[Illustration: LUNCHEON IN A DOWN-TOWN CLUB]

Later, I was on the ground level, in the midst of an enormous apparent
confusion--the target for all the packages and baskets, big and little,
that shot every instant in a continuous stream from those spiral planes,
and slid dangerously at me along the floors. Here were the packers. I
saw a packer deal with a collected order, and in this order were a
number of tiny cookery utensils, a four-cent curling-iron, a brush, and
two incredibly ugly pink china mugs, inscribed in cheap gilt
respectively with the words "Father" and "Mother." Throughout my stay in
America no moment came to me more dramatically than this moment, and
none has remained more vividly in my mind. All the daily domestic life
of the small communities in the wilds of the West and the Middle West,
and in the wilds of the back streets of the great towns, seemed to be
revealed to me by the contents of that basket, as the packer wrapped up
and protected one article after another. I had been compelled to abandon
a visitation of the West and of the small communities everywhere, and I
was sorry. But here in a microcosm I thought I saw the simple reality of
the backbone of all America, a symbol of the millions of the little
plain people, who ultimately make possible the glory of the
world-renowned streets and institutions in dazzling cities.

There was something indescribably touching in that curling-iron and
those two mugs. I could see the table on which the mugs would soon
proudly stand, and "father" and "mother" and children thereat, and I
could see the hand heating the curling-iron and applying it. I could see
the whole little home and the whole life of the little home.... And
afterward, as I wandered through the warehouses--pyramids of the same
chair, cupboards full of the same cheap violin, stacks of the same album
of music, acres of the same carpet and wallpaper, tons of the same