“But even so,” I said to myself, “this is the best the master of the show has to offer. He is at most a strolling player of limited equipment. Perhaps elsewhere, in some other part of the universe, there may be a showman who can do better, who has a bigger, better company. But these——”
I returned to the hotel and waited for Franklin. We were assigned a comfortable room on the second or third floor, I forget which, down a mile of corridor. Supper in the grill cost us five dollars. The next morning breakfast in the Persian breakfast room cost us three more. But that evening we had the privilege of sitting on a balcony and watching a herd of deer come down to a wire fence and eat grass in the glare of an adjacent arc light. We had the joy of observing the colored fountains (quenched at twelve) and seeing the motoring parties come tearing up or go flying past, wild with a nameless gayety. In the parlors, the music rooms, the miles of promenade balconies, were hosts of rich mammas and daughters—the former nearly all fat, the latter all promising to be, and a little gross. For the life of me I could not help but think of breweries, distilleries, soap factories, furniture factories, stove companies and the like. Where did all these people come from? Where did they all get the money to stay here weeks and weeks at six, eight, and even fifteen and twenty a day a person? Our poor little six dollar rooms! Good Heavens! Some of them had suites with three baths. Think of all the factories, the purpose of which (aside from supplying the world with washtubs, flatirons, sealing wax, etc.) was to supply these elderly and youthful females with plumpness and fine raiment.
While we were in the grill eating our rather late dinner (the Imperial Egyptian dining room was closed), several families strolled in, “pa,” in one case, a frail, pale, meditative, speculative little man who seemed about as much at home in his dressy cutaway coat as a sheep would in a lion’s skin. He was so very small and fidgety, but had without doubt built up a wholesale grocery or an iron foundry or something of that sort. And “ma” was so short and aggressive, with such a firm chin and such steady eyes. “Ma” had supplied “pa” with much of his fighting courage, you could see that. As I looked at “pa” I wondered how many thousand things he had been driven to do to escape her wrath, even to coming up here in August and wearing a cutaway coat and a stiff white shirt and hard cuffs and collars. He did look as though he would prefer some quiet small town veranda and his daily newspaper.
And then there was “Cerise” or “Muriel” or “Albertina” (I am sure she had some such name), sitting between her parents and obviously speculating as to her fate. Back at Wilson’s Corner there may have been some youth at some time or other who thought her divine and implored her to look with favor on his suit, but behold “pa” was getting rich and she was not for such as him.
“Jus' you let him be,” I could hear her mother counseling. “Don’t you have anything to do with him. We’re getting on and next summer we’re going up to the Kittatinny. You’re sure to meet somebody there.”
And so here they were—Cerise dressed in the best that Scranton or Wilkes-Barré or even New York could afford. Such organdies, voiles, swisses, silk crepes—trunks full of them, no doubt! Her plump arms were quite bare, shoulders partly so, her hair done in a novel way, white satin shoes were on her feet—oh dear! oh dear! She looked dull and uninteresting and meaty.
But think of Harvey Anstruther Kupfermacher, son of the celebrated trunk manufacturer of Punxsutawney, who will shortly arrive and wed her! It will be a “love match from the first.” The papers of Troy, Schenectady, and Utica will be full of it. There will be a grand church wedding. The happy couple will summer in the Adirondacks or the Blue Ridge. If the trunk factory and the iron foundry continue successful some day they may even venture New York.
“Wilson’s Corner? Well I guess not!”
There was another family, the pater familias large and heavy, with big hands, big feet, a bursting pink complexion, and a vociferous grey suit. “Pa” leads his procession. “Ma” is very simple, and daughter is comparatively interesting, and rather sweet. “Pa” is going to show by living at the Kittatinny what it means to work hard and save your money and fight the labor unions and push the little fellow to the wall. “Pa” thinks, actually, that if he gets very rich—richer and richer—somehow he is going to be supremely happy. Money is going to do it. “Yessiree, money can do anything, good old American dollars. Money can build a fine house, money can buy a fine auto, money can give one a splendid office desk, money can hire obsequious factotums, money can make everyone pleasant and agreeable. Here I sit,” says Pa, “right in the grill room of the Kittatinny. Outside are colored fountains. My shoes are new. My clothes are of the best. I have an auto. What do I lack?”
“Not a thing, Pa,” I wanted to answer, “save certain delicacies of perception, which you will never miss.”