Chapter XIX: Suite Américane

1

_Aspiration_

Police sergeants praying humbly to God that Jews will start poker-rooms on their posts, and so enable them to educate their eldest sons for holy orders.... Newspaper reporters resolving firmly to work hard, keep sober and be polite to the city editor, and so be rewarded with jobs as copy-readers.... College professors in one-building universities on the prairie, still hoping, at the age of sixty, to get their whimsical essays into the _Atlantic Monthly._ ... Car conductors on lonely suburban lines, trying desperately to save up $500 and start a Ford garage.... Pastors of one-horse little churches in decadent villages, who, whenever they drink two cups of coffee at supper, dream all night that they have been elected bishops.... Movie actors who hope against hope that the next fan letter will be from Bar Harbor.... Delicatessen dealers who spend their whole lives searching for a cheap substitute for the embalmed veal used in chicken-salad.... Italians who wish that they were Irish.... Mulatto girls in Georgia and Alabama who send away greasy dollar bills for bottles of Mme. Celestine’s Infallible Hair-Straightener.... Ash-men who pull wires to be appointed superintendents of city dumps. Mothers who dream that the babies in their cradles will reach, in the mysterious after years, the highest chairs in the Red Men and the Maccabees.... Farmers who figure that, with good luck, they will be able to pay off their mortgages by 1943.... Contestants for the standing broad-jump championship of the Altoona, Pa., Y. M. C. A.... Editorial writers who essay to prove mathematically that a war between England and the United States is unthinkable....

2

_Virtue_

Pale druggists in remote towns of the Epworth League and flannel nightgown belts, endlessly wrapping up bottles of Peruna.... Women hidden away in the damp kitchens of unpainted houses along the railroad tracks, frying tough beefsteaks.... Lime and cement dealers being initiated into the Knights of Pythias, the Red Men or the Woodmen of the World.... Watchmen at lonely railroad crossings in Iowa, hoping that they’ll be able to get off to hear the United Brethren evangelist preach.... Ticket-choppers in the subway, breathing sweat in its gaseous form.... Family doctors in poor neighborhoods, faithfully relying upon the therapeutics taught in their Eclectic Medical College in 1884.... Farmers plowing sterile fields behind sad meditative horses, both suffering from the bites of insects.... Greeks tending all-night coffee-joints in the suburban wildernesses where the trolley-cars stop.... Grocery-clerks stealing prunes and ginger-snaps, and trying to make assignations with soapy servant-girls.... Women confined for the ninth or tenth time, wondering helplessly what it is all about.... Methodist preachers retired after forty years of service in the trenches of God, upon pensions of $600 a year.... Wives and daughters of Middle Western country bankers, marooned in Los Angeles, going tremblingly to swami séances in dark, smelly rooms.... Chauffeurs in huge fur coats waiting outside theaters filled with folks applauding Robert Edeson and Jane Cowl.... Decayed and hopeless men writing editorials at midnight for leading papers in Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama.... Owners of the principal candy-stores in Green River, Neb., and Tyrone, Pa.... Presidents of one-building universities in the rural fastnesses of Kentucky and Tennessee.... Women with babies in their arms weeping over moving-pictures in the Elks’ Hall at Schmidtsville, Mo.... Babies just born to the wives of milk-wagon drivers.... Judges on the benches of petty county courts in Virginia, Vermont and Idaho.... Conductors of accommodation trains running between Kokomo, Ind., and Logansport....

3

_Eminence_

The leading Methodist layman of Pottawattamie county, Iowa.... The man who won the limerick contest conducted by the Toomsboro, Ga., _Banner._ ... The secretary of the Little Rock, Ark., Kiwanis Club.... The president of the Johann Sebastian Bach _Bauverein_ of Highlandtown, Md.... The girl who sold the most Liberty Bonds in Duquesne, Pa.... The captain of the champion basket-ball team at the Gary, Ind., Y. M. C. A.... The man who owns the best bull in Coosa county, Ala.... The tallest man in Covington, Ky.... The oldest subscriber to the Raleigh, N. C, _News and Observer._ ... The most fashionable milliner in Bucyrus, O.... The business agent of the Plasterers’ Union of Somerville, Mass.... The author of the ode read at the unveiling of the monument to General Robert E. Lee at Valdosta, Ga.... The original Henry Cabot Lodge man.... The owner of the champion Airedale of Buffalo, N. Y.... The first child named after the Hon. Warren Gamaliel Harding.... The old lady in Wahoo, Neb., who has read the Bible 38 times.... The boss who controls the Italian, Czecho-Slovak and Polish votes in Youngstown, O.... The professor of chemistry, Greek, rhetoric and piano at the Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Tex.... The boy who sells 225 copies of the _Saturday Evening Post_ every week in Cheyenne, Wyo.... The youngest murderer awaiting hanging in Chicago.... The leading dramatic critic of Pittsburgh.... The night watchman in Penn Yan, N. Y., who once shook hands with Chester A. Arthur.... The Lithuanian woman in Bluefield, W. Va., who has had five sets of triplets.... The actor who has played in “Lightning” 1,600 times.... The best horse doctor in Oklahoma.... The highest-paid church-choir soprano in Knoxville, Tenn.... The most eligible bachelor in Cheyenne, Wyo.... The engineer of the locomotive which pulled the train which carried the Hon. A. Mitchell Palmer to the San Francisco Convention.... The girl who got the most votes in the popularity contest at Egg Harbor, N. J....

INDEX

Adam, Villiers de l’Isle
Adams, Henry
Addams, Jane
Addison, Joseph
American Legion
American Protective League
_Annabel Lee_
Anti-Saloon League
Arnold, Matthew
Asch, Sholom
Asquith, Mrs.
Astor, Lady
_Atlantic Monthly_
Augier, Emile

Bach, J. S.
Baker, Newton D.
Balfour, A. J.
Baltimore _Sun_
Balzac, H.
Barton, William E.
Beerbohm, Max
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Belasco, David
Bennett, Arnold
Benson, Admiral
Bentham, Jeremy
_Berliner Tageblatt_
Berlioz, Hector
Bible
Bierbaum, Otto Julius
Birkenhead, Lord
Bismarck, Otto von
Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen
Böhlau, Helene
Bolshevism
Boston _Transcript_
Bottomley, Horace
Boyd, Ernest A.
Brady, Diamond Jim
Brahms, Johannes
Brandes, Georg
Brieux, Eugene
Browning, Robert
Bryan, William Jennings
Bryce, James
Burleson, A. S.
Butler, Nicholas Murray

Cabell, James Branch
Capitalism
Carlyle, Thomas
Cather, Willa
Catt, Carrie Chapman
Cawein, Madison
Cézanne, Paul
Chamberlain, Joseph
Chopin, F.
Churchill, Winston
Cicero
Civil War
Clemenceau, Georges
Clemens, Samuel L.
Clutton-Brock, A.
Congress
_Congressional Record_
Conrad, Joseph
Constitution, U. S.
Coolidge, Calvin
Cooper, J. Fenimore
Cox, James M.
Crane, Frank
Creel, George
Criticism
Curtis, Cyrus K.

D’Annunzio, Gabrielle
Darwin, Charles
Dawes, Rufus
Debs, Eugene
Declaration of Independence
Dempsey, Jack
Dillon, Dr.
Disarmament Treaty
_Dixie_,
Dreiser, Theodore
Dryden, John
Dumas, Alexandre _fils_,
Dunsany, Lord
Duse, Eleanora
Dvorak, Antonin

Edwards, Jonathan
Ehrlich, Paul
Ellis, Havelock
Emerson, R. W.

_Faust_,
Finck, Henry T.
Flower, B. O.
Foch, Ferdinand
Ford, Henry
France, Anatole
Franklin, Fabian
Freud, Sigmund

Gale, Zona
Galileo
Garland, Hamlin
Garrett, Garet
George, W. L.
Gilman, Daniel, C.
Goethe, J. W.
Goldmarck, Karl
Gorky, Maxim
Gounod, Charles
Gourmont, Remy de
Grant, U. S.
Greenwich Village

Hamilton, Alexander
_Hamlet_,
Hamsun, Knut
Harding, W. G.
Harris, Frank
Hartleben, O. E.
Harvey, George B.
Hauptmann, Gerhart
Hazlitt, William
_Heart of Darkness_
Hergesheimer, Joseph
Hillis, Newell Dwight
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von
Howells, William Dean
Huch, Ricarda
_Huckleberry Finn_
Hughes, Charles E.
Huneker, James G.
Huxley, T. H.
Huysmans, J. K.

Ibsen, Henrik
Iconoclasts
Intellectuals, Young
Irving, Washington

Jackson, Andrew
James, Henry
Jefferson, Thomas
Jespersen, Otto
Jordan, David Starr
_Josef’s Legend_

Kerr, Alfred
Kipling, Rudyard
Klebs, Edwin
Knights of Pythias
Know Nothings
Krehbiel, Henry
Ku Klux Klan
Kürnberger, Ferdinand

Lagerlöf, Selma
Lanier, Sidney
Lee, Robert E.
Lewes, George Henry
Lewisohn, Ludwig
Lincoln, Abraham
Lindsey, Ben B.
Liszt, Franz
Lloyd-George, David
Lodge, Henry Cabot
Lodge, Oliver
London _Times_
Lowell, James Russell
Lowes, J. L.
Ludwig, Karl
Luther, Martin
Lyly, John

Mabies, Hamilton Wright
Macaulay, T. B.
Mann, Thomas
March, General
Marden, Orison Swett
Marlowe, Christopher
Martial
Masefield, John
Mendelssohn, Felix
Meredith, George
Methodists
Mill, J. S.
Miller, Joaquin
Milton, John
_Mlle. New York_
Mobile _Register_
Moody, John
Moore, George
More, Paul Elmer
Morgan, J. Pierpont
Müller, Johannes
Murray, Gilbert
Murry, Middleton
_Musical Courier_

Nathan, George Jean
National Institute of Arts and Letters
National Security League
Nearing, Scott
_New Republic_
New York _Evening Journal_
New York _Sun_
New York _Times_
New York _Tribune_
Nicoll, Robertson
Nietzsche, F. W.
Northcliffe, Lord

Ochs, Adolph S.
Odd Fellows
_Old Fogy_
_Othello_

_Painted Veils_
Palmer, A. Mitchell
_Parsifal_,
Pershing, John J.
Philadelphia _Ledger_
Pinchot, Gifford
Pirquet, Clemens von
Plato
Poe, Edgar Allan
Poetry
Pound, Ezra
Prescott, F. C.
_Puck_,

Reading, Lord
Red Cross, American
Reed, James A.
Reese, Lizette Woodworth
Reventlow, Count zu
Ricardo, David
Roosevelt, Theodore
Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr.
Root, Elihu
Rops, Félicien
Rosetti, Christina
Rotary Club
Rothert, Otto A.
Russell, Bertrand
Russell, Lillian

St. Augustine
Sainte-Beuve, C. A.
St. John
Santayana, George
_Saturday Evening Post_
Schmidt, Annalise
Schubert, Franz
Schumann, Robert
Schwab, Charles M.
Scott, Evelyn
Scribner’s, Charles, Sons
Seidl, Anton
Senate, U. S.
Serao, Mathilda
Shakespeare, William
Shaw, George, Bernard
_Sheik, The_
Sherman, S. P.
Sienkiewicz, Henryk
Sims, Admiral
Sinclair, May
Sinclair Upton
Smith, Adam
Sousa, J. P.
Spencer, Herbert
Staël, Mme. de
Stearns, Harold
Steed, Wickham
_Steeplejack_
Strauss, Richard
Strindberg, August
Sumner, William G.
Sunday, William A.
Supreme Court of the United States
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Swinburne, A. C.

Taft, William H.
Thoma, Ludwig
Thompson, Francis
Thoreau, H. D.
_Town Topics_
Tumulty, J. P.

Underwood, Oscar
U’Ren, W. S.

Van Dyke, Henry
Verlaine, Paul
Viebig, Clara
Vigilantes
Volstead, Andrew

Wagner, Cosima
Wagner, Richard
Washington, George
Wassermann, Jacob
Weber, Gottfried
Wedekind, Frank
Wells, H. G.
Wesley, John
Whitman, Walt
Wilson, Woodrow
Wolsogen, Ernst von
Wood, James N.
Wood, Leonard A.
Woodberry, George E.

Yeats, W. B.