“Well,” he went on, turning to the newcomers, “then ’you people can have breakfast.”
So, I thought, these people will have to eat the very poor breakfast that is being prepared for us. It will serve them right—the vulgar, showy creatures. As we were departing, however, Franklin explained that there was an extra charge which he had not troubled to dispute, for something which we had apparently not had. I explained that it was for the meal we had not eaten.
Once more, then, we drove off along more of those delightful country roads which in the early morning sun, with the fields glistening with dew, and laborers making their way to work, and morning birds on the wing, were too lovely. The air, after our stuffy room, was so refreshing, ’I began to sing. Little white houses hugged distant green hillsides, their windows shining like burnished gold. Green branches hung over and almost brushed our faces. The sky, the shade, the dew was heavenly. I thought of Franklin and his father and of him in his father’s fields at dawn, looking at the trees—those fog wrapped trees of dawn—and wishing he was an artist.
Meanwhile, my mind was busy with the sharp contrast this whole progress was presenting to my tour of Europe, even the poorest and most deserted regions I visited. In England, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, there was so much to see—so much that was memorable or quaint or strange or artistic—but here; well, here there were just towns like this one and Binghamton and Scranton and Wilkes-Barré, places the best for which you could say was that they were brisk and vivid and building something which in the future will no doubt seem very beautiful,—I’m sure of it.
And yet I kept saying to myself that notwithstanding all this, all I could sum up against America even, it was actually better than Europe. And why? Well, because of a certain indefinable something—either of hope or courage or youth or vigor or illusion, what you will; but the average American, or the average European transplanted to America, is a better or at least a more dynamic person than the average European at home, even the Frenchman. He has more grit, verve, humor, or a lackadaisical slapdash method which is at once efficient, self-sustaining, comforting. His soul, in spite of all the chains wherewith the ruling giants are seeking to fetter him, is free. As yet, regardless of what is or may be, he does not appear to realize that he is not free or that he is in any way oppressed. There are no ruling classes, to him. He sings, whistles, jests, laughs boisterously; matches everybody for cigars, beers, meals; chews tobacco, spits freely, smokes, swears, rolls to and fro, cocks his hat on one side of his head, and altogether by and large is a regular “hell of a feller.” He doesn’t know anything about history, or very little, and doesn’t give a damn. He doesn’t know anything about art,—but, my God, who with the eternal hills and all nature for a background cannot live without representative art? His food isn’t extraordinarily good, though plentiful, his clothes are made by Stein-Bloch, or Hart, Schaffner & Marx, and altogether he is a noisy, blatant, contented mess—but oh, the gay, selfsufficient soul of him! no moans! no tears! Into the teeth of destiny he marches, whistling “Yankee Doodle” or “Turkey in the Straw.” In the parlance of his own streets, “Can you beat him?”
Nevertheless my sympathies kept reverting to the young innkeeper and I finally got out a map to see if I could discover the name of the very small town or crossroads where this hotel was situated. It proved to be Chemung.
Instantly I recalled the story of a gubernatorial aspirant of twenty years before who had come from this very place or county in New York. Previously a district attorney or lieutenant governor, he had one day been nominated for the governorship, on the reigning ticket. His chances were splendid. There was scarcely a cloud in the sky. He was believed to be brilliant, promising, a presidential possibility of the future. An important meeting was called in New York, I believe, at Madison Square Garden very likely, to ratify and celebrate his nomination. All the élite politically who customarily grace such events were present. The Garden was filled. But, alas, at the sound of the applause called forth by his opening burst of oratory, he paused and took off his coat—quite as he would at an upstate rally, here in Chemung. The audience gasped. The sophisticated leaders of the city groaned. What! Take off your coat at a political address in Madison Square Garden? A candidate for governorship of the state of New York? It completely destroyed him. He was never heard of more. I, a mere stripling at the time, brooded long over this sudden turn of fortune as exemplifying a need to discriminate between audiences and classes. It put a cool, jesuitical thought in my mind that I did not soon forget. “Never remove your coat in the wrong place,” was a maxim that dwelt with me for some time. And here we were in Chemung, the place to which this man subsequently retired, to meditate, no doubt, over the costly follies and errors we sometimes commit without the ability or the knowledge to guard against them.
An hour and a half later we were having breakfast at Elmira, a place much like Binghamton, in the customary “Rathskeller-Grill-Café de Berlin.” This one was all embossed with gold paper and Teutonic hunting scenes, and contained the usual heavy mission tables, to say nothing of a leftover smell of cigarettes burned the night before. There were negro waiters too, and another group of motorists having a most elaborate breakfast and much talk of routes and cars and distant cities. Here it was necessary for us to decide the course of our future progress, so we shortly set off in search of the local automobile club.
CHAPTER XVII
CHICKEN AND WAFFLES AND THE TOON O' BATH
We found an official of the Elmira Automobile Club, a small, stoop-shouldered, bald, eye-sockety person who greeted us with a genial rub of his hands and a hearty smirk as though we were just the persons, among all others, whom he was most pleased to see.