The charming Professor of History, James, of Pittsburgh University, introduced me to a half empty, cold and unresponsive hall!
I prefaced my lecture by asking my audience to allow me, for my own satisfaction, to express a few words of appreciation of Pittsburgh before I began my narrative of Moscow. I said:
“I have only been in this country two weeks, but I have had a wonderful time. As for Pittsburgh, I have only been here three days, but I have been so hospitably received that I have crammed a great deal into that space.
“I have seen things in Pittsburgh that the usual Pittsburgher takes for granted and does not see the beauty of. I have seen a town by day and by night that looked like a Whistler picture. I have heard in the night sounds like the sea breaking on the shore, and this was the sound of never ceasing machinery. I have seen the furnaces and the red hot steel; I have seen machines with hands and fingers that seemed to have the reasoning power of humans.
“I worship force as an element, force and energy in humans, force and power in machinery. You will think me emotional and stupid if I tell you that I came away from the deafening sound of the steel mill, with the same feeling I have after listening to Cathedral music. Have you ever, when you have seen something very beautiful, felt that it was almost too beautiful to take in? There are moments of happiness too, when one feels not big enough to contain them.
“The Pittsburgh mills are like Bolshevism, something so tremendous that my mind cannot grasp it. And this leads me back to my subject: after all, you have come here not to hear my impressions of Pittsburgh, but to form your own impressions of Moscow....”
I then proceeded to tell a cold small audience, in halting tones, forgetting much by the way—the story of my trip to Moscow. And because it was like talking to a reserved unresponsive person, I felt paralyzed—I wanted to stop, I stumbled over my sentences and had lapses of memory! There was no life in my lecture. Moreover, I was tired, and my head was full of the sound of blast furnaces.... It was an awful ordeal and I was glad when it was over.
With Ruth Djirloff, I caught the train, Mr. Robinson seeing us off at the station. He has been so kind.
The train was awful. At last I have something to complain of! How the luxurious, pampered American can stand his night travelling car is a wonderment to me. Here at last is something they might copy from Europe. In England, France, and Italy, it is far more comfortable. My night is indescribable. The bed behind a curtain is all one gets, not a square foot of privacy to stand up and undress in. I had to struggle out of my clothes as I sat or lay on my bed. Then, whenever anyone passed down the car (and they did pass), they brushed my curtains which parted enough (in spite of being buttoned), to let in a streak of electric light that waked me. Moreover, people passed down the car whistling, and at an early hour in the morning, when the stars were still in the heavens, passengers who were about to alight at the next stop got together and talked loudly, ... not a wink of sleep could I get while two men discussed business matters. Weary as I was, sleep could not combat the conditions.
Friday, February 18, 1921. New York.