Worldly Ways and Byways Part 11

The finer buildings may remain, turned into clubs or restaurants, but the greater part of the newer ones are so ill-adapted to any other use than that for which they are built that their future seems obscure.

That fashion will flit away from its present haunts there can be little doubt; the city below the Park is sure to be given up to business, and even the fine frontage on that green s.p.a.ce will sooner or later be occupied by hotels, if not stores; and he who builds with any belief in the permanency of his surroundings must indeed be of a hopeful disposition.

A good lady occupying a delightful corner on this same avenue, opposite a one-story florist's shop, said:

"I shall remain here until they build across the way; then I suppose I shall have to move."

So after all the man who is contented to live in a future apartment house, may not be so very far wrong.

A case of the opposite kind is that of a great millionaire, who, dying, left his house and its collections to his eldest son and his grandson after him, on the condition that they should continue to live in it.

Here was an attempt to keep together a home with its memories and a.s.sociations. What has been the result? The street that was a charming centre for residences twenty years ago has become a "slum;" the unfortunate heirs find themselves with a house on their hands that they cannot live in and are forbidden to rent or sell. As a final result the will must in all probability be broken and the matter ended.

Of course the reason for a great deal of this is the phenomenal growth of our larger cities. Hundreds of families who would gladly remain in their old homes are fairly pushed out of them by the growth of business.

Everything has its limits and a time must come when our cities will cease to expand or when centres will be formed as in London or Paris, where generations may succeed each other in the same homes. So far, I see no indications of any such crystallization in this our big city; we seem to be condemned like the "Wandering Jew" or poor little "Joe" to be perpetually "moving on."

At a dinner of young people not long ago a Frenchman visiting our country, expressed his surprise on hearing a girl speak of "not remembering the house she was born in." Piqued by his manner the young lady answered:

"We are twenty-four at this table. I do not believe there is one person here living in the house in which he or she was born." This a.s.sertion raised a murmur of dissent around the table; on a census being taken it proved, however, to be true.

How can one expect, under circ.u.mstances like these, to find any great respect among young people for home life or the conservative side of existence? They are born as it were on the wing, and on the wing will they live.

The conditions of life in this country, although contributing largely to such a state of affairs, must not be held, however, entirely responsible.

Underlying our civilization and culture, there is still strong in us a wild nomadic strain inherited from a thousand generations of wandering ancestors, which breaks out so soon as man is freed from the restraint inc.u.mbent on bread-winning for his family. The moment there is wealth or even a modest income insured, comes the inclination to cut loose from the dull routine of business and duty, returning instinctively to the migratory habits of primitive man.

We are not the only nation that has given itself up to globe-trotting; it is strong in the English, in spite of their conservative education, and it is surprising to see the number of formerly stay-at-home French and Germans one meets wandering in foreign lands.

In 1855, a Londoner advertised the plan he had conceived of taking some people over to visit the International Exhibition in Paris. For a fixed sum paid in advance he offered to provide everything and act as courier to the party, and succeeded with the greatest difficulty in getting together ten people. From this modest beginning has grown the vast undertaking that to-day covers the globe with tourists, from the frozen seas where they "do" the midnight sun, to the deserts three thousand miles up the Nile.

As I was returning a couple of years ago _via_ Vienna from Constantinople, the train was filled with a party of our compatriots conducted by an agency of this kind--simple people of small means who, twenty years ago, would as soon have thought of leaving their homes for a trip in the East as they would of starting off in balloons en route for the inter-stellar s.p.a.ces.

I doubted at the time as to the amount of information and appreciation they brought to bear on their travels, so I took occasion to draw one of the thin, unsmiling women into conversation, asking her where they intended stopping next.

"At Buda-Pesth," she answered. I said in some amus.e.m.e.nt:

"But that was Buda-Pesth we visited so carefully yesterday."

"Oh, was it," she replied, without any visible change on her face, "I thought we had not got there yet." Apparently it was enough for her to be travelling; the rest was of little importance. Later in the day, when asked if she had visited a certain old city in Germany, she told me she had but would never go there again: "They gave us such poor coffee at the hotel." Again later in speaking to her husband, who seemed a trifle vague as to whether he had seen Nuremberg or not, she said:

"Why, you remember it very well; it was there you bought those nice overshoes!"

All of which left me with some doubts in my mind as to the cultivating influences of foreign travel on their minds.

You cannot change a leopard's spots, neither can you alter the nature of a race, and one of the strongest characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon, is the nomadic instinct. How often one hears people say:

"I am not going to sit at home and take care of my furniture. I want to see something of the world before I am too old." Lately, a sprightly maiden of uncertain years, just returned from a long trip abroad, was asked if she intended now to settle down.

"Settle down, indeed! I'm a b.u.t.terfly and I never expect to settle down."

There is certainly food here for reflection. Why should we be more inclined to wander than our neighbors? Perhaps it is in a measure due to our nervous, restless temperament, which is itself the result of our climate; but whatever the cause is, inability to remain long in one place is having a most unfortunate influence on our social life. When everyone is on the move or longing to be, it becomes difficult to form any but the most superficial ties; strong friendships become impossible, the most intimate family relations are loosened.

If one were of a speculative frame of mind and chose to take as the basis for a calculation the increase in tourists between 1855, when the ten pioneers started for Paris, and the number "personally conducted" over land and sea to-day, and then glance forward at what the future will be if this ratio of increase is maintained the result would be something too awful for words. For if ten have become a million in forty years, what will be the total in 1955? Nothing less than entire nations given over to sight-seeing, pa.s.sing their lives and incomes in rushing aimlessly about.

If the facilities of communication increase as they undoubtedly will with the demand, the prospect becomes nearer the idea of a "Walpurgis Night"

than anything else. For the earth and the sea will be covered and the air filled with every form of whirling, flying, plunging device to get men quickly from one place to another.

Every human being on the globe will be flying South for the cold months and North for the hot season.

As personally conducted tours have been so satisfactory, agencies will be started to lead us through all the stages of existence. Parents will subscribe on the birth of their children to have them personally conducted through life and everything explained as it is done at present in the galleries abroad; food, lodging and reading matter, husbands and wives will be provided by contract, to be taken back and changed if unsatisfactory, as the big stores do with their goods. Delightful prospect! Homes will become superfluous, parents and children will only meet when their "tours" happen to cross each other. Our great-grandchildren will float through life freed from every responsibility and more perfectly independent than even that delightful dreamer, Bellamy, ventured to predict.

No. 29--Husks

Among the Protestants driven from France by that astute and liberal-minded sovereign Louis XIV., were a colony of weavers, who as all the world knows, settled at Spitalfields in England, where their descendants weave silk to this day.

On their arrival in Great Britain, before the looms could be set up and a market found for their industry, the exiles were reduced to the last extremity of dest.i.tution and hunger. Looking about them for anything that could be utilized for food, they discovered that the owners of English slaughter-houses threw away as worthless, the tails of the cattle they killed. Like all the poor in France, these wanderers were excellent cooks, and knew that at home such caudal appendages were highly valued for the tenderness and flavor of the meat. To the amazement and disgust of the English villagers the new arrivals proceeded to collect this "refuse" and carry it home for food. As the first principle of French culinary art is the _pot-au-feu_, the tails were mostly converted into soup, on which the exiles thrived and feasted.

Their neighbors, envious at seeing the despised French indulging daily in savory dishes, unknown to English palates, and tempted like "Jack's"

giant by the smell of "fresh meat," began to inquire into the matter, and slowly realized how, in their ignorance, they had been throwing away succulent and delicate food. The news of this discovery gradually spreading through all cla.s.ses, "ox-tail" became and has remained the national English soup.

If this veracious tale could be twisted into a metaphor, it would serve marvellously to ill.u.s.trate the position of the entire Anglo-Saxon race, and especially that of their American descendants as regards the Latin peoples. For foolish prodigality and reckless, ignorant extravagance, however, we leave our English cousins far behind.

Two American hotels come to my mind, as different in their appearance and management as they are geographically asunder. Both are types and ill.u.s.trations of the wilful waste that has recently excited Mr. Ian Maclaren's comment, and the woeful want (of good food) that is the result. At one, a dreary shingle construction on a treeless island, off our New England coast, where the ideas of the landlord and his guests have remained as unchanged and primitive as the island itself, I found on inquiry that all articles of food coming from the first table were thrown into the sea; and I have myself seen chickens hardly touched, rounds of beef, trays of vegetables, and every variety of cake and dessert tossed to the fish.

While we were having soups so thin and tasteless that they would have made a French house-wife blush, the ingredients essential to an excellent "stock" were cast aside. The boarders were paying five dollars a day and appeared contented, the place was packed, the landlord coining money, so it was foolish to expect any improvement.

The other hotel, a vast caravansary in the South, where a fortune had been lavished in providing every modern convenience and luxury, was the "fad" of its wealthy owner. I had many talks with the manager during my stay, and came to realize that most of the wastefulness I saw around me was not his fault, but that of the public, to whose taste he was obliged to cater. At dinner, after receiving your order, the waiter would disappear for half an hour, and then bring your entire meal on one tray, the over-cooked meats stranded in lakes of coagulated gravy, the entrees cold and the ices warm. He had generally forgotten two or three essentials, but to send back for them meant to wait another half-hour, as his other clients were clamoring to be served. So you ate what was before you in sulky disgust, and got out of the room as quickly as possible.

After one of these gastronomic races, being hungry, fl.u.s.tered, and suffering from indigestion, I asked mine host if it had never occurred to him to serve a _table d'hote_ dinner (in courses) as is done abroad, where hundreds of people dine at the same moment, each dish being offered them in turn accompanied by its accessories.

"Of course, I have thought of it," he answered. "It would be the greatest improvement that could be introduced into American hotel-keeping. No one knows better than I do how disastrous the present system is to all parties. Take as an example of the present way, the dinner I am going to give you to-morrow, in honor of Christmas. Glance over this _menu_. You will see that it enumerates every costly and delicate article of food possible to procure and a long list of other dishes, the greater part of which will not even be called for. As no number of _chefs_ could possibly oversee the proper preparation of such a variety of meats and sauces, all will be carelessly cooked, and as you know by experience, poorly served.

"People who exact useless variety," he added, "are sure in some way to be the sufferers; in their anxiety to try everything, they will get nothing worth eating. Yet that meal will cost me considerably more than my guests pay for their twenty-four hours' board and lodging."

"Why do it, you ask? Because it is the custom, and because it will be an advertis.e.m.e.nt. These bills of fare will be sown broadcast over the country in letters to friends and kept as souvenirs. If, instead of all this senseless superfluity, I were allowed to give a _table d'hote_ meal to-morrow, with the _chef_ I have, I could provide an exquisite dinner, perfect in every detail, served at little tables as deftly and silently as in a private house. I could also discharge half of my waiters, and charge two dollars a day instead of five dollars, and the hotel would become (what it has never been yet) a paying investment, so great would he the saving."

"Only this morning," he continued, warming to his subject, "while standing in the dining room, I saw a young man order and then send away half the dishes on the _menu_. A chicken was broiled for him and rejected; a steak and an omelette fared no better. How much do you suppose a hotel gains from a guest like that?"

"The reason Americans put up with such poor viands in hotels is, that home cooking in this country is so rudimentary, consisting princ.i.p.ally of fried dishes, and hot breads. So little is known about the proper preparation of food that to-morrow's dinner will appear to many as the _ne plus ultra_ of delicate living. One of the charms of a hotel for people who live poorly at home, lies in this power to order expensive dishes they rarely or never see on their own tables."

"To be served with a quant.i.ty of food that he has but little desire to eat is one of an American citizen's dearest privileges, and a right he will most unwillingly relinquish. He may know as well as you and I do, that what he calls for will not be worth eating; that is of secondary importance, he has it before him, and is contented."

"The hotel that attempted limiting the liberty of its guests to the extent of serving them a _table d'hote_ dinner, would be emptied in a week."