So much for the hill—they call it Mount Olympus—which holds the university and those things that are the university's. Now for downtown Syracuse; for while the city's newer districts are ranged upon a series of impressive heights, her old houses, her stores and her factories are squatted upon the flats at the head of Onondaga lake.
We all remember the pictures of Syracuse that every self-respecting geography used to print; salt-sheds running off over an indefinite acreage. We were given to understand that Syracuse's chief excuse for existence was as a sort of huge salt-cellar for the rest of the nation. Nowadays nine-tenths of the Syracusans have forgotten that there is a salt industry left, and will tell you glibly of the typewriters, automobiles, steel-tubing and the like that are made in their town in the course of a twelvemonth.
They will not tell you of one thing, for of that thing you may judge yourself. Life in Syracuse is punctuated by the railroad and the canal. The canal is not so much of an obstruction unless one of the cumbersome lift-bridges sticks and refuses to move up or down, but that railroad! Every few minutes life in Syracuse comes to an actual standstill because of it. Men whose time is worth ten or fifteen dollars an hour and who grow puffy with over-exertion are violently halted by the passing of switch-engines with trails of box-cars. Appointments are missed. Board meetings at the banks halt for directors—directors who are halted in their turn by the dignified and stately passage of the Canastota Local through the heart of the city.
But the old canal is going to go some day—when the State's new barge canal well to the north of the town is completed—and perhaps in that same day Syracuse will have a broad, central avenue replacing the present dirty, foul-smelling ditch. Some day, some very big Syracusan will miss an appointment while he stands in Salina street watching the serene Canastota Local drag its way past him. That missed appointment will cost the very big Syracusan a lot of money and there will be a revolution in Syracuse—a railroad revolution. After that the locomotives will no longer blow their smoky breaths against the fronts of Syracuse's best buildings and grind their way slowly down Washington street from the tunnel to the depot, for the railroad which operates them stands in the forefront of the progressive transportation systems of America, and it is only waiting for Syracuse to take the first definite step of progress. Some day Syracuse—Syracuse delayed—is going to take that step. Only a year or two ago the Chicago Limited held up the carnival parade—and therein lies the final paragraph of this telling of Syracuse.
She is a festive lass. Each September she rolls up her sleeves, her business men swell the subscription lists, her matrons and her pretty girls bestir themselves, and there is a concert of action that gives Syracuse a harvest week long to be remembered. By day folk go out to the State Fair and see the best agricultural show that New York state has ever known—a veritable agricultural show that endeavors not only to furnish an ample measure of fun, but also endeavors to be a real help to the progressive owners of those rich farms of central and western New York. By night Syracuse is in festival. Do not let them tell you that an American town cannot enter into the carnival spirit and still preserve her graciousness and a certain underlying sense of decorum. Tell those scoffers to go to Syracuse during the week of the State Fair. They will see a demonstration of the contrary—Salina street ablaze with an incandescent beauty, lined with row upon row of eager citizens. The street is cleared to a broad strip of stone carpet down its center and over this carpet rolls float after float. These in a single year will symbolize a single thing. In one September we recall that they represented the nations of the world and that the Queen of Ancient Ireland wore eyeglasses; but that is as nothing, the policemen in Boston are addicted to straighteners, and Mr. Syracuse and Mrs. Syracuse, Miss Syracuse and Master Syracuse stand open-eyed in pleasure and go home very late at night on trolley cars that are as crowded as the trolley cars in very big cities, convinced that there possibly may be other towns but there is only one Syracuse.[D]
[D] Let it be recorded in the interest of accuracy that the fall festival of 1913 was not given—much to the disappointment of Mr. Syracuse, Mrs. Syracuse, Miss Syracuse and Master Syracuse. It is hoped, however, that the festival has not been permanently abandoned. The loss of its influence would be felt far outside of Syracuse. E. H.
All of which is exactly as it should be. Syracuse's great hope for her future rests in just such optimism on the part of her people. And in such optimism she has a strong foundation on which to build through coming years.
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Buffalo is not as frivolous as Syracuse. She cares but little for festivals but speaks of herself in the cold commercial terms of success. If you have ever met a man from Buffalo, when you were traveling, and he began to tell you of his town, you will know exactly what we mean. He undoubtedly began by quoting marvelous statistics, some of them concerning the number of trains that arrived and departed from his native heath in the course of twenty-four hours. When he was through, you had a confused idea that Buffalo was some sort of an exaggerated railroad yard, where you changed cars to go from any one corner of the universe to any other corner. When your time came to see Buffalo for yourself, that confused idea returned to you. Your train slipped for miles through an apparently unending wilderness of branching tracks and dusty freight cars, past grimy round-houses and steaming locomotives, until you were ready to believe that any conceivable number of trains arrived at and departed from that busy town within a single calendar day.
If you have approached her by water in the summertime you have seen her as a mighty port, her congestion of water traffic suggesting salt water rather than fresh. When we come to visit the neighboring port of Cleveland we shall give heed to the wonderful traffic of the inland seas, but for this moment consider Buffalo as something more than a railroad yard, a busy harbor, or even a melting-pot for the fusing of as large and as difficult a foreign element as is given to any American town to fuse. Consider Buffalo dreaming metropolitan dreams. The dull roar of Niagara, almost infinite in its possibilities of power, is within hearing. That dull roar has been Buffalo's incentive, the lullaby which induced her dreams of industrial as well as of commercial strength. And much has been written of her growing strength in these great lines.