At the bottom of the card was this—shall I call it warning?
Senator Warner once said to Colonel Roosevelt: "Pike County babies cut their teeth on poker chips."
Senator Warner once said to Colonel Roosevelt: "Pike County babies cut their teeth on poker chips."
I have already said that Pike is a county with a Southern savor, but I had not realized how fully that was true until I dined there. I will not say that I have never tasted such a dinner, for truth I hold even above politeness. All I will say is that if ever before I had met with such a meal the memory of it has departed—and, I may add, my memory for famous meals is considered good to the point of irritation.
The dinner (save for the "essentials") was entirely made up of products of the county. More, it was even supervised and cooked by county products, for two particularly sweet young ladies, members of the family, were flying around the kitchen in their pretty evening gowns, helping and directing Molly.
Molly is a pretty mulatto girl. Her skin is like a smooth, light-colored bronze, her eye is dark and gentle, like that of some domesticated animal, her voice drawls in melodious cadences, and she has a sort of shyness which is very fetching.
"Ah cain't cook lak they used to cook in the ole days," she smiled in response to my tribute to the dinner, later. "The Kuhnel was askin' jus' th' othah day if ah could make 'im some ash cake, but ah haid to tell 'im ah couldn't. Ah've seen ma gran'fatha make itlots o' times, but folks cain't make it no mo', now-a-days."
Poor benighted Northerner that I am, I had to ask what ash cake was. It is a kind of corn cake, Molly told me, the parent, so to speak, of the corn dodger, and the grandparent of hoecake. It has to be prepared carefully and then cooked in the hot ashes—cooked "jes so," as Molly said.
Having learned about ash cake, I demanded more Pike County culinary lore, whereupon I was told, partly by my host, and partly by Molly, about the oldtime wedding cooks.
Wedding cooks were the best cooks in the South, supercooks, with state-wide reputations. When there was a wedding a dinner was given at the home of the bride, for all the wedding guests, and it was in the preparation of this repast that the wedding cook of the bride's family showed what she could do. That dinner was on the day of the wedding. On the next day the entire company repaired to the home of the groom's family, where another dinner was served—a dinner in which the wedding cook belonging to this family tried to outdo that of the day before. This latter feast was known as the "infair." But all these old Southern customs seem to have departed now, along with the wedding cooks themselves. The latter very seldom came to sale, being regarded as the most valuable of all slaves. Once in a while when some leading family was in financial difficulties and was forced to sell its weddingcook she would bring as much as eight or ten times the price of an ordinary female slave.
After dinner, when we moved out to the living room, we found a large, green table all in place, with the chips arranged in little piles. But let me introduce you to the players.
First, there was Colonel Edgar Stark, our host, genial and warm-hearted over dinner; cold and inscrutable behind his spectacles when poker chips appeared.
Then Colonel Charlie Buffum, heavily built, but with a similar dual personality.
Then Colonel Frank Buffum, State Highway Commissioner; or, as some one called him later in the evening, when the chips began to gather at his place, State "highwayman."
Then Colonel Dick Goodman, banker, raconteur, and connoisseur of edibles and "essentials."
Then Colonel George S. Cake, who, when not a Colonel, is a Commodore: commander of the "Betsy," flagship of the Louisiana Yacht Club, and the most famous craft to ply the Mississippi since the "Prairie Belle." (Don't "call" Colonel Cake when he raises you and at the same time raises his right eyebrow.)
Then Colonel Dick Hawkins, former Collector of the Port of St. Louis, and more recently (since there has been so little in St. Louis to collect) a gentleman farmer. (Colonel Hawkins always wins at poker. The question is not "Will he win?" but "How much?")
Only two men in the game were not, so far as I discovered, Colonels.
One, Major Dave Wald, has been held back in title because of time devoted to the pursuit of literature. Major Wald has written a book. The subject of the book is Poker. As a tactician, he is perhaps unrivaled in Missouri. He will look at a hand and instantly declare the percentage of chance it stands of filling in the draw, according to the law of chance. One hand will be, to Major Wald, a "sixteen-time hand"; another a "thirty-two time hand," and so on—meaning that the player has one chance in sixteen, or in thirty-two, of filling.
The other player was merely a plain "Mister," like ourselves—Mr. John W. Matson, the corporation lawyer. At first I felt sorry for Mr. Matson. It seemed hard that the rank of Colonel had been denied him. But when I saw him shuffle and deal, I was no longer sorry for him, but for myself. With the possible exception of General Bob Williams (who won't play any more now that he has been appointed postmaster), and Colonel Clarence Buell, who used to play in the big games on the Mississippi boats, Mr. Matson can shuffle and deal more rapidly and more accurately than any man in Missouri.
Colonel Buell was present, as was Colonel Lloyd Stark, but neither played. Colonel Buell had intended to, but on being told that my companion and I were from New York he declined to "take the money." TheColonel—but to say "the Colonel" in Pike County is hardly specific—Colonel Buell, I mean, is the same gentleman who fought the Indians, long ago, with Buffalo Bill, and who later acted as treasurer of the Wild West Show on its first trip to Europe. Some one informed me that the Colonel—Colonel Buell, I mean—was a capitalist, but the information was beside the mark, for I had already seen the diamond ring he wears—a most remarkable piece of landscape gardening.
During the evening Colonel Buell, who stood for an hour or two and watched the play, spoke of certain things that he had seen and done which, as I estimated it, could not have been seen or done within the last sixty years. "How old is Colonel Buell?" I asked another Colonel.
"Colonel," asked the Colonel, "how old are you?"
"Colonel," replied the Colonel, "I am exactly in my prime."
"I know that, Colonel," said the Colonel, "but what is your age?"
"Colonel," returned the Colonel suavely, "I have forgotten my exact age. But I know that I am somewhere between eighty and one hundred and forty-two."
It was Mr. Matson's deal. He dealt. The cards passed through the air and fell, one on the other, in neat piles. (If you prefer it, Mr. Matson can drop a fan-shaped hand before you, all ready to pick up.) And from the time that the first hand was played I knew that here, as in St. Louis, my companion and I were babesamong the lions. I do not know how he played, but I do know that I played along as best I could, only trying not to lose too much money at once.
But why rehearse the pathetic story? I spoke in a former chapter of Missouri poker, and Pike County is a county in Missouri. Bet on a good pat hand and some one always holds a better one. Bluff and they call you. Call and they beat you. There is no way of winning from Missouri. Missouri poker players are mahatmas. They have an occult sense of cards. Babes at their mothers' breasts can tell the difference between a straight and a flush long before they have the power of speech. Once, while in Pike County, I asked a little boy how many brothers and sisters he had. "One brother and three sisters," he replied, and added: "A full house."
The Missouri gentlemen, so gay, so genial, at the dinner table, take on a frigid look when the cards and chips appear. They turn from gentle, kindly human beings into relentless, ravening wolves, each intent upon the thought of devouring the other. And when, over a poker game, some player seems to enter into a pleasant conversation, the other players know that even that is a bluff—a blind to cover up some diabolic plot.
Once during the game, for instance, Colonel Hawkins started in to tell me something of his history. And I, bland simpleton, believed we were conversingsansulterior motive.
"I used to be in politics," he said. "Then I was inthe banking business. But I've gone back to farming now, because it is the only honest business in the world. In fact—"
But at that juncture the steely voices of half the other players at the table interrupted.
"Ante!" they cried. "Ante, farmer!"
Whereupon Colonel Hawkins, who by that time had to crane his neck to see the table over his pile of chips—a pile of chips like the battlements of some feudal lord—anted suavely.
By midnight Colonel Buell, who had stood behind me for a time and watched my play, showed signs of fatigue and anguish. And a little later, after having seen me try to "put it over" with three sixes, he sighed heavily and went home—a fine, slender, courtly figure, straight as a gun barrel, walking sadly out into the night. Next Major Wald ceased to play for himself, but began to take an interest in my hand. Under his supervision during the last fifteen minutes of the game I made a tiny dent in Colonel Hawkins's stacks of chips. But it is only just to Colonel Hawkins to say that, by that time, the Missourians were so sorry for us that they were making the most desperate efforts not to win from us any more than they could help.
When the game broke up, Major Wald and Colonel Hawkins showed concern about our future.
"How far are you young men going, did you say?" asked Colonel Hawkins.
"To the Pacific Coast," I answered.
At that the two veteran poker players looked at each other solemnly, in silence, and shook their heads.
"All the way to the coast, eh?" demanded Major Wald. Then: "Do you expect to play cards much as you go along?"
I wished to uphold the honor of New York as best I could, so I tried to reply gamely.
"Oh, yes," I said. "Whenever anybody wants a game they'll find us ready."
Again I saw them exchange glances.
"You tell him, Major," said Colonel Hawkins, walking away.
"Young man," said Major Wald, placing his hand kindly on my shoulder, "I played poker before you were born. I know a good deal about it. You wouldn't take offense if I gave you a pointer about your game?"
"On the contrary," I said, thinking I was about to hear the inner secrets of Missouri poker, "I shall be most grateful."
"If I advise you," he pursued, "will you agree to follow my advice?"
"Certainly."
"Well," said the Major, "don't you play poker any more while you're in the West. Wait till you get back to New York."
Seeing the houses of the players next day as I drove about the county, I suspected that even these had beenbuilt around the game of poker, for each house has ample accommodations for the "gang" in case the game lasts until too late to go home. In the winter the games occur at the houses of the different Colonels, and there is always a dinner first. But it is in summer that the greatest games occur, for then it is the immemorial custom for the Colonels (and Major Wald and Mr. Matson, too, of course) to charter a steamer and go out on the river. These excursions sometimes last for the better part of a week. Sometimes they cruise. Sometimes they go ashore upon an island and camp. "We take a tribe of cooks and a few cases of 'essentials,'" one of the Colonels explained to me, "and the game never stops at all."
My companion and I were tired. The mental strain had told upon us. Soon after the Colonels, the Major, and Mr. Matson went, we retired. It seemed to me that I had hardly closed my eyes when I heard a faint rap at my bedroom door. But I must have slept, for there was sunlight streaming through the window.
"What is it?" I called.
The voice of our host replied.
"Breakfast will be ready any time you want it," he declared. "Will you have your toddy now?"
Ah! Pike is a great county!
And what do you suppose we had for breakfast? At the center of the table was a pile of the most beautiful and enormous red apples—fragrant apples, giving a sweet, appetizing scent which filled the room. I hadthought before that I knew something about apples, but when I tasted these I became aware that no merely good apple, no merely fine apple, would ever satisfy my taste again. These apples, which are known as the "Delicious," are to all other apples that I know as Missouri poker is to all other poker. They are in a class absolutely alone, and, in case you get some on a lucky day, I want to tell you how to eat them with your breakfast. Don't eat them as you eat an ordinary apple, but either fry them, with a slice of bacon, or cut them up and take them as you do peaches—that is, with cream and sugar. Did you ever see an apple with flesh white and firm, yet tender as a pear at the exact point of perfect ripeness? Did you ever taste an apple that seemed actually to melt upon your tongue? That is the sort of apple we had for breakfast.
Later we motored to the town of Clarksville, some miles down the river—a town which huddles along the bank, as St. Louis must have in her early days. Being a small, straggling village which has not, if one may judge from appearances, progressed or even changed in fifty years, Clarksville out-Hannibals Hannibal. Or, perhaps, it is to-day the kind of town that Hannibal was when Mark Twain was a boy. In its decay it is theatrically perfect.
Our motor stopped before the bank, and we were introduced to the editor of the local paper, which is called "The Piker."
The bank is, in appearance, contemporary with the town. The fittings are of the period of the Civil War—walnut, as I recall them. And there are red glass signs over the little window grilles bearing the legends "Cashier" and "President."
In the back room we met the president, Mr. John O. Roberts, a gentleman over eighty years of age, who can sit back, with his feet upon his desk, smoke cigars, and, from a cloud of smoke, exude the most delightful stories of old days on the Mississippi. For Mr. Roberts wasclerk on river boats more than sixty years ago, in the golden days of the great stream. There, too, we had the good fortune to meet Professor M. S. Goodman, who was born in Missouri in 1837, and founded the Clarksville High School in 1865. The professor has written the history of Pike County—but that is a big story all by itself.
In the old days Pike County embraced many of the other present counties, and, running all the way from the Mississippi to the Missouri River, was as large as a good-sized State. Pike has colonized more Western country than any other county in Missouri; or, as Professor Goodman put it, "The west used to be full of Pike County men who had pushed out there with their guns and bottles."
"Yes," added Mr. Roberts in his dry, crackling tone, "and wherever they went they always wanted office."
I asked Mr. Roberts about the famous poker games on the river boats.
"I antedate poker," he said. "The old river card game was called 'Brag.' It was out of brag that the game of poker developed. A steward on one of the boats once told me that he and the other boys had picked up more than a hundred dollars from the floor of a room in which Henry Clay and some friends had been playing brag."
Golden days indeed!—and for every one. The steamboat companies made fabulous returns on their investments.
Mr. Roberts is a wonder—nothing less. There's a book in him, and I hope that somebody will write it, for I should like to read that bookMr. Roberts is a wonder—nothing less. There's a book in him, and I hope that somebody will write it, for I should like to read that book
"In '54 and '55," said Mr. Roberts, "I worked for the St. Louis & Keokuk Packet Company, a line owning three boats, which weren't worth over $75,000. That company cleaned up as much as $150,000 clear profit in one season. And, of course, a season wasn't an entire year, either. It would open about March first and end in December or, in a mild winter, January.
"But I tell you we used to drive those boats. We'd shoot up to the docks and land our passengers and mail and freight without so much as tying up or even stopping. We'd just scrape along the dock and then be off again.
"The highest fare ever charged between St. Louis and Keokuk was $4 for the 200 miles. That included a berth, wine, and the finest old Southern cooking a man ever tasted. The best cooks I've ever seen in my life were those old steamboat cooks. And we gave 'em good stuff to cook, too. We bought the best of everything. You ought to see the steaks we had for breakfast! The officers used to sit at the ladies' end of the table and serve out of big chafing dishes. I tell you those weremeals!
"There was lots going on all the time on the river. I remember one trip I made in '52 in the old 'Di Vernon'—all the boats in the line were named for characters in Scott's novels. We were coming from New Orleans with 350 German immigrants on deck and 100 Californians in the cabin. The Californians were sports and they had a big game going all the time. We hadtwo gamblers on board, too—John McKenzie and his partner, a man named Wilburn. They used to come on to the boats at different places, and make out to be farmers, and not acquainted with each other, and there was always something doing when they got into the game.
"Well, this time cholera broke out among the immigrants on the deck. They began dying on us. But we had a deckload of lumber, so we were well fixed to handle 'em. We took the lumber and built coffins for 'em, and when they'd die we'd put 'em in the coffins and save 'em until we got enough to make it worth stopping to bury 'em. Then we'd tie up by some woodyard and be loading up with wood for the furnaces while the burying was going on. Some twenty-five or thirty of 'em died on that trip, and we planted 'em at various points along the way. And all the while, up there in the cabin, the big game was going on—each fellow trying to cheat the other.
"After we got to St. Louis there was a report that we'd buried a man with $3,500 sewed into his clothes. Of course we didn't know which was which or where we'd buried this man. Well, sir, that started the greatest bunch of mining operations along the river bank between New Orleans and St. Louis that anybody ever saw! Every one was digging for that German. Far as I heard, though, they never found a dollar of him."
Some one in Clarksville (in my notes I neglected to set down the origin of this particular item) told me thatthe term "stateroom" originated on the Mississippi boats, where the various rooms were named after the States of the Union, a legend which, if true, is worth preserving.
Another interesting item relates to the origin of the slang term "piker," which, whatever it may have meant originally, is used to-day to designate a timid, close-fisted gambler, a "tightwad" or "short sport."
When one inquires as to the origin of this term, Pike County, Missouri, begins to remember that there is another Pike County—Pike County, Illinois, just across the river, which, incidentally, is I think, the "Pike" referred to in John Hay's poem.
A gentleman in Clarksville explained the origin of the term "piker" to me thus:
"In the early days men from Pike County, Missouri, and Pike County, Illinois, went all through the West. They were all good men. In fact, they were such a fine lot that when any crooks would want to represent themselves as honest men they would say they were from Pike. As a result of this all the bad men in the West claimed to be from our section, and in that way Pike got a bad name. So when the westerners suspected a man of being crooked, they'd say: 'Look out for him; he's a Piker.'"
In St. Louis I was given another version. There I was told that long ago men would come down from Pike to gamble. They loved cards, but oftentimes hadn't enough money to play a big game. So, it wassaid, the term "Piker" came to indicate more or less the type it indicates to-day.
No bit of character and color which we met upon our travels remains in my mind more pleasantly than the talk we had with those fine old men around the stove in the back room of the bank of Mr. John O. Roberts, there at Clarksville. Mr. Roberts is a wonder—nothing less. There's a book in him, and I hope that somebody will write it, for I should like to read that book.
As we were leaving the bank another gentleman came in. We were introduced to him. His name proved also to be John O. Roberts—for he was the banker's son.
"Yes," the elder Mr. Roberts explained to me, "and there's another John O. Roberts, too—my grandson. We're all John O. Robertses in this family. We perpetuate the name because it's an honest name. No John O. Roberts ever went to the penitentiary—or to the legislature."
THE BEGINNING OF THE WEST
If you will take a map of the United States and fold it so that the Atlantic and Pacific coast lines overlap, the crease at the center will form a line which runs down through the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas. That is not, however, the true dividing line between East and West. If I were to try to draw the true line, I should begin at the north, bringing my pencil down between the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, leaving the former to the east, and the latter to the west, and I should follow down through the middle of Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri, so that St. Louis would be included on the eastern map and Kansas City and Omaha on the western.
My companion and I had long looked forward to the West, and had speculated as to where we should first meet it. And sometimes, as we traveled on, we doubted that there really was a West at all, and feared that the whole country had become monotonously "standardized," as was recently charged by a correspondent of the London "Times."
I remember that we discussed that question on thetrain, leaving St. Louis, wondering whether Kansas City, whither we were bound, would prove to be but one more city like the rest—a place with skyscrapers and shops and people resembling, almost exactly, the skyscrapers and shops and people of a dozen other cities we had seen.
Morning in the sleeping car found us less concerned about the character of cities than about our coffee. Coffee was not to be had upon the train. In cheerless emptiness we sat and waited for the station.
While my berth was being turned into its daytime aspect, I was forced to accept a seat beside a stranger: a little man with a black felt hat, a weedy mustache of neutral color, and an Elk's button. I had a feeling that he meant to talk with me; a feeling which amounted to dread. Nothing appeals to me at seven in the morning; least of all a conversation. At that hour my enthusiasm shows only a low blue flame, like a gas jet turned down almost to the point of going out. And in the feeble light of that blue flame, my fellow man becomes a vague shape, threatening unsolicited civilities. I do not like the hour of seven in the morning anywhere, and if there is one condition under which I loathe it most, it is before breakfast in a smelly sleeping car. I saw the little man regarding me. He was about to speak. And there I was, absolutely at his mercy, without so much as a newspaper behind which to shield myself.
"Are you from New York?" he asked.
With about the same amount of effort it would taketo make a long after-dinner speech, I managed to enunciate a hollow: "Yes."
"I thought so," he returned.
It seemed to me that the remark required no answer. He waited; then, presently, vouchsafed the added information: "I knew it by your shoes."
Mechanically I looked at my shoes; then at his. I felt like saying: "Why? Because my shoes are polished?" But I didn't. All I said was, "Oh."
"That's a New York last," he explained. "Long and flat. You can't get a shoe like that out in this section. Nobody'd buy 'em if we made 'em." Then he added: "I'm in the shoe line, myself."
He paused as though expecting me to state my "line." However, I didn't. Very likely he thought it something shameful. After a moment's silence, he asked: "Travel out this way much?"
"Never," I said.
"Never been in Kansas City?"
I shook my head.
"Well," he volunteered, "it's a great town. Greatest farm implement market in the world." (He drawled "world" as though it were spelled with a double R.) "Very little manufacturing but a great distributing point. All cattle and farming out here. Everything depends on the crops. Different from the East."
I looked out of the window.
Itwasdifferent from the East. Even through the smoky fog I saw that.
"Kansas City!" called the negro porter.
I arose with a sigh, said good-by to the little man, and made my way from the car.
The heavy mist was laden with a smoky smell like that of an incipient London fog. Through it I discerned, dimly, a Vesuvian hill, piling up to the left, while, to the right, a maze of tracks and trains lost themselves in the gray blur. Immediately before me stood as disreputable a station as I ever saw, its platforms oozing mud, and its doorways oozing immigrants and other forlorn travelers. Of all the people there, I observed but two who were agreeable to the eye: a young girl, admirably modish, and her mother. But even looking at this girl I remained depressed. "Youdon't belong here," I wished to say to her, "that's clear enough. No one like you could live in such a place. You needn't thinkIlive here, either; for I don't! Most decidedly I don't!"
We got into a taxi, my companion and I, and the taxi started immediately to climb with us, like a mountain goat, ascending a steep hill in leaps, over an atrocious pavement, and between vacant lots and shabby buildings which seemed to me to presage an undeveloped town and, worse yet, a bad hotel.
My companion must have thought as I did, for I remember his saying in a somber tone: "I guess we're in for it this time, all right!"
Those are the first words that I recall his having spoken that morning.
After ascending for some time, we began to coast down again, still through unprepossessing thoroughfares, until at last we slid up in the mud to the door of the Hotel Baltimore—one of the busiest hotels in the whole United States.
On sight of the hotel I took a little heart. Breakfast was near and the hostelry looked promising. It was, indeed, the first building that I saw in Kansas City, that seemed to justify "City."
The coffee at the Baltimore proved good. We saw that we were in a large and capably conducted caravansary—a metropolitan hotel with a dining room like some interior in the capitol of Minnesota, and a Pompeian room, the very look of which bespoke a cabaret performance at a later hour. From the window where we sat at breakfast we saw wagons with brakes set, descending the hill, and streams of people hurrying on their way to work: sturdy-looking men and healthy-looking girls, the latter stamped with that cheap yet indisputable style so characteristic of the young American working woman—a sort of down-at-the-heels showiness in dress, which, combined with an elaborate coiffure and a fine, if slightly affected carriage, makes her at once a pretty and pathetic object.
In Kansas City one is well within the borders of the land of silver dollars. Dollar bills are scarce. Pay for a cigar with a $5 bill, and your change is more than likely to include four of those silver cartwheels which, though merely annoying in ordinary times, must be a real sourceof danger when the floods come, as one understands they sometimes do in Kansas City. Not only are small bills scarce but, I fancy, the humble copper cent is viewed in Kansas City with less respect than in the East. I base this conclusion upon the fact that a dignified old negro, wearing a bronze medal suspended from a ribbon tied about his neck, charged me five cents at the door of the dining room for a one-cent paper—a rate of extortion surpassing that of New York hotel news stands. However, as that paper was the Kansas City "Star," I raised no objection; for the "Star" is a great newspaper. But of that presently.
Later I found fastened to the wall of my bathroom something which, as I learned afterward, is quite common among hotels in the West, but which I have never seen in an eastern hotel—a slot machine which, for a quarter, supplies any of the following articles: tooth paste, listerine, cold cream, bromo lithia, talcum powder, a toothbrush, a shaving stick, or a safety razor.
Counterbalancing this convenience, however, I found in my room but one telephone instrument, although Kansas City is served by two separate companies. This proved annoying; calls coming by the Missouri & Kansas Telephone Company's lines reached me in my room, but those coming over the wires of the Home Telephone Company had to be answered downstairs, whither I was summoned twice that morning—once from my bath and once while shaving. I had not been in Kansas City half a day before discovering that monopoly—at least in thecase of the telephone—has its very definite advantages. A double system of telephones is a nuisance. Even where, as for instance in Portland, Oregon, there are two instruments in each room, one never knows which bell is ringing. Duplication is unnecessary, and where there are two companies, lack of duplication is annoying. Every home or office in Kansas City provided with but one instrument is cut off from communication with many other homes and offices having the other service, while those having both instruments have to pay the price of two.
It always amuses me to hear criticisms by foreigners of the telephone as perfected in this country. And our sleeping cars and telephones are the things they invariably do criticize. As to the sleeping car there may be some justice in complaints, although it seems to me that, under the conditions for which it is designed, the Pullman car would be hard to improve upon. It is the necessity of going to bed while traveling by rail that is at the bottom of the trouble. But when a foreigner criticizes the American telephone the very thing he criticizes is its perfection. If we had bad telephone service, and didn't use the telephone much, it would be all right, according to the European point of view. But as it is, they say we are the instrument's "slaves."
That was the complaint of Dr. George Brandes, the Danish literary critic. "The telephone is the worst instrument of torture that ever existed," he declared."The medieval rack and thumb-screws were playthings compared with it."
Arnold Bennett, in his "Your United States," tells of having permanently removed the receiver from the telephone in his bedroom in a Chicago hotel. His action, he declares, caused agitation, not merely in the hotel, but throughout the city.
"In response to the prayer of a deputation from the management," he writes, "I restored the receiver. On the horrified face of the deputation I could read the unspoken query: 'Is it conceivable that you have been in this country a month without understanding that the United States is primarily nothing but a vast congeries of telephone cabins?'"
Now, the thing which Mr. Bennett, Dr. Brandes, and many other distinguished visitors from Europe seem to fail to comprehend is this: that, being distinguished visitors, and therefore sought after, they are the telephone's especial victims, and consequently gain a wrong impression of it. They themselves use it little as a means of calling others; others use it much as a means of calling them. Furthermore, being strangers to this highly perfected instrument, they are also, quite naturally strangers to telephonic subtleties. Mr. Bennett proved his entire lack of knowledge of the new science of telephone tact when he tried to stop the instrument by removing the receiver. Any American could have told him that all he need have done was to notify the operator, at the switchboard, downstairs, not to permit himto be disturbed until a certain hour. Or, if he had wished to do so, he could have asked her to sift his messages, giving him only those she deemed desirable. He would have found her, I feel sure, as capable, on that score, as a well-trained private secretary, for, among the many effective services of the telephone, none is finer than that given by those capable, intelligent, quick-thinking young women who act as switchboard operators in large hotels and offices. I am glad of this opportunity to make my compliments to them.
If an American wishes to appreciate the telephone, as developed in this country, he has but to try to use the telephone in Europe. In London the instrument is a ridiculous, cumbersome affair, looking as much like an enormous metal inkwell as any other thing—the kind of inkwell in which some emperor might dip his pen before signing his abdication. To call, you wind the crank violently for a time, then taking up the receiver and mouthpiece which are attached to the main instrument by a cord, you begin calling: "Are you there, miss? Are you there? I say, miss,areyou there?" And the question is quite reasonable, for half the time "miss" does not seem to be there. In Paris it is worse. Once, while residing in that city, I had a telephone in my apartment. It was intended as a convenience, but it turned out to be an irritating kind of joke. The first time I tried to call my house, from the center of town, it took me three times as long to get the connection as it took me to get New York from Kansas City. In the beginning I thought myself the victim of ill luck, but I soon came to understand that was not the case—or, rather, that the ill luck was of a kind experienced by all users of the telephone in Paris. The service there is simply chaotic. It is actually true that I once dispatched a messenger on a bicycle, calling my house on the phone, immediately afterward, and that the messenger had arrived with the note, after having ridden a good two miles, through traffic, by the time I succeeded in talking over the wire. However, in the interim I had talked with almost every other residence in Paris.
The telephones in France and England are controlled by the government. If that accounts for the service given, then I hope the government in this country will never take them over. Bureaucracy makes the Continental railroads inferior to ours, and I have no doubt it is equally responsible for telephone conditions. Bureaucracy, as I have experienced it, feels itself intrenched in office, and is consequently likely to be indifferent to complaint and to the requirements of progress. When I called New York from Kansas City I was talking within ten minutes, and when, later on, I called New York from Denver, it took but little longer, and I heard, and made myself heard, almost as though conversing with some one in the next room. As I reflect upon the countless services performed for me by the telephone, upon these travels, and upon the very different sort of service I should have had abroad, I bless the American Telephone and TelegraphCompany with fervent blessings. And if I said about it all the things I really think, I fear the reader might suspect me of having received a bribe. For I am aware that, in speaking well of any corporation I am flying in the face of precedent and public opinion.
Toward noon, the pall of smoke and fog which had blanketed the city, vanished on a fresh breeze from the prairies, and my companion and I, much inspirited, set forth on foot to see what the downtown streets of Kansas City had to offer. We had gone hardly a block before we realized that our earlier impressions of the place had been ill-founded. We had arrived in the least agreeable portion of the city, and had not, hitherto, seen any of the built-up, well-paved streets. "Petticoat Lane"—the fashionable shopping district on Eleventh Street between Main Street and Grand Avenue—has a metropolitan appearance, and the wider avenues, with their well-built skyscrapers, tell a story of substantiality and progress. But the most striking thing to us, upon that walk, lay not in the great buildings already standing, but in the embryonic structures everywhere. All over Kansas City old buildings are coming down to make place for new ones; hills of clay are being gouged away and foundations dug; steel frames are shooting up. Never, before or since, have I sensed, as I sensed that day, a city's growth. It seemed to me that I could feel expansion in the very ground beneath my feet. Looking upon these multifarious activities was like looking through an enormous magnifying glass at some gigantic ant hill, where thousands upon thousands of workers were rushing about, digging, carrying, constructing, all in breathless haste. Nor was the incidental music lacking; the air was ringing with the symphony of work—the music of brick walls falling, of drills digging at the earth, and of automatic riveters clattering their swift, metallic song, high up among the tall, steel frames, where presently would stand desks, and filing cabinets, and typewriter machines.
"Did you ever feel a city growing so?" I asked of my companion.
"Grow!" he repeated. "Why it has grown so fast they haven't had time to name their streets."
The statement appeared true. We had looked for street signs at all corners, but had seen none. Later, however, we discovered that the streets did have names. But as there are no signs, I conclude that the present names are only tentative, and that when Kansas City gets through building, she will name her streets in sober earnest, and mark them in order that strangers may more readily find their way.
The "slogan" of Kansas City suggests that of Detroit. Detroit says: "In Detroit life is worth living." Kansas City is less boastful, but more aspiring. "Make it a good place to live in," she says.
As nearly as I can like the "slogan" of any city, I like that one. I like it because it is not vainglorious, andbecause it does not attempt cheap alliteration. It is not "smart-alecky" at all, but has, rather, the sound of something genuinely felt. And I believe it is felt. There is every evidence that Kansas City's "slogan" is a promissory note—a note which, it may be added, she is paying off in a handsome manner, by improving herself rapidly in countless ways.
Perhaps the first of her improvements to strike the visitor is her system of parks. I am informed that the parked boulevards of Kansas City exceed in mileage those of any other American city. These boulevards, connecting the various parks and forming circuits running around and through the town, do go a long way toward making it "a good place to live in." Kansas City has every right to be proud, not only of her parks, but of herself for having had the intelligence and energy to make them. What if assessments have been high? Increased property values take care of that; the worst of the work and the expense is over, and Kansas City has lifted itself by its own bootstraps from ugliness to beauty. How much better it is to have done the whole thing quickly—to have made the gigantic effort and attained the parks and boulevards at what amounts to one great municipal bound—than to have dawdled and dreamed along as St. Louis and so many other cities have done.
The Central Traffic Parkway of St. Louis is, as has been said in an earlier chapter, still on paper only. But the Paseo, and West Pennway, and Penn Valley Park,in Kansas City, are all splendid realities, created in an amazingly brief space of years. To make the Paseo and West Pennway, the city cut through blocks and blocks, tearing down old houses or moving them away, with the result that dilapidated, disagreeable neighborhoods have been turned into charming residence districts. In the making of Penn Valley Park, the same thing occurred: the property was acquired at a cost of about $800,000, hundreds of houses were removed, drives were built, trees planted. The park is now a show place; both because of the lesson it offers other cities, and the splendid view, from its highest point, of the enterprising city which created it.
Another spectacular panorama of Kansas City is to be seen from Observation Point on the western side of town, but the finest views of all (and among the finest to be seen in any city in the world) are those which unroll themselves below Scaritt Point, the Cliff Drive, and Kersey Coates Drive. Much as the Boulevard Lafayette skirts the hills beside the Hudson River, these drives make their way along the upper edge of the lofty cliffs which rise majestically above the Missouri River bottoms. Not only is their elevation much greater than that of the New York boulevard, but the view is infinitely more extensive and dramatic, though perhaps less "pretty." Looking down from Kersey Coates Drive, one sees a long sweep of the Missouri, winding its course between the sandy shores which it so loves to inundate. Beyond, the whole world seems to be spread