America To-day: Observations And Reflections

The Atlantic Ocean is geographically a misnomer, socially and politically a dwindling superstition. That’s the chief lesson one learns—and one has barely time to take it in— between Queenstown and Sandy Hook. Ocean forsooth! this little belt of blue water that we cross earlier than we all know the place we’re, at a single hop-skip-and-jump! From north to south, maybe, it might nonetheless rely as an ocean; from east to west we now have narrowed it right into a strait. Why, even for the seasick (and on this level I converse with melancholy authority) the Atlantic has not half the terrors of the Straits of Dover; consolation at sea being a query, not of the dimensions of the waves, however of the proportion between the dimensions of the waves and the dimensions of the ship. Our creativeness remains to be beguiled by the fuss the world remodeled Columbus, whose exploit was intellectually and morally reasonably than bodily nice.