Perhaps, I might add, the Americans are so charmed by Carl Schurz because, when he was in a leading position in the public service, he called a halt in the increasing deforestation of the country. And, above all, because he is a personality! I made his acquaintance, and in his house spent one of the most exhilarating hours of my American visit. I made a pilgrimage to Grant’s tomb, on the door of which his exclamation is carved, “Let us have peace!” And I saw the statue of General Sherman, who uttered the famous saying, “War is hell.” The hellish reports of the ten days’ battle raging in eastern Asia—where, at the very time when we in America were discussing the question of peace, the “field of honor” was covered with incredible numbers of the dead,—brought to us every day a confirmation of that utterance of General Sherman’s. We inspected the famous hotel, the Waldorf-Astoria. It exceeds in size and splendor anything that has thus far been attained in the way of public houses. And yet a new hotel has just been opened in New York, called the St. Regis, which is said to be furnished even more luxuriously, with all sorts of art treasures, old Gobelins, masterpieces of painting, and the like; but it is small—intended only for the upper four hundred; I was told that the lowest price for a room was eight dollars a day. The ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria is adorned with a painting proudly proclaimed by the guide as “the biggest canvas in the world.” Not the best-painted but the biggest canvas in the world! This naïve boastfulness is rather characteristic of the worship of the gigantic that prevails there. When our shops announce a sale they call it a “great sale”; the American advertisement invites you to a “mammoth sale.” The cicerone of the hotel called our attention to the fact that there are three thousand gilded chairs in the ballroom and the adjacent drawing-rooms, each with a different hand-painted scene on its cushion. One of our company immediately sat down on one of these artistically glorified chairs, apparently to test whether or not such delightful artistry aroused special sensations. I had a ride on the underground railway, which was to be opened to the public a few days later, but which had been “running” regularly for three months so that its use might be perfected before it was turned over to the public,—maneuver before the real attack!