Being drawn by it, Americans in increasing numbers
turned their faces towards the older land. Gradually it was discovered
that it was the simplest affair in the world to drive down to the
wharves and take a steamer which landed one, after a more or less
interesting voyage, in Liverpool, or at some other convenient port.
From there one went to London, or Paris, or Rome; in fact, whithersoever
one's fancy guided, but first or last it always led the traveller to
the treading of green, velvet English turf. And once standing on
such velvet, both men and women, looking about them, felt, despite
themselves, the strange old thrill which some of them half resented and
some warmly loved.
In the course of twelve years, a length of time which will transform a
little girl wearing a short frock into a young woman wearing a long one,
the pace of life and the ordering of society may become so altered as
to appear amazing when one finds time to reflect on the subject. But one
does not often find time. Changes occur so gradually that one scarcely
observes them, or so swiftly that they take the form of a kind of amazed
shock which one gets over as quickly as one experiences it and realises
that its cause is already a fixed fact.
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