Stephen Leacock

FOR some years past a rising tide of lecturers and literary men
from England has washed upon the shores of our North American
continent. The purpose of each one of them is to make a new discovery
of America. They come over to us travelling in great simplicity,
and they return in the ducal suite of the Aquitania. They carry
away with them their impressions of America, and when they reach
England they sell them. This export of impressions has now been
going on so long that the balance of trade in impressions is all
disturbed. There is no doubt that the Americans and Canadians have
been too generous in this matter of giving away impressions. We
emit them with the careless ease of a glow worm, and like the
glow-worm ask for nothing in return.
But this irregular and one-sided traffic has now assumed such great
proportions that we are compelled to ask whether it is right to
allow these people to carry away from us impressions of the very
highest commercial value without giving us any pecuniary compensation
whatever. British lecturers have been known to land in New York,
pass the customs, drive uptown in a closed taxi, and then forward
to England from the closed taxi itself ten dollars' worth of
impressions of American national character. I have myself seen an
English literary man,--the biggest, I believe: he had at least the
appearance of it; sit in the corridor of a fashionable New York
hotel and look gloomily into his hat, and then from his very hat
produce an estimate of the genius of Amer ica at twenty cents a
word. The nice question as to whose twenty cents that was never
seems to have occurred to him.
I am not writing in the faintest spirit of jealousy. I quite admit
the extraordinary ability that is involved in this peculiar
susceptibility to impressions. I have estimated that some of these
English visitors have been able to receive impressions at the rate of
four to the second; in fact, they seem to get them every time they
see twenty cents. But without jealousy or complaint, I do feel that
somehow these impressions are inadequate and fail to depict us as we
really are.
Let me illustrate what I mean. Here are some of the impressions of
New York, gathered from visitors' discoveries of America, and
reproduced not perhaps word for word but as closely as I can remember
them. "New York", writes one, "nestling at the foot of the Hudson,

gave me an impression of cosiness, of tiny graciousness: in short, of
weeness." But compare this--"New York," according to another
discoverer of America, "gave me an impression of size, of vastness;
there seemed to be a big ness about it not found in smaller places."
A third visitor writes, "New York struck me as hard, cruel, almost
inhuman." This, I think, was because his taxi driver had charged him
three dollars. "The first thing that struck me in New York," writes
another, "was the Statue of Liberty." But, after all, that was only
natural: it was the first thing that could reach him.
Nor is it only the impressions of the metropolis that seem to fall
short of reality. Let me quote a few others taken at random here
and there over the continent.
"I took from Pittsburg," says an English visitor, "an impression
of something that I could hardly define--an atmosphere rather than
an idea."
All very well, But, after all, had he the right to take it? Granted
that Pittsburg has an atmosphere rather than an idea, the attempt
to carry away this atmosphere surely borders on rapacity.
"New Orleans," writes another visitor, "opened her arms to me and
bestowed upon me the soft and languorous kiss of the Caribbean."
This statement may or may not be true; but in any case it hardly
seems the fair thing to mention it.
"Chicago," according to another book of discovery, "struck me as a
large city. Situated as it is and where it is, it seems destined to
be a place of importance."
Or here, again, is a form of "impression" that recurs again and
again-"At Cleveland I felt a distinct note of optimism in the air."
This same note of optimism is found also at Toledo, at Toronto--in
short, I believe it indicates nothing more than that some one gave
the visitor a cigar. Indeed it generally occurs during the familiar
scene in which the visitor describes his cordial reception in an
unsuspecting American town: thus:
"I was met at the station (called in America the depot) by a member
of the Municipal Council driving his own motor car. After giving me
an excellent cigar, he proceeded to drive me about the town, to
various points of interest, including the municipal abattoir, where
he gave me another excellent cigar, the Carnegie public library, the

First National Bank (the courteous manager of which gave me an
excellent cigar) and the Second Congregational Church where I had the
pleasure of meeting the pastor. The pastor, who appeared a man of
breadth and culture, gave me another cigar. In the evening a dinner,
admirably cooked and excellently served, was tendered to me at a
leading hotel." And of course he took it. After which his statement
that he carried away from the town a feeling of optimism explains
itself: he had four cigars, the dinner, and half a page of
impressions at twenty cents a word.

Nor is it only by the theft of impressions that we suffer at the
hands of these English discoverers of America. It is a part of the
system also that we have to submit to being lectured to by our
talented visitors. It is now quite understood that as soon as an
English literary man finishes a book he is rushed across to America
to tell the people of the United States and Canada all about it, and
how he came to write it. At home, in his own country, they don't care
how he came to write it. He's written it and that's enough. But in
America it is different. One month after the distinguished author's
book on The Boyhood of Botticelli has appeared in London, he is seen
to land in New York very quietly out of one of the back portholes of
the Olympic. That same afternoon you will find him in an armchair in
one of the big hotels giving off impressions of America to a group of
reporters. After which notices appear in all the papers to the effect
that he will lecture in Carnegie Hall on "Botticelli the Boy". The
audience is assured beforehand. It consists of all the people who
feel that they have to go because they know all about Botticelli and
all the people who feel that they have to go because they don't know
anything about Botticelli. By this means the lecturer is able to rake
the whole country from Montreal to San Francisco with "Botticelli the
Boy". Then he turns round, labels his lecture "Botticelli the Man",
and rakes it all back again. All the way across the continent and
back he emits impressions, estimates of national character, and
surveys of American genius. He sails from New York in a blaze of
publicity, with his cordon of reporters round him, and a month later
publishes his book "America as I Saw It". It is widely read--in
America.