A DAY IN NEW YORK.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3584, 9 March 1914, Page 8

A DAY IN NEW YORK.

AMERICANS DO NOT HUSTLE. “GEORGE BIRMINGHAM’S’ ’ NOTES. ‘The only person who is ever hustled in New York is the stranger who has not yet adapted himself to American ways.” So reaeons “George Birmingham” (Canon Hannay), the Irish novelist. “He makes, let us say, ten engagements for a day. He gets Up in the morning convinced that ho can get through the whole ten easily. Ti.iree of them arc meals which he proposes to eat. Five more are interviews with persons of importance. The other two are what we call in America ‘automobile rides’ offered by kind millionaires who wish to show off' the beauties of the city.’ The Canon was recently in New York gathering “local color” on the spot. His first shock was breakfast. “It lasts over into the time appointed for the first interview. He is late for that; but the other man is hater still. At midday he is, so to epeak, overlapped by time. He has get a whole round of bus oourse behind the hastening clock. Then he begins to hustle in good earnest; but tho Americans, his fellow competitors in the race, do not hustle. They, too, have their engagements, but they are quite cheerful'y late for them. They are in no way fussed towards tlie end of the day, as the granger is. T' are sustained by a conviction that they have been living all the time at high pressure, and are sure that tlhey are never late for anything. That is part of the American philosophy of life.

TYRANNY OF THE CLOCK. “According to the dock they are late continuously and regularly late for everything; but the American realises, as the Englishman does not, that man is the superior of the clock. AYlbat, after all, is a clock but a machine? what is the sun itself but. Jife'ess matter? Man, as a living soul, ought to be, and in America is, the superior of any machine. No self-respecting his typewriter to decide what letters he will write, or lot himself be dictated to by his piano as to what tunes lie will play- A clock is no more tlufn a typewriter, lias hard’y a-s much sold as a piano. "W!hy should it decide how long a mail should spend at his lunch? The American —and this is a proof of the greatness of the nation—has asserted itself against the dock, has mastered the vile thing, and now goes through the world a free man, unhustled by the great imposter lime.”