In many districts men bathing naked have been arrested as a sort of breach of the peace. Naked statues in public have been clothed or locked away. In several towns women wearing the slashed skirt have had to conform to municipal regulations concerning underwear.
I have noted everywhere mockery on the heels of seriousness.
No doubt these question-marks will be followed by satisfactory answers in the minds of most readers, especially in the light of the statement that "it is a sacrament to walk the streets as an American citizen. Being an American is a sacred mission."
XIII ALONG ERIE SHORE
Cleveland exemplifies the characteristics of contemporary America, and points to the future. It has its horde of foreign mercenaries living by alien ethics, and committing every now and then atrocious crimes which shock the American community. But it is a "cleaned-up" town. All the dens of the city have been raided; there is no gambling, little drunkenness and immorality. On my first night in the town I had my supper in a saloon, and as I sat among the beer-drinking couples I listened to an old man who was haranguing us all on the temptations of women and drink. The saloon-keeper had no power to turn him out, and possibly had not even the wish to do so. The passion for cleaning up America overtakes upon occasion even those whose living depends upon America remaining "unclean."
Cleveland is well built, and has fine avenues and broad streets. It is well kept, and in the drawing-room of the town you'd never suspect what was going on in the back kitchen and the yard. But take a turn about and you see that the city is not merely one of good clothes, white buildings, and upholstery; there are vistas of smoke and sun, bridges and cranes, endless railway tracks and steaming engines. They are working in the background, the Slavs and the Italians and the Hungarians, the Kikes and the Wops and the Hunkies. There is a rumour of Chicago in the air; you can feel the pulse of the hustling West.
Perhaps nothing is more promising than the twelve miles of garden suburb that go westward from the city along Erie Shore. Tchekof, working in his rose-garden in the Crimea, used to say, "I believe that in quite a short time the whole world will be a garden." This growth of Cleveland gives just that promise to the casual observer. How well these middle-class Americans live? Without the advertisement of the fact they have finer arrangements of streets and houses than we have at Golders Green and Letchworth. Nature is kind. There is a grand freshness and a steeping radiance. The people know how to live out-of-doors, and the women are public all day. No railings, fences, bushes, just sweet lawn approaches, verandahs, on the lawns sprinklers and automatic fountains scattering water to the sparrows' delight. The iris is out and the honeysuckle is in bloom.