got very tired of him sometimes, but loved him just because he was so good; the pretty girl, who couldn't make her eyes behave because she was a pretty girl. We guessed what kind of house each one resided in, the kind of furniture they had, the kind of pictures on the walls, the kind of books they read—or didn't read. And I believed that we guessed right. Did we not even know what sort of underwear encased the ample figure of the man with the amazing memory of unessential things? And, while touching on this somewhat delicate subject, were we not aware that if the alluring being who left the train, and us, at Rochester possessed the once-so-necessary garment called a petticoat, that petticoat was hanging in her closet?
All this I mention because the thought occurred to me then (and it has kept recurring since) that places, no less than persons, have characters and traits and habits of their own. Just as there are colorless people there are colorless communities. There are communities which are strong, self-confident, aggressive; others lazy and inert. There are cities which are cultivated; others which crave "culture" but take "culturine" (like some one drinking from the wrong bottle); and still others almost unaware, as yet, that esthetic things exist. Some cities seem to fairly smile at you; others are glum and worried like men who are ill, or oppressed with business troubles. And there are dowdy cities and fashionable cities—the latter resembling one another as fashionable women do. Some cities seem to have an active sense of duty, others not. And almost all cities, like almost all people, appear to be capable alike of baseness and nobility. Some cities are rich and proud like self-made millionaires; others, by comparison, are poor. But let me digress here to say that, though I have heard mention of "hard times" at certain points along my way, I don't believe our modern generation knows what hard times really are. To most Americans the term appears to signify that life is hard indeed on him who has no motor car or who goes without champagne at dinner.
My contacts with many places and persons I shall mention in the following chapters have, of necessity, been brief. I have hardly more than glimpsed them as I glimpsed those fellow travelers on the train. Therefore I shall merely try to give you some impressions, from a sort of mental sketchbook, of the things which I have seen and done and heard. There is one point in particular about that sketchbook: in it I have reserved the right to set down only what I pleased. It has been hard to do that sometimes. People have pulled me this way and that, telling me what to see and what not to see, what to write and what to leave out. I have been urged, for instance, to write about the varied industries of Cleveland, the parks of Milwaukee, and the enormous red apples of Louisiana, Mo. I may come to the apples later on, for I ate a number of them and enjoyed them; but the varied industries of Cleveland and the Milwaukee parks I did not eat.
I claim the further right to ignore, when I desire to, the most important things, or to dwell with loving pen upon the unimportant. Indeed, I reserve all rights—even to the right to be perverse.
Thus I shall mention things which people told me not to mention: the droll Detroit Art Museum; the comic chimney rising from the center of a Grand Rapids park; horrendous scenes in the Chicago stockyards; the Free Bridge, standing useless over the river at St. Louis for want of an approach; the "wettest block"—a block full of saloons, which marks the dead line between "wet" Kansas City, Mo., and "dry" Kansas City, Kas. (I never heard about that block until a stranger wrote and told me not to mention it.)
As for statistics, though I have been loaded with them to the point of purchasing another trunk, I intend to use them as sparingly as possible. And every time I use them I shall groan.
CHAPTER II
BIFURCATED BUFFALO
Alighting from the train at Buffalo, I was reminded of my earlier reflection that railway stations should express their cities. In Buffalo the thought is painful. If that city were in fact, expressed by its present railway stations, people would not get off there voluntarily; they would have to be put off. And yet, from what I have been told, the curious and particularly ugly relic which is the New York Central Station there, to-day, does tell a certain story of the city. Buffalo has long been torn by factional quarrels—among them a protracted fight as to the location of a modern station for the New York Central Lines. The East Side wants it; the West Side wants it. Neither has it. The old station still stands—at least it was standing when I left Buffalo, for I was very careful not to bump it with my suit case.
This difference of opinion between the East Side and the West with regard to the placing of a station is, I am informed, quite typical of Buffalo. Socially, commercially, religiously, politically, the two sides disagree. The dividing line between them, geographically, is not, as might be supposed, Division Street. (That, by the way, is a peculiarity of highways called "Division Street" in most cities—they seldom divide anything more important than one row of buildings from another.) The real street of division is called Main.
Main Street! How many American towns and cities have used that name, and what a stupid name it is! It is as characterless as a number, and it lacks the number's one excuse for being. If names like Tenth Street or Eleventh Avenue fail to kindle the imagination they do not fail, at all events, to help the stranger find his way—although it should be added that strangers do, somehow, manage to find their way about in London, Paris, and even Boston, where the modern American system of numbering streets and avenues is not in vogue. But I am not agitating against the numbering of streets. Indeed, I fear I rather believe in it, as I believe in certain other dull but useful things like work and government reports. What I am crying out about is the stupid naming of such streets as carry names. Why do we have so many Main Streets? Do you think we lack imagination? Then look at the names of Western towns and Kansas girls and Pullman cars! The thing is an enigma.
Main Street is not only a bad name for a thoroughfare; the quality which it implies is unfortunate. And that quality may be seen in Main Street, Buffalo. On an exaggerated scale that street is like the Main Street of a little town, for the business district, the retail shopping district, all the city's activities string along on
either side. It is bad for a city to grow in that elongated way just as it is bad for a human being. To either it imparts a kind of gawky awkwardness.
The development of Main Street, Buffalo, has been natural. That is just the trouble; it has been too natural. Originally it was the Iroquois trail; later the route followed by the stages coming from the East. So it has grown up from log-cabin days. It is a fine, broad street; all that it lacks is "features." It runs along its wide, monotonous way until it stops in the squalid surroundings of the river; and if the river did not happen to be there to stop it, it would go on and on developing, indefinitely, and uninterestingly, in that direction as well as in the other.
The thing which Buffalo lacks physically is a recognizable center; a point at which a stranger would stop, as he stops in Piccadilly Circus or the Place de l'Opéra, and say to himself with absolute assurance: "Now I am at the very heart of the city." Every city ought to have a center, and every center ought to signify in its spaciousness, its arrangement and its architecture, a city's dignity. Buffalo is, unfortunately, far from being alone in her need of such a thing. Where Buffalo is most at fault is that she does not even seem to be thinking of municipal distinction. And very many other cities are. Cleveland is already attaining it in a manner which will be magnificent; Chicago has long planned and is slowly executing; Denver has work upon a splendid municipal center well under way; so has San Francisco; St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Grand Rapids have plans for excellent municipal improvements. Even St. Paul is waking up and widening an important business street.
Every one knows