A Provincial Capital
A Provincial Capital
THE Hoosier is not so deeply wounded by the assumption in Eastern quarters that he is a wild man of the woods as by the amiable condescension of acquaintances at the seaboard, who tell him, when he mildly remonstrates, that his abnormal sensitiveness is provincial. This is, indeed, the hardest lot, to be called a “mudsill” and then rebuked for talking back! There are, however, several special insults to which the citizen of Indianapolis is subjected, and these he resents with all the strength of his being. First among them is the proneness of many to confuse Indianapolis and Minneapolis. To the citizen of the Hoosier capital, Minneapolis seems a remote place, that can be reached only by passing through Chicago. Still another source of intense annoyance is the persistent fallacy that Indianapolis is situated on the Wabash River. There seems to be something funny about the name of this pleasant stream,—immortalized in late yearsby a tuneful balladist,—which a large percentage of the people of Indianapolis have never seen except from a car window. East of Pittsburg the wanderer from Hoosierdom expects to be asked how things are on the Waybosh,—a pronunciation which, by the way, is never heard at home. Still another grievance that has embittered the lives of Indianapolitans is the annoying mispronunciation of the name of their town by benighted outsiders. Rural Hoosiers, in fact, offend the ears of their city cousins with Indianopolis; but it is left usually for the Yankee visitor to sayInjunapolis, with a stress onInjunwhich points rather unnecessarily to the day of the war-whoop and scalp-dance.
Indianapolis—like Jerusalem, “a city at unity with itself,” where the tribes assemble, and where the seat of judgment is established—is in every sense the capital of all the Hoosiers. With the exception of Boston, it is the largest state capital in the country; and no other American city without water communication is so large. It is distinguished primarily by the essentially American character of itspeople. A considerable body of Germans contributed much first and last to its substantial growth, not only by the example of their familiar industry and frugality, but in later years through their intelligent interest in all manner of civic improvement, in general education, and in music and art. Only in the past decade has there been any perceptible drift of undesirable immigrants from southeastern Europe to our city and the problems they create have been met promptly by wise agencies of social service. There was an influx of negroes at the close of the war, and the colored voters (about seventy-five hundred in 1912) add considerably to our political perplexities.
Indiana was admitted as a State in 1816, and the General Assembly, sitting at Corydon in 1821, designated Indianapolis, then a settlement of struggling cabins, as the state capital. The name of the new town was not adopted without a struggle, Tecumseh, Suwarro, and Concord being proposed and supported, while the name finally chosen aroused the hostility of those who declared it unmelodious and etymologically abominable. It is of record that thefirst mention of the name Indianapolis in the legislature caused great merriment. The town was laid out in broad streets, which were quickly adorned with shade trees that are an abiding testimony to the foresight of the founders. Alexander Ralston, one of the engineers employed in the first survey, had served in a similar capacity at Washington, and the diagonal avenues and the generous breadth of the streets are suggestive of the national capital. The urban landscape lacks variety: the town is perfectly flat, and in old times the mud was intolerable, but the trees are a continuing glory.
Central Indiana was not, in 1820, when the first cabin was built, a region of unalloyed delight. The land was rich, but it was covered with heavy woods, and much of it was under water. Indians still roamed the forests, and the builder of the first cabin was killed by them. There were no roads, and White River, on whose eastern shore the town was built, was navigable only by the smallest craft. Mrs. Beecher, in “From Dawn to Daylight,” described the region as it appeared in the forties: “It is a level stretch of land as far as the eyecan reach, looking as if one good, thorough rain would transform it into an impassable morass. How the inhabitants contrive to get about in rainy weather, I can’t imagine, unless they use stilts. The city itself has been redeemed from this slough, and presents quite a thriving appearance, being very prettily laid out, with a number of fine buildings.” Dr. Eggleston, writing in his novel “Roxy” of the same period, lays stress on the saffron hue of the community, the yellow mud seeming to cover all things animate and inanimate.
But the founders possessed faith, courage, and hardihood, and “the capital in the woods” grew steadily. The pioneers were patriotic and religious; their patriotism was, indeed, touched with the zeal of their religion. For many years before the Civil War a parade of the Sunday-school children of the city was the chief feature of every Fourth of July celebration. The founders labored from the first in the interest of morality and enlightenment. The young capital was a converging point for a slender stream of population that bore in from New England, and a broader current that swept westwardfrom the Middle and Southeastern States. There was no sectional feeling in those days. Many of the prominent settlers from Kentucky were Whigs, but a newcomer’s church affiliation was of far more importance than his political belief. Membership in a church was a social recommendation in old times, but the importance of religion seemed to diminish as the town passed the two-hundred-thousand mark. Perhaps two hundred thousand is the dead-line—I hope no one will press me too hard to defend this suggestion—beyond which a community loses its pristine sensitiveness to benignant influences; but there was indubitably in the history of our capital a moment at which we became disagreeably conscious that we were no longer a few simple and well-meaning folk who made no social engagements that would interfere with Thursday night prayer-meeting, but a corporation of which we were only unconsidered and unimportant members.
The effect of the Civil War upon Indianapolis was immediate and far-reaching. It emphasized, through the centralizing there of theState’s military energy, the fact that it was the capital city,—a fact which until that time had been accepted languidly by the average Hoosier countryman. The presence within the State of an aggressive body of sympathizers with Southern ideas directed attention throughout the country to the energy and resourcefulness of Morton, the War Governor, who pursued the Hoosier Copperheads relentlessly, while raising a great army to send to the seat of war. Again, the intense political bitterness engendered by the war did not end with peace, or with the restoration of good feeling in neighboring States, but continued for twenty-five years more to be a source of political irritation, and, markedly at Indianapolis, a cause of social differentiation. In the minds of many, a Democrat was a Copperhead, and a Copperhead was an evil and odious thing. Referring to the slow death of this feeling, a veteran observer of affairs who had, moreover, supported Mr. Cleveland’s candidacy twice, recently said that he had never been able wholly to free himself from this prejudice. But the end really came in 1884, with the reaction against Blaine, which wasnowhere more significant of the flowering of independence than at Indianapolis.
Following the formative period, which may be said to have ended with the Civil War, came an era of prosperity in business, and even of splendor in social matters. Some handsome habitations had been built in theante-bellumdays, but they were at once surpassed by the homes which many citizens reared for themselves in the seventies. These remain, as a group, the handsomest residences that have been built at any period in the history of the city. Life had been earnest in the early days, but it now became picturesque. The terms “aristocrats” and “first families” were heard in the community, and something of traditional Southern ampleness and generosity crept into the way of life. No one saidnouveau richein those days; the first families were the real thing. No one denied it, and misfortune could not shake or destroy them.
A panic is a stern teacher of humility, and the financial depression that fell upon the country in 1873 drove the lesson home remorselessly at Indianapolis. There had been nothingequivocal about the boom. Western speculators had not always had a fifty-year-old town to operate in,—the capital of a State, a natural railway centre,—no arid village in a hot prairie, but a real forest city that thundered mightily in the prospectus. There was no sudden collapse; a brave effort was made to ward off the day of reckoning; but this only prolonged the agony. Among the victims there was little whimpering. A thoroughbred has not proved his mettle until he has held up his head in defeat, and the Hoosier aristocrat went down with his flag flying. Those that had suffered the proud man’s contumely then came forth to sneer. An old-fashioned butternut Democrat remarked, of a banker who failed, that “no wonder Blank busted when he drove to business in a carriage behind a nigger in uniform.” The memory of the hard times lingered long at home and abroad. A town where credit could be so shaken was not, the Eastern insurance companies declared, a safe place for further investments; and in many quarters Indianapolis was not forgiven until an honest, substantial growth had carried the lines ofthe city beyond theterra incognitaof the boom’s outer rim.
Many of the striking characteristics of the true Indianapolitan are attributable to those days, when the city’s bounds were moved far countryward, to the end that the greatest possible number of investors might enjoy the ownership of town lots. The signal effect of this dark time was to stimulate thrift and bring a new era of caution and conservatism; for there is a good deal of Scotch-Irish in the Hoosier, and he cannot be fooled twice with the same bait. During the period of depression the town lost its zest for gayety. It took its pleasures a little soberly; it was notorious as a town that welcomed theatrical attractions grudgingly, though this attitude must be referred back also to the religious prejudices of the early comers. Your Indianapolitan who has personal knowledge of the panic, or who had listened to the story of it from one who weathered the storm, has never forgotten the discipline of the seventies: though he has reached the promised land, he still remembers the hot sun in the tyrant’s brickyards. So conservatismbecame the city’s rule of life. The panic of 1893 caused scarcely a ripple, and the typical Indianapolis business man to this day is one who minds his barometer carefully.
Indianapolis became a city rather against its will. It liked its own way, and its way was slow; but when the calamity could no longer be averted, it had its trousers creased and its shoes polished, and accepted with good grace the fact that its population had reached two hundred thousand, and that it had crept to a place comfortably near the top in the list of bank clearances. A man who left Indianapolis in 1885, returned in 1912—the Indianapolitan, like the cat in the ballad, always comes back; he cannot successfully be transplanted—to find himself a stranger in a strange city. Once he knew all the people who rode in chaises; but on his return he found new people flying about in automobiles that cost more than any but the most prosperous citizen earned in the horse-car days; once he had been able to discuss current topics with a passing friend in the middle of Washington Street; now he must duck and dive, and keep an eyeon the policeman if he would make a safe crossing. He is asked to luncheon at a club; in the old days there were no clubs, or they were looked on as iniquitous things; he is carried off to inspect factories which are the largest of their kind in the world. At the railroad yards he watches the loading of machinery for shipment to Russia and Chili, and he is driven over asphalt streets to parks that had not been dreamed of before his term of exile.
Manufacturing is the great business of the city, still sootily advertised on the local countenance in spite of heroic efforts to enforce smoke-abatement ordinances. There are nearly two thousand establishments within its limits where manufacturing in some form is carried on. Many of these rose in the day of natural gas, and it was predicted that when the gas had been exhausted the city would lose them; but the number has increased steadily despite the failure of the gas supply. There are abundant coal-fields within the State, so that the question of fuel will not soon be troublesome. The city enjoys, also, the benefits to be derived from the numerous manufactories in othertowns of central Indiana, many of which maintain administrative offices there. It is not only a good place in which to make things, but a point from which many things may be sold to advantage. Jobbing flourished even before manufacturing attained its present proportions. The jobbers have given the city an enviable reputation for enterprise and fair dealing. When you ask an Indianapolis jobber whether the propinquity of St. Louis, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Cleveland is not against him, he answers that he meets his competitors daily in every part of the country and is not afraid of them.
Indianapolis was long a place of industry, thrift, and comfort, where the simple life was not only possible but necessary. Its social entertainments were of the tamest sort, and the change in this respect has come only within a few years,—with the great wave of growth and prosperity that has wrought a new Indianapolis from the old. If left to itself, the old Indianapolis would never have known a horse show or a carnival,—would never have strewn itself with confetti, or boasted the greatestautomobile speedway in the world; but the invading time-spirit has rapidly destroyed the walls of the city of tradition. Business men no longer go home to dinner at twelve o’clock and take a nap before returning to work; and the old amiable habit of visiting for an hour in an office where ten minutes of business was to be transacted has passed. A town is at last a city when sociability has been squeezed out of business and appointments are arranged a day in advance by telephone.
The distinguishing quality of Indianapolis continues, however, to be its simple domesticity. The people are home-loving and home-keeping. In the early days, when the town was a rude capital in the wilderness, the citizens stayed at home perforce; and when the railroad reached them they did not take readily to travel. A trip to New York is still a much more serious event, considered from Indianapolis, than from Denver or Kansas City. It was an Omaha young man who was so little appalled by distance that, having an express frank, he formed the habit of sending his laundry work to New York, to assure a certain finish to hislinen that was unattainable at home. The more the Hoosier travels, the more he likes his own town. Only a little while ago an Indianapolis man who had been in New York for a week went to the theatre and saw there a fellow-townsman who had just arrived. He hurried around to greet him at the end of the first act. “Tell me,” he exclaimed, “how is everything in old Indianapolis?”
The Hoosiers assemble at Indianapolis in great throngs with slight excuse. In addition to the steam railroads that radiate in every direction interurban traction lines have lately knit new communities into sympathetic relationship with the capital. One may see the real Hoosier in the traction station,—and an ironed-out, brushed and combed Hoosier he is found to be. You may read the names of all the surrounding towns on the big interurban cars that mingle with the local traction traffic. They bring men whose errand is to buy or sell, or who come to play golf on the free course at Riverside Park, or on the private grounds of the Country Club. The country women join their sisters of the city in attacks upon the bargaincounters. These cars disfigure the streets, but no one has made serious protest, for are not the Hoosiers welcome to their capital, no matter how or when they visit it; and is not this free intercourse, as the phrase has it, “a good thing for Indianapolis”? This contact between town and country tends to stimulate a state feeling, and as the capital grows this intimacy will have an increasing value.
There is something neighborly and cozy about Indianapolis. The man across the street or next door will share any good thing he has with you, whether it be a cure for rheumatism, a new book, or the garden hose. It is a town where doing as one likes is not a mere possibility, but an inherent right. The woman of Indianapolis is not afraid to venture abroad with her market-basket, albeit she may carry it in an automobile. The public market at Indianapolis is an ancient and honorable institution, and there is no shame but much honor in being seen there in conversation with the farmer and the gardener or the seller of herbs, in the early hours of the morning. The market is so thoroughly established in public affection thatthe society reporter walks its aisles in pursuit of news. The true Indianapolis housewife goes to market; the mere resident of the city orders by telephone, and meekly accepts what the grocer has to offer; and herein lies a difference that is not half so superficial as it may sound, for at heart the people who are related to the history and tradition of Indianapolis are simple and frugal, and if they read Emerson and Browning by the evening lamp, they know no reason why they should not distinguish, the next morning, between the yellow-legged chicken offered by the farmer’s wife at the market and frozen fowls of doubtful authenticity that have been held for a season in cold storage.
The narrow margin between the great parties in Indiana has made the capital a centre of incessant political activity. The geographical position of the city has also contributed to this, the state leaders and managers being constant visitors. Every second man you meet is a statesman; every third man is an orator. The largest social club in Indiana exacts a promise of fidelity to the Republican party,—or did, until insurgency made the close scrutiny of themembers’ partisanship impolite if not impolitic!—and within its portals chances and changes of men and measures are discussed tirelessly. And the pilgrim is not bored with local affairs; not a bit of it! Municipal dangers do not trouble the Indianapolitan; his eye is on the White House, not the town hall. The presence in the city through many years of men of national prominence—Morton, Harrison, Hendricks, McDonald, English, Gresham, Turpie, of the old order, and Fairbanks, Kern, Beveridge, and Marshall in recent years—has kept Indianapolis to the fore as a political centre. Geography is an important factor in the distribution of favors by state conventions. Rivalry between the smaller towns is not so marked as their united stand against the capital, though this feeling seems to be abating. The city has had, at least twice, both United States Senators; but governors have usually been summoned from the country. Harrison was defeated for governor by a farmer (1876), in a heated campaign, in which “Kid-Gloved Harrison” was held up to derision by the adherents of “Blue-Jeans Williams.”And again, in 1880, a similar situation was presented in the contest for the same office between Albert G. Porter and Franklin Landers, both of Indianapolis, though Landers stood ruggedly for the “blue jeans” idea.
The high tide of political interest was reached in the summer and fall of 1888, when Harrison made his campaign for the presidency, largely from his own doorstep. Marion County, of which Indianapolis is the seat, was for many years Republican; but neither county nor city has lately been “safely” Democratic or Republican. At the city election held in October, 1904, a Democrat was elected mayor over a Republican candidate who had been renominated in a “snap” convention, in the face of aggressive opposition within his party. The issue was tautly drawn between corruption and vice on the one hand and law and order on the other. An independent candidate, who had also the Prohibition support, received over five thousand votes.
The difficulties in the way of securing intelligent and honest city government have, however, multiplied with the growth of thecity. The American municipal problem is as acutely presented in Indianapolis as elsewhere. The more prosperous a city the less time have the beneficiaries of its prosperity for self-government. It is much simpler to allow politicians of gross incapacity and leagued with vice to levy taxes and expend the income according to the devices and desires of their own hearts and pockets than to find reputable and patriotic citizens to administer the business. Here as elsewhere the party system is indubitably at the root of the evil. It happens, indeed, that Indianapolis is even more the victim of partisanship than other cities of approximately the same size for the reason that both the old political organizations feel that the loss of the city at a municipal election jeopardizes the chances of success in general elections. Just what effect the tariff and other national issues have upon street cleaning and the policing of a city has never been explained. It is interesting to note that the park board, whose members serve without pay, has been, since the adoption of the city charter, a commission of high intelligence and unassailable integrity.The standard having been so established no mayor is likely soon to venture to consign this board’s important and responsible functions to the common type of city hall hangers-on.
It is one of the most maddening of the anomalies of American life that municipal pride should exhaust its energy in the exploitation of factory sites and the strident advertisement of the number of freight cars handled in railroad yards, while the municipal corporation itself is turned over to any band of charlatans and buccaneers that may seek to capture it. In 1911-12 the municipal government had reached the lowest ebb in the city’s history. It had become so preposterous and improvement was so imperatively demanded that many citizens, both as individuals and in organizations, began to interest themselves in plans for reform. The hope here as elsewhere seems to be in the young men, particularly of the college type, who find in local government a fine exercise for their talents and zeal.
In this connection it may be said that the Indianapolis public schools owe their marked excellence and efficiency to their complete divorcementfrom political influence. This has not only assured the public an intelligent and honest expenditure of school funds, but it has created a corps spirit among the city’s teachers, admirable in itself, and tending to cumulative benefits not yet realized. The superintendent of schools has absolute power of appointment, and he is accountable only to the commissioners, and they in turn are entirely independent of the mayor and other city officers. Positions on the school board are not sought by politicians. The incumbents serve without pay, and the public evince a disposition to find good men and to keep them in office.
The soldiers’ monument at Indianapolis is a testimony to the deep impression made by the Civil War on the people of the State. The monument is to Indianapolis what the Washington Monument is to the national capital. The incoming traveler beholds it afar, and within the city it is almost an inescapable thing, though with the advent of the sky-scraper it is rapidly losing its fine dignity as the chief incident of the skyline. It stands in a circular plaza that was originally a park knownas the “Governor’s Circle.” This was long ago abandoned as a site for the governor’s mansion, but it offered an ideal spot for a monument to Indiana soldiers, when, in 1887, the General Assembly authorized its construction. The height of the monument from the street level is two hundred and eighty-four feet and it stands on a stone terrace one hundred and ten feet in diameter. The shaft is crowned by a statue of Victory thirty-eight feet high. It is built throughout of Indiana limestone. The fountains at the base, the heroic sculptured groups “War” and “Peace,” and the bronze astragals representing the army and navy, are admirable in design and execution. The whole effect is one of poetic beauty and power. There is nothing cheap, tawdry, or commonplace in this magnificent tribute of Indiana to her soldiers. The monument is a memorial of the soldiers of all the wars in which Indiana has participated. The veterans of the Civil War protested against this, and the controversy was long and bitter; but the capture of Vincennes from the British in 1779 is made to link Indiana to the war of the Revolution; and thebattle of Tippecanoe, to the war of 1812. The war with Mexico, and seven thousand four hundred men enlisted for the Spanish War are likewise remembered. It is, however, the war of the Rebellion, whose effect on the social and political life of Indiana was so tremendous, that gives the monument its great cause for being. The white male population of Indiana in 1860 was 693,348; the total enlistment of soldiers during the ensuing years of war was 210,497! The names of these men lie safe for posterity in the base of the gray shaft.
The newspaper paragrapher has in recent years amused himself at the expense of Indiana as a literary centre, but Indianapolis as a village boasted writers of at least local reputation, and Coggeshall’s “Poets and Poetry of the West” (1867) attributes half a dozen poets to the Hoosier capital. The Indianapolis press has from the beginning been distinguished by enterprise and decency, and in several instances by vigorous independence. The literary quality of the city’s newspapers was high, even in the early days, and the standard has not been lowered. Poets with cloaks and canes were, inthe eighties, pretty prevalent in Market Street near the post-office, the habitat then of most of the newspapers. The poets read their verses to one another and cursed the magazines. A reporter for one of the papers, who had scored the triumph of a poem in the “Atlantic,” was a man of mark among the guild for years. The local wits stabbed the fledgeling bards with their gentle ironies. A young woman of social prominence printed some verses in an Indianapolis newspaper, and one of her acquaintances, when asked for his opinion of them, said they were creditable and ought to be set to music—and played as an instrumental piece! The wide popularity attained by Mr. James Whitcomb Riley quickened the literary impulse, and the fame of his elders and predecessors suffered severely from the fact that he did not belong to the cloaked brigade. General Lew Wallace never lived at Indianapolis save for a few years in boyhood, while his father was governor, though toward the end of his life he spent his winters there. Maurice Thompson’s muse scorned “paven ground,” and he was little known at the capitaleven during his term of office as state geologist, when he came to town frequently from his home in Crawfordsville. Mr. Booth Tarkington, the most cosmopolitan of Hoosiers, has lifted the banner anew for a younger generation through his successful essays in fiction and the drama.
If you do not in this provincial capital meet an author at every corner, you are at least never safe from men and women who read books. In many Missouri River towns a stranger must still listen to the old wail against the railroads; at Indianapolis he must listen to politics, and possibly some one will ask his opinion of a sonnet, just as though it were a cigar. A judge of the United States Court sitting at Indianapolis, was in the habit of locking the door of his private office and reading Horace to visiting attorneys. There was, indeed, a time—consule Planco—when most of the federal officeholders at Indianapolis were bookish men. Three successive clerks of the federal courts were scholars; the pension agent was an enthusiastic Shakespearean; the district attorney was a poet; and the master of chancery a man of varied learning, who was so excellent a talkerthat, when he met Lord Chief Justice Coleridge abroad, the English jurist took the Hoosier with him on circuit, and wrote to the justice of the American Supreme Court who had introduced them, to “send me another man as good.”
It is possible for a community which may otherwise lack a true local spirit to be unified through the possession of a sense of humor; and even in periods of financial depression the town has always enjoyed the saving grace of a cheerful, centralized intelligence. The first tavern philosophers stood for this, and the courts of the early times were enlivened by it,—as witness all Western chronicles. The Middle Western people are preëminently humorous, particularly those of the Southern strain from which Lincoln sprang. During all the years that the Hoosier suffered the reproach of the outside world, the citizen of the capital never failed to appreciate the joke when it was on himself; and looking forth from the wicket of the city gate, he was still more keenly appreciative when it was “on” his neighbors. The Hoosier is a natural story-teller; he relishes a joke, and totalk is his ideal of social enjoyment. This was true of the early Hoosier, and it is true to-day of his successor at the capital. The Monday night meetings of the Indianapolis Literary Club—organized in 1877 and with a continuous existence to this time—have been marked by racy talk. The original members are nearly all gone; but the sayings of a group of them—the stiletto thrusts of Fishback, the lawyer; the droll inadvertences of Livingston Howland, the judge; and the inimitable anecdotes of Myron Reed, soldier and preacher—crept beyond the club’s walls and became town property. This club is old and well seasoned. It is exclusive—so much so that one of its luminaries remarked that if all of its members should be expelled for any reason, none could hope to be readmitted. It has entertained but four pilgrims from the outer world,—Matthew Arnold, Dean Farrar, Joseph Parker, and John Fiske.
The Hoosier capital has always been susceptible to the charms of oratory. Most of the great lecturers in the golden age of the American lyceum were welcomed cordially at Indianapolis. The Indianapolis pulpit has been servedby many able men, and great store is still set by preaching. When Henry Ward Beecher ministered to the congregation of the Second Presbyterian Church (1838-46), his superior talents were recognized and appreciated. He gave a series of seven lectures to the young men of the city during the winter of 1843-44, on such subjects as “Industry,” “Gamblers and Gambling,” “Popular Amusements,” etc., which were published at Indianapolis immediately, in response to an urgent request signed by thirteen prominent citizens.
The women of Indianapolis have aided greatly in fashioning the city into an enlightened community. The wives and daughters of the founders were often women of cultivation, and much in the character of the city to-day is plainly traceable to their work and example. During the Civil War they did valiant service in caring for the Indiana soldier. They built for themselves in 1888 a building—the Propylæum—where many clubs meet; and they were long the mainstay of the Indianapolis Art Association, which, by a generous and unexpected bequest a few years ago, now boasts a permanentmuseum and school. It is worth remembering that the first woman’s club—in the West, at least—was organized on Hoosier soil—at Robert Owen’s New Harmony—in 1859. The women of the Hoosier capital have addressed themselves zealously in many organizations to the study of all subjects related to good government. The apathy bred of commercial success that has dulled the civic consciousness of their fathers and husbands and brothers has had the effect of stimulating their curiosity and quickening their energies along lines of political and social development.
I have been retouching here and there this paper as it was written ten years ago. In the intervening decade the population of Indianapolis has increased 38.1 per cent, jumping from 169,161 to 233,650, and passing both Providence and Louisville. Something of the Southern languor that once seemed so charming—something of what the plodding citizens of the mule-car days liked to call “atmosphere”—has passed. And yet the changes are, after all, chiefly such as address the eye rather than thespirit. There are more people, but there are more good people! The coming of the army post has widened our political and social horizons. The building of the Homeric speedway that has caused us to be written large on the world’s pink sporting pages, and the invasion of foreigners, have not seriously disturbed the old neighborliness, kindliness, and homely cheer. Elsewhere in these pages I mention the passing of the church as the bulwark behind which this community had entrenched itself; and yet much the same spirituality that was once observable endures, though known by new names.
The old virtues must still be dominant, for visitors sensitive to such impressions seem to be conscious of their existence. Only to-day Mr. Arnold Bennett, discoursing of America in “Harper’s Magazine,” finds here exactly the things whose passing it is the local fashion to deplore. In our maple-lined streets he was struck by the number of detached houses, each with its own garden. He found in these homes “the expression of a race incapable of looking foolish, of being giddy, of running to extremes.” And I am cheered by his declaration of a beliefthat in some of the comfortable parlors of our quiet thoroughfares there are “minor millionaires who wonder whether, outsoaring the ambition of a bit of property, they would be justified in creeping downtown and buying a cheap automobile!” And I had been afraid that every man among us with anything tangible enough to mortgage had undertaken the task of advertising one of our chief industries by modernizing Ezekiel’s vision of the wheels!
It is cheering to know that this pilgrim from the Five Towns thought us worthy of a place in his odyssey, and that his snapshots reveal so much of what my accustomed eyes sometimes fail to see. I am glad to be reëstablished by so penetrating an observer in my old faith that there are planted here on the West Fork of White River some of the roots of “essential America.” If we are not typical Americans we offer the nearest approach to it that I, in my incurable provincialism, know where to lay hands on.