American cities are always in a state of transition. Good buildings are pulled down to make room for better ones. My wife says that "New York will be a delightful place to live in when it is finished." But it will never be finished. It is like Tennyson's description of the mystical city of Camelot:-- "always building, Therefore never to be built at all." But unlike Camelot, it is not built to music,--rather to an accompaniment of various and dreadful noise. Even natural catastrophes which fall upon cities in America seem to be almost welcomed as an invitation to improve them. A fire laid the business portion of Baltimore in ashes a few years ago. Before the smoke had dispersed, the Baltimoreans were saying, "Now we can have wider streets and larger stores." An earthquake shook San Francisco to pieces. The people were stunned for a little while. Then they rubbed the dust out of their eyes, and said, "This time we shall know how to build better." The high stimulation of will-power in America has had the effect of quickening the general pace of life to a rate that always astonishes and sometimes annoys the European visitor. The movement of things and people is rapid, incessant, bewildering. There is a rushing tide of life in the streets, a nervous tension in the air. Business is transacted with swift despatch and close attention. The preliminary compliments and courtesies are eliminated. Whether you want to buy a paper of pins, or a thousand shares of stock, it is done quickly. I remember that I once had to wait an hour in the Ottoman Bank at Damascus to get a thousand francs on my letter of credit. The courteous director gave me coffee and delightful talk. In New York the transaction would not have taken five minutes,--but there would have been no coffee nor conversation. Of course the rate of speed varies considerably in different parts of the country. In the South it is much slower than in the North and the West. In the rural districts you will often find the old-fashioned virtues of delay and deliberation carried to an exasperating point of perfection. Even among the American cities there is a difference in the rapidity of the pulse of life. New York and Chicago have the name of the swiftest towns. Philadelphia has a traditional reputation for a calm that borders on somnolence. "How many children have you?" some one asked a Chicagoan. "Four," was his answer; "three living, and one in Philadelphia." I was reading only a few day ago an amusing description of the impression which the American _pas-redoublé_ of existence made upon an amiable French observer, M. Hugues Le Roux, one of the lecturers who came to the United States on the Hyde foundation. He says:--