Pedal and Path: Across the Continent Awheel and Afoot

by George B. Thayer

Chapter XXIV.

The Triennial Conclave at St. Louis.

Reaching San Francisco in season to witness the encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, I was quite as fortunate in getting to St. Louis on the eve of the triennial conclave of the Knights Templars. Intending at first to make a stay in the city of but a few days, various causes induced me to lengthen the visit to nearly or quite two weeks, and the chief reason for this was the kind invitation of A. W. Sumner, now proprietor of the St. Louis Stoneware Company, but once an old schoolmate of mine, to remain with him while waiting for my bicycle to be repaired. He and I had not met since we both attended Rev. Mr. Hall’s School at Ellington, Conn., nearly twenty years since, and after “Hello, Poggy,” and “Hello, Bubby,” had come to our lips spontaneously, we talked over and looked back to the time we spent in Ellington with very much the same feelings, I think, that Nicholas Nickleby had when he recalled his experiences under Squeer’s at Dotheboy’s Hall. Still we bear no ill will against the apple-trees in the rear of the school-house, but think it doubtful if those trees themselves have borne anything since, after furnishing so many switches to be used for our moral welfare and physical uplifting. But these reflections were soon forgotten in the noise and excitement of the week.

The Charity Concert at the fair grounds, the proceeds of which were for the benefit of the widows and orphans of Masons, was a great success money-wise, but hardly from any other point of view. The immense band-stand was built on the inside of the mile track so far out into the field that the music could scarcely be heard on the grand-stand, which, by the way, is probably the largest and finest one in the country, and after the first number had been played the majority of the eight or ten thousand people who had paid a dollar for a seat, in addition to the fifty cents admission fee, on the grand-stand, left it in disgust and gathered out in the field where something of the music could be heard, besides the cannon accompaniment, if that part can be called music at all. Seats were provided for twice the number of musicians that could finally be persuaded to participate, for many union musicians refused to play in a concert with non-union musicians, and so there were many vacant chairs among the performers.

Into one of these seats a press committee’s badge made way for me, and there the noise during the anvil chorus was fairly deafening. Before the piece was played Gilmore came over to the anvils on one side of the stand, and rather sternly placed the men, who wore white shirts instead of the customary red ones, in a different position from the one they had taken, but as if to soften his orders he said, smiling, “You are to strike first, you know, but you will do it all right, I guess.” During the performance, as one set of musicians would play too loud, or too soft, or too slow, or too fast, Gilmore would look sharply at them, and raise his eyebrows almost to the top of his head, and when the fifty anvils came in, and the cannons went off, both at first in poor time, it seemed as if he would fly all to pieces, he had so much to see to, but after a few beats, and after bending his body sidewise, almost double, and sweeping his arms from above his head down to the floor, he had the thousand performers all playing in very good time. The effect upon the great audience was shown by the way they cheered at the end, and even Gilmore seemed to be well pleased, for he cried “bravo,” and bowed to his musicians before he turned about and acknowledged the applause of his audience. When some one of his performers, carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, proposed “three cheers for Gilmore,” he had to fairly yell “hold on, hold on,” in order to be heard, and by features and gesture frowned down and nipped in the bud the proposed compliment.

The gate receipts show there were one hundred and twenty-five thousand people in attendance, and of this number I did not see one drunken person. Actually, I have been, many a time, to a county fair in Connecticut where there were not one-hundredth part as many persons present, and have seen decidedly more disturbance and drunkenness. Undoubtedly there were some among this great number who were not sober, but I did not happen to see them and I was around a good deal. It was beer, beer everywhere, and everybody drank it, nicely dressed and otherwise fine appearing women ordering their beer brought to them on the grand-stand fully as freely as the men. One hundred and fifty waiters were kept busy all day on the grand-stand alone. Coffee, lemonade, and soda could be had at exorbitant prices, but the price of beer was restricted to five cents a glass by the Brewer’s Association.

And in addition to the fact that beer drinking was a question of economy, there was still greater influence brought to bear in favor of beer. It was a very warm day, many were overcome by the heat, but there was no place where one could get a glass of water. I went from one end of the fair-grounds to the other in search of it, and finally was obliged to drink from the end of an iron pipe where they water horses. Water, evidently, is not used here as a beverage. They tell of a Missourian who was knocked off a ferry-boat into the water and was rescued after being in great danger of his life and was asked if he was much hurt, “No,” he replied, “thank God, I don’t think a drop of water got into my mouth.” This is a chestnut out here. Has it got East?

Some of the members of the Womans’ Christian Temperance Union in the Eastern cities, who do such a grand good thing by freely furnishing ice-water to the thirsty crowd at all such out-door public gatherings, might suggest the idea to some of the members of the society in this city with good results. Still, notwithstanding the fact that saloons here keep open day and night, seven days in the week, the number of arrests for drunkenness last year was a little less than forty-two hundred, which is not one per cent. of the present estimated population of the city. It would be interesting to compare this with the percentage of drunkenness in Eastern cities. Here the license fee is $600, and the more I can learn of the practical workings of high license in these Western States, the more I am impressed with the belief that high license must for a long time precede prohibition in large cities, in order to insure any practical, good results.