THE WEIGHT OF PUBLIC OPINION
We know now what is the matter! They think we are quitters! They are
so filled with a sense of shame for us that we are beginning to feel
it ourselves. In spite of our original intention to go only so far as
roads were good and accommodations were comfortable, we feel that we are
somehow lacking in mettle, that we are sandless, to say the least!
To explain that we are not crossing the continent as a feat of endurance
is useless; having started to motor to the West, our stopping this side
of the place we set out for is to them incomprehensible.
“Why, _that_ car ought to go through anything!” is all any of them can
think of saying to us.
Our friend the fire chief stood glowering out in front of the garage
all morning. I think he would have gone to great lengths to prevent our
machine’s incarceration in a freight car. The proprietor of the garage
gave us his opinion: “Of course we drive pretty light machines around
here, and yours is heavy and your wheels are uncommon narrow, but that
engine of yours sure ain’t no toy! I’d go through if I was you! I
wouldn’t quit for a little _mud_! No, sir!”
“And only a _little mud_ at that!” scornfully echoed the fire chief.
“And supposing we slide off one of those bridges, or turn turtle in a
ditch?” asked we.
The chief scratched his head, but his determination was undaunted. “She’d
be kind of heavy to fall on you,” he grinned. “All the same, if that car
was mine, I’d go right on plumb across Hell itself, I would!”
To finish what you have begun, to see it through at whatever cost, that
seems to be the spirit here; it is probably the spirit of the West, the
spirit that has doubled and trebled these towns in a few years. The
consideration as to whether it is the wisest and most expedient thing to
do, has no part in their process of reasoning. That is exactly the point.
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs but to do and die.
Only they do not seem to die. They thrive gloriously.
All the same, if this country of ours ever gets into the war there will
be the making of a second Balaklava regiment in a town of Illinois
beginning with an R and a certain fire chief should make a gallant
captain.
But magnificent as is their indomitability as a quality of character;
for us, for instance, to wreck a valuable car, which we might never
afford to replace, for the sake of saying that we were not stopped by any
such trifle as mud seems more foolhardy than courageous. Nevertheless,
they have in some way imbued us with their spirit to such a degree that
we have countermanded the freight car, and although the mud is not a bit
better, have put chains on and are going to start.
* * * * *
Enthusiasm was no name for it! The town turned out to see us off;
the fire chief drove out his engine in all its brass and scarlet
resplendency. The ban of our cowardly leanings toward freight cars was
lifted and they saw us off on our muddy way rejoicing!
We are glad to have seen this little town. Maybe the contagion of its
enthusiasm will remain with us permanently.
The mud, by the way, lasted only ten miles. The celebrated Lincoln
Highway parted from us at Sterling and as soon as we left it, the
ordinary, unadvertised River to River road that we had dreaded was
splendid all the rest of the way to this beautiful hotel, the Black Hawk,
in Davenport, Iowa.
I was in a perfect flutter of excitement about crossing the Mississippi
though I have scarcely the courage to tell the unbelievably idiotic
reason why! It was Mrs. Z., who had crossed the continent an uncountable
number of times, who told me in all seriousness that the middle of the
United States was cut unbridgeably in two by the Mississippi! Nothing
spanned this divide except a railroad bridge, and the only way motorists
had ever crossed was on the trestles in the middle of the night, against
the law and at the risk of their lives! The bridges, needless to say, are
many and quite as crossable as Manhattan to Brooklyn. The river itself
is yellow as the Tiber, but its banks, devoid of factories and refuse
collections, were enchantingly lovely, sloping and vividly green; a
little like the upper Hudson, or still more, Queenstown Harbor in Ireland.
Davenport is evidently a gay resort. A friendly elevator boy detained E.
M. and whispered: “Say, mister, there’s a cabberay going on tonight on
the island. They’ll be vaudeville, tangoing and a band!” He must have put
E. M.’s lack of enthusiasm at our door, for he added: “The fun doesn’t
start until late. You could easy take them,” pointing toward us, “to a
movie first. The Princess is high class and _re_fined. You take it from
me and fix it to stay for a while. You’ll find we’re some lively town!”