But to go from the triviality of the mere social side to the deeper characteristics of the Omahans. There is something very inspiring, very wonderful in the attitude of the West. The pride in their city, the personal caring, that we met first in Chicago, is also the underlying motive here. One hears much of the ambitious Western towns, but I think the word not quite right; it is not mere ambition, but aspiration, that is carrying them forward. One of the editors of a leading paper said yesterday:
“The making of a great city depends less on the men who are in office than on those who have no office, and who want none. It is the spirit of the people that makes a city go forward or leaves it standing still. The spirit that is essential to progress, in Omaha as everywhere, is one of unity, harmony and good will. Combined with this there must be energy, enterprise, confidence in the future, civic pride and devotion. No city, however well favored otherwise, can make the progress its opportunities call for, if its people are forever quarreling among themselves, envious of one another’s good fortune, seeking each to build himself up by tearing some other down. It is shoulder to shoulder, in mass formation, that great armies advance. Rancor, hatred, suspicion, pettiness, that cause division in the ranks, are as deadly as the other extreme where indifference, greed, lack of respect for the other man’s rights, produce dry rot.”
Nor are these merely editorial embroideries of speech. They are the actual sentiments, not only thought, but for the most part lived up to.
CHAPTER XVII
NEXT STOP, NORTH PLATTE!
North Platte might really be called “City of Ishmael.” For no reason that is discoverable except its mere existence, every man’s tongue seems to be against it. Time and time again—in fact the repetition is becoming monotonous—people say to us, “It is all very well, of course, you have had fine hotels and good roads so far, but wait until you come to North Platte!”
Why, I wonder, does everyone pick out North Platte as a sort of third degree place of punishment? Why not one of the other names through which our road runs? Why always set up that same unfortunate town as a target? It began with Mrs. O. in New York, who declared it so dreadful a place that we could never live through it. Her point of view being extremely fastidious, her opinion does not alarm us as much as it otherwise might, but in Chicago, too, the mention of our going to North Platte seemed to be the signal for people to look sorry for us. Now a drummer downstairs has just added his mite to our growing apprehension.
“Goin’ t’ th’ coast?” he queried. “Hmm—I guess you won’t like th’ hotels at North Platte overmuch.”
“Do you go there often?” I returned.
“Me?” he said indignantly. “Not on your life! No one ever gets off at North Platte except the railroad men—they have to!” That is the one unexplained phase of the subject, no one of all those who have villified it has personally been there.