Abroad At Home Part 34

Louis or Kansas City. Like Kansas City, Denver has many long, tree-bordered streets lined with modest homes which look new and which are substantially built, but there is less monotony of design in Denver.

As in Kansas City, the wonder of Denver is that it has all happened in such a short time. This was brought home to me when, dining in a delightful house one evening, I was informed by my hostess that the land on which is her home was "homesteaded," in '64 or '65, by her father; that is to say, he had taken it over, gratis, from the Government. That modest corner lot is now worth between fifteen and twenty thousand dollars.

Though Denver has no art gallery, she hopes to have one in connection with her new "civic center." In the meantime, some paintings are shown in the Public Library and in the Colorado Museum of Natural History--a building which also shelters a collection of stuffed animals (somewhat better, on the whole, than the paintings) and of minerals found in the State.

A symphony hall is planned along with the new art gallery, for Denver has a real interest in music. Indeed, I found that true of many cities in the Middle West and West. In Kansas City, for instance, important concerts are patronized not only by residents of the place, but by quant.i.ties of people who come in from other cities and towns within a radius of thirty or forty miles.

Denver has her own symphony orchestra, one which compares favorably with many other large orchestras in various parts of the country. The Denver organization is led by Horace Tureman, a very capable conductor, and its seventy musicians have been gathered from theater and cafe orchestras throughout the city. Six or eight programs of the highest character are given each season, and in order that all music lovers may be enabled to attend the concerts, seats are sold as low as ten cents each.

"If some of the big concert singers who come out here could hear one of our symphony programs," one Denver woman said to me, "I think they might revise their opinion of us. A great many of them must think us less advanced, musically, than we are, for they insist on singing 'The Suwanee River' and 'Home, Sweet Home'--which we always resent."

The one conspicuous example of sculpture which I saw in Denver--the Pioneer's Fountain, by Macmonnies--is not entirely Denver's fault. When a city gives an order to a sculptor of Macmonnies's standing, she shows that she means to do the best she can. It is then up to the sculptor.

The Pioneer's Fountain, which is intended to commemorate the early settlers, could hardly be less suitable. It is large and exceedingly ornate. Surmounting the top of it is a rococo cowboy upon a pony of the same extraction. The pony is not a cow-pony, and the cowboy is not a cowboy, but a theatrical figure: something which might have been modeled by a Frenchman whose acquaintance with this country had been limited to the reading of bad translations of Fenimore Cooper and Bret Harte. At the base of the fountain are figures which, I was informed, represent pioneers. If western pioneers had been like these, there never would have been a West. They are soft creatures, almost voluptuous, who would have wept in face of hostile Indians. The whole fountain seems like something intended for a mantel ornament in Dresden china, but which, through some confusion, had gotten itself enlarged and cast in bronze.

Society in Denver has several odd features. For one thing, it is the habit of fas.h.i.+onables, and those who wish to gaze upon them, to attend the theaters on certain nights, which are known as "society night."

Thus, the Broadway Theater has "society night" on Mondays, the Denham on Wednesdays, and the Orpheum on Fridays.

"Society," of course, means different things to different persons. In Denver the word, used in its most restricted, most elegant, most _recherche_, and most exclusive sense, means that group of persons who are celebrated in the society columns of the Denver newspapers, as "The Sacred Thirty-six."

If it is possible for newspapers anywhere to outdo in idiocy those of New York in the handling of "society news," I should say that the Denver newspapers accomplished it. Having less to work with, they have to make more noise in proportion. Thus the arrival in Denver, at about the time I was there, of Lord and Lady Decies caused an amount of agitation the like of which I have never witnessed anywhere. The Denver papers were absolutely plastered over with the pictures and doings and sayings of this English gentleman and his American wife, and the matter published with regard to them revealed a delight in their presence which was childlike and engaging.

I have a copy of one Denver paper, containing an interview with Lord and Lady Decies, in which the reporter mentions having been greeted "like I was a regular caller," adding: "The more I looked the grander everything got." The same reporter referred to Decies as "the Lord," which must have struck him as more flattering than when, later, he was mentioned as "His Nibs." The interviewer, however, finally approved the visitors, stating definitely that "they are Regular Folks and they don't four-flush about anything."

When it comes to publicity there is one man in Denver who gets more of it than all the "Sacred Thirty-six" put together, adepts though they seem to be.

It is impossible to consider Denver without considering Judge B.

Lindsey--although I may say in pa.s.sing that I was urged to perform the impossible in this respect.

Opinion with regard to Judge Lindsey is divided in Denver. It is pa.s.sionately divided. I talked not only with the Judge himself, but with a great many citizens of various cla.s.ses, and while I encountered no one who did not believe in the celebrated Juvenile Court conducted by him, I found many who disapproved more or less violently of certain of his political activities, his speech-making tours, and, most of all, of his writings in the magazines which, it was contended, had given Denver a black eye.

Denver is clearly sensitive about her reputation. As a pa.s.sing observer, I am not surprised. With Denver, I believe that she has had to take more than a fair share of criticism. She thoroughly is sick of it, and one way in which she shows that she is sick of it is by a billboard campaign.

"Denver has no bread line," I read on the bill-boards. "Stop knocking.

Boost for more business and a bigger city."

The charge that the Judge had injured Denver by "knocking" it in his book was used against him freely in the 1912 and 1914 campaign, but he was elected by a majority of more than two to one. He is always elected.

He has run for his judges.h.i.+p ten times in the past twelve years--this owing to certain disputes as to whether the judges.h.i.+p of the Juvenile Court is a city, county, or state office. But whatever kind of office it is, he holds it firmly, having been elected by all three.

At present the Judge is engaged in trying to complete a code of laws for the protection of women and children, which he hopes will be a model for all other States. This code will cover labor, juvenile delinquency, and dependency, juvenile courts, mothers' compensation, social insurance (the Judge's term for a measure guaranteeing every woman the support of her child, whether she be married or unmarried), probation, and other matters having to do with social and industrial justice toward mother and child. It is the Judge's general purpose to humanize the law, to cause temptations and frailties to be considered by the law, and to make society responsible for its part in crime.

The Judge is also trying to get himself appointed a Commissioner of Child Welfare for the State, without salary or other expense.

Of all these activities Denver, so far as I could learn, seemed generally to approve. A number of women, two corporation presidents, a hotel waiter, and a clerk in an express office, among others, told me they approved of Lindsey's work for women and children. A barber in the hotel said that he "guessed the Judge was all right," but added that there had been "too much hollering about reform," considering that Denver was a city depending for a good deal of her prosperity upon tourists.

In the more intelligent circles the great objections to the Judge seemed to rest upon the florid methods he has used to promote his causes, upon the diversity of his interests, and upon the allegation that he had become a demagogue.

One gentleman described him to me as "the most hated citizen of Colorado in Colorado, and the most admired citizen of Colorado everywhere outside the State."

"Lindsey has done the State harm, perhaps," said this gentleman, "by what he has said about it, but he has done us a lot of good with his reforms. The great trouble is that he has too many irons in the fire.

His court is a splendid thing; we all admit that. And he is peculiarly suited to his work. But he has gotten into all kinds of movements and has been so widely advertised that he has become a monumental egotist.

He believes in his various causes, but, more than anything else, he believes in himself, in getting himself before the public and keeping himself there. He has posed as a little G.o.d, and, as Shaw says: 'If you pose as a little G.o.d, you must pose for better or for worse.'"

The Judge is a very small, slight man, with a high, bulging white forehead, thin hair, a sharp, aquiline nose, a large, rolling black mustache and very fine eyes, brown almost to blackness. The most striking things about him are the eyes, the forehead, and the waxy whiteness of his skin. He looks thin-skinned, but he seems to have proved that, in the metaphorical sense at least, he is not.

He speaks of his causes quietly but very earnestly, and you feel, as you listen to him, that he hardly ever thinks of other things. There is something strange and very individual about him.

"The story of one American city," he said to me, "is the story of every American city. Denver is no worse than the rest. Indeed, I believe it is a cleaner and better city than most, and I have been in every city in every State in this Union."

It has been said that "the worst thing about reform is the reformer."

You can say the same thing about authors.h.i.+p and authors, or about plumbing and plumbers. It is only another way of saying that the human element is the weak element. I have met a number of reformers and have come to cla.s.sify them under three general heads. Without considering the branch of reform in which they are interested, but only their characteristics as individuals, I should say that all professional reformers might be divided as follows: First, zealots, or "inspired"

reformers; second, cold-blooded, theoretical, statistical reformers; third, a small number of normal human beings, capable alike of feeling and of reasoning clearly.

About reformers of the first type there is often something abnormal.

They are frequently of the most radical opinions, and are likely to be impatient, intolerant, and suspicious of the integrity of those who do not agree with them. They take to the platform like ducks to water and their egos are likely to be very highly developed. Reformers of the second type are repulsive, because reform, with them, has become mechanical; they measure suffering and sin with decimals, and regard their fellow men as specimens. What the reformer of the third cla.s.s will do is more difficult to say. It is possible that, blowing neither hot nor cold, he will not accomplish so much as the others, but he can reach groups of persons who consider reformers of the first cla.s.s unbalanced and those of the second inhuman.

I have a friend who is a reformer of the third cla.s.s. His temperate writings, surcharged with sanity and a sense of justice, have reached many persons who could hardly be affected by "yellow" methods of reform. Becoming deeply interested in his work, he was finally tempted to take the platform. One day, when he had come back from a lecture tour, I chanced to meet him, and was surprised to hear from him that, though he had been successful as a lecturer, he nevertheless intended to abandon that field of work.

I asked him why.

"I'll tell you," he said. "At first it was all right. I had certain things I wanted to say to people, and I said them. But as I went on, I began to feel my audiences more and more. I began to know how certain things I said would affect them. I began to want to affect them--to play upon them, see them stirred, hear them applaud. So, hardly realizing it at first, I began s.h.i.+fting my speeches, playing up certain points, not so much because those points were the ones which ought to be played up, but because of the pleasure it gave me to work up my listeners. Then, one night while I was talking, I realized what was happening to me. I was losing my intellectual honesty. Public speaking had been stealing it from me without my knowing it. Then and there I made up my mind to give it up. I'm not going to Say it any more; I'm going to Write it. When a man is writing, other minds are not acting upon his, as they are when he is speaking to an audience."

Personally, I think Judge Lindsey would be stronger with the more critical minds of Colorado if he, too, had felt this way.

A number of odd items about Denver should be mentioned.

Elitch's Garden, the city's great summer amus.e.m.e.nt place, is famous all through the country. It was originally a farm, and still has a fine orchard, besides its orderly Coney Island features. Children go there in the afternoons with their nurses, and all of Denver goes there in the evenings when the great attraction is the theater with its stock company which is of a very high order.

The Tabor Opera House in Denver is famous among theatrical people largely because of the man who built it. Tabor was one of Denver's most extraordinary mining millionaires. After he had struck it rich he determined to build as a monument to himself, the finest Opera House in the United States, and "d.a.m.n the expense."

While the building was under construction he was called away from the city. The story is related that on his return he went to see what progress had been made, and found mural painters at work, over the proscenium arch. They were painting the portrait of a man.

"Who's that?" demanded Tabor.

"Shakespeare," the decorator informed him.

"Shakespeare--shake h.e.l.l!" responded the proprietor. "He never done nothing for Denver. Paint him out and put me up there."

Though there have been no Tabors made in Denver in the last few years, mining has not gone out of fas.h.i.+on. In the lobby of the Brown Palace Hotel my companion and I saw several old fellows, sitting about, looking neither prosperous nor busy, but always talking mines. A kind word, or even a pleasant glance is enough to set them off. Instantly their hands dive into their pockets and out come nuggets and samples of ore, which they polish upon their coat sleeves, and hold up proudly, turning them to catch the light.

"Yes, sir! I made the doggondest strike up there you ever saw! It's all on the ground. Come over here and look at this!"

To which the answer is likely to be:

"No, I haven't time."

The Denver Club is a central rallying place for the successful business men of the city. It is a splendid club, with the best of kitchens, and cellars, and humidors. All over the land I have met men who had been entertained there and who spoke of the place with something like affection.