a young, hopeful nation, striving to divine its own destiny and to
visualise its future, "more reading" always means _better reading_.
Perhaps the cultured ladder of democracy may be seen allegorically as
the ladder of Jacob's dream. Religion, which may be thought to have
flown from the churches, is in evidence at the libraries. It is a
librarian who is able to say in _The Inside of the Cup_ that we are on
the threshold of a greater religious era than the world has ever seen.
In America to-day we are confronted with two parties,--one the great
multifarious, unformed mass of the people, and the other the strong,
emancipated, cultured American nation, which is at work shaping the
democracy. The aspect of the "rabble," the commercial heathen, and
horde of unknowing, unknown immigrants, gives you the first but not the
final impression of America. You remark first of all the slouching,
blank-eyed, broad-browed immigrant, who indulges still his European
vices and craves his European pleasures, flocking into saloons,
debauching his body, or at best looking dirty and out of hand, a
reproach to the American flag. You see the Jews leaping over one
another's backs in the orgy of mean trade. You see the fat American,
clever enough to bluff even the Jew--the strange emerging bourgeois
type of what I call the "white nigger," low-browed, heavy-cheeked,
thick-lipped, huge-bodied, but _white_; men who seem made of rubber
so elastic they are; men who seem to get their thoughts from below
upward. I've often watched one of these "white negroes" reflecting; he
seems to sense his thoughts in his body first of all--you can watch his
idea rise up to him from the earth, pass along his body and flicker at
last in a true American smile across his lips--a transition type of
man I should say. One wonders where these men, who are originally Jews
or Anglo-Saxons or Dutch or Germans, got their negro souls. It would
almost tempt one to think that there were negro souls floating about,
and that they found homes in white babies.
Beside the fat American is the more familiar lean, hatchet-faced type,
which is thought to correspond to the Red Indian in physiognomy.
Perhaps too much importance is attached to the Darwinian idea that
the climate of America is breeding a race of men with physique and
types similar to the aborigines. The American is still a long way
from the red-skin. Meanwhile, however, one may note with a smile
the extraordinary passion of Americans for collecting autographs,
curios, snippets of the clothes of famous men, Italian art, British
castles,--which seems to be scalp-hunting in disguise. The Americans
are great scalp-hunters.
On the whole, the dry, lean Americans are the most trustworthy and
honourable among the masses of the people. In England we trust fat men,
men "who sleep o' nights," but in America one prefers the lean man.
Shakespeare would not have written of Cassius as he did if he had been
an American of to-day. Of course too much stress might easily be laid
on the unpleasantness of the "white-nigger" type. There are plenty of
them who are true gentlemen.
The American populace has also its bad habits. There are those who
chew "honest scrap," and those who chew "spearmint." It is astonishing
to witness the service of the cuspidor in a hotel, the seven or
eight obese, cow-like American men, all sitting round a cuspidor and
chewing tobacco; almost equally astonishing to sit in a tramcar full
of American girls, and see that every jaw is moving up and down in the
mastication of sweet gum.
America suffers terribly from its own success, its vastness, its great
resources, its commercial scoops, its wealth, vested _en masse_ and
so vulgarly in the person of lucky or astute business men. This has
bred a tendency to chronic exaggeration in the language of the common
people, it has brought on the jaunty airs and tall talk of the man
who, however ignorant he may be, thinks that he knows all. But success
has also brought kindness and an easy-going temperament. There are
no people in the world less disposed to personal ill-temper than the
Americans. They are very generous, and in friendship rampageously
exuberant. They are not mean, and are disinclined to incur or to
collect small debts. They would rather toss who pays for the drinks of
a party than pay each his own score. They have even invented little
gambling machines in cigar stores and saloons where you can put a
nickel over a wheel and run a chance between having five cigars for
five cents, or paying twenty-five cents for no cigars at all.
So stands on the one hand the "many-headed," sprung from every
country in Europe, an uncouth nation doing what they ought not to
do, and leaving undone what they ought to do, but at least having
in their hearts, every one of them, the idea that America is a fine
thing, a large thing, a wonderful promise. Opposite them stands what
may be called the American _intelligence_, ministering as best it
can to the wants of young America, and helping to fashion the great
desideratum,--a homogeneous nation for the new world.
It seems perhaps a shame to question the significance of any of the
phenomena of American life of to-day, to tie what may be likened to
a tin can to the end of this chapter; but I feel that this is the
most fitting place to put a few notes which I have made of tendencies
which are apt to give trouble to the mind of Europeans otherwise very
sympathetic to America and America's ideal. They are quite explicable
phenomena, and in realising and understanding them for himself the
reader will be enabled to get a truer idea of the atmosphere of America.
On my way into Cleveland I read in the _Pittsburg Post_ the following
statistics of life at Princeton College, of the students at the College:
184 men smoke.
76 began after entering College, but 51 students have stopped
smoking since entering College.
91 students wear glasses, and 57 began to wear them since entering.
15 students chew tobacco.
19 students consider dancing immoral.
16 students consider card-playing immoral.
206 students correspond with a total of 579 girls.
203 students claim to have kissed girls in their time.
24 students have proposed and been rejected.
* * * * *
Another day I read in the _New York American_ the story of the
adventures of Watts's "Love and Life" in America:
The peripatetic painting, "Love and Life," the beautiful
allegorical work, by George Frederick Watts, once more reposes in
an honoured niche in the White House. The varied career of this
painting in regard to White House residence extends over seventeen
years.
This picture, painted in 1884, was presented to the national
Government by Watts as a tribute of his esteem and respect for
the United States, and was accepted by virtue of a special act of
Congress. This was during the second administration of President
Cleveland, and he ordered it hung in his study on the second
floor of the White House. Two replicas were made by Watts of the
painting, and one was placed by the National Art Gallery, London,
and the other in the Louvre, Paris.
The two figures of "Love and Life" are entirely nude, and the
publication of reproductions awoke the protests of purists who
circulated petitions to which they secured hundreds of names to
have it removed to an art gallery. Finally, the Clevelands yielded
to the force of public opinion, and sent the offending masterpiece
to the Corcoran Art Gallery.
When Theodore Roosevelt became President he brought the art exile
back to the White House. The hue and cry arose again, and he sent
it back to the Gallery, only to bring it back again toward the
close of his administration to hang in the White House once more.
The Tafts, failing to see the artistic side of the painting, had
it carried back to the Gallery.
There it seemed destined to stay. The other day Mrs. Woodrow
Wilson, accompanied by her daughter Eleanor, both artists of
merit, toured the Corcoran Art Gallery. They were shown "Love and
Life," and told the tragic story of its wanderings.
Mrs. Wilson thereupon requested the painting to be returned to
the White House. There once more it hangs and tells its immortal
lesson of how love can help life up the steepest hills.
* * * * *
Whilst in New York I visited the charming Fabians, who were the hosts
of Maxim Gorky before the American Press took upon itself the rôle
of doing the honours of the house to a guest of genius. The story of
Gorky need not be repeated. But it is in itself a question-mark raised
against the American civilisation.
* * * * *
Tramping through Sandusky I came upon a suburban house all scrawled
over with chalk inscriptions:
"Hurrah for the newly-weds."
"Oh, you beautiful doll!"
"Well! _Then_ what?"
"We should worry."
"Home, sweet Home."
"May your troubles be little ones! Ha, He!"
"You thought we wouldn't guess, but we caught you."
As the house seemed to be empty, I inquired at the nearest store what
was the reason for this outburst. The storekeeper told me it was done
by the neighbours as a welcome to a newly-married couple coming home
from their honeymoon on the morrow. It was a custom to do it, but this
was nothing to the way they "tied them up" sometimes.
"Won't they be distressed?"
"Oh no, they'll like it."
"Are the neighbours envious, or what is it?" I asked. The storekeeper
began to sing, "Snookeyookums."
"All night long the neighbours shout
(to the newly-married couple whose kisses they hear)
"'Cut it out, cut it out, cut it out.'"
On Independence Day I saw a crowd of roughs assailing a Russian girl
who had gone into the water to bathe, dressed in what we in Britain
would call "full regulation costume." The crowd cried shame on her
because she was not wearing stockings and a skirt in addition to
knickers and vest.
* * * * *
In many districts men bathing naked have been arrested as a sort of
breach of the peace. Naked statues in public have been clothed or
locked away. In several towns women wearing the slashed skirt have had
to conform to municipal regulations concerning underwear.
* * * * *
I have noted everywhere mockery on the heels of seriousness.
No doubt these question-marks will be followed by satisfactory answers
in the minds of most readers, especially in the light of the statement
that "it is a sacrament to walk the streets as an American citizen.
Being an American is a sacred mission."
XIII
ALONG ERIE SHORE
Cleveland exemplifies the characteristics of contemporary America, and
points to the future. It has its horde of foreign mercenaries living
by alien ethics, and committing every now and then atrocious crimes
which shock the American community. But it is a "cleaned-up" town. All
the dens of the city have been raided; there is no gambling, little
drunkenness and immorality. On my first night in the town I had my
supper in a saloon, and as I sat among the beer-drinking couples I
listened to an old man who was haranguing us all on the temptations of
women and drink. The saloon-keeper had no power to turn him out, and
possibly had not even the wish to do so. The passion for cleaning up
America overtakes upon occasion even those whose living depends upon
America remaining "unclean."
Cleveland is well built, and has fine avenues and broad streets. It
is well kept, and in the drawing-room of the town you'd never suspect
what was going on in the back kitchen and the yard. But take a turn
about and you see that the city is not merely one of good clothes,
white buildings, and upholstery; there are vistas of smoke and sun,
bridges and cranes, endless railway tracks and steaming engines. They
are working in the background, the Slavs and the Italians and the
Hungarians, the Kikes and the Wops and the Hunkies. There is a rumour
of Chicago in the air; you can feel the pulse of the hustling West.
Perhaps nothing is more promising than the twelve miles of garden
suburb that go westward from the city along Erie Shore. Tchekof,
working in his rose-garden in the Crimea, used to say, "I believe
that in quite a short time the whole world will be a garden." This
growth of Cleveland gives just that promise to the casual observer.
How well these middle-class Americans live? Without the advertisement
of the fact they have finer arrangements of streets and houses than
we have at Golders Green and Letchworth. Nature is kind. There is a
grand freshness and a steeping radiance. The people know how to live
out-of-doors, and the women are public all day. No railings, fences,
bushes, just sweet lawn approaches, verandahs, on the lawns sprinklers
and automatic fountains scattering water to the sparrows' delight. The
iris is out and the honeysuckle is in bloom.
[Illustration: THE LITHUANIAN WHO SAT BEHIND THE ASPHALT AND COAL-OIL
SCATTERER.]
I prefer, however, to walk in the sight of wooded hills or great
waters, and as soon as I could find a way to the back of the long
series of suburban villas I went to the sandbanks of the shore and into
the company of the great lake. It was just sunset time, and the sun of
fire was changing to a sun of blood and sinking into the waters. There
was a great suffusion of crimson in the western sky and a reflection of
it in the green and placid lake. But the water in the foreground was
grey, and it rippled past silver reeds. I stood and listened; the great
silence of the vast lake on the one hand and the whizz of automobiles
on the other, the _paup-paup_ of electric-tram signals, the great whoop
of the oncoming freight trains on the Lake-Shore railway. Far out on
the water there were black dashes on the lit surface and little smokes
proceeding from them--steamers. The lake became lucent yellow with
blackness in the West and mystery in the East. A steamer in the East
seemed fixed as if caught in a spell. Then the blackness of the West
came like an intense dye and poured itself into the rest of the sky.
The East became still--indigo, very precious and holy, the colour of
incense smoke.
I tramped by Clifton through the deep dust of a motor-beaten road
towards Lorain. It was night before I found a suitable place for
sleeping, for most of the ground was private, and there were many
people about. At last I found a deserted plot, where building
operations had evidently been taking place during the day, but from
which the workmen had gone. There were, however, many tools and
covetable properties lying about, and I had hardly settled down before
I heard the baying of dogs on a chain. About half-past eleven Fedka the
watchman came along, singing a Russian song to himself, and he lighted
a large lantern, unloosed two dogs, then went into a shed, lay down and
went to sleep--a nice watchman! My only consideration was the dogs,
a bull-dog and a collie, but they didn't know of my presence. They
had expeditions after tramps on the road, after waggons, automobiles,
tramcars, trains, but never once sniffed at the stranger sleeping
under their noses. However, at about three in the morning the bull-dog
spotted me, and no doubt had rather a queer turn. He actually tripped
on me as he was prowling about, and my heart stood still. He eyed me,
growled low, sniffed at my knees, snorted. "He will spring at my throat
in a moment," I thought; "I'll defend myself with that big saw lying
so handy beside me!" But no, wonder of wonders! the dog did not attack
me, but just lay calmly down beside me and was my gaoler. He dozed and
breathed heavily, but every now and then opened one eye and snarled;
evidently he took his duties seriously. I forgot him and slept. But I
had the consciousness that in the morning I had to get away somehow.
But about half an hour before dawn some one drove a score of cows
down the road, causing the collie to go mad--so mad that the bull-dog
bestirred himself and followed superciliously, not sure whether
he were needed or not. Then I swiftly put my things together and
decamped--and got away.
I watched the dawn come up out of a rosy mist over Erie. The lake was
vast and placid and mud-coloured, but there were vague purple shadows
in it. I learned that mud was the real colour at this point, and there
was no clear sparkling water to bathe in, but only a sea stirred up.
Down by the shore, just after my dip, I caught a young aureole with
red breast and mouth so yellow, and I tried to feed him with sugar and
butter; but he was very angry, and from many trees and low bushes round
about came the scolding and calling of the parents, who had been rashly
giving their progeny his first run.
I tramped to the long settlement of Lorain with its store-factory and
many Polish workers, but continued to the place called Vermilion,
walking along the grey-black sands of the shore. I came to Crystal
Beach. It was a perfect day, the zenith too radiant to look at, the
western sky ahead of the road a rising smoke of sapphire, but filled
with ineffable sunshine. It was difficult to look otherways but
downward, and I needed all the brim of my hat to protect my neck and
my eyes. The lake was now blue-grey as the sea, but still not very
tempting, though Crystal Beach is a great holiday resort. It seemed
to me more than a lake and yet less than a sea--the water had no
other shore and yet suggested no infinity. The visitor, however,
considered it beautiful. That was clear from the enthusiastic naming
of the villas and resorts on the shore. Again, it was strange to pass
from the workshop of America to the parlour,--from industrial Lorain
to ease-loving Vermilion, and to exchange the vision of unwashed
immigrants in slouch hats for dainty girls all in white and smart young
men in delicate linen.
I went into the general store and bought butter and sugar and tea, and
then to the baker for a loaf of bread and a peach pie. What a delicacy
is an eight-penny peach pie when you know you are going to sit on a
bank and munch it, drink coffee, and watch your own wood-blaze.
On my way to Sandusky I got several offers of jobs. A road surveyor and
his man, trundling and springing along the road in their car, nearly
ran me down, and as a compensation for my experience of danger stopped
and gave me a lift, offering also to give me work if I wanted it. All
the highway from Cleveland to Toledo was to be macadamised by next
summer; thousands of men were wanted all along the line, and I could
get to work that very afternoon "farming ditches on each side of the
road" if I wished.
I jigged along three miles in the automobile and then stepped down to
make my dinner. Whilst I was lighting my fire a Bohemian came and had a
little chat with me.
"How far ye going?"
"Chicago."
"You should get on a freight train. I come up from New York myself on
a freighter and dropped off here two days ago. It's too far to walk;
you carry heavy things. Besides, there's a good job here mending the
road. I've just been taken on. A mile up the road you'll see a waggon;
ask there, they're making up a gang. The work's a bit rough but the pay
good."
Then I came on a gang of Wops and Huns loading bridge-props and ribbons
and guard-rails on to an electric trolley, and the boss again applied
to me.
"No, thanks!"
A man with an asphalt and coal-oil scatterer came past. His was a
dirty job. He sat behind a boiler-shaped cistern, which another
man was dragging along with a petrol engine. It had a rose like a
watering-cart, but instead of water there flowed this dark mixture of
asphalt and oil. The man, a Lithuanian, was sitting on the rose, his
legs were dangling under it, and it was his task to keep his finger on
the tap and regulate the flow of the fast-trickling mixture. Though a
Lithuanian by birth he spoke a fair English, and explained that the
asphalt and oil laid the dust for the whole summer, and solidified the
surface of the road, so that automobiles could go pleasantly along.
There was another machine waiting behind, and they had not men to work
it. If I liked to report myself at the depot I could get a job, it was
quite simple, not hard work, and the pay was good. He got two dollars a
day.
Then, as I was going through a little town, a Norwegian came running
out of a shop and pulled me in, saying, "You're a professional, no
doubt, stay here and take photographs"; and he showed me his screens
and classical backgrounds. It was interesting to consider the many
occasions on which I might have given up Europe and started as a young
man in America, entering life afresh, and starting a new series of
connections and acquaintances. But I had only come as a make-believe
colonist.
As the weather was very hot I took a wayside seat erected by a firm
of clothiers to advertise their wares, and it somewhat amused me to
think that as I sat in my somewhat ragged and dust-stained attire the
seat seemed to say I bought my suit at Clayton's. As I sat there six
Boy Scouts came tramping past, walking home from their camping-ground,
boys of twelve or thirteen, all carrying saucepans and kettles, one
of them a bag of medical appliances and medicines, all with heavy
blankets--sun-browned, happy little bodies.
There is all manner of interest on the road. The gleaming, red-headed
woodpecker that I watch alights on the side of the telegraph-pole,
looks at the wood as at a mirror, and then, to my mild surprise, goes
right into the pole. There must be a hole there and a nest. I hear the
guzzling of the little woodpeckers within. Upon reflection, I remember
that the mother's beak was disparted, and there was something between.
Rather amusing, a woodpecker living in a telegraph-pole--Nature taking
advantage of civilisation!
Then there are many squirrels in the woods by the road, and they wag
their tails when they squeak.
At tea-time, by the lake shore, a beautiful white-breasted but speckled
snipe tripped around the sand, showing me his round head, plump body,
and dainty legs. He had his worms and water, I my bread and tea; we
were equals in a way.
Then after tea I caught a little blind mouse, no bigger than my thumb,
held him in my hand, and put him in his probable hole.
As I rested by a railway arch Johnny Kishman, a fat German boy, got off
his bicycle to find out what manner of man I was. His chief interest
was to find out how much money I made by walking. And I flabbergasted
him.
I came into Huron by a road of coal-dust, and left the beautiful
countryside once more for another industrial inferno. Here were many
cranes, black iron bridges, evil smells, an odorous, green river. There
was a continuous noise as of three rolls of thunder in one from the
machinery of the port. I stopped a party of Slavs, who were strolling
out of the town to the strains of an accordion, and asked them by what
the noise was made. I was informed it was the lading of Pennsylvanian
coal and the unlading of Wisconsin and Canadian ore, the tipping of
five to ten tons at a time into the holds of coal boats or into trucks
of freight trains.
I went into a restaurant in the dreary town, and there, over an
ice-cream, chatted with an American, who hoped I would lick Jack London
and Gibson and the rest of them "to a frazzle." A girl, who came into
the shop, told me that last year she wanted to walk to Chicago and
sleep out, but could not get a companion--a chance for me to step in.
Mine host was one of these waggish commercial men in whom America
abounds, and he had posted above his bar:
ELEVEN MEN WHO ASKED
CREDIT
LIE DEAD IN MY CELLAR
But he made good ice-cream.
Every one combined to boost the town and advise me to see this and
that. The port machinery and lading operations were the wonder of Erie
Shore, and provided work for a great number of Hungarians, Italians,
and Slavs. Not so many years back there was no such machinery here, and
the work was done with buckets and derricks.
[Illustration: "JOHNNY KISHMAN, A GERMAN BOY, GOT OFF HIS BICYCLE TO
FIND OUT WHAT MANNER OF MAN I WAS."]
I forebore to have supper at the creditless inn, but as I walked out of
the dark town I spied a fire burning on a bit of waste land, and there
I boiled my kettle and made coffee. It was an eerie proceeding, and as
I sat in the dusk I saw several children come peering at me, _hsh_ing
the younger ones, and inferring horrible suspicions as to my identity.
When I had finished my supper I went down to the beach, and there, on
the sand amidst old logs, under a stooping willow tree, I made my bed.