German priest whom I did not know accosted me in the street the other day to complain of the condition of American workingmen, and to say, in substance, that America, no more than Europe, had solved the social question. I had no difficulty in believing him. But he forgot two points; namely, that competition is "the rule of the game," so to say, the agreement which a man signed in embarking for America—I might almost say in being born here—and he also forgot that this competition has it compensations. The distinctions which establish themselves between men here are real and solid; they do not depend, or, at any rate, they depend less than in Europe, on any caprice or despotism. Assuredly there are "Colonial Dames," but there is no old aristocracy. There are enormous fortunes; there are no "governing classes." There are professors, doctors, lawyers; there are no "liberal professions." A doctor is a man who attends others in sickness, and an upholsterer is a man who furnishes other men's houses. A rich man is a rich man, who can do a great deal as he can everywhere, but who can do only what his money can do, and an educated man is measured by the idea he gives of his merit. From this it results that every one feels himself the sole architect of his own fate, the artisan of his destiny, and generally he blames no one but himself for his failure. . . . And these observations are in the wrong by being too general . . . and what there is true in them will be modified daily; and in a fortnight, in a month, I shall no longer recognize them myself. But if I record others which seem to contradict them, I have an idea that they will all come back to this: that there being more youth in America, the civilization, the country, the very climate being newer, one breathes more deeply, one moves more freely, one lives more independently than elsewhere. It is a privilege of age: the future will tell whether it can be transformed into a social character, and what American experience is worth as gain or loss to ancient humanity.
Bryn Mawr, April 8th.—One could not imagine a college better situated than that of Bryn Mawr, in the open country, "on the slope of a verdant hill,"—of several hills, in fact,—and with horizons" made as one would have them, to please the eye." The vast buildings which compose it give me an impression of solidity which I have not before experienced. This year the number of students is 285, and not a hundred of these, I am told, intend to teach. That makes, then, in one establishment, more than 200 young girls who love knowledge for itself, and assuredly it is not I who will reproach them for it. "Learn Latin, Mesdemoiselles, and, in spite of a certain Molière, learn Greek; learn it for yourselves; and also for the little Europeans who are forgetting it every day." But I will explain myself on that point when I have time. For the moment I have duties to fulfill, for I am the hero of a reception in the "American style," which consists in being introduced, as on this evening, to two or three hundred persons, to whose obliging compliments one tries to respond as best he can by energetically shaking their hands. However, I have been practising this exercise for a fortnight, and I take pleasure in it when, in the midst of this march past, a gentleman who is watching me bends over and says in my ear: "Isn't it true that they are no uglier than if they did something else?" He was right! and I thanked him for having translated my thought so wittily. "They are not uglier." These eyes are not dimmed by reading Greek or even Hebrew, nor have they lost any of that mocking lustre which one loves to see shining in the eyes of young girls. Nor have these faces grown pale, nor these figures bent; nor, in fine, has any of that airy gaiety disappeared which was given to women, as the good Bernardin says, "to enliven the sadness of man." . . .
Baltimore, April 10th.—I have just quitted Baltimore, and I own it was not without a touch of melancholy. Eighteen days, that is very short; but speaking in public establishes so many ties, and so quickly, between an audience and a lecturer, that I seem to be leaving a beloved city. To-morrow I shall wake up in Boston.
