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 the members’ 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 the city. 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
divorcement from 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 known as 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 the battle 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, in the 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 capital even 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 talker that,
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 to talk 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 served by 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 permanent museum 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
the spirit. 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 belief
that 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.
Experience and the Calendar
Experience and the Calendar
“USELESS, quite useless, young man,” said the doctor, pursing his
lips; and as he has a nice feeling for climax, he slapped the reins on
Dobbin’s broad back and placidly drove away.
Beneath that flapping gray hat his wrinkled face was unusually
severe. His eyes really seemed to flash resentment through his green
spectacles. The doctor’s remark related to my manipulation of a new
rose-sprayer which I had purchased this morning at the village hardware
store, and was directing against the pests on my crimson ramblers when
he paused to tell me that he had tried that identical device last year
and found it worthless. As his shabby old phaeton rounded the corner, I
turned the sprayer over to my young undergraduate friend Septimus, and
hurried in to set down a few truths about the doctor.
He is, as you may already have guessed, the venerable Doctor
Experience, of the well-known university that bears his name. He is
a person of quality and distinction, and the most quoted of all the
authorities on life and conduct. How empty the day would be in which
we did not hear some one say, “Experience has taught me--” In the
University of Experience the Doctor fills all the chairs; and all his
utterances, one may say, are _ex cathedra_.
He is as respectable for purposes of quotation as Thomas à Kempis or
Benjamin Franklin. We really imagine--we who are alumni of the old
doctor’s ivy-mantled knowledge-house, and who recall the austerity
of his curriculum and the frugality of Sunday evening tea at his
table--that his own courses were immensely profitable to us. We
remember well how he warned us against yielding to the persuasions
of the world, the flesh, and the devil, illustrating his points with
anecdotes from his own long and honorable career. He used to weep over
us, too, in a fashion somewhat dispiriting; but we loved him, and
sometimes as we sit in the winter twilight thinking of the days that
are no more, we recall him in a mood of affection and regret, and do
not mind at all that cheerless motto in the seal of the university
corporation, “_Experientia docet stultos_,” to which he invariably
calls attention after morning prayers.
“My young friends,” he says, “I hope and trust that my words may be
the means of saving you from much of the heartache and sorrow of this
world. When I was young--”
This phrase is the widely accepted signal for shuffling the feet and
looking bored. We turn away from the benign doctor at his reading-desk,
fumbling at that oft-repeated lecture which our fathers and
grandfathers remember and quote,--we turn our gaze to the open windows
and the sunlight. The philosophy of life is in process of making out
there,--a new philosophy for every hour, with infinite spirit and
color, and anon we hear bugles crying across the hills of our dreams.
“When I was young!” If we were not the politest imaginable body of
students,--we who take Doctor Experience’s course because it is (I
blush at the confession) a “snap,”--we should all be out of the window
and over the hills and far away.
The great weakness of Experience as a teacher lies in the fact that
truth is so alterable. We have hardly realized how utterly the snows
and roses of yesteryear vanish before the amiable book agent points
out to us the obsolete character of our most prized encyclopædia. All
books should be purchased with a view to their utility in lifting the
baby’s chin a proper distance above the breakfast table; for, quite
likely, this will soon become their sole office in the household.
Within a fifteen-minute walk of the window by which I write lives a
man who rejects utterly the idea that the world is round, and he is
by no means a fool. He is a far more interesting person, I dare say,
than Copernicus or Galileo ever was; and his strawberries are the
earliest and the best produced in our township. Truth, let us say, is a
continuing matter, and hope springeth eternal. This is where I parted
company with the revered doctor long ago. His inability to catch bass
in the creek isn’t going to keep me at home to-morrow morning. For all
I care, he may sit on his veranda and talk himself hoarse to his old
friend, Professor Killjoy, whose gum shoes and ear-muffs are a feature
of our village landscape.
When you and I, my brother, are called on to address the young, how
blithely we congratulate our hearers upon being the inheritors of the
wisdom of all the ages. This is one of the greatest of fallacies. The
twentieth century dawned upon American States that were bored by the
very thought of the Constitution, and willing to forget that venerable
document at least long enough to experiment with the Initiative, the
Referendum, and the Recall. What some Lord Chief Justice announced
as sound law a hundred years ago means nothing to commonwealths
that have risen since the motor-car began honking in the highway.
On a starry night in the spring of 1912 a veteran sea-captain, with
wireless warnings buttoned under his pea-jacket, sent the finest ship
in the world smashing into an iceberg. All the safety devices known
to railroading cannot prevent some engineer from occasionally trying
the experiment of running two trains on a single track. With the full
weight of the experience of a thousand years against him the teller
begins to transfer the bank’s money to his own pocket, knowing well the
hazard and the penalty.
We pretend to invoke dear old Experience as though he were a god,
fondly imagining that an honest impulse demands that we appeal to him
as an arbiter. But when we have submitted our case and listened to
his verdict, we express our thanks and go away and do exactly as we
please. We all carry our troubles to the friends whose sympathy we know
outweighs their wisdom. We want them to pat us on the back and tell us
that we are doing exactly right. If by any chance they are bold enough
to give us an honest judgment based on real convictions, we depart
with a grievance, our confidence shaken. We lean upon our friends, to
be sure; but we rely upon them to bail us out after the forts of folly
have crashed about our ears and we pine in the donjon, rather than on
their advice that might possibly have preserved us on the right side
of the barricade. And I may note here, that of all the offices that
man may undertake, that of the frank friend is the most thankless. The
frank friend! It is he who told you yesterday that you were looking
wretchedly ill. Doctor Experience had warned _him_; and he felt it to
be his duty to stop _you_ in your headlong plunge. To-morrow he will
drop in to tell you in gentle terms that your latest poem is--well, he
hates to say it--but he fears it isn’t up to your old mark! The frank
friend, you may remember, is Doctor Experience’s favorite pupil.
We are all trying to square wisdom with our own aims and errors.
Professional men, whose business is the giving of advice, are fully
aware of this. Death is the only arbiter who can enforce his own writs,
and it is not for man to speak a final word on any matter.