“We thought we’d take dinner there,” replied Franklin.
“I ask because usually a number of people go through here of a Sunday looking for his place, particularly now that he’s dead. He’s got quite an institution over there, I understand—or did have. They say his hotel is very good.”
“Haven’t you ever been there?” I inquired, interested.
“No, but I’ve heard a good deal about it. It’s a sort of new art place, as I understand it, heavy furniture and big beams and copper and brass things. He had quite a trade, too. He got into a bad way with some people over there on account of his divorcing his first wife and taking up with this second woman for awhile without being married to her. He was a pretty shrewd business man, I guess, even if he wore his hair long. I saw him once. He lectured around here—and everywhere else, I suppose. I think he was a little too radical for most people out this way.”
He looked as though he had vindicated his right to a seat among the intellectuals.
I stared at him curiously. America is so brisk and well informed. Here was a small, out of the way place, with no railroad and only two or three stores, but this youth was plainly well informed on all the current topics. The few other youths and maids whom we saw here seemed equally brisk. I was surprised to note the Broadway styles in suits and dresses—those little nuances of the ready made clothes manufacturers which make one feel as if there were no longer any country nor any city, but just smart, almost impudent life, everywhere. It was quite diverting.
Looking at this fine country, dotted with red barns and silos and ripe with grain, in which already the reapers were standing in various places ready for the morrow’s work, I could see how the mountains of the east were puffing out. This was a spent mountain country. All the real vigor of the hills was farther east. These were too rolling—too easy of ascent and descent—long and trying and difficult as some of them were. It seemed as if we just climbed and climbed and climbed only to descend, descend, descend, and then climb, climb, climb again. Speed put on the chains,—his favorite employment in hilly regions.
But presently, after a few more hills, which finally gave way to a level country, we entered East Aurora.
It is curious how any fame, even meretricious or vulgar, is likely to put one on the qui vive. I had never been greatly impressed with the intellect or the taste of Elbert Hubbard. He seemed too much the quack savior and patent nostrum vender strayed into the realm of art. His face as photographed suggested the strolling Thespian of country “opera house” fame. I could never look upon his pictures without involuntarily smiling.
Just the same, once here, I was anxious to see what he had achieved. Many people have I known who, after visiting East Aurora and the Roycroft (that name!) Shops, had commended its sacred precincts to my attention. I have known poets who lived there and writers to whom he allotted cottages within the classic precincts of his farm because of their transcendent merits in literature. Sic transit gloria mundi! I cannot even recall their names!