Abroad At Home - free ebook by Julian Street

Read as playlist

Abroad At Home

Julian Street

41 chapters

10 hour read

Read as playlist

Selected Chapters

41 chapters

ABROAD AT HOME

ABROAD AT HOME

THE NEED OF CHANGE Fifth Anniversary Edition. Illustrated by James Montgomery Flagg. Cloth, 50 cents net. Leather, $1.00 net. PARIS À LA CARTE "Gastronomic promenades" in Paris. Illustrated by May Wilson Preston. Cloth, 60 cents net. WELCOME TO OUR CITY Mr. Street plays host to the stranger in New York. Illustrated by James Montgomery Flagg and Wallace Morgan. Cloth, $1.00 net. SHIP-BORED Who hasn't been? Illustrated by May Wilson Preston. Cloth, 50 cents net. ABROAD AT HOME Cheerful ramblings a

2 minute read

Read Chapter

STEPPING WESTWARD

STEPPING WESTWARD

" What, you are stepping westward? "—" Yea. " —'Twould be a wildish destiny, If we, who thus together roam In a strange Land, and far from home, Were in this place the guests of Chance: Yet who would stop or fear to advance, Though home or shelter he had none, With such a sky to lead him on? — Wordsworth. For some time I have desired to travel over the United States—to ramble and observe and seek adventure here, at home, not as a tourist with a short vacation and a round-trip ticket, but as a ki

20 minute read

Read Chapter

BIFURCATED BUFFALO

BIFURCATED BUFFALO

Alighting from the train at Buffalo, I was reminded of my earlier reflection that railway stations should express their cities. In Buffalo the thought is painful. If that city were in fact, expressed by its present railway stations, people would not get off there voluntarily; they would have to be put off. And yet, from what I have been told, the curious and particularly ugly relic which is the New York Central Station there, to-day, does tell a certain story of the city. Buffalo has long been t

22 minute read

Read Chapter

CLEVELAND CHARACTERISTICS

CLEVELAND CHARACTERISTICS

Before leaving home we were presented with a variety of gifts, ranging all the way from ear muffs to advice. Having some regard for the esthetic, we threw away the ear muffs, determining to buy ourselves fur caps when we should need them. But the advice we could not throw away; it stuck to us like a poor relation. In the parlor car, on the way from Buffalo to Cleveland, our minds got running on sad subjects. "We have come out to find interesting things—to have adventures," said my blithe compani

9 minute read

Read Chapter

MORE CLEVELAND CHARACTERISTICS

MORE CLEVELAND CHARACTERISTICS

Because I have told you so much about the Chamber of Commerce you must not assume that the Chamber of Commerce was with us constantly while we were in Cleveland, for that is not the case. True, Chamber of Commerce representatives were with us all the first day and until we went to our rooms, late at night. But at our rooms they left us, merely taking the precaution to lock us in. No attempt was made to assist us in undressing or to hear our prayers or tuck us into bed. Once in our rooms we were

17 minute read

Read Chapter

DETROIT THE DYNAMIC

DETROIT THE DYNAMIC

Because Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit are, in effect, situated upon Lake Erie, and because they are cities of approximately the same size, and because of many other resemblances between them, they always seem to me like three sisters living amicably in three separate houses on the same block. As I personify them, Buffalo, living at the eastern end of the block, is the smallest sister. She has, I fear, a slight tendency to be anemic. Her husband, who was in the shipping business, is getting old

14 minute read

Read Chapter

AUTOMOBILES AND ART

AUTOMOBILES AND ART

Within the last few years there has come to Detroit a new life. The vast growth of the city, owing to the development of the automobile industry, has brought in many new, active, able business men and their families, whom the old Detroiters have dubbed the "Gasoline Aristocracy." Thus there are in Detroit two fairly distinct social groups—the Grosse Pointe group, of which the old families form the nucleus, and the North Woodward group, largely made up of newcomers. The automobile has not only ch

15 minute read

Read Chapter

THE MÆCENAS OF THE MOTOR

THE MÆCENAS OF THE MOTOR

The great trouble with Detroit, from my point of view, is that there is too much which should be mentioned: Grosse Pointe with its rich setting and rich homes; the fine new railroad station; the "Cabbage Patch"; the "Indian Village" (so called because the streets bear Indian names) with its examples of modest, pleasing, domestic architecture. Then there are the boulevards, the fine Wayne County roads, the clubs—the Country Club, the Yacht Club, the Boat Club, the Detroit Club, the University Clu

15 minute read

Read Chapter

THE CURIOUS CITY OF BATTLE CREEK

THE CURIOUS CITY OF BATTLE CREEK

It was on a chilly morning, not much after eight o'clock, that we left Detroit. I recall that, driving trainward, I closed the window of the taxicab; that the marble waiting room of the new station looked uncomfortably half awake, like a sleeper who has kicked the bedclothes off, and that the concrete platform outside was a playground for cold, boisterous gusts of wind. Our train had come from somewhere else. Entering the Pullman car, we found it in its night-time aspect. The narrow aisle, made

17 minute read

Read Chapter

KALAMAZOO

KALAMAZOO

I had but one reason for visiting Kalamazoo: the name has always fascinated me with its zoölogical suggestion and even more with its rich, rhythmic measure. Indian names containing "K's" are almost always striking: Kenosha, Kewanee, Kokomo, Keokuk, Kankakee. Of these, the last two, having the most "K's" are most effective. Next comes Kokomo with two "K's." But Kalamazoo, though it has but one "K," seems to me to take first place among them all, phonetically, because of the finely assorted sound

6 minute read

Read Chapter

GRAND RAPIDS THE "ELECT"

GRAND RAPIDS THE "ELECT"

I know a man whose wife is famous for her cooking. That is a strange thing for a prosperous and charming woman to be famous for to-day, but it is true. When they wish to give their friends an especial treat, the wife prepares the dinner; and it is a treat, from "pigs in blankets" to strawberry shortcake. The husband is proud of his wife's cooking, but I have often noticed, and not without a mild amusement, that when we praise it past a certain point he begins to protest that there are lots of ot

9 minute read

Read Chapter

A MIDDLE-WESTERN MIRACLE

A MIDDLE-WESTERN MIRACLE

Imagine a young demigod, product of a union between Rodin's "Thinker" and the Wingèd Victory of Samothrace, and you will have my symbol of Chicago. Chicago is stupefying. It knows no rules, and I know none by which to judge it. It stands apart from all the cities in the world, isolated by its own individuality, an Olympian freak, a fable, an allegory, an incomprehensible phenomenon, a prodigious paradox in which youth and maturity, brute strength and soaring spirit, are harmoniously confused. Ca

11 minute read

Read Chapter

FIELD'S AND THE "TRIBUNE"

FIELD'S AND THE "TRIBUNE"

Of course we visited Marshall Field's. The very obliging gentleman who showed us about the inconceivably enormous buildings, rushing from floor to floor, poking in and out through mysterious, baffling doors and passageways, now in the public part of the store where goods are sold, now behind the scenes where they are made—this gentleman seemed to have the whole place in his head—almost as great a feat as knowing the whole world by heart. "How much time can you spare?" he asked as we set out from

15 minute read

Read Chapter

THE STOCKYARDS

THE STOCKYARDS

It is rather widely known, I think, that Chicago built the first steel-frame skyscraper—the Tacoma Building—but I do not believe that the world knows that Kohlsaat's in Chicago was the first quick-lunch place of its kind, or that the first "free lunch" in the country was established, many years since, in the basement saloon at the corner of State and Madison Streets. Considering the skyscrapers and quick lunches and free lunches that there are to-day, it is hard to realize that there ever was a

10 minute read

Read Chapter

THE HONORABLE HINKY DINK

THE HONORABLE HINKY DINK

Has it ever struck you that our mental attitude toward famous men varies in this respect: that while we think of some of them as human beings with whom we might conceivably shake hands and have a chat, we think of others as legendary creatures, strange and remote—beings hardly to be looked upon by human eyes? Some years since, in the courtyard of a hotel in Paris, I met a friend of mine. He was hurrying in the direction of the bar. "Come on," he beckoned. "There are some people here you'll want

9 minute read

Read Chapter

AN OLYMPIAN PLAN

AN OLYMPIAN PLAN

In city planning, as in other things, Chicago has thought and plotted on an Olympian scale, and it is characteristic of Chicago that her plan for her own beautification should be so much greater than the plan of any other city in the country, as to make comparisons unkind. For that reason I have eliminated Chicago from consideration, when discussing the various group plans, park and boulevard systems, and "civic centers," upon which other American cities are at work. The Chicago plan is, indeed,

6 minute read

Read Chapter

LOOKING BACKWARD

LOOKING BACKWARD

The Chicago Club is the rich, substantial club of the city, an organization which may perhaps be compared with the Union Club of New York, although the inner atmosphere of the Chicago Club seems somehow less formal than that of its New York prototype. However, that is true in general where Chicago clubs and New York clubs are compared. The University Club of Chicago has a very large and handsome building in the Gothic style, with a dining room said to be the handsomest club dining room in the wo

12 minute read

Read Chapter

SOMNOLENT ST. LOUIS

SOMNOLENT ST. LOUIS

"The moderation of prosperous people comes from the calm which good fortune gives to their temper." — La Rochefoucauld. Some years ago, while riding westward through the Alleghenies in an observation car of the Pennsylvania Limited, a friend of mine fell into conversation with an old gentleman who sat in the next chair. "Evidently he knew a good deal about that region," said my friend, in telling me of the incident later. "We must have sat there together for a couple of hours. He did most of the

23 minute read

Read Chapter

THE FINER SIDE

THE FINER SIDE

Before making my transcontinental pilgrimage I used to wonder, sometimes, just where the line dividing East from West in the United States might be. When I lived in Chicago, and went out to St. Louis, I felt that I was going, not merely in a westerly direction, but that I was actually going out into the "West." I knew, of course, that there was a vast amount of "West" lying beyond St. Louis, but I had no real conception—and no one who has not seen it can have—of what a stupendous, endless, diffe

18 minute read

Read Chapter

HANNIBAL AND MARK TWAIN

HANNIBAL AND MARK TWAIN

If black slaves are no longer bought and sold there, if the river trade has dwindled, if the railroad and the factory have come, bringing a larger population with them, if the town now has a hundred-thousand-dollar city hall, a country club, and "fifty-six passenger trains daily," it is, at all events, a pleasure to record the fact that Hannibal, Missouri, retains to-day that look of soft and shambling picturesqueness suitable to an old river town, and essential to the "St. Petersburg" of fictio

18 minute read

Read Chapter

PIKE AND POKER

PIKE AND POKER

It was before we left St. Louis that I received a letter inviting us to visit in the town of Louisiana, Mo. I quote a portion of it: Louisiana is in Pike County, a county famous for its big red apples, miles of rock roads, fine old estates, Rhine scenery, capons, rare old country hams, and poker. Pike County means more to Missouri than Missouri does to Pike. Do you remember "Jim Bludso of the 'Prairie Belle'"? He weren't no saint—them engineers Is pretty much all alike— One wife in Natchez-under

15 minute read

Read Chapter

OLD RIVER DAYS

OLD RIVER DAYS

Later we motored to the town of Clarksville, some miles down the river—a town which huddles along the bank, as St. Louis must have in her early days. Being a small, straggling village which has not, if one may judge from appearances, progressed or even changed in fifty years, Clarksville out-Hannibals Hannibal. Or, perhaps, it is to-day the kind of town that Hannibal was when Mark Twain was a boy. In its decay it is theatrically perfect. Our motor stopped before the bank, and we were introduced

6 minute read

Read Chapter

KANSAS CITY

KANSAS CITY

If you will take a map of the United States and fold it so that the Atlantic and Pacific coast lines overlap, the crease at the center will form a line which runs down through the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas. That is not, however, the true dividing line between East and West. If I were to try to draw the true line, I should begin at the north, bringing my pencil down between the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, leaving the former to the east, and the latter to the west, and I should follow

18 minute read

Read Chapter

ODDS AND ENDS

ODDS AND ENDS

The quality in Kansas City which struck Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, the French statesman and peace advocate, was the enormous growth and vitality of the place. "Town Development" quotes the Baron as having called Kansas City a " cité champignon ," but I am sure that in saying that he had in mind the growth of the mushroom rather than its fiber; for though Kansas City grew from nothing to a population of 250,000 within a space of fifty years, her fiber is exceptionally firm, and her prosper

12 minute read

Read Chapter

COLONEL NELSON'S "STAR"

COLONEL NELSON'S "STAR"

"What do you expect to see in Kansas City?" I was asked by the president of a trust company. "I want to see the new Union Station," I said, "and I hope also to meet Colonel Nelson." He smiled. "One's as big as the other," was his comment. That is a mild statement of the case. The power of Colonel Nelson is something unique, and his newspaper, the Kansas City "Star," is, I believe, alone in the position it holds among American dailies. Like all powerful newspapers, it is the expression of a singl

11 minute read

Read Chapter

KEEPING A PROMISE

KEEPING A PROMISE

The shades of night were falling fast, As through a western landscape passed A car, which bore, 'mid snow and ice, Two trav'lers taking this advice: Visit Excelsior Springs! Have you ever heard of the city of Excelsior Springs, Missouri? I never had until the letters began to come. The first one reached me in Detroit. It told me that Excelsior Springs desired to be "written up," and offered me, as an inducement to come there, the following arguments: paved streets, beautiful scenery, three moder

12 minute read

Read Chapter

THE TAME LION

THE TAME LION

The James farm occupies a pretty bit of rolling land, at one corner of which, near the road, Frank James has built himself a neat, substantial frame house. Before the house is a large gate, bearing a sign as follows: James Farms Home of the James' Jesse and Frank Admission 50c . Kodaks Bared As we moved in the direction of the house a tall, slender old man with a large hooked nose and a white beard and mustache walked toward us. He was dressed in an exceedingly neat suit and wore a large black f

16 minute read

Read Chapter

KANSAS JOURNALISM

KANSAS JOURNALISM

Everything I had ever heard of Kansas, every one I had ever met from Kansas, everything I had ever imagined about Kansas, made me anxious to invade that State. With the exception of California, there was no State about which I felt such a consuming curiosity. Kansas is, and always has been, a State of freaks and wonders, of strange contrasts, of individualities strong and sometimes weird, of ideas and ideals, and of apocryphal occurrences. Just think what Kansas has been, and has had, and is! Th

9 minute read

Read Chapter

A COLLEGE TOWN

A COLLEGE TOWN

It was about one o'clock in the afternoon when my companion and I alighted from the train in Lawrence, Kas., the city in which the Quantrell massacre occurred, as mentioned in a preceding chapter, and the seat of the University of Kansas. An automobile hack, the gasoline equivalent of the dilapidated horse-drawn station hack of earlier times, was standing beside the platform. We consulted the driver about luncheon. "You kin get just as good eating at the lunch room over by the other station," he

22 minute read

Read Chapter

MONOTONY

MONOTONY

We left Lawrence late at night and went immediately to bed upon the train. When I awoke in the morning the car was standing still. In the ventilators overhead, I heard the steady monotonous whistling of the wind. As I became more awake I began to wonder where we were and why we were not moving. Presently I raised the window shade and looked out. How many things there are in life which we think we know from hearsay, yet which, when we actually encounter them, burst upon us with a new and strange

13 minute read

Read Chapter

UNDER PIKE'S PEAK

UNDER PIKE'S PEAK

What a curious thing it is, that mental process by which a first impression of a city is summed up. A railway station, a taxicab, swift glimpses through a dirty window of streets, buildings, people, blurred together, incoherently, like moving pictures out of focus; then a quick unconscious adding of infinitesimal details and the total: "I like this city," or: "I do not like it." It was late afternoon when the train upon which we had come from eastern Kansas stopped at the Denver station—a substa

23 minute read

Read Chapter

HITTING A HIGH SPOT

HITTING A HIGH SPOT

An enthusiastic young millionaire, the son of a pioneer, determined that my companion and I ought to see the mountain parks. It was winter, and for reasons all too plainly visible from Denver, no automobiles had attempted the ascent since fall, for the mountain barrier, rearing itself majestically to the westward, glittered appallingly with ice and snow. "We can have a try at it, anyway," said our friend. So, presently, in furs, and surrounded by lunch baskets and thermos bottles, we set out for

20 minute read

Read Chapter

COLORADO SPRINGS

COLORADO SPRINGS

In a certain city that I visited upon my travels, I met one night at dinner, one of those tall, pink-cheeked, slim-legged young polo-playing Englishmen, who proceeded to tell me in his positive, British way, exactly what the United States amounted to. He said New York was ripping. He said San Francisco was ripping. He said American girls were ripping. "But," said he, "there are just two really civilized places between your Atlantic and Pacific coasts." The idea entertained me. I asked which plac

19 minute read

Read Chapter

CRIPPLE CREEK

CRIPPLE CREEK

One day, during our stay at Colorado Springs, we were invited to take a trip to Cripple Creek. Driving to the station a friend, a resident of the Springs, pointed out to me a little clay hillock, beside the road. "That," he said, "is what we call Mount Washington." "I don't see the resemblance," I remarked. "Well," he explained, "the top of that little hump has an elevation of about six thousand three hundred feet, which is exactly the height of Mount Washington. You see our mountains, out here,

5 minute read

Read Chapter

THE MORMON CAPITAL

THE MORMON CAPITAL

I think it was in Kansas City that I first became conscious of the fact that, without my knowing it, my mind had made, in advance, imaginary pictures of certain sections of the country, and that, in almost every instance, these pictures were remarkable for their untruthfulness. Kansas City itself surprised me with its hills, for I had been thinking of it in connection with the prairies. With Denver it was the other way about. Thinking of Denver as a mountain city, instead of a city near the moun

17 minute read

Read Chapter

THE SMITHS

THE SMITHS

Before going to Salt Lake City I had heard that the Mormons were in complete control of politics and business in the State of Utah, and that it was their practice to discriminate against "gentiles," making it impossible for them to be successful there. I asked a great many citizens of Salt Lake City about this, and all the evidence indicated that such rumors are without foundation, and that, of recent years, Mormons and "gentiles" have worked harmoniously together, socially and in business. The

11 minute read

Read Chapter

PASSING PICTURES

PASSING PICTURES

As our train crossed the Great Salt Lake the farther shores were glistening in a golden haze, half real, half mirage, like the shores of Pæstum as you see them from the monastery at Amalfi on a sunny day. Beyond the lake a portion of the desert was glazed with a curious thin film of water—evidently overflow—in which the forms of stony hills at the margin of the waste were reflected so clearly that the eye could not determine the exact point of meeting between cliff and plain. Farther out in the

9 minute read

Read Chapter

SAN FRANCISCO

SAN FRANCISCO

Leaving the train in Oakland, one is reminded of Hoboken or Jersey City in the days before the Hudson Tubes were built. There is the train shed, the throng headed for the ferry, the baggage trucks, and the ferryboat itself, like a New York ferryboat down to its very smell. Likewise the fresh salt wind that blows into your face as you stand at the front of the boat, in crossing San Francisco Bay, is like a spring or summer wind in New York Harbor. So, if you cross at night, you have only the ligh

16 minute read

Read Chapter

"BEFORE THE FIRE"

"BEFORE THE FIRE"

San Fransiscans love to show their city off. Nevertheless they take a curious delight in countering against the enthusiasm of the alien with a solemn wag of the head and the invariable: {seen } {felt } "Ah, but you should have {tasted } it before the Fire!" {smelled} {heard } They say that about everything, old and new. They say it indiscriminately, without thought of what it means. They love the sound of it, and have made it a fixed habit. They say it about districts and buildings

10 minute read

Read Chapter

AN EXPOSITION AND A "BOOSTER"

AN EXPOSITION AND A "BOOSTER"

The Panama Pacific Exposition will unquestionably be the most beautiful exposition ever held in the world. Its setting is both accessible and lovely, for it has the city upon one side and the bay and the Golden Gate upon the other. Instead of being smooth and white like those of previous World's Fairs, the buildings have the streaked texture of travertine stone, with a general coloring somewhat warmer than that of travertine. Domes, doorways and other architectural details are rich in soft green

10 minute read

Read Chapter

NEW YORK AGAIN

NEW YORK AGAIN

On my first night in San Francisco I sat up late, unpacking and distributing my things about my room; it was early morning when I was ready to retire, and it occurred to me that I had better leave a call. "Please call me at nine," I said to the telephone operator. "Nine o'clock," she repeated, and in a voice like a caress, added: "Good-night." It was very pleasant to be told good-night, like that, even though the sweet voice was strange, and came over a wire; for my companion and I had been trav

12 minute read

Read Chapter