His Majesty Baby and Some Common PeopleMaclaren, Ian
General
His Majesty Baby and Some Common People
Maclaren, Ian
Fiction; Short stories
One, of course, acknowledges the advantages of this amazing energy, and
there are times when a stolid Englishman grows envious. A university in
America is created in ten years and endowed to the extent of millions
sterling, and equipped with chairs of which a European never dreamt, and
laboratories which border upon palaces. Libraries and picture galleries
are rising in every city, for which the treasuries of Europe have been
ransacked; and, were it not for the restriction of governments, the Old
Masters would have to be sought, not in Italy and England, but in New
York and Chicago. New towns are designed upon a scale of magnificence,
as if each were to be the capital of an empire, and are at least
outlined in building within a few years. Should it be necessary, an army
can be created within a few months, and in a couple of years a new
trade can be established which will kill its European rivals. An English
farmer with fifteen hundred acres is a considerable man, but an American
can have fifteen thousand acres and his different farm buildings will be
connected by telephone. A self-made man in England marries his daughter
to a baronet and is much lifted; but the daughter of a self-made man
in America will marry an English duke, and consider she has conferred
a benefit. When you go to a Western town, you may be taken to see a
university; if not, you are taken to a dry-goods store; each, in its own
way, is the largest of its kind. Certainly, there are stores in America
which have no rival in the Old World, and which you are expected to
visit with the same appreciation as the Duomo of Florence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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