Personally, I think that the directness and simplicity of the Americans is the directness and simplicity of the artist, the man who has no use for unessentials. And one gets this sense of artistry in an American's business dealings. He goes directly at his object, and he goes with a concentrated power and a zest that is exhilarating. Here, too, he exposes his hand in a way bewildering to the Britisher, who sometimes finds the American so candid in his transactions that he becomes suspicious of there being something more behind it. To the American work is something zestful, joyous. He likes to get things done; he likes to do big things with a big gesture--sometimes to the damage of detail, which he has overlooked--for him work is craftsmanship, a thing to be carried through with the delight of a craftsman. He is, in fact, the artist as business man. Like all artists he has an air of hardness, the ruthlessness to attain an end. But like all artists he is quick and generous, vivid in enthusiasm and hard to daunt. Like the artist he is narrow in his point of view at times and decisive in opinion--simply because his own point of vision is all-absorbing. This, for example, is apparent in his democracy, which is extraordinarily wide in certain respects, and singularly restricted in others--an example of this is the way the Americans handle offenders against their code; whether they be I.W.W., strikers or the like, their attitude is infinitely more ruthless than the British attitude. Another example is, having so splendid a freedom, they allow themselves to be "bossed" by policemen, porters and a score of others who exert an authority so drastic on occasions that no Briton would stand it. But over all I was struck by the vividity of the Americans I met. Business men, journalists, writers, store girls, clerks, clubmen, railway men--all of them had an air of passionate aliveness, an intellectual avidity that made contact with them an affair of delightful excitement. CHAPTER XXIV NEW YORK There was no qualification or reservation in New York's welcome to the Prince of Wales. In the last year or so I have seen some great crowds, and by that I mean not merely vast aggregations of people, but vast gatherings of people whose ardour carried away the emotions with a tremendous psychic force. During that year I had seen the London crowd that welcomed back the British military leader; the London and Manchester crowds, and vivid and stirring crowds they were, that dogged the footsteps of President Wilson; I had seen the marvellous and poignant crowd at the London Victory March, and I had had a course of crowds, vigorous, affectionate and lively, in Montreal, Toronto and throughout Canada.