I have wondered a good deal about America and Americans during the year I have spent here. They have amused, surprised and bewildered me, but it was not until I came to Boston that I felt I was at home. Even the town is English. There was Beacon Street with its long row of individual small houses just as in London, and every one had a street door. I never went into an apartment. Peoples’ rooms seemed to be full of books instead of American beauty roses. It was in one of these houses, after luncheon one day, that the women left alone together discussed the immortality of the soul without any semblance of effort or affectation. On Sunday afternoon my host took me to the Public Library as I wanted to see the Sargent mural paintings. Crowds were pouring in. The reading rooms were packed full of silent studious figures. People came, apparently not to look at the Sargent’s and few of them lingered over the Puvis de Chevannes that lined the staircase walls. They came, as people long accustomed to their own, and went straight for the reading rooms. This interested me more even than the paintings I went to see. I felt that all my expectations of Boston were being fulfilled, as if it had been staged for me. Boston could not have been more magnificently Bostonian. Here resplendent in the winter sunlight stood the imposing Library Building, and people kept pouring into it from every direction. It seemed emblematical of all that Boston stands for. I am glad I have been to Boston, it seems to complete one’s great perplexity concerning the United States. Here is a country that is composed of such widely different towns as Washington, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, all as different from one another as they are different from New York, and as different as New York is from Boston. I wonder there is any co-ordination of movement or feeling at all in such a country. I wonder there is any political unity, any fraternity, and yet there is more than all that; there exists a national patriotic spirit. Well--I have finished wondering, it brings one nowhere, it solves nothing. I will return where I belong, to the world of line and form, a world of one’s own imaginings where there are fewer perplexities and more harmonies. THE END FOOTNOTES: [1] Wife of Sir Alan Johnstone, British diplomatic service. [2] Prince and Princess Christian of England. [3] Hugh Frewen, brother of C. S. [4] Who was Minister for foreign affairs under Kolchak. [5] F. E. Smith, now Lord Birkenhead, Lord Chancellor of England. [6] Daughter of John Lothrop Motley, author of “The Rise of the Dutch Republic,” etc. [7] Since writing he has been appointed U. S. Ambassador to Rome. [8] Lady Randolph Churchill--Mother of Winston Churchill. [9] Popocatapetl, simultaneously with my plans, went into eruption so I never achieved the ascent. [10] Margaret, his sister. [Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printer errors corrected silently.