In to the Yukon

by William Seymour Edwards

From the station we took our way to the Southern Hotel, for so many years, and yet to-day, the chief hostelry in the city. A building of white marble, covering one entire block, with four entrances converging upon the office in the center. Here the Southern planters and Mississippi steamboat captains always tarry, here the corn and cattle kings of Kansas and the great Southwest congregate. The politicians of Missouri, too, have always made the Southern a sort of political exchange. Other and newer hotels, like the Planters, have been built in St. Louis, but none has ever outclassed the Southern. We were not expecting to tarry long at the hotel, nor did we, for after waiting only a short interval in the wide reception-room, a carriage drove up, a gracious-mannered woman in black descended, and we were soon in the keeping of one of the most delightful hostesses of old St. Louis. Her carriage was at our command, her time was ours, her home our own so long as we should remain. And we had never met her until the bowing hotel clerk brought her smiling to us. So much for acquaintance with mutual friends.

The morning was spent visiting the more notable of the great retail stores, viewing the miles of massive business blocks, watching the volume of heavy traffic upon the crowded streets. At noon we lunched with our hostess in a home filled with rare books and objects of art, collected during many years of foreign residence and travel, and I was taken to the famous St. Louis Club, shown over its imposing granite club-house, and put up there for a fortnight, should I stay so long.

In the afternoon we were driven through the sumptuous residence section of the city out toward the extensive park on whose western borders are now erected the aggregation of stupendous buildings of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. This residence section of St. Louis has always been impressive to me. There is so much of it. The mansions are so diverse in architecture, so splendid in design. “Palaces,” they would be called in England, in Germany, in France. Here the plain St. Louisian says “Come up to my house,” and walks you into the palace with no ado. Evidences of the material wealth of this great city they are. Not one, not two, but tens and hundreds of palatial homes. Men and women live in them whom you and I have never read about, have never heard about, will never know about, yet there they are, successful, intelligent, influential in the affairs of this Republic quite as much so as you and I. And the larger part of these splendid mansions are lived in by men and women who represent in themselves that distinctively American quality of “getting on.” One granite palace pointed out to me, is inhabited by a man and his wife, neither of whom can more than read and write. Yet both are gifted with great good sense, and he lives there because he saved his wages when a chore hand in a brewery until at last he owned the brewery. Another beautiful home is possessed by a man who began as a day laborer and then struck it rich digging gold in the Black Hills. Calves and cattle built one French chateau; corn, plain corn, built several more, and cotton and mules a number of others. Steamboats and railways, and trade and commerce and manufactures have built miles of others, while the great Shaw’s Botanical Garden, established and endowed and donated to the city, came from a miserly bachelor banker’s penchant to stint and save. The incomes of the hustling citizens of St. Louis remain her own; the incomes of the rent-payers of Chicago, like the interest on her mortgages, go into the pockets of stranger owners who dwell in distant cities in the East.

The extensive Fair grounds and Exposition Buildings were driven upon and among. A gigantic enterprise, an ambitious enterprise. St. Louis means to outdo Chicago, and this time Chicago will surely be outdone. The buildings are bigger and there are more of them than at Chicago. They are painted according to a comprehensive color scheme, not left a blinding white, less gaudy than the French effort of 1900, more harmonious than the Pan-American effects at Buffalo two years ago. The prevailing tints are cream white for the perpendicular walls and statuary, soft blues, greens, reds, for the roofs and pinnacles, and much gilding. More than twenty millions of dollars are now being expended upon this great Exposition show. For one brief summer it is to dazzle the world, forever it is to glorify St. Louis. The complacent St. Louisian now draws a long breath and mutters contentedly, “Thank God, for one time Chicago isn’t in it.” The Art buildings alone are to be permanent. They are not yet complete. I wonder whether it will be possible to have them as splendidly sumptuous as were the marble Art Palaces I beheld in Paris three years ago—the only works of French genius I saw in that Exposition that seemed to me worthy of the greatness of France. The Exposition grounds and buildings are yet in an inchoate condition, and but for the fact that Americans are doing and pushing the work, one would deem it impossible for the undertaking to be completed within the limited time. As it is, many a West Virginian and Kanawhan will next summer enjoy to the full these evidences of American power.

In the late afternoon we were entertained at the Country Club, a delightful bit of field and meadow and woodland, a few miles beyond the city. Here the tired business man may come from the desk and shop and warehouse and office, and play like a boy in the sunshine and among green, living things. Here the young folk of the big city, some of them, gather for evening dance and quiet suppers when the summer heat makes city life too hard. Here golf and polo are played all through the milder seasons of the year. We were asked to remain over for the following day, when a polo match would be played. We should have liked to see the ponies chase the ball, but our time of holiday was coming to an end. We might not stay.

In the evening we were entertained at a most delightful banquet. A large table of interesting and cultivated people were gathered to meet ourselves. We had never met them before, we might never meet them again, but for the brief hour we were as though intimates of many years.

All the night we came speeding across the rolling prairie lands of Illinois and Indiana into Ohio. A country I have seen before, a landscape wide and undulating, filled with immense wheat and corn fields. The home of a well-established and affluent population. The sons and grandsons of the pioneers who, in the early days of the last century, poured in from all quarters of the East, many Virginians and Kanawhans among the number. A country from which the present younger generations have gone and are now going forth into the land yet further west, and even up into the as yet untenanted prairies and plains of the Canadian north.

In the morning we were in Cincinnati and felt almost at home. The city, smoky as usual, marred by the blast of the great fire of the early summer. The throngs upon the streets were just about as numerous, just about as hustling as those elsewhere we have seen, yet there was a variation. The men not so tall, more chunky in build, bigger round the girth, stolid, solid. The large infusion of German blood shows itself in Cincinnati, even more than in St. Louis, where the lank Westerner is more in evidence.

It was dusk when the glimmering lights of Charleston showed across the placid Kanawha. We were once more at home. We had been absent some seventy days; we had journeyed some eight thousand miles upon sea and lake and land. We had enjoyed perfect health. We had met no mishap. We had traveled from almost the Arctic Circle to the sight of Mexico. We had traversed the entire Pacific coast of the continent from Skagway to Los Angeles. We had twice crossed the continent. We had beheld the greatness of our country, the vigor and wealth and energy of many cities, the splendor and power of the Republic.