The Personality of American CitiesHungerford, Edward
History
The Personality of American Cities
Hungerford, Edward
Cities and towns -- United States; United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
The gentleman is sarcastic--and yet not very far from the truth. For
last year when the bond issue for the railroad tunnel went to a vote it
was carried--with enthusiasm. Thereafter Denver was upon the trunk-line
railroad map. The mere facts that the nine miles of tunnel were yet to
be bored and many additional miles of the most difficult railroad
construction of the land builded to its portals were mere details. The
thin air of the Mile-High city lifts its citizens well over details. And
they are far too broad, far too generous to trouble with such minute
things.
For in them dwells the real spirit of the West--by this time no mere
gateway--and it is a rare spirit, indeed. The town, as we have already
intimated, has a strong social tendency. She has sent her men and women,
her sons and her daughters to the East and they have won for themselves
on their own merits. The Atlantic seaboard has paid full tribute to the
measure of her training--and why not? Her schools are as good as the
best, her fine homes and her little homes together would be a credit to
any town in the land, her big clubs would grace Fifth avenue. Her whole
social organism from bottom to top is well fibered. It is charmingly
exclusive in one way, warmly democratic in many others.
A girl tourist from Cleveland, a recent summer, essayed to make the
ascent of the capitol dome between two connecting trains. She
miscalculated distances during the hour and a half that was at her
disposal and almost missed her outbound train. She surely would have
missed it, if it had not been for the courtesy of a well-dressed Denver
woman. The girl stood at the corner of Seventeenth street and Broadway,
where a group of large hotels center, waiting for a trolley car to take
her to the station. She could see its sightly tower a long way down
Seventeenth street, but there were no cars in sight at that instant. She
spoke to the woman, who was coming out of a drug store, and asked about
the car service to the station. In the East she might have had a
perfunctory answer, if she received an answer at all. The Denver woman
began explaining, then she checked herself:
"Better yet," she smiled, "I have my automobile here and I'll take you
down there while we are talking about it."
The car was a big imported fellow and the girl made her train. Some time
after, she discovered that the woman who had been of such courteous
attention was one of the very biggest of Denver society leaders.
Imagine, if you can, such a thing coming to pass upon the Atlantic
seaboard--in New York, in Boston, in Philadelphia--or in Charleston!
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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