As yet, no
portion of the world except a few narrow stretches of western
Europe had ever been tolerably provided with the essentials of
comfort and convenience; to fit out an entire continent with
roads and the decencies of life would exhaust the credit of the
entire planet. Such an estimate seemed outrageous to a Texan
member of Congress who loved the simplicity of nature's noblemen;
but the mere suggestion that a sun existed above him would
outrage the self-respect of a deep-sea fish that carried a
lantern on the end of its nose. From the moment that railways
were introduced, life took on extravagance.
Thus the belated reveller who landed in the dark at the
Desbrosses Street ferry, found his energies exhausted in the
effort to see his own length. The new Americans, of whom he was
to be one, must, whether they were fit or unfit, create a world
of their own, a science, a society, a philosophy, a universe,
where they had not yet created a road or even learned to dig
their own iron. They had no time for thought; they saw, and could
see, nothing beyond their day's work; their attitude to the
universe outside them was that of the deep-sea fish. Above all,
they naturally and intensely disliked to be told what to do, and
how to do it, by men who took their ideas and their methods from
the abstract theories of history, philosophy, or theology.
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