A COUNTRY HOTEL
Beyond Nicholsen, somewhere in this same wondrous valley and in a
winelike atmosphere, came New Milford and with it our noonday meal. We
were rolling along aimlessly, uncertain where next we would pause. The
sight of an old fashioned white hotel at a street corner with several
rurals standing about and a row of beautiful elms over the way gave us
our cue. “This looks rather inviting,” said Franklin; and then, to the
figure of a heavy nondescript in brown jeans who was sitting on a chair
outside in the shade:
“Can’t we get something to eat here?”
“You can,” replied the countryman succinctly; “they’ll be putting dinner
on the table in a few minutes.”
We went into the bar, Franklin’s invariable opening for these meals
being a cocktail, when he could get one. It was a cleanly room, but with
such a field hand atmosphere about those present that I was a little
disappointed, and yet interested. I always feel about most American
country saloons that they are patronized by ditchers and men who do the
rough underpaid work of villages, while in England and France I had a
very different feeling.
I was much interested here by the proprietor, or, as he turned out
afterward, one of two brothers who owned the hotel. He was an elderly
man, stout and serious, who in another place perhaps and with a slightly
different start in life might, I am sure, have been banker, railroad
officer, or director. He was so circumspect, polite, regardful. He came
to inquire in a serious way if we were going to take dinner? We were.
“You can come right in whenever you are ready,” he commented.
Something in his tone and presence touched me pleasantly.
Because of the great heat—it was blazing outside—I had left my coat in
the car and was arrayed in a brown khaki shirt and grey woolen trousers,
with a belt. Because of the heat it did not occur to me that my
appearance would not pass muster. But, no. Life’s little rules of
conduct are not so easily set aside, even in a country hotel. As I
neared the diningroom door and was passing the coatrack, mine host
appeared and, with a grace and tact which I have nowhere seen surpassed,
and in a voice which instantly obviated all possibility of a
disagreeable retort, he presented me a coat which he had taken from a
hook and, holding it ready, said: “Would you mind slipping into this?”
“Pardon me,” I said, “I have a coat in the car; I will get that.”
“Don’t trouble,” he said gently; “you can wear this if you like. It will
do.”
I had to smile, but in an entirely friendly way. Something about the
man’s manner made me ashamed of myself—not that it would have been such
a dreadful thing to have gone into the diningroom looking as I was, for
I was entirely presentable, but that I had not taken greater thought to
respect his conventions more. He was a gentleman running a country
hotel—a real gentleman. I was the brash, smart asininity from the city
seeking to have my own way in the country because the city looks down on
the country. It hurt me a little and yet I felt repaid by having
encountered a man who could fence so skilfully with the little and yet
irritable and no doubt difficult problems of his daily life. I wanted to
make friends with him, for I could see so plainly that he was really
above the thing he was doing and yet content in some philosophical way
to make the best of it. How this man came to be running a country hotel,
with a bar attached, I should like to know.
After luncheon, I fell into a conversation with him, brief but
interesting. He had lived here many years. The place over the way with
the beautiful trees belonged to a former congressman. (I could see the
forgotten dignitary making the best of his former laurels in this
out-of-the-way place.) New Milford, a very old place, had been hurt by
the growth of other towns. But now the automobile was beginning to do
something for it. Last Sunday six hundred machines had passed through
here. Only last week the town had voted to pave the principal street, in
order to attract further travel. One could see by mine host’s manner
that his hotel business was picking up. I venture to say he offered to
contribute liberally to the expense, so far as his ability would permit.
I could not help thinking of this man as we rode away, and I have been
thinking of him from time to time ever since. He was so simple, so
sincere, so honorably dull or conventional. I wish that I could believe
there are thousands of such men in the world. His hotel was tasteless;
so are the vast majority of other hotels, and homes too, in America. The
dining room was execrable from one point of view; naïve, and pleasingly
so, from another. One could feel the desire to “set a good table” and
give a decent meal. The general ingredients were good as far as they
went, but, alas! the average American does not make a good servant—for
the public. The girl who waited on us was a poor slip, well intentioned
enough, I am sure, but without the first idea of what to do. I could see
her being selected by mine host because she was a good girl, or because
her mother was poor and needed the money—never because she had been
trained to do the things she was expected to do. Americans live in a
world of sentiment in spite of all their business acumen, and somehow
expect God to reward good intentions with perfect results. I adore the
spirit, but I grieve for its inutility. No doubt this girl was dreaming
(all the time she was waiting on us) of some four-corners merry-go-round
where her beau would be waiting. Dear, naïve America! When will it be
different from a dreaming child, and, if ever that time arrives, shall
we ever like it as much again?
And then came Halstead and Binghamton, for we were getting on. I never
saw a finer day nor ever enjoyed one more. Imagine smooth roads, a blue
sky, white and black cattle on the hills, lovely farms, the rich green
woods and yellow grainfields of a fecund August. Life was going by in a
Monticelli-esque mood. Dooryards and houses seemed to be a compound of
blowing curtains, cool deep shadows, women in summery dresses reading,
and then an arabesque of bright flowers, golden-glow, canna, flowering
sage, sweet elyssum, geraniums and sunflowers. At Halstead we passed an
hotel facing the Susquehanna River, which seemed to me the ideal of what
a summer hotel should be—gay with yellow and white awnings and airy
balconies and painted with flowers. Before it was this blue river, a
lovely thing, with canoes and trees and a sense of summer life.
Beyond, on a smooth white road, we met a man who was selling some kind
of soap—a soap especially good for motorists. He came to us out of
Binghamton, driving an old ramshackle vehicle, and hailed us as we were
pausing to examine something. He was a tall, lean, shabby American,
clothed in an ancient frock coat and soft rumpled felt hat, and looked
like some small-town carpenter or bricklayer or maker of cement walks.
By his side sat a youngish man, who looked nothing and said nothing,
taking no part in what followed. He had a dreamy, speculative and yet
harassed look, made all the more emphatic by a long pointed nose and
narrow pointed chin.
“I’ve got something here I’d like to show you, gentlemen,” he called,
drawing rein and looking hopefully at Franklin and Speed.
“Well, we’re always willing to look at something once,” replied Franklin
cheerfully and in a bantering tone.
“Very well, gentlemen,” said the stranger, “you’re just the people I’m
looking for, and you’ll be glad you’ve met me.” Even as he spoke he had
been reaching under the seat and produced a small can of something which
he now held dramatically aloft. “It’s the finest thing in the way of a
hand or machine soap that has ever been invented, no akali (he did not
seem to know there were two ls in the word), good for man or woman.
Won’t soil the most delicate fabric or injure the daintiest hands. I
know, now, for I’ve been working on this for the last three years. It’s
my personal, private invention. The basis of it is cornmeal and healing,
soothing oils. You rub it on your hands before you put them in water and
it takes off all these spots and stains that come from machine oil and
that ordinary turpentine won’t take out. It softens them right up. Have
you got any oil stains?” he continued, seizing one of Speed’s genial
hands. “Very good. This will take it right out. You haven’t any water in
there, have you, or a pan? Never mind. I’m sure this lady up here in
this house will let me have some,” and off he hustled with the air of a
proselytizing religionist.
I was interested. So much enthusiasm for so humble a thing as a soap
aroused me. Besides he was curious to look at—a long, lean, shambling
zealot. He was so zealous, so earnest, so amusing, if you please, or
hopeless. “Here really,” I said, “is the basis of all zealotry, of all
hopeless invention, of struggle and dreams never to be fulfilled.” He
looked exactly like the average inventor who is destined to invent and
invent and invent and never succeed in anything.
“Well, there is character there, anyhow,” said Franklin. “That long
nose, that thin dusty coat, that watery blue, inventive eye—all
mountebanks and charlatans and street corner fakers have something of
this man in them—and yet——”
He came hustling back.
“Here you are now!” he exclaimed, as he put down a small washpan full of
water. “Now you just take this and rub it in good. Don’t be afraid; it
won’t hurt the finest fabric or skin. I know what all the ingredients
are. I worked on it three years before I discovered it. Everybody in
Binghamton knows me. If it don’t work, just write me at any time and you
can get your money back.”
In his eager routine presentation of his material he seemed to forget
that we were present, here and now, and could demand our money back
before he left. In a fitting spirit of camaraderie Speed rubbed the soap
on his hands and spots which had for several days defied ordinary
soap-cleansing processes immediately disappeared. Similarly, Franklin,
who had acquired a few stains, salved his hands. He washed them in the
pan of water standing on the engine box, and declared the soap a
success. From my lofty perch in the car I now said to Mr. Vallaurs (the
name on the label of the bottle), “Well, now you’ve made fifteen cents.”
“Not quite,” he corrected, with the eye of a holy disputant. “There are
eight ingredients in that besides the cornmeal and the bottle alone
costs me four and one-half cents.”
“Is that so?” I continued—unable to take him seriously and yet
sympathizing with him, he seemed so futile and so prodigal of his
energy. “Then I really suppose you don’t make much of anything?”
“Oh, yes, I do,” he replied, seemingly unconscious of my jesting mood,
and trying to be exact in the interpretation of his profit. “I make a
little, of course. I’m only introducing it now, and it takes about all I
make to get it around. I’ve got it in all the stores of Binghamton. I’ve
been in the chemical business for years now. I got up some perfumes here
a few years ago, but some fellows in the wholesale business did me out
of them.”
“I see,” I said, trying to tease him and so bring forth any latent
animosity which he might be concealing against fate or life. He looked
to me to be a man who had been kicked about from pillar to post. “Well,
when you get this well started and it looks as though it would be a real
success, some big soap or chemical manufacturer will come along and take
it away from you. You won’t make anything out of it.”
“Won’t I?” he rejoined defiantly, taking me with entire seriousness and
developing a flash of opposition in his eyes. “No, he won’t, either.
I’ve had that done to me before, but it won’t happen this time. I know
the tricks of them sharps. I’ve got all this patented. The last time I
only had my application in. That’s why I’m out here on this road today
interducin' this myself. I lost the other company I was interested in.
But I’m going to take better care of this one. I want to see that it
gets a good start.”
He seemed a little like an animated scarecrow in his mood.
“Oh, I know,” I continued dolefully, but purely in a jesting way, “but
they’ll get you, anyhow. They’ll swallow you whole. You’re only a
beginner; you’re all right now, so long as your business is small, but
just wait until it looks good enough to fight for and they’ll come and
take it away from you. They’ll steal or imitate it, and if you say
anything they’ll look up your past and have you arrested for something
you did twenty or thirty years ago in Oshkosh or Oskaloosa. Then they’ll
have your first wife show up and charge you with bigamy or they’ll prove
that you stole a horse or something. Sure—they’ll get it away from you,”
I concluded.
“No, they won’t either,” he insisted, a faint suspicion that I was
joking with him beginning to dawn on him. “I ain’t never had but one
wife and I never stole any horses. I’ve got this patented now and I’ll
make some money out of it, I think. It’s the best soap”—(and here as he
thought of his invention once more his brow cleared and his enthusiasm
rose)—"the most all-round useful article that has ever been put on the
market. You gentlemen ought really to take a thirty-cent bottle"—he went
back and produced a large one—"it will last you a lifetime. I guarantee
it not to soil, mar or injure the finest fabric or skin. Cornmeal is the
chief ingredient and eight other chemicals, no alkali. I wish you’d take
a few of my cards"—he produced a handful of these—"and if you find
anyone along the road who stands in need of a thing of this kind I wish
you’d just be good enough to give ’em one so’s they’ll know where to
write. I’m right here in Binghamton. I’ve been here now for twenty years
or more. Every druggist knows me."
He looked at us with an unconsciously speculative eye—as though he were
wondering what service we would be to him.
Franklin took the cards and gave him fifteen cents. Speed was still
washing his hands, some new recalcitrant spots having been discovered. I
watched the man as he proceeded to his rattletrap vehicle.
“Well, gentlemen, I’ll be saying good day to you. Will you be so kind as
to return that pan to that lady up there, when you’re through with it?
She was very accommodating about it.”
“Certainly, certainly,” replied Franklin, “we’ll attend to it.”
Once he had gone there ensued a long discussion of inventors and their
fates. Here was this one, fifty years of age, if he was a day, and out
on the public road, advertising a small soap which could not possibly
bring him the reward he desired soon.
“You see, he’s going the wrong way about it,” Franklin said. “He’s
putting the emphasis on what he can do personally, when he ought to be
seeing about what others can do for him; he should be directing as a
manager, instead of working as a salesman. And another thing, he places
too much emphasis upon local standards ever to become broadly
successful. He said over and over that all the druggists and automobile
supply houses in Binghamton handle his soap. That’s nothing to us. We
are, as it were, overland citizens and the judgments of Binghamton do
not convince us of anything any more than the judgments of other towns
and crossroad communities along our route. Every little community has
its standards and its locally successful ones. The thing that will
determine actual success is a man’s ability or inability to see outside
and put upon himself the test of a standard peculiar to no one community
but common to all. This man was not only apparently somewhat mystified
when we asked him what scheme he had to reach the broader market with
his soap; he appeared never to have approached in his own mind that
possibility at all. So he could never become more than partially
successful or rich.”
“Very true,” I assented, “but a really capable man wouldn’t work for
him. He’d consider him too futile and try to take his treasure away from
him and then the poor creature would be just where he was before,
compelled to invent something else. Any man who would work for him
wouldn’t actually be worth having. It would be a case of the blind
leading the blind.”
There was much more of this—a long discussion. We agreed that any man
who does anything must have so much more than the mere idea—must have
vision, the ability to control and to organize men, a magnetism for
those who are successful—in short, that mysterious something which we
call personality. This man did not have it. He was a poor scrub, blown
hither and yon by all the winds of circumstance, dreaming of some
far-off supremacy which he never could enjoy or understand, once he had
it.