[1]"Who's Who" for 1913-1914. The more recent volume, which has come out since, contains a biographical sketch of Mr. Henry Ford of Detroit.
[1]"Who's Who" for 1913-1914. The more recent volume, which has come out since, contains a biographical sketch of Mr. Henry Ford of Detroit.
Baedeker's United States, a third volume in the condensed library I carried in my trunk, sets forth (in small type!) the following: "The finest private art gallery in Detroit is that of Mr. Charles L. Freer. The gallery contains the largest group of works by Whistler in existence and good examples of Tryon, Dewing, and Abbott Thayer as well as many Oriental paintings and potteries."
But in the case of the Detroit Museum of Art, Baedeker bursts into black-faced type, and even adds an asterisk, his mark of special commendation. Also aconsiderable reference is made to various collections contained by the museum: the Scripps collection of old masters, the Stearns collection of Oriental curiosities, a painting by Rubens, drawings by Raphael and Michelangelo, and a great many works attributed to ancient Italian and Dutch masters. "The museum also contains," says Baedeker, "modern paintings by Gari Melchers, Munkacsy, Tryon, F. D. Millet, and others."
I have quoted Baedeker as above, because it reveals the bald fact with regard to art in Detroit; also because it reveals the even balder fact that our blessed old friend Baedeker, who has helped us all so much, can, when he cuts loose on art, make himself exquisitely ridiculous.
The truth is, of course, that Mr. Freer's gallery is not merely the "finest private gallery in Detroit"; not merely the finest gallery of any kind in Detroit; but that it is one of the exceedingly important collections of the world, just as Mr. Freer is one of the world's exceedingly important authorities on art. Indeed, any town which contains Mr. Freer—even if he is only stopping overnight in a hotel—becomes by grace of his presence an important art center for the time being. His mere presence is sufficient. For in Mr. Freer's head there is more art than is contained in many a museum. He was the man whom, above all others in Detroit, we wished to see. (And that is no disparagement of Henry Ford.)
Once in a long, long time it is given to the average human being to make contact for a brief space with some other human being far above the average—a man who knows one thing supremely well. I have met six such men: a surgeon, a musician, an author, an actor, a painter, and Mr. Charles L. Freer.
I do not know much of Mr. Freer's history. He was not born in Detroit, though it was there that he made the fortune which enabled him to retire from business. It is surprising enough to hear of an American business man willing to retire in the prime of life. You expect that in Europe, not here. And it is still more surprising when that American business man begins to devote to art the same energy which made him a success financially. Few would want to do that; fewer could. By the time the average successful man has wrung from the world a few hundred thousand dollars, he is fit for nothing else. He has become a wringer and must remain one always.
Of course rich men collect pictures. I'm not denying that. But they do it, generally, for the same reason they collect butlers and footmen—because tradition says it is the proper thing to do. And I have observed in the course of my meanderings that they are almost invariably better judges of butlers than of paintings. That is because their butlers are really and truly more important to them—excepting as their paintings have financial value. Still, if the world is full of so-called art collectors who don't know what they're doing, let usnot think of them too harshly, for there are also painters who do not know what they are doing, and it is necessary that some one should support them. Otherwise they would starve, and a bad painter should not have to do that—starvation being an honor reserved by tradition for the truly great.
Very keenly I feel the futility of an attempt to tell of Mr. Freer in a few paragraphs. He should be dealt with as Mark Twain was dealt with by that prince of biographers, Albert Bigelow Paine; some one should live with him through the remainder of his life—always sympathetic and appreciative, always ready to draw him out, always with a notebook. It should be some one just like Paine, and as there isn't some one just like Paine, it should be Paine himself.
Probably as a development of his original interest in Whistler, Mr. Freer has, of late years, devoted himself almost entirely to ancient Oriental art—sculptures, paintings, ceramics, bronzes, textiles, lacquers and jades. The very rumor that in some little town in the interior of China was an old vase finer than any other known vase of the kind, has been enough to set him traveling. Many of his greatest treasures he has unearthed, bargained for and acquired at first hand, in remote parts of the globe. He bearded Whistler in his den—that is a story by itself. He purchased Whistler's famous Peacock Room, brought it to this country and set it up in his own house. He traveled on elephant-back through the jungles of India and Javain search of buried temples; to Egypt for Biblical manuscripts and potteries, and to the nearer East, years ago, in quest of the now famous "lustered glazes." He made many trips to Japan, in early days, to study, in ancient temples and private collections, the fine arts of China, Corea and Japan, and was the first American student to visit the rock-hewn caves of central China, with their thousands of specimens of early sculpture—sculpture ranking, Mr. Freer says, with the best sculpture of the world.
The photographs and rubbings of these objects made under Mr. Freer's personal supervision have greatly aided students, all over the globe. Every important public library in this country and abroad has been presented by Mr. Freer with fac-similes of the Biblical manuscripts discovered by him in Egypt about seven years ago, so far as these have been published. The original manuscripts will ultimately go to the National Gallery, at Washington.
Mr. Freer's later life has been one long treasure hunt. Now he will be pursuing a pair of mysterious porcelains around the earth, catching up with them in China, losing them, finding them again in Japan, or in New York, or Paris; now discovering in some unheard-of Chinese town a venerable masterpiece, painted on silk, which has been rolled into a ball for a child's plaything. The placid pleasures of conventional collecting, through the dealers, is not the thing that Mr. Freer loves. He loves the chase.
You should see him handle his ceramics. You should hear him talk of them! Heknows. And though you do not know, you know he knows. More, he is willing to explain. For, though his intolerance is great, it is not directed so much at honest ignorance as against meretricious art.
The names of ancient Chinese painters, of emperors who practised art centuries ago, of dynasties covering thousands of years, of Biblical periods, flow kindly from his lips:
"This dish is Grecian. It was made five hundred years before the birth of Christ. This is a Chinese marble, but you see it has a Persian scroll in high relief. And this bronze urn: it is perhaps the oldest piece I have—about four thousand years—it is Chinese. But do you see this border on it? Perfect Greek! Where did the Chinese get that? Art is universal. We may call an object Greek, or Roman, or Assyrian, or Chinese, or Japanese, but as we begin to understand, we find that other races had the same thing—identical forms and designs. Take, for example, this painting of Whistler's, 'The Gold Screen.' You see he uses the Tosa design. The Tosa was used in Japan in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and down to about twenty years ago. But there wasn't a single example of it in Europe in 1864, when Whistler painted 'The Gold Screen'; and Whistler had not been to the Orient. Then, where did he get the Tosa design? He invented
"This dish is Grecian. It was made five hundred years before the birth of Christ. This is a Chinese marble, but you see it has a Persian scroll in high relief. And this bronze urn: it is perhaps the oldest piece I have—about four thousand years—it is Chinese. But do you see this border on it? Perfect Greek! Where did the Chinese get that? Art is universal. We may call an object Greek, or Roman, or Assyrian, or Chinese, or Japanese, but as we begin to understand, we find that other races had the same thing—identical forms and designs. Take, for example, this painting of Whistler's, 'The Gold Screen.' You see he uses the Tosa design. The Tosa was used in Japan in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and down to about twenty years ago. But there wasn't a single example of it in Europe in 1864, when Whistler painted 'The Gold Screen'; and Whistler had not been to the Orient. Then, where did he get the Tosa design? He invented
it. It came to him because he was a great artist, and art is universal."
it. It came to him because he was a great artist, and art is universal."
It was like that—the spirit of it. And you must imagine the words spoken with measured distinctness in a deep, resonant voice, by a man with whom art is a religion and the pursuit of it a passion. He has a nature full of fire. At the mention of the name of the late J. P. Morgan, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or of certain Chinese collectors and painters of the distant past, a sort of holy flame of admiration rose and kindled in him. His contempt is also fire. A minor eruption occurred when the automobile industry was spoken of; a Vesuvian flare which reddened the sky and left the commercialism of the city in smoking ruins. But it was not until I chanced to mention the Detroit Museum of Art—an institution of which Mr. Freer strongly disapproves—that the great outburst came. His wrath was like an overpowering revolt of nature. A whirlwind of tempestuous fire mounted to the heavens and the museum emerged a clinker.
He went to our heads. We four, who saw and heard him, left Mr. Freer's house drunk with the esthetic. Even the flooding knowledge of our own barbarian ignorance was not enough to sober us. Some of the flame had gotten into us. It was like old brandy. We waved our arms and cried out about art. For there is in a truly big human being—especially in one old enough to have seemed to gain perspective on the universe—some quality which touches something in us that nothing else can ever reach. It is something which is not admiration only, nor vague longing to emulate, nor a quickened comprehension of the immensity of things; something emotional and spiritual and strange and indescribable which seems to set our souls to singing.
The Freer collection will go, ultimately, to the Smithsonian Institution (the National Gallery) in Washington, a fact which is the cause of deep regret to many persons in Detroit, more especially since the City Plan and Improvement Commission has completed arrangements for a Center of Arts and Letters—a fine group plan which will assemble and give suitable setting to a new Museum of Art, Public Library, and other buildings of like nature, including a School of Design and an Orchestra Hall. The site for the new gallery of art was purchased with funds supplied by public-spirited citizens, and the city has given a million dollars toward the erection of the building. Plans for the library have been drawn by Cass Gilbert.
It seems possible that, had the new art museum been started sooner, and with some guarantee of competent management, Mr. Freer might have considered it as an ultimate repository for his treasures. But now it is too late. That the present art museum—the old one—was not to be considered by him, is perfectly obvious. Inside and out it is unworthy. It looks as much like an old waterworks as the new waterworks out on Jefferson Avenue looks like a museum. Its foyer containssome sculptured busts, forming the most amazing group I have ever seen. The group represents, I take it, prominent citizens of Detroit—among them, according to my recollection, the following: Hermes, Augustus Cæsar, Mr. Bela Hubbard, Septimus Severus, the Hon. T. W. Palmer, Mr. Frederick Stearns, Apollo, Demosthenes, and the Hon. H. P. Lillibridge.
I do not want to put things into people's heads, but—the old museum is not fire-proof. God speed the new one!
The great trouble with Detroit, from my point of view, is that there is too much which should be mentioned: Grosse Pointe with its rich setting and rich homes; the fine new railroad station; the "Cabbage Patch"; the "Indian Village" (so called because the streets bear Indian names) with its examples of modest, pleasing, domestic architecture. Then there are the boulevards, the fine Wayne County roads, the clubs—the Country Club, the Yacht Club, the Boat Club, the Detroit Club, the University Club, all with certain individuality. And there is the unique little Yondatega Club of which Theodore Roosevelt said: "It is beyond all doubt the best club in the country."
Also there is Henry Ford.
I suppose there is no individual having to do with manufacturing of any kind whose name is at present more familiar to the world. But in all this ocean of publicity which has resulted from Mr. Ford's development of a reliable, cheap car, from the stupefying growth of his business and his fortune, and more recently from his sudden distribution among his working people of ten million dollars of profits from his business—in all this publicity I have seen nothing that gave me a clear idea of Henry Ford himself. I wanted to see him—to assure myself that he was not some fabulous being out of a Detroit saga. I wanted to know what kind of man he was to look at and to listen to.
The Ford plant is far, far out on Woodward Avenue. It is so gigantic that there is no use wasting words in trying to express its vastness; so full of people, all of them working for Ford, that a thousand or two more or less would make no difference in the looks of things. And among all those people there was just one man I really wanted to see, and just one man I really wanted not to see. I wanted to see Henry Ford and I wanted not to see a man named Liebold, because, they say, if you see Liebold first you never do see Ford. That is what Liebold is for. He is the man whose business in life it is to know where Henry Fordisn't.
To get into Mr. Ford's presence is an undertaking. It is not easy even to find out whether he is there. Liebold is so zealous in his protection that he even protects Mr. Ford from his own employees. Thus, when the young official who had my companion and me in charge, received word over the office telephone that Mr. Ford was not in the building, he didn't believe it. He went on a quiet scouting expedition of his own before he was convinced. Presently he returned to the office in which he had deposited us.
"No; he really isn't here just now," he said. "He'llbe in presently. Come on; I'll take you through the plant."
The machine shop is one room, with a glass roof, covering an area of something less than thirty acres. It is simply unbelievable in its size, its noise and its ghastly furious activity. It was peopled when we were there by five thousand men—the day shift in that one shop alone. (The total force of workmen was something like three times that number.)
Of course there was order in that place, of course there was system—relentless system—terrible "efficiency"—but to my mind, unaccustomed to such things, the whole room, with its interminable aisles, its whirling shafts and wheels, its forest of roof-supporting posts and flapping, flying, leather belting, its endless rows of writhing machinery, its shrieking, hammering, and clatter, its smell of oil, its autumn haze of smoke, its savage-looking foreign population—to my mind it expressed but one thing, and that thing was delirium.
Fancy a jungle of wheels and belts and weird iron forms—of men, machinery and movement—add to it every kind of sound you can imagine: the sound of a million squirrels chirking, a million monkeys quarreling, a million lions roaring, a million pigs dying, a million elephants smashing through a forest of sheet iron, a million boys whistling on their fingers, a million others coughing with the whooping cough, a million sinners groaning as they are dragged to hell—imagine all ofthis happening at the very edge of Niagara Falls, with the everlasting roar of the cataract as a perpetual background, and you may acquire a vague conception of that place.
Fancy all this riot going on at once; then imagine the effect of its suddenly ceasing. For that is what it did. The wheels slowed down and became still. The belts stopped flapping. The machines lay dead. The noise faded to a murmur; then to utter silence. Our ears rang with the quiet. The aisles all at once were full of men in overalls, each with a paper package or a box. Some of them walked swiftly toward the exits. Others settled down on piles of automobile parts, or the bases of machines, to eat, like grimy soldiers on a battlefield. It was the lull of noon.
I was glad to leave the machine shop. It dazed me. I should have liked to leave it some time before I actually did, but the agreeable young enthusiast who was conducting us delighted in explaining things—shouting the explanations in our ears. Half of them I could not hear; the other half I could not comprehend. Here and there I recognized familiar automobile parts—great heaps of them—cylinder castings, crank cases, axles. Then as things began to get a little bit coherent, along would come a train of cars hanging insanely from a single overhead rail, the man in the cab tooting his shrill whistle; whereupon I would promptly retire into mental fog once more, losing all sense of what things meant, feeling that I was not in any factory, but in aGargantuan lunatic asylum where fifteen thousand raving, tearing maniacs had been given full authority to go ahead and do their damnedest.
In that entire factory there was for me but one completely lucid spot. That was the place where cars were being assembled. There I perceived the system. No sooner had axle, frame, and wheels been joined together than the skeleton thus formed was attached, by means of a short wooden coupling, to the rear end of a long train of embryonic automobiles, which was kept moving slowly forward toward a far-distant door. Beside this train of chassis stood a row of men, and as each succeeding chassis came abreast of him, each man did something to it, bringing it just a little further toward completion. We walked ahead beside the row of moving partially-built cars, and each car we passed was a little nearer to its finished state than was the one behind it. Just inside the door we paused and watched them come successively into first place in the line. As they moved up, they were uncoupled. Gasoline was fed into them from one pipe, oil from another, water from still another.
Then as a man leaped to the driver's seat, a machine situated in the floor spun the back wheels around, causing the motor to start; whereupon the little Ford moved out into the wide, wide world, a completed thing, propelled by its own power.
In a glass shed of the size of a small exposition building the members of the Ford staff park their little cars. It was in this shed that we discovered Mr. Ford. He had just driven in (in a Ford!) and was standing beside it—the god out of the machine.
"Nine o'clock to-morrow morning," he said to me in reply to my request for an appointment.
I may have shuddered slightly. I know that my companion shuddered, and that, for one brief instant, I felt a strong desire to intimate to Mr. Ford that ten o'clock would suit me better. But I restrained myself.
Inwardly I argued thus: "I am in the presence of an amazing man—a prince of industry—the Mæcenas of the motor car. Here is a man who, they say, makes a million dollars a month, even in a short month like February. Probably he makes a million and a quarter in the thirty-one-day months when he has time to get into the spirit of the thing. I wish to pay a beautiful tribute to this man, not because he has more money than I have—I don't admit that he has—but because he conserves his money better than I conserve mine. It is for that that I take off my hat to him, even if I have to get up and dress and be away out here on Woodward Avenue by 9A. M.to do it."
Furthermore, I thought to myself that Mr. Ford was the kind of business man you read about in novels; one who, when he says "nine," doesn't mean five minutes after nine, but nine sharp. If you aren't there your chance is gone. You are a ruined man.
Of course there was order in that place, of course there was system—relentless system—terrible "efficiency"—but to my mind it expressed but one thing, and that thing was deliriumOf course there was order in that place, of course there was system—relentless system—terrible "efficiency"—but to my mind it expressed but one thing, and that thing was delirium
"Very well," I said, trying to speak in a natural tone, "we will be on hand at nine."
Then he went into the building, and my companion and I debated long as to how the feat should be accomplished. He favored sitting up all night in order to be safe about it, but we compromised at last on sitting up only a little more than half the night.
The cold, dismal dawn of the day following found us shaved and dressed. We went out to the factory. It was a long, chilly, expensive, silent taxi ride. At five minutes before nine we were there. The factory was there. The clerks were there. Fourteen thousand one hundred and eighty-seven workmen were there—those workmen who divided the ten millions—everything and every one was there with a single exception. And that exception was Mr. Henry Ford.
True, he did come at last. True, he talked with us. But he was not there at nine o'clock, nor yet at ten. Nor do I blame him. For if I were in the place of Mr. Henry Ford, there would be just one man whom I should meet at nine o'clock, and that man would be Meadows, my faithful valet.
Apropos of that, it occurs to me that there is one point of similarity between Mr. Ford and myself: neither of us has a valet just at present. Still, on thinking it over, we aren't so very much alike, after all, for there is one of us—I shan't say which—who hopes to have a valet some day.
Mr. Ford's office is a room somewhat smaller than themachine shop. It is situated in one corner of the administration building, and I am told that there is a private entrance, making it unnecessary for Mr. Ford to run the gantlet of the main doorway and waiting room, where there are almost always persons waiting to ask him for a present of a million or so in money; or, if not that, for four or five thousand dollars' worth of time—for if Mr. Ford makes what they say, and doesn't work overtime, his hour is worth about four thousand five hundred dollars.
He wasn't in the office when we entered. That gave us time to look about. There was a large flat-top desk. The floor was covered with an enormous, costly Oriental rug. At one end of the room, in a glass case, was a tiny and very perfect model of a Ford car. On the walls were four photographs: one of Mr. James Couzens, vice-president and treasurer of the Ford Company; another, a life-size head of "Your friend, John Wanamaker," and two of Thomas A. Edison. Under one of the latter, in the handwriting of the inventor—handwriting which, oddly enough, resembles nothing so much as neatly bent wire—was this inscription:
To Henry Ford, one of a group of men who have helped to make U. S. A. the most progressive nation in the world.Thomas A. Edison.
To Henry Ford, one of a group of men who have helped to make U. S. A. the most progressive nation in the world.
Thomas A. Edison.
Presently Mr. Ford came in—a lean man, of goodheight, wearing a rather shabby brown suit. Without being powerfully built, Mr. Ford looks sinewy, wiry. His gait is loose-jointed—almost boyish. His manner, too, has something boyish about it. I got the feeling that he was a little bit embarrassed at being interviewed. That made me sorry for him—I had been interviewed, myself, the day before. When he sat he hunched down in his chair, resting on the small of his back, with his legs crossed and propped upon a large wooden waste-basket—the attitude of a lanky boy. And, despite his gray hair and the netted wrinkles about his eyes, his face is comparatively youthful, too. His mouth is wide and determined, and it is capable of an exceedingly dry grin, in which the eyes collaborate. They are fine, keen eyes, set high under the brows, wide apart, and they seem to express shrewdness, kindliness, humor, and a distinct wistfulness. Also, like every other item in Mr. Ford's physical make-up, they indicate a high degree of honesty. There never was a man more genuine than Mr. Ford. He hasn't the faintest sign of that veneer so common to distinguished men, which is most eloquently described by the slang term "front." Nor is he, on the other hand, one of those men who (like so many politicians) try to simulate a simple manner. He is just exactly Henry Ford, no more, no less; take it or leave it. If you are any judge at all of character, you know immediately that Henry Ford is a man whom you can trust. I would trust him with anything. He didn't ask me to, but I would. I would trust him with all my money.And, considering that I say that, I think he ought to be willing, in common courtesy, to reciprocate.
He told us about the Ford business. "We've done two hundred and five millions of business to date," he said. "Our profits have amounted to about fifty-nine millions. About twenty-five per cent. has been put back into the business—into the plant and the branches. All the actual cash that was ever put in was twenty-eight thousand dollars. The rest has been built up out of profits. Yes—it has happened in a pretty short time; the big growth has come in the last six years."
I asked if the rapid increase had surprised him.
"Oh, in a way," he said. "Of course we couldn't be just sure what she was going to do. But we figured we had the right idea."
"What is the idea?" I questioned.
Then with deep sincerity, with the conviction of a man who states the very foundation of all that he believes, Mr. Ford told us his idea. His statement did not have the awful majesty of an utterance by Mr. Freer. He did not flame, although his eyes did seem to glow with his conviction.
"It isone model!" he said. "That's the secret of the whole doggone thing!" (That is exactly what he said. I noted it immediately for "character.")
Having revealed the "secret," Mr. Ford directed our attention to the little toy Ford in the glass case.
"There she is," he said. "She's always the same. I tell everybody that's the way to make a success. Everymanufacturer ought to do it. The thing is to find out something that everybody is after and then make that one thing and nothing else. Shoemakers ought to do it. They ought to get one kind of shoe that will suit everybody, instead of making all kinds. Stove men ought to do it, too. I told a stove man that just the other day."
That, I believe, is, briefly, the business philosophy of Henry Ford.
"It just amounts to specializing," he continued. "I like a good specialist. I like Harry Lauder—he's a great specialist. So is Edison. Edison has done more for people than any other living man. You can't look anywhere without seeing something he has invented. Edison doesn't care anything about money. I don't either. You've got to have money to use, that's all. I haven't got any job here, you know. I just go around and keep the fellows lined up."
I don't know how I came by the idea, but I was conscious of the thought that Mr. Ford's money worried him. He looks somehow as though it did. And it must, coming in such a deluge and so suddenly. I asked if wealth had not compelled material changes in his mode of life.
"Do you mean the way we live at home?" he asked.
"Yes; that kind of thing."
"Oh, that hasn't changed to any great extent," he said. "I've got a little house over here a ways. It's nothing very much—just comfortable. It's all we need. You can have the man drive you around there on yourway back if you want. You'll see." (Later I did see; it is a very pleasant, very simple type of brick suburban residence.)
"Do you get up early?" I ventured, having, as I have already intimated, my own ideas as to what I should do if I were a Henry Ford.
"Well, I was up at quarter of seven this morning," he declared. "I went for a long ride in my car. I usually get down to the plant around eight-thirty or nine o'clock."
Then I asked if the change had not forced him to do a deal of entertaining.
"No," he said. "We know the same people we knew twenty years ago. They are our friends to-day. They come to our house. The main difference is that Mrs. Ford used to do the cooking. Lately we've kept a cook. Cooks try to give me fancy food, but I won't stand for it. They can't cook as well as Mrs. Ford either—none of them can."
I wish you could have heard him say that! It was one of his deep convictions, like the "one model" idea.
"What are your hobbies outside your business?" I asked him.
It seemed to me that Mr. Ford looked a little doubtful about that. Certainly his manner, in replying, lacked that animation which you expect of a golfer or a yachtsman or an art collector—or, for the matter of that, a postage-stamp collector.
"Oh, I have my farm out at Dearborn—the placewhere I was born," he replied. "I'm building a house out there—not as much of a house as they try to make out, though. And I'm interested in birds, too."
Then, thinking of Mr. Freer, I inquired: "Do you care for art?"
The answer, like all the rest, was definite enough.
"I wouldn't give five cents for all the art in the world," said Mr. Ford without a moment's hesitation.
I admired him enormously for saying that. So many people feel as he does in their hearts, yet would not dare to say so. So many people have the air of posturing before a work of art, trying to look intelligent, trying to "say the right thing" before the right painting—the right painting as prescribed by Baedeker. True, I think the man who declares he would not give five cents for all the art in the world thereby declares himself a barbarian of sorts. But a good, honest, open-hearted barbarian is a fine creature. For one thing, there is nothing false about him. And there is nothing soft about him either. It is the poseur who is soft—soft at the very top, where Henry Ford is hard.
I saw from his manner that he was becoming restless. Perhaps we had stayed too long. Or perhaps he was bored because I spoke about an abstract thing like art.
I asked but one more question.
"Mr. Ford," I said, "I should think that when a man is very rich he might hardly know, sometimes, whether people are really his friends or whether they are cultivating him because of his money. Isn't that so?"
Mr. Ford's dry grin spread across his face. He replied with a question:
"When people come afteryoubecause they want to get something out of you, don't you get their number?"
"I think I do," I answered.
"Well, so do I," said Mr. Ford.
It was on a chilly morning, not much after eight o'clock, that we left Detroit. I recall that, driving trainward, I closed the window of the taxicab; that the marble waiting room of the new station looked uncomfortably half awake, like a sleeper who has kicked the bedclothes off, and that the concrete platform outside was a playground for cold, boisterous gusts of wind.
Our train had come from somewhere else. Entering the Pullman car, we found it in its night-time aspect. The narrow aisle, made narrower by its shroud of long green curtains, and by shoes and suit cases standing beside the berths, looked cavernous and gloomy, reminding me of a great rock fissure, the entrance to a cave I had once seen. Like a cave, too, it was cold with a musty and oppressive cold; a cold which embalmed the mingling smells of sleep and sleeping car—an odor as of Russia leather and banana peel ground into a damp pulp.
Silently, gloomily, without removing our overcoats or gloves, we seated ourselves, gingerly, upon the bright green plush of the section nearest to the door, and triedto read our morning papers. Presently the train started. A thin, sick-looking Pullman conductor came and took our tickets, saying as few words as possible. A porter, in his sooty canvas coat, sagged miserably down the aisle. Also a waiter from the dining car, announcing breakfast in a cheerless tone. Breakfast! Who could think of breakfast in a place like that? For a long time, we sat in somber silence, without interest in each other or in life.
To appreciate the full horror of a Pullman sleeping car it is not necessary to pass the night upon it; indeed, it is necessarynotto. If you have slept in the car, or tried to sleep, you arise with blunted faculties—the night has mercifully anesthetized you against the scenes and smells of morning. But if you board the car as we did, coming into it awake and fresh from out of doors, while it is yet asleep—then, and then only, do you realize its enormous ghastliness.
Our first diversion—the faintest shadow of a speculative interest—came with a slight stirring of the curtains of the berth across the way. For, even in the most dismal sleeping car, there is always the remote chance, when those green curtains stir, that the Queen of Sheba is all radiant within, and that she will presently appear, like sunrise.
Over our newspapers we watched, and even now and then our curiosity was piqued by further gentle stirrings of the curtains. And, of course, the longer we were forced to wait, the more hopeful we became. In a lowvoice I murmured to my companion the story of the glorious creature I had seen in a Pullman one morning long ago: how the curtains had stirred at first, even as these were stirring now; how they had at last been parted by a pair of rosy finger tips; how I had seen a lovely face emerge; how her two braids were wrapped about her classic head; how she had floated forth into the aisle, transforming the whole car; how she had wafted past me, a soft, sweet cloud of pink; how she—Then, just as I was getting to the interesting part of it, I stopped and caught my breath. The curtains were in final, violent commotion! They were parting at the bottom! Ah! Slowly, from between the long green folds, there appeared a foot. No filmy silken stocking covered it. It was a foot. There was an ankle, too—a small ankle. Indeed, it was so small as to be a misfit, for the foot was of stupendous size, and very knobby. Also it was cold; I knew that it was cold, just as I knew that it was attached to the body of a man, and that I did not wish to see the rest of him. I turned my head and, gazing from the window, tried to concentrate my thoughts upon the larger aspects of the world outside, but the picture of that foot remained with me, dwarfing all other things.
I did not mean to look again; I was determined not to look. But at the sound of more activity across the way, my head was turned as by some outside force, and I did look, as one looks, against one's will, at some horror which has happened in the street.
He had come out. He was sitting upon the edge of his berth, bending over and snorting as he fumbled for his shoes upon the floor. Having secured them, he pulled them on with great contortions, emitting stertorous sounds. Then, in all the glory of his brown balbriggan undershirt, he stood up in the aisle. His face was fat and heavy, his eyes half closed, his hair in tussled disarray. His trousers sagged dismally about his hips, and his suspenders dangled down behind him like two feeble and insensate tails. After rolling his collar, necktie, shirt, and waistcoat into a mournful little bundle, he produced from inner recesses a few unpleasant toilet articles, and made off down the car—a spectacle compared with which a homely woman, her face anointed with cold cream, her hair done in kid curlers, her robe a Canton-flannel nightgown, would appear alluring!
Never, since then, have I heard men jeering over women as they look in dishabille, without wondering if those same men have ever seen themselves clearly in the mirrored washroom of a sleeping car.
On the railroad journey between Detroit and Battle Creek we passed two towns which have attained a fame entirely disproportionate to their size: Ann Arbor, with about fifteen thousand inhabitants, celebrated as a seat of learning; and Ypsilanti, with about six thousand, celebrated as, so to speak, a seat of underwear.
One expects an important college town to be well known, but a manufacturing town with but six thousand inhabitants must have done something in particular to have acquired national reputation. In the case of Ypsilanti it has been done by magazine advertising—the advertising of underwear. If you don't think so, look over the list of towns in the "World Almanac." Have you, for example, ever heard of Anniston, Ala.? Or Argenta, Ark.? Either town is about twice the size of Ypsilanti. Have you ever heard of Cranston, R. I.; Butler, Pa., or Belleville, Ill.? Each is about as large as Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor put together.
Then there is Battle Creek. Think of the amount of advertising that town has had! As Miss Daisy Buck, the lady who runs the news stand in the Battle Creek railroad station, said to us: "It's the best advertised little old town of its size in the whole United States."
And now it is about to be advertised some more.
We were total strangers. We knew nothing of the place save that we had heard that it was full of health cranks and factories where breakfast foods, coffee substitutes, and kindred edibles and drinkables were made. How to see the town and what to see we did not know. We hesitated in the depot waiting room. Then fortune guided our footsteps to the station news stand and its genial and vivacious hostess. Yes, hostess is the word; Miss Buck is anything but a mere girl behind thecounter. She is a reception committee, an information bureau, a guide, philosopher, and friend. Her kindly interest in the wayfarer seems to waft forth from the precincts of the news stand and permeate the station. All the boys know Miss Daisy Buck.
After purchasing some stamps and post cards as a means of getting into conversation with her, we asked about the town.
"How many people are there here?" I ventured.
"Thirty-five," replied Miss Buck.
"Thirty-five?" I repeated, astonished.
Though Miss Buck was momentarily engaged in selling chewing gum (to some one else), she found time to give me a mildly pitying look.
"Thousand," she added.
The "World Almanac" gives Battle Creek but twenty-five thousand population. That, however, is no reproach to Miss Buck; it is, upon the contrary, a reproach to the cold-hearted statisticians who compiled that book. And had they met Miss Buck I think they would have been more liberal.
"What is the best way for us to see the town?" I asked the lady.
She indicated a man who was sitting on a station bench near by, saying:
"He's a driver. He'll take you. He likes to ride around."
"Thanks," I replied, gallantly. "Any friend of yours—"
"Can that stuff," admonished Miss Buck in her easy, offhand manner.
I canned it, and engaged the driver. His vehicle was a typical town hack—a mud-colored chariot, having C springs, sunken cushions, and a strong smell of the stable. Riding in it, I could not rid myself of the idea that I was being driven to a country burial, and that hence, if I wished to smoke, I ought to do it surreptitiously.
Presently we swung into Main Street. I did not ask the name of the street, but I am reasonably certain that is it. There was a policeman on the corner. Also, a building bearing the sign "Old National Bank."
Old! What a pleasant, mellow ring the word has! How fine, and philosophical, and prosperous, and hospitable it sounds. I stopped the carriage. Just out of sentiment I thought I would go in and have a check cashed. But they did not act hospitable at all. They refused to cash my check because they did not know me. Well, it was their loss! I had a little treat prepared for them. I meant to surprise them by making them realize suddenly that, in cashing the check, they were not merely obliging an obscure stranger but a famous literary man. I was going to pass the check through the window, saying modestly: "It may interest you to know whose check you have the honor of handling." Then they would read the name, and I could picture their excitement as they exclaimed andshowed the check around the bank so that the clerks could see it. The only trouble I foresaw, on that score, was that probably they had not ever heard of me. But I was going to obviate that. I intended to sign the check "Rudyard Kipling." That would have given them something to think about!
But, as I have said, the transaction never got that far.
The principal street of Battle Creek may be without amazing architectural beauty, but it is at least well lighted. On either curb is a row of "boulevard lights," the posts set fifty feet apart. They are good-looking posts, too, of simple, graceful design, each surmounted by a cluster of five white globes. This admirable system of lighting is in very general use throughout all parts of the country excepting the East. It is used in all the Michigan cities I visited. I have been told that it was first installed in Minneapolis, but wherever it originated, it is one of a long list of things the East may learn from the West.
After driving about for a time we drew up. Looking out, I came to the conclusion that we had returned again to the railway station.
It was a station, but not the same one.
"This is the Grand Trunk Deepo," said the driver, opening the carriage door.
"I don't believe we'll bother to get out," I said.
But the driver wanted us to.
Never, since then, have I heard men jeering over women as they look in dishabille, without wondering if those same men have ever seen themselves clearly in the mirrored washroom of a sleeping carNever, since then, have I heard men jeering over women as they look in dishabille, without wondering if those same men have ever seen themselves clearly in the mirrored washroom of a sleeping car
"You ought to look at it," he insisted. "It's a very pretty station."
So we got out and looked at it, and were glad we did, for the driver was quite right. It was an unusually pretty station—a station superior to the other in all respects but one: it contained no Miss Daisy Buck.
After some further driving, we returned to the station where she was.
"I suppose we had better go to the Sanitarium for lunch?" I asked her.
"Not on your life," she replied. "If you go to the 'San,' you won't feel like you'd had anything to eat—that is, not if you're good feeders."
"Where else is there to go?" I asked.
"The Tavern," she advised. "You'll get a first-class dinner there. You might have larger hotels in New York, but you haven't got any that's more homelike. At least, that's what I hear. I never was in New York myself, but I get the dope from the traveling men."
However, not for epicurean reasons, but because of curiosity, we wished to try a meal at the Sanitarium. Thither we drove in the hack, passing on our way the office of the "Good Health Publishing Company" and a small building bearing the sign, "The Coffee Parlor"—which may signify a Battle Creek substitute for a saloon. I do not know how coffee drinkers are regarded in that town, but I do know that, while there, Igot neither tea nor coffee—unless "Postum" be coffee and "Kaffir Tea" be tea.
It was at the Sanitarium that I drank Kaffir Tea. I had it with my lunch. It looks like tea, and would probably taste like it, too, if they didn't let the Kaffirs steep so long. But they should use only fresh, young, tender Kaffirs; the old ones get too strong; they have too much bouquet. The one they used in my tea may have been slightly spoiled. I tasted him all afternoon.
The "San" is an enormous brick building like a vast summer hotel. It has an office which is utterly hotel-like, too, even to the chairs, scattered about, and the people sitting in them. Many of the people look perfectly well. Indeed, I saw one young woman who looked so well that I couldn't take my eyes off from her while she remained in view. She was in the elevator when we went up to lunch. She looked at me with a speculative eye—a most engaging eye, it was—as though saying to herself: "Now there's a promising young man. I might make it interesting for him if he would stay here for a while. But of course he'd have to show me a physician's certificate stating that he was not subject to fits." My companion said that she looked at him a long while, too, but I doubt that. He was always claiming that they looked at him.
The people who run the Sanitarium are Seventh-Day Adventists, and as we arrived on Saturday it was the Sabbath there—a rather busy day, I take it, from thebulletin which was printed upon the back of the dinner menu:
7.20A. M.Morning Worship in the Parlor.7.40 to 8.40A. M.BREAKFAST.9.45A. M.Sabbath School in the Chapel.11A. M.Preaching Service in the Chapel.12.30 to 2P. M.DINNER.3.30P. M.Missionary talk.5.30 to 6P. M.Cashier's office open.6 to 6.45P. M.SUPPER.6.45P. M.March for guests and patients only.8P. M.In the Gymnasium. Basket Ball Game. Admission25 cents.No food to be taken from the Dining Room.
The last injunction was not disobeyed by us. We ate enough to satisfy our curiosity, and what we did not eat we left.
The menu at the Sanitarium is a curious thing. After each item are figures showing the proportion of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates contained in that article of food. Everything is weighed out exactly. There was no meat on the bill of fare, but substitutes were provided in the list of entrees: "Protose with Mayonnaise Dressing," "Nuttolene with Cranberry Sauce," and "Walnut Roast."
Suppose you had to decide between those three which would you take?
My companion took "Protose," while I elected for some reason to dally with the "Nuttolene." Then, neither of us liking what we got, we both tried "Walnut Roast." Even then we would not give up. I ordered a little "Malt Honey," while my companion called for a baked potato, saying: "I know what apotatois, anyhow!"
After that we had a little "Toasted Granose" and "Good Health Biscuit," washed down in my case by a gulp or two of "Kaffir Tea," and in his by "Hot Malted Nuts." I tried to get him to take "Kaffir Tea" with me, but, being to leeward of my cup, he declined. As nearly as we could figure it out afterward, he was far ahead of me in proteins and fats, but I was infinitely richer in carbohydrates. In our indigestions we stood absolutely even.
There are some very striking things about the Sanitarium. It is a great headquarters for Health Congresses, Race Betterment Congresses, etc., and at these congresses strange theories are frequently put forth. At one of them, recently held, Dr. J. H. Kellogg, head of the Sanitarium, read a paper in which, according to newspaper reports, he advocated "human stock shows," with blue ribbons for the most perfectly developed men and women. At the same meeting a Mrs. Holcome charged that: "Cigarette-smoking heroes in the modern magazine are, I believe, inserted into the stories by the editors of publications controlled by the big interests."
To this Mr. S. S. McClure, the publisher, replied: "I have never inserted cigarettes in heroes' mouths. I