The Polyglots Read Free

had been heralded earlier by a crescendo of amiability on the part of the stewards. For days the Atlantic had been severe, defiant, and the stewards harsh, indifferent. Now they had changed, as if with the weather. We just missed the famous Statue of Liberty, going through an elaborate passport formality in the saloon, pledging on a printed form that we were verily neither anarchists nor atheists nor believers in bigamy nor yet in leading a double life. The War Office agent who was to meet us at the docks and arrange our passage to Vancouver no sooner came on board than he began drinking—prohibition had just then been proclaimed in the United States—and was not seen again.
    Then followed a small disappointment. I had expected some sort of super-automobile, seeing that it was New York, to convey us, in a flash, to our hotel. Instead, there was a clumsy ‘growler’ of the oldest pattern with an antique coachman with a red nose and an ancient-looking horse—straight out of Dickens. ‘Well, how are things across the water?’ he enquired in a nasal intonation as a preliminary to discussing the fare. And in a flash the Dickens illusion was shattered to the ground. I drove through the warm, brightly lit streets of New York, wondrous, incurring as I did a curious sensation. ‘Me in America!’ I seemed to be saying to myself. ‘Me in New York!’ For up to the present the United States had been to me an inanimate idea connected with the map of the new hemisphere. Now the towering buildings and the teeming streets were a living reality. And the midsummer aspect of Broadway, in all its newness, juvenility, and brightness, probed to the springs of life.
    My companion, who prided himself on knowing New York inside out, determined next morning to show me Fifth Avenue; accordingly we took the subway and found ourselves, upon enquiry, in Brooklyn. As the train steamed out of the lofty precincts of Pennsylvania Station we had our first glimpse of the victorious Alliance. A Japanese gentleman had occupied the lower berth of the sleeper, to the unspeakable wrath and disgust of a citizen of the United States, who prevailed upon him to surrender this privilege to himself, as a member of the superior white race. ‘I’m American,’ he was explaining. ‘You go up—up—up you go, understand? I’m American.’
    The Japanese gentleman either knew no English or very wisely pretended that he did not. He bowed politely and sucked his breath in and showed his teeth and wreathed his face in smiles. ‘Ha!—zzz—Iz zas so?’ he kept asking. ‘Ha! Iz zas so?—zzz——?’
    ‘I’m American, you son of a gun. You—Jap; I—American, understand?’
    ‘Ha!—zzz—Iz zas so?’ asked the Japanese gentleman, bowing and sucking his breath in. ‘Ha! Iz zas so?—zzz——?’
    They seemed destined to go on like this for ever. I took up a book—and fell asleep.
    I sprang up in my sleep, for somebody had slapped me hard on the knee as I was sleeping. I opened my eyes and beheld the American citizen who now took his seat beside me, and, inspecting my British uniform, said:
    ‘Well, I guess you’ll be glad as hell to feel you’re in a free country at last?’
    I rubbed my eyes.
    ‘No kings and princes here to lock you up in prison. No priests and courtiers intriguing against your liberty. Ah, this is a free country, my friend. We are a pure-minded simple people. Our home life is a clean, simple, healthy and straightforward life! Ah, you’ve got to be an American to understand it!’ He paused. ‘See that bridge?’ he said. ‘Cost 11,000,000 dollars to build; 6,600 feet long, 108 feet wide, 123 feet high, with a distance of 1,464 feetbetween the pillars; is made entirely of steel; holds 2 elevated railroads, 4 trolly tracks, 2 automobile streets, 2 bicycle tracks, and 2 sidewalks. Yes, God’s country, we call it!’
    Imperceptibly, to the lull of his voice, I fell asleep.
    I was wakened up by another slap on the knee, as vigorous as