TO the average European there are two things American which have not yet lost their romantic quality: The prairies and the West.

Anticipations of seeing both, filled the breast of the Frau Directorin with mingled feelings of fear and pleasure, as she discussed with her husband the fate of the children they had left behind them—in the event of our being captured by the Indians. However, the probability of our safe return and her consequent opportunity to tell envious friends her experiences in the prairies and the West outweighed all fears.

Among her friends were those who had braved the perils of the ocean and gone as far as New York; some of them had even been in Chicago—but beyond, still hidden in the romance woven about them by Bret Harte (her favorite American author), were those two things she was about to see, and of which they had only dreamed.

The Herr Director, as he repeatedly reminded me, had crossed the plains when I had known them only through Cooper’s fascinating Indian stories, and he was eager to throw off the leadership I had assumed, which, to a dominant nature like his, proved exceedingly irksome.

He soon discovered that he was travelling through territory entirely new to him. The little towns he had known had grown into cities, and the further west we travelled, the greater and more impressive were the changes.

Omaha and Kansas City he did not recognize at all. Not only was there this new growth, “rank growth,” he called it, of sky-scrapers, post-offices and railroad stations with Doric pillars—the men and women he met had a new outlook upon life. While they still boasted of this and that thing in which their city was like Chicago or was unlike some lesser city than their own, they were critical of themselves and eager to learn; they had grown more masterful and at the same time were more refined.

The prairies were not at all what the Frau Directorin had imagined them to be. She was chagrined to find nothing but farm lands and great fields, not so well groomed as those we had seen in the East, but with no Indians or buffaloes, no wild horses or wilder looking men.

She saw no trace of the toil, the struggle and the brave resistance through which these farms had been rescued from the prairies. She could not know of the loneliness of women and the hardihood of men, of the season’s drought and famine, of bitter disappointment, the pangs of bearing and rearing children in utter isolation, and the struggle for education.

No trace of all this was apparent in the sort of settled, middle class prosperity which stretched out in the unvaried, thousand mile panorama through which we journeyed.

In a town of about four thousand inhabitants we stopped; the name of the place is of no significance, for there are hundreds of just such towns in the West. We were met by the superintendent of schools, himself a product of the prairies. Having grown up among the cattle, he is consequently shy of men. He drove his automobile as if it were a broncho, and we all uttered a prayer of thanksgiving when he deposited us, with no bones broken, at the hotel. In a short time we were ready to go with him to his school, which was the objective point of our visit.

It goes without saying that the superintendent boasted of the youth of the town, even as under like circumstances in the East, he would have boasted of its age.

Ten years before it was nothing except a railroad station, miles of sage-brush, rattlesnakes and prairie dogs. Now there are business blocks, embryonic sky-scrapers, a pillared post-office, a hundred-thousand-dollar hotel, a Grand Opera House, neither big enough nor good enough to boast of, numerous churches and this schoolhouse. It is not only a place in which boys and girls learn the “three R’s,” but has a finely equipped gymnasium, a chemical laboratory and a Domestic Science department. It is a center of education and recreation, not only for that town, but for the surrounding country.

I had never seen the Herr Director as enthusiastic over anything as he was over this cowboy school superintendent, with his program of reaching every man, woman and child in the county through his educational and recreational program, his annual budget of some seventy-five thousand dollars, and a faculty of men and women college bred, and citizens of the town. They are not merely educated tramps, but are there to stay, and they take pride in the town in which they make their home.

The Herr Director was no less amused than I was when we were told by one of the teachers that the superintendent, at one of the school board meetings had pulled off his coat and threatened to thrash one of the members who refused his vote on an important measure. As we looked at this six foot three, erstwhile cowboy, his broad shoulders and strong arms which seemed reluctantly confined in a coat, and as we saw his square, determined jaw,—we knew that the unruly member voted aye.

Both the Herr Director and I were asked to speak to the boys and girls. As soon as they entered the room the air became electric with their high school yell; they “rah rahed” us individually and collectively, and “what’s the matter withed” everybody, and indulged in all those academic and classical performances which every high school now seems to consider an essential part of preparation for college.

The Herr Director told them that among all the things he had seen thus far in America he liked their high school the best; which remark of course elicited thunderous applause. This was most gratifying to him, and all day he was in high spirits. He thought the most hopeful characteristic of the American is this faith in education, the practical, far-reaching methods employed, and the daring all sorts of educational experiments. At the same time he severely criticized our lack of unanimity, and the evident disadvantages of such communities as have no cowboy superintendent to lick a conservative or stingy school board member into conformity with his plans.

We visited an agricultural college where we were told of farmers who came to study soil fertility, and farmers’ wives who studied kitchen chemistry, farmers’ children who tested seeds, and to whom these prairies, to which they were being bound by an intelligent knowledge of their environment, were beginning to speak a new language.

We saw a teacher’s college which one with the prophet’s vision had planted in the desert. The sage-brush ridden prairie had been transformed into a glorious campus, and uncultured boys and girls into enthusiastic teachers. More than twelve hundred of them come back each year to get better equipment for their difficult task.

The cities in which we stopped interested the Herr Director less than the towns, and we did not tarry long except in one of them, where we had to stay because of an engagement I had made to address a certain club. I did this because it gave me a fine chance to introduce that particular American institution, a combination of eating and speaking club, which meets once a month and whose program is as ambitious as are most things Western.

We were met at the station by a committee of men and women in automobiles of course, and found the finest rooms in the hotel reserved for us. Big, high, generous rooms, in which the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin openly rejoiced.

The committee awaited us in a private dining-room where luncheon was served. There were three other guests who were to speak during the evening. One of them, a most brilliant woman, a well-known social worker. The second a United States Senator, and the third an explorer who had just returned from a voyage into some less known parts of South America.

The luncheon was sufficiently elaborate and artistically served to satisfy both the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin, but he protested when after the meal, without even a chance at a nap, we were escorted to waiting motor cars, and a long cavalcade of us started on a sight-seeing expedition.

The city was worth seeing, with its boulevards, parks and playgrounds; its schoolhouse, churches, and clubs. We heard much of its prospects, always so great an asset in the life of our Western cities.

Amusing and remarkable to the strangers was the evident pride of this committee in the city, to which they had come from all parts of the country if not of the world; yet they spoke of it with a lover’s affection.

The one thing underneath all this civic pride, and finer than anything visible to us, was the fight for decency, law and order, and the health and happiness of children, which has been waged there and is not yet won. It is as exciting as, and more valorous than, many a battle in which men fight with powder and bullets.

It was an exhilarating experience to shake the hand and look into the face of a woman who had defied the monied interests of her state, who had jeopardized her comforts and her position, even her life, to loosen the hold of graft from the schools of the state.

It was inspiring to hear from a mild mannered, unaggressive looking man how he had helped wipe out brothels and evil dance halls, broken up the connivance of the police with the criminal element and put through a positive program of rational, clean amusements for the people.

We visited a business plant, the architecture and equipment of which are as unique as are its owner’s business methods. We were told the story (not by himself) of how a brave and good man, single handed, struggled against bosses, political cliques and large financial interests in league with them, and all but freed the city from its most dangerously decent foes.

We were shown hills which the citizens had faith enough to remove and the hollows into which they had cast them; a raging river which they meant to control, and ugly, sickening slums which were doomed to go, and that none too soon; the old things which were to become new, and crooked things which were to be made straight.

Thirty-three years before the Herr Director had heard stories of vanishing buffaloes and the last struggles with the Indians. He had met scouts, hunters and soldiers. This was a new type of fighters, much less picturesque, but fit successors to those valiant pioneers. I rescued my guests from a visit to the stock-yards (why any one should care to show off stock-yards I do not know), and the committee released its hold upon us so that we might make our toilettes for the reception which preceded the banquet.

If there is anything more conducive to creating a barrier to real human contact than a reception, I have not seen it, unless it be a reception with orchestral accompaniment; this was such an one, and its chief function seemed to be to drown conversation.

The ladies of our party were happy because this was one of the few occasions on our trip when they could wear evening gowns.

The Frau Directorin was astonished beyond measure when she heard that some of the women on the reception committee of this club were mothers (to a limited degree, it is true), that they had, at the most, two servants, and that some of them had none; that they were interested in Literary Clubs and civic affairs, served on school boards and church committees, and were doing various other things to help the Creator manage His universe.

The German woman, who has adhered to the program marked out for her by the Emperor, the “three K’s,” “KÜche, Kirche und Kinder” stands aghast at the strenuous lives many of our women lead. The Frau Directorin, who has servants for the kitchen and the children, upon whom the third K, the Church, lays no burden in the way of missionary meetings, fairs and suppers, who does not have to reduce her flesh to be in the fashion, and whose social position is determined by her husband’s station in life, may well wear an unruffled smile and keep an unfurrowed brow.

At the banquet, the waiters and the orchestra vied with each other in noise making, and it was a relief when, with the bringing of the black coffee, they all disappeared, and the toast-master rose and began unbottling his stock of stories. Nowhere in the world is there such a thirst for stories as in America, and a group of men after a banquet has an unlimited capacity for absorbing and enjoying them.

There were four scheduled speakers and a few who expected to be called upon unexpectedly, among them the Herr Director; a Glee Club was to sing before, between and after the speeches; so the toast-master did not stop telling stories any too soon.

The first speaker of the evening was a woman who well deserved the cheers which greeted her appearance. Her address on Workmen’s Compensation was so clear, so aptly put, so well reasoned through and so within the limit of time assigned her, that when she finished, the enthusiastic Herr Director shouted: “Bravo! bravo!” loud enough to be heard above the less euphonious sound of hand clapping, in which form of applause the American audience indulges.

The address was an eloquent but unemotional plea for fair play for the working man, an arraignment of present practices, cruelly sickening in detail, and frightful as a revelation of the attitude of large industrial interests towards labor. It showed the fair-mindedness of the men there, that they listened so approvingly, in spite of the fact that a large number of them was in similar relationship to labor, and that the proposed law for which she pleaded would be against their own interests.

After the lady’s address, the Glee Club sang and then the United States Senator was introduced. I have forgotten his subject, but that does not matter, for it had no relation to what he said. It was the kind of address which could be delivered with equal propriety at a Grangers’ picnic or a political meeting.

There were two things which the senator did not know: First, that his audience had outgrown that particular kind of address, and second, when to stop. When his final finally was finally spoken, the Glee Club sang again, after which the Herr Director was called upon to speak. He was listened to most attentively as he told how German cities are built, governed, provisioned and lighted.

There were at least four speeches beside my own, and it was long past midnight when the Glee Club sang its last glee, and the club adjourned to meet again the next month, when it would receive other more or less distinguished guests, eat a six course dinner and listen to half a dozen speakers, each one of them eager to right the wrongs of this universe.

When the Herr Director had said good-bye to the hundred or more people who told him how much they enjoyed his address, he retired in a most happy mood. I found him chuckling as he untied his cravat.

“It was lovely, perfectly lovely,” he said; “but what children they are.”

“Yes,” I replied, “they are children; and, like children, are eager to learn.”