32 MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

The English traveller who lands in New York
will not have long to wait before somebody will
inform him that " New York is not America."
He will be warned against drawing hasty con-
clusions from his experiences in that city, as so
many of his countrymen have done, and supposing
them true of America as a whole. But if the
visitor infers from this that by travelling farther
afield he will find some other city which is America
and proceeds to search for that city, he will find
himself embarked on a futile quest. Boston
clearly won't do: on the one hand it is too British
in its sympathies, and on the other too Irish (or
anti-British) in its antipathies. Nor is Chicago
much better. For though Chicago prides itself
on being characteristically American (which shows
I think how little Chicago knows about the rest
of the country) the very fact that it does so puts
it out of court with Americans belonging else-
where. The difficulty in finding a characteristic
American city is parallel to the difficulty in finding
" a hundred per cent American "—to - be
described in a subsequent chapter.

Once, indeed, I thought I had found it in Salt
Lake City, where I saw so much wise living and
heard so many sane ideas both about God and
man that I was almost tempted to become a
Mormon. But when I mentioned this to my
American friends in the east and indicated my
Mormon leanings, especially in regard to the
admirable discipline this movement has established