The husband is proud of his wife's cooking, but I have often noticed, and not without a mild amusement, that when we praise it past a certain point he begins to protest that there are lots of other things that she can do. You might think then, if you did not understand him, that he was belittling her talent as a cook.
"Oh, yes," he says, in what he intends to be a casual tone, "she can cook very well. But that's not all. She's the best mother I ever saw—sees right into the children, just as though she were one of them. She makes most of their clothes, too. And in spite of all that, she keeps up her playing—both piano and harp. We'll get her to play the harp after dinner."
People are like that about the cities that they live in. They are like that in Detroit. They are afraid that in considering the vastness of the automobile industry, you'll overlook the fact that Detroit has a lot of other business. And in Grand Rapids they're the same; only there, of course, it's furniture.
"Yes," they say almost with reluctance, "we do make a good deal of furniture, but we also have big printing plants and plaster mills, and a large business in automobile accessories, and the metal trades."
They talked that way to me. But I kept right on asking about furniture, just as, when the young husband talks to me about his wife's harp playing, I keep right on eating shortcake. That is no reflection on her music (or her arms!); it is simply a tribute to her cooking.
Grand Rapids is one of those exceedingly agreeable, homelike American cities, which has not yet grown to the unwieldy size. It is the kind of city of which they say: "Every one here knows every one else"—meaning, of course, that members of the older and more prosperous families enjoy all the advantages and disadvantages of a considerable intimacy.
To the visitor—especially the visitor from New York, where a close friend may be bedridden a month without one's knowing it—this sort of thing makes a strong appeal at first. You feel that these people see one another every day; that they know all about one another, and like one another in spite of that. It is nice to see them troop down to the station, fifteen strong, to see somebody off, and it must be nice to be seen off like that; it must make you feel sure that you have friends—a point upon which the New Yorker, in his heart, has the gravest doubts.
Consider, for example, my own case. In the course of my residence in New York, I have lived in four different apartment houses. In only two of these have I had even the slightest acquaintance with any of the other tenants. Once I called upon some disagreeable people on the floor below who had complained about the noise; once I had summoned a doctor who lived on the ground floor. In the other two buildings I knew absolutely no one. I used to see occasionally, in the elevator of one building, a man with whom I was acquainted years ago, but he had either forgotten me in the interim, or he elected to do as I did; that is, to pretend he had forgotten. I had nothing against him; he had nothing against me. We were simply bored at the idea of talking with each other because we had nothing in common.
Any New Yorker who is honest will admit to you that he has had that same experience. He passes people on the street—and sometimes they are people he has known quite well in times gone by—yet he refrains from bowing to them, and they refrain from bowing to him, by a sort of tacit understanding that bowing, even, is a bore.