Your United States, Arnold Bennett [ebook reader browser .TXT] 📗

simplicity of its vast physiognomy. I discovered everything in it proper to a station, except trains. Not a sign of a train. My impulse was to ask, "Is this the tomb of Alexander J. Cassatt, or is it a cathedral, or is it, after all, a railroad station?" Then I was led with due ceremony across the boundless plains of granite to a secret staircase, guarded by lions in uniform, and at the foot of this staircase, hidden like a shame or a crime, I found a resplendent train, the Congressional Limited. It was not the Limited of my dreams; but it was my first American Limited, and I boarded it in a condition of excitement. I criticized, of course, for every experienced traveler has decided views concerning _trains de luxe_. The cars impressed rather than charmed me. I preferred, and still prefer, the European variety of Pullman. (Yes, I admit we owe it entirely to America!) And then there is a harsh, inhospitable quality about those all-steel cars. They do not yield. You think you are touching wood, and your knuckles are abraded. The imitation of wood is a triumph of mimicry, but by no means a triumph of artistic propriety. Why should steel be made to look like wood?... Fireproof, you say. But is anything fireproof in the United States, except perhaps Tammany Hall? Has not the blazing of fireproof constructions again and again singed off the eyebrows of dauntless firemen? My impression is that "fireproof," in the American tongue, is one of those agreeable but quite meaningless phrases which adorn the languages of all nations. Another such phrase, in the American tongue, is "right away!" ...

I sat down in my appointed place in the all-steel car, and, turning over the pages of a weekly paper, saw photographs of actual collisions, showing that in an altercation between trains the steel-and-wood car could knock the all-steel car into a cocked hat!... The decoration of the all-steel car does not atone for its probable combustibility and its proved fragility. In particular, the smoking-cars of all the Limiteds I intrusted myself to were defiantly and wilfully ugly. Still, a fine, proud train, handsome in some ways! And the trainmen were like admirals, captains, and first officers pacing bridges; clearly they owned the train, and had kindly lent it to the Pennsylvania R.R. Their demeanor expressed a rare sense of ownership and also of responsibility. While very polite, they condescended. A strong contrast to the miserable European "guard"--for all his silver buttons! I adventured into the observation-car, of which institution I had so often heard Americans speak with pride, and speculated why, here as in all other cars, the tops of the windows were so low that it was impossible to see the upper part of the thing observed (roofs, telegraph-wires, tree-foliage, hill-summits, sky) without bending the head and cricking the neck. I do not deny that I was setting a high standard of perfection, but then I had heard so much all my life about American Limiteds!

The Limited started with exactitude, and from the observation-car I watched the unrolling of the wondrous Hudson tunnel--one of the major sights of New York, and a thing of curious beauty.... The journey passed pleasantly, with no other episode than that of dinner, which cost a dollar and was worth just about a dollar, despite the mutton. And with exactitude we arrived at Washington--another splendid station. I generalized thus: "It is certain that this country understands railroad stations." I was, however, fresh in the country, and had not then seen New Haven station, which, as soon as it is quite done with, ought to be put in a museum.

We returned from Washington by a night train; we might have taken a day train, but it was pointed out to me that I ought to get into "form" for certain projected long journeys into the West. At midnight I was brusquely introduced to the American sleeping-car. I confess that I had not imagined anything so appalling as the confined, stifling, malodorous promiscuity of the American sleeping-car, where men and women are herded together on shelves under the drastic control of an official aided by negroes. I care not to dwell on the subject.... I have seen European prisons, but in none that I have seen would such a system be tolerated, even by hardened warders and governors; and assuredly, if it were, public opinion would rise in anger and destroy it. I have not been in Siberian prisons, but I remember reading George Kennan's description of their mild horrors, and I am surprised that he should have put himself to the trouble of such a tedious journey when he might have discovered far more exciting material on any good road around New York. However, nobody seemed to mind, such is the force of custom--and I did not mind very much, because my particular friend, intelligently foreseeing my absurd European prejudices, had engaged for us a state-room.

This state-room, or suite--for it comprised two apartments--was a beautiful and aristocratic domain. The bedchamber had a fan that would work at three speeds like an automobile, and was an enchanting toy. In short, I could find no fault with the accommodation. It was perfect, and would have remained perfect had the train remained in the station. Unfortunately, the engine-driver had the unhappy idea of removing the train from the station. He seemed to be an angry engine-driver, and his gesture was that of a man setting his teeth and hissing: "Now, then, come out of that, you sluggards!" and giving a ferocious tug. There was a fearful jerk, and in an instant I understood why sleeping-berths in America are always arranged lengthwise with the train. If they were not, the passengers would spend most of the night in getting up off the floor and climbing into bed again. A few hundred yards out of the station the engine-driver decided to stop, and there was the same fearful jerk and concussion. Throughout the night he stopped and he started at frequent intervals, and always with the fearful jerk. Sometimes he would slow down gently and woo me into a false tranquillity, but only to finish with the same jerk rendered more shocking by contrast.

The bedchamber was delightful, the lavatory amounted to a boudoir, the reading-lamp left nothing to desire, the ventilation was a continuous vaudeville entertainment, the watch-pocket was adorable, the mattress was good. Even the road-bed was quite respectable--not equal to the best I knew, probably, but it had the great advantage of well-tied rails, so that as the train passed from one rail-length to the next you felt no jar, a bliss utterly unknown in Europe. The secret of a satisfactory "sleeper," however, does not lie in the state-room, nor in the glittering lavatory, nor in the lamp, nor in the fan, nor in the watch-pocket, nor in the bed, nor even in the road-bed. It lies in the mannerisms of that brave fellow out there in front of you on the engine, in the wind and the rain. But no one in all America seemed to appreciate this deep truth. For myself, I was inclined to go out to the engine-driver and say to him: "Brother, are you aware--you cannot be--that the best European trains start with the imperceptible stealthiness of a bad habit, so that it is impossible to distinguish motion from immobility, and come to rest with the softness of doves settling on the shoulders of a young girl?" ... If the fault is not the engine-driver's, then are the brakes to blame? Inconceivable!... All American engine-drivers are alike; and I never slept a full hour in any American "sleeper," what with stops, starts, hootings, tollings, whizzings round sharp corners, listening to the passage of freight-trains, and listening to haughty conductor-admirals who quarreled at length with newly arrived voyagers at 2 or 3 A.M.! I do not criticize; I state. I also blame myself. There are those who could sleep. But not everybody could sleep. Well and heartily do I remember the moment when another friend of mine, in the midst of an interminable scolding that was being given by a nasal-voiced conductor to a passenger just before the dawn, exposed his head and remarked: "Has it occurred to you that this is a sleeping-car?" In the swift silence the whirring of my private fan could be heard.

I arrived in New York from Washington, as I arrived at all my destinations after a night journey, in a state of enfeebled submissiveness, and I retired to bed in a hotel. And for several hours the hotel itself would stop and start with a jerk and whiz round corners.

* * * * *


For many years I had dreamed of traveling by the great, the unique, the world-renowned New York-Chicago train; indeed, it would not be a gross exaggeration to say that I came to America in order to take that train; and at length time brought my dream true. I boarded the thing in New York, this especial product of the twentieth century, and yet another thrilling moment in my life came and went! I boarded it with pride; everybody boarded it with pride; and in every eye was the gleam: "This is the train of trains, and I have my state-room on it." Perhaps I was ever so slightly disappointed with the dimensions and appointments of the state-room--I may have been expecting a whole car to myself--but the general self-conscious smartness of the train reassured me. I wandered into the observation-car, and saw my particular friend proudly employ the train-telephone to inform his office that he had caught the train. I saw also the free supply of newspapers, the library of books, the typewriting-machine, and the stenographer by its side--all as promised. And I knew that at the other end of the train was a dining-car, a smoking-car, and a barber-shop. I picked up the advertising literature scattered about by a thoughtful Company, and learned therefrom that this train was not a mere experiment; it was the finished fruit of many experiments, and that while offering the conveniences of a hotel or a club, it did with regularity what it undertook to do in the way of speed and promptness. The pamphlet made good reading!...

I noted that it pleased the Company to run two other very important trains out of the terminus simultaneously with the unique train. Bravado, possibly; but bravado which invited the respect of all those who admire enterprise! I anticipated with pleasure the noble spectacle of these three trains sailing forth together on three parallel tracks; which pleasure was denied me. We for Chicago started last; we started indeed, according to my poor European watch, from fifteen to thirty seconds late!... No matter! I would not stickle for seconds: particularly as at Chicago, by the terms of a contract which no company in Europe would have had the grace to sign, I was to receive, for any unthinkable lateness, compensation at the rate of one cent for every thirty-six seconds!

Within a quarter of an hour it became evident that that train had at least one great quality--it moved. As, in the deepening dusk, we swung along the banks of the glorious Hudson, veiled now in the vaporous mysteries following a red sunset, I was obliged to admit with increasing enthusiasm that that train did move. Even the persecutors of Galileo would never have had the audacity to deny that that train moved. And one felt, comfortably, that the whole Company, with all the Company's resources, was watching over its flying pet, giving it the supreme right of way and urging it forward