AMERICAN SKETCHES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4797, 9 January 1925, Page 1

AMERICAN SKETCHES.

THE ANGLO-SAXON STRAIN.

ENGLISH HOUSES. The Anglo-Saxon straii in the United States is making a desperate light for survival, it is threatened by the avaianche of alien races that have crowded into the El Dorado of a new era. Sometimes .the fight has its pathetic aspects (writes Cecil Roberts in the Westminister Gazette;, You will, find wherever you meet a representative of the old stock who has settled, lived, or been bom in the States that he clings fiercely to the habits of his land of origin. It is revealed in the very name nc gives to his. house, field, or village. My tour took me to a small country village outride Baltimfire, in Maryland. The latter seems so much the homeplace of the maker of sentimental songs, with jazz accompaniments, that I had come to expect little save moon-eyed darkies who sung of their “coal-black mammies.” But the nigger and the jazz are not noticeable features of the landscape. MARYLAND’S "DEVON-” Maryland prides itself on its charming scenery, and in its highest moment of pride it says, hopefully, that it has been called quite English in its aspects. So that one seep a village, made of a few frame houses, called Devon, or drives by a few clustei ing dwellings that might constitute the main street made familiar to us by Sinclair Lewis. And one is told that the name of the place is Hereford, because it has been said by those who know Hereford in England that and n.o further words are necessary to detect the dream lingering in the hearts of these peowho are no less English because they are. wholly American. LIKE AN ENGLISH HOUSE. 1 leapt directly into the heart of one of my hostesses when 1 involuntarily exclaimed, as I entered her drawing - room, "Why I this is exactly like an English house I” She is a woman of, 68, and for the whole of those yeais she has dreamed of visiting England. Fate has conspired to cheat her. Last year, when all was ready for the miraculous journey, she fell and broke a leg. Other signs of her dreams were visible. The inevitable boons on English houses and gardens, ami, as everywhere in these homes, the monthly magazine of the EnglishSpeaking Union, which keeps their hope alive in the Anglo-Saxon strain. But the most pathetic and tender demonstration of thin loyalty to the old Motherland was revealed when she told me of the trouble she had taken to obtain a relief map of England. There it stands, on her writ-ing-desk, where she may look upon the coloured counties, follow the courses of the known— through guide books —rivers, and place her fingers in reverie upon the mountain tops of Scotland and Wales. THE RACE INSTINCT. 1 do not think we realise in England with what ardour, with what long preparation, these descendants of our blood come to England. We are inclined to smile at their accent, scoff at their hectic rapture over our monuments and counti’yside, and fail to perceive, underlying all this tourist spirit, the accumulated dreams of the exiled spirit in which the race instinct strives for expression. Thus it is that Devon, or Glencoe, or Oxford, pathetic with their wooden houses. their wire fences, their gasolene pumps, stand for something deep in the heart of the Anglo-Saxon strain.

THE LIFELONG DREAM.

In Maryland.it is not difficult to catch a glimpse of .an English countryside. True, warm sunshine, In which one may sit on an open verandah throughout the closing weeks of October, makes one conscious that this is not England. And the autumn tints have a richness, a flaming beauty, in a higher key than those proclaimed by our own countryside, but these things apart, Hereford might be in Herefordshire, and not in Maryland.

My hostess is now limping about in her garden. She tells me that she hopes to visit England this year, and I tremble for her. She has a vision of old manor houses, inhabited by ancient families, of quiet country villages, from the thatched roofis of which a spiral of blue smoke ascends in the still air, of village greens with a few ducks, and simple village children, of a gentle courtesy, and contentment. everywhere. I will not dare to disillusion her. I can only hope that my countrymen, when the American is in their midst, will not appear too aggressive and progressive. After such long, such pathetic loyalty to the thought of the . old homeland, we do not seem to have any right but to be as they think we are. For some things it might be merciful if my The dream would remain unbroken, hostess broke her other leg next year.