ABSTRACT
AN AUTOMOBILE journey across America is like a journey across an ocean, monotonous and magnificent. Whenever you go out on deck, in the morning or in the evening, in a storm or a calm, on Monday or on Thursday, you will always find water, of which there is no end. Whenever you look out the window of an automobile there will always be an excellent smooth road, with petrol stations, tourist houses, and billboards on the sides. You saw all this yesterday and the day before, and you know that you will see the very same thing tomorrow and the day after. And the dinner in the state of Ohio will be the same as yesterday’s when you passed through the state of New York—quite as on a steamer, where the change of latitude and longitude introduces no changes in the menu of your dinner, or in the disposition of the passengers’ day. It is in this consistent sameness that the colossal dimensions and the incalculable wealth of the United States are expressed. Before saying about Eastern America that this is a mountainous or a desert or a forest land, one wants to say the main thing, the most important thing, about it—it is the land of automobiles and electricity.
