Throughout the salad, the ices, the Turkish coffee, and the Corona-coronas I remained her champion, while with the port--ah!
nothing, it seems to me, recommends the old order of things quite so thoroughly as old port, which has in it a sermon and a song. After dinner the ladies told us more about their league.
"We don't intend to go to any foolish extremes," said one who looked like the apotheosis of the Rue de la Paix. "We are only going to scale things down and eliminate waste. There is a lot of useless show in this country which only makes it hard for people who can't afford things. And even for those who can, it is wrong. Take the matter of dress--a dress can be simple without looking cheap. And it is the same with a dinner. A dinner can be delicious without being elaborate. Take this little dinner we had to-night--"
"_What?_" I cried.
"Yes," she nodded. "In future we are all going to give plain little dinners like this."
"_Plain?_" I gasped.
Our hostess overheard my choking cry.
"Yes," she put in. "You see, the league is going to practise what it preaches."
"But I didn't think it had begun yet! I thought this dinner was a kind of farewell feast--that it was--"
[Illustration: I was prepared to take the field against all comers, not only in favor of simplicity, but in favor of anything and everything which was favored by my hostess]
Our hostess looked grieved. The other ladies of the league gazed at me reproachfully.
"Why!" I heard one exclaim to another, "I don't believe he noticed!"
"Didn't you notice?" asked my hostess.
I was cornered.
"Notice?" I asked. "Notice _what_?"
"That we didn't have champagne!" she said.
CHAPTER III
CLEVELAND CHARACTERISTICS
Before leaving home we were presented with a variety of gifts, ranging all the way from ear muffs to advice. Having some regard for the esthetic, we threw away the ear muffs, determining to buy ourselves fur caps when we should need them. But the advice we could not throw away; it stuck to us like a poor relation.
In the parlor car, on the way from Buffalo to Cleveland, our minds got running on sad subjects.
"We have come out to find interesting things--to have adventures," said my blithe companion. "Now supposing we go on and on and nothing happens.
What will we do then? The publishers will have spent all this money for our traveling, and what will they get?"
I told him that, in such an event, we would make up adventures.
"What, for instance?" he demanded.
I thought for a time. Then I said:
"Here's a good scheme--we could begin now, right here in this car. You act like a crazy man. I will be your keeper. You run up and down the aisle shouting--talk wildly to these people--stamp on your hat--do anything you like. It will interest the passengers and give us something nice to write about. And you could make a picture of yourself, too."
Instead of appreciating that suggestion he was annoyed with me, so I ventured something else.
"How would it be for you to beat a policeman on the helmet?"
He didn't care for that either.
"Why don't you think of something for yourself to do?" he said, somewhat sourly.
"All right," I returned. "I'm willing to do my share. I will poison you and get arrested for it."
"If you do that," he criticized, "who will make the pictures?"
I saw that he was in a humor to find fault with anything I proposed, so I let him ramble on. He had a regular orgy of imaginary disaster, running all the way from train wrecks, in which I was killed and he was saved only to have the bother and expense of shipping my remains home, to fires in which my notebooks were burned up, leaving on his hands a lot of superb but useless drawings.
After a time he suggested that we make up a list of the things we had been warned of. I did not wish to do it, but, acting on the theory that fever must run its course, I agreed, so we took paper and pencil and began. It required about two hours to get everything down, beginning with _Aches_, _Actresses_, _Adenoids_, _Alcoholism_, _Amnesia_, _Arson_, etc., and running on, through the alphabet to _Zero weather_, _Zolaism_, and _Zymosis_.
After looking over the category, my companion said:
"The trouble with this list is that it doesn't present things in the order in which they may reasonably be expected to occur. For instance, you might get zymosis, or attempt to write like Zola, at almost any time, yet those two dangers are down at the bottom of the list. On the other hand, things like actresses, alcoholism, and arson seem remote. We must rearrange."
I thought it wise to give in to him, so we set to work again. This time we made two lists: one of general dangers--things which might overtake us almost anywhere, such as scarlet fever, hardening of the arteries, softening of the brain, and "road shows" from the New York Winter Garden; another arranged geographically, according to our route. Thus, for example, instead of listing Elbert Hubbard under the letter "H," we elevated him to first place, because he lives near Buffalo, which was our first stop.
I didn't want to put down Hubbard's name at all--I thought it would please him too much if he ever heard about it. I said to my companion:
"We have already passed Buffalo. And, besides, there are some things which the instinct of self-preservation causes one to recollect without the aid of any list."
"I know it," he returned, stubbornly, "but, in the interest of science, I wish this list to be complete."
So we put down everything: Elbert Hubbard, Herbert Kaufman, Eva Tanguay, Upton Sinclair, and all.
[Illustration: Chamber of Commerce representatives were with us all the first day and until we went to our rooms, late at night]
A few selected items from our geographical list may interest the reader as giving him some idea of the locations of certain things we had to fear. For example, west of Chicago we listed _Oysters_, and north of Chicago _Frozen Ears_ and _Frozen Noses_--the latter two representing the dangers of the Minnesota winter. So our list ran on until it reached the point where we would cross the Great Divide, at which place the word "_Boosters_" was writ large.
I recall now that, according to our geographical arrangement, there wasn't much to be afraid of until we got beyond Chicago, and that the first thing we looked forward to with real dread was the cold in Minnesota. We dreaded it more than arson, because if some one sets fire to your ear or your nose, you know it right away, and can send in an alarm; but cold is sneaky. It seems, from what they say, that you can go along the street, feeling perfectly well, and with no idea that anything is going wrong with you, until some experienced resident of the place touches you upon the arm and says: "Excuse me, sir, but you have dropped something." Then you look around, surprised, and there is your ear, lying on the sidewalk. But that is not the worst of it. Before you can thank the man, or pick your ear up and dust it off, some one will very likely come along and step on it. I do not think they do it purposely; they are simply careless about where they walk. But whether it happens by accident or design, whether the ear is spoiled or not, whether or not you be wearing your ear at the time of the occurrence--in any case there is something exceedingly offensive, to the average man, in the idea of a total stranger's walking on his ear.
I mention this to point a moral. However prepared we may be, in life, we are always unprepared. However informed we may be, we are always uninformed. We gaze up at the sky, dreading to-morrow's rain, and slip upon to-day's banana peel. We move toward Cleveland dreading the Minnesota winter which is yet far off, having no thought of the "booster," whom we believe to be still farther off. And what happens? We step from the train, all innocent and trusting, and then, ah, then----!
If it be true, indeed, that the "booster" flourishes more furiously the farther west you find him, let me say (and I say it after having visited California, Oregon, and Washington) that Cleveland must be newly located upon the map. For, if "boosting" be a western industry, Cleveland is not an Ohio city, nor even a Pacific Slope city, but is an island out in the midst of the Pacific Ocean.
Nor is this a mere opinion of my own. Upon the mastodonic brow of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce there hangs an official laurel wreath. The New York Bureau of Municipal Research invited votes from the secretaries of Chambers of Commerce and similar organizations in thirty leading cities, as to which of these bodies had accomplished most for its city, industrially, commercially, etc. Cleveland won.
No one who has caromed against the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce will wonder that Cleveland won. All other Chambers of Commerce I have met, sink into desuetude and insignificance when compared with that of Cleveland. Where others merely "boost," Cleveland "boosts" intensively.
She can raise more bushels of statistics to the acre than other cities can quarts. And the more Cleveland statistics you hear, the more you become amazed that you do not live there. It seems reckless not to do so. The Cleveland Chamber of Commerce can prove this to you not merely with figures, but also with figures of speech.