The daily Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1878-1???, 1884-02-01
THE ENGLISH TOURIST.
A One-Sided Picture OF American
Life and Manners.


trip suggests to those who know some
thing of America by actual residence,
rather than by mere passing tourist
some critical doubts as to
the value of the kind of knowledge
which can be picked up in the course
of suci circular journeys as are most
affected by English visitors across the
Atlantic. One cannot read the pro-
gramme of Lord Coleridge's almost
triumphal progress-or, for that mat
ter, talk with any English traveller who
has spent three months in touring
the States-without being
struck by the extent to which the aver
age Englishman' experiences are neces-
sarily confined to few great cities and
watering-places. 1t is hard
to see how things could possibly be
managed otherwise; the actual rural
heart of country is always very difi-
cult for the stranger to penetrate; and
yet the picture of America brought
back to Europe by any casual summer
visitors must surely needs be very one
sided, and in some respects positively
misleading. We have seen New York,
Boston, Philadelphia. Washington, Chi
cago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, San Fran
cisco, Niagara, Newport Saratoga,
White Mountain House; what else,
they ask, have we left to seep The
simple answer is, America. Not, of
course, the mere broad expanse of
American land; anybody who has gone
one days journey Of twenty-four NOR
tai hours through the great monotonous
Mississippi valley has seen as much Of
that measureless commodity as human
heart is ever likely to desire; but the
true underlying working America Of
the genuine American people. We in
England almost always forget that the
great cities of the States, big and
thriving as they are, are but patch
Ito use the expressive native phrase)
upon the vast scattered population OF
the rural districts. There is no coun-
try on earth Except, perhaps, Russia
and lndiaD SO essentially and over
whelmingly rural as America; its great
towns are mere turning nuclei sprinkled
about at enormous distances over vast
areas of agricultural land. Even in
England, townsmen are apt to forget
that very large proportion of our
population still lives in the village and
hamlets of our broad shires; we need
to be reminded every now and again,
with due persistence, of the elusive
fact that agriculture remains to this
day the greatest and most important
single industry of the British Isles.
Still, it is fair enough, on the whole, to
Judge of England by its large towns.
He who has seen London, Liverpool,
Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, New
castle and half dozen other great
centers, has seen all that is most
vigorous and active and vital In En-
glish life. The universities, the cathe-
dral cities, the rural villages, all con-
tribute their due share to the vast
whole; but they sink. numerically, into
comparative insignificance beside the
bigness of the big towns, and especially
of what Cobbett, in his straightfor-
ward denunciatory fashion, used to
describe as 1.-The all-devouring wen."
In America, however, it is far other
wise. Even Americans themselves
that is to say, town-abiding and tour
ing Americans-seldom adequately
realize the fact that the vast mass of
their fellow citizens are the most pure
ly rural and even rustic people on the
face OF the entire earth 1t is in the
endless succession of white frame
farmhouses, standing in naked plots of
scraggy yard" and surrounded by
treeless meadows with bare snake
fences or open cornfields, that the real
American people Of to-day lives and
breathes and has its being. This wide
and unpicturesque America, with its
aesthetic unloveliness, its intellectual
narrowness of view, its firm and earn
est moral purpose, its intense physical
and nervous vigor, its widely diffused
general education, its unevoked versa
tility, its wonderful potentialities Of
future developments all but un-
known, not only to the English tourist
but even to the great mass OF the hos
pitable city Americans with whom he
is likely to come into contact on both
sides of the Atlantic. For that we'll
known cosmopolitan figure. the travel
ing American, belongs of course al
most invariably to the city class. He
is the successful Spectator, the i'm
porter of dry goods, the railway king,
the Wall street gambler, the political
wire puller, the Chicago pork dealer,
the San Francisco merchant the edu-
Gated New England gentleman, or the
wealthy descendant Of Philadelphia
Quakers. Now, it is a curious fact that
though the American towns have their
whole raison d'etre for the most part
as collectors of produce or distributors
of imports to and from the country
districts, yet the American townsman
generally knows and cares less about
the country than any other townsmar
in the world-than even the faneur Of
the Boulevards, or the cooped-up work.
man of Belleville or Mort-martre. II
is always fresh establishment to the
educated American to find that intelli
gent Englishmen with whom he con
verses live almost or quite entirely In
the country. He has no conception o.
anybody except a farmer living BY
preference anywhere on earth excep,
in town. He seldom goes outside the
town himself, taking his pleasure and
exercise rather in parks and gardens
than in fields or meadows. 1.-THE coun.
try" suggests to his mind only a pict-