第20章

Suddenly it came over me that I was supposed to be amusing myself--my face was a yard long--and that you probably at that moment were saying to your husband: "He stays away so long! What a good time he must be having!" The idea was the first thing that had made me smile for a month; I got up and walked home, reflecting, as I went, that I was "seeing Europe," and that, after all, one MUST see Europe.It was because I had been convinced of this that I came out, and it is because the operation has been brought to a close that I have been so happy for the last eight weeks.I was very conscientious about it, and, though your letter that night made me abominably homesick, I held out to the end, knowing it to be once for all.I sha'n't trouble Europe again; I shall see America for the rest of my days.My long delay has had the advantage that now, at least, I can give you my impressions--I don't mean of Europe;impressions of Europe are easy to get--but of this country, as it strikes the re-instated exile.Very likely you'll think them queer;but keep my letter, and twenty years hence they will be quite commonplace.They won't even be vulgar.It was very deliberate, my going round the world.I knew that one ought to see for one's self, and that I should have eternity, so to speak, to rest.I travelled energetically; I went everywhere and saw everything; took as many letters as possible, and made as many acquaintances.In short, Iheld my nose to the grindstone.The upshot of it all is that I have got rid of a superstition.We have so many, that one the less--perhaps the biggest of all--makes a real difference in one's comfort.The superstition in question--of course you have it--is that there is no salvation but through Europe.Our salvation is here, if we have eyes to see it, and the salvation of Europe into the bargain; that is, if Europe is to be saved, which I rather doubt.Of course you'll call me a bird of freedom, a braggart, a waver of the stars and stripes; but I'm in the delightful position of not minding in the least what any one calls me.I haven't a mission; I don't want to preach; I have simply arrived at a state of mind; I have got Europe off my back.You have no idea how it simplifies things, and how jolly it makes me feel.Now I can live;now I can talk.If we wretched Americans could only say once for all, "Oh, Europe be hanged!" we should attend much better to our proper business.We have simply to live our life, and the rest will look after itself.You will probably inquire what it is that I like better over here, and I will answer that it's simply--life.

Disagreeables for disagreeables, I prefer our own.The way I have been bored and bullied in foreign parts, and the way I have had to say I found it pleasant! For a good while this appeared to be a sort of congenital obligation, but one fine day it occurred to me that there was no obligation at all, and that it would ease me immensely to admit to myself that (for me, at least) all those things had no importance.I mean the things they rub into you in Europe; the tiresome international topics, the petty politics, the stupid social customs, the baby-house scenery.The vastness and freshness of this American world, the great scale and great pace of our development, the good sense and good nature of the people, console me for there being no cathedrals and no Titians.I hear nothing about Prince Bismarck and Gambetta, about the Emperor William and the Czar of Russia, about Lord Beaconsfield and the Prince of Wales.I used to get so tired of their Mumbo-Jumbo of a Bismarck, of his secrets and surprises, his mysterious intentions and oracular words.They revile us for our party politics; but what are all the European jealousies and rivalries, their armaments and their wars, their rapacities and their mutual lies, but the intensity of the spirit of party? what question, what interest, what idea, what need of mankind, is involved in any of these things?

Their big, pompous armies, drawn up in great silly rows, their gold lace, their salaams, their hierarchies, seem a pastime for children;there's a sense of humour and of reality over here that laughs at all that.Yes, we are nearer the reality--we are nearer what they will all have to come to.The questions of the future are social questions, which the Bismarcks and Beaconsfields are very much afraid to see settled; and the sight of a row of supercilious potentates holding their peoples like their personal property, and bristling all over, to make a mutual impression, with feathers and sabres, strikes us as a mixture of the grotesque and the abominable.