He can see his own nation's faults as
well as ours, and his first thought is to appreciate the good
qualities.
He says there is a very grave danger to the country in the liberty of
the press, which has a most debasing influence by printing all the
sensational news, and encouraging the interest in these things in the
youthful mind. It must bring a paltry taint into the glorious freedom
of the true American spirit, but that will right itself. He says: "They
are too darned sane to suffer a scourge when once they begin to see
its fruits." And while the rest were in the observation car after tea
he talked to me of happiness. Happiness, he said, was the main and
chief object in life, and yet nine-tenths of the people of the world
throw it away for such imitation pleasure; and you can't often catch it
again once you have lost it.
I asked him what the greatest was, and he said perfect happiness was to
be close to the woman you loved. If that was impossible there were
several substitutes of a secondary sort--your children, ambition,
success, and even rest. Then his eyes grew all misty and sad, and he
looked out on the desert, and at that moment we were passing a group of
a few shanties close to the rails.
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