ing line; but in Buffalo these adjuncts have preceded settlement and home erection. When a certain notable National industry sent out a call for the presentation of advantages, in thought of removing its great works, Buffalo's committee of the Chamber of Commerce spoke with dignity and restraint, and I have read with admiration their statement for the city, so pleasingly differing from the usual flamboyant promotion literature.

Such a city, developed as Buffalo has been, rapidly but solidly, ought to be reflected in its people. Indeed, my study of cities convinces me that in a curious way the composite personality of a community is quite adequately to be noted in the countenance of its citizens. I could, if this were not a "glory" series, give some pictorial examples that would be unpleasantly recognizable! But the picture of the Buffalonian composite would stand all tests, I am sure, and show forth as an example of the best in aspiring America, tempered by I know not what strain of Old World æstheticism. Buffalo is growing, and her expanding

manufactures and commerce demand increasing population. I will spare readers the statistical suggestion that her output of automobiles could haul the German army, or that her stock of lumber on hand is sufficient to build a fence around the moon; but I can properly say that a single metal industry is coming to use more than ten thousand workers. They must be aliens, and the aliens come in train-loads. Wanting to know of them, I talked with a city official-a keen, acquainted, observant man. He knew his localities, and his troublesfor he had to do with the public orderyet he was cheerful and optimistic. He had seen the natives of Poland, uncouth, ignorant, not clean, rapidly improve as they "caught on." The dirty home surroundings of the first-year Italian immigrants he had noticed give way to flower gardens as soon as a near-by park gave the public suggestion. The other European nationalities held no discouragements for this practical man, and he laughed at the idea of America being overwhelmed by the class of immigrants Mr. Watchorn now lets through his Ellis

Island gateway. "No, Buffalo isn't being swamped," he said. "We want them, these husky men and women; we'll make Americans of them in short order, with our parks and our schools, and our policemen won't be too much overworked while they are learning the difference between liberty and license."

So Buffalo has a great man-factory, in full operation; and her product, educated in her schools, soothed in her parks, beauty-fed all about her streets and in her art gallery, is of Uncle Sam's best sons in a generation.

After all, and before all, this spirit of manhood that makes a city great is a God-inspired spirit. I found an outbreaking instance of this, but I had to dig hard to get the facts from the modest men of means who did a fine thing, and did it so quietly that their left hands hardly found it out. In the usual movement of business, the churches followed the residences "uptown," until fourteen of them had emigrated from the business district. There remained a certain Episcopal church-a really fine building, in the thick center of commercial affairs

and it was doomed. To have all the neighborhood given over to trade seemed wrong to one well-to-do Presbyterian, wherefore he made a quiet suggestion to some of his friends, mostly not members of the threatened church. The result cost him $150,000 and his friends $100,000, with which the church was permanently and securely endowed. But there was a proviso--that a short service be held every week day at noon, providing a quick refuge for the tried soul, a resting-place for the weary brain, right in the heat and the heart of the business rush. The church stands there now, and does its beneficent work, no less a monument to the Creator than a memorial to the fine spirit of service that Christianity has caused thus to flower in the hearts of supposedly sordid men.

There appeared another instance of service in connection with a business so vast as to require the services of some twelve hundred young women as clerks in its office. The unique building housing these workers is provided with filtered and washed air, cooled in summer and warmed in winter. A mutually run

restaurant, a rest parlor, a piano, and many pleasant things about, together with the entire absence of patronage in this service to others, seemed to me to make especially pleasing the motto, stone-carved above a fountain, "Honest labor needs no master-simple justice needs no slaves."

Hardly less impressive to me--a confessed "crank" in the crusade against the bill-board ugliness which is endeavoring selfishly to prevail in and about all American communities-is Buffalo's notable attitude as to obtrusive advertising signs. In many cities the billboard men have taken refuge in the "sacred" right of private property, and have defied regulation, restraint, and limitation. But Buffalo has a charter which gives her some unique rights of selfgovernment. Outraged by the "Gunning system" sky-scraper sign incursions, an ordinance was passed limiting signs to seven feet in height. Did the Gunning system accept? No; it defied the law. Able city officials have recently affirmed the rights of the people through all the courts, and while signs yet disagreeably pervade, Judge Lacombe's decision downs the double-deckers.

An eminent physician and educator, himself completely opposed to certain movements fostered by the business men of Buffalo, spoke to me admiringly of these men, nevertheless. Said he, "Society here is exceedingly good; there are a great many cultivated and educated people, with almost an entire absence of what might be called the fast set.'" I think Buffalo can spare the latter, and glory in her deprivation

There are great things yet to be done for the public in Buffalo. Indeed, one of these great things concerns all Amer ica; for many experiences cause me to surmise that if one sat long enough in the so-called Union Station on Exchange Street in Buffalo, he would be certain to see, passing through, any particular friend from anywhere, in this real "exchange." "exchange." But what an unpleasant wait it would be, in a dirty, inadequate, ill-managed, and utterly inexcusable place that was a nuisance in Pan-American times and is a positive scandal now! Maintained by a railway calling itself great, it is great only in its discomforts and dangers, and in its daily showing of how very poorly poor facilities can be handled, when those who must use them have prepaid their passage. The responsibility for the continuance of this vast impropriety is said to rest upon the people of Buffalo, who, while realizing that it hurts them to have such an entrance, and vigorously trying to rid themselves of grade crossings, have in some way failed in adequately dealing with the thirteen railways that enter the city. Some time, and soon, I hope, Buffalo will have a real Union Station which will unite facilities rather than annoyances, and which will be universally recognized to be architecturally fine as well as practically complete.

But, aside from this somewhat large fly in the ointment, Buffalo has so many glories, and is an American city of such fine spirit and fine accomplishments, that many other communities may well turn to her as an example and an inspiration. Hail, Buffalo !