A Frenchman in America Part 23
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "BRUSH-UP."]
I really admire the independence of all the servants in this country.
You may give them a tip, you will not run the risk of making them servile or even polite.
The railway conductor says "ticket!" The word _please_ does not belong to his vocabulary any more than the words "thank you." He says "ticket"
and frowns. You show it to him. He looks at it suspiciously, and gives it back to you with a haughty air that seems to say: "I hope you will behave properly while you are in my car."
The tip in America is not _de rigueur_ as in Europe. The cabman charges you so much, and expects nothing more. He would lose his dignity by accepting a tip (many run the risk). He will often ask you for more than you owe him; but this is the act of a sharp man of business, not the act of a servant. In doing so, he does not derogate from his character.
The negro is the only servant who smiles in America, the only one who is sometimes polite and attentive, and the only one who speaks English with a pleasant accent.
The negro porter in the sleeping cars has seldom failed to thank me for the twenty-five or fifty cent piece I always give him after he has brushed--or rather, swept--my clothes with his little broom.
A few minutes ago, as I was packing my valise for a journey to St. Paul and Minneapolis to-night, the porter brought in a card. The name was unknown to me; but the porter having said that it was the card of a gentleman who was most anxious to speak to me, I said, "Very well, bring him here."
The gentleman entered the room, saluted me, shook hands, and said:
"I hope I am not intruding."
"Well," said I, "I must ask you not to detain me long, because I am off in a few minutes."
"I understand, sir, that some time ago you were engaged in teaching the French language in one of the great public schools of England."
"I was, sir," I replied.
"Well, I have a son whom I wish to speak French properly, and I have come to ask for your views on the subject. In other words, will you be good enough to tell me what are the best methods for teaching this language? Only excuse me, I am very deaf."
[Ill.u.s.tration: LEFT.]
He pulled out of his back pocket two yards of gutta-percha tube, and, applying one end to his ear and placing the other against my mouth, he said, "Go ahead."
"Really?" I shouted through the tube. "Now please shut your eyes; nothing is better for increasing the power of hearing."
The man shut his eyes and turned his head sideways, so as to have the listening ear in front of me. I took my valise and ran to the elevator as fast as I could.
That man may still be waiting for aught I know and care.
Before leaving the hotel, I made the acquaintance of Mr. George Kennan, the Russian traveler. His articles on Russia and Siberia, published in the _Century Magazine_, attracted a great deal of public attention, and people everywhere throng to hear him relate his terrible experiences on the platform. He has two hundred lectures to give this season. He struck me as a most remarkable man--simple, unaffected in his manner, with unflinching resolution written on his face; a man in earnest, you can see. I am delighted to find that I shall have the pleasure of meeting him again in New York in the middle of April. He looks tired. He, too, is lecturing in the "neighborhood of Chicago," and is off now to the night train for Cincinnati.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER XXIV.
ST. PAUL AND MINNEAPOLIS, THE SISTER CITIES--RIVALRIES AND JEALOUSIES BETWEEN LARGE AMERICAN CITIES--MINNEHAHA FALLS--WONDERFUL INTERVIEWERS--MY HAT GETS INTO TROUBLE AGAIN--ELECTRICITY IN THE AIR--FOREST ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nTS--RAILWAY SPEED IN AMERICA.
_St. Paul, Minn., February 20._
Arrived at St. Paul the day before yesterday to pay a professional visit to the two great sister cities of the north of America.
Sister cities! Yes, they are near enough to shake hands and kiss each other, but I am afraid they avail themselves of their proximity to scratch each other's faces.
If you open Bouillet's famous Dictionary of History and Geography (edition 1880), you will find in it neither St. Paul nor Minneapolis. I was told yesterday that in 1834 there was one white inhabitant in Minneapolis. To-day the two cities have about 200,000 inhabitants each.
Where is the dictionary of geography that can keep pace with such wonderful phantasmagoric growth? The two cities are separated by a distance of about nine miles, but they are every day growing up toward each other, and to-morrow they will practically have become one.
Nothing is more amusing than the jealousies which exist between the different large cities of the United States, and when these rival places are close to each other, the feeling of jealousy is so intensified as to become highly entertaining.
St. Paul charges Minneapolis with copying into the census names from tombstones, and it is affirmed that young men living in either one of the cities will marry girls belonging to the other so as to decrease its population by one. The story goes that once a preacher having announced, in a Minneapolis church, that he had taken the text of his sermon from St. Paul, the congregation walked out _en ma.s.se_.
New York despises Philadelphia, and pokes fun at Boston. On the other hand, Boston hates Chicago, and _vice versa_. St. Louis has only contempt for Chicago, and both cities laugh heartily at Detroit and Milwaukee. San Francisco and Denver are left alone in their prosperity.
They are so far away from the east and north of America, that the feeling they inspire is only one of indifference.
"Philadelphia is a city of homes, not of lodging-houses," once said a Philadelphian to a New Yorker; "and it spreads over a far greater area than New York, with less than half the inhabitants." "Ah," replied the New Yorker, "that's because it has been so much sat upon."
"You are a city of commerce," said a Bostonian to a New York wit; "Boston is a city of culture." "Yes," replied the New Yorker. "You spell culture with a big C, and G.o.d with a small g."
Of course St. Paul and Minneapolis accuse each other of counting their respective citizens twice over. All that is diverting in the highest degree. This feeling does not exist only between the rival cities of the New World, it exists in the Old. Ask a Glasgow man what he thinks of Edinburgh, and an Edinburgh man what he thinks of Glasgow!
On account of the intense cold (nearly thirty degrees below zero), I have not been able to see much either of St. Paul or of Minneapolis, and I am unable to please or vex either of these cities by pointing out their beauties and defects. Both are large and substantially built, with large churches, schools, banks, stores, and all the temples that modern Christians erect to Jehovah and Mammon. I may say that the Ryan Hotel at St. Paul and the West House at Minneapolis are among the very best hotels I have come across in America, the latter especially. When I have added that, the day before yesterday, I had an immense audience in the People's Church at St. Paul, and that to-night I have had a crowded house at the Grand Opera House in Minneapolis, it is hardly necessary for me to say that I shall have enjoyed myself in the two great towns, and that I shall carry away with me a delightful recollection of them.
Soon after arriving in Minneapolis yesterday, I went to see the Minnehaha Falls, immortalized by Longfellow. The motor line gave me an idea of rapid transit. I returned to the West House for lunch and spent the afternoon writing. Many interviewers called.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "WHAT YEARLY INCOME DOES YOUR BOOKS AND LECTURES BRING IN?"]
The first who came sat down in my room and point-blank asked me my views on contagious diseases. Seeing that I was not disposed to talk on the subject, he asked me to discourse on republics and the prospects of General Boulanger. In fact, anything for copy.
The second one, after asking me where I came from and where I was going, inquired whether I had exhausted the Anglo-Saxons and whether I should write on other nations. After I had satisfied him, he asked me what yearly income my books and lectures brought in.
Another wanted to know why I had not brought my wife with me, how many children I had, how old they were, and other details as wonderfully interesting to the public. By and by I saw he was jotting down a description of my appearance, and the different clothes I had on! "I will unpack this trunk," I said, "and spread all its contents on the floor. Perhaps you would be glad to have a look at my things." He smiled: "Don't trouble any more," he said; "I am very much obliged to you for your courtesy."
This morning, on opening the papers, I see that my hat is getting into trouble again. I thought that, after getting rid of my brown hat and sending it to the editor in the town where it had created such a sensation, peace was secured. Not a bit. In the Minneapolis _Journal_ I read the following:
The attractive personality of the man [allow me to record this for the sake of what follows], heightened by his neglige sack coat and vest, with a background of yellowish plaid trowsers, occasional glimpses of which were revealed from beneath the folds of a heavy ulster, which swept the floor [I was sitting of course] and was trimmed with fur collar and cuffs. And then that hat! On the table, carelessly thrown amid a pile of correspondence, was his nondescript headgear. One of those half-sombreros affected by the wild Western cowboy when on dress parade, an impossible combination of dark-blue and bottle-green.
Fancy treating in this off-handed way a $7.50 soft black felt hat bought of the best hatter in New York! No, nothing is sacred for those interviewers. Dark-blue and bottle-green! Why, did that man imagine that I wore my hat inside out so as to show the silk lining?