I am reminded of my friend's experience by my own
meeting with the city of St. Louis; for it was not until
after I had left St. Louis that I found out "who it is."
That is, I failed to focus, while there, upon the fact that
it is America's fourth city. And now, in looking back,
I feel about St. Louis as my friend felt about the iron-
master: I do not think it looks the part.

St. Louis leads the world in shoes, stoves, and to-
bacco; it is the world's greatest market for hardware,
lumber, and raw furs; it is the principal horse and mule
market in America; it builds more street and railroad
cars than any other city in the country; it distributes
more coffee; it makes more woodenware, more native
chemicals, more beer. It leads in all these things. But
what it does not do is to look as though it led. Physi-
cally it is a great, overgrown American town, like Buf-
falo or St. Paul. Its streets are, for the most part,
lacking in distinction. There is no center at which a
visitor might stop, knowing by instinct that he was at
the city's heart. It is a rambling, incoherent place, in
which one has to ask which is the principal retail shop-
ping corner. Fancy having to ask a thing like that!

I do not mean by this that St. Louis is much worse,
in appearance, than some other American cities. For
American cities, as I have said before, have only re-
cently awakened to the need of broadly planned munici-
pal beauty. All I mean is that St. Louis seems to be
behind in taking action to improve herself.

Almost every city presents a paradox, if you will but

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