American adventures; a second trip "Abroad at home"

Front matter

Class f Z ,. 1 ,^^

Book

3^

Foreword

Though much has been written of the South, it seems to me that this part of our country is less understood than any other part. Certainly the South, itself, feels that this is true. Its relationship to the North makes me think of nothing so much as that of a pretty, sensitive wife, to a big, strong, amiable, if somewhat thick-skinned husband. These two had one great quarrel which nearly resulted in divorce. He thought her headstrong; she thought him overbearing. The quarrel made her ill ; she has been for some time recovering. But though they have settled their difficulties and are living again in amity together, and though he, manlike, has half forgotten that they ever quarreled at all, now that peace reigns in the house again, she has not forgotten. There still lingers in her mind the feeling that he never really understood her, that he never understood her problems and her struggles, and that he never will. And it seems to me further that, as is usually the case with wives who consider themselves misunderstood, the fault is partly, but by no means altogether, hers. He, upon one hand, is inclined to pass the matter off with a : "There, there ! It 's all over now. Just be good and forget it !" while she, in the depths of her heart, retains a little bit of wistfulness, a little

vii

FOREWORD

wounded feeling, which causes her to say to herself: 'Thank God our home was not broken up, but — I wish that he could be a little more considerate, sometimes, in view of all that I have suffered."

For my part, I am the humble but devoted friend of the family. Having known him first, having been from boyhood his companion, I may perhaps have sympathized with him in the beginning. But since I have come to know her, too, that is no longer so. And I do think I know her — proud, sensitive, high-strung, generous, captivating beauty that she is! Moreover, after the fashion of many another ''friend of the family," I have fallen in love with her. Loving her from afar, I send her as a nosegay these chapters gathered in her own gardens. If some of the flowers are of a kind for which she does not care, if some have thorns, even if some are only weeds, I pray her to remember that from what was growing in her gardens I was forced to make my choice, and to believe that, whatever the defects of my bouquet, it is meant to be a bunch of roses.

J. s.

October i, igi"^.

vm

The Author makes his grateful acknowledgments to the old friends and the new ones who assisted him upon this journey. And once more he desires to express his gratitude to the friend and fellow-traveler whose illustrations are far from being his only contribution to this volume.

-J. s.

New York, October, 191 7.

Contents

THE BORDERLAND

CHAPTER PAGE

I ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES J

CHAPTER I ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES On journeys through the States we start

. . . We willing learners of all, teachers of all, lovers of all.

We dwell a while in every city and town . . .

— Walt Whitman.

HAD my companion and I never crossed the continent together, had we never gone "abroad at home," I might have curbed my impatience at the beginning of our second voyage. But from the time we returned from our first journey, after having spent some months in trying, as some one put it, to ''discover America," I felt the gnawings of excited appetite. The vast sweep of the country continually suggested to me some great delectable repast: a banquet spread for a hundred million guests; and having discovered myself unable, in the time first allotted, to devour more than part of it — a strip across the table, as it were, stretching from New York on one side to San Francisco on the other — I have hungered impatiently for more. Indeed, to be quite honest, I should like to try to eat it all.

Months before our actual departure for the South the day for leaving was appointed ; days before we fixed upon our train ; hours before I bought my ticket. And then, when my trunks had left the house, when my taxicab was ordered and my faithful battered suitcase stood packed to bulging in the hall, my companion, the Illustrator, telephoned to say that certain drawings he must finish before leaving were not done, that he would be unable to go with me that afternoon, as planned, but must wait until the midnight train.

Had the first leap been a long one I should have waited for him, but the distance from New York to the other side of Mason and Dixon's Line is short, and I knew that he would join me on the threshold of the South next morning. Therefore I told him I would leave that afternoon as originally proposed, and gave him, in excuse, every reason I could think of, save the real one : namely, my impatience. I told him that I wished to make the initial trip by day to avoid the discomforts of the sleeping car, that I had engaged hotel accommodations for the night by wire, that friends were coming down to see me off.

Nor were these arguments without truth. I believe in telling the truth. The truth is good enough for any one at any time — except, perhaps, when there is a point to be carried, and even then some vestige of it should, if convenient, be preserved. Thus, for example, it is quite true that I prefer the conversation of my fellow travelers, dull though it may be, to the stertorous

ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES

sounds they make by night; so, too, if I had not telegraphed for rooms, it was merely because I had forgotten to — and that I remedied immediately ; while as to the statement that friends were to see me off, that was absolutely and literally accurate. Friends had, indeed, signified their purpose to meet me at the station for last farewells, and had, furthermore, remarked upon the very slight show of enthusiasm with which I heard the news.

The fact is, I do not like to be seen off. Least of all, do I like to be seen off by those who are dear to me. If the thing must be done, I prefer it to be done by strangers — committees from chambers of commerce and the like, who have no interest in me save the hope that I will live to write agreeably of their city — of the civic center, the fertilizer works, and the charming new abattoir. Seeing me off for the most practical of reasons, such gentlemen are invariably efficient. They provide an equipage, and there have even been times when, in the final hurried moments, they have helped me to jam the last things into my trunks and bags. One of them politely takes my suitcase, another kindly checks my baggage, and all in order that a third, who is usually the secretary of the chamber of commerce, may regale me with inspiring statistics concerning the population of "our city," the seating capacity of the auditorium, the number of banks, the amount of their clearings, and the quantity of belt buckles annually manufactured. When the train is ready we exchange polite expressions of regret at parting: expressions reminiscent of those little speeches which the King of England and the Emperor of Germany used to make at parting in the old days before they found each other out and began dropping high explosives on each other's roofs.

Such a committee, feeling no emotion (except perhaps relief) at seeing me depart, may be useful. Not so with friends and loved ones. Useful as they may be in the great crises of life, they are but disturbing elements in the small ones. Those who would die for us seldom check our trunks.

By this I do not mean to imply that either of the two delightful creatures who came to the Pennsylvania Terminal to bid me good-by would die for me. That one has lived for me and that both attempt to regulate my conduct is more than enough. Hardly had I alighted from my taxicab, hardly had the redcap seized my suitcase, when, with sweet smiles and a twinkling of daintily shod feet, they came. Fancy their having arrived ahead of me ! Fancy their having come like a pair of angels through the rain to see me off ! Enough to turn a man's head ! It did turn mine ; and I noticed that, as they approached, the heads of other men were turning too.

Flattered to befuddlement, I greeted them and started with them automatically in the direction of the concourse, forgetting entirely the driver of my taxicab, who, however, took in the situation and set up a great shout — whereat I returned hastily and overpaid him.

This accomplished, I rejoined my companions and, with a radiant dark-haired girl at one elbow and a blonde,

ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES

equally delectable, at the other, moved across the concourse.

How gay they were as we strolled along ! How amusing were their prophecies of adventures destined to befall me in the South. Small wonder that I took no thought of whither I was going.

Presently, having reached the wall at the other side of the great vaulted chamber, we stopped.

** Which train, boss?" asked the porter who had meekly followed.

Train? I had forgotten about trains. The mention of the subject distracted my attention for the moment from the Loreleien, stirred my drugged sense of duty, and reminded me that I had trunks to check.

My suggestion that I leave them briefly for this purpose was lightly brushed aside.

"Oh, no !" they cried. "We shall go with you."

I gave in at once — one always does with them — and inquired of the porter the location of the baggage room. He looked somewhat fatigued as he replied :

"It 's away back there where we come from, boss."

It was a long walk; in a garden, with no train to catch, it would have been delightful.

"Got your tickets?" suggested the porter as we passed the row of grilled windows. He had evidently concluded that I was irresponsible.

As I had them, we continued on our way, and presently achieved the baggage room, where they stood talking and laughing, telling me of the morning's shopping expedition — hat-hunting, they called it — in the rain. I fancy that we might have been there yet had not a baggageman, perhaps divining that I had become a little bit distrait and that I had business to transact, rapped smartly on the iron counter with his punch and demanded :

''Baggage checked?"

Turning, not without reluctance, from a pair of violet eyes and a pair of the most mysterious gray, I began to fumble in my pockets for the claim checks.

"How long shall you stay in Baltimore?" asked the girl with the gray eyes.

"Yes, indeed!" I answered, still searching for the checks.

"That does n't make sense," remarked the blue-eyed girl as I found the checks and handed them to the baggageman. "She asked how long you 'd stay in Baltimore, and you said: 'Yes, indeed.' "

"About a week I meant to say."

"Oh, I don't believe a week will be enough," said Gray-eyes.

"We can't stay longer," I declared. "We must keep pushing on. There are so many places in the South to see."

"My sister has just been there, and she — "

"Where to?" demanded the insistent baggageman.

"Why, Baltimore, of course," I said. Had he paid attention to our conversation he might have known.

ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES

"You were saying," reminded Violet-eyes, "that your sister — ?"

"She just came home from there, and says that — "

"Railroad ticket !" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience.

I began again to feel in various pockets.

"She says," continued Gray-eyes, "that she never met more charming people or had better things to eat. She loves the southern accent too."

I don't know how the tickets got into my upper right vest pocket; I never carry tickets there; but that is where I found them.

"Do you like it?" asked the other girl of me.

"Like what?"

"Why, the southern accent."

"Any valuation?" the baggageman demanded.

"Yes," I answered them both at once.

"Oh, you dof" cried Violet-eyes, incredulously.

"Why, yes; I think—"

"Put down the amount and sign here," the baggageman directed, pushing a slip toward me and placing a pencil in my hand.

I obeyed. The baggageman took the slip and w^nt off to a little desk. I judged that he had finished with me for the moment.

"But don't you think," my fair inquisitor continued, "that the southern girls pile on the accent awfully, because they know it pleases men ?"

'Terhaps," I said. "But then, what better reason could they have for doing so?"

"Listen to that!" she cried to her companion. "Did you ever hear such egotism?"

"He 's nothing but a man," said Gray-eyes scornfully. "I would n't be a man for — "

"A dollar and eighty-five cents," declared the baggageman.

I paid him.

"I wouldn't be a man for anything!" my fair friend finished as we started to move off.

"I would n't have you one," I told her, opening the concourse door.

''Hay!" shouted the baggageman. "Here's your ticket and your checks !"

I returned, took them, and put them in my pocket. Again we proceeded upon our way. I was glad to leave the baggageman.

This time the porter meant to take no chances.

"What train, boss?" he asked.

"The Congressional Limited."

"You got jus' four minutes."

"Goodness !" cried Gray-eyes.

"I thought," said Violet-eyes as we accelerated our pace, "that you prided yourself on always having time to spare?"

"Usually I do," I answered, "but in this case — "

"What car?" the porter interrupted tactfully.

Again I felt for my tickets. This time they were in

lO

ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES my change pocket. I can't imagine how I came to put them there.

"But in this case — whatf" The violet eyes looked threatening as their owner put the question.

"Seat seven, car three," I told the porter firmly as we approached the gate. Then, turning to my dangerous and lovely cross-examiner: 'Tn this case I am unfortunate, for there is barely time to say good-by."

There are several reasons why I don't believe in railway station kisses. Kisses given in public are at best but skimpy little things, suggesting the swift peck of a robin at a peach, whereas it is truer of kissing than of many other forms of industry that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well. Yet I knew that one of these enchantresses expected to be kissed, and that the other very definitely did n't. Therefore I kissed them both. Then I bolted toward the gate.

"Tickets !" demanded the gateman, stopping me. At last I found them in the inside pocket of my overcoat. I don't know how they got there. I never carry tickets in that pocket.

As the train began to move I looked at my watch and, discovering it to be three minutes fast, set it right. That is the sort of train the Congressional Limited is. A moment later we were roaring through the blackness of the Hudson River tunnel.

There is something fine in the abruptness of the escape from New York City by the Pennsylvania Railr>s^d. From the time you enter the station you are^s

II good as gone. There is no progress between the city's tenements, with untidy bedding airing in some windows and fat old slatterns leaning out from others to survey the sordidness and squalor of the streets below. A swift plunge into darkness, some thundering moments, and your train glides out upon the wide wastes of the New Jersey meadows. The city is gone. You are even in another State. Far, far behind, bathed in glimmering haze which gives them the appearance of palaces in a mirage, you may see the tops of New York's towering sky-scrapers, dwarfed yet beautified by distance. Outside the wide car window the advertising sign-boards pass to the rear in steady parade, shrieking in strong color of whiskies, tobaccos, pills, chewing gums, cough drops, flours, hams, hotels, soaps, socks, and shows.

Chapter II A Baltimore Evening

I felt her presence by its spell of might,

Stoop o'er me from above ; The calm, majestic presence of the night,

As of the one I love.

— Longfellow.

BEFORE I went to Baltimore I had but two definite impressions connected with the place: the first was of a tunnel, filled with coal gas, through which trains pass beneath the city ; the second was that when a southbound train left Baltimore the time had come to think of cleaning up, preparatory to reaching Washington.

Arriving at Baltimore after dark, one gathers an impression of an adequate though not impressive Union Station from which one emerges to a district of good asphalted streets, the main ones wide and well lighted. The Baltimore street lamps are large and very brilliant single globes, mounted upon the tops of substantial metal columns. I do not remember having seen lamps of the same pattern in any other city. It is a good pattern, but there is one thing about it which is not good at all, and that is the way the street names are lettered upon the sides of the globes. Though the lettering is not large, it is large enough to be read easily in the daytime against the globe's white surface, but to try to read it at night is like trying to read some little legend printed upon a blinding noon-day sun. I noticed this particularly because I spent my first evening in wandering alone about the streets of Baltimore, and wished to keep track of my route in order that I might the more readily find my way back to the hotel.

Can most travelers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city? Do they feel the same detached )^et keen interest in unfamiliar highways, homes, and human beings, the same sense of being a wanderer from another world, a "messenger from -Mars," a Harun-al- Rashid, or, if not one of these, an imaginative adventurer like Tartarin? Do they thrill at the sight of an ill-lighted street leading into a no-man's-land of menacing dark shadows ; at the promise of a glowing window puncturing the blackness here or there ; at the invitation of some open doorway behind which unilluminated blackness hangs, threatening and tempting? Do they rejoice in streets the names of which they have not heard before? Do they — as I do — delight in irregularity: in the curious forms of roofs and spires against the sky; in streets which run up hill or down; or which, instead of being straight, have jogs in them, or curves, or interesting intersections, at which other streets dart off from them obliquely, as though in a great hurry to get somewhere? Do they love to emerge from a street which is narrow, dim, and deserted, upon one which is wide, bright, and crowded; and do they also Hke to leave a brilliant street and dive into the darkness of some somber byway? Does a long row of lights lure them, block by block, toward distances unknown? Are they tempted by the unfamiliar signs on passing street cars? Do they yearn to board those cars and be transported by them into the mystic caverns of the night? And when they see strangers who are evidently going somewhere with some special purpose, do they wish to follow; to find out where these beings are going, and why? Do they wish to trail them, let the trail lead to a prize fight, to a church sociable, to a fire, to a fashionable ball, or to the ends of the world ?

For the traveler who does not know such sensations and such impulses as these — who has not at times indulged in the joy of yielding to an inclination of at least mildly fantastic character — I am profoundly sorry. The blind themselves are not so blind as those who, seeing with the physical eye, lack the eye of imagination.

Residence streets like Chase and Biddle, in the blocks near where they cross Charles Street, midway on its course between the Union Station and Mount Vernon Place, are at night, even more than by day, full of the suggestion of comfortable and settled domesticity. Their brick houses, standing wall to wall and close to the sidewalk, speak of honorable age, and, in some cases, of a fine and ancient dignity. One fancies that in many of these houses the best of old mahogany may be found, or, if not that, then at least the fairly old and quite creditable furniture of the period of the sleigh-back bed, the haircloth-covered rosewood sofa, and the tall, narrow mirror between the two front windows of the drawing room.

Through the glass panels of street doors and beneath half-drawn window shades the early-evening wayfarer may perceive a feeble glow as of illuminating gas turned low; but by ten o'clock these lights have begun to disappear, indicating — or so, at all events, I chose to believe — that certain old ladies wearing caps and black silk gowns with old lace fichus held in place b}^ ancient cameos, have proceeded slowly, rustlingly, upstairs to bed, accompanied by their cats.

At Cathedral Street, a block or two from Charles, Biddle Street performs a jog, dashing off at a tangent from its former course, while Chase Street not only jogs and turns at the corresponding intersection, but does so again, where, at the next corner, it meets at once with Park Avenue and Berkeley Street. After this it runs but a short way and dies, as though exhausted by its own contortions.

Here, in a region of malformed city blocks — some of them pentagonal, some irregularly quadrangular, some wedge-shaped — Howard Street sets forth upon its way, running first southwest as far as Richmond Street, then turning south and becoming, by degrees, an important thoroughfare.

Somewhere near the beginning of Howard Street my

i6

Can most travellers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city?

attention was arrested by shadowy forms in a dark window: furniture, andirons, chinaware, and weapons of obsolete design: unmistakable signs of a shop in which antiquities were for sale. After making mental note of the location of this shop, I proceeded on my way, keeping a sharp lookout for other like establishments. Nor was I to be disappointed. These birds of a feather bear out the truth of the proverb by flocking together in Howard Street, as window displays, faintly visible, informed me.

Since we have come naturally to the subject of antiques, let us pause here, under a convenient lamp-post, and discuss the matter further.

Baltimore — as I found out later — is probably the headquarters for the South in this trade. It has at least one dealer of Fifth Avenue rank, located on Charles Street, and a number of humbler dealers in and near Howard Street. Among the latter, two in particular interested me. One of these — his name is John A. Williar — I have learned to trust. Not only did I make some purchases of him while I was in Baltimore, but I have even gone so far, since leaving there, as to buy from him by mail, accepting his assurance that some article which I have not seen is, nevertheless, what I want, and that it is "worth the price."

At the other antique shop which interested me I made no purchases. The stock on hand was very large, and if those who exhibited it to me made no mistakes in differentiating between genuine antiques and copies, the assortment of ancient furniture on sale in that estabHshment, when I was there, would rank among the great collections of the world.

However, human judgment is not infallible, and antique dealers sometimes make mistakes, offering, so to speak, "new lamps for old." The eyesight of some dealers may not be so good as that of others; or perhaps one dealer does not know so well as another the difference between, say, an old English Chippendale chair and a New York reproduction ; or again, perhaps, some dealers may be innocently unaware that there exist, in this land of ours, certain large establishments wherein are manufactured most extraordinary modern copies of the furniture of long ago. I have been in one of these manufactories, and have there seen chairs of Chippendale and Sheraton design which, though fresh from the workman's hands, looked older than the originals from which they had been plagiarized; also I recall a Jacobean refectory table, the legs of which appeared to have been eaten half away by time, but which had, in reality, been "antiqued" with a stiff wire brush. I mention this because, in my opinion, antique dealers have a right to know that such factories exist.

What curious differences there are between the customs of one trade and those of another. Compare, for instance, the dealer in old furniture with the dealer in old automobiles. The latter, far from pronouncing a machine of which he wishes to dispose "a genuine an-

i8 tique," will assure you — and not always with a strict regard for truth — that it is ''practically as good as new." Or compare the seller of antiques with the horse dealer. Can you imagine the latter's taking you up to some venerable quadruped — let alone a three-year-old — and discoursing upon its merits in some such manner as the following:

"This is the oldest and most historic horse that has ever come into my possession. Just look at it, sir ! The farmer of whom I bought it assured me that it was brought over by his ancestors in the Mayfloiver. The place where I found it was used as Washington's headquarters during the Revolutionary War, and it is known that Washington himself frequently sat on this very horse. It was a favorite of his. For he was a large man and he liked a big, comfortable, deep-seated horse, well braced underneath, and having strong arms, so that he could tilt it back comfortably against the wall, with its front legs off the floor, and — "

But no! That won't do. It appears I have gotten mixed. However, you know what I meant to indicate. I merely meant to show that a horse dealer would n't talk about a horse as an antique dealer would talk about a chair. Even if the horse was once actually ridden by the Father of his Country, the dealer won't stress the point. You can't get him to admit that a horse has reached years of discretion, let alone that it is one hundred and forty-five years old, or so. It is this difference between the horse dealer and the dealer in antiques which keeps us in the dark to-day as to exactly which horses Washington rode and which he did n't ride ; although we know every chair he ever sat in, and every bed he ever slept in, and every house he ever stopped in, and how he is said to have caught his death of cold.

Having thus wandered afield, let me now resume my nocturnal walk.

Proceeding down Howard Street to Franklin, I judged by the signs I saw about me — the conglomerate assortment of theaters, hotels, rathskellers, bars, and brilliantly lighted drug stores — that here was the center of the city's nighttime life.

Not far from this corner is the Academy, a very spacious and somewhat ancient theater, and although the hour was late, into the Academy I went with a ticket for standing room.

Arriving dm'ing an intermission, I had a good view of the auditorium. It is reminiscent, in its interior "decoration," of the recently torn-down Wallack's Theater in New York. The balcony is supported, after the old fashion, by posts, and there are boxes the tops of which are draped with tasseled curtains. It is the kind of theater which suggests traditions, dust, and the possibility of fire and panic.

After looking about me for a time, I drew from my pocket a pamphlet which I had picked up in the hotel, and began to gather information about the "Monumental City," as Baltimore sometimes calls itself — thereby misusing the word, since "monumental" means, in one sense, "enduring," and in another '^pertaining to or serving as a monument": neither of which ideas it is intended, in this instance, to convey. What Baltimore intends to indicate is, not that it pertains to monuments, but that monuments pertain to it: that it is a city in which many monuments have been erected — as is indeed the pleasing fact. My pamphlet informed me that the first monument to Columbus and the first to George Washington were here put up, and that among the city's other monuments was one to Francis Scott Key. I had quite forgotten that it was at Baltimore that Key wrote the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner," and, as others may have done the same, it may be well here to recall the details.

In 1814, after the British had burned a number of Government buildings in Washington, including "the President's palace" (as one of their officers expressed it), they moved on Baltimore, making an attack by land at North Point and a naval attack at Fort McHenry on Whetstone Point in the estuary of the Patapsco River — here practically an arm of Chesapeake Bay. Both attacks were repulsed. Having gone on the United States cartel ship Minden (used by the government in negotiating exchanges of prisoners) to intercede for his friend. Dr. William Beanes, of Upper Marlborough, Maryland, who was held captive on a British vessel. Key witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry from the deck of the Minden, and when he perceived "by the daw^n's early light" that the flag still flew over the fort, he was moved to write his famous poem. Later it was printed and set to music ; it was first sung in a restaurant near the old HolHday Street Theater, but neither the restaurant nor the theater exists to-day. It is sometimes stated that Key was himself a prisoner, during the bombardment, on a British warship. That is a mistake.