In Bowen Hall we came upon a dancing party. Some one of the social clubs had been gracious enough to invite its parents to come. We were introduced to Mrs. Frankelstein from Roumania, and Mrs. Flynn from Ireland, Mrs. Ragovsky from Russia, Mr. and Mrs. Feketey from Hungary, Mr. and Mrs. Rocco from Italy, and many others whose picturesque names I do not remember.
We also met a young business man, the son of a millionaire, with sundry other young men and women of the type one likes to meet and introduce, whom one would be proud to know anywhere. They had charge of the affair. The Herr Director and the Frau Directorin caught the spirit of the occasion and entered into it with zest. When the orchestra began to play, he led the Grand March with Mrs. Rocco and she followed with the young millionaire. At the close of the festivities, as we were leaving, they vowed they had had the best time since they left home.
Chicago, big, blundering, materialistic Chicago had a new meaning to the Herr Director. He praised everything and everybody, and as we parted for the night, he said: “‘Almost thou persuadest me to’ believe in the ‘American Spirit.’”
X
Where the Spirit is Young
TO the average European there are two things American which have not yet lost their romantic quality: The prairies and the West.
Anticipations of seeing both, filled the breast of the Frau Directorin with mingled feelings of fear and pleasure, as she discussed with her husband the fate of the children they had left behind them—in the event of our being captured by the Indians. However, the probability of our safe return and her consequent opportunity to tell envious friends her experiences in the prairies and the West outweighed all fears.
Among her friends were those who had braved the perils of the ocean and gone as far as New York; some of them had even been in Chicago—but beyond, still hidden in the romance woven about them by Bret Harte (her favorite American author), were those two things she was about to see, and of which they had only dreamed.
The Herr Director, as he repeatedly reminded me, had crossed the plains when I had known them only through Cooper’s fascinating Indian stories, and he was eager to throw off the leadership I had assumed, which, to a dominant nature like his, proved exceedingly irksome.
He soon discovered that he was travelling through territory entirely new to him. The little towns he had known had grown into cities, and the further west we travelled, the greater and more impressive were the changes.
Omaha and Kansas City he did not recognize at all. Not only was there this new growth, “rank growth,” he called it, of sky-scrapers, post-offices and railroad stations with Doric pillars—the men and women he met had a new outlook upon life. While they still boasted of this and that thing in which their city was like Chicago or was unlike some lesser city than their own, they were critical of themselves and eager to learn; they had grown more masterful and at the same time were more refined.