George Ade, "The Advantage of Being ‘Middle Class,’" in Franklin J. Meine, Stories of the Streets and of the Town: The Chicago Record 1893-1900 (Chicago: Caxton Club, 1941); 75-79.

The Advantage of Being "Middle Class"

WHY IS IT that the middle class has a monopoly of the real enjoyment in Chicago? The term "middle class" is used in the English sense.

Theoretically, at least, there are no classes in Chicago. But the "middle class" means all those persons who are respectably in the background, who work either with hand or brain, who are neither poverty-stricken nor offensively rich, and who are not held down by the arbitrary laws governing that mysterious part of the community known as society.

The middle class people wouldn’t scourge a man simply because he wore a morning coat in the afternoon. Again, if his private life were redolent of scandals they would not tolerate him as a companion, no matter how often he changed his clothes.

It is quite a privilege to belong to the middle class, especially during the warm weather in June. A middle-class family may sit on the front stoop all evening and watch the society people go to the weddings in their closed carriages. Father doesn't have to wear a tight dress coat all evening and have a collar choking him. He may take off coat or vest, or both, and smoke either pipe or cigar without scandalizing any one. If he and mother wish to get some ice-cream they go around the corner to get it, or else they may send one of the children with a pitcher. If they were above the middle class, of course, it would never do for them to be seen in a [end page 75] common ice-cream place, and the idea of sending a pitcher would be shocking.

* * *

At the Clark Street bridge a double-decked steamer, with electric lights and a resounding orchestra, was preparing to start on its nightly trip, so far out on the broad, cool lake that the town would be only a long fringe of intermingling lights. The passengers were streaming aboard young workingmen and their tittering girls, clerks in new straw hats and unmistakably summer clothes, tired husbands and smiling wives.

They were ranging themselves about on the upper deck, placing their chairs so that they could have something to lean against. The orchestra had bounded into a popular air, and the bass horn was repeating over and over:

Pum, pum,. Pum-pumpum.

One impatient couple had begun to waltz. A hundred or more persons, gathered on the bridge and the approach, looked on with silent envy, feeling like the plowboy who stands at the rail fence and sees the rest of the family start for the county fair. Some of them could not resist the temptation to go down the platform and aboard.

All the passengers belonged to the fortunate "middle class." Society, you must understand, could not patronize cheap excursions on the lake. Therefore "the upper class," except the small portion that can afford private yachts, never enjoys a breezy moonlight ride on a steamer, and Lake Michigan, [end page 76] except for its commercial uses, might as well be a thousand miles to the east.

* * *

There were many pictures of contentment along the boarding-house belt of Dearborn Avenue. The slope of stairway leading up to each house had become an amphitheater where men and women in lightest and cheeriest of summer attire were listening to the concerts of the street musicians. In front of one large house an Italian, with a street piano on wheels, was grinding out "Trovatore" for the benefit of a family which cuts a wide social swath. The Italian was rather to be pitied. He did not know that the family was debarred from coming out on the front porch to hear his music. The family was supposed to close its ears against all street pianos. Although the rooms were lighted, no one came to the windows and the music was wasted upon some appreciative children who marched and danced, keeping time with it.

Suppose the members of a well-known family should be grouped on a front porch listening to a street orchestra, and that just as the collection was being taken up some one who knew them should pass by!

* * *

Dearborn Avenue leads to the lights and shadows and cool depths of Lincoln Park. First there is a broad, smooth road-way, which shows boldly in the electric glare, and then there is a deeply shaded drive between solid walls of trees. It widens [end page 77] and brings into dim outline a dark statue with a massive pedestal. Each wheelman coursing the drives is marked by a speck of lantern, and the illusion is that of racing fireflies. No carriages disturb the night with a clatter of hoofs. Under the trees, right and left, the shade is so deep that sometimes voices may be heard where no one can be seen. Only a few feet away a flood of light shows every blade of grass and every pebble. All roads into the park lead to some circling pathway which is laced with the black shadows of trembling leaves, while misshapen blotches of the blending light fall on the figures and the benches.

There are at least two figures on a bench and one has a light dress. Both are silent and immovable until the intruder has passed on. The girl, who can be seen only in small pieces here and there where the patches of light have fallen, is always handsome, just as a half-finished picture is always sure to be beautiful in its fancied completion. Out in the clearing possibly it would be different.

* * *

Two young men had wandered into the park and had sought the paths less beaten, where the grass is rank and the breeze has a woody flavor pleasant to the nostrils. Neither could sing, but both of them did sing about "nights in June" and "lovely maidens," and they even went so far as to talk about the effect of moonlight on a distant ridge of trees.

Coming back to earth, they saw that the man on a bench ahead undoubtedly had his arm around the woman. As they drew nearer it became a shocking fact. The woman had pillowed her head on the man's shoulder and was either asleep or contented. The young men laughed and made remarks which were loud enough to be overheard, but the man was complacent.

"He has nerve," remarked one. "I suppose he doesn't care."

"She doesn't care, either."

Then they passed close by the bench and saw, cuddled up against the woman, a tousle-haired little girl fast asleep, with a doll in her arms. After which they passed on very quietly, and one of them said: "We ought to go back and apologize to that man." [end page 78]

In Lincoln Park a wide avenue for pedestrians leads straight north to the small lake. The pavilion, with its swinging lamps, lies directly ahead, and these lamps throw bands of fiery reflection across the water, so that from a distance the pavilion seems mounted upon flaming piles which glow and burn even under the rippling waves. Against these glaring pillars the small, darting boats appear in distinct silhouette, but away from the lights and with banks of heavy vegetation as a background they become a ghostly gray. The guitars and voices always sound more sweetly across the water, while the splashing and the laughter have the happy effect of turning thoughts away from hot weather.

On the shores of these lakes, which are linked by quiet waters lying under stone arches, the young man who drives the delivery wagon sits of an evening and holds the hand of the young woman who addresses letters. They are very happy, as well they may be, for no Chicago millionaire has such a magnificent front yard, with such a large lake and so many stately trees around it. They must feel sorry for the millionaire who cannot go to a public park in the evening to stroll or sit for the reason that so many other persons go there. It doesn’t trouble the delivery boy to have other people present and enjoying themselves. [page 79]