“Great fleas have little fleas
On their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas
And so ad infinitum.”
Then I took a trip across the continent, stopping off in Indiana to see
my little Y friends. It was like a bath for my soul. Brains count out
West. Anybody who tries to show off is snubbed.
You must do something to be anything in the Middle West; just to have
something doesn't count. You don't list your ancestors as you must in
Virginia or the Carolinas, but to feel self-respecting you must do
something.
I was happy to renew my wartime friendships. Those who have not shared
a great work or a greater tragedy will not understand these bonds.
The same young friend who served tea to the king took me to a musicale.
She wore her war medal. One of the guests, a lady from Virginia who
claims four coats of arms, was impressed by the girl's medal and the
fact that she had entertained the king.
The girl had married since the war, a fine young Irish lawyer, with a
family name which once belonged to a king but which, since hard times
hit the old sod, has been a butt for song and jest.
The name did not impress the lady from Virginia. “You have such an
interesting face,” she said. “What was your name before your marriage?”
“Oh, it was much less interesting than my husband's,” answered my young
Y friend, and lifting the conversation out of the personal she asked,
“Have you read Mr. Keynes' 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace?'”
“I had n't read it myself,” she confided to me later, “but it was the
first new book I could think of!”
That is good American manners and what the French call savoir faire.
The Far West still keeps the American inheritance of open hearted
hospitality and its provincialism. The West has inherited some of the
finest virtues of our country, and if it is not bitten by Back Bay,
Philadelphia, Virginia, or Charleston, it will grow up into its mother's
finest child.
“No church west of Chicago, no God west of Denver,” we used to hear when
I was a child. But to-day, the churches are part of the community and
even men go. People in the West do not seem to go to church merely out
of respect for the devil and a conscience complex, but because they like
to. Churches and schools are important places in the West.
President Harding has said that he hopes more and more people will learn
to want to pray in a closet alone with God. There are many people like
that in our Middle West. I say this, because I hope it may help other
American women who love their country to fight for honesty and purpose
in our national life, and for tolerance and respect for the simple
things in our private lives.