Abroad At Home Part 18

[Ill.u.s.tration: The bold front of Michigan Avenue along Grant Park ...

great buildings wreathed in whirling smoke and that allegory of infinity which confronts one who looks eastward]

"The neighborhood's changed a good bit since you was here. Lots of the old families have gone. I'm almost a stranger around the alley myself now. I must be a pretty tough old nut, the way I keep hangin' on." He smiled as he said that.

"Of course I'll see you when I come out to Chicago again," I said as we shook hands at parting.

William looked up at the sky, much as a man will look for signs of rain.

Then with another smile he let his eyes drift slowly downward from the heavens.

"Well," he said in his nasal drawl, "I guess I'll see you again some time--some place."

I turned and moved away.

Then, of a sudden, a back gate swung open with a violent bang against the fence, and four or five boys in short trousers leaped out and ran, yelling, helter-skelter up the alley.

I had the curious feeling that among them was the boy I used to be.

"IN MIZZOURA"

CHAPTER XVII

SOMNOLENT ST. LOUIS

"The moderation of prosperous people comes from the calm which good fortune gives to their temper."

--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

Some years ago, while riding westward through the Alleghenies in an observation car of the Pennsylvania Limited, a friend of mine fell into conversation with an old gentleman who sat in the next chair.

"Evidently he knew a good deal about that region," said my friend, in telling me of the incident later. "We must have sat there together for a couple of hours. He did most of the talking; I could see that he enjoyed talking, and was glad to have a listener. Before he got off he shook hands with me and said he was glad to have had the little chat. Then, when he was gone, the trainman came and asked me if I knew who he was. I didn't. Come to find out, it was Andrew Carnegie."

I asked my friend how Mr. Carnegie impressed him.

"Oh," he replied, "I was much surprised when I found it had been he. He seemed a nice old fellow enough, kindly and affable, but a little commonplace. I should never have called him an 'inspired millionaire.'

I've been reconstructing him in my mind ever since."

I am reminded of my friend's experience by my own meeting with the city of St. Louis; for it was not until after I had left St. Louis that I found out "who it is." That is, I failed to focus, while there, upon the fact that it is America's fourth city. And now, in looking back, I feel about St. Louis as my friend felt about the ironmaster: I do not think it looks the part.

St. Louis leads the world in shoes, stoves, and tobacco; it is the world's greatest market for hardware, lumber, and raw furs; it is the princ.i.p.al horse and mule market in America; it builds more street and railroad cars than any other city in the country; it distributes more coffee; it makes more woodenware, more native chemicals, more beer. It leads in all these things. But what it does not do is to _look_ as though it led. Physically it is a great, overgrown American town, like Buffalo or St. Paul. Its streets are, for the most part, lacking in distinction. There is no center at which a visitor might stop, knowing by instinct that he was at the city's heart. It is a rambling, incoherent place, in which one has to ask which is the princ.i.p.al retail shopping corner. Fancy having to ask a thing like that!

I do not mean by this that St. Louis is much worse, in appearance, than some other American cities. For American cities, as I have said before, have only recently awakened to the need of broadly planned munic.i.p.al beauty. All I mean is that St. Louis seems to be behind in taking action to improve herself.

Almost every city presents a paradox, if you will but find it. The St.

Louis paradox is that she is a fashionable city without style. But that is not, in reality, the paradox, it seems. It only means that being an old, aristocratic city, with a wealthy and cosmopolitan population, and an extraordinarily cultivated social life, St. Louis yet lacks munic.i.p.al distinction. It is a dowdy city. It needs to be taken by the hand and led around to some munic.i.p.al-improvement tailor, some civic haberdasher, who will dress it like the gentleman it really is.

I remember a well-to-do old man who used to be like that. His daughters were obliged to drag him down to get new clothes. Always he insisted that the old frock coat was plenty good enough; that he couldn't spare time and the money for a new one. Nevertheless, he could well afford new clothes, and so can St. Louis. The city debt is relatively small, and there are only two American cities of over 350,000 population which have a lower tax-rate. These two are San Francisco and Cleveland. And either one of them can set a good example to St. Louis, in the matter of self-improvement. San Francisco, with a population hardly more than half that of St. Louis, is yet an infinitely more important-looking city; while Minneapolis or Denver might impress a casual visitor, roaming their streets, as being equal to St. Louis in commerce and population, although the Missouri metropolis is, in reality, considerably greater than the two combined. However, in considering the foibles of an old city we should be lenient, as in considering those of an old man.

Old men and old cities did not enjoy, in their youth, the advantages which are enjoyed to-day by young men and young cities. Life was harder, and precedent, in many lines, was wanting. Excepting in a few rare instances, as, for example, in Detroit and Savannah, the laying out of cities seems to have been taken care of, in the early days, as much by cows as men. Look at Boston, or lower New York, or St. Paul, or St.

Louis. How little did the men who founded those cities dream of the proportions to which they would some day attain! With cities which have begun to develop within the last fifty or sixty years, it has been different, for there has been precedent to show them what is possible when an American city really starts to grow. To-day all American cities, even down to the smallest towns, have a sneaking suspicion that they may some day become great, too--great, that is, by comparison with what they are. And those which are not altogether lacking in energy are prepared, at least in a small way, to encounter greatness when, at last, it comes.

Baedeker says St. Louis was founded as a fur-trading station by the French in 1756. "All About St. Louis," a publication compiled by the St.

Louis Advertising Men's League, gives the date 1764. Pierre Laclede was the founder, and it is interesting to note that some of his descendants still reside there.

When Louis XV ceded the territory to the east of the Mississippi to the English, he also ceded the west bank to Spain by secret treaty. Spanish authority was established in St. Louis in 1770, but in 1804 the town became a part of the United States, as a portion of the Louisiana Purchase.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The dilapidation of the quarter has continued steadily from d.i.c.kens's day to this, and the beauty now to be discovered there is that of decay and ruin]

In the old days the city had but three streets: the Rue Royale, one block back from the levee (now Main Street); the Rue de l'Eglise, or Church Street (now Second); and the Rue des Granges, or Barn Street (now Third).

Though a few of the old French houses, in a woeful state of dilapidation, may still be seen in this neighborhood, it is now for the most part given over to commission merchants, warehouses, and slums.

Charles d.i.c.kens, writing of St. Louis in 1842, describes this quarter:

"In the old French portion of the town the thoroughfares are narrow and crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint and picturesque: being built of wood, with tumble-down galleries before the windows, approachable by stairs or rather ladders from the street. There are queer little barbers' shops and drinking houses, too, in this quarter; and abundance of crazy old tenements with blinking cas.e.m.e.nts, such as may be seen in Flanders. Some of these ancient habitations, with high garret gable windows perking into the roofs, have a kind of French shrug about them; and, being lopsided with age, appear to hold their heads askew, besides, as if they were grimacing in astonishment at the American improvements.

"It is hardly necessary to say that these consist of wharves and warehouses and new buildings in all directions; and of a great many vast plans which are still 'progressing.' Already, however, some very good houses, broad streets, and marble-fronted shops have gone so far ahead as to be in a state of completion, and the town bids fair in a few years to improve considerably; though it is not likely ever to vie, in point of elegance or beauty, with Cincinnati.... The Roman Catholic religion, introduced here by the early French settlers, prevails extensively. Among the public inst.i.tutions are a Jesuit college, a convent for 'the Ladies of the Sacred Heart,' and a large chapel attached to the college, which was in course of erection at the time of my visit.... The architect of this building is one of the reverend fathers.... The organ will be sent from Belgium.... In addition to these establishments there is a Roman Catholic cathedral.

"No man ever admits the unhealthiness of the place he dwells in (unless he is going away from it), and I shall therefore, I have no doubt, be at issue with the inhabitants of St. Louis in questioning the perfect salubrity of its climate.... It is very hot...."

The cathedral of which d.i.c.kens wrote remains, perhaps the most st.u.r.dy building in the section which forms the old town. It is a venerable-looking pile of gray granite, built to last forever, and suggesting, with its French inscriptions and its exotic look, a bit of old Quebec. But for the most part the dilapidation of the quarter has continued steadily from d.i.c.kens's day to this, and the beauty now to be discovered there is that of decay and ruin--pathetic beauty to charm the etcher, but sadden the lover of improvement, whose battle cry invariably involves the overworked word "civic."

An exception to the general slovenliness of this quarter is to be seen in the old Merchants' Exchange Hall on Main Street. Built nearly sixty years ago, this building, now disused and dilapidated, nevertheless shows a facade of a distinction rare in structures of its time. I was surprised to discover that this old hall was not better known in St.

Louis, and I cheerfully recommend it to the notice of those who esteem the architecture of the Jefferson Memorial, the bulky new cathedral on Lindell Boulevard, or that residence, suggestive of the hanging gardens of Babylon, at Hortense Place and King's Highway. Take the old Merchants' Exchange Hall away from dirty, cobbled Main Street, set it up, instead, in Venice, beside the Grand Ca.n.a.l, and watch the tourist from St. Louis stop his gondola to gaze!

But what city has respected its ruins? Rome used her palaces as mines for building material. St. Louis destroyed the wonderful old mound which used to stand at the corner of Mound Street and Broadway, forming one of the most interesting archeological remains in the country and, together with smaller mounds near by, giving St. Louis her t.i.tle of "Mound City."

With d.i.c.kens's statements concerning the St. Louis summer climate, the publication, "All About St. Louis," does not, for one moment, agree. In it I find an article headed: "St. Louis has Better Weather than Other Cities," the preamble to which contains the following solemn truth:

The weather question is purely local and individual. Every person forms his own opinion about the weather by the way it affects him, wherever he happens to be.

Having made that clear, the writer becomes more specific. He informs us that, in St. Louis, "the prevailing winds in summer blow over the Ozark Mountains, insuring cool nights and pleasant days." Also that "during the summer the temperature does not run so high, and warm spells do not last so long as in many cities of the North." The latter statement is supported--as almost every statement in the world, it seems to me, can be supported--by statistics. What wonderful things statistics are! How I wish Charles d.i.c.kens might have seen these. How surprised he would have been. How surprised I was--for I, too, have visited St. Louis in the middle of the year. Yes, and so has my companion. He went to St. Louis several years ago to attend the Democratic National Convention, but he is all right again now.

I showed him the statistics.

"Why!" he cried. "I ought to have been told of this before!"

"What for?" I demanded.