Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1884-01-10
OSCAR WILDE ON AMERICA.
n Few Extracts from the Lecture
He is Delivering TO His Country
men
Irish Times.

Irish Times
Oscar Wilde, in the course of a lee
ture delivered recently, said if he was
asked what most struck him on first
landing in America. he would
say it was this: That if the Ameri-
cans were not the most well-dressed
people in the world-and he was
afraid they were not-stilI they were
the most comfortably dressed. There
were no rags to be seen anywhere.
No American ever SauuterS or strolls.
or even walks2wallxing is one of the
fine arts unknown in America. They
are always rushing in a hurry to
catch trains, and the fact that they
were always IN a hurry would make
people think they were a romantic
race. Really romantic people were
never IN time for anything, and did
not care whether they caught their
trains or not. Hear, hear. But in
America, catching trains was a ma
tlonal amusement. Their romance
was different from ours. It was not
the romance of Shakespeare-it was
the romance of commerce.
OF course, when one wentto Ameri-
ca he was brought to see the Niagara.
Every young American went and
spent part of his honeymoon at Mag
ara, and he thought the great water
tall must prove the first disappoint-
ment IN American married life.
Laughter. Niagara was disappoint-
ing, whether it was that the surround
Ings were so abOminably vulgar. cot
up like tea-garden, filled with mel
anchOly tourists, all trying to get up
that feeling of enthusiasm which the
guIde-book assured them they might
have without any extra charge-
Laughter he did not know. In order
to stand underneath the waterfall to
prevent ones getting drenched he had
to wear suit of yellow oilskins of
the most unbecoming texture, almost
as bad as that terrible macintosh,
which he hoped none of the audience
ever thought of wearing. Laughter.
One Of the most charming women of
modern times, Nine. Bernhardt, had.
however, got photographed in it
with Niagara as a sort of unpreten-
tious background.
California, the lovel.est part of
America, was beautiful as the Riviera
IN spring. There, and there only. did
he see a really artistic city-not San
Francisco, with its steep streets and
glarlng white houses, but the city
built by the Chinese, who came over
to build railways or dig in the mines.
These were looked on as very common
people, and a great many bricks were
thrown at them ghterl-but they,
came from race so artistic race
educated IN such traditions of beauty.
that they built for themselves a beauti-
full little city, with narrow winding
streets, lit with paper lanterns. What
ever they did was beautiful, and what
ever beautiful thing they had they
used.
American children seemed to be
pale and precocious, and that might
be owing to the fact that the only
national game of America was the
game of euchre, which could hardly,
II lndustriously practiced, tend to
Great and develop aS fine or manly
physique. These children, however,
grew up into very charming people.
the American girl being one of the
most charming despots that it would
be thought possible to find living in
country with free republican institu-
tions. She was often a most delight
full oasis of unreasonableness in the
desert of common sense. The only
well-dressed men in America were
the miners. The menin America had
very little childhood; They left
school at IA, had two or three success
full bankruptcies by the time they
were 30, and at 81 were million
aires