Sitting in the lobby for a little while in the evening, we noticed that the clerk at the desk, instead of showing the blank indifference typical of hotels on Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, greeted all arriving guests with a hearty “How do you do?” They also gave us souvenirs. A little gilt powder pencil, a leather change purse, and a gilt stamped leather cardcase. We felt as though we had been to a children’s party.
Our “chauffeur,” who went back to Fort Plain at daybreak, returned with the car in the late afternoon, so that we were able to go on again after a delay of only a day and a half.
CHAPTER IV
PENNSYLVANIA, OHIO AND INDIANA
Erie is a nice, homelike little city, full of business; and our hotel, the Lawrence, very good. There was an irate man at the desk this morning. “Say, what kind of a hotel do you run? That dancing went on until three o’clock this morning! It’s an outrage!” The clerk was sorry, and willingly arranged to have the guest put in a quiet room, but he bit off the end of a cigar viciously and went out still storming about the disgrace of allowing such a performance in a reputable hotel.
“He ought to take a trip to little old New York if he thinks dancing till three is late,” said a bystander.
“He’d better go back to the farm and go to roost with the chickens!” answered another.
From Albany the roads have been wonderful, wide and smooth as a billiard table all the way. There were stretches of long straight road as in France—much better than any in France since the first year theirs were built. One thing that we have already found out; we are seeing our own country for the first time! It is not alone that a train window gives one only a piece of whirling view; but the tracks go through the ragged outskirts of the town, past the back doors and through the poorest land generally, while the roads become the best avenues of the cities, and go past the front entrances of farms. And such farms! We had expected the scenery to be uninteresting! No one with a spark of sentiment for his own country could remain long indifferent. Well-fenced fields under perfect cultivation; splendid-looking grazing pastures, splendid-looking cows, horses, houses, barns. And in every barn, a Ford. And fruits, fruits, fruits! Miles and miles and miles of grapevines as neatly trimmed and evenly set in rows as soldiers on parade.
“It looks like Welch’s grape juice!” we said and laughed. It was!
So much for the country. The towns—only the humanizing genius of Julian Street could ever tell them apart. Small Utica dressed herself in taupe color, big Syracuse wore red with brown trimmings. The favorite hues were brown and red, though one or two were fond of gray, but all looked almost exactly alike. Each had a bustling and brown business center, with trolley cars swinging around the corners, pedestrians elbowing their way past big new dry-goods stores’ windows, and automobiles driving up to the curbs; each had a wide tree-bordered residence avenue, with block-shaped detached houses, garnished with cupolas and shelf-paper trimmings. The houses of Utica had deeper gardens than most, and there was a stable at the rear of nearly every one on the proverbial Genesee Street. Syracuse, like the cities in Holland, was picturesquely crossed by canals and, like the thriving commercial center it is, by—this is just our personal opinion—all the freight trains of the world! It took us almost an hour to dodge between the continuous parade of box, refrigerator, and flat cars! Of the salt, for which Syracuse is so celebrated—the marshes were to the north of our road—we saw not an ounce. Perhaps those millions of freight cars were all full of it.