Part 25 (1/2)

THE BEGINNING OF THE WEST

CHAPTER XXII

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 down through the middle of Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri, so that St.

Louis would be included on the eastern map and Kansas City and Omaha on the western.

My companion and I had long looked forward to the West, and had speculated as to where we should first meet it. And sometimes, as we traveled on, we doubted that there really was a West at all, and feared that the whole country had become monotonously ”standardized,” as was recently charged by a correspondent of the London ”Times.”

I remember that we discussed that question on the train, leaving St.

Louis, wondering whether Kansas City, whither we were bound, would prove to be but one more city like the rest--a place with skysc.r.a.pers and shops and people resembling, almost exactly, the skysc.r.a.pers and shops and people of a dozen other cities we had seen.

Morning in the sleeping car found us less concerned about the character of cities than about our coffee. Coffee was not to be had upon the train. In cheerless emptiness we sat and waited for the station.

While my berth was being turned into its daytime aspect, I was forced to accept a seat beside a stranger: a little man with a black felt hat, a weedy mustache of neutral color, and an Elk's b.u.t.ton. I had a feeling that he meant to talk with me; a feeling which amounted to dread.

Nothing appeals to me at seven in the morning; least of all a conversation. At that hour my enthusiasm shows only a low blue flame, like a gas jet turned down almost to the point of going out. And in the feeble light of that blue flame, my fellow man becomes a vague shape, threatening unsolicited civilities. I do not like the hour of seven in the morning anywhere, and if there is one condition under which I loathe it most, it is before breakfast in a smelly sleeping car. I saw the little man regarding me. He was about to speak. And there I was, absolutely at his mercy, without so much as a newspaper behind which to s.h.i.+eld myself.

”Are you from New York?” he asked.

With about the same amount of effort it would take to make a long after-dinner speech, I managed to enunciate a hollow: ”Yes.”

”I thought so,” he returned.

It seemed to me that the remark required no answer. He waited; then, presently, vouchsafed the added information: ”I knew it by your shoes.”

Mechanically I looked at my shoes; then at his. I felt like saying: ”Why? Because my shoes are polished?” But I didn't. All I said was, ”Oh.”

”That's a New York last,” he explained. ”Long and flat. You can't get a shoe like that out in this section. n.o.body'd buy 'em if we made 'em.”

Then he added: ”I'm in the shoe line, myself.”

He paused as though expecting me to state my ”line.” However, I didn't.

Very likely he thought it something shameful. After a moment's silence, he asked: ”Travel out this way much?”

”Never,” I said.

”Never been in Kansas City?”

I shook my head.

”Well,” he volunteered, ”it's a great town. Greatest farm implement market in the world.” (He drawled ”world” as though it were spelled with a double R.) ”Very little manufacturing but a great distributing point.

All cattle and farming out here. Everything depends on the crops.