AMERICAN POLITICS

I HAVE been watching machinery in repose after reading about machinery in action.

An excellent gentleman, who bears a name honored in the magazine, writes, much as Disraeli orated, of “the sublime instincts of an ancient people,” the certainty with which they can be trusted to manage their own affairs in their own way, and the speed with which they are making for all sorts of desirable goals. This he called a statement or purview of American politics.

I went almost directly afterward to a saloon where gentlemen interested in ward politics nightly congregate. They were not pretty persons. Some of them were bloated, and they all swore cheerfully till the heavy gold watch-chains on their fat stomachs rose and fell again; but they talked over their liquor as men who had power and unquestioned access to places of trust and profit.

The magazine writer discussed theories of government; these men the practice. They had been there. They knew all about it. They banged their fists on the table and spoke of political “pulls,” the vending of votes, and so forth. Theirs was not the talk of village babblers reconstructing the affairs of the nation, but of strong, coarse, lustful men fighting for spoil, and thoroughly understanding the best methods of reaching it.

I listened long and intently to speech I could not understand — or but in spots.

It was the speech of business, however. I had sense enough to know that, and to do my laughing outside the door.

Then I began to understand why my pleasant and well-educated hosts in San Francisco spoke with a bitter scorn of such duties of citizenship as voting and taking an interest in the distribution of offices. Scores of men have told me, without false pride, that they would as soon concern themselves with the public affairs of the city or state as rake muck with a steam-shovel. It may be that their lofty disdain covers selfishness, but I should be very sorry habitually to meet the fat gentlemen with shiny top-hats and plump cigars in whose society I have been spending the evening.

Read about politics as the cultured writer of the magazine regards ’em, and then, and not till then, pay your respects to the gentlemen who run the grimy reality.

I’m sick of interviewing night editors who lean their chair against the wall, and, in response to my demand for the record of a prominent citizen, answer: “Well, you see, he began by keeping a saloon,” etc. I prefer to believe that my informants are treating me as in the old sinful days in India I was used to treat the wandering globe-trotter. They declare that they speak the truth, and the news of dog politics lately vouchsafed to me in groggeries inclines me to believe, but I won’t. The people are much too nice to slangander as recklessly as I have been doing.

Besides, I am hopelessly in love with about eight American maidens — all perfectly delightful till the next one comes into the room.

O-Toyo was a darling, but she lacked several things — conversation for one. You cannot live on giggles. She shall remain unmarried at Nagasaki, while I roast a battered heart before the shrine of a big Kentucky blonde, who had for a nurse when she was little a negro “mammy.”

By consequence she has welded on California beauty, Paris dresses, Eastern culture, Europe trips, and wild Western originality, the queer, dreamy superstitions of the quarters, and the result is soul-shattering. And she is but one of many stars.

Item, a maiden who believes in education and possesses it, with a few hundred thousand dollars to boot and a taste for slumming.

Item, the leader of a sort of informal salon where girls congregate, read papers, and daringly discuss metaphysical problems and candy — a sloe-eyed, black-browed, imperious maiden she.

Item, a very small maiden, absolutely without reverence, who can in one swift sentence trample upon and leave gasping half a dozen young men.

Item, a millionairess, burdened with her money, lonely, caustic, with a tongue keen as a sword, yearning for a sphere, but chained up to the rock of her vast possessions.

Item, a typewriter maiden earning her own bread in this big city, because she doesn’t think a girl ought to be a burden on her parents, who quotes Theophile Gautier and moves through the world manfully, much respected for all her twenty inexperienced summers.

Item, a woman from cloud-land who has no history in the past or future, but is discreetly of the present, and strives for the confidences of male humanity on the grounds of “sympathy” (methinks this is not altogether a new type).

Item, a girl in a “dive,” blessed with a Greek head and eyes, that seem to speak all that is best and sweetest in the world. But woe is me! She has no ideas in this world or the next beyond the consumption of beer (a commission on each bottle), and protests that she sings the songs allotted to her nightly without more than the vaguest notion of their meaning.

Sweet and comely are the maidens of Devonshire; delicate and of gracious seeming those who live in the pleasant places of London; fascinating for all their demureness the damsels of France, clinging closely to their mothers, with large eyes wondering at the wicked world; excellent in her own place and to those who understand her is the Anglo–Indian “spin” in her second season; but the girls of America are above and beyond them all. They are clever, they can talk — yea, it is said that they think. Certainly they have an appearance of so doing which is delightfully deceptive.

They are original, and regard you between the brows with unabashed eyes as a sister might look at her brother. They are instructed, too, in the folly and vanity of the male mind, for they have associated with “the boys” from babyhood, and can discerningly minister to both vices or pleasantly snub the possessor. They possess, moreover, a life among themselves, independent of any masculine associations. They have societies and clubs and unlimited tea-fights where all the guests are girls. They are self-possessed, without parting with any tenderness that is their sex-right; they understand; they can take care of themselves; they are superbly independent. When you ask them what makes them so charming, they say:—“It is because we are better educated than your girls, and — and we are more sensible in regard to men. We have good times all round, but we aren’t taught to regard every man as a possible husband. Nor is he expected to marry the first girl he calls on regularly.”

Yes, they have good times, their freedom is large, and they do not abuse it. They can go driving with young men and receive visits from young men to an extent that would make an English mother wink with horror, and neither driver nor drivee has a thought beyond the enjoyment of a good time. As certain, also, of their own poets have said:—

“Man is fire and woman is tow,

And the devil he comes and begins to blow.”

In America the tow is soaked in a solution that makes it fire-proof, in absolute liberty and large knowledge; consequently, accidents do not exceed the regular percentage arranged by the devil for each class and climate under the skies.

But the freedom of the young girl has its drawbacks. She is — I say it with all reluctance — irreverent, from her forty-dollar bonnet to the buckles in her eighteen-dollar shoes. She talks flippantly to her parents and men old enough to be her grandfather. She has a prescriptive right to the society of the man who arrives. The parents admit it.

This is sometimes embarrassing, especially when you call on a man and his wife for the sake of information — the one being a merchant of varied knowledge, the other a woman of the world. In five minutes your host has vanished. In another five his wife has followed him, and you are left alone with a very charming maiden, doubtless, but certainly not the person you came to see. She chatters, and you grin, but you leave with the very strong impression of a wasted morning. This has been my experience once or twice. I have even said as pointedly as I dared to a man:—“I came to see you.”

“You’d better see me in my office, then. The house belongs to my women folk — to my daughter, that is to say.”

He spoke the truth. The American of wealth is owned by his family. They exploit him for bullion. The women get the ha’pence, the kicks are all his own. Nothing is too good for an American’s daughter (I speak here of the moneyed classes).

The girls take every gift as a matter of course, and yet they develop greatly when a catastrophe arrives and the man of many millions goes up or goes down, and his daughters take to stenography or typewriting. I have heard many tales of heroism from the lips of girls who counted the principals among their friends. The crash came, Mamie, or Hattie, or Sadie, gave up their maid, their carriages and candy, and with a No. 2 Remington and a stout heart set about earning their daily bread.

“And did I drop her from the list of my friends? No, sir,” said a scarlet-lipped vision in white lace; “that might happen to us any day.”

It may be this sense of possible disaster in the air that makes San Francisco society go with so captivating a rush and whirl. Recklessness is in the air. I can’t explain where it comes...