And so I could continue—leaving Franklin and Speed waiting patiently in Painesville, Ohio, in the rain, but I won’t. We hastened in after Franklin made his sketch, and, owing to some extraordinary rush of business which had filled the principal hotel, were compelled to take refuge in a rickety barn of a house known as “The Annex”—an annex to this other and much better one.
CHAPTER XXVIII
IN CLEVELAND
The next morning we set off under grey, lowery clouds, over the shore road to Cleveland, which proved better than that between Erie and Painesville, having no breaks and being as smooth as a table. At one place we had to stop in an oatfield where the grain had been newly cut and shocked, to see if we could still jump over the shocks as in days of yore, this being a true test, according to Speed, as to whether one was in a fit condition to live eighty years, and also whether one had ever been a true farmer. Franklin and Speed leaped over the shocks with ease, Franklin’s coat skirts flying out behind in a most bird-like manner, and Speed’s legs and arms taking most peculiar angles. When it came my turn to do it, I funked miserably. Actually, I failed so badly that I felt very much distressed, being haunted for miles by the thought of increasing age and impending death, for once I was fairly athletic and could run three miles at a steady jog and not feel it. But now—well now, whenever I reached the jumping point I couldn’t make it. My feet refused to leave the ground. I felt heavy.
Alas! Alas!
And then we had to pause and look at the lake, which because of the storm the night before and the stiff northwest wind blowing this morning, offered a fine tumbling spectacle. As to dignity and impressiveness I could see no difference between this lake shore and most of the best sea beaches which I have seen elsewhere. The waves were long and dark and foamy, rolling in, from a long distance out, with a thump and a roar which was as fierce as that of any sea. The beach was of smooth, grey sand, with occasional piles of driftwood scattered along its length, and twisted and tortured trees hanging over the banks of the highland above. In the distance we could see the faint outlines of the city of Cleveland, a penciled blur, and over it a cloud of dark smoke, the customary banner of our manufacturing world. I decided that here would be a delightful place to set up a writing shack or a studio, transferring all my effects from my various other dream homes, and spending my latter days. I should have been a carpenter and builder, I think. It would save me money constructing houses for myself.
In the suburbs of Cleveland were being built the many comfortable homes of those who could afford this handsome land facing the lake. Hundreds of cottages we passed were done in the newer moods of our American architects, and some of them were quite free of the horrible banalities to which the American country architect seems addicted. There were homes of real taste, with gardens arranged with a sense of their architectural value and trees and shrubs which enhanced their beauty. Here, as I could tell by my nerves, all the ethical and social conventions of the middle class American and the middle West were being practised, or at least preached. Right was as plain as the nose on your face; truth as definite a thing as the box hedges and macadam roads which surrounded them; virtue a chill and even frozen maid. If I had had the implements I would have tacked up a sign reading “Non-conformists beware! Detour south through factory regions.”
WHERE I LEARN THAT I AM NOT TO LIVE EIGHTY YEARS
As we drew nearer Cleveland, this same atmosphere continued, only becoming more dense. Houses, instead of being five hundred feet apart and set in impressive and exclusive spaces, were one hundred feet apart or less. They were smartly suburban and ultra-respectable and refined. The most imposing of churches began to appear—I never saw finer—and schools and heavily tree-shaded streets. Presently we ran into Euclid Avenue, an amazingly long and wide street, once Cleveland’s pride and the centre of all her wealthy and fashionable life, but now threaded by a new double tracked trolley line and fallen on lesser, if not absolutely evil, days. This street was once the home, and still may be for all I know (his immortal residence was pointed out to us by a policeman), of the sacrosanct John D. Rockefeller. Yes, in his earlier and poorer years, when he was worth only from seventy to eighty millions, he lived here, and the house seemed to me, as I looked at it this morning, actually to reflect all the stodgy conservatism with which he is credited. It was not smart—what rich American’s house of forty or fifty years ago ever is?—but it was solid and impressive and cold. Yes, cold is the word,—a large, roomy, silent thing of grey stone, with a wide smooth lawn at least a hundred feet wide spreading before it, and houses of its same character flanking it on either hand. Here lived John D. and plotted, no doubt, and from here he issued to those local religious meetings and church socials for which he is so famous. And no doubt some one or more of the heavy chambers of this house consumed in their spaciousness the soft, smooth words which meant wealth or poverty to many an oil man or competitor or railroad manipulator whose rates were subsequently undermined. For John D. knew how to outplot the best of them. As an American I forgive him for outplotting the rest of the world. As an individual, well, if he weren’t intellectually and artistically so dull I could forgive him everything.
“What is this?” I queried of Franklin. “Surely Euclid Avenue isn’t being given over to trade, is it? See that drug store there, built in front of an old home—and that garage tacked on to that mansion—impossible!”