Page:Letters from America, Brooke, 1916.djvu/67

Rh belts, and therefore of more loosely moving bodies. This, and the padded shoulders of the coats, and the loosely-cut trousers, make a figure more presentable, at a distance, than most urban civilisations turn out. Also, Americans take their coats off, which is sensible; and they can do it the more beautifully because they are belted, and not braced. They take their coats off anywhere and anywhen, and somehow it strikes the visitor as the most symbolic thing about them. They have not yet thought of discarding collars; but they are unashamedly shirt-sleeved. Any sculptor, seeking to figure this Republic in stone, must carve, in future, a young man in shirt-sleeves, open-faced, pleasant, and rather vulgar, straw hat on the back of his head, his trousers full and sloppy, his coat over his arm. The motto written beneath will be, of course, 'This is some country.' The philosophic gazer on such a monument might get some way towards understanding the making of the Panama Canal, that exploit that no European nation could have carried out.

What facial type the sculptor would give the youth is harder to determine, and very hard to describe. The American race seems to have developed two classes, and only two,