CHAPTER XVII
SOMNOLENT ST. LOUIS
"The moderation of prosperous people comes from the
calm which good fortune gives to their temper."
—La Rochefoucauld.
Some years ago, while riding westward through the Alleghenies in an observation car of the Pennsylvania Limited, a friend of mine fell into conversation with an old gentleman who sat in the next chair.
"Evidently he knew a good deal about that region," said my friend, in telling me of the incident later. "We must have sat there together for a couple of hours. He did most of the talking; I could see that he enjoyed talking, and was glad to have a listener. Before he got off he shook hands with me and said he was glad to have had the little chat. Then, when he was gone, the trainman came and asked me if I knew who he was. I didn't. Come to find out, it was Andrew Carnegie."
I asked my friend how Mr. Carnegie impressed him.
"Oh," he replied, "I was much surprised when I found it had been he. He seemed a nice old fellow enough, kindly and affable, but a little commonplace. I should never have called him an 'inspired millionaire.' I've been reconstructing him in my mind ever since."
I am reminded of my friend's experience by my own meeting with the city of St. Louis; for it was not until after I had left St. Louis that I found out "who it is." That is, I failed to focus, while there, upon the fact that it is America's fourth city. And now, in looking back, I feel about St. Louis as my friend felt about the ironmaster: I do not think it looks the part.
St. Louis leads the world in shoes, stoves, and tobacco; it is the world's greatest market for hardware, lumber, and raw furs; it is the principal horse and mule market in America; it builds more street and railroad cars than any other city in the country; it distributes more coffee; it makes more woodenware, more native chemicals, more beer. It leads in all these things. But what it does not do is to look as though it led. Physically it is a great, overgrown American town, like Buffalo or St. Paul. Its streets are, for the most part, lacking in distinction. There is no center at which a visitor might stop, knowing by instinct that he was at the city's heart. It is a rambling, incoherent place, in which one has to ask which is the principal retail shopping corner. Fancy having to ask a thing like that!
I do not mean by this that St. Louis is much worse, in appearance, than some other American cities. For American cities, as I have said before, have only recently awakened to the need of broadly planned municipal beauty. All I mean is that St. Louis seems to be behind in taking action to improve herself.