Part 2 (2/2)
said Marion insinuatingly. Just a tinge of color rose in her friend's cheeks, but she did not reply, so Marion continued: ”You don't have to live here nine months in the year, and you don't know all the intricacies and peculiarities of our society.”
”Perhaps I don't, but to me the peculiarities are all in Chicago's favor. I love the go-ahead spirit, and I love the lack of affectation among the people one meets.”
”The go-ahead spirit you love,” Marion replied, ”is but an insatiable craving for the 'mighty dollar', and the lack of affectation resolves itself into a lack of _savoir faire_.”
”Why, Marion, how can you say such things. You have friends here with as much knowledge of the world as any one.”
”Yes, but how many? Perhaps fifty, or be liberal and say a hundred, and they were all brought up away from Chicago, or, like myself, have lived away from here a good many years of their lives. If they remain here long enough they will stagnate like the natives.”
”You unpatriotic rebel. I have almost a mind to denounce you to the people you are slandering.”
”I am not slandering them. I am only speaking my convictions. You think I am captious, but I merely understand the subject, and I ought to, for heaven knows I have had a long enough experience. One has the choice here between parvenu vulgarity and Puritanic narrow mindedness. The one makes us the b.u.t.t of the comic papers and the other is simply unbearable. I was brought up in the latter, and of course all ancient families,--that is to say, those dating from before the fire,--come under that eminently respectable cla.s.sification, but I actually believe one would find the pork-packers more distracting.”
”What do you call Puritanic narrow-mindedness, Marion?”
”I call it that carping sanctimoniousness which makes certain people throw up their hands in horror at the slightest appearance of advanced and civilized ideas. It is scarcely more than five years since a woman who wore decollete evening gowns was one of the chosen of Beelzebub, a warm meal on Sunday night was a sacrilege, and wine at dinner the creation of the Devil himself; but the people who hold such ideas will talk scandal by the hour while making red flannel s.h.i.+rts for heathen babies. I don't believe you know how a few of us have struggled to liberalize this city and raise its society a little above that of a country village.”
”You are too bitter, Marion.”
”No, I am not. You should have witnessed the tussle I had with mama, before I was married, in order to get livery on our coachman, and to abolish the anachronism of a one-o'clock dinner.”
”It seems to me, Marion, that your criticisms apply to the Chicago of the past and not to the Chicago of to-day. I am sure I never endured a noon dinner, and as for the turn-outs one meets, many of them are quite as well appointed as one could desire.”
”I grant you that, but then it is the same limited few that have wrought all these changes, and, improved as the city is, we have had to overcome almost insurmountable prejudices. I grant you that Chicago has pa.s.sed the chrysalis age. It is no longer a village but it is far from being a metropolis.”
”You have everything here which makes a city: opera, theatres, parks, drives, shops, art galleries, libraries, restaurants, and even races.
What more do you desire?”
”People, Florence; people. We want people with the instinctive sense of the fitness of things, people with refined tastes and cultivated minds, people whose souls are not bound up either in dollars or in psalms.”
”Why, Marion! I can name you, off-hand, twenty as advanced and cultivated people as I ever met.”
”Of course you can, and perhaps fifty more, but there you will have to stop. Three or four score of people do not make society.”
”If you talk that way I shall believe you are more bigoted than the sanctified families you have just described. I really believe you go about conjuring up imaginable faults in your friends merely to carry out your ideas.”
”Don't be nasty, Florence.”
”No, my dear, I love you too much for that; but it is really dreadful for you to get into such states of mind. I think I understand what you feel; you have led a nomadic existence, and you were educated in a different atmosphere. An acquaintance with three languages, a season in London, a winter in Was.h.i.+ngton, and a strong love of variety all combine to make you discontented with the life here. You want a kaleidoscopic existence, an ever s.h.i.+fting scene, and because you are here, a thousand miles from the nearest city worthy of the name, it is quite natural that you should tire of meeting the same people day after day. You think of London, New York, and Was.h.i.+ngton, where society is continually s.h.i.+fting, where new people come and go, where every one does not know or care about his neighbor's business; but, Marion, granting all this, are you not a little too bitter?”
”Perhaps; but just think of the lack of _savoir faire_ that one finds here; the striving to do a thing correctly and missing it just sufficiently to ruin the effect.”
”That is a criticism which might be applied to American society in general. It is only a poor imitation of the English model. For my part, I almost wish we could go back to pumpkin-pie and Johnny-cake. I wish we could go 'buggy riding with our beaux' and 'spark in the back parlor.' It was all more original, and, what is more to the point, more American.”
”You fairly make me shudder, Florence. Where did you get such Jeffersonian ideas?”
”In my New Hamps.h.i.+re home, perhaps; but despite my patriotism, I recognize that the buggy and the back parlor have gone never to return.
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