"The war upset everything. Labor was unsettled by high wages. The country boys that went into the army got a taste of city life and life in crowds, and it looks as if they would never stay on the land any more."
I let him ramble on about the train of evils that had followed the war. There was no boasting—just a sense of weariness with it all.
On my arrival in Boston I became practically incomunicado and unable to play my rôle of the affable stranger who is willing to engage in conversation with any one who is willing to talk. It was impossible to get accommodations at the hotel to which I had telegraphed for a room. They had more reservations than they could handle for three weeks ahead. But if I wished, the courteous clerk might be able to arrange for me at another hotel. As it was after ten o'clock, I wished. By using the telephone he located a room for me in a quiet family hotel. Its tone and exclusiveness impressed me as soon as I registered. I was in a position to see Boston on its dignity. The elevator man looked like a sad professor of political economy in reduced circumstances, and as I stepped into his cage I felt as if I had been turned over to the final psychopomp. With this in mind it gave me a thrill of pleasure to note, like Phil Welch, that the elevator was going up and not down. No one at this hotel spoke to another without an introduction, and I realized that I was having a chance to get a glimpse of that sternly exclusive New England:
"Where the Cabots speak only to Lowells,
And the Lowells speak only to God."
But a few hours later I was mingling with the ordinary throng again, looking for information.
[CHAPTER II]
THE ELUSIVE INSULT
When a man starts on a journey he usually makes a plan before starting. He will go to this place or that at such a time or times: He will meet this man and that—and will say to them thus and so. If he is a man of trained habits—say a commercial traveller for an exacting firm—he will carry out his plans—or lie about them in his report to the home office. As my report is to be made to the public there is no need of lying. I have promised nothing and nothing is expected. My plans went all awry before I was in the United States two days. But what of that? I may not find the information I was after, but I am finding things that are interesting and amusing, so let us carry on. But first a word about those plans—for what happened to them was rather illuminating. It seems to cast a light on the law of acceleration that I hear about sometimes.