Like all places in which idlers try to avoid finding out that they are idle, Palm Beach has very definite customs as to where to go, and at what time to go there. Excepting in its hours for going to bed and getting up, it runs on schedule. The official day begins with the bathing hour—half past eleven to half past twelve—when the two or three thousand people from the pair of vast hotels assemble before the casino on the beach. Golfers will, of course, be upon the links before this hour; fishermen will be casting from the pier or will be out in boats searching the sail fish—that being the "fashionable" fish at the present time; ladies of excessive circumference will be panting rapidly along the walks, their eyes holding that look of dreamy determination which painters put into the eyes of martyrs, and which a fixed intention to lose twenty pounds puts into the eyes of banting women. So, too, certain gentlemen of swarthy skin make their way to the casino sun parlor, where they disrobe and bake until the bathing hour. The object of this practice is to acquire, as nearly as a white man may, the complexion of a mulatto, and it is surprising to see how closely the skins of some more ardent members of the "Browning Club," as this group is called, match those of their chair boys. The underlying theory of the "Browning Club" is that a triple-plated coat of tan, taken north in March, advertises the wearer as having been at Palm Beach during the entire winter, thus establishing him as a man not merely of means, but of great endurance.
The women of Palm Beach seem to be divided into two distinct schools of thought on the subject of tanning. While none of them compete with the radicals of the "Browning Club," one may nevertheless observe that, in evening dress, many young ladies reveal upon their necks, shoulders, and arms, stenciled outlines of the upper margins of their bathing suits. Ladies of the opposing school, upon the contrary, guard the whiteness of their skins as jealously as the men of the "Browning Club" guard their blackness. Rather than be touched with tan, many ladies of the latter group deny themselves the pleasures of the surf. The parasols beneath which they arrive upon the sands are not lowered until they are safely seated beneath the green and blue striped canvas tops of their beach chairs, and it may be observed that even then they are additionally fortified against the light, by wide black hats and thick dark veils draped to mask their faces up to the eyes; "harem" veils, they call them—the name, however, signifying nothing polygamous.
A pleasant diversion at the beginning of the bathing hour occurs when some mere one-horse millionaire from a Middle-Western town appears on the beach with his family. He is newly arrived and is under the fond delusion that he is as good as anybody else and that his money is as good as any other person's money. Seeing the inviting rows of beach chairs, he and his family plump into several of them. They are hardly settled, however, when the man who attends to the beach chairs comes and asks them to get out, saying that the chairs are reserved.
The other thinks the man is lying like a head waiter, and demands to know for whom the chairs are reserved.
In reply the beach-chair man mentions, with suitable deference, the name of Mrs. Hopkinson Skipkinson Jumpkinson-Jones.
"Well," cries the Middle-Westerner, "Mrs. Jones isn't here yet, is she? She can't use the chairs now, can she, if she isn't here?"
Even without this evidence that he does not grasp at all, the seriousness of the beach-chair situation, the fact that the uncouth stranger has referred to Mrs. H. S. Jumpkinson-Jones merely as "Mrs. Jones," brands him among the Palm Beach "regulars" who have overheard him, as a barbarian of the barbarians. People in neighboring chairs at once turn their backs upon him and glance at each other knowingly with raised eyebrows. At this juncture, let us hope, the daughter of the intruder manages to pry him loose; let us hope also that she takes him aside and tells him what everybody ought to know: namely, that Mrs. H. S. Jumpkinson-Jones has been a society leader ever since the "Journal" published the full-page Sunday story about her having gold fillings put in her Boston terrier's teeth. That was away back in 1913, just before she was allowed to get her divorce from Royal Tewksbury Johnson III of Paris, Newport, and New York. The day after the divorce she married her present husband, and up to last year, when the respective wives of a munitions millionaire and a moving-picture millionaire began to cut in on her, no one thought of denying her claim to be the most wasteful woman in Palm Beach.
True, she may not come down to the beach to-day, but in that case it is obviously proper that her chairs—including those of her dog and her husband—remain magnificently vacant throughout the bathing hour.
The lady is, however, likely to appear. She will be wearing one of the seventy hats which, we have learned by the papers, she brought with her, and a pint or so of her lesser pearls. Her dog—which is sometimes served beside her at table at the Beach Club, and whose diet is the same as her own, even to strawberries and cream followed by a demi tasse—will be in attendance; and her husband, whose diet is even richer, may also appear if he has recovered from his matutinal headache. Here she will sit through the hour, gossiping with her friends, watching the antics of several beautiful, dubious women, camp followers of the rich, who add undoubted interest to the place; calling languidly to her dog: "Viens, Tou-tou! Viens vite!" above all waiting patiently, with crossed knees, for news-service photographers to come and take her picture—a picture which, when we see it presently in "Vogue," "Vanity Fair," or a Sunday newspaper, will present indisputable proof that Mrs. H. S. Jumpkinson-Jones and the ladies sitting near her (also with legs crossed) refrained from wearing bathing suits neither through excessive modesty nor for fear of revealing deformity of limb.
Many a Mrs. H. S. Jumpkinson-Jones has beaten her way to glory by the Palm Beach route. Many of the names which sound vaguely familiar when you read them in connection with the story of a jewel robbery, in lists of "those present," or in an insinuating paragraph in the tattered copy of "Town Topics" which you pick up, in lieu of reading matter, from the table in your dentist's waiting room, first broke into the paradise of the society column by way of this resort. For a woman with money and the press-agent type of mind it is not a difficult thing to accomplish. One must think of sensational things to do—invent a new fad in dress, or send one's dog riding each day in a special wheel chair, or bring down one's own private dancing instructor or golf instructor at $5,000 for the season. Above all, one must be nice to the correspondents of newspapers. Never must one forget to do that. Never must one imagine oneself so securely placed in society columns that one may forget the reporters who gave one that place.
One lady who, for several seasons, figured extensively in the news from Palm Beach, fell into this error. She thought herself safe, and altered her manner toward newspaper folk. But, alas! thereupon they altered their manner toward her. The press clippings sent by the bureau to which she subscribed became fewer and fewer. Her sensational feats went unnoticed. At last came a ball—one of the three big balls of the season; a New York paper printed a list of names of persons who went to the ball; a column of names in very small type. Lying in bed a few mornings later she read through the names and came to the end without finding her own. Thinking that she must have skipped it, she read the names over again with great care. Then she sent for her husband, and he read them. When it was clear to them both that her name was actually not there, it is said she went into hysterics. At all events, her husband came down in a rage and complained to the hotel management. But what could the management do? What can they do? The woman is doomed. The Palm Beach correspondents who "made" her have been snubbed by her and have unanimously declared "thumbs down." It is theirs to give, but let no climber be unmindful of the fact that it is also theirs to take away!
As Mrs. H. S. Jumpkinson-Jones looks over the top of her harem veil she may see a great glistening steam yacht, with rakish masts and funnel, lying off the pier-head; and down on the sand she may see the young master and mistress of that yacht: a modest, attractive pair, possessors of one of the world's great fortunes, yet not nearly so elaborately dressed, nor so insistent upon their "position," as the Jumpkinson-Joneses. By raising the brim of her hat a trifle Mrs. H. S. Jumpkinson-Jones may see, sweeping in glorious circles above the yacht, the hydroplane which, when it left the edge of the beach a few minutes since, blew back with its propeller a stinging storm of sand, and caused skirts to snap like flags in a hundred-mile-an-hour hurricane; and in that hydroplane she knows there is another multimillionaire.
Near by, sitting disconsolately upon the sand, are the one-horse Middle-Western millionaire with his wife and daughter—the three who were ousted from her seats by the beach-chair man. Mrs. H. S. Jumpkinson-Jones, like every one who has spent a season, let alone half a dozen seasons, at Palm Beach, immediately recognizes the type.
Father is the leading merchant of his town; mother the social arbiter; daughter the regnant belle. Father definitely didn't wish to come here, nor was mother anxious to, but daughter made them. Often she has read the lists of prominent arrivals at Palm Beach and seen alluring pictures of them taken on the sand. She has dreamed of the place, and in her dreams has seemed to hear the call of Destiny. Who knows? may it not be at Palm Beach that she will meet him?—the beautiful and wealthy scion of a noble house who (so the fortune teller at the Elks' Club bazaar told her) will rescue her from the narrow life at home, and transport her, as his bride, into a world of wonder and delight, and footmen in knee-breeches. Daughter insisted on Palm Beach. So mother got a lot of pretty clothes for daughter, and father purchased several yards of green and yellow railroad tickets, and off they went. They arrived at Palm Beach. They walked the miles of green carpeted corridor. They were dazed—as every one must be who sees them for the first time—at the stunning size of the hotels. They looked upon the endless promenade of other visitors. They went to the beach at bathing hour, to the cocoanut grove at the time for tea and dancing, in wheel chairs through the jungle trail and Reve d'Eté, to the waiters' cake walk in the Poinciana dining room, to the concert at the Breakers, to the palm room, and to the sea by moonlight; everywhere they went they saw people, people, people: richly dressed people, gay people, people who knew quantities of other people; yet among them all was not one single being that they had ever seen before. After several days of this, father met a man he knew—a business friend from Akron. A precious lot of good that did! Why didn't father know the two young men who sat last night at the next table in the dining room? Even those two would have done just now. Clearly they had been mad to know her too, for they were likewise feeling desolate. Perhaps mother can get father to scrape up an acquaintance with them. But alas, before this plan can be set in motion, the two young men have formed their own conclusions as to what Palm Beach is like when you do not know anybody in the place. They have departed. Next day, when mother enters daughter's room to say good night, she finds her weeping; and next day, to father's infinite relief, they start for home. So it has gone with many a bush-league belle.
Even the Mrs. Jumpkinson-Joneses, satiated though they be with private cars, press notices, and Palm Beach, can hardly fail to be sensible to the almost delirious beauty of the scene at bathing hour.
Nowhere is the sand more like a deep, warm dust of yellow gold; nowhere is there a margin of the earth so splashed with spots of brilliant color: sweaters, parasols, bathing suits, canvas shelters—blue, green, purple, pink, yellow, orange, scarlet—vibrating together in the sharp sunlight like brush marks on a high-keyed canvas by Sorolla; nowhere has flesh such living, glittering beauty as the flesh of long, white, lovely arms which flash out, cold and dripping, from the sea; nowhere does water appear less like water, more like a flowing waste of liquid emeralds and sapphires, held perpetually in cool solution and edged with a thousand gleaming, flouncing strings of pearls.
Over the beach lies a layer of people, formed in groups, some of them costumed for the water, some for the shore; some of them known to the great lady, many of them unknown to her. The groups are forever shifting as their members rise and run down to the sea, or come back shiny and dripping, to fling themselves again upon the warm sand, roll in it, or stretch out in lazy comfort while their friends shovel it over them with their hands. Now one group, or another, will rise and form a grinning row while a snap-shot is taken; now they recline again; now they scamper down to see the hydroplane come in; now they return, drop to the sand, and idly watch women bathers tripping past them toward the water. Here comes a girl in silken knickerbockers, with cuffs buttoning over her stockings like the cuffs of riding breeches. Heads turn simultaneously as she goes by. Here is a tomboy in a jockey cap; here two women wearing over their bathing suits brilliant colored satin wraps which flutter revealingly in the warm, fresh fragrant breeze. And now comes the slender, aristocratic, foreign-looking beauty who wears high-heeled slippers with her bathing costume, and steps gracefully to the water's edge under the shade of a bright colored Japanese parasol. It seems that every one must now be on the beach. But no! Here come the three most wonderful of all: the three most watched, most talked about, most spoiled, most coveted young women at Palm Beach. Their bathing suits are charming: very short, high waisted, and cut at the top like Empire evening gowns, showing lovely arms and shoulders. Hovering about them, like flies about a box of sweets, yet also with something of the jealous guardianship of watchdogs, is their usual escort of young men—for though they know none of the fashionable women, their beauty gives them a power of wide selection as to masculine society.
One is a show girl, famous in the way such girls become famous in a New York season, vastly prosperous (if one may judge by appearances), yet with a prosperity founded upon the capitalization of youth and amazing loveliness of person. The other two, less advertised, but hardly less striking in appearance, have been nicknamed, for the convenience of the gossips, "The Queen of Sheba," and "The Queen of the May." They too suggest, somehow, association with the trivial stage, but it is said that one of them—the slender wonderfully rounded one—has never had the footlights in her face, but has been (in some respects, at least), a model.
Like the climbers, like the bush league belle, these girls, we judge, brought definite ambitions with them to Palm Beach. Partly, no doubt, they came for pleasure, but also one hears stories of successful ventures made by men, on their behalf, at Beach Club tables, and of costly rings and brooches which they now possess, although they did not bring them with them. But after all, the sources from which come their jeweled trinkets may only be surmised, whereas, to the success of their desire for fun, the eyes and ears of the entire smiling beach bear witness. Watch them as they clasp hands and run down to the water's edge; see them prancing playfully where the waves die on the sand, while devoted swains launch the floating mattress upon which it is their custom to bask so picturesquely; see them now as they rush into the green waves and mount the softly rocking thing; observe the gleam of their white arms as, idly, they splash and paddle; note the languid grace of their recumbence: chins on hands, heels waving lazily in air; hear them squeal in inharmonious unison, as a young member of the "Browning Club," makes as though to splatter them, or mischievously threatens to overturn their unwieldy couchlike craft. Free from the restriction of ideas about "society," about the "tradition" of Palm Beach, about "convention," they seem to detect no difference between this resort and certain summer beaches, more familiar to them, and at the same time more used to boisterousness and cachinnation. They go everywhere, these girls. You will see them having big cocktails, in a little while, on the porch of the Breakers; you will see them having tea, and dancing under the dry rustling palm fronds of the cocoanut grove, when the colored electric lights begin to glow in the luminous semi-tropical twilight; and you will see them, resplendent, at the Beach Club, dining, or playing at the green-topped tables.
The Beach Club has been for some time, I suppose, the last redoubt held in this country by the forces of open, or semi-open gambling. Every now and then one hears a rumor that it is to be stormed and taken by the hosts of legislative piety, yet on it goes, upon its gilded way—a place, it should be said, of orderly, spectacular distinction. The Beach Club occupies a plain white house, low-spreading and unpretentious, but fitted most agreeably within, and boasting a superb cuisine. Not every one is admitted. Members have cards, and must be vouched for, formally, by persons known to those who operate the place. Many of the quiet pleasant people who, leading their own lives regardless of the splurging going on about them, form the background of Palm Beach life—much as "walking ladies and gentlemen" form the crowd in a spectacular theatrical production—have never seen the inside of the Beach Club; and I have little doubt that many visitors who drop in at Palm Beach for a few days never so much as hear of it. It is not run for them, nor for the "piker," nor for the needy clerk, but for the furious spenders.
Let us therefore view the Beach Club only as an interesting adjunct to Palm Beach life, and let us admit that, as such, it is altogether in the picture. Let us, in short, seek, upon this brief excursion, not only to recover from our case of grippe, but to recover also that sense of the purely esthetic, without regard to moral issues, which we used to enjoy some years ago, before our legislatures legislated virtue into us. Let us soar, upon the wings of our checkbook, in one final flight to the realms of unalloyed beauty. Let us, in considering this most extravagantly passionate and passionately extravagant of American resorts, be great artists, who are above morals. Let us refuse pointblank to consider morals at all. For by so doing we may avoid giving ourselves away.
The season wanes. Crowds on the beach grow thinner. Millionaires begin to move their private cars from Palm Beach sidings, and depart for other fashionable places farther north. Croupiers at the Beach Club stand idle for an hour at a time, though ready to spin the wheel, invitingly, for any one who saunters in. The shops hold cut-price sales. And we, regarding somewhat sadly our white trousers, perceive that there does not remain a single spotless pair. The girl in Mr. Foster's fruit store has more leisure, now, and smiles agreeably as we pass upon our way to the hotel dining-room. The waiter, likewise, is not pressed for time.
"They was seven-hunduhd an' twe've folks heah yestahday," he says. "On'y six-fohty-three to-day. Ah reckon they a-goin' t' close the Breakuhs day aftuh t'-mo'w."
Still the flowers bloom; still the place is beautiful; still the weather is not uncomfortably warm. Nevertheless the season dies. And so it comes about that we depart.
The ride through Florida is tedious. The miles of palmettoes, with leaves glittering like racks of bared cutlasses in the sun, the miles of dark swamp, in which the cypresses seem to wade like dismal club-footed men, the miles of live-oak strung with their sad tattered curtains of Spanish moss, the miles of sandy waste, of pineapple and orange groves, of pines with feathery palm-like tops, above all the sifting of fine Florida dust, which covers everything inside the car as with a coat of flour—these make you wish that you were North again.
The train stops at a station. You get off to walk upon the platform. The row of hackmen and hotel porters stand there, in gloomy silent defiance of the rapidly approaching end of things, each holding a sign bearing the name of some hotel. In another week the railway company may, if it wishes, lift the ban on shouting hotel runners. Let them shout. There will be nobody to hear.
You buy a newspaper.
Ah! What is this? "Great Blizzard in New York—Trains Late—Wires Down."
You know what New York blizzards are. You picture the scenes being enacted there to-day. You see the icy streets with horses falling down. You see cyclonic clouds of snow whirl savagely around the corners of high buildings, pelting the homegoing hoards, whirling them about, throwing women down upon street crossings. You have a vision of the muddy, slushy subway steps, and slimy platforms, packed with people, their clothing caked with wet white spangles. You see them wedged, cross and damp, into the trains, and hear them coughing into one another's necks. You see emaciated tramps, pausing to gaze wanly into bakery windows: men without overcoats, their collars turned up, their hands deep in the pockets of their trousers, their heads bent against the storm; you see them walk on to keep from freezing. You remember Roscoe Conkling. That sort of thing can happen in a New York blizzard! Little tattered newsboys, thinly clad, will die to-night upon cold corners. Poor widows, lacking money to buy coal, are shuddering even now in squalid tenements, and covering their wailing little ones with shoddy blankets.
"Horrible!" you say, sighing upon the balmy air. Then, with the sweetly resigned philosophy of Palm Beach, you add:
"Oh, well, what does it matter? I'm in Florida anyhow. After all it is a pretty good old world!"
Florida in winter comes near to being all things to all men. To all she offers amusement plus her climate, and in no one section is the contrast in what amusement constitutes, and costs, set forth more sharply than where, on the west coast of the State, Belleair and St. Petersburg are situated, side by side.
The Hotel Belleview at Belleair compares favorably with any in the State, and is peopled, during the cold months, with affluent golf maniacs, for whom two fine courses have been laid out.
When the pipes supplying water for the greens of his home course, at Brook, Indiana, freeze, annually, George Ade, for instance, knows that, instead of hibernating, it is time for him to take his white flannel suits, hang them on the clothesline in the back yard until the fragrance of the moth-ball has departed, pack them in his wardrobe trunk, and take his winter flight to the Belleview. He knows that, at the Belleview, he will meet hundreds of men and women who are suffering from the malady with which he is afflicted.
The conversation at Belleair is, so far as my companion and I could learn, confined entirely to comparisons between different courses, different kinds of clubs and balls, and different scores. Belleair turns up its nose at Palm Beach. It considers the game of golf as played at Palm Beach a trifling game, and it feels that the winter population of Palm Beach wastes a lot of time talking about clothes and the stock market when it might be discussing cleeks, midirons, and mashies. The woman who thinks it essential to be blond whether she is blond or not, and who regards Forty-second Street as the axle upon which the universe turns, would be likely to die of ennui in a week at Belleair, whereas, in Palm Beach, if she died in that time, it would probably be of delight—with a possibility of alcoholism as a contributing cause. And likewise, though Belleair has plutocrats in abundance, they are not starred for their wealth, as are the Palm Beach millionaires, nor yet for their social position, but are rated strictly according to their club handicap. Hence it happens that if, speaking of a Palm Beach millionaire, you ask: "How did he make it?" you will be told the story of some combine of trusts, some political grafting, or some widely advertised patent medicine; but if you ask in Belleair: "How did he make it?" the answer is likely to be: "He made it in 4, with a cleek."
Consider on the other hand, St. Petersburg, with its cheap hotels, its boarding houses, its lunch rooms and cafeterias, and its winter population of farmers and their wives from the North. The people you see in St. Petersburg are identical with those you might see on market day in a county town of Ohio or Indiana. Several thousands of them come annually from several dozen States, and many a family of them lives through the winter comfortably on less than some other families spend at Belleair in a week, or at Palm Beach in a day.
If I am any judge of the signs of happiness, there is plenty of it in the hearts of those who winter at St. Petersburg. The city park is full of contented people, most of them middle-aged or old. The women listen to the band, and the men play checkers under the palmetto-thatched shelter, or toss horseshoes on the greensward, at the sign of the Sunshine Pleasure Club—an occupation which is St. Petersburg's equivalent for Palm Beach's game of tossing chips on the green-topped tables of a gambling house. And yet—
Is it always pleasant to be virtuous? Is it always delightful to be where pious people, naïve people, people who love simple pastimes, are enjoying themselves? I am reminded of a talk I had with a negro whose strong legs turned the pedals of a wheel chair in which my companion and I rode one day through the Palm Beach jungle trail. It is a wonderful place, that jungle, with its tangled trunks and vines and its green foliage swimming in sifted sunlight; with its palms, palmettoes, ferns, and climbing morning-glories, its banana trees, gnarled rubber banyans, and wild mangoes—which are like trees growing upside down, digging their spreading branches into the ground. For a time we forgot the pedaling negro behind us, but a faint puffing sound on a slight up-grade reminded us, presently, that our party was not of two, but three. When the chair was running free again, one of us inquired of the chairman:
"What would you do if you had a million dollars?"
"Well, boss," replied the negro seriously, "Ah knows one thing Ah'd do. No mattuh how much o' dis worl's goods Ah haid, Ah'd allus get mah exuhcize."
"That's wise," my companion replied. "What kind of exercise would you take?"
"Ah ain't nevvuh jest stedied dat out, boss," returned the man. "But it sho' would be some kind o' exuhcize besides pushin' one o' dese-heah chaihs."
"When you weren't exercising would you go and have a good time?"
"No, boss."
"Why not?"
"Well, boss, y' see Ah's a 'ligious man, Ah is."
"But can't people who are religious have a good time?"
"Oh," said the negro, "dey might have deh little pleasuhs now an' den, but dey cain't hev no sich good times like othah folks kin. A man 't 's a 'ligious man, he cain't hev no sich good times like Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y's an' dem folks 'at was heah up to laist week. Ah was Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y's chaih boy. He gimme ninety-two dollahs an' fifty cents tips one week! Yassuh! Dat might be cha'ity but 't ain't 'ligion. Mistuh Dodge, his chaih boy's been a-wohkin' foh 'im six weeks. I 'spec' Mistuh Dodge give dat boy fahve hund'ud dollahs if he give 'im a cent! Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y's pahty, dey haid nineteen chaihs waitin' on 'em all de time, jest foh t' drive 'em f'om de ho-tel to de club, an' de casino. Dat cos' 'em nineteen hund'ud dollahs a week, and de boys, dey ain't one o'em 'at git less'n hund'ud dolluhs fo' hisself. Dat's de kin' o' gen'men Mistuh Wahtuhbe'y an' his pahty is. Ah's haid sev'ul gen'men dis season dat ain't what you'd jes' say, 'ligious, but dey was, as folks calls it, p'ofuse. Dey was one ol' gen'man heah two weeks, an' deh was a young lady what he haid a attachment on, an' evvy evenin' 'e use' t' take huh foh a wheel-chaih ride in de moonlight. Fuhst night Ah took 'em out he tuhn to me, an' he says: 'Look-a-heah, boy! You sho you knows youah duties?'
"'Yassuh, boss,' Ah tell 'im. 'Deed Ah does!'
"'Den what is youah duties den?' sez 'e.
"Ah say: 'Boss, de chaih boy's duties, dey's to be dumb, an' deef, an' blin', an' dey cain't see nothin', an' dey cain't say nothin', an' dey cain't heah nothin', and dey cain't—'
"'Dass 'nuff,' he say. 'Ah sees you knows youah business. Heah's fiffy dollahs.'"
"Well," one of us asked presently, "what happened?"
"Ah took 'em ridin' through de jungle trail, boss," he returned, innocently.
"What did they do?"
"How does Ah know, boss? Di'n' Ah have ma eyes covuhed wi' dat fiffy dollahs? Di'n' Ah have ma eahs stuff' wid it? Yassuh! An' Ah got ma mouf full o' it yit!"
The chair boys, bell boys, waiters, barbers, porters, bartenders, waitresses, chambermaids, manicures, and shop attendants one finds in Palm Beach, Belleair, Miami, and many other winter resorts, are, numerically, a not inconsiderable part of the season's population, and the lives of these people who form a background of service, of which many an affluent visitor is hardly conscious, parallel the lives of the rich in a manner that is not without a note of caricature.
When the rich go South so do the hordes that serve them; when the Florida season begins to close and the rich move northward, the serving population likewise begins to melt away; if you are in Palm Beach near the season's end, and move up to St. Augustine, or Jacksonville, or Augusta, or any one of a dozen other places, you are likely to recognize, here and there, a waiter, a bell-boy, or a chambermaid whom you tipped, some weeks earlier, preparatory to leaving a latitude several degrees nearer the Equator. When you leave the Poinciana or the Breakers at the season's close, your waiter may, for all you know, be in the Jim Crow car, ahead, and when you go in to dinner at the Ponce de Leon at St. Augustine, or the Mason at Jacksonville, you may discover that he too has stopped off there for a few days, to gather in the final tips. Nor must you fancy, when you depart for the North, that you have seen the last of him. Next summer when you take a boat up the Hudson, or go to Boston by the Fall River Line, or drop in at a hotel at Saratoga, there he will be, like an old friend. The bartender who mixes you a pick-me-up on the morning that you leave the Breakers, will be ready to start you on the downward path, at the beginning of the summer, at some Northern country club; the barber who cuts your hair at the Royal Palm in Miami will be ready to perform a like service, later on, at some hotel in the Adirondacks or the White Mountains; the neat waitress who serves you at the Belleview at Belleair will appear before you three or four months hence at the Griswold near New London; the adept waiter from the Beach Club at Palm Beach will seem to you to look like some one you have seen before when, presently, he places viands before you at Sherry's, or the Ritz, or some fashionable restaurant in London or Paris. Likewise, when you enter the barber shop of a large hostelry just off the board walk in Atlantic City, next July, you will find there, in the same generously ventilated shirt waist, the manicurist who caused your nails to glisten so superbly in the Florida sunlight; and if she has the memory for faces which is no small part of a successful manicurist's stock in trade, she will remember you, and where she saw you last, and will tell you just which of the young women from "The Follies" and the Century Theater are to be seen upon the beach that day, and whether they are wearing, here on the Jersey coast, those same surprising bathing suits which, last February, caused blasé gentlemen basking upon the Florida sands to sit up, arise, say it was time for one last dip before luncheon, and then, without seeming too deliberate about it, follow the amazing nymphs in the direction of a matchless sea—that sea which, as a background for these Broadway girls in their long silken hosiery, takes on a tone of spectacular unreality, like some fantastic marine back drop devised by Mr. Dillingham or Mr. Ziegfeld.
As I have remarked before, it is a long haul from the peninsula of Florida to New Orleans. There are two ways to go. The route by way of Pensacola, following the Gulf Coast, looks shorter on the map but is, I believe, in point of time consumed, the longer way. My companion and I were advised to go by way of Montgomery, Alabama—a long way around it looked—where we were to change trains, catching a New Orleans-bound express from the North.
It was nearly midnight when, after a long tiresome journey, we arrived in Alabama's capital, and after midnight when we reached the comfortable if curiously called Hotel Gay-Teague, which is not named for an Indian chief or a kissing game, but for two men who had to do with building it.
We had heard that Montgomery was a quiet, sleepy old town, and had expected to go immediately to bed on our arrival. What then was our amazement at hearing, echoing through the wide street in front of the hotel, the sound of strident ragtime. Investigation disclosed a gaudily striped tent of considerable size set up in the street and illuminated by those flaring naphtha lamps they use in circuses. Going over to the tent, we learned that there was dancing within, whereupon we paid our fifteen cents apiece and entered. I have forgotten what produced the music—it may have been a mechanical piano or a hurdy-gurdy—but there was music, and it was loud, and there was a platform laid over the cobble-stones of the street, and on that platform ten or more couples were "ragging," their shoulders working like the walking beams of side-wheelers. The men were of that nondescript type one would expect to see in a fifteen-cent dancing place, but the women were of curious appearance, for all were dressed alike, the costume being a fringed khaki suit with knee-length skirt, a bandana at the neck, and a sombrero. On inquiry I learned that this was called a "cowgirl" costume. The dances were very brief, and in the intervals between them most of the dancers went to a "bar" at the end of the tent where (Alabama being a dry State) the beverage called "coca-cola"—a habit as much as a drink—was being served in whisky glasses.
Unable to understand why this pageant of supposed western mining-camp life should confront us in the streets of Alabama's capital, I made inquiry of an amiable policeman who was on duty in the tent, and learned that this was not a regular Montgomery institution, but one of the attractions of a street fair which had invaded the city—the main body of the fair being a block or two distant.
These fairs, he said, travel about the country much as circuses do, making arrangements in advance with various organizations in different places to stand sponsor for them.
Long after we were in our beds that night we were kept awake by the sound of ragtime from the tent across the way. I arose next morning with the feeling of one who has had insufficient sleep, and a glance at my companion, who was already at table when I reached the hotel dining room, informed me that he was suffering from a like complaint. I took my seat opposite him in silence, and he acknowledged my presence with a nod which he accomplished without looking up from his newspaper.
After breakfast there arrived a pleasant gentleman who announced himself as secretary of one of the city's commercial organizations.
"We have a motor here," said the secretary, "and will show you points of interest. Is there anything in particular you wish to see?"
"I think," said my companion, "that it would be a good thing to see the street fair."
"Oh, no," said the secretary earnestly. "You don't want to see that. There is nothing about it that is representative of Montgomery. It is just a traveling show such as you might run into anywhere."
"Yes," I said, "but we never have run into one before, and here it is."
"I have said right along," declared the secretary, somberly, "that it was a great mistake to bring this fair here at all. I don't think you ought to pay any attention to it in your book. It will give people a wrong impression of our city."
"Do you think it will, if I explain that it is just a traveling fair?"
"Yes. Wait until you see what we have to show you. We want you to understand that Montgomery is a thriving metropolis, sir!"
"What is there to see?"
"Montgomery," he replied, "is known as 'The City of Sunshine.' It is rich in history. It has superior hotels, picturesque highways, good fishing and hunting, two golf courses, seven theaters, a number of tennis courts, and unsurpassed artesian water. It has free factory sites, the cheapest electric power rates in the United States, and is the best-lighted city in the country."
"We have some pretty fair street lighting in New York," interjected my companion, who takes much pride in his home town.
"I said 'one of the best lighted,'" replied the secretary.
"What is the population?"
"Montgomery," the other returned, "is typical of both the Old and the New South. Though it may be called a modern model city, its wealth of history and tradition are preserved with loving care by its myriad inhabitants."
"How many inhabitants?"
"Roses and other flowers are in bloom here throughout the year," said he. "Also there are six hundred miles of macadamized and picturesque highways in Montgomery County. Indeed, this region is a motorist's paradise."
"How many people did you say?"
"Montgomery," he answered, "is the trading center for a million prosperous souls."
At this my companion, who had been reading up Montgomery in a guidebook, began to bristle with hidden knowledge.
"You say there are a million people here?" he demanded.
"Not right here," admitted the secretary.
"Well, how many do you claim?"
"Fifty-five thousand four hundred and ten."
"Right in the city?"
"Well, in the trolley-car territory."
"But in the city itself?" my companion insisted.
The secretary was fairly cornered. "The 1910 census," he said, with a smile, "gave us about forty thousand."
"Thirty-eight thousand one hundred and thirty-six," corrected my companion. He had not spent hours with the guidebook for nothing.
When, presently, we got into the automobile, I gave another feeble chirp about the fair, but the secretary was adamant, so we yielded temporarily, and were whirled about the city.
Montgomery is a charming old town, not only by reason of the definite things it has to show, but also because of a general rich suggestion of old southern life.
The day, by a fortunate chance, was Saturday, and everywhere we went we encountered negroes driving in from the country to market, in their rickety old wagons. On some wagons there would be four or five men and women, and here and there one would be playing a musical instrument and they would all be singing, while the creaking of the wagon came in with an orchestral quality which seemed grotesquely suitable. The mules, too, looked as though they ought to creak, and an inspection of the harness suggested that it was held together, not so much by the string and wire with which it was mended, as by the fingers of that especial Providence which watches over all kinds of absurd repairs made by negroes, and makes them hold for negroes, where they would not hold for white men.