THE POTTER'S THUMB.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1675, 15 February 1913, Page 9

THE POTTER'S THUMB.

A.NEW BOOK ON AMERICA, • Mr, „£,!' no!t ' Bennett's book about America- Ihoso United States" (London: Martin Seeker)—does not make us see Stars t and Stripes: that is its charm. The States it desonbes are states of mind, etats r dame, oftcner than the soven-and-forty parallelograms—and nobody properly appreciative of Mr. Bennett's idiosyncrasy, of the way his egotism works, will tako thnt to mean it is but an account, an Anntolo Frenchified account, of his own 1 soul s adventures anion? those forty-seven masterpieces. It is other people's souls he is interested in: instead of putting the Paternal poser: "What is this engaging personality to mo,?" his instinct is always to ask "What sort of time would I he having if I were this engaging personality?"—and in this account of a seven weeks' (less one • day) trip we find him trying on successively, eagerly,. as no other literary traveller ever has "done, the shoes of,lift-boys, millionaires, railway captains, kindergarteners, telephonegirls, baseball-players, hotel managers, newly-married couples, professional murderers, nnd others.- One of tho great scenes in the book, one of tho most richly renrcsentativo, is his attempt to got into the pair worn by a certain giant of finance. It is recounted quits! simply,' without a trace of braggadocio,,just. as though it were the most natural episode in the world—but to us, looking on from afar, our imaginations baited by the tales i'of earlier travellers, it has a perfect Hop-o'-my-Thumb hardihood and bright fearlessness. Jack enters tho Ogre's castle:

Finnlly,\ wo approached the sacred lair and fastness of the president, whose massive portrait I had already seen on several walls. Spaciousness and magnificence increased.: Ceilings rose in height, marble was softened by the thick rile of carpets. Mahogany and gold shone more luxuriously. I was-introduced inlo the vast- ■ ante-chamber of- the ■-' presidential secretaries, and by the chief of them inducted through, polished and gleaming barriers into the presence-chamber itself,; a noblo apartment, an apartment surpassing dreams and expectations, conceived and executed in a spirit of majestic prodigality. The president Had not been afrnid. And his costly audacity was splendidly justified, of itself. This man had a sense of the romantic, of the dramatic, of the fit. And the qualities in him and his etat major which had commanded the'success of the entire enter- ; prise were. well stown in the brilliant ■symbolism of that room's grandiosity. ..,.,., And' there was the , president's 'pdrtrait'.again,-"?orgeously framed. ■ ■'-. Hoi came in. through door, an ■old man' of,',superb"physique. . .'!. . And'then ?" Why,"then—it really is deli'cio.us—he. really, is, a' Card— . \ ■■<'. "What' do'you 'do:-.with :yourself in the evenings?" asked Mr. Arnold Bennett. It is exactly what-wo all want to'know, of course; what do these strange creatures, these monsters of legend,'in their incredible world of sky-scrapers and gloating trusts—what, do they do behind-the facade? .What happens, at home, when there is no longer-any audience, and the seven'-leagued shoes are off and the fept on the fender? But it is a question nobodv has hitherto had the courage, lacked the sentimentality, to let drive straight into their skins. In this particular / instance,': as' it happens/' it-; does not get all : the way home. A little disconcerted by ; this perhaps unaccustomed bhmthess," the giant;seems to have shuffled rather sheepishly. "Oh," said, he, absurdly, "I read, lnsurance literature." Pcrhans Jack ought, to have had at him again, beat?n down, that clumsy guard—but indeed the confession is fairly full. The evasion avows'even more than honesty, gives ns more of the man; it is easy to translate that insurance literature" into terms of .domesticitv; a pretty poor .sort of giant, afterall: Arid in other cases the disclosures are-of the com'pMest. -Very ■ effective, for instance, was Mr. Bennett's Taid (pp. M et seq.) on the seraglio of the New ,Y6rkTelephone Exchange; and'good, m--crbasinorly- gnod,. :: is ■ tlieV". : l6ng.Xlasf-:,-!chaD-. tor, called "Human Citizens."..The former telephone ("millions, and "millions of live, filaments uniting all the: privacies of the ortranism'and, destrdyi'ns them in order*to make :one -j'mmmse'."publicity") to.-a hu-man-.-''convent:of.->itl9:^?q,iliring,.sugar.and couches'andi^hHsiing-for.■love.",..'And in the'second 1 iher'q-.f.'i domestic squabbler' a''sq'nabWe'"that -a poaehed-egg spinning across a breakfasttable, flung, by an overstrung small wife, that riositiveiv the wholo of New York. .The flight of that ee<r is like a metaphor reversed. It is the flight of the American eagle stated in homelier terms..' ' '

' But perhaps the.finest effect of' this faculty foT reducing all' things _to the personal equation is the neat way it packs up, and,, makes portable the whole of the physical side, of the great American scene. In an old land like .Italy, say, where so much that is essential to the onlooker;; lies outside tho private-. l'fe of the'citizen)..it probably would not work well; but in America, the Land of formance, where everything visible'is a piece of apparatus,- and the wholo structure is indeed a house of Cards, this valuation of all things' in terms of their net human value, their, power for effectual "functioning," does shrink down the wlfolc place, proportioned, and' at the samo .time' passes .it over to. us, in a condition that'requires only the addition of: our.own. daily-ex-perience toswellit -back to its-full size,, firm and vivid.' Mr.'. Wells'', and Mr. James,- ,';tho ■ best packers; '.we ' have had hitherto, -employed a much less reliable process. ■ They strove to vaporise , what they, eaw, turned it .-into generalisation's, and sent-us over consignments .of the spirit of the place, which, we had to recondense, in accordance with accompanying directions. They sent diagrams, too, but in the main they followed the Franco-Paternal plan. Mr. Bennett delivers the goods. From generalisations of any "sort, with immense selfdenial, he steadily refrains. In the wholo book there are only, three:—"lt seems to mo that tho brains and th,e imagination of America shine superlatively in tho conception and ordering of vast'organisations of human beings and of machinery, and of the two combined." "The rough broad difference between, ; the,. American and the European; business man is that tho latter is anxious to leave his work, while'tho former is anxious to get to.it" "Tho American citizen unquestionably ■lias the 'most ■ comfortable home in the world" These are all—and. even these aro reflectors ;to '•..throw the-ilight moro sharply back upon the. details. .His bravura passages do the same.■: Tlig.-most beautiful page in. the book is the description of a _dynamo' (p. 101). Tho best single phrase describes the - perfect stopping of a train' (p. 131). His nocturne ,of New York (p. 25) is essentially an enumeration of facilities. And his appreciation of the poetry of the slcy-jornper is not complete until ho has taken us inside nnd shown us how it works:—

"But in the sky-scrapers there is a deeper romanticism than Mint which disengages itself from them externally. You must enter them in order to appreciate them, in order to respond fully to their complex appeal.... . . T«u ■ come to those mysterious palisaded- shafts with which the building and every other-build-ing in New York is secretly honeycombed, nnd tin palisade is opened and an elevator snatches you up. 1 think of. American cities as enormous- agglomerations in whose inmost dark recesses innumerable elevators are constantly ascending and descending liko tho angels of the ladder. . .: ."' The elevator., ejfots you. You are taken into dazzling daylight, into what is modestly called a business office. -. . .

.You walk from chunber to chamber, and in answer to inquiry learn that tho rent of this one' suite—among so many—is over thirty-six thousand dollars a year! And you reflect that, to tho beholder in tho strerct, all .that is represented by ono narrow row of windows, lo*t in .1 diminishing chess-board of windows. And you begin to roaliso what a sky-scraper is, awl tho poi'try of it."

So the whole place i 3 anatomised, dismembered, neatly transhipped, much ns English castles are taken down brick by brick by Americans to bo built up again, over there. Wo get the working parts of tho machine in exactly the form most universally intelligible. They fit together to form a working model, and a iatch-koy, any latch-key, is all that is required to set it lucidly going. And even the marks of 'exclamation in which it is •packed and. the abundance of "prodigiouses" havo their use. They keep us nwaro of tho scale. That must bo a pretty colossal structure (we reflect) that could reduce tho proved Samson of our letters to tho condition of tho dominie.— Dixon Scott, in tho "Manchester Guardian,"