4c MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

dimly conscious of being in beautiful surroundings
—a place of rolling lawns and stately trees, of
shining lakes and tumbling waters, «of rocky
eminences and shady glens. But dimly conscious
only, for I was so closely 'occupied in urging
my way through the press that I was hardly
aware either of the wood in the trees or the trees
in the wood. The place was overwhelmed with
humanity. It is a way the Americans have.

These are the places to indulge yourself in the
sense of your human insignificance. And, if I
may judge by myself, an instructive train of self-
questioning may follow. "Do I love these
millions ? " I have often asked myself. " Do I
love them singly ? Do I love them all to-
gether ? " Honesty compels me to answer " No."
Do they, does any one of them, love me ? There
is not the faintest indication of it. But is there
not something else that I love in them, and that
some of them may perhaps love in me—the ideal
behind the human mask, the ideal woman in that
painted girl which, though she paint an inch thick,
she cannot wholly hide; the ideal man in that
spitting ruffian who has just blown the smoke
of his nasty cigar into my face and whose conver-
sation, as I catch stray fragments of it, seems to
be aJl about " hell " and " God " and the general
damnation of all things. Do I love that? Why,
yes, to be sure I do! But then I find that I have
changed the meaning of " love " in order to
persuade myself that I am still a Christian.