"Can that stuff," admonished Miss Buck in her easy, offhand manner"Can that stuff," admonished Miss Buck in her easy, offhand manner
have taken them out lots of times. But generally the authors use a pipe for their heroes."
There was talk, too, about "eugenic weddings." And a sensation was caused when a Southern college professor made a charge that graduates of modern women's colleges are unfitted for motherhood. The statement, it may be added, was vigorously denied by the heads of several leading women's colleges.
Rather wild, some of this, it seems to me. But when people gather together in one place, intent on some one subject, wildness is almost certain to develop. One feels, in visiting the Sanitarium, that, though many people may be restored to health there, there is yet an air of mild fanaticism over all. Health fanaticism. The passionate light of the health hunt flashes in the stranger's eye as he looks at you and wonders what is wrong with you. And whatever may be wrong with you, or with him, you are both there to shake it off. That is your sole business in life. You are going to get over it, even if you have to live for weeks on "Nuttolene" or other products of the diet kitchen.
"Nuttolene!"
It is always an experience for the sophisticated palate to meet a brand-new taste. In "Nuttolene" my palate encountered one, and before dinner was over it met several more.
"Nuttolene" is served in a slab, resembling, as nearly as anything I can think of, a good-sized piece of shoemaker's wax. In flavor it is confusing. Some fainttaste about it hinted that it was intended to resemble turkey; an impression furthered by the fact that cranberry sauce was served on the same plate. But what it was made of I could not detect. It was not unpleasant to taste, nor yet did I find it appetizing. Rather, I should classify it in the broad category of uninteresting food. However, after such a statement, it is but fair to add that the food I find most interesting is almost always rich and indigestible. Perhaps, therefore, I shall be obliged to go to Battle Creek some day, to subsist on "Nuttolene" and kindred substances as penance for my gastronomic indiscretions. Better men than I have done that thing—men and women from all over the globe. And Battle Creek has benefited them. Nevertheless, I hope that I shall never have to go there. My feeling about the place, quite without regard to the cures which it effects, is much like that of my companion:
At luncheon I asked him to save his menu for me, so that I might have the data for this article. He put it in his pocket. But he kept pulling it out again, every little while, throughout the afternoon, and suggesting that I copy it all off into my notebook.
Finally I said to him:
"What is the use in my copying all that stuff when you have it right there in print? Just keep it for me. Then, when I get to writing, I will take it and use what I want."
"But I'd rather not keep it," he insisted.
"Why not?"
"Well, there might be a railroad wreck. If I'm killed I don't want this thing to be found on me. When they went through my clothes and ran across this they'd say: 'Oh, this doesn't matter. It's all right. He's just some poor boob that's been to Battle Creek.'"
When we got out of the hack at the station before leaving Battle Creek, I asked the hackman how the town got its name. He didn't know. So, after buying the tickets, I went and asked Miss Daisy Buck.
"I suppose," I said, "there was some battle here, beside some creek, wasn't there?"
But for once Miss Buck failed me.
"You can searchme," she replied. Then: "Did you lunch at the 'San'?"
We admitted it.
"How did you like it?"
We informed her.
"What did you eat—Mercerized hay?"
"No; mostly Nuttolene."
She sighed. Then:
"What town are you making next?" she asked.
"Kalamazoo," I said.
"Oh, Ka'zoo, eh? What line are you gen'l'men travelling in?"
"I'm a writer," I replied, "and my friend here is an artist. We're going around the country gathering material for a book."
In answer to this statement, Miss Buck simply winked one eye as one who would say: "You're some little liar, ain't you?"
"It's true," I said.
"Oh, sure!" said Miss Buck, and let one eyelid fall again.
"When the book appears," I continued, "you will find that it contains an interview with you."
"Also a picture of you and the news stand," my companion added.
Then we heard the train.
Taking up our suit cases, we thanked Miss Buck for the assistance she had rendered us.
"I'm sure you're quite welcome," she replied. "I meet all kinds here—including kidders."
That was some months ago. No doubt Miss Buck may have forgotten us by now. But when she sees this—as, being a news-stand lady, I have reason to hope she will—I trust she may remember, and admit that truth has triumphed in the end.
I had but one reason for visiting Kalamazoo: the name has always fascinated me with its zoölogical suggestion and even more with its rich, rhythmic measure. Indian names containing "K's" are almost always striking: Kenosha, Kewanee, Kokomo, Keokuk, Kankakee. Of these, the last two, having the most "K's" are most effective. Next comes Kokomo with two "K's." But Kalamazoo, though it has but one "K," seems to me to take first place among them all, phonetically, because of the finely assorted sound contained in its four syllables. There is a kick in its "K," a ring in its "L," a buzz in its "Z," and a glorious hoot in its two final "O's."
I wish here to protest against the abbreviated title frequently bestowed upon the town by newspapers in Detroit and other neighboring cities. They call it "Ka'zoo."
Ka'zoo, indeed! For shame! How can men take so fine a name and treat it lightly? True, it is a little long for easy handling in a headline, but that does not justify indignity. If headline writers cannot handle it conveniently they should not change the name, but ratherchange their type, or make-up. If I owned a newspaper, and there arose a question of giving space to this majestic name, I should cheerfully drop out a baseball story, or the love letters in some divorce case, or even an advertisement, in order to display it as it deserves to be displayed.
Kalamazoo (I love to write it out!) Kalamazoo, I say, is also sometimes known familiarly as "Celery Town"—the growing of this crisp and succulent vegetable being a large local industry. Also, I was informed, more paper is made there than in any other city in the world. I do not know if that is true, I only know that if there is not moresomethingin Kalamazoo than there is in any other city, the place is unique in my experience.
From my own observations, made during an evening walk through the agreeable, tree-bordered streets of Kalamazoo, I should have said that it led in quite a different field. I have never been in any town where so many people failed to draw their window shades, or owned green reading lamps, or sat by those green-shaded lamps and read. I looked into almost every house I passed, and in all but two, I think, I saw the self-same picture of calm, literary domesticity.
One family, living in a large and rather new-looking house on Main Street, did not seem to be at home. The shades were up but no one was sitting by the lamp. And, more, the lamp itself was different. Instead of a plain green shade it had a shade with pictures in theglass, and red bead fringe. Later I found out where the people were. They were playing bridge across the street. They must have been the people from that house, because there were two in all the other houses, whereas there were four in the house where bridge was being played.
I stood and watched them. The woman from across the street—being the guest, she was in evening dress—was dummy. She was sitting back stiffly, her mouth pursed, her eyes staring at the cards her partner played. And she was saying to herself (and, unconsciously, to us, through the window): "IfIhad played that hand, I never should have done itthatway!"
Kalamazoo has a Commercial Club. What place hasn't? And the Commercial Club has issued a booklet. What Commercial Club hasn't? This one bears the somewhat fanciful title "The Lure of Kalamazoo."
"The Lure of Kalamazoo" is written in that peculiarly chaste style characteristic of Chamber of Commerce "literature"—a style comparable only with that of railway folders and summer hotel booklets. It is the "Here-all-nature-seems-to-be-rejoicing" school. Let me present an extract:
Kalamazoo is peculiarly a city of homes—homes varying in cost from the modest cottage of the laborer to the palatial house of the wealthy manufacturer.
Kalamazoo is peculiarly a city of homes—homes varying in cost from the modest cottage of the laborer to the palatial house of the wealthy manufacturer.
The only place in which the man who wrote thatslipped up, was in referring to the wealthy manufacturer's "house." Obviously the word called for there is "mansion." However, in justice to this man, and to Kalamazoo, I ought to add that the town seemed to be rather free from "mansions." That is one of the pleasantest things about it. It is just a pretty, unpretentious place. Perhaps he actually meant to say "house," but I doubt it. I think he missed a trick. I think he failed to get the right word, just as if he had been writing about brooks, and had forgotten to say "purling."
But if I saw no "mansions," I did see one building in Kalamazoo the architecture of which was distinguished. That was the building of the Western Michigan Normal School—a long, low structure of classical design, with three fine porticos.
Having a Commercial Club, Kalamazoo quite naturally has a "slogan," too. (A "slogan," by the way, is the war cry or gathering cry of a Highland clan—but that makes no difference to a Commercial Club.) It is: "In Kalamazoo We Do."
This battle cry "did" very well up to less than a year ago; then it suddenly began to languish. There was a company in Kalamazoo called the Michigan Buggy Company, and this company had a very sour failure last year, their figures varying from fact to the extent of about a million and a half dollars. Not satisfied with dummy accounts and padded statements, they had, also, what was called a "velvet pay roll." And, whenit all blew up, the whole of Michigan was shaken by the shock. Since that time, I am informed, the "slogan" "In Kalamazoo We Do" has not been in high favor.
She was saying to herself (and, unconsciously, to us, through the window): "If I had played that hand, I never should have done it that way!"She was saying to herself (and, unconsciously, to us, through the window): "If I had played that hand, I never should have done it that way!"
Among the "lures" presented in the Commercial Club's booklet are four hundred and fifty-six lakes within a radius of fifty miles of the city. I didn't count the lakes myself. I didn't count the people either—not all of them.
The "World Almanac" gives the population of the place as just under forty thousand, but some one in Kalamazoo—and I think he was a member of the Commercial Club—told me that fifty thousand was the correct figure.
Now, I ask you, is it not reasonable to suppose that the Commercial Club, being rightinKalamazoo, where it can count the people every day, should be more accurate in its figures than the Almanac, which is published in far-away New York? Errors like this on the part of the Almanac might be excused, once or twice, on the ground of human fallibility or occasional misprint, but when the Almanac keeps on cutting down the figures given by the Commercial Clubs and Chambers of Commerce of town after town, it begins to look like wilful misrepresentation if not actual spitework.
That, to tell the truth, was the reason I walked around and looked in all the windows. I decided to get at the bottom of this matter—to find out the causefor these discrepancies, and if I caught the Almanac in what appeared to be a deliberate lie, to expose it, here. With this in view, I started to count the people myself. Unfortunately, however, I did not start early enough in the evening. When I had only a little more than half of them counted, they began to put out their lights and go upstairs to bed. And, oddly enough, though they leave their parlor shades up, they have a way of drawing those in their bedrooms. I was, therefore, forced to stop counting.
I do not attempt to explain this Kalamazoo custom with regard to window shades. All I can say is that, for whatever reason they follow it, their custom is not metropolitan. New Yorkers do things just the other way around. They pull down their parlor shades, but leave their bedroom shades up. Any one who has lived in a New York apartment house in summer can testify to that. Probably it is all accounted for by the fact that in a relatively small city, like Kalamazoo, the census takers go around and count the people in the early evening, whereas in New York it is necessary for those who make the reckoning to work all night in order to—as one might say—get all the figures.
I know a man whose wife is famous for her cooking. That is a strange thing for a prosperous and charming woman to be famous for to-day, but it is true. When they wish to give their friends an especial treat, the wife prepares the dinner; and itisa treat, from "pigs in blankets" to strawberry shortcake.
The husband is proud of his wife's cooking, but I have often noticed, and not without a mild amusement, that when we praise it past a certain point he begins to protest that there are lots of other things that she can do. You might think then, if you did not understand him, that he was belittling her talent as a cook.
"Oh, yes," he says, in what he intends to be a casual tone, "she can cook very well. But that's not all. She's the best mother I ever saw—sees right into the children, just as though she were one of them. She makes most of their clothes, too. And in spite of all that, she keeps up her playing—both piano and harp. We'll get her to play the harp after dinner."
People are like that about the cities that they live in. They are like that in Detroit. They are afraid that in considering the vastness of the automobile industry, you'll overlook the fact that Detroit has a lot of otherbusiness. And in Grand Rapids they're the same; only there, of course, it's furniture.
"Yes," they say almost with reluctance, "we do make a good deal of furniture, but we also have big printing plants and plaster mills, and a large business in automobile accessories, and the metal trades."
They talked that way to me. But I kept right on asking about furniture, just as, when the young husband talks to me about his wife's harp playing, I keep right on eating shortcake. That is no reflection on her music (or her arms!); it is simply a tribute to her cooking.
Grand Rapids is one of those exceedingly agreeable, homelike American cities, which has not yet grown to the unwieldy size. It is the kind of city of which they say: "Every one here knows every one else"—meaning, of course, that members of the older and more prosperous families enjoy all the advantages and disadvantages of a considerable intimacy.
To the visitor—especially the visitor from New York, where a close friend may be bedridden a month without one's knowing it—this sort of thing makes a strong appeal at first. You feel that these people see one another every day; that they know all about one another, and like one another in spite of that. It is nice to see them troop down to the station, fifteen strong, to see somebody off, and it must be nice to be seen off like that; it must make you feel sure that you havefriends—a point upon which the New Yorker, in his heart, has the gravest doubts.
Consider, for example, my own case. In the course of my residence in New York, I have lived in four different apartment houses. In only two of these have I had even the slightest acquaintance with any of the other tenants. Once I called upon some disagreeable people on the floor below who had complained about the noise; once I had summoned a doctor who lived on the ground floor. In the other two buildings I knew absolutely no one. I used to see occasionally, in the elevator of one building, a man with whom I was acquainted years ago, but he had either forgotten me in the interim, or he elected to do as I did; that is, to pretend he had forgotten. I had nothing against him; he had nothing against me. We were simply bored at the idea of talking with each other because we had nothing in common.
Any New Yorker who is honest will admit to you that he has had that same experience. He passes people on the street—and sometimes they are people he has known quite well in times gone by—yet he refrains from bowing to them, and they refrain from bowing to him, by a sort of tacit understanding that bowing, even, is a bore.
That is a sad sort of situation. But sadder yet is the fact that in New York we lose sight of so many people whom we should like to see—friends of whom we are genuinely fond, but whose evolutions in the whirlpool of the city's life are such that we don't chance tocome in contact with them. At first we try. We paddle toward them now and then. But the very act of paddling is fatiguing, so by and by we give it up, and either never see them any more, or, running across them, once in a year or two, on the street or in a shop, lament at the broken intimacy, and make new resolves, only to see them melt away again in the flux and flow of New York life.
I thought of all this at a Sunday evening supper party in Grand Rapids—a neighborhood supper party at which a dozen or more people of assorted ages sat around a hospitable table, arguing, explaining, laughing, and chaffing each other like members of one great glorious family. It made me want to go and live there, too. Then I began to wonder how long I'd really want to live there. Would I always want to? Or would I grow tired of that, just as I grow tired of the contrasting coldness of New York? In short, I wondered to myself which is the worst: to know your neighbors with a wonderful, terrible, all-revealing intimacy, or—not to know them at all. I have thought about it often, and still I am not sure.
The Grand Rapids "Press" fearing that I might fail to notice certain underlying features of Grand Rapids life, printed an editorial at the time of my visit, in which attention was called to certain things. Said the "Press":
It isn't immediately revealed to the stranger that this is one of the clearest-thinking communities in the country. The records of the public library show the local demand for books on sociology, on political economy, on the relations of labor and capital, on taxation, on art, on the literature that has some chance of permanency. The topics discussed in the lecture halls, in the social centers, and in the Sunday gatherings, which are so pronounced a feature of church life here, add to the testimony. Ida M. Tarbell noticed that on her first visit. Her impression deepened on her second.... Without tossing any bouquets at ourselves it can be said that we are thinking some thoughts which only the elect in other cities dream of thinking.
It isn't immediately revealed to the stranger that this is one of the clearest-thinking communities in the country. The records of the public library show the local demand for books on sociology, on political economy, on the relations of labor and capital, on taxation, on art, on the literature that has some chance of permanency. The topics discussed in the lecture halls, in the social centers, and in the Sunday gatherings, which are so pronounced a feature of church life here, add to the testimony. Ida M. Tarbell noticed that on her first visit. Her impression deepened on her second.... Without tossing any bouquets at ourselves it can be said that we are thinking some thoughts which only the elect in other cities dream of thinking.
I should like to make some intelligent comment on this. I feel, indeed, that something very ponderous, and solemn, and authoritative, and learned, and wise, and owlish, and erudite, ought to be said.
But the trouble is that I am utterly unqualified to speak in that way. I am not one of the elect. If some one called me that, I would knock him down if I could, and kick him full of holes. That is because I think that the elect almost invariably elect themselves. They are intellectual Huertas, and as such I generally detest them. I merely print the "Press's" statement because I think it is interesting, sometimes, to see what a city thinks about itself. For my own part, I should think more of Grand Rapids if, instead of sitting tight and thinking these extraordinary thoughts, it had done more to carry out the plan it had for its own beautification.
That is not to say that it is not a pretty city. It is. But its beauty is of that unconscious kind which comes from hills, and pleasant homes, and lawns, and trees.The kind of beauty that it lacks is conscious beauty, the creation of which requires the expenditure of thought, money, and effort. And if it does nothing else to indicate its intellectual and esthetic soarings, I should say that it might do well to discard the reading lamp in favor of the crowbar, if only for long enough to take the latter instrument, go down to the park, and see what can be done about that chimney which rises so absurdly there.
The lack of coherent municipal taste is all the more a reproach to Grand Rapids for the reason that taste, perhaps above all other qualities, is the essential characteristic of the city's leading industry.
I used to have an idea that "cheap" furniture came from Grand Rapids. Perhaps it did. Perhaps it still does. I do not know. But I do know that the tour I made through the five acres, more or less, of rooms which make up the show house of Berkey & Gay, afforded me the best single bit of concrete proof I met, in all my travels, of the positive growth of good taste in this country.
Just as the whole face of things has changed architecturally in the last ten or fifteen years, furnishings have also changed. The improved appreciation which makes people build sightly homes makes them fill those homes with furniture of respectable design. People are beginning to know about the history of furniture, to recognize the characteristics of the great Englishfurniture designers and to appreciate the beauty which they handed down.
We went through the warerooms with Mr. Gay, and as I feasted my eyes upon piece after piece, set after set, of Chippendale, Sheraton, Heppelwhite, and Adam, I asked Mr. Gay about the renaissance which is upon us. One thing I was particularly curious about: I wanted to know whether the improvement in furniture sprang from popular demand or whether it had been in some measure forced upon the public by the manufacturers.
Mr. Gay told me that the change was something which originated with the people. "We have always wanted to make beautiful furniture," he said, "and we have helped all we could, but a manufacturer of furniture cannot force either good taste or bad taste upon those who buy. He has to offer them what they are willing to take, for they will not buy anything else. I know that, because sometimes we have tried to press matters a little. Now and then we have indulged ourselves to the extent of turning out some fine pieces, of one design or another, a little in advance of public appreciation, but there has never been any considerable sale for such things." He indicated a fine Jacobean library table of oak. "Take that piece for instance. We made some furniture like that twenty or twenty-five years ago, but could sell very little of it. People weren't ready for it then. Or this Adam set—as recently as five years ago we couldn't have hoped for anything more than a few nibbles on that kind of thing, but there's a big market for it now."
I asked Mr. Gay if he had any theories as to what had caused the development in popular appreciation.
"It is a great big subject," he said. "I think the magazines have done some of it. There have been quantities of publications on house furnishing. And the manufacturers' catalogues have helped, too. And as wealth and leisure have increased, people have had more time to give to the study of such things."
On the train going to Chicago I fell into conversation with a man whom I presently discerned to be a furniture manufacturer. I don't know who he was but he told me about the furniture exposition which is held in Grand Rapids in January and July each year. There are large buildings with many acres of floor space which stand idle and empty all the year around, excepting at the time of these great shows. Last year more than two hundred and fifty separate manufacturers had exhibitions, a large number of them being manufacturers whose factories were not located in Grand Rapids, but who nevertheless found it profitable to ship samples there and rent space in the exhibition buildings in order to place their wares before the buyers who gather there from all over the country.
Before we parted, this gentleman told me a story which, though he said it was an old one, I had never heard before.
According to this story, there was, in Grand Rapids, a very inquisitive furniture manufacturer, who was always trying to find out about the business done by other manufacturers. When he would meet them he would question them in a way they found exceedingly annoying.
One day, encountering a rival manufacturer upon the street, he stopped him and began the usual line of questions. The other answered several, becoming more and more irritated. But finally his inquisitor asked one too many.
"How many men are working in your factory now?" he demanded.
"Oh?" said the other, as he turned away, "about two-thirds of them."
CHICAGO
Imagine a young demigod, product of a union between Rodin's "Thinker" and the Wingèd Victory of Samothrace, and you will have my symbol of Chicago.
Chicago is stupefying. It knows no rules, and I know none by which to judge it. It stands apart from all the cities in the world, isolated by its own individuality, an Olympian freak, a fable, an allegory, an incomprehensible phenomenon, a prodigious paradox in which youth and maturity, brute strength and soaring spirit, are harmoniously confused.
Call Chicago mighty, monstrous, multifarious, vital, lusty, stupendous, indomitable, intense, unnatural, aspiring, puissant, preposterous, transcendent—call it what you like—throw the dictionary at it! It is all that you can do, except to shoot it with statistics. And even the statistics of Chicago are not deadly, as most statistics are.
First, you must realize that Chicago stands fourth in population among the cities of the world, and second among those of the Western Hemisphere. Next you must realize that there are people still alive who werealive when Chicago did not exist, even as a fort in a swamp at the mouth of the Chicago River—the river from which, by the way, the city took its name, and which in turn took its own name from an Indian word meaning "skunk."
I do not claim that there are many people still alive who were alive when Chicago wasn't there at all, or that such people are feeling very active, or that they remember much about it, for in 102 years a man forgets a lot of little things. Nevertheless, thereareliving men older than Chicago.
Just one hundred years ago Fort Dearborn, at the mouth of the river, was being rebuilt, after a massacre by the Indians. Eighty-five years ago Chicago was a village of one hundred people. Sixty-five years ago this village had grown into a city of approximately the present size of Evanston—a suburb of Chicago, with less than thirty thousand people. Fifty-five years ago Chicago had something over one hundred thousand inhabitants. Forty-five years ago, at the time of the Chicago fire, the city was as large as Washington is now—over three hundred thousand. In the ten years which followed the disaster, Chicago was not only entirely rebuilt, and very much improved, but also it increased in population to half a million, or about the size of Detroit. In the next decade it actually doubled in size, so that, twenty-five years ago, it passed the million mark. Soon after that it pushed Philadelphia from second place among American cities. So it has gone on, until to-day it has a population of two million, plus a city of about the size of San Francisco for full measure.
There are the statistics in a capsule paragraph. I hope you will feel better in the morning. And just to take the taste away, here's another item which you may like because of its curious flavor: Chicago has more Poles than any other city except Warsaw.
One knows in advance what a visitor from Europe will say about New York, just as one knows what an American humorist will say about Europe. But one never knows what any visitor will say about Chicago. I have heard people damn Chicago—"up hill and down" I was about to say, but I withdraw that, for the highest hill I remember in Chicago is that ungainly little bump, on the lake front, which is surmounted by Saint Gaudens' statue of General Logan.
As I was saying, I have heard people rave against Chicago and about it. Being itself a city of extremes, it seems to draw extremes of feeling and expression from outsiders. For instance, Canon Hannay, who writes novels and plays under the name of George A. Birmingham, was quoted, at the time of his recent visit to this country, as saying: "In a little while Chicago will be a world center of literature, music, and art.British writers will be more anxious for her verdict than for that of London. The music of the future will be hammered out on the shores of Lake Michigan. The Paris Salon will be a second-rate affair."
Remembering that the Canon is an Irishman and a humorist—which is tautology—we may perhaps discount his statement a little bit for blarney and a little more for fun. His "prophecy" about the Salon seems to stamp the interview with waggery, for certainly it is not hard to prophesy what is already true—and, as everybody ought to know by now, the Salon has for years been second-rate.
The Chicago Art Institute has by all odds the most important art collection I visited upon my travels. The pictures are varied and interesting, and American painters are well represented. The presence in the institute of a good deal of that rather "tight" and "sugary" painting which came to Chicago at the time of the World's Fair, is to be regretted—a fact which is, I have no doubt, quite as well known to those in charge of the museum as to anybody else. But as I remarked in a previous chapter, most museums are hampered, in their early days, by the gifts of their rich friends. It takes a strong museum indeed to risk offending a rich man by kicking out bad paintings which he offers. Even the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has not always been so brave as to do that.
"Who's Who" (which, by the way, is published in Chicago) mentions perhaps a score of Chicago paintersand sculptors, among the former Lawton S. Parker and Oliver Dennett Grover, and among the latter Lorado Taft.
There are, however, many others, not in "Who's Who," who attempt to paint—enough of them to give a fairly large and very mediocre exhibition which I saw. One thing is, however, certain: the Art Institute has not the deserted look of most other art museums one visits. It is used. This may be partly accounted for by its admirable location at the center of the city—a location more accessible than that of any other museum I think of, in the country. But whatever the reason, as you watch the crowds, you realize more than ever that Chicago is alive to everything—even to art.
Years ago Chicago was musical enough to support the late Theodore Thomas and his orchestra—one of the most distinguished organizations of the kind ever assembled in this country. Thomas did great things for Chicago, musically. He started her, and she has kept on. Besides innumerable and varied concerts which occur throughout the season, the city is one of four in the country strong enough to support a first-rate grand opera company of its own.
About twenty-five musicians of one sort and another are credited to Chicago by "Who's Who," the most distinguished of them, perhaps, being Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, the concert pianist. But it is the writers of Chicago who come out strongest in the fat red volume, among followers of the arts. With sinking heartI counted about seventy of these, and I may be merely revealing my own ignorance when I add that the names of a good two-thirds of them were new to me. But this is dangerous ground. Without further comment let me say that among the seventy I found such names as Robert Herrick, Henry B. Fuller, Hamlin Garland, Emerson Hough, Henry Kitchell Webster, Maud Radford Warren, Opie Read, and Clara Louise Burnham—a hatful of them which you may sort and classify according to your taste.
Canon Hannay said he felt at home in Chicago. So did Arnold Bennett. Canon Hannay said Chicago reminded him of Belfast. Arnold Bennett said Chicago reminded him of the "Five Towns," made famous in his novels. Even Baedeker breaks away from his usual nonpartizan attitude long enough to say with what, for Baedeker, is nothing less than an outburst of passion: "Great injustice is done to Chicago by those who represent it as wholly given over to the worship of Mammon, as it compares favorably with a great many American cities in the efforts it has made to beautify itself by the creation of parks and boulevards and in its encouragement of education and the liberal arts."
Baedeker is quite right about that. He might also have added that the "Windy City" is not so windy as New York, and that the old legend, now almost forgotten, to the effect that Chicago girls have big feet is
Rodin's "Thinker"Rodin's "Thinker"
equally untrue. There is still some wind in Chicago; thanks to it and to the present mode in dress, I was able to assure myself quite definitely upon the size of Chicago feet. I not only saw them upon the streets; I saw them also at dances: twinkling, slippered feet as small as any in the land; and, again owing to the present mode, I saw not only pretty feet, but also—However, I am digressing. That is enough about feet. I fear I have already let them run away with me.
A friend of mine who visited Chicago for the first time, a year ago, came back appreciative of her wonders, but declaring her provincial.
"Why do you say provincial?" I asked.
"Because you can't pick up a taxi in the street," he said.
And it is true. I was chagrined at his discovery—not so much because of its truth, however, as because it was the discovery of a New Yorker. I always defend Chicago against New Yorkers, for I love the place, partly for itself and partly because I was born and spent my boyhood there.
I know a great many other ex-Chicagoans who now live in New York, as I do, and I have noticed with amusement that the side we take depends upon the society in which we are. If we are with Chicagoans, we defend New York; if with New Yorkers, we defend Chicago. We are like those people in the circus who stand uponthe backs of two horses at once. Only among ourselves do we go in for candor.
The other day I met a man and his wife, transplanted Chicagoans, on the street in New York.
"How long have you been here?" I asked.
"Three years," said the husband.
"Why did you come?"
"For business reasons."
"How do you like the change?"
The husband hesitated. "Well, I've done a great deal better here than I ever did in Chicago," he said.
"How do you like it?" I asked the wife.
"New York gives us more advantages," she said, "but I prefer Chicago people."
"Would you like to go back?"
The wife hesitated, but the husband shook his head.
"No," he replied, "there's something about New York that gets into your blood. To go back to Chicago would seem like retrograding."
Among my notes I find the record of a conversation with a New York girl who married a Chicago man and went out there to live.
"I was very lonely at first," she said. "One day a man came around selling pencils. I happened to see him at the door. He said: 'I'm an actor, and I'm trying to raise money to get back to New York.' As I was feeling then I'd have given him anything in the house just because that was where he wanted to go. Igave him some money. 'Here,' I said, 'you take this and go on back to New York.' 'Why,' he inquired, 'are you from New York, too?' I said I was. Then he asked me: 'What are you doing away out here?' 'Oh,' I told him, 'this is my home now. I live here.' He thanked me, and as he put the money in his pocket he shook his head and said: 'Too bad! Too bad!'
"That will show you how I felt at first. But when I came to know Chicago people I liked them. And now I wouldn't go back for anything."
There is testimony from both sides.
With the literary man the situation is, perhaps, a little different. New York is practically his one big market place. I was speaking about that the other day with an author who used to live in Chicago.
"The atmosphere out there is not nearly so stimulating for a writer," he assured me. "Here, in New York, even a pretty big writer is lost in the shuffle. There, he is a shining mark. The Chicago writers are likely to be a little bit self-conscious and naive. They have their own local literary gods, and they're rather inclined to sit around and talk solemnly about 'Art with a capital A.'"
Necessarily, when the adherents of two cities start an argument, they are confined to concrete points. They talk about opera and theaters and buildings and hotels and stores, and seldom touch upon such subtlethings as city spirit. For spirit is a hard thing to deal with and a harder thing to prove. Yet "greatness knows itself." Chicago unquestionably knows that it is great, and that its greatness is of the spirit. But the Chicagoan, debating in favor of his city, is unable to "get that over," and is therefore obliged to fall back upon two last, invariable defenses: the department store of Marshall Field & Co. and the Blackstone Hotel.
The Blackstone he will tell you, with an eye lit by fanatical belief, is positively the finest hotel in the whole United States. Mention the Ritz, the Plaza, the St. Regis, the Biltmore, or any other hotel to him, and it makes no difference; the Blackstone is the best. As to Marshall Field's, he is no less positive: It is not merely the largest but also the very finest store in the whole world.
I have never stopped at any of those hotels with which the New Yorker would attempt to defeat the Blackstone. But I have stopped at the Blackstone, and it is undeniably a very good hotel. One of the most agreeable things about it is the air of willing service which one senses in its staff. It is an excellent manager who can instil into his servants that spirit which causes them to seem to be eternally on tiptoe—not for a tip but for a chance to serve. Further, the Blackstone occupies a position, with regard to the fashionable life of Chicago, which is not paralleled by any single hotel in New York. Socially it is preëminently the place.
General dancing in such public restaurants as Rector's—the original Rector's is in Chicago, you know—and in the dining rooms of some hotels, was started in Chicago, but was soon stopped by municipal regulation. Since that time other schemes have been devised. Dances are held regularly in the ballrooms of most of the hotels, but are managed as clubs or semi-private gatherings. This arrangement has its advantages. It would have its advantages, indeed, if it did nothing more than put the brakes on the dancing craze—as any one can testify who has seen his friends offering up their business and their brains as a sacrifice to Terpsichore. But that is not what I started to say. The advantage of the system which was in vogue at the Blackstone, when I was there, is that, to get into the ballroom people must be known; wherefore ladies who still have doubts as to the propriety of dancing in a public restaurant need not, and do not, hesitate to go there and dance to their toes' content.
Of course we visited Marshall Field's.
The very obliging gentleman who showed us about the inconceivably enormous buildings, rushing from floor to floor, poking in and out through mysterious, baffling doors and passageways, now in the public part of the store where goods are sold, now behind the scenes where they are made—this gentleman seemed to have the whole place in his head—almost as great a feat as knowing the whole world by heart.
"How much time can you spare?" he asked as we set out from the top floor, where he had shown us a huge recreation room, gymnasium, and dining room, all for the use of the employees.
"How long should it take?"
"It can be done in two hours," he said, "if we keep moving all the time."
"All right," I said—and we did keep moving. Through great rooms full of trunks, of brass beds, through vast galleries of furniture, through restaurants, grilles, afternoon tea rooms, rooms full of curtains and coverings and cushions and corsets and waists and hatsand carpets and rugs and linoleum and lamps and toys and stationery and silver, and Heaven only knows what else, over miles and miles of pleasant, soft, green carpet, I trotted along beside the amazing man who not only knew the way, but seemed even to know the clerks. Part of the time I tried to look about me at the phantasmagoria of things with which civilization has encumbered the human race; part of the time I listened to our cicerone; part of the time I walked blindly, scribbling notes, while my companion guided my steps.
Here are some of the notes:
Ten thousand employees in retail store——Choral society, two hundred members, made up of sales-people——Twelve baseball teams in retail store; twelve in wholesale; play during season, and, finally, for championship cup, on "Marshall Field Day"——Lectures on various topics, fabrics, etc., for employees, also for outsiders: women's clubs, etc.——Employees' lunch: soup, meat, vegetables, etc., sixteen cents——Largest retail custom dressmaking business in the country——Largest business in ready-made apparel——Largest retail millinery business——Largest retail shoe business——Largest branch of Chicago public library (for employees)——Largest postal sub-station in Chicago——Largest—largest—largest!
Now and then when something interested me particularly we would pause and catch our breath. Once we stopped for two or three minutes in a fine schoolroom, where some stock-boys and stock-girls were having a lesson in fractions—"to fit them for better positions." Again we paused in a children's playroom, where mothers left their youngsters while they went to do their shopping, and where certain youngsters, thus deposited, were having a gorgeous time, sliding down things, and running around other things, and crawling over and under still other things. Still again we paused at the telephone switchboard—a switchboard large enough to take care of the entire business of a city of the size of Springfield, the capital of Illinois. And still again we paused at the postal sub-station, where fifty to sixty thousand dollars' worth of stamps are sold in a year, and which does as great a postal business, in the holiday season, as the whole city of Milwaukee does at the same period.
At one time we would be walking through a great shirt factory, set off in one corner of that endless building, all unknown to the shoppers who never get behind the scenes; then we would pop out again into the dressed-up part of the store, just as one goes from the kitchen and the pantry of a house into the formality of dining room and drawing room. And as we appeared thus, and our guide was recognized as the assistant manager of all that kingdom, with its population of ten thousand, saleswomen would rise suddenly from seats, little gossiping groups would disperse quickly, and floor men, who had been talking with saleswomen, would begin to occupy themselves with other matters. I remember coming upon a "silence room" for saleswomen—a large, dark, quiet chamber, in which was an attendant; also a saleswoman who was restlessly resting by rocking herself in a chair. And as we moved through the store we kept taking off our hats as we went behind the scenes, and putting them on as we emerged into the public parts. Never before had I realized how much of a department store is a world unseen by shoppers. At one point, in that hidden world, a vast number of women were sewing upon dresses. I had hardly time to look upon this picture when, rushing through a little door, in pursuit of my active guide, I found myself in a maze of glass, and long-piled carpets, and mahogany, and electric light, and pretty frocks, disposed about on forms. Also disposed about were many "perfect thirty-sixes," with piles of taffy-colored hair, doing the "débutante slouch" in their trim black costumes, so slinky and alluring. Here I had a strong impulse to halt, to pause and examine the carpets and woodwork, and one thing and another. But no! Our guardian had a professional pride in getting us through the store within two hours, according to his promise. I would gladly have allowed him an extra ten minutes if I could have spent it in that place, but on we went—my companion and I dragging behind a little and looking backward at the Lorelei—I remember that, because I ran into a man and knocked my hat off.
At last we came to the information bureau, and as there was a particularly attractive young person behindthe desk, it occurred to me that this would be a fine time to get a little information.
"I wonder if I can stump that sinuous sibyl," I said.
"Try it," said our conductor.
So I went over to her and asked: "How large is this store, please?"
"You mean the building?"
"Yes."
"There is fifty acres of floor space under this roof," she said. "There are sixteen floors: thirteen stories rising two hundred and fifty-eight feet above the street, and three basements, extending forty-three and a half feet below. The building takes up one entire block. The new building devoted exclusively to men's goods is just across Washington Street. That building is—"
"Thank you very much," I said. "That's all I want to know about that. Can you tell me the population of Chicago?"
"Two million three hundred and eighty-eight thousand five hundred," she said glibly, showing me her pretty teeth.
Then I racked my brains for a difficult question.
"Now," I said, "will you please tell me where Charles Towne was born?"
"Do you mean Charles A. Towne, the lawyer; Charles Wayland Towne, the author; or Charles Hanson Towne, the poet?" she demanded.
I managed to say that I meant the poet Towne.
"He was born in Louisville, Kentucky," she informedme sweetly. She even gave me the date of his birth, too, but as the poet is a friend of mine, I will suppress that.
"Is that all?" she inquired presently, seeing that I was merely gazing at her.
"Yes, you adorable creature." The first word of that sentence is all that I really uttered. I only thought the rest.
"Very well," she replied, shutting the book in which she had looked up the Townes.
"Thanks very much," I said.
"Don't mention it," said she—and went about her business in a way that sent me about mine.
Aside from its vastness and the variety of its activities, two things about Marshall Field's store interested me particularly. One is the attitude maintained by the company with regard to claims made in the advertising of "sales." When there is a "sale" at Field's comparisons of values are not made. It may be said that certain articles are cheap at the price at which they are being offered, but it is never put in the form: "Was $5. Now $2.50." Field's does not believe in that.
"We take the position," an official explained to me, "that things are worth what they will bring. For instance, if some manufacturer has made too many overcoats, and we are able to get them at a bargain, or if there is a mild winter and overcoats do not sell well, we may place on sale a lot of coats which were meant to be sold at $40, but which we are willing to sell at $22.50.In such a case we never advertise 'Worth $40.' We just point out that these are exceptionally good coats for the money. And, when we say that, it is invariably true. This advertising is not so sensational as it could be made, of course, but we think that in the long run it teaches people to rely upon us."
Another thing which interested me in Field's was the appearance of the saleswomen. They do not look like New York saleswomen. In the aggregate they look happier, simpler, and more natural. I saw no women behind the counters there who had the haughty, indifferent bearing, the nose-in-the-air, to which the New York shopper is accustomed. Among these women, no less than among the rich, the Chicago spirit seemed to show itself. It is everywhere, that spirit. I admit that, perhaps, it does not go with omnipresent taxicabs. I admit that there are more effete cities than Chicago. The East is full of them. But that any city in the country has more sterling simplicity, greater freedom from sham and affectation among all classes, more vigorous cultivation, or more well-bred wealth, I respectfully beg to doubt.
No, I havenotforgotten Boston and Philadelphia.
In an earlier chapter I told of a man I met upon a train who, though he lived in Buffalo, had never seen Niagara Falls. In Chicago it occurred to me that, though I had worked on a newspaper, I had never stoodas an observer and watched a newspaper "go through." So, one Saturday night after sitting around the city room of the Chicago "Tribune"—which is one of the world's great newspapers—and talking with a group of men as interesting as any men I ever found together, I was placed in charge of James Durkin, the world's most eminent office boy, who forthwith took me to the nether regions of the "Tribune" Building.
With its floor of big steel plates, its towering presses, vast and incomprehensible, and its grimy men in overalls, the pressroom struck me as resembling nothing so much as the engine room of an ocean liner.
The color presses were already roaring, shedding streams of printed paper like swift waterfalls, down which shot an endless chain of Mona Lisas—for the Mona Lisa took the whole front page of the "Tribune" colored supplement that week. At the bottom, where the "folder" put the central creases in them, the paper torrents narrowed to a disappearing point, giving the illusion of a subterranean river, vanishing beneath the floor. But the river didn't vanish. It was caught, and measured, and folded, and cut, and counted by machinery, as swift, as eye-defying, as a moving picture; machinery which miraculously converted a cataract into prim piles of Sunday newspapers, which were, in turn, gathered up and rushed away to the mailing room—whither, presently, we followed.
In the mailing room I made the acquaintance of a machine with which, if it had not been so busy, I shouldhave liked to shake hands, and sit down somewhere for a quiet chat. For it was a machine possessed of the Chicago spirit: modest, businesslike, effective, and highly intelligent. I did not interrupt it, but watched it at its work. And this is what it did: It took Sunday papers, one by one, from a great pile which was handed to it every now and then, folded them neatly, wrapped them in manila paper, sealed them up with mucilage, squeezed them, so that the seal would hold, addressed them to out-of-town subscribers and dropped them into a mail sack. There was a man who hovered about, acting as a sort of valet to this highly capable machine, but all he had to do was to bring it more newspapers from time to time, and to take away the mail bags when they were full, or when the machine had finished with all the subscribers in one town, and began on another. Nor did it fail to serve notice of each such change. Every time it started in on a new town it dipped its thumb in some red ink, and made a dab on the wrapper of the first paper, so that its valet—poor human thing—would know enough to furnish a new mail bag. I noted the name to which one red-dabbed paper was addressed:E. J. Henry, Bosco, Wis., and I wondered if Mr. Henry had ever wondered what made that florid mark.
It was near midnight then. All Bosco was asleep. Was Mr. Henry dreaming? And however wonderful his dream, could it surpass, in wonder, this gigantic organization which, for a tiny sum, tells him, daily, everything that happens everywhere?
Think of the men and the machines that work for Mr. E. J. Henry, resident of Bosco, in the Badger State! Think of the lumbermen who cut the logs; of the Eastern rivers down which those logs float; of the great pulp mills which convert them into paper. Think of the railroad trains which bring that paper to Chicago. Think of the factories which build presses for the ultimate defacement of that paper; and the other factories which make the ink. Think of the reporters working everywhere! Think of the men who laid the wires with which the world is webbed, that news may fly; and the men who sit at the ends of those wires, in all parts of the globe, ticking out the story of the day to the "Tribune" office in Chicago, where it is received by other men, who give it to the editors, who prepare it for the linotypers, who set it for the stereotypers, who make it into plates for the presses, which print it upon the paper, which is folded, addressed, and dropped into a mail bag, which is rushed off in a motor through the midnight streets and put aboard a train, which carries it to Bosco, where it is taken by the postman and delivered at the residence of Mr. E. J. Henry, who, after tearing the manila wrapper, opening the paper, and glancing through it, remarks: "Pshaw! There's no news to-day!" and, forthwith, rising from the breakfast table, takes up an old pair of shoes, wraps them in his copy of the Chicago "Tribune," tucks them under his arm and takes them down to the cobbler to be half-soled.
Sic transit gloria!
Up-stairs, on the roof of the "Tribune" Building, in a kind of deck-house, is a club, made up of members of the staff, and here, through the courtesy of some of the editors, my companion and I were invited to have supper. When I had eaten my fill, I had a happy thought. Here, at my mercy, were a lot of men who were engaged in the business of sending out reporters to molest the world for interviews. I decided to turn the tables and, then and there, interview them—all of them. And I did it. And they took it very well.
I had heard that the "Column"—that sometimes, if not always, humorous newspaper department, which now abounds throughout the country, threatening to become a pestilence—originated with the "Tribune." I asked about that, and in return received, from several sources, the history of "Columns," as recollected by these men.
Probably the first regular humorous column in the country—certainly the first to attract any considerable attention,—was conducted for the "Tribune" by Henry Ten Eyck White, familiarly known as "Butch" White. It started about 1885, under the heading, "Lakeside Musings." After running this column for some five years, White gave it up, and it was taken over, under the same heading, by Eugene Field, who made it even better known than it had been before.
Field had started as a "columnist" on the Denver "Tribune," where he had run his "Tribune Primer"; later he had been brought to Chicago by Melville E.