The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor

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      DEAREST MAMMA,--We had such an interesting dinner on the train the night we left Niagara, and here we are. A millionaire travelling also, whom the senator knew, joined us for the meal, so we sat four at one table, and Gaston and Octavia alone at the other side. He was such a wonderful person, the first of just this kind we have met yet, although we are told there are more like him in Pittsburg and Chicago.

      He was thick-set everywhere, a bull neck and fierce moustache and bushy eyebrows, and gave one the impression of sledge-hammer force. The whole character seemed to be so dominated and obsessed by an immense personal laudation, that his conversation created in our minds the doubt that qualities which required so much vaunting could really be there. It was _his_ wonderful will which had won his game, _his_ wonderful diplomacy, _his_ wonderful knowledge of men, _his_ clever perception, _his_ supreme tact; in short, _his_ everything in the world. The slightest show of a contrary opinion to anything he said was instantly pounced upon and annihilated. I do wonder, Mamma, if two of his sort got together what their conversation would be about? Would they shout one another down, each saying he was perfect, and so end in thunder or silence? Or would they contradict each other immediately and come to blows, or would they realise it was no use boasting to one of their own species, and so talk business or be quiet?

      We, being strangers, were splendid victims for him, and I am sure he spent a dinner of pure joy. After each speech of self appreciation he would look round the table in a triumphant challenging way, and say, "Say, senator, isn't that so?" and the dear senator, with a twinkle in his grey eye, would reply:

      "Why, certainly, Governor." (He was a governor of some place once, the senator knew.)

      Finally he got on to his marvellous cleverness in the training of the young. He had no children himself, he said, but he had "raised" two young men in his office, and as a proof of their wonderful astuteness from his teaching, "I give you my word, Ma'am," he said, "either of them could draw a contract now for me, out of which I could slip at any moment!!!"

      Isn't that a superb idea, Mamma! And the complete frankness with which it was said! What we would call sharp practice he considered "smart," and no doubt that is the way to get rich; for when he had gone on to the smoking car, the senator told us he was five times a millionaire, and really a good fellow underneath.

      "We've got to have all sorts to make a nation, and he's the kind of machine that does the rough-hewing," he said. "He did no bragging when he was under dog; he just bottled it up and pushed on, but it was that spirit which caused him to rise. Now he's made good, won his millions, and it bursts out."--(It certainly did!)

      The Senator always sees straight. He said also: "He rough-hews everything he handles, including his neighbours' nerves; he has no mercy or pity or consideration for anyone serving him, and yet he's the kindest heart towards children and animals, and the good he does to them is about the only thing he don't brag about."

      It interested me immensely, but Tom had got so ruffled that I am sure even his sense of humour could not have kept him from contradicting Craik Purdy, his name is--Craik V. Purdy, I mean!

      The Senator told us lots more about him and his methods, succeeding by sheer brute force and shouting all opposition down. Don't you wish, Mamma, we had some like him at home to deal with the socialists? These men are the real autocrats of the world, even though America is a republic. But wouldn't it be frightful to be married to a person like that! Octavia, who even in the noise of the train had heard some of it, asked the Senator what the wife was like, and he told us she had been a girl of his own class who had never risen with him, and was a rare exception in American women, who rise quicker than the men as a rule.

      "She's been every sort of drawback to him," he said, "and yet he is almighty kind to her and covers her with diamonds; and she is a dullish sort of woman with a cold in her head."

      Octavia said at once that was the kind she wanted to see in Chicago. Of what use to meet more charming and refined people like in New York or Philadelphia. She wanted to sample the "rough-hewn." And we both felt, Mamma, one must have a nice streak in one to go on being kind to a person who has a continual cold in her head.

      The Senator said he would arrange a luncheon party for us in Chicago unlike anything we had had in any place yet, and it is coming off to-morrow. But first I must tell you of Detroit, where we stopped the night before last, and of our arrival here. The whole train goes over in a ferry boat from the Canadian to the American side and dinner and screaming tram cars under the window are the only distinct memories I have after our arrival, until next day, when we took a motor and went for a drive.

      Detroit is really the most perfectly laid out city one could imagine, and such an enchanting park and lake,--infinitely better than any town I know in Europe. It ought to be a paradise in about fifty years when it has all matured. That is where the Americans are clever, in the beautiful laying-out of their towns; but then, as I said, they have not old dbris to contend with, though I shall always think it looks queer and unfinished to see houses standing just in a mown patch unseparated from the road by any fence. I should hate the idea of strangers being able to peep into my windows.

      We left about twelve, after being interviewed by several reporters in the hall of the hotel. These halls are apparently meeting places for countless men, simply crammed like one could have imagined a portico in the Roman days,--not people necessarily staying there, but herds of others from outside. The type gets thicker as one leaves New York. It reminds one of a funny man I once saw in the pantomime who put on about six suits, one after another, growing gradually larger, though no taller or fatter--just thick. All these in the hall were meaty, not one with that lean look of the pictures of "Uncle Sam," but more like our "John Bull," only not portly and complacent as he is, but just thick all over, at about the three coat stage; thick noses, thick hair, thick arms, thick legs, and nearly invariably clean-shaven and keen looking. The Senator said they were the ordinary business people and might any of them rise to be President of the Republic. We are perfectly overcome with admiration and respect for their enormous advancing and adaptive power, because just to look at we should not call these of the Senator's class. But think what brains they must have, and what vitality; and those things matter a great deal more than looks to a country.

      The Senator said the type would culminate in Chicago, and gradually get finer again out in the far West. And he seemed right, from the impression we got of the crowd in this hotel. It was rather like a Christmas nightmare, when everyone had turned into a plum pudding, or those gingerbread men the old woman by the Wavebeach pier used to sell. Do you remember, Mamma? Perfectly square and solid. They are ahead of Detroit, and at the six coat stage here. Probably all as good as gold, and kind and nice and full of virtues; but for strangers who don't know all these things, just to look at, they make one think one is dreaming.

      Do you suppose it is, if they have to be so much among pork and meat generally, perhaps that makes them solid? We did not know a soul to speak to, nor did the Senator either, though he said he was acquainted with many nice people in Chicago; so perhaps they were just travellers like us after all, and we have no right to judge of a place by them.

      We supped--we had arrived very late--and watched the world in from the theatres. We don't know of what class they were, or of what society, only they were not the least like New York. The women were, some of them, very wonderfully dressed, though not that exquisite Paris look of the New Yorkers, and they had larger hats and brighter colours; and numbers of them were what the Senator calls "homely." We were very silent,--naturally, we did not like to say our thoughts aloud to the Senator, an American; but he spoke of it to us himself.

      He said his eye, accustomed to the slender lean cowboys and miners, found them just as displeasing as he was sure we must. "Lordy," he said, СКАЧАТЬ