VII
THE TWIN CITIES AND TEN THOUSAND LAKES
August 6th and 7th we spent in St. Paul, at the first-class St. Paul Hotel—a perfect joy! Our stay here was filled with interest. The capitol building is a noble pile. Summit Avenue boasts of many beautiful homes, but the business life is fast overtaking it. Minneapolis is such a close neighbor that we could not tell where one city began and the other left off. Here cousins took us to the Athletic Club for lunch, in as beautiful a café as we have seen. A bounteous luncheon was served for sixty cents that we would have paid at least two dollars for in New York. This was our last feast on broiled whitefish. As we were all chatting over our trip, a crash as of broken china brought us to a pause. “What in Heaven’s name is that?” we exclaimed. “Oh, just the boys in the ‘training’ café, having a hurry-up lunch,” laughed our host. On the many floors men were spending their noon-hour exercising and keeping themselves fit.
We drove out to the famous summer resort, Lake Minnetonka, picturesque and edged with lovely summer homes. Near by were the Minnehaha Falls, known to all Longfellow lovers, and the Fort Snelling reservation, where the sturdy pioneers defended their lives in the old round tower and block-house. By far the most attractive spot we visited was Christmas Lake, seventeen miles out of town, where the Radisson Inn nestles in the woods, quite hidden from the highway. No private villa could be more lovely. In the large dining-room, which was really a sun-parlor, each table had its own color-scheme, with vines and wild flowers. Plants, ferns, vines, and flowers growing everywhere in the most original baskets and boxes made of twigs, bark, or moss. We all stood exclaiming, like a lot of children, “Isn’t it adorable?”—“Oh, my dear, do look at this Indian rug!”—“Where did they get this willow furniture?”—“Altman never had such exquisite cretonnes!”—“Let’s give up the trip and stop here!”—and so on. We were told that the table was in keeping with the house, and that the place was full all season. This was another high spot on the trip.
Still another pleasure was in store for us—we were to play golf and dine at the Town and City Club. The club is situated between the two cities, near the banks of the Mississippi River. We drove past before we realized that it was not a private estate. Stopping a young man, we asked where the club was. “Got me stuck, Missis; never heard of it.” A small boy of seven came up, and, with a withering glance which took us all in, waved his arm, saying, “Right before your eyes!” We drove through lovely grounds to the club-house. Such gorgeous old trees!—hedges that made you think of Devonshire, lawns like velvet, and a riot of color in the beds and borders—every flowering shrub and plant you could dream of. Of course, the links were fine, and the twilight lasted until nearly nine o’clock. We had ordered dinner in advance; so by a quarter to nine we were seated at our table, with faultless appointments, enjoying such a good dinner, and watching the sky-line of Minneapolis, with its church spires and towering buildings, fade in the afterglow of the sunset. Not one of us spoke as the twilight deepened and the stars came out; we went out on the lawn and saw the new harvest moon through the trees—a bit of Nature’s fairyland, the memory of which will always stay with us.
Here we left the Yellowstone Trail and followed the National Parks Highway north to Fargo, North Dakota, 265 miles; winding in and out over good roads through a myriad of lakes—ten thousand, we were told—in Minnesota. Every mile of the way, as far as the eye could see, were acres of potatoes, corn, and wheat, fertile and green. If you want to visualize Frank Norris’s books and understand how we can feed starving Europe, motor through this state. It was harvest-time. Great tractors were snorting like live creatures, hundreds of men on the big ranches were “bringing in the sheaves,” the country was alive with action, and the world was to reap the benefit of the toil and endless energy of these sturdy men. You have never seen our country until you have traveled through this great grain-belt. Every small town had two or three grain elevators. There were beautiful fields of alfalfa, a mass of bloom with its bluish purple flower as sweet as honey. As we came near these fields, the air was always cool. We couldn’t account for it; but it is a strange fact that the air is considerably cooler when you near an alfalfa field. Can you see the picture? Lakes on every side, as blue as great sapphires, sparkling in the sun, the road lined with the wild sunflowers, often forming a golden hedge on either side for miles, the blue mass of color of the alfalfa fields, and above it the green corn and golden wheat. The magpies were in flocks, and the sea-gulls were skimming over the inland lakes, hundreds of miles from any large body of water, and hundreds more of them were resting on the shores. Strange, was it not? Through the West we have noted the absence of many birds, especially in Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. But here the crops were so abundant that the little songsters “had first whack at the grain,” as my husband remarked. He was the bird-man of the party, and when he was driving at a top-notch speed or turning a hairpin curve he would calmly ask, “Did you girls see that blue heron?”
Alexandria, and the hotel of the same name, were comfortable beyond our hopes. The next day we passed through Fergus Falls, where the cyclone of June 22d had demolished the better part of the town. It had been a thriving, attractive place in the heart of the grain-belt, with fine buildings and pretty homes. Now, less than two months later, the wreck and débris were appalling. The wind had wrought strange sights. We saw a sewing-machine in the top of a neighbor’s tree, festooned with bedding, petticoats, and a bird-cage. Houses were turned over as if they had been toys; others were crushed to kindling. Here a small tree or a chicken-coop would be intact, and a building five feet away would be demolished. We stopped off for lunch in a small café in the part of the town that had escaped the gale. The people were talking of nothing else. The whole countryside had driven in to see it, to take the sufferers home, or to render assistance. The waitress paid no attention to our order—just talked. “Why, lady, it was the awfullest thing you ever heard tell on! One moment we were all sitting at our work, and then we heard a roar like a mad bull, or thunder, and the sky got so black that you couldn’t see across that counter. Windows smashed in, and this house shook like jelly. Folks were blown down that street like old newspapers. Scared? My Gawd! we just crawled under the counter and prayed! The door was blown in and the front window smashed. A little kid was blown across that street and straight through that broken glass. My maw’s house was shook to pieces. Maw was cookin’, and she and the stove went off together. Paw was feedin’ the cattle; when we found him he was lyin’ in the next lot with a cow a-lyin’ on top of him and a milkpail a-coverin’ of his head. Most everyone got cut by the glass or broke an arm or leg, tryin’ to hold on to somethin’. The piany in the schoolhouse was took up and planted in a street two blocks away not hurt a bit. It sounds just beautiful now. Some folks I know had their two cats and three dogs killed, and the canary was a-singin’ like mad when they found the house in the end of the garden. The wire fences were the worst; they just wound themselves up like yarn.” Many others told us similar weird tales. We left that town, already being rebuilt, a sober party.
“I wonder what would happen to us if we should meet such a cyclone,” said Toodles.
“I think we would ‘blow in’ to lunch with our friends in Boston,” mused the bird-man.
He has given me this list of birds that we saw through the West: Mudhens, bluebirds, bluejays, robins, ospreys, cranes, loons, terns, the Canada goose, song-sparrows, meadowlarks, hawks, wild swans, woodpeckers, orioles, wild doves, and others. Later we saw sagehens and eagles.