CHAPTER XVII ACROSS AMERICA NORTH TO SOUTH
Ewart was much surprised by the politeness of Chicago. If he made a mistake in New York, such as to bring his lighted cigarette into a car of the overhead railway, he met with such rebukes as Put that cigarette out! Put-it-OUT! But as the porter put our bags into the cab at Chicago he cried out to us: "Good luck, boys!" and gave us a cheery salute. Perhaps we overtipped him. And when we got to Santa Fe a salesman in a shop selling Ewart a shirt called him "brother"—"This pattern, brother, is what you want." I explained to my friend that the lower orders in New York were Lithuanians and the like, who had only just learned enough English to be impolite in it. He must not judge the manners of America by them.
We spent a Chicago morning in Marshall Field's and "The Fair," trying to buy a pair of canvas shoes with rubber soles and brown leather facings, something Ewart had seen on the boat and fancied. The foreman of the floor walkers of the huge department store examined his chart, saw at a glance which salesmen were occupied and which were waiting, and assigned us to one who was straightway called. That young man proceeded to try and sell to us, not what Ewart wanted, but what he had got; brought out box after box of shoes, and even persuaded him to try on a pair of shoes of an entirely different style. "But what I mean is a sort of a tennis shoe with leather toe-caps. You know what I mean," said Ewart. "You want Oxfords," decided the salesman, and passed him on to another department. Thence we were transferred to a subdivision of the Athletic department, and then got back to "Shoes." Here another salesman proceeded to show us all that we had seen before, assuring us, however, that he had just what we wanted.
After that we spent an hour in that crowded chaotic emporium called "The Fair" where the procedure was different. A very busy, preoccupied salesman, tending six or seven anxious bargain-hunting Chicagoans, assured us he had just the thing, got Ewart with his boots off, gave him a pair of white tennis shoes, "just to get his size," and left him stranded for a full quarter of an hour—whilst as it seemed all Chicago swirled past, gossiping, buying, clamoring, jostling, and in the midst of this great shop crowds of children went up and down a moving staircase for fun.
I believe that both in Marshall Field's and "The Fair" shoes of the kind wanted were in stock, but the salesman's habit was to show just what he was put in charge of—he had become incapable of the mental process of imagining what a customer might describe as his need. In England a shopkeeper has to pay much more attention to individual wants. If he has not got a certain thing he will get it. Americans buy much more from what is spread before them than by choice and need.
However, without the shoes, we left "The Fair" for the less crowded streets, and had lunch in a restaurant on Dearborn. My friend had ordered roast beef. "The thing to have here is 'hot dog,'" said I.
"No, really? I say, I think I'll change that order. Have you, er, have you hot dog?"
"Sure," replied the waitress with alacrity, and she brought him back two large sausages, crisp and burst at one end.
"Some dawgs, I'll say," smiled the girl as she put them before him. He did not put them away coldly from him. He ate his dogs, and was amused. He was getting what they call "an angle on America."