The Arkansaw traveler., 1883-12-22
THE ENGLISH TOURIST IN
 AMERICA.
Pail Mail Gazette.l

iHAu OJ hCtC paosih6 NoestSt some critical doubts as to the value of the kind of knowledge which can be picked up in the course Of such circular journeys as are most affected by English us,,ors across the Atlantic. One cannot read the programme of Lord Coleridge's almost triumphal progress-or, for that matter, talk with any English traveller who has spent three months Tn touring through the States-without being struck by the extent to which the average Eng lishman's experiences are necessarily con- fned te few great cities and fashionable watering-places. It is hard to see how things could possibly be managed other wise the actual rural heart of a country Is always very difficult for the stranger to penetrate and yet the picture of Ameri- oa brought back. to Europe by any such casual summer visitors must surely needs be very one-sided, and in some respects positively misleading. We have seen New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Wash ington. Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, San Francisco. Niagara. Newport, Sara toEA. White Mountain House what else, they ask, have we left 10 see3 The sim- ple answer is, America. Not, of course, the mere broad expanse of American land anybody who has gone one days journey of twenty-four mortal hours through the great monotonous Mis- ,issippi valley has seen as much of that neaslreless commodity as human heart is ever likely to desire; but the true un- deriving working America of the genuine American people. Vein England almost always forget that the great cities of the states. big and thriving as they are, are bu; < patch (to use the expressive native phrasel upon the vast scattered popula- ton ot the rural districts. There IS no country on earth (except, perhaps, Rus sia and India) so essentially and over ~keimingly rural as America; its great ,nens aie mere turning nuclei sprinkled aboet at enormous distances over vast areas of agricultural land. Even in Eng ,dn- ,ownsmen are apt to forget that scss .arge proportion of our population sull ..yes in the village and hamlets of our broad shires; we need to be remind ed every now and again, with due per ssstence, of the elusive fact that agricul- ture remains to this day the greatest and mos; important single industry of the liri,ish Isles. Sull. II is fair enough, on NuC &Ao>O@ bo tdo6N VI A-bhiaho O1 hS large towns He who has seen London Lnerpool. Manchester, Leeds, Birmlng hari. Newcastle and half dozen other great centres, has seen all that is most vigorous and active and vital in English l,fe The universities, the cathedral cities. the rural villages, all contribute ,hc,r due share to the vast whole bat they sink, numerically. into comparative insignhcance beside the bigness of the bIg towns. and especially of what Cobbett ln his straightforward denunci4tory fash ion. used to describe as the li-devour- ing ven"
 In America, however, 1t is far otherwise Even Americans themselves that is 10 say, ,o~n-abiding and touring Americans seldom adequately realize the fact tha, the vast mass of their fellow citizens are the most purely rural and even rustic people on the face of the entire earth. |, IS Tn the endless succession of white frame farmhouses, standing in naked plots of scraggy yard" and surrounded by treeiess meadows with bare snake Sences or open cornhelds, that the real American people of to-day lives and Sreathes and has its being This wide and unpioturesque America, with its rthetic unlovelness, its intellectual narrowness of view. its firm aad earnes, moral purpose, its intense physical and nervous vigor, is widely diifused general educ ation, it's unevoked versatility, its woadeIfal potentialities offuture develop ,nen1 IS all but unknown. not only to the English tourist, but even to the srea, mass of the hospitable city Ameri- ,.,h kA ,s l,l, contac, on both sides of the Atlantic
 For that well-known cosmopolitan figure, the travelling American, belongs of course almost invariably to the city class. He IS the successful snecnla,or, the importer of dry goods. the railway king, the Wall street gambler. the political wire butler, the Chicago pork-dealer. the San Fran cisco merchant, the educated New Eng land gentleman, or the wealthy descend ant of Philadelphia ouakers. Now, t is curious fact that though the America towns have their whole raison d'eue for :he most part as collectors of produce or distributors of imports to and from the country districts, yet the American towns man generally knows and cares less abou, .he country than any other townsman n the world-than even the fianeu. of ehe BoulevaIds, or the cooped- up workman of Belleville or Mort martre It is always a fresh astonish-
 nent to the educated American to find that intelligent Englishmen with whom he converses live almost or quite entirely m the country. He has no conception oi anybody except farmer living by prefer. eaoe anywhere on earth except in town He seldom goes outside the town him. seif, taking his pleasure and exercise rather in parks and gardens than in fields or meadows. "The country" suggests to his mind only picture, not of green hedges and village churches embowered ;n the trees, but of long fenceless corn fields, endless expanses of bare grass land, and highroads running in straight lines through more or less dreary u,ili- tarian "real estate." As an American himself has somewhere well phrased it, in the states there is great deal of land, fsss1 = Al