ST. PAUL AND MINNEAPOLIS, THE SISTER CITIES--RIVALRIES AND JEALOUSIES
BETWEEN LARGE AMERICAN CITIES--MINNEHAHA FALLS--WONDERFUL
INTERVIEWERS--MY HAT GETS INTO TROUBLE AGAIN--ELECTRICITY IN THE
AIR--FOREST ADVERTISEMENTS--RAILWAY SPEED IN AMERICA.
_St. Paul, Minn., February 20._
Arrived at St. Paul the day before yesterday to pay a professional visit
to the two great sister cities of the north of America.
Sister cities! Yes, they are near enough to shake hands and kiss each
other, but I am afraid they avail themselves of their proximity to
scratch each other's faces.
If you open Bouillet's famous Dictionary of History and Geography
(edition 1880), you will find in it neither St. Paul nor Minneapolis. I
was told yesterday that in 1834 there was one white inhabitant in
Minneapolis. To-day the two cities have about 200,000 inhabitants each.
Where is the dictionary of geography that can keep pace with such
wonderful phantasmagoric growth? The two cities are separated by a
distance of about nine miles, but they are every day growing up toward
each other, and to-morrow they will practically have become one.
Nothing is more amusing than the jealousies which exist between the
different large cities of the United States, and when these rival places
are close to each other, the feeling of jealousy is so intensified as to
become highly entertaining.
St. Paul charges Minneapolis with copying into the census names from
tombstones, and it is affirmed that young men living in either one of
the cities will marry girls belonging to the other so as to decrease its
population by one. The story goes that once a preacher having announced,
in a Minneapolis church, that he had taken the text of his sermon from
St. Paul, the congregation walked out _en masse_.
New York despises Philadelphia, and pokes fun at Boston. On the other
hand, Boston hates Chicago, and _vice versa_. St. Louis has only
contempt for Chicago, and both cities laugh heartily at Detroit and
Milwaukee. San Francisco and Denver are left alone in their prosperity.
They are so far away from the east and north of America, that the
feeling they inspire is only one of indifference.
"Philadelphia is a city of homes, not of lodging-houses," once said a
Philadelphian to a New Yorker; "and it spreads over a far greater area
than New York, with less than half the inhabitants." "Ah," replied the
New Yorker, "that's because it has been so much sat upon."
"You are a city of commerce," said a Bostonian to a New York wit;
"Boston is a city of culture." "Yes," replied the New Yorker. "You
spell culture with a big C, and God with a small g."
Of course St. Paul and Minneapolis accuse each other of counting their
respective citizens twice over. All that is diverting in the highest
degree. This feeling does not exist only between the rival cities of the
New World, it exists in the Old. Ask a Glasgow man what he thinks of
Edinburgh, and an Edinburgh man what he thinks of Glasgow!
* * * * *
On account of the intense cold (nearly thirty degrees below zero), I
have not been able to see much either of St. Paul or of Minneapolis, and
I am unable to please or vex either of these cities by pointing out
their beauties and defects. Both are large and substantially built, with
large churches, schools, banks, stores, and all the temples that modern
Christians erect to Jehovah and Mammon. I may say that the Ryan Hotel at
St. Paul and the West House at Minneapolis are among the very best
hotels I have come across in America, the latter especially. When I have
added that, the day before yesterday, I had an immense audience in the
People's Church at St. Paul, and that to-night I have had a crowded
house at the Grand Opera House in Minneapolis, it is hardly necessary
for me to say that I shall have enjoyed myself in the two great towns,
and that I shall carry away with me a delightful recollection of them.
* * * * *
Soon after arriving in Minneapolis yesterday, I went to see the
Minnehaha Falls, immortalized by Longfellow. The motor line gave me an
idea of rapid transit. I returned to the West House for lunch and spent
the afternoon writing. Many interviewers called.
[Illustration: "WHAT YEARLY INCOME DOES YOUR BOOKS AND LECTURES BRING
IN?"]
The first who came sat down in my room and point-blank asked me my views
on contagious diseases. Seeing that I was not disposed to talk on the
subject, he asked me to discourse on republics and the prospects of
General Boulanger. In fact, anything for copy.
The second one, after asking me where I came from and where I was going,
inquired whether I had exhausted the Anglo-Saxons and whether I should
write on other nations. After I had satisfied him, he asked me what
yearly income my books and lectures brought in.
Another wanted to know why I had not brought my wife with me, how many
children I had, how old they were, and other details as wonderfully
interesting to the public. By and by I saw he was jotting down a
description of my appearance, and the different clothes I had on! "I
will unpack this trunk," I said, "and spread all its contents on the
floor. Perhaps you would be glad to have a look at my things." He
smiled: "Don't trouble any more," he said; "I am very much obliged to
you for your courtesy."
This morning, on opening the papers, I see that my hat is getting into
trouble again. I thought that, after getting rid of my brown hat and
sending it to the editor in the town where it had created such a
sensation, peace was secured. Not a bit. In the Minneapolis _Journal_ I
read the following:
The attractive personality of the man [allow me to record this for the
sake of what follows], heightened by his neglige sack coat and vest,
with a background of yellowish plaid trowsers, occasional glimpses of
which were revealed from beneath the folds of a heavy ulster, which
swept the floor [I was sitting of course] and was trimmed with fur
collar and cuffs. And then that hat! On the table, carelessly thrown
amid a pile of correspondence, was his nondescript headgear. One of
those half-sombreros affected by the wild Western cowboy when on dress
parade, an impossible combination of dark-blue and bottle-green.
Fancy treating in this off-handed way a $7.50 soft black felt hat bought
of the best hatter in New York! No, nothing is sacred for those
interviewers. Dark-blue and bottle-green! Why, did that man imagine that
I wore my hat inside out so as to show the silk lining?
* * * * *
The air here is perfectly wonderful, dry and full of electricity. If
your fingers come into contact with anything metallic, like the
hot-water pipes, the chandeliers, the stopper of your washing basin,
they draw a spark, sharp and vivid. One of the reporters who called
here, and to whom I mentioned the fact, was able to light my gas with
his finger, by merely obtaining an electric spark on the top of the
burner. When he said he could thus light the gas, I thought he was
joking.
I had observed this phenomenon before. In Ottawa, for instance.
Whether this air makes you live too quickly, I do not know; but it is
most bracing and healthy. I have never felt so well and hearty in my
life as in these cold, dry climates.
* * * * *
I was all the more flattered to have such a large and fashionable
audience at the Grand Opera House to-night, that my _causerie_ was not
given under the auspices of any society, or as one of any course of
lectures.
I lecture in Detroit the day after to-morrow. I shall have to leave
Minneapolis to-morrow morning at six o'clock for Chicago, which I shall
reach at ten in the evening. Then I shall have to run to the Michigan
Central Station to catch the night train to Detroit at eleven.
Altogether, twenty-three hours of railway traveling--745 miles.
And still in "the neighborhood of Chicago!"
* * * * *
[Illustration: AN ADVERTISEMENT.]
_In the train to Chicago, February 21._
Have just passed a wonderful advertisement. Here, in the midst of a
forest, I have seen a huge wide board nailed on two trees, parallel to
the railway line. On it was written, round a daub supposed to represent
one of the loveliest English ladies: "If you would be as lovely as the
beautiful Lady de Gray, use Gray perfumes."
_Soyez donc belle_, to be used as an advertisement in the forests of
Minnesota!
* * * * *
[Illustration: "I RETURNED THANKS."]
My lectures have never been criticised in more kind, flattering, and
eulogistic terms than in the St. Paul and the Minneapolis papers, which
I am reading on my way to Chicago. I find newspaper reading a great
source of amusement in the trains. First of all because these papers
always are light reading, and also because reading is a possibility in a
well lighted carriage going only at a moderate speed. Eating is
comfortable, and even writing is possible _en route_. With the exception
of a few trains, such as are run from New York to Boston, Chicago, and
half a dozen other important cities, railway traveling is slower in
America than in England and France; but I have never found fault with
the speed of an American train. On the contrary, I have always felt
grateful to the driver for running slowly. And every time that the car
reached the other side of some of the many rotten wooden bridges on
which the train had to pass, I returned thanks.