AMERICA is a vast country, likewise a vast subject to tackle. Everything there is vast, its mercantile projects, its successes, its catastrophes—but, above all, it possesses a vast wealth in the warm hearts of its kindly people. I have so many friends on the other side of the “herring pond,” that my memory lingers with pleasure and interest in the United States.

I wonder how many times since I returned from my last delightful visit in 1904 people have asked me what I thought of Roosevelt (Rosie-felt).

Those last weeks of the year had been spent in Mexico—my second visit to that remarkable and enchanting land—as the guest of President Diaz and his charming wife. Their great kindness, together with the interesting phase of life unfolded to me day by day, as I made notes for the Diaz Life, brought a desire to make the acquaintance of His Excellency’s neighbour-President of the United States—Mr. Roosevelt.

It was about as difficult to see Mr. Roosevelt as to see the King of England, perhaps even more so, for a good introduction would produce a presentation to our sovereign, whereas in America even a good introduction is looked upon with suspicion. President Roosevelt was surrounded by a perfect cordon of officials.

The White House is one of the best things in America. It is a low, rambling building, quite attractive in style, and like the homes of a great many noblemen in England. There is nothing of the palace about it; it does not seem big enough for the President of the United States, although standing on rising ground, amid beautiful surroundings. It is in a way more handsome externally—and decidedly more imposing—than Buckingham Palace, and a great deal cleaner. The decorations of the interior I thought appalling, but that may be my bad taste. They were so horribly new, and American.

The day on which I was received at the White House happened to be the eighteenth anniversary of the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt. They had been the recipients of congratulatory messages from all parts of the country, but the President was busy as ever. Except his annual recess, he knew no holiday.

I presented myself at the portico. Policemen were everywhere; at each corner was a blue coat.

“Pass on, if you please,” was the order of proceedings, until I arrived at a sort of conservatory door, where another policeman bade me enter. Horrors! a gaunt, square room with a small, empty writing-table in the middle, and chairs standing all round close against the four walls. It was enough to chill one’s enthusiasm. Worse than all! on nearly every chair sat a man who stared obtrusively at the entrance of a woman. Had I known the sort of ordeal to be passed through, in spite of my excellent introductions, I doubt if I should have ventured at all.

Not daring to run away, I sat on a chair like the rest, and felt that, instead of my best, my worst frock would have been the most appropriate for the occasion. One man was summoned to a particular door, and his neighbour to another, and then an old gentleman came forward to me and bowed.

“Mrs. Alec Tweedie, I believe? Would you please to step this way? The President will see you immediately.”

“A haven of refuge at last,” thought I, “anyway a carpet and a cushioned seat.” But even here three men were sitting and waiting in solemn silence, and all the staring had to be gone through again.

Ten minutes or a quarter of an hour of this awful tension passed, and then two more individuals were ushered in, and sat down, not one—of all the five staring beings—uttering a word. I was getting quite nervous, and wondering how best to slip away, when the door opened again.

Merely expecting a sixth sitter, I did not even take the trouble to look up. A vision stopped before me.

“Mrs. Tweedie, I am delighted to meet you,” it said. But somehow it was so short and round and smiling, that I did not grasp the fact that President Roosevelt himself was addressing me. A few pleasant words and he added, “If you will go in there, I will be with you in a moment.”

I went in. This was his own private room, large, plain, and neat, with an enormous, highly polished table reflecting a few roses in a vase. It was just a nice sort of office and nothing more. The only interesting personal thing appeared to be a business-like gun standing in a corner.

I sat and waited, but as the door was wide open I could see and hear the following:

“How do you do? Delighted to see you. Am very busy at the moment, but if there is anything I could do for you quickly, well——” Hesitancy, and a few murmured remarks.

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t spare any time for that this morning. Good-bye!” So in five minutes the President got rid of all those five long-suffering, long-waiting mortals.

That was enough to make one run away without even waiting to say Good-bye. But feeling how foolish that kind of thing would be, I braced myself for the effort, and murmured:

“I’ve not come to ask you to make me a Bishop, or my uncle a Senator, or my nephew an Ambassador, so perhaps I’ve no business here at all. In fact, I’ve not come to ask for anything.”

The President laughed heartily, and, throwing himself back into a capacious arm-chair, soon proved himself to be a very human specimen of mankind.

There is no doubt about it, Roosevelt is an extraordinary man, and a strong one. There may be a little of the ungoverned schoolboy about him, but he is right at heart. His energy and enthusiasm prompted him to do things which, in his position, may not always have been discreet, but he accomplished a vast deal more for America than folk in his own country yet realise.

It was all the more interesting to see and talk to this amazing personality as I had just come direct from Mexico. No greater contrast was possible than that between the two then Presidents of those neighbouring countries.

Diaz—calm, quiet, reserved, strong, determined, thoughtful, and far-seeing.

Roosevelt—impetuous, outspoken, fearless, hasty in action, and hurried in forming opinions.

Both remarkable men, very remarkable men, and utterly dissimilar in character as in physiognomy; each admiring the other in a perfectly delightful way. Roosevelt writes a hand like a schoolboy’s, and, with all his business rush and appetite for work, it somehow seemed to me that he would love quiet sentimental songs and pretty poems. No doubt there may be more clever men in America, more learned men, more suave and polished diplomatists, but this man is a judicious mixture that makes him great. In truth he is a gigantic personality. He is not in the least American except in his unrestrained enthusiasm and rough exterior. He gesticulates like a foreigner, his mind works quickly. Withal he was the right man in the right place, and the United States had every cause to be proud of him.

Once more I met, or rather saw and heard, America’s greatest living President. But how this chanced was at a sad time for our country.

As told elsewhere, I was doing a cure at Woodhall Spa at the time of King Edward VII.’s death. It happened that on my return to town I tumbled across my old friend the late Sir Joseph Dimsdale, in the railway dining-car, when the conversation turned on Mr. Roosevelt and his visit to England.

I regretted the circumstances that had saddened his reception; also that he should see nothing of our Court and alas! of the Monarch whom he had so much admired. And then we talked of the Freedom of the City, which was to be conferred on the ex-President in a few days’ time.

“Although my Cambridge boy was made a Freeman of the City of London the other day, I have never witnessed the ceremony,” I said.

“Would you like to see one of these public ones?” asked the ex-Lord Mayor.

“Immensely,” I replied.

“If it is possible to manage it, you shall have a seat,” he replied, and accordingly I was invited to see Mr. Roosevelt made free of the Ancient City of London, and enjoyed the privilege of hearing one of the most memorable speeches ever made within the Guildhall walls: certainly one of the most abused, admired, discussed.

Was Roosevelt playing to the gallery?

Was he angling for the Presidency of the United States? Or was he really trying to do England a good turn in correcting her stupidity in Egypt?

Anyway, it was a bold stroke, but done so skilfully that it did not seem so rude as it looked in cold print.

I had been much struck with Roosevelt’s personality when I spent that hour tête-à-tête with him in Washington—his rough-and-ready manner, his fearless, overflowing geniality—but I had never heard him speak in public.

The giving of the Freedom of the City of London is a great event, very old, very historic, very interesting, surrounded by ancient ritual.

As the Guildhall only holds about twelve hundred people, and that twelve hundred is mainly composed of Aldermen and aldermanic wives, sheriffs, ex-Lord Mayors, Masters of City Companies and burgesses, and a very business element, with a very business-like class of femininity, ordinary outsiders like myself are rare.

Owing to the death of Edward VII. everyone wore black. This made the Hall look its best, for the red robes, or dark blue and fur of the officials, contrasted well with the sombre hue of the audience.

Roosevelt was the personification of quiet dignity as he walked up the central aisle, subdued possibly by nervousness, and he was very still on the platform seated on the right of the Lord Mayor, with the Mace and other Insignia of Pomp on the table before him.

Sir Joseph Dimsdale’s speech as Chamberlain of the City was excellent. Well delivered by a far-reaching voice, with the manners of a gentleman, the learning of a scholar, and the tact of a diplomat. It was all that a speech of the kind ought to be.

Then rose Roosevelt the Democrat.

He bowed to everybody. To the right, to the left, behind and before, and while doing so, walked about the platform, as he did at intervals during the whole of his speech.

Speech? It was no address, no oration. He is not an orator. He merely had a friendly chat with an audience he hoped was friendly disposed. Although no speaker, he is convincing. He continually stretched out his right arm and pointed his finger at some particular person and spoke directly to him, as he thundered forth:

“You won’t like it. You won’t like what I am going to say! but I am going to say it, and it is this!” Then glancing at the papers in his left hand, he read all the important parts. He had evidently prepared it with great care, and he said exactly so much and no more. He never gave more than three or four words without a pause; in a staccato way he hurled his ideas at his audience in the simplest language possible, but with a real American accent.

He was grave and weighty. He was very deliberate as he addressed different people by gesture, but he named no one, although Lord Cromer, Sir Edward Grey, and Mr. Balfour, were all at his elbow. One could not help feeling the earnestness of the man, and his claim to be an idealist when he spoke of the future of nations, and begged the public to throw aside the question, “Will it pay?” “Great nations must do great work,” he said, “such work as Panama, or Egypt, and not ask that eternal question, ‘Will it pay?’”

Personally, I think he did it extremely well, and feel also that, coming from a stranger, his words may probably have the desired effect, and make us strengthen our government in Egypt and India before we lose these two grand possessions.

While I was in Washington I again saw my old friend Secretary John Hay, who gave me his photograph taken in December, 1904, and consequently his last. He looked ill then, but was so keenly interested in Mexican affairs, and spoke so eulogistically of General Diaz, that on my return to England I ventured to ask him if he would write a few lines for the Biography of the Mexican President, on which I was by that time working.

He had already started for Europe when the letter arrived, but he wrote the following hurried lines, penned a week after his return to Washington from his last trip in search of health, when he must have been very busy:

The letter was delivered in London the day following his death.

America has always sent us of her best in Ambassadors, but none was more popular or more respected than Colonel John Hay. The most shy and retiring of men, he abhorred ovations; public speaking was torture to him, yet he was the constant recipient of the first, and was excellent at the second. One of the most cultured of American Ambassadors, he was really a man of letters. He had not the acute legal knowledge of Mr. Choate, nor the diplomatic manner of Mr. Whitelaw Reid, but the world knew him and admired him as a man who was honest to the core.

No Secretary of State ever did more to bring his country to the front than John Hay. A number of most difficult foreign questions requiring prompt decision—Cuba and the Philippines, Japan and China—came to the forefront during his term of office; and the position, maintained in the world of diplomacy by the United States, was, at the time of his death, totally different from that existing when he first entered her service in the Senate at Washington.

Napoleon may have merely boasted when he declared that every French soldier carried a field-marshal’s baton in his knapsack. The saying would be literally true if applied to those who march in the ranks of industry and politics in America. There is no office in the State which is not open to the man of brains and grit.

If asked for a type of the go-ahead American who is making his mark, I should be inclined to name John Barrett. I have run across him in several quarters of the globe.

Keen and shrewd, with a Gargantuan appetite for work, Barrett, at the age of some forty years, had already been United States Minister to Siam, Argentina, Panama, and Colombia; he was Commissioner General to Foreign Nations of the St. Louis World’s Fair, and a year or two later held the important post of Director of the International Bureau of American Republics, towards the establishment of which in Washington, Carnegie gave a million sterling. One of his most marked characteristics is his readiness to act in sudden emergency.

An open-air gathering in a very small New England town was being held in support of Mr. Roosevelt. From the platform a man with a high forehead and intellectual features was making a speech; clearly and logically he dealt with the manner in which his country was fulfilling its obligations in the Philippines and Panama. The speaker showed remarkable personal familiarity with America’s Far Eastern possessions, and with Central American affairs. Many farmers were in the audience. Seeing this, the orator emphasised one of his points with a homely illustration from farm life, adding:

“I know what it is to work on a farm myself.”

That was too much for a stalwart young Democratic rustic, who, with others of the same party, had been attracted to the meeting by curiosity. He eyed the speaker’s faultless frock coat, immaculate shirt front and grey striped trousers, likewise the shining hat on the table behind him. Then he arose in his place and blustered out:

“What bluff are you giving us? You never worked on a farm! Bet yer never milked a cow in your life!”

“Not only have I milked cows,” replied the orator quietly, “but, what is more, I will put up a hundred dollars against the same amount to be put up by you and your party friends—the sum to go to local charity—that I can milk a cow faster than you can. Appoint a committee and produce the cows.”

The challenge was taken up. By the time the speech was brought to its close a committee was selected. It consisted of a Democrat, a Republican, and a woman. Two Jersey cows, procured from a neighbouring farm, were driven on to the platform. In full view of the electors each of the contestants seated himself on a milking stool and took a pail between his legs, the orator—“spell-binder” is the Americanism—still in his frock coat, with silk hat tilted on the back of his head.

“Are you ready?” came the words.

“Go!”

The milk rattled in the bottoms of the pails. It was still rattling in the young farmer’s pail when it already had begun to swash in the “spell-binder’s,” and the latter had his cow milked dry before his opponent was half through. The meeting wound up in a blaze of glory for the victor.

That was Mr. John Barrett, the diplomatic representative of his country in Panama, who was spending his leave in electioneering. He paid his way in part through college with money he earned as a day labourer on farms during the summer. First a schoolmaster, he drifted early into journalism, with its wider opportunities, and working on San Francisco newspapers, he divined what had remained hidden from people who had spent all their lives on the Pacific coast—the opportunity that was awaiting America across that vast body of water.

I first met Mr. Barrett when he was brought to call on me in London.

Later, on an October day in 1904, I was sitting in the “Waldorf” in New York, talking to Colonel John Wier, when a man passed. He paused and whisked round.

“Mrs. Alec Tweedie,” he exclaimed. “Why, where have you come from?”

“London; and you, Mr. Barrett?”

“Panama.”

We had both travelled far over the world since he had dined with me in London a couple of years before, and yet our paths crossed in that great meeting-place, the “Waldorf.” It was during his leave from duty which I have just mentioned, and he was very busy. Unfortunately I was leaving the same day for Chicago, but we met again in that city. His enthusiasm for Roosevelt was delightful; “the greatest man on earth,” according to him, “delightful to work under.” They had just been having an hour’s conversation on the telephone, though Washington lies nearly a thousand miles away.

“Won’t you come to Panama and write a book?” he said. “The Canal is to be the revolution of the world’s traffic, and one of the finest spokes in the American wheel.”

Poor old Lesseps; adored over Suez, damned over Panama, and then, thirty years later, to have his dearest scheme realised by America, through the aid of hygienic science. But more of my Lesseps friends in a later volume.

Early in 1908 came a charming letter from Mr. Barrett, then at Washington, part of which may be quoted here:

John Barrett is now the head of the Great Pan-American Union of American Republics in Washington.

Clara Morris, another personality of the West, was one of the greatest actresses America has produced, and her book was one of the most realistic presentations of stage life. On going to the States in 1900 I wanted to see her, but she had retired. However, when I returned on my second visit, she was back on the stage—the usual story of reverses.

It so chanced I was in Chicago that October, paying a visit to those delightful people the Francis Walkers. Behind the Footlights was selling well in an American edition, and on learning that I was in the city, the managers of the different theatres most kindly sent me boxes. Success cannot adequately be gauged by gold, it brings friends and opportunities beyond mere dross. One night we went to the Illinois Theatre (since destroyed by fire, with frightful loss of life), and occupied Mr. William Davis’s own box, to see The Two Orphans. There was an “all-star” cast.

I had never seen that play since I was a little girl. It had been almost my first theatrical experience; and, as the first act proceeded, the story came back with more force than in any production seen for the second time nowadays, after even only a week or two’s interval. These childish impressions had sunk deep in the memory. In Chicago this inferior drama was well acted, and again I noticed how many English people were upon the boards. More than half the actors and actresses of America are English, or of British parentage.

Clara Morris played the nun. She received a perfect ovation, and needed to bow again and again before she was allowed to proceed with her small part. There was a quiet dignity about her, and when she told the lie to save the girl, she rose to a high level of dramatic power. After that Mr. Davis came and took me to her dressing-room.

We did not get into the wings through an iron door direct from the boxes, as in London, but had to go right to the back of the theatre, down some stairs, under the stalls (there never is a pit), below the stage, and upstairs again to the stage, where Clara Morris had a small dressing-room almost on the footlights, it was so far in front. This was the star dressing-room, but it was certainly smaller than those in our theatres, and one cannot imagine how three or four dresses and a dresser ever squeezed into it.

She welcomed us at the door. “Mam, I am delighted to see you,” she said, with a true American “Mam.” Her hand trembled, for she had just left the stage after her big scene, and she was an elderly woman. I told her how keen had been my wish to see her, and how I had quoted her in my book. She knew that, and thanked me, saying many pretty things, and added:

“No, I never dared play in England, although I have been there, and loved it.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because of my ac-cent. You see, I was born in the West, where from the age of thirteen I toiled at this profession. I starved and cried, worked and struggled, and when success did come and I moved up East the critics always rubbed in two things—my intonation and my accent. My voice was criticised up hill and down dale. ‘A great actress, but——’ Then came down the hail. Mam, if my accent grated in America, among all our awful accents here, what would it have done in Britain, with your soft, beautiful voices? So I refused to go again and again. Then also when success had come I felt, ‘This public likes me, my bed and bread depend upon them; if I go to England and fail they will turn their back upon me, and I shall starve again.’ And so, Mam, regretfully I refused.”

She spoke dramatically, fire shot from those large, wonderful grey eyes. I noticed she was not painted. Only the tiniest amount of make-up I have ever seen on any actress was upon her face, and then I remembered her words of warning upon the subject. In all those years she had not changed her mind.

Her husband, an elderly man with white hair, stood or sat while we talked in the tiny room, and as the last curtain came down I rose to leave.

“Will you give me your photograph, please?”

“My dear, I haven’t one. My ugliness has caused me so much pain in life that I have almost never let a camera be turned upon me. That was my second horror: ‘She is a great actress, but——’ And then down came the bricks upon my looks. God made me this way, but my critics have found it a personal sin.”

And she waxed warm on the subject. Her grey eyes were beautiful, however, they were so expressive; still her mouth was large, and her features heavy and bad. Her voice certainly had grated upon me when I first heard it. With those who found fault with her voice I had sympathy, but none with the beauty-seekers, for expression comes before everything, and Clara Morris’s expression was wonderful.

She wore her wedding ring upon her little finger, for whatever part she played through life she had never taken it off.

“You see how sentimental I have been,” she laughed.

In reply to a question, I replied that I had to be back in England for my boys’ holidays. Only once was I absent at holiday time, and on that occasion they were with my mother.

“Happy woman!” she exclaimed. “How I have always longed for children; though such happiness never came to me. But I have an old mother who still lives, thank God; and as long as a woman has a mother she can never grow old or feel lonely.”

Another remarkable figure in America, when I was over there in 1904, was Dowie the prophet, or as some on this side of the Atlantic more correctly termed him—the “Profit”; perhaps the biggest humbug that even his own vast country of adoption has produced.

Of course I went to see Dowie and Zion City; everybody did. The place lay within an hour’s railway journey of Chicago. Four years before it had been waste land. In the interval there had sprung up a railway station, an hotel called Elijah House, a whole town of residences, a huge tabernacle capable of holding seven thousand people, and a population of over ten thousand souls.

Knowing his gross life, the horrible language he used, knowing also that he was hounded out of England for his vituperation against King Edward—his King, for Dowie was born in Edinburgh and had lived only sixteen years in the States—I was surprised to find such a charming, kindly old gentleman. A man nearly seventy years of age, short and stout like Ibsen, with a large strong head and a grey beard; such was “Elijah,” as he pleased to call himself.

Dowie received me in a most magnificent, book-lined library; thousands of well-bound volumes—for which I have since heard he never paid—filled the shelves. Beside him on the table stood a machine that was clicking.

“What is that?” I asked, having visions of dynamite.

He solemnly handed me a telegram which read:

“Tom and Mary Bateson” (or some such names) “are seriously ill; pray for them.”

Looking me full in the face, he remarked:

“Tom and Mary Bateson were cured at 2.55.”

It was then 3.30.

“How?” I asked.

“Through my prayers,” he replied, “by faith.” And taking up a little piece of paper, he clicked on it through the machine.

“A duplicate of this,” he explained, “has been posted to the sick man’s friends so that they may have the record, but of course they felt the benefit of the prayer the moment I gave it.”

He spoke so solemnly, so impressively, and with such apparent belief in his own infallibility, that he greatly impressed me. I kept the piece of paper as a memento of the occasion. It is short and business-like, and is here reproduced:

PRAYED

NOV 2 2-55 PM 1904

JOHN ALEX. DOWIE.

The man was a charlatan. One felt it in his eyes and in the grasp of his hand; and yet at the same time there was so much enthusiasm about him, it was easy to understand how people came under his sway.

Not one of those ten thousand persons, who then filled Zion City, drank alcohol, smoked tobacco, swore, gambled, or ate swine’s flesh.

The people, whether from fear or love I know not, certainly worshipped the prophet. Unlike the Christian Scientists, he believed in illness, and said it was punishment for sin and would be cured by prayer.

When I saw him he was revelling in every imaginable luxury, decked his wife in diamonds and fine gowns, ate off superb mahogany and handsome silver. Dowie was rich and prosperous, for every one of his followers was forced to give him a tenth of all he earned. Yet such were his extravagances that the largest shop in Chicago took possession of one of his summer residences, and let it, so that the rent might pay their bill.

Prophet or no prophet, Dowie had a keen eye to business. Everything stood in his own name: land, houses, furniture, and, as his son showed no spiritual desires, he educated him as a lawyer, with a view that he should continue in the town, in a business-like way presumably.

Dowie owned also factories of lace, sweets, biscuits, soap, harness, brooms, tailoring, even sewing machines and pianos. His disciples generally came to him with a knowledge of various trades, and he made use of that knowledge in a profitable way.

Dowie was a prodigious humbug, and died a beggar.

After many happy weeks spent in the States I am not in the least surprised that Englishmen should marry American women. They show their good taste—I should do the same were I a man. Nor am I surprised that American women should prefer Englishmen—for the same remark applies. There is a delightful freedom, an air of comradeship coupled with pleasant manners and pretty looks in the American woman which are most attractive. Her hospitality is unbounded, her generosity thoughtful, and she is an all-round good sort.

The American woman is an excellent speaker. It is surprising to hear her oratory at one of her large club luncheons, such as the Sorosis in New York. I was honoured with an invitation as their special guest (1900), and for the first time in my life saw two hundred women sit down together for a meal. The club woman is young and handsome, well dressed and pleasing, and she stands up and addresses a couple of hundred women just as easily as she would begin a tête-à-tête across a luncheon table. She is not shy, or if she is she hides it cleverly.

Americans entertain royally; they almost overpower the stranger with hospitality. They are generous in a high degree, not only in big things, but in constantly thinking of “little gifts or kindnesses” to shower upon their guests. They become the warmest and truest of friends, in spite of their sensitiveness and hatred of criticism. Never were any people so sensitive about their country or themselves, or so ready to take offence at the slightest critical word. But we all have our weaknesses, and while we are too terribly thick-skinned and self-satisfied, Americans are perhaps too sensitive for their own happiness. They are not only warm friends amongst themselves both in sunshine and in shade, but they are equally staunch to their English visitors. They may in the main be a tiny bit jealous of England, but individually they seem to love British people, and welcome them so warmly one can only regret that more English do not travel in America where they would see her people at their best, for, alas! many of the Americans who come over here leave a wrong impression altogether of the charms of our brothers and sisters across the Atlantic.

The more the inhabitants of these two countries see of one another, the better they understand and appreciate each other’s feelings, the stronger are forged the links of the chain of brotherhood. And the stronger this chain is made, the better for the whole world.

America! It is impossible to mention here all the delightful people I met in America, from Mark Twain to Thompson Seton; from Kate Douglas Wiggin to Gertrude Atherton; from Agnes Lant to Julia Marlowe; from Jane Addams to Louise Chandler Moulton; from Dana Gibson to Roosevelt. Their names are legion, and in grateful remembrance they lie until I can visit their shores again, and shake them by the hand. I simply loved the American women.

The following delightful Christmas note from Dr. Horace Howard Furness, the great Shakespearian writer of America, and one of her foremost sons, is an instance of the kindly remembrance and loyal friendliness the American people keep green for their English friends, bridging not only the billowy Atlantic but the swift stream of Time.