Introducing the American Spirit. Edward Alfred Steiner

THE Herr Director and I were sitting over our coffee in the Café Bauer, Unter den Linden. In the midst of my account of some of the men of America and the idealistic movements in which they are interested, he rudely interrupted with: “You may tell that to some one who has never been in the United States; but not to me who have travelled through the length and breadth of it three times.” He said it in an ungenerous, impatient way, although his last visit was thirty years ago and his journeys across this continent necessarily hurried. I dared not say much more, for I am apt to lose my temper when any one anywhere, criticizes my adopted country or questions my glowing accounts of it.

But I did say: “When you come over the next time, let me be your guide.”

“Why should I want to go over again?” he replied. “It’s a noisy, dirty, hopelessly materialistic country. You have sky-scrapers, but no beauty; money, but no ideals; garishness, but no comfort. You have despatch, but no courtesy; you are ingenious, but not thorough; you have fine clothes, but no style; churches, but no religion; universities, but no learning. No, I have been there three times. That’s enough. I know all about it. Fertig!” And with that he dismissed me without giving me a chance to relieve my feelings, of which there were many; although he took advantage of a minute that was left and told me that I was an Unausstehlicher Americaner whose judgment had been warped by my great love for my adopted country.

Evidently the Herr Director reversed his decision not to come to this country; for the following spring I received a cablegram to meet him on the arrival of his ship at the Hamburg-American dock, which of course I promptly did. The Herr Director and the Frau Directorin stepped onto the soil of the United States with a predisposition to be martyrs, to endure the sufferings entailed by travel with as little grace as possible, and to suppress to the utmost all pleasurable emotion.

On the other hand, I was determined to show off my United States from its best side, to woo and win the Herr Director’s and the Frau Directorin’s approval. In my laudable endeavor I seemed to be supported by that divine providence which watches over the whole world in general, but over the United States in particular. The weather was perfect, the sky festooned in fleecy clouds, the air charged by a divine energy; and when the sun shines upon the harbor of New York—well, even the most taciturn European cannot resist it.

The Herr Director and the Frau Directorin greeted all the good Lord’s endeavor and mine, with an air of condescension as something due their station. From force of habit they worried and fussed about their baggage, although there was nothing to worry or fuss about, for it was safe on its way to the hotel. They were shot under the river and the busy streets of Manhattan and whirled up to the twenty-first story of their thirty-two-storied hotel without having taken more than a dozen steps to reach it.

The Herr Director and the Frau Directorin refused to be impressed by the rooms assigned them, in which not a single comfort or luxury was missing, and complained because they were not as big as barns and the ceilings not as high as a cathedral. The Frau Directorin eyed the bath-room almost in silence; but she did wonder why they put out a whole month’s supply of towels at once, instead of doing it in the provident European way of one towel every other day.

The Herr Director and the Frau Directorin, like all Europeans who can afford to travel, are exceedingly æsthetic, and at the same time fond of good food, and their first approving smile was won at the breakfast table, when they were each face to face with half a grapefruit of vast circumference, reposing upon a bed of crushed ice. Their smiles broadened when they had introduced their palates to an American breakfast food, a crispy bit of nut-flavored air bubble, floating upon thick, rich cream; and, although they had made up their minds that American coffee was vile and they must not taste it, they could not resist its aroma, and drank it with a relish.

When the Herr Director said: “Der Kaffee ist gut,” I knew that my prayers were being answered, and that the good Lord still loves the United States of America.

Most of us have shown off something—a baby, school-children, a schoolhouse, a town, an automobile, a cemetery. You know that feeling of pride which thrills you, that fear lest pride have a fall if it or they fail to “show up.” But have you ever tried to show off a country—a country which you love with a lover’s passion; a country whose virtues are so many, whose defects are so obvious; a country whose glory you have gloried in before the whole world, but whose halo has so many rust spots that you wish you might have had a chance to use Sapolio on it ere you let it shine before your visitors? A country of one hundred million inhabitants, of whom every fourth person smells of the steerage, when you wish that they all smelled of the Mayflower; a country where more people are ready to die for its freedom than anywhere, and more people ought to be in the penitentiary for abusing that freedom; a country of vast distances, bound together by huge railways and controlled by unsavory politicians; a country with more homely virtues, more virtuous homes, than anywhere else, yet where the divorce courts never cease their grinding and alimonies have no end?

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