What’ll we do with the Middle West and the South? Are they gradually and unconsciously sinking into the demnition doldrums? Suppose our largest soap factories, our largest reaper works, and our largest chewing gum emporiums are out there—what of it? It doesn’t help much to amass large fortunes making routine things that merely increase the multitude who then sit back and do dull, routine things. Life was intended for the spectacular, I take it. It was intended to sting and hurt so that songs and dreams might come forth. When it becomes mere plethora and fixity, it is nothing—a stultifying world. When a great crisis comes—as come it surely will at some time or other—if people have just eaten and played and not dreamed vastly and beautifully, they are as chaff blown by the wind or burned in the oven. They do not even make a good spectacle. They are just pushed aside, destroyed, forgotten.
But this resort was so splendid in its natural aspects I could not help contrasting its material use by these middle westerners with what would have been the case if it were situate say in the South of France, or on the shores of Holland or Belgium. Anyone who has visited Scheveningen or Ostend, or Nice or Cannes, need scarcely be told there is a certain smartness not even suggested by the best of our American resorts. Contrasted even with these latter, this island place was lower in the scale. (I presume the Christian Middle West would say it was higher.) We motored out there positively thrilled by a halcyon evening in which a blood red sun, aided by tattered, wind whipped clouds, combined to give the day’s close a fabled, almost Norse aspect. The long beach was so beautiful that it evoked exclamations of surprise and delight. Think of being able to tear along for seven miles and more, the open water to your right, a weird, grass grown marsh world dotted with tall, gaunt trees to your left, this splendid cloud world above, turgid with red and pink, and a perfect road to ride on! We tore. But when we reached the extreme point of land known as Cedar Point, and devoted, as I have said, to the more definite entertainment of the stranger, things were very different. The exterior of all that I saw was quite charming, but imagine an immense casino devoted to tables for people who bring their own lunch or dinner and merely want to buy coffee or milk or soda!!—No beer sold here, if you please. A perfectly legitimate and laudable atmosphere, say you? Quite so, only——
And then the large hotels! We looked at them. The prices of the best one ranged from two to four dollars a day; the other from one to two!!! Shades of Atlantic City and Long Beach!—And remember that these were well built, well equipped hotels. The beach pavilions were attractive, but the crowd was of a simple, inexperienced character. I am not sniffing. Did I not praise Geneva Beach? I did. And before I left here I was fond of this place and would not have changed it in any least detail. I would not have even these mid-westerners different, in spite of anything I may have said. They seem to know that Sunday School meetings are important and that one must succeed in business in some very small way; but even so, they are a vivacious, hopeful crew, and as such deserving of all praise.
Franklin and I walked about talking about them and contrasting them with the East. Our conclusion was that the East is more schooled in vice and sensuality, and show and luxury, perhaps, and that these people were sweet and amusing and all right—here. We found a girl tending a cigar counter in the principal casino—a very angular, not too attractive creature, but not homely either, and decidedly vivacious. I could not help contrasting her with the maidens who wait on you at telephone booths and stands generally in New York, and who fix you with an icy stare and, at telephone booths, inquire, “Numbah, please?” She was quite set up, in a pleasantly human way, by the fact that she was in charge of a cigar stand in so vivacious a world, and communicated her thoughts to us with the greatest pleasure and fluency.
“Do you have many people here every day?” I asked, thinking that because I had seen three excursion steamers lying at anchor at the foot of the principal street in Sandusky it might merely be overrun by holiday crowds occasionally.
“Indeed, yes,” she replied briskly. “The two big hotels here are always full, and on the coldest days we have four or five hundred in bathing. Haven’t you been here in the day time yet? Well, ya just ought to be here when it’s very hot and the sun is bright. Crowds! Course, I haven’t been to Atlantic City or any of them swell eastern places, but people that have tell me that this is one of the finest beaches anywhere. Style! You just oughta see. And the crowds! The bathing pavilions are packed, and the board walk. There are thousands of people here.”
“I suppose, then, this casino fills up completely?” I said, looking round and seeing a few empty tables here and there.
It had evidently been raining the day before, and even early this morning, for it was pleasantly cool tonight and this seemed to have kept away some people.
“Well, you just oughta see it on a real hot night, if you don’t think we have crowds here. Full! Why people stand around and wait. It’s wonderful!”
“Indeed? And is there much money spent here?”