The American thought of
himself as a restless, pushing, energetic, ingenious person,
always awake and trying to get ahead of his neighbors. Perhaps
this idea of the national character might be correct for New York
or Chicago; it was not correct for Washington. There the American
showed himself, four times in five, as a quiet, peaceful, shy
figure, rather in the mould of Abraham Lincoln, somewhat sad,
sometimes pathetic, once tragic; or like Grant, inarticulate,
uncertain, distrustful of himself, still more distrustful of
others, and awed by money. That the American, by temperament,
worked to excess, was true; work and whiskey were his stimulants;
work was a form of vice; but he never cared much for money or
power after he earned them. The amusement of the pursuit was all
the amusement he got from it; he had no use for wealth. Jim Fisk
alone seemed to know what he wanted; Jay Gould never did. At
Washington one met mostly such true Americans, but if one wanted
to know them better, one went to study them in Europe. Bored,
patient, helpless; pathetically dependent on his wife and
daughters; indulgent to excess; mostly a modest, decent,
excellent, valuable citizen; the American was to be met at every
railway station in Europe, carefully explaining to every listener
that the happiest day of his life would be the day he should land
on the pier at New York.
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