The Project Gutenberg eBook of Abroad at Home, by Julian Street

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ABROAD AT HOME

BY JULIAN STREET

ABROAD AT HOME

AMERICAN RAMBLINGS, OBSERVATIONS, AND
ADVENTURES OF JULIAN STREET

WITH PICTORIAL SIDELIGHTS

BY

WALLACE MORGAN

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1915

TO MY FATHER

The Author takes this opportunity to thank the old friends, and the new ones, who assisted him in so many ways, upon his travels. Especially, he makes his affectionate acknowledgment to his wise and kindly companion, the Illustrator, whose admirable drawings are far from being his only contribution to this volume.

CHAPTER		PAGE
	STEPPING WESTWARD
I	STEPPING WESTWARD	3
II	BIFURCATED BUFFALO	21
III	CLEVELAND CHARACTERISTICS	40
IV	MORE CLEVELAND CHARACTERISTICS	48
	MICHIGAN MEANDERINGS
V	DETROIT THE DYNAMIC	65
VI	AUTOMOBILES AND ART	77
VII	THE MÆCENAS OF THE MOTOR	91
VIII	THE CURIOUS CITY OF BATTLE CREEK	105
IX	KALAMAZOO	121
X	GRAND RAPIDS THE "ELECT"	127
	CHICAGO
XI	A MIDDLE-WESTERN MIRACLE	139
XII	FIELD'S AND THE "TRIBUNE"	150
XIII	THE STOCKYARDS	164
XIV	THE HONORABLE HINKY DINK	173
XV	AN OLYMPIAN PLAN	181
XVI	LOOKING BACKWARD	187
	"IN MIZZOURA"
XVII	SOMNOLENT ST. LOUIS	201
XVIII	THE FINER SIDE	221
XIX	HANNIBAL AND MARK TWAIN	237
XX	PIKE AND POKER	253
XXI	OLD RIVER DAYS	267
	THE BEGINNING OF THE WEST
XXII	KANSAS CITY	275
XXIII	ODDS AND ENDS	291
XXIV	COLONEL NELSON'S "STAR"	302
XXV	KEEPING A PROMISE	313
XXVI	THE TAME LION	323
XXVII	KANSAS JOURNALISM	337
XXVIII	A COLLEGE TOWN	345
XXIX	MONOTONY	365
	THE MOUNTAINS AND THE COAST
XXX	UNDER PIKE'S PEAK	379
XXXI	HITTING A HIGH SPOT	400
XXXII	COLORADO SPRINGS	417
XXXIII	CRIPPLE CREEK	434
XXXIV	THE MORMON CAPITAL	439
XXXV	THE SMITHS	454
XXXVI	PASSING PICTURES	465
XXXVII	SAN FRANCISCO	474
XXXVIII	"BEFORE THE FIRE"	488
XXXIX	AN EXPOSITION AND A "BOOSTER"	498
XL	NEW YORK AGAIN	507

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The St. Francis at tea-time.—With her hotels San Francisco is New York, but with her people she is San Francisco—which comes near being the apotheosis of praise. Frontispiece	FACING PAGE

I was moving about my room, my hands full of hairbrushes and toothbrushes and clothesbrushes and shaving brushes; my head full of railroad trains, and hills, and plains, and valleys	5
A dusky redcap took my baggage	12
What scenes these black, pathetic people had passed through—were passing through! Why did they not look up in wonderment?.	17
We made believe we wanted to go out and smoke. And as we left our seats she made believe she didn't know that we were going.	23
The gentleman who favored linen mesh was a fat, prosperous-looking person, whose gold-rimmed spectacles reflected flying lights from out of doors	26
In a few hours there was enough shame around us to have lasted all the reformers and muckrakers I know a whole month	32
My companion and I made excuses to go downstairs and wash our hands in the public washroom, just for the pleasure of doing so without fear of being attacked by a swarthy brigand with a brush	35
I was prepared to take the field against all comers, not only in favor of simplicity, but in favor of anything and everything which was favored by my hostess	38
Chamber of Commerce representatives were with us all the first day and until we went to our rooms, late at night	43
It is an Elizabethan building, with a heavy timbered front, suggesting some ancient, hospitable, London coffee house where wits of old were used to meet	46
In this charming, homelike old building, with its grandfather's clock, its Windsor chairs, and its open wood fires, a visitor finds it hard to realize that he is in the "west"	53
Down by the docks we saw gigantic, strange machines, expressive of Cleveland's lake commerce—machines for loading and unloading ships in the space of a few hours	60
In midstream passes a continual parade of freighters ... and in their swell you may see, teetering, all kinds of craft, from proud white yachts to canoes	71
The automobile has not only changed Detroit from a quiet old town into a rich, active city, but upon the drowsy romance of the old days it has superimposed the romance of modern business	74
Of course there was order in that place, of course there was system—relentless system—terrible "efficiency"—but to my mind it expressed but one thing, and that thing was delirium	97
Never, since then, have I heard men jeering over women as they look in dishabille, without wondering if those same men have ever seen themselves clearly in the mirrored washroom of a sleeping car	112
"Can that stuff," admonished Miss Buck in her easy, offhand manner	117
She was saying to herself (and, unconsciously, to us, through the window): "If I had played that hand, I never should have done it that way!"	124
Rodin's "Thinker"	145
Chicago's skyline from the docks.... A city which rebuilt itself after the fire; in the next decade doubled its size; and now has a population of two million, plus a city of about the size of San Francisco	160
Two rabbis, old bearded men, performed the rites with long, slim, shiny blades	177
As I stood there, studying the temperament of pigs, I saw the butcher looking up at me.... I have never seen such eyes	192
The bold front of Michigan Avenue along Grant Park ... great buildings wreathed in whirling smoke and that allegory of infinity which confronts one who looks eastward	196
The dilapidation of the quarter has continued steadily from Dickens's day to this, and the beauty now to be discovered there is that of decay and ruin	205
The three used bridges which cross the Mississippi River at St. Louis are privately controlled toll bridges	212
The skins are handled in the raw state ... with the result that the floor of the exchange is made slippery by animal fats, and that the olfactory organs encounter smells not to be matched in any zoo	221
St. Louis needs to be taken by the hand and led around to some municipal-improvement tailor, some civic haberdasher	225
We came upon the "Mark Twain House."... And to think that, wretched as this place was, the Clemens family were forced to leave it for a time because they were too poor to live there	240
At one side is an alley running back to the house of Huckleberry Finn, and in that alley stood the historic fence which young Sam Clemens cajoled the other boys into whitewashing for him	244
Never outside of Brittany and Normandy have I seen roads so full of animals as those of Pike County	253
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	268
Looking down from Kersey Coates Drive, one sees ... the appalling web of railroad tracks, crammed with freight cars, which seen through a softening haze of smoke, resemble a relief map—strange, vast and pictorial	289
Colonel Nelson is a "character." Even if he didn't own the "Star," ... he would be a "character."... I have called him a volcano; he is more like one than any other man I have ever met	304
Mr. Fish informed me that the waters of Excelsior Springs resemble the waters of Homburg, the favorite watering place of the late King Edward—or, rather, I think he put it the other way round	322
We strolled in the direction of the old house, that house of tragedy in which the family lived in the troublous times.... It was there that the Pinkertons threw the bomb	328
It was Frank James.... He looks more like a prosperous farmer or the president of a rural bank than like a bandit. In his manner there is a strong note of the showman	335
The campus seems to have "just growed."... Nevertheless, there is a sort of homely charm about the place, with its unimposing, helter-skelter piles of brick and stone	353
Even at sea the great bowl of the sky had never looked to me so vast	368
The little towns of western Kansas are far apart and have, like the surrounding scenery, an air of sadness and desolation	373
In the lobby of the Brown Palace Hotel we saw several old fellows, sitting about, looking neither prosperous nor busy, but always talking mines. A kind word, or even a pleasant glance, is enough to set them off	380
"Ain't Nature wonderful!"	405
I was by this time very definitely aware that I had my fill of winter motoring in the mountains. The mere reluctance I felt as we began to climb had now developed into a passionate desire to desist	412
The homes of Colorado Springs really explain the place and the society is as cosmopolitan as the architecture	417
On the road to Cripple Creek we were always turning, always turning upward	432
We were invited to meet the President of the Mormon Church and some members of his family at the Beehive House, his official residence	452
The Lion House—a large adobe building in which formerly resided the rank and file of Brigham Young's wives	461
The Cliff House has a Sorrento setting and hectic turkey-trotting nights	468
The Salt-water pool, Olympic Club, San Francisco	477
The switchboard of the Chinatown telephone exchange is set in a shrine and the operators are dressed in Chinese silks	496
We believed we had encountered every kind of "booster" that creeps, crawls, walks, crows, cries, bellows, barks or brays, but it remained for the Exposition to show us a new specimen	504
New York—Everyone is in a hurry. Everyone is dodging everyone else. Everyone is trying to keep his knees from being knocked by swift-passing suitcases	513

STEPPING WESTWARD

ABROAD AT HOME

CHAPTER I

STEPPING WESTWARD

"What, you are stepping westward?"—"Yea."
—'Twould be a wildish destiny,
If we, who thus together roam
In a strange Land, and far from home,
Were in this place the guests of Chance:
Yet who would stop or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a sky to lead him on?

—Wordsworth.

For some time I have desired to travel over the United States—to ramble and observe and seek adventure here, at home, not as a tourist with a short vacation and a round-trip ticket, but as a kind of privateer with a roving commission. The more I have contemplated the possibility the more it has engaged me. For we Americans, though we are the most restless race in the world, with the possible exception of the Bedouins, almost never permit ourselves to travel, either at home or abroad, as the "guests of Chance." We always go from one place to another with a definite purpose. We never amble. On the boat, going to Europe, we talk of leisurely trips away from the "beaten track," but we never take them. After we land we rush about obsessed by "sights," seeing with the eyes of guides and thinking the "canned" thoughts of guidebooks.

In order to accomplish such a trip as I had thought of I was even willing to write about it afterward. Therefore I went to see a publisher and suggested that he send me out upon my travels.

I argued that Englishmen, from Dickens to Arnold Bennett, had "done" America; likewise Frenchmen and Germans. And we have traveled over there and written about them. But Americans who travel at home to write (or, as in my case, write to travel) almost always go in search of some specific thing: to find corruption and expose it, to visit certain places and describe them in detail, or to catch, exclusively, the comic side. For my part, I did not wish to go in search of anything specific. I merely wished to take things as they might come. And—speaking of taking things—I wished, above all else, to take a good companion, and I had him all picked out: a man whose drawings I admire almost as much as I admire his disposition; the one being who might endure my presence for some months, sharing with me his joys and sorrows and collars and cigars, and yet remain on speaking terms with me.

They were incredulous. That is the New York attitude of mind. Your "typical New Yorker" really thinks that any man who leaves Manhattan Island for any destination other than Europe or Palm Beach must be either a fool who leaves voluntarily or a criminal taken off by force. For the picturesque criminal he may be sorry, but for the fool he has scant pity.

At a farewell party which they gave us on the night before we left, one of my friends spoke, in an emotional moment, of accompanying us as far as Buffalo. He spoke of it as one might speak of going up to Baffin Land to see a friend off for the Pole.

I welcomed the proposal and assured him of safe conduct to that point in the "interior." I even showed him Buffalo upon the map. But the sight of that wide-flung chart of the United States seemed only to alarm him. After regarding it with a solemn and uneasy eye he shook his head and talked long and seriously of his responsibilities as a family man—of his duty to his wife and his limousine and his elevator boys.

It was midnight when good-bys were said and my companion and I returned to our respective homes to pack. There were many things to be put into trunks and bags. A clock struck three as my weary head struck the pillow. I closed my eyes. Then when, as it seemed to me, I was barely dozing off there came a knocking at my bedroom door.

As I arose I knew the feelings of a man condemned to death who hears the warden's voice in the chilly dawn: "Come! It is the fatal hour!"

When, fifteen minutes later, doubting Hannah (who knows my habits in these early morning matters) knocked again, I was moving about my room, my hands full of hairbrushes and toothbrushes and clothes brushes and shaving brushes; my head full of railroad trains, and hills, and plains and valleys, and snow-capped mountain peaks, and smoking cities and smoking-cars, and people I had never seen.

The breakfast table, shining with electric light, had a night-time aspect which made eggs and coffee seem bizarre. I do not like to breakfast by electric light, and I had done so seldom until then; but since that time I have done it often—sometimes to catch the early morning train, sometimes to catch the early morning man.

Beside my plate I found a telegram. I ripped the envelope and read this final punctuation-markless message from a literary friend:

That is an awful thing to tell a man in the very early morning before breakfast. In my mind I answered with the cry: "But I am afraid to say so!"

And now, months later, I am still afraid to say so, because, despite a certain truth the statement may contain, it seems to me to sound ridiculous, and ponderous, and solemn with an asinine solemnity.

I had not swallowed my second cup of coffee when, from her switchboard, a dozen floors below, the operator telephoned to say my taxi had arrived; whereupon I left the table, said good-by to those I should miss most of all, took up my suit case and departed.

Beside the curb there stood an unhappy-looking taxicab, shivering as with malaria, but the driver showed a face of brazen cheerfulness which, considering the hour and the circumstances, seemed almost indecent. I could not bear his smile. Hastily I blotted him from view beneath a pile of baggage.

With a jerk we started. Few other vehicles disputed our right to the whole width of Seventy-second Street as we skimmed eastward. Farewell, O Central Park! Farewell, O Plaza! And you, Fifth Avenue, empty, gray, deserted now; so soon to flash with fascinating traffic. Farewell! Farewell!

Presently, in that cavern in which vehicles stop beneath the overhanging cliffs of the Grand Central Station, we drew up. A dusky redcap took my baggage. I alighted and, passing through glass doors, gazed down on the vast concourse. Far up in the lofty spaces of the room there seemed to hang a haze, through which—from that amazing and audacious ceiling, painted like the heavens—there twinkled, feebly, morning stars of gold. Through three arched windows, towering to the height of six-story buildings, the eastern light streamed softly in, combining with the spaciousness around me, and the blue above, to fill me with a curious sense of paradox: a feeling that I was indoors yet out of doors.

The glass dials of the four-faced clock, crowning the information bureau at the center of the concourse, glowed with electric light, yellow and sickly by contrast with the day which poured in through those windows. Such stupendous windows! Gargantuan spider webs whose threads were massive bars of steel. And suddenly I saw the spider! He emerged from one side, passed nimbly through the center of the web, disappeared, emerged again, crossed the second web and the third in the same way, and was gone—a two-legged spider, walking importantly and carrying papers in his hand. Then another spider came, and still another, each black against the light, each on a different level. For those windows are, in reality, more than windows. They are double walls of glass, supporting floors of glass—layer upon layer of crystal corridor, suspended in the air as by genii out of the Arabian Nights. And through these corridors pass clerks who never dream that they are princes in the modern kind of fairy tale.

As yet the torrent of commuters had not begun to pour through the vast place. The floor lay bare and tawny like the bed of some dry river waiting for the melting of the mountain snows. Across the river bed there came a herd of cattle—Italian immigrants, dark-eyed, dumb, patient, uncomprehending. Two weeks ago they had left Naples, with plumed Vesuvius looming to the left; yesterday they had come to Ellis Island; last night they had slept on station benches; to-day they were departing; to-morrow or the next day they would reach their destination in the West. Suddenly there came to me from nowhere, but with a poignance that seemed to make it new, the platitudinous thought that life is at once the commonest and strangest of experiences. What scenes these black, pathetic people had passed through—were passing through! Why did they not look up in wonderment? Why were their bovine eyes gazing blankly ahead of them at nothing? What had dazed them so—the bigness of the world? Yet, after all, why should they understand? What American can understand Italian railway stations? They have always seemed to me to express a sort of mild insanity. But the Grand Central terminal I fancy I do understand. It seems to me to be much more than a successful station. In its stupefying size, its brilliant utilitarianism, and, most of all, in its mildly vulgar grandeur, it seems to me to express, exactly, the city to which it is a gate. That is something every terminal should do unless, as in the case of the Pennsylvania terminal in New York, it expresses something finer. The Grand Central Station is New York, but that classic marvel over there on Seventh Avenue is more: it is something for New York to live up to.

When I had bought my ticket and moved along to count my change there came up to the ticket window a big man in a big ulster who asked in a big voice for a ticket to Grand Rapids. As he stood there I was conscious of a most un-New-York-like wish to say to him: "After a while I'm going to Grand Rapids, too!" And I think that, had I said it, he would have told me that Grand Rapids was "some town" and asked me to come in and see him, when I got there,—"at the plant," I think he would have said.

As I crossed the marble floor to take the train I caught sight of my traveling companion leaning rigidly against the wall beside the gate. He did not see me. Reaching his side, I greeted him.

At that moment a most attractive person put in an appearance. She was followed by a redcap carrying a lovely little Russia leather bag. A few years before I should have called a bag like that a dressing case, but watching that young woman as she tripped along with steps restricted by the slimness of her narrow satin skirt, it occurred to me that modes in baggage may have changed like those in woman's dress and that her little leather case might be a modern kind of wardrobe trunk.

"The pretty girl," he remarked, with sad philosophy, "is always in the other car. That's life."

And I was right, for presently, in the parlor car, we found our seats across the aisle from hers.

Before the train moved out a boy came through with books and magazines, proclaiming loudly the "last call for reading matter."

I think the radiant being believed him, for she bought a magazine—a magazine of pretty girls and piffle: just the sort we knew she'd buy. As for my companion and me, we made no purchases, not crediting the statement that it was really the "last call." But I am impelled to add that having, later, visited certain book stores of Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit, I now see truth in what the boy said.

For a time my companion and I sat and tried to make believe we didn't know that some one was across the aisle. And she sat there and played with pages and made believe she didn't know we made believe. When that had gone on for a time and our train was slipping silently along beside the Hudson, we felt we couldn't stand it any longer, so we made believe we wanted to go out and smoke. And as we left our seats she made believe she didn't know that we were going.

Four men were seated in the smoking room. Two were discussing the merits of flannel versus linen mesh for winter underwear. The gentleman who favored linen mesh was a fat, prosperous-looking person, whose gold-rimmed spectacles reflected flying lights from out of doors.

"If you'll wear linen," he declared with deep conviction—"and it wants to be a union suit, too—you'll never go back to shirt and drawers again. I'll guarantee that!" The other promised to try it. Presently I noticed that the first speaker had somehow gotten all the way from linen union suits to Portland, Me., on a hot Sunday afternoon. He said it was the hottest day last year, and gave the date and temperatures at certain hours. He mentioned his wife's weight, details of how she suffered from the heat, the amount of flesh she lost, the name of the steamer on which they finally escaped from Portland to New York, the time of leaving and arrival, and many other little things.

I left him on the dock in New York. A friend (name and occupation given) had met him with a touring car (make and horsepower specified). What happened after that I do not know, save that it was nothing of importance. Important things don't happen to a man like that.

Two other men of somewhat Oriental aspect were seated on the leather sofa talking the unintelligible jargon of the factory. But, presently, emerged an anecdote.

"I was going through our sorting room a while back," said the one nearest the window, "and I happened to take notice of one of the girls. I hadn't seen her before. She was a new hand—a mighty pretty girl, with a nice, round figure and a fine head of hair. She kept herself neater than most of them girls do. I says to myself: 'Why, if you was to take that girl and dress her up and give her a little education you wouldn't be ashamed to take her anywheres.' Well, I went over to her table and I says: 'Look at here, little girl; you got a fine head of hair and you'd ought to take care of it. Why don't you wear a cap in here in all this dust?' It tickled her to death to be noticed like that. And, sure enough, she did get a cap. I says to her: 'That's the dope, little girl. Take care of your looks. You'll only be young and pretty like this once, you know.' So one thing led to another, and one day, a while later, she come up to the office to see about her time slip or something, and I jollied her a little. I seen she was a pretty smart kid at that, so—" At that point he lowered his voice to a whisper, and leaned over so that his thick, smiling lips were close to his companion's ear. The motion of the train caused their hat brims to interfere. Disturbed by this, the raconteur removed his derby. His head was absolutely bald.

Well, I am not sure that I should have liked to hear the rest. I shifted my attention back to the apostle of the linen union suit, who had talked on, unremittingly. His conversation had, at least, the merit of entire frankness. He was a man with nothing to conceal.

"Yes, sir!" I heard him declare, "every time you get on to a railroad train you take your life in your hands. That's a positive fact. I was reading it up just the other day. We had almost sixteen thousand accidents to trains in this country last year. A hundred and thirty-nine passengers killed and between nine and ten thousand injured. That's not counting employees, either—just passengers like us." He emphasized his statements by waving a fat forefinger beneath the listener's nose, and I noticed that the latter seemed to wish to draw his head back out of range, as though in momentary fear of a collision.

For my part, I did not care for these statistics. They were not pleasant to the ears of one on the first leg of a long railroad journey. I rose, aimed the end of my cigar at the convenient nickel-plated receptacle provided for that purpose by the thoughtful Pullman Company, missed it, and retired from the smoking room. Or, rather, I emerged and went to luncheon.

Our charming neighbor of the parlor car was already in the diner. She finished luncheon before we did, and, passing by our table as she left, held her chin well up and kept her eyes ahead with a precision almost military—almost, but not quite. Try as she would, she was unable to control a slight but infinitely gratifying flicker of the eyelids, in which nature triumphed over training and femininity defeated feministic theory.

A little later, on our way back to the smoking room, we saw her seated, as before, behind the sheltering ramparts of her magazine. This time it pleased our fancy to take the austere military cue from her. So we filed by in step, as stiff as any guardsmen on parade before a princess seated on a green plush throne. Resolutely she kept her eyes upon the page. We might have thought she had not noticed us at all but for a single sign. She uncrossed her knees as we passed by.

In the smoking room we entered conversation with a young man who was sitting by the window. He proved to be a civil engineer from Buffalo. He had lived in Buffalo eight years, he said, without having visited Niagara Falls. ("I've been meaning to go, but I've kept putting it off.") But in New York he had taken time to go to Bedloe Island and ascend the Statue of Liberty. ("It's awfully hot in there.") Though my companion and myself had lived in New York for many years, neither of us had been to Bedloe Island. But both of us had visited the Falls. The absurd humanness of this was amusing to us all; to my companion and me it was encouraging as well, for it seemed to give us ground for hope that, in our visits to strange places, we might see things which the people living in those places fail to see.

When, after finishing our smoke, we went back to our seats, the being across the way began to make believe to read again. But now and then, when some one passed, she would look up and make believe she wished to see who it might be. And always, after doing so, she let her eyes trail casually in our direction ere they sought the page again. And always we were thankful.

As the train slowed down for Rochester we saw her rise and get into her slinky little coat. The porter came and took her Russia leather bag. Meanwhile we hoped she would be generous enough to look once more before she left the car. Only once more!

But she would not. I think she had a feeling that frivolity should cease at Rochester; for Rochester, we somehow sensed, was home to her. At all events she simply turned and undulated from the car.

That was too much! Enough of make-believe! With one accord we swung our chairs to face the window. As she appeared upon the platform our noses almost touched the windowpane and our eyes sent forth forlorn appeals. She knew that we were there, yet she walked by without so much as glancing at us.

We saw a lean old man trot up to her, throw one arm about her shoulders, and kiss her warmly on the cheek. Her father—there was no mistaking that. They stood there for a moment on the platform talking eagerly; and as they talked they turned a little bit, so that we saw her smiling up at him.

Then, to our infinite delight, we noticed that her eyes were slipping, slipping. First they slipped down to her

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Abroad at Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian Street

ABROAD AT HOME

BY JULIAN STREET

TO MY FATHER

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

STEPPING WESTWARD

ABROAD AT HOME

CHAPTER I

STEPPING WESTWARD