“I thought,” she continued, “that at home we were small and narrow and that over here I should find a larger freedom; but you can’t turn around here, without finding the bars up—racially, religiously, socially and politically. The only unobstructed passage is the way to Hell.”
Hers were large, black, dreamy eyes and the shadows of disappointment passed over them. Then, to shake off the gripping seriousness from her mood, she said, with a forced smile: “I am going to see the Merry Widow to-night with my Captain. They are both inane. Meeting you has made me blue, I fear; you remind me of my father.”
She said this reproachfully, I thought; although she added: “Let us sit down and talk things over. My daughter and the maid are listening to the music and I have nothing to do until my Captain comes to meet me.”
“Now please listen to me,” I said when we were seated. “I was born over here, right in this city. My playground was this very park. I have tasted the best this city can offer a boy, as well as its worst.
“Listen,” I said again; for her eyes wandered to the gay crowds. “I also know your home city, and I wouldn’t give one block in Hartford, Conn., not speaking from the commercial standpoint, for this whole magnificent city, with its Cathedral, its Grand Opera, its royal castle, its officers and its Merry Widow. Do you ask why? Just watch this crowd and let me interpret it to you. Those boys now passing are Bohemians, apprentices; and they are talking Czechish to make themselves obnoxious to the Germans whom they hate and who hate them, more than your forefathers hated the devil.
“Do you see that Bosnian? Notice his smile as he sells a jack-knife to the Austrian soldier. His smile would be more genuine if he could knife this detested ‘Schwab,’ his enemy and the conquerer of his country.
“Those men with the needle-pointed moustaches are Magyars, and they hate the Slavs and Germans and every one else who will not speak their language.
“The officers with the red fez are Turks, as you know; just now they despise everything Austrian, and not without reason.
“The picturesque nurse maids, wheeling the babies, do not have those soldiers with them to protect Austria’s ‘infant industries’; they are Slovaks, aliens of the aliens, and the unprotected prey of the soldiers. The Jews here add to the chaos; for all these races hate them and they reciprocate in kind.”
“We have all these people in Hartford! What of it?” My companion impatiently interrupted my explanations.