Gaiety and merriment are among the foremost characteristics of American society. Indeed the individual American, for all his diligence and hard work, is perhaps the merriest inhabitant of the whole world: at every stage of his life he does not beg gaiety from the people and things around him, but draws it out of himself, to pour it upon everything around him. And so the tourist, as he wanders through the United States, sees merriment everywhere. He sees it in the old, the young, and the children; he sees it in the parks and the skyscrapers; and he sees it too in sculpture, in music, in painting, in fashion, and in food.
But the merriest thing I ever saw, beyond all else, was the "Barber Shop Quartets"... I was with some friends
of mine in one of the most famous restaurants of Detroit, and the place was packed with the wealthy of the city. And the inhabitants of Detroit are not of the ordinary classes of the rich. They are the owners of the famous automobile plants, and their doctors, their tailors, and the presidents of their clubs. They are the heirs of Ford and Dodge and Cadillac and Chrysler and the rest. As for us, we were a party that had shouldered the expense of the aforesaid restaurant in order to sit in a corner of it and watch its patrons... Suddenly we saw four men drawing near one another. They came together at a spot not far from the middle of the hall, linked arms to form a ring, and brought their heads close together as though they