NOT ALL MILLIONAIRES.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 962, 1 November 1910, Page 9

NOT ALL MILLIONAIRES.

... Everyone is saying this i 8 a great year for Americans, as they might say it is a "great year for wheatears" or any other migrants (says the Manchester, "Guardian") . Certainly one- hears the familiar drawl of the American man and the high-pitched questioning voice of his wonien sounding incessantly in all tho show places—in Oxford, for instance, thoy arrive : this summer by hundreds, and are to be seen crowding round tho city guido developing themselves as rapidly as the minutes will allow. In that semi-collegiate haunt tho Temple they :'come singly with red Baedekers or in couples arm-in-arm poking into open doorways, or more'often in large parties approvingly listening to all tho gossip about Lamb . or. Thackeray - that their cicerono can produce. Surrounded thus, on all sides by tho travelling American with an appearance of prosperity, one asks sometimes are ■ there any. poor Americans amongst the educated classes, and, if so, what do they do and whoro. do they live. Tho answer is that there are poor American, gentlefolk, but that their country is no place for them, and that, the only possible life they can enjoy must, bo led in England. It seems that tho lack of small houses in the.countryside in America.is,partly responsible for this. I am told by -Americans that beyond the fuvm hand's domicile tho conntry cottago simply does not exist. . If your poor American has,to live- in tho country on small means he has to find a place that is cheap because of its extreme isolation: There, is hardly any equivalent in America for our country village with its simple life, possiblo aliko for educated and uneducated poor. I have known moro than one set of such Americans living the.simplest life possiblo in a quiet.English village, and, when they tiro of it—for those restless Transatlantic people do tire of things—they give up the cottage and go and livo on the Continent" in the ; same way. There have been quite colonies of them in Oxfordshire. They take unfurnished rooms, buy a few necessary but good things, live a year or so in one place, then'sell tho furniture nnd move to another part. America, they will always tell you, is no place for poor people. Watching tho workmanlike way. they set' about leading the sim- I pie life one became convinced that they know how. to do';it. better;.than'we do,, whioh' makes if 'doubly hard" that they cannot get a chance with it—outside tho life in a community—in their own land. They hire no extra,help, whatever, but just put aside air the tiresome "washing up", till night-time, when, as one. man. explained, "it's a good form of exercise an hour before bedtime, better for one's eyes than reading, and makes'you kind of steeply at the-right time."