No, we are bad enough about not importing valuable European ideas, but Europe is still slower about introducing ours. Europe has always--from away back--been neglectful in this regard. Take our admirable postal and express system, for instance. We had it perfectly developed and running smoothly and beautifully more than three hundred years ago; and Europe came over and admired it and eloquently praised it--but didn’t adopt it. We Americans.... But let Prescott tell about it. I quote from the _Conquest of Peru_, chapter 2, vol. 1: As the distance each courier had to perform was small, they ran over the ground with great swiftness, and messages were carried through the whole extent of the long routes at the rate of a hundred and fifty miles a day. Their office was not limited to carrying dispatches. They brought various articles. Fish from the distant ocean, fruits, game, and different commodities from the hot regions of the coast were taken to the capital in good condition. It is remarkable that this important institution should have been found among two barbarian nations of the New World long before it was introduced among the civilized nations of Europe. By these wise contrivances of the Incas, the most distant parts of the long-extended empire of Peru were brought into intimate relations with each other. And while the capitals of Christendom, but a few hundred miles apart, remained as far asunder as if seas had rolled between them, the great capitals Cuzco and Quito were placed in immediate correspondence. Intelligence from the numerous provinces was transmitted on the wings of the wind to the Peruvian metropolis, the great focus to which all the lines of communication converged. There--that is what we had, three hundred and twenty-five years before Europe had anything that could be called a businesslike and effective postal and express service. We are a great people. We have always been a great people, from the start: always alive, alert, up early in the morning, and ready to teach. But Europe has been a slow and discouraging pupil from the start; always, from the very start. It seems to me that something ought to be done about this. ----- Footnote 5: Compare with his remarks on the same subject, in “Marienbad--A Health Factory,” written about a year earlier. Footnote 6: This was good prophecy. There were no skyscrapers in New York City when it was written. THE CHOLERA EPIDEMIC IN HAMBURG (1892)