V

THE AMERICAN ROAD

OUT in the country was a different America. The maples were all red, the first blush of the dawn of summer. In the gardens the ficacia was shooting her yellow arrows, in the woods the American dogwood tree was covered with white blossoms like thousands of little dolls' nightcaps. Down at Caldwell, New Jersey, I picked many violets and anemones large blue fragrant violets. The bride's veil was in lovely wisps and armfuls of white. The unfolding oak turned all rose, like the peach tree in bloom. Each morning when I awakened and went out into the woods I found something new had happened overnight, thus I discovered the sycamore in leaf, fringing and fanning, and then the veils which the naked birch trees were wearing. The birches began to look like maidens doing their hair. The fern fronds and azalea buds opened their hands. The chestnut tree lit up her many candles. The shaggy hickory, the tree giant whose bark hangs in rags and clots, had looked quite dead, but with the coming of May it was seen to be awaking tenderly. In the glades the little columbines

put on their pink bonnets. Only the pines and cedars were dark and changeless, as if grown old in sin beside the tender innocence of the birches.

It is very pleasant living in the half-country- living, that is, in the outer suburbs of the great American city or in the ordinary suburbs of the small city. New York has very little corresponding to our Walthamstow, Enfield, Catford, Ilford, Camberwell, and all those dreary congested parishes that lie eight to ten miles from the centre of London. The American suburbs are garden cities without being called so. Each house is detached from its neighbour, there is a stretch of greenest lawn in front of it, there is a verandah on which are fixed hammocks and porch-swings, there are flower-beds, blossoming shrubs, the shade of maples and cherry trees. There are no railings or fences, and the people on the verandah look down their lawn to the road and take stock of all the people passing to and fro.

Working men and women live a long way out, and are content to spend an hour or an hour and a half a day in trains and cars if only to be quite free of the city when work is over.

Twelve miles of garden city is very wearisome to the pedestrian; but he tramps them gaily when he remembers that the country is ahead, and that he has not simply to retrace his footsteps to a town-dwelling which for the time being he calls home.

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I set off for Chicago in the beginning of May in a Pullman car, but on my own feet; for in order to understand America it is necessary to go to America, and the only way she can be graciously approached is humbly, on one's feet. I travelled just in the same way as I have done the last four years in Russia — viz. with a knapsack on my back, a staff in my hand, and a stout pair of boots on my feet. I carried my pot, I had matches, and I reckoned to buy my own provisions as I went along, and to cook what was necessary over my own fire by the side of the road. At night I proposed to sleep at farmhouses in cold weather, and under the stars when it was warm. I was ready in mind and body for whatever might happen to me. If the farmers proved to be inhospitable, and would not take me in on cold or rainy nights, I would quite cheerfully tramp on till I came to a hotel, or a barn, or a cave, or a bridge, or any place where man, the wanderer, could reasonably find shelter from the elements.

I took the road with great spirits. There is something unusually invigorating in the American air. It is marvellously healthy and strength-giving, this virginal land. Every tree and shrub seems to have a full grasp of life, and outbreathes a robust joy. It is as if the earth itself had greater supplies of unexhausted strength than Europe has as if, indeed, it were a newer world, and had spent less of the primeval potencies and energies bequeathed to this planet at