The Englishman spends more than another hour at afternoon tea, and gossip with friends, and sauntering about between his club and his office, while the American packs every minute with work. The very walk of an English merchant, slow, dignified, self-satisfied, and that of the American, rapid, eager, anxious--the one looking as if time were of no importance nor circumstances, and the other as if the loss of a minute might mean ruin--are the visible indices to the character of the nations. It is only yesterday that elevators were introduced into English city buildings, and there are many London offices to which you still have to make an Alpine ascent of four stairs; but a New Yorker regards a stair as a survival of barbarism, and hardly knows how to use it. The higher buildings have several sets of elevators, like the four tracks which railways lay down to work the swift and slow traffic. “Don't go in there,” my friend said, with whom I was going to lunch at a club on the top floor of a many-storied New York building. “That's an accommodation elevator; stops, you know, at every station. This is the express for the top floor.” “Would it have made much difference?” I said. “Very nearly a minute,” as if the loss of the minute would have thrown us back for the rest of the day. No man goes slow if he has the chance of going fast, no man stops to talk if he can talk walking, no man walks if he can ride in a trolley car, no one goes in a trolley car if he can get a convenient railway, and by-and-by no one will go by railway car if he can be shot through a pneumatic tube. No one writes with his own hand if he can dictate to a stenographer, no one dictates if he can telegraph, no one telegraphs if he can telephone, and by-and-by, when the spirit of American invention has brought wireless telegraphy into thorough condition, a man will simply sit with his mouth at one hole and his ear at another, and do business with the ends of the earth in a few seconds, which the same machine will copy and preserve in letter books and ledgers. It is the American's regret that at present he can do nothing with his feet while he is listening at the telephone, but doubtless some employment will be found for them in the coming age.