Reflections and Comments 1865-1895Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
General
Reflections and Comments 1865-1895
Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
Essays
would have to give the editors high places about his person, and
provide offices for the reporters in his basement. If the scheme
were well organized and did not attempt too much, its value in
settling people's "position," and in giving the worthy their proper
place without the prolonged struggles they now have sometimes to
undergo, would be very great, and it would enable foreign students
of our institutions to pursue successfully certain lines of inquiry
into our manners and customs in which they are now too often
baffled.
LIVING IN EUROPE AND GOING TO IT
Every year a great deal of discussion of the best mode of spending
the summer, and the course of the people who go to Europe, instead
of submitting to the discomfort and extortion of American hotels, is
for the most part greatly commended. The story told about the hotels
and lodging-houses is the same every year. The food is bad, the
rooms uncomfortable, and the charges high. The fashion, except
perhaps at Newport and Beverly, near Boston, Bar Harbor, and one or
two other highly favored localities, grows stronger and stronger, to
live in the city in the winter and spend the three hot months in
France or England or Switzerland. Moreover, the accounts which come
from Europe of the increase in the number of American colonists now
to be found in every attractive town of the Continent are not
exactly alarming, but they are sufficient to set people thinking.
The number of those who pass long years in Europe, educate their
children there, and retain little connection with America beyond
drawing their dividends, grows steadily, and as a general rule they
are persons whose minds or manners or influence makes their
prolonged absence a sensible loss to our civilization. Moreover,
when they come back, they find it difficult to stay, and staying is
not made easy for them. People here are a little suspicious of them,
and are apt to fancy that they have got out of sympathy with
American institutions, and have grown too critical for the rough
processes by which the work of life in America has in a large degree
to be done. They themselves, on the other hand, besides being soured
by the coldness of their reception, are apt to be disgusted by the
want of finish of all their surroundings, by the difficulty with
which the commoner and coarser needs are met in this country, and by
the reluctance with which allowance is made by legislation and
opinion for the gratification of unusual or unpopular tastes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account