Instead, Schumann-Heink sang her
lieder for them; McCutcheon talked and cartooned for them;
Madame Bloomfield-Zeisler played. Winnebago was one of
those wealthy little Mid-Western towns whose people
appreciate the best and set out to acquire it for
themselves.
To the Easterner, Winnebago, and Oshkosh, and Kalamazoo, and
Emporia are names invented to get a laugh from a vaudeville
audience. Yet it is the people from Winnebago and Emporia
and the like whom you meet in Egypt, and the Catalina
Islands, and at Honolulu, and St. Moritz. It is in the
Winnebago living-room that you are likely to find a prayer
rug got in Persia, a bit of gorgeous glaze from China, a
scarf from some temple in India, and on it a book, hand-
tooled and rare. The Winnebagoans seem to know what is
being served and worn, from salad to veilings,
surprisingly soon after New York has informed itself on
those subjects. The 7:52 Northwestern morning train out of
Winnebago was always pretty comfortably crowded with
shoppers who were taking a five-hour run down to Chicago to
get a hat and see the new musical show at the Illinois.
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