Everybody comes
here of evenings to sit around little tables and listen to a
first-class orchestra. The place is something like the Gaiety
Theatre at Simla, enlarged twenty times. The "Light Brigade" of
Buffalo occupy the boxes and the stage, "as it was at Simla in
the days of old," and the others sit in the parquet. Here I went
with a friend - poor or boor is the man who cannot pick up a
friend for a season in America - and here was shown the really
smart folk of the city. I grieve to say I laughed, because when
an American wishes to be correct he sets himself to imitate the
Englishman. This he does vilely, and earns not only the contempt
of his brethren, but the amused scorn of the Briton.
I saw one man who was pointed out to me as being the glass of
fashion hereabouts. He was aggressively English in his get-up.
From eye-glass to trouser-hem the illusion was perfect, but - he
wore with evening-dress buttoned boots with brown cloth tops!
Not till I wandered about this land did I understand why the
comic papers belabor the Anglomaniac.
Certain young men of the more idiotic sort launch into dog-carts
and raiment of English cut, and here in Buffalo they play polo at
four in the afternoon. I saw three youths come down to the
polo-ground faultlessly attired for the game and mounted on their
best ponies. Expecting a game, I lingered; but I was mistaken.
These three shining ones with the very new yellow hide boots and
the red silk sashes had assembled themselves for the purpose of
knocking the ball about. They smote with great solemnity up and
down the grounds, while the little boys looked on. When they
trotted, which was not seldom, they rose and sunk in their
stirrups with a conscientiousness that cried out "Riding-school!"
from afar.
Other young men in the park were riding after the English manner,
in neatly cut riding-trousers and light saddles. Fate in
derision had made each youth bedizen his animal with a checkered
enam-elled leather brow-band visible half a mile away - a
black-and-white checkered brow-band! They can't do it, any more
than an Englishman, by taking cold, can add that indescribable
nasal twang to his orchestra.
The other sight of the evening was a horror. The little tragedy
played itself out at a neighboring table where two very young men
and two very young women were sitting. It did not strike me till
far into the evening that the pimply young reprobates were making
the girls drunk. They gave them red wine and then white, and the
voices rose slightly with the maidens' cheek flushes. I watched,
wishing to stay, and the youths drank till their speech thickened
and their eye-balls grew watery. It was sickening to see,
because I knew what was going to happen. My friend eyed the
group, and said: - "Maybe they're children of respectable people.
I hardly think, though, they'd be allowed out without any better
escort than these boys. And yet the place is a place where every
one comes, as you see. They may be Little Immoralities - in which
case they wouldn't be so hopelessly overcome with two glasses of
wine. They may be - "
Whatever they were they got indubitably drunk - there in that
lovely hall, surrounded by the best of Buffalo society. One
could do nothing except invoke the judgment of Heaven on the two
boys, themselves half sick with liquor. At the close of the
performance the quieter maiden laughed vacantly and protested she
couldn't keep her feet. The four linked arms, and staggering,
flickered out into the street - drunk, gentlemen and ladies, as
Davy's swine, drunk as lords! They disappeared down a side
avenue, but I could hear their laughter long after they were out
of sight.
And they were all four children of sixteen and seventeen. Then,
recanting previous opinions, I became a prohibitionist. Better
it is that a man should go without his beer in public places, and
content himself with swearing at the narrow-mindedness of the
majority; better it is to poison the inside with very vile
temperance drinks, and to buy lager furtively at back-doors, than
to bring temptation to the lips of young fools such as the four I
had seen. I understand now why the preachers rage against drink.
I have said: "There is no harm in it, taken moderately;" and yet
my own demand for beer helped directly to send those two girls
reeling down the dark street to - God alone knows what end.
If liquor is worth drinking, it is worth taking a little trouble
to come at - such trouble as a man will undergo to compass his own
desires. It is not good that we should let it lie before the
eyes of children, and I have been a fool in writing to the
contrary. Very sorry for myself, I sought a hotel, and found in
the hall a reporter who wished to know what I thought of the
country. Him I lured into conversation about his own profession,
and from him gained much that confirmed me in my views of the
grinding tyranny of that thing which they call the Press here.
Thus: - I - But you talk about interviewing people whether they
like it or not. Have you no bounds beyond which even your
indecent curiosity must not go?
HE - I haven't struck 'em yet. What do you think of interviewing
a widow two hours after her husband's death, to get her version
of his life?
I - I think that is the work of a ghoul. Must the people have no
privacy?
HE - There is no domestic privacy in America. If there was, what
the deuce would the papers do?
