YOUR UNITED STATES

I. THE FIRST NIGHT 3
II. STREETS 27
III. THE CAPITOL AND OTHER SITES 49
IV. SOME ORGANIZATIONS 73
V. TRANSIT AND HOTELS 99
VI. SPORT AND THE THEATER 123
VII. EDUCATION AND ART 147
VIII. CITIZENS 171



THE GLORY OF FIFTH AVENUE INSPIRES EVEN THOSE ON FOOT _Frontispiece_
DISEMBARKING AT NEW YORK _Facing p._ 10
THE DOWN-TOWN BROADWAY OF CROWED SKY-SCRAPERS 16
BROADWAY ON ELECTION NIGHT 20
A BUSY DAY ON THE CURB MARKET 34
A WELL-KNOWN WALL STREET CHARACTER 36
THE SKY-SCRAPERS OF LOWER NEW YORK AT NIGHT 38
A WINTER MORNING IN LINCOLN PARK, CHICAGO 42
A RIVER-FRONT HARMONY IN BLACK AND WHITE--CHICAGO 44
THE APPROACH TO THE CAPITOL 50
ON PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE 52
ON THE STEPS OF THE PORTICO--THE CAPITOL 54
UNDER THE GREAT DOME OF THE CAPITOL 56
THE PROMENADE--CITY POINT, BOSTON 60
THE BOSTON YACHT CLUB--OVERLOOKING THE HARBOR 64
AT MORN POURING CONFIDENCES INTO HER TELEPHONE 74
LUNCHEON IN A DOWN-TOWN CLUB 86
A YOUNG WOMAN WAS JUST FINISHING A FLORID SONG 90
ABSORBED IN THAT WONDROUS SATISFYING HOBBY 94
IN THE PARLOR-CAR 100
BREAKFAST EN ROUTE 108
IN THE SUBWAY ONE ENCOUNTERS AN INSISTENT, HURRYING STREAM 112
THE STRAP-HANGERS 114
THE PASSENGERS ON THE ELEVATED AT NIGHT ARE ODDLY ASSORTED 116
THE RESTAURANT OF A GREAT HOTEL IS BUT ONE FEATURE OF ITS SPLENDOR 118
THE HORSE-SHOWS ARE WONDROUS DISPLAYS OF FASHION 124
THE SENSE OF A MIGHTY AND CULMINATING EVENT SHARPENED THE AIR 130
THE VICTORS LEAVING THE FIELD 134
UNIVERSITY BUILDINGS--UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 156
MITCHELL TOWER AND HUTCHINSON COMMONS--UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 164
PART OF THE DAILY ROUND OF THE INDOMITABLE NEW YORK WOMAN 172
THE ASTOUNDING POPULOUSNESS OF THE EAST SIDE 186




YOUR UNITED STATES




I

THE FIRST NIGHT


I sat with a melting ice on my plate, and my gaze on a very distant
swinging door, through which came and went every figure except the
familiar figure I desired. The figure of a woman came. She wore a
pale-blue dress and a white apron and cap, and carried a dish in
uplifted hands, with the gesture of an acolyte. On the bib of the apron
were two red marks, and as she approached, tripping, scornful,
unheeding, along the interminable carpeted aisle, between serried tables
of correct diners, the vague blur of her face gradually developed into
features, and the two red marks on her stomacher grew into two rampant
lions, each holding a globe in its ferocious paws; and she passed on,
bearing away the dish and these mysterious symbols, and lessened into a
puppet on the horizon of the enormous hall, and finally vanished through
another door. She was succeeded by men, all bearing dishes, but none of
them so inexorably scornful as she, and none of them disappearing where
she had disappeared; every man relented and stopped at some table or
other. But the figure I desired remained invisible, and my ice
continued to melt, in accordance with chemical law. The orchestra in the
gallery leaped suddenly into the rag-time without whose accompaniment it
was impossible, anywhere in the civilized world, to dine correctly. That
rag-time, committed, I suppose, originally by some well-intentioned if
banal composer in the privacy of his study one night, had spread over
the whole universe of restaurants like a pest, to the exasperation of
the sensitive, but evidently to the joy of correct diners. Joy shone in
the elated eyes of the four hundred persons correctly dining together in
this high refectory, and at the end there was honest applause!... And
yet you never encountered a person who, questioned singly, did not agree
and even assert of his own accord that music at meals is an outrageous
nuisance!...