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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/14717-0.txt b/14717-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7ef950f --- /dev/null +++ b/14717-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11971 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14717 *** + +TWELVE MEN + +BY + +Theodore Dreiser + +1919 + + + + +Contents + + I _Peter_ + II _A Doer of the Word_ + III _My Brother Paul_ + IV _The Country Doctor_ + V _Culhane, the Solid Man_ + VI _A True Patriarch_ + VII _De Maupassant, Jr._ +VIII _The Village Feudists_ + IX _Vanity, Vanity_ + X _The Mighty Rourke_ + XI _A Mayor and His People_ + XII _W.L.S._ + + + + +_Peter_ + + +In any group of men I have ever known, speaking from the point of view +of character and not that of physical appearance, Peter would stand out +as deliciously and irrefutably different. In the great waste of American +intellectual dreariness he was an oasis, a veritable spring in the +desert. He understood life. He knew men. He was free--spiritually, +morally, in a thousand ways, it seemed to me. + +As one drags along through this inexplicable existence one realizes how +such qualities stand out; not the pseudo freedom of strong men, +financially or physically, but the real, internal, spiritual freedom, +where the mind, as it were, stands up and looks at itself, faces Nature +unafraid, is aware of its own weaknesses, its strengths; examines its +own and the creative impulses of the universe and of men with a kindly +and non-dogmatic eye, in fact kicks dogma out of doors, and yet +deliberately and of choice holds fast to many, many simple and human +things, and rounds out life, or would, in a natural, normal, courageous, +healthy way. + +The first time I ever saw Peter was in St. Louis in 1892; I had come +down from Chicago to work on the St. Louis _Globe-Democrat_, and he was +a part of the art department force of that paper. At that time--and he +never seemed to change later even so much as a hair's worth until he +died in 1908--he was short, stocky and yet quick and even jerky in his +manner, with a bushy, tramp-like "get-up" of hair and beard, most +swiftly and astonishingly disposed of at times only to be regrown at +others, and always, and intentionally, I am sure, most amusing to +contemplate. In addition to all this he had an air of well-being, force +and alertness which belied the other surface characteristics as anything +more than a genial pose or bit of idle gayety. + +Plainly he took himself seriously and yet lightly, usually with an air +of suppressed gayety, as though saying, "This whole business of living +is a great joke." He always wore good and yet exceedingly mussy clothes, +at times bespattered with ink or, worse yet, even soup--an amazing +grotesquery that was the dismay of all who knew him, friends and +relatives especially. In addition he was nearly always liberally +besprinkled with tobacco dust, the source of which he used in all forms: +in pipe, cigar and plug, even cigarettes when he could obtain nothing +more substantial. One of the things about him which most impressed me at +that time and later was this love of the ridiculous or the grotesque, in +himself or others, which would not let him take anything in a dull or +conventional mood, would not even permit him to appear normal at times +but urged him on to all sorts of nonsense, in an effort, I suppose, to +entertain himself and make life seem less commonplace. + +And yet he loved life, in all its multiform and multiplex aspects and +with no desire or tendency to sniff, reform or improve anything. It was +good just as he found it, excellent. Life to Peter was indeed so +splendid that he was always very much wrought up about it, eager to +live, to study, to do a thousand things. For him it was a workshop for +the artist, the thinker, as well as the mere grubber, and without really +criticizing any one he was "for" the individual who is able to +understand, to portray or to create life, either feelingly and +artistically or with accuracy and discrimination. To him, as I saw then +and see even more clearly now, there was no high and no low. All things +were only relatively so. A thief was a thief, but he had his place. +Ditto the murderer. Ditto the saint. Not man but Nature was planning, or +at least doing, something which man could not understand, of which very +likely he was a mere tool. Peter was as much thrilled and entendered by +the brawling strumpet in the street or the bagnio as by the virgin with +her starry crown. The rich were rich and the poor poor, but all were in +the grip of imperial forces whose ruthless purposes or lack of them made +all men ridiculous, pathetic or magnificent, as you choose. He pitied +ignorance and necessity, and despised vanity and cruelty for cruelty's +sake, and the miserly hoarding of anything. He was liberal, material, +sensual and yet spiritual; and although he never had more than a little +money, out of the richness and fullness of his own temperament he seemed +able to generate a kind of atmosphere and texture in his daily life +which was rich and warm, splendid really in thought (the true reality) +if not in fact, and most grateful to all. Yet also, as I have said, +always he wished to _seem_ the clown, the scapegrace, the wanton and +the loon even, mouthing idle impossibilities at times and declaring his +profoundest faith in the most fantastic things. + +Do I seem to rave? I am dealing with a most significant person. + +In so far as I knew he was born into a mid-Western family of Irish +extraction whose habitat was southwest Missouri. In the town in which he +was reared there was not even a railroad until he was fairly well +grown--a fact which amused but never impressed him very much. Apropos of +this he once told me of a yokel who, never having seen a railroad, +entered the station with his wife and children long before train time, +bought his ticket and waited a while, looking out of the various +windows, then finally returned to the ticket-seller and asked, "When +does this thing start?" He meant the station building itself. At the +time Peter had entered upon art work he had scarcely prosecuted his +studies beyond, if so far as, the conventional high or grammar school, +and yet he was most amazingly informed and but little interested in what +any school or college had to offer. His father, curiously enough, was an +educated Irish-American, a lawyer by profession, and a Catholic. His +mother was an American Catholic, rather strict and narrow. His brothers +and sisters, of whom there were four, were, as I learned later, +astonishingly virile and interesting Americans of a rather wild, +unsettled type. They were all, in so far as I could judge from chance +meetings, agnostic, tense, quick-moving--so vital that they weighed on +one a little, as very intense temperaments are apt to do. One of the +brothers, K----, who seemed to seek me out ever so often for Peter's +sake, was so intense, nervous, rapid-talking, rapid-living, that he +frightened me a little. He loved noisy, garish places. He liked to play +the piano, stay up very late; he was a high liver, a "good dresser," as +the denizens of the Tenderloin would say, an excellent example of the +flashy, clever promoter. He was always representing a new company, +introducing something--a table or laxative water, a shaving soap, a +chewing gum, a safety razor, a bicycle, an automobile tire or the +machine itself. He was here, there, everywhere--in Waukesha, Wisconsin; +San Francisco; New York; New Orleans. "My, my! This is certainly +interesting!" he would exclaim, with an air which would have done credit +to a comedian and extending both hands. "Peter's pet friend, Dreiser! +Well, well, well! Let's have a drink. Let's have something to eat. I'm +only in town for a day. Maybe you'd like to go to a show--or hit the +high places? Would you? Well, well, well! Let's make a night of it! What +do you say?" and he would fix me with a glistening, nervous and what was +intended no doubt to be a reassuring eye, but which unsettled me as +thoroughly as the imminence of an earthquake. But I was talking of +Peter. + +The day I first saw him he was bent over a drawing-board illustrating a +snake story for one of the Sunday issues of the _Globe-Democrat_, which +apparently delighted in regaling its readers with most astounding +concoctions of this kind, and the snake he was drawing was most +disturbingly vital and reptilian, beady-eyed, with distended jaws, +extended tongue, most fatefully coiled. + +"My," I commented in passing, for I was in to see him about another +matter, "what a glorious snake!" + +"Yes, you can't make 'em too snaky for the snake-editor up front," he +returned, rising and dusting tobacco from his lap and shirtfront, for he +was in his shirt-sleeves. Then he expectorated not in but to one side of +a handsome polished brass cuspidor which contained not the least +evidence of use, the rubber mat upon which it stood being instead most +disturbingly "decorated." I was most impressed by this latter fact +although at the time I said nothing, being too new. Later, I may as well +say here, I discovered why. This was a bit of his clowning humor, a +purely manufactured and as it were mechanical joke or ebullience of +soul. If any one inadvertently or through unfamiliarity attempted to +expectorate in his "golden cuspidor," as he described it, he was always +quick to rise and interpose in the most solemn, almost sepulchral +manner, at the same time raising a hand. "Hold! Out--not in--to one +side, on the mat! That cost me seven dollars!" Then he would solemnly +seat himself and begin to draw again. I saw him do this to all but the +chiefest of the authorities of the paper. And all, even the dullest, +seemed to be amused, quite fascinated by the utter trumpery folly of it. + +But I am getting ahead of my tale. In so far as the snake was +concerned, he was referring to the assistant who had these snake stories +in charge. "The fatter and more venomous and more scaly they are," he +went on, "the better. I'd like it if we could use a little color in this +paper--red for eyes and tongue, and blue and green for scales. The +farmers upstate would love that. They like good but poisonous snakes." +Then he grinned, stood back and, cocking his head to one side in a most +examining and yet approving manner, ran his hand through his hair and +beard and added, "A snake can't be too vital, you know, for this paper. +We have to draw 'em strong, plenty of vitality, plenty of go." He +grinned most engagingly. + +I could not help laughing, of course. The impertinent air! The grand, +almost condescending manner! + +We soon became fast friends. + +In the same office in close contact with him was another person, one +D---- W----, also a newspaper artist, who, while being exceedingly +interesting and special in himself, still as a character never seems to +have served any greater purpose in my own mind than to have illustrated +how emphatic and important Peter was. He had a thin, pale, Dantesque +face, coal black, almost Indian-like hair most carefully parted in the +middle and oiled and slicked down at the sides and back until it looked +as though it had been glued. His eyes were small and black and querulous +but not mean--petted eyes they were--and the mouth had little lines at +each corner which seemed to say he had endured much, much pain, which of +course he had not, but which nevertheless seemed to ask for, and I +suppose earned him some, sympathy. Dick in his way was an actor, a +tragedian of sorts, but with an element of humor, cynicism and insight +which saved him from being utterly ridiculous. Like most actors, he was +a great poseur. He invariably affected the long, loose flowing tie with +a soft white or blue or green or brown linen shirt (would any American +imitation of the "Quartier Latin" denizen have been without one at that +date?), yellow or black gloves, a round, soft crush hat, very soft and +limp and very _different_, patent leather pumps, betimes a capecoat, a +slender cane, a boutonnière--all this in hard, smoky, noisy, commercial +St. Louis, full of middle-West business men and farmers! + +I would not mention this particular person save that for a time he, +Peter and myself were most intimately associated. We temporarily +constituted in our way a "soldiers three" of the newspaper world. For +some years after we were more or less definitely in touch as a group, +although later Peter and myself having drifted Eastward and hob-nobbing +as a pair had been finding more and more in common and had more and more +come to view Dick for what he was: a character of Dickensian, or perhaps +still better, Cruikshankian, proportions and qualities. But in those +days the three of us were all but inseparable; eating, working, playing, +all but sleeping together. I had a studio of sorts in a more or less +dilapidated factory section of St. Louis (Tenth near Market; now I +suppose briskly commercial), Dick had one at Broadway and Locust, +directly opposite the then famous Southern Hotel. Peter lived with his +family on the South Side, a most respectable and homey-home +neighborhood. + +It has been one of my commonest experiences, and one of the most +interesting to me, to note that nearly all of my keenest experiences +intellectually, my most gorgeous _rapprochements_ and swiftest +developments mentally, have been by, to, and through men, not women, +although there have been several exceptions to this. Nearly every +turning point in my career has been signalized by my meeting some man of +great force, to whom I owe some of the most ecstatic intellectual hours +of my life, hours in which life seemed to bloom forth into new aspects, +glowed as with the radiance of a gorgeous tropic day. + +Peter was one such. About my own age at this time, he was blessed with a +natural understanding which was simply Godlike. Although, like myself, +he was raised a Catholic and still pretending in a boisterous, +Rabelaisian way to have some reverence for that faith, he was amusingly +sympathetic to everything good, bad, indifferent--"in case there might +be something in it; you never can tell." Still he hadn't the least +interest in conforming to the tenets of the church and laughed at its +pretensions, preferring his own theories to any other. Apparently +nothing amused him so much as the thought of confession and communion, +of being shrived by some stout, healthy priest as worldly as himself, +and preferably Irish, like himself. At the same time he had a hearty +admiration for the Germans, all their ways, conservatisms, their +breweries, food and such things, and finally wound up by marrying a +German girl. + +As far as I could make out, Peter had no faith in anything except Nature +itself, and very little in that except in those aspects of beauty and +accident and reward and terrors with which it is filled and for which he +had an awe if not a reverence and in every manifestation of which he +took the greatest delight. Life was a delicious, brilliant mystery to +him, horrible in some respects, beautiful in others; a great adventure. +Unlike myself at the time, he had not the slightest trace of any +lingering Puritanism, and wished to live in a lush, vigorous, healthy, +free, at times almost barbaric, way. The negroes, the ancient Romans, +the Egyptians, tales of the Orient and the grotesque Dark Ages, our own +vile slums and evil quarters--how he reveled in these! He was for nights +of wandering, endless investigation, reading, singing, dancing, playing! + +Apropos of this I should like to relate here that one of his seemingly +gross but really innocent diversions was occasionally visiting a certain +black house of prostitution, of which there were many in St. Louis. Here +while he played a flute and some one else a tambourine or small drum, he +would have two or three of the inmates dance in some weird savage way +that took one instanter to the wilds of Central Africa. There was, so +far as I know, no payment of any kind made in connection with this. He +was a friend, in some crude, artistic or barbaric way. He satisfied, I +am positive, some love of color, sound and the dance in these queer +revels. + +Nor do I know how he achieved these friendships, such as they were. I +was never with him when he did. But aside from the satiation they +afforded his taste for the strange and picturesque, I am sure they +reflected no gross or sensual appetite. But I wish to attest in passing +that the mere witnessing of these free scenes had a tonic as well as +toxic effect on me. As I view myself now, I was a poor, spindling, +prying fish, anxious to know life, and yet because of my very narrow +training very fearsome of it, of what it might do to me, what dreadful +contagion of thought or deed it might open me to! Peter was not so. To +him all, positively _all_, life was good. It was a fascinating +spectacle, to be studied or observed and rejoiced in as a spectacle. +When I look back now on the shabby, poorly-lighted, low-ceiled room to +which he led me "for fun," the absolutely black or brown girls with +their white teeth and shiny eyes, the unexplainable, unintelligible love +of rhythm and the dance displayed, the beating of a drum, the sinuous, +winding motions of the body, I am grateful to him. He released my mind, +broadened my view, lengthened my perspective. For as I sat with him, +watching him beat his drum or play his flute, noted the gayety, his love +of color and effect, and feeling myself _low_, a criminal, disgraced, +the while I was staring with all my sight and enjoying it intensely, I +realized that I was dealing with a man who was "bigger" than I was in +many respects, saner, really more wholesome. I was a moral coward, and +he was not losing his life and desires through fear--which the majority +of us do. He was strong, vital, unafraid, and he made me so. + +But, lest I seem to make him low or impossible to those who +instinctively cannot accept life beyond the range of their own little +routine world, let me hasten to his other aspects. He was not low but +simple, brilliant and varied in his tastes. America and its point of +view, religious and otherwise, was simply amusing to him, not to be +taken seriously. He loved to contemplate man at his mysteries, rituals, +secret schools. He loved better yet ancient history, medieval inanities +and atrocities--a most singular, curious and wonderful mind. Already at +this age he knew many historians and scientists (their work), a most +astonishing and illuminating list to me--Maspero, Froude, Huxley, +Darwin, Wallace, Rawlinson, Froissart, Hallam, Taine, Avebury! The list +of painters, sculptors and architects with whose work he was familiar +and books about whom or illustrated by whom he knew, is too long to be +given here. His chief interest, in so far as I could make out, in these +opening days, was Egyptology and the study of things natural and +primeval--all the wonders of a natural, groping, savage world. + +"Dreiser," he exclaimed once with gusto, his bright beady eyes gleaming +with an immense human warmth, "you haven't the slightest idea of the +fascination of some of the old beliefs. Do you know the significance of +a scarab in Egyptian religious worship, for instance?" + +"A scarab? What's a scarab? I never heard of one," I answered. + +"A beetle, of course. An Egyptian beetle. You know what a beetle is, +don't you? Well, those things burrowed in the earth, the mud of the +Nile, at a certain period of their season to lay their eggs, and the +next spring, or whenever it was, the eggs would hatch and the beetles +would come up. Then the Egyptians imagined that the beetle hadn't died +at all, or if it had that it also had the power of restoring itself to +life, possessed immortality. So they thought it must be a god and began +to worship it," and he would pause and survey me with those amazing +eyes, bright as glass beads, to see if I were properly impressed. + +"You don't say!" + +"Sure. That's where the worship came from," and then he might go on and +add a bit about monkey-worship, the Zoroastrians and the Parsees, the +sacred bull of Egypt, its sex power as a reason for its religious +elevation, and of sex worship in general; the fantastic orgies at Sidon +and Tyre, where enormous images of the male and female sex organs were +carried aloft before the multitude. + +Being totally ignorant of these matters at the time, not a rumor of them +having reached me as yet in my meagre reading, I knew that it must be +so. It fired me with a keen desire to read--not the old orthodox +emasculated histories of the schools but those other books and pamphlets +to which I fancied he must have access. Eagerly I inquired of him where, +how. He told me that in some cases they were outlawed, banned or not +translated wholly or fully, owing to the puritanism and religiosity of +the day, but he gave me titles and authors to whom I might have access, +and the address of an old book-dealer or two who could get them for me. + +In addition he was interested in ethnology and geology, as well as +astronomy (the outstanding phases at least), and many, many phases of +applied art: pottery, rugs, pictures, engraving, wood-carving, +jewel-cutting and designing, and I know not what else, yet there was +always room even in his most serious studies for humor of the bizarre +and eccentric type, amounting to all but an obsession. He wanted to +laugh, and he found occasion for doing so under the most serious, or at +least semi-serious, circumstances. Thus I recall that one of the butts +of his extreme humor was this same Dick, whom he studied with the +greatest care for points worthy his humorous appreciation. Dick, in +addition to his genuinely lively mental interests, was a most romantic +person on one side, a most puling and complaining soul on the other. As +a newspaper artist I believe he was only a fairly respectable craftsman, +if so much, whereas Peter was much better, although he deferred to Dick +in the most persuasive manner and seemed to believe at times, though I +knew he did not, that Dick represented all there was to know in matters +artistic. + +Among other things at this time, the latter was, or pretended to be, +immensely interested in all things pertaining to the Chinese and to know +not only something of their language, which he had studied a little +somewhere, but also their history--a vague matter, as we all know--and +the spirit and significance of their art and customs. He sometimes +condescended to take us about with him to one or two Chinese restaurants +of the most beggarly description, and--as he wished to believe, because +of the romantic titillation involved--the hang-outs of crooks and +thieves and disreputable Tenderloin characters generally. (Of such was +the beginning of the Chinese restaurant in America.) He would introduce +us to a few of his Celestial friends, whose acquaintance apparently he +had been most assiduously cultivating for some time past and with whom +he was now on the best of terms. He had, as Peter pointed out to me, the +happy knack of persuading himself that there was something vastly +mysterious and superior about the whole Chinese race, that there was +some Chinese organization known as the Six Companions, which, so far as +I could make out from him, was ruling very nearly (and secretly, of +course) the entire habitable globe. For one thing it had some governing +connection with great constructive ventures of one kind and another in +all parts of the world, supplying, as he said, thousands of Chinese +laborers to any one who desired them, anywhere, and although they were +employed by others, ruling them with a rod of iron, cutting their +throats when they failed to perform their bounden duties and burying +them head down in a basket of rice, then transferring their remains +quietly to China in coffins made in China and brought for that purpose +to the country in which they were. The Chinese who had worked for the +builders of the Union Pacific had been supplied by this company, as I +understood from Dick. In regard to all this Peter used to analyze and +dispose of Dick's self-generated romance with the greatest gusto, +laughing the while and yet pretending to accept it all. + +But there was one phase of all this which interested Peter immensely. +Were there on sale in St. Louis any bits of jade, silks, needlework, +porcelains, basketry or figurines of true Chinese origin? He was far +more interested in this than in the social and economic sides of the +lives of the Chinese, and was constantly urging Dick to take him here, +there and everywhere in order that he might see for himself what of +these amazing wonders were locally extant, leading Dick in the process a +merry chase and a dog's life. Dick was compelled to persuade nearly all +of his boasted friends to produce all they had to show. Once, I recall, +a collection of rare Chinese porcelains being shown at the local museum +of art, there was nothing for it but that Dick must get one or more of +his Oriental friends to interpret this, that and the other symbol in +connection with this, that and the other vase--things which put him to +no end of trouble and which led to nothing, for among all the local +Chinese there was not one who knew anything about it, although they, +Dick included, were not honest enough to admit it. + +"You know, Dreiser," Peter said to me one day with the most delicious +gleam of semi-malicious, semi-tender humor, "I am really doing all this +just to torture Dick. He doesn't know a damned thing about it and +neither do these Chinese, but it's fun to haul 'em out there and make +'em sweat. The museum sells an illustrated monograph covering all this, +you know, with pictures of the genuinely historic pieces and +explanations of the various symbols in so far as they are known, but +Dick doesn't know that, and he's lying awake nights trying to find out +what they're all about. I like to see his expression and that of those +chinks when they examine those things." He subsided with a low chuckle +all the more disturbing because it was so obviously the product of +well-grounded knowledge. + +Another phase of this same humor related to the grand artistic, social +and other forms of life to which Dick was hoping to ascend via marriage +and which led him, because of a kind of anticipatory eagerness, into all +sorts of exaggerations of dress, manners, speech, style in writing or +drawing, and I know not what else. He had, as I have said, a "studio" in +Broadway, an ordinary large, square upper chamber of an old residence +turned commercial but which Dick had decorated in the most, to him, +recherché or _different_ manner possible. In Dick's gilding imagination +it was packed with the rarest and most carefully selected things, odd +bits of furniture, objects of art, pictures, books--things which the +ordinary antique shop provides in plenty but which to Dick, having been +reared in Bloomington, Illinois, were of the utmost artistic import. He +had vaulting ambitions and pretensions, literary and otherwise, having +by now composed various rondeaus, triolets, quatrains, sonnets, in +addition to a number of short stories over which he had literally slaved +and which, being rejected by many editors, were kept lying idly and +inconsequentially and seemingly inconspicuously about his place--the +more to astonish the poor unsophisticated "outsider." Besides it gave +him the opportunity of posing as misunderstood, neglected, depressed, as +becomes all great artists, poets, and thinkers. + +His great scheme or dream, however, was that of marriage to an heiress, +one of those very material and bovine daughters of the new rich in the +West end, and to this end he was bending all his artistic thought, +writing, dressing, dreaming the thing he wished. I myself had a marked +tendency in this direction, although from another point of view, and +speaking from mine purely, there was this difference between us: Dick +being an artist, rather remote and disdainful in manner and decidedly +handsome as well as poetic and better positioned than I, as I fancied, +was certain to achieve this gilded and crystal state, whereas I, not +being handsome nor an artist nor sufficiently poetic perhaps, could +scarcely aspire to so gorgeous a goal. Often, as around dinnertime he +ambled from the office arrayed in the latest mode--dark blue suit, +patent leather boots, a dark, round soft felt hat, loose tie blowing +idly about his neck, a thin cane in his hand--I was already almost +convinced that the anticipated end was at hand, this very evening +perhaps, and that I should never see him more except as the husband of a +very rich girl, never be permitted even to speak to him save as an +almost forgotten friend, and in passing! Even now perhaps he was on his +way to her, whereas I, poor oaf that I was, was moiling here over some +trucky work. Would my ship never come in? my great day never arrive? my +turn? Unkind heaven! + +As for Peter he was the sort of person who could swiftly detect, +understand and even sympathize with a point of view of this kind the +while he must laugh at it and his mind be busy with some plan of making +a fol-de-rol use of it. One day he came into the city-room where I was +working and bending over my desk fairly bursting with suppressed humor +announced, "Gee, Dreiser, I've just thought of a delicious trick to play +on Dick! Oh, Lord!" and he stopped and surveyed me with beady eyes the +while his round little body seemed to fairly swell with pent-up +laughter. "It's too rich! Oh, if it just works out Dick'll be sore! +Wait'll I tell you," he went on. "You know how crazy he is about rich +young heiresses? You know how he's always 'dressing up' and talking and +writing about marrying one of those girls in the West end?" (Dick was +forever composing a short story in which some lorn but perfect and great +artist was thus being received via love, the story being read to us +nights in his studio.) "That's all bluff, that talk of his of visiting +in those big houses out there. All he does is to dress up every night as +though he were going to a ball, and walk out that way and moon around. +Well, listen. Here's the idea. We'll go over to Mermod & Jaccards +to-morrow and get a few sheets of their best monogrammed paper, sample +sheets. Then we'll get up a letter and sign it with the most romantic +name we can think of--Juanita or Cyrene or Doris--and explain who she +is, the daughter of a millionaire living out there, and that she's been +strictly brought up but that in spite of all that she's seen his name in +the paper at the bottom of his pictures and wants to meet him, see? Then +we'll have her suggest that he come out to the west gate of, say, +Portland Place at seven o'clock and meet her. We'll have her describe +herself, see, young and beautiful, and some attractive costume she's to +wear, and we'll kill him. He'll fall hard. Then we'll happen by there at +the exact time when he's waiting, and detain him, urge him to come into +the park with us or to dinner. We'll look our worst so he'll be ashamed +of us. He'll squirm and get wild, but we'll hang on and spoil the date +for him, see? We'll insist in the letter that he must be alone, see, +because she's timid and afraid of being recognized. My God, he'll be +crazy! He'll think we've ruined his life--oh, ho, ho!" and he fairly +writhed with inward joy. + +The thing worked. It was cruel in its way, but when has man ever grieved +over the humorous ills of others? The paper was secured, the letter +written by a friend of Peter's in a nearby real estate office, after the +most careful deliberation as to wording on our part. Extreme youth, +beauty and a great mansion were all hinted at. The fascination of Dick +as a romantic figure was touched upon. He would know her by a green silk +scarf about her waist, for it was spring, the ideal season. Seven +o'clock was the hour. She could give him only a moment or two then--but +later--and she gave no address! + +The letter was mailed in the West end, as was meet and proper, and in +due season arrived at the office. Peter, working at the next easel, +observed him, as he told me, out of the corner of his eye. + +"You should have seen him, Dreiser," he exclaimed, hunting me up about +an hour after the letter arrived. "Oh, ho! Say, you know I believe he +thinks it's the real thing. It seemed to make him a little sick. He +tried to appear nonchalant, but a little later he got his hat and went +out, over to Deck's," a nearby saloon, "for a drink, for I followed him. +He's all fussed up. Wait'll we heave into view that night! I'm going to +get myself up like a joke, a hobo. I'll disgrace him. Oh, Lord, he'll be +crazy! He'll think we've ruined his life, scared her off. There's no +address. He can't do a thing. Oh, ho, ho, ho!" + +On the appointed day--and it was a delicious afternoon and evening, +aflame with sun and in May--Dick left off his work at three p.m., as +Peter came and told me, and departed, and then we went to make our +toilets. At six we met, took a car and stepped down not more than a +short block from the point of meeting. I shall never forget the +sweetness of the air, the something of sadness in the thought of love, +even in this form. The sun was singing its evensong, as were the birds. +But Peter--blessings or curses upon him!--was arrayed as only he could +array himself when he wished to look absolutely disconcerting--more like +an unwashed, uncombed tramp who had been sleeping out for weeks, than +anything else. His hair was over his eyes and ears, his face and hands +dirty, his shoes ditto. He had even blackened one tooth slightly. He had +on a collarless shirt, and yet he was jaunty withal and carried a cane, +if you please, assuming, as he always could and in the most aggravating +way, to be totally unconscious of the figure he cut. At one angle of his +multiplex character the man must have been a born actor. + +We waited a block away, concealed by a few trees, and at the exact hour +Dick appeared, hopeful and eager no doubt, and walking and looking +almost all that he hoped--delicate, pale, artistic. The new straw hat! +The pale green "artists'" shirt! His black, wide-buckled belt! The cane! +The dark-brown low shoes! The boutonnière! He was plainly ready for any +fate, his great moment. + +And then, before he could get the feeling that his admirer might not be +coming, we descended upon him in all our wretched nonchalance and +unworthiness--out of hell, as it were. We were most brisk, familiar, +affectionate. It was so fortunate to meet him so, so accidentally and +peradventure. The night was so fine. We were out for a stroll in the +park, to eat afterward. He must come along. + +I saw him look at Peter in that hat and no collar, and wilt. It was too +much. Such a friend--such friends (for on Peter's advice I was looking +as ill as I might, an easy matter)! No, he couldn't come. He was waiting +for some friends. We must excuse him. + +But Peter was not to be so easily shaken off. He launched into the most +brisk and serious conversation. He began his badger game by asking about +some work upon which Dick had been engaged before he left the office, +some order, how he was getting along with it, when it would be done; +and, when Dick evaded and then attempted to dismiss the subject, took +up another and began to expatiate on it, some work he himself was doing, +something that had developed in connection with it. He asked inane +questions, complimented Dick on his looks, began to tease him about some +girl. And poor Dick--his nervousness, his despair almost, the sense of +the waning of his opportunity! It was cruel. He was becoming more and +more restless, looking about more and more wearily and anxiously and +wishing to go or for us to go. He was horribly unhappy. Finally, after +ten or fifteen minutes had gone and various girls had crossed the plaza +in various directions, as well as carriages and saddle-horses--each one +carrying his heiress, no doubt!--he seemed to summon all his courage and +did his best to dispose of us. "You two'll have to excuse me," he +exclaimed almost wildly. "I can't wait." Those golden moments! She could +not approach! "My people aren't coming, I guess. I'll have to be going +on." + +He smiled weakly and made off, Peter half following and urging him to +come back. Then, since he would not, we stood there on the exact spot of +the rendezvous gazing smirkily after him. Then we went into the park a +few paces and sat on a bench in full view, talking--or Peter was--most +volubly. He was really choking with laughter. A little later, at +seven-thirty, we went cackling into the park, only to return in five +minutes as though we had changed our minds and were coming out--and saw +Dick bustling off at our approach. It was sad really. There was an +element of the tragic in it. But not to Peter. He was all laughter, all +but apoplectic gayety. "Oh, by George!" he choked. "This is too much! +Oh, ho! This is great! his poor heiress! And he came back! Har! Har! +Har!" + +"Peter, you dog," I said, "aren't you ashamed of yourself, to rub it in +this way?" + +"Not a bit, not a bit!" he insisted most enthusiastically. "Do him good. +Why shouldn't he suffer? He'll get over it. He's always bluffing about +his heiresses. Now he's lost a real one. Har! Har! Har!" and he fairly +choked, and for days and weeks and months he laughed, but he never told. +He merely chortled at his desk, and if any one asked him what he was +laughing about, even Dick, he would reply, "Oh, something--a joke I +played on a fellow once." + +If Dick ever guessed he never indicated as much. But that lost romance! +That faded dream! + +Not so long after this, the following winter, I left St. Louis and did +not see Peter for several years, during which time I drifted through +various cities to New York. We kept up a more or less desultory +correspondence which resulted eventually in his contributing to a paper +of which I had charge in New York, and later, in part at least I am +sure, in his coming there. I noticed one thing, that although Peter had +no fixed idea as to what he wished to be--being able to draw, write, +engrave, carve and what not--he was in no way troubled about it. "I +don't see just what it is that I am to do best," he said to me once. "It +may be that I will wind up as a painter or writer or collector--I can't +tell yet. I want to study, and meantime I'm making a living--that's all +I want now. I want to live, and I am living, in my way." + +Some men are masters of cities, or perhaps better, of all the elements +which enter into the making of them, and Peter was one. I think +sometimes that he was born a writer of great force and charm, only as +yet he had not found himself. I have known many writers, many geniuses +even, but not one his superior in intellect and romantic response to +life. He was a poet, thinker, artist, philosopher and master of prose, +as a posthumous volume ("Wolf, the Autobiography of a Cave Dweller") +amply proves, but he was not ready then to fully express himself, and it +troubled him not at all. He loved life's every facet, was gay and +helpful to himself and others, and yet always with an eye for the +undercurrent of human misery, error and tragedy as well as comedy. +Immediately upon coming to New York he began to examine and grasp it in +a large way, its museums, public buildings, geography, politics, but +after a very little while decided suddenly that he did not belong there +and without a by-your-leave, although once more we had fallen into each +other's ways, he departed without a word, and I did not hear from him +for months. Temporarily at least he felt that he had to obtain more +experience in a lesser field, and lost no time in so doing. The next I +knew he was connected, at a comfortable salary, with the then dominant +paper of Philadelphia. + +It was after he had established himself very firmly in Philadelphia that +we two finally began to understand each other fully, to sympathize +really with each other's point of view as opposed to the more or less +gay and casual nature of our earlier friendship. Also here perhaps, more +than before, we felt the binding influence of having worked together in +the West. It was here that I first noticed the ease with which he took +hold of a city, the many-sidedness of his peculiar character which led +him to reflect so many angles of it, which a less varied temperament +would never have touched upon. For, first of all, wherever he happened +to be, he was intensely interested in the age and history of his city, +its buildings and graveyards and tombstones which pointed to its past +life, then its present physical appearance, the chief characteristics of +the region in which it lay, its rivers, lakes, parks and adjacent places +and spots of interest (what rambles we took!), as well as its newest and +finest things architecturally. Nor did any one ever take a keener +interest in the current intellectual resources of a city--any city in +which he happened to be--its museums, libraries, old bookstores, +newspapers, magazines, and I know not what else. It was he who first +took me into Leary's bookstore in Philadelphia, descanting with his +usual gusto on its merits. Then and lastly he was keenly and wisely +interested in various currents of local politics, society and finance, +although he always considered the first a low mess, an arrangement or +adjustment of many necessary things among the lower orders. He seemed to +know or sense in some occult way everything that was going on in those +various realms. His mind was so full and rich that merely to be with him +was a delight. He gushed like a fountain, and yet not polemically, of +all he knew, heard, felt, suspected. His thoughts were so rich at times +that to me they were more like a mosaic of variegated and richly colored +stones and jewels. I felt always as though I were in the presence of a +great personage, not one who was reserved or pompous but a loose +bubbling temperament, wise beyond his years or day, and so truly great +that perhaps because of the intensity and immense variety of his +interests he would never shine in a world in which the most intensive +specialization, and that of a purely commercial character, was the grand +rôle. + +And yet I always felt that perhaps he might. He attracted people of all +grades so easily and warmly. His mind leaped from one interest to +another almost too swiftly, and yet the average man understood and liked +him. While in a way he contemned their mental states as limited or +bigoted, he enjoyed the conditions under which they lived, seemed to +wish to immerse himself in them. And yet nearly all his thoughts were, +from their point of view perhaps, dangerous. Among his friends he was +always talking freely, honestly, of things which the average man could +not or would not discuss, dismissing as trash illusion, lies or the +cunning work of self-seeking propagandists, most of the things currently +accepted as true. + +He was constantly commenting on the amazing dullness of man, his +prejudices, the astonishing manner in which he seized upon and clung +savagely or pathetically to the most ridiculous interpretations of life. +He was also forever noting that crass chance which wrecks so many of our +dreams and lives,--its fierce brutalities, its seemingly inane +indifference to wondrous things,--but never in a depressed or morbid +spirit; merely as a matter of the curious, as it were. But if any one +chanced to contradict him he was likely to prove liquid fire. At the +same time he was forever reading, reading, reading--history, archæology, +ethnology, geology, travel, medicine, biography, and descanting on the +wonders and idiosyncrasies of man and nature which they revealed. He was +never tired of talking of the intellectual and social conditions that +ruled in Greece and Rome from 600 B.C. on, the philosophies, the +travels, the art, the simple, natural pagan view of things, and +regretting that they were no more. He grieved at times, I think, that he +had not been of that world, might not have seen it, or, failing that, +might not see all the shards of those extinct civilizations. There was +something loving and sad in the manner in which at times, in one museum +and another, he would examine ancient art designs, those of the +Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, their public and private house plans, +their statues, book rolls, inscriptions, flambeaux, boats, swords, +chariots. Carthage, Rome, Greece, Phoenicia--their colonies, art and +trade stuffs, their foods, pleasures and worships--how he raved! A book +like Thaïs, Salammbo, Sonica, Quo Vadis, touched him to the quick. + +At the same time, and odd as it may seem, he was seemingly in intimate +contact with a circle of friends that rather astonished me by its +catholicity. It included, for instance, and quite naïvely, real estate +dealers, clerks, a bank cashier or two, some man who had a leather shop +or cigar factory in the downtown section, a drummer, a printer, two or +three newspaper artists and reporters--a list too long to catalogue here +and seemingly not interesting, at least not inspiring to look at or live +in contact with. Yet his relations with all of these were of a warm, +genial, helpful, homely character, quite intimate. He used them as one +might a mulch in which to grow things, or in other words he took them on +their own ground; a thing which I could never quite understand, being +more or less aloof myself and yet wishing always to be able so to do, to +take life, as he did. + +For he desired, and secured, their good will and drew them to him. He +took a simple, natural pleasure in the kinds of things they were able to +do, as well as the kinds of things he could do. With these, then, and a +type of girl who might not be classed above the clerk or manicure class, +he and they managed to eke out a social life, the outstanding phases of +which were dances, "parties," dinners at one simple home and another, +flirting, boating, and fishing expeditions in season, evenings out at +restaurants or the theater, and I know not what else. He could sing (a +very fair baritone), play the piano, cornet, flute, banjo, mandolin and +guitar, but always insisted that his favorite instruments were the +jews'-harp, the French harp (mouth organ) and a comb with a piece of +paper over it, against which he would blow with fierce energy, making +the most outrageous sounds, until stopped. At any "party" he was always +talking, jumping about, dancing, cooking something--fudge, taffy, a +rarebit, and insisting in the most mock-serious manner that all the +details be left strictly to him. "Now just cut out of this, all of you, +and leave this to your Uncle Dudley. Who's doing this? All I want is +sugar, chocolate, a pot, a big spoon, and I'll show you the best fudge +you ever ate." Then he would don an apron or towel and go to work in a +manner which would rob any gathering of a sense of stiffness and induce +a naturalness most intriguing, calculated to enhance the general +pleasure an hundredfold. + +Yes, Peter woke people up. He could convey or spread a sense of ease and +good nature and give and take among all. Wise as he was and not so +good-looking, he was still attractive to girls, very much so, and by no +means unconscious of their beauty. He could always, and easily, break +down their reserve, and was soon apparently on terms of absolute +friendship, exchanging all sorts of small gossip and news with them +about this, that and the other person about whom they knew. Indeed he +was such a general favorite and so seemingly impartial that it was hard +to say how he came close to any, and yet he did. At odd tête-à -tête +moments he was always making confessions as to "nights" or "afternoons." +"My God, Dreiser, I've found a peach! I can't tell you--but oh, +wonderful! Just what I need. This world's a healthy old place, eh? Let's +have another drink, what?" and he would order a stein or a half-schoppen +of light German beer and pour it down, grinning like a gargoyle. + +It was while he was in Philadelphia that he told me the beginnings of +the love affair which eventually ended in his marrying and settling down +into the homiest of home men I have ever seen and which for sheer +naïveté and charm is one of the best love stories I know anything about. +It appears that he was walking in some out-of-the-way factory realm of +North Philadelphia one Saturday afternoon about the first or second year +of his stay there, when, playing in the street with some other children, +he saw a girl of not more than thirteen or fourteen who, as he expressed +it to me, "came damned near being the prettiest thing I ever saw. She +had yellow hair and a short blue dress and pink bows in her hair--and +say, Dreiser, when I saw her I stopped flat and said 'me for that' if I +have to wait fifteen years! Dutchy--you never saw the beat! And poor! +Her shoes were clogs. She couldn't even talk English yet. Neither could +the other kids. They were all sausage--a regular German neighborhood. + +"But, say, I watched her a while and then I went over and said, 'Come +here, kid. Where do you live?' She didn't understand, and one of the +other kids translated for her, and then she said, 'Ich sprech nicht +English,'" and he mocked her. "That fixed her for me. One of the others +finally told me who she was and where she lived--and, say, I went right +home and began studying German. In three months I could make myself +understood, but before that, in two weeks, I hunted up her old man and +made him understand that I wanted to be friends with the family, to +learn German. I went out Sundays when they were all at home. There are +six children and I made friends with 'em all. For a long time I couldn't +make Madchen (that's what they call her) understand what it was all +about, but finally I did, and she knows now all right. And I'm crazy +about her and I'm going to marry her as soon as she's old enough." + +"How do you know that she'll have you?" I inquired. + +"Oh, she'll have me. I always tell her I'm going to marry her when she's +eighteen, and she says all right. And I really believe she does like me. +I'm crazy about her." + +Five years later, if I may anticipate a bit, after he had moved to +Newark and placed himself rather well in the journalistic field and was +able to carry out his plans in regard to himself, he suddenly returned +to Philadelphia and married, preparing beforehand an apartment which he +fancied would please her. It was a fortunate marriage in so far as love +and home pleasures were concerned. I never encountered a more delightful +atmosphere. + +All along in writing this I feel as though I were giving but the +thinnest portrait of Peter; he was so full and varied in his moods and +interests. To me he illustrated the joy that exists, on the one hand, in +the common, the so-called homely and what some might think ugly side of +life, certainly the very simple and ordinarily human aspect of things; +on the other, in the sheer comfort and satisfaction that might be taken +in things truly intellectual and artistic, but to which no great expense +attached--old books, prints, things connected with history and science +in their various forms, skill in matters relating to the applied arts +and what not, such as the coloring and firing of pottery and glass, the +making of baskets, hammocks and rugs, the carving of wood, the +collection and imitation of Japanese and Chinese prints, the art of +embalming as applied by the Egyptians (which, in connection with an +undertaker to whom he had attached himself, he attempted to revive or at +least play with, testing his skill for instance by embalming a dead cat +or two after the Egyptian manner). In all of these lines he trained +himself after a fashion and worked with skill, although invariably he +insisted that he was little more than a bungler, a poor follower after +the art of some one else. But most of all, at this time and later, he +was interested in collecting things Japanese and Chinese: netsukes, +inros, censors, images of jade and porcelain, teajars, vases, prints; +and it was while he was in Philadelphia and seemingly trifling about +with the group I have mentioned and making love to his little German +girl that he was running here and there to this museum and that and +laying the foundations of some of those interesting collections which +later he was fond of showing his friends or interested collectors. By +the time he had reached Newark, as chief cartoonist of the leading paper +there, he was in possession of a complete Tokaido (the forty views on +the road between Tokio and Kyoto), various prints by Hokusai, Sesshiu, +Sojo; a collection of one hundred inros, all of fifty netsukes, all of +thirty censers, lacquered boxes and teajars, and various other +exceedingly beautiful and valuable things--Mandarin skirts and coats, +among other things--which subsequently he sold or traded around among +one collector friend and another for things which they had. I recall his +selling his completed Tokaido, a labor which had extended over four +years, for over a thousand dollars. Just before he died he was trading +netsukes for inros and getting ready to sell all these latter to a man, +who in turn was going to sell his collection to a museum. + +But in between was this other, this ultra-human side, which ran to such +commonplaces as bowling, tennis-playing, golf, billiards, cards and +gambling with the dice--a thing which always struck me as having an odd +turn to it in connection with Peter, since he could be interested in so +many other things, and yet he pursued these commonplaces with as much +gusto at times as one possessed of a mania. At others he seemed not to +miss or think of them. Indeed, you could be sure of him and all his +interests, whatever they were, feeling that he had himself well in hand, +knew exactly how far he was going, and that when the time came he could +and would stop. Yet during the process of his momentary relaxation or +satiation, in whatever field it might be, he would give you a sense of +abandon, even ungovernable appetite, which to one who had not known him +long might have indicated a mania. + +Thus I remember once running over to Philadelphia to spend a Saturday +and Sunday with him, visits of this kind, in either direction, being of +the commonest occurrence. At that time he was living in some +quiet-looking boarding-house in South Fourth Street, but in which dwelt +or visited the group above-mentioned, and whenever I came there, at +least, there was always an atmosphere of intense gaming or playing in +some form, which conveyed to me nothing so much as a glorious sense of +life and pleasure. A dozen or more men might be seated at or standing +about a poker or dice table, in summer (often in winter) with their +coats off, their sleeves rolled up, Peter always conspicuous among them. +On the table or to one side would be money, a pitcher or a tin pail of +beer, boxes of cigarettes or cigars, and there would be Peter among the +players, flushed with excitement, his collar off, his hair awry, his +little figure stirring about here and there or gesticulating or lighting +a cigar or pouring down a glass of beer, shouting at the top of his +voice, his eyes aglow, "That's mine!" "I say it's not!" "Two on the +sixes!" "Three!" "Four!" "Ah, roll the bones! Roll the bones!" "Get off! +Get off! Come on now, Spikes--cough up! You've got the money now. Pay +back. No more loans if you don't." "Once on the fours--the fives--the +aces!" "Roll the bones! Roll the bones! Come on!" Or, if he saw me, +softening and saying, "Gee, Dreiser, I'm ahead twenty-eight so far!" or +"I've lost thirty all told. I'll stick this out, though, to win or lose +five more, and then I'll quit. I give notice, you fellows, five more, +one way or the other, and then I'm through. See? Say, these damned +sharks are always trying to turn a trick. And when they lose they don't +want to pay. I'm offa this for life unless I get a better deal." + +In the room there might be three or four girls--sisters, sweethearts, +pals of one or other of the players--some dancing, some playing the +piano or singing, and in addition the landlord and his wife, a slattern +pair usually, about whose past and present lives Peter seemed always to +know much. He had seduced them all apparently into a kind of rakish +camaraderie which was literally amazing to behold. It thrilled, +fascinated, at times frightened me, so thin and inadequate and +inefficient seemed my own point of view and appetite for life. He was +vigorous, charitable, pagan, gay, full of health and strength. He would +play at something, anything, indoors or out as occasion offered, until +he was fairly perspiring, when, throwing down whatever implement he had +in hand--be it cards, a tennis-racket, a golf club--would declare, +"That's enough! That's enough! I'm done now. I've licked-cha," or "I'm +licked. No more. Not another round. Come on, Dreiser, I know just the +place for us--" and then descanting on a steak or fish planked, or some +new method of serving corn or sweet potatoes or tomatoes, he would lead +the way somewhere to a favorite "rat's killer," as he used to say, or +grill or Chinese den, and order enough for four or five, unless stopped. +As he walked, and he always preferred to walk, the latest political row +or scandal, the latest discovery, tragedy or art topic would get his +keen attention. In his presence the whole world used to look different +to me, more colorful, more hopeful, more gay. Doors seemed to open; in +imagination I saw the interiors of a thousand realms--homes, factories, +laboratories, dens, resorts of pleasure. During his day such figures as +McKinley, Roosevelt, Hanna, Rockefeller, Rogers, Morgan, Peary, Harriman +were abroad and active, and their mental states and points of view and +interests--and sincerities and insincerities--were the subject of his +wholly brilliant analysis. He rather admired the clever opportunist, I +think, so long as he was not mean in view or petty, yet he scorned and +even despised the commercial viewpoint or trade reactions of a man like +McKinley. Rulers ought to be above mere commercialism. Once when I asked +him why he disliked McKinley so much he replied laconically, "The voice +is the voice of McKinley, but the hands--are the hands of Hanna." +Roosevelt seemed to amuse him always, to be a delightful if ridiculous +and self-interested "grandstander," as he always said, "always looking +out for Teddy, you bet," but good for the country, inspiring it with +visions. Rockefeller was wholly admirable as a force driving the country +on to autocracy, oligarchy, possibly revolution. Ditto Hanna, ditto +Morgan, ditto Harriman, ditto Rogers, unless checked. Peary might have, +and again might not have, discovered the North Pole. He refused to +judge. Old "Doc" Cook, the pseudo discoverer, who appeared very shortly +before he died, only drew forth chuckles of delight. "My God, the gall, +the nerve! And that wreath of roses the Danes put around his neck! It's +colossal, Dreiser. It's grand. Munchausen, Cook, Gulliver, Marco +Polo--they'll live forever, or ought to!" + +Some Saturday afternoons or Sundays, if he came to me or I to him in +time, we indulged in long idle rambles, anywhere, either going first by +streetcar, boat or train somewhere and then walking, or, if the mood was +not so, just walking on and on somewhere and talking. On such occasions +Peter was at his best and I could have listened forever, quite as the +disciples of Plato and Aristotle must have to them, to his discourses on +life, his broad and broadening conceptions of Nature--her cruelty, +beauty, mystery. Once, far out somewhere beyond Camden, we were idling +about an inlet where were boats and some fishermen and a trestle which +crossed it. Just as we were crossing it some men in a boat below +discovered the body of a possible suicide, in the water, days old and +discolored, but still intact and with the clothes of a man of at least +middle-class means. I was for leaving, being made a little sick by the +mere sight. Not so Peter. He was for joining in the effort which brought +the body to shore, and in a moment was back with the small group of +watermen, speculating and arguing as to the condition and character of +the dead man, making himself really one of the group. Finally he was +urging the men to search the pockets while some one went for the police. +But more than anything, with a hard and yet in its way humane realism +which put any courage of mine in that direction to the blush, he was all +for meditating on the state and nature of man, his chemical +components--chlorine, sulphuric acid, phosphoric acid, potassium, +sodium, calcium, magnesium, oxygen--and speculating as to which +particular chemicals in combination gave the strange metallic blues, +greens, yellows and browns to the decaying flesh! He had a great stomach +for life. The fact that insects were at work shocked him not at all. He +speculated as to _these_, their duties and functions! He asserted +boldly that man was merely a chemical formula at best, that something +much wiser than he had prepared him, for some not very brilliant purpose +of his or its own perhaps, and that he or it, whoever or whatever he or +it was, was neither good nor bad, as we imagined such things, but both. +He at once went off into the mysteries--where, when with me at least, he +seemed to prefer to dwell--talked of the divinations of the Chaldeans, +how they studied the positions of the stars and the entrails of dead +animals before going to war, talked of the horrible fetiches of the +Africans, the tricks and speculations of the priests of Greek and Roman +temples, finally telling me the story of the ambitious eel-seller who +anchored the dead horse in the stream in order to have plenty of eels +every morning for market. I revolted. I declared he was sickening. + +"My boy," he assured me, "you are too thin-skinned. You can't take life +that way. It's all good to me, whatever happens. We're here. We're not +running it. Why be afraid to look at it? The chemistry of a man's body +isn't any worse than the chemistry of anything else, and we're eating +the dead things we've killed all the time. A little more or a little +less in any direction--what difference?" + +Apropos of this same a little later--to shock me, of course, as he well +knew he could--he assured me that in eating a dish of chop suey in a +Chinese restaurant, a very low one, he had found and eaten a part of the +little finger of a child, and that "it was very good--very good, +indeed." + +"Dog!" I protested. "Swine! Thou ghoula!" but he merely chuckled +heartily and stuck to his tale! + +But if I paint this side of him it is to round out his wonderful, to me +almost incredible, figure. Insisting on such things, he was still and +always warm and human, sympathetic, diplomatic and cautious, according +to his company, so that he was really acceptable anywhere. Peter would +never shock those who did not want to be shocked. A minute or two or +five after such a discourse as the above he might be describing some +marvelously beautiful process of pollination among the flowers, the +history of some medieval trade guild or gazing at a beautiful scene and +conveying to one by his very attitude his unspoken emotion. + +After spending about two or three years in Philadelphia--which city +came to reflect for me the color of Peter's interests and mood--he +suddenly removed to Newark, having been nursing an arrangement with its +principal paper for some time. Some quarrel or dissatisfaction with the +director of his department caused him, without other notice, to paste +some crisp quotation from one of the poets on his desk and depart! In +Newark, a city to which before this I had paid not the slightest +attention, he found himself most happy; and I, living in New York close +at hand, felt that I possessed in it and him an earthly paradise. +Although it contained no more than 300,000 people and seemed, or had, a +drear factory realm only, he soon revealed it to me in quite another +light, because he was there. Very swiftly he found a wondrous canal +running right through it, under its market even, and we went walking +along its banks, out into the woods and fields. He found or created out +of an existing boardinghouse in a back street so colorful and gay a +thing that after a time it seemed to me to outdo that one of +Philadelphia. He joined a country club near Passaic, on the river of +that name, on the veranda of which we often dined. He found a Chinese +quarter with a restaurant or two; an amazing Italian section with a +restaurant; a man who had a $40,000 collection of rare Japanese and +Chinese curios, all in his rooms at the Essex County Insane Asylum, for +he was the chemist there; a man who was a playwright and manager in New +York; another who owned a newspaper syndicate; another who directed a +singing society; another who was president of a gun club; another who +owned and made or rather fired pottery for others. Peter was so restless +and vital that he was always branching out in a new direction. To my +astonishment he now took up the making and firing of pottery for +himself, being interested in reproducing various Chinese dishes and +vases of great beauty, the originals of which were in the Metropolitan +Museum of Art. His plan was first to copy the design, then buy, shape or +bake the clay at some pottery, then paint or decorate with liquid +porcelain at his own home, and fire. In the course of six or eight +months, working in his rooms Saturdays and Sundays and some mornings +before going to the office, he managed to produce three or four which +satisfied him and which he kept plates of real beauty. The others he +gave away. + +A little later, if you please, it was Turkish rug-making on a small +scale, the frame and materials for which he slowly accumulated, and then +providing himself with a pillow, Turkish-fashion, he crossed his legs +before it and began slowly but surely to produce a rug, the colors and +design of which were entirely satisfactory to me. As may be imagined, it +was slow and tedious work, undertaken at odd moments and when there was +nothing else for him to do, always when the light was good and never at +night, for he maintained that the coloring required the best of light. +Before this odd, homely, wooden machine, a combination of unpainted rods +and cords, he would sit, cross-legged or on a bench at times, and pound +and pick and tie and unravel--a most wearisome-looking task to me. + +"For heaven's sake," I once observed, "couldn't you think of anything +more interestingly insane to do than this? It's the slowest, most +painstaking work I ever saw." + +"That's just it, and that's just why I like it," he replied, never +looking at me but proceeding with his weaving in the most industrious +fashion. "You have just one outstanding fault, Dreiser. You don't know +how to make anything out of the little things of life. You want to +remember that this is an art, not a job. I'm discovering whether I can +make a Turkish carpet or not, and it gives me pleasure. If I can get so +much as one good spot of color worked out, one small portion of the +design, I'll be satisfied. I'll know then that I can do it, the whole +thing, don't you see? Some of these things have been the work of a +lifetime of one man. You call that a small thing? I don't. The pleasure +is in doing it, proving that you can, not in the rug itself." He clacked +and tied, congratulating himself vastly. In due course of time three or +four inches were finished, a soft and yet firm silky fabric, and he was +in great glee over it, showing it to all and insisting that in time (how +long? I often wondered) he would complete it and would then own a +splendid carpet. + +It was at this time that he built about him in Newark a structure of +friendships and interests which, it seemed to me, promised to be for +life. He interested himself intensely in the paper with which he was +connected and although he was only the cartoonist, still it was not long +before various departments and elements in connection with it seemed to +reflect his presence and to be alive with his own good will and +enthusiasm. Publisher, editor, art director, managing editor and +business manager, were all in friendly contact with him. He took out +life insurance for the benefit of the wife and children he was later to +have! With the manager of the engraving department he was working out +problems in connection with copperplate engraving and printing; with the +official photographer, art photography; with the art director, some +scheme for enlarging the local museum in some way. With his enduring +love of the fantastic and ridiculous it was not long before he had +successfully planned and executed a hoax of the most ridiculous +character, a piece of idle drollery almost too foolish to think of, and +yet which eventually succeeded in exciting the natives of at least four +States and was telegraphed to and talked about in a Sunday feature way, +by newspapers all over the country, and finally involved Peter as an +actor and stage manager of the most vivid type imaginable. And yet it +was all done really to amuse himself, to see if he could do it, as he +often told me. + +This particular hoax related to that silly old bugaboo of our boyhood +days, the escaped and wandering wild man, ferocious, blood-loving, +terrible. I knew nothing of it until Peter, one Sunday afternoon when we +were off for a walk a year or two after he had arrived in Newark, +suddenly announced apropos of nothing at all, "Dreiser, I've just hit +upon a great idea which I am working out with some of the boys down on +our paper. It's a dusty old fake, but it will do as well as any other, +better than if it were a really decent idea. I'm inventing a wild man. +You know how crazy the average dub is over anything strange, +different,'terrible.' Barnum was right, you know. There's one born every +minute. Well, I'm just getting this thing up now. It's as good as the +sacred white elephant or the blood-sweating hippopotamus. And what's +more, I'm going to stage it right here in little old Newark--and they'll +all fall for it, and don't you think they won't," and he chuckled most +ecstatically. + +"For heaven's sake, what's coming now?" I sighed. + +"Oh, very well. But I have it all worked out just the same. We're +beginning to run the preliminary telegrams every three or four days--one +from Ramblersville, South Jersey, let us say, another from Hohokus, +twenty-five miles farther on, four or five days later. By degrees as +spring comes on I'll bring him north--right up here into Essex County--a +genuine wild man, see, something fierce and terrible. We're giving him +long hair like a bison, red eyes, fangs, big hands and feet. He's +entirely naked--or will be when he gets here. He's eight feet tall. He +kills and eats horses, dogs, cattle, pigs, chickens. He frightens men +and women and children. I'm having him bound across lonely roads, look +in windows at night, stampede cattle and drive tramps and peddlers out +of the country. But say, wait and see. As summer comes on we'll make a +regular headliner of it. We'll give it pages on Sunday. We'll get the +rubes to looking for him in posses, offer rewards. Maybe some one will +actually capture and bring in some poor lunatic, a real wild man. You +can do anything if you just stir up the natives enough." + +I laughed. "You're crazy," I said. "What a low comedian you really are, +Peter!" + +Well, the weeks passed, and to mark progress he occasionally sent me +clippings of telegrams, cut not from his pages, if you please, but from +such austere journals as the _Sun_ and _World_ of New York, the _North +American_ of Philadelphia, the _Courant_ of Hartford, recording the +antics of his imaginary thing of the woods. Longish articles actually +began to appear here and there, in Eastern papers especially, describing +the exploits of this very elusive and moving demon. He had been seen in +a dozen fairly widely distributed places within the month, but always +coming northward. In one place he had killed three cows at once, in +another two, and eaten portions of them raw! Old Mrs. Gorswitch of +Dutchers Run, Pennsylvania, returning from a visit to her +daughter-in-law, Annie A. Gorswitch, and ambling along a lonely road in +Osgoroola County, was suddenly descended upon by a most horrific figure, +half man, half beast, very tall and with long hair and red, all but +bloody eyes who, looking at her with avid glance, made as if to seize +her, but a wagon approaching along the road from another direction, he +had desisted and fled, leaving old Mrs. Gorswitch in a faint upon the +ground. Barns and haystacks had been fired here and there, lonely widows +in distant cotes been made to abandon their homes through fear.... I +marveled at the assiduity and patience of the man. + +One day in June or July following, being in Newark and asking Peter +quite idly about his wild man, he replied, "Oh, it's great, great! +Couldn't be better! He'll soon be here now. We've got the whole thing +arranged now for next Sunday or Saturday--depends on which day I can get +off. We're going to photograph him. Wanto come over?" + +"What rot!" I said. "Who's going to pose? Where?" + +"Well," he chuckled, "come along and see. You'll find out fast enough. +We've got an actual wild man. I got him. I'll have him out here in the +woods. If you don't believe it, come over. You wouldn't believe me when +I said I could get the natives worked up. Well, they are. Look at +these," and he produced clippings from rival papers. The wild man was +actually being seen in Essex County, not twenty-five miles from Newark. +He had ravaged the property of people in five different States. It was +assumed that he was a lunatic turned savage, or that he had escaped from +a circus or trading-ship wrecked on the Jersey coast (suggestions made +by Peter himself). His depredations, all told, had by now run into +thousands, speaking financially. Staid residents were excited. Rewards +for his capture were being offered in different places. Posses of irate +citizens were, and would continue to be, after him, armed to the teeth, +until he was captured. Quite remarkable developments might be expected +at any time ... I stared. It seemed too ridiculous, and it was, and back +of it all was smirking, chuckling Peter, the center and fountain of it! + +"You dog!" I protested. "You clown!" He merely grinned. + +Not to miss so interesting a dénouement as the actual capture of this +prodigy of the wilds, I was up early and off the following Sunday to +Newark, where in Peter's apartment in due time I found him, his rooms in +a turmoil, he himself busy stuffing things into a bag, outside an +automobile waiting and within it the staff photographer as well as +several others, all grinning, and all of whom, as he informed me, were +to assist in the great work of tracking, ambushing and, if possible, +photographing the dread peril. + +"Yes, well, who's going to be him?" I insisted. + +"Never mind! Never mind! Don't be so inquisitive," chortled Peter. "A +wild man has his rights and privileges, as well as any other. Remember, +I caution all of you to be respectful in his presence. He's very +sensitive, and he doesn't like newspapermen anyhow. He'll be +photographed, and he'll be wild. That's all you need to know." + +In due time we arrived at as comfortable an abode for a wild man as well +might be. It was near the old Essex and Morris Canal, not far from +Boonton. A charming clump of brush and rock was selected, and here a +snapshot of a posse hunting, men peering cautiously from behind trees in +groups and looking as though they were most eager to discover something, +was made. Then Peter, slipping away--I suddenly saw him ambling toward +us, hair upstanding, body smeared with black muck, daubs of white about +the eyes, little tufts of wool about wrists and ankles and loins--as +good a figure of a wild man as one might wish, only not eight feet tall. + +"Peter!" I said. "How ridiculous! You loon!" + +"Have a care how you address me," he replied with solemn dignity. "A +wild man is a wild man. Our punctilio is not to be trifled with. I am of +the oldest, the most famous line of wild men extant. Touch me not." He +strode the grass with the air of a popular movie star, while he +discussed with the art director and photographer the most terrifying and +convincing attitudes of a wild man seen by accident and unconscious of +his pursuers. + +"But you're not eight feet tall!" I interjected at one point. + +"A small matter. A small matter," he replied airily. "I will be in the +picture. Nothing easier. We wild men, you know--" + +Some of the views were excellent, most striking. He leered most terribly +from arras of leaves or indicated fright or cunning. The man was a good +actor. For years I retained and may still have somewhere a full set of +the pictures as well as the double-page spread which followed the next +week. + +Well, the thing was appropriately discussed, as it should have been, +but the wild man got away, as was feared. He went into the nearby canal +and washed away all his terror, or rather he vanished into the dim +recesses of Peter's memory. He was only heard of a few times more in the +papers, his supposed body being found in some town in northeast +Pennsylvania--or in the small item that was "telegraphed" from there. As +for Peter, he emerged from the canal, or from its banks, a cleaner if +not a better man. He was grinning, combing his hair, adjusting his tie. + +"What a scamp!" I insisted lovingly. "What an incorrigible trickster!" + +"Dreiser, Dreiser," he chortled, "there's nothing like it. You should +not scoff. I am a public benefactor. I am really a creator. I have +created a being as distinct as any that ever lived. He is in many +minds--mine, yours. You know that you believe in him really. There he +was peeking out from between those bushes only fifteen minutes ago. And +he has made, and will make, thousands of people happy, thrill them, give +them a new interest. If Stevenson can create a Jekyll and Hyde, why +can't I create a wild man? I have. We have his picture to prove it. What +more do you wish?" + +I acquiesced. All told, it was a delightful bit of foolery and art, and +Peter was what he was first and foremost, an artist in the grotesque and +the ridiculous. + +For some time thereafter peace seemed to reign in his mind, only now it +was that the marriage and home and children idea began to grow. From +much of the foregoing it may have been assumed that Peter was out of +sympathy with the ordinary routine of life, despised the commonplace, +the purely practical. As a matter of fact it was just the other way +about. I never knew a man so radical in some of his viewpoints, so +versatile and yet so wholly, intentionally and cravingly, immersed in +the usual as Peter. He was all for creating, developing, brightening +life along simple rather than outré lines, in so far as he himself was +concerned. Nearly all of his arts and pleasures were decorative and +homey. A good grocer, a good barber, a good saloon-keeper, a good +tailor, a shoe maker, was just as interesting in his way to Peter as any +one or anything else, if not a little more so. He respected their lines, +their arts, their professions, and above all, where they had it, their +industry, sobriety and desire for fair dealing. He believed that +millions of men, especially those about him were doing the best they +could under the very severe conditions which life offered. He objected +to the idle, the too dull the swindlers and thieves as well as the +officiously puritanic or dogmatic. He resented, for himself at least, +solemn pomp and show. Little houses, little gardens, little porches, +simple cleanly neighborhoods with their air of routine, industry, +convention and order, fascinated him as apparently nothing else could. +He insisted that they were enough. A man did not need a great house +unless he was a public character with official duties. + +"Dreiser," he would say in Philadelphia and Newark, if not before, "it's +in just such a neighborhood as this that some day I'm going to live. I'm +going to have my little _frau_, my seven children, my chickens, dog, +cat, canary, best German style, my garden, my birdbox, my pipe; and +Sundays, by God, I'll march 'em all off to church, wife and seven kids, +as regular as clockwork, shined shoes, pigtails and all, and I'll lead +the procession." + +"Yes, yes," I said. "You talk." + +"Well, wait and see. Nothing in this world means so much to me as the +good old orderly home stuff. One ought to live and die in a family. It's +the right way. I'm cutting up now, sowing my wild oats, but that's +nothing. I'm just getting ready to eventually settle down and live, just +as I tell you, and be an ideal orderly citizen. It's the only way. It's +the way nature intends us to do. All this early kid stuff is passing, a +sorting-out process. We get over it. Every fellow does, or ought to be +able to, if he's worth anything, find some one woman that he can live +with and stick by her. That makes the world that you and I like to live +in, and you know it. There's a psychic call in all of us to it, I think. +It's the genius of our civilization, to marry one woman and settle down. +And when I do, no more of this all-night stuff with this, that and the +other lady. I'll be a model husband and father, sure as you're standing +there. Don't you think I won't. Smile if you want to--it's so. I'll have +my garden. I'll be friendly with my neighbors. You can come over then +and help us put the kids to bed." + +"Oh, Lord! This is a new bug now! We'll have the vine-covered cot idea +for a while, anyhow." + +"Oh, all right. Scoff if you want to. You'll see." + +Time went by. He was doing all the things I have indicated, living in a +kind of whirl of life. At the same time, from time to time, he would +come back to this thought. Once, it is true, I thought it was all over +with the little yellow-haired girl in Philadelphia. He talked of her +occasionally, but less and less. Out on the golf links near Passaic he +met another girl, one of a group that flourished there. I met her. She +was not unpleasing, a bit sensuous, rather attractive in dress and +manners, not very well informed, but gay, clever, up-to-date; such a +girl as would pass among other women as fairly satisfactory. + +For a time Peter seemed greatly attracted to her. She danced, played a +little, was fair at golf and tennis, and she was, or pretended to be, +intensely interested in him. He confessed at last that he believed he +was in love with her. + +"So it's all day with Philadelphia, is it?" I asked. + +"It's a shame," he replied, "but I'm afraid so. I'm having a hell of a +time with myself, my alleged conscience, I tell you." + +I heard little more about it. He had a fad for collecting rings at this +time, a whole casket full, like a Hindu prince, and he told me once he +was giving her her choice of them. + +Suddenly he announced that it was "all off" and that he was going to +marry the maid of Philadelphia. He had thrown the solitaire engagement +ring he had given her down a sewer! At first he would confess nothing as +to the reason or the details, but being so close to me it eventually +came out. Apparently, to the others as to myself, he had talked much of +his simple home plans, his future children--the good citizen idea. He +had talked it to his new love also, and she had sympathized and agreed. +Yet one day, after he had endowed her with the engagement ring, some +one, a member of the golf club, came and revealed a tale. The girl was +not "straight." She had been, mayhap was even then, "intimate" with +other men--one anyhow. She was in love with Peter well enough, as she +insisted afterward, and willing to undertake the life he suggested, but +she had not broken with the old atmosphere completely, or if she had it +was still not believed that she had. There were those who could not +only charge, but prove. A compromising note of some kind sent to some +one was involved, turned over to Peter. + +"Dreiser," he growled as he related the case to me, "it serves me right. +I ought to know better. I know the kind of woman I need. This one has +handed me a damned good wallop, and I deserve it. I might have guessed +that she wasn't suited to me. She was really too free--a life-lover more +than a wife. That home stuff! She was just stringing me because she +liked me. She isn't really my sort, not simple enough." + +"But you loved her, I thought?" + +"I did, or thought I did. Still, I used to wonder too. There were many +ways about her that troubled me. You think I'm kidding about this home +and family idea, but I'm not. It suits me, however flat it looks to you. +I want to do that, live that way, go through the normal routine +experience, and I'm going to do it." + +"But how did you break it off with her so swiftly?" I asked curiously. + +"Well, when I heard this I went direct to her and put it up to her. If +you'll believe me she never even denied it. Said it was all true, but +that she was in love with me all right, and would change and be all that +I wanted her to be." + +"Well, that's fair enough," I said, "if she loves you. You're no saint +yourself, you know. If you'd encourage her, maybe she'd make good." + +"Well, maybe, but I don't think so really," he returned, shaking his +head. "She likes me, but not enough, I'm afraid. She wouldn't run +straight, now that she's had this other. She'd mean to maybe, but she +wouldn't. I feel it about her. And anyhow I don't want to take any +chances. I like her--I'm crazy about her really, but I'm through. I'm +going to marry little Dutchy if she'll have me, and cut out this +old-line stuff. You'll have to stand up with me when I do." + +In three months more the new arrangement was consummated and little +Dutchy--or Zuleika, as he subsequently named her--was duly brought to +Newark and installed, at first in a charming apartment in a +conventionally respectable and cleanly neighborhood, later in a small +house with a "yard," lawn front and back, in one of the homiest of home +neighborhoods in Newark. It was positively entertaining to observe +Peter not only attempting to assume but assuming the rôle of the +conventional husband, and exactly nine months after he had been married, +to the hour, a father in this humble and yet, in so far as his +particular home was concerned, comfortable world. I have no space here +for more than the barest outline. I have already indicated his views, +most emphatically expressed and forecasted. He fulfilled them all to the +letter, up to the day of his death. In so far as I could make out, he +made about as satisfactory a husband and father and citizen as I have +ever seen. He did it deliberately, in cold reason, and yet with a warmth +and flare which puzzled me all the more since it _was_ based on reason +and forethought. I misdoubted. I was not quite willing to believe that +it would work out, and yet if ever a home was delightful, with a +charming and genuinely "happy" atmosphere, it was Peter's. + +"Here she is," he observed the day he married her, "me _frau_--Zuleika. +Isn't she a peach? Ever see any nicer hair than that? And these here, +now, pink cheeks? What? Look at 'em! And her little Dutchy nose! Isn't +it cute? Oh, Dutchy! And right here in me vest pocket is the golden band +wherewith I am to be chained to the floor, the domestic hearth. And +right there on her finger is my badge of prospective serfdom." Then, in +a loud aside to me, "In six months I'll be beating her. Come now, +Zuleika. We have to go through with this. You have to swear to be my +slave." + +And so they were married. + +And in the home afterward he was as busy and helpful and noisy as any +man about the house could ever hope to be. He was always fussing about +after hours "putting up" something or arranging his collections or +helping Zuleika wash and dry the dishes, or showing her how to cook +something if she didn't know how. He was running to the store or +bringing home things from the downtown market. Months before the first +child was born he was declaring most shamelessly, "In a few months now, +Dreiser, Zuleika and I are going to have our first calf. The bones roll +for a boy, but you never can tell. I'm offering up prayers and +oblations--both of us are. I make Zuleika pray every night. And say, +when it comes, no spoiling-the-kid stuff. No bawling or rocking it to +sleep nights permitted. Here's one kid that's going to be raised right. +I've worked out all the rules. No trashy baby-foods. Good old specially +brewed Culmbacher for the mother, and the kid afterwards if it wants it. +This is one family in which law and order are going to prevail--good old +'dichtig, wichtig' law and order." + +I used to chuckle the while I verbally denounced him for his coarse, +plebeian point of view and tastes. + +In a little while the child came, and to his immense satisfaction it was +a boy. I never saw a man "carry on" so, make over it, take such a +whole-souled interest in all those little things which supposedly made +for its health and well-being. For the first few weeks he still talked +of not having it petted or spoiled, but at the same time he was surely +and swiftly changing, and by the end of that time had become the most +doting, almost ridiculously fond papa that I ever saw. Always the child +must be in his lap at the most unseemly hours, when his wife would +permit it. When he went anywhere, or they, although they kept a maid the +child must be carried along by him on his shoulder. He liked nothing +better than to sit and hold it close, rocking in a rocking-chair +American style and singing, or come tramping into my home in New York, +the child looking like a woolen ball. At night if it stirred or +whimpered he was up and looking. And the baby-clothes!--and the +cradle!--and the toys!--colored rubber balls and soldiers the first or +second or third week! + +"What about that stern discipline that was to be put in force here--no +rocking, no getting up at night to coddle a weeping infant?" + +"Yes, I know. That's all good stuff before you get one. I've got one of +my own now, and I've got a new light on this. Say, Dreiser, take my +advice. Go through the routine. Don't try to escape. Have a kid or two +or three. There's a psychic punch to it you can't get any other way. +It's nature's way. It's a great scheme. You and your girl and your kid." + +As he talked he rocked, holding the baby boy to his breast. It was +wonderful. + +And Mrs. Peter--how happy she seemed. There was light in that house, +flowers, laughter, good fellowship. As in his old rooms so in this new +home he gathered a few of his old friends around him and some new ones, +friends of this region. In the course of a year or two he was on the +very best terms of friendship with his barber around the corner, his +grocer, some man who had a saloon and bowling alley in the neighborhood, +his tailor, and then just neighbors. The milkman, the coal man, the +druggist and cigar man at the next corner--all could tell you where +Peter lived. His little front "yard" had two beds of flowers all summer +long, his lot in the back was a garden--lettuce, onions, peas, beans. +Peter was always happiest when he could be home working, playing with +the baby, pushing him about in a go-cart, working in his garden, or +lying on the floor making something--an engraving or print or a box +which he was carving, the infant in some simple gingham romper crawling +about. He was always busy, but never too much so for a glance or a +mock-threatening, "Now say, not so much industry there. You leave my +things alone," to the child. Of a Sunday he sat out on the front porch +smoking, reading the Sunday paper, congratulating himself on his happy +married life, and most of the time holding the infant. Afternoons he +would carry it somewhere, anywhere, in his arms to his friends, the +Park, New York, to see me. At breakfast, dinner, supper the heir +presumptive was in a high-chair beside him. + +"Ah, now, here's a rubber spoon. Beat with that. It's less destructive +and less painful physically." + +"How about a nice prust" (crust) "dipped in bravery" (gravy) "--heh? Do +you suppose that would cut any of your teeth?" + +"Zuleika, this son of yours seems to think a spoonful of beer or two +might not hurt him. What do you say?" + +Occasionally, especially of a Saturday evening, he wanted to go bowling +and yet he wanted his heir. The problem was solved by fitting the latter +into a tight little sweater and cap and carrying him along on his +shoulder, into the bar for a beer, thence to the bowling alley, where +young hopeful was fastened into a chair on the side lines while Peter +and myself or some of his friends bowled. At ten or ten-thirty or +eleven, as the case might be, he was ready to leave, but before that +hour les ongfong might be sound asleep, hanging against Peter's scarf, +his interest in his toes or thumbs having given out. + +"Peter, look at that," I observed once. "Don't you think we'd better +take him home?" + +"Home nothing! Let him sleep. He can sleep here as well as anywhere, and +besides I like to look at him." And in the room would be a great crowd, +cigars, beers, laughter, and Peter's various friends as used to the +child's presence and as charmed by it as he was. He was just the man who +could do such things. His manner and point of view carried conviction. +He believed in doing all that he wanted to do simply and naturally, and +more and more as he went along people not only respected, I think they +adored him, especially the simple homely souls among whom he chose to +move and have his being. + +About this time there developed among those in his immediate +neighborhood a desire to elect him to some political position, that of +councilman, or State assemblyman, in the hope or thought that he would +rise to something higher. But he would none of it--not then anyhow. +Instead, about this time or a very little later, after the birth of his +second child (a girl), he devoted himself to the composition of a +brilliant piece of prose poetry ("Wolf"), which, coming from him, did +not surprise me in the least. If he had designed or constructed a great +building, painted a great picture, entered politics and been elected +governor or senator, I would have taken it all as a matter of course. He +could have. The material from which anything may rise was there. I asked +him to let me offer it to the publishing house with which I was +connected, and I recall with interest the comment of the oldest and most +experienced of the bookmen and salesmen among us. "You'll never make +much, if anything, on this book. It's too good, too poetic. But whether +it pays or not, I vote yes. I'd rather lose money on something like this +than make it on some of the trash we do make it on." + +Amen. I agreed then, and I agree now. + +The last phase of Peter was as interesting and dramatic as any of the +others. His married life was going forward about as he had planned. His +devotion to his home and children, his loving wife, his multiplex +interests, his various friends, was always a curiosity to me, +especially in view of his olden days. One day he was over in New York +visiting one of his favorite Chinese importing companies, through which +he had secured and was still securing occasional objects of art. He had +come down to me in my office at the Butterick Building to see if I would +not come over the following Saturday as usual and stay until Monday. He +had secured something, was planning something. I should see. At the +elevator he waved me a gay "so long--see you Saturday!" + +But on Friday, as I was talking with some one at my desk, a telegram was +handed me. It was from Mrs. Peter and read: "Peter died today at two of +pneumonia. Please come." + +I could scarcely believe it. I did not know that he had even been sick. +His little yellow-haired wife! The two children! His future! His +interests! I dropped everything and hurried to the nearest station. En +route I speculated on the mysteries on which he had so often +speculated--death, dissolution, uncertainty, the crude indifference or +cruelty of Nature. What would become of Mrs. Peter? His children? + +I arrived only to find a home atmosphere destroyed as by a wind that +puts out a light. There was Peter, stiff and cold, and in the other +rooms his babies, quite unconscious of what had happened, prattling as +usual, and Mrs. Peter practically numb and speechless. It had come so +suddenly, so out of a clear sky, that she could not realize, could not +even tell me at first. The doctor was there--also a friend of his, the +nearest barber! Also two or three representatives from his paper, the +owner of the bowling alley, the man who had the $40,000 collection of +curios. All were stunned, as I was. As his closest friend, I took +charge: wired his relatives, went to an undertaker who knew him to +arrange for his burial, in Newark or Philadelphia, as his wife should +wish, she having no connection with Newark other than Peter. + +It was most distressing, the sense of dull despair and unwarranted +disaster which hung over the place. It was as though impish and pagan +forces, or malign ones outside life, had committed a crime of the +ugliest character. On Monday, the day he saw me, he was well. On Tuesday +morning he had a slight cold but insisted on running out somewhere +without his overcoat, against which his wife protested. Tuesday night +he had a fever and took quinine and aspirin and a hot whiskey. +Wednesday morning he was worse and a doctor was called, but it was not +deemed serious. Wednesday night he was still worse and pneumonia had set +in. Thursday he was lower still, and by noon a metal syphon of oxygen +was sent for, to relieve the sense of suffocation setting in. Thursday +night he was weak and sinking, but expected to come round--and still, so +unexpected was the attack, so uncertain the probability of anything +fatal, that no word was sent, even to me. Friday morning he was no worse +and no better. "If he was no worse by night he might pull through." At +noon he was seized with a sudden sinking spell. Oxygen was applied by +his wife and a nurse, and the doctor sent for. By one-thirty he was +lower still, very low. "His face was blue, his lips ashen," his wife +told me. "We put the oxygen tube to his mouth and I said 'Can you speak, +Peter?' I was so nervous and frightened. He moved his head a little to +indicate 'no.' 'Peter,' I said, 'you mustn't let go! You must fight! +Think of me! Think of the babies!' I was a little crazy, I think, with +fear. He looked at me very fixedly. He stiffened and gritted his teeth +in a great effort. Then suddenly he collapsed and lay still. He was +dead." + +I could not help thinking of the force and energy--able at the last +minute, when he could not speak--to "grit his teeth" and "fight," a +minute before his death. What is the human spirit, or mind, that it can +fight so, to the very last? I felt as though some one, something, had +ruthlessly killed him, committed plain, unpunished murder--nothing more +and nothing less. + +And there were his cases of curios, his rug, his prints, his dishes, his +many, many schemes, his book to come out soon. I gazed and marveled. I +looked at his wife and babies, but could say nothing. It spelled, what +such things always spell, in the face of all our dreams, crass chance or +the willful, brutal indifference of Nature to all that relates to man. +If he is to prosper he must do so without her aid. + +That same night, sleeping in the room adjoining that in which was the +body, a pale candle burning near it, I felt as though Peter were walking +to and fro, to and fro, past me and into the room of his wife beyond, +thinking and grieving. His imagined wraith seemed horribly depressed +and distressed. Once he came over and moved his hand (something) over my +face. I felt him walking into the room where were his wife and kiddies, +but he could make no one see, hear, understand. I got up and looked at +his _cadaver_ a long time, then went to bed again. + +The next day and the next and the next were filled with many things. His +mother and sister came on from the West as well as the mother and +brother of his wife. I had to look after his affairs, adjusting the +matter of insurance which he left, his art objects, the burial of his +body "in consecrated ground" in Philadelphia, with the consent and aid +of the local Catholic parish rector, else no burial. His mother desired +it, but he had never been a good Catholic and there was trouble. The +local parish assistant refused me, even the rector. Finally I threatened +the good father with an appeal to the diocesan bishop on the ground of +plain common sense and courtesy to a Catholic family, if not charity to +a tortured mother and wife--and obtained consent. All along I felt as if +a great crime had been committed by some one, foul murder. I could not +get it out of my mind, and it made me angry, not sad. + +Two, three, five, seven years later, I visited the little family in +Philadelphia. The wife was with her mother and father in a simple little +home street in a factory district, secretary and stenographer to an +architect. She was little changed--a little stouter, not so carefree, +industrious, patient. His boy, the petted F----, could not even recall +his father, the girl not at all of course. And in the place were a few +of his prints, two or three Chinese dishes, pottered by himself, his +loom with the unfinished rug. I remained for dinner and dreamed old +dreams, but I was uncomfortable and left early. And Mrs. Peter, +accompanying me to the steps, looked after me as though I, alone, was +all that was left of the old life. + + + + +_A Doer of the Word_ + + +Noank is a little played-out fishing town on the southeastern coast of +Connecticut, lying half-way between New London and Stonington. Once it +was a profitable port for mackerel and cod fishing. Today its wharves +are deserted of all save a few lobster smacks. There is a shipyard, +employing three hundred and fifty men, a yacht-building establishment, +with two or three hired hands; a sail-loft, and some dozen or so shops +or sheds, where the odds and ends of fishing life are made and sold. +Everything is peaceful. The sound of the shipyard axes and hammers can +be heard for miles over the quiet waters of the bay. In the sunny lane +which follows the line of the shore, and along which a few shops +struggle in happy-go-lucky disorder, may be heard the voices and noises +of the workers at their work. Water gurgling about the stanchions of the +docks, the whistle of some fisherman as he dawdles over his nets, or +puts his fish ashore, the whirr of the single high-power sewing machine +in the sail-loft, often mingle in a pleasant harmony, and invite the +mind to repose and speculation. + +I was in a most examining and critical mood that summer, looking into +the nature and significance of many things, and was sitting one day in +the shed of the maker of sailboats, where a half-dozen characters of the +village were gathered, when some turn in the conversation brought up the +nature of man. He is queer, he is restless; life is not so very much +when you come to look upon many phases of it. + +"Did any of you ever know a contented man?" I inquired idly, merely for +the sake of something to say. + +There was silence for a moment, and one after another met my roving +glance with a thoughtful, self-involved and retrospective eye. + +Old Mr. Main was the first to answer. + +"Yes, I did. One." + +"So did I," put in the sailboat maker, as he stopped in his work to +think about it. + +"Yes, and I did," said a dark, squat, sunny, little old fisherman, who +sold cunners for bait in a little hut next door. + +"Maybe you and me are thinking of the same one, Jacob," said old Mr. +Main, looking inquisitively at the boat-builder. + +"I think we've all got the same man in mind, likely," returned the +builder. + +"Who is he?" I asked. + +"Charlie Potter," said the builder. + +"That's the man!" exclaimed Mr. Main. + +"Yes, I reckon Charlie Potter is contented, if anybody be," said an old +fisherman who had hitherto been silent. + +Such unanimity of opinion struck me forcibly. Charlie Potter--what a +humble name; not very remarkable, to say the least. And to hear him so +spoken of in this restless, religious, quibbling community made it all +the more interesting. + +"So you really think he is contented, do you?" I asked. + +"Yes, sir! Charlie Potter is a contented man," replied Mr. Main, with +convincing emphasis. + +"Well," I returned, "that's rather interesting. What sort of a man is +he?" + +"Oh, he's just an ordinary man, not much of anybody. Fishes and builds +boats occasionally," put in the boat-builder. + +"Is that all? Nothing else?" + +"He preaches now and then--not regularly," said Mr. Main. + +A-ha! I thought. A religionist! + +"A preacher is expected to set a good example," I said. + +"He ain't a regular preacher," said Mr. Main, rather quickly. "He's just +kind of around in religious work." + +"What do you mean?" I asked curiously, not quite catching the import of +this "around." + +"Well," answered the boat builder, "he don't take any money for what he +does. He ain't got anything." + +"What does he live on then?" I persisted, still wondering at the +significance of "around in religious work." + +"I don't know. He used to fish for a living. Fishes yet once in a while, +I believe." + +"He makes models of yachts," put in one of the bystanders. "He sold the +New Haven Road one for two hundred dollars here not long ago." + +A vision of a happy-go-lucky Jack-of-all-trades arose before me. A +visionary--a theorist. + +"What else?" I asked, hoping to draw them out. "What makes you all +think he is contented? What does he do that makes him so contented?" + +"Well," said Mr. Main, after a considerable pause and with much of +sympathetic emphasis in his voice, "Charlie Potter is just a good man, +that's all. That's why he's contented. He does as near as he can what he +thinks he ought to by other people--poor people." + +"You won't find anybody with a kinder heart than Charlie Potter," put in +the boat-builder. "That's the trouble with him, really. He's too good. +He don't look after himself right, I say. A fellow has to look out for +himself some in this world. If he don't, no one else will." + +"Right you are, Henry," echoed a truculent sea voice from somewhere. + +I was becoming both amused and interested, intensely so. + +"If he wasn't that way, he'd be a darned sight better off than he is," +said a thirty-year-old helper, from a far corner of the room. + +"What makes you say that?" I queried. "Isn't it better to be +kind-hearted and generous than not?" + +"It's all right to be kind-hearted and generous, but that ain't sayin' +that you've got to give your last cent away and let your family go +hungry." + +"Is that what Charlie Potter does?" + +"Well, no, maybe he don't, but he comes mighty near to it at times. He +and his wife and his adopted children have been pretty close to it at +times." + +You see, this was the center, nearly, for all village gossip and +philosophic speculation, and many of the most important local problems, +morally and intellectually speaking, were here thrashed put. + +"There's no doubt but that's where Charlie is wrong," put in old Mr. +Main a little later. "He don't always stop to think of his family." + +"What did he ever do that struck you as being over-generous?" I asked of +the young man who had spoken from the corner. + +"That's all right," he replied in a rather irritated and peevish tone; +"I ain't going to go into details now, but there's people around here +that hang on him, and that he's give to, that he hadn't orter." + +"I believe in lookin' out for Number One, that's what I believe in," +interrupted the boat-maker, laying down his rule and line. "This givin' +up everything and goin' without yourself may be all right, but I don't +believe it. A man's first duty is to his wife and children, that's what +I say." + +"That's the way it looks to me," put in Mr. Main. + +"Well, does Potter give up everything and go without things?" I asked +the boat-maker. + +"Purty blamed near it at times," he returned definitely, then addressing +the company in general he added, "Look at the time he worked over there +on Fisher's Island, at the Ellersbie farm--the time they were packing +the ice there. You remember that, Henry, don't you?" + +Mr. Main nodded. + +"What about it?" + +"What about it! Why, he give his rubber boots away, like a darned fool, +to old drunken Jimmy Harper, and him loafin' around half the year drunk, +and worked around on the ice without any shoes himself. He might 'a' +took cold and died." + +"Why did he do it?" I queried, very much interested by now. + +"Oh, Charlie's naturally big-hearted," put in the little old man who +sold cunners. "He believes in the Lord and the Bible. Stands right +square on it, only he don't belong to no church like. He's got the +biggest heart I ever saw in a livin' being." + +"Course the other fellow didn't have any shoes for to wear," put in the +boat-maker explanatorily, "but he never would work, anyhow." + +They lapsed into silence while the latter returned to his measuring, and +then out of the drift of thought came this from the helper in the +corner: + +"Yes, and look at the way Bailey used to sponge on him. Get his money +Saturday night and drink it all up, and then Sunday morning, when his +wife and children were hungry, go cryin' around Potter. Dinged if I'd +'a' helped him. But Potter'd take the food right off his breakfast table +and give it to him. I saw him do it! I don't think that's right. Not +when he's got four or five orphans of his own to care for." + +"His own children?" I interrupted, trying to get the thing straight. + +"No, sir; just children he picked up around, here and there." + +Here is a curious character, sure enough, I thought--one well worth +looking into. + +Another lull, and then as I was leaving the room to give the matter a +little quiet attention, I remarked to the boat-maker: + +"Outside of his foolish giving, you haven't anything against Charlie +Potter, have you?" + +"Not a thing," he replied, in apparent astonishment. "Charlie Potter's +one of the best men that ever lived. He's a good man." + +I smiled at the inconsistency and went my way. + +A day or two later the loft of the sail-maker, instead of the shed of +the boat-builder, happened to be my lounging place, and thinking of this +theme, now uppermost in my mind, I said to him: + +"Do you know a man around here by the name of Charlie Potter?" + +"Well, I might say that I do. He lived here for over fifteen years." + +"What sort of a man is he?" + +He stopped in his stitching a moment to look at me, and then said: + +"How d'ye mean? By trade, so to speak, or religious-like?" + +"What is it he has done," I said, "that makes him so popular with all +you people? Everybody says he's a good man. Just what do you mean by +that?" + +"Well," he said, ceasing his work as though the subject were one of +extreme importance to him, "he's a peculiar man, Charlie is. He believes +in giving nearly everything he has away, if any one else needs it. He'd +give the coat off his back if you asked him for it. Some folks condemn +him for this, and for not giving everything to his wife and them orphans +he has, but I always thought the man was nearer right than most of us. +I've got a family myself--but, then, so's he, now, for that matter. It's +pretty hard to live up to your light always." + +He looked away as if he expected some objection to be made to this, but +hearing none, he went on. "I always liked him personally very much. He +ain't around here now any more--lives up in Norwich, I think. He's a man +of his word, though, as truthful as kin be. He ain't never done nothin' +for me, I not bein' a takin' kind, but that's neither here nor there." + +He paused, in doubt apparently, as to what else to say. + +"You say he's so good," I said. "Tell me one thing that he ever did that +struck you as being preëminently good." + +"Well, now, I can't say as I kin, exactly, offhand," he replied, "there +bein' so many of them from time to time. He was always doin' things one +way and another. He give to everybody around here that asked him, and to +a good many that didn't. I remember once"--and a smile gave evidence of +a genial memory--"he give away a lot of pork that he'd put up for the +winter to some colored people back here--two or three barrels, maybe. +His wife didn't object, exactly, but my, how his mother-in-law did go on +about it. She was livin' with him then. She went and railed against him +all around." + +"She didn't like to give it to them, eh?" + +"Well, I should say not. She didn't set with his views, exactly--never +did. He took the pork, though--it was right in the coldest weather we +had that winter--and hauled it back about seven miles here to where they +lived, and handed it all out himself. Course they were awful hard up, +but then they might 'a' got along without it. They do now, sometimes. +Charlie's too good that way. It's his one fault, if you might so speak +of it." + +I smiled as the evidence accumulated. Houseless wayfarers, stopping to +find food and shelter under his roof, an orphan child carried seven +miles on foot from the bedside of a dead mother and cared for all +winter, three children, besides two of his own, being raised out of a +sense of affection and care for the fatherless. + +One day in the local post office I was idling a half hour with the +postmaster, when I again inquired: + +"Do you know Charlie Potter?" + +"I should think I did. Charlie Potter and I sailed together for +something over eleven years." + +"How do you mean sailed together?" + +"We were on the same schooner. This used to be a great port for mackerel +and cod. We were wrecked once together" + +"How was that?" + +"Oh, we went on rocks." + +"Any lives lost?" + +"No, but there came mighty near being. We helped each other in the boat. +I remember Charlie was the last one in that time. Wouldn't get in until +all the rest were safe." + +A sudden resolution came to me. + +"Do you know where he is now?" + +"Yes, he's up in Norwich, preaching or doing missionary work. He's kind +of busy all the time among the poor people, and so on. Never makes much +of anything out of it for himself, but just likes to do it, I guess." + +"Do you know how he manages to live?" + +"No, I don't, exactly. He believes in trusting to Providence for what he +needs. He works though, too, at one job and another. He's a carpenter +for one thing. Got an idea the Lord will send 'im whatever he needs." + +"Well, and does He?" + +"Well, he lives." A little later he added: + +"Oh, yes. There's nothing lazy about Charlie. He's a good worker. When +he was in the fishing line here there wasn't a man worked harder than he +did. They can't anybody lay anything like that against him." + +"Is he very difficult to talk to?" I asked, meditating on seeking him +out. I had so little to do at the time, the very idlest of summers, and +the reports of this man's deeds were haunting me. I wanted to discover +for myself whether he was real or not--whether the reports were true. +The Samaritan in people is so easily exaggerated at times. + +"Oh, no. He's one of the finest men that way I ever knew. You could see +him, well enough, if you went up to Norwich, providing he's up there. He +usually is, though, I think. He lives there with his wife and mother, +you know." + +I caught an afternoon boat for New London and Norwich at one-thirty, and +arrived in Norwich at five. The narrow streets of the thriving little +mill city were alive with people. I had no address, could not obtain +one, but through the open door of a news-stall near the boat landing I +called to the proprietor: + +"Do you know any one in Norwich by the name of Charlie Potter?" + +"The man who works around among the poor people here?" + +"That's the man." + +"Yes, I know him. He lives out on Summer Street, Number Twelve, I think. +You'll find it in the city directory." + +The ready reply was rather astonishing. Norwich has something like +thirty thousand people. + +I walked out in search of Summer Street and finally found a beautiful +lane of that name climbing upward over gentle slopes, arched completely +with elms. Some of the pretty porches of the cottages extended nearly to +the sidewalk. Hammocks, rocking-chairs on verandas, benches under the +trees--all attested the love of idleness and shade in summer. Only the +glimpse of mills and factories in the valley below evidenced the grimmer +life which gave rise mayhap to the need of a man to work among the poor. + +"Is this Summer Street?" I inquired of an old darky who was strolling +cityward in the cool of the evening. An umbrella was under his arm and +an evening paper under his spectacled nose. + +"Bress de Lord!" he said, looking vaguely around. "Ah couldn't say. Ah +knows dat street--been on it fifty times--but Ah never did know de name. +Ha, ha, ha!" + +The hills about echoed his hearty laugh. + +"You don't happen to know Charlie Potter?" + +"Oh, yas, sah. Ah knows Charlie Potter. Dat's his house right ovah dar." + +The house in which Charlie Potter lived was a two-story frame, +overhanging a sharp slope, which descended directly to the waters of the +pretty river below. For a mile or more, the valley of the river could be +seen, its slopes dotted with houses, the valley itself lined with mills. +Two little girls were upon the sloping lawn to the right of the house. A +stout, comfortable-looking man was sitting by a window on the left side +of the house, gazing out over the valley. + +"Is this where Charlie Potter lives?" I inquired of one of the children. + +"Yes, sir." + +"Did he live in Noank?" + +"Yes, sir." + +Just then a pleasant-faced woman of forty-five or fifty issued from a +vine-covered door. + +"Mr. Potter?" she replied to my inquiry. "He'll be right out." + +She went about some little work at the side of the house, and in a +moment Charlie Potter appeared. He was short, thick-set, and weighed no +less than two hundred pounds. His face and hands were sunburned and +brown like those of every fisherman of Noank. An old wrinkled coat and a +baggy pair of gray trousers clothed his form loosely. Two inches of a +spotted, soft-brimmed hat were pulled carelessly over his eyes. His face +was round and full, but slightly seamed. His hands were large, his walk +uneven, and rather inclined to a side swing, or the sailor's roll. He +seemed an odd, pudgy person for so large a fame. + +"Is this Mr. Potter?" + +"I'm the man." + +"I live on a little hummock at the east of Mystic Island, off Noank." + +"You do?" + +"I came up to have a talk with you." + +"Will you come inside, or shall we sit out here?" + +"Let's sit on the step." + +"All right, let's sit on the step." + +He waddled out of the gate and sank comfortably on the little low +doorstep, with his feet on the cool bricks below. I dropped into the +space beside him, and was greeted by as sweet and kind a look as I have +ever seen in a man's eyes. It was one of perfect courtesy and good +nature--void of all suspicion. + +"We were sitting down in the sailboat maker's place at Noank the other +day, and I asked a half dozen of the old fellows whether they had ever +known a contented man. They all thought a while, and then they said they +had. Old Mr. Main and the rest of them agreed that Charlie Potter was a +contented man. What I want to know is, are you?" + +I looked quizzically into his eyes to see what effect this would have, +and if there was no evidence of a mist of pleasure and affection being +vigorously restrained I was very much mistaken. Something seemed to hold +the man in helpless silence as he gazed vacantly at nothing. He breathed +heavily, then drew himself together and lifted one of his big hands, as +if to touch me, but refrained. + +"Yes, brother," he said after a time, "I _am_." + +"Well, that's good," I replied, taking a slight mental exception to the +use of the word brother. "What makes you contented?" + +"I don't know, unless it is that I've found out what I ought to do. You +see, I need so very little for myself that I couldn't be very unhappy." + +"What ought you to do?" + +"I ought to love my fellowmen." + +"And do you?" + +"Say, brother, but I do," he insisted quite simply and with no evidence +of chicane or make-believe--a simple, natural enthusiasm. "I love +everybody. There isn't anybody so low or so mean but I love him. I love +you, yes, I do. I love you." + +He reached out and touched me with his hand, and while I was inclined to +take exception to this very moral enthusiasm, I thrilled just the same +as I have not over the touch of any man in years. There was something +effective and electric about him, so very warm and foolishly human. The +glance which accompanied it spoke, it seemed, as truthfully as his +words. He probably did love me--or thought he did. What difference? + +We lapsed into silence. The scene below was so charming that I could +easily gaze at it in silence. This little house was very simple, not +poor, by no means prosperous, but well-ordered--such a home as such a +man might have. After a while I said: + +"It is very evident that you think the condition of some of your +fellowmen isn't what it ought to be. Tell me what you are trying to do. +What method have you for improving their condition?" + +"The way I reason is this-a-way," he began. "All that some people have +is their feelings, nothing else. Take a tramp, for instance, as I often +have. When you begin to sum up to see where to begin, you find that all +he has in the world, besides his pipe and a little tobacco, is his +feelings. It's all most people have, rich or poor, though a good many +think they have more than that. I try not to injure anybody's feelings." + +He looked at me as though he had expressed the solution of the +difficulties of the world, and the wonderful, kindly eyes beamed in rich +romance upon the scene. + +"Very good," I said, "but what do you do? How do you go about it to aid +your fellowmen?" + +"Well," he answered, unconsciously overlooking his own personal actions +in the matter, "I try to bring them the salvation which the Bible +teaches. You know I stand on the Bible, from cover to cover." + +"Yes, I know you stand on the Bible, but what do you do? You don't +merely preach the Bible to them. What do you do?" + +"No, sir, I don't preach the Bible at all. I stand on it myself. I try +as near as I can to do what it says. I go wherever I can be useful. If +anybody is sick or in trouble, I'm ready to go. I'll be a nurse. I'll +work and earn them food. I'll give them anything I can--that's what I +do." + +"How can you give when you haven't anything? They told me in Noank that +you never worked for money." + +"Not for myself alone. I never take any money for myself alone. That +would be self-seeking. Anything I earn or take is for the Lord, not me. +I never keep it. The Lord doesn't allow a man to be self-seeking." + +"Well, then, when you get money what do you do with it? You can't do and +live without money." + +He had been looking away across the river and the bridge to the city +below, but now he brought his eyes back and fixed them on me. + +"I've been working now for twenty years or more, and, although I've +never had more money than would last me a few days at a time, I've never +wanted for anything and I've been able to help others. I've run pretty +close sometimes. Time and time again I've been compelled to say, 'Lord, +I'm all out of coal,' or 'Lord, I'm going to have to ask you to get me +my fare to New Haven tomorrow,' but in the moment of my need He has +never forgotten me. Why, I've gone down to the depot time and time +again, when it was necessary for me to go, without five cents in my +pocket, and He's been there to meet me. Why, He wouldn't keep you +waiting when you're about His work. He wouldn't forget you--not for a +minute." + +I looked at the man in open-eyed amazement. + +"Do you mean to say that you would go down to a depot without money and +wait for money to come to you?" + +"Oh, brother," he said, with the softest light in his eyes, "if you only +knew what it is to have faith!" + +He laid his hand softly on mine. + +"What is car-fare to New Haven or to anywhere, to Him?" + +"But," I replied materially, "you haven't any car-fare when you go +there--how do you actually get it? Who gives it to you? Give me one +instance." + +"Why, it was only last week, brother, that a woman wrote me from Maiden, +Massachusetts, wanting me to come and see her. She's very sick with +consumption, and she thought she was going to die. I used to know her in +Noank, and she thought if she could get to see me she would feel better. + +"I didn't have any money at the time, but that didn't make any +difference. + +"'Lord,' I said, 'here's a woman sick in Maiden, and she wants me to +come to her. I haven't got any money, but I'll go right down to the +depot, in time to catch a certain train,' and I went. And while I was +standing there a man came up to me and said, 'Brother, I'm told to give +you this,' and he handed me ten dollars." + +"Did you know the man?" I exclaimed. + +"Never saw him before in my life," he replied, smiling genially. + +"And didn't he say anything more than that?" + +"No." + +I stared at him, and he added, as if to take the edge off my +astonishment: + +"Why, bless your heart, I knew he was from the Lord, just the moment I +saw him coming." + +"You mean to say you were standing there without a cent, expecting the +Lord to help you, and He did?" + +"'He shall call upon me, and I shall answer him,'" he answered simply, +quoting the Ninety-first Psalm. + +This incident was still the subject of my inquiry when a little colored +girl came out of the yard and paused a moment before us. + +"May I go down across the bridge, papa?" she asked. + +"Yes," he answered, and then as she tripped away, said: + +"She's one of my adopted children." He gazed between his knees at the +sidewalk. + +"Have you many others?" + +"Three." + +"Raising them, are you?" + +"Yes." + +"They seem to think, down in Noank, that living as you do and giving +everything away is satisfactory to you but rather hard on your wife and +children." + +"Well, it is true that she did feel a little uncertain in the beginning, +but she's never wanted for anything. She'll tell you herself that she's +never been without a thing that she really needed, and she's been +happy." + +He paused to meditate, I presume, over the opinion of his former fellow +townsmen, and then added: + +"It's true, there have been times when we have been right where we had +to have certain things pretty badly, before they came, but they never +failed to come." + +While he was still talking, Mrs. Potter came around the corner of the +house and out upon the sidewalk. She was going to the Saturday evening +market in the city below. + +"Here she is," he said. "Now you can ask her." + +"What is it?" she inquired, turning a serene and smiling face to me. + +"They still think, down in Noank, that you're not very happy with me," +he said. "They're afraid you want for something once in a while." + +She took this piece of neighborly interference in better fashion than +most would, I fancy. + +"I have never wanted for anything since I have been married to my +husband," she said. "I am thoroughly contented." + +She looked at him and he at her, and there passed between them an +affectionate glance. + +"Yes," he said, when she had passed after a pleasing little +conversation, "my wife has been a great help to me. She has never +complained." + +"People are inclined to talk a little," I said. + +"Well, you see, she never complained, but she did feel a little bit +worried in the beginning." + +"Have you a mission or a church here in Norwich?" + +"No, I don't believe in churches." + +"Not in churches?" + +"No. The sight of a minister preaching the word of God for so much a +year is all a mockery to me." + +"What do you believe in?" + +"Personal service. Churches and charitable institutions and societies +are all valueless. You can't reach your fellowman that way. They build +up buildings and pay salaries--but there's a better way." (I was +thinking of St. Francis and his original dream, before they threw him +out and established monasteries and a costume or uniform--the thing he +so much objected to.) "This giving of a few old clothes that the moths +will get anyhow, that won't do. You've got to give something of +yourself, and that's affection. Love is the only thing you can really +give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything. +Everything comes with it in some way or other." + +"How do you say?" I queried. "Money certainly comes handy sometimes." + +"Yes, when you give it with your own hand and heart--in no other way. It +comes to nothing just contributed to some thing. Ah!" he added, with +sudden animation, "the tangles men can get themselves into, the snarls, +the wretchedness! Troubles with women, with men whom they owe, with evil +things they say and think, until they can't walk down the street any +more without peeping about to see if they are followed. They can't look +you in die face; can't walk a straight course, but have got to sneak +around corners. Poor, miserable, unhappy--they're worrying and crying +and dodging one another!" + +He paused, lost in contemplation of the picture he had conjured up. + +"Yes," I went on catechistically, determined, if I could, to rout out +this matter of giving, this actual example of the modus operandi of +Christian charity. "What do you do? How do you get along without giving +them money?" + +"I don't get along without giving them some money. There are cases, lots +of them, where a little money is necessary. But, brother, it is so +little necessary at times. It isn't always money they want. You can't +reach them with old clothes and charity societies," he insisted. "You've +got to love them, brother. You've got to go to them and love them, just +as they are, scarred and miserable and bad-hearted." + +"Yes," I replied doubtfully, deciding to follow this up later. "But just +what is it you do in a needy case? One instance?" + +"Why, one night I was passing a little house in this town," he went on, +"and I heard a woman crying. I went right to the door and opened it, and +when I got inside she just stopped and looked at me. + +"'Madam,' I said, 'I have come to help you, if I can. Now you tell me +what you're crying for.' + +"Well, sir, you know she sat there and told me how her husband drank and +how she didn't have anything in the house to eat, and so I just gave her +all I had and told her I would see her husband for her, and the next day +I went and hunted him up and said to him, 'Oh, brother, I wish you would +open your eyes and see what you are doing. I wish you wouldn't do that +any more. It's only misery you are creating.' And, you know, I got to +telling about how badly his wife felt about it, and how I intended to +work and try and help her, and bless me if he didn't up and promise me +before I got through that he wouldn't do that any more. And he didn't. +He's working today, and it's been two years since I went to him, +nearly." + +His eyes were alight with his appreciation of personal service. + +"Yes, that's one instance," I said. + +"Oh, there are plenty of them," he replied. "It's the only way. Down +here in New London a couple of winters ago we had a terrible time of it. +That was the winter of the panic, you know. Cold--my, but that was a +cold winter, and thousands of people out of work--just thousands. It was +awful. I tried to do what I could here and there all along, but finally +things got so bad there that I went to the mayor. I saw they were +raising some kind of a fund to help the poor, so I told him that if he'd +give me a little of the money they were talking of spending that I'd +feed the hungry for a cent-and-a-half a meal." + +"A cent-and-a-half a meal!" + +"Yes, sir. They all thought it was rather curious, not possible at +first, but they gave me the money and I fed 'em." + +"Good meals?" + +"Yes, as good as I ever eat myself," he replied. + +"How did you do it?" I asked. + +"Oh, I can cook. I just went around to the markets, and told the +market-men what I wanted--heads of mackerel, and the part of the halibut +that's left after the rich man cuts off his steak--it's the poorest part +that he pays for, you know. And I went fishing myself two or three +times--borrowed a big boat and got men to help me--oh, I'm a good +fisherman, you know. And then I got the loan of an old covered brickyard +that no one was using any more, a great big thing that I could close up +and build fires in, and I put my kettle in there and rigged up tables +out of borrowed boards, and got people to loan me plates and spoons and +knives and forks and cups. I made fish chowder, and fish dinners, and +really I set a very fine table, I did, that winter." + +"For a cent-and-a-half a meal!" + +"Yes, sir, a cent-and-a-half a meal. Ask any one in New London. That's +all it cost me. The mayor said he was surprised at the way I did it." + +"Well, but there wasn't any particular personal service in the money +they gave you?" I asked, catching him up on that point. "They didn't +personally serve--those who gave you the money?" + +"No, sir, they didn't," he replied dreamily, with unconscious +simplicity. "But they gave through me, you see. That's the way it was. I +gave the personal service. Don't you see? That's the way." + +"Yes, that's the way," I smiled, avoiding as far as possible a further +discussion of this contradiction, so unconscious on his part, and in the +drag of his thought he took up another idea. + +"I clothed 'em that winter, too--went around and got barrels and boxes +of old clothing. Some of them felt a little ashamed to put on the +things, but I got over that, all right. I was wearing them myself, and I +just told them, 'Don't feel badly, brother. I'm wearing them out of the +same barrel with you--I'm wearing them out of the same barrel.' Got my +clothes entirely free for that winter." + +"Can you always get all the aid you need for such enterprises?" + +"Usually, and then I can earn a good deal of money when I work steadily. +I can get a hundred and fifty dollars for a little yacht, you know, +every time I find time to make one; and I can make a good deal of money +out of fishing. I went out fishing here on the Fourth of July and caught +two hundred blackfish--four and five pounds, almost, every one of them." + +"That ought to be profitable," I said. + +"Well, it was," he replied. + +"How much did you get for them?" + +"Oh, I didn't sell them," he said. "I never take money for my work that +way. I gave them all away." + +"What did you do?" I asked, laughing--"advertise for people to come for +them?" + +"No. My wife took some, and my daughters, and I took the rest and we +carried them around to people that we thought would like to have them." + +"Well, that wasn't so profitable, was it?" I commented amusedly. + +"Yes, they were fine fish," he replied, not seeming to have heard me. + +We dropped the subject of personal service at this point, and I +expressed the opinion that his service was only a temporary expedient. +Times changed, and with them, people. They forgot. Perhaps those he +aided were none the better for accepting his charity. + +"I know what you mean," he said. "But that don't make any difference. +You just have to keep on giving, that's all, see? Not all of 'em turn +back. It helps a lot. Money is the only dangerous thing to give--but I +never give money--not very often. I give myself, rather, as much as +possible. I give food and clothing, too, but I try to show 'em a new +way--that's not money, you know. So many people need a new way. They're +looking for it often, only they don't seem to know how. But God, dear +brother, however poor or mean they are--He knows. You've got to reach +the heart, you know, and I let Him help me. You've got to make a man +over in his soul, if you want to help him, and money won't help you to +do that, you know. No, it won't." + +He looked up at me in clear-eyed faith. It was remarkable. + +"Make them over?" I queried, still curious, for it was all like a +romance, and rather fantastic to me. "What do you mean? How do you make +them over?" + +"Oh, in their attitude, that's how. You've got to change a man and bring +him out of self-seeking if you really want to make him good. Most men +are so tangled up in their own errors and bad ways, and so worried over +their seekings, that unless you can set them to giving it's no use. +They're always seeking, and they don't know what they want half the +time. Money isn't the thing. Why, half of them wouldn't understand how +to use it if they had it. Their minds are not bright enough. Their +perceptions are not clear enough. All you can do is to make them content +with themselves. And that, giving to others will do. I never saw the man +or the woman yet who couldn't be happy if you could make them feel the +need of living for others, of doing something for somebody besides +themselves. It's a fact. Selfish people are never happy." + +He rubbed his hands as if he saw the solution of the world's +difficulties very clearly, and I said to him: + +"Well, now, you've got a man out of the mire, and 'saved,' as you call +it, and then what? What comes next?" + +"Well, then he's saved," he replied. "Happiness comes next--content." + +"I know. But must he go to church, or conform to certain rules?" + +"No, no, no!" he replied sweetly. "Nothing to do except to be good to +others. 'True religion and undefiled before our God and Father is +this,'" he quoted, "'to visit the widow and the orphan in their +affliction and to keep unspotted from the world. Charity is kind,' you +know. 'Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh not its +own.'" + +"Well," I said, rather aimlessly, I will admit, for this high faith +staggered me. (How high! How high!) "And then what?" + +"Well, then the world would come about. It would be so much better. All +the misery is in the lack of sympathy one with another. When we get that +straightened out we can work in peace. There are lots of things to do, +you know." + +Yes, I thought, looking down on the mills and the driving force of +self-interest--on greed, lust, love of pleasure, all their fantastic and +yet moving dreams. + +"I'm an ignorant man myself, and I don't know all," he went on, "and I'd +like to study. My, but I'd like to look into all things, but I can't do +it now. We can't stop until this thing is straightened out. Some time, +maybe," and he looked peacefully away. + +"By the way," I said, "whatever became of the man to whom you gave your +rubber boots over on Fisher's Island?" + +His face lit up as if it were the most natural thing that I should know +about it. + +"Say," he exclaimed, in the most pleased and confidential way, as if we +were talking about a mutual friend, "I saw him not long ago. And, do you +know, he's a good man now--really, he is. Sober and hard-working. And, +say, would you believe it, he told me that I was the cause of it--just +that miserable old pair of rubber boots--what do you think of that?" + +I shook his hand at parting, and as we stood looking at each other in +the shadow of the evening I asked him: + +"Are you afraid to die?" + +"Say, brother, but I'm not," he returned. "It hasn't any terror for me +at all. I'm just as willing. My, but I'm willing." + +He smiled and gripped me heartily again, and, as I was starting to go, +said: + +"If I die tonight, it'll be all right. He'll use me just as long as He +needs me. That I know. Good-by." + +"Good-by," I called back. + +He hung by his fence, looking down upon the city. As I turned the next +corner I saw him awakening from his reflection and waddling stolidly +back into the house. + + + + +_My Brother Paul_ + + +I like best to think of him as he was at the height of his all-too-brief +reputation and success, when, as the author and composer of various +American popular successes ("On the Banks of the Wabash," "Just Tell +Them That You Saw Me," and various others), as a third owner of one of +the most successful popular music publishing houses in the city and as +an actor and playwright of some small repute, he was wont to spin like a +moth in the white light of Broadway. By reason of a little luck and some +talent he had come so far, done so much for himself. In his day he had +been by turn a novitiate in a Western seminary which trained aspirants +for the Catholic priesthood; a singer and entertainer with a +perambulating cure-all oil troupe or wagon ("Hamlin's Wizard Oil") +traveling throughout Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; both end- and middle-man +with one, two or three different minstrel companies of repute; the +editor or originator and author of a "funny column" in a Western small +city paper; the author of the songs mentioned and a hundred others; a +black-face monologue artist; a white-face ditto, at Tony Pastor's, +Miner's and Niblo's of the old days; a comic lead; co-star and star in +such melodramas and farces as "The Danger Signal," "The Two Johns," "A +Tin Soldier," "The Midnight Bell," "A Green Goods Man" (a farce which he +himself wrote, by the way), and others. The man had a genius for the +kind of gayety, poetry and romance which may, and no doubt must be, +looked upon as exceedingly middle-class but which nonetheless had as +much charm as anything in this world can well have. He had at this time +absolutely no cares or financial worries of any kind, and this plus his +health, self-amusing disposition and talent for entertaining, made him a +most fascinating figure to contemplate. + +My first recollection of him is of myself as a boy often and he a man of +twenty-five (my oldest brother). He had come back to the town in which +we were then living solely to find his mother and help her. Six or seven +years before he had left without any explanation as to where he was +going, tired of or irritated by the routine of a home which for any +genuine opportunity it offered him might as well never have existed. It +was run dominantly by my father in the interest of religious and moral +theories, with which this boy had little sympathy. He was probably not +understood by any one save my mother, who understood or at least +sympathized with us all. Placed in a school which was to turn him out a +priest, he had decamped, and now seven years later was here in this +small town, with fur coat and silk hat, a smart cane--a gentleman of the +theatrical profession. He had joined a minstrel show somewhere and had +become an "end-man." He had suspected that we were not as fortunate in +this world's goods as might be and so had returned. His really great +heart had called him. + +But the thing which haunts me, and which was typical of him then as +throughout life, was the spirit which he then possessed and conveyed. It +was one of an agile geniality, unmarred by thought of a serious +character but warm and genuinely tender and with a taste for simple +beauty which was most impressive. He was already the author of a cheap +songbook, "_The Paul Dresser Songster_" ("All the Songs Sung in the +Show"), and some copies of this he had with him, one of which he gave +me. But we having no musical instrument of any kind, he taught me some +of the melodies "by ear." The home in which by force of poverty we were +compelled to live was most unprepossessing and inconvenient, and the +result of his coming could but be our request for, or at least the +obvious need of, assistance. Still he was as much an enthusiastic part +of it as though he belonged to it. He was happy in it, and the cause of +his happiness was my mother, of whom he was intensely fond. I recall how +he hung about her in the kitchen or wherever she happened to be, how +enthusiastically he related all his plans for the future, his amusing +difficulties in the past. He was very grand and youthfully +self-important, or so we all thought, and still he patted her on the +shoulder or put his arm about her and kissed her. Until she died years +later she was truly his uppermost thought, crying with her at times over +her troubles and his. He contributed regularly to her support and sent +home all his cast-off clothing to be made over for the younger ones. +(Bless her tired hands!) + +As I look back now on my life, I realize quite clearly that of all the +members of my family, subsequent to my mother's death, the only one who +truly understood me, or, better yet, sympathized with my intellectual +and artistic point of view, was, strange as it may seem, this same Paul, +my dearest brother. Not that he was in any way fitted intellectually or +otherwise to enjoy high forms of art and learning and so guide me, or +that he understood, even in later years (long after I had written +"Sister Carrie," for instance), what it was that I was attempting to do; +he never did. His world was that of the popular song, the middle-class +actor or comedian, the middle-class comedy, and such humorous æsthetes +of the writing world as Bill Nye, Petroleum V. Nasby, the authors of the +Spoopendyke Papers, and "Samantha at Saratoga." As far as I could make +out--and I say this in no lofty, condescending spirit, by any means--he +was entirely full of simple, middle-class romance, middle-class humor, +middle-class tenderness and middle-class grossness, all of which I am +very free to say early disarmed and won me completely and kept me so +much his debtor that I should hesitate to try to acknowledge or explain +all that he did for or meant to me. + +Imagine, if you can, a man weighing all of three hundred pounds, not +more than five feet ten-and-one-half inches in height and yet of so +lithesome a build that he gave not the least sense of either undue +weight or lethargy. His temperament, always ebullient and radiant, +presented him as a clever, eager, cheerful, emotional and always highly +illusioned person with so collie-like a warmth that one found him +compelling interest and even admiration. Easily cast down at times by +the most trivial matters, at others, and for the most part, he was so +spirited and bubbly and emotional and sentimental that your fiercest or +most gloomy intellectual rages or moods could scarcely withstand his +smile. This tenderness or sympathy of his, a very human appreciation of +the weaknesses and errors as well as the toils and tribulations of most +of us, was by far his outstanding and most engaging quality, and gave +him a very definite force and charm. Admitting, as I freely do, that he +was very sensuous (gross, some people might have called him), that he +had an intense, possibly an undue fondness for women, a frivolous, +childish, horse-playish sense of humor at times, still he had other +qualities which were absolutely adorable. Life seemed positively to +spring up fountain-like in him. One felt in him a capacity to do (in +his possibly limited field); an ability to achieve, whether he was doing +so at the moment or not, and a supreme willingness to share and radiate +his success--qualities exceedingly rare, I believe. Some people are so +successful, and yet you know their success is purely selfish--exclusive, +not inclusive; they never permit you to share in their lives. Not so my +good brother. He was generous to the point of self-destruction, and that +is literally true. He was the mark if not the prey of all those who +desired much or little for nothing, those who previously might not have +rendered him a service of any kind. He was all life and color, and +thousands (I use the word with care) noted and commented on it. + +When I first came to New York he was easily the foremost popular +song-writer of the day and was the cause of my coming, so soon at least, +having established himself in the publishing field and being so +comfortably settled as to offer me a kind of anchorage in so troubled a +commercial sea. I was very much afraid of New York, but with him here it +seemed not so bad. The firm of which he was a part had a floor or two in +an old residence turned office building, as so many are in New York, in +Twentieth Street very close to Broadway, and here, during the summer +months (1894-7) when the various theatrical road-companies, one of which +he was always a part, had returned for the closed season, he was to be +found aiding his concern in the reception and care of possible +applicants for songs and attracting by his personality such virtuosi of +the vaudeville and comedy stage as were likely to make the instrumental +publications of his firm a success. + +I may as well say here that he had no more business skill than a fly. At +the same time, he was in no wise sycophantic where either wealth, power +or fame was concerned. He considered himself a personage of sorts, and +was. The minister, the moralist, the religionist, the narrow, dogmatic +and self-centered in any field were likely to be the butt of his humor, +and he could imitate so many phases of character so cleverly that he was +the life of any idle pleasure-seeking party anywhere. To this day I +recall his characterization of an old Irish washerwoman arguing; a +stout, truculent German laying down the law; lean, gloomy, out-at-elbows +actors of the Hamlet or classic school complaining of their fate; the +stingy skinflint haggling over a dollar, and always with a skill for +titillating the risibilities which is vivid to me even to this day. +Other butts of his humor were the actor, the Irish day-laborer, the +negro and the Hebrew. And how he could imitate them! It is useless to +try to indicate such things in writing, the facial expression, the +intonation, the gestures; these are not things of words. Perhaps I can +best indicate the direction of his mind, if not his manner, by the +following: + +One night as we were on our way to a theater there stood on a nearby +corner in the cold a blind man singing and at the same time holding out +a little tin cup into which the coins of the charitably inclined were +supposed to be dropped. At once my brother noticed him, for he had an +eye for this sort of thing, the pathos of poverty as opposed to so gay a +scene, the street with its hurrying theater crowds. At the same time, so +inherently mischievous was his nature that although his sympathy for the +suffering or the ill-used of fate was overwhelming, he could not resist +combining his intended charity with a touch of the ridiculous. + +"Got any pennies?" he demanded. + +"Three or four." + +Going over to an outdoor candystand he exchanged a quarter for pennies, +then came back and waited until the singer, who had ceased singing, +should begin a new melody. A custom of the singer's, since the song was +of no import save as a means of attracting attention to him, was to +interpolate a "Thank you" after each coin dropped in his cup and between +the words of the song, regardless. It was this little idiosyncrasy which +evidently had attracted my brother's attention, although it had not +mine. Standing quite close, his pennies in his hand, he waited until the +singer had resumed, then began dropping pennies, waiting each time for +the "Thank you," which caused the song to go about as follows: + +"Da-a-'ling" (Clink!--"Thank you!") "I am--" (Clink!--"Thank you!") +"growing o-o-o-ld" (Clink!--"Thank you!"), "Silve-e-r--" (Clink!--"Thank +you!") "threads among the--" (Clink!--"Thank you!") "go-o-o-ld--" +(Clink! "Thank you!"). "Shine upon my-y" (Clink!--"Thank you!") +"bro-o-ow toda-a-y" (Clink!--"Thank you!"), "Life is--" (Clink!--"Thank +you!") "fading fast a-a-wa-a-ay" (Clink!--"Thank you!")--and so on ad +infinitum, until finally the beggar himself seemed to hesitate a little +and waver, only so solemn was his rôle of want and despair that of +course he dared not but had to go on until the last penny was in, and +until he was saying more "Thank yous" than words of the song. A +passer-by noticing it had begun to "Haw-haw!", at which others joined +in, myself included. The beggar himself, a rather sniveling specimen, +finally realizing what a figure he was cutting with his song and thanks, +emptied the coins into his hand and with an indescribably wry +expression, half-uncertainty and half smile, exclaimed, "I'll have to +thank you as long as you keep putting pennies in, I suppose. God bless +you!" + +My brother came away smiling and content. + +However, it is not as a humorist or song-writer or publisher that I wish +to portray him, but as an odd, lovable personality, possessed of so many +interesting and peculiar and almost indescribable traits. Of all +characters in fiction he perhaps most suggests Jack Falstaff, with his +love of women, his bravado and bluster and his innate good nature and +sympathy. Sympathy was really his outstanding characteristic, even more +than humor, although the latter was always present. One might recite a +thousand incidents of his generosity and out-of-hand charity, which +contained no least thought of return or reward. I recall that once there +was a boy who had been reared in one of the towns in which we had once +lived who had never had a chance in his youth, educationally or in any +other way, and, having turned out "bad" and sunk to the level of a bank +robber, had been detected in connection with three other men in the act +of robbing a bank, the watchman of which was subsequently killed in the +mêlée and escape. Of all four criminals only this one had been caught. +Somewhere in prison he had heard sung one of my brother's sentimental +ballads, "The Convict and the Bird," and recollecting that he had known +Paul wrote him, setting forth his life history and that now he had no +money or friends. + +At once my good brother was alive to the pathos of it. He showed the +letter to me and wanted to know what could be done. I suggested a +lawyer, of course, one of those brilliant legal friends of his--always +he had enthusiastic admirers in all walks--who might take the case for +little or nothing. There was the leader of Tammany Hall, Richard Croker, +who could be reached, he being a friend of Paul's. There was the +Governor himself to whom a plain recitation of the boy's unfortunate +life might be addressed, and with some hope of profit. + +All of these things he did, and more. He went to the prison (Sing Sing), +saw the warden and told him the story of the boy's life, then went to +the boy, or man, himself and gave him some money. He was introduced to +the Governor through influential friends and permitted to tell the tale. +There was much delay, a reprieve, a commutation of the death penalty to +life imprisonment--the best that could be done. But he was so grateful +for that, so pleased. You would have thought at the time that it was his +own life that had been spared. + +"Good heavens!" I jested. "You'd think you'd done the man an inestimable +service, getting him in the penitentiary for life!" + +"That's right," he grinned--an unbelievably provoking smile. "He'd +better be dead, wouldn't he? Well, I'll write and ask him which he'd +rather have." + +I recall again taking him to task for going to the rescue of a "down and +out" actor who had been highly successful and apparently not very +sympathetic in his day, one of that more or less gaudy clan that wastes +its substance, or so it seemed to me then, in riotous living. But now +being old and entirely discarded and forgotten, he was in need of +sympathy and aid. By some chance he knew Paul, or Paul had known him, +and now because of the former's obvious prosperity--he was much in the +papers at the time--he had appealed to him. The man lived with a sister +in a wretched little town far out on Long Island. On receiving his +appeal Paul seemed to wish to investigate for himself, possibly to +indulge in a little lofty romance or sentiment. At any rate he wanted me +to go along for the sake of companionship, so one dreary November +afternoon we went, saw the pantaloon, who did not impress me very much +even in his age and misery for he still had a few of his theatrical +manners and insincerities, and as we were coming away I said, "Paul, why +should you be the goat in every case?" for I had noted ever since I had +been in New York, which was several years then, that he was a victim of +many such importunities. If it was not the widow of a deceased friend +who needed a ton of coal or a sack of flour, or the reckless, headstrong +boy of parents too poor to save him from a term in jail or the +reformatory and who asked for fine-money or an appeal to higher powers +for clemency, or a wastrel actor or actress "down and out" and unable to +"get back to New York" and requiring his or her railroad fare wired +prepaid, it was the dead wastrel actor or actress who needed a coffin +and a decent form of burial. + +"Well, you know how it is, Thee" (he nearly always addressed me thus), +"when you're old and sick. As long as you're up and around and have +money, everybody's your friend. But once you're down and out no one +wants to see you any more--see?" Almost amusingly he was always sad over +those who had once been prosperous but who were now old and forgotten. +Some of his silliest tender songs conveyed as much. + +"Quite so," I complained, rather brashly, I suppose, "but why didn't he +save a little money when he had it? He made as much as you'll ever +make." The man had been a star. "He had plenty of it, didn't he? Why +should he come to you?" + +"Well, you know how it is, Thee," he explained in the kindliest and most +apologetic way. "When you're young and healthy like that you don't +think. I know how it is; I'm that way myself. We all have a little of it +in us. I have; you have. And anyhow youth's the time to spend money if +you're to get any good of it, isn't it? Of course when you're old you +can't expect much, but still I always feel as though I'd like to help +some of these old people." His eyes at such times always seemed more +like those of a mother contemplating a sick or injured child than those +of a man contemplating life. + +"But, Paul," I insisted on another occasion when he had just wired +twenty-five dollars somewhere to help bury some one. (My spirit was not +so niggardly as fearsome. I was constantly terrified in those days by +the thought of a poverty-stricken old age for myself and him--why, I +don't know. I was by no means incompetent.) "Why don't you save your +money? Why should you give it to every Tom, Dick and Harry that asks +you? You're not a charity organization, and you're not called upon to +feed and clothe and bury all the wasters who happen to cross your path. +If you were down and out how many do you suppose would help you?" + +"Well, you know," and his voice and manner were largely those of mother, +the same wonder, the same wistfulness and sweetness, the same bubbling +charity and tenderness of heart, "I can't say I haven't got it, can I?" +He was at the height of his success at the time. "And anyhow, what's the +use being so hard on people? We're all likely to get that way. You don't +know what pulls people down sometimes--not wasting always. It's +thoughtlessness, or trying to be happy. Remember how poor we were and +how mamma and papa used to worry." Often these references to mother or +father or their difficulties would bring tears to his eyes. "I can't +stand to see people suffer, that's all, not if I have anything," and his +eyes glowed sweetly. "And, after all," he added apologetically, "the +little I give isn't much. They don't get so much out of me. They don't +come to me every day." + +Another time--one Christmas Eve it was, when I was comparatively new to +New York (my second or third year), I was a little uncertain what to do, +having no connections outside of Paul and two sisters, one of whom was +then out of the city. The other, owing to various difficulties of her +own and a temporary estrangement from us--more our fault than hers--was +therefore not available. The rather drab state into which she had +allowed her marital affections to lead her was the main reason that kept +us apart. At any rate I felt that I could not, or rather would not, go +there. At the same time, owing to some difficulty or irritation with the +publishing house of which my brother was then part owner (it was +publishing the magazine which I was editing), we twain were also +estranged, nothing very deep really--a temporary feeling of distance and +indifference. + +So I had no place to go except to my room, which was in a poor part of +the town, or out to dine where best I might--some moderate-priced hotel, +was my thought. I had not seen my brother in three or four days, but +after I had strolled a block or two up Broadway I encountered him. I +have always thought that he had kept an eye on me and had really +followed me; was looking, in short, to see what I would do As usual he +was most smartly and comfortably dressed. + +"Where you going, Thee?" he called cheerfully. + +"Oh, no place in particular," I replied rather suavely, I presume. "Just +going up the street." + +"Now, see here, sport," he began--a favorite expression of his, +"sport"--with his face abeam, "what's the use you and me quarreling? +It's Christmas Eve, ain't it? It's a shame! Come on, let's have a drink +and then go out to dinner." + +"Well," I said, rather uncompromisingly, for at times his seemingly +extreme success and well-being irritated me, "I'll have a drink, but as +for dinner I have another engagement." + +"Aw, don't say that. What's the use being sore? You know I always feel +the same even if we do quarrel at times. Cut it out. Come on. You know +I'm your brother, and you're mine. It's all right with me, Thee. Let's +make it up, will you? Put 'er there! Come on, now. We'll go and have a +drink, see, something hot--it's Christmas Eve, sport. The old home +stuff." + +He smiled winsomely, coaxingly, really tenderly, as only he could smile. +I "gave in." But now as we entered the nearest shining bar, a Christmas +crowd buzzing within and without (it was the old Fifth Avenue Hotel), a +new thought seemed to strike him. + +"Seen E---- lately?" he inquired, mentioning the name of the troubled +sister who was having a very hard time indeed. Her husband had left her +and she was struggling over the care of two children. + +"No," I replied, rather shamefacedly, "not in a week or two--maybe +more." + +He clicked his tongue. He himself had not been near her in a month or +more. His face fell, and he looked very depressed. + +"It's too bad--a shame really. We oughtn't to do this way, you know, +sport. It ain't right. What do you say to our going around there," it +was in the upper thirties, "and see how she's making out?--take her a +few things, eh? Whaddya say?" + +I hadn't a spare dollar myself, but I knew well enough what he meant by +"take a few things" and who would pay for them. + +"Well, we'll have to hurry if we want to get anything now," I urged, +falling in with the idea since it promised peace, plenty and good will +all around, and we rushed the drink and departed. Near at hand was a +branch of one of the greatest grocery companies of the city, and near +it, too, his then favorite hotel, the Continental. En route we meditated +on the impossibility of delivery, the fact that we would have to carry +the things ourselves, but he at last solved that by declaring that he +could commandeer negro porters or bootblacks from the Continental. We +entered, and by sheer smiles on his part and some blarney heaped upon a +floor-manager, secured a turkey, sweet potatoes, peas, beans, a salad, a +strip of bacon, a ham, plum pudding, a basket of luscious fruit and I +know not what else--provender, I am sure, for a dozen meals. While it +was being wrapped and packed in borrowed baskets, soon to be returned, +he went across the way to the hotel and came back with three grinning +darkies who for the tip they knew they would receive preceded us up +Broadway, the nearest path to our destination. On the way a few +additional things were picked up: holly wreaths, toys, candy, nuts--and +then, really not knowing whether our plan might not mis-carry, we made +our way through the side street and to the particular apartment, or, +rather, flat-house, door, a most amusing Christmas procession, I fancy, +wondering and worrying now whether she would be there. + +But the door clicked in answer to our ring, and up we marched, the three +darkies first, instructed to inquire for her and then insist on leaving +the goods, while we lagged behind to see how she would take it. + +The stage arrangement worked as planned. My sister opened the door and +from the steps below we could hear her protesting that she had ordered +nothing, but the door being open the negroes walked in and a moment or +two afterwards ourselves. The packages were being piled on table and +floor, while my sister, unable quite to grasp this sudden visitation and +change of heart, stared. + +"Just thought we'd come around and have supper with you, E----, and +maybe dinner tomorrow if you'll let us," my brother chortled. "Merry +Christmas, you know. Christmas Eve. The good old home stuff--see? Old +sport here and I thought we couldn't stay away--tonight, anyhow." + +He beamed on her in his most affectionate way, but she, suffering +regret over the recent estrangement as well as the difficulties of life +itself and the joy of this reunion, burst into tears, while the two +little ones danced about, and he and I put our arms about her. + +"There, there! It's all over now," he declared, tears welling in his +eyes. "It's all off. We'll can this scrapping stuff. Thee and I are a +couple of bums and we know it, but you can forgive us, can't you? We +ought to be ashamed of ourselves, all of us, and that's the truth. We've +been quarreling, too, haven't spoken for a week. Ain't that so, sport? +But it's all right now, eh?" + +There were tears in my eyes, too. One couldn't resist him. He had the +power of achieving the tenderest results in the simplest ways. We then +had supper, and breakfast the next morning, all staying and helping, +even to the washing and drying of the dishes, and thereafter for I don't +know how long we were all on the most affectionate terms, and he +eventually died in this sister's home, ministered to with absolutely +restless devotion by her for weeks before the end finally came. + +But, as I have said, I always prefer to think of him at this, the very +apex or tower window of his life. For most of this period he was gay and +carefree. The music company of which he was a third owner was at the +very top of its success. Its songs, as well as his, were everywhere. He +had in turn at this time a suite at the Gilsey House, the Marlborough, +the Normandie--always on Broadway, you see. The limelight district was +his home. He rose in the morning to the clang of the cars and the honk +of the automobiles outside; he retired at night as a gang of repair men +under flaring torches might be repairing a track, or the milk trucks +were rumbling to and from the ferries. He was in his way a public +restaurant and hotel favorite, a shining light in the theater managers' +offices, hotel bars and lobbies and wherever those flies of the +Tenderloin, those passing lords and celebrities of the sporting, +theatrical, newspaper and other worlds, are wont to gather. One of his +intimates, as I now recall, was "Bat" Masterson, the Western and now +retired (to Broadway!) bad man; Muldoon, the famous wrestler; Tod Sloan, +the jockey; "Battling" Nelson; James J. Corbett; Kid McCoy; Terry +McGovern--prize-fighters all. Such Tammany district leaders as James +Murphy, "The" McManus, Chrystie and Timothy Sullivan, Richard Carroll, +and even Richard Croker, the then reigning Tammany boss, were all on his +visiting list. He went to their meetings, rallies and district doings +generally to sing and play, and they came to his "office" occasionally. +Various high and mighties of the Roman Church, "fathers" with fine +parishes and good wine cellars, and judges of various municipal courts, +were also of his peculiar world. He was always running to one or the +other "to get somebody out," or they to him to get him to contribute +something to something, or to sing and play or act, and betimes they +were meeting each other in hotel grills or elsewhere and having a drink +and telling "funny stories." + +Apropos of this sense of humor of his, this love of horse-play almost, I +remember that once he had a new story to tell--a vulgar one of +course--and with it he had been making me and a dozen others laugh until +the tears coursed down our cheeks. It seemed new to everybody and, true +to his rather fantastic moods, he was determined to be the first to tell +it along Broadway. For some reason he was anxious to have me go along +with him, possibly because he found me at that time an unvarying +fountain of approval and laughter, possibly because he liked to show me +off as his rising brother, as he insisted that I was. At between six and +seven of a spring or summer evening, therefore, we issued from his suite +at the Gilsey House, whither he had returned to dress, and invading the +bar below were at once centered among a group who knew him. A whiskey, a +cigar, the story told to one, two, three, five, ten to roars of +laughter, and we were off, over the way to Weber & Fields (the Musical +Burlesque House Supreme of those days) in the same block, where to the +ticket seller and house manager, both of whom he knew, it was told. More +laughter, a cigar perhaps. Then we were off again, this time to the +ticket seller of Palmer's Theater at Thirtieth Street, thence to the bar +of the Grand Hotel at Thirty-first, the Imperial at Thirty-second, the +Martinique at Thirty-third, a famous drug-store at the southwest corner +of Thirty-fourth and Broadway, now gone of course, the manager of which +was a friend of his. It was a warm, moony night, and he took a glass of +vichy "for looks' sake," as he said. + +Then to the quondam Hotel Aulic at Thirty-fifth and Broadway--the center +and home of the then much-berated "Hotel Aulic or Actors' School of +Philosophy," and a most impressive actors' rendezvous where might have +been seen in the course of an evening all the "second leads" and "light +comedians" and "heavies" of this, that and the other road company, all +blazing with startling clothes and all explaining how they "knocked 'em" +here and there: in Peoria, Pasadena, Walla-Walla and where not. My +brother shone like a star when only one is in the sky. + +Over the way then to the Herald Building, its owls' eyes glowing in the +night, its presses thundering, the elevated thundering beside it. Here +was a business manager whom he knew. Then to the Herald Square Theater +on the opposite side of the street, ablaze with a small electric +sign--among the newest in the city. In this, as in the business office +of the _Herald_ was another manager, and he knew them all. Thence to the +Marlborough bar and lobby at Thirty-sixth, the manager's office of the +Knickerbocker Theater at Thirty-eighth, stopping at the bar and lobby of +the Normandie, where some blazing professional beauty of the stage +waylaid him and exchanged theatrical witticisms with him--and what else? +Thence to the manager's office of the Casino at Thirty-ninth, some bar +which was across the street, another in Thirty-ninth west of Broadway, +an Italian restaurant on the ground floor of the Metropolitan at +Fortieth and Broadway, and at last but by no means least and by such +slow stages to the very door of the then Mecca of Meccas of all +theater- and sportdom, the sanctum sanctorum of all those sportively au +fait, "wise," the "real thing"--the Hotel Metropole at Broadway and +Forty-second Street, the then extreme northern limit of the white-light +district. And what a realm! Rounders and what not were here ensconced at +round tables, their backs against the leather-cushioned wall seats, the +adjoining windows open to all Broadway and the then all but somber +Forty-second Street. + +It was wonderful, the loud clothes, the bright straw hats, the canes, +the diamonds, the "hot" socks, the air of security and well-being, so +easily assumed by those who gain an all too brief hour in this pretty, +petty world of make-believe and pleasure and pseudo-fame. Among them my +dearest brother was at his best. It was "Paul" here and "Paul" +there--"Why, hello, Dresser, you're just in time! Come on in. What'll +you have? Let me tell you something, Paul, a good one--". More drinks, +cigars, tales--magnificent tales of successes made, "great shows" given, +fights, deaths, marvelous winnings at cards, trickeries in racing, +prize-fighting; the "dogs" that some people were, the magnificent, +magnanimous "God's own salt" that others were. The oaths, stories of +women, what low, vice-besmeared, crime-soaked ghoulas certain reigning +beauties of the town or stage were--and so on and so on ad infinitum. + +But his story?--ah, yes. I had all but forgotten. It was told in every +place, not once but seven, eight, nine, ten times. We did not eat until +we reached the Metropole, and it was ten-thirty when we reached it! The +handshakes, the road stories--"This is my brother Theodore. He writes; +he's a newspaper man." The roars of laughter, the drinks! "Ah, my boy, +that's good, but let me tell you one--one that I heard out in Louisville +the other day." A seedy, shabby ne'er-do-well of a song-writer maybe +stopping the successful author in the midst of a tale to borrow a +dollar. Another actor, shabby and distrait, reciting the sad tale of a +year's misfortunes. Everywhere my dear brother was called to, slapped on +the back, chuckled with. He was successful. One of his best songs was +the rage, he had an interest in a going musical concern, he could confer +benefits, favors. + +Ah, me! Ah, me! That one could be so great, and that it should not last +for ever and for ever! + +Another of his outstanding characteristics was his love of women, a +really amusing and at times ridiculous quality. He was always sighing +over the beauty, innocence, sweetness, this and that, of young +maidenhood in his songs, but in real life he seemed to desire and +attract quite a different type--the young and beautiful, it is true, but +also the old, the homely and the somewhat savage--a catholicity of taste +I could never quite stomach. It was "Paul dearest" here and "Paul +dearest" there, especially in his work in connection with the +music-house and the stage. In the former, popular ballad singers of +both sexes, some of the women most attractive and willful, were most +numerous, coming in daily from all parts of the world apparently to find +songs which they could sing on the American or even the English stage. +And it was a part of his duty, as a member of the firm and the one who +principally "handled" the so-called professional inquirers, to meet them +and see that they were shown what the catalogue contained. Occasionally +there was an aspiring female song-writer, often mere women visitors. + +Regardless, however, of whether they were young, old, attractive or +repulsive, male or female, I never knew any one whose manner was more +uniformly winsome or who seemed so easily to disarm or relax an +indifferent or irritated mood. He was positive sunshine, the same in +quality as that of a bright spring morning. His blue eyes focused +mellowly, his lips were tendrilled with smiles. He had a brisk, quick +manner, always somehow suggestive of my mother, who was never brisk. + +And how he fascinated them, the women! Their quite shameless daring +where he was concerned! Positively, in the face of it I used to wonder +what had become of all the vaunted and so-called "stabilizing morality" +of the world. None of it seemed to be in the possession of these women, +especially the young and beautiful. They were distant and freezing +enough to all who did not interest them, but let a personality such as +his come into view and they were all wiles, bending and alluring graces. +It was so obvious, this fascination he had for them and they for him, +that at times it took on a comic look. + +"Get onto the hit he's making," one would nudge another and remark. + +"Say, some tenderness, that!" This in reference to a smile or a melting +glance on the part of a female. + +"Nothing like a way with the ladies. Some baby, eh, boys?"--this +following the flick of a skirt and a backward-tossed glance perhaps, as +some noticeable beauty passed out. + +"No wonder he's cheerful," a sour and yet philosophic vaudevillian, who +was mostly out of a job and hung about the place for what free meals he +could obtain, once remarked to me in a heavy and morose undertone. "If +I had that many women crazy about me I'd be too." + +And the results of these encounters with beauty! Always he had something +most important to attend to, morning, noon or night, and whenever I +encountered him after some such statement "the important thing" was, of +course, a woman. As time went on and he began to look upon me as +something more than a thin, spindling, dyspeptic and disgruntled youth, +he began to wish to introduce me to some of his marvelous followers, and +then I could see how completely dependent upon beauty in the flesh he +was, how it made his life and world. + +One day as we were all sitting in the office, a large group of +vaudevillians, song-writers, singers, a chance remark gave rise to a +subsequent practical joke at Paul's expense. "I'll bet," observed some +one, "that if a strange man were to rush in here with a revolver and +say, 'Where's the man that seduced my wife?' Paul would be the first to +duck. He wouldn't wait to find out whether he was the one meant or not." + +Much laughter followed, and some thought. The subject of this banter +was, of course, not present at the time. There was one actor who hung +about there who was decidedly skillful in make-up. On more than one +occasion he had disguised himself there in the office for our benefit. +Coöperating with us, he disguised himself now as a very severe and even +savage-looking person of about thirty-five--side-burns, mustachios and +goatee. Then, with our aid, timing his arrival to an hour when Paul was +certain to be at his desk, he entered briskly and vigorously and, +looking about with a savage air, demanded, "Where is Paul Dresser?" + +The latter turned almost apprehensively, I thought, and at once seemed +by no means captivated by the man's looks. + +"That's Mr. Dresser there," explained one of the confederates most +willingly. + +The stranger turned and glared at him. "So you're the scoundrel that's +been running around with my wife, are you?" he demanded, approaching him +and placing one hand on his right hip. + +Paul made no effort to explain. It did not occur to him to deny the +allegation, although he had never seen the man before. With a rising +and backward movement he fell against the rail behind him, lifting both +hands in fright and exclaiming, "Why--why--Don't shoot!" His expression +was one of guilt, astonishment, perplexity. As some one afterwards said, +"As puzzled as if he was trying to discover which injured husband it +might be." The shout that went up--for it was agreed beforehand that the +joke must not be carried far--convinced him that a hoax had been +perpetrated, and the removal by the actor of his hat, sideburns and +mustache revealed the true character of the injured husband. At first +inclined to be angry and sulky, later on he saw the humor of his own +indefinite position in the matter and laughed as heartily as any. But I +fancy it developed a strain of uncertainty in him also in regard to +injured husbands, for he was never afterwards inclined to interest +himself in the much-married, and gave such wives a wide berth. + +But his great forte was of course his song-writing, and of this, before +I speak of anything else, I wish to have my say. It was a gift, quite a +compelling one, out of which, before he died, he had made thousands, all +spent in the manner described. Never having the least power to interpret +anything in a fine musical way, still he was always full of music of a +tender, sometimes sad, sometimes gay, kind--that of the ballad-maker of +a nation. He was constantly attempting to work them out of himself, not +quickly but slowly, brooding as it were over the piano wherever he might +find one and could have a little solitude, at times on the organ (his +favorite instrument), improvising various sad or wistful strains, some +of which he jotted down, others of which, having mastered, he strove to +fit words to. At such times he preferred to be alone or with some one +whose temperament in no way clashed but rather harmonized with his own. +Living with one of my sisters for a period of years, he had a room +specially fitted up for his composing work, a very small room for so +very large a man, within which he would shut himself and thrum a melody +by the hour, especially toward evening or at night. He seemed to have a +peculiar fondness for the twilight hour, and at this time might thrum +over one strain and another until over some particular one, a new song +usually, he would be in tears! + +And what pale little things they were really, mere bits and scraps of +sentiment and melodrama in story form, most asinine sighings over home +and mother and lost sweethearts and dead heroes such as never were in +real life, and yet with something about them, in the music at least, +which always appealed to me intensely and must have appealed to others, +since they attained so wide a circulation. They bespoke, as I always +felt, a wistful, seeking, uncertain temperament, tender and illusioned, +with no practical knowledge of any side of life, but full of a true +poetic feeling for the mystery and pathos of life and death, the wonder +of the waters, the stars, the flowers, accidents of life, success, +failure. Beginning with a song called "Wide Wings" (published by a small +retail music-house in Evansville, Indiana), and followed by such +national successes as "The Letter That Never Came," "I Believe It, For +My Mother Told Me So" (!), "The Convict and the Bird," "The Pardon Came +Too Late," "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," "The Blue and the Grey," +"On the Bowery," "On the Banks of the Wabash," and a number of others, +he was never content to rest and never really happy, I think, save when +composing. During this time, however, he was at different periods all +the things I have described--a black-face monologue artist, an end- and +at times a middle-man, a publisher, and so on. + +I recall being with him at the time he composed two of his most famous +successes: "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," and "On the Banks of the +Wabash," and noting his peculiar mood, almost amounting to a deep +depression which ended a little later in marked elation or satisfaction, +once he had succeeded in evoking something which really pleased him. + +The first of these songs must have followed an actual encounter with +some woman or girl whose life had seemingly if not actually gone to +wreck on the shore of love or passion. At any rate he came into the +office of his publishing house one gray November Sunday afternoon--it +was our custom to go there occasionally, a dozen or more congenial +souls, about as one might go to a club--and going into a small room +which was fitted up with a piano as a "try-out" room (professionals +desiring a song were frequently taught it in the office), he began +improvising, or rather repeating over and over, a certain strain which +was evidently in his mind. A little while later he came out and said, +"Listen to this, will you, Thee?" + +He played and sang the first verse and chorus. In the middle of the +latter, so moved was he by the sentiment of it, his voice broke and he +had to stop. Tears stood in his eyes and he wiped them away. A moment or +two later he was able to go through it without wavering and I thought it +charming for the type of thing it was intended to be. Later on (the +following spring) I was literally astonished to see how, after those +various efforts usually made by popular music publishers to make a song +"go"--advertising it in the _Clipper_ and _Mirror_, getting various +vaudeville singers to sing it, and so forth--it suddenly began to sell, +thousands upon thousands of copies being wrapped in great bundles under +my very eyes and shipped express or freight to various parts of the +country. Letters and telegrams, even, from all parts of the nation began +to pour in--"Forward express today ---- copies of Dresser's 'Tell Them +That You Saw Me.'" The firm was at once as busy as a bee-hive, on "easy +street" again, as the expression went, "in clover." Just before this +there had been a slight slump in its business and in my brother's +finances, but now once more he was his most engaging self. Every one in +that layer of life which understands or takes an interest in popular +songs and their creators knew of him and his song, his latest success. +He was, as it were, a revivified figure on Broadway. His barbers, +barkeepers, hotel clerks, theatrical box-office clerks, hotel managers +and the stars and singers of the street knew of it and him. Some +enterprising button firm got out a button on which the phrase was +printed. Comedians on the stage, newspaper paragraphers, his bank teller +or his tailor, even staid business men wishing to appear "up-to-date," +used it as a parting salute. The hand-organs, the bands and the theater +orchestras everywhere were using it. One could scarcely turn a corner or +go into a cheap music hall or variety house without hearing a parody of +it. It was wonderful, the enormous furore that it seemed to create, and +of course my dear brother was privileged to walk about smiling and +secure, his bank account large, his friends numerous, in the pink of +health, and gloating over the fact that he was a success, well known, a +genuine creator of popular songs. + +It was the same with "On the Banks of the Wabash," possibly an even +greater success, for it came eventually to be adopted by his native +State as its State song, and in that region streets and a town were +named after him. In an almost unintentional and unthinking way I had a +hand in that, and it has always cheered me to think that I had, although +I have never had the least talent for musical composition or song +versification. It was one of those delightful summer Sunday mornings +(1896, I believe), when I was still connected with his firm as editor of +the little monthly they were issuing, and he and myself, living with my +sister E----, that we had gone over to this office to do a little work. +I had a number of current magazines I wished to examine; he was always +wishing to compose something, to express that ebullient and emotional +soul of his in some way. + +"What do you suppose would make a good song these days?" he asked in an +idle, meditative mood, sitting at the piano and thrumming while I at a +nearby table was looking over my papers. "Why don't you give me an idea +for one once in a while, sport? You ought to be able to suggest +something." + +"Me?" I queried, almost contemptuously, I suppose. I could be very lofty +at times in regard to his work, much as I admired him--vain and yet more +or less dependent snip that I was. "I can't write those things. Why +don't you write something about a State or a river? Look at 'My Old +Kentucky Home,' 'Dixie,' 'Old Black Joe'--why don't you do something +like that, something that suggests a part of America? People like that. +Take Indiana--what's the matter with it--the Wabash River? It's as good +as any other river, and you were 'raised' beside it." + +I have to smile even now as I recall the apparent zest or feeling with +which all at once he seized on this. It seemed to appeal to him +immensely. "That's not a bad idea," he agreed, "but how would you go +about it? Why don't you write the words and let me put the music to +them? We'll do it together!" + +"But I can't," I replied. "I don't know how to do those things. You +write it. I'll help--maybe." + +After a little urging--I think the fineness of the morning had as much +to do with it as anything--I took a piece of paper and after meditating +a while scribbled in the most tentative manner imaginable the first +verse and chorus of that song almost as it was published. I think one or +two lines were too long or didn't rhyme, but eventually either he or I +hammered them into shape, but before that I rather shamefacedly turned +them over to him, for somehow I was convinced that this work was not for +me and that I was rather loftily and cynically attempting what my good +brother would do in all faith and feeling. + +He read it, insisted that it was fine and that I should do a second +verse, something with a story in it, a girl perhaps--a task which I +solemnly rejected. + +"No, you put it in. It's yours. I'm through." + +Some time later, disagreeing with the firm as to the conduct of the +magazine, I left--really was forced out--which raised a little feeling +on my part; not on his, I am sure, for I was very difficult to deal +with. + +Time passed and I heard nothing. I had been able to succeed in a +somewhat different realm, that of the magazine contributor, and although +I thought a great deal of my brother I paid very little attention to him +or his affairs, being much more concerned with my own. One spring night, +however, the following year, as I was lying in my bed trying to sleep, I +heard a quartette of boys in the distance approaching along the street +in which I had my room. I could not make out the words at first but the +melody at once attracted my attention. It was plaintive and compelling. +I listened, attracted, satisfied that it was some new popular success +that had "caught on." As they drew near my window I heard the words "On +the Banks of the Wabash" most mellifluously harmonized. + +I jumped up. They were my words! It was Paul's song! He had another +"hit" then--"On the Banks of the Wabash," and they were singing it in +the streets already! I leaned out of the window and listened as they +approached and passed on, their arms about each other's shoulders, the +whole song being sung in the still street, as it were, for my benefit. +The night was so warm, delicious. A full moon was overhead. I was young, +lonely, wistful. It brought back so much of my already spent youth that +I was ready to cry--for joy principally. In three more months it was +everywhere, in the papers, on the stage, on the street-organs, played by +orchestras, bands, whistled and sung in the streets. One day on Broadway +near the Marlborough I met my brother, gold-headed cane, silk shirt, a +smart summer suit, a gay straw hat. + +"Ah," I said, rather sarcastically, for I still felt peeved that he had +shown so little interest in my affairs at the time I was leaving. "On +the banks, I see." + +"On the banks," he replied cordially. "You turned the trick for me, +Thee, that time. What are you doing now? Why don't you ever come and see +me? I'm still your brother, you know. A part of that is really yours." + +"Cut that!" I replied most savagely. "I couldn't write a song like that +in a million years. You know I couldn't. The words are nothing." + +"Oh, all right. It's true, though, you know. Where do you keep yourself? +Why don't you come and see me? Why be down on me? I live here, you +know." He looked up at the then brisk and successful hotel. + +"Well, maybe I will some time," I said distantly, but with no particular +desire to mend matters, and we parted. + +There was, however, several years later, a sequel to all this and one so +characteristic of him that it has always remained in my mind as one of +the really beautiful things of life, and I might as well tell it here +and now. About five years later I had become so disappointed in +connection with my work and the unfriendly pressure of life that I had +suffered what subsequently appeared to have been a purely psychic +breakdown or relapse, not physical, but one which left me in no mood or +condition to go on with my work, or any work indeed in any form. Hope +had disappeared in a sad haze. I could apparently succeed in nothing, do +nothing mentally that was worth while. At the same time I had all but +retired from the world, living on less and less until finally I had +descended into those depths where I was in the grip of actual want, with +no place to which my pride would let me turn. I had always been too vain +and self-centered. Apparently there was but one door, and I was very +close to it. To match my purse I had retired to a still sorrier +neighborhood in B----, one of the poorest. I desired most of all to be +let alone, to be to myself. Still I could not be, for occasionally I +met people, and certain prospects and necessities drove me to various +publishing houses. One day as I was walking in some street near Broadway +(not on it) in New York, I ran into my brother quite by accident, he as +prosperous and comfortable as ever. I think I resented him more than +ever. He was of course astonished, shocked, as I could plainly see, by +my appearance and desire not to be seen. He demanded to know where I was +living, wanted me to come then and there and stay with him, wanted me to +tell him what the trouble was--all of which I rather stubbornly refused +to do and finally got away--not however without giving him my address, +though with the caution that I wanted nothing. + +The next morning he was there bright and early in a cab. He was the most +vehement, the most tender, the most disturbed creature I have ever seen. +He was like a distrait mother with a sick child more than anything else. + +"For God's sake," he commented when he saw me, "living in a place like +this--and at this number, too!" (130 it was, and he was superstitious as +to the thirteen.) "I knew there'd be a damned thirteen in it!" he +ejaculated. "And me over in New York! Jesus Christ! And you sick and run +down this way! I might have known. It's just like you. I haven't heard a +thing about you in I don't know when. Well, I'm not going back without +you, that's all. You've got to come with me now, see? Get your clothes, +that's all. The cabby'll take your trunk. I know just the place for you, +and you're going there tomorrow or next day or next week, but you're +coming with me now. My God, I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself, +and me feeling the way I do about you!" His eyes all but brimmed. + +I was so morose and despondent that, grateful as I felt, I could +scarcely take his mood at its value. I resented it, resented myself, my +state, life. + +"I can't," I said finally, or so I thought. "I won't. I don't need your +help. You don't owe me anything. You've done enough already." + +"Owe, hell!" he retorted. "Who's talking about 'owe'? And you my +brother--my own flesh and blood! Why, Thee, for that matter, I owe you +half of 'On the Banks,' and you know it. You can't go on living like +this. You're sick and discouraged. You can't fool me. Why, Thee, you're +a big man. You've just got to come out of this! Damn it--don't you +see--don't make me"--and he took out his handkerchief and wiped his +eyes. "You can't help yourself now, but you can later, don't you see? +Come on. Get your things. I'd never forgive myself if I didn't. You've +got to come, that's all. I won't go without you," and he began looking +about for my bag and trunk. + +I still protested weakly, but in vain. His affection was so overwhelming +and tender that it made me weak. I allowed him to help me get my things +together. Then he paid the bill, a small one, and on the way to the +hotel insisted on forcing a roll of bills on me, all that he had with +him. I was compelled at once, that same day or the next, to indulge in a +suit, hat, shoes, underwear, all that I needed. A bedroom adjoining his +suite at the hotel was taken, and for two days I lived there, later +accompanying him in his car to a famous sanitarium in Westchester, one +in charge of an old friend of his, a well-known ex-wrestler whose fame +for this sort of work was great. Here I was booked for six weeks, all +expenses paid, until I should "be on my feet again," as he expressed it. +Then he left, only to visit and revisit me until I returned to the city, +fairly well restored in nerves if not in health. + +But could one ever forget the mingled sadness and fervor of his original +appeal, the actual distress written in his face, the unlimited generosity +of his mood and deed as well as his unmerited self-denunciation? One +pictures such tenderness and concern as existing between parents and +children, but rarely between brothers. Here he was evincing the same +thing, as soft as love itself, and he a man of years and some affairs +and I an irritable, distrait and peevish soul. + +Take note, ye men of satire and spleen. All men are not selfish or hard. + +The final phase of course related to his untimely end. He was not quite +fifty-five when he died, and with a slightly more rugged quality of mind +he might have lasted to seventy. It was due really to the failure of his +firm (internal dissensions and rivalries, in no way due to him, however, +as I have been told) and what he foolishly deemed to be the end of his +financial and social glory. His was one of those simple, confiding, +non-hardy dispositions, warm and colorful but intensely sensitive, +easily and even fatally chilled by the icy blasts of human difficulty, +however slight. You have no doubt seen some animals, cats, dogs, birds, +of an especially affectionate nature, which when translated to a strange +or unfriendly climate soon droop and die. They have no spiritual +resources wherewith to contemplate what they do not understand or know. +Now his friends would leave him. Now that bright world of which he had +been a part would know him no more. It was pathetic, really. He emanated +a kind of fear. Depression and even despair seemed to hang about him +like a cloak. He could not shake it off. And yet, literally, in his case +there was nothing to fear, if he had only known. + +And yet two years before he did die, I knew he would. Fantastic as it +may seem, to be shut out from that bright world of which he deemed +himself an essential figure was all but unendurable. He had no ready +money now--not the same amount anyhow. He could not greet his old-time +friends so gayly, entertain so freely. Meeting him on Broadway shortly +after the failure and asking after his affairs, he talked of going into +business for himself as a publisher, but I realized that he could not. +He had neither the ability nor the talent for that, nor the heart. He +was not a business man but a song-writer and actor, had never been +anything but that. He tried in this new situation to write songs, but he +could not. They were too morbid. What he needed was some one to buoy him +up, a manager, a strong confidant of some kind, some one who would have +taken his affairs in hand and shown him what to do. As it was he had no +one. His friends, like winter-frightened birds, had already departed. +Personally, I was in no position to do anything at the time, being more +or less depressed myself and but slowly emerging from difficulties which +had held me for a number of years. + +About a year or so after he failed my sister E---- announced that Paul +had been there and that he was coming to live with her. He could not pay +so much then, being involved with all sorts of examinations of one kind +and another, but neither did he have to. Her memory was not short; she +gave him the fullness of her home. A few months later he was ostensibly +connected with another publishing house, but by then he was feeling so +poorly physically and was finding consolation probably in some drinking +and the caresses of those feminine friends who have, alas, only caresses +to offer. A little later I met a doctor who said, "Paul cannot live. He +has pernicious anæmia. He is breaking down inside and doesn't know it. +He can't last long. He's too depressed." I knew it was so and what the +remedy was--money and success once more, the petty pettings and flattery +of that little world of which he had been a part but which now was no +more for him. Of all those who had been so lavish in their greetings and +companionship earlier in his life, scarcely one, so far as I could make +out, found him in that retired world to which he was forced. One or two +pegged-out actors sought him and borrowed a little of the little that he +had; a few others came when he had nothing at all. His partners, +quarreling among themselves and feeling that they had done him an +injustice, remained religiously away. He found, as he often told my +sister, broken horse-shoes (a "bad sign"), met cross-eyed women, another +"bad sign," was pursued apparently by the inimical number thirteen--and +all these little straws depressed him horribly. Finally, being no longer +strong enough to be about, he took to his bed and remained there days at +a time, feeling well while in bed but weak when up. For a little while +he would go "downtown" to see this, that and the other person, but would +soon return. One day on coming back home he found one of his hats lying +on his bed, accidentally put there by one of the children, and according +to my sister, who was present at the time, he was all but petrified by +the sight of it. To him it was the death-sign. Some one had told him so +not long before!!! + +Then, not incuriously, seeing the affectional tie that had always held +us, he wanted to see me every day. He had a desire to talk to me about +his early life, the romance of it--maybe I could write a story some +time, tell something about him! (Best of brothers, here it is, a thin +little flower to lay at your feet!) To please him I made notes, although +I knew most of it. On these occasions he was always his old self, full +of ridiculous stories, quips and slight _mots_, all in his old and best +vein. He would soon be himself, he now insisted. + +Then one evening in late November, before I had time to call upon him +(I lived about a mile away), a hurry-call came from E----. He had +suddenly died at five in the afternoon; a blood-vessel had burst in the +head. When I arrived he was already cold in death, his soft hands folded +over his chest, his face turned to one side on the pillow, that +indescribable sweetness of expression about the eyes and mouth--the +empty shell of the beetle. There were tears, a band of reporters from +the papers, the next day obituary news articles, and after that a host +of friends and flowers, flowers, flowers. It is amazing what +satisfaction the average mind takes in standardized floral forms--broken +columns and gates ajar! + +Being ostensibly a Catholic, a Catholic sister-in-law and other +relatives insistently arranged for a solemn high requiem mass at the +church of one of his favorite rectors. All Broadway was there, more +flowers, his latest song read from the altar. Then there was a carriage +procession to a distant Catholic graveyard somewhere, his friend, the +rector of the church, officiating at the grave. It was so cold and +dreary there, horrible. Later on he was removed to Chicago. + +But still I think of him as not there or anywhere in the realm of space, +but on Broadway between Twenty-ninth and Forty-second Streets, the +spring and summer time at hand, the doors of the grills and bars of the +hotels open, the rout of actors and actresses ambling to and fro, his +own delicious presence dressed in his best, his "funny" stories, his +songs being ground out by the hand organs, his friends extending their +hands, clapping him on the shoulder, cackling over the latest idle yarn. + +Ah, Broadway! Broadway! And you, my good brother! Here is the story that +you wanted me to write, this little testimony to your memory, a pale, +pale symbol of all I think and feel. Where are the thousand yarns I have +laughed over, the music, the lights, the song? + +Peace, peace. So shall it soon be with all of us. It was a dream. It is. +I am. You are. And shall we grieve over or hark back to dreams? + + + + +_The County Doctor_ + + +How well I remember him--the tall, grave, slightly bent figure, the head +like Plato's or that of Diogenes, the mild, kindly, brown-gray eyes +peering, all too kindly, into the faces of dishonest men. In addition, +he wore long, full, brown-gray whiskers, a long gray overcoat (soiled +and patched toward the last) in winter, a soft black hat that hung +darkeningly over his eyes. But what a doctor! And how simple and often +non-drug-storey were so many of his remedies! + +"My son, your father is very sick. Now, I'll tell you what you can do +for me. You go out here along the Cheevertown road about a mile or two +and ask any farmer this side of the creek to let you have a good big +handful of peach sprigs--about so many, see? Say that Doctor Gridley +said he was to give them to you for him. Then, Mrs. ----, when he brings +them, you take a few, not more than seven or eight, and break them up +and steep them in hot water until you have an amber-colored tea. Give +Mr. ---- about three or four tea-spoonfuls of that every three or four +hours, and I hope we'll find he'll do better. This kidney case is +severe, I know, but he'll come around all right." + +And he did. My father had been very ill with gall stones, so weak at +last that we thought he was sure to die. The house was so somber at the +time. Over it hung an atmosphere of depression and fear, with pity for +the sufferer, and groans of distress on his part. And then there were +the solemn visits of the doctor, made pleasant by his wise, kindly humor +and his hopeful predictions and ending in this seemingly mild +prescription, which resulted, in this case, in a cure. He was seemingly +so remote at times, in reality so near, and wholly thoughtful. + +On this occasion I went out along the long, cold, country road of a +March evening. I was full of thoughts of his importance as a doctor. He +seemed so necessary to us, as he did to everybody. I knew nothing about +medicine, or how lives were saved, but I felt sure that he did and that +he would save my father in spite of his always conservative, +speculative, doubtful manner. What a wonderful man he must be to know +all these things--that peach sprouts, for instance, were an antidote to +the agony of gall stones! + +As I walked along, the simplicity of country life and its needs and +deprivations were impressed upon me, even though I was so young. So few +here could afford to pay for expensive prescriptions--ourselves +especially--and Dr. Gridley knew that and took it into consideration, so +rarely did he order anything from a drug-store. Most often, what he +prescribed he took out of a case, compounded, as it were, in our +presence. + +A brisk wind had fluttered snow in the morning, and now the ground was +white, with a sinking red sun shining across it, a sense of spring in +the air. Being unknown to these farmers, I wondered if any one of them +would really cut me a double handful of fresh young peach sprigs or +suckers from their young trees, as the doctor had said. Did they really +know him? Some one along the road--a home-driving farmer--told me of an +old Mr. Mills who had a five-acre orchard farther on. In a little while +I came to his door and was confronted by a thin, gaunt, bespectacled +woman, who called back to a man inside: + +"Henry, here's a little boy says Dr. Gridley said you were to cut him a +double handful of peach sprigs." + +Henry now came forward--a tall, bony farmer in high boots and an old +wool-lined leather coat, and a cap of wool. + +"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he?" he observed, eyeing me most critically. + +"Yes, sir." + +"What's the matter? What does he want with 'em? Do ya know?" + +"Yes, sir. My father's sick with kidney trouble, and Dr. Gridley said I +was to come out here." + +"Oh, all right. Wait'll I git my big knife," and back he went, returning +later with a large horn-handled knife, which he opened. He preceded me +out through the barn lot and into the orchard beyond. + +"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he, huh?" he asked as he went. "Well, I guess +we all have ter comply with whatever the doctor orders. We're all apt +ter git sick now an' ag'in," and talking trivialities of a like +character, he cut me an armful, saying: "I might as well give ya too +many as too few. Peach sprigs! Now, I never heered o' them bein' good +fer anythin', but I reckon the doctor knows what he's talkin' about. He +usually does--or that's what we think around here, anyhow." + +In the dusk I trudged home with my armful, my fingers cold. The next +morning, the tea having been brewed and taken, my father was better. In +a week or two he was up and around, as well as ever, and during this +time he commented on the efficacy of this tea, which was something new +to him, a strange remedy, and which caused the whole incident to be +impressed upon my mind. The doctor had told him that at any time in the +future if he was so troubled and could get fresh young peach sprigs for +a tea, he would find that it would help him. And the drug expense was +exactly nothing. + +In later years I came to know him better--this thoughtful, crusty, +kindly soul, always so ready to come at all hours when his cases +permitted, so anxious to see that his patients were not taxed beyond +their financial resources. + +I remember once, one of my sisters being very ill, so ill that we were +beginning to fear death, one and another of us had to take turn sitting +up with her at night to help and to give her her medicine regularly. +During one of the nights when I was sitting up, dozing, reading and +listening to the wind in the pines outside, she seemed persistently to +get worse. Her fever rose, and she complained of such aches and pains +that finally I had to go and call my mother. A consultation with her +finally resulted in my being sent for Dr. Gridley--no telephones in +those days--to tell him, although she hesitated so to do, how sister was +and ask him if he would not come. + +I was only fourteen. The street along which I had to go was quite dark, +the town lights being put out at two a.m., for reasons of thrift +perhaps. There was a high wind that cried in the trees. My shoes on the +board walks, here and there, sounded like the thuds of a giant. I recall +progressing in a shivery ghost-like sort of way, expecting at any step +to encounter goblins of the most approved form, until finally the +well-known outlines of the house of the doctor on the main +street--yellow, many-roomed, a wide porch in front--came, because of a +very small lamp in a very large glass case to one side of the door, into +view. + +Here I knocked, and then knocked more. No reply. I then made a still +more forceful effort. Finally, through one of the red glass panels which +graced either side of the door I saw the lengthy figure of the doctor, +arrayed in a long white nightshirt, and carrying a small glass +hand-lamp, come into view at the head of the stairs. His feet were in +gray flannel slippers, and his whiskers stuck out most grotesquely. + +"Wait! Wait!" I heard him call. "I'll be there! I'm coming! Don't make +such a fuss! It seems as though I never get a real good night's rest any +more." + +He came on, opened the door, and looked out. + +"Well," he demanded, a little fussily for him, "what's the matter now?" + +"Doctor," I began, and proceeded to explain all my sister's aches and +pains, winding up by saying that my mother said "wouldn't he please come +at once?" + +"Your mother!" he grumbled. "What can I do if I do come down? Not a +thing. Feel her pulse and tell her she's all right! That's every bit I +can do. Your mother knows that as well as I do. That disease has to run +its course." He looked at me as though I were to blame, then added, +"Calling me up this way at three in the morning!" + +"But she's in such pain, Doctor," I complained. + +"All right--everybody has to have a little pain! You can't be sick +without it." + +"I know," I replied disconsolately, believing sincerely that my sister +might die, "but she's in such awful pain, Doctor." + +"Well, go on," he replied, turning up the light. "I know it's all +foolishness, but I'll come. You go back and tell your mother that I'll +be there in a little bit, but it's all nonsense, nonsense. She isn't a +bit sicker than I am right this minute, not a bit--" and he closed the +door and went upstairs. + +To me this seemed just the least bit harsh for the doctor, although, as +I reasoned afterwards, he was probably half-asleep and tired--dragged +out of his bed, possibly, once or twice before in the same night. As I +returned home I felt even more fearful, for once, as I was passing a +woodshed which I could not see, a rooster suddenly flapped his wings and +crowed--a sound which caused me to leap all of nineteen feet Fahrenheit, +sidewise. Then, as I walked along a fence which later by day I saw had +a comfortable resting board on top, two lambent golden eyes surveyed me +out of inky darkness! Great Hamlet's father, how my heart sank! Once +more I leaped to the cloddy roadway and seizing a cobblestone or hunk of +mud hurled it with all my might, and quite involuntarily. Then I ran +until I fell into a crossing ditch. It was an amazing--almost a +tragic--experience, then. + +In due time the doctor came--and I never quite forgave him for not +making me wait and go back with him. He was too sleepy, though, I am +sure. The seizure was apparently nothing which could not have waited +until morning. However, he left some new cure, possibly clear water in a +bottle, and left again. But the night trials of doctors and their +patients, especially in the country, was fixed in my mind then. + +One of the next interesting impressions I gained of the doctor was that +of seeing him hobbling about our town on crutches, his medicine case +held in one hand along with a crutch, visiting his patients, when he +himself appeared to be so ill as to require medical attention. He was +suffering from some severe form of rheumatism at the time, but this, +apparently, was not sufficient to keep him from those who in his +judgment probably needed his services more than he did his rest. + +One of the truly interesting things about Dr. Gridley, as I early began +to note, was his profound indifference to what might be called his +material welfare. Why, I have often asked myself, should a man of so +much genuine ability choose to ignore the gauds and plaudits and +pleasures of the gayer, smarter world outside, in which he might readily +have shone, to thus devote himself and all his talents to a simple rural +community? That he was an extremely able physician there was not the +slightest doubt. Other physicians from other towns about, and even so +far away as Chicago, were repeatedly calling him into consultation. That +he knew life--much of it--as only a priest or a doctor of true wisdom +can know it, was evident from many incidents, of which I subsequently +learned, and yet here he was, hidden away in this simple rural world, +surrounded probably by his Rabelais, his Burton, his Frazer, and his +Montaigne, and dreaming what dreams--thinking what thoughts? + +"Say," an old patient, friend and neighbor of his once remarked to me +years later, when we had both moved to another city, "one of the +sweetest recollections of my life is to picture old Dr. Gridley, Ed +Boulder who used to run the hotel over at Sleichertown, Congressman +Barr, and Judge Morgan, sitting out in front of Boulder's hotel over +there of a summer's evening and haw-hawing over the funny stories which +Boulder was always telling while they were waiting for the Pierceton +bus. Dr. Gridley's laugh, so soft to begin with, but growing in force +and volume until it was a jolly shout. And the green fields all around. +And Mrs. Calder's drove of geese over the way honking, too, as geese +will whenever people begin to talk or laugh. It was delicious." + +One of the most significant traits of his character, as may be inferred, +was his absolute indifference to actual money, the very cash, one would +think, with which he needed to buy his own supplies. During his life, +his wife, who was a thrifty, hard-working woman, used frequently, as I +learned after, to comment on this, but to no result. He could not be +made to charge where he did not need to, nor collect where he knew that +the people were poor. + +"Once he became angry at my uncle," his daughter once told me, "because +he offered to collect for him for three per cent, dunning his patients +for their debts, and another time he dissolved a partnership with a +local physician who insisted that he ought to be more careful to charge +and collect." + +This generosity on his part frequently led to some very interesting +results. On one occasion, for instance, when he was sitting out on his +front lawn in Warsaw, smoking, his chair tilted back against a tree and +his legs crossed in the fashion known as "jack-knife," a poorly dressed +farmer without a coat came up and after saluting the doctor began to +explain that his wife was sick and that he had come to get the doctor's +advice. He seemed quite disturbed, and every now and then wiped his +brow, while the doctor listened with an occasional question or gently +accented "uh-huh, uh-huh," until the story was all told and the advice +ready to be received. When this was given in a low, reassuring tone, he +took from his pocket his little book of blanks and wrote out a +prescription, which he gave to the man and began talking again. The +latter took out a silver dollar and handed it to the doctor, who turned +it idly between his fingers for a few seconds, then searched in his +pocket for a mate to it, and playing with them a while as he talked, +finally handed back the dollar to the farmer. + +"You take that," he said pleasantly, "and go down to the drug-store and +have the prescription filled. I think your wife will be all right." + +When he had gone the doctor sat there a long time, meditatively puffing +the smoke from his cob pipe, and turning his own dollar in his hand. +After a time he looked up at his daughter, who was present, and said: + +"I was just thinking what a short time it took me to write that +prescription, and what a long time it took him to earn that dollar. I +guess he needs the dollar more than I do." + +In the same spirit of this generosity he was once sitting in his yard of +a summer day, sunning himself and smoking, a favorite pleasure of his, +when two men rode up to his gate from opposite directions and +simultaneously hailed him. He arose and went out to meet them. His wife, +who was sewing just inside the hall as she usually was when her husband +was outside, leaned forward in her chair to see through the door, and +took note of who they were. Both were men in whose families the doctor +had practiced for years. One was a prosperous farmer who always paid his +"doctor's bills," and the other was a miller, a "ne'er-do-well," with a +delicate wife and a family of sickly children, who never asked for a +statement and never had one sent him, and who only occasionally and at +great intervals handed the doctor a dollar in payment for his many +services. Both men talked to him a little while and then rode away, +after which he returned to the house, calling to Enoch, his old negro +servant, to bring his horse, and then went into his study to prepare his +medicine case. Mrs. Gridley, who was naturally interested in his +financial welfare, and who at times had to plead with him not to let his +generosity stand wholly in the way of his judgment, inquired of him as +he came out: + +"Now, Doctor, which of those two men are you going with?" + +"Why, Miss Susan," he replied--a favorite manner of addressing his wife, +of whom he was very fond--the note of apology in his voice showing that +he knew very well what she was thinking about, "I'm going with W----." + +"I don't think that is right," she replied with mild emphasis. "Mr. +N---- is as good a friend of yours as W----, and he always pays you." + +"Now, Miss Susan," he returned coaxingly, "N---- can go to Pierceton and +get Doctor Bodine, and W---- can't get any one but me. You surely +wouldn't have him left without any one?" + +What the effect of such an attitude was may be judged when it is related +that there was scarcely a man, woman or child in the entire county who +had not at some time or other been directly or indirectly benefited by +the kindly wisdom of this Samaritan. He was nearly everybody's doctor, +in the last extremity, either as consultant or otherwise. Everywhere he +went, by every lane and hollow that he fared, he was constantly being +called into service by some one--the well-to-do as well as by those who +had nothing; and in both cases he was equally keen to give the same +degree of painstaking skill, finding something in the very poor--a +humanness possibly--which detained and fascinated him and made him a +little more prone to linger at their bedsides than anywhere else. + +"He was always doing it," said his daughter, "and my mother used to +worry over it. She declared that of all things earthly, papa loved an +unfortunate person; the greater the misfortune, the greater his care." + +In illustration of his easy and practically controlling attitude toward +the very well-to-do, who were his patients also, let me narrate this: + +In our town was an old and very distinguished colonel, comparatively +rich and very crotchety, who had won considerable honors for himself +during the Civil War. He was a figure, and very much looked up to by +all. People were, in the main, overawed by and highly respectful of him. +A remote, stern soul, yet to Dr. Gridley he was little more than a child +or schoolboy--one to be bossed on occasion and made to behave. Plainly, +the doctor had the conviction that all of us, great and small, were very +much in need of sympathy and care, and that he, the doctor, was the one +to provide it. At any rate, he had known the colonel long and well, and +in a public place--at the principal street corner, for instance, or in +the postoffice where we school children were wont to congregate--it was +not at all surprising to hear him take the old colonel, who was quite +frail now, to task for not taking better care of himself--coming out, +for instance, without his rubbers, or his overcoat, in wet or chilly +weather, and in other ways misbehaving himself. + +"There you go again!" I once heard him call to the colonel, as the +latter was leaving the postoffice and he was entering (there was no +rural free delivery in those days) "--walking around without your +rubbers, and no overcoat! You want to get me up in the night again, do +you?" + +"It didn't seem so damp when I started out, Doctor." + +"And of course it was too much trouble to go back! You wouldn't feel +that way if you couldn't come out at all, perhaps!" + +"I'll put 'em on! I'll put 'em on! Only, please don't fuss, Doctor. I'll +go back to the house and put 'em on." + +The doctor merely stared after him quizzically, like an old +schoolmaster, as the rather stately colonel marched off to his home. + +Another of his patients was an old Mr. Pegram, a large, kind, +big-hearted man, who was very fond of the doctor, but who had an +exceedingly irascible temper. He was the victim of some obscure malady +which medicine apparently failed at times to relieve. This seemed to +increase his irritability a great deal, so much so that the doctor had +at last discovered that if he could get Mr. Pegram angry enough the +malady would occasionally disappear. This seemed at times as good a +remedy as any, and in consequence he was occasionally inclined to try +it. + +Among other things, this old gentleman was the possessor of a handsome +buffalo robe, which, according to a story that long went the rounds +locally, he once promised to leave to the doctor when he died. At the +same time all reference to death both pained and irritated him +greatly--a fact which the doctor knew. Finding the old gentleman in a +most complaining and hopeless mood one night, not to be dealt with, +indeed, in any reasoning way, the doctor returned to his home, and early +the next day, without any other word, sent old Enoch, his negro +servant, around to get, as he said, the buffalo robe--a request which +would indicate, of course that the doctor had concluded that old Mr. +Pegram had died, or was about to--a hopeless case. When ushered into the +latter's presence, Enoch began innocently enough: + +"De doctah say dat now dat Mr. Peg'am hab subspired, he was to hab dat +ba--ba--buffalo robe." + +"What!" shouted the old irascible, rising and clambering out of his bed. +"What's that? Buffalo robe! By God! You go back and tell old Doc Gridley +that I ain't dead yet by a damned sight! No, sir!" and forthwith he +dressed himself and was out and around the same day. + +Persons who met the doctor, as I heard years later from his daughter and +from others who had known him, were frequently asking him, just in a +social way, what to do for certain ailments, and he would as often reply +in a humorous and half-vagrom manner that if he were in their place he +would do or take so-and-so, not meaning really that they should do so +but merely to get rid of them, and indicating of course any one of a +hundred harmless things--never one that could really have proved +injurious to any one. Once, according to his daughter, as he was driving +into town from somewhere, he met a man on a lumber wagon whom he +scarcely knew but who knew him well enough, who stopped and showed him a +sore on the upper tip of his ear, asking him what he would do for it. + +"Oh," said the doctor, idly and jestingly, "I think I'd cut it off." + +"Yes," said the man, very much pleased with this free advice, "with +what, Doctor?" + +"Oh, I think I'd use a pair of scissors," he replied amusedly, scarcely +assuming that his jesting would be taken seriously. + +The driver jogged on and the doctor did not see or hear of him again +until some two months later when, meeting him in the street, the driver +smilingly approached him and enthusiastically exclaimed: + +"Well, Doc, you see I cut 'er off, and she got well!" + +"Yes," replied the doctor solemnly, not remembering anything about the +case but willing to appear interested, "--what was it you cut off?" + +"Why, that sore on my ear up here, you know. You told me to cut it off, +and I did." + +"Yes," said the doctor, becoming curious and a little amazed, "with +what?" + +"Why, with a pair of scissors, Doc, just like you said." + +The doctor stared at him, the whole thing coming gradually back to him. + +"But didn't you have some trouble in cutting it off?" he inquired, in +disturbed astonishment. + +"No, no," said the driver, "I made 'em sharp, all right. I spent two +days whettin' 'em up, and Bob Hart cut 'er off fer me. They cut, all +right, but I tell you she hurt when she went through the gristle." + +He smiled in pleased remembrance of his surgical operation, and the +doctor smiled also, but, according to his daughter, he decided to give +no more idle advice of that kind. + +In the school which I attended for a period were two of his sons, Fred +and Walter. Both were very fond of birds, and kept a number of one kind +or another about their home--not in cages, as some might, but inveigled +and trained as pets, and living in the various open bird-houses fixed +about the yard on poles. The doctor himself was intensely fond of these +and all other birds, and, according to his daughter and his sons, always +anticipated the spring return of many of diem--black-birds, blue jays, +wrens and robins--with a hopeful, "Well, now, they'll soon be here +again." During the summer, according to her, he was always an interested +spectator of their gyrations in the air, and when evening would come was +never so happy as when standing and staring at them gathering from all +directions to their roosts in the trees or the birdhouses. Similarly, +when the fall approached and they would begin their long flight +Southward, he would sometimes stand and scan the sky and trees in vain +for a final glimpse of his feathered friends, and when in the gathering +darkness they were no longer to be seen would turn away toward the +house, saying sadly to his daughter: + +"Well, Dollie, the blackbirds are all gone. I am sorry. I like to see +them, and I am always sorry to lose them, and sorry to know that winter +is coming." + +"Usually about the 25th or 26th of December," his daughter once +quaintly added to me, "he would note that the days were beginning to get +longer, and cheer up, as spring was certain to follow soon and bring +them all back again." + +One of the most interesting of his bird friendships was that which +existed between him and a pair of crows he and his sons had raised, +"Jim" and "Zip" by name. These crows came to know him well, and were +finally so humanly attached to him that, according to his family, they +would often fly two or three miles out of town to meet him and would +then accompany him, lighting on fences and trees by the way, and cawing +to him as he drove along! Both of them were great thieves, and would +steal anything from a bit of thread up to a sewing machine, if they +could have carried it. They were always walking about the house, +cheerfully looking for what they might devour, and on one occasion +carried off a set of spoons, which they hid about the eaves of the +house. On another occasion they stole a half dozen tin-handled pocket +knives, which the doctor had bought for the children and which the crows +seemed to like for the brightness of the metal. They were recovered once +by the children, stolen again by the crows, recovered once more, and so +on, until at last it was a question as to which were the rightful +owners. + +The doctor was sitting in front of a store one day in the business-heart +of town, where also he liked to linger in fair weather, when suddenly he +saw one of his crows flying high overhead and bearing something in its +beak, which it dropped into the road scarcely a hundred feet away. +Interested to see what it was the bird had been carrying, he went to the +spot where he saw it fall and found one of the tin-handled knives, which +the crow had been carrying to a safe hiding-place. He picked it up and +when he returned home that night asked one of his boys if he could lend +him a knife. + +"No," said his son. "Our knives are all lost. The crows took them." + +"I knew that," said the doctor sweetly, "and so, when I met Zip uptown +just now, I asked her to lend me one, and she did. Here it is." + +He pulled out the knife and handed it to the boy and, when the latter +expressed doubt and wonder, insisted that the crow had loaned it to him; +a joke which ended in his always asking one of the children to run and +ask Zip if she would lend him a knife, whenever he chanced to need one. + +Although a sad man at times, as I understood, the doctor was not a +pessimist, and in many ways, both by practical jokes and the humoring of +odd characters, sought relief from the intense emotional strain which +the large practice of his profession put upon him. One of his greatest +reliefs was the carrying out of these little practical jokes, and he had +been known to go to much trouble at times to work up a good laugh. + +One of the, to him, richest jokes, and one which he always enjoyed +telling, related to a country singing school which was located in the +neighborhood of Pierceton, in which reading (the alphabet, at least), +spelling, geography, arithmetic, rules of grammar, and so forth, were +still taught by a process of singing. The method adopted in this form of +education was to have the scholar memorize all knowledge by singing it. +Thus in the case of geography the students would sing the name of the +country, then its mountains, then the highest peaks, cities, rivers, +principal points of interest, and so on, until all information about +that particular country had been duly memorized in song or rhyme. +Occasionally they would have a school-day on which the local dignitaries +would be invited, and on a number of these occasions the doctor was, for +amusement's sake merely, a grave and reverent listener. On one occasion, +however, he was merely passing the school, when hearing "Africa-a, +Africa-a, mountains of the moo-oo-oon" drawled out of the windows, he +decided to stop in and listen a while. Having tethered his horse outside +he knocked at the door and was received by the little English singing +teacher who, after showing him to a seat, immediately called upon the +class for an exhibition of their finest wisdom. When they had finished +this the teacher turned to him and inquired if there was anything he +would especially like them to sing. + +"No," said the doctor gravely, and no doubt with an amused twinkle in +his eye, "I had thought of asking you to sing the Rocky Mountains, but +as the mountains are so high, and the amount of time I have so limited, +I have decided that perhaps it will be asking too much." + +"Oh, not at all, not at all" airily replied the teacher, and turning to +his class, he exclaimed with a very superior smile: "Now, ladies and +gentlemen, 'ere is a scientific gentleman who thinks it is 'arder to +sing of _'igh_ mountings than it is to sing of _low_ mountings," and +forthwith the class began to demonstrate that in respect to vocalization +there was no difference at all. + +Only those, however, who knew Dr. Gridley in the sickroom, and knew him +well, ever discovered the really finest trait of his character: a keen, +unshielded sensibility to and sympathy for all human suffering, that +could not bear to inflict the slightest additional pain. He was really, +in the main, a man of soft tones and unctuous laughter, of gentle touch +and gentle step, and a devotion to duty that carried him far beyond his +interests or his personal well-being. One of his chiefest oppositions, +according to his daughter, was to telling the friends or relatives of +any stricken person that there was no hope. Instead, he would use every +delicate shade of phrasing and tone in imparting the fateful words, in +order if possible to give less pain. "I remember in the case of my +father," said one of his friends, "when the last day came. Knowing the +end was near, he was compelled to make some preliminary discouraging +remark, and I bent over with my ear against my father's chest and said, +'Doctor Gridley, the disease is under control, I think. I can hear the +respiration to the bottom of the lungs.' + +"'Yes, yes,' he answered me sadly, but now with an implication which +could by no means be misunderstood, 'it is nearly always so. The failure +is in the recuperative energy. Vitality runs too low.' It meant from the +first, 'Your father will not live.'" + +In the case of a little child with meningitis, the same person was sent +to him to ask what of the child--better or worse. His answer was: "He is +passing as free from pain as ever I knew a case of this kind." + +In yet another case of a dying woman, one of her relatives inquired: +"Doctor, is this case dangerous?" "Not in the nature of the malady, +madam," was his sad and sympathetic reply, "but fatal in the condition +it meets. Hope is broken. There is nothing to resist the damage." + +One of his patients was a farmer who lived in an old-time log house a +few miles out from Silver Lake, who while working about his barn met +with a very serious accident which involved a possible injury to the +gall bladder. The main accident was not in itself fatal, but the +possible injury to the gall bladder was, and this, if it existed, would +show as a yellow tint in the eyeball on the tenth day. Fearing the +danger of this, he communicated the possibility to the relatives, saying +that he could do little after that time but that he would come just the +same and make the patient as comfortable as possible. For nine days he +came, sitting by the bedside and whiling away many a weary hour for the +sufferer, until the tenth morning. On this day, according to his +daughter, who had it from the sick man's relatives, his face but ill +concealed the anxiety he felt. Coming up to the door, he entered just +far enough to pretend to reach for a water bucket. With this in his hand +he turned and gave one long keen look in the eye of the sick man, then +walked down the yard to a chair under a tree some distance from the +house, where he sat, drooping and apparently grieved, the certainty of +the death of the patient affecting him as much as if he were his own +child. + +"There was no need for words," said one of them. "Every curve and droop +of his figure, as he walked slowly and with bent head, told all of us +who saw him that hope was gone and that death had won the victory." + +One of his perpetual charges, as I learned later, was a poor old +unfortunate by the name of Id Logan, who had a little cabin and an acre +of ground a half dozen miles west of Warsaw, and who existed from year +to year heaven only knows how. + +Id never had any money, friends or relatives, and was always troubled +with illness or hunger in some form or other, and yet the doctor always +spoke of him sympathetically as "Poor old Id Logan" and would often call +out there on his rounds to see how he was getting along. One snowy +winter's evening as he was traveling homeward after a long day's ride, +he chanced to recollect the fact that he was in the neighborhood of his +worthless old charge, and fancying that he might be in need of something +turned his horse into the lane which led up to the door. When he reached +the house he noticed that no smoke was coming from the chimney and that +the windows were slightly rimmed with frost, as if there were no heat +within. Rapping at the door and receiving no response, he opened it and +went in. There he found his old charge, sick and wandering in his mind, +lying upon a broken-down bed and moaning in pain. There was no fire in +the fireplace. The coverings with which the bed was fitted were but two +or three old worn and faded quilts, and the snow was sifting in badly +through the cracks where the chinking had fallen out between the logs, +and under the doors and windows. + +Going up to the sufferer and finding that some one of his old, and to +the doctor well-known, maladies had at last secured a fatal grip upon +him, he first administered a tonic which he knew would give him as much +strength as possible, and then went out into the yard, where, after +putting up his horse, he gathered chips and wood from under the snow and +built a roaring fire. Having done this, he put on the kettle, trimmed +the lamp, and after preparing such stimulants as the patient could +stand, took his place at the bedside, where he remained the whole night +long, keeping the fire going and the patient as comfortable as possible. +Toward morning the sufferer died and when the sun was well up he finally +returned to his family, who anxiously solicited him as to his +whereabouts. + +"I was with Id Logan," he said. + +"What's ailing him now?" his daughter inquired. + +"Nothing now," he returned. "It was only last night," and for years +afterward he commented on the death of "poor old Id," saying always at +the conclusion of his remarks that it must be a dreadful thing to be +sick and die without friends. + +His love for his old friends and familiar objects was striking, and he +could no more bear to see an old friend move away than he could to lose +one of his patients. One of his oldest friends was a fine old Christian +lady by the name of Weeks, who lived down in Louter Creek bottoms and in +whose household he had practiced for nearly fifty years. During the +latter part of his life, however, this family began to break up, and +finally when there was no one left but the mother she decided to move +over into Whitley County, where she could stay with her daughter. Just +before going, however, she expressed a wish to see Doctor Gridley, and +he called in upon her. A little dinner had been prepared in honor of +his coming. After it was over and the old times were fully discussed he +was about to take his leave when Mrs. Weeks disappeared from the room +and then returned, bearing upon her arm a beautiful yarn spread which +she held out before her and, in her nervous, feeble way getting the +attention of the little audience, said: + +"Doctor, I am going up to Whitley now to live with my daughter, and I +don't suppose I will get to see you very often any more. Like myself, +you are getting old, and it will be too far for you to come. But I want +to give you this spread that I have woven with my own hands since I have +been sixty years of age. It isn't very much, but it is meant for a token +of the love and esteem I bear you, and in remembrance of all that you +have done for me and mine." + +Her eyes were wet and her voice quivering as she brought it forward. The +doctor, who had been wholly taken by surprise by this kindly +manifestation of regard, had arisen during her impromptu address and now +stood before her, dignified and emotionally grave, his own eyes wet with +tears of appreciation. + +Balancing the homely gift upon his extended hands, he waited until the +force of his own sentiment had slightly subsided, when he replied: + +"Madam, I appreciate this gift with which you have chosen to remember me +as much as I honor the sentiment which has produced it. There are, I +know, threads of feeling woven into it stronger than any cords of wool, +and more enduring than all the fabrics of this world. I have been your +physician now for fifty years, and have been a witness of your joys and +sorrows. But, as much as I esteem you, and as highly as I prize this +token of your regard, I can accept it but upon one condition, and that +is, Mrs. Weeks, that you promise me that no matter how dark the night, +how stormy the sky, or how deep the waters that intervene, you will not +fail to send for me in your hour of need. It is both my privilege and my +pleasure, and I should not rest content unless I knew it were so." + +When the old lady had promised, he took his spread and going out to his +horse, rode away to his own home, where he related this incident, and +ended with, "Now I want this put on my bed." + +His daughter, who lovingly humored his every whim, immediately complied +with his wish, and from that day to the hour of his death the spread was +never out of his service. + +One of the most pleasing incidents to me was one which related to his +last illness and death. Always, during his later years, when he felt the +least bit ill, he refused to prescribe for himself, saying that a +doctor, if he knew anything at all, was never such a fool as to take any +of his own medicine. Instead, and in sequence to this humorous attitude, +he would always send for one of the younger men of the vicinity who were +beginning to practice here, one, for instance, who having other merits +needed some assurance and a bit of superior recognition occasionally to +help him along. On this occasion he called in a very sober young doctor, +one who was greatly admired but had very little practice as yet, and +saying, "Doctor, I'm sick today," lay back on his bed and waited for +further developments. + +The latter, owing to Dr. Gridley's great repute and knowledge, was very +much flustered, so much so that he scarcely knew what to do. + +"Well, Doctor," he finally said, after looking at his tongue, taking his +pulse and feeling his forehead, "you're really a better judge of your +own condition than I am, I'm sure. What do you think I ought to give +you?" + +"Now, Doctor," replied Gridley sweetly, "I'm your patient, and you're my +doctor. I wouldn't prescribe for myself for anything in the world, and +I'm going to take whatever you give me. That's why I called you in. Now, +you just give me what you think my condition requires, and I'll take +it." + +The young doctor, meditating on all that was new or faddistic, decided +at last that just for variation's sake he would give the doctor +something of which he had only recently heard, a sample of which he had +with him and which had been acclaimed in the medical papers as very +effective. Without asking the doctor whether he had ever heard of it, or +what he thought, he merely prescribed it. + +"Well, now, I like that," commented Gridley solemnly. "I never heard of +that before in my life, but it sounds plausible. I'll take it, and we'll +see. What's more, I like a young doctor like yourself who thinks up ways +of his own--" and, according to his daughter, he did take it, and was +helped, saying always that what young doctors needed to do was to keep +abreast of the latest medical developments, that medicine was changing, +and perhaps it was just as well that old doctors died! He was so old and +feeble, however, that he did not long survive, and when the time came +was really glad to go. + +One of the sweetest and most interesting of all his mental phases was, +as I have reason to know, his attitude toward the problem of suffering +and death, an attitude so full of the human qualities of wonder, +sympathy, tenderness, and trust, that he could scarcely view them +without exhibiting the emotion he felt. He was a constant student of the +phenomena of dissolution, and in one instance calmly declared it as his +belief that when a man was dead he was dead and that was the end of him, +consciously. At other times he modified his view to one of an almost +prayerful hope, and in reading Emily Brontë's somewhat morbid story of +"Wuthering Heights," his copy of which I long had in my possession, I +noted that he had annotated numerous passages relative to death and a +future life with interesting comments of his own. To one of these +passages, which reads: + + "I don't know if it be a peculiarity with me, but I am seldom + otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, + provided no frenzied or despairing mourner shares the duty with + me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I + feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the + eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its + duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness," + +he had added on the margin: + + "How often I have felt this very emotion. How natural I know it to + be. And what a consolation in the thought!" + +Writing a final prescription for a young clergyman who was dying, and +for whom he had been most tenderly solicitous, he added to the list of +drugs he had written in Latin, the lines: + + "In life's closing hour, when the trembling soul flies + And death stills the heart's last emotion, + Oh, then may the angel of mercy arise + Like a star on eternity's ocean!" + +When he himself was upon his death-bed he greeted his old friend Colonel +Dyer--he of the absent overcoat and over-shoes--with: + +"Dyer, I'm almost gone. I am in the shadow of death. I am standing upon +the very brink. I cannot see clearly, I cannot speak coherently, the +film of death obstructs my sight. I know what this means. It is the end, +but all is well with me. I have no fear. I have said and done things +that would have been better left unsaid and undone, but I have never +willfully wronged a man in my life. I have no concern for myself. I am +concerned only for those I leave behind. I never saved money, and I die +as poor as when I was born. We do not know what there is in the future +now shut out from our view by a very thin veil. It seems to me there is +a hand somewhere that will lead us safely across, but I cannot tell. No +one can tell." + +This interesting speech, made scarcely a day before he closed his eyes +in death, was typical of his whole generous, trustful, philosophical +point of view. + +"If there be green fields and placid waters beyond the river that he so +calmly crossed," so ran an editorial in the local county paper edited by +one of his most ardent admirers, "reserved for those who believe in and +practice upon the principle of 'Do unto others as you would have them do +unto you,' then this Samaritan of the medical profession is safe from +all harm. If there be no consciousness, but only a mingling of that +which was gentleness and tenderness here with the earth and the waters, +then the greenness of the one and the sparkling limpidity of the other +are richer for that he lived, and wrought, and returned unto them so +trustingly again." + + + + +_Culhane, the Solid Man_ + + +I met him in connection with a psychic depression which only partially +reflected itself in my physical condition. I might almost say that I was +sick spiritually. At the same time I was rather strongly imbued with a +contempt for him and his cure. I had heard of him for years. To begin +with, he was a wrestler of repute, or rather ex-wrestler, retired +undefeated champion of the world. As a boy I had known that he had +toured America with Modjeska as Charles, the wrestler, in "As You Like +It." Before or after that he had trained John L. Sullivan, the world's +champion prize fighter of his day, for one of his most successful +fights, and that at a time when Sullivan was unfitted to fight any one. +Before that, in succession, from youth up, he had been a peasant +farmer's son in Ireland, a scullion in a ship's kitchen earning his way +to America, a "beef slinger" for a packing company, a cooks' assistant +and waiter in a Bowery restaurant, a bouncer in a saloon, a rubber down +at prize fights, a policeman, a private in the army during the Civil +War, a ticket-taker, exhibition wrestler, "short-change man" with a +minstrel company, later a circus, until having attained his greatest +fame as champion wrestler of the world, and as trainer of John L. +Sullivan, he finally opened a sporting sanitarium in some county in +upper New York State which later evolved into the great and now +decidedly fashionable institution in Westchester, near New York. + +It has always been interesting to me to see in what awe men of this type +or profession are held by many in the more intellectual walks of life as +well as by those whose respectful worship is less surprising,--those who +revere strength, agility, physical courage, so-called, brute or +otherwise. There is a kind of retiring worshipfulness, especially in men +and children of the lower walks, for this type, which must be flattering +in the extreme. + +However, in so far as Culhane was concerned at this time, the case was +different. Whatever he had been in his youth he was not that now, or at +least his earlier rawness had long since been glazed over by other +experiences. Self-education, an acquired politeness among strangers and +a knowledge of the manners and customs of the better-to-do, permitted +him to associate with them and to accept if not copy their manners and +to a certain extent their customs in his relations with them. Literally, +he owned hundreds of the best acres of the land about him, in one of the +most fashionable residence sections of the East. He had already given +away to some Sisters of Mercy a great estate in northern New York. His +stables contained every type of fashionable vehicle and stalled and fed +sixty or seventy of the worst horses, purposely so chosen, for the use +of his "guests." Men of all professions visited his place, paid him +gladly the six hundred dollars in advance which he asked for the course +of six weeks' training, and brought, or attempted to, their own cars and +retinues, which they lodged in the vicinity but could not use. I myself +was introduced or rather foisted upon him by my dear brother, whose +friend if not crony--if such a thing could have been said to exist in +his life--he was. I was taken to him in a very somber and depressed mood +and left; he rarely if ever received guests in person or at once. On the +way, and before I had been introduced, I was instructed by my good +brother as to his moods, methods, airs and tricks, supposed or rumored +to be so beneficial in so many cases. They were very rough--purposely +so. + +The day I arrived, and before I saw him, I was very much impressed with +the simplicity yet distinction of the inn or sanitarium or "repair +shop," as subsequently I learned he was accustomed to refer to it, +perched upon a rise of ground and commanding a quite wonderful panorama. +It was spring and quite warm and bright. The cropped enclosure which +surrounded it, a great square of green fenced with high, well-trimmed +privet, was good to look upon, level and smooth. The house, standing in +the center of this, was large and oblong and gray, with very simple +French windows reaching to the floor and great wide balustraded +balconies reaching out from the second floor, shaded with awnings and +set with rockers. The land on which this inn stood sloped very gradually +to the Sound, miles away to the southeast, and the spires of churches +and the gables of villages rising in between, as well as various +toy-like sails upon the water, were no small portion of its charm. To +the west for a score of miles the green-covered earth rose and fell in +undulating beauty, and here again the roofs and spires of nearby +villages might in fair weather be seen nestling peacefully among the +trees. Due south there was a suggestion of water and some peculiar +configuration, which by day seemed to have no significance other than +that which attached to the vague outlines of a distant landscape. By +night, however, the soft glow emanating from myriads of lights +identified it as the body and length of the merry, night-reveling New +York. Northward the green waves repeated themselves unendingly until +they passed into a dim green-blue haze. + +Interiorly, as I learned later, this place was most cleverly and +sensibly arranged for the purpose for which it was intended. It was airy +and well-appointed, with, on the ground floor, a great gymnasium +containing, outside of an alcove at one end where hung four or five +punching bags, only medicine balls. At the other end was an office or +receiving-room, baggage or store-room, and locker and dining-room. To +the east at the center extended a wing containing a number of +shower-baths, a lounging room and sun parlor. On the second floor, on +either side of a wide airy hall which ran from an immense library, +billiard and smoking-room at one end to Culhane's private suite at the +other, were two rows of bedrooms, perhaps a hundred all told, which gave +in turn, each one, upon either side, on to the balconies previously +mentioned. These rooms were arranged somewhat like the rooms of a +passenger steamer, with its center aisle and its outer decks and doors +opening upon it. In another wing on the ground floor were kitchens, +servants' quarters, and what not else! Across the immense lawn or campus +to the east, four-square to the sanitarium, stood a rather grandiose +stable, almost as impressive as the main building. About the place, and +always more or less in evidence, were servants, ostlers, waiting-maids +and always a decidedly large company of men of practically all +professions, ages, and one might almost say nationalities. That is as +nationalities are represented in America, by first and second +generations. + +The day I arrived I did not see my prospective host or manager or +trainer for an hour or two after I came, being allowed to wait about +until the very peculiar temperament which he possessed would permit him +to come and see me. When he did show up, a more savage and yet +gentlemanly-looking animal in clothes _de rigueur_ I have never seen. He +was really very princely in build and manner, shapely and grand, like +those portraits that have come down to us of Richelieu and the Duc de +Guise--fawn-colored riding trousers, bright red waistcoat, +black-and-white check riding coat, brown leather riding boots and +leggings with the essential spurs, and a riding quirt. And yet really, +at that moment he reminded me not so much of a man, in his supremely +well-tailored riding costume, as of a tiger or a very ferocious and yet +at times purring cat, beautifully dressed, as in our children's +storybooks, a kind of tiger in collar and boots. He was so lithe, +silent, cat-like in his tread. In his hard, clear, gray animal eyes was +that swift, incisive, restless, searching glance which sometimes +troubles us in the presence of animals. It was hard to believe that he +was all of sixty, as I had been told. He looked the very well-preserved +man of fifty or less. The short trimmed mustache and goatee which he +wore were gray and added to his grand air. His hair, cut a close +pompadour, the ends of his heavy eyebrow hairs turned upward, gave him a +still more distinguished air. He looked very virile, very intelligent, +very indifferent, intolerant and even threatening. + +"Well," he exclaimed on sight, "you wish to see me?" + +I gave him my name. + +"Yes, that's so. Your brother spoke to me about you. Well, take a seat. +You will be looked after." + +He walked off, and after an hour or so I was still waiting, for what I +scarcely knew--a room, something to eat possibly, some one to speak a +friendly word to me, but no one did. + +While I was waiting in this rather nondescript antechamber, hung with +hats, caps, riding whips and gauntlets, I had an opportunity to study +some of the men with whom presumably I was to live for a number of +weeks. It was between two and three in the afternoon, and many of them +were idling about in pairs or threes, talking, reading, all in rather +commonplace athletic costumes--soft woolen shirts, knee trousers, +stockings and running or walking shoes. They were in the main evidently +of the so-called learned professions or the arts--doctors, lawyers, +preachers, actors, writers, with a goodly sprinkling of merchants, +manufacturers and young and middle-aged society men, as well as +politicians and monied idlers, generally a little the worse for their +pleasures or weaknesses. A distinguished judge of one of the superior +courts of New York and an actor known everywhere in the English-speaking +world were instantly recognized by me. Others, as I was subsequently +informed, were related by birth or achievement to some one fact or +another of public significance. The reason for the presence of so many +people rather above than under the average in intellect lay, as I came +to believe later, in their ability or that of some one connected with +them to sincerely appreciate or to at least be amused and benefited by +the somewhat different theory of physical repair which the lord of the +manor had invented, or for which at least he had become famous. + +I have remarked that I was not inclined to be impressed. Sanitariums +with their isms and theories did not appeal to me. However, as I was +waiting here an incident occurred which stuck in my mind. A smart +conveyance drove up, occupied by a singularly lean and haughty-looking +individual, who, after looking about him, expecting some one to come out +to him no doubt, clambered cautiously out, and after seeing that his +various grips and one trunk were properly deposited on the gravel square +outside, paid and feed his driver, then walked in and remarked: + +"Ah--where is Mr. Culhane?" + +"I don't know, sir," I replied, being the only one present. "He was +here, but he's gone. I presume some one will show up presently." + +He walked up and down a little while, and then added: "Um--rather +peculiar method of receiving one, isn't it? I wired him I'd be here." He +walked restlessly and almost waspishly to and fro, looking out of the +window at times, at others commenting on the rather casual character of +it all. I agreed. + +Thus, some fifteen minutes having gone by without any one approaching +us, and occasional servants or "guests" passing through the room or +being seen in the offing without even so much as vouchsafing a word or +appearing to be interested in us, the new arrival grew excited. + +"This is very unusual," he fumed, walking up and down. "I wired him +only three hours ago. I've been here now fully three-quarters of an +hour! A most unheard-of method of doing business, I should say!" + +Presently our stern, steely-eyed host returned. He seemed to be going +somewhere, to be nowise interested in us. Yet into our presence, +probably into the consciousness of this new "guest," he carried that air +of savage strength and indifference, eyeing the stranger quite sharply +and making no effort to apologize for our long wait. + +"You wish to see me?" he inquired brusquely once more. + +Like a wasp, the stranger was vibrant with rage. Plainly he felt himself +insulted or terribly underrated. + +"Are you Mr. Culhane?" he asked crisply. + +"Yes." + +"I am Mr. Squiers," he exclaimed. "I wired you from Buffalo and ordered +a room," this last with an irritated wave of the hand. + +"Oh, no, you didn't order any room," replied the host sourly and with an +obvious desire to show his indifference and contempt even. "You wired to +know if you _could engage_ a room." + +He paused. The temperature seemed to drop perceptibly. The prospective +guest seemed to realize that he had made a mistake somewhere, had been +misinformed as to conditions here. + +"Oh! Um--ah! Yes! Well, have you a room?" + +"I don't know. I doubt it. We don't take every one." His eyes seemed to +bore into the interior of his would-be guest. + +"Well, but I was told--my friend, Mr. X----," the stranger began a +rapid, semi-irritated, semi-apologetic explanation of how he came to be +here. + +"I don't know anything about your friend or what he told you. If he told +you you could order a room by telegraph, he's mistaken. Anyhow, you're +not dealing with him, but with me. Now that you're here, though, if you +want to sit down and rest yourself a little I'll see what I can do for +you. I can't decide now whether I can let you stay. You'll have to wait +a while." He turned and walked off. + +The other stared. "Well," he commented to me after a time, walking and +twisting, "if a man wants to come here I suppose he has to put up with +such things, but it's certainly unusual, isn't it?" He sat down, wilted, +and waited. + +Later a clerk in charge of the registry book took us in hand, and then I +heard him explaining that his lungs were not in good shape. He had come +a long way--Denver, I believe. He had heard that all one needed to do +was to wire, especially one in his circumstances. + +"Some people think that way," solemnly commented the clerk, "but they +don't know Mr. Culhane. He does about as he pleases in these matters. He +doesn't do this any more to make money but rather to amuse himself, I +think. He always has more applicants than he accepts." + +I began to see a light. Perhaps there was something to this place after +all. I did not even partially sense the drift of the situation, though, +until bedtime when, after having been served a very frugal meal and +shown to my very simple room, a kind of cell, promptly at nine o'clock +lights were turned off. I lit a small candle and was looking over some +things which I had placed in a grip, when I heard a voice in the hall +outside: "Candles out, please! Candles out! All guests in bed!" Then it +came to me that a very rigorous régime was being enforced here. + +The next morning as I was still soundly sleeping at five-thirty a loud +rap sounded at my door. The night before I had noticed above my bed a +framed sign which read: "Guests must be dressed in running trunks, shoes +and sweater, and appear in the gymnasium by six sharp." "Gymnasium at +six! Gymnasium at six!" a voice echoed down the hall. I bounced out of +bed. Something about the very air of the place made me feel that it was +dangerous to attempt to trifle with the routine here. The tiger-like +eyes of my host did not appeal to me as retaining any softer ray in them +for me than for others. I had paid my six hundred ... I had better earn +it. I was down in the great room in my trunks, sweater, dressing-gown, +running shoes in less than five minutes. + +And that room! By that time as odd a company of people as I have ever +seen in a gymnasium had already begun to assemble. The leanness! the +osseosity! the grandiloquent whiskers parted in the middle! the +mustachios! the goatees! the fat, Hoti-like stomachs! the protuberant +knees! the thin arms! the bald or semi-bald pates! the spectacles or +horn glasses or pince-nezes!--laid aside a few moments later, as the +exercises began. Youth and strength in the pink of condition, when clad +only in trunks, a sweater and running shoes, are none too +acceptable--but middle age! And out in the world, I reflected rather +sadly, they all wore the best of clothes, had their cars, servants, city +and country houses perhaps, their factories, employees, institutions. +Ridiculous! Pitiful! As lymphatic and flabby as oysters without their +shells, myself included. It was really painful. + +Even as I meditated, however, I was advised, by many who saw that I was +a stranger, to choose a partner, any partner, for medicine ball +practice, for it might save me being taken or called by _him_. I +hastened so to do. Even as we were assembling or beginning to practice, +keeping two or three light medicine balls going between each pair, our +host entered--that iron man, that mount of brawn. In his cowled +dressing-gown he looked more like some great monk or fighting abbot of +the medieval years than a trainer. He walked to the center, hung up his +cowl and revealed himself lithe and lion-like and costumed like +ourselves. But how much more attractive as he strode about, his legs +lean and sturdy, his chest full, his arms powerful and graceful! At once +he seized a large leather-covered medicine ball, as had all the others, +and calling a name to which responded a lean whiskerando with a +semi-bald pate, thin legs and arms, and very much caricatured, I +presume, by the wearing of trunks and sweater. Taking his place opposite +the host, he was immediately made the recipient of a volley of balls and +brow-beating epithets. + +"Hurry up now! Faster! Ah, come on! Put the ball back to me! Put the +ball back! Do you want to keep it all day? Great God! What are you +standing there for? What are you standing there for? What do you think +you're doing--drinking tea? Come on! I haven't all morning for you +alone. Move! Move, you ham! You call yourself an editor! Why, you +couldn't edit a handbill! You can't even throw a ball straight! Throw it +straight! Throw it straight! For Christ's sake where do you think I +am--out in the office? Throw it straight! Hell!" and all the time one +and another ball, grabbed from anywhere, for the floor was always +littered with them, would be thrown in the victim's direction, and +before he could well appreciate what was happening to him he was being +struck, once in the neck and again on the chest by the rapidly delivered +six ounce air-filled balls, two of which at least he and the host were +supposed to keep in constant motion between them. Later, a ball striking +him in the stomach, he emitted a weak "Ooph!" and laying his hands over +the affected part ceased all effort. At this the master of the situation +only smirked on him leoninely and holding up a ball as if to throw it +continued, "What's the matter with you now? Come on! What do you want to +stop for? What do you want to stand there for? You're not hurt. How do +you expect to get anywhere if you can't keep two silly little balls like +these going between us?" (There had probably been six or eight.) "Here I +am sixty and you're forty, and you can't even keep up with me. And you +pretend to give the general public advice on life! Well, go on; God pity +the public, is all I say," and he dismissed him, calling out another +name. + +Now came a fat, bald soul, with dewlaps and a protruding stomach, who +later I learned was a manufacturer of clothing--six hundred employees +under him--down in health and nerves, really all "shot to pieces" +physically. Plainly nervous at the sound of his name, he puffed quickly +into position, grabbing wildly after the purposely eccentric throws +which his host made and which kept him running to left and right in an +all but panicky mood. + +"Move! Move!" insisted our host as before, and, if anything, more +irritably. "Say, you work like a crab! What a motion! If you had more +head and less guts you could do this better. A fine specimen you are! +This is what comes of riding about in taxis and eating midnight suppers +instead of exercising. Wake up! Wake up! A belt would have kept your +stomach in long ago. A little less food and less sleep, and you wouldn't +have any fat cheeks. Even your hair might stay on! Wake up! Wake up! +What do you want to do--die?" and as he talked he pitched the balls so +quickly that his victim looked at times as though he were about to weep. +His physical deficiencies were all too plain in every way. He was +generally obese and looked as though he might drop, his face a flaming +red, his hands trembling and missing, when a "Well, go on," sounded and +a third victim was called. This time it was a well-known actor who +responded, a star, rather spry and well set up, but still nervous, for +he realized quite well what was before him. He had been here for weeks +and was in pretty fair trim, but still he was plainly on edge. He ran +and began receiving and tossing as swiftly as he could, but as with the +others so it was his turn now to be given such a grilling and +tongue-lashing as falls to few of us in this world, let alone among the +successful in the realm of the footlights. "Say, you're not an +actor--you're a woman! You're a stewed onion! Move! Move! Come on! Come +on! Look at those motions now, will you? Look at that one arm up! Where +do you suppose the ball is? On the ceiling? It's not a lamp! Come on! +Come on! It's a wonder when you're killed as Hamlet that you don't stay +dead. You are. You're really dead now, you know. Move! Move!" and so it +would go until finally the poor thespian, no match for his master and +beset by flying balls, landing upon his neck, ear, stomach, finally gave +up and cried: + +"Well, I can't go any faster than I can, can I? I can't do any more than +I can!" + +"Ah, go on! Go back into the chorus!" called his host, who now abandoned +him. "Get somebody from the baby class to play marbles with you," and he +called another. + +By now, as may well be imagined, I was fairly stirred up as to the +probabilities of the situation. He might call me! The man who was +playing opposite me--a small, decayed person who chose me, I think, +because he knew I was new, innocuous and probably awkward--seemed to +realize my thoughts as well as his own. By lively exercise with me he +was doing his utmost to create an impression of great and valuable +effort here. "Come on, let's play fast so he won't notice us," he said +most pathetically at one point. You would have thought I had known him +all my life. + +But he didn't call us--not this morning at any rate. Whether owing to +our efforts or the fact that I at least was too insignificant, too +obscure, we escaped. He did reach me, however, on the fourth or fifth +day, and no spindling failure could have done worse. I was struck and +tripped and pounded until I all but fell prone upon the floor, half +convinced that I was being killed, but I was not. I was merely sent +stumbling and drooping back to the sidelines to recover while he +tortured some one else. But the names he called me! The comments on my +none too smoothly articulated bones--and my alleged mind! As in my +schooldays when, a laggard in the fierce and seemingly malevolent +atmosphere in which I was taught my ABC's, I crept shamefacedly and +beaten from the scene. + +It was in the adjoining bathroom, where the host daily personally +superintended the ablutions of his guests, that even more of his +remarkable method was revealed. Here a goodly portion of the force of +his method was his skill in removing any sense of ability, agility, +authority or worth from those with whom he dealt. Apparently to him, in +his strength and energy, they were all children, weaklings, failures, +numbskulls, no matter what they might be in the world outside. They had +no understanding of the most important of their possessions, their +bodies. And here again, even more than in the gymnasium, they were at +the disadvantage of feeling themselves spectacles, for here they were +naked. However grand an osseous, leathery lawyer or judge or doctor or +politician or society man may look out in the world addressing a jury or +a crowd or walking in some favorite place, glistening in his raiment, +here, whiskered, thin of legs, arms and neck, with bulging brow and +stripped not only of his gown but everything else this side of his +skin--well, draw your own conclusion. For after performing certain +additional exercises--one hundred times up on your toes, one hundred +times (if you could) squatting to your knees, one hundred times throwing +your arms out straight before you from your chest or up from your +shoulders or out at right angles, right and left from your body and back +to your hips until your fingers touched and the sweat once more ran--you +were then ready to be told (for once in your life) how to swiftly and +agilely take a bath. + +"Well, now, you're ready, are you?" this to a noble jurist who, like +myself perhaps, had arrived only the day before. "Come on, now. Now you +have just ten seconds in which to jump under the water and get yourself +wet all over, twenty seconds in which to jump out and soap yourself +thoroughly, ten seconds in which to get back in again and rinse off all +the soap, and twenty seconds in which to rub and dry your skin +thoroughly--now start!" + +The distinguished jurist began, but instead of following the advice +given him for rapid action huddled himself in a shivering position under +the water and stood all but inert despite the previous explanation of +the host that the sole method of escaping the weakening influence of +cold water was by counteracting it with activity, when it would prove +beneficial. + +He was such a noble, stalky, bony affair, his gold eyeglasses laid aside +for the time being, his tweeds and carefully laundered linen all +dispensed with during his stay here. As he came, meticulously and +gingerly and quite undone by his efforts, from under the water, where he +had been most roughly urged by Culhane, I hoped that he and not I would +continue to be seized upon by this savage who seemed to take infinite +delight in disturbing the social and intellectual poise of us all. + +"Soap yourself!" exclaimed the latter most harshly now that the bather +was out in the room once more. "Soap your chest! Soap your stomach! Soap +your arms, damn it! Soap your arms! And don't rub them all day either! +Now soap your legs, damn it! Soap your legs! Don't you know how to soap +your legs! Don't stand there all day! Soap your legs! Now turn round and +soap your back--soap your back! For Christ's sake, soap your back! Do it +quick--quick! Now come back under the water again and see if you can get +it off. Don't act as though you were cold molasses! Move! Move! Lord, +you act as though you had all day--as though you had never taken a bath +in your life! I never saw such an old poke. You come up here and expect +me to do some things for you, and then you stand around as though you +were made of bone! Quick now, move!" + +The noble jurist did as demanded--that is, as quickly as he could--only +the mental inadequacy and feebleness which he displayed before all the +others, of course, was the worst of his cruel treatment here, and in +this as in many instances it cut deep. So often it was the shock to +one's dignity more than anything else which hurt so, to be called an old +poke when one was perhaps a grave and reverent senior, or to be told +that one was made of bone when one was a famous doctor or merchant. +Once under the water this particular specimen had begun by nervously +rubbing his hands and face in order to get the soap off, and when +shouted at and abused for that had then turned his attention to one +other spot--the back of his left forearm. + +Mine host seemed enraged. "Well, well!" he exclaimed irascibly, watching +him as might a hawk. "Are you going to spend all day rubbing that one +spot? For God's sake, don't you know enough to rub your whole body and +get out from under the water? Move! Move! Rub your chest! Rub your +belly! Hell, rub your back! Rub your toes and get out!" + +When routed from the ludicrous effort of vigorously rubbing one spot he +was continually being driven on to some other, as though his body were +some vast complex machine which he had never rightly understood before. +He was very much flustered of course and seemed wholly unable to grasp +how it was done, let alone please his exacting host. + +"Come on!" insisted the latter finally and wearily. "Get out from under +the water. A lot you know about washing yourself! For a man who has been +on the bench for fifteen years you're the dullest person I ever met. If +you bathe like that at home, how do you keep clean? Come on out and dry +yourself!" + +The distinguished victim, drying himself rather ruefully on an +exceedingly rough towel, looked a little weary and disgusted. "Such +language!" some one afterwards said he said to some one else. "He's not +used to dealing with gentlemen, that's plain. The man talks like a +blackguard. And to think we pay for such things! Well, well! I'll not +stand it, I'm afraid. I've had about enough. It's positively revolting, +positively revolting!" But he stayed on, just the same--second thoughts, +a good breakfast, his own physical needs. At any rate weeks later he was +still there and in much better shape physically if not mentally. + +About the second or third day I witnessed another such spectacle, which +made me laugh--only not in my host's presence--nay, verily! For into +this same chamber had come another distinguished personage, a lawyer or +society man, I couldn't tell which, who was washing himself rather +leisurely, as was _not_ the prescribed way, when suddenly he was spied +by mine host, who was invariably instructing some one in this swift +one-minute or less system. Now he eyed the operation narrowly for a few +seconds, then came over and exclaimed: + +"Wash your toes, can't you? Wash your toes! Can't you wash your toes?" + +The skilled gentleman, realizing that he was now living under very +different conditions from those to which presumably he was accustomed, +reached down and began to rub the tops of his toes but without any +desire apparently to widen the operation. + +"Here!" called the host, this time much more sharply, "I said wash your +toes, not the outside of them! Soap them! Don't you know how to wash +your toes yet? You're old enough, God knows! Wash between 'em! Wash +under 'em!" + +"Certainly I know how to wash my toes," replied the other irritably and +straightening up, "and what's more, I'd like you to know that I am a +gentleman." + +"Well, then, if you're a gentleman," retorted the other, "you ought to +know how to wash your toes. Wash 'em--and don't talk back!" + +"Pah!" exclaimed the bather now, looking twice as ridiculous as before. +"I'm not used to having such language addressed to me." + +"I can't help that," said Culhane. "If you knew how to wash your toes +perhaps you wouldn't have to have such language addressed to you." + +"Oh, hell!" fumed the other. "This is positively outrageous! I'll leave +the place, by George!" + +"Very well," rejoined the other, "only before you go you'll have to wash +your toes!" + +And he did, the host standing by and calmly watching the performance +until it was finally completed. + +It was just this atmosphere which made the place the most astonishing in +which I have ever been. It seemed to be drawing the celebrated and the +successful as a magnet might iron, and yet it offered conditions which +one might presume they would be most opposed to. No one here was really +any one, however much he might be outside. Our host was all. He had a +great blazing personality which dominated everybody, and he did not +hesitate to show before one and all that he did so do. + +Breakfast here consisted of a cereal, a chop and coffee--plentiful but +very plain, I thought. After breakfast, between eight-thirty and eleven, +we were free to do as we chose: write letters, pack our bags if we were +leaving, do up our laundry to be sent out, read, or merely sit about. At +eleven, or ten-thirty, according to the nature of the exercise, one had +to join a group, either one that was to do the long or short block, as +they were known here, or one that was to ride horseback, all exercises +being so timed that by proper execution one would arrive at the bathroom +door in time to bathe, dress and take ten minutes' rest before luncheon. +These exercises were simple enough in themselves, consisting, as they +did in the case of the long and the short blocks (the long block seven, +the short four miles in length), of our walking, or walking and running +betimes, about or over courses laid up hill and down dale, over or +through unpaved mudroads in many instances, along dry or wet beds of +brooks or streams, and across stony or weedy fields, often still damp +with dew or the spring rains. But in most cases, when people had not +taken any regular exercise for a long time, this was by no means easy. +The first day I thought I should never make it, and I was by no means a +poor walker. Others, the new ones especially, often gave out and had to +be sent for, or came in an hour late to be most severely and +irritatingly ragged by the host. He seemed to all but despise weakness +and had apparently a thousand disagreeable ways of showing it. + +"If you want to see what poor bags of mush some people can become," he +once said in regard to some poor specimen who had seemingly had great +difficulty in doing the short block, "look at this. Here comes a man +sent out to do four measly country miles in fifty minutes, and look at +him. You'd think he was going to die. He probably thinks so himself. In +New York he'd do seventeen miles in a night running from barroom to +barroom or one lobster palace to another--that's a good name for them, +by the way--and never say a word. But out here in the country, with +plenty of fresh air and a night's rest and a good breakfast, he can't +even do four miles in fifty minutes! Think of it! And he probably +thinks of himself as a man--boasts before his friends, or his wife, +anyhow. Lord!" + +A day or two later there arrived here a certain major of the United +States Army, a large, broad-chested, rather pompous person of about +forty-eight or -nine, who from taking his ease in one sinecure and +another had finally reached the place where he was unable to endure +certain tests (or he thought so) which were about to be made with a view +to retiring certain officers grown fat in the service. As he explained +to Culhane, and the latter was always open and ribald afterward in his +comments on those who offered explanations of any kind, his plan was to +take the course here in order to be able to make the difficult tests +later. + +Culhane resented this, I think. He resented people using him or his +methods to get anywhere, do anything more in life than he could do, and +yet he received them. He felt, and I think in the main that he was +right, that they looked down on him because of his lowly birth and +purely material and mechanical career, and yet having attained some +distinction by it he could not forego this work which raised him, in a +way, to a position of dominance over these people. Now the sight of +presumably so efficient a person in need of aid or exercise, to be built +up, was all that was required to spur him on to the most waspish or +wolfish attitude imaginable. In part at least he argued, I think (for in +the last analysis he was really too wise and experienced to take any +such petty view, although there is a subconscious "past-lack" motivating +impulse in all our views), that here he was, an ex-policeman, +ex-wrestler, ex-prize fighter, ex-private, ex-waiter, beef-carrier, +bouncer, trainer; and here was this grand major, trained at West Point, +who actually didn't know any more about life or how to take care of his +body than to be compelled to come here, broken down at forty-eight, +whereas he, because of his stamina and Spartan energy, had been able to +survive in perfect condition until sixty and was now in a position to +rebuild all these men and wastrels and to control this great +institution. And to a certain extent he was right, although he seemed to +forget or not to know that he was not the creator of his own great +strength, by any means, impulses and tendencies over which he had no +control having arranged for that. + +However that may be, here was the major a suppliant for his services, +and here was he, Culhane, and although the major was paying well for his +minute room and his probably greatly decreased diet, still Culhane could +not resist the temptation to make a show of him, to picture him as the +more or less pathetic example that he was, in order perhaps that he, +Culhane, might shine by contrast. Thus on the first day, having sent him +around the short block with the others, it was found at twelve, when the +"joggers" were expected to return, and again at twelve-thirty when they +were supposed to take their places at the luncheon table, that the heavy +major had not arrived. He had been seen and passed by all, of course. +After the first mile or two probably he had given out and was making his +way as best he might up hill and down dale, or along some more direct +road, to the "shop," or maybe he had dropped out entirely, as some did, +via a kindly truck or farmer's wagon, and was on his way to the nearest +railway station. + +At any rate, as Culhane sat down at his very small private table, which +stood in the center of the dining-room and far apart from the others (a +vantage point, as it were), he looked about and, not seeing the new +guest, inquired, "Has any one seen that alleged army officer who arrived +here this morning?" + +No one could say anything more than that they had left him two or three +miles back. + +"I thought so," he said tersely. "There you have a fine example of the +desk general and major--we had 'em in the army--men who sit in a swivel +chair all day, wear a braided uniform and issue orders to other people. +You'd think a man like that who had been trained at West Point and seen +service in the Philippines would have sense enough to keep himself in +condition. Not at all. As soon as they get a little way up in their +profession they want to sit around hotel grills or society ballrooms and +show off, tell how wonderful they are. Here's a man, an army officer, in +such rotten shape that if I sent a good horse after him now it's ten to +one he couldn't get on him. I'll have to send a truck or some such +thing." + +He subsided. About an hour later the major did appear, much the worse +for wear. A groom with a horse had been sent out after him, and, as the +latter confided to some one afterward, he "had to help the major on." +From that time on, on the short block and the long, as well as on those +horseback tours which every second or third morning we were supposed to +take, the major was his especial target. He loved to pick on him, to +tell him that he was "nearly all guts"--a phrase which literally +sickened me at that time--to ask him how he expected to stay in the army +if he couldn't do this or that, what good was he to the army, how could +any soldier respect a thing like him, and so on _ad infinitum_ until, +while at first I pitied the major, later on I admired his pluck. Culhane +foisted upon him his sorriest and boniest nag, the meanest animal he +could find, yet he never complained; and although he forced on him all +the foods he knew the major could not like, still there was no +complaint; he insisted that he should be out and around of an afternoon +when most of us lay about, allowed him no drinks whatever, although he +was accustomed to them. The major, as I learned afterwards, stayed not +six but twelve weeks and passed the tests which permitted him to remain +in the army. + +But to return to Culhane himself. The latter's method always contained +this element of nag and pester which, along with his brazen reliance on +and pride in his brute strength at sixty, made all these others look so +puny and ineffectual. They might have brains and skill but here they +were in his institution, more or less undone nervously and physically, +and here he was, cold, contemptuous, not caring much whether they came, +stayed or went, and laughing at them even as they raged. Now and then it +was rumored that he found some single individual in whom he would take +an interest, but not often. In the main I think he despised them one and +all for the puny machines they were. He even despised life and the +pleasures and dissipations or swinish indolence which, in his judgment, +characterized most men. I recall once, for instance, his telling us how +as a private in the United States Army when the division of which he was +a unit was shut up in winter quarters, huddled about stoves, smoking (as +he characterized them) "filthy pipes" or chewing tobacco and spitting, +actually lousy, and never changing their clothes for weeks on end--how +he, revolting at all this and the disease and fevers ensuing, had kept +out of doors as much as possible, even in the coldest weather, and +finding no other way of keeping clean the single shift of underwear and +the one uniform he possessed he had, every other day or so, washed all, +uniform and underwear, with or without soap as conditions might compel, +in a nearby stream, often breaking the ice to get to the water, and +dancing about naked in the cold, running and jumping, while they dried +on bushes or the branch of a tree. + +"Those poor rats," he added most contemptuously, "used to sit inside and +wonder at me or laugh and jeer, hovering over their stoves, but a lot of +them died that very winter, and here I am today." + +And well we knew it. I used to study the faces of many of the puffy, +gelatinous souls, so long confined to their comfortable offices, +restaurants and homes that two hours on horseback all but wore them out, +and wonder how this appealed to them. I think that in the main they took +it as an illustration of either one of two things: insanity, or giant +and therefore not-to-be-imitated strength. + +But in regard to them Culhane was by no means so tolerant. One day, as I +recall, there arrived at the sanitarium a stout and mushy-looking +Hebrew, with a semi-bald pate, protruding paunch and fat arms and legs, +who applied to Culhane for admission. And, as much to irritate his other +guests, I think, as to torture this particular specimen into some +semblance of vitality, he admitted him. And thereafter, from the hour he +entered until he left about the time I did, Culhane seemed to follow him +with a wolfish and savage idea. He gave him a most damnable and savage +horse, one that kicked and bit, and at mounting time would place Mr. +Itzky (I think his name was) up near the front of the procession where +he could watch him. Always at mount-time, when we were permitted to +ride, there was inside the great stable a kind of preliminary military +inspection of all our accouterments, seeing that we had to saddle and +bridle and bring forth our own steeds. This particular person could not +saddle a horse very well nor put on his bit and bridle. The animal was +inclined to rear and plunge when he came near, to fix him with an evil +eye and bite at him. + +And above all things Culhane seemed to value strain of this kind. If he +could just make his guests feel the pressure of necessity in connection +with their work he was happy. To this end he would employ the most +contemptuous and grilling comment. Thus to Mr. Itzky he was most unkind. +He would look over all most cynically, examining the saddles and +bridles, and then say, "Oh, I see you haven't learned how to tighten a +belly-band yet," or "I do believe you have your saddle hind-side to. You +would if you could, that's one thing sure. How do you expect a horse to +be sensible or quiet when he knows that he isn't saddled right? Any +horse knows that much, and whether he has an ass for a rider. I'd kick +and bite too if I were some of these horses, having a lot of damned +fools and wasters to pack all over the country. Loosen that belt and +fasten it right" (there might be nothing wrong with it) "and move your +saddle up. Do you want to sit over the horse's rump?" + +Then would come the fateful moment of mounting. There was of course the +accepted and perfect way--his way: left foot in stirrup, an easy +balanced spring and light descent into the seat. One should be able to +slip the right foot into the right stirrup with the same motion of +mounting. But imagine fifty, sixty, seventy men, all sizes, weights and +differing conditions of health and mood. A number of these people had +never ridden a horse before coming here and were as nervous and +frightened as children. Such mounts! Such fumbling around, once they +were in their saddles, for the right stirrup! And all the while Culhane +would be sitting out front like an army captain on the only decent steed +in the place, eyeing us with a look of infinite and weary contempt that +served to increase our troubles a thousandfold. + +"Well, you're all on, are you? You all do it so gracefully I like to sit +here and admire you. Hulbert there throws his leg over his horse's back +so artistically that he almost kicks his teeth out. And Effingham does +his best to fall off on the other side. And where's Itzky? I don't even +see him. Oh, yes, there he is. Well" (this to Itzky, frantically +endeavoring to get one fat foot in a stirrup and pull himself up), "what +about you? Can't you get your leg that high? Here's a man who for +twenty-five years has been running a cloak-and-suit business and +employing five hundred people, but he can't get on a horse! Imagine! +Five hundred people dependent on that for their living!" (At this point, +say, Itzky succeeds in mounting.) "Well, he's actually on! Now see if +you can stick while we ride a block or two. You'll find the right +stirrup, Itzky, just a little forward of your horse's belly on the right +side--see? A fine bunch this is to lead out through a gentleman's +country! Hell, no wonder I've got a bad reputation throughout this +section! Well, forward, and see if you can keep from falling off." + +Then we were out through the stable-door and the privet gate at a smart +trot, only to burst into a headlong gallop a little farther on down the +road. To the seasoned riders it was all well enough, but to beginners, +those nervous about horses, fearful about themselves! The first day, not +having ridden in years and being uncertain as to my skill, I could +scarcely stay on. Several days later, I by then having become a +reasonably seasoned rider, it was Mr. Itzky who appeared on the scene, +and after him various others. On this particular trip I am thinking of, +Mr. Itzky fell or rolled off and could not again mount. He was miles +from the repair shop and Culhane, discovering his plight, was by no +means sympathetic. We had a short ride back to where he sat lamely by +the roadside viewing disconsolately the cavalcade and the country in +general. + +"Well, what's the matter with you now?" It was Culhane, eyeing him most +severely. + +"I hef hurt my foot. I kent stay on." + +"You mean you'd rather walk, do you, and lead your horse?" + +"Vell, I kent ride." + +"All right, then, you lead your horse back to the stable if you want any +lunch, and hereafter you run with the baby-class on the short block +until you think you can ride without falling off. What's the good of my +keeping a stable of first-class horses at the service of a lot of +mush-heads who don't even know how to use 'em? All they do is ruin 'em. +In a week or two, after a good horse is put in the stable, he's not fit +for a gentleman to ride. They pull and haul and kick and beat, when as +a matter of fact the horse has a damned sight more sense than they +have." + +We rode off, leaving Itzky alone. The men on either side of me--we were +riding three abreast--scoffed under their breath at the statement that +we were furnished decent horses. "The nerve! This nag!" "This bag of +bones!" "To think a thing like this should be called a horse!" But there +were no outward murmurs and no particular sympathy for Mr. Itzky. He was +a fat stuff, a sweat-shop manufacturer, they would bet; let him walk and +sweat. + +So much for sympathy in this gay realm where all were seeking to restore +their own little bodies, whatever happened. + +So many of these men varied so greatly in their looks, capacities and +troubles that they were always amusing. Thus I recall one lean iron +manufacturer, the millionaire president of a great "frog and switch" +company, who had come on from Kansas City, troubled with anæmia, +neurasthenia, "nervous derangement of the heart" and various other +things. He was over fifty, very much concerned about himself, his +family, his business, his friends; anxious to obtain the benefits of +this celebrated course of which he had heard so much. Walking or running +near me on his first day, he took occasion to make inquiries in regard +to Culhane, the life here, and later on confidences as to his own +condition. It appeared that his chief trouble was his heart, a kind of +phantom disturbance which made him fear that he was about to drop dead +and which came and went, leaving him uncertain as to whether he had it +or not. On entering he had confided to Culhane the mysteries of his +case, and the latter had examined him, pronouncing him ("Rather +roughly," as he explained to me), quite fit to do "all the silly work he +would have to do here." + +Nevertheless while we were out on the short block his heart was hurting +him. At the same time it had been made rather clear to him that if he +wished to stay here he would have to fulfill all the obligations +imposed. After a mile or two or three of quick walking and jogging he +was saying to me, "You know, I'm not really sure that I can do this. +It's very severe, more so than I thought. My heart is not doing very +well. It feels very fluttery." + +"But," I said, "if he told you you could stand it, you can, I'm sure. +It's not very likely he'd say you could if you couldn't. He examined +you, didn't he? I don't believe he'd deliberately put a strain on any +one who couldn't stand it." + +"Yes," he admitted doubtfully, "that's true perhaps." + +Still he continued to complain and complain and to grow more and more +worried, until finally he slowed up and was lost in the background. + +Reaching the gymnasium at the proper time I bathed and dressed myself +quickly and waited on the balcony over the bathroom to see what would +happen in this case. As a rule Culhane stood in or near the door at this +time, having just returned from some route or "block" himself, to see +how the others were faring. And he was there when the iron manufacturer +came limping up, fifteen minutes late, one hand over his heart, the +other to his mouth, and exclaiming as he drew near, "I do believe, Mr. +Culhane, that I can't stand this. I'm afraid there is something the +matter with my heart. It's fluttering so." + +"To hell with your heart! Didn't I tell you there was nothing the matter +with it? Get into the bath!" + +The troubled manufacturer, overawed or reassured as the case might be, +entered the bath and ten minutes later might have been seen entering the +dining-room, as comfortable apparently as any one. Afterwards he +confessed to me on one of our jogs that there was something about +Culhane which _gave him confidence_ and made him believe that there +wasn't anything wrong with his heart--which there wasn't, I presume. + +The intensely interesting thing about Culhane was this different, very +original and forthright if at times brutal point of view. It was a +blazing material world of which he was the center, the sun, and yet +always I had the sense of very great life. With no knowledge of or +interest in the superior mental sciences or arts or philosophies, still +he seemed to suggest and even live them. He was in his way an +exemplification of that ancient Greek regimen and stark thought which +brought back the ten thousand from Cunaxa. He seemed even to suggest in +his rough way historical perspective and balance. He knew men, and +apparently he sensed how at best and at bottom life was to be lived, +with not too much emotional or appetitive swaying in any one direction, +and not too little either. + +Yet in "trapseing" about this particular realm each day with ministers, +lawyers, doctors, actors, manufacturers, papa's or mamma's young +hopefuls and petted heirs, young scapegraces and so-called "society men" +of the extreme "upper crust," stuffed and plethoric with money and as +innocent of sound knowledge or necessary energy in some instances as any +one might well be, one could not help speculating as to how it was that +such a man, as indifferent and all but discourteous as this one, could +attract them (and so many) to him. They came from all parts of +America--the Pacific, the Gulf, the Atlantic and Canada--and yet, +although they did not relish, him or his treatment of them, once here +they stayed. Walking or running or idling about with them one could +always hear from one or another that Culhane was too harsh, a "bounder," +an "upstart," a "cheap pugilist" or "wrestler" at best (I myself thought +so at times when I was angry), yet here they were, and here I was, and +staying. He was low, vulgar--yet here we were. And yet, meditating on +him, I began to think that he was really one of the most remarkable men +I had ever known, for these people he dealt with were of all the most +difficult to deal with. In the main they were of that order or condition +of mind which springs from (1), too much wealth too easily acquired or +inherited; or (2), from a blazing material success, the cause of which +was their own savage self-interested viewpoint. Hence a colder and in +some respects a more critical group of men I have never known. Most of +them had already seen so much of life in a libertine way that there was +little left to enjoy. They sniffed at almost everything, Culhane +included, and yet they were obviously drawn to him. I tried to explain +this to myself on the ground that there is some iron power in some +people which literally compels this, whether one will or no; or that +they were in the main so tired of life and so truly selfish and +egotistic that it required some such different iron or caviar mood plus +such a threatening regimen to make them really take an interest. Sick as +they were, he was about the only thing left on which they could sharpen +their teeth with any result. + +As I have said, a part of Culhane's general scheme was to arrange the +starting time for the walks and jogs about the long and short blocks so +that if one moved along briskly he reached the sanitarium at +twelve-thirty and had a few minutes in which to bathe and cool off and +change his clothes before entering the dining-room, where, if not at the +bathroom door beforehand, Culhane would be waiting, seated at his little +table, ready to keep watch on the time and condition of all those due. +Thus one day, a group of us having done the long block in less time than +we should have devoted to it, came in panting and rejoicing that we had +cut the record by seven minutes. We did not know that he was around. But +in the dining-room as we entered he scoffed at our achievement. + +"You think you're smart, don't you?" he said sourly and without any +preliminary statement as to how he knew we had done it in less time. +"You come out here and pay me one hundred a week and then you want to be +cute and play tricks with your own money and health. I want you to +remember just one thing: my reputation is just as much involved with the +results here as your money. I don't need anybody's money, and I do need +my orders obeyed. Now you all have watches. You just time yourselves and +do that block in the time required. If you can't do it, that's one +thing; I can forgive a man too weak or sick to do it. But I haven't any +use for a mere smart aleck, and I don't want any more of it, see?" + +That luncheon was very sad. + +Another thing in connection with these luncheons and dinners, which were +sharply timed to the minute, were these crisp table speeches, often made +_in re_ some particular offender or his offense, at other times mere +sarcastic comments on life in general and the innate cussedness of human +nature, which amused at the same time that they were certain to irritate +some. For who is it that is not interested in hearing the peccadilloes +of his neighbor aired? + +Thus while I was there, there was a New York society man by the name of +Blake, who unfortunately was given to severe periods of alcoholism, the +results of which were, after a time, nervous disorders which sent him +here. In many ways he was as amiable and courteous and considerate a +soul as one could meet anywhere. He had that smooth, gracious something +about him--good nature, for one thing, a kind of understanding and +sympathy for various forms of life--which left him highly noncensorious, +if genially examining at times. But his love of drink, or rather his +mild attempts here to arrange some method by which in this droughty +world he could obtain a little, aroused in Culhane not so much +opposition as an amused contempt, for at bottom I think he really liked +the man. Blake was so orderly, so sincere in his attempts to fulfill +conditions, only about once every week or so he would suggest that he be +allowed to go to White Plains or Rye, or even New York, on some errand +or other--most of which requests were promptly and nearly always +publicly refused. For although Culhane had his private suite at one end +of the great building, where one might suppose one might go to make a +private plea, still one could never find him there. He refused to +receive complaints or requests or visits of any kind there. If you +wanted to speak to him you had to do it when he was with the group in +its entirety--a commonsense enough policy. But just the same there were +those who had reasonable requests or complaints, and these, by a fine +intuition as to who was who in this institution and what might be +expected of each one, he managed to hear very softly, withdrawing slowly +as they talked or inviting them into the office. In the main however the +requests were very much like those of Blake--men who wanted to get off +somewhere for a day or two, feeling, as they did after a week or two or +three, especially fit and beginning to think no doubt of the various +comforts and pleasures which the city offered. + +But to all these he was more or less adamant. By hook or by crook, by +special arrangements with friends or agents in nearby towns and the +principal showy resorts of New York, he managed to know, providing they +did leave the grounds, either with or without his consent, about where +they were and what they had done, and in case any of his rules or their +agreements were broken their privileges were thereafter cut off or they +were promptly ejected, their trunks being set out on the roadway in +front of the estate and they being left to make their way to shelter +elsewhere as best they might. + +On one occasion, however, Blake had been allowed to go to New York over +Saturday and Sunday to attend to some urgent business, as he said, he on +his honor having promised to avoid the white lights. Nevertheless he did +not manage so to do but instead, in some comfortable section of that +region, was seen drinking enough to last him until perhaps he should +have another opportunity to return to the city. + +On his return to the "shop" on Monday morning or late Sunday night, +Culhane pretended not to see him until noonday lunch, when, his jog over +the long block done with and his bath taken, he came dapperly into the +dining-room, wishing to look as innocent and fit as possible. But +Culhane was there before him at his little table in the center of the +room, and patting the head of one of the two pure-blooded collies that +always followed him about on the grounds or in the house, began as +follows: + +"A dog," he said very distinctly and in his most cynical tone and +apparently apropos of nothing, which usually augured that the lightning +of his criticism was about to strike somewhere, "is so much better than +the average man that it's an insult to the dog to compare them. The +dog's really decent. He has no sloppy vices. You set a plate of food +before a regularly-fed, blooded dog, and he won't think of gorging +himself sick or silly. He eats what he needs, and then stops. So does a +cat" (which is of course by no means true, but still--). "A dog doesn't +get a red nose from drinking too much." By now all eyes were turning in +the direction of Blake, whose nose was faintly tinged. "He doesn't get +gonorrhea or syphilis." The united glances veered in the direction of +three or four young scapegraces of wealth, all of whom were suspected of +these diseases. "He doesn't hang around hotel bars and swill and get his +tongue thick and talk about how rich he is or how old his family is." +(This augured that Blake did such things, which I doubt, but once more +all eyes were shifted to him.) "He doesn't break his word. Within the +limits of his poor little brain he's faithful. He does what he thinks +he's called upon to do. + +"But you take a man--more especially a gentleman--one of these fellows +who is always very pointed in emphasizing that he is a gentleman" (which +Blake never did). "Let him inherit eight or ten millions, give him a +college education, let him be socially well connected, and what does he +do? Not a damned thing if he can help it except contract vices--run from +one saloon to another, one gambling house to another, one girl to +another, one meal to another. He doesn't need to know anything +necessarily. He may be the lowest dog physically and in every other way, +and still he's a gentleman--because he has money, wears spats and a high +hat. Why I've seen fifty poor boob prize fighters in my time who could +put it all over most of the so-called gentlemen I have ever seen. They +kept their word. They tried to be physically fit. They tried to stand up +in the world and earn their own living and be somebody." (He was +probably thinking of himself.) "But a gentleman wants to boast of his +past and his family, to tell you that he must go to the city on +business--his lawyers or some directors want to see him. Then he swills +around at hotel bars, stays with some of his lady whores, and then comes +back here and expects me to pull him into shape again, to make his nose +a little less red. He thinks he can use my place to fall back on when he +can't go any longer, to fix him up to do some more swilling later on. + +"Well, I want to serve notice on all so-called gentlemen here, and _one +gentleman_ in particular" (and he heavily and sardonically emphasized +the words), "that it won't do. This isn't a hospital attached to a +whorehouse or a saloon. And as for the trashy little six hundred paid +here, I don't need it. I've turned away more men who have been here once +or twice and have shown me that they were just using this place and me +as something to help them go on with their lousy drinking and carousing, +than would fill this building. Sensible men know it. They don't try to +use me. It's only the wastrels, or their mothers or fathers who bring +their boys and husbands and cry, who try to use me, and I take 'em once +or twice, but not oftener. When a man goes out of here cured, I know he +is cured. I never want to see him again. I want him to go out in the +world and stand up. I don't want him to come back here in six months +sniveling to be put in shape again. He disgusts me. He makes me sick. I +feel like ordering him off the place, and I do, and that's the end of +him. Let him go and bamboozle somebody else. I've shown him all I know. +There's no mystery. He can do as much for himself, once he's been here, +as I can. If he won't, well and good. And I'm saying one thing more: +There's one man here to whom this particularly applies today. This is +his last call. He's been here twice. When he goes out this time he can't +come back. Now see if some of you can remember some of the things I've +been telling you." + +He subsided and opened his little pint of wine. + +Another day while I was there he began as follows: + +"If there's one class of men that needs to be improved in this country, +it's lawyers. I don't know why it is, but there's something in the very +nature of the work of a lawyer which appears to make him cynical and to +want to wear a know-it-all look. Most lawyers are little more than +sharper crooks than the crooks they have to deal with. They're always +trying to get in on some case or other where they have to outwit the +law, save some one from getting what he justly deserves, and then they +are supposed to be honest and high-minded! Think of it! To judge by some +of the specimens I get up here," and then some lawyer in the place would +turn a shrewd inquiring glance in his direction or steadfastly gaze at +his plate or out the window, while the others stared at him, "you would +think they were the salt of the earth or that they were following a +really noble profession or that they were above or better than other men +in their abilities. Well, if being conniving and tricky are fine traits, +I suppose they are, but personally I can't see it. Generally speaking, +they're physically the poorest fish I get here. They're slow and +meditative and sallow, mostly because they get too little exercise, I +presume. And they're never direct and enthusiastic in an argument. A +lawyer always wants to stick in an 'if' or a 'but,' to get around you in +some way. He's never willing to answer you quickly or directly. I've +watched 'em now for nearly fifteen years, and they're all more or less +alike. They think they're very individual and different, but they're +not. Most of them don't know nearly as much about life as a good, +all-around business or society man," this in the absence of any desire +to discuss these two breeds for the time being. "For the life of me I +could never see why a really attractive woman would ever want to marry a +lawyer"--and so he would talk on, revealing one little unsatisfactory +trait after another in connection with the tribe, sand-papering their +raw places as it were, until you would about conclude, supposing you had +never heard him talk concerning any other profession, that lawyers were +the most ignoble, the pettiest, the most inefficient physically and +mentally, of all the men he had ever encountered; and in his noble +savage state there would not be one to disagree with him, for he had +such an animal, tiger-like mien that you had the feeling that instead of +an argument you would get a physical rip which would leave you bleeding +for days. + +The next day, or a day or two or four or six later--according to his +mood--it would be doctors or merchants or society men or politicians he +would discourse about--and, kind heaven, what a drubbing they would get! +He seemed always to be meditating on the vulnerable points of his +victims, anxious (and yet presumably not) to show them what poor, +fallible, shabby, petty and all but drooling creatures they were. Thus +in regard to merchants: + +"The average man who has a little business of some kind, a factory or a +wholesale or brokerage house or a hotel or a restaurant, usually has a +distinctly middle-class mind." At this all the merchants and +manufacturers were likely to give a very sharp ear. "As a rule, you'll +find that they know just the one little line with which they're +connected, and nothing more. One man knows all about cloaks and suits" +(this may have been a slap at poor Itzky) "or he knows a little +something about leather goods or shoes or lamps or furniture, and that's +all he knows. If he's an American he'll buckle down to that little +business and work night and day, sweat blood and make every one else +connected with him sweat it, underpay his employees, swindle his +friends, half-starve himself and his family, in order to get a few +thousand dollars and seem as good as some one else who has a few +thousand. And yet he doesn't want to be different from--he wants to be +just like--the other fellow. If some one in his line has a house up on +the Hudson or on Riverside Drive, when he gets his money he wants to go +there and live. If the fellow in his line, or some other that he knows +something about, belongs to a certain club, he has to belong to it even +if the club doesn't want him or he wouldn't look well in it. He wants to +have the same tailor, the same grocer, smoke the same brand of cigars +and go to the same summer resort as the other fellow. They even want to +look alike. God! And then when they're just like every one else, they +think they're somebody. They haven't a single idea outside their line, +and yet because they've made money they want to tell other people how +to live and think. Imagine a rich butcher or cloak-maker, or any one +else, presuming to tell me how to think or live!" + +He stared about him as though he saw many exemplifications of his +picture present. And it was always interesting to see how those whom his +description really did fit look as though he could not possibly be +referring to them. + +Of all types or professions that came here, I think he disliked doctors +most. The reason was of course that the work they did or were about to +do in the world bordered on that which he was trying to accomplish, and +the chances were that they sniffed at or at least critically examined +what he was doing with an eye to finding its weak spots. In many cases +no doubt he fancied that they were there to study and copy his methods +and ideas, without having the decency later on to attribute their +knowledge to him. It was short shrift for any one of them with ideas or +"notions" unfriendly to him advanced in his presence. For a little while +during my stay there was a smooth-faced, rather solid physically and +decidedly self-opinionated mentally, doctor who ate at the same small +table as I and who was never tired of airing his views, medical and +otherwise. He confided to me rather loftily that there was, to be sure, +something to Culhane's views and methods but that they were +"over-emphasized here, over-emphasized." Still, one could over-emphasize +the value of drugs too. As for himself he had decided to achieve a happy +medium if possible, and for this reason (for one) he had come here to +study Culhane. + +As for Culhane, in spite of the young doctor's condescension and +understanding, or perhaps better yet because of it, he thoroughly +disliked, barely tolerated, him, and was never tired of commenting on +little dancing medics with their "pill cases" and easily acquired book +knowledge, boasting of their supposed learning "which somebody else had +paid for," as he once said--their fathers, of course. And when they were +sick, some of them at least, they had to come out here to him, or they +came to steal his theory and start a shabby grafting sanitarium of their +own. He knew them. + +One noon we were at lunch. Occasionally before seating himself at his +small central table he would walk or glance about and, having good eyes, +would spy some little defect or delinquency somewhere and of course +immediately act upon it. One of the rules of the repair shop was that +you were to eat what was put before you, especially when it differed +from what your table companion received. Thus a fat man at a table with +a lean one might receive a small portion of lean meat, no potatoes and +no bread or one little roll, whereas his lean acquaintance opposite +would be receiving a large portion of fat meat, a baked or boiled +potato, plenty of bread and butter, and possibly a side dish of some +kind. Now it might well be, as indeed was often the case, that each +would be dissatisfied with his apportionment and would attempt to change +plates. + +But this was the one thing that Culhane would not endure. So upon one +occasion, passing near the table at which sat myself and the +above-mentioned doctor, table-mates for the time being, he noticed that +he was not eating his carrots, a dish which had been especially prepared +for him, I imagine--for if one unconsciously ignored certain things the +first day or two of his stay, those very things would be all but rammed +down his throat during the remainder of his stay; a thing concerning +which one guest and another occasionally cautioned newcomers. However +this may have been in this particular case, he noticed the uneaten +carrots and, pausing a moment, observed: + +"What's the matter? Aren't you eating your carrots?" We had almost +finished eating. + +"Who, me?" replied the medic, looking up. "Oh, no, I never eat carrots, +you know. I don't like them." + +"Oh, don't you?" said Culhane sweetly. "You don't like them, and so you +don't eat them! Well, suppose you eat them here. They may do you a +little good just as a change." + +"But I never eat carrots," retorted the medic tersely and with a slight +show of resentment or opposition, scenting perhaps a new order. + +"No, not outside perhaps, but here you do. You eat carrots here, see?" + +"Yes, but why should I eat them if I don't like them? They don't agree +with me. Must I eat something that doesn't agree with me just because +it's a rule or to please you?" + +"To please me, or the carrots, or any damned thing you please--but eat +'em." + +The doctor subsided. For a day or two he went about commenting on what a +farce the whole thing was, how ridiculous to make any one eat what was +not suited to him, but just the same while he was there he ate them. + +As for myself, I was very fond of large boiled potatoes and substantial +orders of fat and lean meat, and in consequence, having been so foolish +as to show this preference, I received but the weakest, most +contemptible and puling little spuds and pale orders of meat--with, it +is true, plenty of other "side dishes"; whereas a later table-mate of +mine, a distressed and neurasthenic society man, was receiving--I soon +learned he especially abhorred them--potatoes as big as my two fists. + +"Now look at that! Now look at that!" he often said peevishly and with a +kind of sickly whine in his voice when he saw one being put before him. +"He knows I don't like potatoes, and see what I get! And look at the +little bit of a thing he gives you! It's a shame, the way he nags +people, especially over this food question. I don't think there's a +thing to it. I don't think eating a big potato does me a bit of good, or +you the little one, and yet I have to eat the blank-blank things or get +out. And I need to get on my feet just now." + +"Well, cheer up," I said sympathetically and with an eye on the large +potato perhaps. "He isn't always looking, and we can fix it. You mash up +your big potato and put butter and salt on it, and I'll do the same with +my little one. Then when he's not looking we'll shift." + +"Oh, that's all right," he commented, "but we'd better look out. If he +sees us he'll be as sore as the devil." + +This system worked well enough for a time, and for days I was getting +all the potato I wanted and congratulating myself on my skill, when one +day as I was slyly forking potatoes out of his dish, moved helpfully in +my direction, I saw Culhane approaching and feared that our trick had +been discovered. It had. Perhaps some snaky waitress has told on us, or +he had seen us, even from his table. + +"Now I know what's going on here at this table," he growled savagely, +"and I want you two to cut it out. This big boob here" (he was referring +to my esteemed self) "who hasn't strength of will or character enough to +keep himself in good health and has to be brought up here by his +brother, hasn't brains enough to see that when I plan a thing for his +benefit it is for his benefit, and not mine. Like most of the other +damned fools that come up here and waste their money and my time, he +thinks I'm playing some cute game with him--tag or something that will +let him show how much cuter he is than I am. And he's supposed to be a +writer and have a little horse-sense! His brother claims it, anyhow. And +as for this other simp here," and now he was addressing the assembled +diners while nodding toward my friend, "it hasn't been three weeks since +he was begging to know what I could do for him. And now look at +him--entering into a petty little game of potato-cheating! + +"I swear," he went on savagely, talking to the room in general, +"sometimes I don't know what to do with such damned fools. The right +thing would be to set these two, and about fifty others in this place, +out on the main road with their trunks and let them go to hell. They +don't deserve the attention of a conscientious man. I prohibit +gambling--what happens? A lot of nincompoops and mental lightweights +with more money than brains sneak off into a field of an afternoon on +the excuse that they are going for a walk, and then sit down and lose or +win a bucket of money just to show off what hells of fellows they are, +what sports, what big 'I ams.' I prohibit cigarette-smoking, not because +I think it's literally going to kill anybody but because I think it +looks bad here, sets a bad example to a lot of young wasters who come +here and who ought to be broken of the vice, and besides, because I +don't like cigarette-smoking here--don't want it and won't have it. What +happens? A lot of sissies and mamma's boys and pet heirs, whose fathers +haven't got enough brains to cut 'em off and make 'em get out and work, +come up here, sneak in cigarettes or get the servants to, and then hide +out behind the barn or a tree down in the lot and sneak and smoke like +a lot of cheap schoolboys. God, it makes me sick! What's the use of a +man working out a fact during a lifetime and letting other people have +the benefit of it--not because he needs their money, but that they need +his help--if all the time he is going to have such cattle to deal with? +Not one out of twenty or forty men that come here really wants me to +help him or to help himself. What he wants is to have some one drive him +in the way he ought to go, kick him into it, instead of his buckling +down and helping himself. What's the good of bothering with such damned +fools? A man ought to take the whole pack and run 'em off the place with +a dog-whip." He waved his hand in the air. "It's sickening. It's +impossible. + +"As for you two," he added, turning to us, but suddenly stopped. "Hell, +what's the use! Why should I bother with you? Do as you damned well +please, and stay sick or die!" + +He turned on his heel and walked out of the dining-room, leaving us to +sit there. I was so dumbfounded by the harangue our pseudo-cleverness +had released that I could scarcely speak. My appetite was gone and I +felt wretched. To think of having been the cause of this unnecessary +tongue-lashing to the others! And I felt that we were, and justly, the +target for their rather censorious eyes. + +"My God!" moaned my companion most dolefully. "That's always the way +with me. Nothing that I ever do comes out right. All my life I've been +unlucky. My mother died when I was seven, and my father's never had any +use for me. I started in three or four businesses four or five years +ago, but none of them ever came out right. My yacht burned last summer, +and I've had neurasthenia for two years." He catalogued a list of ills +that would have done honor to Job himself, and he was worth nine +millions, so I heard! + +Two or three additional and amusing incidents, and I am done. + +One of the most outré things in connection with our rides about the +countryside was Culhane's attitude toward life and the natives and +passing strangers as representing life. Thus one day, as I recall very +well, we were riding along a backwoods country road, very shadowy and +branch-covered, a great company of us four abreast, when suddenly and +after his very military fashion there came a "Halt! Right by fours! +Right dress! Face!" and presently we were all lined up in a row facing a +greensward which had suddenly been revealed to the left and on which, +and before a small plumber's stove standing outside some gentleman's +stable, was stretched a plumber and his helper. The former, a man of +perhaps thirty-five, the latter a lad of, say, fourteen or fifteen, were +both very grimy and dirty, but taking their ease in the morning sun, a +little pot of lead on the stove being waited for, I presume, that it +might boil. + +Culhane, leaving his place at the head of the column, returned to the +center nearest the plumber and his helper and pointing at them and +addressing us in a very clear voice, said: + +"There you have it. There's American labor for you, at its best--union +labor, the poor, downtrodden workingman. Look at him." We all looked. +"This poor hard-working plumber here," and at that the latter stirred +and sat up, scarcely even now grasping what it was all about, so +suddenly had we descended upon him, "earns or demands sixty cents an +hour, and this poor sweating little helper here has to have forty. +They're working now. They're waiting for that little bit of lead to +boil, at a dollar an hour between them. They can't do a thing, either of +'em, until it does, and lead has to be well done, you know, before it +can be used. + +"Well, now, these two here," he continued, suddenly shifting his tone +from one of light sarcasm to a kind of savage contempt, "imagine they +are getting along, making life a lot better for themselves, when they +lie about this way and swindle another man out of his honest due in +connection with the work he is paying for. He can't help himself. He +can't know everything. If he did he'd probably find what's wrong in +there and fix it himself in three minutes. But if he did that and the +union heard of it they'd boycott him. They'd come around and blackmail +him, blow up his barn, or make him pay for the work he did himself. I +know 'em. I have to deal with 'em. They fix my pipes in the same way +that these two are fixing his--lying on the grass at a dollar an hour. +And they want five dollars a pound for every bit of lead they use. If +they forget anything and have to go back to town for it, you pay for +it, at a dollar an hour. They get on the job at nine and quit at four, +in the country. If you say anything, they quit altogether--they're +_union_ laborers--and they won't let any one else do it, either. Once +they're on the job they have to rest every few minutes, like these two. +Something has to boil, or they have to wait for something. Isn't it +wonderful! Isn't it beautiful! And all of us of course are made free and +equal! They're just as good as we are! If you work and make money and +have any plumbing to do you have to support 'em--Right by fours! Guide +right! Forward!" and off we trotted, breaking into a headlong gallop a +little farther on as if he wished to outrun the mood which was holding +him at the moment. + +The plumber and his assistant, fully awake now to the import of what had +occurred, stared after us. The journeyman plumber, who was short and +fat, sat and blinked. At last he recovered his wits sufficiently to cry, +"Aw, go to hell, you ---- ---- ----!" but by that time we were well along +the road and I am not sure that Culhane even heard. + +Another day as we were riding along a road which led into a nearby city +of, say, twenty thousand, we encountered a beer truck of great size and +on its seat so large and ruddy and obese a German as one might go a long +way and still not see. It was very hot. The German was drowsy and taking +his time in the matter of driving. As we drew near, Culhane suddenly +called a halt and, lining us up as was his rule, called to the horses of +the brewery wagon, who also obeyed his lusty "Whoa!" The driver, from +his high perch above, stared down on us with mingled curiosity and +wonder. + +"Now, here's an illustration of what I mean," Culhane began, apropos of +nothing at all, "when I say that the word man ought to be modified or +changed in some way so that when we use it we would mean something more +definite than we mean now. That thing you see sitting up on that +wagon-seat there--call that a man? And then call me one? Or a man like +Charles A. Dana? Or a man like General Grant? Hell! Look at him! Look at +his shape! Look at that stomach! You think a thing like that--call it a +man if you want to--has any brains or that he's really any better than a +pig in a sty? If you turn a horse out to shift for himself he'll eat +just enough to keep in condition; same way with a dog, a cat or a bird. +But let one of these things, that some people call a _man_, come along, +give him a job and enough money or a chance to stuff himself, and see +what happens. A thing like that connects himself with one end of a beer +hose and then he thinks he's all right. He gets enough guts to start a +sausage factory, and then he blows up, I suppose, or rots. Think of it! +And we call him a man--or some do!" + +During this amazing and wholly unexpected harangue (I never saw him stop +any one before), the heavy driver, who did not understand English very +well, first gazed and then strained with his eyebrows, not being able +quite to make out what it was all about. From the chuckling and laughter +that finally set up in one place and another he began dimly to +comprehend that he was being made fun of, used as an unsatisfactory jest +of some kind. Finally his face clouded for a storm and his eyes blazed, +the while his fat red cheeks grew redder. "_Donnervetter!_" he began +gutturally to roar. "_Schweine hunde! Hunds knoche! Nach der polizei +soll man reufen!_" + +I for one pulled my horse cautiously back, as he cracked a great whip, +and, charging savagely through us, drove on. Culhane, having made his +unkind comments, gave orders for our orderly formation once more and +calmly led us away. + +Perhaps the most amusing phase of him was his opposition to and contempt +for inefficiency of any kind. If he asked you to do anything, no matter +what, and you didn't at once leap to the task ready and willing and able +so to do, he scarcely had words enough with which to express himself. On +one occasion, as I recall all too well, he took us for a drive in his +tally-ho--one or two or three that he possessed--a great lumbering, +highly lacquered, yellow-wheeled vehicle, to which he attached seven or +eight or nine horses, I forget which. This tally-ho ride was a regular +Sunday morning or afternoon affair unless it was raining, a call +suddenly sounding from about the grounds somewhere at eleven or at two +in the afternoon, "Tally-ho at eleven-thirty" (or two-thirty, as the +case might be). "All aboard!" Gathering all the reins in his hands and +perching himself in the high seat above, with perhaps one of his guests +beside him, all the rest crowded willy-nilly on the seats within and on +top, he would carry us off, careening about the countryside most madly, +several of his hostlers acting as liveried footmen or outriders and one +of them perched up behind on the little seat, the technical name of +which I have forgotten, waving and blowing the long silver trumpet, the +regulation blasts on which had to be exactly as made and provided for +such occasions. Often, having been given no warning as to just when it +was to be, there would be a mad scramble to get into our _de rigueur_ +Sunday clothes, for Culhane would not endure any flaws in our +appearance, and if we were not ready and waiting when one of his +stablemen swung the vehicle up to the door at the appointed time he was +absolutely furious. + +On the particular occasion I have in mind we all clambered on in good +time, all spick and span and in our very best, shaved, powdered, hands +appropriately gloved, our whiskers curled and parted, our shoes shined, +our hats brushed; and up in front was Culhane, gentleman de luxe for the +occasion, his long-tailed whip looped exactly as it should be, no doubt, +ready to be flicked out over the farthest horse's head, and up behind +was the trumpeter--high hat, yellow-topped boots, a uniform of some +grand color, I forget which. + +But, as it turned out on this occasion, there had been a hitch at the +last minute. The regular hostler or stableman who acted as footman +extraordinary and trumpeter plenipotentiary, the one who could truly and +ably blow this magnificent horn, was sick or his mother was dead. At any +rate, there he wasn't. And in order not to irritate Culhane, a second +hostler had been dressed and given his seat and horn--only he couldn't +blow it. As we began to clamber in I heard him asking, "Can any of you +gentleman blow the trumpet? Do any of you gentleman know the regular +trumpet call?" + +No one responded, although there was much discussion in a low key. Some +could, or thought they could, but hesitated to assume so frightful a +risk. At the same time Culhane, hearing the fuss and knowing perhaps +that his substitute could not trumpet, turned grimly around and said, +"Say, do you mean to say there isn't any one back there who knows how to +blow that thing? What's the matter with you, Caswell?" he called to +one, and getting only mumbled explanations from that quarter, called to +another, "How about you, Drewberry? Or you, Crashaw?" + +All three apologized briskly. They were terrified by the mere thought of +trying. Indeed no one seemed eager to assume the responsibility, until +finally he became so threatening and assured us so volubly that unless +some immediate and cheerful response were made he would never again +waste one blank minute on a lot of blank-blank this and thats, that one +youth, a rash young society somebody from Rochester, volunteered more or +less feebly that he "thought" that "maybe he could manage it." He took a +seat directly under the pompously placed trumpeter, and we were off. + +"Heigh-ho!" Out the gate and down the road and up a nearby slope at a +smart clip, all of us gazing cheerfully and possibly vainly about, for +it was a bright day and a gay country. Now the trumpeter, as is provided +for on all such occasions, lifted the trumpet to his lips and began on +the grandiose "ta-ra-ta-ta," but to our grief and pain, although he got +through fairly successfully on his first attempt, there was one place +where there was a slight hitch, a "false crack," as some one rowdyishly +remarked. Culhane, although tucking up his lines and stiffening his back +irritably at this flaw, said nothing. For after all a poor trumpeter was +better than none at all. A little later, however, the trumpeter having +hesitated to begin again, he called back, "Well, what about the horn? +What about the horn? Can't you do something with it? Have you quit for +the day?" + +Up went the horn once more, and a most noble and encouraging +"Ta-ra-ta-ta" was begun, but just at the critical point, and when we +were all most prayerfully hoping against hope, as it were, that this +time he would round the dangerous curves of it gracefully and come to a +grand finish, there was a most disconcerting and disheartening squeak. +It was pathetic, ghastly. As one man we wilted. What would Culhane say +to that? We were not long in doubt. "Great Christ!" he shouted, looking +back and showing a countenance so black that it was positively +terrifying. "Who did that? Throw him off! What do you think--that I want +the whole country to know I'm airing a lot of lunatics? Somebody who +can blow that thing, take it and blow it, for God's sake! I'm not going +to drive around here without a trumpeter!" + +For a few moments there was more or less painful gabbling in all the +rows, pathetic whisperings and "go ons" or eager urgings of one and +another to sacrifice himself upon the altar of necessity, insistences by +the ex-trumpeter that he had blown trumpets in his day as good as any +one--what the deuce had got into him anyhow? It must be the horn! + +"Well," shouted Culhane finally, as a stop-gap to all this, "isn't any +one going to blow that thing? Do you mean to tell me that I'm hauling +all of you around, with not a man among you able to blow a dinky little +horn? What's the use of my keeping a lot of fancy vehicles in my barn +when all I have to deal with is a lot of shoe salesmen and floorwalkers? +Hell! Any child can blow it. It's as easy as a fish-horn. If I hadn't +these horses to attend to I'd blow it myself. Come on--come on! +Kerrigan, what's the matter with you blowing it?" + +"The truth is, Mr. Culhane," explained Mr. Kerrigan, the very dapper and +polite heir of a Philadelphia starch millionaire, "I haven't had any +chance to practice with one of those for several years. I'll try it if +you want me to, but I can't guarantee--" + +"Try!" insisted Culhane violently. "You can't do any worse than that +other mutt, if you blow for a million years. Blow it! Blow it!" + +Mr. Kerrigan turned back and being very cheerfully tendered the horn by +the last failure, wetted and adjusted his lips, lifted it upward and +backward--and-- + +It was pathetic. It was positively dreadful, the wheezing, grinding +sounds that were emitted. + +"God!" shouted Culhane, pulling up the coach to a dead stop. "Stop that! +Whoa! Whoa!!! Do you mean to say that that's the best you can do? Well, +this finishes me! Whoa! What kind of a bunch of cattle have I got up +here, anyhow? Whoa! And out in this country too where I'm known and +where they know all about such things! God! Whoa! Here I spend thousands +of dollars to get together an equipment that will make a pleasant +afternoon for a crowd of gentlemen, and this is what I draw--hams! A lot +of barflies who never saw a tally-ho! Well, I'm done! I'm through! I'll +split the damned thing up for firewood before I ever take it out again! +Get down! Get out, all of you! I'll not haul one of you back a step! +Walk back or anywhere you please--to hell, for all I care! I'm through! +Get out! I'm going to turn around and get back to the barn as quick as I +can--up some alley if I can find one. To think of having such a bunch of +hacks to deal with!" + +Humbly and wearily we climbed down and, while he drove savagely on to +some turning-place, stood about first in small groups, then by twos and +threes began making our way--rather gingerly, I must confess, in our +fine clothes--along the winding road back to the place on the hill. But +such swearing! Such un-Sabbath-like comments! The number of times his +sturdy Irish soul was wished into innermost and almost sacrosanct +portions of Sheol! He was cursed from more angles and in more +artistically and architecturally nobly constructed phrases and even +paragraphs than any human being that I have ever heard of before or +since, phrases so livid and glistening that they smoked. + +Talk about the carved ivories of speech! The mosaics of verbal precious +stones! + +You should have heard us on our way back! + +And still we stayed. + + * * * * * + +Some two years later I was passing this place in company with some +friends, when I asked my host, who also knew of the place, to turn in. +During my stay it had been the privilege and custom among those who knew +much of this institution to drive through the grounds and past the very +doors of the "repair shop," even to stop if Culhane chanced to be +visible and talking to or at least greeting him, in some cases. A custom +of Culhane's was, in the summer time, to have erected on the lawn a +large green-and-white striped marquee tent, a very handsome thing +indeed, in which was placed a field-officer's table and several camp +chairs, and some books and papers. Here of a hot day, when he was not +busy with us, he would sit and read. And when he was in here or +somewhere about, a little pennant was run up, possibly as guide to +visiting guests or friends. At any rate, it was the presence of this +pennant which caused me to know that he was about and to wish that I +might have a look at him once more, great lion that he was. As "guests," +none of us were ever allowed to come within more than ten feet of it, +let alone in it. As passing visitors, however, we might, and many did, +stop, remind him that we had once been his humble slaves, and ask leave +to congratulate him on his health and sturdy years. At such times, if +the visitors looked interesting enough, or he remembered them well, he +would deign to come to the tent-fly and, standing there à la Napoleon at +Lodi or Grant in the Wilderness, be for the first time in his relations +with them a bit civil. + +Anyway, on this occasion, urged on by curiosity to see my liege once +more and also to learn whether he would remember me at all, I had my +present host roll his car up to the tent door, where Culhane was +reading. Feeling that by this venturesome deed I had "let myself in for +it" and had to "make a showing," I climbed briskly out and, approaching, +recalled myself to him. With a semi-wry expression, half smile, half +contemptuous curl of the corners of his mouth, he recalled me and took +my extended hand; then seeing that possibly my friends if not myself +looked interesting, he arose and came to the door. I introduced +them--one a naval officer of distinction, the other the owner of a great +estate some miles farther on. For the first time in my relations with +him I had an opportunity to note how grandly gracious he could be. He +accepted my friends' congratulations as to the view with a princely nod +and suggested that on other days it was even better. He was soon to be +busy now or he would have some one show my friends through the shop. +Some Saturday afternoon, if they would telephone or stop in passing, he +would oblige. + +I noted at once that he had not aged in the least. He was sixty-two +or -three now and as vigorous and trim as ever. And now he treated me as +courteously and formally as though he had never browbeaten me in the +least. "Good heavens," I said, "how much better to be a visitor than a +guest!" After a moment or two we offered many thanks and sped on, but +not without many a backward glance on my part, for the place fascinated +me. That simply furnished institution! That severe regimen! This +latter-day Stoic and Spartan in his tent! And, above all things, and the +most astounding to me, so little could one know him, the book he had +been reading and which he had laid upon his little table as I entered--I +could not help noting the title for he laid it back up, open face +down--was Lecky's "History of European Morals"! + +Now! + +Well! + + +IN RETROSPECT + +Two years after this visit, in a serious attempt to set down what I +really did think of him, I arranged the following thoughts with which I +closed my sketch then and which I now append for what they may be worth. +They represented my best thought concerning him then: + +"Thomas Culhane belongs to that class of society which the preachers and +the world's army of conventional merchants, lawyers, judges and +reputable citizens generally are presumably, if one may judge by the +moral and religious literature of the day, trying to reach and reform. +Yet here at his sanitarium are gathered representatives of those same +orders, the so-called better element. And here we see them suddenly +dominated, mind and soul, by this being whom they, theoretically at +least, look upon as a brand to be snatched from the burning. + +"As the Church and society view Culhane, so they view all life outside +their own immediate circles. Culhane is in fact a conspicuous figure +among the semi-taboo. He has been referred to in many an argument and +platform and pulpit and in the press as a type of man whose influence is +supposed to be vitiating. Now a minister enters the sanitarium, broken +down by his habits of life, and this same Culhane is able to penetrate +him, to see that his dogmatic and dictatorial mental habits are the +cause of his ailment, and he has the moral courage to shock him, to drag +him by apparently brutal processes out of his rut. He reads the man +accurately, he knows him better than he knows himself, and he effects a +cure. + +"This astonishing condition is certainly a new light for those seeking +to labor among men. Those who are successful gamblers, pugilists, +pickpockets, saloon-keepers, book-makers, jockeys and the like are so +by reason of their intelligence, their innate mental acumen and +perception. It is a fact that in the sporting world and among the +unconventional men-about-town you will often find as good if not better +judges of human nature than elsewhere. Contact with a rough and ready +and all-too-revealing world teaches them much. The world's customary +pretensions and delusions are in the main ripped away. They are bruised +by rough facts. Often the men gathered in some such café and whom +preachers and moralists are most ready to condemn have a clearer +perception of preachers, church organizations and reformers and their +relative importance in the multitudinous life of the world than the +preachers, church congregations and reformers have of those in the café +or the world outside to which they belong. + +"This is why, in my humble judgment, the Church and those associated +with its aims make no more progress than they do. While they are +consciously eager to better the world, they are so wrapped up in +themselves and their theories, so hampered by their arbitrary and +limited conceptions of good and evil, that the great majority of men +move about them unseen, except in a far-away and superficial manner. Men +are not influenced at arm's length. It would be interesting to know if +some day a preacher or judge, who, offended by Mr. Culhane's profanity +and brutality, will be able to reach the gladiator and convert him to +his views as readily as the gladiator is able to rid him of his +ailment." + +In justice to the preachers, moralists, et cetera, I should now like to +add that it is probably not any of the virtues or perfections +represented by a man like Culhane with which they are quarreling, but +the vices of many who are in no wise like him and do not stand for the +things he stands for. At the same time, the so-called "sports" might +well reply that it is not with any of the really admirable qualities of +the "unco guid" that they quarrel, but their too narrow interpretations +of virtue and duty and their groundless generalization as to types and +classes. + +Be it so. + +Here is meat for a thousand controversies. + + + + +_A True Patriarch_ + + +In the streets of a certain moderate-sized county seat in Missouri not +many years ago might have been seen a true patriarch. Tall, +white-haired, stout in body and mind, he roamed among his neighbors, +dispensing sympathy and a curiously genial human interest through the +leisure of his day. One might have taken him to be Walt Whitman, of whom +he was the living counterpart; or, in the clear eye, high forehead and +thick, appealing white hair, have seen a marked similarity to Bryant as +he appeared in his later years. Already at this time he had seen man's +allotted term on earth, and yet he was still strong in the councils of +his people and rich in the accumulated interests of a lifetime. + +At the particular time in question he was most interesting for the +eccentricities which years of stalwart independence had developed, but +these were lovable peculiarities and only severed from remarkable +actions by the compelling power of time and his increasing infirmities. +The loud, though pleasant, voice, and strong, often fiery, declamatory +manner, were remnants of the days when his fellow-citizens were wholly +swayed by the magnificence of his orations. Charmingly simple in manner, +he still represented with it that old courtesy which made every stranger +his guest. When moved by righteous indignation, there cropped out the +daring and domineering insistence of one who had always followed what he +considered to be the right, and who knew its power. + +Even then, old as he was, if there were any topic worthy of discussion, +and his fellow-citizens were in danger of going wrong, he became an +haranguing prophet, as it were, a local Isaiah or Jeremiah. Every gate +heard him, for he stopped on his rounds in front of each, and calling +out the inhabitant poured forth such a volume of fact and argument as +tended to remove all doubt of what he, at least, considered right. All +of this he invariably accompanied by a magnificence of gesture worthy of +a great orator. + +At such times his mind, apparently, was almost wholly engrossed with +these matters, and I have it from one of his daughters, who, besides +being his daughter, was a sincere admirer of his, that often he might +have been seen coming down his private lawn, and even the public streets +when there was no one near to hear him, shaking his head, gesticulating, +sometimes sweeping upward with his arms, as if addressing his +fellow-citizens in assemblage. + +"He used to push his big hat well back upon his forehead," she said on +one occasion, "and often in winter, forgetful of the bitter cold, would +take off his overcoat and carry it on his arm. Occasionally he would +stop quite still, as if he were addressing a companion, and with +sweeping gestures illustrate some idea or other, although, of course, +there was no one present. Then, planting his big cane forcibly with each +step, as though still emphasizing his recently stated ideas, he would +come forward and enter the house." + +The same suggestion of mental concentration might have been seen in +everything that he did, and I personally have seen him leading a pet +Jersey cow home for milking with the same dignity of bearing and +forcefulness of manner that characterized him when he stood before his +fellow-citizens at a public meeting addressing them on some important +topic. He never appeared to have a sense of difference from or +superiority over his fellowmen, but only the keenest sympathy with all +things human. Every man was his brother, every human being honest. A cow +or a horse was as much to be treated with sympathy and charity as a man +or a woman. If a purse was lost, forty-nine out of every fifty men would +return it without thought of reward, if you were to believe him. + +In the little town where he had lived so many years, and where he +finally died, he knew every living creature from cattle upwards, and +could call each by name. The sick, the poor, the widows, the orphans, +the insane, and dependents of all kinds, were his especial care. Every +Sunday afternoon for years, it was his custom to go the rounds of the +indigent, frequently carrying a basket of his good wife's dinner. This +he distributed, along with consolation and advice. Occasionally he would +return home of a winter's day very much engrossed with the discovery of +some condition of distress hitherto unseen. + +"Mother," he would say to his wife in that same oratorical manner +previously noted, as he entered the house, "I've found such a poor +family. They have moved into the old saloon below Solmson's. You know +how open that is." This was delivered in the most dramatic style after +he had indicated something important by throwing his overcoat on the bed +and standing his cane in the corner. "There's a man and several children +there. The mother is dead. They were on their way to Kansas, but it got +so cold they've had to stop here until the winter is broken. They're +without food; almost no clothing. Can't we find something for them?" + +"On these occasions," said his daughter to me once, "he would, as he +nearly always did, talk to himself on the way, as if he were discussing +politics. But you could never tell what he was coming for." + +Then with his own labor he would help his wife seek out the odds and +ends that could be spared, and so armed, would return, arguing by the +way as if an errand of mercy were the last thing he contemplated. Nearly +always the subject of these orations was some public wrong or error +which should receive, although in all likelihood it did not, immediate +attention. + +Always of a reverent, although not exactly religious, turn of mind, he +took considerable interest in religious ministration, though he steadily +and persistently refused, in his later years, to go to church. He had +St. James's formula to quote in self-defense, which insists that "Pure +religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, To visit the +fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted +from the world." Often, when pressed too close, he would deliver this +with kindly violence. One of the most touching anecdotes representative +of this was related to me by his daughter, who said: + +"Mr. Kent, a poor man of our town, was sick for months previous to his +death, and my father used to go often, sometimes daily, to visit him. He +would spend perhaps a few minutes, perhaps an hour, with him, singing, +praying, and ministering to his spiritual wants. The pastor of the +church living so far away and coming only once a month, this duty +devolved upon some one, and my father did his share, and always felt +more than repaid for the time spent by the gratitude shown by the many +poor people he aided in this way. + +"Mr. Kent's favorite song, for instance, was 'On Jordan's Stormy Banks +I Stand.' This he would have my father sing, and his clear voice could +often be heard in the latter's small house, and seemed to impart +strength to the sick man. + +"Upon one occasion, I remember, Mr. Kent expressed a desire to hear a +certain song. My father was not very familiar with it but, anxious to +grant his request, came home and asked me if I would get a friend of +mine and go and sing the song for him. + +"We entered the sick-room, he leading us by the hand, for we were +children at the time. Mr. Kent's face at once brightened, and father +said to him: + +"'Mr. Kent, I told you this morning that I couldn't sing the song you +asked for, but these girls know it, and have come to sing it for you.' + +"Then, waving his hand gently toward us, he said: + +"'Sing, children.' + +"We did so, and when we had finished he knelt and offered a prayer, not +for the poor man's recovery but that he might put his trust in the Lord +and meet death without fear. I have never been more deeply impressed nor +felt more confident in the presence of death, for the man died soon +after, soothed into perfect peace." + +On another occasion he was sitting with some friends in front of the +courthouse in his town, talking and sunning himself, when a neighbor +came running up in great excitement, calling: + +"Mr. White, Mr. White, come, right quick. Mrs. Sadler wants you." + +He explained that the woman in question was dying, and, being afraid she +would strangle in her last moments, had asked the bystanders to run for +him, her old acquaintance, in the efficacy of whose prayers she had +great faith. The old patriarch was without a coat at the time, but, +unmindful of that, hastened after. + +"Mr. White," exclaimed the sick woman excitedly upon seeing him, "I want +you to pray that I won't strangle. I'm not afraid to die, but I don't +want to die that way. I want you to offer a prayer for me that I may be +saved from that. I'm so afraid." + +Seeing by the woman's manner that she was very much overwrought, he +used all his art to soothe her. + +"Have no fear, Mrs. Sadler, now," he exclaimed solemnly. "You won't +strangle. I will ask the Lord for you, and this evil will not come upon +you. You need not have any fear." + +"Kneel down, you," he commanded, turning upon the assembled neighbors +and relatives who had followed or had been there before him, while he +pushed back his white hair from his forehead. "Let us now pray that this +good woman here be allowed to pass away in peace." And even with the +rustle of kneeling that accompanied his words he lifted up his coatless +arms and began to pray. + +Through his magnificent phraseology, no doubt, as well as his profound +faith, he succeeded in inducing a feeling of peace and quiet in all his +hearers, the sick woman included, who, listening, sank into a restful +stupor, from which all agony of mind had apparently disappeared. Then +when the physical atmosphere of the room had been thus reorganized, he +ceased and retired to the yard in front of the house, where on a bench +under a shade tree he seated himself to wipe his moist brow and recover +his composure. In a few moments a slight commotion in the sick-room +denoted that the end had come. Several neighbors came out, and one said, +"Well, it is all over, Mr. White. She is dead." + +"Yes," he replied with great assurance. "She didn't strangle, did she?" + +"No," said the other, "the Lord granted her request." + +"I knew He would," he replied in his customary loud and confident tone. +"Prayer is always answered." + +Then, after viewing the dead woman and making additional comments, he +was off, as placid as though nothing had occurred. + +I happened to hear of this some time after, and one day, while sitting +with him on his front porch, said, "Mr. White, do you really believe +that the Lord directly answered your prayer in that instance?" + +"Answered!" he almost shouted defiantly and yet with a kind of human +tenderness that one could never mistake. "Of course He answered! Why +wouldn't He--a faithful old servant like that? To be sure, He answered." + +"Might it not have been merely the change of atmosphere which your +voice and strength introduced? The quality of your own thoughts goes for +something in such matters. Mind acts on mind." + +"Certainly," he said, in a manner as agreeable as if it had always been +a doctrine with him. "I know that. But, after all, what is _that_--my +mind, your mind, the sound of voices? It's all the Lord anyhow, whatever +you think." + +How could one gainsay such a religionist as that? + +The poor, the blind, the insane, and sufferers of all sorts, as I have +said before, were always objects of his keenest sympathies. Evidence of +it flashed out at the most unexpected moments--loud, rough exclamations, +which, however, always contained a note so tender and suggestive as to +defy translation. Thus, while we were sitting on his front porch one day +and hotly discussing politics to while away a dull afternoon, there came +down the street, past his home, a queer, ragged, half-demented +individual, who gazed about in an aimless sort of way, peering queerly +over fences, looking idly down the road, staring strangely overhead into +the blue. It was apparent, in a moment, that the man was crazy, some +demented creature, harmless enough, however, to be allowed abroad and so +save the county the expense of caring for him. The old man broke a +sentence short in order to point and shake his head emotionally. + +"Look at that," he said to me, with a pathetic sweep of the arm, "now +just look at that! There's a poor, demented soul, with no one to look +after him. His brother is a hard-working saddler. His sister is dead. No +money to speak of, any of them." He paused a moment, and then added, "I +don't know what we're to do in such cases. The state and the county +don't always do their duty. Most people here are too poor to help, there +are so many to be taken care of. It seems almost at times as if you +can't do anything but leave them to the mercy of God, and yet you can't +do that either, quite," and he once more shook his head sadly. + +I was for denouncing the county, but he explained very charitably that +it was already very heavily taxed by such cases. He did not seem to know +exactly what should be done at the time, but he was very sorry, very, +and for the time being the warm argument in which he had been indulging +was completely forgotten. Now he lapsed into silence and all +communication was suspended, while he rocked silently in his great chair +and thought. + +One day in passing the local poor-farm (and this is of my own +knowledge), he came upon a man beating a poor idiot with a whip. The +latter was incapable of reasoning and therefore of understanding why it +was that he was being beaten. The two were beside a wood-pile and the +demented one was crying. In a moment the old patriarch had jumped out of +his conveyance, leaped over the fence, and confronted the amazed +attendant with an uplifted arm. + +"Not another lick!" he fairly shouted. "What do you mean by striking an +idiot?" + +"Why," explained the attendant, "I want him to carry in the wood, and he +won't do it." + +"It is not his place to bring in the wood. He isn't put here for that, +and in the next place he can't understand what you mean. He's put here +to be taken care of. Don't you dare strike him again. I'll see about +this, and you." + +Knowing his interrupter well, his position and power in the community, +the man endeavored to explain that some work must be done by the +inmates, and that this one was refractory. The only way he had of making +him understand was by whipping him. + +"Not another word," the old man blustered, overawing the county +hireling. "You've done a wrong, and you know it. I'll see to this," and +off he bustled to the county courthouse, leaving the transgressor so +badly frightened that whips thereafter were carefully concealed, in this +institution at least. The court, which was held in his home town, was +not in session at the time, and only the clerk was present when he came +tramping down the aisle and stood before the latter with his right hand +uplifted in the position of one about to make oath. + +"Swear me," he called solemnly, and without further explanation, as the +latter stared at him. "I want you to take this testimony under oath." + +The clerk knew well enough the remarkable characteristics of his guest, +whose actions were only too often inexplicable from the ground point of +policy and convention. Without ado, after swearing him, he got out ink +and paper, and the patriarch began. + +"I saw," he said, "in the yard of the county farm of this county, not +over an hour ago, a poor helpless idiot, too weak-minded to understand +what was required of him, and put in that institution by the people of +this county to be cared for, being beaten with a cowhide by Mark +Sheffels, who is an attendant there, because the idiot did not +understand enough to carry in wood, which the people have hired Mark +Sheffels to carry in. Think of it," he added, quite forgetting the +nature of his testimony and that he was now speaking for dictation and +not for an audience to hear, and going off into a most scorching and +brilliant arraignment of the entire system in which such brutality could +occur, "a poor helpless idiot, unable to frame in his own disordered +mind a single clear sentence, being beaten by a sensible, healthy brute +too lazy and trifling to perform the duties for which he was hired and +which he personally is supposed to perform." + +There was more to the effect, for instance, that the American people and +the people of this county should be ashamed to think that such crimes +should be permitted and go unpunished, and that this was a fair sample. +The clerk, realizing the importance of Mr. White in the community, and +the likelihood of his following up his charges very vigorously, quietly +followed his address in a very deferential way, jotting down such +salient features as he had time to write. When he was through, however, +he ventured to lift his voice in protest. + +"You know, Mr. White," he said, "Sheffels is a member of our party, and +was appointed by us. Of course, now, it's too bad that this thing should +have happened, and he ought to be dropped, but if you are going to make +a public matter of it in this way it may hurt us in the election next +month." + +The old patriarch threw back his head and gazed at him in the most +blazing way, almost without comprehension, apparently, of so petty a +view. + +"What!" he exclaimed. "What's that got to do with it? Do you want the +Democratic Party to starve the poor and beat the insane?" + +The opposition was rather flattened by the reply, and left the old +gentleman to storm out. For once, at least, in this particular instance, +anyhow, he had purified the political atmosphere, as if by lightning, +and within the month following the offending attendant was dropped. + +Politics, however, had long known his influence in a similar way. There +was a time when he was the chief political figure in the county, and +possessed the gift of oratory, apparently, beyond that of any of his +fellow-citizens. Men came miles to hear him, and he took occasion to +voice his views on every important issue. It was his custom in those +days, for instance, when he had anything of special importance to say, +to have printed at his own expense a few placards announcing his coming, +which he would then carry to the town selected for his address and +personally nail up. When the hour came, a crowd, as I am told, was never +wanting. Citizens and farmers of both parties for miles about usually +came to hear him. + +Personally I never knew how towering his figure had been in the past, or +how truly he had been admired, until one day I drifted in upon a lone +bachelor who occupied a hut some fifteen miles from the patriarch's home +and who was rather noted in the community at the time that I was there +for his love of seclusion and indifference to current events. He had not +visited the nearest neighboring village in something like five years, +and had not been to the moderate-sized county seat in ten. Naturally he +treasured memories of his younger days and more varied activity. + +"I don't know," he said to me one day, in discussing modern statesmen +and political fame in general, "but getting up in politics is a queer +game. I can't understand it. Men that you'd think ought to get up don't +seem to. It doesn't seem to be real greatness that helps 'em along." + +"What makes you say that?" I asked. + +"Well, there used to be a man over here at Danville that I always +thought would get up, and yet he didn't. He was the finest orator I ever +heard." + +"Who was he?" I asked. + +"Arch White," he said quietly. "He was really a great man. He was a good +man. Why, many's the time I've driven fifteen miles to hear him. I used +to like to go into Danville just for that reason. He used to be around +there, and sometimes he'd talk a little. He could stir a fellow up." + +"Oratory alone won't make a statesman," I ventured, more to draw him out +than to object. + +"Oh, I know," he answered, "but White was a good man. The +plainest-spoken fellow I ever heard. He seemed to be able to tell us +just what was the matter with us, or at least I thought so. He always +seemed a wonderful speaker to me. I've seen as many as two thousand +people up at High Hill hollerin' over what he was saying until you could +hear them for miles." + +"Why didn't he get up, then, do you suppose?" I now asked on my part. + +"I dunno," he answered. "Guess he was too honest, maybe. It's sometimes +that way in politics, you know. He was a mighty determined man, and one +that would talk out in convention, whatever happened. Whenever they got +to twisting things too much and doing what wasn't just honest, I suppose +he'd kick out. Anyhow, he didn't get up, and I've always wondered at +it." + +In Danville one might hear other stories wholly bearing out this latter +opinion, and always interesting--delightful, really. Thus, a long, +enduring political quarrel was once generated by an incident of no great +importance, save that it revealed an odd streak in the old patriarch's +character and his interpretation of charity and duty. + +A certain young man, well known to the people of this county and to the +patriarch, came to Danville one day and either drank up or gambled away +a certain sum of money intrusted to him by his aunt for disposition in +an entirely different manner. When the day was all over, however, he was +not too drunk to realize that he was in a rather serious predicament, +and so, riding out of town, traveled a little way and then tearing his +clothes and marking his skin, returned, complaining that he had been set +upon by the wayside, beaten, and finally robbed. His clothes were in a +fine state of dilapidation after his efforts, and even his body bore +marks which amply seconded his protestation. In the slush and rain of +the dark village street he was finally picked up by the county treasurer +seemingly in a wretched state, and the latter, knowing the generosity +of White and the fact that his door was always open to those in +distress, took the young man by the arm and led him to the patriarch's +door, where he personally applied for him. The old patriarch, holding a +lamp over his head, finally appeared and peered outward into the +darkness. + +"Yes," he exclaimed, as he always did, eyeing the victim; "what is it +you want of me?" + +"Mr. White," said the treasurer, "it's me. I've got young Squiers here, +who needs your sympathy and aid tonight. He's been beaten and robbed out +here on the road while he was on his way to his mother's home." + +"Who?" inquired the patriarch, stepping out on the porch and eyeing the +newcomer, the while he held the lamp down so as to get a good look. +"Billy Squiers!" he exclaimed when he saw who it was. "Mr. Morton, I'll +not take this man into my house. I know him. He's a drunkard and a liar. +No man has robbed him. This is all a pretense, and I want you to take +him away from here. Put him in the hotel. I'll pay his expenses for the +night, but he can't come into my home," and he retired, closing the door +after him. + +The treasurer fell back amazed at this onslaught, but recovered +sufficiently to knock at the door once more and declare to his friend +that he deemed him no Christian in taking such a stand and that true +religion commanded otherwise, even though he suspected the worst. The +man was injured and penniless. He even went so far as to quote the +parable of the good Samaritan who passed down by way of Jericho and +rescued him who had fallen among thieves. The argument had long +continued into the night and rain before the old patriarch finally waved +them both away. + +"Don't you quote Scripture to me," he finally shouted defiantly, still +holding the light and flourishing it in an oratorical sweep. "I know my +Bible. There's nothing in it requiring me to shield liars and drunkards, +not a bit of it," and once more he went in and closed the door. + +Nevertheless the youth was housed and fed at his expense and no charge +of any kind made against him, although many believed, as did Mr. White, +that he was guilty of theft, whereas others of the opposing political +camp believed not. However, considerable opposition, based on old Mr. +White's lack of humanity in this instance, was generated by this +argument, and for years he was taunted with it although he always +maintained that he was justified and that the Lord did not require any +such service of him. + +The crowning quality of nearly all of his mercies, as one may easily +see, was their humor. Even he was not unaware, in retrospect, of the +figure he made at times, and would smilingly tell, under provocation, of +his peculiar attitude on one occasion or another. Partially from +himself, from those who saw it, and the judge presiding in the case, was +the following characteristic anecdote gathered. + +In the same community with him at one time lived a certain man by the +name of Moore, who in his day had been an expert tobacco picker, but who +later had come by an injury to his hand and so turned cobbler, and a +rather helpless, although not hopeless, one at that. Mr. White had known +this man from boyhood up, and had been a witness at various times to the +many changes in his fortunes, from the time, for instance, when he had +earned as much as several dollars a day--good pay in that region--to the +hour when he took a cobbler's kit upon his back and began to eke out a +bare livelihood for his old age by traveling about the countryside +mending shoes. At the time under consideration, this ex-tobacco picker +had degenerated into so humble a thing as Uncle Bobby Moore, a poor, +half-remembered cobbler, whose earlier state but few knew, and who at +this time had only a few charitably inclined friends, with some of whom +he spent the more pleasant portion of the year from spring to fall. +Thus, it was his custom to begin his annual pilgrimage with a visit of +ten days to Mr. White, where he would sit and cobble shoes for all the +members of the household. From here he would go to another acquaintance +some ten miles farther on, where he could enjoy the early fruit which +was then ripening in delicious quantity. Then he would visit a friendly +farmer whose home was upon the Missouri River still farther away, where +he did his annual fishing, and so on by slow degrees, until at last he +would reach a neighborhood rich in cider presses, where he would wind up +the fall, and so end his travel for the winter, beginning his peculiar +round once more the following spring at the home of Mr. White. +Naturally the old patriarch knew him and liked him passing well. + +As he grew older, however, Uncle Bobby reached the place where even by +this method and his best efforts he could scarcely make enough to +sustain him in comfort during the winter season, which was one of nearly +six months, free as his food and lodging occasionally were. He was too +feeble. Not desiring to put himself upon any friend for more than a +short visit, he finally applied to the patriarch. + +"I come to you, Mr. White," he said, "because I don't think I can do for +myself any longer in the winter season. My hand hurts a good deal and I +get tired so easily. I want to know if you'd won't help me to get into +the county farm during the winter months, anyhow. In summer I can still +look out for myself, I think." + +In short, he made it clear that in summer he preferred to be out so that +he might visit his friends and still enjoy his declining years. + +The old patriarch was visibly moved by this appeal, and seizing him by +the arm and leading off toward the courthouse where the judge governing +such cases was then sitting he exclaimed, "Come right down here, Uncle +Bobby. I'll see what can be done about this. Your old age shouldn't be +troubled in this fashion--not after all the efforts you have made to +maintain yourself," and bursting in on the court a few moments later, +where a trial was holding at the time, he deliberately led his charge +down the aisle, disturbing the court proceedings by so doing, and +calling as he came: + +"Your Honor, I want you to hear this case especially. It's a very +important and a very sad case, indeed." + +Agape, the spectators paused to listen. The judge, an old and +appreciative friend of his, turned a solemn eye upon this latest +evidence of eccentricity. + +"What is it, Mr. White?" he inquired. + +"Your Honor," returned the latter in his most earnest and oratorical +manner, "this man here, as you may or may not know, is an old and +honorable citizen of this county. He has been here nearly all the days +of his life, and every day of that time he has earned an honest living. +These people here," he said, gazing about upon the interested +spectators, "can witness whether or not he was one of the best tobacco +pickers this county ever saw. Mayhew," he interrupted himself to call to +a spectator on one of the benches, "you know whether Uncle Bobby always +earned an honest living. Speak up. Tell the Court, did he?" + +"Yes, Mr. White," said Mayhew quickly, "he did." + +"Morrison," he called, turning in another direction, where an aged +farmer sat, "what do you know of this man?" + +Mr. Morrison was about to reply, when the Court interfered. + +"The Court knows, Mr. White, that he is an honest man. Now what would +you have it do?" + +"Well, your Honor," resumed the speaker, indifferently following his own +oratorical bent, the while the company surveyed him, amused and smiling, +"this man has always earned an honest living until he injured his hand +here in some way a number of years ago, and since then it has been +difficult for him to make his way and he has been cobbling for a living. +However, he is getting so old now that he can't even earn much at that, +except in the spring and summer, and so I brought him here to have him +assigned a place in the county infirmary. I want you to make out an +order admitting him to that institution, so that I can take it and go +with him and see that he is comfortably placed." + +"All right, Mr. White," replied the judge, surveying the two figures in +mid-aisle, "I so order." + +"But, your Honor," he went on, "there's an exception I want made in this +case. Mr. Moore has a few friends that he likes to visit in the summer, +and who like to have him visit them. I want him to have the privilege of +coming out in the summer to see these people and to see me." + +"All right, Mr. White," said the judge, "he shall have that privilege. +Now, what else?" + +Satisfied in these particulars, the aged citizen led his charge away, +and then went with him to the infirmary, where he presented the order of +the Court and then left him. + +Things went very well with his humble client for a certain time, and +Uncle Bobby was thought to be well disposed of, when one day he came to +his friend again. It appeared that only recently he had been changed +about in his quarters at the infirmary and put into a room with a +slightly demented individual, whose nocturnal wanderings greatly +disturbed his very necessary sleep. + +"I want to know if you won't have them put me by myself, Mr. White," he +concluded. "I need my sleep. But they say they can't do it without an +order." + +Once more the old patriarch led his charge before the Court, then +sitting, as it happened, and breaking in upon the general proceedings as +before, began: + +"Your Honor, this man here, Mr. Moore, whom I brought before you some +time ago, has been comfortably housed by your order, and he's deeply +grateful for it, as he will tell you, and as I can, but he's an old man, +your Honor, and, above all things, needs his rest. Now, of late they've +been quartering him with a poor, demented sufferer down there who walks +a good deal in his sleep, and it wears upon him. I've come here with him +to ask you to allow him to have a room by himself, where he will be +alone and rest undisturbed." + +"Very well, Mr. White," said the Court, "it shall be as you request." + +Without replying, the old gentleman turned and led the supplicant away. + +Everything went peacefully now for a number of years, until finally +Uncle Bobby, having grown so feeble with age that he feared he was soon +to die, came to his friend and asked him to promise him one thing. + +"What is it?" asked the latter. + +By way of replying, the supplicant described an old oak tree which grew +in the yard of the Baptist Church some miles from Danville, and said: + +"I want you to promise that when I am dead, wherever I happen to be at +the time, that you will see that I am buried under that tree." He gave +no particular reason save that he had always liked the tree and the view +it commanded, but made his request a very secret matter and begged to be +assured that Mr. White would come and get his body and carry it to the +old oak. + +The latter, always a respecter of the peculiarities and crotchets of his +friends, promised. After a few years went by, suddenly one day he +learned that Uncle Bobby was not only dead but buried, a thing which +astonished him greatly. No one locally being supposed to know that he +was to have had any special form of burial, the old patriarch at once +recalled his promise. + +"Where is his body?" he asked. + +"Why, they buried it under the old white oak over at Mt. Horeb Church," +was the answer. + +"What!" he exclaimed, too astonished to think of anything save his lost +privilege of mercy, "who told them to bury him there?" + +"Why, _he_ did," said the friend. "It was his last wish, I believe." + +"The confounded villain," he shouted, amusingly enough. "He led me to +believe that I was the only one he told. I alone was to have looked +after his burial, and now look at him--going and having himself buried +without a word. The scoundrel! Would you believe that an old friend like +Uncle Bobby would do anything like that? However," he added after a +time, "I think I know how it was. He got so old and feeble here of late +that he must have lost his mind--otherwise he would never have done +anything like that to me." + +And with this he was satisfied to rest and let bygones be bygones. + + + + +_De Maupassant, Junior_ + + +He dawned on me in the spring of 1906, a stocky, sturdy, penetrative +temperament of not more than twenty-four or -five years of age, steady of +eye, rather aloof and yet pervasive and bristling; a devouring type. +Without saying much, and seeming to take anything I had to say with a +grain of salt, he managed to impress himself on me at once. Frankly, I +liked him very much, although I could see at a glance that he was not so +very much impressed with me. I was an older man than he by, say, ten +years, an editor of an unimportant magazine, newly brought in (which he +did not know) to turn it into something better. In order to earn a few +dollars he had undertaken to prepare for the previous editor a most +ridiculous article, some silly thing about newspaper writing as a career +for women. It had been ordered or encouraged, and I felt that it was but +just that it should be paid for. + +"Why do you waste your time on a thing like that?" I inquired, smiling +and trying to criticize and yet encourage him at one and the same time, +for I had been annoyed by many similar assignments given out by the old +management which could not now be used. "You look to me to have too much +force and sense for that. Why not undertake something worth your time?" + +"My time, hell!" he bristled, like a fighting sledge-dog, of which by +the way he reminded me. "You show me a magazine in this town that would +buy anything that I thought worthy of my time! You're like all the rest +of them: you talk big, but you really don't want anything very +important. You want little things probably, written to a theory or down +to 'our policy.' I know. Give me the stuff. You don't have to take it. +It was ordered, but I'll throw it in the waste basket." + +"Not so fast! Not so fast!" I replied, admiring his courage and moved by +his contempt of the editorial and book publishing conditions in America. +He was so young and raw and savage in his way, quite animal, and yet how +interesting! There was something as fresh and clean about him as a newly +plowed field or the virgin prairies. He typified for me all the young +unsophisticated strength of my country, but with more "punch" than it +usually manifests, in matters intellectual at least. "Now, don't get +excited, and don't snarl," I cooed. "I know what you say is true. They +don't really want much of what you have to offer. I don't. Working for +some one else, as most of us do, for the dear circulation department, +it's not possible for us to get very far above crowd needs and tastes. +I've been in your position exactly. I am now. Where do you come from?" + +He told me--Missouri--and some very few years before from its state +university. + +"And what is it you want to do?" + +"What's that to you?" he replied irritatingly, with an ingrowing and +obvious self-conviction of superiority and withdrawing as though he +highly resented my question as condescending and intrusive. "You +probably wouldn't understand if I told you. Just now I want to write +enough magazine stuff to make a living, that's all." + +"Dear, dear!" I said, laughing at the slap. "What a bravo we are! +Really, you're interesting. But suppose now you and I get down to brass +tacks. You want to do something interesting, if you can, and get paid +for it. I rather like you, and anyhow you look to me as though you might +do the things I want, or some of them. Now, you want to do the least +silly thing you can--something better than this. I want the least silly +stuff I can get away with in this magazine--genuine color out of the +life of New York, if such a thing can be published in an ordinary +magazine. Roughly, here's the kind of thing I want," and I outlined to +him the probable policy of the magazine under my direction. I had taken +an anæmic "white-light" monthly known as _The Broadway_ (!) and was +attempting to recast it into a national or international metropolitan +picture. He thawed slightly. + +"Well, maybe with that sort of idea behind it, it might come to +something. I don't know. It's _possible_ that you may be the one to do +it." He emphasized the "possible." "At any rate, it's worth trying. +Judging by the snide editors and publications in this town, no one in +America wants anything decent." His lip curled. "I have ambitions of my +own, but I don't expect to work them out through the magazines of this +town; maybe not of this country. I didn't know that any change was +under way here." + +"Well, it is," I said. "Still, you can't expect much from this either, +remember. After all, it seeks to be a popular magazine. We'll see how +far we can go with really interesting material. And now if you know of +any others like yourself, bring them in here. I need them. I'll pay you +for that article, only I'll include it in a better price I'll give you +for something else later, see?" + +I smiled and he smiled. His was a warmth which was infectious when he +chose to yield, but it was always a repressed warmth, cynical, a bit +hard; heat chained to a purpose, I thought. He went away and I saw him +no more until about a week later when he brought me his first attempt to +give me what I wanted. + +In the meantime I was busy organizing a staff which should if possible, +I decided after seeing him, include him. I could probably use him as a +salaried "special" writer, provided he could be trained to write +"specials." He looked so intelligent and ambitious that he promised +much. Besides, the little article which he had left when he came again, +while not well organized or arranged as to its ideas or best points, was +exceedingly well written from the point of mere expression. + +And the next thing I had given him to attempt was even better. It was, +if I recall correctly, a stirring picture of the East Side, intended to +appeal to readers elsewhere than in the city, but while in the matter of +color and definiteness of expression as well as choice of words it was +exceptional, it was lacking in, quite as the first one had been, the +arrangement of its best points. This I explained to him, and also made +it clear to him that I could show him how if he would let me. He seemed +willing enough, quite anxious, although always with an air of reserve, +as if he were accommodating himself to me in this much but no more. He +grasped the idea of order swiftly, and in a little while, having worked +at a table in an outer room, brought me the rearranged material, almost +if not quite satisfactory. During a number of weeks and months +thereafter, working on one "special" and another in this way with me, he +seemed finally to grasp the theory I had, or at least to develop a +method of his own which was quite as satisfactory to me, and I was very +much pleased. A little later I employed him at a regular salary. + +It was pathetic, as I look at it now, the things we were trying to do +and the conditions under which we were trying to do them--the raw +commercial force and theory which underlay the whole thing, the +necessity of explaining and fighting for so much that one should not, as +I saw it then, have to argue over at all. We were in new rooms, in a new +building, filled with lumber not yet placed and awaiting the completion +of partitions which, as some one remarked, "would divide us up." Our +publisher and owner was a small, energetic, vibrant and colorful soul, +all egotism and middle-class conviction as to the need of "push," +ambition, "closeness to life," "punch," and what not else, American to +the core, and descending on us, or me rather, hourly as it were, +demanding the "hows" and the "whyfors" of the dream which the little +group I was swiftly gathering about me was seeking to make real. + +It was essential to me, therefore, that something different should be +done, some new fresh note concerning metropolitan life and action be +struck; the old, slow and somewhat grandiose methods of reporting and +describing things dispensed with, at least in this instance, and here +was a youth who seemed able to help me do it. He was so vigorous, so +avid of life, so anxious to picture the very atmosphere which this +magazine was now seeking to portray. I felt stronger, better for having +him around. The growth of the city, the character and atmosphere of a +given neighborhood, the facts concerning some great social fortune, +event, condition, crime interested him intensely; on the other hand he +was so very easy to teach, quick to sense what was wanted and the order +in which it must be presented. A few brief technical explanations from +me, and he had the art of writing a "special" at his fingertips, and +thereafter gave me no real difficulty. + +But what was more interesting to me than his success in grasping my +theory of "special" writing was his own character, as it was revealed to +me from day to day in intimate working contact with him under these +conditions. Here, as I soon learned, and was glad to learn, was no +namby-pamby scribbler of the old happy-ending, pretty-nothing school of +literary composition. On the contrary he sounded, for the first time in +my dealings with literary aspirants of every kind, that sure, sane, +penetrating, non-sentimental note so common to the best writers of the +Continent, a note entirely free from mush, bravado and cant. He had a +style as clear as water, as simple as rain; color, romance, humor; and +if a little too much of vanity and self-importance, still one could +forgive him for they were rather well-based. Already used to dealing +with literary and artistic aspirants of different kinds in connection +with the publications of which I had been a part, this one appealed to +me as being the best of them all and a very refreshing change. + +One day, only a few weeks after I had met him, seeing that I was alert +for fiction, poetry and short essays or prose phantasies, all +illustrative of the spirit of New York, he brought me a little poem +entitled "Neuvain," which interested me greatly. It was so brief and +forceful and yet so delicate, a double triolet of the old French order, +but with the modernity and flavor of the streets outside, the conduit +cars, hand-organs and dancing children of the pavements. The title +seemed affected, seeing that the English word "Spring" would have done +as well, but it was typical of his mood at the time, his literary +adorations. He was in leash to the French school of which de Maupassant +was the outstanding luminary, only I did not know it at the time. + +"Charming," I exclaimed quite enthusiastically. "I like this. Let me see +anything else you have. Do you write short stories?" + +For answer he merely stared at me for a little while in the most +examining and arrogant and contemptuous way, as much as to say, "Let me +see if you are really worth my time and trouble in this matter," or +"This sad specimen of alleged mentality is just beginning to suspect +that I might write a short story." Seeing that I merely smiled most +genially in return, he finally deigned to say, "Sure, I write short +stories. What do you think I'm in the writing game for?" + +"But you might be interested in novels only or plays, or poetry." + +"No," he returned after a pause and with that same air of unrelieved +condescension, "the short story is what I want to specialize in." + +"Well," I said to myself, "here is a young cub who certainly has talent, +is crowded with it, and yet owing to the kind of thing he is starting +out to do and the fact that life will give him slaps and to spare before +he is many years older, he needs to be encouraged. I was like that +myself not so long ago. And besides, if I do not encourage this type of +work financially (which is the best way of all), who will?" + +About a week later I was given another and still more gratifying +surprise, for one day, in his usual condescending manner, he brought to +me two short pieces of fiction and laid them most gingerly on my desk +with scarcely a word--"Here was something I might read if I chose," I +believe. The reading of these two stories gave me as much of a start as +though I had discovered a fully developed genius. They were so truly new +or different in their point of view, so very clear, incisive, brief, +with so much point in them (_The Second Motive_; _The Right Man_). For +by then having been struggling with the short-story problem in other +magazine offices before this, I had become not a little pessimistic as +to the trend of American short fiction, as well as long--the +impossibility of finding any, even supposing it publishable once we had +it. My own experience with "Sister Carrie" as well as the fierce +opposition or chilling indifference which, as I saw, overtook all those +who attempted anything even partially serious in America, was enough to +make me believe that the world took anything even slightly approximating +the truth as one of the rankest and most criminal offenses possible. One +dared not "talk out loud," one dared not report life as it was, as one +lived it. And one of the primary warnings I had received from the +president of this very organization--a most eager and ambitious and +distressing example of that American pseudo-morality which combines a +pirate-like acquisitiveness with an inward and absolute conviction of +righteousness--was that while he wanted something new in fiction, +something more virile and life-like than that "mush," as he +characterized it, to be found in the current magazines, still (1), it +must have a strong appeal for the general reader (!); and (2), be very +compelling in fact and _clean_, as the dear general reader would of +course understand that word--a solid little pair of millstones which +would unquestionably end in macerating everything vital out of any good +story. + +Still I did not despair; something might be done. And though I sighed, I +hoped to be able to make my superior stretch a point in favor of the +exceptional thing, or, as the slang phrase went, "slip a few over on +him," but that of course meant nothing or something, as you choose. My +dream was really to find one or many like this youth, or a pungent kind +of realism that would be true and yet within such limits as would make +it usable. Imagine, then, my satisfaction in finding these two things, +tales that I could not only admire genuinely but that I could publish, +things that ought to have an interest for all who knew even a little +about life. True, they were ironic, cruel, but still with humor and +color, so deftly and cleanly told that they were smile-provoking. I +called him and said as much, or nearly so--a mistake, as I sometimes +think now, for art should be long--and bought them forthwith, hoping, +almost against hope, to find many more such like them. + +By this time, by the way, and as I should have said before, I had still +further enlarged my staff by one art director of the most flamboyant and +erratic character, a genius of sorts, volatile, restless, emotional, +colorful, a veritable Verlaine-Baudelaire-Rops soul, who, not content to +arrange and decorate the magazine each month, must needs wish to write, +paint, compose verse and music and stage plays, as well as move in an +upper social world, _entrée_ to which was his by birth. Again, there was +by now an Irish-Catholic makeup editor, a graduate of some distinguished +sectarian school, who was more interested in St. Jerome and his +_Vulgate_, as an embodiment of classic Latin, than he was in getting out +the magazine. Still he had the advantage of being interesting--"and I +learned about Horace from him." Again, there was a most interesting and +youthful and pretty, if severe, example of the Wellesley-Mt. +Holyoke-Bryn Mawr school of literary art and criticism, a most +engagingly interesting intellectual maiden, who functioned as assistant +editor and reader in an adjoining room, along with the art-director, the +makeup editor and an office boy. This very valuable and in some +respects remarkable young woman, who while holding me in proper +contempt, I fear, for my rather loose and unliterary ways, was still, as +I had suspected before employing her, as keen for something new and +vital in fiction and every other phase of the scriptic art as any one +well could be. She was ever for culling, sorting, eliminating--repression +carried to the N-th power. At first L---- cordially hated her, calling +her a "simp," a "bluff," a "la-de-da," and what not. In addition to +these there was a constantly swelling band of writers, artists, poets, +critics, dreamers of reforms social, and I know not what else, who, +holding the hope of achieving their ends or aims through some really +forceful magazine, were by now beginning to make our place a center. It +fairly swarmed for a time with aspirants; an amusing, vivid, strident +world. + +As for L----, all this being new to him, he was as interested, +fascinated even, as any one well might be. He responded to it almost +gayly at times, wondering whether something wonderful, international, +enduring might not be made to come of it. He rapidly developed into one +of the most pertinacious and even disconcerting youths I have ever met. +At times he seemed to have a positive genius for saying and doing +irritable and disagreeable things, not only to me but to others. Never +having heard of me before he met me here, he was convinced, I think, +that I was a mere nothing, with some slight possibilities as an editor +maybe, certainly with none as a writer or as one who could even suggest +anything to writers. I had helped him, but that was as it should be. As +for my art-director, he was at first a fool, later a genius; ditto my +makeup man. + +As for Miss E----, the Wellesley-Bryn Mawr-Mt. Holyoke assistant, who +from the first had agreed with me that here indeed was a writer of +promise, a genius really, he, as I have said, at first despised her. +Later, by dint of exulting in his force, sincerity of purpose, his keen +insight and all but braggart strength, she managed, probably on account +of her looks and physical graces, to install herself in his confidence +and to convince him that she was not only an honest admirer of his skill +but one who had taste and judgment of no mean caliber. Thereafter he +was about as agreeable as a semi-caged wild animal would be about any +office. + +But above all he was affronted by M----, the publisher of the paper, +concerning whom he could find no words equal to his contemptuous +thoughts of him. The publisher, as L---- made quite bold to say to me, +was little more than a "dodging, rat-like financial ferret," a +"financial stool-pigeon for some trust or other," a "shrewd, material +little shopkeeper." This because M---- was accustomed to enter and force +a conversation here and there, anxious of course to gather the full +import of all these various energies and enthusiasms. One of the things +which L---- most resented in him at the time was his air of supreme +material well-being, his obvious attempt and wish not to convey it, his +carefully-cut clothes, his car, his numerous assistants and secretaries +following him here and there from various other organizations with which +he was connected. + +M----'s idea, as he always said, was to spend and to live, only it +wasn't. He merely induced others so to do. One of his customs (and it +must have impressed L---- very much, innocent newcomer that he was) was +to have one or another of his hirelings announce his passing from one +"important" meeting to another, within or without his own building, +telephone messages being "thrown in" on his line or barred out, wherever +he happened to be at the moment and when, presumably, he was deep in one +of those literary conferences or confidences with one employee or +another or with a group, for which he rapidly developed a passion. +Another of his vanities was to have his automobile announced and he be +almost forced into it by impetuous secretaries, who, because of orders +previously given, insisted that he must be made to keep certain +important engagements. Or he would send for one of his hirelings, +wherever he chanced to be--club, restaurant, his home--midnight if +necessary, to confer with him on some subject of great moment, and the +hireling was supposed to call a taxi and come post haste in order that +he might not be kept waiting. + +"God!" L---- once remarked in my presence. "To think that a thinking +being has to be beholden to a thing like that for his weekly income! +Somebody ought to tap him with a feather-duster and kill him!" + +But the manner in which L---- developed in this atmosphere! It was +interesting. At first, before the magazine became so significant or +well-organized, it was a great pleasure for me to associate with him +outside office hours, and a curious and vivid companion he made. He was +so intensely avid of life, so intolerant of the old, of anything +different to that which he personally desired or saw, that at times it +was most difficult to say anything at all for fear of meeting a rebuff +or at least a caustic objection. As I was very pleased to note, he had a +passion for seeing, as all youth should have when it first comes to the +great city--the great bridges, the new tunnels just then being completed +or dug, the harbor and bay, Coney Island, the two new and great railway +terminals, then under construction. Most, though, he reveled in +different and even depressing neighborhoods--Eighth Avenue, for +instance, about which he later wrote a story, and a very good one ("A +Quiet Duet"); Hell's Kitchen, that neighborhood that lies (or did), on +the West Side of Manhattan, between Eighth and Tenth Avenues, +Thirty-sixth and Forty-first Streets; Little Italy, the region below +Delancey and north of Worth Street on the East Side; Chinatown; +Washington Street (Syria in America); the Greeks in Twenty-seventh and +-eighth Streets, West Side. All these and many more phases of New York's +multiplex life took his full and restless attention. Once he said to me +quite excitedly, walking up Eighth Avenue at two in the morning--I was +showing him some rear tenement slums in the summertime--"God, how I hate +to go to bed in this town! I'm afraid something will happen while I'm +asleep and I won't see it!" That was exactly how he felt all the time, I +am sure. + +And in those days he was most simple, a very Spartan of a boy. He hadn't +the least taste for drink, lived in a small hall-bedroom +somewhere--Eighth Avenue, I believe--and took his meals in those shabby +little quick-lunch rooms where the characters were more important to him +than the food. (My hat--my hat is in my hand!) Intellectually he was so +stern and ambitious that I all but stood in awe of and reverence before +him. Here, I said to myself, is one who will really do; let him be as +savage as he pleases. In America he probably needs to be. + +And during this short time, what scraps of his early life he revealed! +By degrees I picked up bits of his early deprivations and difficulties, +if such they might be called. He had been a newspaper reporter, or had +tried to be, in Kansas City, had worked in the college restaurant and +laundry of the middle-West State university from which he had graduated, +to help pay his way. Afterward he had assisted the janitor of some great +skyscraper somewhere--Kansas City, I believe--and, what was most +pleasing to me, he in nowise emphasized these as youthful difficulties +or made any comment as to their being "hard." Neither did he try to +boastingly minimize them as nothing at all--another wretched pose. From +him I learned that throughout his youth he had been carried here and +there by the iron woman who was his mother and whom he seemed to adore +in some grim contentious way, smothering his comments as though he +disliked to say anything at all, and yet describing her at times as +coarse and vulgar, but a mother to him "all right," someone who had made +marked sacrifices for him. + +She had once "run" a restaurant in a Western mining camp, had then or +later carried him as a puling baby under her shawl or cloak across the +Mojave Desert, on foot a part of the way. Apparently he did not know who +his father was, and he was not very much concerned to know whether she +did or not. His father had died, he said, when he was a baby. Later his +mother, then a cook in some railroad hotel in Texas, had sent him to +school there. Later still she had been a "bawler out," if you know what +that means, an employee of a loan shark and used by him to compel +delinquent, albeit petty and pathetic, creditors to pay their dues or +then and there, before all their fellow-workers, be screamed at for +their delinquency about the shop in which they worked! Later she became +a private detective! an insurance agent--God knows what--a kind of rough +man-woman, as she turned out to be, but all the while clinging to this +boy, her pet, no doubt her dream of perfection. She had by turns sent +him to common and high school and to college, remitting him such sums of +money as she might to pay his way. Later still (at that very time in +fact) she was seeking to come to New York to keep house for him, only +he would not have that, perhaps sensing the need of greater freedom. But +he wrote her regularly, as he confessed to me, and in later years I +believe sent her a part of his earnings, which were to be saved by her +for him against a rainy day. Among his posthumous writings later I found +a very lovely story ("His Mother"), describing her and himself in +unsparing and yet loving terms, a compound of the tender and the brutal +in his own soul. + +The thing that always made me hope for the best was that at that time he +was not at all concerned with the petty little _moralic_ and economic +definitions and distinctions which were floating about his American +world in one form and another. Indeed he seemed to be entirely free of +and even alien to them. What he had heard about the indwelling and +abiding perfections of the human soul had gone, and rightly so, in one +ear and out the other. He respected the virtues, but he knew of and +reckoned with die antipathetic vices which gave them their reason for +being. To him the thief was almost as important as the saint, the reason +for the saint's being. And, better still, he had not the least interest +in American politics or society--a wonderful sign. The American dream of +"getting ahead" financially and socially was not part of him--another +mark royal. All life was fascinating, acceptable, to be interpreted if +one had the skill; it was a great distinction to have the skill--worth +endless pains to acquire it. + +But how unwilling would the average American of his day have been, +stuffed as he was and still is with book and picture drivel about +artists and art, to accept L---- as anything more than a raw, callow +yokel, presuming to assail the outer portals of the temple with his +muddy feet! A romping, stamping, irritable soul, with more the air of a +young railroad brakeman or "hand," than an artist, and with so much +coarse language at times and such brutality of thought as to bar him +completely, one might say, from having anything to do with great +fiction, great artistic conceptions, or the temple of art. What, sit +with the mighty!--that coarse youth, with darkish-brown hair parted at +one side and combed over one ear, in the manner of a grandiose barber; +with those thick-soled and none too shapely brown shoes, that none too +well-made store suit of clothes, that little round brown hat, more +often a cap, pulled rather savagely and vulgarly, even insultingly, over +one eye; that coarse frieze overcoat, still worn on cold spring days, +its "corners" back and front turned up by the damp and from being +indifferently sat on; that brash corn-cob pipe and bag of cheap tobacco, +extracted and lit at odd moments; what, that youth with the aggressive, +irritating vibrant manner--almost the young tough with a chip on his +shoulder looking for one to even so much as indicate that he is not all +he should be! Positively, there was something brutal and yet cosmic (not +comic) about him, his intellectual and art pretensions considered. At +times his waspishness and bravado palled even on me. He was too +aggressive, too forceful, too intolerant, I said. He should be softer. +At other times I felt that he needed to be all that and more to "get +by," as he would have said. I wanted to modify him a little--and yet I +didn't--and I remained drawn to him in spite of many irritating little +circumstances, all but infuriating at times, and actually calculated, it +seemed, with a kind of savage skill to reduce what he conceived to be my +lofty superiority. At times I thought he ought to be killed--like a +father meditating on an unruly son--but the mood soon passed and his +literary ability made amends for everything. + +In so far as the magazine was concerned, once it began to grow and +attract attention he was for me its most important asset; not that he +did so much directly as that he provided a definite standard toward +which we all had to work. Not incuriously, he was swiftly recognized for +what he was by all who came in touch with the magazine. In the first +place, interested in his progress, I had seen to it that he was properly +introduced wherever that was possible and of benefit to him, and later +on, by sheer force of his mental capacity and integrity, his dreams and +his critical skill, he managed to center about him an entire band of +seeking young writers, artists, poets, playwrights, aspiring musicians; +an amusing and as interesting a group as I have ever seen. Their points +of rendezvous appeared to be those same shabby quick-lunches in back +streets or even on the principal thoroughfares about Times Square, or +they met in each other's rooms or my office at night after I had gone, +giving me as an excuse that they had work to do. And during all this +time the air fairly hummed with rumors of new singers, dancers, plays, +stories being begun or under way, articles and essays contemplated; +avid, if none too well financed frolics or bohemian midnight suppers +here and there. Money was by no means plentiful, and in consequence +there was endless borrowing and "paying up" among them. Among the most +enthusiastic members of this circle, as I had begun to note, and finally +rather nervously, were my art-director, a valiant knight in Bohemia if +ever there was one, and she of Bryn Mawr-Wellesley standards. My makeup +editor, as well as various contributors who had since become more or +less closely identified with the magazine, were also following him up +all the time. + +If not directly profitable it was enlivening, and I was fairly well +convinced by now that from the point of view of being "aware," "in touch +with," "in sympathy with" many of the principal tendencies and +undercurrents which make for a magazine's success and precedence, this +group was as valuable to me as any might well be. It constituted a +"kitchen cabinet" of sorts and brought hundreds of interesting ideas to +the surface, and from all directions. Now it would be a new and hitherto +unheard-of tenor who was to be brought from abroad and introduced with +great noise to repute-loving Americans; a new sculptor or painter who +had never been heard of in America; a great actor, perhaps, or poet or +writer. I listened to any quantity of gossip in regard to new movements +that were ready to burst upon the world, in sculpture, painting, the +scriptic art. About the whole group there was much that was exceedingly +warm, youthful, full of dreams. They were intensely informative and full +of hope, and I used to look at them and wonder which one, if any, was +destined to have his dreams realized. + +Of L---- however I never had the least doubt. He began, it is true, to +adopt rather more liberal tendencies, to wish always to be part and +parcel of this gayety, this rushing here and there; and he drank at +times--due principally, as I thought, to my wildling art-director, who +had no sense or reserve in matters material or artistic and who was all +for a bacchanalian career, cost what it might. On more than one occasion +I heard L---- declaring roundly, apropos of some group scheme of +pilgrimage, "No, no! I will not. I am going _home_ now!" He had a story +he wanted to work on, an article to finish. At the same time he would +often agree that if by a certain time, when he was through, they were +still at a certain place, or a second or third, he would look them up. +Never, apparently, did his work suffer in the least. + +And it was about this time that I began to gather the true source and +import of his literary predisposition. He was literally obsessed, as I +now discovered, with Continental and more especially the French +conception of art in writing. He had studied the works as well as the +temperaments and experiences (more especially the latter, I fear) of +such writers as de Maupassant, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Balzac, de Musset, +Sand, Daudet, Dumas junior, and Zola, as well as a number of the more +recent writers: Hervieu, Bourget, Louys and their contemporaries. Most +of all, though, he was impressed, and deeply, by the life and art of de +Maupassant, his method of approach, his unbiased outlook on life, his +freedom from moral and religious and even sentimental predisposition. In +the beginning of his literary career I really believe he slaved to +imitate him exactly, although he could not very well escape the American +temperament and rearing by which he was hopelessly conditioned. A +certain Western critic and editor, to whom he had first addressed his +hopes and scribblings before coming to me, writing me after L----'s +death in reference to a period antedating that in which I had known him, +observed, "He was crazy about the _fin de siècle_ stuff that then held +the boards and from which (I hope the recording angel will put it to my +credit) I steered him clear." I think so; but he was still very much +interested in it. He admired Aubrey Beardsley, the poster artists of +France, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rops, the Yellow Book, even Oscar Wilde, +although his was a far more substantial and plebeian and even radical +point of view. + +Unfortunately for L----, I have always thought, there now thrust himself +forward the publisher and owner of the magazine, who from previously +having been content to see that the mercantile affairs of the magazine +were in good order, had decided that since it was attracting attention +he should be allowed to share in its literary and artistic prestige, +should indeed be closely identified with it and recognized as its true +source and inspiration--a thing which in no fashion had been +contemplated by me when I went there. From having agreed very distinctly +with me that no such interference would at any time be indulged in, he +now came forward with a plan for an advisory council which was to +consist of himself and the very members of the staff which I had +created. + +I could not object and it did not disturb me so much personally. For +some time I had been sensing that the thing was for me no end in itself, +but an incident. This same I felt to be true for L----, who had been +taking more and more interest in the magazine's technical composition. +At the same time I saw no immediate way of arranging my affairs and +departing, which left me, for a very little while, more or less of a +spectator. During this time I had the dissatisfaction of noting the +growth of an influence with L---- which could, as I saw, prove only +harmful. M---- was no suitable guide for him. He was a brilliant but +superficial and very material type who was convinced that in the having +and holding of many things material--houses, lands, corporation stocks, +a place in the clubs and circles of those who were materially +prosperous--was really to achieve all that was significant in the now or +the hereafter. Knowing comparatively nothing of either art or letters, +or that subtle thing which makes for personality and atmosphere in a +magazine or in writing (and especially the latter), that grateful +something which attracts and detains one, he was nevertheless convinced +that he did. And what was more, he was determined not only to make +friends with and hold all those whom I might have attracted, providing +they could prove useful to him, but also a number of a much more +successful group in these fields, those who had already achieved repute +in a more commonplace and popular way and were therefore presumably +possessed of a following and with the power to exact a high return for +their product, and for the magazine, regardless of intrinsic merit. His +constant talk was of money, its power to attract and buy, the +significance of all things material. He now wanted the magazine to be +representative of this glowing element, and at the same time, +paradoxical as it might seem, the best that might be in literary and +artistic thought. + +Naturally the thing was impossible, but he had a facile and specious +method of arguing, a most gay and in some respects magnetic personality, +far from stodgy or gross, which for a time attracted many to him. Very +briskly then indeed he proceeded to make friends with all those with +whom I had surrounded myself, to enter into long and even private +discussions with them as to the proper conduct of the magazine, to hint +quite broadly at a glorious future in which all, each one particularly +to whom he talked, was to share. Curiously, this new and (as I would +have thought) inimical personality of M---- seemed to appeal to L---- +very much. + +I do not claim that the result was fatal. It may even, or at least +might, have had value, combined with an older or slightly more balanced +temperament. But it seemed to me that it offered too quickly what should +have come, if at all, as the result of much effort. For in regard to the +very things L---- should have most guarded against--show and the shallow +pleasures of social and night and material life in New York--M---- was +most specious. I never knew a more intriguing and fascinating man in +this respect nor one who cared less for those he used to obtain his +unimportant ends. He had positive genius for making the gaudy and the +unworthy seem worthy and even perfect. During his earlier days there, +L---- had more than once "cursed him out" (in his absence, of course), +to use his own expressive phrase, for his middle-West trade views, as he +described them, his shabby social and material ideals, and yet, as I +could plainly see, even at that time the virus of his theories was +working. For it must be remembered that L---- was very new to New York, +very young, and never having had much of anything he was no doubt +slightly envious of the man's material facility, the sense of +all-sufficiency, exclusiveness and even a kind of petty trade grandeur +with which he tried to surround himself. + +Well, that might not have proved fatal either, only L---- needed some one +to keep him true to himself, his individual capabilities, to constantly +caution and if possible sober him to his very severe taste, and as it +was he was all but surrounded by acolytes and servitors. + +A little later, having left M----'s and assumed another editorial +position, and being compelled to follow the various current magazines +more or less professionally, I was disturbed to note that there began to +appear in various publications--especially M----'s, which was +flourishing greatly for the moment--stories which while exhibiting much +of the deftness and repression as well as an avidity for the true color +of things, still showed what I had at first feared they might: a decided +compromise. That curse of all American fiction, the necessarily happy +ending, had been impressed on him--by whom? To my sincere +dissatisfaction, he began writing stories, some at least, which +concerned (1), a young woman who successfully abandoned art dreams for +advertising; (2), a middle-aged charmer, female, who attempted +_libertinage_ and was defeated, American style; (3), a Christmas picture +with sweetness and light reigning on every hand (Dickens at his +sentimentalest could have done no worse); (4), a Broadway press agent +who, attempting to bring patronage to a great hotel via chic vice, +accidentally and unintentionally mates an all-too-good young society man +turned hotel manager to a grand heiress. And so on and so on, not ad +infinitum but for a period at least--the ten years in which he managed +to live and work. + +And, what was more, during this new period I heard and occasionally saw +discouraging things in connection with him from time to time. True to +his great promise, for I sincerely think M---- had a genuine fondness +for his young protégé, as much of a fondness as he could well have for +anything, he guaranteed him perhaps as much as three thousand a year; +sent him to Stockholm at the age of twenty-four or -five to meet and +greet the famous false pole discoverer, Doctor Cook; allowed him to go +to Paris in connection with various articles; to Rome; sent him into the +middle and far West; to Broadway for dramatic and social studies. Well +and good, only he wanted always in what was done for him the "uplift" +note, the happy ending--or at least one not vulgar or low--whereas my +idea in connection with L----, gifted as he was, was that he should +confine himself to fiction as an art and without any regard to theories +or types of ending, believing, as I did, that he would definitely +establish himself in that way in the long run. I had no objection of +course to experiences of various kinds, his taking up with any line of +work which might seem at the moment far removed from realistic writing, +providing always that the star of his ideal was in sight. Whenever he +wrote, be it early or late, it must be in the clear, incisive, +uncompromising vein of these first stories and with that passion for +revelation which characterized him at first, that same unbiased and +unfettered non-moral viewpoint. + +But after meeting with and working for M---- under this new arrangement +and being apparently fascinated for the moment by his personality, he +seemed to me to gradually lose sight of his ideal, to be actually taken +in by the plausible arguments which the latter could spin with the ease +that a spider spins gossamer. In that respect I insist that M---- was a +bad influence. Under his tutelage L---- gradually became, for instance, +an habitué of a well-known and pseudo-bohemian chop-house, a most +mawkish and naïvely imitative affair, intended frankly to be a copy or +even the original, forsooth, of an old English inn, done, in so far as +its woodwork was concerned, in smoked or dark-stained oak to represent +an old English interior, its walls covered with long-stemmed pipes and +pictures of English hunting and drinking scenes, its black-stained but +unvarnished tables littered with riding, driving and country-life +society papers, to give it that air of _sans ceremonie_ with an upper +world of which its habitués probably possessed no least inkling but most +eagerly craved. Here, along with a goodly group of his latter-day +friends, far different from those by whom he had first been +surrounded--a pretentious society poet of no great merit but +considerable self-emphasis, a Wall Street broker, posing as a club man, +_raconteur_, "first-nighter" and what not, and several young and +ambitious playwrights, all seeking the heaven of a Broadway success--he +began to pose as one of the intimates of the great city, its bosom child +as it were, the cynosure and favorite of its most glittering +precincts--a most M-----like proceeding. His clothes by now, for I saw +him on occasion, had taken on a more lustrous if less convincing aspect +than those he had worn when I first knew him. The small round hat or +rakish cap, typical of his Western dreams, had now given way to a most +pretentious square-topped derby, beloved, I believe, of undertakers and +a certain severe type of banker as well as some clergymen, only it was a +light brown. His suit and waistcoat were of a bright English tweed, +reddish-brown or herring-bone gray by turns, his shoes box-toed +perfections of the button type. He carried a heavy cane, often a bright +leather manuscript case, and seemed intensely absorbed in the great and +dramatic business of living and writing. "One must," so I read him at +this time, "take the pleasures as well as the labors of this world with +the utmost severity." Here, with a grand manner, he patronized the +manager and the waiters, sent word to his friend the cook, who probably +did not know him at all, that his chop or steak was to be done just so. +These friends of his, or at least one of them (the poet) he met every +day at five for an all-essential game of chess, after which an evening +paper was read and the chop ordered. Ale--not beer--in a pewter mug was +_comme il faut_, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy of +the name, to drink. + +I am sorry to write so, for after all youth must have its fling. Still, +I had expected better of L----, and I was a little disappointed to see +that earlier dream of simplicity and privation giving way to an +absolutely worthless show. Besides, twenty or thirty such stories as +"The Right Man," "Sweet Dreams," "The Man With the Broken Fingers," "The +Second Motive," would outweigh a thousand of the things he was getting +published and the profits of which permitted him these airs. + +Again, during the early days of his success with M----, he had +married--a young nurse who had previously been a clerk in a store, a +serious, earnest and from one point of view helpful person, seeing that +she could keep his domestic affairs in order and bear him children, +which she did, but she had no understanding of, or flair for, the type +of thing he was called upon to do. She had no instinct for literature or +the arts, and aside from her domestic capacities little skill or taste +for "socializing." And, naturally, he was neglecting her. His head was +probably surging with great ideas of art and hence a social supremacy +which might well carry him anywhere. He had bought a farm some distance +from New York, where in a community supposedly inhabited by successful +and superior men of letters he posed as a farmer at times, mowing and +cocking hay as became a Western plow-boy; and also, as the mood moved +him, and as became a great and secluded writer, working in a den +entirely surrounded by books in fine leather bindings (!) and being +visited by those odd satellites of the scriptic art who see in genius of +this type the _summum bonum_ of life. It was the thing to do at that +time, for a writer to own a farm and work it. Horace had. One individual +in particular, a man of genuine literary and critical ability and great +taste in the matter of all the arts but with no least interest in or +tolerance for the simplicities of effort, came here occasionally, as I +heard, to help him pile hay, and this in a silk shirt and a monocle; a +second--and a most fascinating intellectual _flaneur_, who, however, had +no vision or the gift of dreams--came to eat, drink, talk of many things +to be done, to steal a few ideas, borrow a little money perhaps or +consume a little morphine, and depart; a third came to spout of his +success in connection with plays, or his proposed successes; a fourth to +paint a picture, urged on by L----; a fifth to compose rural verse; a +sixth, a broker or race-track tout or city bar-tender (for color, this +last), to marvel that one of L----'s sense, or any one indeed, should +live in the country at all. There were drinking bouts, absolute +drunkenness, in which, according to the Johnsonian tradition and that of +Messieurs Rabelais and Molière, the weary intellect and one's guiding +genius were immersed in a comforting Lethe of rye. + +Such things cost money, however. In addition, my young friend, due to a +desire no doubt to share in the material splendors of his age (a +doctrine M---- was ever fond of spouting--and as a duty, if you please), +had saddled himself, for a time at least, with an apartment in an +exclusive square on the East Side, the rent of which was a severe drain. +Before this there had been, and after it were still, others, obligations +too much for him to bear financially, all in the main taken for show, +that he might be considered a literary success. Now and again (so I was +told by several of his intimates), confronted by a sudden exhaustion of +his bank balance, he would leave some excellent apartment house or +neighborhood, where for a few months he had been living in grand style, +extracting his furniture as best he might, or leaving it and various +debts beside, and would take refuge in some shabby tenement, or rear +rooms even, and where, touched by remorse or encouraged by the great +literary and art traditions (Balzac, Baudelaire, Johnson, Goldsmith, +Verlaine) he would toil unendingly at definite money-yielding +manuscripts, the results of which carried to some well-paying +_successful magazine_ would yield him sufficient to return to the white +lights--often even to take a better apartment than that which last had +been his. By now, however, one of the two children he eventually left +behind him had been born. His domestic cares were multiplying, the +marriage idea dull. Still he did not hesitate to continue those dinners +given to his friends, the above-mentioned group or its spiritual kin, +either in his apartment or in a bohemian restaurant of great show in New +York. In short, he was a fairly successful short-story writer and critic +in whom still persisted a feeling that he would yet triumph in the +adjacent if somewhat more difficult field of popular fiction. + +It was during this period, if I may interpolate an incident, that I was +waiting one night in a Broadway theater lobby for a friend to appear, +when who should arrive on the scene but L----, most outlandishly dressed +in what I took to be a _reductio ad absurdum_ of his first pose, as I +now half-feared it to be: that of the uncouth and rugged young American, +disclaiming style in dress at least, and content to be a clod in looks +so long as he was a Shelley in brains. His suit was of that coarse +ill-fitting character described as Store, and shelf-worn; his shoes all +but dusty brogans, his headgear a long-visored yellowish-and-brown +cross-barred cap. He had on a short, badly-cut frieze overcoat, his +hands stuck defiantly in his trousers pockets, forcing its lapels wide +open. And he appeared to be partially if not entirely drunk, and very +insolent. I had the idea that the drunkenness and the dress were a pose, +or else that he had been in some neighborhood in search of copy which +required such an outfit. Charitably let us accept the last. He was +accompanied by two satellic souls who were doing their best to restrain +him. + +"Come, now! Don't make a scene. We'll see the show all right!" + +"Sure we'll see the show!" he returned contentiously. "Where's the +manager?" + +A smug mannikin whose uniform was a dress suit, the business manager +himself, eyed him in no friendly spirit from a nearby corner. + +"This is Mr. L----," one of the satellites now approached and explained +to the manager. "He's connected with M----'s Magazine. He does short +stories and dramatics occasionally." + +The manager bowed. After all, M----'s Magazine had come to have some +significance on Broadway. It was as well to be civil. Courtesy was +extended for three, and they went in. + +As for myself, I resented the mood and the change. It was in no way my +affair--his life was his own--and still I resented it. I did not believe +that he was as bad as he seemed. He had too much genuine sense. It was +just boyish swagger and show, and still it was time that he was getting +over that and settling down. I really hoped that time would modify all +this. + +One thing that made me hope for the best was that very shortly after +this M----'s Magazine blew completely up, leaving him without that +semi-financial protection which I felt was doing him so much harm. The +next favorable sign that I observed was that a small volume of short +stories, some sixteen in number, and containing the cream of his work up +to that time, was brought to a publishing house with which I was +financially identified at the time, and although no word was said to me +(I really think he took great care not to see me), still it was left and +on my advice eventually published (it sold, I believe, a little under +five hundred copies). But the thing that cheered me was that it +contained not one story which could be looked upon as a compromise with +his first views. And better, it had been brought to the concern with +which I was connected--intentionally, I am sure. I was glad to have had +a hand in its publication. "At least," I said, "he has not lost sight of +his first ideal. He may go on now." + +And thereafter, in one magazine and another, excellent enough to have +but a small circulation, I saw something of his which had genuine merit. +A Western critical journal began to publish a series of essays by him, +for which I am sure he received nothing at all. Again, three or four +years later, a second volume of stories, almost if not quite as good as +his first, was issued by this same Western paper. He was trying to do +serious work; but he still sought and apparently craved those grand +scenes on the farm or in some New York restaurant or an expensive +apartment, and when he could no longer afford it. He still wrote +happy-ending, or compromise, stories for any such magazine as would +receive him, and was apparently building up a reasonably secure market +for them. In the meantime the moving-picture scenario market had +developed, and he wrote for it. His eyes were also turning toward the +stage, as one completed manuscript and several "starts" turned over to +me after his death proved. One day some one who knew him and me quite +well assured me that L----, having sent out many excellent stories only +to have them returned, had one day cried and then raged, cursing America +for its attitude toward serious letters--an excellent sign, I thought, +good medicine for one who must eventually forsake his hope of material +grandeur and find himself. "In time, in time," I said, "he will eat +through the husks of these other things, the 'M---- complex,' and do +something splendid. He can't help it. But this fantastic dream of +grandeur, of being a popular success, will have to be lived down." + +For a time now I heard but little more save once that he was connected +with a moving-picture concern, suggesting plots and making some money. +Then I saw a second series of essays in the same Western critical +paper--that of the editor who had published his book--and some of them +were excellent, very searching and sincere. I felt that he was moving +along the right line, although they earned him nothing. Then one week, +very much to my surprise, there was a very glowing and extended +commentary on myself, concerning which for the time being I decided to +make no comment; and a little later, perhaps three weeks, a telephone +call. Did I recall him? (!) Could he come and see me? (!) I invited him +to dinner, and he came, carrying, of all things--and for him, the +ex-railroad boy--a great armful of red roses. This touched me. + +"What's the idea?" I inquired jovially, laughing at him. + +He blushed like a girl, a little irritably too, I thought, for he found +me (as perhaps he had hoped not to) examining and critical, and he may +have felt that I was laughing at him, which I wasn't. "I wished to give +them to you, and I brought 'em. Why shouldn't I?" + +"You know you should bring them if you want me to have them, and I'm +only too glad to get them, anyway. Don't think I'm criticizing." + +He smiled and began at once on the "old days," as he now called them, a +sad commentary on our drifting days. Indeed he seemed able to talk of +little else or fast enough or with too much enthusiasm. He went over +many things and people--M----; K----, the wonderful art-director, now +insane and a wreck; the group of which he and I had once been a part; +his youthful and unsophisticated viewpoint at the time. "You know," he +confessed quite frankly finally, "my mother always told me then and +afterwards that I made a mistake in leaving you. You were the better +influence for me. She was right. I know it now. Still, a life's a life, +and we have to work through it and ourselves somehow." + +I agreed heartily. + +He told me of his wife, children, farm, his health and his difficulties. +It appeared that he was making a bare living at times, at others doing +very well. His great bane was the popular magazine, the difficulty of +selling a good thing. It was true, I said, and at midnight he left, +promising to come again, inviting me to come to his place in the country +at my convenience. I promised. + +But one thing and another interfered. I went South. One day six months +later, after I had returned, he called up once more, saying he wished to +see me. Of course I asked him down and he came and spoke of his health. +Some doctor, an old college pal of his, was assuring him that he had +Bright's disease and that he might die at any time. He wanted to know, +in case anything happened to him, would I look after his many mss., most +of which, the most serious efforts at least, had never been published. I +agreed. Then he went away and I never saw him again. A year later I was +one day informed that he had died three days before of kidney trouble. +He had been West to see a moving-picture director; on his way East he +had been taken ill and had stopped off with friends somewhere to be +treated, or operated upon. A few weeks later he had returned to New +York, but refusing to rest and believing that he could not die, so soon, +had kept out of doors and in the city, until suddenly he did collapse. +Or, rather, he met his favorite doctor, an intellectual savage like +himself, who with some weird desire to appear forceful, definite, +unsentimental perhaps--a mental condition L---- most fancied--had told +him to go home and to bed, for he would be dead in forty-eight hours!--a +fine bit of assurance which perhaps as much as anything else assisted +L---- to die. At any rate and in spite of the ministrations of his wife, +who wished to defy the doctor and who in her hope for herself and her +children as well as him strove to contend against this gloom, he did so +go to bed and did die. On the last day, realizing no doubt how utterly +indifferent his life had been, how his main aspirations or great dreams +had been in the main nullified by passions, necessities, crass chance +(how well he was fitted to understand that!) he broke down and cried for +hours. Then he died. + +A friend who had known much of this last period, said to me rather +satirically, "He was dealing with death in the shape of a medic. Have +you ever seen him?" The doctor, he meant. "He looks like an +advertisement for an undertaker. I do believe he was trying to discover +whether he could kill somebody by the power of suggestion, and he met +L---- in the nick of time. You know how really sensitive he was. Well, +that medic killed him, the same as you would kill a bird with a bullet. +He said 'You're already dead,' and he was." + +And--oh yes--M----, his former patron. At the time of L----'s sickness +and death he was still owing him $1100 for services rendered during the +last days of that unfortunate magazine. He had never been called upon to +pay his debts, for he had sunk through one easy trapdoor of bankruptcy +only to rise out of another, smiling and with the means to continue. +Yes, he was rich again, rated A No. 1, the president of a great +corporation, and with L----'s $1100 still unpaid and now not legally +"collectible." His bank balance, established by a friend at the time, +was exactly one hundred thousand. + +But Mrs. L----, anxious to find some way out of her difficulty since her +husband was lying cold, and knowing of no one else to whom to turn, had +written to him. There was no food in the house, no medicine, no way to +feed the children at the moment. That matter of $1100 now--could he +spare a little? L---- had thought-- + +A letter in answer was not long in arriving, and a most moving M----y +document it was. M---- had been stunned by the dreadful news, stunned. +Could it really be? Could it? His young brilliant friend? Impossible! At +the dread, pathetic news he had cried--yes he had--cried--and cried--and +cried--and then he had even cried some more. Life was so sad, so grim. +As for him, his own affairs were never in so wretched a condition. It +was unfortunate. Debts there were on every hand. They haunted him, +robbed him of his sleep. He himself scarcely knew which way to turn. +They stood in serried ranks, his debts. A slight push on the part of any +one, and he would be crushed--crushed--go down in ruin. And so, as much +as he was torn, and as much as he cried, even now, he could do nothing, +nothing, nothing. He was agonized, beaten to earth, but still--. Then, +having signed it, there was a P.S. or an N.B. This stated that in +looking over his affairs he had just discovered that by stinting himself +in another direction he _could_ manage to scrape together twenty-five +dollars, and this he was enclosing. Would that God had designed that he +should be better placed at this sad hour! + + * * * * * + +However that may be, I at once sent for the mss. and they came, a +jumbled mass in two suitcases and a portfolio; and a third suitcase, so +I was informed, containing all of a hundred mss., mostly stories, had +been lost somewhere! There had been much financial trouble of late and +more than one enforced move. Mrs. L---- had been compelled--but I will +not tell all. Suffice it to say that he had such an end as his own +realistic pen might have satirically craved. + +The mss., finally sorted, tabulated and read, yielded two small volumes +of excellent tales, all unpublished, the published material being all +but uniformly worthless. There was also the attempt at a popular comedy, +previously mentioned, a sad affair, and a volume of essays, as well as a +very, very slender but charming volume of verse, in case a publisher +could ever be found for them--a most agreeable little group, showing a +pleasing sense of form and color and emotion. I arranged them as best I +could and finally-- + +But they are still unpublished. + + * * * * * + +P.S. As for the sum total of the work left by L----, its very best, it +might be said that although he was not a great psychologist, still, +owing to a certain pretentiousness of assertion at times, one might +unthinkingly suppose he was. Neither had he, as yet, any fixed theories +of art or definite style of his own, imitating as he was now de +Maupassant, now O. Henry, now Poe; but also it must be said that slowly +and surely he was approximating one, original and forceful and +water-clear in expression and naturalness. At times he veered to a +rather showy technique, at others to a cold and even harsh simplicity. +Yet always in the main he had color, beauty, emotion, poignance when +necessary. Like his idol, de Maupassant, he had no moral or strong +social prejudices, no really great or disturbing imagination, no wealth +of perplexing ideas. He saw America and life as something to be painted +as all masters see life and paint it. Gifted with a true vein of satire, +he had not, at the time of his death, quite mastered its possibilities. +He still retained prejudice of one type or another, which he permitted +to interfere with the very smooth arrangement of his colors. At the same +time, had he not been disturbed by so many of the things which in +America, as elsewhere, ordinarily assail an ambitious and earnest +writer--the prejudice against naturalness and sincerity in matters of +the intellect and the facts of life, and the consequent difficulty of +any one so gifted in obtaining funds at any time--he might have done +much better sooner. He was certain to come into his own eventually had +he lived. His very accurate and sensitive powers of observation, his +literary taste, his energy and pride in his work, were destined to carry +him there. It could not have been otherwise. Ten years more, judging by +the rate at which he worked, his annual product and that which he did +leave, one might say that in the pantheon of American letters it is +certain that he would have proved a durable if not one of its great +figures, and he might well have been that. As it stands, it is not +impossible that he will be so recognized, if for no more than the sure +promise of his genius. + + + + +_The Village Feudists_ + + +In a certain Connecticut fishing-town sometime since, where, besides +lobstering, a shipyard and some sail-boat-building there existed the +several shops and stores which catered to the wants of those who labored +in those lines, there dwelt a groceryman by the name of Elihu Burridge, +whose life and methods strongly point the moral and social successes and +failures of the rural man. + +Sixty years of age, with the vanities and desires of the average man's +life behind rather than before him, he was at the time not unlike the +conventional drawings of Parson Thirdly, which graced the humorous +papers of that day. Two moon-shaped eyes, a long upper lip, a mouth like +the sickle moon turned downward, prominent ears, a rather long face and +a mutton-chop-shaped whisker on either cheek, served to give him that +clerical appearance which the humorous artists so religiously seek to +depict. Add to this that he was middle-sized, clerically spare in form, +reserved and quiet in demeanor, and one can see how he might very +readily give the impression of being a minister. His clothes, however, +were old, his trousers torn but neatly mended, his little blue gingham +jumper which he wore about the store greasy and aged. Everything about +him and his store was so still and dark that one might have been +inclined on first sight to consider him crusty and morose. + +Even more remarkable than himself, however, was his store. I have seen +many in my time that were striking because of their neatness; I never +saw one before that struck me as more remarkable for its disorder. In +the first place it was filled neck-deep with barrels and boxes in the +utmost confusion. Dark, greasy, provision-lined alleys led off into +dingy sections which the eye could not penetrate. Old signs hung about, +advertising things which had long since ceased to sell and were +forgotten by the public. There were pictures in once gilt but now +time-blackened frames, wherein queerly depicted children and +pompous-looking grocers offered one commodity and another, all now +almost obliterated by fly-specks. Shelves were marked on the walls by +signs now nearly illegible. Cobwebs hung thickly from corners and +pillars. There were oil, lard, and a dust-laden scum of some sort on +three of the numerous scales with which he occasionally weighed things +and on many exteriors of once salable articles. Pork, lard, molasses, +and nails were packed in different corners of the place in barrels. +Lying about were household utensils, ship-rigging, furniture and a +hundred other things which had nothing to do with the grocery business. + +As I entered the store the first afternoon I noticed a Bible open at +Judges and a number of slips of paper on which questions had been +written. On my second visit for oil and vinegar, two strangers from off +a vagrant yacht which had entered the little harbor nudged one another +and demanded to know whether either had ever seen anything like it. On +the third, my companion protested that it was not clean, and seeing that +there were other stores we decided to buy our things elsewhere. This was +not so easily accomplished. + +"Where can I get a flatiron?" I inquired at the Postoffice when I first +entered the village. + +"Most likely at Burridge's," was the reply. + +"Do you know where I can get a pair of row-locks?" I asked of a boy who +was lounging about the town dock. + +"At Burridge's," he replied. + +When we wanted oars, pickles of a certain variety, golden syrup, and a +dozen other things which were essential at times, we were compelled to +go to Burridge's, so that at last he obtained a very fair portion of our +trade despite the condition of his store. + +During all these earlier dealings there cropped up something curt and +dry in his conversation. One day we lost a fruit jar which he had +loaned, and I took one very much like it back in its place. When I began +to apologize he interrupted me with, "A jar's a jar, isn't it?" + +Another time, when I remarked in a conciliatory tone that he owed me +eight cents for a can of potted ham which had proved stale, he +exclaimed, "Well, I won't owe you long," and forthwith pulled the money +out of the loose jacket of his jumper and paid me. + +I inquired one day if a certain thing were good. "If it isn't," he +replied, with a peculiar elevation of the eyebrows, "your money is. You +can have that back." + +"That's the way you do business, is it?" + +"Yes, sir," he replied, and his long upper lip thinned out along the +line of the lower one like a vise. + +I was in search of a rocking-chair one day and was directed to +Burridge's as the only place likely to have any! + +"Do you keep furniture?" I inquired. + +"Some," he said. + +"Have you a rocking-chair?" + +"No, sir." + +A day or two later I was in search of a table and on going to Burridge's +found that he had gone to a neighboring city. + +"Have you got a table?" I inquired of the clerk. + +"I don't know," he replied. "There's some furniture in the back room, +but I don't know as I dare to sell any of it while he's away." + +"Why?" + +"Well, he don't like me to sell any of it. He's kind of queer that way. +I dunno what he intends to do with it. Gar!" he added in a strangely +electric way, "he's a queer man! He's got a lot of things back +there--chairs and tables and everything. He's got a lot more in a loft +up the street here. He never seems to want to sell any of 'em. Heard him +tell people he didn't have any." + +I shook my head in puzzled desperation. + +"Come on, let's go back and look anyway. There's no harm in seeing if he +has one." + +We went back and there amid pork and molasses barrels, old papers, boxes +and signs, was furniture in considerable quantity--tables, +rocking-chairs, washstands, bureaus--all cornered and tumbled about. + +"Why, here are rocking-chairs, lots of them," I exclaimed. "Just the +kind I want! He said he didn't have any." + +"Gar! I dunno," replied the clerk. "Here's a table, but I wouldn't dare +sell it to you." + +"Why should he say he didn't have a rocking-chair?" + +"Gar! I dunno. He's goin' out of the furniture business. He don't want +to sell any. I don't know what he intends to do with it." + +"Well," I said in despair, "what about the table? You can sell that, +can't you?" + +"I couldn't--not till he comes back. I don't know what he'd want to do +about it." + +"What's the price of it?" + +"I dunno. He could tell you." + +I went out of the thick-aired stuffy backroom with its unwashed windows, +and when I got opposite the Bible near the door I said: + +"What's the matter with him anyhow? Why doesn't he straighten things out +here?" + +Again the clerk awoke. "Huh!" he exclaimed. "Straighten it out! Gar! I'd +like to see anybody try it." + +"It could be," I said encouragingly. + +"Gar!" he chuckled. "One man did try to straighten it out once when Mr. +Burridge was away. Got about a third of it cleaned up when he come back. +Gar! You oughta seen him! Gar!" + +"What did he do?" + +"What did he do! What didn't he do! Gar! Just took things an' threw them +about again. Said he couldn't find anything." + +"You don't say!" + +"Gar! I should say so! Man come in an' asked for a hammer. Said he +couldn't find any hammer, things was so mixed up. Did it with screws, +water-buckets an' everything just the same. Took 'em right off the +shelves, where they was all in groups, an' scattered 'em all over the +room. Gar! 'Now I guess I can find something when I want it,' he said." +The clerk paused to squint and add, "There ain't anybody tried any +straightenin' out around here since then, you bet. Gar!" + +"How long ago has that been?" + +"About fourteen years now." + +Surprised by this sharp variation from the ordinary standards of trade, +I began thinking of possible conditions which had produced it, when one +evening I happened in on the local barber. He was a lean, inquisitive +individual with a shock of sandy hair and a conspicuous desire to appear +a well-rounded social factor. + +"What sort of person is this Burridge over here? He keeps such a +peculiar store." + +"Elihu is a bit peculiar," he replied, his smile betraying a desire to +appear conservative. "The fault with Elihu, if he has one, is that he's +terribly strong on religion. Can't seem to agree with anybody around +here." + +"What's the trouble?" I asked. + +"It's more'n I could ever make out, what is the matter with him. They're +all a little bit cracked on the subject around here. Nothing but +revivals and meetin's, year in and year out. They're stronger on it +winters than they are in summer." + +"How do you mean?" + +"Well, they'll be more against yachtin' and Sunday pleasures when they +can't go than when they can." + +"What about Elihu?" I asked. + +"Well, he can't seem to get along, somehow. He used to belong to the +Baptist Church, but he got out o' that. Then he went to a church up in +Graylock, but he had a fallin' out up there. Then he went to Northfield +and Eustis. He's been all around, even over on Long Island. He goes to +church up at Amherst now, I believe." + +"What seems to be the trouble?" + +"Oh, he's just strong-headed, I guess." He paused, and ideas lagged +until finally I observed: + +"It's a very interesting store he keeps." + +"It's just as Billy Drumgold told him once: 'Burridge,' he says, 'you've +got everything in this store that belongs to a full-rigged ship 'cept +one thing.' 'What's that?' Burridge asks. 'A second-hand pulpit.' 'Got +that too,' he answered, and takes him upstairs, and there he had one +sure enough." + +"Well," I said, "what was he doing with it?" + +"Danged if I know. He had it all right. Has it yet, so they say." + +Days passed and as the summer waned the evidences of a peculiar life +accumulated. Noank, apparently, was at outs with Burridge on the subject +of religion, and he with it. There were instances of genuine hard +feeling against him. + +Writing a letter in the Postoffice one day I ventured to take up this +matter with the postmaster. + +"You know Mr. Burridge, don't you--the grocer?" + +"Well, I should guess I did," he replied with a flare. + +"Anything wrong with him?" + +"Oh, about everything that's just plain cussed--the most wrangling man +alive. I never saw such a man. He don't get his mail here no more +because he's mad at me, I guess. Took it away because I had Mr. Palmer's +help in my fight, I suppose. Wrote me that I should send all his mail up +to Mystic, and he goes there three or four miles out of his way every +day, just to spite me. It's against the law. I hadn't ought to be doing +it, re-addressing his envelopes three or four times a day, but I do do +it. He's a strong-headed man, that's the trouble with Elihu." + +I had no time to follow this up then, but a little later, sitting in the +shop of the principal sailboat maker, which was situated in the quiet +little lane which follows the line of the village, I was one day +surprised by the sudden warm feeling which the name of Elihu generated. +Something had brought up the subject of religion, and I said that +Burridge seemed rather religious. + +"Yes," said the sailboat maker quickly, "he's religious, all right, only +he reads the Bible for others, not for himself." + +"What do you mean by that?" + +"Why, he wants to run things, that's what. As long as you agree with +Elihu, why, everything's all right. When you don't, the Bible's against +you. That's the way he is." + +"Did he ever disagree with you?" I asked, suspecting some personal +animus in the matter. + +"Me and Elihu was always good friends as long as I agreed with him," he +went on bitterly. "We've been raised together, man and boy, for pretty +near sixty years. We never had a word of any kind but what was friendly, +as long as I agreed with him, but just as soon as I didn't he took a set +against me, and we ain't never spoke a word since." + +"What was the trouble?" I inquired sweetly, anxious to come at the +kernel of this queer situation. + +"Well," he said, dropping his work and looking up to impress me, "I'm a +man that'll sometimes say what I don't believe; that is, I'll agree with +what I hadn't ought to, just to be friendly like. I did that way a lot +o' times with Elihu till one day he came to me with something about +particular salvation. I'm a little more liberal myself. I believe in +universal redemption by faith alone. Well, Elihu came to me and began +telling me what he believed. Finally he asked me something about +particular salvation and wanted to know whether I didn't agree with him. +I didn't, and told him so. From that day on he took a set against me, +and he ain't never spoke a word to me since." + +I was unaware that there was anything besides a religious disagreement +in this local situation until one day I happened to come into a second +friendly contact with the postmaster. We were speaking of the +characteristics of certain individuals, and I mentioned Burridge. + +"He's all right when you take him the way he wants to be taken. When you +don't you'll find him quite a different man." + +"He seems to be straightforward and honest," I said. + +"There ain't anything you can tell me about Elihu Burridge that I don't +know," he replied feelingly. "Not a thing. I've lived with him, as you +might say, all my life. Been raised right here in town with him, and we +went to school together. Man and boy, there ain't ever been a thing that +Elihu has agreed with, without he could have the running of it. You +can't tell me anything about him that I don't know." + +I could not help smiling at the warmth of feeling, although something +about the man's manner bespoke a touch of heart-ache, as if he were +privately grieving. + +"What was the trouble between you two?" I asked. + +"It's more'n I could ever find out," he replied in a voice that was +really mournful, so difficult and non-understandable was the subject to +him. "Before I started to work for this office there wasn't a day that I +didn't meet and speak friendly with Elihu. He used to have a good many +deeds and papers to sign, and he never failed to call me in when I was +passing. When I started to work for this office I noticed he took on a +cold manner toward me, and I tried to think of something I might have +done, but I couldn't. Finally I wrote and asked him if there was +anything between us if he wouldn't set a time and place so's we might +talk it over and come to an understanding." He paused and then added, "I +wish you could see the letter he wrote me. Comin' from a Christian +man--from him to me--I wish you could see it." + +"Why don't you show it to me?" I asked inquisitively. + +He went back into the office and returned with an ancient-looking +document, four years old it proved to be, which he had been treasuring. +He handed me the thumbed and already yellowed page, and I read: + + "MATTHEW HOLCOMB, ESQUIRE, + + "DEAR SIR:--In reply to your letter asking me to set a time and + place in which we might talk over the trouble between us, would + say that the time be Eternity and the place where God shall call + us to judgment. + + "Very truly, + "ELIHU BURRIDGE." + +His eyes rested on me while I read, and the moment I finished he began +with: + +"I never said one word against that man, not one word. I never did a +thing he could take offense at, not one thing. I don't know how a man +can justify himself writing like that." + +"Perhaps it's political," I said. "You don't belong to the same party, +do you?" + +"Yes, we do," he said. "Sometimes I've thought that maybe it was because +I had the support of the shipyard when I first tried to get this office, +but then that wasn't anything between him and me," and he looked away as +if the mystery were inexplicable. + +This shipyard was conducted by a most forceful man but one as narrow and +religionistic as this region in which it had had its rise. Old Mr. +Palmer, the aged founder of it, had long been a notable figure in the +streets and private chambers of the village. The principal grocery +store, coal-yard, sail-loft, hotel and other institutions were conducted +in its interests. His opinion was always foremost in the decision of the +local authorities. He was still, reticent, unobtrusive. Once I saw him +most considerately helping a cripple up the lane to the local Baptist +Church. + +"What's the trouble between Burridge and Palmer?" I asked of the +sail-maker finally, coming to think that here, if anywhere, lay the +solution of the difficulty. + +"Two big fish in too small a basket," he responded laconically. + +"Can't agree, eh?" + +"They both want to lead, or did," he said. "Elihu's a beaten man, +though, now." He paused and then added, "I'm sorry for Elihu. He's a +good man at heart, one of the kindest men you ever saw, when you let him +follow his natural way. He's good to the poor, and he's carried more +slow-pay people than any man in this country, I do believe. He won't +collect an old debt by law. Don't believe in it. No, sir. Just a +kind-hearted man, but he loves to rule." + +"How about Palmer?" I inquired. + +"Just the same way exactly. He loves to rule, too. Got a good heart, +too, but he's got a lot more money than Elihu and so people pay more +attention to him, that's all. When Elihu was getting the attention he +was just the finest man you ever saw, kind, generous, good-natured. +People love to be petted, at least some people do--you know they do. +When you don't pet 'em they get kind o' sour and crabbed like. Now +that's all that's the matter with Elihu, every bit of it. He's sour, +now, and a little lonely, I expect. He's drove away every one from him, +or nearly all, 'cept his wife and some of his kin. Anybody can do a good +grocery business here, with the strangers off the boats"--the harbor was +a lively one--"all you have to do is carry a good stock. That's why he +gets along so well. But he's drove nearly all the local folks away from +him." + +I listened to this comfortable sail-loft sage, and going back to the +grocery store one afternoon took another look at the long, grim-faced +silent figure. He was sitting in the shadow of one of his moldy corners, +and if there had ever been any light of merriment in his face it was not +there now. He looked as fixed and solemn as an ancient puritan, and yet +there was something so melancholy in the man's eye, so sad and +disappointed, that it seemed anything but hard. Two or three little +children were playing about the door and when he came forward to wait on +me one of them sidled forward and put her chubby hand in his. + +"Your children?" I asked, by way of reaching some friendly +understanding. + +"No," he replied, looking fondly down, "she belongs to a French lady up +the street here. She often comes down to see me, don't you?" and he +reached over and took the fat little cheek between his thumb and +forefinger. + +The little one rubbed her face against his worn baggy trousers' leg and +put her arm about his knee. Quietly he stood there in a simple way until +she loosened her hold upon him, when he went about his labor. + +I was sitting one day in the loft of the comfortable sail-maker, who, by +the way, was brother-in-law to Burridge, when I said to him: + +"I wish you'd tell me the details about Elihu. How did he come to be +what he is? You ought to know; you've lived here all your life." + +"So I do know," he replied genially. "What do you want me to tell you?" + +"The whole story of the trouble between him and Palmer; how he comes to +be at outs with all these people." + +"Well," he began, and here followed with many interruptions and side +elucidations, which for want of space have been eliminated, the +following details: + +Twenty-five years before Elihu had been the leading citizen of Noank. +From operating a small grocery at the close of the Civil War he branched +out until he sold everything from ship-rigging to hardware. Noank was +then in the height of its career as a fishing town and as a port from +which expeditions of all sorts were wont to sail. Whaling was still in +force, and vessels for whaling expeditions were equipped here. Wealthy +sea-captains frequently loaded fine three-masted schooners here for +various trading expeditions to all parts of the world; the fishers for +mackerel, cod and herring were making three hundred and fifty dollars a +day in season, and thousands of dollars' worth of supplies were annually +purchased here. + +Burridge was then the only tradesman of any importance and, being of a +liberal, strong-minded and yet religious turn, attracted the majority of +this business to him. He had houses and lands, was a deacon in the local +Baptist Church and a counselor in matters political, social and +religious, whose advice was seldom rejected. Every Fourth of July during +these years it was his custom to collect all the children of the town in +front of his store and treat them to ice-cream. Every Christmas Eve he +traveled about the streets in a wagon, which carried half a dozen +barrels of candy and nuts, which he would ladle out to the merry +shouting throng of pursuing youngsters, until all were satisfied. For +the skating season he prepared a pond, spending several thousand dollars +damming up a small stream, in order that the children might have a place +to skate. He created a library where all might obtain suitable reading, +particularly the young. + +On New Year's morning it was his custom to visit all the poor and +bereaved and lonely in Noank, taking a great dray full of presents and +leaving a little something with his greetings and a pleasant handshake +at every door. The lonely rich as well as the lonely poor were included, +for he was certain, as he frequently declared, that the rich could be +lonely too. + +He once told his brother-in-law that one New Year's Day a voice called +to him in church: "Elihu Burridge, how about the lonely rich and poor of +Noank?" "Up I got," he concluded, "and from that day to this I have +never neglected them." + +When any one died who had a little estate to be looked after for the +benefit of widows or orphans, Burridge was the one to take charge of it. +People on their deathbeds sent for him, and he always responded, taking +energetic charge of everything and refusing to take a penny for his +services. After a number of years the old judge to whom he always +repaired with these matters of probate, knowing his generosity in this +respect, also refused to accept any fee. When he saw him coming he would +exclaim: + +"Well, Elihu, what is it this time? Another widow or orphan that we've +got to look after?" + +After Elihu had explained what it was, he would add: + +"Well, Elihu, I do hope that some day some rich man will call you to +straighten out his affairs. I'd like to see _you_ get a little +something, so that _I_ might get a little something. Eh, Elihu?" Then he +would jocularly poke his companion in charity in the ribs. + +These general benefactions were continuous and coeval with his local +prosperity and dominance, and their modification as well as the man's +general decline the result of the rise of this other individual--Robert +Palmer,--"operating" to take the color of power and preëminence from +him. + +Palmer was the owner of a small shipyard here at the time, a thing which +was not much at first but which grew swiftly. He was born in Noank +also, a few years before Burridge, and as a builder of vessels had been +slowly forging his way to a moderate competence when Elihu was already +successful. He was a keen, fine-featured, energetic individual, with +excellent commercial and strong religious instincts, and by dint of hard +labor and a saving disposition he obtained, soon after the Civil War, a +powerful foothold. Many vessels were ordered here from other cities. +Eventually he began to build barges in large numbers for a great +railroad company. + +Early becoming a larger employer of labor than any one else in the +vicinity he soon began to branch out, possessed himself of the allied +industries of ship-rigging, chandlering, and finally established a +grocery store for his employees, and opened a hotel. Now the local +citizens began to look upon him as their leading citizen. They were +always talking of his rise, frequently in the presence of Burridge. He +said nothing at first, pretending to believe that his quondam leadership +was unimpaired. Again, there were those who, having followed the various +branches of labor which Palmer eventually consolidated, viewed this +growth with sullen and angry eyes. They still sided with Burridge, or +pretended still to believe that he was the more important citizen of the +two. In the course of time, however--a period of thirty years or +more--some of them failed; others died; still others were driven away +for want of a livelihood. Only Burridge's position and business +remained, but in a sadly weakened state. He was no longer a man of any +great importance. + +Not unnaturally, this question of local supremacy was first tested in +the one place in which local supremacy is usually tested--the church +where they both worshiped. Although only one of five trustees, Burridge +had been the will of the body. Always, whatever he thought, the others +had almost immediately agreed to it. But now that Palmer had become a +power, many of those ardent in the church and beholden to him for profit +became his humble followers. They elected him trustee and did what he +wished, or what they thought he wished. To Burridge this made them +sycophants, slaves. + +Now followed the kind of trivialities by which most human feuds are +furthered. The first test of strength came when a vagrant evangelist +from Alabama arrived and desired to use the church for a series of +evening lectures. The question had to be decided at once. Palmer was +absent at the time. + +"Here is a request for the use of the church," said one of the trustees, +explaining its nature. + +"Well," said Burridge, "you'd better let him have it." + +"Do you think we ought to do anything about it," the trustee replied, +"until Mr. Palmer returns?" + +Although Burridge saw no reason for waiting, the other trustees did, and +upon that the board rested. Burridge was furious. By one fell stroke he +was put in second place, a man who had to await the return of +Palmer--and that in his own church, so to speak. + +"Why," he told some one, "the rest of us are nothing. This man is a +king." + +From that time on differences of opinion within the church and elsewhere +were common. Although no personal animosity was ever admitted, local +issues almost invariably found these two men opposed to each other. +There was the question of whether the village should be made into a +borough--a most trivial matter; another, that of creating public works +for the manufacture of gas and distribution of water; a third, that of +naming a State representative. Naturally, while these things might be to +the advantage of Palmer or not, they were of no great import to +Burridge, but yet he managed to see in them an attempt or attempts to +saddle a large public debt upon widows and orphans, those who could not +afford or did not need these things, and he proceeded to so express +himself at various public meetings. Slowly the breach widened. Burridge +became little more than a malcontent in many people's eyes. He was a +"knocker," a man who wanted to hold the community back. + +Although defeated in many instances he won in others, and this did not +help matters any. At this point, among other things the decay of the +fishing industry helped to fix definitely the position of the two men as +that of victor and vanquished. Whaling died out, then mackerel and cod +were caught only at farther and farther distances from the town, and +finally three- and even two-masted schooners ceased entirely to buy their +outfits here, and Burridge was left dependent upon local patronage or +smaller harbor trade for his support. Coextensively, he had the +dissatisfaction of seeing Palmer's industries grow until eventually +three hundred and fifty men were upon his payrolls and even his foremen +and superintendents were considered influential townspeople. Palmer's +son and two daughters grew up and married, branched out and became +owners of industries which had formerly belonged to men who had traded +with Burridge. He saw his grocery trade dwindle and sink, while with age +his religiosity grew, and he began to be little more than a petty +disputant, one constantly arguing as to whether the interpretation of +the Bible as handed down from the pulpit of what he now considered _his_ +recalcitrant church was sound or not. When those who years before had +followed him obediently now pricked him with theological pins and +ventured to disagree with him, he was quick and sometimes foolish in his +replies. Thus, once a former friend and fellow-church-member who had +gone over to the opposition came into his store one morning and said: + +"Elihu, for a man that's as strong on religion as you are, I see you do +one thing that can't quite be justified by the Book." + +"What's that?" inquired Burridge, looking up. + +"I see you sell tobacco." + +"I see you chew it," returned the host grimly. + +"I know I do," returned his visitor, "but I'll tell you what I'll do, +Elihu. If you'll quit selling, I'll quit chewing it," and he looked as +if he had set a fancy trap for his straw-balancing brother, as he held +him to be. + +"It's a bargain," said Burridge on the instant. "It's a bargain!" + +And from that day on tobacco was not offered for sale in that store, +although there was a large local demand for it. + +Again, in the pride of his original leadership, he had accepted the +conduct of the local cemetery, a thing which was more a burden than a +source of profit. With his customary liberality in all things reflecting +credit upon himself he had spent his own money in improving it, much +more than ever the wardens of the church would have thought of returning +to him. In one instance, when a new receiving vault was desired, he had +added seven hundred dollars of his own to three hundred gathered by the +church trustees for the purpose, and the vault was immediately +constructed. Frequently also, in his pride of place, he had been given +to asserting he was tired of conducting the cemetery and wished he could +resign. + +In these later evil days, therefore, the trustees, following the star of +the newer power, saw fit to intimate that perhaps some one else would be +glad to look after it if he was tired of it. Instantly the fact that he +could no longer boast as formerly came home to him. He was not essential +any longer in anything. The church did not want him to have a hand in +any of its affairs! The thought of this so weighed on him that +eventually he resigned from this particular task, but thereafter also +every man who had concurred in accepting his resignation was his bitter +enemy. He spoke acidly of the seven hundred he had spent, and jibed at +the decisions of the trustees in other matters. Soon he became a +disturbing element in the church, taking a solemn vow never to enter the +graveyard again, and not long after resigned all his other official +duties--passing the plate, et cetera--although he still attended +services there. + +Decoration Day rolled around, the G.A.R. Post of which he was an ardent +member prepared for the annual memorial services over the graves of its +dead comrades. Early on the morning of the thirtieth of May they +gathered before their lodge hall, Burridge among them, and after +arranging the details marched conspicuously to the cemetery where the +placing of the wreaths and the firing of the salute were to take place. +No one thought of Burridge until the gate was reached, when, gun over +shoulder and uniform in perfect trim, he fell conspicuously out of line +and marched away home alone. It was the cemetery he had vowed not to +enter, his old pet and protégé. + +Men now looked askance at him. He was becoming queer, no doubt of it, +not really sensible--or was he? Up in Northfield, a nearby town, dwelt a +colonel of the Civil War who had led the very regiment of which Burridge +was a member but who during the war had come into serious difficulty +through a tangle of orders, and had been dishonorably discharged. +Although wounded in one of the engagements in which the regiment had +distinguished itself, he had been allowed to languish almost forgotten +for years and finally, failing to get a pension, had died in poverty. +On his deathbed he had sent for Burridge, and reminding him of the +battle in which he had led him asked that after he was gone, for the +sake of his family, he would take up the matter of a pension and if +possible have his record purged of the stigma and the pension awarded. + +Burridge agreed most enthusiastically. Going to the local congressman, +he at once began a campaign, but because of the feeling against him two +years passed without anything being done. Later he took up the matter in +his own G.A.R. Post, but there also failing to find the measure of his +own enthusiasm, he went finally direct to one of the senators of the +State and laying the matter before him had the records examined by +Congress and the dead colonel honorably discharged. + +One day thereafter in the local G.A.R. he commented unfavorably upon the +indifference which he deemed had been shown. + +"There wouldn't have been half so much delay if the man hadn't been a +deserter," said one of his enemies--one who was a foreman in Palmer's +shipyard. + +Instantly Burridge was upon his feet, his eyes aflame with feeling. +Always an orator, with a strangely declamatory style he launched into a +detailed account of the late colonel's life and services, his wounds, +his long sufferings and final death in poverty, winding up with a vivid +word picture of a battle (Antietam), in which the colonel had gallantly +captured a rebel flag and come by his injury. + +When he was through there was great excitement in the Post and much +feeling in his favor, but he rather weakened the effect by at once +demanding that the traitorous words be withdrawn, and failing to compel +this, preferred charges against the man who had uttered them and +attempted to have him court-martialed. + +So great was the bitterness engendered by this that the Post was now +practically divided, and being unable to compel what he considered +justice he finally resigned. Subsequently he took issue with his former +fellow-soldiers in various ways, commenting satirically on their church +regularity and professed Christianity, as opposed to their indifference +to the late colonel, and denouncing in various public conversations the +double-mindedness and sharp dealings of the "little gods," as he termed +those who ran the G.A.R. Post, the church, and the shipyards. + +Not long after his religious affairs reached a climax when the minister, +once a good friend of his, following the lead of the dominant star, Mr. +Palmer, publicly denounced him from the pulpit one Sunday as an enemy of +the church and of true Christianity! + +"There is a man in this congregation," he exclaimed in a burst of +impassioned oratory, "who poses as a Christian and a Baptist, who is in +his heart's depth the church's worst enemy. Hell and all its devils +could have no worse feelings of evil against the faith than he, and he +doesn't sell tobacco, either!" + +The last reference at once fixed the identity of the person, and caused +Burridge to get up and leave the church. He pondered over this for a +time, severed his connections with the body, and having visited Graylock +one Sunday drove there every Sabbath thereafter, each time going to a +different church. After enduring this for six months he generated a +longing for a more convenient meeting-place, and finally allied himself +with the Baptist Church of Eustis. Here his anchor might possibly have +remained fast had it not been that subtle broodings over his wrongs, a +calm faith in the righteousness of his own attitude, and disgust with +those whom he saw calmly expatiating upon the doctrines and dogmas of +religion in his own town finally caused him to suspect a universal +misreading of the Bible. This doubt, together with his own desire for +justification according to the Word, finally put the idea in his mind to +make a study of the Bible himself. He would read it, he said. He would +study Hebrew and Greek, and refer all questionable readings of words and +passages back to the original tongue in which it had been written. + +With this end in view he began a study of these languages, the +importance of the subject so growing upon him that he neglected his +business. Day after day he labored, putting a Bible and a Concordance +upon a pile of soap-boxes near the door of his store and poring over +them between customers, the store meantime taking care of itself. He +finally mastered Greek and Hebrew after a fashion, and finding the word +"repent" frequently used, and that God had made man in the image of +Himself, with a full knowledge of right and wrong, he gravitated toward +the belief that therefore his traducers in Noank knew what they were +doing, and that before he needed to forgive them--though his love might +cover all--they must repent. + +He read the Bible from beginning to end with this one feeling +subconsciously dominant, and all its loving commands about loving one +another, forgiving your brother seventy times seven, loving those that +hate you, returning good for evil, selling all that you have and giving +it to the poor, were made to wait upon the duty of others to repent. He +began to give this interpretation at Eustis, where he was allowed to +have a Sunday-school, until the minister came and told him once, "to his +face," as the local report ran: "We don't want you here." + +Meekly he went forth and, joining a church across the Sound on Long +Island, sailed over every Sunday and there advanced the same views until +he was personally snubbed by the minister and attacked by the local +papers. Leaving there he went to Amherst, always announcing now that he +held distinctive views about some things in the Bible and asking the +privilege of explaining. In this congregation he was still comfortably +at rest when I knew him. + +"All sensitiveness," the sail-maker had concluded after his long +account. "There ain't anything the matter with Elihu, except that he's +piqued and grieved. He wanted to be the big man, and he wasn't." + +I was thinking of this and of his tender relationship with children as I +had noticed it, and of his service to the late colonel when one day +being in the store, I said: + +"Do you stand on the Bible completely, Mr. Burridge?" + +"Yes, sir," he replied, "I do." + +"Believe every word of it to be true?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"If your brother has offended you, how many times must you forgive him?" + +"Seventy times seven." + +"Do you forgive your brothers?" + +"Yes, sir--if they repent." + +"If they repent?" + +"Yes, sir, if they repent. That's the interpretation. In Matthew you +will find, 'If he repent, forgive him.'" + +"But if you don't forgive them, even before they repent," I said, +"aren't you harboring enmity?" + +"No, sir, I'm not treasuring up enmity. I only refuse to forgive them." + +I looked at the man, a little astonished, but he looked so sincere and +earnest that I could not help smiling. + +"How do you reconcile that with the command, 'Love one another?' You +surely can't love and refuse to forgive them at the same time?" + +"I don't refuse to forgive them," he repeated. "If John there," +indicating an old man in a sun-tanned coat who happened to be passing +through the store at the time, "should do me a wrong--I don't care what +it was, how great or how vile--if he should come to me and say, +'Burridge, I'm sorry,'" he executed a flashing oratorical move in +emphasis, and throwing back his head, exclaimed: "It's gone! It's gone! +There ain't any more of it! All gone!" + +I stood there quite dumbfounded by his virility, as the air vibrated +with his force and feeling. So manifestly was his reading of the Bible +colored by the grief of his own heart that it was almost painful to +tangle him with it. Goodness and mercy colored all his ideas, except in +relation to his one-time followers, those who had formerly been his +friends and now left him to himself. + +"Do you still visit the poor and the afflicted, as you once did?" I +asked him once. + +"I'd rather not say anything about that," he replied sternly. + +"But do you?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Still make your annual New Year round?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Well, you'll get your reward for that, whatever you believe." + +"I've had my reward," he said slowly. + +"Had it?" + +"Yes, sir, had it. Every hand that's been lifted to receive the little +I had to offer has been my reward." + +He smiled, and then said in seemingly the most untimely way: + +"I remember once going to a lonely woman here on New Year's Day and +taking her a little something--basket of grapes or fruit of some kind it +was. I was stopping a minute--never stay long, you know; just run in and +say 'Happy New Year!' leave what I have and get out--and so said, 'Good +morning, Aunt Mary!' + +"'Good morning, Elihu,' says she. + +"'Can't stay long, Aunt Mary,' I said. 'Just want to leave you these. +Happy New Year!' + +"Well, sir, you know I was just turning around and starting when she +caught hold of my sleeve and says: + +"'Elihu Burridge,' she says, 'give me that hand!' and do you know, +before I knew what she was about she took it up to her lips and kissed +it! Yes, she did--kissed my hand! + +"Now," he said, drawing himself up, with eyes bright with intense +feeling, "you know whether I've had my reward or not, don't you?" + + + + +_"Vanity, Vanity," Saith the Preacher_ + + +Sometimes a single life will clearly and effectively illustrate a +period. Hence, to me, the importance of this one. + +I first met X---- at a time when American financial methods and American +finances were at their apex of daring and splendor, and when the world +was in a more or less tolerant mood toward their grandiose manners and +achievements. It was the golden day of Mr. Morgan, Senior, Mr. Belmont, +Mr. Harriman, Mr. Sage, Mr. Gates, Mr. Brady, and many, many others who +were still extant and ruling distinctly and drastically, as was proved +by the panic of 1907. In opposition to them and yet imitating their +methods, now an old story to those who have read "Frenzied Finance," +"Lawless Wealth," and other such exposures of the methods which produced +our enormous American fortunes, were such younger men as Charles W. +Morse (the victim of the 1907 panic), F. Augustus Heinze (another if +less conspicuous victim of the same "panic"), E.R. Thomas, an ambitious +young millionaire, himself born to money, David A. Sullivan, and X----. +I refuse to mention his name because he is still alive although no +longer conspicuous, and anxious perhaps to avoid the uncomfortable glare +of publicity when all the honors and comforts which made it endurable in +the first place are absent. + +The person who made X---- essentially interesting to me long before I +met him was one Lucien de Shay, a ne'er-do-well pianist and voice +culturist, who was also a connoisseur in the matters of rugs, hangings, +paintings and furniture, things in which X---- was just then most +intensely interested, erecting, as he was, a great house on Long Island +and but newly blossoming into the world of art or fashion or culture or +show--those various things which the American multi-millionaire always +wants to blossom or bloom into and which he does not always succeed in +doing. De Shay was one of those odd natures so common to the +metropolis--half artist and half man of fashion who attach themselves so +readily to men of strength and wealth, often as advisors and counselors +in all matters of taste, social form and social progress. How this +particular person was rewarded I never quite knew, whether in cash or +something else. He was also a semi-confidant of mine, furnishing me +"tips" and material of one sort and another in connection with the +various publications I was then managing. As it turned out later, X---- +was not exactly a multi-millionaire as yet, merely a fledgling, although +the possibilities were there and his aims and ambitions were fast +nearing a practical triumph the end of which of course was to be, as in +the case of nearly all American multi-millionaires of the newer and +quicker order, bohemian or exotic and fleshly rather than cultural or +æsthetic pleasure, although the latter were never really exactly +ignored. + +But even so. He was a typical multi-millionaire in the showy and even +gaudy sense of the time. For if the staid and conservative and socially +well-placed rich have the great houses and the ease and the luxury of +paraphernalia, the bohemian rich of the X---- type have the flare, +recklessness and imagination which lend to their spendings and +flutterings a sparkle and a shine which the others can never hope to +match. + +Said this friend of mine to me one day: "Listen, I want you to meet this +man X----. You will like him. He is fine. You haven't any idea what a +fascinating person he really is. He looks like a Russian Grand Duke. He +has the manners and the tastes of a Medici or a Borgia. He is building a +great house down on Long Island that once it is done will have cost him +five or six hundred thousand. It's worth seeing already. His studio here +in the C---- studio building is a dream. It's thick with the loveliest +kinds of things. I've helped buy them myself. And he isn't dull. He +wrote a book at twenty, 'Icarus,' which is not bad either and which he +says is something like himself. He has read your book ("Sister Carrie") +and he sympathizes with that man Hurstwood. Says parts of it remind him +of his own struggles. That's why he wants to meet you. He once worked on +the newspapers too. God knows how he is making his money, but I know how +he is spending it. He's decided to live, and he's doing it splendidly. +It's wonderful." + +I took notice, although I had never even heard of the man. There were so +very, very many rich men in America. Later I heard much more concerning +him from this same de Shay. Once he had been so far down in the scale +that he had to shine shoes for a living. Once he had walked the streets +of New York in the snow, his shoes cracked and broken, no overcoat, not +even a warm suit. He had come here a penniless emigrant from Russia. Now +he controlled four banks, one trust company, an insurance company, a +fire insurance company, a great real estate venture somewhere, and what +not. Naturally all of this interested me greatly. When are we +indifferent to a rise from nothing to something? + +At de Shay's invitation I journeyed up to X----'s studio one Wednesday +afternoon at four, my friend having telephoned me that if I could I must +come at once, that there was an especially interesting crowd already +assembled in the rooms, that I would meet a long list of celebrities. +Two or three opera singers of repute were already there, among them an +Italian singer and sorceress of great beauty, a veritable queen of the +genus adventuress, who was setting the town by the ears not only by her +loveliness but her voice. Her beauty was so remarkable that the Sunday +papers were giving full pages to her face and torso alone. There were to +be several light opera and stage beauties there also, a basso profundo +to sing, writers, artists, poets. + +I went. The place and the crowd literally enthralled me. It was so gay, +colorful, thrillful. The host and the guests were really interesting--to +me. Not that it was so marvelous as a studio or that it was so +gorgeously decorated and furnished--it was impressive enough in that +way--but that it was so gracefully and interestingly representative of a +kind of comfort disguised as elegance. The man had everything, or nearly +so--friends, advisors, servants, followers. A somewhat savage and +sybaritic nature, as I saw at once, was here disporting itself in +velvets and silks. The iron hand of power, if it was power, was being +most gracefully and agreeably disguised as the more or less flaccid one +of pleasure and friendship. + +My host was not visible at first, but I met a score of people whom I +knew by reputation, and listened to clatter and chatter of the most +approved metropolitan bohemian character. The Italian sorceress was +there, her gorgeous chain earrings tinkling mellifluously as she nodded +and gesticulated. De Shay at once whispered in my ear that she was +X----'s very latest flame and an expensive one too. "You should see what +he buys her!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "God!" Actresses and society +women floated here and there in dreams of afternoon dresses. The +automobiles outside were making a perfect uproar. The poets and writers +fascinated me with their praises of the host's munificence and taste. At +a glance it was plain to me that he had managed to gather about him the +very element it would be most interesting to gather, supposing one +desired to be idle, carefree and socially and intellectually gay. If +America ever presented a smarter drawing-room I never saw it. + +My friend de Shay, being the fidus Achates of the host, had the power to +reveal the inner mysteries of this place to me, and on one or two +occasions when there were not so many present and while the others were +chattering in the various rooms--music-, dining-, ball-, library and so +forth--I was being shown the kitchen, pantry, wine cellar, and also +various secret doors and passages whereby mine host by pressing a flower +on a wall or a spring behind a picture could cause a door to fly open or +close which gave entrance to or from a room or passage in no way +connected with the others save by another secret door and leading always +to a private exit. I wondered at once at the character of the person who +could need, desire or value this. A secret bedroom, for instance; a +lounging-room! In one of these was a rather severe if handsome desk and +a steel safe and two chairs--no more; a very bare room. I wondered at +this silent and rather commercial sanctum in the center of this +frou-frou of gayety, no trace of the sound of which seemed to penetrate +here. What I also gained was a sense of an exotic, sybaritic and purely +pagan mind, one which knew little of the conventions of the world and +cared less. + +On my first visit, as I was leaving, I was introduced to the host just +within his picture gallery, hung with many fine examples of the Dutch +and Spanish schools. I found him to be as described: picturesque and +handsome, even though somewhat plump, phlegmatic and lethargic--yet +active enough. He was above the average in height, well built, florid, +with a huge, round handsome head, curly black hair, keen black eyes, +heavy overhanging eyebrows, full red lips, a marked chin ornamented by a +goatee. In any costume ball he would have made an excellent Bacchus or +Pan. He appeared to have the free, easy and gracious manner of those who +have known much of life and have achieved, in part at least, their +desires. He smiled, wished to know if I had met all the guests, hoped +that the sideboard had not escaped me, that I had enjoyed the singing. +Would I come some evening when there was no crowd--or, better yet, dine +with him and my friend de Shay, whose personality appeared to be about +as agreeable to him as his own. He was sorry he could not give me more +attention now. + +Interestingly enough, and from the first, I was impressed with this man; +not because of his wealth (I knew richer men) but because of a something +about him which suggested dreams, romance, a kind of sense or love of +splendor and grandeur which one does not often encounter among the +really wealthy. Those cracked shoes were in my mind, I suppose. He +seemed to live among great things, but in no niggardly, parsimonious or +care-taking way. Here was ease, largess, a kind of lavishness which was +not ostentation but which seemed rather to say, "What are the minute +expenses of living and pleasuring as contrasted with the profits of +skill in the world outside?" He suggested the huge and Aladdin-like +adventures with which so many of the great financiers of the day, the +true tigers of Wall Street, were connected. + +It was not long thereafter that I was once more invited, this time to a +much more lavish affair and something much more sybaritic in its tone, +although I was really not conscious of what it was to be like when I +went there. It began at twelve midnight, and to this day it glitters in +my mind as among the few really barbaric and exotic things that I have +ever witnessed. Not that the trappings or hangings or setting were so +outré or amazing as that the atmosphere of the thing itself was relaxed, +bubbling, pagan. There were so many daring and seeking people there. The +thing sang and was talked of for months after--in whispers! The gayety! +The abandon! The sheer intoxication, mental and physical! I never saw +more daring costumes, so many really beautiful women (glitteringly so) +in one place at one time, wonderful specimens of exotic and in the main +fleshy or sensuous femininity. There was, among other things, as I +recall, a large nickeled ice-tray on wheels packed with unopened bottles +of champagne, and you had but to lift a hand or wink an eye to have +another opened for you alone, ever over and over. And the tray was +always full. One wall of the dining-room farther on was laden with +delicate novelties in the way of food. A string quartette played for the +dancers in the music-room. There were a dozen corners in different rooms +screened with banks of flowers and concealing divans. The dancing and +singing were superb, individual, often abandoned in character, as was +the conversation. As the morning wore on (for it did not begin until +after midnight) the moods of all were either so mellowed or inflamed as +to make intentions, hopes, dreams, the most secret and sybaritic, the +order of expression. One was permitted to see human nature stripped of +much of its repression and daylight reserve or cant. At about four in +the morning came the engaged dancers, quite the pièce de +résistance--with wreaths about heads, waists and arms for clothing and +well, really nothing more beyond their beautiful figures--scattering +rose leaves or favors. These dancers the company itself finally joined, +single file at first, pellmell afterwards--artists, writers, +poets--dancing from room to room in crude Bacchic imitation of their +leaders--the women too--until all were singing, parading, swaying and +dancing in and out of the dozen rooms. And finally, liquor and food +affecting them, I suppose, many fell flat, unable to do anything +thereafter but lie upon divans or in corners until friends assisted them +elsewhere--to taxis finally. But mine host, as I recall him, was always +present, serene, sober, smiling, unaffected, bland and gracious and +untiring in his attention. He was there to keep order where otherwise +there would have been none. + +I mention this merely to indicate the character of a long series of such +events which covered the years 19-- to 19--. During that time, for the +reason that I have first given (his curious pleasure in my company), I +was part and parcel of a dozen such more or less vivid affairs and +pleasurings, which stamped on my mind not only X---- but life itself, +the possibilities and resources of luxury where taste and appetite are +involved, the dreams of grandeur and happiness which float in some +men's minds and which work out to a wild fruition--dreams so outré and +so splendid that only the tyrant of an obedient empire, with all the +resources of an enslaved and obedient people, could indulge with safety. +Thus once, I remember, that a dozen of us--writers and artists--being +assembled in his studio in New York one Friday afternoon for the mere +purpose of idling and drinking, he seeming to have nothing better to do +for the time being, he suddenly suggested, and as though it had but now +occurred to him, that we all adjourn to his country house on Long +Island, which was not yet quite finished (or, rather, furnished), but +which was in a sufficient state of completion to permit of appropriate +entertainment providing the necessaries were carried out there with us. + +As I came to think of this afterward, I decided that after all it was +not perhaps so unpremeditated as it seemed and that unconsciously we +served a very useful purpose. There was work to do, suggestions to be +obtained, an overseer, decorator and landscape gardener with whom +consultations were absolutely necessary; and nothing that X---- ever did +was without its element of calculation. Why not make a gala affair of a +rather dreary November task-- + +Hence-- + +At any rate the majority of us forthwith agreed, since plainly it meant +an outing of the most lavish and pleasing nature. At once four +automobiles were pressed into service, three from his own garage and one +specially engaged elsewhere. There was some telephoning _in re_ culinary +supplies to a chef in charge of the famous restaurant below who was _en +rapport_ with our host, and soon some baskets of food were produced and +subsequently the four cars made their appearance at the entryway below. +At dusk of a gray, cold, smoky day we were all bundled into +these--poets, playwrights, novelists, editors (he professed a great +contempt for actors), and forthwith we were off, to do forty-five miles +between five-thirty and seven p.m. + +I often think of that ride, the atmosphere of it, and what it told of +our host's point of view. He was always so grave, serene, watchful yet +pleasant and decidedly agreeable, gay even, without seeming so to be. +There was something so amazingly warm and exotic about him and his, and +yet at the same time something so cold and calculated, as if after all +he were saying to himself, "I am the master of all this, am +stage-managing it for my own pleasure." I felt that he looked upon us +all not so much as intimates or friends as rather fine birds or +specimens of one kind and another, well qualified to help him with art +and social ideas if nothing more--hence his interest in us. Also, in his +estimation no doubt, we reflected some slight color or light into his +life, which he craved. We had done things too. Nevertheless, in his own +estimation, he was the master, the Can Grande. He could at will, "take +us up or leave us out," or so he thought. We were mere toys, fine +feathers, cap-and-bell artists. It was nice to, "take us around," have +us with him. Smothered in a great richly braided fur coat and fur cap, +he looked as much the Grand Duke as one might wish. + +But I liked him, truly. And what a delicious evening and holiday, all +told, he made of it for us. By leaving a trail of frightened horses, men +and women, and tearing through the gloom as though streets were his +private race-track--I myself as much frightened as any at the roaring +speed of the cars and the possibilities of the road--we arrived at +seven, and by eight were seated to a course dinner of the most +gratifying character. There was no heat in the house as yet, but from +somewhere great logs had been obtained and now blazed in the large +fireplaces. There was no electricity as yet--a private plant was being +installed--but candles and lamps blazed in lovely groups, casting a soft +glow over the great rooms. One room lacked a door, but an immense rug +took its place. There were rugs, hangings and paintings in profusion, +many of them as yet unhung. Some of the most interesting importations of +furniture and statuary were still in the cases in which they had +arrived, with marks of ships and the names of foreign cities upon the +cases. Scattered about the great living-room, dining-room, music-room +and library were enough rugs, divans and chairs as well as musical +instruments--a piano among others--to give the place an air of +completeness and luxury. The walls and ceilings had already been +decorated--in a most florid manner, I must say. Outside were great +balconies and verandahs commanding, as the following morning proved, a +very splendid view of a very bleak sea. The sand dunes! The distant +floor of the sea! The ships! Upstairs were nine suites of one- and +two-rooms and bath. The basement was an intricate world of kitchen, +pantry, engine-room, furnace, wine cellars and what not. Outside was a +tawny waste of sand held together in places in the form of hummocks and +even concealing hills by sand-binding grasses. + +That night, because it was windy and dull and bleak, we stayed inside, I +for one going outside only long enough to discover that there were great +wide verandahs of concrete about the house, fit for great entertainments +in themselves, and near at hand, hummocks of sand. Inside all was warm +and flaring enough. The wine cellar seemed to contain all that one might +reasonably desire. Our host once out here was most gay in his mood. He +was most pleasantly interested in the progress of his new home, although +not intensely so. He seemed to have lived a great deal and to be making +the best of everything as though it were something to go through with. +With much talking on the part of us all, the evening passed swiftly +enough. Some of the men could play and sing. One poet recited enchanting +bits of verse. For our inspection certain pieces of furniture and +statuary were unpacked and displayed--a bronze faun some three feet in +height, for one thing. All the time I was sensible of being in contact +with some one who was really in touch with life in a very large way, +financially and otherwise. His mind seemed to be busy with all sorts of +things. There were two Syrians in Paris, he said, who owned a large +collection of rugs suitable for an exhibition. He had an agent who was +trying to secure the best of them for his new home. De Shay had recently +introduced him to a certain Italian count who had a great house in Italy +but could not afford its upkeep. He was going to take over a portion of +its furnishings, after due verification, of course. Did I know the +paintings of Monticelli and Mancini? He had just secured excellent +examples of both. Some time when his new home was further along I must +come out. Then the pictures would be hung, the statuary and furniture in +place. He would get up a week-end party for a select group. + +The talk drifted to music and the stage. At once I saw that because of +his taste, wealth and skill, women formed a large and yet rather +toy-like portion of his life, holding about as much relation to his +inner life as do the concubines of an Asiatic sultan. Madame of the +earrings, as I learned from De Shay, was a source of great expense to +him, but at that she was elusive, not easily to be come at. The stage +and Broadway were full of many beauties in various walks of life, many +of whom he knew or to whom he could obtain access. Did I know thus, and +so--such-and-such, and one? + +"I'll tell you," he said after a time and when the wine glasses had been +refilled a number of times, "we must give a party out here some time, +something extraordinary, a real one. De Shay and Bielow" (naming another +artist) "and myself must think it out. I know three different +dancers"--and he began to enumerate their qualities. I saw plainly that +even though women played a minor part in his life, they were the fringe +and embroidery to his success and power. At one a.m. we went to our +rooms, having touched upon most of the themes dear to metropolitan +lovers of life and art. + +The next morning was wonderful--glittering, if windy. The sea sparkled +beyond the waste of sand. I noted anew the richness of the furnishings, +the greatness of the house. Set down in so much sand and facing the +great sea, it was wonderful. There was no order for breakfast; we came +down as we chose. A samovar and a coffee urn were alight on the table. +Rolls, chops, anything, were brought on order. Possibly because I was +one of the first about, my host singled me out--he was up and dressed +when I came down--and we strolled over the estate to see what we should +see. + +Curiously, although I had seen many country homes of pretension and even +luxury, I never saw one that appealed to me more on the ground of +promise and, after a fashion, of partial fulfillment. It was so +unpretentiously pretentious, so really grand in a limited and yet poetic +way. Exteriorly its placement, on a rise of ground commanding that vast +sweep of sea and sand, its verandahs, so very wide--great smooth floors +of red concrete--bordered with stone boxes for flowers and handsomely +designed stone benches, its long walks and drives but newly begun, its +stretch of beach, say a half mile away and possibly a mile and a half +long, to be left, as he remarked, "au naturel," driftwood, stones and +all, struck me most favorably. Only one long pier for visiting yachts +was to be built, and a certain stretch of beach, not over three hundred +feet, cleared for bath houses and a smooth beach. On one spot of land, a +high hummock reaching out into the sea, had already been erected a small +vantage tower, open at the bottom for shade and rest, benches turning in +a circle upon a concrete floor, above it, a top looking more like a +small bleak lighthouse than anything else. In this upper portion was a +room reached by small spiral concrete stairs! + +I could not help noting the reserve and _savoir faire_ with which my +host took all this. He was so healthy, assured, interested and, I am +glad to say, not exactly self-satisfied; at least he did not impress me +in that way--a most irritating condition. Plainly he was building a very +splendid thing. His life was nearing its apex. He must not only have had +millions, but great taste to have undertaken, let alone accomplished, as +much as was already visible here. Pointing to a bleak waste of sand +between the house and the sea--and it looked like a huge red and yellow +bird perched upon a waste of sand--he observed, "When you come again in +the spring, that will contain a garden of 40,000 roses. The wind is +nearly always off the sea here. I want the perfume to blow over the +verandahs. I can rotate the roses so that a big percentage of them will +always be in bloom." + +We visited the stables, the garage, an artesian well newly driven, a +drive that was to skirt the sea, a sunken garden some distance from the +house and away from the sea. + +Next spring I came once more--several times, in fact. The rose garden +was then in bloom, the drives finished, the pictures hung. Although this +was not a world in which society as yet deigned to move, it was entirely +conceivable that at a later period it might, and betimes it was crowded +with people smart enough and more agreeable in the main than the hardy, +strident members of the so-called really inner circles. There were +artists, writers, playwrights, singers, actresses, and some nondescript +figures of the ultra-social world--young men principally who seemed to +come here in connection with beautiful young women, models and other +girls whose beauty was their only recommendation to consideration. + +The scene was not without brilliance. A butler and numerous flunkeys +fluttered to and fro. Guests were received at the door by a footman. A +housekeeper and various severe-looking maids governed in the matter of +cleaning. One could play golf, tennis, bridge, motor, fish, swim, drink +in a free and even disconcerting manner or read quietly in one angle or +another of the grounds. There were affairs, much flirting and giggling, +suspicious wanderings to and fro at night--no questions asked as to who +came or whether one was married, so long as a reasonable amount of +decorum was maintained. It was the same on other occasions, only the +house and grounds were full to overflowing with guests and passing +friends, whose machines barked in the drives. I saw as many gay and +fascinating costumes and heard as much clever and at times informative +talk here as anywhere I have been. + +During this fall and winter I was engaged in work which kept me very +much to myself. During the period I read much of X----, banks he was +combining, new ventures he was undertaking. Yet all at once one winter's +day, and out of a clear sky, the papers were full of an enormous +financial crash of which he was the center. According to the newspapers, +the first and foremost of a chain of banks of which he was the head, to +say nothing of a bonding and realty company and some street-railway +project on Long Island, were all involved in the crash. Curiously, +although no derogatory mention had previously been made of him, the +articles and editorials were now most vituperative. Their venom was +especially noticeable. He was a get-rich-quick villain of the vilest +stripe; he had been juggling a bank, a trust company, an insurance +company and a land and street-railway speculative scheme as one would +glass balls. The money wherewith he gambled was not his. He had robbed +the poor, deceived them. Yet among all this and in the huge articles +which appeared the very first day, I noted one paragraph which stuck in +my mind, for I was naturally interested in all this and in him. It read: + + "Wall Street heard yesterday that Superintendent H---- got his + first information concerning the state in which X----'s affairs + were from quarters where resentment may have been cherished + because of his activity in the Long Island Traction field. This is + one of the Street's 'clover patches' and the success which the + newcomer seemed to be meeting did not provoke great pleasure." + +Another item read: + + "A hitch in a deal that was to have transferred the South Shore to + the New York and Queens County System, owned by the Long Island + Railroad, at a profit of almost $2,000,000 to X----, was the cause + of all the trouble. Very active displeasure on the part of certain + powers in Wall Street blocked, it is said, the closing of the deal + for the railroad. They did not want him in this field, and were + powerful enough to prevent it. At the same time pressure from + other directions was brought to bear on him. The clearing-house + refused to clear for his banks. X---- was in need of cash, but + still insisting on a high rate of remuneration for the road which + he had developed to an important point. Their sinister influences + entered and blocked the transfer until it was no longer possible + for him to hold out." + +Along with these two items was a vast mass of data, really pages, +showing how, when, where he had done thus and so, "juggled accounts" +between one bank and another, all of which he controlled however, and +most of which he owned, drew out large sums and put in their place +mortgages on, or securities in, new companies which he was +organizing--tricks which were the ordinary routine of Wall Street and +hence rather ridiculous as the sub-stone of so vast a hue and cry. + +I was puzzled and, more than that, moved by the drama of the man's +sudden end, for I understood a little of finance and its ways, also of +what place and power had plainly come to mean to him. It must be +dreadful. Yet how could it be, I asked myself, if he really owned +fifty-one per cent or more in so many companies that he could be such a +dark villain? After all, ownership is ownership, and control, control. +On the face of the reports themselves his schemes did not look so black. +I read everything in connection with him with care. + +As the days passed various other things happened. For one thing, he +tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window of his studio in New +York; for another, he tried to take poison. Now of a sudden a bachelor +sister, of whom I had never heard in all the time I had known him, put +in an appearance as his nearest of kin--a woman whose name was not his +own but a variation of it, an "-ovitch" having suddenly been tacked onto +it. She took him to a sanitarium, from which he was eventually turned +out as a criminal, then to a hospital, until finally he surrendered +himself to the police. The names of great lawyers and other bankers +began to enter the case. Alienists of repute, those fine chameleons of +the legal world, were employed who swore first that he was insane, then +that he was not. His sister, who was a physician and scientist of +repute, asked the transfer of all his property to her on the ground that +he was incompetent and that she was his next of kin. To this she swore, +giving as her reasons for believing him insane that he had "illusions of +grandeur" and that he believed himself "persecuted by eminent +financiers," things which smacked more of sanity than anything else to +me. At the same time he and she, as time rather indicated, had arranged +this in part in the hope of saving something out of the great wreck. +There were other curious features: Certain eminent men in politics and +finance who from revelations made by the books of the various banks were +in close financial if not personal relations with X---- denied this +completely. Curiously, the great cry on the part of these was that he +was insane, must be, and that he was all alone in his schemes. His life +on Broadway, on Long Island, in his studio in New York, were ransacked +for details. Enough could not be made of his gay, shameful, spendthrift +life. No one else, of course, had ever been either gay or shameful +before--especially not the eminent and hounding financiers. + +Then from somewhere appeared a new element. In a staggeringly low +tenement region in Brooklyn was discovered somehow or other a very old +man and woman, most unsatisfactory as relatives of such imposing people, +who insisted that they were his parents, that years before because he +and his sister were exceedingly restless and ambitious, they had left +them and had only returned occasionally to borrow money, finally ceasing +to come at all. In proof of this, letters, witnesses, old photos, were +produced. It really did appear as if he and his sister, although they +had long vigorously denied it, really were the son and daughter of the +two who had been petty bakers in Brooklyn, laying up a little +competence of their own. I never knew who "dug" them up, but the reason +why was plain enough. The sister was laying claim to the property as the +next of kin. If this could be offset, even though X---- were insane, the +property would at once be thrown into the hands of the various creditors +and sold under a forced sale, of course--in other words, for a song--for +their benefit. Naturally it was of interest to those who wished to have +his affairs wound up to have the old people produced. But the great +financier had been spreading the report all along that he was from +Russia, that his parents, or pseudo-parents, were still there, but that +really he was the illegitimate son of the Czar of Russia, boarded out +originally with a poor family. Now, however, the old people were brought +from Brooklyn and compelled to confront him. It was never really proved +that he and his sister had neglected them utterly or had done anything +to seriously injure them, but rather that as they had grown in place and +station they had become more or less estranged and so ignored them, +having changed their names and soared in a world little dreamed of by +their parents. Also a perjury charge was made against the sister which +effectually prevented her from controlling his estate, a lease long +enough to give the financiers time for their work. Naturally there was a +great hue and cry over her, the scandal, the shame, that they should +thus publicly refuse to recognize their parents as they did or had when +confronted by them. Horrible! There were most heavily illustrated and +tearful Sunday articles, all blazoned forth with pictures of his house +and studio, his banks, cars, yacht, groups of guests, while the motives +of those who produced the parents were overlooked. The pictures of the +parents confronting X---- and his sister portrayed very old and feeble +people, and were rather moving. They insisted that they were his parents +and wept brokenly in their hands. But why? And he denying it! His +sister, who resented all this bitterly and who stood by him valiantly, +repudiated, for his sake of course, his and her so-called parents and +friends. + +I never saw such a running to cover of "friends" in all my life. Of all +those I had seen about his place and in his company, scores on scores of +people reasonably well known in the arts, the stage, the worlds of +finance and music, all eating his dinners, riding in his cars, drinking +his wines, there was scarcely any one now who knew him anything more +than "casually" or "slightly"--oh, so slightly! When rumors as to the +midnight suppers, the Bacchic dancing, the automobile parties to his +great country place and the spirited frolics which occurred there began +to get abroad, there was no one whom I knew who had ever been there or +knew anything about him or them. For instance, of all the people who had +been close or closest and might therefore have been expected to be +friendly and deeply concerned was de Shay, his fidus Achates and +literally his pensioner--yet de Shay was almost the loudest in his +denunciation or at least deprecation of X----, his habits and methods! +Although it was he who had told me of Mme. ---- and her relation to +X----, who urged me to come here, there and the other place, especially +where X---- was the host, always assuring me that it would be so +wonderful and that X---- was really such a great man, so generous, so +worth-while, he was now really the loudest or at least the most +stand-offish in his comments, pretending never to have been very close +to X----, and lifting his eyebrows in astonishment as though he had not +even guessed what he had actually engineered. His "Did-you-hears," +"Did-you-knows" and "Wouldn't-have-dreamed" would have done credit to a +tea-party. He was so shocked, especially at X----'s robbing poor +children and orphans, although in so far as my reading of the papers +went I could find nothing that went to prove that he had any intention +of robbing anybody--that is, directly. In the usual Wall Street high +finance style he was robbing Peter to pay Paul, that is, he was using +the monies of one corporation which he controlled to bolster up any of +the others which he controlled, and was "washing one hand with the +other," a proceeding so common in finance that to really radically and +truly oppose it, or do away with it, would mean to bring down the whole +fabric of finance in one grand crash. + +Be that as it may. In swift succession there now followed the so-called +"legal" seizure and confiscation of all his properties. In the first +place, by alienists representing the District Attorney and the State +banking department, he was declared sane and placed on trial for +embezzlement. Secondly, his sister's plea that his property be put into +her hands as trustee or administrator was thrown out of court and she +herself arrested and confined for perjury on the ground that she had +perjured herself in swearing that she was his next of kin when in +reality his real parents, or so they swore, were alive and in America. +Next, his banks, trust companies and various concerns, including his +great country estate, were swiftly thrown into the hands of receivers +(what an appropriate name!) and wound up "for the benefit of creditors." +All the while X---- was in prison, protesting that he was really not +guilty, that he was solvent, or had been until he was attacked by the +State bank examiner or the department back of him, and that he was the +victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy which was using the State banking +department and other means to drive him out of financial life, and that +solely because of his desire to grow and because by chance he had been +impinging upon one of the choicest and most closely guarded fields of +the ultra-rich of Wall Street--the street railway area in New York and +Brooklyn. + +One day, so he publicly swore to the grand jury, by which he was being +examined, as he was sitting in his great offices, in one of the great +sky-scrapers of New York, which occupied an entire floor and commanded +vast panoramas in every direction (another evidence of the man's insane +"delusion of grandeur," I presume), he was called to answer the +telephone. One Mr. Y----, so his assistant said, one of the eminent +financiers of Wall Street and America, was on the wire. Without any +preliminary and merely asking was this Mr. X---- on the wire, the latter +proceeded, "This is Mr. Y----. Listen closely to what I am going to say. +I want you to get out of the street railway business in New York or +something is going to happen to you. I am giving you a reasonable +warning. Take it." Then the phone clicked most savagely and ominously +and superiorly at the other end. + +"I knew at the time," went on X----, addressing the grand jury, "that I +was really listening to the man who was most powerful in such affairs in +New York and elsewhere and that he meant what he said. At the same time +I was in no position to get out without closing up the one deal which +stood to net me two million dollars clear if I closed it. At the same +time I wanted to enter this field and didn't see why I shouldn't. If I +didn't it spelled not ruin by any means but a considerable loss, a very +great loss, to me, in more ways than one. Oddly enough, just at this +time I was being pressed by those with whom I was associated to wind up +this particular venture and turn my attention to other things. I have +often wondered, in the light of their subsequent actions, why they +should have become so pressing just at this time. At the same time, +perhaps I was a little vain and self-sufficient. I had once got the +better of some agents of another great financier in a Western Power +deal, and I felt that I could put this thing through too. Hence I +refused to heed the warning. However, I found that all those who were +previously interested to buy or at least develop the property were now +suddenly grown cold, and a little later when, having entered on several +other matters, I needed considerable cash, the State banking department +descended on me and, crying fraud and insolvency, closed all my banks. + +"You know how it is when they do this to you. Cry 'Fire!' and you can +nearly wreck a perfectly good theater building. Depositors withdraw, +securities tumble, investigation and legal expenses begin, your +financial associates get frightened or ashamed and desert you. Nothing +is so squeamish or so retiring and nervous as money. Time will show that +I was not insolvent at the time. The books will show a few technically +illegal things, but so would the books or the affairs of any great bank, +especially at this time, if quickly examined. I was doing no more than +all were doing, but they wanted to get me out--and they did." + +Regardless of proceedings of various kinds--legal, technical and the +like--X---- was finally sent to the penitentiary, and spent some time +there. At the same time his confession finally wrecked about nine other +eminent men, financiers all. A dispassionate examination of all the +evidence eight years later caused me to conclude without hesitation that +the man had been a victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy, the object of +which was to oust him from opportunities and to forestall him in methods +which would certainly have led to enormous wealth. He was apparently in +a position and with the brains to do many of the things which the ablest +and coldest financiers of his day had been and were doing, and they did +not want to be bothered with, would not brook, in short, his +approaching rivalry. Like the various usurpers of regal powers in +ancient days, they thought it best to kill a possible claimant to the +throne in his infancy. + +But that youth of his! The long and devious path by which he had come! +Among the papers relating to the case and to a time when he could not +have been more than eighteen, and when he was beginning his career as a +book agent, was a letter written to his mother (August, 1892), which +read: + + "MY DEAR PARENTS: Please answer me at once if I can have anything + of you, or something of you or nothing. Remember this is the first + and the last time in my life that I beg of you anything. You have + given to the other child not $15 but hundreds, and now when I, the + very youngest, ask of you, my parents, $15, are you going to be so + hard-hearted as to refuse me? Without these $15 it is left to me + to be without income for two or three weeks. + + "For God's sake, remember what I ask of you, and send me at once + so that I should cease thinking of it. Leon, as I have told you, + will give me $10, $15 he has already paid for the contract, and + your $15 will make $25. Out of this I need $10 for a ticket and + $15 for two or three weeks' board and lodging. + + "Please answer at once. Don't wait for a minute, and send me the + money or write me one word 'not.' Remember this only that if you + refuse me I will have nothing in common with you. + + "Your son, + "----" + +There was another bit of testimony on the part of one Henry Dom, a +baker, who for some strange reason came forward to identify him as some +one he had known years before in Williamsburgh, which read: + + "I easily recognize them" (X---- and his sister) "from their + pictures in the newspapers. I worked for X----'s father, who was a + baker in Williamsburgh, and frequently addressed letters that were + written by X---- Senior and his wife to Dr. Louise X---- who was + then studying medicine in Philadelphia. X---- was then a boy going + to school, but working in his father's bakery mornings and + evenings. He did not want to do that, moaned a great deal, and his + parents humored him in his attitude. He was very vain, liked to + appear intellectual. They kept saying to their friends that he + should have a fine future. Five years later, after I had left them + once, I met the mother and she told me that X---- was studying + banking and getting along fine." + +Some seven years after the failure and trial by which he had so +summarily been disposed of and after he had been released from prison, I +was standing at a certain unimportant street corner in New York waiting +for a car when I saw him. He was passing in the opposite direction, not +very briskly, and, as I saw, plainly meditatively. He was not so well +dressed. The clothes he wore while good were somehow different, lacking +in that exquisite something which had characterized him years before. +His hat--well, it was a hat, not a Romanoff shako nor a handsome panama +such as he had affected in the old days. He looked tired, a little worn +and dusty, I thought. + +My first impulse was of course to hail him, my second not, since he had +not seen me. It might have been embarrassing, and at any rate he might +not have even remembered me. But as he walked I thought of the great +house by the sea, the studio, the cars, the 40,000 roses, the crowds at +his summer place, the receptions in town and out, Madame of the earrings +(afterward married to a French nobleman), and then of the letter to his +mother as a boy, the broken shoes in the winter time, his denial of his +parents, the telephone message from the financial tiger. "Vanity, +vanity," saith the preacher. The shores of our social seas are strewn +with pathetic wrecks, the whitening bone of half-sand-buried ships. + +At the next corner he paused, a little uncertain apparently as to which +way to go, then turned to the left and was lost. I have never seen nor +heard of him since. + + + + +_The Mighty Rourke_ + + +When I first met him he was laying the foundation for a small dynamo in +the engine-room of the repair shop at Spike, and he was most unusually +loud in his protestations and demands. He had with him a dozen Italians, +all short, swarthy fellows of from twenty-five to fifty years of age, +who were busy bringing material from a car that had been pushed in on +the side-track next to the building. This was loaded with crushed stone, +cement, old boards, wheelbarrows, tools, and the like, all of which were +to be used in the labor that he was about to undertake. He himself was +standing in the doorway of the shop where the work was to be conducted, +coat off, sleeves rolled up, and shouting with true Irish insistence, +"Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Get the shovels, now! Get the picks! Bring +some sand here! Bring some stone! Where's the cement, now? Where's the +cement? Jasus Christ! I must have some cement! What arre ye all doin'? +What do ye think ye're up here fer? Hurry, now, hurry! Bring the +cement!" and then, having concluded this amazing fanfare, calmly turning +to gaze about as if he were the only one in the world who had the right +to stand still. + +More or less oppressed with life myself at the time, I was against all +bosses, and particularly against so seemingly a vicious one as this. +"What a slave driver!" I thought. "What a brute!" And yet I remember +thinking that he was not exactly unpleasant to look at, either--quite +the contrary. He was medium in height, thick of body and neck, with +short gray hair and mustache, and bright, clear, twinkling Irish gray +eyes, and he carried himself with an air of unquestionable authority. It +was much as if he had said, "I am the boss here"; and, indeed, he was. +Is it this that sends the Irish to rule as captains of hundreds the +world over? + +The job he was bossing was not very intricate or important, but it was +interesting. It consisted of digging a trench ten by twelve feet, and +shaping it up with boards into a "form," after which concrete was to be +mixed and poured in, and some iron rods set to fasten the engine to--an +engine bed, no less. It was not so urgent but that it might have been +conducted with far less excitement, but what are you to do when you are +naturally excitable, love to make a great noise, and feel that things +are going forward whether they are or not? Plainly this particular +individual loved noise and a great stir. So eager was he to have done +with it, no matter what it was or where, that he was constantly trotting +to and fro, shouting, "Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Hurry, now, bring the +shovels! Bring the picks!" and occasionally bursting forth with a +perfect avalanche of orders. "Up with it! Down with it! Front with it! +Back with it! In with it! Out with it!" all coupled with his favorite +expletive, "Jasus Christ," which was as innocent of evil, I subsequently +came to know, as a prayer. In short, he was simply wild Irish, and that +was all there was to him--a delightful specimen, like Namgay Doola. + +But, as I say, at the time he seemed positively appalling to me, a +virulent specimen, and I thought, "The Irish brute! To think of human +beings having to work for a brute like that! To think of his driving men +like that!" However, I soon began to discover that he was not so bad as +he seemed, and then I began to like him. + +The thing that brought about this swift change of feeling in me was the +attitude of his men toward him. Although he was so insistent with his +commands, they did not seem to mind nor to strain themselves working. +They were not killing themselves, by any means. He would stand over +them, crying, "Up with it! Up with it! Up with it! Up with it!" or "Down +with it! Down with it! Down with it!" until you would have imagined +their nerves would be worn to a frazzle. As it was, however, they did +not seem to care any more than you would for the ticking of a clock; +rather, they appeared to take it as a matter of course, something that +had to be, and that one was prepared for. Their steps were in the main +as leisurely as those of idlers on Fifth Avenue or Broadway. They +carried boards or stone as one would objects of great value. One could +not help smiling at the incongruity of it; it was farcical. Finally +gathering the full import of it all, I ventured to laugh, and he turned +on me with a sharp and yet not unkindly retort. + +"Ha! ha! ha!" he mocked. "If ye had to work as hard as these min, ye +wouldn't laugh." + +I wanted to say, "Hard work, indeed!" but instead I replied, "Is that +so? Well, I don't see that they're killing themselves, or you either. +You're not as fierce as you sound." + +Then I explained that I was not laughing at them but at him, and he took +it all in good part. Since I was only a nominal laborer here, not a real +one--permitted to work for my health, for twelve cents an hour--we fell +to conversing upon railroad matters, and in this way our period of +friendship began. + +As I learned that morning, Rourke was the foreman-mason for minor tasks +for all that part of the railroad that lay between New York and fifty +miles out, on three divisions. He had a dozen or so men under him and +was in possession of one car, which was shunted back and forth between +the places in which he happened to be working. He was a builder of +concrete platforms, culverts, coal-bins, sidewalks, bridge and building +piers, and, in fact, anything that could be made out of crushed stone +and cement, or bricks and stone, and he was sent here and there, as +necessity required. As he explained to me at the time, he sometimes rose +as early as four a.m. in order to get to his place of labor by seven. +The great railroad company for which he toiled was no gentle master, and +did not look upon his ease, or that of his men, as important. At the +same time, as he himself confessed, he did not mind hard work--liked it, +in short. He had been working now for the company for all of twenty-two +years, "rain or shine." Darkness or storm made no difference to him. +"Shewer, I have to be there," he observed once with his quizzical, +elusive Irish grin. "They're not payin' me wages fer lyin' in bed. If ye +was to get up that way yerself every day fer a year, me b'y," he added, +eyeing my spare and none too well articulated frame, "it'd make a man av +ye." + +"Yes?" I said tolerantly. "And how much do you get, Rourke?" + +"Two an' a half a day." + +"You don't say!" I replied, pretending admiration. + +The munificence of the corporation that paid him two and a half dollars +a day for ten hours' work, as well as for superintending and +constructing things of such importance, struck me forcibly. Perhaps, as +we say in America, he "had a right" to be happy, only I could not see +it. At the same time, I could not help thinking that he was better +situated than myself at the time. I had been ill, and was now earning +only twelve cents an hour for ten hours' work, and the sight of the +foreman for whom I was working was a torture to my soul. He was such a +loud-mouthed, blustering, red-headed ignoramus, and I wanted to get out +from under him. At the same time, I was not without sufficient influence +so to do, providing I could find a foreman who could make use of me. The +great thing was to do this, and the more I eyed this particular specimen +of foreman the better I liked him. He was genial, really kindly, +amazingly simple and sincere. I decided to appeal to him to take me on +his staff. + +"How would you like to take me, Mr. Rourke, and let me work for you?" I +asked hopefully, after explaining to him why I was here. + +"Shewer," he replied. "Ye'd do fine." + +"Would I have to work with the Italians?" I asked, wondering how I would +make out with a pick and shovel. My frame was so spare at the time that +the question must have amused him, considering the type of physique +required for day labor. + +"There'll be plenty av work fer ye to do without ever yer layin' a hand +to a pick er shovel," he replied comfortingly. "Shewer, that's no work +fer white min. Let the nagurs do it. Look at their backs an' arrms, an' +then look at yers." + +I was ready to blush for shame. These poor Italians whom I was so ready +to contemn were immeasurably my physical superiors. + +"But why do you call them negroes, Rourke?" I asked after a time. +"They're not black." + +"Well, bedad, they're not white, that's waan thing shewer," he added. +"Aany man can tell that be lookin' at thim." + +I had to smile. It was so dogmatic and unreasoning. + +"Very well, then, they're black," I said, and we left the matter. + +Not long after I put in a plea to be transferred to him, at his request, +and it was granted. The day that I joined his flock, or gang, as he +called it, he was at Williamsbridge, a little station north on the +Harlem, building a concrete coal-bin. It was a pretty place, surrounded +by trees and a grass-plot, a vast improvement upon a dark indoor shop, +and seemed to me a veritable haven of rest. Ah, the smiling morning sun, +the green leaves, the gentle fresh winds of heaven! + +Rourke was down in an earthen excavation under the depot platform when I +arrived, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, and +when I looked in on him hopefully he looked up and smiled. + +"So here ye arre at last," he said with a grin. + +"Yes," I laughed. + +"Well, ye're jist in time; I waant ye to go down to the ahffice." + +"Certainly," I replied, but before I could say more he climbed out of +his hole, his white jeans odorous of the new-turned earth, and fished in +the pocket of an old gray coat which lay beside him for a soiled and +crumpled letter, which he finally unfolded with his thick, clumsy +fingers. Then he held it up and looked at it defiantly. + +"I waant ye to go to Woodlawn," he continued, "an' look after some bolts +that arre up there--there's a keg av thim--an' sign the bill fer thim, +an' ship thim down to me. An' thin I waant ye to go down to the ahffice +an' take thim this o.k." Here again he fished around and produced +another crumpled slip, this time of a yellow color (how well I came to +know them!), which I soon learned was an o.k. blank, a form which had to +be filled in and signed for everything received, if no more than a stick +of wood or a nail or a bolt. The company demanded these of all foremen, +in order to keep its records straight. Its accounting department was +useless without them. At the same time, Rourke kept talking of the +"nonsinse av it," and the "onraisonableness" of demanding o.k.s for +everything. "Ye'd think some one was goin' to sthale thim from thim," he +declared irritably and defiantly. + +I saw at once that some infraction of the railroad rules had occurred +and that he had been "called down," or "jacked up" about it, as the +railroad men expressed it. He was in a high state of dudgeon, and as +defiant and pugnacious as his royal Irish temper would allow. At the +same time he was pleased to think that I or some one had arrived who +would relieve him of this damnable "nonsinse," or so he hoped. He was +not so inexperienced as not to imagine that I could help him with all +this. In fact, as time proved, this was my sole reason for being here. + +He flung a parting shot at his superior as I departed. + +"Tell him that I'll sign fer thim when I get thim, an' not before," he +declared. + +I went on my way, knowing full well that no such message was for +delivery, and that he did not intend that it should be. It was just the +Irish of it. I went off to Woodlawn and secured the bolts, after which I +went down to the "ahffice" and reported. There I found the chief clerk, +a mere slip of a dancing master in a high collar and attractive office +suit, who was also in a high state of dudgeon because Rourke, as he now +explained, had failed to render an o.k. for this and other things, and +did not seem to understand that he, the chief clerk, must have them to +make up his reports. Sometimes o.k.s did not come in for a month or +more, the goods lying around somewhere until Rourke could use them. He +wanted to know what explanation Rourke had to offer, and when I +suggested that the latter thought, apparently, that he could leave all +consignments of goods in one station or another until such time as he +needed them before he o.k.ed for them, he fairly foamed. + +"Say," he almost shouted, at the same time shoving his hands +distractedly through his hair, "what does he think I am? How does he +think I'm going to make up my books? He'll leave them there until he +needs them, will he? Well, he's a damned fool, and you go back and tell +him I said so. He's been long enough on the road to know better. You go +back and tell him I said that I want a signed form for everything +consigned to him the moment he learns that it's waiting for him, and I +want it right away, without fail, whether it's a single nut or a car of +sand. I want it. He's got to come to time about this now, or something's +going to drop. I'm not going to stand it any longer. How does he think +I'm going to make up my books? I wish he'd let you attend to these +matters while you're up there. It will save an awful lot of trouble in +this office and it may save him his job. There's one thing sure: he's +got to come to time from now on, or either he quits or I do." + +These same o.k.s plus about twenty-five long-drawn-out reports or +calculations, retroactive and prospective, covering every possible +detail of his work from the acknowledgment of all material received up +to and including the expenditure of even so much as one mill's worth of +paper, were the bane of my good foreman's life. As I learned afterward, +he had nearly his whole family, at least a boy and two girls, assisting +him nights on this part of the work. In addition, while they were +absolutely of no import in so far as the actual work of construction was +concerned--and that was really all that interested Rourke--they were an +essential part of the system which made it possible for him to do the +work at all--a point which he did not seem to be able to get clear. At +the same time, there was an unsatisfactory side to this office +technicalia, and it was this: If a man could only sit down and reel off +a graphic account of all that he was doing, accompanied by facts and +figures, he was in excellent standing with his superiors, no matter what +his mechanical defects might be; whereas, if his reports were not clear, +or were insufficient, the efficiency of his work might well be +overlooked. In a vague way, Rourke sensed this and resented it. He knew +that his work was as good as could be done, and yet here were these +constant reports and o.k.s to irritate and delay him. Apparently they +aided actual construction no whit--but, of course, they did. Although he +was a better foreman than most, still, because of his lack of skill in +this matter of accounting, he was looked upon as more or less a failure, +especially by the chief clerk. Naturally, I explained that I would do my +best, and came away. + +When I returned, however, I decided to be politic. I could not very well +work with a pick and shovel, and this was about all that was left +outside of that. I therefore explained as best I could the sad plight of +the chief clerk, who stood in danger of losing his job unless these +things came in promptly. + +"You see how it is, Rourke, don't you?" I pleaded. + +He seemed to see, but he was still angry. + +"An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!" he echoed contentiously, but in a +somewhat more conciliatory spirit. "He wants an o.k. blank, does he? +Well, I expect ye might as well give thim to him, thin. I think the man +lives on thim things, the way he's aalways caallin' fer thim. Ye'd think +I was a bookkeeper an' foreman at the same time; it's somethin' aaful. +An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!" and he sputtered to silence. + +A little while later he humorously explained that he had "clane forgot +thim, anyhow." + +The ensuing month was a busy one for us. We had a platform to lay at +Morrisania, a chimney to build at Tarrytown, a sidewalk to lay at White +Plains, and a large cistern to dig and wall in at Tuckahoe. Besides +these, there were platforms to build at Van Cortlandt and Mount Kisco, +water-towers at Highbridge and Ardsley, a sidewalk and drain at Caryl, a +culvert and an ash-pit at Bronx Park, and some forty concrete piers for +a building at Melrose--all of which required any amount of running and +figuring, to say nothing of the actual work of superintending and +constructing, which Rourke alone could look after. It seemed ridiculous +to me at the time that any one doing all this hard practical labor +should not be provided with a clerk or an accountant to take at least +some of this endless figuring off his hands. At the same time, if he had +been the least bit clever, he could have provided himself with one +permanently by turning one of his so-called laborers into a +clerk--carrying a clerk as a laborer--but plainly it had never occurred +to him. He depended on his family. The preliminary labor alone of +ordering and seeing that the material was duly shipped and unloaded was +one man's work; and yet Rourke was expected to do it all. + +In spite of all this, however, he displayed himself a masterful worker. +I have never seen a better. He preferred to superintend, of course, to +get down into the pit or up on the wall, and measure and direct. At the +same time, when necessary to expedite a difficult task, he would toil +for hours at a stretch with his trowel and his line and his level and +his plumb-bob, getting the work into shape, and you would never hear a +personal complaint from him concerning the weariness of labor. On the +contrary, he would whistle and sing until something went wrong, when +suddenly you would hear the most terrific uproar of words: "Come out av +that! Come out, now! Jasus Christ, man, have ye no sinse at aall? Put it +down! Put it down! What arre ye doin'? What did I tell ye? Have ye no +raison in ye, no sinse, ye h'athen nagur?" + +"Great heavens!" I used to think, "what has happened now?" + +You would have imagined the most terrible calamity; and yet, all told, +it might be nothing of any great import--a little error of some kind, +more threatening than real, and soon adjusted. It might last for a few +moments, during which time the Italians would be seen hurrying excitedly +to and fro; and then there would come a lull, and Rourke would be heard +to raise his voice in tuneful melody, singing or humming or whistling +some old-fashioned Irish "Come-all-ye." + +But the thing in Rourke that would have pleased any one was his ready +grasp for the actualities of life--his full-fledged knowledge that work +is the thing, not argument, or reports, or plans, but the direct +accomplishment of something tangible, the thing itself. Thus, while I +was working with him, at least nothing that might concern the clerical +end of the labor could disturb him, but, if the sky fell, and eight +thousand chief clerks threatened to march upon him in a body demanding +reports and o.k.s, he would imperturbably make you wait until the work +was done. Once, when I interrupted him to question him concerning some +of these same wretched, pestering aftermaths of labor, concerning which +he alone could answer, he shut me off with: "The reports! The reports! +What good arre the reports! Ye make me sick. What have the reports to do +with the work? If it wasn't fer the work, where would the reports be?" +And I heartily echoed "Where?" + +Another thing was his charming attitude toward his men, kindly and sweet +for all his storming, that innate sense of something intimate and +fatherly. He had a way of saying kindly things in a joking manner which +touched them. When he arrived in the morning, for instance, it was +always in the cheeriest way that he began. "Come, now, b'ys, ye have a +good day's work before ye today. Get the shovels, Jimmie. Bring the +line, Matt!" and then he would go below himself, if below it was, and +there would be joy and peace until some obstacle to progress interfered. +I might say in passing that Matt and Jimmie, his faithful henchmen, were +each between forty and fifty, if they were a day--poor, gnarled, dusty, +storm-tossed Italians who had come from heaven knows where, had endured +God knows what, and were now rounding out a work-a-day existence under +the sheltering wing of this same Rourke, a great and protecting power to +them. + +This same Matt was a funny little Italian, soft of voice and gentle of +manner, whom Rourke liked very much, but with whom he loved to quarrel. +He would go down in any hole where the latter was working, and almost +invariably shortly after you would hear the most amazing uproar issuing +therefrom, shouts of: "Put it here, I say! Put it here! Down with it! +Here! Here! Jasus Christ, have ye no sinse at aall?"--coupled, of +course, with occasional guttural growls from Matt, who was by no means +in awe of his master and who feared no personal blows. The latter had +been with Rourke for so long that he was not in the least overawed by +his yelling and could afford to take such liberties. Occasionally, not +always, Rourke would come climbing out of the hole, his face and neck +fairly scarlet with heat, raging and shouting, "I'll get shut av ye! +I'll have no more thruck with ye, ye blitherin', crazy loon! What good +arre ye? What work can ye do? Naathin'! Naathin'! I'll be shut av ye +now, an' thin maybe I'll have a little p'ace." Then he would dance +around and threaten and growl until something else would take his +attention, when he would quiet down and be as peaceful as ever. Somehow, +I always felt that in spite of all the difficulties involved, he enjoyed +these rows--must fight, in short, to be happy. Sometimes he would go +home without saying a word to Matt, a conclusion which at first I +imagined portended the end of the latter, but soon I came to know +better. For the next morning Matt would reappear as unconcernedly as +though nothing had happened, and Rourke would appear not to notice or +remember. + +Once, anent all this, I said to him, "Rourke, how many times have you +threatened to discharge Matt in the last three years?" + +"Shewer," he replied, with his ingratiating grin, "a man don't mane aall +he says aall the time." + +The most humorous of all his collection of workingmen, however, was the +aforementioned Jimmie, a dark, mild-eyed, soft-spoken Calabrian, who had +the shrewdness of a Machiavelli and the pertness of a crow. He lived in +the same neighborhood as Rourke, far out in one of those small towns on +the Harlem, sheltering so many Italians, for, like a hen with a brood +of chicks, Rourke kept all his Italians gathered close about him. +Jimmie, curiously, was the one who was always selected to run his family +errands for him, a kind of valet to Rourke, as it were--selected for +some merit I could never discover, certainly not one of speed. He was +nevertheless constantly running here and there like an errand boy, his +worn, dusty, baggy clothes making him look like a dilapidated bandit +fresh from a sewer. On the job, however, no matter what it might be, +Jimmie could never be induced to do real, hard work. He was always above +it, or busy with something else. But as he was an expert cement-mixer +and knew just how to load and unload the tool-car, two sinecures of +sorts, nothing was ever said to him. If any one dared to reprove him, +myself for instance (a mere interloper to Jimmie), he would reply: "Yeh! +Yeh! I know-a my biz. I been now with Misha Rook fifteen year. I know-a +my biz." If you made any complaint to Rourke, he would merely grin and +say, "Ha! Jimmie's the sharp one," or perhaps, "I'll get ye yet, ye +fox," but more than that nothing was ever done. + +One day, however, Jimmie failed to comply with an extraordinary order of +Rourke's, which, while it resulted in no real damage, produced a most +laughable and yet characteristic scene. A strict rule of the company was +that no opening of any kind into which a person might possibly step or +fall should be left uncovered at any station during the approach, stay, +or departure of any train scheduled to stop at that station. Rourke was +well aware of this rule. He had a copy of it on file in his collection +of circulars. In addition, he had especially delegated Jimmie to attend +to this matter, a task which just suited the Italian as it gave him +ample time to idle about and pretend to be watching. This it was which +made the crime all the greater. + +On this particular occasion Jimmie had failed to attend to this matter. +We had been working on the platform at Williamsbridge, digging a pit for +a coal-bin, when a train bearing the general foreman came along. The +latter got off at the station especially to examine the work that had +been done so far. When the train arrived there was the hole wide open +with Rourke below shouting and gesticulating about something, and +totally unconscious, of course, that his order had been neglected. The +general foreman, who was, by the way, I believe, an admirer of Rourke, +came forward, looked down, and said quietly: "This won't do, Rourke. +You'll have to keep the work covered when a train is approaching. I've +told you that before, you know." + +Rourke looked up, so astonished and ashamed that he should have been put +in such a position before his superior that he hardly knew what to say. +I doubt if any one ever had a greater capacity for respecting his +superiors, anyhow. Instead of trying to answer, he merely choked and +began to shout for Jimmie, who came running, crying, as he always did, +"What's da mat'? What's da mat'?" + +"What's da mat'? What's da mat'?" mocked Rourke, fairly seething with a +marvelous Irish fury. "What the devil do ye suppose is the mat'? What do +ye mane be waalkin' away an' l'avin' the hole uncovered? Didn't I tell +ye niver to l'ave a hole when a train's comin'? Didn't I tell ye to +attind to that an' naathin' else? An' now what have ye been doin'? Be +all the powers, what d'ye mane be l'avin' it? What else arre ye good +fer? What d'ye mane be lettin' a thing like that happen, an' Mr. Wilson +comin' along here, an' the hole open?" + +He was as red as a beet, purple almost, perspiring, apoplectic. During +all this tirade Mr. Wilson, a sad, dark, anæmic-looking person, troubled +with acute indigestion, I fancy, stood by with an amused, kindly, and +yet mock severe expression on his face. I am sure he did not wish to be +severe. + +Jimmie, dumbfounded, scarcely knew what to say. In the face of Rourke's +rage and the foreman's presence, he did his best to remedy his error by +covering the hole, at the same time stuttering something about going for +a trowel. + +"A trowel!" cried Rourke, glaring at him. "A trowel, ye h'athen ginny! +What'd ye be doin' lookin' fer a trowel, an' a train comin' that close +on ye it could 'a' knocked ye off the thrack? An' the hole open, an' Mr. +Wilson right here! Is that what I told ye? Is that what I pay ye fer? Be +all the saints! A trowel, is it? I'll trowel ye! I'll break yer h'athen +Eyetalian skull, I will. Get thim boards on, an' don't let me ketch ye +l'avin' such a place as that open again. I'll get shut av ye, ye +blitherin' lunatic." + +When it was all over and the train bearing the general foreman had +gone, Rourke quieted down, but not without many fulgurous flashes that +kept the poor Italian on tenterhooks. + +About an hour later, however, another train arrived, and, by reason of +some intervening necessity and the idle, wandering mood of the Italian, +the hole was open again. Jimmie was away behind the depot somewhere, +smoking perhaps, and Rourke was, as usual, down in the hole. This time +misfortune trebled itself, however, by bringing, not the general +foreman, but the supervisor himself, a grave, quiet man, of whom Rourke +stood in the greatest awe. He was so solid, so profound, so severe. I +don't believe I ever saw him smile. He walked up to the hole, and +looking reproachfully down, said: "Is this the way you leave your +excavations, Rourke, when a train is coming? Don't you know better than +to do a thing like that?" + +"Jimmie!" shouted Rourke, leaping to the surface of the earth with a +bound, "Jimmie! Now, be Jasus, where is that bla'guard Eyetalian? Didn't +I tell him not to l'ave this place open!" and he began shoving the +planks into place himself. + +Jimmie, suddenly made aware of this new catastrophe, came running as +fast as his short legs would carry him, scared almost out of his wits. +He was as pale as a very dark and dirty Italian could be, and so wrought +up that his facial expression changed involuntarily from moment to +moment. Rourke was in a fairly murderous mood, only he was so excited +and ashamed that he could not speak. Here was the supervisor, and here +was himself, and conditions--necessity for order, etc.--would not permit +him to kill the Italian in the former's presence. He could only choke +and wait. To think that he should be made a mark of like this, and that +in the face of his great supervisor! His face and neck were a beet-red, +and his eyes flashed with anger. He merely glared at his recalcitrant +henchman, as much as to say, "Wait!" When this train had departed and +the dignified supervisor had been carried safely out of hearing he +turned on Jimmie with all the fury of a masterful and excitable temper. + +"So ye'll naht cover the hole, after me tellin' ye naht fifteen minutes +ago, will ye?" he shouted. "Ye'll naht cover the hole! An' what'll ye be +tellin' me ye was doin' now?" + +"I carry da waut (water) for da concrete," pleaded Jimmie weakly. + +"Waut fer the concrete," almost moaned Rourke, so great was his fury, +his angry face shoved close to the Italian's own. "Waut fer the +concrete, is it? It's a pity ye didn't fall into yer waut fer the +concrete, ye damned nagur, an' drown! Waut fer the concrete, is it, an' +me here, an' Mr. Mills steppin' off an' lookin' in on me, ye +black-hearted son of a Eyetalian, ye! I'll waut fer the concrete ye! +I'll crack yer blitherin' Eyetalian skull with a pick, I will! I'll +chuck ye in yer waut fer the concrete till ye choke, ye flat-footed, +leather-headed lunatic! I'll tache ye to waalk aaf an' l'ave the hole +open, an' me in it. Now, be Jasus, get yer coat an' get out av this. +Get--I'm tellin' ye! I'll have no more thruck with ye! I'll throuble no +more with ye. Ye're no damned good. Out with ye! An' niver show me yer +face again!" And he made a motion as if he would grab him and rend him +limb from limb. + +Jimmie, well aware of his dire position, was too clever, however, to let +Rourke seize him. During all this conversation he had been slowly +backing away, always safely beyond Rourke's reach, and now ran--an +amazing feat for him. He had evidently been through many such scenes +before. He retreated first behind the depot, and then when Rourke had +gone to work once more down in his hole, came back and took a safe +position on guard over the hitherto sadly neglected opening. When the +next train came he was there to shove the boards over before it neared +the station, and nothing more was said about the matter. Rourke did not +appear to notice him. He did not even seem to see that he was there. The +next morning, however, when the latter came to work as usual, it was, +"Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie!" just as if nothing had happened. I was never +more astonished in my life. + +An incident, even more ridiculous, but illustrative of the atmosphere in +which Rourke dwelt, occurred at Highbridge one frosty October Sunday +morning, where because of seepage from a hill which threatened to +undermine some tracks, Rourke was ordered to hurry and build a drain--a +thing which, because the order came on Saturday afternoon, required +Sunday labor, a most unusual thing in his case. But in spite of the +order, Rourke, who was a good Catholic, felt impelled before coming to +go to at least early mass, and in addition--a regular Sunday practice +with him, I presume--to put on a long-skirted Prince Albert coat, which +I had never seen before and which lent to his stocky figure some amusing +lines. It was really too tight, having been worn, I presume, every +Sunday regularly since his wedding day. In addition, he had donned a +brown derby hat which, to me at least, gave him a most unfamiliar look. + +I, being curious more than anything else and wishing to be out of doors +as much as possible, also went up, arriving on the scene about nine. +Rourke did not arrive until ten. In the meantime, I proceeded to build +myself a fire on the dock, for we were alongside the Harlem River and a +brisk wind was blowing. Then Rourke came, fresh from church, smiling and +genial, in the most cheerful Sunday-go-to-meeting frame of mind, but +plainly a little conscious of his grand garb. + +"My," I said, surveying him, "you look fine. I never saw you dressed up +before." + +"L'ave aaf with yer taalk," he replied. "I know well enough how I +look--good enough." + +Then he bestirred himself about the task of examining what had been done +so far. But I could see, in spite of all the busy assurance with which +he worked, that he was still highly conscious of his clothes and a +little disturbed by what I or others might think. His every-day garb +plainly suited his mood much better. + +Everything went smoothly until noon, not a cloud in the sky, when, +looking across the tracks at that hour, I beheld coming toward us with +more or less uncertain step another individual, stocky of figure and +evidently bent on seeing Rourke--an Irishman as large as Rourke, +younger, and, if anything, considerably coarser in fiber. He was very +red-faced, smooth shaven, with a black derby hat pulled down over his +eyes and wearing a somewhat faded tight-fitting brown suit. He was +drunk, or nearly so, that was plain from the first. From the moment +Rourke beheld him he seemed beside himself with anger or irritation. His +expression changed completely and he began to swell, as was customary +with him when he was angry, as though suffering from an internal +eruption of some kind. + +"The bla'guard!" I heard him mutter. "Now, be gob, what'll that felly +be waantin'?" and then as the stranger drew nearer, "Who was it tould +him I was here? Maybe some waan at the ahffice." + +Regardless of his speculations on this score, the stranger picked his +way across the tracks and came directly to him, his face and manner +indicating no particularly friendly frame of mind. + +"Maybe ye'll be lettin' me have that money now," he began instanter, and +when Rourke made no reply, merely staring at him, he added, "I'll be +waantin' to know now, when it is ye're goin' to give me the rest av me +time fer that Scarborough job. I've been waitin' long enough." + +Rourke stirred irritably and aggressively before he spoke. He seemed +greatly put out, shamed, to think that the man should come here so, +especially on this peaceful Sabbath morning. + +"I've tould ye before," he replied defiantly after a time, "that ye've +had aall ye earned, an' more. Ye left me without finishin' yer work, an' +ye'll get no more time from me. If ye waant more, go down to the ahffice +an' see if they'll give it to ye. I have no money fer ye here," and he +resumed a comfortable position before the fire, his hands behind his +back. + +"It's siven dollars ye still owe me," returned the other, ignoring +Rourke's reply, "an' I waant it now." + +"Well, ye'll naht get it," replied my boss. "I've naathin' fer ye, I'm +tellin' ye. I owe ye naathin'." + +"Is that so?" returned the other. "Well, we'll see about that. Ye'll be +after givin' it to me, er I'll get it out of ye somehow. It's naht goin' +to be ch'ated out av me money I am." + +"I'm owin' ye naathin'," insisted Rourke. "Ye may as well go away from +here. Ye'll get naathin'. If ye waant anything more, go an' see the +ahffice," and now he strode away to where the Italians were, ignoring +the stranger completely and muttering something about his being drunk. +The latter followed him, however, over to where he stood, and continued +the dispute. Rourke ignored him as much as possible, only exclaiming +once, "L'ave me be, man. Ye're drunk." + +"I'm naht drunk," returned the other. "Once an' fer all now, I'm askin' +ye, arre ye goin' to give me that money?" + +"No," replied Rourke, "I'm naht." + +"Belave me," said the stranger, "I'll get it out av ye somehow," but for +the moment he made no move, merely hanging about in an uncertain way. He +seemed to have no definite plan for collecting the money, or if he had +he had by now abandoned it. + +Without paying any more attention to him, Rourke, still very irritated +and defiant, returned to the fire. He tried to appear calm and +indifferent, but the ex-workman, a non-union mason, I judged, followed +after, standing before him and staring in the defiant, irritating way a +drunken man will, not quite able to make up his mind what else to do. +Presently Rourke, more to relieve the tedium of an embarrassing +situation than anything else (a number of accusatory remarks having been +passed), turned and began poking at the blaze, finally bending over to +lay on a stick of wood. On the instant, and as if seized by sudden +inspiration, whether because the tails of Rourke's long coat hung out in +a most provoking fashion and suggested the thing that followed or not, I +don't know, but now the red-faced intruder jumped forward, and seizing +them in a most nimble and yet vigorous clutch, gave an amazing yank, +which severed them straight up the back, from seat to nape, at the same +time exclaiming: + +"Ye'll naht pay me, will ye? Ye'll naht, will ye?" + +On the instant a tremendous change came over the scene. It was as swift +as stage play. Instantly Rourke was upright and faced about, shouting, +"Now, be gob, ye've torn me coat, have ye! Now I'll tache ye! Now I'll +show ye! Wait! Get ready, now. Now I'll fix ye, ye drunken, thavin' +loafer," and at the same time he began to move upon the enemy in a kind +of rhythmic, cryptic circle (some law governing anger and emotion, I +presume), the while his hands opened and shut and his eyes looked as +though they would be veiled completely by his narrowing lids. At the +same time the stranger, apparently seeing his danger, began backing and +circling in the same way around Rourke, as well as around the fire, +until it looked as though they were performing a war dance. Round and +round they went like two Hopi bucks or Zulu warriors, their faces +displaying the most murderous cunning and intention to slay--only, +instead of feathers and beads, they had on their negligible best. All +the while Rourke was calling, "Come on, now! Get ready, now! I'll show +ye, now! I'll fix ye, now! It's me coat ye'll rip, is it? Come on, now! +Get ready! Make yerself ready! I'm goin' to give ye the lickin' av yer +life! Come on, now! Come on, now! Come on, now!" + +It was as though each had been secreted from the other and had to be +sought out in some mysterious manner and in a circle. In spite of the +feeling of distress that an impending struggle of this kind gives one, I +could not help noting the comic condition of Rourke's back--the long +coat beautifully ripped straight up the back, its ends fluttering in the +wind like fans, and exposing his waistcoat and Sunday boiled white +shirt--and laying up a laugh for the future. It was too ridiculous. The +stranger had a most impressive and yet absurd air of drunken sternness +written in his face, a do-or-die look. + +Whether anything serious would really have happened I was never +permitted to learn, for now, in addition to myself and the Italians, all +of them excited and ready to defend their lord and master, some +passengers from the nearby station and the street above as well as a +foreman of a section gang helping at this same task, a great hulking +brute of a man who looked quite able to handle both Rourke and his +opponent at one and the same time, came forward and joined in this +excited circle. Considerable effort was made on the part of the latter +to learn just what the trouble was, after which the big foreman +interposed with: + +"What's the trouble here? Come, now! What's all this row, Rourke? Ye +wouldn't fight here, would ye? Have him arristed, er go to his home--ye +say ye know him--but don't be fightin' here. Supposin' waan av the +bosses should be comin' along now?" and at the same time he interposed +his great bulk between the two. + +Rourke, quieted some by this interruption but still sputtering with rage +and disgrace, shouted, "Lookit me coat! Lookit what he done to me coat! +See what he done to me coat! Man alive, d'ye think I'm goin' to stand +fer the likes av that? It's naht me that can be waalked on by a loafer +like that--an' me payin' him more than ever he was worth, an' him +waalkin' aaf an' l'avin' the job half done. I'll fix him this time. I'll +show him. I'll tache him to be comin' around an' disturbin' a man when +he's at his work. I'll fix him now," and once more he began to move. But +the great foreman was not so easily to be disposed of. + +"Well then, let's caall the police," he argued in a highly conciliatory +mood. "Ye can't be fightin' him here. Sure, ye don't waant to do that. +What'll the chafe think? What is it ye'll think av yerself?" + +At the same time he turned to find the intruder and demand to know what +he meant by it, but the latter had already decamped. Seeing the crowd +that had and was gathering, and that he was likely to encounter more +forms of trouble than he had anticipated, he had started down the track +toward Mott Haven. + +"I'll fix ye!" Rourke shouted when he saw him going. "Ye'll pay fer +this. I'll have ye arristed. Wait! Ye'll naht get aaf so aisy this +time." + +But just the same the storm was over for the present, anyhow, the man +gone, and in a little while Rourke left for his home at Mount Vernon to +repair his tattered condition. I never saw a man so crestfallen, nor one +more determined to "have the laa on him" in my life. Afterwards, when I +inquired very cautiously what he had done about it--this was a week or +two later--he replied, "Shewer, what can ye do with a loafer like that? +He has no money, an' lockin' him up won't help his wife an' children +any." + +Thus ended a perfect scene out of Kilkenny. + +It was not so very long after I arrived that Rourke began to tell me of +a building which the company was going to erect in Mott Haven Yard, one +of its great switching centers. It was to be an important affair, +according to him, sixty by two hundred feet in breadth and length, of +brick and stone, and was to be built under a time limit of three months, +an arrangement by which the company hoped to find out how satisfactorily +it could do work for itself rather than by outside contract, which it +was always hoping to avoid. From his manner and conversation, I judged +that Rourke was eager to get this job, for he had been a contractor of +some ability in his day before he ever went to work for the company, and +felt, I am sure, that fate had done him an injustice in not allowing him +to remain one. In addition, he felt a little above the odds and ends of +masonry that he was now called on to do, where formerly he had done so +much more important work. He was eager to be a real foreman once more, a +big one, and to show the company that he could erect this building and +thus make a little place for himself in the latter's good graces, +although to what end I could not quite make out. He would never have +made a suitable general foreman. At the same time, he was a little +afraid of the clerical details, those terrible nightmares of reports, +o.k.s and the like. + +"How arre ye feelin', Teddy, b'y?" he often inquired of me during this +period, with a greater show of interest in my troublesome health than +ever before. I talked of leaving, I suppose, from time to time because +sheer financial necessity was about to compel it. + +"Fine, Rourke," I would say, "never better. I'm feeling better every +day." + +"That's good. Ye're the right man in the right place now. If ye was to +sthay a year er two at this work it would be the makin' av ye. Ye're too +thin. Ye need more chist," and he would tap my bony chest in a kindly +manner. "I niver have a sick day, meself." + +"That's right, Rourke," I replied pleasantly, feeling keenly the need of +staying by so wonderful a lamp of health. "I intend to stick at it as +long as I can." + +"Ye ought to; it'll do ye good. If we get the new buildin' to build, +it'll be better yet for ye. Ye'll have plenty to do there to relave yer +mind." + +"Relieve, indeed!" I thought, but I did not say so. On the contrary I +felt so much sympathy for this lusty Irishman and his reasonable +ambitions that I desired to help him, and urged him to get it. I +suggested indirectly that I would see him through, which touched him +greatly. He was a grateful creature in his way, but so excitable and so +helplessly self-reliant that there was no way of aiding him without +doing it in a secret or rather self-effacing manner. He would have much +preferred to struggle along alone and fail, though I doubt whether real +failure could have come to Rourke so essentially capable was he. + +In another three weeks the work was really given him to do, and then +began one of the finest exhibitions of Irish domination and +self-sufficiency that I have ever witnessed. We moved to Mott Haven +Yard, a great network of tracks and buildings, in the center of which +this new building was to be erected. Rourke was given a large force of +men, whom he fairly gloried in bossing. He had as many as forty +Italians, to say nothing of a number of pseudo-carpenters and masons +(not those shrewd hawks clever enough to belong to the union, but +wasters and failures of another type) who did the preliminary work of +digging for the foundation, etc. Handling these, Rourke was in his +element. He loved to see so much brisk work going on. He would trot to +and fro about the place, beaming in the most angelic fashion, and +shouting orders that could be heard all over the neighborhood. It was +delicious to watch him. At times he would stand by the long trenches +where the men were digging for the foundation, a great line of them, +their backs bent over their work, and rub his hands in pleasingly human +satisfaction, saying, "We're goin' along fine, Teddy. I can jist see me +way to the top av the buildin'," and then he would proceed to harass and +annoy his men out of pure exuberance of spirits. + +"Ye waant to dig it so, man," or, "Ye don't handle yer pick right; can't +ye see that? Hold it this way." Sometimes he would get down in the +trench and demonstrate just how it was to be done, a thing which greatly +amused some of the workmen. Frequently he would exhibit to me little +tricks or knacks of his trade, such as throwing a trowel ten feet so +that it would stick in a piece of wood; turning a shovel over with a +lump of dirt on it and not dropping the lump, and similar simple acts, +always adding, "Ye'll niver be a mason till ye can do that." + +When he was tired of fussing with the men outside he would come around +to the little wooden shed, where I was keeping the mass of orders and +reports in shape and getting his material ready for him, and look over +the papers in the most knowing manner. When he had satisfied himself +that everything was going right, he would exclaim, "Ye're jist the b'y +fer the place, Teddy. Ye'd made a good bookkeeper. If ever I get to be +Prisident, I'll make ye me Sicretary av State." + +But the thing which really interested and enthralled Rourke was the +coming of the masons--those hardy buccaneers of the laboring world who +come and go as they please, asking no favors and brooking no +interference. Plainly he envied them their reckless independence at the +same time that he desired to control their labor in his favor--a task +worthy of the shrewdest diplomat. Never in my life have I seen such a +gay, ruthless, inconsiderate point of view as these same union masons +represented, a most astounding lot. They were--are, I suppose I should +say--our modern buccaneers and Captain Kidds of the laboring world, +demanding, if you please, their six a day, starting and stopping almost +when they please, doing just as little as they dare and yet face their +own decaying conscience, dropping any task at the most critical and +dangerous point, and in other ways rejoicing in and disporting +themselves in such a way as to annoy the representatives of any +corporation great or small that suffered the sad compulsion of employing +them. Seriously, I am not against union laborers. I like them. They +spell rude, blazing life. But when you have to deal with them! + +Plainly, Rourke anticipated endless rows. Their coming promised him the +opportunity he inmostly desired, I suppose, of once more fussing and +fuming with real, strong, determined and pugnacious men like himself, +who would not take his onslaughts tamely but would fight him back, as he +wished strong men to do. He was never weary of talking of them. + +"Wait till we have thirty er forty av thim on the line," he once +observed to me in connection with them, "every man layin' his six +hundred bricks a day, er takin' aaf his apron! Thim's the times ye'll +see what excitement manes, me b'y. Thim's the times." + +"What'll I see, Rourke?" I asked interestedly. + +"Throuble enough. Shewer, they're no crapin' Eyetalians, that'll let ye +taalk to thim as ye pl'ase. Indade not. Ye'll have to fight with them +fellies." + +"Well, that's a queer state of affairs," I remarked, and then added, "Do +you think you can handle them, Rourke?" + +"Handle thim!" he exclaimed, his glorious wrath kindling in anticipation +of a possible conflict. "Handle thim, an' the likes av a thousand av +thim! I know them aall, every waan av thim, an' their thricks. It's naht +foolin' me they'll be. But, me b'y," he added instructively, "it's a +fine job ye'll have runnin' down to the ahffice gettin' their time." +(This is the railroad man's expression for money due, or wages.) "Ye'll +have plenty av that to do, I'm tellin' ye." + +"You don't mean to say that you're going to discharge them, Rourke, do +you?" I asked. + +"Shewer!" he exclaimed authoritatively. "Why shouldn't I? They're jist +the same as other min. Why shouldn't I?" Then he added, after a pause, +"But it's thim that'll be comin' to me askin' fer their time instid av +me givin' it to thim, niver fear. They're not the kind that'll let ye +taalk back to thim. If their work don't suit ye, it's 'give me me time.' +Wait till they'll be comin' round half drunk in the mornin', an' not +feelin' just right. Thim's the times ye'll find out what masons arre +made av, me b'y." + +I confess this probability did not seem as brilliant to me as it did to +him, but it had its humor. I expressed wonder that he would hire them if +they were such a bad lot. + +"Where else will ye get min?" he demanded to know. "The unions have the +best, an' the most av thim. Thim outside fellies don't amount to much. +They're aall pore, crapin' creatures. If it wasn't fer the railroad +bein' against the union I wouldn't have thim at aall, and besides," he +added thoughtfully, and with a keen show of feeling for their point of +view, "they have a right to do as they pl'ase. Shewer, it's no common +workmen they arre. They can lay their eight hundred bricks a day, if +they will, an' no advice from any waan. If ye was in their place ye'd do +the same. There's no sinse in allowin' another man to waalk on ye whin +ye can get another job. I don't blame thim. I was a mason wanst meself." + +"You don't mean to say that you acted as you say these men are going to +act?" + +"Shewer!" + +"Well, I shouldn't think you'd be very proud of it." + +"I have me rights," he declared, flaring up. "What kind av a man is it +that'll let himself be waalked on? There's no sinse in it. It's naht +natchral. It's naht intinded that it should be so." + +"Very well," I said, smoothing the whole thing over, and so that ended. + +Well, the masons came, and a fine lot of pirates they surely were. Such +independence! Such defiance! Such feverish punctilio in regard to their +rights and what forms and procedures they were entitled to! I stared in +amazement. For the most part they were hale, healthy, industrious +looking creatures, but so obstreperously conscious of their own rights, +and so proud of their skill as masons, that there was no living with +them. Really, they would have tried the patience of a saint, let alone a +healthy, contentious Irish foreman-mason. "First off," as the railroad +men used to say, they wanted to know whether there were any non-union +men on the job, and if so, would they be discharged instanter?--if not, +no work--a situation which gave Rourke several splendid opportunities +for altercations, which he hastened to improve, although the non-union +men _went_, of course. Then they wanted to know when, where, and how +they were to get their money, whether on demand at any time they chose, +and this led to more trouble, since the railroad paid only once a month. +However, this was adjusted by a special arrangement being made whereby +the building department stood ready to pay them instantly on demand, +only I had to run down to the division office each time and get their +pay for them at any time that they came to ask for it! Then came an +argument (or many of them) as to the number of bricks they were to lay +an hour; the number of men they were to carry on one line, or wall; the +length of time they were supposed to work, or had worked, or would +work--all of which was pure food and drink to Rourke. He was in his +element at last, shouting, gesticulating, demanding that they leave or +go to ----. After all these things had been adjusted, however, they +finally consented to go to work, and then of course the work flew. It +was a grand scene, really inspiring--forty or fifty masons on the line, +perhaps half as many helpers or mixers, the Italians carrying bricks, +and a score of carpenters now arriving under another foreman to set the +beams and lay the joists as the walls rose upward. + +Rourke was about all the time now, arguing and gesticulating with this +man or that, fighting with this one or the other, and calling always to +some mason or other to "come down" and get his "time." "Come down! Come +down!" I would hear, and then would see him rushing for the office, a +defiant and even threatening mason at his heels; Rourke demanding that +I make out a time-check at once for the latter and go down to the +"ahffice" and get the money, the while the mason hung about attempting +to seduce other men to a similar point of view. Once in a while, but +only on rare occasions, Rourke would patch up a truce with a man. As a +rule, the mason was only too eager to leave and spend the money thus far +earned, while Rourke was curiously indifferent as to whether he went or +stayed. "'Tis to drink he waants," he would declare amusedly. To me it +was all like a scene out of comic opera. + +Toward the last, however, a natural calm set in, the result no doubt of +weariness and a sense of surfeit, which sent the building forward apace. +During this time Rourke was to be seen walking defiantly up and down the +upper scaffolding of the steadily rising walls, or down below on the +ground in front of his men, his hands behind his back, his face screwed +into a quizzical expression, his whole body bearing a look of bristling +content and pugnacity which was too delicious for words. Since things +were going especially well he could not say much, but still he could +look his contentiousness, and did. Even now he would occasionally manage +to pick a quarrel with some lusty mason or other, which resulted in the +customary descent to the office, but not often. + +But one cold December day, about three weeks later, when I was just +about to announce that I could no longer delay my departure, seeing that +my health was now as good, or nearly so, as my purse was lean, and that, +whether I would or no, I must arrange to make more money, that a most +dreadful accident occurred. It appeared that Rourke and a number of +Italians, including Matt and Jimmie, were down in the main room of the +building, now fast nearing completion, when the boiler of the hoisting +engine, which had been placed inside the building and just at the +juncture of three walls, blew up and knocked out this wall and the +joists of the second and third floors loose, thus precipitating all of +fifteen thousand bricks, which had been placed on the third floor, into +this room below. For a few moments there had been a veritable hurricane +of bricks and falling timber; and then, when it was over, it was found +that the mighty Rourke and five Italians were embedded in or under them, +and all but Jimmie more or less seriously injured or killed. Two +Italians were killed outright. A third died later. Rourke, in +particular, was unfortunately placed and terribly injured. His body from +the waist down was completely buried by a pile of bricks, and across his +shoulder lay a great joist pressing where it had struck him, and cutting +his neck and ear. He was a pathetic sight when we entered, bleeding and +pain-wrenched yet grim and undaunted, as one might have expected. + +"I'm tight fast, me lad," he said when he could speak. "It's me legs +that's caught, not me body. But give a hand to the min, there. The +Eyetalians are underneath." + +Disregarding his suggestion, however, we began working about him, every +man throwing away bricks like a machine; but he would not have it. + +"'Tind to the min!" he insisted with all of his old firmness. "The +Eyetalians are under there--Matt an' Jimmie. Can't ye see that I'll be +all right till ye get thim out? Come, look after the min!" + +We fell to this end of the work, although by now others had arrived, and +soon there was a great crowd assisting--men coming from the yard and the +machine shop. Although embedded in this mass of material and most +severely injured, there was no gainsaying him, and he still insisted on +directing us as best he could. But now he was so picturesque, so much +nobler, really, than he had been in his healthier, uninjured days. A +fabled giant, he seemed to me, half-god, half-man, composed in part of +flesh, in part of brick and stone, gazing down on our earthly efforts +with the eye of a demi-god. + +"Come, now--get the j'ists from aaf the end, there. Take the bricks away +from that man. Can't ye see? There's where his head is--there. There! +Jasus Christ--theyer!" + +You would have thought we were Italians ourselves, poor wisps of +nothing, not his rescuers, but slaves, compelled to do his lordly +bidding. + +After a time, however, we managed to release him and all his five +helpers--two dead, as I say, and Matt badly cut about the head and +seriously injured, while Jimmie, the imperturbable, was but little the +worse for a brick mark on one shoulder. He was more or less frightened, +of course, and comic to look at, even in this dread situation. "Big-a +smash," he exclaimed when he recovered himself. "Like-a da worl' fall. +Misha Rook! Misha Rook! Where Misha Rook?" + +"Here I am, ye Eyetalian scalawag," exclaimed the unyielding Rourke +genially, who was still partially embedded when Jimmie was released. +There was, however, a touch of sorrow in his voice as he added weakly, +"Arre ye hurted much?" + +"No, Misha Rook. Help Misha Rook," replied Jimmie, grabbing at bricks +himself, and so the rescue work of "Rook" went on. + +Finally he was released, although not without deprecating our efforts +the while (this wonderful and exceptional fuss over him), and exclaiming +at one point as we tugged at joists and beams rather frantically, "Take +yer time. Take yer time. I'm naht so bad fixed as aall that. Take yer +time. Get that board out o' the way there, Jimmie." + +But he was badly "fixed," and "hurted" unto death also, as we now found, +and as he insisted he was not. His hip was severely crushed by the +timbers and his legs broken, as well as his internal organs disarranged, +although we did not know how badly at the time. Only after we had +removed all the weight did he collapse and perhaps personally realize +how serious was his plight. He was laid on a canvas tarpaulin brought by +the yard-master and spread on the chip-strewn ground, while the doctors +from two ambulances worked over him. While they were examining his +wounds he took a critical and quizzical interest in what they were +doing, and offered one or two humorous suggestions. Finally, when they +were ready to move him he asked how he was, and on being told that he +was all right, looked curiously about until he caught my eye. I could +see that he realized how critical it was with him. + +"I'd like to see a priest, Teddy," he whispered, "and, if ye don't mind, +I'd like ye to go up to Mount Vernon an' tell me wife. They'll be after +telegraphin' her if ye don't. Break it aisy, if ye will. Don't let 'er +think there's anything serious. There's no need av it. I'm naht hurted +so bad as aall that." + +I promised, and the next moment one of the doctors shot a spray of +cocaine into his hip to relieve what he knew must be his dreadful pain. +A few moments later he lost consciousness, after which I left him to the +care of the hospital authorities and hurried away to send the priest and +to tell his wife. + +For a week thereafter he lingered in a very serious condition and +finally died, blood-poisoning having set in. I saw him at the hospital a +day or two before, and, trying to sympathize with his condition, I +frequently spoke of what I deemed the dreadful uncertainty of life and +the seeming carelessness of the engineer in charge of the hoisting +engine. He, however, had no complaint to make. + +"Ye must expect thim things," was his only comment. "Ye can't aalways +expect to go unhurted. I niver lost a man before, nor had one come to +haarm. 'Tis the way av things, ye see." + +Mighty Rourke! You would have thought the whole Italian population of +Mount Vernon knew and loved him, the way they turned out at his funeral. +It was a state affair for most of them, and they came in scores, packing +the little brick church at which he was accustomed to worship full to +overflowing. Matt was there, bandaged and sore, but sorrowful; and +Jimmie, artful and scheming in the past, but now thoroughly subdued. He +was all sorrow, and sniveled and blubbered and wept hot, blinding tears +through the dark, leathery fingers of his hands. + +"Misha Rook! Misha Rook!" I heard him say, as they bore the body in; and +when they carried it out of the church, he followed, head down. As they +lowered it to the grave he was inconsolable. + +"Misha Rook! Misha Rook! I work-a for him fifteen year!" + + + + +_A Mayor and His People_ + + +Here is the story of an individual whose political and social example, +if such things are ever worth anything (the moralists to the contrary +notwithstanding), should have been, at the time, of the greatest +importance to every citizen of the United States. Only it was not. Or +was it? Who really knows? Anyway, he and his career are entirely +forgotten by now, and have been these many years. + +He was the mayor of one of those dreary New England mill towns in +northern Massachusetts--a bleak, pleasureless realm of about forty +thousand, where, from the time he was born until he finally left at the +age of thirty-six to seek his fortune elsewhere, he had resided without +change. During that time he had worked in various of the local mills, +which in one way and another involved nearly all of the population. He +was a mill shoe-maker by trade, or, in other words, a factory shoe-hand, +knowing only a part of all the processes necessary to make a shoe in +that fashion. Still, he was a fair workman, and earned as much as +fifteen or eighteen dollars a week at times--rather good pay for that +region. By temperament a humanitarian, or possibly because of his own +humble state one who was compelled to take cognizance of the +difficulties of others, he finally expressed his mental unrest by +organizing a club for the study and propagation of socialism, and later, +when it became powerful enough to have a candidate and look for +political expression of some kind, he was its first, and thereafter for +a number of years, its regular candidate for mayor. For a long time, or +until its membership became sufficient to attract some slight political +attention, its members (following our regular American, unintellectual +custom) were looked upon by the rest of the people as a body of harmless +kickers, filled with fool notions about a man's duty to his fellowman, +some silly dream about an honest and economical administration of public +affairs--their city's affairs, to be exact. We are so wise in America, +so interested in our fellowman, so regardful of his welfare. They were +so small in number, however, that they were little more than an object +of pleasant jest, useful for that purpose alone. + +This club, however, continued to put up its candidate until about 1895, +when suddenly it succeeded in polling the very modest number of +fifty-four votes--double the number it had succeeded in polling any +previous year. A year later one hundred and thirty-six were registered, +and the next year six hundred. Then suddenly the mayor who won that +year's battle died, and a special election was called. Here the club +polled six hundred and one, a total and astonishing gain of one. In 1898 +the perennial candidate was again nominated and received fifteen +hundred, and in 1899, when he ran again, twenty-three hundred votes, +which elected him. + +If this fact be registered casually here, it was not so regarded in that +typically New England mill town. Ever study New England--its Puritan, +self-defensive, but unintellectual and selfish psychology? Although this +poor little snip of a mayor was only elected for one year, men paused +astounded, those who had not voted for him, and several of the older +conventional political and religious order, wedded to their church and +all the routine of the average puritanic mill town, actually cried. No +one knew, of course, who the new mayor was, or what he stood for. There +were open assertions that the club behind him was anarchistic--that +ever-ready charge against anything new in America--and that the courts +should be called upon to prevent his being seated. And this from people +who were as poorly "off" commercially and socially as any might well be. +It was stated, as proving the worst, that he was, or had been, a mill +worker!--and, before that a grocery clerk--both at twelve a week, or +less!! Immediate division of property, the forcing of all employers to +pay as much as five a day to every laborer (an unheard-of sum in New +England), and general constraint and subversion of individual rights +(things then unknown in America, of course), loomed in the minds of +these conventional Americans as the natural and immediate result of so +modest a victory. The old-time politicians and corporations who +understood much better what the point was, the significance of this +straw, were more or less disgruntled, but satisfied that it could be +undone later. + +An actual conversation which occurred on one of the outlying street +corners one evening about dusk will best illustrate the entire +situation. + +"Who is the man, anyway?" asked one citizen of a total stranger whom he +had chanced to meet. + +"Oh, no one in particular, I think. A grocery clerk, they say." + +"Astonishing, isn't it? Why, I never thought those people would get +anything. Why, they didn't even figure last year." + +"Seems to be considerable doubt as to just what he'll do." + +"That's what I've been wondering. I don't take much stock in all their +talk about anarchy. A man hasn't so very much power as mayor." + +"No," said the other. + +"We ought to give him a trial, anyway. He's won a big fight. I should +like to see him, see what he looks like." + +"Oh, nothing startling. I know him." + +"Rather young, ain't he?" + +"Yes." + +"Where did he come from?" + +"Oh, right around here." + +"Was he a mill-hand?" + +"Yes." + +The stranger made inquiry as to other facts and then turned off at a +corner. + +"Well," he observed at parting, "I don't know. I'm inclined to believe +in the man. I should like to see him myself. Good-night." + +"Good-night," said the other, waving his hand. "When you see me again +you will know that you are looking at the mayor." + +The inquirer stared after him and saw a six-foot citizen, of otherwise +medium proportions, whose long, youthful face and mild gray eyes, with +just a suggestion of washed-out blue in them, were hardly what was to be +expected of a notorious and otherwise astounding political figure. + +"He is too young," was the earliest comments, when the public once +became aware of his personality. + +"Why, he is nothing but a grocery clerk," was another, the skeptical and +condemnatory possibilities of which need not be dilated upon here. + +And he was, in his way--nothing much of a genius, as such things go in +politics, but an interesting figure. Without much taste (or its +cultivated shadow) or great vision of any kind, he was still a man who +sensed the evils of great and often unnecessary social inequalities and +the need of reorganizing influences, which would tend to narrow the vast +gulf between the unorganized and ignorant poor, and the huge +beneficiaries of unearned (yes, and not even understood) increment. For +what does the economic wisdom of the average capitalist amount to, after +all: the narrow, gourmandizing hunger of the average multi-millionaire? + +At any rate, people watched him as he went to and fro between his office +and his home, and reached the general conclusion after the first +excitement had died down that he did not amount to much. + +When introduced into his office in the small but pleasant city hall, he +came into contact with a "ring," and a fixed condition, which nobody +imagined a lone young mayor could change. Old-time politicians sat there +giving out contracts for street-cleaning, lighting, improvements and +supplies of all kinds, and a bond of mutual profit bound them closely +together. + +"I don't think he can do much to hurt us," these individuals said one to +another. "He don't amount to much." + +The mayor was not of a talkative or confiding turn. Neither was he cold +or wanting in good and natural manners. He was, however, of a +preoccupied turn of mind, "up in the air," some called it, and smoked a +good many cigars. + +"I think we ought to get together and have some sort of a conference +about the letting of contracts," said the president of the city council +to him one morning shortly after he had been installed. "You will find +these gentlemen ready to meet you half-way in these matters." + +"I'm very glad to hear that," he replied. "I've something to say in my +message to the council, which I'll send over in the morning." + +The old-time politician eyed him curiously, and he eyed the old-time +politician in turn, not aggressively, but as if they might come to a +very pleasant understanding if they wanted to, and then went back to his +office. + +The next day his message was made public, and this was its key-note: + +"All contract work for the city should be let with a proviso, that the +workmen employed receive not less than two dollars a day." + +The dissatisfied roar that followed was not long in making itself heard +all over the city. + +"Stuff and nonsense," yelled the office jobbers in a chorus. +"Socialism!" "Anarchy!" "This thing must be put down!" "The city would +be bankrupt in a year." "No contractor could afford to pay his ordinary +day laborers two a day. The city could not afford to pay any contractor +enough to do it." + +"The prosperity of the city is not greater than the prosperity of the +largest number of its component individuals," replied the mayor, in a +somewhat altruistic and economically abstruse argument on the floor of +the council hall. "We must find contractors." + +"We'll see about that," said the members of the opposition. "Why, the +man's crazy. If he thinks he can run this town on a goody-good basis and +make everybody rich and happy, he's going to get badly fooled, that's +all there is to that." + +Fortunately for him three of the eight council members were fellows of +the mayor's own economic beliefs, individuals elected on the same ticket +with him. These men could not carry a resolution, but they could stop +one from being carried over the mayor's veto. Hence it was found that if +the contracts could not be given to men satisfactory to the mayor they +could not be given at all, and he stood in a fair way to win. + +"What the hell's the use of us sitting here day after day!" were the +actual words of the leading members of the opposition in the council +some weeks later, when the fight became wearisome. "We can't pass the +contracts over his veto. I say let 'em go." + +So the proviso was tacked on, that two a day was the minimum wage to be +allowed, and the contracts passed. + +The mayor's followers were exceedingly jubilant at this, more so than +he, who was of a more cautious and less hopeful temperament. + +"Not out of the woods yet, gentlemen," he remarked to a group of his +adherents at the reform club. "We have to do a great many things +sensibly if we expect to keep the people's confidence and 'win again.'" + +Under the old system of letting contracts, whenever there was a wage +rate stipulated, men were paid little or nothing, and the work was not +done. There was no pretense of doing it. Garbage and ashes accumulated, +and papers littered the streets. The old contractor who had pocketed the +appropriated sum thought to do so again. + +"I hear the citizens are complaining as much as ever," said the mayor to +this individual one morning. "You will have to keep the streets clean." + +The contractor, a robust, thick-necked, heavy-jawed Irishman, of just so +much refinement as the sudden acquisition of a comfortable fortune would +allow, looked him quizzically over, wondering whether he was "out" for a +portion of the appropriation or whether he was really serious. + +"We can fix that between us," he said. + +"There's nothing to fix," replied the mayor. "All I want you to do is to +clean the streets." + +The contractor went away and for a few days after the streets were +really clean, but it was only for a few days. + +In his walks about the city the mayor himself found garbage and paper +uncollected, and then called upon his new acquaintance again. + +"I'm mentioning this for the last time, Mr. M----," he said. "You will +have to fulfill your contract, or resign in favor of some one who will." + +"Oh, I'll clean them, well enough," said this individual, after five +minutes of rapid fire explanation. "Two dollars a day for men is high, +but I'll see that they're clean." + +Again he went away, and again the mayor sauntered about, and then one +morning sought out the contractor in his own office. + +"This is the end," he said, removing a cigar from his mouth and holding +it before him with his elbow at right angles. "You are discharged from +this work. I'll notify you officially to-morrow." + +"It can't be done the way you want it," the contractor exclaimed with an +oath. "There's no money in it at two dollars. Hell, anybody can see +that." + +"Very well," said the mayor in a kindly well-modulated tone. "Let +another man try, then." + +The next day he appointed a new contractor, and with a schedule before +him showing how many men should be employed and how much profit he might +expect, the latter succeeded. The garbage was daily removed, and the +streets carefully cleaned. + +Then there was a new manual training school about to be added to the +public school system at this time, and the contract for building was to +be let, when the mayor threw a bomb into the midst of the old-time +jobbers at the city council. A contractor had already been chosen by +them and the members were figuring out their profits, when at one of the +public discussions of the subject the mayor said: + +"Why shouldn't the city build it, gentlemen?" + +"How can it?" exclaimed the councilmen. "The city isn't an individual; +it can't watch carefully." + +"It can hire its own architect, as well as any contractor. Let's try +it." + +There were sullen tempers in the council chamber after this, but the +mayor was insistent. He called an architect who made a ridiculously low +estimate. Never had a public building been estimated so cheaply before. + +"See here," said one of the councilmen when the plans were presented to +the chamber--"This isn't doing this city right, and the gentlemen of the +council ought to put their feet down on any such venture as this. You're +going to waste the city's money on some cheap thing in order to catch +votes." + +"I'll publish the cost of the goods as delivered," said the mayor. "Then +the people can look at the building when it's built. We'll see how cheap +it looks then." + +To head off political trickery on the part of the enemy he secured bills +for material as delivered, and publicly compared them with prices paid +for similar amounts of the same material used in other buildings. So the +public was kept aware of what was going on and the cry of cheapness for +political purposes set at naught. It was the first public structure +erected by the city, and by all means the cheapest and best of all the +city's buildings. + +Excellent as these services were in their way, the mayor realized later +that a powerful opposition was being generated and that if he were to +retain the interest of his constituents he would have to set about +something which would endear him and his cause to the public. + +"I may be honest," he told one of his friends, "but honesty will play a +lone hand with these people. The public isn't interested in its own +welfare very much. It can't be bothered or hasn't the time. What I need +is something that will impress it and still be worth while. I can't be +reëlected on promises, or on my looks, either." + +When he looked about him, however, he found the possibility of +independent municipal action pretty well hampered by mandatory +legislation. He had promised, for instance, to do all he could to lower +the exorbitant gas rate and to abolish grade crossings, but the law said +that no municipality could do either of these things without first +voting to do so three years in succession--a little precaution taken by +the corporation representing such things long before he came into power. +Each vote must be for such contemplated action, or it could not become a +law. + +"I know well enough that promises are all right," he said to one of his +friends, "and that these laws are good enough excuses, but the public +won't take excuses from me for three years. If I want to be mayor again +I want to be doing something, and doing it quick." + +In the city was a gas corporation, originally capitalized at $45,000, +and subsequently increased to $75,000, which was earning that year the +actual sum of $58,000 over and above all expenses. It was getting ready +to inflate the capitalization, as usual, and water its stock to the +extent of $500,000, when it occurred to the mayor that if the +corporation was making such enormous profits out of a $75,000 investment +as to be able to offer to pay six per cent on $500,000 to investors, and +put the money it would get for such stocks into its pocket, perhaps it +could reduce the price of gas from one dollar and nineteen cents to a +more reasonable figure. There was the three years' voting law, however, +behind which, as behind an entrenchment, the very luxurious corporation +lay comfortable and indifferent. + +The mayor sent for his corporation counsel, and studied gas law for +awhile. He found that at the State capital there was a State board, or +commission, which had been created to look after gas companies in +general, and to hear the complaints of municipalities which considered +themselves unjustly treated. + +"This is the thing for me," he said. + +Lacking the municipal authority himself, he decided to present the facts +in the case and appeal to this commission for a reduction of the gas +rate. + +When he came to talk about it he found that the opposition he would +generate would be something much more than local. Back of the local +reduction idea was the whole system of extortionate gas rates of the +State and of the nation; hundreds of fat, luxurious gas corporations +whose dividends would be threatened by any agitation on this question. + +"You mean to proceed with this scheme of yours?" asked a prominent +member of the local bar who called one morning to interview him. "I +represent the gentlemen who are interested in our local gas company." + +"I certainly do," replied the mayor. + +"Well," replied the uncredentialed representative of private interests, +after expostulating a long time and offering various "reasons" why it +would be more profitable and politically advantageous for the new mayor +not to proceed, "I've said all I can say. Now I want to tell you that +you are going up against a combination that will be your ruin. You're +not dealing with this town now; you're dealing with the State, the whole +nation. These corporations can't afford to let you win, and they won't. +You're not the one to do it; you're not big enough." + +The mayor smiled and replied that of course he could not say as to that. + +The lawyer went away, and that next day the mayor had his legal counsel +look up the annual reports of the company for the consecutive years of +its existence, as well as a bulletin issued by a firm of brokers, into +whose hands the matter of selling a vast amount of watered stock it +proposed to issue had been placed. He also sent for a gas expert and set +him to figuring out a case for the people. + +It was found by this gentleman that since the company was first +organized it had paid dividends on its capital stock at the rate of ten +per cent per annum, for the first thirty years; had made vast +improvements in the last ten, and notwithstanding this fact, had paid +twenty per cent, and even twenty-five per cent per annum in dividends. +All the details of cost and expenditure were figured out, and then the +mayor with his counsel took the train for the State capitol. + +Never was there more excitement in political circles than when this +young representative of no important political organization whatsoever +arrived at the State capitol and walked, at the appointed time, into the +private audience room of the commission. Every gas company, as well as +every newspaper and every other representative of the people, had +curiously enough become interested in the fight he was making, and there +was a band of reporters at the hotel where he was stopping, as well as +in the commission chambers in the State capitol where the hearing was to +be. They wanted to know about him--why he was doing this, whether it +wasn't a "strike" or the work of some rival corporation. The fact that +he might foolishly be sincere was hard to believe. + +"Gentlemen," said the mayor, as he took his stand in front of an august +array of legal talent which was waiting to pick his argument to pieces +in the commission chambers at the capitol, "I miscalculated but one +thing in this case which I am about to lay before you, and that is the +extent of public interest. I came here prepared to make a private +argument, but now I want to ask the privilege of making it public. I see +the public itself is interested, or should be. I will ask leave to +postpone my argument until the day after tomorrow." + +There was considerable hemming and hawing over this, since from the +point of view of the corporation it was most undesirable, but the +commission was practically powerless to do aught but grant his request. +And meanwhile the interest created by the newspapers added power to his +cause. Hunting up the several representatives and senators from his +district, he compelled them to take cognizance of the cause for which he +was battling, and when the morning of the public hearing arrived a large +audience was assembled in the chamber of representatives. + +When the final moment arrived the young mayor came forward, and after +making a very simple statement of the cause which led him to request a +public hearing and the local condition which he considered unfair begged +leave to introduce an expert, a national examiner of gas plants and +lighting facilities, for whom he had sent, and whose twenty years of +experience in this line had enabled him to prepare a paper on the +condition of the gas-payers in the mayor's city. + +The commission was not a little surprised by this, but signified its +willingness to hear the expert as counsel for the city, and as his +statement was read a very clear light was thrown upon the situation. + +Counsel for the various gas corporations interrupted freely. The mayor +himself was constantly drawn into the argument, but his replies were so +simple and convincing that there was not much satisfaction to be had in +stirring him. Instead, the various counsel took refuge in long-winded +discussions about the methods of conducting gas plants in other cities, +the cost of machinery, labor and the like, which took days and days, and +threatened to extend into weeks. The astounding facts concerning large +profits and the present intentions of not only this but every other +company in the State could not be dismissed. In fact the revelation of +huge corporation profits everywhere became so disturbing that after the +committee had considered and re-considered, it finally, when threatened +with political extermination, voted to reduce the price of gas to eighty +cents. + +It is needless to suggest the local influence of this decision. When the +mayor came home he received an ovation, and that at the hands of many of +the people who had once been so fearful of him, but he knew that this +enthusiasm would not last long. Many disgruntled elements were warring +against him, and others were being more and more stirred up. His home +life was looked into as well as his past, his least childish or private +actions. It was a case of finding other opportunities for public +usefulness, or falling into the innocuous peace which would result in +his defeat. + +In the platform on which he had been elected was a plank which declared +that it was the intention of this party, if elected, to abolish local +grade crossings, the maintenance of which had been the cause of numerous +accidents and much public complaint. With this plank he now proposed to +deal. + +In this of course he was hampered by the law before mentioned, which +declared that no city could abolish its grade crossings without having +first submitted the matter to the people during three successive years +and obtained their approval each time. Behind this law was not now, +however, as in the case of the gas company, a small $500,000 +corporation, but all the railroads which controlled New England, and to +which brains and legislators, courts and juries, were mere adjuncts. +Furthermore, the question would have to be voted on at the same time as +his candidacy, and this would have deterred many another more ambitious +politician. The mayor was not to be deterred, however. He began his +agitation, and the enemy began theirs, but in the midst of what seemed +to be a fair battle the great railway company endeavored to steal a +march. There was suddenly and secretly introduced into the lower house +of the State legislature a bill which in deceptive phraseology declared +that the law which allowed all cities, by three successive votes, to +abolish grade crossings in three years, was, in the case of a particular +city mentioned, hereby abrogated for a term of four years. The question +might not even be discussed politically. + +When the news of this attempt reached the mayor, he took the first train +for the State capitol and arrived there just in time to come upon the +floor of the house when the bill was being taken up for discussion. He +asked leave to make a statement. Great excitement was aroused by his +timely arrival. Those who secretly favored the bill endeavored to have +the matter referred to a committee, but this was not to be. One member +moved to go on with the consideration of the bill, and after a close +vote the motion carried. + +The mayor was then introduced. + +After a few moments, in which the silent self-communing with which he +introduced himself impressed everyone with his sincerity, he said: + +"I am accused of objecting to this measure because its enactment will +remove, as a political issue, the one cause upon which I base my hope +for reëlection. If there are no elevated crossings to vote for, there +will be no excuse for voting for me. Gentlemen, you mistake the temper +and the intellect of the people of our city. It is you who see political +significance in this thing, but let me assure you that it is of a far +different kind from that which you conceive. If the passing of this +measure had any significance to me other than the apparent wrong of it, +I would get down on my knees and urge its immediate acceptance. Nothing +could elect me quicker. Nothing could bury the opposition further from +view. If you wish above all things to accomplish my triumph you will +only need to interfere with the rights of our city in this arbitrary +manner, and you will have the thing done. I could absolutely ask nothing +more." + +The gentlemen who had this measure in charge weighed well these +assertions and trifled for weeks with the matter, trying to make up +their minds. + +Meanwhile election time approached, and amid the growing interest of +politics it was thought unwise to deal with it. A great fight was +arranged for locally, in which every conceivable element of opposition +was beautifully harmonized by forces and conceptions which it is almost +impossible to explain. Democrats, republicans, prohibitionists, saloon +men and religious circles, all were gathered into one harmonious body +and inspired with a single idea, that of defeating the mayor. From some +quarter, not exactly identified, was issued a call for a civic committee +of fifty, which should take into its hands the duty of rescuing the city +from what was termed a "throttling policy of commercial oppression and +anarchy." Democrats, republicans, liquor and anti-liquorites, were +invited to the same central meeting place, and came. Money was not +lacking, nor able minds, to prepare campaign literature. It was openly +charged that a blank check was handed in to the chairman of this body by +the railway whose crossings were in danger, to be filled out for any +amount necessary to the destruction of the official upstart who was +seeking to revolutionize old methods and conditions. + +As may be expected, this opposition did not lack daring in making +assertions contrary to facts. Charges were now made that the mayor was +in league with the railroad to foist upon the city a great burden of +expense, because the law under which cities could compel railroads to +elevate their tracks declared that one-fifth of the burden of expense +must be borne by the city and the remaining four-fifths by the railroad. +It would saddle a debt of $250,000 upon the taxpayers, they said, and +give them little in return. All the advantage would be with the +railroad. "Postpone this action until the railroad can be forced to bear +the entire expense, as it justly should," declared handbill writers, +whose services were readily rendered to those who could afford to pay +for them. + +The mayor and his committee, although poor, answered with handbills and +street corner speeches, in which he showed that even with the +extravagantly estimated debt of $250,000, the city's tax-rate would not +be increased by quite six cents to the individual. The cry that each man +would have to pay five dollars more each year for ten years was thus +wholesomely disposed of, and the campaign proceeded. + +Now came every conceivable sort of charge. If he were not defeated, all +reputable merchants would surely leave the city. Capital was certainly +being scared off. There would be idle factories and empty stomachs. Look +out for hard times. No one but a fool would invest in a city thus +hampered. + +In reply the mayor preached a fair return by corporations for benefits +received. He, or rather his organization, took a door-to-door census of +his following, and discovered a very considerable increase in the number +of those intending to vote for him. The closest calculations of the +enemy were discovered, the actual number they had fixed upon as +sufficient to defeat him. This proved to the mayor that he must have +three hundred more votes if he wished to be absolutely sure. These he +hunted out from among the enemy, and had them pledged before the +eventual morning came. + +The night preceding election ended the campaign, for the enemy at least, +in a blaze of glory, so to speak. Dozens of speakers for both causes +were about the street corners and in the city meeting room. + +Oratory poured forth in streams, and gasoline-lighted band-wagons +rattled from street to street, emitting song and invective. Even a great +parade was arranged by the anti-mayoral forces, in which horses and men +to the number of hundreds were brought in from nearby cities and palmed +off as enthusiastic citizens. + +"Horses don't vote," a watchword handed out by the mayor, took the edge +off the extreme ardor of this invading throng, and set to laughing the +hundreds of his partisans, who needed such encouragement. + +Next day came the vote, and then for once, anyhow, he was justified. +Not only was a much larger vote cast than ever, but he thrashed the +enemy with a tail of two hundred votes to spare. It was an inspiring +victory from one point of view, but rather doleful for the enemy. The +latter had imported a carload of fireworks, which now stood sadly unused +upon the very tracks which, apparently, must in the future be raised. +The crowning insult was offered when the successful forces offered to +take them off their hands at half price. + +For a year thereafter (a mayor was elected yearly there), less was heard +of the commercial destruction of the city. Gas stood, as decided, at +eighty cents a thousand. A new manual training school, built at a very +nominal cost, a monument to municipal honesty, was also in evidence. The +public waterworks had also been enlarged and the rates reduced. The +streets were clean. + +Then the mayor made another innovation. During his first term of office +there had been a weekly meeting of the reform club, at which he appeared +and talked freely of his plans and difficulties. These meetings he now +proposed to make public. + +Every Wednesday evening for a year thereafter a spectacle of municipal +self-consciousness was witnessed, which those who saw it felt sure would +redound to the greater strength and popularity of the mayor. In a large +hall, devoted to public gatherings, a municipal meeting was held. Every +one was invited. The mayor was both host and guest, an individual who +chose to explain his conduct and his difficulties and to ask advice. +There his constituents gathered, not only to hear but to offer counsel. + +"Gentlemen," so ran the gist of his remarks on various of these +occasions, "the present week has proved a most trying one. I am +confronted by a number of difficult problems, which I will now try to +explain to you. In the first place, you know my limitations as to power +in the council. But three members now vote for me, and it is only by +mutual concessions that we move forward at all." + +Then would follow a detailed statement of the difficulties, and a +general discussion. The commonest laborer was free to offer his advice. +Every question was answered in the broadest spirit of fellowship. An +inquiry as to "what to do" frequently brought the most helpful advice. +Weak and impossible solutions were met as such, and shown to be what +they were. Radicals were assuaged, conservatives urged forward. The +whole political situation was so detailed and explained that no +intelligent person could leave, it was thought, with a false impression +of the mayor's position or intent. + +With five thousand or more such associated citizens abroad each day +explaining, defending, approving the official conduct of the mayor, +because they understood it, no misleading conceptions, it was thought, +could arise. Men said that his purpose and current leaning in any matter +was always clear. He was thought to be closer to his constituency than +any other official within the whole range of the Americas and that there +could be nothing but unreasoning partisan opposition to his rule. + +After one year of such service a presidential campaign drew near, and +the mayor's campaign for reëlection had to be contested at the same +time. No gas monopoly evil was now a subject of contention. Streets were +clean, contracts fairly executed; the general municipal interests as +satisfactorily attended to as could be expected. Only the grade crossing +war remained as an issue, and that would require still another vote +after this. His record was the only available campaign argument. + +On the other side, however, were the two organizations of the locally +defeated great parties, and the railroad. The latter, insistent in its +bitterness, now organized these two bodies into a powerful opposition. +Newspapers were subsidized; the national significance of the campaign +magnified; a large number of railroad-hands colonized. When the final +weeks of the campaign arrived a bitter contest was waged, and money +triumphed. Five thousand four hundred votes were cast for the mayor. +Five thousand four hundred and fifty for the opposing candidate, who was +of the same party as the successful presidential nominee. + +It was a bitter blow, but still one easily borne by the mayor, who was +considerable of a philosopher. With simple, undisturbed grace he +retired, and three days later applied to one of the principal shoe +factories for work at his trade. + +"What? You're not looking for a job, are you?" exclaimed the astonished +foreman. + +"I am," said the mayor. + +"You can go to work, all right, but I should think you could get into +something better now." + +"I suppose I can later," he replied, "when I complete my law studies. +Just now I want to do this for a change, to see how things are with the +rank and file." And donning the apron he had brought with him he went to +work. + +It was not long, however, before he was discharged, largely because of +partisan influence anxious to drive him out of that region. It was said +that this move of seeking a job in so simple a way was a bit of "grand +standing"--insincere--that he didn't need to do it, and that he was +trying to pile up political capital against the future. A little later a +local grocery man of his social faith offered him a position as clerk, +and for some odd reason--humanitarian and sectarian, possibly--he +accepted this. At any rate, here he labored for a little while. Again +many said he was attempting to make political capital out of this simple +life in order to further his political interests later, and this +possibly, even probably, was true. All men have methods of fighting for +that which they believe. So here he worked for a time, while a large +number of agencies pro and con continued to denounce or praise him, to +ridicule or extol his so-called Jeffersonian simplicity. It was at this +time that I encountered him--a tall, spare, capable and interesting +individual, who willingly took me into his confidence and explained all +that had hitherto befallen him. He was most interesting, really, a +figure to commemorate in this fashion. + +In one of the rooms of his very humble home--a kind of office or den, in +a small house such as any clerk or working-man might occupy--was a +collection of clippings, laudatory, inquiring, and abusive, which would +have done credit to a candidate for the highest office in the land. One +would have judged by the scrap-books and envelopes stuffed to +overflowing with long newspaper articles and editorials that had been +cut from papers all over the country from Florida to Oregon, that his +every movement at this time and earlier was all-essential to the people. +Plainly, he had been watched, spied upon, and ignored by one class, +while being hailed, praised and invited by another. Magazine editors had +called upon him for contributions, journalists from the large cities had +sought him out to obtain his actual views, citizens' leagues in various +parts of the nation had invited him to come and speak, and yet he was +still a very young man in years, not over-intelligent politically or +philosophically, the ex-mayor of a small city, and the representative of +no great organization of any sort. + +In his retirement he was now comforted, if one can be so comforted, by +these memories, still fresh in his mind and by the hope possibly for his +own future, as well as by a droll humor with which he was wont to select +the sharpest and most willful slur upon his unimpeachable conduct as an +offering to public curiosity. + +"Do you really want to know what people think of me?" he said to me on +one occasion. "Well, here's something. Read this." And then he would +hand me a bunch of the bitterest attacks possible, attacks which +pictured him as a sly and treacherous enemy of the people--or worse yet +a bounding anarchistic ignoramus. Personally I could not help admiring +his stoic mood. It was superior to that of his detractors. Apparent +falsehoods did not anger him. Evident misunderstandings could not, +seemingly, disturb him. + +"What do you expect?" he once said to me, after I had made a very +careful study of his career for a current magazine, which, curiously, +was never published. I was trying to get him to admit that he believed +that his example might be fruitful of results agreeable to him in the +future. I could not conclude that he really agreed with me. "People do +not remember; they forget. They remember so long as you are directly +before them with something that interests them. That may be a lower +gas-rate, or a band that plays good music. People like strong people, +and only strong people, characters of that sort--good, bad or +indifferent--I've found that out. If a man or a corporation is stronger +than I am, comes along and denounces me, or spends more money than I do +(or can), buys more beers, makes larger promises, it is 'all day' for +me. What has happened in my case is that, for the present, anyhow, I +have come up against a strong corporation, stronger than I am. What I +now need to do is to go out somewhere and get some more strength in some +way, it doesn't matter much how. People are not so much interested in me +or you, or your or my ideals in their behalf, as they are in strength, +an interesting spectacle. And they are easily deceived. These big +fighting corporations with their attorneys and politicians and +newspapers make me look weak--puny. So the people forget me. If I could +get out, raise one million or five hundred thousand dollars and give the +corporations a good drubbing, they would adore me--for awhile. Then I +would have to go out and get another five hundred thousand somewhere, or +do something else." + +"Quite so," I replied. "Yet _Vox populi, vox dei_." + +Sitting upon his own doorstep one evening, in a very modest quarter of +the city, I said: + +"Were you very much depressed by your defeat the last time?" + +"Not at all," he replied. "Action, reaction, that's the law. All these +things right themselves in time, I suppose, or, anyhow, they ought to. +Maybe they don't. Some man who can hand the people what they really need +or ought to have will triumph, I suppose, some time. I don't know, I'm +sure. I hope so. I think the world is moving on, all right." + +In his serene and youthful face, the pale blue, philosophical eyes, was +no evidence of dissatisfaction with the strange experiences through +which he had passed. + +"You're entirely philosophical, are you?" + +"As much as any one can be, I suppose. They seem to think that all my +work was an evidence of my worthlessness," he said. "Well, maybe it was. +Self-interest may be the true law, and the best force. I haven't quite +made up my mind yet. My sympathies of course are all the other way. 'He +ought to be sewing shoes in the penitentiary,' one paper once said of +me. Another advised me to try something that was not above my +intelligence, such as breaking rock or shoveling dirt. Most of them +agreed, however," he added with a humorous twitch of his large, +expressive mouth, "that I'll do very well if I will only stay where I +am, or, better yet, get out of here. They want me to leave. That's the +best solution for them." + +He seemed to repress a smile that was hovering on his lips. + +"The voice of the enemy," I commented. + +"Yes, sir, the voice of the enemy," he added. "But don't think that I +think I'm done for. Not at all. I have just returned to my old ways in +order to think this thing out. In a year or two I'll have solved my +problem, I hope. I may have to leave here, and I may not. Anyhow, I'll +turn up somewhere, with something." + +He did have to leave, however, public opinion never being allowed to +revert to him again, and five years later, in a fairly comfortable +managerial position in New York, he died. He had made a fight, well +enough, but the time, the place, the stars, perhaps, were not quite +right. He had no guiding genius, possibly, to pull him through. +Adherents did not flock to him and save him. Possibly he wasn't magnetic +enough--that pagan, non-moral, non-propagandistic quality, anyhow. The +fates did not fight for him as they do for some, those fates that ignore +the billions and billions of others who fail. Yet are not all lives more +or less failures, however successful they may appear to be at one time +or another, contrasted, let us say, with what they hoped for? We +compromise so much with everything--our dreams and all. + +As for his reforms, they may be coming fast enough, or they may not. _In +medias res._ + +But as for him...? + + + + +_W.L.S._ + + +Life's little ironies are not always manifest. We hear distant rumbling +sounds of its tragedies, but rarely are we permitted to witness the +reality. Therefore the real incidents which I am about to relate may +have some value. + +I first called upon W.L. S----, Jr., in the winter of 1895. I had known +of him before only by reputation, or, what is nearer the truth, by +seeing his name in one of the great Sunday papers attached to several +drawings of the most lively interest. These drawings depicted night +scenes of the city of New York, and appeared as colored supplements, +eleven by eighteen inches. They represented the spectacular scenes which +the citizen and the stranger most delight in--Madison Square in a +drizzle; the Bowery lighted by a thousand lamps and crowded with "L" and +surface cars; Sixth Avenue looking north from Fourteenth Street. + +I was a youthful editor at the time and on the lookout for interesting +illustrations of this sort, and when a little later I was in need of a +colored supplement for the Christmas number I decided to call upon +S----. I knew absolutely nothing about the world of art save what I had +gathered from books and current literary comment of all sorts, and was, +therefore, in a mood to behold something exceedingly bizarre in the +atmosphere with which I should find my illustrator surrounded. + +I was not disappointed. It was at the time when artists--I mean American +artists principally--went in very strongly for that sort of thing. Only +a few years before they had all been going to Paris, not so much to +paint as to find out and imitate how artists _do_ and live. I was +greeted by a small, wiry, lean-looking individual arrayed in a bicycle +suit, whose countenance could be best described as wearing a perpetual +look of astonishment. He had one eye which fixed you with a strange, +unmoving solemnity, owing to the fact that it was glass. His skin was +anything but fair, and might be termed sallow. He wore a close, +sharp-pointed Vandyke beard, and his gold-bridge glasses sat at almost +right angles upon his nose. His forehead was high, his good eye alert, +his hair sandy-colored and tousled, and his whole manner indicated +thought, feeling, remarkable nervous energy, and, above all, a rasping +and jovial sort of egotism which pleased me rather than otherwise. + +I noticed no more than this on my first visit, owing to the fact that I +was very much overawed and greatly concerned about the price which he +would charge me, not knowing what rate he might wish to exact, and being +desirous of coming away at least unabashed by his magnificence and +independence. + +"What's it for?" he asked, when I suggested a drawing. + +I informed him. + +"You say you want it for a double-page center?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, I'll do it for three hundred dollars." + +I was taken considerably aback, as I had not contemplated paying more +than one hundred. + +"I get that from all the magazines," he added, seeing my hesitation, +"wherever a supplement is intended." + +"I don't think I could pay more than one hundred," I said, after a few +moments' consideration. + +"You couldn't?" he said, sharply, as if about to reprove me. + +I shook my head. + +"Well," he said, "let's see a copy of your publication." + +The chief value of this conversation was that it taught me that the +man's manner was no indication of his mood. I had thought he was +impatient and indifferent, but I saw now that he was not so, rather +brusque merely. He was simply excitable, somewhat like the French, and +meant only to be businesslike. The upshot of it all was that he agreed +to do it for one hundred and fifty, and asked me very solemnly to say +nothing about it. + +I may say here that I came upon S---- in the full blush of his fancies +and ambitions, and just when he was verging upon their realization. He +was not yet successful. A hundred and fifty dollars was a very fair +price indeed. His powers, however, had reached that stage where they +would soon command their full value. + +I could see at once that he was very ambitious. He was bubbling over +with the enthusiasm of youth and an intense desire for recognition. He +knew he had talent. The knowledge of it gave him an air and an +independence of manner which might have been irritating to some. +Besides, he was slightly affected, argue to the contrary as he would, +and was altogether full of his own hopes and ambitions. + +The matter of painting this picture necessitated my presence on several +occasions, and during this time I got better acquainted with him. +Certain ideas and desires which we held in common drew us toward each +other, and I soon began to see that he was much above the average in +insight and skill. He talked with the greatest ease upon a score of +subjects--literature, art, politics, music, the drama, and history. He +seemed to have read the latest novels; to have seen many of the current +plays; to have talked with important people. Theodore Roosevelt, +previously Police Commissioner but then Governor, often came to his +studio to talk and play chess with him. A very able architect was his +friend. He had artist associates galore, many of whom had studios in the +same building or the immediate vicinity. And there were literary and +business men as well, all of whom seemed to enjoy his company, and who +were very fond of calling and spending an hour in his studio. + +I had only called the second time, and was going away, when he showed me +a steamship he had constructed with his own hands--a fair-sized model, +complete in every detail, even to the imitation stokers in the +boiler-room, and which would run by the hour if supplied with oil and +water. I soon learned that his skill in mechanical construction was +great. He was a member of several engineering societies, and devoted +some part of his carefully organized days to studying and keeping up +with problems in mechanics. + +"Oh, that's nothing," he observed, when I marveled at the size and +perfection of the model. "I'll show you something else, if you have time +some day, which may amuse you." + +He then explained that he had constructed several model warships, and +that it was his pleasure to take them out and fight them on a pond +somewhere out on Long Island. + +"We'll go out some day," he said when I showed appropriate interest, +"and have them fight each other. You'll see how it's done!" + +I waited some time for this outing, and finally mentioned it. + +"We'll go tomorrow," he said. "Can you be around here by ten o'clock?" + +Ten the next morning saw me promptly at the studio, and five minutes +later we were off. + +When we arrived at Long Island City we went to the first convenient arm +of the sea and undid the precious fighters, in which he much delighted. + +After studying the contour of the little inlet for a few moments he took +some measurements with a tape-line, stuck up two twigs in two places for +guide posts, and proceeded to fire and get up steam in his war-ships. +Afterwards he set the rudders, and then took them to the water-side and +floated them at the points where he had placed the twigs. + +These few details accomplished, he again studied the situation +carefully, headed the vessels to the fraction of an inch toward a +certain point of the opposite shore, and began testing the steam. + +"When I say ready, you push this lever here," he said, indicating a +little brass handle fastened to the stern-post. "Don't let her move an +inch until you do that. You'll see some tall firing." + +He hastened to the other side where his own boat was anchored, and began +an excited examination. He was like a school-boy with a fine toy. + +At a word, I moved the lever as requested, and the two vessels began +steaming out toward one another. Their weight and speed were such that +the light wind blowing affected them not in the least, and their prows +struck with an audible crack. This threw them side by side, steaming +head on together. At the same time it operated to set in motion their +guns, which fired broadsides in such rapid succession as to give a +suggestion of rapid revolver practice. Quite a smoke rose, and when it +rolled away one of the vessels was already nearly under water and the +other was keeling with the inflow of water from the port side. S---- lost +no time, but throwing off his coat, jumped in and swam to the rescue. + +Throughout this entire incident his manner was that of an enthusiastic +boy who had something exceedingly novel. He did not laugh. In all our +acquaintance I never once heard him give a sound, hearty laugh. Instead +he cackled. His delight apparently could only express itself in that +way. In the main it showed itself in an excess of sharp movements, short +verbal expressions, gleams of the eye. + +I saw from this the man's delight in the science of engineering, and +humored him in it. He was thereafter at the greatest pains to show all +that he had under way in the mechanical line, and schemes he had for +enjoying himself in this work in the future. It seemed rather a +recreation for him than anything else. Like him, I could not help +delighting in the perfect toys which he created, but the intricate +details and slow process of manufacture were brain-racking. For not only +would he draw the engine in all its parts, but he would buy the raw +material and cast and drill and polish each separate part. + +Upon my second visit I was deeply impressed by the sight of a fine +passenger engine, a duplicate of the great 999 of the New York Central, +of those days. It stood on brass rails laid along an old library shelf +that had probably belonged to the previous occupant of the studio. This +engine was a splendid object to look upon, strong, heavy, +silent-running, with the fineness and grace of a perfect sewing-machine. +It was duly trimmed with brass and nickel, after the manner of the great +"flyers," and seemed so sturdy and powerful that one could not restrain +the desire to see it run. + +"How do you like that?" S---- exclaimed when he saw me looking at it. + +"It's splendid," I said. + +"See how she runs," he exclaimed, moving it up and down. "No noise about +that." + +He fairly caressed the mechanism with his hand, and went off into a most +careful analysis of its qualities. + +"I could build that engine," he exclaimed at last, enthusiastically, "if +I were down in the Baldwin Company's place. I could make her break the +record." + +"I haven't the slightest doubt in the world," I answered. + +This engine was a source of great expense to him, as well as the chief +point in a fine scheme. He had made brass rails for it--sufficient to +extend about the four sides of the studio--something like seventy feet. +He had made most handsome passenger-cars with full equipment of brakes, +vestibules, Pintsch gas, and so on, and had painted on their sides "The +Great Pullman Line." One day, when we were quite friendly, he brought +from his home all the rails, in a carpet-bag, and gave an exhibition of +his engine's speed, attaching the cars and getting up sufficient steam +to cause the engine to race about the room at a rate which was actually +exciting. He had an arrangement by which it would pick up water and stop +automatically. It was on this occasion that he confided what he called +his great biograph scheme, the then forerunner of the latter day moving +pictures. It was all so new then, almost a rumor, like that of the +flying machine before it was invented. + +"I propose to let the people see the photographic representation of an +actual wreck--engine, cars, people, all tumbled down together after a +collision, and no imitation, either--the actual thing." + +"How do you propose to do it?" I asked. + +"Well, that's the thing," he said, banteringly. "Now, how do you suppose +I'd do it?" + +"Hire a railroad to have a wreck and kill a few people," I suggested. + +"Well, I've got a better thing than that. A railroad couldn't plan +anything more real than mine will be." + +I was intensely curious because of the novelty of the thing at that +time. The "Biograph" was in its infancy. + +"This is it," he exclaimed suddenly. "You see how realistic this engine +is, don't you?" + +I acknowledged that I did. + +"Well," he confided, "I'm building another just like it. It's costing me +three hundred dollars, and the passenger-cars will cost as much more. +Now, I'm going to fix up some scenery on my roof--a gorge, a line of +woods, a river, and a bridge. I'm going to make the water tumble over +big rocks just above the bridge and run underneath it. Then I'm going to +lay this track around these rocks, through the woods, across the bridge +and off into the woods again. + +"I'm going to put on the two trains and time them so they'll meet on the +bridge. Just when they come into view where they can see each other, a +post on the side of the track will strike the cabs in such a way as to +throw the firemen out on the steps just as if they were going to jump. +When the engines take the bridge they'll explode caps that will set fire +to oil and powder under the cars and burn them up." + +"Then what?" I asked. + +"Well, I've got it planned automatically so that you will see people +jumping out of the cars and tumbling down on the rocks, the flames +springing up and taking to the cars, and all that. Don't you believe +it?" he added, as I smiled at the idea. "Look here," and he produced a +model of one of the occupants of the cars. He labored for an hour to +show all the intricate details, until I was compelled to admit the +practicability and novelty of the idea. Then he explained that +instantaneous photography, as it was then called, was to be applied at +such close range that the picture would appear life size. The actuality +of the occurrence would do the rest. + +Skepticism still lingered with me for a time, but when I saw the second +train growing, the figures and apparatus gradually being modeled, and +the correspondence and conferences going on between the artist and +several companies which wished to gain control of the result, I was +perfectly sure that his idea would some day be realized. + +As I have said, when I first met S---- he had not realized any of his +dreams. It was just at that moment that the tide was about to turn. He +surprised me by the assurance, born of his wonderful virility, with +which he went about all things. + +"I've got an order from the _Ladies' Home Journal_," he said to me one +day. "They came to me." + +"Good," I said. "What is it?" + +"Somebody's writing up the terminal facilities of New York." + +He had before him an Academy board, on which was sketched, in wash, a +midnight express striking out across the Jersey meadows with sparks +blazing from the smoke stacks and dim lights burning in the sleepers. It +was a vivid thing, strong with all the strength of an engine, and rich +in the go and enthusiasm which adhere to such mechanisms. + +"I want to make a good thing of this," he said. "It may do me some +good." + +A little later he received his first order from Harper's. He could not +disguise that he was pleased, much as he tried to carry it off with an +air. It was just before the Spanish war broke out, and the sketches he +was to do related to the navy. + +He labored at this order with the most tireless enthusiasm. Marine +construction was his delight anyhow, and he spent hours and days making +studies about the great vessels, getting not only the atmosphere but the +mechanical detail. When he made the pictures they represented all that +he felt. + +"You know those drawings?" he said the day after he delivered them. + +"Yes." + +"I set a good stiff price on them and demanded my drawings back when +they were through." + +"Did you get them?" + +"Yep. It will give them more respect for what I'm trying to do," he +said. + +Not long after he illustrated one of Kipling's stories. + +He was in high feather at this, but grim and repressed withal. One could +see by the nervous movements of his wiry body that he was delighted over +it. + +At this time Kipling came to his studio. It was by special arrangement, +but S---- received him as if he were--well, as artists usually receive +authors. They talked over the galley proofs, and the author went away. + +"It's coming my way now," he said, when he could no longer conceal his +feelings. "I want to do something good on this." + +Through all this rise from obscurity to recognition he lived close to +his friends--a crowd of them, apparently, always in his studio jesting, +boxing, fencing--and interested himself in the mechanics I have +described. His drawing, his engine-building, his literary studies and +recreations were all mixed, jumbled, plunging him pell-mell, as it were, +on to distinction. In the first six months of his studio life he had +learned to fence, and often dropped his brush to put on the mask and +assume the foils with one of his companions. + +As our friendship increased I found how many were the man's +accomplishments and how wide his range of sympathies. He was an expert +bicyclist, as well as a trick rider, and used a camera in a way to make +an amateur envious. He could sing, having a fine tenor voice, which I +heard the very day I learned that he could sing. It so happened that it +was my turn to buy the theater tickets, and I invited him to come with +me that especial evening. + +"Can't do it," he replied. + +"All right," I said. + +"I'm part of an entertainment tonight, or I would," he added +apologetically. + +"What do you do?" I inquired. + +"Sing." + +"Get out!" I said. + +"So be it," he answered. "Come up this evening." + +To this I finally agreed, and was surprised to observe the ease with +which he rendered his solo. He had an exquisitely clear and powerful +voice and received a long round of applause, which he refused to +acknowledge by singing again. + +The influence of success is easily observable in a man of so volatile a +nature. It seems to me that I could have told by his manner, day by day, +the inwash of the separate ripples of the inrolling tide of success. He +was all alive, full of plans, and the tale of his coming conquests was +told in his eye. Sometime in the second year of our acquaintance I +called at his studio in response to a card which he had stuck under my +office door. It was his habit to draw an outline head of himself, +something almost bordering upon a caricature, writing underneath it "I +called," together with any word he might have to say. This day he was in +his usual good spirits, and rallied me upon having an office which was +only a blind. He had a roundabout way of getting me to talk about his +personal affairs with him, and I soon saw that he had something very +interesting, to himself, to communicate. At last he said,-- + +"I'm going to Europe next summer." + +"Is that so?" I replied. "For pleasure?" + +"Well, partly." + +"What's up outside of that?" I asked. + +"I'm going to represent the American Architectural League at the +international convention." + +"I didn't know you were an architect," I said. + +"Well, I'm not," he answered, "professionally. I've studied it pretty +thoroughly." + +"Well, you seem to be coming up, Louis," I remarked. + +"I'm doing all right," he answered. + +He went on working at his easel as if his fate depended upon what he was +doing. He had the fortunate quality of being able to work and converse +most entertainingly at the same time. He seemed to enjoy company under +such circumstances. + +"You didn't know I was a baron, did you?" he finally observed. + +"No," I answered, thinking he was exercising his fancy for the moment. +"Where do you keep your baronial lands, my lord?" + +"In Germany, kind sir," he replied, banteringly. + +Then in his customary excitable mood he dropped his brushes and stood +up. + +"You don't believe me, do you?" he exclaimed, looking over his drooping +glasses. + +"Why, certainly I believe you, if you are serious. Are you truly a +baron?" + +"It was this way," he said. "My grandfather was a baron. My father was +the younger of two brothers. His brother got the title and what was left +of the estate. That he managed to go through with, and then he died. +Now, no one has bothered about the title--" + +"And you're going back to claim it?" + +"Exactly." + +I took it all lightly at first, but in time I began to perceive that it +was a serious ambition. He truly wanted to be Baron S---- and add to +himself the luster of his ancestors. + +With all this, the man was really not so much an aristocrat in his mood +as a seeker after life and new experiences. Being a baron was merely a +new experience, or promised to be. He had the liveliest sympathies for +republican theories and institutions--only he considered his life a +thing apart. He had a fine mind, philosophically and logically poised. +He could reason upon all things, from the latest mathematical theorem to +Christian Science. Naturally, being so much of an individualist, he was +not drifting toward any belief in the latter, but was never weary of +discussing the power of mind--a universal mind even--its wondrous +ramifications and influences. Also he was a student of the English +school of philosophy, and loved to get up mathematical and mechanical +demonstrations of certain philosophic truths. Thus he worked out by +means of a polygon, whose sides were of unequal lengths, a theory of +friendship which is too intricate to explain here. + +From now on I watched his career with the liveliest interest. He was a +charming and a warm friend, and never neglected for a moment the +obligations which such a relationship demands. + +I heard from him frequently in many and various ways, dined with him +regularly every second or third week, and rejoiced with him in his +triumphs, now more and more frequent. One spring he went to Europe and +spent the summer in tracing down his baronial claims, looking up various +artists and scientists and attending several scientific meetings here +and there at the same time. He did the illustrations for one of +Kipling's fast express stories which one of the magazines published, and +came back flushed and ready to try hard for a membership in the American +Water-Color Society. + +I shall never forget his anxiety to get into that mildly interesting +body. He worked hard and long on several pictures which should not only +be hung on the line but enlist sufficient interest among the artists to +gain him a vote of admission. He mentioned it frequently and fixed me +with his eyes to see what I thought of him. + +"Go ahead," I said; "you have more right to membership perhaps than many +another I know. Try hard." + +He painted not one, but four, pictures, and sent them all. They were +very interesting after their kind. Two were scenes from the great +railroad terminal yards; the others, landscapes in mist or rain. Three +of these pictures were passed and two of them hung on the line. The +third was _skyed_, but he was admitted to membership. + +I was delighted for his sake, for I could see, when he gave me the +intelligence, that it was a matter which had keyed up his whole nervous +system. + +Not long after this we were walking on Broadway, one drizzly autumn +evening, on our way to the theater. Life, ambition, and our future were +the _small_ subjects under discussion. The street, as usual, was +crowded. On every hand blazed the fire signs. The yellow lights were +beautifully reflected in the wet sidewalks and gray wet cobblestones +glistening with water. + +When we reached Greeley Square (at that time a brilliant and almost +sputtering spectacle of light and merriment), S---- took me by the arm. + +"Come over here," he said. "I want you to look at it from here." + +He took me to a point where, by the intersection of the lines of the +converging streets, one could not only see Greeley Square but a large +part of Herald Square, with its then huge theatrical sign of fire and +its measure of store lights and lamps of vehicles. It was a +kaleidoscopic and inspiring scene. The broad, converging walks were +alive with people. A perfect jam of vehicles marked the spot where the +horse and cable cars intersected. Overhead was the elevated station, its +lights augmented every few minutes by long trains of brightly lighted +cars filled with changing metropolitan crowds--crowds like shadows +moving in a dream. + +"Do you see the quality of that? Look at the blend of the lights and +shadows in there under the L." + +I looked and gazed in silent admiration. + +"See, right here before us--that pool of water there--do you get that? +Now, that isn't silver-colored, as it's usually represented. It's a +prism. Don't you see the hundred points of light?" + +I acknowledged the variety of color, which I had scarcely observed +before. + +"You may think one would skip that in viewing a great scene, but the +artist mustn't. He must get all, whether you notice it or not. It gives +feeling, even when you don't see it." + +I acknowledged the value of this ideal. + +"It's a great spectacle," he said. "It's got more flesh and blood in it +than people usually think. It's easy to make it too mechanical and +commonplace." + +"Why don't you paint it?" I asked. + +He turned on me as if he had been waiting for the suggestion. + +"That's something I want to tell you," he said. "I am. I've sketched it +a half-dozen times already. I haven't got it yet. But I'm going to." + +I heard more of these dreams, intensifying all the while, until the +Spanish-American war broke out. Then he was off in a great rush of war +work. I scarcely saw him for six weeks, owing to some travels of my own, +but I saw his name. One day in Broadway I stopped to see why a large +crowd was gathered about a window in the Hoffman House. It was one of +S----'s drawings of our harbor defenses, done as if the artist had been +sitting at the bottom of the sea. The fishes, the green water, the hull +of a massive war-ship--all were there--and about, the grim torpedoes. +This put it into my head to go and see him. He was as tense and +strenuous as ever. The glittering treasure at the end of the rainbow was +more than ever in his eye. His body was almost sore from traveling. + +"I am in now," he said, referring to the war movement. "I am going to +Tampa." + +"Be gone long?" I asked. + +"Not this first time. I'll only be down there three weeks." + +"I'll see you then." + +"Supposing we make it certain," he said. "What do you say to dining +together this coming Sunday three weeks?" + +I went away, wishing him a fine trip and feeling that his dreams must +now soon begin to come true. He was growing in reputation. Some war +pictures, such as he could do, would set people talking. Then he would +paint his prize pictures, finish his wreck scheme, become a baron, and +be a great man. + +Three weeks later I knocked at his studio door. It was a fine springlike +day, though it was in February. I expected confidently to hear his quick +aggressive step inside. Not a sound in reply. I knocked harder, but +still received no answer. Then I went to the other doors about. He might +be with his friends, but they were not in. I went away thinking that his +war duties had interfered, that he had not returned. + +Nevertheless there was something depressing about that portion of the +building in which his studio was located. I felt as if it should not be, +and decided to call again. Monday it was the same, and Tuesday. + +That same evening I was sitting in the library of the Salmagundi Club, +when a well-known artist addressed me. + +"You knew S----, didn't you?" he said. + +"Yes; what of it?" + +"You knew he was dead, didn't you?" + +"What!" I said. + +"Yes, he died of fever, this morning." + +I looked at him without speaking for a moment. + +"Too bad," he said. "A clever boy, Louis. Awfully clever. I feel sorry +for his father." + +It did not take long to verify his statement. His name was in the +perfunctory death lists of the papers the next morning. No other notice +of any sort. Only a half-dozen seemed to know that he had ever lived. + +And yet it seemed _to me_ that a great tragedy had happened--he was so +ambitious, so full of plans. His dreams were so near fulfillment. + +I saw the little grave afterward and the empty studio. His desks +revealed several inventions and many plans of useful things, but these +came to nothing. There was no one to continue the work. + +My feeling at the time was as if I had been looking at a beautiful lamp, +lighted, warm and irradiating a charming scene, and then suddenly that +it had been puffed out before my eyes, as if a hundred bubbles of +iridescent hues had been shattered by a breath. We toil so much, we +dream so richly, we hasten so fast, and, lo! the green door is opened. +We are through it, and its grassy surface has sealed us forever from all +which apparently we so much crave--even as, breathlessly, we are still +running. + +[Transcriber's Note: Typos have been corrected in this document, but +spelling and punctuation inconsistencies have been retained.] + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Twelve Men, by Theodore Dreiser + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14717 *** diff --git a/14717-h/14717-h.htm b/14717-h/14717-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..773a96d --- /dev/null +++ b/14717-h/14717-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,12054 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Twelve Men, by Theodore Dreiser. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14717 ***</div> + +<h1>TWELVE MEN</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>Theodore Dreiser</h2> + +<h4>1919</h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Contents" id="Contents" />Contents</h2> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> + <a href="#Peter"><b>Peter</b></a><br /> + <a href="#A_Doer_of_the_Word"><b>A Doer of the Word</b></a><br /> + <a href="#My_Brother_Paul"><b>My Brother Paul</b></a><br /> + <a href="#The_County_Doctor"><b>The County Doctor</b></a><br /> + <a href="#Culhane_the_Solid_Man"><b>Culhane, the Solid Man</b></a><br /> + <a href="#A_True_Patriarch"><b>A True Patriarch</b></a><br /> + <a href="#De_Maupassant_Junior"><b>De Maupassant, Junior</b></a><br /> + <a href="#The_Village_Feudists"><b>The Village Feudists</b></a><br /> + <a href="#Vanity_Vanityquot_Saith_the_Preacher"><b>"Vanity, Vanity," Saith the Preacher</b></a><br /> + <a href="#The_Mighty_Rourke"><b>The Mighty Rourke</b></a><br /> + <a href="#A_Mayor_and_His_People"><b>A Mayor and His People</b></a><br /> + <a href="#WLS"><b>W.L.S.</b></a><br /> + </p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Peter" id="Peter" /><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" /><i>Peter</i></h2> + + +<p>In any group of men I have ever known, speaking from the point of view +of character and not that of physical appearance, Peter would stand out +as deliciously and irrefutably different. In the great waste of American +intellectual dreariness he was an oasis, a veritable spring in the +desert. He understood life. He knew men. He was free—spiritually, +morally, in a thousand ways, it seemed to me.</p> + +<p>As one drags along through this inexplicable existence one realizes how +such qualities stand out; not the pseudo freedom of strong men, +financially or physically, but the real, internal, spiritual freedom, +where the mind, as it were, stands up and looks at itself, faces Nature +unafraid, is aware of its own weaknesses, its strengths; examines its +own and the creative impulses of the universe and of men with a kindly +and non-dogmatic eye, in fact kicks dogma out of doors, and yet +deliberately and of choice holds fast to many, many simple and human +things, and rounds out life, or would, in a natural, normal, courageous, +healthy way.</p> + +<p>The first time I ever saw Peter was in St. Louis in 1892; I had come +down from Chicago to work on the St. Louis <i>Globe-Democrat</i>, and he was +a part of the art department force of that paper. At that time—and he +never seemed to change later even so much as a hair's worth until he +died in 1908—he was short, stocky and yet quick and even jerky in his +manner, with a bushy, tramp-like "get-up" of hair and beard, most +swiftly and astonishingly disposed of at times only to be regrown at +others, and always, and intentionally, I am sure, most amusing to +contemplate. In addition to all this he had an air of well-being, force +and alertness which belied the other surface characteristics as anything +more than a genial pose or bit of idle gayety.</p> + +<p>Plainly he took himself seriously and yet lightly, usually with an air +of suppressed gayety, as though saying, "This whole business of living +is a great joke." He always wore good and yet exceedingly mussy clothes, +at times bespattered with ink or, worse yet, even soup—an amazing +grotesquery that was the dismay of all who knew him, friends and +relatives <a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" />especially. In addition he was nearly always liberally +besprinkled with tobacco dust, the source of which he used in all forms: +in pipe, cigar and plug, even cigarettes when he could obtain nothing +more substantial. One of the things about him which most impressed me at +that time and later was this love of the ridiculous or the grotesque, in +himself or others, which would not let him take anything in a dull or +conventional mood, would not even permit him to appear normal at times +but urged him on to all sorts of nonsense, in an effort, I suppose, to +entertain himself and make life seem less commonplace.</p> + +<p>And yet he loved life, in all its multiform and multiplex aspects and +with no desire or tendency to sniff, reform or improve anything. It was +good just as he found it, excellent. Life to Peter was indeed so +splendid that he was always very much wrought up about it, eager to +live, to study, to do a thousand things. For him it was a workshop for +the artist, the thinker, as well as the mere grubber, and without really +criticizing any one he was "for" the individual who is able to +understand, to portray or to create life, either feelingly and +artistically or with accuracy and discrimination. To him, as I saw then +and see even more clearly now, there was no high and no low. All things +were only relatively so. A thief was a thief, but he had his place. +Ditto the murderer. Ditto the saint. Not man but Nature was planning, or +at least doing, something which man could not understand, of which very +likely he was a mere tool. Peter was as much thrilled and entendered by +the brawling strumpet in the street or the bagnio as by the virgin with +her starry crown. The rich were rich and the poor poor, but all were in +the grip of imperial forces whose ruthless purposes or lack of them made +all men ridiculous, pathetic or magnificent, as you choose. He pitied +ignorance and necessity, and despised vanity and cruelty for cruelty's +sake, and the miserly hoarding of anything. He was liberal, material, +sensual and yet spiritual; and although he never had more than a little +money, out of the richness and fullness of his own temperament he seemed +able to generate a kind of atmosphere and texture in his daily life +which was rich and warm, splendid really in thought (the true reality) +if not in fact, and most grateful to all. Yet also, as I have said, +<a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" />always he wished to <i>seem</i> the clown, the scapegrace, the wanton and +the loon even, mouthing idle impossibilities at times and declaring his +profoundest faith in the most fantastic things.</p> + +<p>Do I seem to rave? I am dealing with a most significant person.</p> + +<p>In so far as I knew he was born into a mid-Western family of Irish +extraction whose habitat was southwest Missouri. In the town in which he +was reared there was not even a railroad until he was fairly well +grown—a fact which amused but never impressed him very much. Apropos of +this he once told me of a yokel who, never having seen a railroad, +entered the station with his wife and children long before train time, +bought his ticket and waited a while, looking out of the various +windows, then finally returned to the ticket-seller and asked, "When +does this thing start?" He meant the station building itself. At the +time Peter had entered upon art work he had scarcely prosecuted his +studies beyond, if so far as, the conventional high or grammar school, +and yet he was most amazingly informed and but little interested in what +any school or college had to offer. His father, curiously enough, was an +educated Irish-American, a lawyer by profession, and a Catholic. His +mother was an American Catholic, rather strict and narrow. His brothers +and sisters, of whom there were four, were, as I learned later, +astonishingly virile and interesting Americans of a rather wild, +unsettled type. They were all, in so far as I could judge from chance +meetings, agnostic, tense, quick-moving—so vital that they weighed on +one a little, as very intense temperaments are apt to do. One of the +brothers, K——, who seemed to seek me out ever so often for Peter's +sake, was so intense, nervous, rapid-talking, rapid-living, that he +frightened me a little. He loved noisy, garish places. He liked to play +the piano, stay up very late; he was a high liver, a "good dresser," as +the denizens of the Tenderloin would say, an excellent example of the +flashy, clever promoter. He was always representing a new company, +introducing something—a table or laxative water, a shaving soap, a +chewing gum, a safety razor, a bicycle, an automobile tire or the +machine itself. He was here, there, everywhere—in Waukesha, Wisconsin; +San Francisco; New York; New Orleans.<a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" /> "My, my! This is certainly +interesting!" he would exclaim, with an air which would have done credit +to a comedian and extending both hands. "Peter's pet friend, Dreiser! +Well, well, well! Let's have a drink. Let's have something to eat. I'm +only in town for a day. Maybe you'd like to go to a show—or hit the +high places? Would you? Well, well, well! Let's make a night of it! What +do you say?" and he would fix me with a glistening, nervous and what was +intended no doubt to be a reassuring eye, but which unsettled me as +thoroughly as the imminence of an earthquake. But I was talking of +Peter.</p> + +<p>The day I first saw him he was bent over a drawing-board illustrating a +snake story for one of the Sunday issues of the <i>Globe-Democrat</i>, which +apparently delighted in regaling its readers with most astounding +concoctions of this kind, and the snake he was drawing was most +disturbingly vital and reptilian, beady-eyed, with distended jaws, +extended tongue, most fatefully coiled.</p> + +<p>"My," I commented in passing, for I was in to see him about another +matter, "what a glorious snake!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you can't make 'em too snaky for the snake-editor up front," he +returned, rising and dusting tobacco from his lap and shirtfront, for he +was in his shirt-sleeves. Then he expectorated not in but to one side of +a handsome polished brass cuspidor which contained not the least +evidence of use, the rubber mat upon which it stood being instead most +disturbingly "decorated." I was most impressed by this latter fact +although at the time I said nothing, being too new. Later, I may as well +say here, I discovered why. This was a bit of his clowning humor, a +purely manufactured and as it were mechanical joke or ebullience of +soul. If any one inadvertently or through unfamiliarity attempted to +expectorate in his "golden cuspidor," as he described it, he was always +quick to rise and interpose in the most solemn, almost sepulchral +manner, at the same time raising a hand. "Hold! Out—not in—to one +side, on the mat! That cost me seven dollars!" Then he would solemnly +seat himself and begin to draw again. I saw him do this to all but the +chiefest of the authorities of the paper. And all, even the dullest, +seemed to be amused, quite fascinated by the utter trumpery folly of it.</p> + +<p>But I am getting ahead of my tale. In so far as the snake <a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" />was +concerned, he was referring to the assistant who had these snake stories +in charge. "The fatter and more venomous and more scaly they are," he +went on, "the better. I'd like it if we could use a little color in this +paper—red for eyes and tongue, and blue and green for scales. The +farmers upstate would love that. They like good but poisonous snakes." +Then he grinned, stood back and, cocking his head to one side in a most +examining and yet approving manner, ran his hand through his hair and +beard and added, "A snake can't be too vital, you know, for this paper. +We have to draw 'em strong, plenty of vitality, plenty of go." He +grinned most engagingly.</p> + +<p>I could not help laughing, of course. The impertinent air! The grand, +almost condescending manner!</p> + +<p>We soon became fast friends.</p> + +<p>In the same office in close contact with him was another person, one +D—— W——, also a newspaper artist, who, while being exceedingly +interesting and special in himself, still as a character never seems to +have served any greater purpose in my own mind than to have illustrated +how emphatic and important Peter was. He had a thin, pale, Dantesque +face, coal black, almost Indian-like hair most carefully parted in the +middle and oiled and slicked down at the sides and back until it looked +as though it had been glued. His eyes were small and black and querulous +but not mean—petted eyes they were—and the mouth had little lines at +each corner which seemed to say he had endured much, much pain, which of +course he had not, but which nevertheless seemed to ask for, and I +suppose earned him some, sympathy. Dick in his way was an actor, a +tragedian of sorts, but with an element of humor, cynicism and insight +which saved him from being utterly ridiculous. Like most actors, he was +a great poseur. He invariably affected the long, loose flowing tie with +a soft white or blue or green or brown linen shirt (would any American +imitation of the "Quartier Latin" denizen have been without one at that +date?), yellow or black gloves, a round, soft crush hat, very soft and +limp and very <i>different</i>, patent leather pumps, betimes a capecoat, a +slender cane, a boutonnière—all this in hard, smoky, noisy, commercial +St. Louis, full of middle-West business men and farmers!</p> + +<p>I would not mention this particular person save that for a <a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" />time he, +Peter and myself were most intimately associated. We temporarily +constituted in our way a "soldiers three" of the newspaper world. For +some years after we were more or less definitely in touch as a group, +although later Peter and myself having drifted Eastward and hob-nobbing +as a pair had been finding more and more in common and had more and more +come to view Dick for what he was: a character of Dickensian, or perhaps +still better, Cruikshankian, proportions and qualities. But in those +days the three of us were all but inseparable; eating, working, playing, +all but sleeping together. I had a studio of sorts in a more or less +dilapidated factory section of St. Louis (Tenth near Market; now I +suppose briskly commercial), Dick had one at Broadway and Locust, +directly opposite the then famous Southern Hotel. Peter lived with his +family on the South Side, a most respectable and homey-home +neighborhood.</p> + +<p>It has been one of my commonest experiences, and one of the most +interesting to me, to note that nearly all of my keenest experiences +intellectually, my most gorgeous <i>rapprochements</i> and swiftest +developments mentally, have been by, to, and through men, not women, +although there have been several exceptions to this. Nearly every +turning point in my career has been signalized by my meeting some man of +great force, to whom I owe some of the most ecstatic intellectual hours +of my life, hours in which life seemed to bloom forth into new aspects, +glowed as with the radiance of a gorgeous tropic day.</p> + +<p>Peter was one such. About my own age at this time, he was blessed with a +natural understanding which was simply Godlike. Although, like myself, +he was raised a Catholic and still pretending in a boisterous, +Rabelaisian way to have some reverence for that faith, he was amusingly +sympathetic to everything good, bad, indifferent—"in case there might +be something in it; you never can tell." Still he hadn't the least +interest in conforming to the tenets of the church and laughed at its +pretensions, preferring his own theories to any other. Apparently +nothing amused him so much as the thought of confession and communion, +of being shrived by some stout, healthy priest as worldly as himself, +and preferably Irish, like himself. At the same time he had a hearty +<a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" />admiration for the Germans, all their ways, conservatisms, their +breweries, food and such things, and finally wound up by marrying a +German girl.</p> + +<p>As far as I could make out, Peter had no faith in anything except Nature +itself, and very little in that except in those aspects of beauty and +accident and reward and terrors with which it is filled and for which he +had an awe if not a reverence and in every manifestation of which he +took the greatest delight. Life was a delicious, brilliant mystery to +him, horrible in some respects, beautiful in others; a great adventure. +Unlike myself at the time, he had not the slightest trace of any +lingering Puritanism, and wished to live in a lush, vigorous, healthy, +free, at times almost barbaric, way. The negroes, the ancient Romans, +the Egyptians, tales of the Orient and the grotesque Dark Ages, our own +vile slums and evil quarters—how he reveled in these! He was for nights +of wandering, endless investigation, reading, singing, dancing, playing!</p> + +<p>Apropos of this I should like to relate here that one of his seemingly +gross but really innocent diversions was occasionally visiting a certain +black house of prostitution, of which there were many in St. Louis. Here +while he played a flute and some one else a tambourine or small drum, he +would have two or three of the inmates dance in some weird savage way +that took one instanter to the wilds of Central Africa. There was, so +far as I know, no payment of any kind made in connection with this. He +was a friend, in some crude, artistic or barbaric way. He satisfied, I +am positive, some love of color, sound and the dance in these queer +revels.</p> + +<p>Nor do I know how he achieved these friendships, such as they were. I +was never with him when he did. But aside from the satiation they +afforded his taste for the strange and picturesque, I am sure they +reflected no gross or sensual appetite. But I wish to attest in passing +that the mere witnessing of these free scenes had a tonic as well as +toxic effect on me. As I view myself now, I was a poor, spindling, +prying fish, anxious to know life, and yet because of my very narrow +training very fearsome of it, of what it might do to me, what dreadful +contagion of thought or deed it might open me to! Peter was not so. To +him all, positively <i>all</i>, life was good. It was a <a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" />fascinating +spectacle, to be studied or observed and rejoiced in as a spectacle. +When I look back now on the shabby, poorly-lighted, low-ceiled room to +which he led me "for fun," the absolutely black or brown girls with +their white teeth and shiny eyes, the unexplainable, unintelligible love +of rhythm and the dance displayed, the beating of a drum, the sinuous, +winding motions of the body, I am grateful to him. He released my mind, +broadened my view, lengthened my perspective. For as I sat with him, +watching him beat his drum or play his flute, noted the gayety, his love +of color and effect, and feeling myself <i>low</i>, a criminal, disgraced, +the while I was staring with all my sight and enjoying it intensely, I +realized that I was dealing with a man who was "bigger" than I was in +many respects, saner, really more wholesome. I was a moral coward, and +he was not losing his life and desires through fear—which the majority +of us do. He was strong, vital, unafraid, and he made me so.</p> + +<p>But, lest I seem to make him low or impossible to those who +instinctively cannot accept life beyond the range of their own little +routine world, let me hasten to his other aspects. He was not low but +simple, brilliant and varied in his tastes. America and its point of +view, religious and otherwise, was simply amusing to him, not to be +taken seriously. He loved to contemplate man at his mysteries, rituals, +secret schools. He loved better yet ancient history, medieval inanities +and atrocities—a most singular, curious and wonderful mind. Already at +this age he knew many historians and scientists (their work), a most +astonishing and illuminating list to me—Maspero, Froude, Huxley, +Darwin, Wallace, Rawlinson, Froissart, Hallam, Taine, Avebury! The list +of painters, sculptors and architects with whose work he was familiar +and books about whom or illustrated by whom he knew, is too long to be +given here. His chief interest, in so far as I could make out, in these +opening days, was Egyptology and the study of things natural and +primeval—all the wonders of a natural, groping, savage world.</p> + +<p>"Dreiser," he exclaimed once with gusto, his bright beady eyes gleaming +with an immense human warmth, "you haven't the slightest idea of the +fascination of some of the old beliefs.<a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" /> Do you know the significance of +a scarab in Egyptian religious worship, for instance?"</p> + +<p>"A scarab? What's a scarab? I never heard of one," I answered.</p> + +<p>"A beetle, of course. An Egyptian beetle. You know what a beetle is, +don't you? Well, those things burrowed in the earth, the mud of the +Nile, at a certain period of their season to lay their eggs, and the +next spring, or whenever it was, the eggs would hatch and the beetles +would come up. Then the Egyptians imagined that the beetle hadn't died +at all, or if it had that it also had the power of restoring itself to +life, possessed immortality. So they thought it must be a god and began +to worship it," and he would pause and survey me with those amazing +eyes, bright as glass beads, to see if I were properly impressed.</p> + +<p>"You don't say!"</p> + +<p>"Sure. That's where the worship came from," and then he might go on and +add a bit about monkey-worship, the Zoroastrians and the Parsees, the +sacred bull of Egypt, its sex power as a reason for its religious +elevation, and of sex worship in general; the fantastic orgies at Sidon +and Tyre, where enormous images of the male and female sex organs were +carried aloft before the multitude.</p> + +<p>Being totally ignorant of these matters at the time, not a rumor of them +having reached me as yet in my meagre reading, I knew that it must be +so. It fired me with a keen desire to read—not the old orthodox +emasculated histories of the schools but those other books and pamphlets +to which I fancied he must have access. Eagerly I inquired of him where, +how. He told me that in some cases they were outlawed, banned or not +translated wholly or fully, owing to the puritanism and religiosity of +the day, but he gave me titles and authors to whom I might have access, +and the address of an old book-dealer or two who could get them for me.</p> + +<p>In addition he was interested in ethnology and geology, as well as +astronomy (the outstanding phases at least), and many, many phases of +applied art: pottery, rugs, pictures, engraving, wood-carving, +jewel-cutting and designing, and I know not what else, yet there was +always room even in his <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" />most serious studies for humor of the bizarre +and eccentric type, amounting to all but an obsession. He wanted to +laugh, and he found occasion for doing so under the most serious, or at +least semi-serious, circumstances. Thus I recall that one of the butts +of his extreme humor was this same Dick, whom he studied with the +greatest care for points worthy his humorous appreciation. Dick, in +addition to his genuinely lively mental interests, was a most romantic +person on one side, a most puling and complaining soul on the other. As +a newspaper artist I believe he was only a fairly respectable craftsman, +if so much, whereas Peter was much better, although he deferred to Dick +in the most persuasive manner and seemed to believe at times, though I +knew he did not, that Dick represented all there was to know in matters +artistic.</p> + +<p>Among other things at this time, the latter was, or pretended to be, +immensely interested in all things pertaining to the Chinese and to know +not only something of their language, which he had studied a little +somewhere, but also their history—a vague matter, as we all know—and +the spirit and significance of their art and customs. He sometimes +condescended to take us about with him to one or two Chinese restaurants +of the most beggarly description, and—as he wished to believe, because +of the romantic titillation involved—the hang-outs of crooks and +thieves and disreputable Tenderloin characters generally. (Of such was +the beginning of the Chinese restaurant in America.) He would introduce +us to a few of his Celestial friends, whose acquaintance apparently he +had been most assiduously cultivating for some time past and with whom +he was now on the best of terms. He had, as Peter pointed out to me, the +happy knack of persuading himself that there was something vastly +mysterious and superior about the whole Chinese race, that there was +some Chinese organization known as the Six Companions, which, so far as +I could make out from him, was ruling very nearly (and secretly, of +course) the entire habitable globe. For one thing it had some governing +connection with great constructive ventures of one kind and another in +all parts of the world, supplying, as he said, thousands of Chinese +laborers to any one who desired them, anywhere, and although they were +employed by others, ruling them with a rod of iron, <a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" />cutting their +throats when they failed to perform their bounden duties and burying +them head down in a basket of rice, then transferring their remains +quietly to China in coffins made in China and brought for that purpose +to the country in which they were. The Chinese who had worked for the +builders of the Union Pacific had been supplied by this company, as I +understood from Dick. In regard to all this Peter used to analyze and +dispose of Dick's self-generated romance with the greatest gusto, +laughing the while and yet pretending to accept it all.</p> + +<p>But there was one phase of all this which interested Peter immensely. +Were there on sale in St. Louis any bits of jade, silks, needlework, +porcelains, basketry or figurines of true Chinese origin? He was far +more interested in this than in the social and economic sides of the +lives of the Chinese, and was constantly urging Dick to take him here, +there and everywhere in order that he might see for himself what of +these amazing wonders were locally extant, leading Dick in the process a +merry chase and a dog's life. Dick was compelled to persuade nearly all +of his boasted friends to produce all they had to show. Once, I recall, +a collection of rare Chinese porcelains being shown at the local museum +of art, there was nothing for it but that Dick must get one or more of +his Oriental friends to interpret this, that and the other symbol in +connection with this, that and the other vase—things which put him to +no end of trouble and which led to nothing, for among all the local +Chinese there was not one who knew anything about it, although they, +Dick included, were not honest enough to admit it.</p> + +<p>"You know, Dreiser," Peter said to me one day with the most delicious +gleam of semi-malicious, semi-tender humor, "I am really doing all this +just to torture Dick. He doesn't know a damned thing about it and +neither do these Chinese, but it's fun to haul 'em out there and make +'em sweat. The museum sells an illustrated monograph covering all this, +you know, with pictures of the genuinely historic pieces and +explanations of the various symbols in so far as they are known, but +Dick doesn't know that, and he's lying awake nights trying to find out +what they're all about. I like to see his expression and that of those +chinks when they examine those <a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" />things." He subsided with a low chuckle +all the more disturbing because it was so obviously the product of +well-grounded knowledge.</p> + +<p>Another phase of this same humor related to the grand artistic, social +and other forms of life to which Dick was hoping to ascend via marriage +and which led him, because of a kind of anticipatory eagerness, into all +sorts of exaggerations of dress, manners, speech, style in writing or +drawing, and I know not what else. He had, as I have said, a "studio" in +Broadway, an ordinary large, square upper chamber of an old residence +turned commercial but which Dick had decorated in the most, to him, +recherché or <i>different</i> manner possible. In Dick's gilding imagination +it was packed with the rarest and most carefully selected things, odd +bits of furniture, objects of art, pictures, books—things which the +ordinary antique shop provides in plenty but which to Dick, having been +reared in Bloomington, Illinois, were of the utmost artistic import. He +had vaulting ambitions and pretensions, literary and otherwise, having +by now composed various rondeaus, triolets, quatrains, sonnets, in +addition to a number of short stories over which he had literally slaved +and which, being rejected by many editors, were kept lying idly and +inconsequentially and seemingly inconspicuously about his place—the +more to astonish the poor unsophisticated "outsider." Besides it gave +him the opportunity of posing as misunderstood, neglected, depressed, as +becomes all great artists, poets, and thinkers.</p> + +<p>His great scheme or dream, however, was that of marriage to an heiress, +one of those very material and bovine daughters of the new rich in the +West end, and to this end he was bending all his artistic thought, +writing, dressing, dreaming the thing he wished. I myself had a marked +tendency in this direction, although from another point of view, and +speaking from mine purely, there was this difference between us: Dick +being an artist, rather remote and disdainful in manner and decidedly +handsome as well as poetic and better positioned than I, as I fancied, +was certain to achieve this gilded and crystal state, whereas I, not +being handsome nor an artist nor sufficiently poetic perhaps, could +scarcely aspire to so gorgeous a goal. Often, as around dinnertime he +ambled from <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" />the office arrayed in the latest mode—dark blue suit, +patent leather boots, a dark, round soft felt hat, loose tie blowing +idly about his neck, a thin cane in his hand—I was already almost +convinced that the anticipated end was at hand, this very evening +perhaps, and that I should never see him more except as the husband of a +very rich girl, never be permitted even to speak to him save as an +almost forgotten friend, and in passing! Even now perhaps he was on his +way to her, whereas I, poor oaf that I was, was moiling here over some +trucky work. Would my ship never come in? my great day never arrive? my +turn? Unkind heaven!</p> + +<p>As for Peter he was the sort of person who could swiftly detect, +understand and even sympathize with a point of view of this kind the +while he must laugh at it and his mind be busy with some plan of making +a fol-de-rol use of it. One day he came into the city-room where I was +working and bending over my desk fairly bursting with suppressed humor +announced, "Gee, Dreiser, I've just thought of a delicious trick to play +on Dick! Oh, Lord!" and he stopped and surveyed me with beady eyes the +while his round little body seemed to fairly swell with pent-up +laughter. "It's too rich! Oh, if it just works out Dick'll be sore! +Wait'll I tell you," he went on. "You know how crazy he is about rich +young heiresses? You know how he's always 'dressing up' and talking and +writing about marrying one of those girls in the West end?" (Dick was +forever composing a short story in which some lorn but perfect and great +artist was thus being received via love, the story being read to us +nights in his studio.) "That's all bluff, that talk of his of visiting +in those big houses out there. All he does is to dress up every night as +though he were going to a ball, and walk out that way and moon around. +Well, listen. Here's the idea. We'll go over to Mermod & Jaccards +to-morrow and get a few sheets of their best monogrammed paper, sample +sheets. Then we'll get up a letter and sign it with the most romantic +name we can think of—Juanita or Cyrene or Doris—and explain who she +is, the daughter of a millionaire living out there, and that she's been +strictly brought up but that in spite of all that she's seen his name in +the paper at the bottom of his pictures and wants to meet him, see? Then +we'll have her suggest that he come out to the <a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" />west gate of, say, +Portland Place at seven o'clock and meet her. We'll have her describe +herself, see, young and beautiful, and some attractive costume she's to +wear, and we'll kill him. He'll fall hard. Then we'll happen by there at +the exact time when he's waiting, and detain him, urge him to come into +the park with us or to dinner. We'll look our worst so he'll be ashamed +of us. He'll squirm and get wild, but we'll hang on and spoil the date +for him, see? We'll insist in the letter that he must be alone, see, +because she's timid and afraid of being recognized. My God, he'll be +crazy! He'll think we've ruined his life—oh, ho, ho!" and he fairly +writhed with inward joy.</p> + +<p>The thing worked. It was cruel in its way, but when has man ever grieved +over the humorous ills of others? The paper was secured, the letter +written by a friend of Peter's in a nearby real estate office, after the +most careful deliberation as to wording on our part. Extreme youth, +beauty and a great mansion were all hinted at. The fascination of Dick +as a romantic figure was touched upon. He would know her by a green silk +scarf about her waist, for it was spring, the ideal season. Seven +o'clock was the hour. She could give him only a moment or two then—but +later—and she gave no address!</p> + +<p>The letter was mailed in the West end, as was meet and proper, and in +due season arrived at the office. Peter, working at the next easel, +observed him, as he told me, out of the corner of his eye.</p> + +<p>"You should have seen him, Dreiser," he exclaimed, hunting me up about +an hour after the letter arrived. "Oh, ho! Say, you know I believe he +thinks it's the real thing. It seemed to make him a little sick. He +tried to appear nonchalant, but a little later he got his hat and went +out, over to Deck's," a nearby saloon, "for a drink, for I followed him. +He's all fussed up. Wait'll we heave into view that night! I'm going to +get myself up like a joke, a hobo. I'll disgrace him. Oh, Lord, he'll be +crazy! He'll think we've ruined his life, scared her off. There's no +address. He can't do a thing. Oh, ho, ho, ho!"</p> + +<p>On the appointed day—and it was a delicious afternoon and evening, +aflame with sun and in May—Dick left off his work at three p.m., as +Peter came and told me, and departed, <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" />and then we went to make our +toilets. At six we met, took a car and stepped down not more than a +short block from the point of meeting. I shall never forget the +sweetness of the air, the something of sadness in the thought of love, +even in this form. The sun was singing its evensong, as were the birds. +But Peter—blessings or curses upon him!—was arrayed as only he could +array himself when he wished to look absolutely disconcerting—more like +an unwashed, uncombed tramp who had been sleeping out for weeks, than +anything else. His hair was over his eyes and ears, his face and hands +dirty, his shoes ditto. He had even blackened one tooth slightly. He had +on a collarless shirt, and yet he was jaunty withal and carried a cane, +if you please, assuming, as he always could and in the most aggravating +way, to be totally unconscious of the figure he cut. At one angle of his +multiplex character the man must have been a born actor.</p> + +<p>We waited a block away, concealed by a few trees, and at the exact hour +Dick appeared, hopeful and eager no doubt, and walking and looking +almost all that he hoped—delicate, pale, artistic. The new straw hat! +The pale green "artists'" shirt! His black, wide-buckled belt! The cane! +The dark-brown low shoes! The boutonnière! He was plainly ready for any +fate, his great moment.</p> + +<p>And then, before he could get the feeling that his admirer might not be +coming, we descended upon him in all our wretched nonchalance and +unworthiness—out of hell, as it were. We were most brisk, familiar, +affectionate. It was so fortunate to meet him so, so accidentally and +peradventure. The night was so fine. We were out for a stroll in the +park, to eat afterward. He must come along.</p> + +<p>I saw him look at Peter in that hat and no collar, and wilt. It was too +much. Such a friend—such friends (for on Peter's advice I was looking +as ill as I might, an easy matter)! No, he couldn't come. He was waiting +for some friends. We must excuse him.</p> + +<p>But Peter was not to be so easily shaken off. He launched into the most +brisk and serious conversation. He began his badger game by asking about +some work upon which Dick had been engaged before he left the office, +some order, how he was getting along with it, when it would be done; +and, <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" />when Dick evaded and then attempted to dismiss the subject, took +up another and began to expatiate on it, some work he himself was doing, +something that had developed in connection with it. He asked inane +questions, complimented Dick on his looks, began to tease him about some +girl. And poor Dick—his nervousness, his despair almost, the sense of +the waning of his opportunity! It was cruel. He was becoming more and +more restless, looking about more and more wearily and anxiously and +wishing to go or for us to go. He was horribly unhappy. Finally, after +ten or fifteen minutes had gone and various girls had crossed the plaza +in various directions, as well as carriages and saddle-horses—each one +carrying his heiress, no doubt!—he seemed to summon all his courage and +did his best to dispose of us. "You two'll have to excuse me," he +exclaimed almost wildly. "I can't wait." Those golden moments! She could +not approach! "My people aren't coming, I guess. I'll have to be going +on."</p> + +<p>He smiled weakly and made off, Peter half following and urging him to +come back. Then, since he would not, we stood there on the exact spot of +the rendezvous gazing smirkily after him. Then we went into the park a +few paces and sat on a bench in full view, talking—or Peter was—most +volubly. He was really choking with laughter. A little later, at +seven-thirty, we went cackling into the park, only to return in five +minutes as though we had changed our minds and were coming out—and saw +Dick bustling off at our approach. It was sad really. There was an +element of the tragic in it. But not to Peter. He was all laughter, all +but apoplectic gayety. "Oh, by George!" he choked. "This is too much! +Oh, ho! This is great! his poor heiress! And he came back! Har! Har! +Har!"</p> + +<p>"Peter, you dog," I said, "aren't you ashamed of yourself, to rub it in +this way?"</p> + +<p>"Not a bit, not a bit!" he insisted most enthusiastically. "Do him good. +Why shouldn't he suffer? He'll get over it. He's always bluffing about +his heiresses. Now he's lost a real one. Har! Har! Har!" and he fairly +choked, and for days and weeks and months he laughed, but he never told. +He merely chortled at his desk, and if any one asked him what he was +<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" />laughing about, even Dick, he would reply, "Oh, something—a joke I +played on a fellow once."</p> + +<p>If Dick ever guessed he never indicated as much. But that lost romance! +That faded dream!</p> + +<p>Not so long after this, the following winter, I left St. Louis and did +not see Peter for several years, during which time I drifted through +various cities to New York. We kept up a more or less desultory +correspondence which resulted eventually in his contributing to a paper +of which I had charge in New York, and later, in part at least I am +sure, in his coming there. I noticed one thing, that although Peter had +no fixed idea as to what he wished to be—being able to draw, write, +engrave, carve and what not—he was in no way troubled about it. "I +don't see just what it is that I am to do best," he said to me once. "It +may be that I will wind up as a painter or writer or collector—I can't +tell yet. I want to study, and meantime I'm making a living—that's all +I want now. I want to live, and I am living, in my way."</p> + +<p>Some men are masters of cities, or perhaps better, of all the elements +which enter into the making of them, and Peter was one. I think +sometimes that he was born a writer of great force and charm, only as +yet he had not found himself. I have known many writers, many geniuses +even, but not one his superior in intellect and romantic response to +life. He was a poet, thinker, artist, philosopher and master of prose, +as a posthumous volume ("Wolf, the Autobiography of a Cave Dweller") +amply proves, but he was not ready then to fully express himself, and it +troubled him not at all. He loved life's every facet, was gay and +helpful to himself and others, and yet always with an eye for the +undercurrent of human misery, error and tragedy as well as comedy. +Immediately upon coming to New York he began to examine and grasp it in +a large way, its museums, public buildings, geography, politics, but +after a very little while decided suddenly that he did not belong there +and without a by-your-leave, although once more we had fallen into each +other's ways, he departed without a word, and I did not hear from him +for months. Temporarily at least he felt that he had to obtain more +experience in a lesser field, and lost no time in so doing. The next I +knew he <a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" />was connected, at a comfortable salary, with the then dominant +paper of Philadelphia.</p> + +<p>It was after he had established himself very firmly in Philadelphia that +we two finally began to understand each other fully, to sympathize +really with each other's point of view as opposed to the more or less +gay and casual nature of our earlier friendship. Also here perhaps, more +than before, we felt the binding influence of having worked together in +the West. It was here that I first noticed the ease with which he took +hold of a city, the many-sidedness of his peculiar character which led +him to reflect so many angles of it, which a less varied temperament +would never have touched upon. For, first of all, wherever he happened +to be, he was intensely interested in the age and history of his city, +its buildings and graveyards and tombstones which pointed to its past +life, then its present physical appearance, the chief characteristics of +the region in which it lay, its rivers, lakes, parks and adjacent places +and spots of interest (what rambles we took!), as well as its newest and +finest things architecturally. Nor did any one ever take a keener +interest in the current intellectual resources of a city—any city in +which he happened to be—its museums, libraries, old bookstores, +newspapers, magazines, and I know not what else. It was he who first +took me into Leary's bookstore in Philadelphia, descanting with his +usual gusto on its merits. Then and lastly he was keenly and wisely +interested in various currents of local politics, society and finance, +although he always considered the first a low mess, an arrangement or +adjustment of many necessary things among the lower orders. He seemed to +know or sense in some occult way everything that was going on in those +various realms. His mind was so full and rich that merely to be with him +was a delight. He gushed like a fountain, and yet not polemically, of +all he knew, heard, felt, suspected. His thoughts were so rich at times +that to me they were more like a mosaic of variegated and richly colored +stones and jewels. I felt always as though I were in the presence of a +great personage, not one who was reserved or pompous but a loose +bubbling temperament, wise beyond his years or day, and so truly great +that perhaps because of the intensity and immense variety of his +interests he would never shine in a world in which the most <a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" />intensive +specialization, and that of a purely commercial character, was the grand +rôle.</p> + +<p>And yet I always felt that perhaps he might. He attracted people of all +grades so easily and warmly. His mind leaped from one interest to +another almost too swiftly, and yet the average man understood and liked +him. While in a way he contemned their mental states as limited or +bigoted, he enjoyed the conditions under which they lived, seemed to +wish to immerse himself in them. And yet nearly all his thoughts were, +from their point of view perhaps, dangerous. Among his friends he was +always talking freely, honestly, of things which the average man could +not or would not discuss, dismissing as trash illusion, lies or the +cunning work of self-seeking propagandists, most of the things currently +accepted as true.</p> + +<p>He was constantly commenting on the amazing dullness of man, his +prejudices, the astonishing manner in which he seized upon and clung +savagely or pathetically to the most ridiculous interpretations of life. +He was also forever noting that crass chance which wrecks so many of our +dreams and lives,—its fierce brutalities, its seemingly inane +indifference to wondrous things,—but never in a depressed or morbid +spirit; merely as a matter of the curious, as it were. But if any one +chanced to contradict him he was likely to prove liquid fire. At the +same time he was forever reading, reading, reading—history, archæology, +ethnology, geology, travel, medicine, biography, and descanting on the +wonders and idiosyncrasies of man and nature which they revealed. He was +never tired of talking of the intellectual and social conditions that +ruled in Greece and Rome from 600 B.C. on, the philosophies, the +travels, the art, the simple, natural pagan view of things, and +regretting that they were no more. He grieved at times, I think, that he +had not been of that world, might not have seen it, or, failing that, +might not see all the shards of those extinct civilizations. There was +something loving and sad in the manner in which at times, in one museum +and another, he would examine ancient art designs, those of the +Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, their public and private house plans, +their statues, book rolls, inscriptions, flambeaux, boats, swords, +chariots. Carthage, Rome, Greece, Phoenicia—their <a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" />colonies, art and +trade stuffs, their foods, pleasures and worships—how he raved! A book +like Thaïs, Salammbo, Sonica, Quo Vadis, touched him to the quick.</p> + +<p>At the same time, and odd as it may seem, he was seemingly in intimate +contact with a circle of friends that rather astonished me by its +catholicity. It included, for instance, and quite naïvely, real estate +dealers, clerks, a bank cashier or two, some man who had a leather shop +or cigar factory in the downtown section, a drummer, a printer, two or +three newspaper artists and reporters—a list too long to catalogue here +and seemingly not interesting, at least not inspiring to look at or live +in contact with. Yet his relations with all of these were of a warm, +genial, helpful, homely character, quite intimate. He used them as one +might a mulch in which to grow things, or in other words he took them on +their own ground; a thing which I could never quite understand, being +more or less aloof myself and yet wishing always to be able so to do, to +take life, as he did.</p> + +<p>For he desired, and secured, their good will and drew them to him. He +took a simple, natural pleasure in the kinds of things they were able to +do, as well as the kinds of things he could do. With these, then, and a +type of girl who might not be classed above the clerk or manicure class, +he and they managed to eke out a social life, the outstanding phases of +which were dances, "parties," dinners at one simple home and another, +flirting, boating, and fishing expeditions in season, evenings out at +restaurants or the theater, and I know not what else. He could sing (a +very fair baritone), play the piano, cornet, flute, banjo, mandolin and +guitar, but always insisted that his favorite instruments were the +jews'-harp, the French harp (mouth organ) and a comb with a piece of +paper over it, against which he would blow with fierce energy, making +the most outrageous sounds, until stopped. At any "party" he was always +talking, jumping about, dancing, cooking something—fudge, taffy, a +rarebit, and insisting in the most mock-serious manner that all the +details be left strictly to him. "Now just cut out of this, all of you, +and leave this to your Uncle Dudley. Who's doing this? All I want is +sugar, chocolate, a pot, a big spoon, and I'll show you the best fudge +you ever ate." Then he would don an apron or towel and go to <a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" />work in a +manner which would rob any gathering of a sense of stiffness and induce +a naturalness most intriguing, calculated to enhance the general +pleasure an hundredfold.</p> + +<p>Yes, Peter woke people up. He could convey or spread a sense of ease and +good nature and give and take among all. Wise as he was and not so +good-looking, he was still attractive to girls, very much so, and by no +means unconscious of their beauty. He could always, and easily, break +down their reserve, and was soon apparently on terms of absolute +friendship, exchanging all sorts of small gossip and news with them +about this, that and the other person about whom they knew. Indeed he +was such a general favorite and so seemingly impartial that it was hard +to say how he came close to any, and yet he did. At odd tête-à-tête +moments he was always making confessions as to "nights" or "afternoons." +"My God, Dreiser, I've found a peach! I can't tell you—but oh, +wonderful! Just what I need. This world's a healthy old place, eh? Let's +have another drink, what?" and he would order a stein or a half-schoppen +of light German beer and pour it down, grinning like a gargoyle.</p> + +<p>It was while he was in Philadelphia that he told me the beginnings of +the love affair which eventually ended in his marrying and settling down +into the homiest of home men I have ever seen and which for sheer +naïveté and charm is one of the best love stories I know anything about. +It appears that he was walking in some out-of-the-way factory realm of +North Philadelphia one Saturday afternoon about the first or second year +of his stay there, when, playing in the street with some other children, +he saw a girl of not more than thirteen or fourteen who, as he expressed +it to me, "came damned near being the prettiest thing I ever saw. She +had yellow hair and a short blue dress and pink bows in her hair—and +say, Dreiser, when I saw her I stopped flat and said 'me for that' if I +have to wait fifteen years! Dutchy—you never saw the beat! And poor! +Her shoes were clogs. She couldn't even talk English yet. Neither could +the other kids. They were all sausage—a regular German neighborhood.</p> + +<p>"But, say, I watched her a while and then I went over and said, 'Come +here, kid. Where do you live?' She didn't understand, and one of the +other kids translated for her, and then <a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" />she said, 'Ich sprech nicht +English,'" and he mocked her. "That fixed her for me. One of the others +finally told me who she was and where she lived—and, say, I went right +home and began studying German. In three months I could make myself +understood, but before that, in two weeks, I hunted up her old man and +made him understand that I wanted to be friends with the family, to +learn German. I went out Sundays when they were all at home. There are +six children and I made friends with 'em all. For a long time I couldn't +make Madchen (that's what they call her) understand what it was all +about, but finally I did, and she knows now all right. And I'm crazy +about her and I'm going to marry her as soon as she's old enough."</p> + +<p>"How do you know that she'll have you?" I inquired.</p> + +<p>"Oh, she'll have me. I always tell her I'm going to marry her when she's +eighteen, and she says all right. And I really believe she does like me. +I'm crazy about her."</p> + +<p>Five years later, if I may anticipate a bit, after he had moved to +Newark and placed himself rather well in the journalistic field and was +able to carry out his plans in regard to himself, he suddenly returned +to Philadelphia and married, preparing beforehand an apartment which he +fancied would please her. It was a fortunate marriage in so far as love +and home pleasures were concerned. I never encountered a more delightful +atmosphere.</p> + +<p>All along in writing this I feel as though I were giving but the +thinnest portrait of Peter; he was so full and varied in his moods and +interests. To me he illustrated the joy that exists, on the one hand, in +the common, the so-called homely and what some might think ugly side of +life, certainly the very simple and ordinarily human aspect of things; +on the other, in the sheer comfort and satisfaction that might be taken +in things truly intellectual and artistic, but to which no great expense +attached—old books, prints, things connected with history and science +in their various forms, skill in matters relating to the applied arts +and what not, such as the coloring and firing of pottery and glass, the +making of baskets, hammocks and rugs, the carving of wood, the +collection and imitation of Japanese and Chinese prints, the art of +embalming as applied by the Egyptians (which, in connec<a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" />tion with an +undertaker to whom he had attached himself, he attempted to revive or at +least play with, testing his skill for instance by embalming a dead cat +or two after the Egyptian manner). In all of these lines he trained +himself after a fashion and worked with skill, although invariably he +insisted that he was little more than a bungler, a poor follower after +the art of some one else. But most of all, at this time and later, he +was interested in collecting things Japanese and Chinese: netsukes, +inros, censors, images of jade and porcelain, teajars, vases, prints; +and it was while he was in Philadelphia and seemingly trifling about +with the group I have mentioned and making love to his little German +girl that he was running here and there to this museum and that and +laying the foundations of some of those interesting collections which +later he was fond of showing his friends or interested collectors. By +the time he had reached Newark, as chief cartoonist of the leading paper +there, he was in possession of a complete Tokaido (the forty views on +the road between Tokio and Kyoto), various prints by Hokusai, Sesshiu, +Sojo; a collection of one hundred inros, all of fifty netsukes, all of +thirty censers, lacquered boxes and teajars, and various other +exceedingly beautiful and valuable things—Mandarin skirts and coats, +among other things—which subsequently he sold or traded around among +one collector friend and another for things which they had. I recall his +selling his completed Tokaido, a labor which had extended over four +years, for over a thousand dollars. Just before he died he was trading +netsukes for inros and getting ready to sell all these latter to a man, +who in turn was going to sell his collection to a museum.</p> + +<p>But in between was this other, this ultra-human side, which ran to such +commonplaces as bowling, tennis-playing, golf, billiards, cards and +gambling with the dice—a thing which always struck me as having an odd +turn to it in connection with Peter, since he could be interested in so +many other things, and yet he pursued these commonplaces with as much +gusto at times as one possessed of a mania. At others he seemed not to +miss or think of them. Indeed, you could be sure of him and all his +interests, whatever they were, feeling that he had himself well in hand, +knew exactly how far he was <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" />going, and that when the time came he could +and would stop. Yet during the process of his momentary relaxation or +satiation, in whatever field it might be, he would give you a sense of +abandon, even ungovernable appetite, which to one who had not known him +long might have indicated a mania.</p> + +<p>Thus I remember once running over to Philadelphia to spend a Saturday +and Sunday with him, visits of this kind, in either direction, being of +the commonest occurrence. At that time he was living in some +quiet-looking boarding-house in South Fourth Street, but in which dwelt +or visited the group above-mentioned, and whenever I came there, at +least, there was always an atmosphere of intense gaming or playing in +some form, which conveyed to me nothing so much as a glorious sense of +life and pleasure. A dozen or more men might be seated at or standing +about a poker or dice table, in summer (often in winter) with their +coats off, their sleeves rolled up, Peter always conspicuous among them. +On the table or to one side would be money, a pitcher or a tin pail of +beer, boxes of cigarettes or cigars, and there would be Peter among the +players, flushed with excitement, his collar off, his hair awry, his +little figure stirring about here and there or gesticulating or lighting +a cigar or pouring down a glass of beer, shouting at the top of his +voice, his eyes aglow, "That's mine!" "I say it's not!" "Two on the +sixes!" "Three!" "Four!" "Ah, roll the bones! Roll the bones!" "Get off! +Get off! Come on now, Spikes—cough up! You've got the money now. Pay +back. No more loans if you don't." "Once on the fours—the fives—the +aces!" "Roll the bones! Roll the bones! Come on!" Or, if he saw me, +softening and saying, "Gee, Dreiser, I'm ahead twenty-eight so far!" or +"I've lost thirty all told. I'll stick this out, though, to win or lose +five more, and then I'll quit. I give notice, you fellows, five more, +one way or the other, and then I'm through. See? Say, these damned +sharks are always trying to turn a trick. And when they lose they don't +want to pay. I'm offa this for life unless I get a better deal."</p> + +<p>In the room there might be three or four girls—sisters, sweethearts, +pals of one or other of the players—some dancing, some playing the +piano or singing, and in addition the landlord and his wife, a slattern +pair usually, about whose <a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" />past and present lives Peter seemed always to +know much. He had seduced them all apparently into a kind of rakish +camaraderie which was literally amazing to behold. It thrilled, +fascinated, at times frightened me, so thin and inadequate and +inefficient seemed my own point of view and appetite for life. He was +vigorous, charitable, pagan, gay, full of health and strength. He would +play at something, anything, indoors or out as occasion offered, until +he was fairly perspiring, when, throwing down whatever implement he had +in hand—be it cards, a tennis-racket, a golf club—would declare, +"That's enough! That's enough! I'm done now. I've licked-cha," or "I'm +licked. No more. Not another round. Come on, Dreiser, I know just the +place for us—" and then descanting on a steak or fish planked, or some +new method of serving corn or sweet potatoes or tomatoes, he would lead +the way somewhere to a favorite "rat's killer," as he used to say, or +grill or Chinese den, and order enough for four or five, unless stopped. +As he walked, and he always preferred to walk, the latest political row +or scandal, the latest discovery, tragedy or art topic would get his +keen attention. In his presence the whole world used to look different +to me, more colorful, more hopeful, more gay. Doors seemed to open; in +imagination I saw the interiors of a thousand realms—homes, factories, +laboratories, dens, resorts of pleasure. During his day such figures as +McKinley, Roosevelt, Hanna, Rockefeller, Rogers, Morgan, Peary, Harriman +were abroad and active, and their mental states and points of view and +interests—and sincerities and insincerities—were the subject of his +wholly brilliant analysis. He rather admired the clever opportunist, I +think, so long as he was not mean in view or petty, yet he scorned and +even despised the commercial viewpoint or trade reactions of a man like +McKinley. Rulers ought to be above mere commercialism. Once when I asked +him why he disliked McKinley so much he replied laconically, "The voice +is the voice of McKinley, but the hands—are the hands of Hanna." +Roosevelt seemed to amuse him always, to be a delightful if ridiculous +and self-interested "grandstander," as he always said, "always looking +out for Teddy, you bet," but good for the country, inspiring it with +visions. Rockefeller was wholly admirable as a force driving the country +on to autocracy, <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" />oligarchy, possibly revolution. Ditto Hanna, ditto +Morgan, ditto Harriman, ditto Rogers, unless checked. Peary might have, +and again might not have, discovered the North Pole. He refused to +judge. Old "Doc" Cook, the pseudo discoverer, who appeared very shortly +before he died, only drew forth chuckles of delight. "My God, the gall, +the nerve! And that wreath of roses the Danes put around his neck! It's +colossal, Dreiser. It's grand. Munchausen, Cook, Gulliver, Marco +Polo—they'll live forever, or ought to!"</p> + +<p>Some Saturday afternoons or Sundays, if he came to me or I to him in +time, we indulged in long idle rambles, anywhere, either going first by +streetcar, boat or train somewhere and then walking, or, if the mood was +not so, just walking on and on somewhere and talking. On such occasions +Peter was at his best and I could have listened forever, quite as the +disciples of Plato and Aristotle must have to them, to his discourses on +life, his broad and broadening conceptions of Nature—her cruelty, +beauty, mystery. Once, far out somewhere beyond Camden, we were idling +about an inlet where were boats and some fishermen and a trestle which +crossed it. Just as we were crossing it some men in a boat below +discovered the body of a possible suicide, in the water, days old and +discolored, but still intact and with the clothes of a man of at least +middle-class means. I was for leaving, being made a little sick by the +mere sight. Not so Peter. He was for joining in the effort which brought +the body to shore, and in a moment was back with the small group of +watermen, speculating and arguing as to the condition and character of +the dead man, making himself really one of the group. Finally he was +urging the men to search the pockets while some one went for the police. +But more than anything, with a hard and yet in its way humane realism +which put any courage of mine in that direction to the blush, he was all +for meditating on the state and nature of man, his chemical +components—chlorine, sulphuric acid, phosphoric acid, potassium, +sodium, calcium, magnesium, oxygen—and speculating as to which +particular chemicals in combination gave the strange metallic blues, +greens, yellows and browns to the decaying flesh! He had a great stomach +for life. The fact that insects were at work shocked him not at all. He +speculated as to <i>these</i>, their duties <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" />and functions! He asserted +boldly that man was merely a chemical formula at best, that something +much wiser than he had prepared him, for some not very brilliant purpose +of his or its own perhaps, and that he or it, whoever or whatever he or +it was, was neither good nor bad, as we imagined such things, but both. +He at once went off into the mysteries—where, when with me at least, he +seemed to prefer to dwell—talked of the divinations of the Chaldeans, +how they studied the positions of the stars and the entrails of dead +animals before going to war, talked of the horrible fetiches of the +Africans, the tricks and speculations of the priests of Greek and Roman +temples, finally telling me the story of the ambitious eel-seller who +anchored the dead horse in the stream in order to have plenty of eels +every morning for market. I revolted. I declared he was sickening.</p> + +<p>"My boy," he assured me, "you are too thin-skinned. You can't take life +that way. It's all good to me, whatever happens. We're here. We're not +running it. Why be afraid to look at it? The chemistry of a man's body +isn't any worse than the chemistry of anything else, and we're eating +the dead things we've killed all the time. A little more or a little +less in any direction—what difference?"</p> + +<p>Apropos of this same a little later—to shock me, of course, as he well +knew he could—he assured me that in eating a dish of chop suey in a +Chinese restaurant, a very low one, he had found and eaten a part of the +little finger of a child, and that "it was very good—very good, +indeed."</p> + +<p>"Dog!" I protested. "Swine! Thou ghoula!" but he merely chuckled +heartily and stuck to his tale!</p> + +<p>But if I paint this side of him it is to round out his wonderful, to me +almost incredible, figure. Insisting on such things, he was still and +always warm and human, sympathetic, diplomatic and cautious, according +to his company, so that he was really acceptable anywhere. Peter would +never shock those who did not want to be shocked. A minute or two or +five after such a discourse as the above he might be describing some +marvelously beautiful process of pollination among the flowers, the +history of some medieval trade guild or gazing at a beautiful scene and +conveying to one by his very attitude his unspoken emotion.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" />After spending about two or three years in Philadelphia—which city +came to reflect for me the color of Peter's interests and mood—he +suddenly removed to Newark, having been nursing an arrangement with its +principal paper for some time. Some quarrel or dissatisfaction with the +director of his department caused him, without other notice, to paste +some crisp quotation from one of the poets on his desk and depart! In +Newark, a city to which before this I had paid not the slightest +attention, he found himself most happy; and I, living in New York close +at hand, felt that I possessed in it and him an earthly paradise. +Although it contained no more than 300,000 people and seemed, or had, a +drear factory realm only, he soon revealed it to me in quite another +light, because he was there. Very swiftly he found a wondrous canal +running right through it, under its market even, and we went walking +along its banks, out into the woods and fields. He found or created out +of an existing boardinghouse in a back street so colorful and gay a +thing that after a time it seemed to me to outdo that one of +Philadelphia. He joined a country club near Passaic, on the river of +that name, on the veranda of which we often dined. He found a Chinese +quarter with a restaurant or two; an amazing Italian section with a +restaurant; a man who had a $40,000 collection of rare Japanese and +Chinese curios, all in his rooms at the Essex County Insane Asylum, for +he was the chemist there; a man who was a playwright and manager in New +York; another who owned a newspaper syndicate; another who directed a +singing society; another who was president of a gun club; another who +owned and made or rather fired pottery for others. Peter was so restless +and vital that he was always branching out in a new direction. To my +astonishment he now took up the making and firing of pottery for +himself, being interested in reproducing various Chinese dishes and +vases of great beauty, the originals of which were in the Metropolitan +Museum of Art. His plan was first to copy the design, then buy, shape or +bake the clay at some pottery, then paint or decorate with liquid +porcelain at his own home, and fire. In the course of six or eight +months, working in his rooms Saturdays and Sundays and some mornings +before going to the office, he managed to <a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" />produce three or four which +satisfied him and which he kept plates of real beauty. The others he +gave away.</p> + +<p>A little later, if you please, it was Turkish rug-making on a small +scale, the frame and materials for which he slowly accumulated, and then +providing himself with a pillow, Turkish-fashion, he crossed his legs +before it and began slowly but surely to produce a rug, the colors and +design of which were entirely satisfactory to me. As may be imagined, it +was slow and tedious work, undertaken at odd moments and when there was +nothing else for him to do, always when the light was good and never at +night, for he maintained that the coloring required the best of light. +Before this odd, homely, wooden machine, a combination of unpainted rods +and cords, he would sit, cross-legged or on a bench at times, and pound +and pick and tie and unravel—a most wearisome-looking task to me.</p> + +<p>"For heaven's sake," I once observed, "couldn't you think of anything +more interestingly insane to do than this? It's the slowest, most +painstaking work I ever saw."</p> + +<p>"That's just it, and that's just why I like it," he replied, never +looking at me but proceeding with his weaving in the most industrious +fashion. "You have just one outstanding fault, Dreiser. You don't know +how to make anything out of the little things of life. You want to +remember that this is an art, not a job. I'm discovering whether I can +make a Turkish carpet or not, and it gives me pleasure. If I can get so +much as one good spot of color worked out, one small portion of the +design, I'll be satisfied. I'll know then that I can do it, the whole +thing, don't you see? Some of these things have been the work of a +lifetime of one man. You call that a small thing? I don't. The pleasure +is in doing it, proving that you can, not in the rug itself." He clacked +and tied, congratulating himself vastly. In due course of time three or +four inches were finished, a soft and yet firm silky fabric, and he was +in great glee over it, showing it to all and insisting that in time (how +long? I often wondered) he would complete it and would then own a +splendid carpet.</p> + +<p>It was at this time that he built about him in Newark a structure of +friendships and interests which, it seemed to me, <a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" />promised to be for +life. He interested himself intensely in the paper with which he was +connected and although he was only the cartoonist, still it was not long +before various departments and elements in connection with it seemed to +reflect his presence and to be alive with his own good will and +enthusiasm. Publisher, editor, art director, managing editor and +business manager, were all in friendly contact with him. He took out +life insurance for the benefit of the wife and children he was later to +have! With the manager of the engraving department he was working out +problems in connection with copperplate engraving and printing; with the +official photographer, art photography; with the art director, some +scheme for enlarging the local museum in some way. With his enduring +love of the fantastic and ridiculous it was not long before he had +successfully planned and executed a hoax of the most ridiculous +character, a piece of idle drollery almost too foolish to think of, and +yet which eventually succeeded in exciting the natives of at least four +States and was telegraphed to and talked about in a Sunday feature way, +by newspapers all over the country, and finally involved Peter as an +actor and stage manager of the most vivid type imaginable. And yet it +was all done really to amuse himself, to see if he could do it, as he +often told me.</p> + +<p>This particular hoax related to that silly old bugaboo of our boyhood +days, the escaped and wandering wild man, ferocious, blood-loving, +terrible. I knew nothing of it until Peter, one Sunday afternoon when we +were off for a walk a year or two after he had arrived in Newark, +suddenly announced apropos of nothing at all, "Dreiser, I've just hit +upon a great idea which I am working out with some of the boys down on +our paper. It's a dusty old fake, but it will do as well as any other, +better than if it were a really decent idea. I'm inventing a wild man. +You know how crazy the average dub is over anything strange, +different,'terrible.' Barnum was right, you know. There's one born every +minute. Well, I'm just getting this thing up now. It's as good as the +sacred white elephant or the blood-sweating hippopotamus. And what's +more, I'm going to stage it right here in little old Newark—and they'll +all fall for it, and don't you think they won't," and he chuckled most +ecstatically.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" />For heaven's sake, what's coming now?" I sighed.</p> + +<p>"Oh, very well. But I have it all worked out just the same. We're +beginning to run the preliminary telegrams every three or four days—one +from Ramblersville, South Jersey, let us say, another from Hohokus, +twenty-five miles farther on, four or five days later. By degrees as +spring comes on I'll bring him north—right up here into Essex County—a +genuine wild man, see, something fierce and terrible. We're giving him +long hair like a bison, red eyes, fangs, big hands and feet. He's +entirely naked—or will be when he gets here. He's eight feet tall. He +kills and eats horses, dogs, cattle, pigs, chickens. He frightens men +and women and children. I'm having him bound across lonely roads, look +in windows at night, stampede cattle and drive tramps and peddlers out +of the country. But say, wait and see. As summer comes on we'll make a +regular headliner of it. We'll give it pages on Sunday. We'll get the +rubes to looking for him in posses, offer rewards. Maybe some one will +actually capture and bring in some poor lunatic, a real wild man. You +can do anything if you just stir up the natives enough."</p> + +<p>I laughed. "You're crazy," I said. "What a low comedian you really are, +Peter!"</p> + +<p>Well, the weeks passed, and to mark progress he occasionally sent me +clippings of telegrams, cut not from his pages, if you please, but from +such austere journals as the <i>Sun</i> and <i>World</i> of New York, the <i>North +American</i> of Philadelphia, the <i>Courant</i> of Hartford, recording the +antics of his imaginary thing of the woods. Longish articles actually +began to appear here and there, in Eastern papers especially, describing +the exploits of this very elusive and moving demon. He had been seen in +a dozen fairly widely distributed places within the month, but always +coming northward. In one place he had killed three cows at once, in +another two, and eaten portions of them raw! Old Mrs. Gorswitch of +Dutchers Run, Pennsylvania, returning from a visit to her +daughter-in-law, Annie A. Gorswitch, and ambling along a lonely road in +Osgoroola County, was suddenly descended upon by a most horrific figure, +half man, half beast, very tall and with long hair and red, all but +bloody eyes who, looking at her with avid glance, made as if to seize +her, but a wagon approaching along the <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" />road from another direction, he +had desisted and fled, leaving old Mrs. Gorswitch in a faint upon the +ground. Barns and haystacks had been fired here and there, lonely widows +in distant cotes been made to abandon their homes through fear.... I +marveled at the assiduity and patience of the man.</p> + +<p>One day in June or July following, being in Newark and asking Peter +quite idly about his wild man, he replied, "Oh, it's great, great! +Couldn't be better! He'll soon be here now. We've got the whole thing +arranged now for next Sunday or Saturday—depends on which day I can get +off. We're going to photograph him. Wanto come over?"</p> + +<p>"What rot!" I said. "Who's going to pose? Where?"</p> + +<p>"Well," he chuckled, "come along and see. You'll find out fast enough. +We've got an actual wild man. I got him. I'll have him out here in the +woods. If you don't believe it, come over. You wouldn't believe me when +I said I could get the natives worked up. Well, they are. Look at +these," and he produced clippings from rival papers. The wild man was +actually being seen in Essex County, not twenty-five miles from Newark. +He had ravaged the property of people in five different States. It was +assumed that he was a lunatic turned savage, or that he had escaped from +a circus or trading-ship wrecked on the Jersey coast (suggestions made +by Peter himself). His depredations, all told, had by now run into +thousands, speaking financially. Staid residents were excited. Rewards +for his capture were being offered in different places. Posses of irate +citizens were, and would continue to be, after him, armed to the teeth, +until he was captured. Quite remarkable developments might be expected +at any time ... I stared. It seemed too ridiculous, and it was, and back +of it all was smirking, chuckling Peter, the center and fountain of it!</p> + +<p>"You dog!" I protested. "You clown!" He merely grinned.</p> + +<p>Not to miss so interesting a dénouement as the actual capture of this +prodigy of the wilds, I was up early and off the following Sunday to +Newark, where in Peter's apartment in due time I found him, his rooms in +a turmoil, he himself busy stuffing things into a bag, outside an +automobile waiting and within it the staff photographer as well as +several others, all grinning, and all of whom, as he informed me, were +to assist <a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" />in the great work of tracking, ambushing and, if possible, +photographing the dread peril.</p> + +<p>"Yes, well, who's going to be him?" I insisted.</p> + +<p>"Never mind! Never mind! Don't be so inquisitive," chortled Peter. "A +wild man has his rights and privileges, as well as any other. Remember, +I caution all of you to be respectful in his presence. He's very +sensitive, and he doesn't like newspapermen anyhow. He'll be +photographed, and he'll be wild. That's all you need to know."</p> + +<p>In due time we arrived at as comfortable an abode for a wild man as well +might be. It was near the old Essex and Morris Canal, not far from +Boonton. A charming clump of brush and rock was selected, and here a +snapshot of a posse hunting, men peering cautiously from behind trees in +groups and looking as though they were most eager to discover something, +was made. Then Peter, slipping away—I suddenly saw him ambling toward +us, hair upstanding, body smeared with black muck, daubs of white about +the eyes, little tufts of wool about wrists and ankles and loins—as +good a figure of a wild man as one might wish, only not eight feet tall.</p> + +<p>"Peter!" I said. "How ridiculous! You loon!"</p> + +<p>"Have a care how you address me," he replied with solemn dignity. "A +wild man is a wild man. Our punctilio is not to be trifled with. I am of +the oldest, the most famous line of wild men extant. Touch me not." He +strode the grass with the air of a popular movie star, while he +discussed with the art director and photographer the most terrifying and +convincing attitudes of a wild man seen by accident and unconscious of +his pursuers.</p> + +<p>"But you're not eight feet tall!" I interjected at one point.</p> + +<p>"A small matter. A small matter," he replied airily. "I will be in the +picture. Nothing easier. We wild men, you know—"</p> + +<p>Some of the views were excellent, most striking. He leered most terribly +from arras of leaves or indicated fright or cunning. The man was a good +actor. For years I retained and may still have somewhere a full set of +the pictures as well as the double-page spread which followed the next +week.</p> + +<p>Well, the thing was appropriately discussed, as it should <a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" />have been, +but the wild man got away, as was feared. He went into the nearby canal +and washed away all his terror, or rather he vanished into the dim +recesses of Peter's memory. He was only heard of a few times more in the +papers, his supposed body being found in some town in northeast +Pennsylvania—or in the small item that was "telegraphed" from there. As +for Peter, he emerged from the canal, or from its banks, a cleaner if +not a better man. He was grinning, combing his hair, adjusting his tie.</p> + +<p>"What a scamp!" I insisted lovingly. "What an incorrigible trickster!"</p> + +<p>"Dreiser, Dreiser," he chortled, "there's nothing like it. You should +not scoff. I am a public benefactor. I am really a creator. I have +created a being as distinct as any that ever lived. He is in many +minds—mine, yours. You know that you believe in him really. There he +was peeking out from between those bushes only fifteen minutes ago. And +he has made, and will make, thousands of people happy, thrill them, give +them a new interest. If Stevenson can create a Jekyll and Hyde, why +can't I create a wild man? I have. We have his picture to prove it. What +more do you wish?"</p> + +<p>I acquiesced. All told, it was a delightful bit of foolery and art, and +Peter was what he was first and foremost, an artist in the grotesque and +the ridiculous.</p> + +<p>For some time thereafter peace seemed to reign in his mind, only now it +was that the marriage and home and children idea began to grow. From +much of the foregoing it may have been assumed that Peter was out of +sympathy with the ordinary routine of life, despised the commonplace, +the purely practical. As a matter of fact it was just the other way +about. I never knew a man so radical in some of his viewpoints, so +versatile and yet so wholly, intentionally and cravingly, immersed in +the usual as Peter. He was all for creating, developing, brightening +life along simple rather than outré lines, in so far as he himself was +concerned. Nearly all of his arts and pleasures were decorative and +homey. A good grocer, a good barber, a good saloon-keeper, a good +tailor, a shoe maker, was just as interesting in his way to Peter as any +one or anything else, if not a little more so. He respected their lines, +their arts, their professions, and above all, where they <a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" />had it, their +industry, sobriety and desire for fair dealing. He believed that +millions of men, especially those about him were doing the best they +could under the very severe conditions which life offered. He objected +to the idle, the too dull the swindlers and thieves as well as the +officiously puritanic or dogmatic. He resented, for himself at least, +solemn pomp and show. Little houses, little gardens, little porches, +simple cleanly neighborhoods with their air of routine, industry, +convention and order, fascinated him as apparently nothing else could. +He insisted that they were enough. A man did not need a great house +unless he was a public character with official duties.</p> + +<p>"Dreiser," he would say in Philadelphia and Newark, if not before, "it's +in just such a neighborhood as this that some day I'm going to live. I'm +going to have my little <i>frau</i>, my seven children, my chickens, dog, +cat, canary, best German style, my garden, my birdbox, my pipe; and +Sundays, by God, I'll march 'em all off to church, wife and seven kids, +as regular as clockwork, shined shoes, pigtails and all, and I'll lead +the procession."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," I said. "You talk."</p> + +<p>"Well, wait and see. Nothing in this world means so much to me as the +good old orderly home stuff. One ought to live and die in a family. It's +the right way. I'm cutting up now, sowing my wild oats, but that's +nothing. I'm just getting ready to eventually settle down and live, just +as I tell you, and be an ideal orderly citizen. It's the only way. It's +the way nature intends us to do. All this early kid stuff is passing, a +sorting-out process. We get over it. Every fellow does, or ought to be +able to, if he's worth anything, find some one woman that he can live +with and stick by her. That makes the world that you and I like to live +in, and you know it. There's a psychic call in all of us to it, I think. +It's the genius of our civilization, to marry one woman and settle down. +And when I do, no more of this all-night stuff with this, that and the +other lady. I'll be a model husband and father, sure as you're standing +there. Don't you think I won't. Smile if you want to—it's so. I'll have +my garden. I'll be friendly with my neighbors. You can come over then +and help us put the kids to bed."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" />Oh, Lord! This is a new bug now! We'll have the vine-covered cot idea +for a while, anyhow."</p> + +<p>"Oh, all right. Scoff if you want to. You'll see."</p> + +<p>Time went by. He was doing all the things I have indicated, living in a +kind of whirl of life. At the same time, from time to time, he would +come back to this thought. Once, it is true, I thought it was all over +with the little yellow-haired girl in Philadelphia. He talked of her +occasionally, but less and less. Out on the golf links near Passaic he +met another girl, one of a group that flourished there. I met her. She +was not unpleasing, a bit sensuous, rather attractive in dress and +manners, not very well informed, but gay, clever, up-to-date; such a +girl as would pass among other women as fairly satisfactory.</p> + +<p>For a time Peter seemed greatly attracted to her. She danced, played a +little, was fair at golf and tennis, and she was, or pretended to be, +intensely interested in him. He confessed at last that he believed he +was in love with her.</p> + +<p>"So it's all day with Philadelphia, is it?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"It's a shame," he replied, "but I'm afraid so. I'm having a hell of a +time with myself, my alleged conscience, I tell you."</p> + +<p>I heard little more about it. He had a fad for collecting rings at this +time, a whole casket full, like a Hindu prince, and he told me once he +was giving her her choice of them.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he announced that it was "all off" and that he was going to +marry the maid of Philadelphia. He had thrown the solitaire engagement +ring he had given her down a sewer! At first he would confess nothing as +to the reason or the details, but being so close to me it eventually +came out. Apparently, to the others as to myself, he had talked much of +his simple home plans, his future children—the good citizen idea. He +had talked it to his new love also, and she had sympathized and agreed. +Yet one day, after he had endowed her with the engagement ring, some +one, a member of the golf club, came and revealed a tale. The girl was +not "straight." She had been, mayhap was even then, "intimate" with +other men—one anyhow. She was in love with Peter well enough, as she +insisted afterward, and willing to undertake the life he suggested, but +she had not broken with the old atmosphere completely, or if she had it +was still not believed that she had.<a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" /> There were those who could not +only charge, but prove. A compromising note of some kind sent to some +one was involved, turned over to Peter.</p> + +<p>"Dreiser," he growled as he related the case to me, "it serves me right. +I ought to know better. I know the kind of woman I need. This one has +handed me a damned good wallop, and I deserve it. I might have guessed +that she wasn't suited to me. She was really too free—a life-lover more +than a wife. That home stuff! She was just stringing me because she +liked me. She isn't really my sort, not simple enough."</p> + +<p>"But you loved her, I thought?"</p> + +<p>"I did, or thought I did. Still, I used to wonder too. There were many +ways about her that troubled me. You think I'm kidding about this home +and family idea, but I'm not. It suits me, however flat it looks to you. +I want to do that, live that way, go through the normal routine +experience, and I'm going to do it."</p> + +<p>"But how did you break it off with her so swiftly?" I asked curiously.</p> + +<p>"Well, when I heard this I went direct to her and put it up to her. If +you'll believe me she never even denied it. Said it was all true, but +that she was in love with me all right, and would change and be all that +I wanted her to be."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's fair enough," I said, "if she loves you. You're no saint +yourself, you know. If you'd encourage her, maybe she'd make good."</p> + +<p>"Well, maybe, but I don't think so really," he returned, shaking his +head. "She likes me, but not enough, I'm afraid. She wouldn't run +straight, now that she's had this other. She'd mean to maybe, but she +wouldn't. I feel it about her. And anyhow I don't want to take any +chances. I like her—I'm crazy about her really, but I'm through. I'm +going to marry little Dutchy if she'll have me, and cut out this +old-line stuff. You'll have to stand up with me when I do."</p> + +<p>In three months more the new arrangement was consummated and little +Dutchy—or Zuleika, as he subsequently named her—was duly brought to +Newark and installed, at first in a charming apartment in a +conventionally respectable and cleanly neighborhood, later in a small +house with a "yard," lawn front and back, in one of the homiest of home +<a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" />neighborhoods in Newark. It was positively entertaining to observe +Peter not only attempting to assume but assuming the rôle of the +conventional husband, and exactly nine months after he had been married, +to the hour, a father in this humble and yet, in so far as his +particular home was concerned, comfortable world. I have no space here +for more than the barest outline. I have already indicated his views, +most emphatically expressed and forecasted. He fulfilled them all to the +letter, up to the day of his death. In so far as I could make out, he +made about as satisfactory a husband and father and citizen as I have +ever seen. He did it deliberately, in cold reason, and yet with a warmth +and flare which puzzled me all the more since it <i>was</i> based on reason +and forethought. I misdoubted. I was not quite willing to believe that +it would work out, and yet if ever a home was delightful, with a +charming and genuinely "happy" atmosphere, it was Peter's.</p> + +<p>"Here she is," he observed the day he married her, "me <i>frau</i>—Zuleika. +Isn't she a peach? Ever see any nicer hair than that? And these here, +now, pink cheeks? What? Look at 'em! And her little Dutchy nose! Isn't +it cute? Oh, Dutchy! And right here in me vest pocket is the golden band +wherewith I am to be chained to the floor, the domestic hearth. And +right there on her finger is my badge of prospective serfdom." Then, in +a loud aside to me, "In six months I'll be beating her. Come now, +Zuleika. We have to go through with this. You have to swear to be my +slave."</p> + +<p>And so they were married.</p> + +<p>And in the home afterward he was as busy and helpful and noisy as any +man about the house could ever hope to be. He was always fussing about +after hours "putting up" something or arranging his collections or +helping Zuleika wash and dry the dishes, or showing her how to cook +something if she didn't know how. He was running to the store or +bringing home things from the downtown market. Months before the first +child was born he was declaring most shamelessly, "In a few months now, +Dreiser, Zuleika and I are going to have our first calf. The bones roll +for a boy, but you never can tell. I'm offering up prayers and +oblations—both of us are. I make Zuleika pray every night. And say, +when it comes, no <a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" />spoiling-the-kid stuff. No bawling or rocking it to +sleep nights permitted. Here's one kid that's going to be raised right. +I've worked out all the rules. No trashy baby-foods. Good old specially +brewed Culmbacher for the mother, and the kid afterwards if it wants it. +This is one family in which law and order are going to prevail—good old +'dichtig, wichtig' law and order."</p> + +<p>I used to chuckle the while I verbally denounced him for his coarse, +plebeian point of view and tastes.</p> + +<p>In a little while the child came, and to his immense satisfaction it was +a boy. I never saw a man "carry on" so, make over it, take such a +whole-souled interest in all those little things which supposedly made +for its health and well-being. For the first few weeks he still talked +of not having it petted or spoiled, but at the same time he was surely +and swiftly changing, and by the end of that time had become the most +doting, almost ridiculously fond papa that I ever saw. Always the child +must be in his lap at the most unseemly hours, when his wife would +permit it. When he went anywhere, or they, although they kept a maid the +child must be carried along by him on his shoulder. He liked nothing +better than to sit and hold it close, rocking in a rocking-chair +American style and singing, or come tramping into my home in New York, +the child looking like a woolen ball. At night if it stirred or +whimpered he was up and looking. And the baby-clothes!—and the +cradle!—and the toys!—colored rubber balls and soldiers the first or +second or third week!</p> + +<p>"What about that stern discipline that was to be put in force here—no +rocking, no getting up at night to coddle a weeping infant?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know. That's all good stuff before you get one. I've got one of +my own now, and I've got a new light on this. Say, Dreiser, take my +advice. Go through the routine. Don't try to escape. Have a kid or two +or three. There's a psychic punch to it you can't get any other way. +It's nature's way. It's a great scheme. You and your girl and your kid."</p> + +<p>As he talked he rocked, holding the baby boy to his breast. It was +wonderful.</p> + +<p>And Mrs. Peter—how happy she seemed. There was light in that house, +flowers, laughter, good fellowship. As in his <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" />old rooms so in this new +home he gathered a few of his old friends around him and some new ones, +friends of this region. In the course of a year or two he was on the +very best terms of friendship with his barber around the corner, his +grocer, some man who had a saloon and bowling alley in the neighborhood, +his tailor, and then just neighbors. The milkman, the coal man, the +druggist and cigar man at the next corner—all could tell you where +Peter lived. His little front "yard" had two beds of flowers all summer +long, his lot in the back was a garden—lettuce, onions, peas, beans. +Peter was always happiest when he could be home working, playing with +the baby, pushing him about in a go-cart, working in his garden, or +lying on the floor making something—an engraving or print or a box +which he was carving, the infant in some simple gingham romper crawling +about. He was always busy, but never too much so for a glance or a +mock-threatening, "Now say, not so much industry there. You leave my +things alone," to the child. Of a Sunday he sat out on the front porch +smoking, reading the Sunday paper, congratulating himself on his happy +married life, and most of the time holding the infant. Afternoons he +would carry it somewhere, anywhere, in his arms to his friends, the +Park, New York, to see me. At breakfast, dinner, supper the heir +presumptive was in a high-chair beside him.</p> + +<p>"Ah, now, here's a rubber spoon. Beat with that. It's less destructive +and less painful physically."</p> + +<p>"How about a nice prust" (crust) "dipped in bravery" (gravy) "—heh? Do +you suppose that would cut any of your teeth?"</p> + +<p>"Zuleika, this son of yours seems to think a spoonful of beer or two +might not hurt him. What do you say?"</p> + +<p>Occasionally, especially of a Saturday evening, he wanted to go bowling +and yet he wanted his heir. The problem was solved by fitting the latter +into a tight little sweater and cap and carrying him along on his +shoulder, into the bar for a beer, thence to the bowling alley, where +young hopeful was fastened into a chair on the side lines while Peter +and myself or some of his friends bowled. At ten or ten-thirty or +eleven, as the case might be, he was ready to leave, but before that +hour les ongfong might be sound asleep, hanging against<a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" /> Peter's scarf, +his interest in his toes or thumbs having given out.</p> + +<p>"Peter, look at that," I observed once. "Don't you think we'd better +take him home?"</p> + +<p>"Home nothing! Let him sleep. He can sleep here as well as anywhere, and +besides I like to look at him." And in the room would be a great crowd, +cigars, beers, laughter, and Peter's various friends as used to the +child's presence and as charmed by it as he was. He was just the man who +could do such things. His manner and point of view carried conviction. +He believed in doing all that he wanted to do simply and naturally, and +more and more as he went along people not only respected, I think they +adored him, especially the simple homely souls among whom he chose to +move and have his being.</p> + +<p>About this time there developed among those in his immediate +neighborhood a desire to elect him to some political position, that of +councilman, or State assemblyman, in the hope or thought that he would +rise to something higher. But he would none of it—not then anyhow. +Instead, about this time or a very little later, after the birth of his +second child (a girl), he devoted himself to the composition of a +brilliant piece of prose poetry ("Wolf"), which, coming from him, did +not surprise me in the least. If he had designed or constructed a great +building, painted a great picture, entered politics and been elected +governor or senator, I would have taken it all as a matter of course. He +could have. The material from which anything may rise was there. I asked +him to let me offer it to the publishing house with which I was +connected, and I recall with interest the comment of the oldest and most +experienced of the bookmen and salesmen among us. "You'll never make +much, if anything, on this book. It's too good, too poetic. But whether +it pays or not, I vote yes. I'd rather lose money on something like this +than make it on some of the trash we do make it on."</p> + +<p>Amen. I agreed then, and I agree now.</p> + +<p>The last phase of Peter was as interesting and dramatic as any of the +others. His married life was going forward about as he had planned. His +devotion to his home and children, his loving wife, his multiplex +interests, his various friends, <a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" />was always a curiosity to me, +especially in view of his olden days. One day he was over in New York +visiting one of his favorite Chinese importing companies, through which +he had secured and was still securing occasional objects of art. He had +come down to me in my office at the Butterick Building to see if I would +not come over the following Saturday as usual and stay until Monday. He +had secured something, was planning something. I should see. At the +elevator he waved me a gay "so long—see you Saturday!"</p> + +<p>But on Friday, as I was talking with some one at my desk, a telegram was +handed me. It was from Mrs. Peter and read: "Peter died today at two of +pneumonia. Please come."</p> + +<p>I could scarcely believe it. I did not know that he had even been sick. +His little yellow-haired wife! The two children! His future! His +interests! I dropped everything and hurried to the nearest station. En +route I speculated on the mysteries on which he had so often +speculated—death, dissolution, uncertainty, the crude indifference or +cruelty of Nature. What would become of Mrs. Peter? His children?</p> + +<p>I arrived only to find a home atmosphere destroyed as by a wind that +puts out a light. There was Peter, stiff and cold, and in the other +rooms his babies, quite unconscious of what had happened, prattling as +usual, and Mrs. Peter practically numb and speechless. It had come so +suddenly, so out of a clear sky, that she could not realize, could not +even tell me at first. The doctor was there—also a friend of his, the +nearest barber! Also two or three representatives from his paper, the +owner of the bowling alley, the man who had the $40,000 collection of +curios. All were stunned, as I was. As his closest friend, I took +charge: wired his relatives, went to an undertaker who knew him to +arrange for his burial, in Newark or Philadelphia, as his wife should +wish, she having no connection with Newark other than Peter.</p> + +<p>It was most distressing, the sense of dull despair and unwarranted +disaster which hung over the place. It was as though impish and pagan +forces, or malign ones outside life, had committed a crime of the +ugliest character. On Monday, the day he saw me, he was well. On Tuesday +morning he had a slight cold but insisted on running out somewhere +without his overcoat, against which his wife protested. Tuesday night +<a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" />he had a fever and took quinine and aspirin and a hot whiskey. +Wednesday morning he was worse and a doctor was called, but it was not +deemed serious. Wednesday night he was still worse and pneumonia had set +in. Thursday he was lower still, and by noon a metal syphon of oxygen +was sent for, to relieve the sense of suffocation setting in. Thursday +night he was weak and sinking, but expected to come round—and still, so +unexpected was the attack, so uncertain the probability of anything +fatal, that no word was sent, even to me. Friday morning he was no worse +and no better. "If he was no worse by night he might pull through." At +noon he was seized with a sudden sinking spell. Oxygen was applied by +his wife and a nurse, and the doctor sent for. By one-thirty he was +lower still, very low. "His face was blue, his lips ashen," his wife +told me. "We put the oxygen tube to his mouth and I said 'Can you speak, +Peter?' I was so nervous and frightened. He moved his head a little to +indicate 'no.' 'Peter,' I said, 'you mustn't let go! You must fight! +Think of me! Think of the babies!' I was a little crazy, I think, with +fear. He looked at me very fixedly. He stiffened and gritted his teeth +in a great effort. Then suddenly he collapsed and lay still. He was +dead."</p> + +<p>I could not help thinking of the force and energy—able at the last +minute, when he could not speak—to "grit his teeth" and "fight," a +minute before his death. What is the human spirit, or mind, that it can +fight so, to the very last? I felt as though some one, something, had +ruthlessly killed him, committed plain, unpunished murder—nothing more +and nothing less.</p> + +<p>And there were his cases of curios, his rug, his prints, his dishes, his +many, many schemes, his book to come out soon. I gazed and marveled. I +looked at his wife and babies, but could say nothing. It spelled, what +such things always spell, in the face of all our dreams, crass chance or +the willful, brutal indifference of Nature to all that relates to man. +If he is to prosper he must do so without her aid.</p> + +<p>That same night, sleeping in the room adjoining that in which was the +body, a pale candle burning near it, I felt as though Peter were walking +to and fro, to and fro, past me and into the room of his wife beyond, +thinking and grieving.<a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" /> His imagined wraith seemed horribly depressed +and distressed. Once he came over and moved his hand (something) over my +face. I felt him walking into the room where were his wife and kiddies, +but he could make no one see, hear, understand. I got up and looked at +his <i>cadaver</i> a long time, then went to bed again.</p> + +<p>The next day and the next and the next were filled with many things. His +mother and sister came on from the West as well as the mother and +brother of his wife. I had to look after his affairs, adjusting the +matter of insurance which he left, his art objects, the burial of his +body "in consecrated ground" in Philadelphia, with the consent and aid +of the local Catholic parish rector, else no burial. His mother desired +it, but he had never been a good Catholic and there was trouble. The +local parish assistant refused me, even the rector. Finally I threatened +the good father with an appeal to the diocesan bishop on the ground of +plain common sense and courtesy to a Catholic family, if not charity to +a tortured mother and wife—and obtained consent. All along I felt as if +a great crime had been committed by some one, foul murder. I could not +get it out of my mind, and it made me angry, not sad.</p> + +<p>Two, three, five, seven years later, I visited the little family in +Philadelphia. The wife was with her mother and father in a simple little +home street in a factory district, secretary and stenographer to an +architect. She was little changed—a little stouter, not so carefree, +industrious, patient. His boy, the petted F——, could not even recall +his father, the girl not at all of course. And in the place were a few +of his prints, two or three Chinese dishes, pottered by himself, his +loom with the unfinished rug. I remained for dinner and dreamed old +dreams, but I was uncomfortable and left early. And Mrs. Peter, +accompanying me to the steps, looked after me as though I, alone, was +all that was left of the old life.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="A_Doer_of_the_Word" id="A_Doer_of_the_Word" /><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" /><i>A Doer of the Word</i></h2> + + +<p>Noank is a little played-out fishing town on the southeastern coast of +Connecticut, lying half-way between New London and Stonington. Once it +was a profitable port for mackerel and cod fishing. Today its wharves +are deserted of all save a few lobster smacks. There is a shipyard, +employing three hundred and fifty men, a yacht-building establishment, +with two or three hired hands; a sail-loft, and some dozen or so shops +or sheds, where the odds and ends of fishing life are made and sold. +Everything is peaceful. The sound of the shipyard axes and hammers can +be heard for miles over the quiet waters of the bay. In the sunny lane +which follows the line of the shore, and along which a few shops +struggle in happy-go-lucky disorder, may be heard the voices and noises +of the workers at their work. Water gurgling about the stanchions of the +docks, the whistle of some fisherman as he dawdles over his nets, or +puts his fish ashore, the whirr of the single high-power sewing machine +in the sail-loft, often mingle in a pleasant harmony, and invite the +mind to repose and speculation.</p> + +<p>I was in a most examining and critical mood that summer, looking into +the nature and significance of many things, and was sitting one day in +the shed of the maker of sailboats, where a half-dozen characters of the +village were gathered, when some turn in the conversation brought up the +nature of man. He is queer, he is restless; life is not so very much +when you come to look upon many phases of it.</p> + +<p>"Did any of you ever know a contented man?" I inquired idly, merely for +the sake of something to say.</p> + +<p>There was silence for a moment, and one after another met my roving +glance with a thoughtful, self-involved and retrospective eye.</p> + +<p>Old Mr. Main was the first to answer.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I did. One."</p> + +<p>"So did I," put in the sailboat maker, as he stopped in his work to +think about it.</p> + +<p>"Yes, and I did," said a dark, squat, sunny, little old fisherman, who +sold cunners for bait in a little hut next door.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" />Maybe you and me are thinking of the same one, Jacob," said old Mr. +Main, looking inquisitively at the boat-builder.</p> + +<p>"I think we've all got the same man in mind, likely," returned the +builder.</p> + +<p>"Who is he?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Charlie Potter," said the builder.</p> + +<p>"That's the man!" exclaimed Mr. Main.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I reckon Charlie Potter is contented, if anybody be," said an old +fisherman who had hitherto been silent.</p> + +<p>Such unanimity of opinion struck me forcibly. Charlie Potter—what a +humble name; not very remarkable, to say the least. And to hear him so +spoken of in this restless, religious, quibbling community made it all +the more interesting.</p> + +<p>"So you really think he is contented, do you?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir! Charlie Potter is a contented man," replied Mr. Main, with +convincing emphasis.</p> + +<p>"Well," I returned, "that's rather interesting. What sort of a man is +he?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's just an ordinary man, not much of anybody. Fishes and builds +boats occasionally," put in the boat-builder.</p> + +<p>"Is that all? Nothing else?"</p> + +<p>"He preaches now and then—not regularly," said Mr. Main.</p> + +<p>A-ha! I thought. A religionist!</p> + +<p>"A preacher is expected to set a good example," I said.</p> + +<p>"He ain't a regular preacher," said Mr. Main, rather quickly. "He's just +kind of around in religious work."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" I asked curiously, not quite catching the import of +this "around."</p> + +<p>"Well," answered the boat builder, "he don't take any money for what he +does. He ain't got anything."</p> + +<p>"What does he live on then?" I persisted, still wondering at the +significance of "around in religious work."</p> + +<p>"I don't know. He used to fish for a living. Fishes yet once in a while, +I believe."</p> + +<p>"He makes models of yachts," put in one of the bystanders. "He sold the +New Haven Road one for two hundred dollars here not long ago."</p> + +<p>A vision of a happy-go-lucky Jack-of-all-trades arose before me. A +visionary—a theorist.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" />What else?" I asked, hoping to draw them out. "What makes you all +think he is contented? What does he do that makes him so contented?"</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mr. Main, after a considerable pause and with much of +sympathetic emphasis in his voice, "Charlie Potter is just a good man, +that's all. That's why he's contented. He does as near as he can what he +thinks he ought to by other people—poor people."</p> + +<p>"You won't find anybody with a kinder heart than Charlie Potter," put in +the boat-builder. "That's the trouble with him, really. He's too good. +He don't look after himself right, I say. A fellow has to look out for +himself some in this world. If he don't, no one else will."</p> + +<p>"Right you are, Henry," echoed a truculent sea voice from somewhere.</p> + +<p>I was becoming both amused and interested, intensely so.</p> + +<p>"If he wasn't that way, he'd be a darned sight better off than he is," +said a thirty-year-old helper, from a far corner of the room.</p> + +<p>"What makes you say that?" I queried. "Isn't it better to be +kind-hearted and generous than not?"</p> + +<p>"It's all right to be kind-hearted and generous, but that ain't sayin' +that you've got to give your last cent away and let your family go +hungry."</p> + +<p>"Is that what Charlie Potter does?"</p> + +<p>"Well, no, maybe he don't, but he comes mighty near to it at times. He +and his wife and his adopted children have been pretty close to it at +times."</p> + +<p>You see, this was the center, nearly, for all village gossip and +philosophic speculation, and many of the most important local problems, +morally and intellectually speaking, were here thrashed put.</p> + +<p>"There's no doubt but that's where Charlie is wrong," put in old Mr. +Main a little later. "He don't always stop to think of his family."</p> + +<p>"What did he ever do that struck you as being over-generous?" I asked of +the young man who had spoken from the corner.</p> + +<p>"That's all right," he replied in a rather irritated and peevish tone; +"I ain't going to go into details now, but there's <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" />people around here +that hang on him, and that he's give to, that he hadn't orter."</p> + +<p>"I believe in lookin' out for Number One, that's what I believe in," +interrupted the boat-maker, laying down his rule and line. "This givin' +up everything and goin' without yourself may be all right, but I don't +believe it. A man's first duty is to his wife and children, that's what +I say."</p> + +<p>"That's the way it looks to me," put in Mr. Main.</p> + +<p>"Well, does Potter give up everything and go without things?" I asked +the boat-maker.</p> + +<p>"Purty blamed near it at times," he returned definitely, then addressing +the company in general he added, "Look at the time he worked over there +on Fisher's Island, at the Ellersbie farm—the time they were packing +the ice there. You remember that, Henry, don't you?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Main nodded.</p> + +<p>"What about it?"</p> + +<p>"What about it! Why, he give his rubber boots away, like a darned fool, +to old drunken Jimmy Harper, and him loafin' around half the year drunk, +and worked around on the ice without any shoes himself. He might 'a' +took cold and died."</p> + +<p>"Why did he do it?" I queried, very much interested by now.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Charlie's naturally big-hearted," put in the little old man who +sold cunners. "He believes in the Lord and the Bible. Stands right +square on it, only he don't belong to no church like. He's got the +biggest heart I ever saw in a livin' being."</p> + +<p>"Course the other fellow didn't have any shoes for to wear," put in the +boat-maker explanatorily, "but he never would work, anyhow."</p> + +<p>They lapsed into silence while the latter returned to his measuring, and +then out of the drift of thought came this from the helper in the +corner:</p> + +<p>"Yes, and look at the way Bailey used to sponge on him. Get his money +Saturday night and drink it all up, and then Sunday morning, when his +wife and children were hungry, go cryin' around Potter. Dinged if I'd +'a' helped him. But Potter'd take the food right off his breakfast table +and give it to him. I saw him do it! I don't think that's right. Not +when he's got four or five orphans of his own to care for."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" />His own children?" I interrupted, trying to get the thing straight.</p> + +<p>"No, sir; just children he picked up around, here and there."</p> + +<p>Here is a curious character, sure enough, I thought—one well worth +looking into.</p> + +<p>Another lull, and then as I was leaving the room to give the matter a +little quiet attention, I remarked to the boat-maker:</p> + +<p>"Outside of his foolish giving, you haven't anything against Charlie +Potter, have you?"</p> + +<p>"Not a thing," he replied, in apparent astonishment. "Charlie Potter's +one of the best men that ever lived. He's a good man."</p> + +<p>I smiled at the inconsistency and went my way.</p> + +<p>A day or two later the loft of the sail-maker, instead of the shed of +the boat-builder, happened to be my lounging place, and thinking of this +theme, now uppermost in my mind, I said to him:</p> + +<p>"Do you know a man around here by the name of Charlie Potter?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I might say that I do. He lived here for over fifteen years."</p> + +<p>"What sort of a man is he?"</p> + +<p>He stopped in his stitching a moment to look at me, and then said:</p> + +<p>"How d'ye mean? By trade, so to speak, or religious-like?"</p> + +<p>"What is it he has done," I said, "that makes him so popular with all +you people? Everybody says he's a good man. Just what do you mean by +that?"</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, ceasing his work as though the subject were one of +extreme importance to him, "he's a peculiar man, Charlie is. He believes +in giving nearly everything he has away, if any one else needs it. He'd +give the coat off his back if you asked him for it. Some folks condemn +him for this, and for not giving everything to his wife and them orphans +he has, but I always thought the man was nearer right than most of us. +I've got a family myself—but, then, so's he, now, for that matter. It's +pretty hard to live up to your light always."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" />He looked away as if he expected some objection to be made to this, but +hearing none, he went on. "I always liked him personally very much. He +ain't around here now any more—lives up in Norwich, I think. He's a man +of his word, though, as truthful as kin be. He ain't never done nothin' +for me, I not bein' a takin' kind, but that's neither here nor there."</p> + +<p>He paused, in doubt apparently, as to what else to say.</p> + +<p>"You say he's so good," I said. "Tell me one thing that he ever did that +struck you as being preëminently good."</p> + +<p>"Well, now, I can't say as I kin, exactly, offhand," he replied, "there +bein' so many of them from time to time. He was always doin' things one +way and another. He give to everybody around here that asked him, and to +a good many that didn't. I remember once"—and a smile gave evidence of +a genial memory—"he give away a lot of pork that he'd put up for the +winter to some colored people back here—two or three barrels, maybe. +His wife didn't object, exactly, but my, how his mother-in-law did go on +about it. She was livin' with him then. She went and railed against him +all around."</p> + +<p>"She didn't like to give it to them, eh?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I should say not. She didn't set with his views, exactly—never +did. He took the pork, though—it was right in the coldest weather we +had that winter—and hauled it back about seven miles here to where they +lived, and handed it all out himself. Course they were awful hard up, +but then they might 'a' got along without it. They do now, sometimes. +Charlie's too good that way. It's his one fault, if you might so speak +of it."</p> + +<p>I smiled as the evidence accumulated. Houseless wayfarers, stopping to +find food and shelter under his roof, an orphan child carried seven +miles on foot from the bedside of a dead mother and cared for all +winter, three children, besides two of his own, being raised out of a +sense of affection and care for the fatherless.</p> + +<p>One day in the local post office I was idling a half hour with the +postmaster, when I again inquired:</p> + +<p>"Do you know Charlie Potter?"</p> + +<p>"I should think I did. Charlie Potter and I sailed together for +something over eleven years."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" />How do you mean sailed together?"</p> + +<p>"We were on the same schooner. This used to be a great port for mackerel +and cod. We were wrecked once together"</p> + +<p>"How was that?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, we went on rocks."</p> + +<p>"Any lives lost?"</p> + +<p>"No, but there came mighty near being. We helped each other in the boat. +I remember Charlie was the last one in that time. Wouldn't get in until +all the rest were safe."</p> + +<p>A sudden resolution came to me.</p> + +<p>"Do you know where he is now?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, he's up in Norwich, preaching or doing missionary work. He's kind +of busy all the time among the poor people, and so on. Never makes much +of anything out of it for himself, but just likes to do it, I guess."</p> + +<p>"Do you know how he manages to live?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't, exactly. He believes in trusting to Providence for what he +needs. He works though, too, at one job and another. He's a carpenter +for one thing. Got an idea the Lord will send 'im whatever he needs."</p> + +<p>"Well, and does He?"</p> + +<p>"Well, he lives." A little later he added:</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes. There's nothing lazy about Charlie. He's a good worker. When +he was in the fishing line here there wasn't a man worked harder than he +did. They can't anybody lay anything like that against him."</p> + +<p>"Is he very difficult to talk to?" I asked, meditating on seeking him +out. I had so little to do at the time, the very idlest of summers, and +the reports of this man's deeds were haunting me. I wanted to discover +for myself whether he was real or not—whether the reports were true. +The Samaritan in people is so easily exaggerated at times.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no. He's one of the finest men that way I ever knew. You could see +him, well enough, if you went up to Norwich, providing he's up there. He +usually is, though, I think. He lives there with his wife and mother, +you know."</p> + +<p>I caught an afternoon boat for New London and Norwich at one-thirty, and +arrived in Norwich at five. The narrow streets of the thriving little +mill city were alive with people. I had no address, could not obtain +one, but through the open <a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" />door of a news-stall near the boat landing I +called to the proprietor:</p> + +<p>"Do you know any one in Norwich by the name of Charlie Potter?"</p> + +<p>"The man who works around among the poor people here?"</p> + +<p>"That's the man."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know him. He lives out on Summer Street, Number Twelve, I think. +You'll find it in the city directory."</p> + +<p>The ready reply was rather astonishing. Norwich has something like +thirty thousand people.</p> + +<p>I walked out in search of Summer Street and finally found a beautiful +lane of that name climbing upward over gentle slopes, arched completely +with elms. Some of the pretty porches of the cottages extended nearly to +the sidewalk. Hammocks, rocking-chairs on verandas, benches under the +trees—all attested the love of idleness and shade in summer. Only the +glimpse of mills and factories in the valley below evidenced the grimmer +life which gave rise mayhap to the need of a man to work among the poor.</p> + +<p>"Is this Summer Street?" I inquired of an old darky who was strolling +cityward in the cool of the evening. An umbrella was under his arm and +an evening paper under his spectacled nose.</p> + +<p>"Bress de Lord!" he said, looking vaguely around. "Ah couldn't say. Ah +knows dat street—been on it fifty times—but Ah never did know de name. +Ha, ha, ha!"</p> + +<p>The hills about echoed his hearty laugh.</p> + +<p>"You don't happen to know Charlie Potter?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yas, sah. Ah knows Charlie Potter. Dat's his house right ovah dar."</p> + +<p>The house in which Charlie Potter lived was a two-story frame, +overhanging a sharp slope, which descended directly to the waters of the +pretty river below. For a mile or more, the valley of the river could be +seen, its slopes dotted with houses, the valley itself lined with mills. +Two little girls were upon the sloping lawn to the right of the house. A +stout, comfortable-looking man was sitting by a window on the left side +of the house, gazing out over the valley.</p> + +<p>"Is this where Charlie Potter lives?" I inquired of one of the children.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" />Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>"Did he live in Noank?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>Just then a pleasant-faced woman of forty-five or fifty issued from a +vine-covered door.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Potter?" she replied to my inquiry. "He'll be right out."</p> + +<p>She went about some little work at the side of the house, and in a +moment Charlie Potter appeared. He was short, thick-set, and weighed no +less than two hundred pounds. His face and hands were sunburned and +brown like those of every fisherman of Noank. An old wrinkled coat and a +baggy pair of gray trousers clothed his form loosely. Two inches of a +spotted, soft-brimmed hat were pulled carelessly over his eyes. His face +was round and full, but slightly seamed. His hands were large, his walk +uneven, and rather inclined to a side swing, or the sailor's roll. He +seemed an odd, pudgy person for so large a fame.</p> + +<p>"Is this Mr. Potter?"</p> + +<p>"I'm the man."</p> + +<p>"I live on a little hummock at the east of Mystic Island, off Noank."</p> + +<p>"You do?"</p> + +<p>"I came up to have a talk with you."</p> + +<p>"Will you come inside, or shall we sit out here?"</p> + +<p>"Let's sit on the step."</p> + +<p>"All right, let's sit on the step."</p> + +<p>He waddled out of the gate and sank comfortably on the little low +doorstep, with his feet on the cool bricks below. I dropped into the +space beside him, and was greeted by as sweet and kind a look as I have +ever seen in a man's eyes. It was one of perfect courtesy and good +nature—void of all suspicion.</p> + +<p>"We were sitting down in the sailboat maker's place at Noank the other +day, and I asked a half dozen of the old fellows whether they had ever +known a contented man. They all thought a while, and then they said they +had. Old Mr. Main and the rest of them agreed that Charlie Potter was a +contented man. What I want to know is, are you?"</p> + +<p>I looked quizzically into his eyes to see what effect this <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" />would have, +and if there was no evidence of a mist of pleasure and affection being +vigorously restrained I was very much mistaken. Something seemed to hold +the man in helpless silence as he gazed vacantly at nothing. He breathed +heavily, then drew himself together and lifted one of his big hands, as +if to touch me, but refrained.</p> + +<p>"Yes, brother," he said after a time, "I <i>am</i>."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's good," I replied, taking a slight mental exception to the +use of the word brother. "What makes you contented?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, unless it is that I've found out what I ought to do. You +see, I need so very little for myself that I couldn't be very unhappy."</p> + +<p>"What ought you to do?"</p> + +<p>"I ought to love my fellowmen."</p> + +<p>"And do you?"</p> + +<p>"Say, brother, but I do," he insisted quite simply and with no evidence +of chicane or make-believe—a simple, natural enthusiasm. "I love +everybody. There isn't anybody so low or so mean but I love him. I love +you, yes, I do. I love you."</p> + +<p>He reached out and touched me with his hand, and while I was inclined to +take exception to this very moral enthusiasm, I thrilled just the same +as I have not over the touch of any man in years. There was something +effective and electric about him, so very warm and foolishly human. The +glance which accompanied it spoke, it seemed, as truthfully as his +words. He probably did love me—or thought he did. What difference?</p> + +<p>We lapsed into silence. The scene below was so charming that I could +easily gaze at it in silence. This little house was very simple, not +poor, by no means prosperous, but well-ordered—such a home as such a +man might have. After a while I said:</p> + +<p>"It is very evident that you think the condition of some of your +fellowmen isn't what it ought to be. Tell me what you are trying to do. +What method have you for improving their condition?"</p> + +<p>"The way I reason is this-a-way," he began. "All that some people have +is their feelings, nothing else. Take a tramp, for instance, as I often +have. When you begin to sum up to see <a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" />where to begin, you find that all +he has in the world, besides his pipe and a little tobacco, is his +feelings. It's all most people have, rich or poor, though a good many +think they have more than that. I try not to injure anybody's feelings."</p> + +<p>He looked at me as though he had expressed the solution of the +difficulties of the world, and the wonderful, kindly eyes beamed in rich +romance upon the scene.</p> + +<p>"Very good," I said, "but what do you do? How do you go about it to aid +your fellowmen?"</p> + +<p>"Well," he answered, unconsciously overlooking his own personal actions +in the matter, "I try to bring them the salvation which the Bible +teaches. You know I stand on the Bible, from cover to cover."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know you stand on the Bible, but what do you do? You don't +merely preach the Bible to them. What do you do?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir, I don't preach the Bible at all. I stand on it myself. I try +as near as I can to do what it says. I go wherever I can be useful. If +anybody is sick or in trouble, I'm ready to go. I'll be a nurse. I'll +work and earn them food. I'll give them anything I can—that's what I +do."</p> + +<p>"How can you give when you haven't anything? They told me in Noank that +you never worked for money."</p> + +<p>"Not for myself alone. I never take any money for myself alone. That +would be self-seeking. Anything I earn or take is for the Lord, not me. +I never keep it. The Lord doesn't allow a man to be self-seeking."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, when you get money what do you do with it? You can't do and +live without money."</p> + +<p>He had been looking away across the river and the bridge to the city +below, but now he brought his eyes back and fixed them on me.</p> + +<p>"I've been working now for twenty years or more, and, although I've +never had more money than would last me a few days at a time, I've never +wanted for anything and I've been able to help others. I've run pretty +close sometimes. Time and time again I've been compelled to say, 'Lord, +I'm all out of coal,' or 'Lord, I'm going to have to ask you to get me +my fare to New Haven tomorrow,' but in the moment of my need He has +never forgotten me. Why, I've gone down to the depot time and time +again, when it was necessary for <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" />me to go, without five cents in my +pocket, and He's been there to meet me. Why, He wouldn't keep you +waiting when you're about His work. He wouldn't forget you—not for a +minute."</p> + +<p>I looked at the man in open-eyed amazement.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to say that you would go down to a depot without money and +wait for money to come to you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, brother," he said, with the softest light in his eyes, "if you only +knew what it is to have faith!"</p> + +<p>He laid his hand softly on mine.</p> + +<p>"What is car-fare to New Haven or to anywhere, to Him?"</p> + +<p>"But," I replied materially, "you haven't any car-fare when you go +there—how do you actually get it? Who gives it to you? Give me one +instance."</p> + +<p>"Why, it was only last week, brother, that a woman wrote me from Maiden, +Massachusetts, wanting me to come and see her. She's very sick with +consumption, and she thought she was going to die. I used to know her in +Noank, and she thought if she could get to see me she would feel better.</p> + +<p>"I didn't have any money at the time, but that didn't make any +difference.</p> + +<p>"'Lord,' I said, 'here's a woman sick in Maiden, and she wants me to +come to her. I haven't got any money, but I'll go right down to the +depot, in time to catch a certain train,' and I went. And while I was +standing there a man came up to me and said, 'Brother, I'm told to give +you this,' and he handed me ten dollars."</p> + +<p>"Did you know the man?" I exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"Never saw him before in my life," he replied, smiling genially.</p> + +<p>"And didn't he say anything more than that?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>I stared at him, and he added, as if to take the edge off my +astonishment:</p> + +<p>"Why, bless your heart, I knew he was from the Lord, just the moment I +saw him coming."</p> + +<p>"You mean to say you were standing there without a cent, expecting the +Lord to help you, and He did?"</p> + +<p>"'He shall call upon me, and I shall answer him,'" he answered simply, +quoting the Ninety-first Psalm.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" />This incident was still the subject of my inquiry when a little colored +girl came out of the yard and paused a moment before us.</p> + +<p>"May I go down across the bridge, papa?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he answered, and then as she tripped away, said:</p> + +<p>"She's one of my adopted children." He gazed between his knees at the +sidewalk.</p> + +<p>"Have you many others?"</p> + +<p>"Three."</p> + +<p>"Raising them, are you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"They seem to think, down in Noank, that living as you do and giving +everything away is satisfactory to you but rather hard on your wife and +children."</p> + +<p>"Well, it is true that she did feel a little uncertain in the beginning, +but she's never wanted for anything. She'll tell you herself that she's +never been without a thing that she really needed, and she's been +happy."</p> + +<p>He paused to meditate, I presume, over the opinion of his former fellow +townsmen, and then added:</p> + +<p>"It's true, there have been times when we have been right where we had +to have certain things pretty badly, before they came, but they never +failed to come."</p> + +<p>While he was still talking, Mrs. Potter came around the corner of the +house and out upon the sidewalk. She was going to the Saturday evening +market in the city below.</p> + +<p>"Here she is," he said. "Now you can ask her."</p> + +<p>"What is it?" she inquired, turning a serene and smiling face to me.</p> + +<p>"They still think, down in Noank, that you're not very happy with me," +he said. "They're afraid you want for something once in a while."</p> + +<p>She took this piece of neighborly interference in better fashion than +most would, I fancy.</p> + +<p>"I have never wanted for anything since I have been married to my +husband," she said. "I am thoroughly contented."</p> + +<p>She looked at him and he at her, and there passed between them an +affectionate glance.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, when she had passed after a pleasing little +<a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" />conversation, "my wife has been a great help to me. She has never +complained."</p> + +<p>"People are inclined to talk a little," I said.</p> + +<p>"Well, you see, she never complained, but she did feel a little bit +worried in the beginning."</p> + +<p>"Have you a mission or a church here in Norwich?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't believe in churches."</p> + +<p>"Not in churches?"</p> + +<p>"No. The sight of a minister preaching the word of God for so much a +year is all a mockery to me."</p> + +<p>"What do you believe in?"</p> + +<p>"Personal service. Churches and charitable institutions and societies +are all valueless. You can't reach your fellowman that way. They build +up buildings and pay salaries—but there's a better way." (I was +thinking of St. Francis and his original dream, before they threw him +out and established monasteries and a costume or uniform—the thing he +so much objected to.) "This giving of a few old clothes that the moths +will get anyhow, that won't do. You've got to give something of +yourself, and that's affection. Love is the only thing you can really +give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything. +Everything comes with it in some way or other."</p> + +<p>"How do you say?" I queried. "Money certainly comes handy sometimes."</p> + +<p>"Yes, when you give it with your own hand and heart—in no other way. It +comes to nothing just contributed to some thing. Ah!" he added, with +sudden animation, "the tangles men can get themselves into, the snarls, +the wretchedness! Troubles with women, with men whom they owe, with evil +things they say and think, until they can't walk down the street any +more without peeping about to see if they are followed. They can't look +you in die face; can't walk a straight course, but have got to sneak +around corners. Poor, miserable, unhappy—they're worrying and crying +and dodging one another!"</p> + +<p>He paused, lost in contemplation of the picture he had conjured up.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I went on catechistically, determined, if I could, to rout out +this matter of giving, this actual example of the <a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" />modus operandi of +Christian charity. "What do you do? How do you get along without giving +them money?"</p> + +<p>"I don't get along without giving them some money. There are cases, lots +of them, where a little money is necessary. But, brother, it is so +little necessary at times. It isn't always money they want. You can't +reach them with old clothes and charity societies," he insisted. "You've +got to love them, brother. You've got to go to them and love them, just +as they are, scarred and miserable and bad-hearted."</p> + +<p>"Yes," I replied doubtfully, deciding to follow this up later. "But just +what is it you do in a needy case? One instance?"</p> + +<p>"Why, one night I was passing a little house in this town," he went on, +"and I heard a woman crying. I went right to the door and opened it, and +when I got inside she just stopped and looked at me.</p> + +<p>"'Madam,' I said, 'I have come to help you, if I can. Now you tell me +what you're crying for.'</p> + +<p>"Well, sir, you know she sat there and told me how her husband drank and +how she didn't have anything in the house to eat, and so I just gave her +all I had and told her I would see her husband for her, and the next day +I went and hunted him up and said to him, 'Oh, brother, I wish you would +open your eyes and see what you are doing. I wish you wouldn't do that +any more. It's only misery you are creating.' And, you know, I got to +telling about how badly his wife felt about it, and how I intended to +work and try and help her, and bless me if he didn't up and promise me +before I got through that he wouldn't do that any more. And he didn't. +He's working today, and it's been two years since I went to him, +nearly."</p> + +<p>His eyes were alight with his appreciation of personal service.</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's one instance," I said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, there are plenty of them," he replied. "It's the only way. Down +here in New London a couple of winters ago we had a terrible time of it. +That was the winter of the panic, you know. Cold—my, but that was a +cold winter, and thousands of people out of work—just thousands. It was +awful. I tried to do what I could here and there all along, but finally +things got so bad there that I went to the mayor. I saw they <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" />were +raising some kind of a fund to help the poor, so I told him that if he'd +give me a little of the money they were talking of spending that I'd +feed the hungry for a cent-and-a-half a meal."</p> + +<p>"A cent-and-a-half a meal!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir. They all thought it was rather curious, not possible at +first, but they gave me the money and I fed 'em."</p> + +<p>"Good meals?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, as good as I ever eat myself," he replied.</p> + +<p>"How did you do it?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I can cook. I just went around to the markets, and told the +market-men what I wanted—heads of mackerel, and the part of the halibut +that's left after the rich man cuts off his steak—it's the poorest part +that he pays for, you know. And I went fishing myself two or three +times—borrowed a big boat and got men to help me—oh, I'm a good +fisherman, you know. And then I got the loan of an old covered brickyard +that no one was using any more, a great big thing that I could close up +and build fires in, and I put my kettle in there and rigged up tables +out of borrowed boards, and got people to loan me plates and spoons and +knives and forks and cups. I made fish chowder, and fish dinners, and +really I set a very fine table, I did, that winter."</p> + +<p>"For a cent-and-a-half a meal!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir, a cent-and-a-half a meal. Ask any one in New London. That's +all it cost me. The mayor said he was surprised at the way I did it."</p> + +<p>"Well, but there wasn't any particular personal service in the money +they gave you?" I asked, catching him up on that point. "They didn't +personally serve—those who gave you the money?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir, they didn't," he replied dreamily, with unconscious +simplicity. "But they gave through me, you see. That's the way it was. I +gave the personal service. Don't you see? That's the way."</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's the way," I smiled, avoiding as far as possible a further +discussion of this contradiction, so unconscious on his part, and in the +drag of his thought he took up another idea.</p> + +<p>"I clothed 'em that winter, too—went around and got barrels and boxes +of old clothing. Some of them felt a little <a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" />ashamed to put on the +things, but I got over that, all right. I was wearing them myself, and I +just told them, 'Don't feel badly, brother. I'm wearing them out of the +same barrel with you—I'm wearing them out of the same barrel.' Got my +clothes entirely free for that winter."</p> + +<p>"Can you always get all the aid you need for such enterprises?"</p> + +<p>"Usually, and then I can earn a good deal of money when I work steadily. +I can get a hundred and fifty dollars for a little yacht, you know, +every time I find time to make one; and I can make a good deal of money +out of fishing. I went out fishing here on the Fourth of July and caught +two hundred blackfish—four and five pounds, almost, every one of them."</p> + +<p>"That ought to be profitable," I said.</p> + +<p>"Well, it was," he replied.</p> + +<p>"How much did you get for them?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I didn't sell them," he said. "I never take money for my work that +way. I gave them all away."</p> + +<p>"What did you do?" I asked, laughing—"advertise for people to come for +them?"</p> + +<p>"No. My wife took some, and my daughters, and I took the rest and we +carried them around to people that we thought would like to have them."</p> + +<p>"Well, that wasn't so profitable, was it?" I commented amusedly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, they were fine fish," he replied, not seeming to have heard me.</p> + +<p>We dropped the subject of personal service at this point, and I +expressed the opinion that his service was only a temporary expedient. +Times changed, and with them, people. They forgot. Perhaps those he +aided were none the better for accepting his charity.</p> + +<p>"I know what you mean," he said. "But that don't make any difference. +You just have to keep on giving, that's all, see? Not all of 'em turn +back. It helps a lot. Money is the only dangerous thing to give—but I +never give money—not very often. I give myself, rather, as much as +possible. I give food and clothing, too, but I try to show 'em a new +way—that's not money, you know. So many people need a new way.<a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" /> They're +looking for it often, only they don't seem to know how. But God, dear +brother, however poor or mean they are—He knows. You've got to reach +the heart, you know, and I let Him help me. You've got to make a man +over in his soul, if you want to help him, and money won't help you to +do that, you know. No, it won't."</p> + +<p>He looked up at me in clear-eyed faith. It was remarkable.</p> + +<p>"Make them over?" I queried, still curious, for it was all like a +romance, and rather fantastic to me. "What do you mean? How do you make +them over?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, in their attitude, that's how. You've got to change a man and bring +him out of self-seeking if you really want to make him good. Most men +are so tangled up in their own errors and bad ways, and so worried over +their seekings, that unless you can set them to giving it's no use. +They're always seeking, and they don't know what they want half the +time. Money isn't the thing. Why, half of them wouldn't understand how +to use it if they had it. Their minds are not bright enough. Their +perceptions are not clear enough. All you can do is to make them content +with themselves. And that, giving to others will do. I never saw the man +or the woman yet who couldn't be happy if you could make them feel the +need of living for others, of doing something for somebody besides +themselves. It's a fact. Selfish people are never happy."</p> + +<p>He rubbed his hands as if he saw the solution of the world's +difficulties very clearly, and I said to him:</p> + +<p>"Well, now, you've got a man out of the mire, and 'saved,' as you call +it, and then what? What comes next?"</p> + +<p>"Well, then he's saved," he replied. "Happiness comes next—content."</p> + +<p>"I know. But must he go to church, or conform to certain rules?"</p> + +<p>"No, no, no!" he replied sweetly. "Nothing to do except to be good to +others. 'True religion and undefiled before our God and Father is +this,'" he quoted, "'to visit the widow and the orphan in their +affliction and to keep unspotted from the world. Charity is kind,' you +know. 'Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh not its +own.'"</p> + +<p>"Well," I said, rather aimlessly, I will admit, for this high <a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" />faith +staggered me. (How high! How high!) "And then what?"</p> + +<p>"Well, then the world would come about. It would be so much better. All +the misery is in the lack of sympathy one with another. When we get that +straightened out we can work in peace. There are lots of things to do, +you know."</p> + +<p>Yes, I thought, looking down on the mills and the driving force of +self-interest—on greed, lust, love of pleasure, all their fantastic and +yet moving dreams.</p> + +<p>"I'm an ignorant man myself, and I don't know all," he went on, "and I'd +like to study. My, but I'd like to look into all things, but I can't do +it now. We can't stop until this thing is straightened out. Some time, +maybe," and he looked peacefully away.</p> + +<p>"By the way," I said, "whatever became of the man to whom you gave your +rubber boots over on Fisher's Island?"</p> + +<p>His face lit up as if it were the most natural thing that I should know +about it.</p> + +<p>"Say," he exclaimed, in the most pleased and confidential way, as if we +were talking about a mutual friend, "I saw him not long ago. And, do you +know, he's a good man now—really, he is. Sober and hard-working. And, +say, would you believe it, he told me that I was the cause of it—just +that miserable old pair of rubber boots—what do you think of that?"</p> + +<p>I shook his hand at parting, and as we stood looking at each other in +the shadow of the evening I asked him:</p> + +<p>"Are you afraid to die?"</p> + +<p>"Say, brother, but I'm not," he returned. "It hasn't any terror for me +at all. I'm just as willing. My, but I'm willing."</p> + +<p>He smiled and gripped me heartily again, and, as I was starting to go, +said:</p> + +<p>"If I die tonight, it'll be all right. He'll use me just as long as He +needs me. That I know. Good-by."</p> + +<p>"Good-by," I called back.</p> + +<p>He hung by his fence, looking down upon the city. As I turned the next +corner I saw him awakening from his reflection and waddling stolidly +back into the house.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="My_Brother_Paul" id="My_Brother_Paul" /><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" /><i>My Brother Paul</i></h2> + + +<p>I like best to think of him as he was at the height of his all-too-brief +reputation and success, when, as the author and composer of various +American popular successes ("On the Banks of the Wabash," "Just Tell +Them That You Saw Me," and various others), as a third owner of one of +the most successful popular music publishing houses in the city and as +an actor and playwright of some small repute, he was wont to spin like a +moth in the white light of Broadway. By reason of a little luck and some +talent he had come so far, done so much for himself. In his day he had +been by turn a novitiate in a Western seminary which trained aspirants +for the Catholic priesthood; a singer and entertainer with a +perambulating cure-all oil troupe or wagon ("Hamlin's Wizard Oil") +traveling throughout Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; both end- and middle-man +with one, two or three different minstrel companies of repute; the +editor or originator and author of a "funny column" in a Western small +city paper; the author of the songs mentioned and a hundred others; a +black-face monologue artist; a white-face ditto, at Tony Pastor's, +Miner's and Niblo's of the old days; a comic lead; co-star and star in +such melodramas and farces as "The Danger Signal," "The Two Johns," "A +Tin Soldier," "The Midnight Bell," "A Green Goods Man" (a farce which he +himself wrote, by the way), and others. The man had a genius for the +kind of gayety, poetry and romance which may, and no doubt must be, +looked upon as exceedingly middle-class but which nonetheless had as +much charm as anything in this world can well have. He had at this time +absolutely no cares or financial worries of any kind, and this plus his +health, self-amusing disposition and talent for entertaining, made him a +most fascinating figure to contemplate.</p> + +<p>My first recollection of him is of myself as a boy often and he a man of +twenty-five (my oldest brother). He had come back to the town in which +we were then living solely to find his mother and help her. Six or seven +years before he had left without any explanation as to where he was +going, tired of or irritated by the routine of a home which for any +genuine <a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" />opportunity it offered him might as well never have existed. It +was run dominantly by my father in the interest of religious and moral +theories, with which this boy had little sympathy. He was probably not +understood by any one save my mother, who understood or at least +sympathized with us all. Placed in a school which was to turn him out a +priest, he had decamped, and now seven years later was here in this +small town, with fur coat and silk hat, a smart cane—a gentleman of the +theatrical profession. He had joined a minstrel show somewhere and had +become an "end-man." He had suspected that we were not as fortunate in +this world's goods as might be and so had returned. His really great +heart had called him.</p> + +<p>But the thing which haunts me, and which was typical of him then as +throughout life, was the spirit which he then possessed and conveyed. It +was one of an agile geniality, unmarred by thought of a serious +character but warm and genuinely tender and with a taste for simple +beauty which was most impressive. He was already the author of a cheap +songbook, "<i>The Paul Dresser Songster</i>" ("All the Songs Sung in the +Show"), and some copies of this he had with him, one of which he gave +me. But we having no musical instrument of any kind, he taught me some +of the melodies "by ear." The home in which by force of poverty we were +compelled to live was most unprepossessing and inconvenient, and the +result of his coming could but be our request for, or at least the +obvious need of, assistance. Still he was as much an enthusiastic part +of it as though he belonged to it. He was happy in it, and the cause of +his happiness was my mother, of whom he was intensely fond. I recall how +he hung about her in the kitchen or wherever she happened to be, how +enthusiastically he related all his plans for the future, his amusing +difficulties in the past. He was very grand and youthfully +self-important, or so we all thought, and still he patted her on the +shoulder or put his arm about her and kissed her. Until she died years +later she was truly his uppermost thought, crying with her at times over +her troubles and his. He contributed regularly to her support and sent +home all his cast-off clothing to be made over for the younger ones. +(Bless her tired hands!)</p> + +<p>As I look back now on my life, I realize quite clearly that of all the +members of my family, subsequent to my mother's <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" />death, the only one who +truly understood me, or, better yet, sympathized with my intellectual +and artistic point of view, was, strange as it may seem, this same Paul, +my dearest brother. Not that he was in any way fitted intellectually or +otherwise to enjoy high forms of art and learning and so guide me, or +that he understood, even in later years (long after I had written +"Sister Carrie," for instance), what it was that I was attempting to do; +he never did. His world was that of the popular song, the middle-class +actor or comedian, the middle-class comedy, and such humorous æsthetes +of the writing world as Bill Nye, Petroleum V. Nasby, the authors of the +Spoopendyke Papers, and "Samantha at Saratoga." As far as I could make +out—and I say this in no lofty, condescending spirit, by any means—he +was entirely full of simple, middle-class romance, middle-class humor, +middle-class tenderness and middle-class grossness, all of which I am +very free to say early disarmed and won me completely and kept me so +much his debtor that I should hesitate to try to acknowledge or explain +all that he did for or meant to me.</p> + +<p>Imagine, if you can, a man weighing all of three hundred pounds, not +more than five feet ten-and-one-half inches in height and yet of so +lithesome a build that he gave not the least sense of either undue +weight or lethargy. His temperament, always ebullient and radiant, +presented him as a clever, eager, cheerful, emotional and always highly +illusioned person with so collie-like a warmth that one found him +compelling interest and even admiration. Easily cast down at times by +the most trivial matters, at others, and for the most part, he was so +spirited and bubbly and emotional and sentimental that your fiercest or +most gloomy intellectual rages or moods could scarcely withstand his +smile. This tenderness or sympathy of his, a very human appreciation of +the weaknesses and errors as well as the toils and tribulations of most +of us, was by far his outstanding and most engaging quality, and gave +him a very definite force and charm. Admitting, as I freely do, that he +was very sensuous (gross, some people might have called him), that he +had an intense, possibly an undue fondness for women, a frivolous, +childish, horse-playish sense of humor at times, still he had other +qualities which were absolutely adorable. Life seemed positively to +spring up fountain-<a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" />like in him. One felt in him a capacity to do (in +his possibly limited field); an ability to achieve, whether he was doing +so at the moment or not, and a supreme willingness to share and radiate +his success—qualities exceedingly rare, I believe. Some people are so +successful, and yet you know their success is purely selfish—exclusive, +not inclusive; they never permit you to share in their lives. Not so my +good brother. He was generous to the point of self-destruction, and that +is literally true. He was the mark if not the prey of all those who +desired much or little for nothing, those who previously might not have +rendered him a service of any kind. He was all life and color, and +thousands (I use the word with care) noted and commented on it.</p> + +<p>When I first came to New York he was easily the foremost popular +song-writer of the day and was the cause of my coming, so soon at least, +having established himself in the publishing field and being so +comfortably settled as to offer me a kind of anchorage in so troubled a +commercial sea. I was very much afraid of New York, but with him here it +seemed not so bad. The firm of which he was a part had a floor or two in +an old residence turned office building, as so many are in New York, in +Twentieth Street very close to Broadway, and here, during the summer +months (1894-7) when the various theatrical road-companies, one of which +he was always a part, had returned for the closed season, he was to be +found aiding his concern in the reception and care of possible +applicants for songs and attracting by his personality such virtuosi of +the vaudeville and comedy stage as were likely to make the instrumental +publications of his firm a success.</p> + +<p>I may as well say here that he had no more business skill than a fly. At +the same time, he was in no wise sycophantic where either wealth, power +or fame was concerned. He considered himself a personage of sorts, and +was. The minister, the moralist, the religionist, the narrow, dogmatic +and self-centered in any field were likely to be the butt of his humor, +and he could imitate so many phases of character so cleverly that he was +the life of any idle pleasure-seeking party anywhere. To this day I +recall his characterization of an old Irish washerwoman arguing; a +stout, truculent German laying down the law; lean, gloomy, out-at-elbows +actors of the<a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" /> Hamlet or classic school complaining of their fate; the +stingy skinflint haggling over a dollar, and always with a skill for +titillating the risibilities which is vivid to me even to this day. +Other butts of his humor were the actor, the Irish day-laborer, the +negro and the Hebrew. And how he could imitate them! It is useless to +try to indicate such things in writing, the facial expression, the +intonation, the gestures; these are not things of words. Perhaps I can +best indicate the direction of his mind, if not his manner, by the +following:</p> + +<p>One night as we were on our way to a theater there stood on a nearby +corner in the cold a blind man singing and at the same time holding out +a little tin cup into which the coins of the charitably inclined were +supposed to be dropped. At once my brother noticed him, for he had an +eye for this sort of thing, the pathos of poverty as opposed to so gay a +scene, the street with its hurrying theater crowds. At the same time, so +inherently mischievous was his nature that although his sympathy for the +suffering or the ill-used of fate was overwhelming, he could not resist +combining his intended charity with a touch of the ridiculous.</p> + +<p>"Got any pennies?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Three or four."</p> + +<p>Going over to an outdoor candystand he exchanged a quarter for pennies, +then came back and waited until the singer, who had ceased singing, +should begin a new melody. A custom of the singer's, since the song was +of no import save as a means of attracting attention to him, was to +interpolate a "Thank you" after each coin dropped in his cup and between +the words of the song, regardless. It was this little idiosyncrasy which +evidently had attracted my brother's attention, although it had not +mine. Standing quite close, his pennies in his hand, he waited until the +singer had resumed, then began dropping pennies, waiting each time for +the "Thank you," which caused the song to go about as follows:</p> + +<p>"Da-a-'ling" (Clink!—"Thank you!") "I am—" (Clink!—"Thank you!") +"growing o-o-o-ld" (Clink!—"Thank you!"), "Silve-e-r—" (Clink!—"Thank +you!") "threads among the—" (Clink!—"Thank you!") "go-o-o-ld—" +(Clink! "Thank you!"). "Shine upon my-y" (Clink!—"Thank you!") +"bro-o-ow toda-a-y" (Clink!—"Thank you!"), "Life is—" (Clink!—"Thank<a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" /> +you!") "fading fast a-a-wa-a-ay" (Clink!—"Thank you!")—and so on ad +infinitum, until finally the beggar himself seemed to hesitate a little +and waver, only so solemn was his rôle of want and despair that of +course he dared not but had to go on until the last penny was in, and +until he was saying more "Thank yous" than words of the song. A +passer-by noticing it had begun to "Haw-haw!", at which others joined +in, myself included. The beggar himself, a rather sniveling specimen, +finally realizing what a figure he was cutting with his song and thanks, +emptied the coins into his hand and with an indescribably wry +expression, half-uncertainty and half smile, exclaimed, "I'll have to +thank you as long as you keep putting pennies in, I suppose. God bless +you!"</p> + +<p>My brother came away smiling and content.</p> + +<p>However, it is not as a humorist or song-writer or publisher that I wish +to portray him, but as an odd, lovable personality, possessed of so many +interesting and peculiar and almost indescribable traits. Of all +characters in fiction he perhaps most suggests Jack Falstaff, with his +love of women, his bravado and bluster and his innate good nature and +sympathy. Sympathy was really his outstanding characteristic, even more +than humor, although the latter was always present. One might recite a +thousand incidents of his generosity and out-of-hand charity, which +contained no least thought of return or reward. I recall that once there +was a boy who had been reared in one of the towns in which we had once +lived who had never had a chance in his youth, educationally or in any +other way, and, having turned out "bad" and sunk to the level of a bank +robber, had been detected in connection with three other men in the act +of robbing a bank, the watchman of which was subsequently killed in the +mêlée and escape. Of all four criminals only this one had been caught. +Somewhere in prison he had heard sung one of my brother's sentimental +ballads, "The Convict and the Bird," and recollecting that he had known +Paul wrote him, setting forth his life history and that now he had no +money or friends.</p> + +<p>At once my good brother was alive to the pathos of it. He showed the +letter to me and wanted to know what could be done. I suggested a +lawyer, of course, one of those brilliant legal friends of his—always +he had enthusiastic admirers in <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" />all walks—who might take the case for +little or nothing. There was the leader of Tammany Hall, Richard Croker, +who could be reached, he being a friend of Paul's. There was the +Governor himself to whom a plain recitation of the boy's unfortunate +life might be addressed, and with some hope of profit.</p> + +<p>All of these things he did, and more. He went to the prison (Sing Sing), +saw the warden and told him the story of the boy's life, then went to +the boy, or man, himself and gave him some money. He was introduced to +the Governor through influential friends and permitted to tell the tale. +There was much delay, a reprieve, a commutation of the death penalty to +life imprisonment—the best that could be done. But he was so grateful +for that, so pleased. You would have thought at the time that it was his +own life that had been spared.</p> + +<p>"Good heavens!" I jested. "You'd think you'd done the man an inestimable +service, getting him in the penitentiary for life!"</p> + +<p>"That's right," he grinned—an unbelievably provoking smile. "He'd +better be dead, wouldn't he? Well, I'll write and ask him which he'd +rather have."</p> + +<p>I recall again taking him to task for going to the rescue of a "down and +out" actor who had been highly successful and apparently not very +sympathetic in his day, one of that more or less gaudy clan that wastes +its substance, or so it seemed to me then, in riotous living. But now +being old and entirely discarded and forgotten, he was in need of +sympathy and aid. By some chance he knew Paul, or Paul had known him, +and now because of the former's obvious prosperity—he was much in the +papers at the time—he had appealed to him. The man lived with a sister +in a wretched little town far out on Long Island. On receiving his +appeal Paul seemed to wish to investigate for himself, possibly to +indulge in a little lofty romance or sentiment. At any rate he wanted me +to go along for the sake of companionship, so one dreary November +afternoon we went, saw the pantaloon, who did not impress me very much +even in his age and misery for he still had a few of his theatrical +manners and insincerities, and as we were coming away I said, "Paul, why +should you be the goat in <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" />every case?" for I had noted ever since I had +been in New York, which was several years then, that he was a victim of +many such importunities. If it was not the widow of a deceased friend +who needed a ton of coal or a sack of flour, or the reckless, headstrong +boy of parents too poor to save him from a term in jail or the +reformatory and who asked for fine-money or an appeal to higher powers +for clemency, or a wastrel actor or actress "down and out" and unable to +"get back to New York" and requiring his or her railroad fare wired +prepaid, it was the dead wastrel actor or actress who needed a coffin +and a decent form of burial.</p> + +<p>"Well, you know how it is, Thee" (he nearly always addressed me thus), +"when you're old and sick. As long as you're up and around and have +money, everybody's your friend. But once you're down and out no one +wants to see you any more—see?" Almost amusingly he was always sad over +those who had once been prosperous but who were now old and forgotten. +Some of his silliest tender songs conveyed as much.</p> + +<p>"Quite so," I complained, rather brashly, I suppose, "but why didn't he +save a little money when he had it? He made as much as you'll ever +make." The man had been a star. "He had plenty of it, didn't he? Why +should he come to you?"</p> + +<p>"Well, you know how it is, Thee," he explained in the kindliest and most +apologetic way. "When you're young and healthy like that you don't +think. I know how it is; I'm that way myself. We all have a little of it +in us. I have; you have. And anyhow youth's the time to spend money if +you're to get any good of it, isn't it? Of course when you're old you +can't expect much, but still I always feel as though I'd like to help +some of these old people." His eyes at such times always seemed more +like those of a mother contemplating a sick or injured child than those +of a man contemplating life.</p> + +<p>"But, Paul," I insisted on another occasion when he had just wired +twenty-five dollars somewhere to help bury some one. (My spirit was not +so niggardly as fearsome. I was constantly terrified in those days by +the thought of a poverty-stricken old age for myself and him—why, I +don't know. I was by no means incompetent.) "Why don't you save your +money? Why should you give it to every Tom, Dick and<a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" /> Harry that asks +you? You're not a charity organization, and you're not called upon to +feed and clothe and bury all the wasters who happen to cross your path. +If you were down and out how many do you suppose would help you?"</p> + +<p>"Well, you know," and his voice and manner were largely those of mother, +the same wonder, the same wistfulness and sweetness, the same bubbling +charity and tenderness of heart, "I can't say I haven't got it, can I?" +He was at the height of his success at the time. "And anyhow, what's the +use being so hard on people? We're all likely to get that way. You don't +know what pulls people down sometimes—not wasting always. It's +thoughtlessness, or trying to be happy. Remember how poor we were and +how mamma and papa used to worry." Often these references to mother or +father or their difficulties would bring tears to his eyes. "I can't +stand to see people suffer, that's all, not if I have anything," and his +eyes glowed sweetly. "And, after all," he added apologetically, "the +little I give isn't much. They don't get so much out of me. They don't +come to me every day."</p> + +<p>Another time—one Christmas Eve it was, when I was comparatively new to +New York (my second or third year), I was a little uncertain what to do, +having no connections outside of Paul and two sisters, one of whom was +then out of the city. The other, owing to various difficulties of her +own and a temporary estrangement from us—more our fault than hers—was +therefore not available. The rather drab state into which she had +allowed her marital affections to lead her was the main reason that kept +us apart. At any rate I felt that I could not, or rather would not, go +there. At the same time, owing to some difficulty or irritation with the +publishing house of which my brother was then part owner (it was +publishing the magazine which I was editing), we twain were also +estranged, nothing very deep really—a temporary feeling of distance and +indifference.</p> + +<p>So I had no place to go except to my room, which was in a poor part of +the town, or out to dine where best I might—some moderate-priced hotel, +was my thought. I had not seen my brother in three or four days, but +after I had strolled a block or two up Broadway I encountered him. I +have always thought that he had kept an eye on me and had really +<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" />followed me; was looking, in short, to see what I would do As usual he +was most smartly and comfortably dressed.</p> + +<p>"Where you going, Thee?" he called cheerfully.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no place in particular," I replied rather suavely, I presume. "Just +going up the street."</p> + +<p>"Now, see here, sport," he began—a favorite expression of his, +"sport"—with his face abeam, "what's the use you and me quarreling? +It's Christmas Eve, ain't it? It's a shame! Come on, let's have a drink +and then go out to dinner."</p> + +<p>"Well," I said, rather uncompromisingly, for at times his seemingly +extreme success and well-being irritated me, "I'll have a drink, but as +for dinner I have another engagement."</p> + +<p>"Aw, don't say that. What's the use being sore? You know I always feel +the same even if we do quarrel at times. Cut it out. Come on. You know +I'm your brother, and you're mine. It's all right with me, Thee. Let's +make it up, will you? Put 'er there! Come on, now. We'll go and have a +drink, see, something hot—it's Christmas Eve, sport. The old home +stuff."</p> + +<p>He smiled winsomely, coaxingly, really tenderly, as only he could smile. +I "gave in." But now as we entered the nearest shining bar, a Christmas +crowd buzzing within and without (it was the old Fifth Avenue Hotel), a +new thought seemed to strike him.</p> + +<p>"Seen E—— lately?" he inquired, mentioning the name of the troubled +sister who was having a very hard time indeed. Her husband had left her +and she was struggling over the care of two children.</p> + +<p>"No," I replied, rather shamefacedly, "not in a week or two—maybe +more."</p> + +<p>He clicked his tongue. He himself had not been near her in a month or +more. His face fell, and he looked very depressed.</p> + +<p>"It's too bad—a shame really. We oughtn't to do this way, you know, +sport. It ain't right. What do you say to our going around there," it +was in the upper thirties, "and see how she's making out?—take her a +few things, eh? Whaddya say?"</p> + +<p>I hadn't a spare dollar myself, but I knew well enough what he meant by +"take a few things" and who would pay for them.</p> + +<p>"Well, we'll have to hurry if we want to get anything now,"<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" /> I urged, +falling in with the idea since it promised peace, plenty and good will +all around, and we rushed the drink and departed. Near at hand was a +branch of one of the greatest grocery companies of the city, and near +it, too, his then favorite hotel, the Continental. En route we meditated +on the impossibility of delivery, the fact that we would have to carry +the things ourselves, but he at last solved that by declaring that he +could commandeer negro porters or bootblacks from the Continental. We +entered, and by sheer smiles on his part and some blarney heaped upon a +floor-manager, secured a turkey, sweet potatoes, peas, beans, a salad, a +strip of bacon, a ham, plum pudding, a basket of luscious fruit and I +know not what else—provender, I am sure, for a dozen meals. While it +was being wrapped and packed in borrowed baskets, soon to be returned, +he went across the way to the hotel and came back with three grinning +darkies who for the tip they knew they would receive preceded us up +Broadway, the nearest path to our destination. On the way a few +additional things were picked up: holly wreaths, toys, candy, nuts—and +then, really not knowing whether our plan might not mis-carry, we made +our way through the side street and to the particular apartment, or, +rather, flat-house, door, a most amusing Christmas procession, I fancy, +wondering and worrying now whether she would be there.</p> + +<p>But the door clicked in answer to our ring, and up we marched, the three +darkies first, instructed to inquire for her and then insist on leaving +the goods, while we lagged behind to see how she would take it.</p> + +<p>The stage arrangement worked as planned. My sister opened the door and +from the steps below we could hear her protesting that she had ordered +nothing, but the door being open the negroes walked in and a moment or +two afterwards ourselves. The packages were being piled on table and +floor, while my sister, unable quite to grasp this sudden visitation and +change of heart, stared.</p> + +<p>"Just thought we'd come around and have supper with you, E——, and +maybe dinner tomorrow if you'll let us," my brother chortled. "Merry +Christmas, you know. Christmas Eve. The good old home stuff—see? Old +sport here and I thought we couldn't stay away—tonight, anyhow."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" />He beamed on her in his most affectionate way, but she, suffering +regret over the recent estrangement as well as the difficulties of life +itself and the joy of this reunion, burst into tears, while the two +little ones danced about, and he and I put our arms about her.</p> + +<p>"There, there! It's all over now," he declared, tears welling in his +eyes. "It's all off. We'll can this scrapping stuff. Thee and I are a +couple of bums and we know it, but you can forgive us, can't you? We +ought to be ashamed of ourselves, all of us, and that's the truth. We've +been quarreling, too, haven't spoken for a week. Ain't that so, sport? +But it's all right now, eh?"</p> + +<p>There were tears in my eyes, too. One couldn't resist him. He had the +power of achieving the tenderest results in the simplest ways. We then +had supper, and breakfast the next morning, all staying and helping, +even to the washing and drying of the dishes, and thereafter for I don't +know how long we were all on the most affectionate terms, and he +eventually died in this sister's home, ministered to with absolutely +restless devotion by her for weeks before the end finally came.</p> + +<p>But, as I have said, I always prefer to think of him at this, the very +apex or tower window of his life. For most of this period he was gay and +carefree. The music company of which he was a third owner was at the +very top of its success. Its songs, as well as his, were everywhere. He +had in turn at this time a suite at the Gilsey House, the Marlborough, +the Normandie—always on Broadway, you see. The limelight district was +his home. He rose in the morning to the clang of the cars and the honk +of the automobiles outside; he retired at night as a gang of repair men +under flaring torches might be repairing a track, or the milk trucks +were rumbling to and from the ferries. He was in his way a public +restaurant and hotel favorite, a shining light in the theater managers' +offices, hotel bars and lobbies and wherever those flies of the +Tenderloin, those passing lords and celebrities of the sporting, +theatrical, newspaper and other worlds, are wont to gather. One of his +intimates, as I now recall, was "Bat" Masterson, the Western and now +retired (to Broadway!) bad man; Muldoon, the famous wrestler; Tod Sloan, +the jockey; "Battling" Nelson;<a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" /> James J. Corbett; Kid McCoy; Terry +McGovern—prize-fighters all. Such Tammany district leaders as James +Murphy, "The" McManus, Chrystie and Timothy Sullivan, Richard Carroll, +and even Richard Croker, the then reigning Tammany boss, were all on his +visiting list. He went to their meetings, rallies and district doings +generally to sing and play, and they came to his "office" occasionally. +Various high and mighties of the Roman Church, "fathers" with fine +parishes and good wine cellars, and judges of various municipal courts, +were also of his peculiar world. He was always running to one or the +other "to get somebody out," or they to him to get him to contribute +something to something, or to sing and play or act, and betimes they +were meeting each other in hotel grills or elsewhere and having a drink +and telling "funny stories."</p> + +<p>Apropos of this sense of humor of his, this love of horse-play almost, I +remember that once he had a new story to tell—a vulgar one of +course—and with it he had been making me and a dozen others laugh until +the tears coursed down our cheeks. It seemed new to everybody and, true +to his rather fantastic moods, he was determined to be the first to tell +it along Broadway. For some reason he was anxious to have me go along +with him, possibly because he found me at that time an unvarying +fountain of approval and laughter, possibly because he liked to show me +off as his rising brother, as he insisted that I was. At between six and +seven of a spring or summer evening, therefore, we issued from his suite +at the Gilsey House, whither he had returned to dress, and invading the +bar below were at once centered among a group who knew him. A whiskey, a +cigar, the story told to one, two, three, five, ten to roars of +laughter, and we were off, over the way to Weber & Fields (the Musical +Burlesque House Supreme of those days) in the same block, where to the +ticket seller and house manager, both of whom he knew, it was told. More +laughter, a cigar perhaps. Then we were off again, this time to the +ticket seller of Palmer's Theater at Thirtieth Street, thence to the bar +of the Grand Hotel at Thirty-first, the Imperial at Thirty-second, the +Martinique at Thirty-third, a famous drug-store at the southwest corner +of Thirty-fourth and Broadway, now gone of course, the manager of which +<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" />was a friend of his. It was a warm, moony night, and he took a glass of +vichy "for looks' sake," as he said.</p> + +<p>Then to the quondam Hotel Aulic at Thirty-fifth and Broadway—the center +and home of the then much-berated "Hotel Aulic or Actors' School of +Philosophy," and a most impressive actors' rendezvous where might have +been seen in the course of an evening all the "second leads" and "light +comedians" and "heavies" of this, that and the other road company, all +blazing with startling clothes and all explaining how they "knocked 'em" +here and there: in Peoria, Pasadena, Walla-Walla and where not. My +brother shone like a star when only one is in the sky.</p> + +<p>Over the way then to the Herald Building, its owls' eyes glowing in the +night, its presses thundering, the elevated thundering beside it. Here +was a business manager whom he knew. Then to the Herald Square Theater +on the opposite side of the street, ablaze with a small electric +sign—among the newest in the city. In this, as in the business office +of the <i>Herald</i> was another manager, and he knew them all. Thence to the +Marlborough bar and lobby at Thirty-sixth, the manager's office of the +Knickerbocker Theater at Thirty-eighth, stopping at the bar and lobby of +the Normandie, where some blazing professional beauty of the stage +waylaid him and exchanged theatrical witticisms with him—and what else? +Thence to the manager's office of the Casino at Thirty-ninth, some bar +which was across the street, another in Thirty-ninth west of Broadway, +an Italian restaurant on the ground floor of the Metropolitan at +Fortieth and Broadway, and at last but by no means least and by such +slow stages to the very door of the then Mecca of Meccas of all +theater- and sportdom, the sanctum sanctorum of all those sportively au +fait, "wise," the "real thing"—the Hotel Metropole at Broadway and +Forty-second Street, the then extreme northern limit of the white-light +district. And what a realm! Rounders and what not were here ensconced at +round tables, their backs against the leather-cushioned wall seats, the +adjoining windows open to all Broadway and the then all but somber +Forty-second Street.</p> + +<p>It was wonderful, the loud clothes, the bright straw hats, the canes, +the diamonds, the "hot" socks, the air of security <a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" />and well-being, so +easily assumed by those who gain an all too brief hour in this pretty, +petty world of make-believe and pleasure and pseudo-fame. Among them my +dearest brother was at his best. It was "Paul" here and "Paul" +there—"Why, hello, Dresser, you're just in time! Come on in. What'll +you have? Let me tell you something, Paul, a good one—". More drinks, +cigars, tales—magnificent tales of successes made, "great shows" given, +fights, deaths, marvelous winnings at cards, trickeries in racing, +prize-fighting; the "dogs" that some people were, the magnificent, +magnanimous "God's own salt" that others were. The oaths, stories of +women, what low, vice-besmeared, crime-soaked ghoulas certain reigning +beauties of the town or stage were—and so on and so on ad infinitum.</p> + +<p>But his story?—ah, yes. I had all but forgotten. It was told in every +place, not once but seven, eight, nine, ten times. We did not eat until +we reached the Metropole, and it was ten-thirty when we reached it! The +handshakes, the road stories—"This is my brother Theodore. He writes; +he's a newspaper man." The roars of laughter, the drinks! "Ah, my boy, +that's good, but let me tell you one—one that I heard out in Louisville +the other day." A seedy, shabby ne'er-do-well of a song-writer maybe +stopping the successful author in the midst of a tale to borrow a +dollar. Another actor, shabby and distrait, reciting the sad tale of a +year's misfortunes. Everywhere my dear brother was called to, slapped on +the back, chuckled with. He was successful. One of his best songs was +the rage, he had an interest in a going musical concern, he could confer +benefits, favors.</p> + +<p>Ah, me! Ah, me! That one could be so great, and that it should not last +for ever and for ever!</p> + +<p>Another of his outstanding characteristics was his love of women, a +really amusing and at times ridiculous quality. He was always sighing +over the beauty, innocence, sweetness, this and that, of young +maidenhood in his songs, but in real life he seemed to desire and +attract quite a different type—the young and beautiful, it is true, but +also the old, the homely and the somewhat savage—a catholicity of taste +I could never quite stomach. It was "Paul dearest" here and "Paul +dearest" there, especially in his work in connection with the +music-<a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" />house and the stage. In the former, popular ballad singers of +both sexes, some of the women most attractive and willful, were most +numerous, coming in daily from all parts of the world apparently to find +songs which they could sing on the American or even the English stage. +And it was a part of his duty, as a member of the firm and the one who +principally "handled" the so-called professional inquirers, to meet them +and see that they were shown what the catalogue contained. Occasionally +there was an aspiring female song-writer, often mere women visitors.</p> + +<p>Regardless, however, of whether they were young, old, attractive or +repulsive, male or female, I never knew any one whose manner was more +uniformly winsome or who seemed so easily to disarm or relax an +indifferent or irritated mood. He was positive sunshine, the same in +quality as that of a bright spring morning. His blue eyes focused +mellowly, his lips were tendrilled with smiles. He had a brisk, quick +manner, always somehow suggestive of my mother, who was never brisk.</p> + +<p>And how he fascinated them, the women! Their quite shameless daring +where he was concerned! Positively, in the face of it I used to wonder +what had become of all the vaunted and so-called "stabilizing morality" +of the world. None of it seemed to be in the possession of these women, +especially the young and beautiful. They were distant and freezing +enough to all who did not interest them, but let a personality such as +his come into view and they were all wiles, bending and alluring graces. +It was so obvious, this fascination he had for them and they for him, +that at times it took on a comic look.</p> + +<p>"Get onto the hit he's making," one would nudge another and remark.</p> + +<p>"Say, some tenderness, that!" This in reference to a smile or a melting +glance on the part of a female.</p> + +<p>"Nothing like a way with the ladies. Some baby, eh, boys?"—this +following the flick of a skirt and a backward-tossed glance perhaps, as +some noticeable beauty passed out.</p> + +<p>"No wonder he's cheerful," a sour and yet philosophic vaudevillian, who +was mostly out of a job and hung about the place for what free meals he +could obtain, once remarked <a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" />to me in a heavy and morose undertone. "If +I had that many women crazy about me I'd be too."</p> + +<p>And the results of these encounters with beauty! Always he had something +most important to attend to, morning, noon or night, and whenever I +encountered him after some such statement "the important thing" was, of +course, a woman. As time went on and he began to look upon me as +something more than a thin, spindling, dyspeptic and disgruntled youth, +he began to wish to introduce me to some of his marvelous followers, and +then I could see how completely dependent upon beauty in the flesh he +was, how it made his life and world.</p> + +<p>One day as we were all sitting in the office, a large group of +vaudevillians, song-writers, singers, a chance remark gave rise to a +subsequent practical joke at Paul's expense. "I'll bet," observed some +one, "that if a strange man were to rush in here with a revolver and +say, 'Where's the man that seduced my wife?' Paul would be the first to +duck. He wouldn't wait to find out whether he was the one meant or not."</p> + +<p>Much laughter followed, and some thought. The subject of this banter +was, of course, not present at the time. There was one actor who hung +about there who was decidedly skillful in make-up. On more than one +occasion he had disguised himself there in the office for our benefit. +Coöperating with us, he disguised himself now as a very severe and even +savage-looking person of about thirty-five—side-burns, mustachios and +goatee. Then, with our aid, timing his arrival to an hour when Paul was +certain to be at his desk, he entered briskly and vigorously and, +looking about with a savage air, demanded, "Where is Paul Dresser?"</p> + +<p>The latter turned almost apprehensively, I thought, and at once seemed +by no means captivated by the man's looks.</p> + +<p>"That's Mr. Dresser there," explained one of the confederates most +willingly.</p> + +<p>The stranger turned and glared at him. "So you're the scoundrel that's +been running around with my wife, are you?" he demanded, approaching him +and placing one hand on his right hip.</p> + +<p>Paul made no effort to explain. It did not occur to him to deny the +allegation, although he had never seen the man <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" />before. With a rising +and backward movement he fell against the rail behind him, lifting both +hands in fright and exclaiming, "Why—why—Don't shoot!" His expression +was one of guilt, astonishment, perplexity. As some one afterwards said, +"As puzzled as if he was trying to discover which injured husband it +might be." The shout that went up—for it was agreed beforehand that the +joke must not be carried far—convinced him that a hoax had been +perpetrated, and the removal by the actor of his hat, sideburns and +mustache revealed the true character of the injured husband. At first +inclined to be angry and sulky, later on he saw the humor of his own +indefinite position in the matter and laughed as heartily as any. But I +fancy it developed a strain of uncertainty in him also in regard to +injured husbands, for he was never afterwards inclined to interest +himself in the much-married, and gave such wives a wide berth.</p> + +<p>But his great forte was of course his song-writing, and of this, before +I speak of anything else, I wish to have my say. It was a gift, quite a +compelling one, out of which, before he died, he had made thousands, all +spent in the manner described. Never having the least power to interpret +anything in a fine musical way, still he was always full of music of a +tender, sometimes sad, sometimes gay, kind—that of the ballad-maker of +a nation. He was constantly attempting to work them out of himself, not +quickly but slowly, brooding as it were over the piano wherever he might +find one and could have a little solitude, at times on the organ (his +favorite instrument), improvising various sad or wistful strains, some +of which he jotted down, others of which, having mastered, he strove to +fit words to. At such times he preferred to be alone or with some one +whose temperament in no way clashed but rather harmonized with his own. +Living with one of my sisters for a period of years, he had a room +specially fitted up for his composing work, a very small room for so +very large a man, within which he would shut himself and thrum a melody +by the hour, especially toward evening or at night. He seemed to have a +peculiar fondness for the twilight hour, and at this time might thrum +over one strain and another until over some particular one, a new song +usually, he would be in tears!</p> + +<p><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" />And what pale little things they were really, mere bits and scraps of +sentiment and melodrama in story form, most asinine sighings over home +and mother and lost sweethearts and dead heroes such as never were in +real life, and yet with something about them, in the music at least, +which always appealed to me intensely and must have appealed to others, +since they attained so wide a circulation. They bespoke, as I always +felt, a wistful, seeking, uncertain temperament, tender and illusioned, +with no practical knowledge of any side of life, but full of a true +poetic feeling for the mystery and pathos of life and death, the wonder +of the waters, the stars, the flowers, accidents of life, success, +failure. Beginning with a song called "Wide Wings" (published by a small +retail music-house in Evansville, Indiana), and followed by such +national successes as "The Letter That Never Came," "I Believe It, For +My Mother Told Me So" (!), "The Convict and the Bird," "The Pardon Came +Too Late," "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," "The Blue and the Grey," +"On the Bowery," "On the Banks of the Wabash," and a number of others, +he was never content to rest and never really happy, I think, save when +composing. During this time, however, he was at different periods all +the things I have described—a black-face monologue artist, an end- and +at times a middle-man, a publisher, and so on.</p> + +<p>I recall being with him at the time he composed two of his most famous +successes: "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," and "On the Banks of the +Wabash," and noting his peculiar mood, almost amounting to a deep +depression which ended a little later in marked elation or satisfaction, +once he had succeeded in evoking something which really pleased him.</p> + +<p>The first of these songs must have followed an actual encounter with +some woman or girl whose life had seemingly if not actually gone to +wreck on the shore of love or passion. At any rate he came into the +office of his publishing house one gray November Sunday afternoon—it +was our custom to go there occasionally, a dozen or more congenial +souls, about as one might go to a club—and going into a small room +which was fitted up with a piano as a "try-out" room (professionals +desiring a song were frequently taught it in the office), he began +improvising, or rather repeating over and over, a <a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" />certain strain which +was evidently in his mind. A little while later he came out and said, +"Listen to this, will you, Thee?"</p> + +<p>He played and sang the first verse and chorus. In the middle of the +latter, so moved was he by the sentiment of it, his voice broke and he +had to stop. Tears stood in his eyes and he wiped them away. A moment or +two later he was able to go through it without wavering and I thought it +charming for the type of thing it was intended to be. Later on (the +following spring) I was literally astonished to see how, after those +various efforts usually made by popular music publishers to make a song +"go"—advertising it in the <i>Clipper</i> and <i>Mirror</i>, getting various +vaudeville singers to sing it, and so forth—it suddenly began to sell, +thousands upon thousands of copies being wrapped in great bundles under +my very eyes and shipped express or freight to various parts of the +country. Letters and telegrams, even, from all parts of the nation began +to pour in—"Forward express today —— copies of Dresser's 'Tell Them +That You Saw Me.'" The firm was at once as busy as a bee-hive, on "easy +street" again, as the expression went, "in clover." Just before this +there had been a slight slump in its business and in my brother's +finances, but now once more he was his most engaging self. Every one in +that layer of life which understands or takes an interest in popular +songs and their creators knew of him and his song, his latest success. +He was, as it were, a revivified figure on Broadway. His barbers, +barkeepers, hotel clerks, theatrical box-office clerks, hotel managers +and the stars and singers of the street knew of it and him. Some +enterprising button firm got out a button on which the phrase was +printed. Comedians on the stage, newspaper paragraphers, his bank teller +or his tailor, even staid business men wishing to appear "up-to-date," +used it as a parting salute. The hand-organs, the bands and the theater +orchestras everywhere were using it. One could scarcely turn a corner or +go into a cheap music hall or variety house without hearing a parody of +it. It was wonderful, the enormous furore that it seemed to create, and +of course my dear brother was privileged to walk about smiling and +secure, his bank account large, his friends numerous, in the pink of +health, and gloating over the fact that he was a success, well known, a +genuine creator of popular songs.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" />It was the same with "On the Banks of the Wabash," possibly an even +greater success, for it came eventually to be adopted by his native +State as its State song, and in that region streets and a town were +named after him. In an almost unintentional and unthinking way I had a +hand in that, and it has always cheered me to think that I had, although +I have never had the least talent for musical composition or song +versification. It was one of those delightful summer Sunday mornings +(1896, I believe), when I was still connected with his firm as editor of +the little monthly they were issuing, and he and myself, living with my +sister E——, that we had gone over to this office to do a little work. +I had a number of current magazines I wished to examine; he was always +wishing to compose something, to express that ebullient and emotional +soul of his in some way.</p> + +<p>"What do you suppose would make a good song these days?" he asked in an +idle, meditative mood, sitting at the piano and thrumming while I at a +nearby table was looking over my papers. "Why don't you give me an idea +for one once in a while, sport? You ought to be able to suggest +something."</p> + +<p>"Me?" I queried, almost contemptuously, I suppose. I could be very lofty +at times in regard to his work, much as I admired him—vain and yet more +or less dependent snip that I was. "I can't write those things. Why +don't you write something about a State or a river? Look at 'My Old +Kentucky Home,' 'Dixie,' 'Old Black Joe'—why don't you do something +like that, something that suggests a part of America? People like that. +Take Indiana—what's the matter with it—the Wabash River? It's as good +as any other river, and you were 'raised' beside it."</p> + +<p>I have to smile even now as I recall the apparent zest or feeling with +which all at once he seized on this. It seemed to appeal to him +immensely. "That's not a bad idea," he agreed, "but how would you go +about it? Why don't you write the words and let me put the music to +them? We'll do it together!"</p> + +<p>"But I can't," I replied. "I don't know how to do those things. You +write it. I'll help—maybe."</p> + +<p>After a little urging—I think the fineness of the morning <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" />had as much +to do with it as anything—I took a piece of paper and after meditating +a while scribbled in the most tentative manner imaginable the first +verse and chorus of that song almost as it was published. I think one or +two lines were too long or didn't rhyme, but eventually either he or I +hammered them into shape, but before that I rather shamefacedly turned +them over to him, for somehow I was convinced that this work was not for +me and that I was rather loftily and cynically attempting what my good +brother would do in all faith and feeling.</p> + +<p>He read it, insisted that it was fine and that I should do a second +verse, something with a story in it, a girl perhaps—a task which I +solemnly rejected.</p> + +<p>"No, you put it in. It's yours. I'm through."</p> + +<p>Some time later, disagreeing with the firm as to the conduct of the +magazine, I left—really was forced out—which raised a little feeling +on my part; not on his, I am sure, for I was very difficult to deal +with.</p> + +<p>Time passed and I heard nothing. I had been able to succeed in a +somewhat different realm, that of the magazine contributor, and although +I thought a great deal of my brother I paid very little attention to him +or his affairs, being much more concerned with my own. One spring night, +however, the following year, as I was lying in my bed trying to sleep, I +heard a quartette of boys in the distance approaching along the street +in which I had my room. I could not make out the words at first but the +melody at once attracted my attention. It was plaintive and compelling. +I listened, attracted, satisfied that it was some new popular success +that had "caught on." As they drew near my window I heard the words "On +the Banks of the Wabash" most mellifluously harmonized.</p> + +<p>I jumped up. They were my words! It was Paul's song! He had another +"hit" then—"On the Banks of the Wabash," and they were singing it in +the streets already! I leaned out of the window and listened as they +approached and passed on, their arms about each other's shoulders, the +whole song being sung in the still street, as it were, for my benefit. +The night was so warm, delicious. A full moon was overhead. I was young, +lonely, wistful. It brought back so much of my already spent youth that +I was ready to cry—for joy principally. In <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" />three more months it was +everywhere, in the papers, on the stage, on the street-organs, played by +orchestras, bands, whistled and sung in the streets. One day on Broadway +near the Marlborough I met my brother, gold-headed cane, silk shirt, a +smart summer suit, a gay straw hat.</p> + +<p>"Ah," I said, rather sarcastically, for I still felt peeved that he had +shown so little interest in my affairs at the time I was leaving. "On +the banks, I see."</p> + +<p>"On the banks," he replied cordially. "You turned the trick for me, +Thee, that time. What are you doing now? Why don't you ever come and see +me? I'm still your brother, you know. A part of that is really yours."</p> + +<p>"Cut that!" I replied most savagely. "I couldn't write a song like that +in a million years. You know I couldn't. The words are nothing."</p> + +<p>"Oh, all right. It's true, though, you know. Where do you keep yourself? +Why don't you come and see me? Why be down on me? I live here, you +know." He looked up at the then brisk and successful hotel.</p> + +<p>"Well, maybe I will some time," I said distantly, but with no particular +desire to mend matters, and we parted.</p> + +<p>There was, however, several years later, a sequel to all this and one so +characteristic of him that it has always remained in my mind as one of +the really beautiful things of life, and I might as well tell it here +and now. About five years later I had become so disappointed in +connection with my work and the unfriendly pressure of life that I had +suffered what subsequently appeared to have been a purely psychic +breakdown or relapse, not physical, but one which left me in no mood or +condition to go on with my work, or any work indeed in any form. Hope +had disappeared in a sad haze. I could apparently succeed in nothing, do +nothing mentally that was worth while. At the same time I had all but +retired from the world, living on less and less until finally I had +descended into those depths where I was in the grip of actual want, with +no place to which my pride would let me turn. I had always been too vain +and self-centered. Apparently there was but one door, and I was very +close to it. To match my purse I had retired to a still sorrier +neighborhood in B——, one of the poorest. I desired most of all to be +let alone, to be to myself. Still I <a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" />could not be, for occasionally I +met people, and certain prospects and necessities drove me to various +publishing houses. One day as I was walking in some street near Broadway +(not on it) in New York, I ran into my brother quite by accident, he as +prosperous and comfortable as ever. I think I resented him more than +ever. He was of course astonished, shocked, as I could plainly see, by +my appearance and desire not to be seen. He demanded to know where I was +living, wanted me to come then and there and stay with him, wanted me to +tell him what the trouble was—all of which I rather stubbornly refused +to do and finally got away—not however without giving him my address, +though with the caution that I wanted nothing.</p> + +<p>The next morning he was there bright and early in a cab. He was the most +vehement, the most tender, the most disturbed creature I have ever seen. +He was like a distrait mother with a sick child more than anything else.</p> + +<p>"For God's sake," he commented when he saw me, "living in a place like +this—and at this number, too!" (130 it was, and he was superstitious as +to the thirteen.) "I knew there'd be a damned thirteen in it!" he +ejaculated. "And me over in New York! Jesus Christ! And you sick and run +down this way! I might have known. It's just like you. I haven't heard a +thing about you in I don't know when. Well, I'm not going back without +you, that's all. You've got to come with me now, see? Get your clothes, +that's all. The cabby'll take your trunk. I know just the place for you, +and you're going there tomorrow or next day or next week, but you're +coming with me now. My God, I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself, +and me feeling the way I do about you!" His eyes all but brimmed.</p> + +<p>I was so morose and despondent that, grateful as I felt, I could +scarcely take his mood at its value. I resented it, resented myself, my +state, life.</p> + +<p>"I can't," I said finally, or so I thought. "I won't. I don't need your +help. You don't owe me anything. You've done enough already."</p> + +<p>"Owe, hell!" he retorted. "Who's talking about 'owe'? And you my +brother—my own flesh and blood! Why, Thee, for that matter, I owe you +half of 'On the Banks,' and you know <a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" />it. You can't go on living like +this. You're sick and discouraged. You can't fool me. Why, Thee, you're +a big man. You've just got to come out of this! Damn it—don't you +see—don't make me"—and he took out his handkerchief and wiped his +eyes. "You can't help yourself now, but you can later, don't you see? +Come on. Get your things. I'd never forgive myself if I didn't. You've +got to come, that's all. I won't go without you," and he began looking +about for my bag and trunk.</p> + +<p>I still protested weakly, but in vain. His affection was so overwhelming +and tender that it made me weak. I allowed him to help me get my things +together. Then he paid the bill, a small one, and on the way to the +hotel insisted on forcing a roll of bills on me, all that he had with +him. I was compelled at once, that same day or the next, to indulge in a +suit, hat, shoes, underwear, all that I needed. A bedroom adjoining his +suite at the hotel was taken, and for two days I lived there, later +accompanying him in his car to a famous sanitarium in Westchester, one +in charge of an old friend of his, a well-known ex-wrestler whose fame +for this sort of work was great. Here I was booked for six weeks, all +expenses paid, until I should "be on my feet again," as he expressed it. +Then he left, only to visit and revisit me until I returned to the city, +fairly well restored in nerves if not in health.</p> + +<p>But could one ever forget the mingled sadness and fervor of his original +appeal, the actual distress written in his face, the unlimited generosity +of his mood and deed as well as his unmerited self-denunciation? One +pictures such tenderness and concern as existing between parents and +children, but rarely between brothers. Here he was evincing the same +thing, as soft as love itself, and he a man of years and some affairs +and I an irritable, distrait and peevish soul.</p> + +<p>Take note, ye men of satire and spleen. All men are not selfish or hard.</p> + +<p>The final phase of course related to his untimely end. He was not quite +fifty-five when he died, and with a slightly more rugged quality of mind +he might have lasted to seventy. It was due really to the failure of his +firm (internal dissensions and rivalries, in no way due to him, however, +as I have been told) and what he foolishly deemed to be the end of his +financial and social glory. His was one of those simple, confiding, +<a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" />non-hardy dispositions, warm and colorful but intensely sensitive, +easily and even fatally chilled by the icy blasts of human difficulty, +however slight. You have no doubt seen some animals, cats, dogs, birds, +of an especially affectionate nature, which when translated to a strange +or unfriendly climate soon droop and die. They have no spiritual +resources wherewith to contemplate what they do not understand or know. +Now his friends would leave him. Now that bright world of which he had +been a part would know him no more. It was pathetic, really. He emanated +a kind of fear. Depression and even despair seemed to hang about him +like a cloak. He could not shake it off. And yet, literally, in his case +there was nothing to fear, if he had only known.</p> + +<p>And yet two years before he did die, I knew he would. Fantastic as it +may seem, to be shut out from that bright world of which he deemed +himself an essential figure was all but unendurable. He had no ready +money now—not the same amount anyhow. He could not greet his old-time +friends so gayly, entertain so freely. Meeting him on Broadway shortly +after the failure and asking after his affairs, he talked of going into +business for himself as a publisher, but I realized that he could not. +He had neither the ability nor the talent for that, nor the heart. He +was not a business man but a song-writer and actor, had never been +anything but that. He tried in this new situation to write songs, but he +could not. They were too morbid. What he needed was some one to buoy him +up, a manager, a strong confidant of some kind, some one who would have +taken his affairs in hand and shown him what to do. As it was he had no +one. His friends, like winter-frightened birds, had already departed. +Personally, I was in no position to do anything at the time, being more +or less depressed myself and but slowly emerging from difficulties which +had held me for a number of years.</p> + +<p>About a year or so after he failed my sister E—— announced that Paul +had been there and that he was coming to live with her. He could not pay +so much then, being involved with all sorts of examinations of one kind +and another, but neither did he have to. Her memory was not short; she +gave him the fullness of her home. A few months later he was ostensibly +connected with another publishing house, but by <a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" />then he was feeling so +poorly physically and was finding consolation probably in some drinking +and the caresses of those feminine friends who have, alas, only caresses +to offer. A little later I met a doctor who said, "Paul cannot live. He +has pernicious anæmia. He is breaking down inside and doesn't know it. +He can't last long. He's too depressed." I knew it was so and what the +remedy was—money and success once more, the petty pettings and flattery +of that little world of which he had been a part but which now was no +more for him. Of all those who had been so lavish in their greetings and +companionship earlier in his life, scarcely one, so far as I could make +out, found him in that retired world to which he was forced. One or two +pegged-out actors sought him and borrowed a little of the little that he +had; a few others came when he had nothing at all. His partners, +quarreling among themselves and feeling that they had done him an +injustice, remained religiously away. He found, as he often told my +sister, broken horse-shoes (a "bad sign"), met cross-eyed women, another +"bad sign," was pursued apparently by the inimical number thirteen—and +all these little straws depressed him horribly. Finally, being no longer +strong enough to be about, he took to his bed and remained there days at +a time, feeling well while in bed but weak when up. For a little while +he would go "downtown" to see this, that and the other person, but would +soon return. One day on coming back home he found one of his hats lying +on his bed, accidentally put there by one of the children, and according +to my sister, who was present at the time, he was all but petrified by +the sight of it. To him it was the death-sign. Some one had told him so +not long before!!!</p> + +<p>Then, not incuriously, seeing the affectional tie that had always held +us, he wanted to see me every day. He had a desire to talk to me about +his early life, the romance of it—maybe I could write a story some +time, tell something about him! (Best of brothers, here it is, a thin +little flower to lay at your feet!) To please him I made notes, although +I knew most of it. On these occasions he was always his old self, full +of ridiculous stories, quips and slight <i>mots</i>, all in his old and best +vein. He would soon be himself, he now insisted.</p> + +<p>Then one evening in late November, before I had time to <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" />call upon him +(I lived about a mile away), a hurry-call came from E——. He had +suddenly died at five in the afternoon; a blood-vessel had burst in the +head. When I arrived he was already cold in death, his soft hands folded +over his chest, his face turned to one side on the pillow, that +indescribable sweetness of expression about the eyes and mouth—the +empty shell of the beetle. There were tears, a band of reporters from +the papers, the next day obituary news articles, and after that a host +of friends and flowers, flowers, flowers. It is amazing what +satisfaction the average mind takes in standardized floral forms—broken +columns and gates ajar!</p> + +<p>Being ostensibly a Catholic, a Catholic sister-in-law and other +relatives insistently arranged for a solemn high requiem mass at the +church of one of his favorite rectors. All Broadway was there, more +flowers, his latest song read from the altar. Then there was a carriage +procession to a distant Catholic graveyard somewhere, his friend, the +rector of the church, officiating at the grave. It was so cold and +dreary there, horrible. Later on he was removed to Chicago.</p> + +<p>But still I think of him as not there or anywhere in the realm of space, +but on Broadway between Twenty-ninth and Forty-second Streets, the +spring and summer time at hand, the doors of the grills and bars of the +hotels open, the rout of actors and actresses ambling to and fro, his +own delicious presence dressed in his best, his "funny" stories, his +songs being ground out by the hand organs, his friends extending their +hands, clapping him on the shoulder, cackling over the latest idle yarn.</p> + +<p>Ah, Broadway! Broadway! And you, my good brother! Here is the story that +you wanted me to write, this little testimony to your memory, a pale, +pale symbol of all I think and feel. Where are the thousand yarns I have +laughed over, the music, the lights, the song?</p> + +<p>Peace, peace. So shall it soon be with all of us. It was a dream. It is. +I am. You are. And shall we grieve over or hark back to dreams?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="The_County_Doctor" id="The_County_Doctor" /><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" /><i>The County Doctor</i></h2> + + +<p>How well I remember him—the tall, grave, slightly bent figure, the head +like Plato's or that of Diogenes, the mild, kindly, brown-gray eyes +peering, all too kindly, into the faces of dishonest men. In addition, +he wore long, full, brown-gray whiskers, a long gray overcoat (soiled +and patched toward the last) in winter, a soft black hat that hung +darkeningly over his eyes. But what a doctor! And how simple and often +non-drug-storey were so many of his remedies!</p> + +<p>"My son, your father is very sick. Now, I'll tell you what you can do +for me. You go out here along the Cheevertown road about a mile or two +and ask any farmer this side of the creek to let you have a good big +handful of peach sprigs—about so many, see? Say that Doctor Gridley +said he was to give them to you for him. Then, Mrs. ——, when he brings +them, you take a few, not more than seven or eight, and break them up +and steep them in hot water until you have an amber-colored tea. Give +Mr. —— about three or four tea-spoonfuls of that every three or four +hours, and I hope we'll find he'll do better. This kidney case is +severe, I know, but he'll come around all right."</p> + +<p>And he did. My father had been very ill with gall stones, so weak at +last that we thought he was sure to die. The house was so somber at the +time. Over it hung an atmosphere of depression and fear, with pity for +the sufferer, and groans of distress on his part. And then there were +the solemn visits of the doctor, made pleasant by his wise, kindly humor +and his hopeful predictions and ending in this seemingly mild +prescription, which resulted, in this case, in a cure. He was seemingly +so remote at times, in reality so near, and wholly thoughtful.</p> + +<p>On this occasion I went out along the long, cold, country road of a +March evening. I was full of thoughts of his importance as a doctor. He +seemed so necessary to us, as he did to everybody. I knew nothing about +medicine, or how lives were saved, but I felt sure that he did and that +he would save my father in spite of his always conservative, +speculative, doubtful manner. What a wonderful man he must be to know +all these <a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" />things—that peach sprouts, for instance, were an antidote to +the agony of gall stones!</p> + +<p>As I walked along, the simplicity of country life and its needs and +deprivations were impressed upon me, even though I was so young. So few +here could afford to pay for expensive prescriptions—ourselves +especially—and Dr. Gridley knew that and took it into consideration, so +rarely did he order anything from a drug-store. Most often, what he +prescribed he took out of a case, compounded, as it were, in our +presence.</p> + +<p>A brisk wind had fluttered snow in the morning, and now the ground was +white, with a sinking red sun shining across it, a sense of spring in +the air. Being unknown to these farmers, I wondered if any one of them +would really cut me a double handful of fresh young peach sprigs or +suckers from their young trees, as the doctor had said. Did they really +know him? Some one along the road—a home-driving farmer—told me of an +old Mr. Mills who had a five-acre orchard farther on. In a little while +I came to his door and was confronted by a thin, gaunt, bespectacled +woman, who called back to a man inside:</p> + +<p>"Henry, here's a little boy says Dr. Gridley said you were to cut him a +double handful of peach sprigs."</p> + +<p>Henry now came forward—a tall, bony farmer in high boots and an old +wool-lined leather coat, and a cap of wool.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he?" he observed, eyeing me most critically.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>"What's the matter? What does he want with 'em? Do ya know?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir. My father's sick with kidney trouble, and Dr. Gridley said I +was to come out here."</p> + +<p>"Oh, all right. Wait'll I git my big knife," and back he went, returning +later with a large horn-handled knife, which he opened. He preceded me +out through the barn lot and into the orchard beyond.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he, huh?" he asked as he went. "Well, I guess +we all have ter comply with whatever the doctor orders. We're all apt +ter git sick now an' ag'in," and talking trivialities of a like +character, he cut me an armful, saying:<a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" /> "I might as well give ya too +many as too few. Peach sprigs! Now, I never heered o' them bein' good +fer anythin', but I reckon the doctor knows what he's talkin' about. He +usually does—or that's what we think around here, anyhow."</p> + +<p>In the dusk I trudged home with my armful, my fingers cold. The next +morning, the tea having been brewed and taken, my father was better. In +a week or two he was up and around, as well as ever, and during this +time he commented on the efficacy of this tea, which was something new +to him, a strange remedy, and which caused the whole incident to be +impressed upon my mind. The doctor had told him that at any time in the +future if he was so troubled and could get fresh young peach sprigs for +a tea, he would find that it would help him. And the drug expense was +exactly nothing.</p> + +<p>In later years I came to know him better—this thoughtful, crusty, +kindly soul, always so ready to come at all hours when his cases +permitted, so anxious to see that his patients were not taxed beyond +their financial resources.</p> + +<p>I remember once, one of my sisters being very ill, so ill that we were +beginning to fear death, one and another of us had to take turn sitting +up with her at night to help and to give her her medicine regularly. +During one of the nights when I was sitting up, dozing, reading and +listening to the wind in the pines outside, she seemed persistently to +get worse. Her fever rose, and she complained of such aches and pains +that finally I had to go and call my mother. A consultation with her +finally resulted in my being sent for Dr. Gridley—no telephones in +those days—to tell him, although she hesitated so to do, how sister was +and ask him if he would not come.</p> + +<p>I was only fourteen. The street along which I had to go was quite dark, +the town lights being put out at two a.m., for reasons of thrift +perhaps. There was a high wind that cried in the trees. My shoes on the +board walks, here and there, sounded like the thuds of a giant. I recall +progressing in a shivery ghost-like sort of way, expecting at any step +to encounter goblins of the most approved form, until finally the +well-known outlines of the house of the doctor on the main +street—yellow, many-roomed, a wide porch in front—came, because of a +very small lamp in a very large glass case to one side of the door, into +view.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" />Here I knocked, and then knocked more. No reply. I then made a still +more forceful effort. Finally, through one of the red glass panels which +graced either side of the door I saw the lengthy figure of the doctor, +arrayed in a long white nightshirt, and carrying a small glass +hand-lamp, come into view at the head of the stairs. His feet were in +gray flannel slippers, and his whiskers stuck out most grotesquely.</p> + +<p>"Wait! Wait!" I heard him call. "I'll be there! I'm coming! Don't make +such a fuss! It seems as though I never get a real good night's rest any +more."</p> + +<p>He came on, opened the door, and looked out.</p> + +<p>"Well," he demanded, a little fussily for him, "what's the matter now?"</p> + +<p>"Doctor," I began, and proceeded to explain all my sister's aches and +pains, winding up by saying that my mother said "wouldn't he please come +at once?"</p> + +<p>"Your mother!" he grumbled. "What can I do if I do come down? Not a +thing. Feel her pulse and tell her she's all right! That's every bit I +can do. Your mother knows that as well as I do. That disease has to run +its course." He looked at me as though I were to blame, then added, +"Calling me up this way at three in the morning!"</p> + +<p>"But she's in such pain, Doctor," I complained.</p> + +<p>"All right—everybody has to have a little pain! You can't be sick +without it."</p> + +<p>"I know," I replied disconsolately, believing sincerely that my sister +might die, "but she's in such awful pain, Doctor."</p> + +<p>"Well, go on," he replied, turning up the light. "I know it's all +foolishness, but I'll come. You go back and tell your mother that I'll +be there in a little bit, but it's all nonsense, nonsense. She isn't a +bit sicker than I am right this minute, not a bit—" and he closed the +door and went upstairs.</p> + +<p>To me this seemed just the least bit harsh for the doctor, although, as +I reasoned afterwards, he was probably half-asleep and tired—dragged +out of his bed, possibly, once or twice before in the same night. As I +returned home I felt even more fearful, for once, as I was passing a +woodshed which I could not see, a rooster suddenly flapped his wings and +crowed—a sound which caused me to leap all of nineteen feet Fahrenheit, +sidewise. Then, as I walked along a fence which <a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" />later by day I saw had +a comfortable resting board on top, two lambent golden eyes surveyed me +out of inky darkness! Great Hamlet's father, how my heart sank! Once +more I leaped to the cloddy roadway and seizing a cobblestone or hunk of +mud hurled it with all my might, and quite involuntarily. Then I ran +until I fell into a crossing ditch. It was an amazing—almost a +tragic—experience, then.</p> + +<p>In due time the doctor came—and I never quite forgave him for not +making me wait and go back with him. He was too sleepy, though, I am +sure. The seizure was apparently nothing which could not have waited +until morning. However, he left some new cure, possibly clear water in a +bottle, and left again. But the night trials of doctors and their +patients, especially in the country, was fixed in my mind then.</p> + +<p>One of the next interesting impressions I gained of the doctor was that +of seeing him hobbling about our town on crutches, his medicine case +held in one hand along with a crutch, visiting his patients, when he +himself appeared to be so ill as to require medical attention. He was +suffering from some severe form of rheumatism at the time, but this, +apparently, was not sufficient to keep him from those who in his +judgment probably needed his services more than he did his rest.</p> + +<p>One of the truly interesting things about Dr. Gridley, as I early began +to note, was his profound indifference to what might be called his +material welfare. Why, I have often asked myself, should a man of so +much genuine ability choose to ignore the gauds and plaudits and +pleasures of the gayer, smarter world outside, in which he might readily +have shone, to thus devote himself and all his talents to a simple rural +community? That he was an extremely able physician there was not the +slightest doubt. Other physicians from other towns about, and even so +far away as Chicago, were repeatedly calling him into consultation. That +he knew life—much of it—as only a priest or a doctor of true wisdom +can know it, was evident from many incidents, of which I subsequently +learned, and yet here he was, hidden away in this simple rural world, +surrounded probably by his Rabelais, his Burton, his Frazer, and his +Montaigne, and dreaming what dreams—thinking what thoughts?</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" />Say," an old patient, friend and neighbor of his once remarked to me +years later, when we had both moved to another city, "one of the +sweetest recollections of my life is to picture old Dr. Gridley, Ed +Boulder who used to run the hotel over at Sleichertown, Congressman +Barr, and Judge Morgan, sitting out in front of Boulder's hotel over +there of a summer's evening and haw-hawing over the funny stories which +Boulder was always telling while they were waiting for the Pierceton +bus. Dr. Gridley's laugh, so soft to begin with, but growing in force +and volume until it was a jolly shout. And the green fields all around. +And Mrs. Calder's drove of geese over the way honking, too, as geese +will whenever people begin to talk or laugh. It was delicious."</p> + +<p>One of the most significant traits of his character, as may be inferred, +was his absolute indifference to actual money, the very cash, one would +think, with which he needed to buy his own supplies. During his life, +his wife, who was a thrifty, hard-working woman, used frequently, as I +learned after, to comment on this, but to no result. He could not be +made to charge where he did not need to, nor collect where he knew that +the people were poor.</p> + +<p>"Once he became angry at my uncle," his daughter once told me, "because +he offered to collect for him for three per cent, dunning his patients +for their debts, and another time he dissolved a partnership with a +local physician who insisted that he ought to be more careful to charge +and collect."</p> + +<p>This generosity on his part frequently led to some very interesting +results. On one occasion, for instance, when he was sitting out on his +front lawn in Warsaw, smoking, his chair tilted back against a tree and +his legs crossed in the fashion known as "jack-knife," a poorly dressed +farmer without a coat came up and after saluting the doctor began to +explain that his wife was sick and that he had come to get the doctor's +advice. He seemed quite disturbed, and every now and then wiped his +brow, while the doctor listened with an occasional question or gently +accented "uh-huh, uh-huh," until the story was all told and the advice +ready to be received. When this was given in a low, reassuring tone, he +took from his pocket his little book of blanks and wrote out a +prescription, which he gave to the man and began talking again. The +latter took <a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" />out a silver dollar and handed it to the doctor, who turned +it idly between his fingers for a few seconds, then searched in his +pocket for a mate to it, and playing with them a while as he talked, +finally handed back the dollar to the farmer.</p> + +<p>"You take that," he said pleasantly, "and go down to the drug-store and +have the prescription filled. I think your wife will be all right."</p> + +<p>When he had gone the doctor sat there a long time, meditatively puffing +the smoke from his cob pipe, and turning his own dollar in his hand. +After a time he looked up at his daughter, who was present, and said:</p> + +<p>"I was just thinking what a short time it took me to write that +prescription, and what a long time it took him to earn that dollar. I +guess he needs the dollar more than I do."</p> + +<p>In the same spirit of this generosity he was once sitting in his yard of +a summer day, sunning himself and smoking, a favorite pleasure of his, +when two men rode up to his gate from opposite directions and +simultaneously hailed him. He arose and went out to meet them. His wife, +who was sewing just inside the hall as she usually was when her husband +was outside, leaned forward in her chair to see through the door, and +took note of who they were. Both were men in whose families the doctor +had practiced for years. One was a prosperous farmer who always paid his +"doctor's bills," and the other was a miller, a "ne'er-do-well," with a +delicate wife and a family of sickly children, who never asked for a +statement and never had one sent him, and who only occasionally and at +great intervals handed the doctor a dollar in payment for his many +services. Both men talked to him a little while and then rode away, +after which he returned to the house, calling to Enoch, his old negro +servant, to bring his horse, and then went into his study to prepare his +medicine case. Mrs. Gridley, who was naturally interested in his +financial welfare, and who at times had to plead with him not to let his +generosity stand wholly in the way of his judgment, inquired of him as +he came out:</p> + +<p>"Now, Doctor, which of those two men are you going with?"</p> + +<p>"Why, Miss Susan," he replied—a favorite manner of addressing his wife, +of whom he was very fond—the note of <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" />apology in his voice showing that +he knew very well what she was thinking about, "I'm going with W——."</p> + +<p>"I don't think that is right," she replied with mild emphasis. "Mr. +N—— is as good a friend of yours as W——, and he always pays you."</p> + +<p>"Now, Miss Susan," he returned coaxingly, "N—— can go to Pierceton and +get Doctor Bodine, and W—— can't get any one but me. You surely +wouldn't have him left without any one?"</p> + +<p>What the effect of such an attitude was may be judged when it is related +that there was scarcely a man, woman or child in the entire county who +had not at some time or other been directly or indirectly benefited by +the kindly wisdom of this Samaritan. He was nearly everybody's doctor, +in the last extremity, either as consultant or otherwise. Everywhere he +went, by every lane and hollow that he fared, he was constantly being +called into service by some one—the well-to-do as well as by those who +had nothing; and in both cases he was equally keen to give the same +degree of painstaking skill, finding something in the very poor—a +humanness possibly—which detained and fascinated him and made him a +little more prone to linger at their bedsides than anywhere else.</p> + +<p>"He was always doing it," said his daughter, "and my mother used to +worry over it. She declared that of all things earthly, papa loved an +unfortunate person; the greater the misfortune, the greater his care."</p> + +<p>In illustration of his easy and practically controlling attitude toward +the very well-to-do, who were his patients also, let me narrate this:</p> + +<p>In our town was an old and very distinguished colonel, comparatively +rich and very crotchety, who had won considerable honors for himself +during the Civil War. He was a figure, and very much looked up to by +all. People were, in the main, overawed by and highly respectful of him. +A remote, stern soul, yet to Dr. Gridley he was little more than a child +or schoolboy—one to be bossed on occasion and made to behave. Plainly, +the doctor had the conviction that all of us, great and small, were very +much in need of sympathy and care, and that he, the doctor, was the one +to provide it. At any rate, he had known the colonel long and well, and +in a <a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" />public place—at the principal street corner, for instance, or in +the postoffice where we school children were wont to congregate—it was +not at all surprising to hear him take the old colonel, who was quite +frail now, to task for not taking better care of himself—coming out, +for instance, without his rubbers, or his overcoat, in wet or chilly +weather, and in other ways misbehaving himself.</p> + +<p>"There you go again!" I once heard him call to the colonel, as the +latter was leaving the postoffice and he was entering (there was no +rural free delivery in those days) "—walking around without your +rubbers, and no overcoat! You want to get me up in the night again, do +you?"</p> + +<p>"It didn't seem so damp when I started out, Doctor."</p> + +<p>"And of course it was too much trouble to go back! You wouldn't feel +that way if you couldn't come out at all, perhaps!"</p> + +<p>"I'll put 'em on! I'll put 'em on! Only, please don't fuss, Doctor. I'll +go back to the house and put 'em on."</p> + +<p>The doctor merely stared after him quizzically, like an old +schoolmaster, as the rather stately colonel marched off to his home.</p> + +<p>Another of his patients was an old Mr. Pegram, a large, kind, +big-hearted man, who was very fond of the doctor, but who had an +exceedingly irascible temper. He was the victim of some obscure malady +which medicine apparently failed at times to relieve. This seemed to +increase his irritability a great deal, so much so that the doctor had +at last discovered that if he could get Mr. Pegram angry enough the +malady would occasionally disappear. This seemed at times as good a +remedy as any, and in consequence he was occasionally inclined to try +it.</p> + +<p>Among other things, this old gentleman was the possessor of a handsome +buffalo robe, which, according to a story that long went the rounds +locally, he once promised to leave to the doctor when he died. At the +same time all reference to death both pained and irritated him +greatly—a fact which the doctor knew. Finding the old gentleman in a +most complaining and hopeless mood one night, not to be dealt with, +indeed, in any reasoning way, the doctor returned to his home, and early +the next day, without any other word, sent old<a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" /> Enoch, his negro +servant, around to get, as he said, the buffalo robe—a request which +would indicate, of course that the doctor had concluded that old Mr. +Pegram had died, or was about to—a hopeless case. When ushered into the +latter's presence, Enoch began innocently enough:</p> + +<p>"De doctah say dat now dat Mr. Peg'am hab subspired, he was to hab dat +ba—ba—buffalo robe."</p> + +<p>"What!" shouted the old irascible, rising and clambering out of his bed. +"What's that? Buffalo robe! By God! You go back and tell old Doc Gridley +that I ain't dead yet by a damned sight! No, sir!" and forthwith he +dressed himself and was out and around the same day.</p> + +<p>Persons who met the doctor, as I heard years later from his daughter and +from others who had known him, were frequently asking him, just in a +social way, what to do for certain ailments, and he would as often reply +in a humorous and half-vagrom manner that if he were in their place he +would do or take so-and-so, not meaning really that they should do so +but merely to get rid of them, and indicating of course any one of a +hundred harmless things—never one that could really have proved +injurious to any one. Once, according to his daughter, as he was driving +into town from somewhere, he met a man on a lumber wagon whom he +scarcely knew but who knew him well enough, who stopped and showed him a +sore on the upper tip of his ear, asking him what he would do for it.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said the doctor, idly and jestingly, "I think I'd cut it off."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the man, very much pleased with this free advice, "with +what, Doctor?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I think I'd use a pair of scissors," he replied amusedly, scarcely +assuming that his jesting would be taken seriously.</p> + +<p>The driver jogged on and the doctor did not see or hear of him again +until some two months later when, meeting him in the street, the driver +smilingly approached him and enthusiastically exclaimed:</p> + +<p>"Well, Doc, you see I cut 'er off, and she got well!"</p> + +<p>"Yes," replied the doctor solemnly, not remembering anything about the +case but willing to appear interested, "—what was it you cut off?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" />Why, that sore on my ear up here, you know. You told me to cut it off, +and I did."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the doctor, becoming curious and a little amazed, "with +what?"</p> + +<p>"Why, with a pair of scissors, Doc, just like you said."</p> + +<p>The doctor stared at him, the whole thing coming gradually back to him.</p> + +<p>"But didn't you have some trouble in cutting it off?" he inquired, in +disturbed astonishment.</p> + +<p>"No, no," said the driver, "I made 'em sharp, all right. I spent two +days whettin' 'em up, and Bob Hart cut 'er off fer me. They cut, all +right, but I tell you she hurt when she went through the gristle."</p> + +<p>He smiled in pleased remembrance of his surgical operation, and the +doctor smiled also, but, according to his daughter, he decided to give +no more idle advice of that kind.</p> + +<p>In the school which I attended for a period were two of his sons, Fred +and Walter. Both were very fond of birds, and kept a number of one kind +or another about their home—not in cages, as some might, but inveigled +and trained as pets, and living in the various open bird-houses fixed +about the yard on poles. The doctor himself was intensely fond of these +and all other birds, and, according to his daughter and his sons, always +anticipated the spring return of many of diem—black-birds, blue jays, +wrens and robins—with a hopeful, "Well, now, they'll soon be here +again." During the summer, according to her, he was always an interested +spectator of their gyrations in the air, and when evening would come was +never so happy as when standing and staring at them gathering from all +directions to their roosts in the trees or the birdhouses. Similarly, +when the fall approached and they would begin their long flight +Southward, he would sometimes stand and scan the sky and trees in vain +for a final glimpse of his feathered friends, and when in the gathering +darkness they were no longer to be seen would turn away toward the +house, saying sadly to his daughter:</p> + +<p>"Well, Dollie, the blackbirds are all gone. I am sorry. I like to see +them, and I am always sorry to lose them, and sorry to know that winter +is coming."</p> + +<p>"Usually about the 25th or 26th of December," his daughter <a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" />once +quaintly added to me, "he would note that the days were beginning to get +longer, and cheer up, as spring was certain to follow soon and bring +them all back again."</p> + +<p>One of the most interesting of his bird friendships was that which +existed between him and a pair of crows he and his sons had raised, +"Jim" and "Zip" by name. These crows came to know him well, and were +finally so humanly attached to him that, according to his family, they +would often fly two or three miles out of town to meet him and would +then accompany him, lighting on fences and trees by the way, and cawing +to him as he drove along! Both of them were great thieves, and would +steal anything from a bit of thread up to a sewing machine, if they +could have carried it. They were always walking about the house, +cheerfully looking for what they might devour, and on one occasion +carried off a set of spoons, which they hid about the eaves of the +house. On another occasion they stole a half dozen tin-handled pocket +knives, which the doctor had bought for the children and which the crows +seemed to like for the brightness of the metal. They were recovered once +by the children, stolen again by the crows, recovered once more, and so +on, until at last it was a question as to which were the rightful +owners.</p> + +<p>The doctor was sitting in front of a store one day in the business-heart +of town, where also he liked to linger in fair weather, when suddenly he +saw one of his crows flying high overhead and bearing something in its +beak, which it dropped into the road scarcely a hundred feet away. +Interested to see what it was the bird had been carrying, he went to the +spot where he saw it fall and found one of the tin-handled knives, which +the crow had been carrying to a safe hiding-place. He picked it up and +when he returned home that night asked one of his boys if he could lend +him a knife.</p> + +<p>"No," said his son. "Our knives are all lost. The crows took them."</p> + +<p>"I knew that," said the doctor sweetly, "and so, when I met Zip uptown +just now, I asked her to lend me one, and she did. Here it is."</p> + +<p>He pulled out the knife and handed it to the boy and, when the latter +expressed doubt and wonder, insisted that the crow had loaned it to him; +a joke which ended in his always <a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" />asking one of the children to run and +ask Zip if she would lend him a knife, whenever he chanced to need one.</p> + +<p>Although a sad man at times, as I understood, the doctor was not a +pessimist, and in many ways, both by practical jokes and the humoring of +odd characters, sought relief from the intense emotional strain which +the large practice of his profession put upon him. One of his greatest +reliefs was the carrying out of these little practical jokes, and he had +been known to go to much trouble at times to work up a good laugh.</p> + +<p>One of the, to him, richest jokes, and one which he always enjoyed +telling, related to a country singing school which was located in the +neighborhood of Pierceton, in which reading (the alphabet, at least), +spelling, geography, arithmetic, rules of grammar, and so forth, were +still taught by a process of singing. The method adopted in this form of +education was to have the scholar memorize all knowledge by singing it. +Thus in the case of geography the students would sing the name of the +country, then its mountains, then the highest peaks, cities, rivers, +principal points of interest, and so on, until all information about +that particular country had been duly memorized in song or rhyme. +Occasionally they would have a school-day on which the local dignitaries +would be invited, and on a number of these occasions the doctor was, for +amusement's sake merely, a grave and reverent listener. On one occasion, +however, he was merely passing the school, when hearing "Africa-a, +Africa-a, mountains of the moo-oo-oon" drawled out of the windows, he +decided to stop in and listen a while. Having tethered his horse outside +he knocked at the door and was received by the little English singing +teacher who, after showing him to a seat, immediately called upon the +class for an exhibition of their finest wisdom. When they had finished +this the teacher turned to him and inquired if there was anything he +would especially like them to sing.</p> + +<p>"No," said the doctor gravely, and no doubt with an amused twinkle in +his eye, "I had thought of asking you to sing the Rocky Mountains, but +as the mountains are so high, and the amount of time I have so limited, +I have decided that perhaps it will be asking too much."</p> + +<p>"Oh, not at all, not at all" airily replied the teacher, and turning to +his class, he exclaimed with a very superior smile:<a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" /> "Now, ladies and +gentlemen, 'ere is a scientific gentleman who thinks it is 'arder to +sing of <i>'igh</i> mountings than it is to sing of <i>low</i> mountings," and +forthwith the class began to demonstrate that in respect to vocalization +there was no difference at all.</p> + +<p>Only those, however, who knew Dr. Gridley in the sickroom, and knew him +well, ever discovered the really finest trait of his character: a keen, +unshielded sensibility to and sympathy for all human suffering, that +could not bear to inflict the slightest additional pain. He was really, +in the main, a man of soft tones and unctuous laughter, of gentle touch +and gentle step, and a devotion to duty that carried him far beyond his +interests or his personal well-being. One of his chiefest oppositions, +according to his daughter, was to telling the friends or relatives of +any stricken person that there was no hope. Instead, he would use every +delicate shade of phrasing and tone in imparting the fateful words, in +order if possible to give less pain. "I remember in the case of my +father," said one of his friends, "when the last day came. Knowing the +end was near, he was compelled to make some preliminary discouraging +remark, and I bent over with my ear against my father's chest and said, +'Doctor Gridley, the disease is under control, I think. I can hear the +respiration to the bottom of the lungs.'</p> + +<p>"'Yes, yes,' he answered me sadly, but now with an implication which +could by no means be misunderstood, 'it is nearly always so. The failure +is in the recuperative energy. Vitality runs too low.' It meant from the +first, 'Your father will not live.'"</p> + +<p>In the case of a little child with meningitis, the same person was sent +to him to ask what of the child—better or worse. His answer was: "He is +passing as free from pain as ever I knew a case of this kind."</p> + +<p>In yet another case of a dying woman, one of her relatives inquired: +"Doctor, is this case dangerous?" "Not in the nature of the malady, +madam," was his sad and sympathetic reply, "but fatal in the condition +it meets. Hope is broken. There is nothing to resist the damage."</p> + +<p>One of his patients was a farmer who lived in an old-time log house a +few miles out from Silver Lake, who while <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" />working about his barn met +with a very serious accident which involved a possible injury to the +gall bladder. The main accident was not in itself fatal, but the +possible injury to the gall bladder was, and this, if it existed, would +show as a yellow tint in the eyeball on the tenth day. Fearing the +danger of this, he communicated the possibility to the relatives, saying +that he could do little after that time but that he would come just the +same and make the patient as comfortable as possible. For nine days he +came, sitting by the bedside and whiling away many a weary hour for the +sufferer, until the tenth morning. On this day, according to his +daughter, who had it from the sick man's relatives, his face but ill +concealed the anxiety he felt. Coming up to the door, he entered just +far enough to pretend to reach for a water bucket. With this in his hand +he turned and gave one long keen look in the eye of the sick man, then +walked down the yard to a chair under a tree some distance from the +house, where he sat, drooping and apparently grieved, the certainty of +the death of the patient affecting him as much as if he were his own +child.</p> + +<p>"There was no need for words," said one of them. "Every curve and droop +of his figure, as he walked slowly and with bent head, told all of us +who saw him that hope was gone and that death had won the victory."</p> + +<p>One of his perpetual charges, as I learned later, was a poor old +unfortunate by the name of Id Logan, who had a little cabin and an acre +of ground a half dozen miles west of Warsaw, and who existed from year +to year heaven only knows how.</p> + +<p>Id never had any money, friends or relatives, and was always troubled +with illness or hunger in some form or other, and yet the doctor always +spoke of him sympathetically as "Poor old Id Logan" and would often call +out there on his rounds to see how he was getting along. One snowy +winter's evening as he was traveling homeward after a long day's ride, +he chanced to recollect the fact that he was in the neighborhood of his +worthless old charge, and fancying that he might be in need of something +turned his horse into the lane which led up to the door. When he reached +the house he noticed that no smoke was coming from the chimney and that +the windows were slightly rimmed with frost, as if there were no <a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" />heat +within. Rapping at the door and receiving no response, he opened it and +went in. There he found his old charge, sick and wandering in his mind, +lying upon a broken-down bed and moaning in pain. There was no fire in +the fireplace. The coverings with which the bed was fitted were but two +or three old worn and faded quilts, and the snow was sifting in badly +through the cracks where the chinking had fallen out between the logs, +and under the doors and windows.</p> + +<p>Going up to the sufferer and finding that some one of his old, and to +the doctor well-known, maladies had at last secured a fatal grip upon +him, he first administered a tonic which he knew would give him as much +strength as possible, and then went out into the yard, where, after +putting up his horse, he gathered chips and wood from under the snow and +built a roaring fire. Having done this, he put on the kettle, trimmed +the lamp, and after preparing such stimulants as the patient could +stand, took his place at the bedside, where he remained the whole night +long, keeping the fire going and the patient as comfortable as possible. +Toward morning the sufferer died and when the sun was well up he finally +returned to his family, who anxiously solicited him as to his +whereabouts.</p> + +<p>"I was with Id Logan," he said.</p> + +<p>"What's ailing him now?" his daughter inquired.</p> + +<p>"Nothing now," he returned. "It was only last night," and for years +afterward he commented on the death of "poor old Id," saying always at +the conclusion of his remarks that it must be a dreadful thing to be +sick and die without friends.</p> + +<p>His love for his old friends and familiar objects was striking, and he +could no more bear to see an old friend move away than he could to lose +one of his patients. One of his oldest friends was a fine old Christian +lady by the name of Weeks, who lived down in Louter Creek bottoms and in +whose household he had practiced for nearly fifty years. During the +latter part of his life, however, this family began to break up, and +finally when there was no one left but the mother she decided to move +over into Whitley County, where she could stay with her daughter. Just +before going, however, she expressed a wish to see Doctor Gridley, and +he called in upon her. A little dinner had been prepared in honor <a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" />of +his coming. After it was over and the old times were fully discussed he +was about to take his leave when Mrs. Weeks disappeared from the room +and then returned, bearing upon her arm a beautiful yarn spread which +she held out before her and, in her nervous, feeble way getting the +attention of the little audience, said:</p> + +<p>"Doctor, I am going up to Whitley now to live with my daughter, and I +don't suppose I will get to see you very often any more. Like myself, +you are getting old, and it will be too far for you to come. But I want +to give you this spread that I have woven with my own hands since I have +been sixty years of age. It isn't very much, but it is meant for a token +of the love and esteem I bear you, and in remembrance of all that you +have done for me and mine."</p> + +<p>Her eyes were wet and her voice quivering as she brought it forward. The +doctor, who had been wholly taken by surprise by this kindly +manifestation of regard, had arisen during her impromptu address and now +stood before her, dignified and emotionally grave, his own eyes wet with +tears of appreciation.</p> + +<p>Balancing the homely gift upon his extended hands, he waited until the +force of his own sentiment had slightly subsided, when he replied:</p> + +<p>"Madam, I appreciate this gift with which you have chosen to remember me +as much as I honor the sentiment which has produced it. There are, I +know, threads of feeling woven into it stronger than any cords of wool, +and more enduring than all the fabrics of this world. I have been your +physician now for fifty years, and have been a witness of your joys and +sorrows. But, as much as I esteem you, and as highly as I prize this +token of your regard, I can accept it but upon one condition, and that +is, Mrs. Weeks, that you promise me that no matter how dark the night, +how stormy the sky, or how deep the waters that intervene, you will not +fail to send for me in your hour of need. It is both my privilege and my +pleasure, and I should not rest content unless I knew it were so."</p> + +<p>When the old lady had promised, he took his spread and going out to his +horse, rode away to his own home, where he related this incident, and +ended with, "Now I want this put on my bed."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" />His daughter, who lovingly humored his every whim, immediately complied +with his wish, and from that day to the hour of his death the spread was +never out of his service.</p> + +<p>One of the most pleasing incidents to me was one which related to his +last illness and death. Always, during his later years, when he felt the +least bit ill, he refused to prescribe for himself, saying that a +doctor, if he knew anything at all, was never such a fool as to take any +of his own medicine. Instead, and in sequence to this humorous attitude, +he would always send for one of the younger men of the vicinity who were +beginning to practice here, one, for instance, who having other merits +needed some assurance and a bit of superior recognition occasionally to +help him along. On this occasion he called in a very sober young doctor, +one who was greatly admired but had very little practice as yet, and +saying, "Doctor, I'm sick today," lay back on his bed and waited for +further developments.</p> + +<p>The latter, owing to Dr. Gridley's great repute and knowledge, was very +much flustered, so much so that he scarcely knew what to do.</p> + +<p>"Well, Doctor," he finally said, after looking at his tongue, taking his +pulse and feeling his forehead, "you're really a better judge of your +own condition than I am, I'm sure. What do you think I ought to give +you?"</p> + +<p>"Now, Doctor," replied Gridley sweetly, "I'm your patient, and you're my +doctor. I wouldn't prescribe for myself for anything in the world, and +I'm going to take whatever you give me. That's why I called you in. Now, +you just give me what you think my condition requires, and I'll take +it."</p> + +<p>The young doctor, meditating on all that was new or faddistic, decided +at last that just for variation's sake he would give the doctor +something of which he had only recently heard, a sample of which he had +with him and which had been acclaimed in the medical papers as very +effective. Without asking the doctor whether he had ever heard of it, or +what he thought, he merely prescribed it.</p> + +<p>"Well, now, I like that," commented Gridley solemnly. "I never heard of +that before in my life, but it sounds plausible. I'll take it, and we'll +see. What's more, I like a young doctor like yourself who thinks up ways +of his own—" and, <a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" />according to his daughter, he did take it, and was +helped, saying always that what young doctors needed to do was to keep +abreast of the latest medical developments, that medicine was changing, +and perhaps it was just as well that old doctors died! He was so old and +feeble, however, that he did not long survive, and when the time came +was really glad to go.</p> + +<p>One of the sweetest and most interesting of all his mental phases was, +as I have reason to know, his attitude toward the problem of suffering +and death, an attitude so full of the human qualities of wonder, +sympathy, tenderness, and trust, that he could scarcely view them +without exhibiting the emotion he felt. He was a constant student of the +phenomena of dissolution, and in one instance calmly declared it as his +belief that when a man was dead he was dead and that was the end of him, +consciously. At other times he modified his view to one of an almost +prayerful hope, and in reading Emily Brontë's somewhat morbid story of +"Wuthering Heights," his copy of which I long had in my possession, I +noted that he had annotated numerous passages relative to death and a +future life with interesting comments of his own. To one of these +passages, which reads:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I don't know if it be a peculiarity with me, but I am seldom + otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, + provided no frenzied or despairing mourner shares the duty with + me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I + feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter—the + eternity they have entered—where life is boundless in its + duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness,"</p></blockquote> + +<p>he had added on the margin:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"How often I have felt this very emotion. How natural I know it to + be. And what a consolation in the thought!"</p></blockquote> + +<p>Writing a final prescription for a young clergyman who was dying, and +for whom he had been most tenderly solicitous, he added to the list of +drugs he had written in Latin, the lines:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" /> +<span>"In life's closing hour, when the trembling soul flies<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And death stills the heart's last emotion,<br /></span> +<span>Oh, then may the angel of mercy arise<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Like a star on eternity's ocean!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When he himself was upon his death-bed he greeted his old friend Colonel +Dyer—he of the absent overcoat and over-shoes—with:</p> + +<p>"Dyer, I'm almost gone. I am in the shadow of death. I am standing upon +the very brink. I cannot see clearly, I cannot speak coherently, the +film of death obstructs my sight. I know what this means. It is the end, +but all is well with me. I have no fear. I have said and done things +that would have been better left unsaid and undone, but I have never +willfully wronged a man in my life. I have no concern for myself. I am +concerned only for those I leave behind. I never saved money, and I die +as poor as when I was born. We do not know what there is in the future +now shut out from our view by a very thin veil. It seems to me there is +a hand somewhere that will lead us safely across, but I cannot tell. No +one can tell."</p> + +<p>This interesting speech, made scarcely a day before he closed his eyes +in death, was typical of his whole generous, trustful, philosophical +point of view.</p> + +<p>"If there be green fields and placid waters beyond the river that he so +calmly crossed," so ran an editorial in the local county paper edited by +one of his most ardent admirers, "reserved for those who believe in and +practice upon the principle of 'Do unto others as you would have them do +unto you,' then this Samaritan of the medical profession is safe from +all harm. If there be no consciousness, but only a mingling of that +which was gentleness and tenderness here with the earth and the waters, +then the greenness of the one and the sparkling limpidity of the other +are richer for that he lived, and wrought, and returned unto them so +trustingly again."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Culhane_the_Solid_Man" id="Culhane_the_Solid_Man" /><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" /><i>Culhane, the Solid Man</i></h2> + + +<p>I met him in connection with a psychic depression which only partially +reflected itself in my physical condition. I might almost say that I was +sick spiritually. At the same time I was rather strongly imbued with a +contempt for him and his cure. I had heard of him for years. To begin +with, he was a wrestler of repute, or rather ex-wrestler, retired +undefeated champion of the world. As a boy I had known that he had +toured America with Modjeska as Charles, the wrestler, in "As You Like +It." Before or after that he had trained John L. Sullivan, the world's +champion prize fighter of his day, for one of his most successful +fights, and that at a time when Sullivan was unfitted to fight any one. +Before that, in succession, from youth up, he had been a peasant +farmer's son in Ireland, a scullion in a ship's kitchen earning his way +to America, a "beef slinger" for a packing company, a cooks' assistant +and waiter in a Bowery restaurant, a bouncer in a saloon, a rubber down +at prize fights, a policeman, a private in the army during the Civil +War, a ticket-taker, exhibition wrestler, "short-change man" with a +minstrel company, later a circus, until having attained his greatest +fame as champion wrestler of the world, and as trainer of John L. +Sullivan, he finally opened a sporting sanitarium in some county in +upper New York State which later evolved into the great and now +decidedly fashionable institution in Westchester, near New York.</p> + +<p>It has always been interesting to me to see in what awe men of this type +or profession are held by many in the more intellectual walks of life as +well as by those whose respectful worship is less surprising,—those who +revere strength, agility, physical courage, so-called, brute or +otherwise. There is a kind of retiring worshipfulness, especially in men +and children of the lower walks, for this type, which must be flattering +in the extreme.</p> + +<p>However, in so far as Culhane was concerned at this time, the case was +different. Whatever he had been in his youth he was not that now, or at +least his earlier rawness had long since been glazed over by other +experiences. Self-education, an <a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" />acquired politeness among strangers and +a knowledge of the manners and customs of the better-to-do, permitted +him to associate with them and to accept if not copy their manners and +to a certain extent their customs in his relations with them. Literally, +he owned hundreds of the best acres of the land about him, in one of the +most fashionable residence sections of the East. He had already given +away to some Sisters of Mercy a great estate in northern New York. His +stables contained every type of fashionable vehicle and stalled and fed +sixty or seventy of the worst horses, purposely so chosen, for the use +of his "guests." Men of all professions visited his place, paid him +gladly the six hundred dollars in advance which he asked for the course +of six weeks' training, and brought, or attempted to, their own cars and +retinues, which they lodged in the vicinity but could not use. I myself +was introduced or rather foisted upon him by my dear brother, whose +friend if not crony—if such a thing could have been said to exist in +his life—he was. I was taken to him in a very somber and depressed mood +and left; he rarely if ever received guests in person or at once. On the +way, and before I had been introduced, I was instructed by my good +brother as to his moods, methods, airs and tricks, supposed or rumored +to be so beneficial in so many cases. They were very rough—purposely +so.</p> + +<p>The day I arrived, and before I saw him, I was very much impressed with +the simplicity yet distinction of the inn or sanitarium or "repair +shop," as subsequently I learned he was accustomed to refer to it, +perched upon a rise of ground and commanding a quite wonderful panorama. +It was spring and quite warm and bright. The cropped enclosure which +surrounded it, a great square of green fenced with high, well-trimmed +privet, was good to look upon, level and smooth. The house, standing in +the center of this, was large and oblong and gray, with very simple +French windows reaching to the floor and great wide balustraded +balconies reaching out from the second floor, shaded with awnings and +set with rockers. The land on which this inn stood sloped very gradually +to the Sound, miles away to the southeast, and the spires of churches +and the gables of villages rising in between, as well as various +toy-like sails upon the water, were no small <a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" />portion of its charm. To +the west for a score of miles the green-covered earth rose and fell in +undulating beauty, and here again the roofs and spires of nearby +villages might in fair weather be seen nestling peacefully among the +trees. Due south there was a suggestion of water and some peculiar +configuration, which by day seemed to have no significance other than +that which attached to the vague outlines of a distant landscape. By +night, however, the soft glow emanating from myriads of lights +identified it as the body and length of the merry, night-reveling New +York. Northward the green waves repeated themselves unendingly until +they passed into a dim green-blue haze.</p> + +<p>Interiorly, as I learned later, this place was most cleverly and +sensibly arranged for the purpose for which it was intended. It was airy +and well-appointed, with, on the ground floor, a great gymnasium +containing, outside of an alcove at one end where hung four or five +punching bags, only medicine balls. At the other end was an office or +receiving-room, baggage or store-room, and locker and dining-room. To +the east at the center extended a wing containing a number of +shower-baths, a lounging room and sun parlor. On the second floor, on +either side of a wide airy hall which ran from an immense library, +billiard and smoking-room at one end to Culhane's private suite at the +other, were two rows of bedrooms, perhaps a hundred all told, which gave +in turn, each one, upon either side, on to the balconies previously +mentioned. These rooms were arranged somewhat like the rooms of a +passenger steamer, with its center aisle and its outer decks and doors +opening upon it. In another wing on the ground floor were kitchens, +servants' quarters, and what not else! Across the immense lawn or campus +to the east, four-square to the sanitarium, stood a rather grandiose +stable, almost as impressive as the main building. About the place, and +always more or less in evidence, were servants, ostlers, waiting-maids +and always a decidedly large company of men of practically all +professions, ages, and one might almost say nationalities. That is as +nationalities are represented in America, by first and second +generations.</p> + +<p>The day I arrived I did not see my prospective host or manager or +trainer for an hour or two after I came, being allowed <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" />to wait about +until the very peculiar temperament which he possessed would permit him +to come and see me. When he did show up, a more savage and yet +gentlemanly-looking animal in clothes <i>de rigueur</i> I have never seen. He +was really very princely in build and manner, shapely and grand, like +those portraits that have come down to us of Richelieu and the Duc de +Guise—fawn-colored riding trousers, bright red waistcoat, +black-and-white check riding coat, brown leather riding boots and +leggings with the essential spurs, and a riding quirt. And yet really, +at that moment he reminded me not so much of a man, in his supremely +well-tailored riding costume, as of a tiger or a very ferocious and yet +at times purring cat, beautifully dressed, as in our children's +storybooks, a kind of tiger in collar and boots. He was so lithe, +silent, cat-like in his tread. In his hard, clear, gray animal eyes was +that swift, incisive, restless, searching glance which sometimes +troubles us in the presence of animals. It was hard to believe that he +was all of sixty, as I had been told. He looked the very well-preserved +man of fifty or less. The short trimmed mustache and goatee which he +wore were gray and added to his grand air. His hair, cut a close +pompadour, the ends of his heavy eyebrow hairs turned upward, gave him a +still more distinguished air. He looked very virile, very intelligent, +very indifferent, intolerant and even threatening.</p> + +<p>"Well," he exclaimed on sight, "you wish to see me?"</p> + +<p>I gave him my name.</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's so. Your brother spoke to me about you. Well, take a seat. +You will be looked after."</p> + +<p>He walked off, and after an hour or so I was still waiting, for what I +scarcely knew—a room, something to eat possibly, some one to speak a +friendly word to me, but no one did.</p> + +<p>While I was waiting in this rather nondescript antechamber, hung with +hats, caps, riding whips and gauntlets, I had an opportunity to study +some of the men with whom presumably I was to live for a number of +weeks. It was between two and three in the afternoon, and many of them +were idling about in pairs or threes, talking, reading, all in rather +commonplace athletic costumes—soft woolen shirts, knee trousers, +stockings and running or walking shoes. They were in the main evidently +of the so-called learned professions or the <a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" />arts—doctors, lawyers, +preachers, actors, writers, with a goodly sprinkling of merchants, +manufacturers and young and middle-aged society men, as well as +politicians and monied idlers, generally a little the worse for their +pleasures or weaknesses. A distinguished judge of one of the superior +courts of New York and an actor known everywhere in the English-speaking +world were instantly recognized by me. Others, as I was subsequently +informed, were related by birth or achievement to some one fact or +another of public significance. The reason for the presence of so many +people rather above than under the average in intellect lay, as I came +to believe later, in their ability or that of some one connected with +them to sincerely appreciate or to at least be amused and benefited by +the somewhat different theory of physical repair which the lord of the +manor had invented, or for which at least he had become famous.</p> + +<p>I have remarked that I was not inclined to be impressed. Sanitariums +with their isms and theories did not appeal to me. However, as I was +waiting here an incident occurred which stuck in my mind. A smart +conveyance drove up, occupied by a singularly lean and haughty-looking +individual, who, after looking about him, expecting some one to come out +to him no doubt, clambered cautiously out, and after seeing that his +various grips and one trunk were properly deposited on the gravel square +outside, paid and feed his driver, then walked in and remarked:</p> + +<p>"Ah—where is Mr. Culhane?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, sir," I replied, being the only one present. "He was +here, but he's gone. I presume some one will show up presently."</p> + +<p>He walked up and down a little while, and then added: "Um—rather +peculiar method of receiving one, isn't it? I wired him I'd be here." He +walked restlessly and almost waspishly to and fro, looking out of the +window at times, at others commenting on the rather casual character of +it all. I agreed.</p> + +<p>Thus, some fifteen minutes having gone by without any one approaching +us, and occasional servants or "guests" passing through the room or +being seen in the offing without even so much as vouchsafing a word or +appearing to be interested in us, the new arrival grew excited.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" />This is very unusual," he fumed, walking up and down. "I wired him +only three hours ago. I've been here now fully three-quarters of an +hour! A most unheard-of method of doing business, I should say!"</p> + +<p>Presently our stern, steely-eyed host returned. He seemed to be going +somewhere, to be nowise interested in us. Yet into our presence, +probably into the consciousness of this new "guest," he carried that air +of savage strength and indifference, eyeing the stranger quite sharply +and making no effort to apologize for our long wait.</p> + +<p>"You wish to see me?" he inquired brusquely once more.</p> + +<p>Like a wasp, the stranger was vibrant with rage. Plainly he felt himself +insulted or terribly underrated.</p> + +<p>"Are you Mr. Culhane?" he asked crisply.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"I am Mr. Squiers," he exclaimed. "I wired you from Buffalo and ordered +a room," this last with an irritated wave of the hand.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, you didn't order any room," replied the host sourly and with an +obvious desire to show his indifference and contempt even. "You wired to +know if you <i>could engage</i> a room."</p> + +<p>He paused. The temperature seemed to drop perceptibly. The prospective +guest seemed to realize that he had made a mistake somewhere, had been +misinformed as to conditions here.</p> + +<p>"Oh! Um—ah! Yes! Well, have you a room?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I doubt it. We don't take every one." His eyes seemed to +bore into the interior of his would-be guest.</p> + +<p>"Well, but I was told—my friend, Mr. X——," the stranger began a +rapid, semi-irritated, semi-apologetic explanation of how he came to be +here.</p> + +<p>"I don't know anything about your friend or what he told you. If he told +you you could order a room by telegraph, he's mistaken. Anyhow, you're +not dealing with him, but with me. Now that you're here, though, if you +want to sit down and rest yourself a little I'll see what I can do for +you. I can't decide now whether I can let you stay. You'll have to wait +a while." He turned and walked off.</p> + +<p>The other stared. "Well," he commented to me after a time, <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" />walking and +twisting, "if a man wants to come here I suppose he has to put up with +such things, but it's certainly unusual, isn't it?" He sat down, wilted, +and waited.</p> + +<p>Later a clerk in charge of the registry book took us in hand, and then I +heard him explaining that his lungs were not in good shape. He had come +a long way—Denver, I believe. He had heard that all one needed to do +was to wire, especially one in his circumstances.</p> + +<p>"Some people think that way," solemnly commented the clerk, "but they +don't know Mr. Culhane. He does about as he pleases in these matters. He +doesn't do this any more to make money but rather to amuse himself, I +think. He always has more applicants than he accepts."</p> + +<p>I began to see a light. Perhaps there was something to this place after +all. I did not even partially sense the drift of the situation, though, +until bedtime when, after having been served a very frugal meal and +shown to my very simple room, a kind of cell, promptly at nine o'clock +lights were turned off. I lit a small candle and was looking over some +things which I had placed in a grip, when I heard a voice in the hall +outside: "Candles out, please! Candles out! All guests in bed!" Then it +came to me that a very rigorous régime was being enforced here.</p> + +<p>The next morning as I was still soundly sleeping at five-thirty a loud +rap sounded at my door. The night before I had noticed above my bed a +framed sign which read: "Guests must be dressed in running trunks, shoes +and sweater, and appear in the gymnasium by six sharp." "Gymnasium at +six! Gymnasium at six!" a voice echoed down the hall. I bounced out of +bed. Something about the very air of the place made me feel that it was +dangerous to attempt to trifle with the routine here. The tiger-like +eyes of my host did not appeal to me as retaining any softer ray in them +for me than for others. I had paid my six hundred ... I had better earn +it. I was down in the great room in my trunks, sweater, dressing-gown, +running shoes in less than five minutes.</p> + +<p>And that room! By that time as odd a company of people as I have ever +seen in a gymnasium had already begun to assemble. The leanness! the +osseosity! the grandiloquent whiskers parted in the middle! the +mustachios! the goatees!<a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" /> the fat, Hoti-like stomachs! the protuberant +knees! the thin arms! the bald or semi-bald pates! the spectacles or +horn glasses or pince-nezes!—laid aside a few moments later, as the +exercises began. Youth and strength in the pink of condition, when clad +only in trunks, a sweater and running shoes, are none too +acceptable—but middle age! And out in the world, I reflected rather +sadly, they all wore the best of clothes, had their cars, servants, city +and country houses perhaps, their factories, employees, institutions. +Ridiculous! Pitiful! As lymphatic and flabby as oysters without their +shells, myself included. It was really painful.</p> + +<p>Even as I meditated, however, I was advised, by many who saw that I was +a stranger, to choose a partner, any partner, for medicine ball +practice, for it might save me being taken or called by <i>him</i>. I +hastened so to do. Even as we were assembling or beginning to practice, +keeping two or three light medicine balls going between each pair, our +host entered—that iron man, that mount of brawn. In his cowled +dressing-gown he looked more like some great monk or fighting abbot of +the medieval years than a trainer. He walked to the center, hung up his +cowl and revealed himself lithe and lion-like and costumed like +ourselves. But how much more attractive as he strode about, his legs +lean and sturdy, his chest full, his arms powerful and graceful! At once +he seized a large leather-covered medicine ball, as had all the others, +and calling a name to which responded a lean whiskerando with a +semi-bald pate, thin legs and arms, and very much caricatured, I +presume, by the wearing of trunks and sweater. Taking his place opposite +the host, he was immediately made the recipient of a volley of balls and +brow-beating epithets.</p> + +<p>"Hurry up now! Faster! Ah, come on! Put the ball back to me! Put the +ball back! Do you want to keep it all day? Great God! What are you +standing there for? What are you standing there for? What do you think +you're doing—drinking tea? Come on! I haven't all morning for you +alone. Move! Move, you ham! You call yourself an editor! Why, you +couldn't edit a handbill! You can't even throw a ball straight! Throw it +straight! Throw it straight! For Christ's sake where do you think I +am—out in the office? Throw it straight! Hell!" and all the time one +and another ball, grabbed from <a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" />anywhere, for the floor was always +littered with them, would be thrown in the victim's direction, and +before he could well appreciate what was happening to him he was being +struck, once in the neck and again on the chest by the rapidly delivered +six ounce air-filled balls, two of which at least he and the host were +supposed to keep in constant motion between them. Later, a ball striking +him in the stomach, he emitted a weak "Ooph!" and laying his hands over +the affected part ceased all effort. At this the master of the situation +only smirked on him leoninely and holding up a ball as if to throw it +continued, "What's the matter with you now? Come on! What do you want to +stop for? What do you want to stand there for? You're not hurt. How do +you expect to get anywhere if you can't keep two silly little balls like +these going between us?" (There had probably been six or eight.) "Here I +am sixty and you're forty, and you can't even keep up with me. And you +pretend to give the general public advice on life! Well, go on; God pity +the public, is all I say," and he dismissed him, calling out another +name.</p> + +<p>Now came a fat, bald soul, with dewlaps and a protruding stomach, who +later I learned was a manufacturer of clothing—six hundred employees +under him—down in health and nerves, really all "shot to pieces" +physically. Plainly nervous at the sound of his name, he puffed quickly +into position, grabbing wildly after the purposely eccentric throws +which his host made and which kept him running to left and right in an +all but panicky mood.</p> + +<p>"Move! Move!" insisted our host as before, and, if anything, more +irritably. "Say, you work like a crab! What a motion! If you had more +head and less guts you could do this better. A fine specimen you are! +This is what comes of riding about in taxis and eating midnight suppers +instead of exercising. Wake up! Wake up! A belt would have kept your +stomach in long ago. A little less food and less sleep, and you wouldn't +have any fat cheeks. Even your hair might stay on! Wake up! Wake up! +What do you want to do—die?" and as he talked he pitched the balls so +quickly that his victim looked at times as though he were about to weep. +His physical deficiencies were all too plain in every way. He was +generally obese and looked as though he might drop, his face a flaming +red, his <a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" />hands trembling and missing, when a "Well, go on," sounded and +a third victim was called. This time it was a well-known actor who +responded, a star, rather spry and well set up, but still nervous, for +he realized quite well what was before him. He had been here for weeks +and was in pretty fair trim, but still he was plainly on edge. He ran +and began receiving and tossing as swiftly as he could, but as with the +others so it was his turn now to be given such a grilling and +tongue-lashing as falls to few of us in this world, let alone among the +successful in the realm of the footlights. "Say, you're not an +actor—you're a woman! You're a stewed onion! Move! Move! Come on! Come +on! Look at those motions now, will you? Look at that one arm up! Where +do you suppose the ball is? On the ceiling? It's not a lamp! Come on! +Come on! It's a wonder when you're killed as Hamlet that you don't stay +dead. You are. You're really dead now, you know. Move! Move!" and so it +would go until finally the poor thespian, no match for his master and +beset by flying balls, landing upon his neck, ear, stomach, finally gave +up and cried:</p> + +<p>"Well, I can't go any faster than I can, can I? I can't do any more than +I can!"</p> + +<p>"Ah, go on! Go back into the chorus!" called his host, who now abandoned +him. "Get somebody from the baby class to play marbles with you," and he +called another.</p> + +<p>By now, as may well be imagined, I was fairly stirred up as to the +probabilities of the situation. He might call me! The man who was +playing opposite me—a small, decayed person who chose me, I think, +because he knew I was new, innocuous and probably awkward—seemed to +realize my thoughts as well as his own. By lively exercise with me he +was doing his utmost to create an impression of great and valuable +effort here. "Come on, let's play fast so he won't notice us," he said +most pathetically at one point. You would have thought I had known him +all my life.</p> + +<p>But he didn't call us—not this morning at any rate. Whether owing to +our efforts or the fact that I at least was too insignificant, too +obscure, we escaped. He did reach me, however, on the fourth or fifth +day, and no spindling failure could have done worse. I was struck and +tripped and pounded until I all but fell prone upon the floor, half +con<a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" />vinced that I was being killed, but I was not. I was merely sent +stumbling and drooping back to the sidelines to recover while he +tortured some one else. But the names he called me! The comments on my +none too smoothly articulated bones—and my alleged mind! As in my +schooldays when, a laggard in the fierce and seemingly malevolent +atmosphere in which I was taught my ABC's, I crept shamefacedly and +beaten from the scene.</p> + +<p>It was in the adjoining bathroom, where the host daily personally +superintended the ablutions of his guests, that even more of his +remarkable method was revealed. Here a goodly portion of the force of +his method was his skill in removing any sense of ability, agility, +authority or worth from those with whom he dealt. Apparently to him, in +his strength and energy, they were all children, weaklings, failures, +numbskulls, no matter what they might be in the world outside. They had +no understanding of the most important of their possessions, their +bodies. And here again, even more than in the gymnasium, they were at +the disadvantage of feeling themselves spectacles, for here they were +naked. However grand an osseous, leathery lawyer or judge or doctor or +politician or society man may look out in the world addressing a jury or +a crowd or walking in some favorite place, glistening in his raiment, +here, whiskered, thin of legs, arms and neck, with bulging brow and +stripped not only of his gown but everything else this side of his +skin—well, draw your own conclusion. For after performing certain +additional exercises—one hundred times up on your toes, one hundred +times (if you could) squatting to your knees, one hundred times throwing +your arms out straight before you from your chest or up from your +shoulders or out at right angles, right and left from your body and back +to your hips until your fingers touched and the sweat once more ran—you +were then ready to be told (for once in your life) how to swiftly and +agilely take a bath.</p> + +<p>"Well, now, you're ready, are you?" this to a noble jurist who, like +myself perhaps, had arrived only the day before. "Come on, now. Now you +have just ten seconds in which to jump under the water and get yourself +wet all over, twenty seconds in which to jump out and soap yourself +thoroughly, <a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" />ten seconds in which to get back in again and rinse off all +the soap, and twenty seconds in which to rub and dry your skin +thoroughly—now start!"</p> + +<p>The distinguished jurist began, but instead of following the advice +given him for rapid action huddled himself in a shivering position under +the water and stood all but inert despite the previous explanation of +the host that the sole method of escaping the weakening influence of +cold water was by counteracting it with activity, when it would prove +beneficial.</p> + +<p>He was such a noble, stalky, bony affair, his gold eyeglasses laid aside +for the time being, his tweeds and carefully laundered linen all +dispensed with during his stay here. As he came, meticulously and +gingerly and quite undone by his efforts, from under the water, where he +had been most roughly urged by Culhane, I hoped that he and not I would +continue to be seized upon by this savage who seemed to take infinite +delight in disturbing the social and intellectual poise of us all.</p> + +<p>"Soap yourself!" exclaimed the latter most harshly now that the bather +was out in the room once more. "Soap your chest! Soap your stomach! Soap +your arms, damn it! Soap your arms! And don't rub them all day either! +Now soap your legs, damn it! Soap your legs! Don't you know how to soap +your legs! Don't stand there all day! Soap your legs! Now turn round and +soap your back—soap your back! For Christ's sake, soap your back! Do it +quick—quick! Now come back under the water again and see if you can get +it off. Don't act as though you were cold molasses! Move! Move! Lord, +you act as though you had all day—as though you had never taken a bath +in your life! I never saw such an old poke. You come up here and expect +me to do some things for you, and then you stand around as though you +were made of bone! Quick now, move!"</p> + +<p>The noble jurist did as demanded—that is, as quickly as he could—only +the mental inadequacy and feebleness which he displayed before all the +others, of course, was the worst of his cruel treatment here, and in +this as in many instances it cut deep. So often it was the shock to +one's dignity more than anything else which hurt so, to be called an old +poke when one was perhaps a grave and reverent senior, or to be told +that one was made of bone when one was a famous doctor or <a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" />merchant. +Once under the water this particular specimen had begun by nervously +rubbing his hands and face in order to get the soap off, and when +shouted at and abused for that had then turned his attention to one +other spot—the back of his left forearm.</p> + +<p>Mine host seemed enraged. "Well, well!" he exclaimed irascibly, watching +him as might a hawk. "Are you going to spend all day rubbing that one +spot? For God's sake, don't you know enough to rub your whole body and +get out from under the water? Move! Move! Rub your chest! Rub your +belly! Hell, rub your back! Rub your toes and get out!"</p> + +<p>When routed from the ludicrous effort of vigorously rubbing one spot he +was continually being driven on to some other, as though his body were +some vast complex machine which he had never rightly understood before. +He was very much flustered of course and seemed wholly unable to grasp +how it was done, let alone please his exacting host.</p> + +<p>"Come on!" insisted the latter finally and wearily. "Get out from under +the water. A lot you know about washing yourself! For a man who has been +on the bench for fifteen years you're the dullest person I ever met. If +you bathe like that at home, how do you keep clean? Come on out and dry +yourself!"</p> + +<p>The distinguished victim, drying himself rather ruefully on an +exceedingly rough towel, looked a little weary and disgusted. "Such +language!" some one afterwards said he said to some one else. "He's not +used to dealing with gentlemen, that's plain. The man talks like a +blackguard. And to think we pay for such things! Well, well! I'll not +stand it, I'm afraid. I've had about enough. It's positively revolting, +positively revolting!" But he stayed on, just the same—second thoughts, +a good breakfast, his own physical needs. At any rate weeks later he was +still there and in much better shape physically if not mentally.</p> + +<p>About the second or third day I witnessed another such spectacle, which +made me laugh—only not in my host's presence—nay, verily! For into +this same chamber had come another distinguished personage, a lawyer or +society man, I couldn't tell which, who was washing himself rather +leisurely, <a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" />as was <i>not</i> the prescribed way, when suddenly he was spied +by mine host, who was invariably instructing some one in this swift +one-minute or less system. Now he eyed the operation narrowly for a few +seconds, then came over and exclaimed:</p> + +<p>"Wash your toes, can't you? Wash your toes! Can't you wash your toes?"</p> + +<p>The skilled gentleman, realizing that he was now living under very +different conditions from those to which presumably he was accustomed, +reached down and began to rub the tops of his toes but without any +desire apparently to widen the operation.</p> + +<p>"Here!" called the host, this time much more sharply, "I said wash your +toes, not the outside of them! Soap them! Don't you know how to wash +your toes yet? You're old enough, God knows! Wash between 'em! Wash +under 'em!"</p> + +<p>"Certainly I know how to wash my toes," replied the other irritably and +straightening up, "and what's more, I'd like you to know that I am a +gentleman."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, if you're a gentleman," retorted the other, "you ought to +know how to wash your toes. Wash 'em—and don't talk back!"</p> + +<p>"Pah!" exclaimed the bather now, looking twice as ridiculous as before. +"I'm not used to having such language addressed to me."</p> + +<p>"I can't help that," said Culhane. "If you knew how to wash your toes +perhaps you wouldn't have to have such language addressed to you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, hell!" fumed the other. "This is positively outrageous! I'll leave +the place, by George!"</p> + +<p>"Very well," rejoined the other, "only before you go you'll have to wash +your toes!"</p> + +<p>And he did, the host standing by and calmly watching the performance +until it was finally completed.</p> + +<p>It was just this atmosphere which made the place the most astonishing in +which I have ever been. It seemed to be drawing the celebrated and the +successful as a magnet might iron, and yet it offered conditions which +one might presume they would be most opposed to. No one here was really +any one, however much he might be outside. Our host was all. He had <a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" />a +great blazing personality which dominated everybody, and he did not +hesitate to show before one and all that he did so do.</p> + +<p>Breakfast here consisted of a cereal, a chop and coffee—plentiful but +very plain, I thought. After breakfast, between eight-thirty and eleven, +we were free to do as we chose: write letters, pack our bags if we were +leaving, do up our laundry to be sent out, read, or merely sit about. At +eleven, or ten-thirty, according to the nature of the exercise, one had +to join a group, either one that was to do the long or short block, as +they were known here, or one that was to ride horseback, all exercises +being so timed that by proper execution one would arrive at the bathroom +door in time to bathe, dress and take ten minutes' rest before luncheon. +These exercises were simple enough in themselves, consisting, as they +did in the case of the long and the short blocks (the long block seven, +the short four miles in length), of our walking, or walking and running +betimes, about or over courses laid up hill and down dale, over or +through unpaved mudroads in many instances, along dry or wet beds of +brooks or streams, and across stony or weedy fields, often still damp +with dew or the spring rains. But in most cases, when people had not +taken any regular exercise for a long time, this was by no means easy. +The first day I thought I should never make it, and I was by no means a +poor walker. Others, the new ones especially, often gave out and had to +be sent for, or came in an hour late to be most severely and +irritatingly ragged by the host. He seemed to all but despise weakness +and had apparently a thousand disagreeable ways of showing it.</p> + +<p>"If you want to see what poor bags of mush some people can become," he +once said in regard to some poor specimen who had seemingly had great +difficulty in doing the short block, "look at this. Here comes a man +sent out to do four measly country miles in fifty minutes, and look at +him. You'd think he was going to die. He probably thinks so himself. In +New York he'd do seventeen miles in a night running from barroom to +barroom or one lobster palace to another—that's a good name for them, +by the way—and never say a word. But out here in the country, with +plenty of fresh air and a night's rest and a good breakfast, he can't +even do four miles <a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" />in fifty minutes! Think of it! And he probably +thinks of himself as a man—boasts before his friends, or his wife, +anyhow. Lord!"</p> + +<p>A day or two later there arrived here a certain major of the United +States Army, a large, broad-chested, rather pompous person of about +forty-eight or-nine, who from taking his ease in one sinecure and +another had finally reached the place where he was unable to endure +certain tests (or he thought so) which were about to be made with a view +to retiring certain officers grown fat in the service. As he explained +to Culhane, and the latter was always open and ribald afterward in his +comments on those who offered explanations of any kind, his plan was to +take the course here in order to be able to make the difficult tests +later.</p> + +<p>Culhane resented this, I think. He resented people using him or his +methods to get anywhere, do anything more in life than he could do, and +yet he received them. He felt, and I think in the main that he was +right, that they looked down on him because of his lowly birth and +purely material and mechanical career, and yet having attained some +distinction by it he could not forego this work which raised him, in a +way, to a position of dominance over these people. Now the sight of +presumably so efficient a person in need of aid or exercise, to be built +up, was all that was required to spur him on to the most waspish or +wolfish attitude imaginable. In part at least he argued, I think (for in +the last analysis he was really too wise and experienced to take any +such petty view, although there is a subconscious "past-lack" motivating +impulse in all our views), that here he was, an ex-policeman, +ex-wrestler, ex-prize fighter, ex-private, ex-waiter, beef-carrier, +bouncer, trainer; and here was this grand major, trained at West Point, +who actually didn't know any more about life or how to take care of his +body than to be compelled to come here, broken down at forty-eight, +whereas he, because of his stamina and Spartan energy, had been able to +survive in perfect condition until sixty and was now in a position to +rebuild all these men and wastrels and to control this great +institution. And to a certain extent he was right, although he seemed to +forget or not to know that he was not the creator of his own great +strength, by any means, impulses and <a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" />tendencies over which he had no +control having arranged for that.</p> + +<p>However that may be, here was the major a suppliant for his services, +and here was he, Culhane, and although the major was paying well for his +minute room and his probably greatly decreased diet, still Culhane could +not resist the temptation to make a show of him, to picture him as the +more or less pathetic example that he was, in order perhaps that he, +Culhane, might shine by contrast. Thus on the first day, having sent him +around the short block with the others, it was found at twelve, when the +"joggers" were expected to return, and again at twelve-thirty when they +were supposed to take their places at the luncheon table, that the heavy +major had not arrived. He had been seen and passed by all, of course. +After the first mile or two probably he had given out and was making his +way as best he might up hill and down dale, or along some more direct +road, to the "shop," or maybe he had dropped out entirely, as some did, +via a kindly truck or farmer's wagon, and was on his way to the nearest +railway station.</p> + +<p>At any rate, as Culhane sat down at his very small private table, which +stood in the center of the dining-room and far apart from the others (a +vantage point, as it were), he looked about and, not seeing the new +guest, inquired, "Has any one seen that alleged army officer who arrived +here this morning?"</p> + +<p>No one could say anything more than that they had left him two or three +miles back.</p> + +<p>"I thought so," he said tersely. "There you have a fine example of the +desk general and major—we had 'em in the army—men who sit in a swivel +chair all day, wear a braided uniform and issue orders to other people. +You'd think a man like that who had been trained at West Point and seen +service in the Philippines would have sense enough to keep himself in +condition. Not at all. As soon as they get a little way up in their +profession they want to sit around hotel grills or society ballrooms and +show off, tell how wonderful they are. Here's a man, an army officer, in +such rotten shape that if I sent a good horse after him now it's ten to +one he couldn't get on him. I'll have to send a truck or some such +thing."</p> + +<p>He subsided. About an hour later the major did appear, much the worse +for wear. A groom with a horse had been <a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" />sent out after him, and, as the +latter confided to some one afterward, he "had to help the major on." +From that time on, on the short block and the long, as well as on those +horseback tours which every second or third morning we were supposed to +take, the major was his especial target. He loved to pick on him, to +tell him that he was "nearly all guts"—a phrase which literally +sickened me at that time—to ask him how he expected to stay in the army +if he couldn't do this or that, what good was he to the army, how could +any soldier respect a thing like him, and so on <i>ad infinitum</i> until, +while at first I pitied the major, later on I admired his pluck. Culhane +foisted upon him his sorriest and boniest nag, the meanest animal he +could find, yet he never complained; and although he forced on him all +the foods he knew the major could not like, still there was no +complaint; he insisted that he should be out and around of an afternoon +when most of us lay about, allowed him no drinks whatever, although he +was accustomed to them. The major, as I learned afterwards, stayed not +six but twelve weeks and passed the tests which permitted him to remain +in the army.</p> + +<p>But to return to Culhane himself. The latter's method always contained +this element of nag and pester which, along with his brazen reliance on +and pride in his brute strength at sixty, made all these others look so +puny and ineffectual. They might have brains and skill but here they +were in his institution, more or less undone nervously and physically, +and here he was, cold, contemptuous, not caring much whether they came, +stayed or went, and laughing at them even as they raged. Now and then it +was rumored that he found some single individual in whom he would take +an interest, but not often. In the main I think he despised them one and +all for the puny machines they were. He even despised life and the +pleasures and dissipations or swinish indolence which, in his judgment, +characterized most men. I recall once, for instance, his telling us how +as a private in the United States Army when the division of which he was +a unit was shut up in winter quarters, huddled about stoves, smoking (as +he characterized them) "filthy pipes" or chewing tobacco and spitting, +actually lousy, and never changing their clothes for weeks on end—how +he, revolting at all this and the disease <a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" />and fevers ensuing, had kept +out of doors as much as possible, even in the coldest weather, and +finding no other way of keeping clean the single shift of underwear and +the one uniform he possessed he had, every other day or so, washed all, +uniform and underwear, with or without soap as conditions might compel, +in a nearby stream, often breaking the ice to get to the water, and +dancing about naked in the cold, running and jumping, while they dried +on bushes or the branch of a tree.</p> + +<p>"Those poor rats," he added most contemptuously, "used to sit inside and +wonder at me or laugh and jeer, hovering over their stoves, but a lot of +them died that very winter, and here I am today."</p> + +<p>And well we knew it. I used to study the faces of many of the puffy, +gelatinous souls, so long confined to their comfortable offices, +restaurants and homes that two hours on horseback all but wore them out, +and wonder how this appealed to them. I think that in the main they took +it as an illustration of either one of two things: insanity, or giant +and therefore not-to-be-imitated strength.</p> + +<p>But in regard to them Culhane was by no means so tolerant. One day, as I +recall, there arrived at the sanitarium a stout and mushy-looking +Hebrew, with a semi-bald pate, protruding paunch and fat arms and legs, +who applied to Culhane for admission. And, as much to irritate his other +guests, I think, as to torture this particular specimen into some +semblance of vitality, he admitted him. And thereafter, from the hour he +entered until he left about the time I did, Culhane seemed to follow him +with a wolfish and savage idea. He gave him a most damnable and savage +horse, one that kicked and bit, and at mounting time would place Mr. +Itzky (I think his name was) up near the front of the procession where +he could watch him. Always at mount-time, when we were permitted to +ride, there was inside the great stable a kind of preliminary military +inspection of all our accouterments, seeing that we had to saddle and +bridle and bring forth our own steeds. This particular person could not +saddle a horse very well nor put on his bit and bridle. The animal was +inclined to rear and plunge when he came near, to fix him with an evil +eye and bite at him.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" />And above all things Culhane seemed to value strain of this kind. If he +could just make his guests feel the pressure of necessity in connection +with their work he was happy. To this end he would employ the most +contemptuous and grilling comment. Thus to Mr. Itzky he was most unkind. +He would look over all most cynically, examining the saddles and +bridles, and then say, "Oh, I see you haven't learned how to tighten a +belly-band yet," or "I do believe you have your saddle hind-side to. You +would if you could, that's one thing sure. How do you expect a horse to +be sensible or quiet when he knows that he isn't saddled right? Any +horse knows that much, and whether he has an ass for a rider. I'd kick +and bite too if I were some of these horses, having a lot of damned +fools and wasters to pack all over the country. Loosen that belt and +fasten it right" (there might be nothing wrong with it) "and move your +saddle up. Do you want to sit over the horse's rump?"</p> + +<p>Then would come the fateful moment of mounting. There was of course the +accepted and perfect way—his way: left foot in stirrup, an easy +balanced spring and light descent into the seat. One should be able to +slip the right foot into the right stirrup with the same motion of +mounting. But imagine fifty, sixty, seventy men, all sizes, weights and +differing conditions of health and mood. A number of these people had +never ridden a horse before coming here and were as nervous and +frightened as children. Such mounts! Such fumbling around, once they +were in their saddles, for the right stirrup! And all the while Culhane +would be sitting out front like an army captain on the only decent steed +in the place, eyeing us with a look of infinite and weary contempt that +served to increase our troubles a thousandfold.</p> + +<p>"Well, you're all on, are you? You all do it so gracefully I like to sit +here and admire you. Hulbert there throws his leg over his horse's back +so artistically that he almost kicks his teeth out. And Effingham does +his best to fall off on the other side. And where's Itzky? I don't even +see him. Oh, yes, there he is. Well" (this to Itzky, frantically +endeavoring to get one fat foot in a stirrup and pull himself up), "what +about you? Can't you get your leg that high? Here's a man who for +twenty-five years has been running a cloak-and-suit business <a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" />and +employing five hundred people, but he can't get on a horse! Imagine! +Five hundred people dependent on that for their living!" (At this point, +say, Itzky succeeds in mounting.) "Well, he's actually on! Now see if +you can stick while we ride a block or two. You'll find the right +stirrup, Itzky, just a little forward of your horse's belly on the right +side—see? A fine bunch this is to lead out through a gentleman's +country! Hell, no wonder I've got a bad reputation throughout this +section! Well, forward, and see if you can keep from falling off."</p> + +<p>Then we were out through the stable-door and the privet gate at a smart +trot, only to burst into a headlong gallop a little farther on down the +road. To the seasoned riders it was all well enough, but to beginners, +those nervous about horses, fearful about themselves! The first day, not +having ridden in years and being uncertain as to my skill, I could +scarcely stay on. Several days later, I by then having become a +reasonably seasoned rider, it was Mr. Itzky who appeared on the scene, +and after him various others. On this particular trip I am thinking of, +Mr. Itzky fell or rolled off and could not again mount. He was miles +from the repair shop and Culhane, discovering his plight, was by no +means sympathetic. We had a short ride back to where he sat lamely by +the roadside viewing disconsolately the cavalcade and the country in +general.</p> + +<p>"Well, what's the matter with you now?" It was Culhane, eyeing him most +severely.</p> + +<p>"I hef hurt my foot. I kent stay on."</p> + +<p>"You mean you'd rather walk, do you, and lead your horse?"</p> + +<p>"Vell, I kent ride."</p> + +<p>"All right, then, you lead your horse back to the stable if you want any +lunch, and hereafter you run with the baby-class on the short block +until you think you can ride without falling off. What's the good of my +keeping a stable of first-class horses at the service of a lot of +mush-heads who don't even know how to use 'em? All they do is ruin 'em. +In a week or two, after a good horse is put in the stable, he's not fit +for a gentleman to ride. They pull and haul and kick and beat, <a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" />when as +a matter of fact the horse has a damned sight more sense than they +have."</p> + +<p>We rode off, leaving Itzky alone. The men on either side of me—we were +riding three abreast—scoffed under their breath at the statement that +we were furnished decent horses. "The nerve! This nag!" "This bag of +bones!" "To think a thing like this should be called a horse!" But there +were no outward murmurs and no particular sympathy for Mr. Itzky. He was +a fat stuff, a sweat-shop manufacturer, they would bet; let him walk and +sweat.</p> + +<p>So much for sympathy in this gay realm where all were seeking to restore +their own little bodies, whatever happened.</p> + +<p>So many of these men varied so greatly in their looks, capacities and +troubles that they were always amusing. Thus I recall one lean iron +manufacturer, the millionaire president of a great "frog and switch" +company, who had come on from Kansas City, troubled with anæmia, +neurasthenia, "nervous derangement of the heart" and various other +things. He was over fifty, very much concerned about himself, his +family, his business, his friends; anxious to obtain the benefits of +this celebrated course of which he had heard so much. Walking or running +near me on his first day, he took occasion to make inquiries in regard +to Culhane, the life here, and later on confidences as to his own +condition. It appeared that his chief trouble was his heart, a kind of +phantom disturbance which made him fear that he was about to drop dead +and which came and went, leaving him uncertain as to whether he had it +or not. On entering he had confided to Culhane the mysteries of his +case, and the latter had examined him, pronouncing him ("Rather +roughly," as he explained to me), quite fit to do "all the silly work he +would have to do here."</p> + +<p>Nevertheless while we were out on the short block his heart was hurting +him. At the same time it had been made rather clear to him that if he +wished to stay here he would have to fulfill all the obligations +imposed. After a mile or two or three of quick walking and jogging he +was saying to me, "You know, I'm not really sure that I can do this. +It's very severe, more so than I thought. My heart is not doing very +well. It feels very fluttery."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" />But," I said, "if he told you you could stand it, you can, I'm sure. +It's not very likely he'd say you could if you couldn't. He examined +you, didn't he? I don't believe he'd deliberately put a strain on any +one who couldn't stand it."</p> + +<p>"Yes," he admitted doubtfully, "that's true perhaps."</p> + +<p>Still he continued to complain and complain and to grow more and more +worried, until finally he slowed up and was lost in the background.</p> + +<p>Reaching the gymnasium at the proper time I bathed and dressed myself +quickly and waited on the balcony over the bathroom to see what would +happen in this case. As a rule Culhane stood in or near the door at this +time, having just returned from some route or "block" himself, to see +how the others were faring. And he was there when the iron manufacturer +came limping up, fifteen minutes late, one hand over his heart, the +other to his mouth, and exclaiming as he drew near, "I do believe, Mr. +Culhane, that I can't stand this. I'm afraid there is something the +matter with my heart. It's fluttering so."</p> + +<p>"To hell with your heart! Didn't I tell you there was nothing the matter +with it? Get into the bath!"</p> + +<p>The troubled manufacturer, overawed or reassured as the case might be, +entered the bath and ten minutes later might have been seen entering the +dining-room, as comfortable apparently as any one. Afterwards he +confessed to me on one of our jogs that there was something about +Culhane which <i>gave him confidence</i> and made him believe that there +wasn't anything wrong with his heart—which there wasn't, I presume.</p> + +<p>The intensely interesting thing about Culhane was this different, very +original and forthright if at times brutal point of view. It was a +blazing material world of which he was the center, the sun, and yet +always I had the sense of very great life. With no knowledge of or +interest in the superior mental sciences or arts or philosophies, still +he seemed to suggest and even live them. He was in his way an +exemplification of that ancient Greek regimen and stark thought which +brought back the ten thousand from Cunaxa. He seemed even to suggest in +his rough way historical perspective and balance. He knew men, and +apparently he sensed how at best and at bottom life was to be lived, +with not too much emotional or appetitive swaying in any one direction, +and not too little either.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" />Yet in "trapseing" about this particular realm each day with ministers, +lawyers, doctors, actors, manufacturers, papa's or mamma's young +hopefuls and petted heirs, young scapegraces and so-called "society men" +of the extreme "upper crust," stuffed and plethoric with money and as +innocent of sound knowledge or necessary energy in some instances as any +one might well be, one could not help speculating as to how it was that +such a man, as indifferent and all but discourteous as this one, could +attract them (and so many) to him. They came from all parts of +America—the Pacific, the Gulf, the Atlantic and Canada—and yet, +although they did not relish, him or his treatment of them, once here +they stayed. Walking or running or idling about with them one could +always hear from one or another that Culhane was too harsh, a "bounder," +an "upstart," a "cheap pugilist" or "wrestler" at best (I myself thought +so at times when I was angry), yet here they were, and here I was, and +staying. He was low, vulgar—yet here we were. And yet, meditating on +him, I began to think that he was really one of the most remarkable men +I had ever known, for these people he dealt with were of all the most +difficult to deal with. In the main they were of that order or condition +of mind which springs from (1), too much wealth too easily acquired or +inherited; or (2), from a blazing material success, the cause of which +was their own savage self-interested viewpoint. Hence a colder and in +some respects a more critical group of men I have never known. Most of +them had already seen so much of life in a libertine way that there was +little left to enjoy. They sniffed at almost everything, Culhane +included, and yet they were obviously drawn to him. I tried to explain +this to myself on the ground that there is some iron power in some +people which literally compels this, whether one will or no; or that +they were in the main so tired of life and so truly selfish and +egotistic that it required some such different iron or caviar mood plus +such a threatening regimen to make them really take an interest. Sick as +they were, he was about the only thing left on which they could sharpen +their teeth with any result.</p> + +<p>As I have said, a part of Culhane's general scheme was to arrange the +starting time for the walks and jogs about the long and short blocks so +that if one moved along briskly he <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" />reached the sanitarium at +twelve-thirty and had a few minutes in which to bathe and cool off and +change his clothes before entering the dining-room, where, if not at the +bathroom door beforehand, Culhane would be waiting, seated at his little +table, ready to keep watch on the time and condition of all those due. +Thus one day, a group of us having done the long block in less time than +we should have devoted to it, came in panting and rejoicing that we had +cut the record by seven minutes. We did not know that he was around. But +in the dining-room as we entered he scoffed at our achievement.</p> + +<p>"You think you're smart, don't you?" he said sourly and without any +preliminary statement as to how he knew we had done it in less time. +"You come out here and pay me one hundred a week and then you want to be +cute and play tricks with your own money and health. I want you to +remember just one thing: my reputation is just as much involved with the +results here as your money. I don't need anybody's money, and I do need +my orders obeyed. Now you all have watches. You just time yourselves and +do that block in the time required. If you can't do it, that's one +thing; I can forgive a man too weak or sick to do it. But I haven't any +use for a mere smart aleck, and I don't want any more of it, see?"</p> + +<p>That luncheon was very sad.</p> + +<p>Another thing in connection with these luncheons and dinners, which were +sharply timed to the minute, were these crisp table speeches, often made +<i>in re</i> some particular offender or his offense, at other times mere +sarcastic comments on life in general and the innate cussedness of human +nature, which amused at the same time that they were certain to irritate +some. For who is it that is not interested in hearing the peccadilloes +of his neighbor aired?</p> + +<p>Thus while I was there, there was a New York society man by the name of +Blake, who unfortunately was given to severe periods of alcoholism, the +results of which were, after a time, nervous disorders which sent him +here. In many ways he was as amiable and courteous and considerate a +soul as one could meet anywhere. He had that smooth, gracious something +about him—good nature, for one thing, a kind of understanding and +sympathy for various forms of life—which left him highly noncensorious, +if genially examining at times. But <a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" />his love of drink, or rather his +mild attempts here to arrange some method by which in this droughty +world he could obtain a little, aroused in Culhane not so much +opposition as an amused contempt, for at bottom I think he really liked +the man. Blake was so orderly, so sincere in his attempts to fulfill +conditions, only about once every week or so he would suggest that he be +allowed to go to White Plains or Rye, or even New York, on some errand +or other—most of which requests were promptly and nearly always +publicly refused. For although Culhane had his private suite at one end +of the great building, where one might suppose one might go to make a +private plea, still one could never find him there. He refused to +receive complaints or requests or visits of any kind there. If you +wanted to speak to him you had to do it when he was with the group in +its entirety—a commonsense enough policy. But just the same there were +those who had reasonable requests or complaints, and these, by a fine +intuition as to who was who in this institution and what might be +expected of each one, he managed to hear very softly, withdrawing slowly +as they talked or inviting them into the office. In the main however the +requests were very much like those of Blake—men who wanted to get off +somewhere for a day or two, feeling, as they did after a week or two or +three, especially fit and beginning to think no doubt of the various +comforts and pleasures which the city offered.</p> + +<p>But to all these he was more or less adamant. By hook or by crook, by +special arrangements with friends or agents in nearby towns and the +principal showy resorts of New York, he managed to know, providing they +did leave the grounds, either with or without his consent, about where +they were and what they had done, and in case any of his rules or their +agreements were broken their privileges were thereafter cut off or they +were promptly ejected, their trunks being set out on the roadway in +front of the estate and they being left to make their way to shelter +elsewhere as best they might.</p> + +<p>On one occasion, however, Blake had been allowed to go to New York over +Saturday and Sunday to attend to some urgent business, as he said, he on +his honor having promised to avoid the white lights. Nevertheless he did +not manage so to do but instead, in some comfortable section of that +region, <a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" />was seen drinking enough to last him until perhaps he should +have another opportunity to return to the city.</p> + +<p>On his return to the "shop" on Monday morning or late Sunday night, +Culhane pretended not to see him until noonday lunch, when, his jog over +the long block done with and his bath taken, he came dapperly into the +dining-room, wishing to look as innocent and fit as possible. But +Culhane was there before him at his little table in the center of the +room, and patting the head of one of the two pure-blooded collies that +always followed him about on the grounds or in the house, began as +follows:</p> + +<p>"A dog," he said very distinctly and in his most cynical tone and +apparently apropos of nothing, which usually augured that the lightning +of his criticism was about to strike somewhere, "is so much better than +the average man that it's an insult to the dog to compare them. The +dog's really decent. He has no sloppy vices. You set a plate of food +before a regularly-fed, blooded dog, and he won't think of gorging +himself sick or silly. He eats what he needs, and then stops. So does a +cat" (which is of course by no means true, but still—). "A dog doesn't +get a red nose from drinking too much." By now all eyes were turning in +the direction of Blake, whose nose was faintly tinged. "He doesn't get +gonorrhea or syphilis." The united glances veered in the direction of +three or four young scapegraces of wealth, all of whom were suspected of +these diseases. "He doesn't hang around hotel bars and swill and get his +tongue thick and talk about how rich he is or how old his family is." +(This augured that Blake did such things, which I doubt, but once more +all eyes were shifted to him.) "He doesn't break his word. Within the +limits of his poor little brain he's faithful. He does what he thinks +he's called upon to do.</p> + +<p>"But you take a man—more especially a gentleman—one of these fellows +who is always very pointed in emphasizing that he is a gentleman" (which +Blake never did). "Let him inherit eight or ten millions, give him a +college education, let him be socially well connected, and what does he +do? Not a damned thing if he can help it except contract vices—run from +one saloon to another, one gambling house to another, one girl to +another, one meal to another. He doesn't need to <a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" />know anything +necessarily. He may be the lowest dog physically and in every other way, +and still he's a gentleman—because he has money, wears spats and a high +hat. Why I've seen fifty poor boob prize fighters in my time who could +put it all over most of the so-called gentlemen I have ever seen. They +kept their word. They tried to be physically fit. They tried to stand up +in the world and earn their own living and be somebody." (He was +probably thinking of himself.) "But a gentleman wants to boast of his +past and his family, to tell you that he must go to the city on +business—his lawyers or some directors want to see him. Then he swills +around at hotel bars, stays with some of his lady whores, and then comes +back here and expects me to pull him into shape again, to make his nose +a little less red. He thinks he can use my place to fall back on when he +can't go any longer, to fix him up to do some more swilling later on.</p> + +<p>"Well, I want to serve notice on all so-called gentlemen here, and <i>one +gentleman</i> in particular" (and he heavily and sardonically emphasized +the words), "that it won't do. This isn't a hospital attached to a +whorehouse or a saloon. And as for the trashy little six hundred paid +here, I don't need it. I've turned away more men who have been here once +or twice and have shown me that they were just using this place and me +as something to help them go on with their lousy drinking and carousing, +than would fill this building. Sensible men know it. They don't try to +use me. It's only the wastrels, or their mothers or fathers who bring +their boys and husbands and cry, who try to use me, and I take 'em once +or twice, but not oftener. When a man goes out of here cured, I know he +is cured. I never want to see him again. I want him to go out in the +world and stand up. I don't want him to come back here in six months +sniveling to be put in shape again. He disgusts me. He makes me sick. I +feel like ordering him off the place, and I do, and that's the end of +him. Let him go and bamboozle somebody else. I've shown him all I know. +There's no mystery. He can do as much for himself, once he's been here, +as I can. If he won't, well and good. And I'm saying one thing more: +There's one man here to whom this particularly applies today. This is +his last call. He's been here twice. When he goes out this time he can't +come back. Now <a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" />see if some of you can remember some of the things I've +been telling you."</p> + +<p>He subsided and opened his little pint of wine.</p> + +<p>Another day while I was there he began as follows:</p> + +<p>"If there's one class of men that needs to be improved in this country, +it's lawyers. I don't know why it is, but there's something in the very +nature of the work of a lawyer which appears to make him cynical and to +want to wear a know-it-all look. Most lawyers are little more than +sharper crooks than the crooks they have to deal with. They're always +trying to get in on some case or other where they have to outwit the +law, save some one from getting what he justly deserves, and then they +are supposed to be honest and high-minded! Think of it! To judge by some +of the specimens I get up here," and then some lawyer in the place would +turn a shrewd inquiring glance in his direction or steadfastly gaze at +his plate or out the window, while the others stared at him, "you would +think they were the salt of the earth or that they were following a +really noble profession or that they were above or better than other men +in their abilities. Well, if being conniving and tricky are fine traits, +I suppose they are, but personally I can't see it. Generally speaking, +they're physically the poorest fish I get here. They're slow and +meditative and sallow, mostly because they get too little exercise, I +presume. And they're never direct and enthusiastic in an argument. A +lawyer always wants to stick in an 'if' or a 'but,' to get around you in +some way. He's never willing to answer you quickly or directly. I've +watched 'em now for nearly fifteen years, and they're all more or less +alike. They think they're very individual and different, but they're +not. Most of them don't know nearly as much about life as a good, +all-around business or society man," this in the absence of any desire +to discuss these two breeds for the time being. "For the life of me I +could never see why a really attractive woman would ever want to marry a +lawyer"—and so he would talk on, revealing one little unsatisfactory +trait after another in connection with the tribe, sand-papering their +raw places as it were, until you would about conclude, supposing you had +never heard him talk concerning any other profession, that lawyers were +the most ignoble, the pettiest, the most inefficient physically and +mentally, of all the <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" />men he had ever encountered; and in his noble +savage state there would not be one to disagree with him, for he had +such an animal, tiger-like mien that you had the feeling that instead of +an argument you would get a physical rip which would leave you bleeding +for days.</p> + +<p>The next day, or a day or two or four or six later—according to his +mood—it would be doctors or merchants or society men or politicians he +would discourse about—and, kind heaven, what a drubbing they would get! +He seemed always to be meditating on the vulnerable points of his +victims, anxious (and yet presumably not) to show them what poor, +fallible, shabby, petty and all but drooling creatures they were. Thus +in regard to merchants:</p> + +<p>"The average man who has a little business of some kind, a factory or a +wholesale or brokerage house or a hotel or a restaurant, usually has a +distinctly middle-class mind." At this all the merchants and +manufacturers were likely to give a very sharp ear. "As a rule, you'll +find that they know just the one little line with which they're +connected, and nothing more. One man knows all about cloaks and suits" +(this may have been a slap at poor Itzky) "or he knows a little +something about leather goods or shoes or lamps or furniture, and that's +all he knows. If he's an American he'll buckle down to that little +business and work night and day, sweat blood and make every one else +connected with him sweat it, underpay his employees, swindle his +friends, half-starve himself and his family, in order to get a few +thousand dollars and seem as good as some one else who has a few +thousand. And yet he doesn't want to be different from—he wants to be +just like—the other fellow. If some one in his line has a house up on +the Hudson or on Riverside Drive, when he gets his money he wants to go +there and live. If the fellow in his line, or some other that he knows +something about, belongs to a certain club, he has to belong to it even +if the club doesn't want him or he wouldn't look well in it. He wants to +have the same tailor, the same grocer, smoke the same brand of cigars +and go to the same summer resort as the other fellow. They even want to +look alike. God! And then when they're just like every one else, they +think they're somebody. They haven't a single idea outside their line, +and <a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" />yet because they've made money they want to tell other people how +to live and think. Imagine a rich butcher or cloak-maker, or any one +else, presuming to tell me how to think or live!"</p> + +<p>He stared about him as though he saw many exemplifications of his +picture present. And it was always interesting to see how those whom his +description really did fit look as though he could not possibly be +referring to them.</p> + +<p>Of all types or professions that came here, I think he disliked doctors +most. The reason was of course that the work they did or were about to +do in the world bordered on that which he was trying to accomplish, and +the chances were that they sniffed at or at least critically examined +what he was doing with an eye to finding its weak spots. In many cases +no doubt he fancied that they were there to study and copy his methods +and ideas, without having the decency later on to attribute their +knowledge to him. It was short shrift for any one of them with ideas or +"notions" unfriendly to him advanced in his presence. For a little while +during my stay there was a smooth-faced, rather solid physically and +decidedly self-opinionated mentally, doctor who ate at the same small +table as I and who was never tired of airing his views, medical and +otherwise. He confided to me rather loftily that there was, to be sure, +something to Culhane's views and methods but that they were +"over-emphasized here, over-emphasized." Still, one could over-emphasize +the value of drugs too. As for himself he had decided to achieve a happy +medium if possible, and for this reason (for one) he had come here to +study Culhane.</p> + +<p>As for Culhane, in spite of the young doctor's condescension and +understanding, or perhaps better yet because of it, he thoroughly +disliked, barely tolerated, him, and was never tired of commenting on +little dancing medics with their "pill cases" and easily acquired book +knowledge, boasting of their supposed learning "which somebody else had +paid for," as he once said—their fathers, of course. And when they were +sick, some of them at least, they had to come out here to him, or they +came to steal his theory and start a shabby grafting sanitarium of their +own. He knew them.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" />One noon we were at lunch. Occasionally before seating himself at his +small central table he would walk or glance about and, having good eyes, +would spy some little defect or delinquency somewhere and of course +immediately act upon it. One of the rules of the repair shop was that +you were to eat what was put before you, especially when it differed +from what your table companion received. Thus a fat man at a table with +a lean one might receive a small portion of lean meat, no potatoes and +no bread or one little roll, whereas his lean acquaintance opposite +would be receiving a large portion of fat meat, a baked or boiled +potato, plenty of bread and butter, and possibly a side dish of some +kind. Now it might well be, as indeed was often the case, that each +would be dissatisfied with his apportionment and would attempt to change +plates.</p> + +<p>But this was the one thing that Culhane would not endure. So upon one +occasion, passing near the table at which sat myself and the +above-mentioned doctor, table-mates for the time being, he noticed that +he was not eating his carrots, a dish which had been especially prepared +for him, I imagine—for if one unconsciously ignored certain things the +first day or two of his stay, those very things would be all but rammed +down his throat during the remainder of his stay; a thing concerning +which one guest and another occasionally cautioned newcomers. However +this may have been in this particular case, he noticed the uneaten +carrots and, pausing a moment, observed:</p> + +<p>"What's the matter? Aren't you eating your carrots?" We had almost +finished eating.</p> + +<p>"Who, me?" replied the medic, looking up. "Oh, no, I never eat carrots, +you know. I don't like them."</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't you?" said Culhane sweetly. "You don't like them, and so you +don't eat them! Well, suppose you eat them here. They may do you a +little good just as a change."</p> + +<p>"But I never eat carrots," retorted the medic tersely and with a slight +show of resentment or opposition, scenting perhaps a new order.</p> + +<p>"No, not outside perhaps, but here you do. You eat carrots here, see?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" />Yes, but why should I eat them if I don't like them? They don't agree +with me. Must I eat something that doesn't agree with me just because +it's a rule or to please you?"</p> + +<p>"To please me, or the carrots, or any damned thing you please—but eat +'em."</p> + +<p>The doctor subsided. For a day or two he went about commenting on what a +farce the whole thing was, how ridiculous to make any one eat what was +not suited to him, but just the same while he was there he ate them.</p> + +<p>As for myself, I was very fond of large boiled potatoes and substantial +orders of fat and lean meat, and in consequence, having been so foolish +as to show this preference, I received but the weakest, most +contemptible and puling little spuds and pale orders of meat—with, it +is true, plenty of other "side dishes"; whereas a later table-mate of +mine, a distressed and neurasthenic society man, was receiving—I soon +learned he especially abhorred them—potatoes as big as my two fists.</p> + +<p>"Now look at that! Now look at that!" he often said peevishly and with a +kind of sickly whine in his voice when he saw one being put before him. +"He knows I don't like potatoes, and see what I get! And look at the +little bit of a thing he gives you! It's a shame, the way he nags +people, especially over this food question. I don't think there's a +thing to it. I don't think eating a big potato does me a bit of good, or +you the little one, and yet I have to eat the blank-blank things or get +out. And I need to get on my feet just now."</p> + +<p>"Well, cheer up," I said sympathetically and with an eye on the large +potato perhaps. "He isn't always looking, and we can fix it. You mash up +your big potato and put butter and salt on it, and I'll do the same with +my little one. Then when he's not looking we'll shift."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's all right," he commented, "but we'd better look out. If he +sees us he'll be as sore as the devil."</p> + +<p>This system worked well enough for a time, and for days I was getting +all the potato I wanted and congratulating myself on my skill, when one +day as I was slyly forking potatoes out of his dish, moved helpfully in +my direction, I saw Culhane approaching and feared that our trick had +been discovered. It <a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" />had. Perhaps some snaky waitress has told on us, or +he had seen us, even from his table.</p> + +<p>"Now I know what's going on here at this table," he growled savagely, +"and I want you two to cut it out. This big boob here" (he was referring +to my esteemed self) "who hasn't strength of will or character enough to +keep himself in good health and has to be brought up here by his +brother, hasn't brains enough to see that when I plan a thing for his +benefit it is for his benefit, and not mine. Like most of the other +damned fools that come up here and waste their money and my time, he +thinks I'm playing some cute game with him—tag or something that will +let him show how much cuter he is than I am. And he's supposed to be a +writer and have a little horse-sense! His brother claims it, anyhow. And +as for this other simp here," and now he was addressing the assembled +diners while nodding toward my friend, "it hasn't been three weeks since +he was begging to know what I could do for him. And now look at +him—entering into a petty little game of potato-cheating!</p> + +<p>"I swear," he went on savagely, talking to the room in general, +"sometimes I don't know what to do with such damned fools. The right +thing would be to set these two, and about fifty others in this place, +out on the main road with their trunks and let them go to hell. They +don't deserve the attention of a conscientious man. I prohibit +gambling—what happens? A lot of nincompoops and mental lightweights +with more money than brains sneak off into a field of an afternoon on +the excuse that they are going for a walk, and then sit down and lose or +win a bucket of money just to show off what hells of fellows they are, +what sports, what big 'I ams.' I prohibit cigarette-smoking, not because +I think it's literally going to kill anybody but because I think it +looks bad here, sets a bad example to a lot of young wasters who come +here and who ought to be broken of the vice, and besides, because I +don't like cigarette-smoking here—don't want it and won't have it. What +happens? A lot of sissies and mamma's boys and pet heirs, whose fathers +haven't got enough brains to cut 'em off and make 'em get out and work, +come up here, sneak in cigarettes or get the servants to, and then hide +out behind <a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" />the barn or a tree down in the lot and sneak and smoke like +a lot of cheap schoolboys. God, it makes me sick! What's the use of a +man working out a fact during a lifetime and letting other people have +the benefit of it—not because he needs their money, but that they need +his help—if all the time he is going to have such cattle to deal with? +Not one out of twenty or forty men that come here really wants me to +help him or to help himself. What he wants is to have some one drive him +in the way he ought to go, kick him into it, instead of his buckling +down and helping himself. What's the good of bothering with such damned +fools? A man ought to take the whole pack and run 'em off the place with +a dog-whip." He waved his hand in the air. "It's sickening. It's +impossible.</p> + +<p>"As for you two," he added, turning to us, but suddenly stopped. "Hell, +what's the use! Why should I bother with you? Do as you damned well +please, and stay sick or die!"</p> + +<p>He turned on his heel and walked out of the dining-room, leaving us to +sit there. I was so dumbfounded by the harangue our pseudo-cleverness +had released that I could scarcely speak. My appetite was gone and I +felt wretched. To think of having been the cause of this unnecessary +tongue-lashing to the others! And I felt that we were, and justly, the +target for their rather censorious eyes.</p> + +<p>"My God!" moaned my companion most dolefully. "That's always the way +with me. Nothing that I ever do comes out right. All my life I've been +unlucky. My mother died when I was seven, and my father's never had any +use for me. I started in three or four businesses four or five years +ago, but none of them ever came out right. My yacht burned last summer, +and I've had neurasthenia for two years." He catalogued a list of ills +that would have done honor to Job himself, and he was worth nine +millions, so I heard!</p> + +<p>Two or three additional and amusing incidents, and I am done.</p> + +<p>One of the most outré things in connection with our rides about the +countryside was Culhane's attitude toward life and the natives and +passing strangers as representing life. Thus one day, as I recall very +well, we were riding along a backwoods country road, very shadowy and +branch-covered, a great company of us four abreast, when suddenly and +after <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" />his very military fashion there came a "Halt! Right by fours! +Right dress! Face!" and presently we were all lined up in a row facing a +greensward which had suddenly been revealed to the left and on which, +and before a small plumber's stove standing outside some gentleman's +stable, was stretched a plumber and his helper. The former, a man of +perhaps thirty-five, the latter a lad of, say, fourteen or fifteen, were +both very grimy and dirty, but taking their ease in the morning sun, a +little pot of lead on the stove being waited for, I presume, that it +might boil.</p> + +<p>Culhane, leaving his place at the head of the column, returned to the +center nearest the plumber and his helper and pointing at them and +addressing us in a very clear voice, said:</p> + +<p>"There you have it. There's American labor for you, at its best—union +labor, the poor, downtrodden workingman. Look at him." We all looked. +"This poor hard-working plumber here," and at that the latter stirred +and sat up, scarcely even now grasping what it was all about, so +suddenly had we descended upon him, "earns or demands sixty cents an +hour, and this poor sweating little helper here has to have forty. +They're working now. They're waiting for that little bit of lead to +boil, at a dollar an hour between them. They can't do a thing, either of +'em, until it does, and lead has to be well done, you know, before it +can be used.</p> + +<p>"Well, now, these two here," he continued, suddenly shifting his tone +from one of light sarcasm to a kind of savage contempt, "imagine they +are getting along, making life a lot better for themselves, when they +lie about this way and swindle another man out of his honest due in +connection with the work he is paying for. He can't help himself. He +can't know everything. If he did he'd probably find what's wrong in +there and fix it himself in three minutes. But if he did that and the +union heard of it they'd boycott him. They'd come around and blackmail +him, blow up his barn, or make him pay for the work he did himself. I +know 'em. I have to deal with 'em. They fix my pipes in the same way +that these two are fixing his—lying on the grass at a dollar an hour. +And they want five dollars a pound for every bit of lead they use. If +they forget anything and have to go back to town for it, you pay <a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" />for +it, at a dollar an hour. They get on the job at nine and quit at four, +in the country. If you say anything, they quit altogether—they're +<i>union</i> laborers—and they won't let any one else do it, either. Once +they're on the job they have to rest every few minutes, like these two. +Something has to boil, or they have to wait for something. Isn't it +wonderful! Isn't it beautiful! And all of us of course are made free and +equal! They're just as good as we are! If you work and make money and +have any plumbing to do you have to support 'em—Right by fours! Guide +right! Forward!" and off we trotted, breaking into a headlong gallop a +little farther on as if he wished to outrun the mood which was holding +him at the moment.</p> + +<p>The plumber and his assistant, fully awake now to the import of what had +occurred, stared after us. The journeyman plumber, who was short and +fat, sat and blinked. At last he recovered his wits sufficiently to cry, +"Aw, go to hell, you ——————!" but by that time we were well along +the road and I am not sure that Culhane even heard.</p> + +<p>Another day as we were riding along a road which led into a nearby city +of, say, twenty thousand, we encountered a beer truck of great size and +on its seat so large and ruddy and obese a German as one might go a long +way and still not see. It was very hot. The German was drowsy and taking +his time in the matter of driving. As we drew near, Culhane suddenly +called a halt and, lining us up as was his rule, called to the horses of +the brewery wagon, who also obeyed his lusty "Whoa!" The driver, from +his high perch above, stared down on us with mingled curiosity and +wonder.</p> + +<p>"Now, here's an illustration of what I mean," Culhane began, apropos of +nothing at all, "when I say that the word man ought to be modified or +changed in some way so that when we use it we would mean something more +definite than we mean now. That thing you see sitting up on that +wagon-seat there—call that a man? And then call me one? Or a man like +Charles A. Dana? Or a man like General Grant? Hell! Look at him! Look at +his shape! Look at that stomach! You think a thing like that—call it a +man if you want to—has any brains or that he's really any better than a +pig in a sty? If you turn a horse out to shift for himself he'll eat +just enough to <a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" />keep in condition; same way with a dog, a cat or a bird. +But let one of these things, that some people call a <i>man</i>, come along, +give him a job and enough money or a chance to stuff himself, and see +what happens. A thing like that connects himself with one end of a beer +hose and then he thinks he's all right. He gets enough guts to start a +sausage factory, and then he blows up, I suppose, or rots. Think of it! +And we call him a man—or some do!"</p> + +<p>During this amazing and wholly unexpected harangue (I never saw him stop +any one before), the heavy driver, who did not understand English very +well, first gazed and then strained with his eyebrows, not being able +quite to make out what it was all about. From the chuckling and laughter +that finally set up in one place and another he began dimly to +comprehend that he was being made fun of, used as an unsatisfactory jest +of some kind. Finally his face clouded for a storm and his eyes blazed, +the while his fat red cheeks grew redder. "<i>Donnervetter!</i>" he began +gutturally to roar. "<i>Schweine hunde! Hunds knoche! Nach der polizei +soll man reufen!</i>"</p> + +<p>I for one pulled my horse cautiously back, as he cracked a great whip, +and, charging savagely through us, drove on. Culhane, having made his +unkind comments, gave orders for our orderly formation once more and +calmly led us away.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the most amusing phase of him was his opposition to and contempt +for inefficiency of any kind. If he asked you to do anything, no matter +what, and you didn't at once leap to the task ready and willing and able +so to do, he scarcely had words enough with which to express himself. On +one occasion, as I recall all too well, he took us for a drive in his +tally-ho—one or two or three that he possessed—a great lumbering, +highly lacquered, yellow-wheeled vehicle, to which he attached seven or +eight or nine horses, I forget which. This tally-ho ride was a regular +Sunday morning or afternoon affair unless it was raining, a call +suddenly sounding from about the grounds somewhere at eleven or at two +in the afternoon, "Tally-ho at eleven-thirty" (or two-thirty, as the +case might be). "All aboard!" Gathering all the reins in his hands and +perching himself in the high seat above, with perhaps one of his guests +beside him, all the rest crowded <a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" />willy-nilly on the seats within and on +top, he would carry us off, careening about the countryside most madly, +several of his hostlers acting as liveried footmen or outriders and one +of them perched up behind on the little seat, the technical name of +which I have forgotten, waving and blowing the long silver trumpet, the +regulation blasts on which had to be exactly as made and provided for +such occasions. Often, having been given no warning as to just when it +was to be, there would be a mad scramble to get into our <i>de rigueur</i> +Sunday clothes, for Culhane would not endure any flaws in our +appearance, and if we were not ready and waiting when one of his +stablemen swung the vehicle up to the door at the appointed time he was +absolutely furious.</p> + +<p>On the particular occasion I have in mind we all clambered on in good +time, all spick and span and in our very best, shaved, powdered, hands +appropriately gloved, our whiskers curled and parted, our shoes shined, +our hats brushed; and up in front was Culhane, gentleman de luxe for the +occasion, his long-tailed whip looped exactly as it should be, no doubt, +ready to be flicked out over the farthest horse's head, and up behind +was the trumpeter—high hat, yellow-topped boots, a uniform of some +grand color, I forget which.</p> + +<p>But, as it turned out on this occasion, there had been a hitch at the +last minute. The regular hostler or stableman who acted as footman +extraordinary and trumpeter plenipotentiary, the one who could truly and +ably blow this magnificent horn, was sick or his mother was dead. At any +rate, there he wasn't. And in order not to irritate Culhane, a second +hostler had been dressed and given his seat and horn—only he couldn't +blow it. As we began to clamber in I heard him asking, "Can any of you +gentleman blow the trumpet? Do any of you gentleman know the regular +trumpet call?"</p> + +<p>No one responded, although there was much discussion in a low key. Some +could, or thought they could, but hesitated to assume so frightful a +risk. At the same time Culhane, hearing the fuss and knowing perhaps +that his substitute could not trumpet, turned grimly around and said, +"Say, do you mean to say there isn't any one back there who knows how to +blow that thing? What's the matter with you, Caswell?" he <a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" />called to +one, and getting only mumbled explanations from that quarter, called to +another, "How about you, Drewberry? Or you, Crashaw?"</p> + +<p>All three apologized briskly. They were terrified by the mere thought of +trying. Indeed no one seemed eager to assume the responsibility, until +finally he became so threatening and assured us so volubly that unless +some immediate and cheerful response were made he would never again +waste one blank minute on a lot of blank-blank this and thats, that one +youth, a rash young society somebody from Rochester, volunteered more or +less feebly that he "thought" that "maybe he could manage it." He took a +seat directly under the pompously placed trumpeter, and we were off.</p> + +<p>"Heigh-ho!" Out the gate and down the road and up a nearby slope at a +smart clip, all of us gazing cheerfully and possibly vainly about, for +it was a bright day and a gay country. Now the trumpeter, as is provided +for on all such occasions, lifted the trumpet to his lips and began on +the grandiose "ta-ra-ta-ta," but to our grief and pain, although he got +through fairly successfully on his first attempt, there was one place +where there was a slight hitch, a "false crack," as some one rowdyishly +remarked. Culhane, although tucking up his lines and stiffening his back +irritably at this flaw, said nothing. For after all a poor trumpeter was +better than none at all. A little later, however, the trumpeter having +hesitated to begin again, he called back, "Well, what about the horn? +What about the horn? Can't you do something with it? Have you quit for +the day?"</p> + +<p>Up went the horn once more, and a most noble and encouraging +"Ta-ra-ta-ta" was begun, but just at the critical point, and when we +were all most prayerfully hoping against hope, as it were, that this +time he would round the dangerous curves of it gracefully and come to a +grand finish, there was a most disconcerting and disheartening squeak. +It was pathetic, ghastly. As one man we wilted. What would Culhane say +to that? We were not long in doubt. "Great Christ!" he shouted, looking +back and showing a countenance so black that it was positively +terrifying. "Who did that? Throw him off! What do you think—that I want +the whole country to know I'm <a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" />airing a lot of lunatics? Somebody who +can blow that thing, take it and blow it, for God's sake! I'm not going +to drive around here without a trumpeter!"</p> + +<p>For a few moments there was more or less painful gabbling in all the +rows, pathetic whisperings and "go ons" or eager urgings of one and +another to sacrifice himself upon the altar of necessity, insistences by +the ex-trumpeter that he had blown trumpets in his day as good as any +one—what the deuce had got into him anyhow? It must be the horn!</p> + +<p>"Well," shouted Culhane finally, as a stop-gap to all this, "isn't any +one going to blow that thing? Do you mean to tell me that I'm hauling +all of you around, with not a man among you able to blow a dinky little +horn? What's the use of my keeping a lot of fancy vehicles in my barn +when all I have to deal with is a lot of shoe salesmen and floorwalkers? +Hell! Any child can blow it. It's as easy as a fish-horn. If I hadn't +these horses to attend to I'd blow it myself. Come on—come on! +Kerrigan, what's the matter with you blowing it?"</p> + +<p>"The truth is, Mr. Culhane," explained Mr. Kerrigan, the very dapper and +polite heir of a Philadelphia starch millionaire, "I haven't had any +chance to practice with one of those for several years. I'll try it if +you want me to, but I can't guarantee—"</p> + +<p>"Try!" insisted Culhane violently. "You can't do any worse than that +other mutt, if you blow for a million years. Blow it! Blow it!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Kerrigan turned back and being very cheerfully tendered the horn by +the last failure, wetted and adjusted his lips, lifted it upward and +backward—and—</p> + +<p>It was pathetic. It was positively dreadful, the wheezing, grinding +sounds that were emitted.</p> + +<p>"God!" shouted Culhane, pulling up the coach to a dead stop. "Stop that! +Whoa! Whoa!!! Do you mean to say that that's the best you can do? Well, +this finishes me! Whoa! What kind of a bunch of cattle have I got up +here, anyhow? Whoa! And out in this country too where I'm known and +where they know all about such things! God! Whoa! Here I spend thousands +of dollars to get together an equipment that will make a pleasant +afternoon for a crowd of gentlemen, and this is what I draw—hams! A lot +of barflies who never saw a <a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" />tally-ho! Well, I'm done! I'm through! I'll +split the damned thing up for firewood before I ever take it out again! +Get down! Get out, all of you! I'll not haul one of you back a step! +Walk back or anywhere you please—to hell, for all I care! I'm through! +Get out! I'm going to turn around and get back to the barn as quick as I +can—up some alley if I can find one. To think of having such a bunch of +hacks to deal with!"</p> + +<p>Humbly and wearily we climbed down and, while he drove savagely on to +some turning-place, stood about first in small groups, then by twos and +threes began making our way—rather gingerly, I must confess, in our +fine clothes—along the winding road back to the place on the hill. But +such swearing! Such un-Sabbath-like comments! The number of times his +sturdy Irish soul was wished into innermost and almost sacrosanct +portions of Sheol! He was cursed from more angles and in more +artistically and architecturally nobly constructed phrases and even +paragraphs than any human being that I have ever heard of before or +since, phrases so livid and glistening that they smoked.</p> + +<p>Talk about the carved ivories of speech! The mosaics of verbal precious +stones!</p> + +<p>You should have heard us on our way back!</p> + +<p>And still we stayed.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Some two years later I was passing this place in company with some +friends, when I asked my host, who also knew of the place, to turn in. +During my stay it had been the privilege and custom among those who knew +much of this institution to drive through the grounds and past the very +doors of the "repair shop," even to stop if Culhane chanced to be +visible and talking to or at least greeting him, in some cases. A custom +of Culhane's was, in the summer time, to have erected on the lawn a +large green-and-white striped marquee tent, a very handsome thing +indeed, in which was placed a field-officer's table and several camp +chairs, and some books and papers. Here of a hot day, when he was not +busy with us, he would sit and read. And when he was in here or +somewhere about, a little pennant was run up, possibly as guide to +visiting guests or friends. At any rate, it was the presence of this +<a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" />pennant which caused me to know that he was about and to wish that I +might have a look at him once more, great lion that he was. As "guests," +none of us were ever allowed to come within more than ten feet of it, +let alone in it. As passing visitors, however, we might, and many did, +stop, remind him that we had once been his humble slaves, and ask leave +to congratulate him on his health and sturdy years. At such times, if +the visitors looked interesting enough, or he remembered them well, he +would deign to come to the tent-fly and, standing there à la Napoleon at +Lodi or Grant in the Wilderness, be for the first time in his relations +with them a bit civil.</p> + +<p>Anyway, on this occasion, urged on by curiosity to see my liege once +more and also to learn whether he would remember me at all, I had my +present host roll his car up to the tent door, where Culhane was +reading. Feeling that by this venturesome deed I had "let myself in for +it" and had to "make a showing," I climbed briskly out and, approaching, +recalled myself to him. With a semi-wry expression, half smile, half +contemptuous curl of the corners of his mouth, he recalled me and took +my extended hand; then seeing that possibly my friends if not myself +looked interesting, he arose and came to the door. I introduced +them—one a naval officer of distinction, the other the owner of a great +estate some miles farther on. For the first time in my relations with +him I had an opportunity to note how grandly gracious he could be. He +accepted my friends' congratulations as to the view with a princely nod +and suggested that on other days it was even better. He was soon to be +busy now or he would have some one show my friends through the shop. +Some Saturday afternoon, if they would telephone or stop in passing, he +would oblige.</p> + +<p>I noted at once that he had not aged in the least. He was sixty-two +or-three now and as vigorous and trim as ever. And now he treated me as +courteously and formally as though he had never browbeaten me in the +least. "Good heavens," I said, "how much better to be a visitor than a +guest!" After a moment or two we offered many thanks and sped on, but +not without many a backward glance on my part, for the place fascinated +me. That simply furnished institution! That severe <a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" />regimen! This +latter-day Stoic and Spartan in his tent! And, above all things, and the +most astounding to me, so little could one know him, the book he had +been reading and which he had laid upon his little table as I entered—I +could not help noting the title for he laid it back up, open face +down—was Lecky's "History of European Morals"!</p> + +<p>Now!</p> + +<p>Well!</p> + + +<p>IN RETROSPECT</p> + +<p>Two years after this visit, in a serious attempt to set down what I +really did think of him, I arranged the following thoughts with which I +closed my sketch then and which I now append for what they may be worth. +They represented my best thought concerning him then:</p> + +<p>"Thomas Culhane belongs to that class of society which the preachers and +the world's army of conventional merchants, lawyers, judges and +reputable citizens generally are presumably, if one may judge by the +moral and religious literature of the day, trying to reach and reform. +Yet here at his sanitarium are gathered representatives of those same +orders, the so-called better element. And here we see them suddenly +dominated, mind and soul, by this being whom they, theoretically at +least, look upon as a brand to be snatched from the burning.</p> + +<p>"As the Church and society view Culhane, so they view all life outside +their own immediate circles. Culhane is in fact a conspicuous figure +among the semi-taboo. He has been referred to in many an argument and +platform and pulpit and in the press as a type of man whose influence is +supposed to be vitiating. Now a minister enters the sanitarium, broken +down by his habits of life, and this same Culhane is able to penetrate +him, to see that his dogmatic and dictatorial mental habits are the +cause of his ailment, and he has the moral courage to shock him, to drag +him by apparently brutal processes out of his rut. He reads the man +accurately, he knows him better than he knows himself, and he effects a +cure.</p> + +<p>"This astonishing condition is certainly a new light for those seeking +to labor among men. Those who are successful gamblers, pugilists, +pickpockets, saloon-keepers, book-<a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" />makers, jockeys and the like are so +by reason of their intelligence, their innate mental acumen and +perception. It is a fact that in the sporting world and among the +unconventional men-about-town you will often find as good if not better +judges of human nature than elsewhere. Contact with a rough and ready +and all-too-revealing world teaches them much. The world's customary +pretensions and delusions are in the main ripped away. They are bruised +by rough facts. Often the men gathered in some such café and whom +preachers and moralists are most ready to condemn have a clearer +perception of preachers, church organizations and reformers and their +relative importance in the multitudinous life of the world than the +preachers, church congregations and reformers have of those in the café +or the world outside to which they belong.</p> + +<p>"This is why, in my humble judgment, the Church and those associated +with its aims make no more progress than they do. While they are +consciously eager to better the world, they are so wrapped up in +themselves and their theories, so hampered by their arbitrary and +limited conceptions of good and evil, that the great majority of men +move about them unseen, except in a far-away and superficial manner. Men +are not influenced at arm's length. It would be interesting to know if +some day a preacher or judge, who, offended by Mr. Culhane's profanity +and brutality, will be able to reach the gladiator and convert him to +his views as readily as the gladiator is able to rid him of his +ailment."</p> + +<p>In justice to the preachers, moralists, et cetera, I should now like to +add that it is probably not any of the virtues or perfections +represented by a man like Culhane with which they are quarreling, but +the vices of many who are in no wise like him and do not stand for the +things he stands for. At the same time, the so-called "sports" might +well reply that it is not with any of the really admirable qualities of +the "unco guid" that they quarrel, but their too narrow interpretations +of virtue and duty and their groundless generalization as to types and +classes.</p> + +<p>Be it so.</p> + +<p>Here is meat for a thousand controversies.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="A_True_Patriarch" id="A_True_Patriarch" /><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" /><i>A True Patriarch</i></h2> + + +<p>In the streets of a certain moderate-sized county seat in Missouri not +many years ago might have been seen a true patriarch. Tall, +white-haired, stout in body and mind, he roamed among his neighbors, +dispensing sympathy and a curiously genial human interest through the +leisure of his day. One might have taken him to be Walt Whitman, of whom +he was the living counterpart; or, in the clear eye, high forehead and +thick, appealing white hair, have seen a marked similarity to Bryant as +he appeared in his later years. Already at this time he had seen man's +allotted term on earth, and yet he was still strong in the councils of +his people and rich in the accumulated interests of a lifetime.</p> + +<p>At the particular time in question he was most interesting for the +eccentricities which years of stalwart independence had developed, but +these were lovable peculiarities and only severed from remarkable +actions by the compelling power of time and his increasing infirmities. +The loud, though pleasant, voice, and strong, often fiery, declamatory +manner, were remnants of the days when his fellow-citizens were wholly +swayed by the magnificence of his orations. Charmingly simple in manner, +he still represented with it that old courtesy which made every stranger +his guest. When moved by righteous indignation, there cropped out the +daring and domineering insistence of one who had always followed what he +considered to be the right, and who knew its power.</p> + +<p>Even then, old as he was, if there were any topic worthy of discussion, +and his fellow-citizens were in danger of going wrong, he became an +haranguing prophet, as it were, a local Isaiah or Jeremiah. Every gate +heard him, for he stopped on his rounds in front of each, and calling +out the inhabitant poured forth such a volume of fact and argument as +tended to remove all doubt of what he, at least, considered right. All +of this he invariably accompanied by a magnificence of gesture worthy of +a great orator.</p> + +<p>At such times his mind, apparently, was almost wholly engrossed with +these matters, and I have it from one of his daughters, who, besides +being his daughter, was a sincere <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" />admirer of his, that often he might +have been seen coming down his private lawn, and even the public streets +when there was no one near to hear him, shaking his head, gesticulating, +sometimes sweeping upward with his arms, as if addressing his +fellow-citizens in assemblage.</p> + +<p>"He used to push his big hat well back upon his forehead," she said on +one occasion, "and often in winter, forgetful of the bitter cold, would +take off his overcoat and carry it on his arm. Occasionally he would +stop quite still, as if he were addressing a companion, and with +sweeping gestures illustrate some idea or other, although, of course, +there was no one present. Then, planting his big cane forcibly with each +step, as though still emphasizing his recently stated ideas, he would +come forward and enter the house."</p> + +<p>The same suggestion of mental concentration might have been seen in +everything that he did, and I personally have seen him leading a pet +Jersey cow home for milking with the same dignity of bearing and +forcefulness of manner that characterized him when he stood before his +fellow-citizens at a public meeting addressing them on some important +topic. He never appeared to have a sense of difference from or +superiority over his fellowmen, but only the keenest sympathy with all +things human. Every man was his brother, every human being honest. A cow +or a horse was as much to be treated with sympathy and charity as a man +or a woman. If a purse was lost, forty-nine out of every fifty men would +return it without thought of reward, if you were to believe him.</p> + +<p>In the little town where he had lived so many years, and where he +finally died, he knew every living creature from cattle upwards, and +could call each by name. The sick, the poor, the widows, the orphans, +the insane, and dependents of all kinds, were his especial care. Every +Sunday afternoon for years, it was his custom to go the rounds of the +indigent, frequently carrying a basket of his good wife's dinner. This +he distributed, along with consolation and advice. Occasionally he would +return home of a winter's day very much engrossed with the discovery of +some condition of distress hitherto unseen.</p> + +<p>"Mother," he would say to his wife in that same oratorical manner +previously noted, as he entered the house, "I've found <a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" />such a poor +family. They have moved into the old saloon below Solmson's. You know +how open that is." This was delivered in the most dramatic style after +he had indicated something important by throwing his overcoat on the bed +and standing his cane in the corner. "There's a man and several children +there. The mother is dead. They were on their way to Kansas, but it got +so cold they've had to stop here until the winter is broken. They're +without food; almost no clothing. Can't we find something for them?"</p> + +<p>"On these occasions," said his daughter to me once, "he would, as he +nearly always did, talk to himself on the way, as if he were discussing +politics. But you could never tell what he was coming for."</p> + +<p>Then with his own labor he would help his wife seek out the odds and +ends that could be spared, and so armed, would return, arguing by the +way as if an errand of mercy were the last thing he contemplated. Nearly +always the subject of these orations was some public wrong or error +which should receive, although in all likelihood it did not, immediate +attention.</p> + +<p>Always of a reverent, although not exactly religious, turn of mind, he +took considerable interest in religious ministration, though he steadily +and persistently refused, in his later years, to go to church. He had +St. James's formula to quote in self-defense, which insists that "Pure +religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, To visit the +fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted +from the world." Often, when pressed too close, he would deliver this +with kindly violence. One of the most touching anecdotes representative +of this was related to me by his daughter, who said:</p> + +<p>"Mr. Kent, a poor man of our town, was sick for months previous to his +death, and my father used to go often, sometimes daily, to visit him. He +would spend perhaps a few minutes, perhaps an hour, with him, singing, +praying, and ministering to his spiritual wants. The pastor of the +church living so far away and coming only once a month, this duty +devolved upon some one, and my father did his share, and always felt +more than repaid for the time spent by the gratitude shown by the many +poor people he aided in this way.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" />Mr. Kent's favorite song, for instance, was 'On Jordan's Stormy Banks +I Stand.' This he would have my father sing, and his clear voice could +often be heard in the latter's small house, and seemed to impart +strength to the sick man.</p> + +<p>"Upon one occasion, I remember, Mr. Kent expressed a desire to hear a +certain song. My father was not very familiar with it but, anxious to +grant his request, came home and asked me if I would get a friend of +mine and go and sing the song for him.</p> + +<p>"We entered the sick-room, he leading us by the hand, for we were +children at the time. Mr. Kent's face at once brightened, and father +said to him:</p> + +<p>"'Mr. Kent, I told you this morning that I couldn't sing the song you +asked for, but these girls know it, and have come to sing it for you.'</p> + +<p>"Then, waving his hand gently toward us, he said:</p> + +<p>"'Sing, children.'</p> + +<p>"We did so, and when we had finished he knelt and offered a prayer, not +for the poor man's recovery but that he might put his trust in the Lord +and meet death without fear. I have never been more deeply impressed nor +felt more confident in the presence of death, for the man died soon +after, soothed into perfect peace."</p> + +<p>On another occasion he was sitting with some friends in front of the +courthouse in his town, talking and sunning himself, when a neighbor +came running up in great excitement, calling:</p> + +<p>"Mr. White, Mr. White, come, right quick. Mrs. Sadler wants you."</p> + +<p>He explained that the woman in question was dying, and, being afraid she +would strangle in her last moments, had asked the bystanders to run for +him, her old acquaintance, in the efficacy of whose prayers she had +great faith. The old patriarch was without a coat at the time, but, +unmindful of that, hastened after.</p> + +<p>"Mr. White," exclaimed the sick woman excitedly upon seeing him, "I want +you to pray that I won't strangle. I'm not afraid to die, but I don't +want to die that way. I want you to offer a prayer for me that I may be +saved from that. I'm so afraid."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" />Seeing by the woman's manner that she was very much overwrought, he +used all his art to soothe her.</p> + +<p>"Have no fear, Mrs. Sadler, now," he exclaimed solemnly. "You won't +strangle. I will ask the Lord for you, and this evil will not come upon +you. You need not have any fear."</p> + +<p>"Kneel down, you," he commanded, turning upon the assembled neighbors +and relatives who had followed or had been there before him, while he +pushed back his white hair from his forehead. "Let us now pray that this +good woman here be allowed to pass away in peace." And even with the +rustle of kneeling that accompanied his words he lifted up his coatless +arms and began to pray.</p> + +<p>Through his magnificent phraseology, no doubt, as well as his profound +faith, he succeeded in inducing a feeling of peace and quiet in all his +hearers, the sick woman included, who, listening, sank into a restful +stupor, from which all agony of mind had apparently disappeared. Then +when the physical atmosphere of the room had been thus reorganized, he +ceased and retired to the yard in front of the house, where on a bench +under a shade tree he seated himself to wipe his moist brow and recover +his composure. In a few moments a slight commotion in the sick-room +denoted that the end had come. Several neighbors came out, and one said, +"Well, it is all over, Mr. White. She is dead."</p> + +<p>"Yes," he replied with great assurance. "She didn't strangle, did she?"</p> + +<p>"No," said the other, "the Lord granted her request."</p> + +<p>"I knew He would," he replied in his customary loud and confident tone. +"Prayer is always answered."</p> + +<p>Then, after viewing the dead woman and making additional comments, he +was off, as placid as though nothing had occurred.</p> + +<p>I happened to hear of this some time after, and one day, while sitting +with him on his front porch, said, "Mr. White, do you really believe +that the Lord directly answered your prayer in that instance?"</p> + +<p>"Answered!" he almost shouted defiantly and yet with a kind of human +tenderness that one could never mistake. "Of course He answered! Why +wouldn't He—a faithful old servant like that? To be sure, He answered."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" />Might it not have been merely the change of atmosphere which your +voice and strength introduced? The quality of your own thoughts goes for +something in such matters. Mind acts on mind."</p> + +<p>"Certainly," he said, in a manner as agreeable as if it had always been +a doctrine with him. "I know that. But, after all, what is <i>that</i>—my +mind, your mind, the sound of voices? It's all the Lord anyhow, whatever +you think."</p> + +<p>How could one gainsay such a religionist as that?</p> + +<p>The poor, the blind, the insane, and sufferers of all sorts, as I have +said before, were always objects of his keenest sympathies. Evidence of +it flashed out at the most unexpected moments—loud, rough exclamations, +which, however, always contained a note so tender and suggestive as to +defy translation. Thus, while we were sitting on his front porch one day +and hotly discussing politics to while away a dull afternoon, there came +down the street, past his home, a queer, ragged, half-demented +individual, who gazed about in an aimless sort of way, peering queerly +over fences, looking idly down the road, staring strangely overhead into +the blue. It was apparent, in a moment, that the man was crazy, some +demented creature, harmless enough, however, to be allowed abroad and so +save the county the expense of caring for him. The old man broke a +sentence short in order to point and shake his head emotionally.</p> + +<p>"Look at that," he said to me, with a pathetic sweep of the arm, "now +just look at that! There's a poor, demented soul, with no one to look +after him. His brother is a hard-working saddler. His sister is dead. No +money to speak of, any of them." He paused a moment, and then added, "I +don't know what we're to do in such cases. The state and the county +don't always do their duty. Most people here are too poor to help, there +are so many to be taken care of. It seems almost at times as if you +can't do anything but leave them to the mercy of God, and yet you can't +do that either, quite," and he once more shook his head sadly.</p> + +<p>I was for denouncing the county, but he explained very charitably that +it was already very heavily taxed by such cases. He did not seem to know +exactly what should be done at the time, but he was very sorry, very, +and for the time being the <a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" />warm argument in which he had been indulging +was completely forgotten. Now he lapsed into silence and all +communication was suspended, while he rocked silently in his great chair +and thought.</p> + +<p>One day in passing the local poor-farm (and this is of my own +knowledge), he came upon a man beating a poor idiot with a whip. The +latter was incapable of reasoning and therefore of understanding why it +was that he was being beaten. The two were beside a wood-pile and the +demented one was crying. In a moment the old patriarch had jumped out of +his conveyance, leaped over the fence, and confronted the amazed +attendant with an uplifted arm.</p> + +<p>"Not another lick!" he fairly shouted. "What do you mean by striking an +idiot?"</p> + +<p>"Why," explained the attendant, "I want him to carry in the wood, and he +won't do it."</p> + +<p>"It is not his place to bring in the wood. He isn't put here for that, +and in the next place he can't understand what you mean. He's put here +to be taken care of. Don't you dare strike him again. I'll see about +this, and you."</p> + +<p>Knowing his interrupter well, his position and power in the community, +the man endeavored to explain that some work must be done by the +inmates, and that this one was refractory. The only way he had of making +him understand was by whipping him.</p> + +<p>"Not another word," the old man blustered, overawing the county +hireling. "You've done a wrong, and you know it. I'll see to this," and +off he bustled to the county courthouse, leaving the transgressor so +badly frightened that whips thereafter were carefully concealed, in this +institution at least. The court, which was held in his home town, was +not in session at the time, and only the clerk was present when he came +tramping down the aisle and stood before the latter with his right hand +uplifted in the position of one about to make oath.</p> + +<p>"Swear me," he called solemnly, and without further explanation, as the +latter stared at him. "I want you to take this testimony under oath."</p> + +<p>The clerk knew well enough the remarkable characteristics of his guest, +whose actions were only too often inexplicable from the ground point of +policy and convention. Without <a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" />ado, after swearing him, he got out ink +and paper, and the patriarch began.</p> + +<p>"I saw," he said, "in the yard of the county farm of this county, not +over an hour ago, a poor helpless idiot, too weak-minded to understand +what was required of him, and put in that institution by the people of +this county to be cared for, being beaten with a cowhide by Mark +Sheffels, who is an attendant there, because the idiot did not +understand enough to carry in wood, which the people have hired Mark +Sheffels to carry in. Think of it," he added, quite forgetting the +nature of his testimony and that he was now speaking for dictation and +not for an audience to hear, and going off into a most scorching and +brilliant arraignment of the entire system in which such brutality could +occur, "a poor helpless idiot, unable to frame in his own disordered +mind a single clear sentence, being beaten by a sensible, healthy brute +too lazy and trifling to perform the duties for which he was hired and +which he personally is supposed to perform."</p> + +<p>There was more to the effect, for instance, that the American people and +the people of this county should be ashamed to think that such crimes +should be permitted and go unpunished, and that this was a fair sample. +The clerk, realizing the importance of Mr. White in the community, and +the likelihood of his following up his charges very vigorously, quietly +followed his address in a very deferential way, jotting down such +salient features as he had time to write. When he was through, however, +he ventured to lift his voice in protest.</p> + +<p>"You know, Mr. White," he said, "Sheffels is a member of our party, and +was appointed by us. Of course, now, it's too bad that this thing should +have happened, and he ought to be dropped, but if you are going to make +a public matter of it in this way it may hurt us in the election next +month."</p> + +<p>The old patriarch threw back his head and gazed at him in the most +blazing way, almost without comprehension, apparently, of so petty a +view.</p> + +<p>"What!" he exclaimed. "What's that got to do with it? Do you want the +Democratic Party to starve the poor and beat the insane?"</p> + +<p>The opposition was rather flattened by the reply, and left <a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" />the old +gentleman to storm out. For once, at least, in this particular instance, +anyhow, he had purified the political atmosphere, as if by lightning, +and within the month following the offending attendant was dropped.</p> + +<p>Politics, however, had long known his influence in a similar way. There +was a time when he was the chief political figure in the county, and +possessed the gift of oratory, apparently, beyond that of any of his +fellow-citizens. Men came miles to hear him, and he took occasion to +voice his views on every important issue. It was his custom in those +days, for instance, when he had anything of special importance to say, +to have printed at his own expense a few placards announcing his coming, +which he would then carry to the town selected for his address and +personally nail up. When the hour came, a crowd, as I am told, was never +wanting. Citizens and farmers of both parties for miles about usually +came to hear him.</p> + +<p>Personally I never knew how towering his figure had been in the past, or +how truly he had been admired, until one day I drifted in upon a lone +bachelor who occupied a hut some fifteen miles from the patriarch's home +and who was rather noted in the community at the time that I was there +for his love of seclusion and indifference to current events. He had not +visited the nearest neighboring village in something like five years, +and had not been to the moderate-sized county seat in ten. Naturally he +treasured memories of his younger days and more varied activity.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," he said to me one day, in discussing modern statesmen +and political fame in general, "but getting up in politics is a queer +game. I can't understand it. Men that you'd think ought to get up don't +seem to. It doesn't seem to be real greatness that helps 'em along."</p> + +<p>"What makes you say that?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well, there used to be a man over here at Danville that I always +thought would get up, and yet he didn't. He was the finest orator I ever +heard."</p> + +<p>"Who was he?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Arch White," he said quietly. "He was really a great man. He was a good +man. Why, many's the time I've driven fifteen miles to hear him. I used +to like to go into Danville just for <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" />that reason. He used to be around +there, and sometimes he'd talk a little. He could stir a fellow up."</p> + +<p>"Oratory alone won't make a statesman," I ventured, more to draw him out +than to object.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know," he answered, "but White was a good man. The +plainest-spoken fellow I ever heard. He seemed to be able to tell us +just what was the matter with us, or at least I thought so. He always +seemed a wonderful speaker to me. I've seen as many as two thousand +people up at High Hill hollerin' over what he was saying until you could +hear them for miles."</p> + +<p>"Why didn't he get up, then, do you suppose?" I now asked on my part.</p> + +<p>"I dunno," he answered. "Guess he was too honest, maybe. It's sometimes +that way in politics, you know. He was a mighty determined man, and one +that would talk out in convention, whatever happened. Whenever they got +to twisting things too much and doing what wasn't just honest, I suppose +he'd kick out. Anyhow, he didn't get up, and I've always wondered at +it."</p> + +<p>In Danville one might hear other stories wholly bearing out this latter +opinion, and always interesting—delightful, really. Thus, a long, +enduring political quarrel was once generated by an incident of no great +importance, save that it revealed an odd streak in the old patriarch's +character and his interpretation of charity and duty.</p> + +<p>A certain young man, well known to the people of this county and to the +patriarch, came to Danville one day and either drank up or gambled away +a certain sum of money intrusted to him by his aunt for disposition in +an entirely different manner. When the day was all over, however, he was +not too drunk to realize that he was in a rather serious predicament, +and so, riding out of town, traveled a little way and then tearing his +clothes and marking his skin, returned, complaining that he had been set +upon by the wayside, beaten, and finally robbed. His clothes were in a +fine state of dilapidation after his efforts, and even his body bore +marks which amply seconded his protestation. In the slush and rain of +the dark village street he was finally picked up by the county treasurer +seemingly in a wretched state, and the latter, knowing <a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" />the generosity +of White and the fact that his door was always open to those in +distress, took the young man by the arm and led him to the patriarch's +door, where he personally applied for him. The old patriarch, holding a +lamp over his head, finally appeared and peered outward into the +darkness.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he exclaimed, as he always did, eyeing the victim; "what is it +you want of me?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. White," said the treasurer, "it's me. I've got young Squiers here, +who needs your sympathy and aid tonight. He's been beaten and robbed out +here on the road while he was on his way to his mother's home."</p> + +<p>"Who?" inquired the patriarch, stepping out on the porch and eyeing the +newcomer, the while he held the lamp down so as to get a good look. +"Billy Squiers!" he exclaimed when he saw who it was. "Mr. Morton, I'll +not take this man into my house. I know him. He's a drunkard and a liar. +No man has robbed him. This is all a pretense, and I want you to take +him away from here. Put him in the hotel. I'll pay his expenses for the +night, but he can't come into my home," and he retired, closing the door +after him.</p> + +<p>The treasurer fell back amazed at this onslaught, but recovered +sufficiently to knock at the door once more and declare to his friend +that he deemed him no Christian in taking such a stand and that true +religion commanded otherwise, even though he suspected the worst. The +man was injured and penniless. He even went so far as to quote the +parable of the good Samaritan who passed down by way of Jericho and +rescued him who had fallen among thieves. The argument had long +continued into the night and rain before the old patriarch finally waved +them both away.</p> + +<p>"Don't you quote Scripture to me," he finally shouted defiantly, still +holding the light and flourishing it in an oratorical sweep. "I know my +Bible. There's nothing in it requiring me to shield liars and drunkards, +not a bit of it," and once more he went in and closed the door.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless the youth was housed and fed at his expense and no charge +of any kind made against him, although many believed, as did Mr. White, +that he was guilty of theft, whereas others of the opposing political +camp believed not. However, considerable opposition, based on old Mr. +White's <a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" />lack of humanity in this instance, was generated by this +argument, and for years he was taunted with it although he always +maintained that he was justified and that the Lord did not require any +such service of him.</p> + +<p>The crowning quality of nearly all of his mercies, as one may easily +see, was their humor. Even he was not unaware, in retrospect, of the +figure he made at times, and would smilingly tell, under provocation, of +his peculiar attitude on one occasion or another. Partially from +himself, from those who saw it, and the judge presiding in the case, was +the following characteristic anecdote gathered.</p> + +<p>In the same community with him at one time lived a certain man by the +name of Moore, who in his day had been an expert tobacco picker, but who +later had come by an injury to his hand and so turned cobbler, and a +rather helpless, although not hopeless, one at that. Mr. White had known +this man from boyhood up, and had been a witness at various times to the +many changes in his fortunes, from the time, for instance, when he had +earned as much as several dollars a day—good pay in that region—to the +hour when he took a cobbler's kit upon his back and began to eke out a +bare livelihood for his old age by traveling about the countryside +mending shoes. At the time under consideration, this ex-tobacco picker +had degenerated into so humble a thing as Uncle Bobby Moore, a poor, +half-remembered cobbler, whose earlier state but few knew, and who at +this time had only a few charitably inclined friends, with some of whom +he spent the more pleasant portion of the year from spring to fall. +Thus, it was his custom to begin his annual pilgrimage with a visit of +ten days to Mr. White, where he would sit and cobble shoes for all the +members of the household. From here he would go to another acquaintance +some ten miles farther on, where he could enjoy the early fruit which +was then ripening in delicious quantity. Then he would visit a friendly +farmer whose home was upon the Missouri River still farther away, where +he did his annual fishing, and so on by slow degrees, until at last he +would reach a neighborhood rich in cider presses, where he would wind up +the fall, and so end his travel for the winter, beginning his peculiar +round once more the <a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" />following spring at the home of Mr. White. +Naturally the old patriarch knew him and liked him passing well.</p> + +<p>As he grew older, however, Uncle Bobby reached the place where even by +this method and his best efforts he could scarcely make enough to +sustain him in comfort during the winter season, which was one of nearly +six months, free as his food and lodging occasionally were. He was too +feeble. Not desiring to put himself upon any friend for more than a +short visit, he finally applied to the patriarch.</p> + +<p>"I come to you, Mr. White," he said, "because I don't think I can do for +myself any longer in the winter season. My hand hurts a good deal and I +get tired so easily. I want to know if you'd won't help me to get into +the county farm during the winter months, anyhow. In summer I can still +look out for myself, I think."</p> + +<p>In short, he made it clear that in summer he preferred to be out so that +he might visit his friends and still enjoy his declining years.</p> + +<p>The old patriarch was visibly moved by this appeal, and seizing him by +the arm and leading off toward the courthouse where the judge governing +such cases was then sitting he exclaimed, "Come right down here, Uncle +Bobby. I'll see what can be done about this. Your old age shouldn't be +troubled in this fashion—not after all the efforts you have made to +maintain yourself," and bursting in on the court a few moments later, +where a trial was holding at the time, he deliberately led his charge +down the aisle, disturbing the court proceedings by so doing, and +calling as he came:</p> + +<p>"Your Honor, I want you to hear this case especially. It's a very +important and a very sad case, indeed."</p> + +<p>Agape, the spectators paused to listen. The judge, an old and +appreciative friend of his, turned a solemn eye upon this latest +evidence of eccentricity.</p> + +<p>"What is it, Mr. White?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>"Your Honor," returned the latter in his most earnest and oratorical +manner, "this man here, as you may or may not know, is an old and +honorable citizen of this county. He has been here nearly all the days +of his life, and every day of that time he has earned an honest living. +These people here," he <a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" />said, gazing about upon the interested +spectators, "can witness whether or not he was one of the best tobacco +pickers this county ever saw. Mayhew," he interrupted himself to call to +a spectator on one of the benches, "you know whether Uncle Bobby always +earned an honest living. Speak up. Tell the Court, did he?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Mr. White," said Mayhew quickly, "he did."</p> + +<p>"Morrison," he called, turning in another direction, where an aged +farmer sat, "what do you know of this man?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Morrison was about to reply, when the Court interfered.</p> + +<p>"The Court knows, Mr. White, that he is an honest man. Now what would +you have it do?"</p> + +<p>"Well, your Honor," resumed the speaker, indifferently following his own +oratorical bent, the while the company surveyed him, amused and smiling, +"this man has always earned an honest living until he injured his hand +here in some way a number of years ago, and since then it has been +difficult for him to make his way and he has been cobbling for a living. +However, he is getting so old now that he can't even earn much at that, +except in the spring and summer, and so I brought him here to have him +assigned a place in the county infirmary. I want you to make out an +order admitting him to that institution, so that I can take it and go +with him and see that he is comfortably placed."</p> + +<p>"All right, Mr. White," replied the judge, surveying the two figures in +mid-aisle, "I so order."</p> + +<p>"But, your Honor," he went on, "there's an exception I want made in this +case. Mr. Moore has a few friends that he likes to visit in the summer, +and who like to have him visit them. I want him to have the privilege of +coming out in the summer to see these people and to see me."</p> + +<p>"All right, Mr. White," said the judge, "he shall have that privilege. +Now, what else?"</p> + +<p>Satisfied in these particulars, the aged citizen led his charge away, +and then went with him to the infirmary, where he presented the order of +the Court and then left him.</p> + +<p>Things went very well with his humble client for a certain time, and +Uncle Bobby was thought to be well disposed of, when one day he came to +his friend again. It appeared that <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" />only recently he had been changed +about in his quarters at the infirmary and put into a room with a +slightly demented individual, whose nocturnal wanderings greatly +disturbed his very necessary sleep.</p> + +<p>"I want to know if you won't have them put me by myself, Mr. White," he +concluded. "I need my sleep. But they say they can't do it without an +order."</p> + +<p>Once more the old patriarch led his charge before the Court, then +sitting, as it happened, and breaking in upon the general proceedings as +before, began:</p> + +<p>"Your Honor, this man here, Mr. Moore, whom I brought before you some +time ago, has been comfortably housed by your order, and he's deeply +grateful for it, as he will tell you, and as I can, but he's an old man, +your Honor, and, above all things, needs his rest. Now, of late they've +been quartering him with a poor, demented sufferer down there who walks +a good deal in his sleep, and it wears upon him. I've come here with him +to ask you to allow him to have a room by himself, where he will be +alone and rest undisturbed."</p> + +<p>"Very well, Mr. White," said the Court, "it shall be as you request."</p> + +<p>Without replying, the old gentleman turned and led the supplicant away.</p> + +<p>Everything went peacefully now for a number of years, until finally +Uncle Bobby, having grown so feeble with age that he feared he was soon +to die, came to his friend and asked him to promise him one thing.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" asked the latter.</p> + +<p>By way of replying, the supplicant described an old oak tree which grew +in the yard of the Baptist Church some miles from Danville, and said:</p> + +<p>"I want you to promise that when I am dead, wherever I happen to be at +the time, that you will see that I am buried under that tree." He gave +no particular reason save that he had always liked the tree and the view +it commanded, but made his request a very secret matter and begged to be +assured that Mr. White would come and get his body and carry it to the +old oak.</p> + +<p>The latter, always a respecter of the peculiarities and crotchets of his +friends, promised. After a few years went by, <a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" />suddenly one day he +learned that Uncle Bobby was not only dead but buried, a thing which +astonished him greatly. No one locally being supposed to know that he +was to have had any special form of burial, the old patriarch at once +recalled his promise.</p> + +<p>"Where is his body?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Why, they buried it under the old white oak over at Mt. Horeb Church," +was the answer.</p> + +<p>"What!" he exclaimed, too astonished to think of anything save his lost +privilege of mercy, "who told them to bury him there?"</p> + +<p>"Why, <i>he</i> did," said the friend. "It was his last wish, I believe."</p> + +<p>"The confounded villain," he shouted, amusingly enough. "He led me to +believe that I was the only one he told. I alone was to have looked +after his burial, and now look at him—going and having himself buried +without a word. The scoundrel! Would you believe that an old friend like +Uncle Bobby would do anything like that? However," he added after a +time, "I think I know how it was. He got so old and feeble here of late +that he must have lost his mind—otherwise he would never have done +anything like that to me."</p> + +<p>And with this he was satisfied to rest and let bygones be bygones.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="De_Maupassant_Junior" id="De_Maupassant_Junior" /><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" /><i>De Maupassant, Junior</i></h2> + + +<p>He dawned on me in the spring of 1906, a stocky, sturdy, penetrative +temperament of not more than twenty-four or-five years of age, steady of +eye, rather aloof and yet pervasive and bristling; a devouring type. +Without saying much, and seeming to take anything I had to say with a +grain of salt, he managed to impress himself on me at once. Frankly, I +liked him very much, although I could see at a glance that he was not so +very much impressed with me. I was an older man than he by, say, ten +years, an editor of an unimportant magazine, newly brought in (which he +did not know) to turn it into something better. In order to earn a few +dollars he had undertaken to prepare for the previous editor a most +ridiculous article, some silly thing about newspaper writing as a career +for women. It had been ordered or encouraged, and I felt that it was but +just that it should be paid for.</p> + +<p>"Why do you waste your time on a thing like that?" I inquired, smiling +and trying to criticize and yet encourage him at one and the same time, +for I had been annoyed by many similar assignments given out by the old +management which could not now be used. "You look to me to have too much +force and sense for that. Why not undertake something worth your time?"</p> + +<p>"My time, hell!" he bristled, like a fighting sledge-dog, of which by +the way he reminded me. "You show me a magazine in this town that would +buy anything that I thought worthy of my time! You're like all the rest +of them: you talk big, but you really don't want anything very +important. You want little things probably, written to a theory or down +to 'our policy.' I know. Give me the stuff. You don't have to take it. +It was ordered, but I'll throw it in the waste basket."</p> + +<p>"Not so fast! Not so fast!" I replied, admiring his courage and moved by +his contempt of the editorial and book publishing conditions in America. +He was so young and raw and savage in his way, quite animal, and yet how +interesting! There was something as fresh and clean about him as a newly +plowed field or the virgin prairies. He typified for me all the <a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" />young +unsophisticated strength of my country, but with more "punch" than it +usually manifests, in matters intellectual at least. "Now, don't get +excited, and don't snarl," I cooed. "I know what you say is true. They +don't really want much of what you have to offer. I don't. Working for +some one else, as most of us do, for the dear circulation department, +it's not possible for us to get very far above crowd needs and tastes. +I've been in your position exactly. I am now. Where do you come from?"</p> + +<p>He told me—Missouri—and some very few years before from its state +university.</p> + +<p>"And what is it you want to do?"</p> + +<p>"What's that to you?" he replied irritatingly, with an ingrowing and +obvious self-conviction of superiority and withdrawing as though he +highly resented my question as condescending and intrusive. "You +probably wouldn't understand if I told you. Just now I want to write +enough magazine stuff to make a living, that's all."</p> + +<p>"Dear, dear!" I said, laughing at the slap. "What a bravo we are! +Really, you're interesting. But suppose now you and I get down to brass +tacks. You want to do something interesting, if you can, and get paid +for it. I rather like you, and anyhow you look to me as though you might +do the things I want, or some of them. Now, you want to do the least +silly thing you can—something better than this. I want the least silly +stuff I can get away with in this magazine—genuine color out of the +life of New York, if such a thing can be published in an ordinary +magazine. Roughly, here's the kind of thing I want," and I outlined to +him the probable policy of the magazine under my direction. I had taken +an anæmic "white-light" monthly known as <i>The Broadway</i> (!) and was +attempting to recast it into a national or international metropolitan +picture. He thawed slightly.</p> + +<p>"Well, maybe with that sort of idea behind it, it might come to +something. I don't know. It's <i>possible</i> that you may be the one to do +it." He emphasized the "possible." "At any rate, it's worth trying. +Judging by the snide editors and publications in this town, no one in +America wants anything decent." His lip curled. "I have ambitions of my +own, but I don't expect to work them out through the magazines of this +<a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" />town; maybe not of this country. I didn't know that any change was +under way here."</p> + +<p>"Well, it is," I said. "Still, you can't expect much from this either, +remember. After all, it seeks to be a popular magazine. We'll see how +far we can go with really interesting material. And now if you know of +any others like yourself, bring them in here. I need them. I'll pay you +for that article, only I'll include it in a better price I'll give you +for something else later, see?"</p> + +<p>I smiled and he smiled. His was a warmth which was infectious when he +chose to yield, but it was always a repressed warmth, cynical, a bit +hard; heat chained to a purpose, I thought. He went away and I saw him +no more until about a week later when he brought me his first attempt to +give me what I wanted.</p> + +<p>In the meantime I was busy organizing a staff which should if possible, +I decided after seeing him, include him. I could probably use him as a +salaried "special" writer, provided he could be trained to write +"specials." He looked so intelligent and ambitious that he promised +much. Besides, the little article which he had left when he came again, +while not well organized or arranged as to its ideas or best points, was +exceedingly well written from the point of mere expression.</p> + +<p>And the next thing I had given him to attempt was even better. It was, +if I recall correctly, a stirring picture of the East Side, intended to +appeal to readers elsewhere than in the city, but while in the matter of +color and definiteness of expression as well as choice of words it was +exceptional, it was lacking in, quite as the first one had been, the +arrangement of its best points. This I explained to him, and also made +it clear to him that I could show him how if he would let me. He seemed +willing enough, quite anxious, although always with an air of reserve, +as if he were accommodating himself to me in this much but no more. He +grasped the idea of order swiftly, and in a little while, having worked +at a table in an outer room, brought me the rearranged material, almost +if not quite satisfactory. During a number of weeks and months +thereafter, working on one "special" and another in this way with me, he +seemed finally to grasp the theory I had, or at least to develop a +method of his own which was quite as satisfactory <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" />to me, and I was very +much pleased. A little later I employed him at a regular salary.</p> + +<p>It was pathetic, as I look at it now, the things we were trying to do +and the conditions under which we were trying to do them—the raw +commercial force and theory which underlay the whole thing, the +necessity of explaining and fighting for so much that one should not, as +I saw it then, have to argue over at all. We were in new rooms, in a new +building, filled with lumber not yet placed and awaiting the completion +of partitions which, as some one remarked, "would divide us up." Our +publisher and owner was a small, energetic, vibrant and colorful soul, +all egotism and middle-class conviction as to the need of "push," +ambition, "closeness to life," "punch," and what not else, American to +the core, and descending on us, or me rather, hourly as it were, +demanding the "hows" and the "whyfors" of the dream which the little +group I was swiftly gathering about me was seeking to make real.</p> + +<p>It was essential to me, therefore, that something different should be +done, some new fresh note concerning metropolitan life and action be +struck; the old, slow and somewhat grandiose methods of reporting and +describing things dispensed with, at least in this instance, and here +was a youth who seemed able to help me do it. He was so vigorous, so +avid of life, so anxious to picture the very atmosphere which this +magazine was now seeking to portray. I felt stronger, better for having +him around. The growth of the city, the character and atmosphere of a +given neighborhood, the facts concerning some great social fortune, +event, condition, crime interested him intensely; on the other hand he +was so very easy to teach, quick to sense what was wanted and the order +in which it must be presented. A few brief technical explanations from +me, and he had the art of writing a "special" at his fingertips, and +thereafter gave me no real difficulty.</p> + +<p>But what was more interesting to me than his success in grasping my +theory of "special" writing was his own character, as it was revealed to +me from day to day in intimate working contact with him under these +conditions. Here, as I soon learned, and was glad to learn, was no +namby-pamby scrib<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" />bler of the old happy-ending, pretty-nothing school of +literary composition. On the contrary he sounded, for the first time in +my dealings with literary aspirants of every kind, that sure, sane, +penetrating, non-sentimental note so common to the best writers of the +Continent, a note entirely free from mush, bravado and cant. He had a +style as clear as water, as simple as rain; color, romance, humor; and +if a little too much of vanity and self-importance, still one could +forgive him for they were rather well-based. Already used to dealing +with literary and artistic aspirants of different kinds in connection +with the publications of which I had been a part, this one appealed to +me as being the best of them all and a very refreshing change.</p> + +<p>One day, only a few weeks after I had met him, seeing that I was alert +for fiction, poetry and short essays or prose phantasies, all +illustrative of the spirit of New York, he brought me a little poem +entitled "Neuvain," which interested me greatly. It was so brief and +forceful and yet so delicate, a double triolet of the old French order, +but with the modernity and flavor of the streets outside, the conduit +cars, hand-organs and dancing children of the pavements. The title +seemed affected, seeing that the English word "Spring" would have done +as well, but it was typical of his mood at the time, his literary +adorations. He was in leash to the French school of which de Maupassant +was the outstanding luminary, only I did not know it at the time.</p> + +<p>"Charming," I exclaimed quite enthusiastically. "I like this. Let me see +anything else you have. Do you write short stories?"</p> + +<p>For answer he merely stared at me for a little while in the most +examining and arrogant and contemptuous way, as much as to say, "Let me +see if you are really worth my time and trouble in this matter," or +"This sad specimen of alleged mentality is just beginning to suspect +that I might write a short story." Seeing that I merely smiled most +genially in return, he finally deigned to say, "Sure, I write short +stories. What do you think I'm in the writing game for?"</p> + +<p>"But you might be interested in novels only or plays, or poetry."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" />No," he returned after a pause and with that same air of unrelieved +condescension, "the short story is what I want to specialize in."</p> + +<p>"Well," I said to myself, "here is a young cub who certainly has talent, +is crowded with it, and yet owing to the kind of thing he is starting +out to do and the fact that life will give him slaps and to spare before +he is many years older, he needs to be encouraged. I was like that +myself not so long ago. And besides, if I do not encourage this type of +work financially (which is the best way of all), who will?"</p> + +<p>About a week later I was given another and still more gratifying +surprise, for one day, in his usual condescending manner, he brought to +me two short pieces of fiction and laid them most gingerly on my desk +with scarcely a word—"Here was something I might read if I chose," I +believe. The reading of these two stories gave me as much of a start as +though I had discovered a fully developed genius. They were so truly new +or different in their point of view, so very clear, incisive, brief, +with so much point in them (<i>The Second Motive</i>; <i>The Right Man</i>). For +by then having been struggling with the short-story problem in other +magazine offices before this, I had become not a little pessimistic as +to the trend of American short fiction, as well as long—the +impossibility of finding any, even supposing it publishable once we had +it. My own experience with "Sister Carrie" as well as the fierce +opposition or chilling indifference which, as I saw, overtook all those +who attempted anything even partially serious in America, was enough to +make me believe that the world took anything even slightly approximating +the truth as one of the rankest and most criminal offenses possible. One +dared not "talk out loud," one dared not report life as it was, as one +lived it. And one of the primary warnings I had received from the +president of this very organization—a most eager and ambitious and +distressing example of that American pseudo-morality which combines a +pirate-like acquisitiveness with an inward and absolute conviction of +righteousness—was that while he wanted something new in fiction, +something more virile and life-like than that "mush," as he +characterized it, to be found in the current magazines, still (1), it +must have a strong appeal for the general reader (!); and (2), be very +compelling in fact <a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" />and <i>clean</i>, as the dear general reader would of +course understand that word—a solid little pair of millstones which +would unquestionably end in macerating everything vital out of any good +story.</p> + +<p>Still I did not despair; something might be done. And though I sighed, I +hoped to be able to make my superior stretch a point in favor of the +exceptional thing, or, as the slang phrase went, "slip a few over on +him," but that of course meant nothing or something, as you choose. My +dream was really to find one or many like this youth, or a pungent kind +of realism that would be true and yet within such limits as would make +it usable. Imagine, then, my satisfaction in finding these two things, +tales that I could not only admire genuinely but that I could publish, +things that ought to have an interest for all who knew even a little +about life. True, they were ironic, cruel, but still with humor and +color, so deftly and cleanly told that they were smile-provoking. I +called him and said as much, or nearly so—a mistake, as I sometimes +think now, for art should be long—and bought them forthwith, hoping, +almost against hope, to find many more such like them.</p> + +<p>By this time, by the way, and as I should have said before, I had still +further enlarged my staff by one art director of the most flamboyant and +erratic character, a genius of sorts, volatile, restless, emotional, +colorful, a veritable Verlaine-Baudelaire-Rops soul, who, not content to +arrange and decorate the magazine each month, must needs wish to write, +paint, compose verse and music and stage plays, as well as move in an +upper social world, <i>entrée</i> to which was his by birth. Again, there was +by now an Irish-Catholic makeup editor, a graduate of some distinguished +sectarian school, who was more interested in St. Jerome and his +<i>Vulgate</i>, as an embodiment of classic Latin, than he was in getting out +the magazine. Still he had the advantage of being interesting—"and I +learned about Horace from him." Again, there was a most interesting and +youthful and pretty, if severe, example of the Wellesley-Mt. +Holyoke-Bryn Mawr school of literary art and criticism, a most +engagingly interesting intellectual maiden, who functioned as assistant +editor and reader in an adjoining room, along with the art-director, the +makeup editor and an office <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" />boy. This very valuable and in some +respects remarkable young woman, who while holding me in proper +contempt, I fear, for my rather loose and unliterary ways, was still, as +I had suspected before employing her, as keen for something new and +vital in fiction and every other phase of the scriptic art as any one +well could be. She was ever for culling, sorting, eliminating—repression +carried to the N-th power. At first L——cordially hated her, calling +her a "simp," a "bluff," a "la-de-da," and what not. In addition to +these there was a constantly swelling band of writers, artists, poets, +critics, dreamers of reforms social, and I know not what else, who, +holding the hope of achieving their ends or aims through some really +forceful magazine, were by now beginning to make our place a center. It +fairly swarmed for a time with aspirants; an amusing, vivid, strident +world.</p> + +<p>As for L——, all this being new to him, he was as interested, +fascinated even, as any one well might be. He responded to it almost +gayly at times, wondering whether something wonderful, international, +enduring might not be made to come of it. He rapidly developed into one +of the most pertinacious and even disconcerting youths I have ever met. +At times he seemed to have a positive genius for saying and doing +irritable and disagreeable things, not only to me but to others. Never +having heard of me before he met me here, he was convinced, I think, +that I was a mere nothing, with some slight possibilities as an editor +maybe, certainly with none as a writer or as one who could even suggest +anything to writers. I had helped him, but that was as it should be. As +for my art-director, he was at first a fool, later a genius; ditto my +makeup man.</p> + +<p>As for Miss E——, the Wellesley-Bryn Mawr-Mt. Holyoke assistant, who +from the first had agreed with me that here indeed was a writer of +promise, a genius really, he, as I have said, at first despised her. +Later, by dint of exulting in his force, sincerity of purpose, his keen +insight and all but braggart strength, she managed, probably on account +of her looks and physical graces, to install herself in his confidence +and to convince him that she was not only an honest admirer of his skill +but one who had taste and judgment of no mean caliber.<a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" /> Thereafter he +was about as agreeable as a semi-caged wild animal would be about any +office.</p> + +<p>But above all he was affronted by M——, the publisher of the paper, +concerning whom he could find no words equal to his contemptuous +thoughts of him. The publisher, as L——made quite bold to say to me, +was little more than a "dodging, rat-like financial ferret," a +"financial stool-pigeon for some trust or other," a "shrewd, material +little shopkeeper." This because M—— was accustomed to enter and force +a conversation here and there, anxious of course to gather the full +import of all these various energies and enthusiasms. One of the things +which L—— most resented in him at the time was his air of supreme +material well-being, his obvious attempt and wish not to convey it, his +carefully-cut clothes, his car, his numerous assistants and secretaries +following him here and there from various other organizations with which +he was connected.</p> + +<p>M——'s idea, as he always said, was to spend and to live, only it +wasn't. He merely induced others so to do. One of his customs (and it +must have impressed L—— very much, innocent newcomer that he was) was +to have one or another of his hirelings announce his passing from one +"important" meeting to another, within or without his own building, +telephone messages being "thrown in" on his line or barred out, wherever +he happened to be at the moment and when, presumably, he was deep in one +of those literary conferences or confidences with one employee or +another or with a group, for which he rapidly developed a passion. +Another of his vanities was to have his automobile announced and he be +almost forced into it by impetuous secretaries, who, because of orders +previously given, insisted that he must be made to keep certain +important engagements. Or he would send for one of his hirelings, +wherever he chanced to be—club, restaurant, his home—midnight if +necessary, to confer with him on some subject of great moment, and the +hireling was supposed to call a taxi and come post haste in order that +he might not be kept waiting.</p> + +<p>"God!" L—— once remarked in my presence. "To think that a thinking +being has to be beholden to a thing like that <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" />for his weekly income! +Somebody ought to tap him with a feather-duster and kill him!"</p> + +<p>But the manner in which L—— developed in this atmosphere! It was +interesting. At first, before the magazine became so significant or +well-organized, it was a great pleasure for me to associate with him +outside office hours, and a curious and vivid companion he made. He was +so intensely avid of life, so intolerant of the old, of anything +different to that which he personally desired or saw, that at times it +was most difficult to say anything at all for fear of meeting a rebuff +or at least a caustic objection. As I was very pleased to note, he had a +passion for seeing, as all youth should have when it first comes to the +great city—the great bridges, the new tunnels just then being completed +or dug, the harbor and bay, Coney Island, the two new and great railway +terminals, then under construction. Most, though, he reveled in +different and even depressing neighborhoods—Eighth Avenue, for +instance, about which he later wrote a story, and a very good one ("A +Quiet Duet"); Hell's Kitchen, that neighborhood that lies (or did), on +the West Side of Manhattan, between Eighth and Tenth Avenues, +Thirty-sixth and Forty-first Streets; Little Italy, the region below +Delancey and north of Worth Street on the East Side; Chinatown; +Washington Street (Syria in America); the Greeks in Twenty-seventh and +-eighth Streets, West Side. All these and many more phases of New York's +multiplex life took his full and restless attention. Once he said to me +quite excitedly, walking up Eighth Avenue at two in the morning—I was +showing him some rear tenement slums in the summertime—"God, how I hate +to go to bed in this town! I'm afraid something will happen while I'm +asleep and I won't see it!" That was exactly how he felt all the time, I +am sure.</p> + +<p>And in those days he was most simple, a very Spartan of a boy. He hadn't +the least taste for drink, lived in a small hall-bedroom +somewhere—Eighth Avenue, I believe—and took his meals in those shabby +little quick-lunch rooms where the characters were more important to him +than the food. (My hat—my hat is in my hand!) Intellectually he was so +stern and ambitious that I all but stood in awe of and reverence before +him. Here, I said to myself, is one who will really do; <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" />let him be as +savage as he pleases. In America he probably needs to be.</p> + +<p>And during this short time, what scraps of his early life he revealed! +By degrees I picked up bits of his early deprivations and difficulties, +if such they might be called. He had been a newspaper reporter, or had +tried to be, in Kansas City, had worked in the college restaurant and +laundry of the middle-West State university from which he had graduated, +to help pay his way. Afterward he had assisted the janitor of some great +skyscraper somewhere—Kansas City, I believe—and, what was most +pleasing to me, he in nowise emphasized these as youthful difficulties +or made any comment as to their being "hard." Neither did he try to +boastingly minimize them as nothing at all—another wretched pose. From +him I learned that throughout his youth he had been carried here and +there by the iron woman who was his mother and whom he seemed to adore +in some grim contentious way, smothering his comments as though he +disliked to say anything at all, and yet describing her at times as +coarse and vulgar, but a mother to him "all right," someone who had made +marked sacrifices for him.</p> + +<p>She had once "run" a restaurant in a Western mining camp, had then or +later carried him as a puling baby under her shawl or cloak across the +Mojave Desert, on foot a part of the way. Apparently he did not know who +his father was, and he was not very much concerned to know whether she +did or not. His father had died, he said, when he was a baby. Later his +mother, then a cook in some railroad hotel in Texas, had sent him to +school there. Later still she had been a "bawler out," if you know what +that means, an employee of a loan shark and used by him to compel +delinquent, albeit petty and pathetic, creditors to pay their dues or +then and there, before all their fellow-workers, be screamed at for +their delinquency about the shop in which they worked! Later she became +a private detective! an insurance agent—God knows what—a kind of rough +man-woman, as she turned out to be, but all the while clinging to this +boy, her pet, no doubt her dream of perfection. She had by turns sent +him to common and high school and to college, remitting him such sums of +money as she might to pay his way. Later still (at that very time in +fact)<a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" /> she was seeking to come to New York to keep house for him, only +he would not have that, perhaps sensing the need of greater freedom. But +he wrote her regularly, as he confessed to me, and in later years I +believe sent her a part of his earnings, which were to be saved by her +for him against a rainy day. Among his posthumous writings later I found +a very lovely story ("His Mother"), describing her and himself in +unsparing and yet loving terms, a compound of the tender and the brutal +in his own soul.</p> + +<p>The thing that always made me hope for the best was that at that time he +was not at all concerned with the petty little <i>moralic</i> and economic +definitions and distinctions which were floating about his American +world in one form and another. Indeed he seemed to be entirely free of +and even alien to them. What he had heard about the indwelling and +abiding perfections of the human soul had gone, and rightly so, in one +ear and out the other. He respected the virtues, but he knew of and +reckoned with die antipathetic vices which gave them their reason for +being. To him the thief was almost as important as the saint, the reason +for the saint's being. And, better still, he had not the least interest +in American politics or society—a wonderful sign. The American dream of +"getting ahead" financially and socially was not part of him—another +mark royal. All life was fascinating, acceptable, to be interpreted if +one had the skill; it was a great distinction to have the skill—worth +endless pains to acquire it.</p> + +<p>But how unwilling would the average American of his day have been, +stuffed as he was and still is with book and picture drivel about +artists and art, to accept L—— as anything more than a raw, callow +yokel, presuming to assail the outer portals of the temple with his +muddy feet! A romping, stamping, irritable soul, with more the air of a +young railroad brakeman or "hand," than an artist, and with so much +coarse language at times and such brutality of thought as to bar him +completely, one might say, from having anything to do with great +fiction, great artistic conceptions, or the temple of art. What, sit +with the mighty!—that coarse youth, with darkish-brown hair parted at +one side and combed over one ear, in the manner of a grandiose barber; +with those thick-soled and none too shapely brown shoes, that none too +well-made store suit <a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" />of clothes, that little round brown hat, more +often a cap, pulled rather savagely and vulgarly, even insultingly, over +one eye; that coarse frieze overcoat, still worn on cold spring days, +its "corners" back and front turned up by the damp and from being +indifferently sat on; that brash corn-cob pipe and bag of cheap tobacco, +extracted and lit at odd moments; what, that youth with the aggressive, +irritating vibrant manner—almost the young tough with a chip on his +shoulder looking for one to even so much as indicate that he is not all +he should be! Positively, there was something brutal and yet cosmic (not +comic) about him, his intellectual and art pretensions considered. At +times his waspishness and bravado palled even on me. He was too +aggressive, too forceful, too intolerant, I said. He should be softer. +At other times I felt that he needed to be all that and more to "get +by," as he would have said. I wanted to modify him a little—and yet I +didn't—and I remained drawn to him in spite of many irritating little +circumstances, all but infuriating at times, and actually calculated, it +seemed, with a kind of savage skill to reduce what he conceived to be my +lofty superiority. At times I thought he ought to be killed—like a +father meditating on an unruly son—but the mood soon passed and his +literary ability made amends for everything.</p> + +<p>In so far as the magazine was concerned, once it began to grow and +attract attention he was for me its most important asset; not that he +did so much directly as that he provided a definite standard toward +which we all had to work. Not incuriously, he was swiftly recognized for +what he was by all who came in touch with the magazine. In the first +place, interested in his progress, I had seen to it that he was properly +introduced wherever that was possible and of benefit to him, and later +on, by sheer force of his mental capacity and integrity, his dreams and +his critical skill, he managed to center about him an entire band of +seeking young writers, artists, poets, playwrights, aspiring musicians; +an amusing and as interesting a group as I have ever seen. Their points +of rendezvous appeared to be those same shabby quick-lunches in back +streets or even on the principal thoroughfares about Times Square, or +they met in each other's rooms or my office at night after I had gone, +giving me as an excuse that they had <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" />work to do. And during all this +time the air fairly hummed with rumors of new singers, dancers, plays, +stories being begun or under way, articles and essays contemplated; +avid, if none too well financed frolics or bohemian midnight suppers +here and there. Money was by no means plentiful, and in consequence +there was endless borrowing and "paying up" among them. Among the most +enthusiastic members of this circle, as I had begun to note, and finally +rather nervously, were my art-director, a valiant knight in Bohemia if +ever there was one, and she of Bryn Mawr-Wellesley standards. My makeup +editor, as well as various contributors who had since become more or +less closely identified with the magazine, were also following him up +all the time.</p> + +<p>If not directly profitable it was enlivening, and I was fairly well +convinced by now that from the point of view of being "aware," "in touch +with," "in sympathy with" many of the principal tendencies and +undercurrents which make for a magazine's success and precedence, this +group was as valuable to me as any might well be. It constituted a +"kitchen cabinet" of sorts and brought hundreds of interesting ideas to +the surface, and from all directions. Now it would be a new and hitherto +unheard-of tenor who was to be brought from abroad and introduced with +great noise to repute-loving Americans; a new sculptor or painter who +had never been heard of in America; a great actor, perhaps, or poet or +writer. I listened to any quantity of gossip in regard to new movements +that were ready to burst upon the world, in sculpture, painting, the +scriptic art. About the whole group there was much that was exceedingly +warm, youthful, full of dreams. They were intensely informative and full +of hope, and I used to look at them and wonder which one, if any, was +destined to have his dreams realized.</p> + +<p>Of L—— however I never had the least doubt. He began, it is true, to +adopt rather more liberal tendencies, to wish always to be part and +parcel of this gayety, this rushing here and there; and he drank at +times—due principally, as I thought, to my wildling art-director, who +had no sense or reserve in matters material or artistic and who was all +for a bacchanalian career, cost what it might. On more than one occasion +I heard L—— declaring roundly, apropos of some <a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" />group scheme of +pilgrimage, "No, no! I will not. I am going <i>home</i> now!" He had a story +he wanted to work on, an article to finish. At the same time he would +often agree that if by a certain time, when he was through, they were +still at a certain place, or a second or third, he would look them up. +Never, apparently, did his work suffer in the least.</p> + +<p>And it was about this time that I began to gather the true source and +import of his literary predisposition. He was literally obsessed, as I +now discovered, with Continental and more especially the French +conception of art in writing. He had studied the works as well as the +temperaments and experiences (more especially the latter, I fear) of +such writers as de Maupassant, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Balzac, de Musset, +Sand, Daudet, Dumas junior, and Zola, as well as a number of the more +recent writers: Hervieu, Bourget, Louys and their contemporaries. Most +of all, though, he was impressed, and deeply, by the life and art of de +Maupassant, his method of approach, his unbiased outlook on life, his +freedom from moral and religious and even sentimental predisposition. In +the beginning of his literary career I really believe he slaved to +imitate him exactly, although he could not very well escape the American +temperament and rearing by which he was hopelessly conditioned. A +certain Western critic and editor, to whom he had first addressed his +hopes and scribblings before coming to me, writing me after L——'s +death in reference to a period antedating that in which I had known him, +observed, "He was crazy about the <i>fin de siècle</i> stuff that then held +the boards and from which (I hope the recording angel will put it to my +credit) I steered him clear." I think so; but he was still very much +interested in it. He admired Aubrey Beardsley, the poster artists of +France, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rops, the Yellow Book, even Oscar Wilde, +although his was a far more substantial and plebeian and even radical +point of view.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately for L——, I have always thought, there now thrust himself +forward the publisher and owner of the magazine, who from previously +having been content to see that the mercantile affairs of the magazine +were in good order, had decided that since it was attracting attention +he should be allowed to share in its literary and artistic prestige, +<a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" />should indeed be closely identified with it and recognized as its true +source and inspiration—a thing which in no fashion had been +contemplated by me when I went there. From having agreed very distinctly +with me that no such interference would at any time be indulged in, he +now came forward with a plan for an advisory council which was to +consist of himself and the very members of the staff which I had +created.</p> + +<p>I could not object and it did not disturb me so much personally. For +some time I had been sensing that the thing was for me no end in itself, +but an incident. This same I felt to be true for L——, who had been +taking more and more interest in the magazine's technical composition. +At the same time I saw no immediate way of arranging my affairs and +departing, which left me, for a very little while, more or less of a +spectator. During this time I had the dissatisfaction of noting the +growth of an influence with L—— which could, as I saw, prove only +harmful. M—— was no suitable guide for him. He was a brilliant but +superficial and very material type who was convinced that in the having +and holding of many things material—houses, lands, corporation stocks, +a place in the clubs and circles of those who were materially +prosperous—was really to achieve all that was significant in the now or +the hereafter. Knowing comparatively nothing of either art or letters, +or that subtle thing which makes for personality and atmosphere in a +magazine or in writing (and especially the latter), that grateful +something which attracts and detains one, he was nevertheless convinced +that he did. And what was more, he was determined not only to make +friends with and hold all those whom I might have attracted, providing +they could prove useful to him, but also a number of a much more +successful group in these fields, those who had already achieved repute +in a more commonplace and popular way and were therefore presumably +possessed of a following and with the power to exact a high return for +their product, and for the magazine, regardless of intrinsic merit. His +constant talk was of money, its power to attract and buy, the +significance of all things material. He now wanted the magazine to be +representative of this glowing element, and at the same time, +paradoxical as it might seem, the best that might be in literary and +artistic thought.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" />Naturally the thing was impossible, but he had a facile and specious +method of arguing, a most gay and in some respects magnetic personality, +far from stodgy or gross, which for a time attracted many to him. Very +briskly then indeed he proceeded to make friends with all those with +whom I had surrounded myself, to enter into long and even private +discussions with them as to the proper conduct of the magazine, to hint +quite broadly at a glorious future in which all, each one particularly +to whom he talked, was to share. Curiously, this new and (as I would +have thought) inimical personality of M—— seemed to appeal to L—— +very much.</p> + +<p>I do not claim that the result was fatal. It may even, or at least +might, have had value, combined with an older or slightly more balanced +temperament. But it seemed to me that it offered too quickly what should +have come, if at all, as the result of much effort. For in regard to the +very things L—— should have most guarded against—show and the shallow +pleasures of social and night and material life in New York—M—— was +most specious. I never knew a more intriguing and fascinating man in +this respect nor one who cared less for those he used to obtain his +unimportant ends. He had positive genius for making the gaudy and the +unworthy seem worthy and even perfect. During his earlier days there, +L—— had more than once "cursed him out" (in his absence, of course), +to use his own expressive phrase, for his middle-West trade views, as he +described them, his shabby social and material ideals, and yet, as I +could plainly see, even at that time the virus of his theories was +working. For it must be remembered that L—— was very new to New York, +very young, and never having had much of anything he was no doubt +slightly envious of the man's material facility, the sense of +all-sufficiency, exclusiveness and even a kind of petty trade grandeur +with which he tried to surround himself.</p> + +<p>Well, that might not have proved fatal either, only L——needed some one +to keep him true to himself, his individual capabilities, to constantly +caution and if possible sober him to his very severe taste, and as it +was he was all but surrounded by acolytes and servitors.</p> + +<p>A little later, having left M——'s and assumed another editorial +position, and being compelled to follow the various <a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" />current magazines +more or less professionally, I was disturbed to note that there began to +appear in various publications—especially M——'s, which was +flourishing greatly for the moment—stories which while exhibiting much +of the deftness and repression as well as an avidity for the true color +of things, still showed what I had at first feared they might: a decided +compromise. That curse of all American fiction, the necessarily happy +ending, had been impressed on him—by whom? To my sincere +dissatisfaction, he began writing stories, some at least, which +concerned (1), a young woman who successfully abandoned art dreams for +advertising; (2), a middle-aged charmer, female, who attempted +<i>libertinage</i> and was defeated, American style; (3), a Christmas picture +with sweetness and light reigning on every hand (Dickens at his +sentimentalest could have done no worse); (4), a Broadway press agent +who, attempting to bring patronage to a great hotel via chic vice, +accidentally and unintentionally mates an all-too-good young society man +turned hotel manager to a grand heiress. And so on and so on, not ad +infinitum but for a period at least—the ten years in which he managed +to live and work.</p> + +<p>And, what was more, during this new period I heard and occasionally saw +discouraging things in connection with him from time to time. True to +his great promise, for I sincerely think M—— had a genuine fondness +for his young protégé, as much of a fondness as he could well have for +anything, he guaranteed him perhaps as much as three thousand a year; +sent him to Stockholm at the age of twenty-four or-five to meet and +greet the famous false pole discoverer, Doctor Cook; allowed him to go +to Paris in connection with various articles; to Rome; sent him into the +middle and far West; to Broadway for dramatic and social studies. Well +and good, only he wanted always in what was done for him the "uplift" +note, the happy ending—or at least one not vulgar or low—whereas my +idea in connection with L——, gifted as he was, was that he should +confine himself to fiction as an art and without any regard to theories +or types of ending, believing, as I did, that he would definitely +establish himself in that way in the long run. I had no objection of +course to experiences of various kinds, his taking up with any line of +work which <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" />might seem at the moment far removed from realistic writing, +providing always that the star of his ideal was in sight. Whenever he +wrote, be it early or late, it must be in the clear, incisive, +uncompromising vein of these first stories and with that passion for +revelation which characterized him at first, that same unbiased and +unfettered non-moral viewpoint.</p> + +<p>But after meeting with and working for M—— under this new arrangement +and being apparently fascinated for the moment by his personality, he +seemed to me to gradually lose sight of his ideal, to be actually taken +in by the plausible arguments which the latter could spin with the ease +that a spider spins gossamer. In that respect I insist that M—— was a +bad influence. Under his tutelage L—— gradually became, for instance, +an habitué of a well-known and pseudo-bohemian chop-house, a most +mawkish and naïvely imitative affair, intended frankly to be a copy or +even the original, forsooth, of an old English inn, done, in so far as +its woodwork was concerned, in smoked or dark-stained oak to represent +an old English interior, its walls covered with long-stemmed pipes and +pictures of English hunting and drinking scenes, its black-stained but +unvarnished tables littered with riding, driving and country-life +society papers, to give it that air of <i>sans ceremonie</i> with an upper +world of which its habitués probably possessed no least inkling but most +eagerly craved. Here, along with a goodly group of his latter-day +friends, far different from those by whom he had first been +surrounded—a pretentious society poet of no great merit but +considerable self-emphasis, a Wall Street broker, posing as a club man, +<i>raconteur</i>, "first-nighter" and what not, and several young and +ambitious playwrights, all seeking the heaven of a Broadway success—he +began to pose as one of the intimates of the great city, its bosom child +as it were, the cynosure and favorite of its most glittering +precincts—a most M—— like proceeding. His clothes by now, for I saw +him on occasion, had taken on a more lustrous if less convincing aspect +than those he had worn when I first knew him. The small round hat or +rakish cap, typical of his Western dreams, had now given way to a most +pretentious square-topped derby, beloved, I believe, of undertakers and +a certain severe type of banker as well as some clergymen, only it was a +light brown.<a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" /> His suit and waistcoat were of a bright English tweed, +reddish-brown or herring-bone gray by turns, his shoes box-toed +perfections of the button type. He carried a heavy cane, often a bright +leather manuscript case, and seemed intensely absorbed in the great and +dramatic business of living and writing. "One must," so I read him at +this time, "take the pleasures as well as the labors of this world with +the utmost severity." Here, with a grand manner, he patronized the +manager and the waiters, sent word to his friend the cook, who probably +did not know him at all, that his chop or steak was to be done just so. +These friends of his, or at least one of them (the poet) he met every +day at five for an all-essential game of chess, after which an evening +paper was read and the chop ordered. Ale—not beer—in a pewter mug was +<i>comme il faut</i>, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy of +the name, to drink.</p> + +<p>I am sorry to write so, for after all youth must have its fling. Still, +I had expected better of L——, and I was a little disappointed to see +that earlier dream of simplicity and privation giving way to an +absolutely worthless show. Besides, twenty or thirty such stories as +"The Right Man," "Sweet Dreams," "The Man With the Broken Fingers," "The +Second Motive," would outweigh a thousand of the things he was getting +published and the profits of which permitted him these airs.</p> + +<p>Again, during the early days of his success with M——, he had +married—a young nurse who had previously been a clerk in a store, a +serious, earnest and from one point of view helpful person, seeing that +she could keep his domestic affairs in order and bear him children, +which she did, but she had no understanding of, or flair for, the type +of thing he was called upon to do. She had no instinct for literature or +the arts, and aside from her domestic capacities little skill or taste +for "socializing." And, naturally, he was neglecting her. His head was +probably surging with great ideas of art and hence a social supremacy +which might well carry him anywhere. He had bought a farm some distance +from New York, where in a community supposedly inhabited by successful +and superior men of letters he posed as a farmer at times, mowing and +cocking hay as became a Western plow-boy; and also, as the <a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" />mood moved +him, and as became a great and secluded writer, working in a den +entirely surrounded by books in fine leather bindings (!) and being +visited by those odd satellites of the scriptic art who see in genius of +this type the <i>summum bonum</i> of life. It was the thing to do at that +time, for a writer to own a farm and work it. Horace had. One individual +in particular, a man of genuine literary and critical ability and great +taste in the matter of all the arts but with no least interest in or +tolerance for the simplicities of effort, came here occasionally, as I +heard, to help him pile hay, and this in a silk shirt and a monocle; a +second—and a most fascinating intellectual <i>flaneur</i>, who, however, had +no vision or the gift of dreams—came to eat, drink, talk of many things +to be done, to steal a few ideas, borrow a little money perhaps or +consume a little morphine, and depart; a third came to spout of his +success in connection with plays, or his proposed successes; a fourth to +paint a picture, urged on by L——; a fifth to compose rural verse; a +sixth, a broker or race-track tout or city bar-tender (for color, this +last), to marvel that one of L——'s sense, or any one indeed, should +live in the country at all. There were drinking bouts, absolute +drunkenness, in which, according to the Johnsonian tradition and that of +Messieurs Rabelais and Molière, the weary intellect and one's guiding +genius were immersed in a comforting Lethe of rye.</p> + +<p>Such things cost money, however. In addition, my young friend, due to a +desire no doubt to share in the material splendors of his age (a +doctrine M—— was ever fond of spouting—and as a duty, if you please), +had saddled himself, for a time at least, with an apartment in an +exclusive square on the East Side, the rent of which was a severe drain. +Before this there had been, and after it were still, others, obligations +too much for him to bear financially, all in the main taken for show, +that he might be considered a literary success. Now and again (so I was +told by several of his intimates), confronted by a sudden exhaustion of +his bank balance, he would leave some excellent apartment house or +neighborhood, where for a few months he had been living in grand style, +extracting his furniture as best he might, or leaving it and various +debts beside, and would take refuge in some shabby tenement, or rear +rooms even, and where, touched by re<a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" />morse or encouraged by the great +literary and art traditions (Balzac, Baudelaire, Johnson, Goldsmith, +Verlaine) he would toil unendingly at definite money-yielding +manuscripts, the results of which carried to some well-paying +<i>successful magazine</i> would yield him sufficient to return to the white +lights—often even to take a better apartment than that which last had +been his. By now, however, one of the two children he eventually left +behind him had been born. His domestic cares were multiplying, the +marriage idea dull. Still he did not hesitate to continue those dinners +given to his friends, the above-mentioned group or its spiritual kin, +either in his apartment or in a bohemian restaurant of great show in New +York. In short, he was a fairly successful short-story writer and critic +in whom still persisted a feeling that he would yet triumph in the +adjacent if somewhat more difficult field of popular fiction.</p> + +<p>It was during this period, if I may interpolate an incident, that I was +waiting one night in a Broadway theater lobby for a friend to appear, +when who should arrive on the scene but L——, most outlandishly dressed +in what I took to be a <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of his first pose, as I +now half-feared it to be: that of the uncouth and rugged young American, +disclaiming style in dress at least, and content to be a clod in looks +so long as he was a Shelley in brains. His suit was of that coarse +ill-fitting character described as Store, and shelf-worn; his shoes all +but dusty brogans, his headgear a long-visored yellowish-and-brown +cross-barred cap. He had on a short, badly-cut frieze overcoat, his +hands stuck defiantly in his trousers pockets, forcing its lapels wide +open. And he appeared to be partially if not entirely drunk, and very +insolent. I had the idea that the drunkenness and the dress were a pose, +or else that he had been in some neighborhood in search of copy which +required such an outfit. Charitably let us accept the last. He was +accompanied by two satellic souls who were doing their best to restrain +him.</p> + +<p>"Come, now! Don't make a scene. We'll see the show all right!"</p> + +<p>"Sure we'll see the show!" he returned contentiously. "Where's the +manager?"</p> + +<p>A smug mannikin whose uniform was a dress suit, the <a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" />business manager +himself, eyed him in no friendly spirit from a nearby corner.</p> + +<p>"This is Mr. L——," one of the satellites now approached and explained +to the manager. "He's connected with M——'s Magazine. He does short +stories and dramatics occasionally."</p> + +<p>The manager bowed. After all, M——'s Magazine had come to have some +significance on Broadway. It was as well to be civil. Courtesy was +extended for three, and they went in.</p> + +<p>As for myself, I resented the mood and the change. It was in no way my +affair—his life was his own—and still I resented it. I did not believe +that he was as bad as he seemed. He had too much genuine sense. It was +just boyish swagger and show, and still it was time that he was getting +over that and settling down. I really hoped that time would modify all +this.</p> + +<p>One thing that made me hope for the best was that very shortly after +this M——'s Magazine blew completely up, leaving him without that +semi-financial protection which I felt was doing him so much harm. The +next favorable sign that I observed was that a small volume of short +stories, some sixteen in number, and containing the cream of his work up +to that time, was brought to a publishing house with which I was +financially identified at the time, and although no word was said to me +(I really think he took great care not to see me), still it was left and +on my advice eventually published (it sold, I believe, a little under +five hundred copies). But the thing that cheered me was that it +contained not one story which could be looked upon as a compromise with +his first views. And better, it had been brought to the concern with +which I was connected—intentionally, I am sure. I was glad to have had +a hand in its publication. "At least," I said, "he has not lost sight of +his first ideal. He may go on now."</p> + +<p>And thereafter, in one magazine and another, excellent enough to have +but a small circulation, I saw something of his which had genuine merit. +A Western critical journal began to publish a series of essays by him, +for which I am sure he received nothing at all. Again, three or four +years later, a second volume of stories, almost if not quite as good as +his first, was issued by this same Western paper. He was trying to do +serious work; but he still sought and apparently craved those <a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" />grand +scenes on the farm or in some New York restaurant or an expensive +apartment, and when he could no longer afford it. He still wrote +happy-ending, or compromise, stories for any such magazine as would +receive him, and was apparently building up a reasonably secure market +for them. In the meantime the moving-picture scenario market had +developed, and he wrote for it. His eyes were also turning toward the +stage, as one completed manuscript and several "starts" turned over to +me after his death proved. One day some one who knew him and me quite +well assured me that L——, having sent out many excellent stories only +to have them returned, had one day cried and then raged, cursing America +for its attitude toward serious letters—an excellent sign, I thought, +good medicine for one who must eventually forsake his hope of material +grandeur and find himself. "In time, in time," I said, "he will eat +through the husks of these other things, the 'M—— complex,' and do +something splendid. He can't help it. But this fantastic dream of +grandeur, of being a popular success, will have to be lived down."</p> + +<p>For a time now I heard but little more save once that he was connected +with a moving-picture concern, suggesting plots and making some money. +Then I saw a second series of essays in the same Western critical +paper—that of the editor who had published his book—and some of them +were excellent, very searching and sincere. I felt that he was moving +along the right line, although they earned him nothing. Then one week, +very much to my surprise, there was a very glowing and extended +commentary on myself, concerning which for the time being I decided to +make no comment; and a little later, perhaps three weeks, a telephone +call. Did I recall him? (!) Could he come and see me? (!) I invited him +to dinner, and he came, carrying, of all things—and for him, the +ex-railroad boy—a great armful of red roses. This touched me.</p> + +<p>"What's the idea?" I inquired jovially, laughing at him.</p> + +<p>He blushed like a girl, a little irritably too, I thought, for he found +me (as perhaps he had hoped not to) examining and critical, and he may +have felt that I was laughing at him, which I wasn't. "I wished to give +them to you, and I brought 'em. Why shouldn't I?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" />You know you should bring them if you want me to have them, and I'm +only too glad to get them, anyway. Don't think I'm criticizing."</p> + +<p>He smiled and began at once on the "old days," as he now called them, a +sad commentary on our drifting days. Indeed he seemed able to talk of +little else or fast enough or with too much enthusiasm. He went over +many things and people—M——; K——, the wonderful art-director, now +insane and a wreck; the group of which he and I had once been a part; +his youthful and unsophisticated viewpoint at the time. "You know," he +confessed quite frankly finally, "my mother always told me then and +afterwards that I made a mistake in leaving you. You were the better +influence for me. She was right. I know it now. Still, a life's a life, +and we have to work through it and ourselves somehow."</p> + +<p>I agreed heartily.</p> + +<p>He told me of his wife, children, farm, his health and his difficulties. +It appeared that he was making a bare living at times, at others doing +very well. His great bane was the popular magazine, the difficulty of +selling a good thing. It was true, I said, and at midnight he left, +promising to come again, inviting me to come to his place in the country +at my convenience. I promised.</p> + +<p>But one thing and another interfered. I went South. One day six months +later, after I had returned, he called up once more, saying he wished to +see me. Of course I asked him down and he came and spoke of his health. +Some doctor, an old college pal of his, was assuring him that he had +Bright's disease and that he might die at any time. He wanted to know, +in case anything happened to him, would I look after his many mss., most +of which, the most serious efforts at least, had never been published. I +agreed. Then he went away and I never saw him again. A year later I was +one day informed that he had died three days before of kidney trouble. +He had been West to see a moving-picture director; on his way East he +had been taken ill and had stopped off with friends somewhere to be +treated, or operated upon. A few weeks later he had returned to New +York, but refusing to rest and believing that he could not die, so soon, +had kept out of doors and in the city, until suddenly he did collapse. +Or, <a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" />rather, he met his favorite doctor, an intellectual savage like +himself, who with some weird desire to appear forceful, definite, +unsentimental perhaps—a mental condition L——most fancied—had told +him to go home and to bed, for he would be dead in forty-eight hours!—a +fine bit of assurance which perhaps as much as anything else assisted +L—— to die. At any rate and in spite of the ministrations of his wife, +who wished to defy the doctor and who in her hope for herself and her +children as well as him strove to contend against this gloom, he did so +go to bed and did die. On the last day, realizing no doubt how utterly +indifferent his life had been, how his main aspirations or great dreams +had been in the main nullified by passions, necessities, crass chance +(how well he was fitted to understand that!) he broke down and cried for +hours. Then he died.</p> + +<p>A friend who had known much of this last period, said to me rather +satirically, "He was dealing with death in the shape of a medic. Have +you ever seen him?" The doctor, he meant. "He looks like an +advertisement for an undertaker. I do believe he was trying to discover +whether he could kill somebody by the power of suggestion, and he met +L—— in the nick of time. You know how really sensitive he was. Well, +that medic killed him, the same as you would kill a bird with a bullet. +He said 'You're already dead,' and he was."</p> + +<p>And—oh yes—M——, his former patron. At the time of L——'s sickness +and death he was still owing him $1100 for services rendered during the +last days of that unfortunate magazine. He had never been called upon to +pay his debts, for he had sunk through one easy trapdoor of bankruptcy +only to rise out of another, smiling and with the means to continue. +Yes, he was rich again, rated A No. 1, the president of a great +corporation, and with L——'s $1100 still unpaid and now not legally +"collectible." His bank balance, established by a friend at the time, +was exactly one hundred thousand.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. L——, anxious to find some way out of her difficulty since her +husband was lying cold, and knowing of no one else to whom to turn, had +written to him. There was no food in the house, no medicine, no way to +feed the children at the moment. That matter of $1100 now—could he +spare a little? L—- had thought——</p> + +<p><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" />A letter in answer was not long in arriving, and a most moving M——y +document it was. M—— had been stunned by the dreadful news, stunned. +Could it really be? Could it? His young brilliant friend? Impossible! At +the dread, pathetic news he had cried—yes he had—cried—and cried—and +cried—and then he had even cried some more. Life was so sad, so grim. +As for him, his own affairs were never in so wretched a condition. It +was unfortunate. Debts there were on every hand. They haunted him, +robbed him of his sleep. He himself scarcely knew which way to turn. +They stood in serried ranks, his debts. A slight push on the part of any +one, and he would be crushed—crushed—go down in ruin. And so, as much +as he was torn, and as much as he cried, even now, he could do nothing, +nothing, nothing. He was agonized, beaten to earth, but still——. Then, +having signed it, there was a P.S. or an N.B. This stated that in +looking over his affairs he had just discovered that by stinting himself +in another direction he <i>could</i> manage to scrape together twenty-five +dollars, and this he was enclosing. Would that God had designed that he +should be better placed at this sad hour!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>However that may be, I at once sent for the mss. and they came, a +jumbled mass in two suitcases and a portfolio; and a third suitcase, so +I was informed, containing all of a hundred mss., mostly stories, had +been lost somewhere! There had been much financial trouble of late and +more than one enforced move. Mrs. L—— had been compelled—but I will +not tell all. Suffice it to say that he had such an end as his own +realistic pen might have satirically craved.</p> + +<p>The mss., finally sorted, tabulated and read, yielded two small volumes +of excellent tales, all unpublished, the published material being all +but uniformly worthless. There was also the attempt at a popular comedy, +previously mentioned, a sad affair, and a volume of essays, as well as a +very, very slender but charming volume of verse, in case a publisher +could ever be found for them—a most agreeable little group, showing a +pleasing sense of form and color and emotion. I arranged them as best I +could and finally——</p> + +<p>But they are still unpublished.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" />P.S. As for the sum total of the work left by L——, its very best, it +might be said that although he was not a great psychologist, still, +owing to a certain pretentiousness of assertion at times, one might +unthinkingly suppose he was. Neither had he, as yet, any fixed theories +of art or definite style of his own, imitating as he was now de +Maupassant, now O. Henry, now Poe; but also it must be said that slowly +and surely he was approximating one, original and forceful and +water-clear in expression and naturalness. At times he veered to a +rather showy technique, at others to a cold and even harsh simplicity. +Yet always in the main he had color, beauty, emotion, poignance when +necessary. Like his idol, de Maupassant, he had no moral or strong +social prejudices, no really great or disturbing imagination, no wealth +of perplexing ideas. He saw America and life as something to be painted +as all masters see life and paint it. Gifted with a true vein of satire, +he had not, at the time of his death, quite mastered its possibilities. +He still retained prejudice of one type or another, which he permitted +to interfere with the very smooth arrangement of his colors. At the same +time, had he not been disturbed by so many of the things which in +America, as elsewhere, ordinarily assail an ambitious and earnest +writer—the prejudice against naturalness and sincerity in matters of +the intellect and the facts of life, and the consequent difficulty of +any one so gifted in obtaining funds at any time—he might have done +much better sooner. He was certain to come into his own eventually had +he lived. His very accurate and sensitive powers of observation, his +literary taste, his energy and pride in his work, were destined to carry +him there. It could not have been otherwise. Ten years more, judging by +the rate at which he worked, his annual product and that which he did +leave, one might say that in the pantheon of American letters it is +certain that he would have proved a durable if not one of its great +figures, and he might well have been that. As it stands, it is not +impossible that he will be so recognized, if for no more than the sure +promise of his genius.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="The_Village_Feudists" id="The_Village_Feudists" /><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" /><i>The Village Feudists</i></h2> + + +<p>In a certain Connecticut fishing-town sometime since, where, besides +lobstering, a shipyard and some sail-boat-building there existed the +several shops and stores which catered to the wants of those who labored +in those lines, there dwelt a groceryman by the name of Elihu Burridge, +whose life and methods strongly point the moral and social successes and +failures of the rural man.</p> + +<p>Sixty years of age, with the vanities and desires of the average man's +life behind rather than before him, he was at the time not unlike the +conventional drawings of Parson Thirdly, which graced the humorous +papers of that day. Two moon-shaped eyes, a long upper lip, a mouth like +the sickle moon turned downward, prominent ears, a rather long face and +a mutton-chop-shaped whisker on either cheek, served to give him that +clerical appearance which the humorous artists so religiously seek to +depict. Add to this that he was middle-sized, clerically spare in form, +reserved and quiet in demeanor, and one can see how he might very +readily give the impression of being a minister. His clothes, however, +were old, his trousers torn but neatly mended, his little blue gingham +jumper which he wore about the store greasy and aged. Everything about +him and his store was so still and dark that one might have been +inclined on first sight to consider him crusty and morose.</p> + +<p>Even more remarkable than himself, however, was his store. I have seen +many in my time that were striking because of their neatness; I never +saw one before that struck me as more remarkable for its disorder. In +the first place it was filled neck-deep with barrels and boxes in the +utmost confusion. Dark, greasy, provision-lined alleys led off into +dingy sections which the eye could not penetrate. Old signs hung about, +advertising things which had long since ceased to sell and were +forgotten by the public. There were pictures in once gilt but now +time-blackened frames, wherein queerly depicted children and +pompous-looking grocers offered one commodity and another, all now +almost obliterated by fly-specks. Shelves were marked on the walls by +<a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" />signs now nearly illegible. Cobwebs hung thickly from corners and +pillars. There were oil, lard, and a dust-laden scum of some sort on +three of the numerous scales with which he occasionally weighed things +and on many exteriors of once salable articles. Pork, lard, molasses, +and nails were packed in different corners of the place in barrels. +Lying about were household utensils, ship-rigging, furniture and a +hundred other things which had nothing to do with the grocery business.</p> + +<p>As I entered the store the first afternoon I noticed a Bible open at +Judges and a number of slips of paper on which questions had been +written. On my second visit for oil and vinegar, two strangers from off +a vagrant yacht which had entered the little harbor nudged one another +and demanded to know whether either had ever seen anything like it. On +the third, my companion protested that it was not clean, and seeing that +there were other stores we decided to buy our things elsewhere. This was +not so easily accomplished.</p> + +<p>"Where can I get a flatiron?" I inquired at the Postoffice when I first +entered the village.</p> + +<p>"Most likely at Burridge's," was the reply.</p> + +<p>"Do you know where I can get a pair of row-locks?" I asked of a boy who +was lounging about the town dock.</p> + +<p>"At Burridge's," he replied.</p> + +<p>When we wanted oars, pickles of a certain variety, golden syrup, and a +dozen other things which were essential at times, we were compelled to +go to Burridge's, so that at last he obtained a very fair portion of our +trade despite the condition of his store.</p> + +<p>During all these earlier dealings there cropped up something curt and +dry in his conversation. One day we lost a fruit jar which he had +loaned, and I took one very much like it back in its place. When I began +to apologize he interrupted me with, "A jar's a jar, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>Another time, when I remarked in a conciliatory tone that he owed me +eight cents for a can of potted ham which had proved stale, he +exclaimed, "Well, I won't owe you long," and forthwith pulled the money +out of the loose jacket of his jumper and paid me.</p> + +<p>I inquired one day if a certain thing were good. "If it isn't,"<a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" /> he +replied, with a peculiar elevation of the eyebrows, "your money is. You +can have that back."</p> + +<p>"That's the way you do business, is it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," he replied, and his long upper lip thinned out along the +line of the lower one like a vise.</p> + +<p>I was in search of a rocking-chair one day and was directed to +Burridge's as the only place likely to have any!</p> + +<p>"Do you keep furniture?" I inquired.</p> + +<p>"Some," he said.</p> + +<p>"Have you a rocking-chair?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir."</p> + +<p>A day or two later I was in search of a table and on going to Burridge's +found that he had gone to a neighboring city.</p> + +<p>"Have you got a table?" I inquired of the clerk.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," he replied. "There's some furniture in the back room, +but I don't know as I dare to sell any of it while he's away."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Well, he don't like me to sell any of it. He's kind of queer that way. +I dunno what he intends to do with it. Gar!" he added in a strangely +electric way, "he's a queer man! He's got a lot of things back +there—chairs and tables and everything. He's got a lot more in a loft +up the street here. He never seems to want to sell any of 'em. Heard him +tell people he didn't have any."</p> + +<p>I shook my head in puzzled desperation.</p> + +<p>"Come on, let's go back and look anyway. There's no harm in seeing if he +has one."</p> + +<p>We went back and there amid pork and molasses barrels, old papers, boxes +and signs, was furniture in considerable quantity—tables, +rocking-chairs, washstands, bureaus—all cornered and tumbled about.</p> + +<p>"Why, here are rocking-chairs, lots of them," I exclaimed. "Just the +kind I want! He said he didn't have any."</p> + +<p>"Gar! I dunno," replied the clerk. "Here's a table, but I wouldn't dare +sell it to you."</p> + +<p>"Why should he say he didn't have a rocking-chair?"</p> + +<p>"Gar! I dunno. He's goin' out of the furniture business. He don't want +to sell any. I don't know what he intends to do with it."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" />Well," I said in despair, "what about the table? You can sell that, +can't you?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't—not till he comes back. I don't know what he'd want to do +about it."</p> + +<p>"What's the price of it?"</p> + +<p>"I dunno. He could tell you."</p> + +<p>I went out of the thick-aired stuffy backroom with its unwashed windows, +and when I got opposite the Bible near the door I said:</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with him anyhow? Why doesn't he straighten things out +here?"</p> + +<p>Again the clerk awoke. "Huh!" he exclaimed. "Straighten it out! Gar! I'd +like to see anybody try it."</p> + +<p>"It could be," I said encouragingly.</p> + +<p>"Gar!" he chuckled. "One man did try to straighten it out once when Mr. +Burridge was away. Got about a third of it cleaned up when he come back. +Gar! You oughta seen him! Gar!"</p> + +<p>"What did he do?"</p> + +<p>"What did he do! What didn't he do! Gar! Just took things an' threw them +about again. Said he couldn't find anything."</p> + +<p>"You don't say!"</p> + +<p>"Gar! I should say so! Man come in an' asked for a hammer. Said he +couldn't find any hammer, things was so mixed up. Did it with screws, +water-buckets an' everything just the same. Took 'em right off the +shelves, where they was all in groups, an' scattered 'em all over the +room. Gar! 'Now I guess I can find something when I want it,' he said." +The clerk paused to squint and add, "There ain't anybody tried any +straightenin' out around here since then, you bet. Gar!"</p> + +<p>"How long ago has that been?"</p> + +<p>"About fourteen years now."</p> + +<p>Surprised by this sharp variation from the ordinary standards of trade, +I began thinking of possible conditions which had produced it, when one +evening I happened in on the local barber. He was a lean, inquisitive +individual with a shock of sandy hair and a conspicuous desire to appear +a well-rounded social factor.</p> + +<p>"What sort of person is this Burridge over here? He keeps such a +peculiar store."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" />Elihu is a bit peculiar," he replied, his smile betraying a desire to +appear conservative. "The fault with Elihu, if he has one, is that he's +terribly strong on religion. Can't seem to agree with anybody around +here."</p> + +<p>"What's the trouble?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"It's more'n I could ever make out, what is the matter with him. They're +all a little bit cracked on the subject around here. Nothing but +revivals and meetin's, year in and year out. They're stronger on it +winters than they are in summer."</p> + +<p>"How do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Well, they'll be more against yachtin' and Sunday pleasures when they +can't go than when they can."</p> + +<p>"What about Elihu?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well, he can't seem to get along, somehow. He used to belong to the +Baptist Church, but he got out o' that. Then he went to a church up in +Graylock, but he had a fallin' out up there. Then he went to Northfield +and Eustis. He's been all around, even over on Long Island. He goes to +church up at Amherst now, I believe."</p> + +<p>"What seems to be the trouble?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's just strong-headed, I guess." He paused, and ideas lagged +until finally I observed:</p> + +<p>"It's a very interesting store he keeps."</p> + +<p>"It's just as Billy Drumgold told him once: 'Burridge,' he says, 'you've +got everything in this store that belongs to a full-rigged ship 'cept +one thing.' 'What's that?' Burridge asks. 'A second-hand pulpit.' 'Got +that too,' he answered, and takes him upstairs, and there he had one +sure enough."</p> + +<p>"Well," I said, "what was he doing with it?"</p> + +<p>"Danged if I know. He had it all right. Has it yet, so they say."</p> + +<p>Days passed and as the summer waned the evidences of a peculiar life +accumulated. Noank, apparently, was at outs with Burridge on the subject +of religion, and he with it. There were instances of genuine hard +feeling against him.</p> + +<p>Writing a letter in the Postoffice one day I ventured to take up this +matter with the postmaster.</p> + +<p>"You know Mr. Burridge, don't you—the grocer?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I should guess I did," he replied with a flare.</p> + +<p>"Anything wrong with him?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" />Oh, about everything that's just plain cussed—the most wrangling man +alive. I never saw such a man. He don't get his mail here no more +because he's mad at me, I guess. Took it away because I had Mr. Palmer's +help in my fight, I suppose. Wrote me that I should send all his mail up +to Mystic, and he goes there three or four miles out of his way every +day, just to spite me. It's against the law. I hadn't ought to be doing +it, re-addressing his envelopes three or four times a day, but I do do +it. He's a strong-headed man, that's the trouble with Elihu."</p> + +<p>I had no time to follow this up then, but a little later, sitting in the +shop of the principal sailboat maker, which was situated in the quiet +little lane which follows the line of the village, I was one day +surprised by the sudden warm feeling which the name of Elihu generated. +Something had brought up the subject of religion, and I said that +Burridge seemed rather religious.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the sailboat maker quickly, "he's religious, all right, only +he reads the Bible for others, not for himself."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean by that?"</p> + +<p>"Why, he wants to run things, that's what. As long as you agree with +Elihu, why, everything's all right. When you don't, the Bible's against +you. That's the way he is."</p> + +<p>"Did he ever disagree with you?" I asked, suspecting some personal +animus in the matter.</p> + +<p>"Me and Elihu was always good friends as long as I agreed with him," he +went on bitterly. "We've been raised together, man and boy, for pretty +near sixty years. We never had a word of any kind but what was friendly, +as long as I agreed with him, but just as soon as I didn't he took a set +against me, and we ain't never spoke a word since."</p> + +<p>"What was the trouble?" I inquired sweetly, anxious to come at the +kernel of this queer situation.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, dropping his work and looking up to impress me, "I'm a +man that'll sometimes say what I don't believe; that is, I'll agree with +what I hadn't ought to, just to be friendly like. I did that way a lot +o' times with Elihu till one day he came to me with something about +particular salvation. I'm a little more liberal myself. I believe in +universal redemption by faith alone. Well, Elihu came to me and began +telling <a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" />me what he believed. Finally he asked me something about +particular salvation and wanted to know whether I didn't agree with him. +I didn't, and told him so. From that day on he took a set against me, +and he ain't never spoke a word to me since."</p> + +<p>I was unaware that there was anything besides a religious disagreement +in this local situation until one day I happened to come into a second +friendly contact with the postmaster. We were speaking of the +characteristics of certain individuals, and I mentioned Burridge.</p> + +<p>"He's all right when you take him the way he wants to be taken. When you +don't you'll find him quite a different man."</p> + +<p>"He seems to be straightforward and honest," I said.</p> + +<p>"There ain't anything you can tell me about Elihu Burridge that I don't +know," he replied feelingly. "Not a thing. I've lived with him, as you +might say, all my life. Been raised right here in town with him, and we +went to school together. Man and boy, there ain't ever been a thing that +Elihu has agreed with, without he could have the running of it. You +can't tell me anything about him that I don't know."</p> + +<p>I could not help smiling at the warmth of feeling, although something +about the man's manner bespoke a touch of heart-ache, as if he were +privately grieving.</p> + +<p>"What was the trouble between you two?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"It's more'n I could ever find out," he replied in a voice that was +really mournful, so difficult and non-understandable was the subject to +him. "Before I started to work for this office there wasn't a day that I +didn't meet and speak friendly with Elihu. He used to have a good many +deeds and papers to sign, and he never failed to call me in when I was +passing. When I started to work for this office I noticed he took on a +cold manner toward me, and I tried to think of something I might have +done, but I couldn't. Finally I wrote and asked him if there was +anything between us if he wouldn't set a time and place so's we might +talk it over and come to an understanding." He paused and then added, "I +wish you could see the letter he wrote me. Comin' from a Christian +man—from him to me—I wish you could see it."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you show it to me?" I asked inquisitively.</p> + +<p>He went back into the office and returned with an ancient-<a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" />looking +document, four years old it proved to be, which he had been treasuring. +He handed me the thumbed and already yellowed page, and I read:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"MATTHEW HOLCOMB, ESQUIRE,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<blockquote><p>"DEAR SIR:—In reply to your letter asking me to set a time and + place in which we might talk over the trouble between us, would + say that the time be Eternity and the place where God shall call + us to judgment.</p></blockquote> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Very truly,<br /></span> +<span>"ELIHU BURRIDGE."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His eyes rested on me while I read, and the moment I finished he began +with:</p> + +<p>"I never said one word against that man, not one word. I never did a +thing he could take offense at, not one thing. I don't know how a man +can justify himself writing like that."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it's political," I said. "You don't belong to the same party, +do you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, we do," he said. "Sometimes I've thought that maybe it was because +I had the support of the shipyard when I first tried to get this office, +but then that wasn't anything between him and me," and he looked away as +if the mystery were inexplicable.</p> + +<p>This shipyard was conducted by a most forceful man but one as narrow and +religionistic as this region in which it had had its rise. Old Mr. +Palmer, the aged founder of it, had long been a notable figure in the +streets and private chambers of the village. The principal grocery +store, coal-yard, sail-loft, hotel and other institutions were conducted +in its interests. His opinion was always foremost in the decision of the +local authorities. He was still, reticent, unobtrusive. Once I saw him +most considerately helping a cripple up the lane to the local Baptist +Church.</p> + +<p>"What's the trouble between Burridge and Palmer?" I asked of the +sail-maker finally, coming to think that here, if anywhere, lay the +solution of the difficulty.</p> + +<p>"Two big fish in too small a basket," he responded laconically.</p> + +<p>"Can't agree, eh?"</p> + +<p>"They both want to lead, or did," he said. "Elihu's a beaten <a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" />man, +though, now." He paused and then added, "I'm sorry for Elihu. He's a +good man at heart, one of the kindest men you ever saw, when you let him +follow his natural way. He's good to the poor, and he's carried more +slow-pay people than any man in this country, I do believe. He won't +collect an old debt by law. Don't believe in it. No, sir. Just a +kind-hearted man, but he loves to rule."</p> + +<p>"How about Palmer?" I inquired.</p> + +<p>"Just the same way exactly. He loves to rule, too. Got a good heart, +too, but he's got a lot more money than Elihu and so people pay more +attention to him, that's all. When Elihu was getting the attention he +was just the finest man you ever saw, kind, generous, good-natured. +People love to be petted, at least some people do—you know they do. +When you don't pet 'em they get kind o' sour and crabbed like. Now +that's all that's the matter with Elihu, every bit of it. He's sour, +now, and a little lonely, I expect. He's drove away every one from him, +or nearly all, 'cept his wife and some of his kin. Anybody can do a good +grocery business here, with the strangers off the boats"—the harbor was +a lively one—"all you have to do is carry a good stock. That's why he +gets along so well. But he's drove nearly all the local folks away from +him."</p> + +<p>I listened to this comfortable sail-loft sage, and going back to the +grocery store one afternoon took another look at the long, grim-faced +silent figure. He was sitting in the shadow of one of his moldy corners, +and if there had ever been any light of merriment in his face it was not +there now. He looked as fixed and solemn as an ancient puritan, and yet +there was something so melancholy in the man's eye, so sad and +disappointed, that it seemed anything but hard. Two or three little +children were playing about the door and when he came forward to wait on +me one of them sidled forward and put her chubby hand in his.</p> + +<p>"Your children?" I asked, by way of reaching some friendly +understanding.</p> + +<p>"No," he replied, looking fondly down, "she belongs to a French lady up +the street here. She often comes down to see me, don't you?" and he +reached over and took the fat little cheek between his thumb and +forefinger.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" />The little one rubbed her face against his worn baggy trousers' leg and +put her arm about his knee. Quietly he stood there in a simple way until +she loosened her hold upon him, when he went about his labor.</p> + +<p>I was sitting one day in the loft of the comfortable sail-maker, who, by +the way, was brother-in-law to Burridge, when I said to him:</p> + +<p>"I wish you'd tell me the details about Elihu. How did he come to be +what he is? You ought to know; you've lived here all your life."</p> + +<p>"So I do know," he replied genially. "What do you want me to tell you?"</p> + +<p>"The whole story of the trouble between him and Palmer; how he comes to +be at outs with all these people."</p> + +<p>"Well," he began, and here followed with many interruptions and side +elucidations, which for want of space have been eliminated, the +following details:</p> + +<p>Twenty-five years before Elihu had been the leading citizen of Noank. +From operating a small grocery at the close of the Civil War he branched +out until he sold everything from ship-rigging to hardware. Noank was +then in the height of its career as a fishing town and as a port from +which expeditions of all sorts were wont to sail. Whaling was still in +force, and vessels for whaling expeditions were equipped here. Wealthy +sea-captains frequently loaded fine three-masted schooners here for +various trading expeditions to all parts of the world; the fishers for +mackerel, cod and herring were making three hundred and fifty dollars a +day in season, and thousands of dollars' worth of supplies were annually +purchased here.</p> + +<p>Burridge was then the only tradesman of any importance and, being of a +liberal, strong-minded and yet religious turn, attracted the majority of +this business to him. He had houses and lands, was a deacon in the local +Baptist Church and a counselor in matters political, social and +religious, whose advice was seldom rejected. Every Fourth of July during +these years it was his custom to collect all the children of the town in +front of his store and treat them to ice-cream. Every Christmas Eve he +traveled about the streets in a wagon, which carried half a dozen +barrels of candy and nuts, which he would ladle out to the merry +shouting throng of pursuing <a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" />youngsters, until all were satisfied. For +the skating season he prepared a pond, spending several thousand dollars +damming up a small stream, in order that the children might have a place +to skate. He created a library where all might obtain suitable reading, +particularly the young.</p> + +<p>On New Year's morning it was his custom to visit all the poor and +bereaved and lonely in Noank, taking a great dray full of presents and +leaving a little something with his greetings and a pleasant handshake +at every door. The lonely rich as well as the lonely poor were included, +for he was certain, as he frequently declared, that the rich could be +lonely too.</p> + +<p>He once told his brother-in-law that one New Year's Day a voice called +to him in church: "Elihu Burridge, how about the lonely rich and poor of +Noank?" "Up I got," he concluded, "and from that day to this I have +never neglected them."</p> + +<p>When any one died who had a little estate to be looked after for the +benefit of widows or orphans, Burridge was the one to take charge of it. +People on their deathbeds sent for him, and he always responded, taking +energetic charge of everything and refusing to take a penny for his +services. After a number of years the old judge to whom he always +repaired with these matters of probate, knowing his generosity in this +respect, also refused to accept any fee. When he saw him coming he would +exclaim:</p> + +<p>"Well, Elihu, what is it this time? Another widow or orphan that we've +got to look after?"</p> + +<p>After Elihu had explained what it was, he would add:</p> + +<p>"Well, Elihu, I do hope that some day some rich man will call you to +straighten out his affairs. I'd like to see <i>you</i> get a little +something, so that <i>I</i> might get a little something. Eh, Elihu?" Then he +would jocularly poke his companion in charity in the ribs.</p> + +<p>These general benefactions were continuous and coeval with his local +prosperity and dominance, and their modification as well as the man's +general decline the result of the rise of this other individual—Robert +Palmer,—"operating" to take the color of power and preëminence from +him.</p> + +<p>Palmer was the owner of a small shipyard here at the time, a thing which +was not much at first but which grew swiftly.<a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" /> He was born in Noank +also, a few years before Burridge, and as a builder of vessels had been +slowly forging his way to a moderate competence when Elihu was already +successful. He was a keen, fine-featured, energetic individual, with +excellent commercial and strong religious instincts, and by dint of hard +labor and a saving disposition he obtained, soon after the Civil War, a +powerful foothold. Many vessels were ordered here from other cities. +Eventually he began to build barges in large numbers for a great +railroad company.</p> + +<p>Early becoming a larger employer of labor than any one else in the +vicinity he soon began to branch out, possessed himself of the allied +industries of ship-rigging, chandlering, and finally established a +grocery store for his employees, and opened a hotel. Now the local +citizens began to look upon him as their leading citizen. They were +always talking of his rise, frequently in the presence of Burridge. He +said nothing at first, pretending to believe that his quondam leadership +was unimpaired. Again, there were those who, having followed the various +branches of labor which Palmer eventually consolidated, viewed this +growth with sullen and angry eyes. They still sided with Burridge, or +pretended still to believe that he was the more important citizen of the +two. In the course of time, however—a period of thirty years or +more—some of them failed; others died; still others were driven away +for want of a livelihood. Only Burridge's position and business +remained, but in a sadly weakened state. He was no longer a man of any +great importance.</p> + +<p>Not unnaturally, this question of local supremacy was first tested in +the one place in which local supremacy is usually tested—the church +where they both worshiped. Although only one of five trustees, Burridge +had been the will of the body. Always, whatever he thought, the others +had almost immediately agreed to it. But now that Palmer had become a +power, many of those ardent in the church and beholden to him for profit +became his humble followers. They elected him trustee and did what he +wished, or what they thought he wished. To Burridge this made them +sycophants, slaves.</p> + +<p>Now followed the kind of trivialities by which most human feuds are +furthered. The first test of strength came when a vagrant evangelist +from Alabama arrived and desired to use <a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" />the church for a series of +evening lectures. The question had to be decided at once. Palmer was +absent at the time.</p> + +<p>"Here is a request for the use of the church," said one of the trustees, +explaining its nature.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Burridge, "you'd better let him have it."</p> + +<p>"Do you think we ought to do anything about it," the trustee replied, +"until Mr. Palmer returns?"</p> + +<p>Although Burridge saw no reason for waiting, the other trustees did, and +upon that the board rested. Burridge was furious. By one fell stroke he +was put in second place, a man who had to await the return of +Palmer—and that in his own church, so to speak.</p> + +<p>"Why," he told some one, "the rest of us are nothing. This man is a +king."</p> + +<p>From that time on differences of opinion within the church and elsewhere +were common. Although no personal animosity was ever admitted, local +issues almost invariably found these two men opposed to each other. +There was the question of whether the village should be made into a +borough—a most trivial matter; another, that of creating public works +for the manufacture of gas and distribution of water; a third, that of +naming a State representative. Naturally, while these things might be to +the advantage of Palmer or not, they were of no great import to +Burridge, but yet he managed to see in them an attempt or attempts to +saddle a large public debt upon widows and orphans, those who could not +afford or did not need these things, and he proceeded to so express +himself at various public meetings. Slowly the breach widened. Burridge +became little more than a malcontent in many people's eyes. He was a +"knocker," a man who wanted to hold the community back.</p> + +<p>Although defeated in many instances he won in others, and this did not +help matters any. At this point, among other things the decay of the +fishing industry helped to fix definitely the position of the two men as +that of victor and vanquished. Whaling died out, then mackerel and cod +were caught only at farther and farther distances from the town, and +finally three-and even two-masted schooners ceased entirely to buy their +outfits here, and Burridge was left dependent upon local patronage or +smaller harbor trade for his support. Coexten<a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" />sively, he had the +dissatisfaction of seeing Palmer's industries grow until eventually +three hundred and fifty men were upon his payrolls and even his foremen +and superintendents were considered influential townspeople. Palmer's +son and two daughters grew up and married, branched out and became +owners of industries which had formerly belonged to men who had traded +with Burridge. He saw his grocery trade dwindle and sink, while with age +his religiosity grew, and he began to be little more than a petty +disputant, one constantly arguing as to whether the interpretation of +the Bible as handed down from the pulpit of what he now considered <i>his</i> +recalcitrant church was sound or not. When those who years before had +followed him obediently now pricked him with theological pins and +ventured to disagree with him, he was quick and sometimes foolish in his +replies. Thus, once a former friend and fellow-church-member who had +gone over to the opposition came into his store one morning and said:</p> + +<p>"Elihu, for a man that's as strong on religion as you are, I see you do +one thing that can't quite be justified by the Book."</p> + +<p>"What's that?" inquired Burridge, looking up.</p> + +<p>"I see you sell tobacco."</p> + +<p>"I see you chew it," returned the host grimly.</p> + +<p>"I know I do," returned his visitor, "but I'll tell you what I'll do, +Elihu. If you'll quit selling, I'll quit chewing it," and he looked as +if he had set a fancy trap for his straw-balancing brother, as he held +him to be.</p> + +<p>"It's a bargain," said Burridge on the instant. "It's a bargain!"</p> + +<p>And from that day on tobacco was not offered for sale in that store, +although there was a large local demand for it.</p> + +<p>Again, in the pride of his original leadership, he had accepted the +conduct of the local cemetery, a thing which was more a burden than a +source of profit. With his customary liberality in all things reflecting +credit upon himself he had spent his own money in improving it, much +more than ever the wardens of the church would have thought of returning +to him. In one instance, when a new receiving vault was desired, he had +added seven hundred dollars of his own to three hundred gathered by the +church trustees for the purpose, and <a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" />the vault was immediately +constructed. Frequently also, in his pride of place, he had been given +to asserting he was tired of conducting the cemetery and wished he could +resign.</p> + +<p>In these later evil days, therefore, the trustees, following the star of +the newer power, saw fit to intimate that perhaps some one else would be +glad to look after it if he was tired of it. Instantly the fact that he +could no longer boast as formerly came home to him. He was not essential +any longer in anything. The church did not want him to have a hand in +any of its affairs! The thought of this so weighed on him that +eventually he resigned from this particular task, but thereafter also +every man who had concurred in accepting his resignation was his bitter +enemy. He spoke acidly of the seven hundred he had spent, and jibed at +the decisions of the trustees in other matters. Soon he became a +disturbing element in the church, taking a solemn vow never to enter the +graveyard again, and not long after resigned all his other official +duties—passing the plate, et cetera—although he still attended +services there.</p> + +<p>Decoration Day rolled around, the G.A.R. Post of which he was an ardent +member prepared for the annual memorial services over the graves of its +dead comrades. Early on the morning of the thirtieth of May they +gathered before their lodge hall, Burridge among them, and after +arranging the details marched conspicuously to the cemetery where the +placing of the wreaths and the firing of the salute were to take place. +No one thought of Burridge until the gate was reached, when, gun over +shoulder and uniform in perfect trim, he fell conspicuously out of line +and marched away home alone. It was the cemetery he had vowed not to +enter, his old pet and protégé.</p> + +<p>Men now looked askance at him. He was becoming queer, no doubt of it, +not really sensible—or was he? Up in Northfield, a nearby town, dwelt a +colonel of the Civil War who had led the very regiment of which Burridge +was a member but who during the war had come into serious difficulty +through a tangle of orders, and had been dishonorably discharged. +Although wounded in one of the engagements in which the regiment had +distinguished itself, he had been allowed to languish almost forgotten +for years and finally, <a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" />failing to get a pension, had died in poverty. +On his deathbed he had sent for Burridge, and reminding him of the +battle in which he had led him asked that after he was gone, for the +sake of his family, he would take up the matter of a pension and if +possible have his record purged of the stigma and the pension awarded.</p> + +<p>Burridge agreed most enthusiastically. Going to the local congressman, +he at once began a campaign, but because of the feeling against him two +years passed without anything being done. Later he took up the matter in +his own G.A.R. Post, but there also failing to find the measure of his +own enthusiasm, he went finally direct to one of the senators of the +State and laying the matter before him had the records examined by +Congress and the dead colonel honorably discharged.</p> + +<p>One day thereafter in the local G.A.R. he commented unfavorably upon the +indifference which he deemed had been shown.</p> + +<p>"There wouldn't have been half so much delay if the man hadn't been a +deserter," said one of his enemies—one who was a foreman in Palmer's +shipyard.</p> + +<p>Instantly Burridge was upon his feet, his eyes aflame with feeling. +Always an orator, with a strangely declamatory style he launched into a +detailed account of the late colonel's life and services, his wounds, +his long sufferings and final death in poverty, winding up with a vivid +word picture of a battle (Antietam), in which the colonel had gallantly +captured a rebel flag and come by his injury.</p> + +<p>When he was through there was great excitement in the Post and much +feeling in his favor, but he rather weakened the effect by at once +demanding that the traitorous words be withdrawn, and failing to compel +this, preferred charges against the man who had uttered them and +attempted to have him court-martialed.</p> + +<p>So great was the bitterness engendered by this that the Post was now +practically divided, and being unable to compel what he considered +justice he finally resigned. Subsequently he took issue with his former +fellow-soldiers in various ways, commenting satirically on their church +regularity and professed Christianity, as opposed to their indifference +to the late <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" />colonel, and denouncing in various public conversations the +double-mindedness and sharp dealings of the "little gods," as he termed +those who ran the G.A.R. Post, the church, and the shipyards.</p> + +<p>Not long after his religious affairs reached a climax when the minister, +once a good friend of his, following the lead of the dominant star, Mr. +Palmer, publicly denounced him from the pulpit one Sunday as an enemy of +the church and of true Christianity!</p> + +<p>"There is a man in this congregation," he exclaimed in a burst of +impassioned oratory, "who poses as a Christian and a Baptist, who is in +his heart's depth the church's worst enemy. Hell and all its devils +could have no worse feelings of evil against the faith than he, and he +doesn't sell tobacco, either!"</p> + +<p>The last reference at once fixed the identity of the person, and caused +Burridge to get up and leave the church. He pondered over this for a +time, severed his connections with the body, and having visited Graylock +one Sunday drove there every Sabbath thereafter, each time going to a +different church. After enduring this for six months he generated a +longing for a more convenient meeting-place, and finally allied himself +with the Baptist Church of Eustis. Here his anchor might possibly have +remained fast had it not been that subtle broodings over his wrongs, a +calm faith in the righteousness of his own attitude, and disgust with +those whom he saw calmly expatiating upon the doctrines and dogmas of +religion in his own town finally caused him to suspect a universal +misreading of the Bible. This doubt, together with his own desire for +justification according to the Word, finally put the idea in his mind to +make a study of the Bible himself. He would read it, he said. He would +study Hebrew and Greek, and refer all questionable readings of words and +passages back to the original tongue in which it had been written.</p> + +<p>With this end in view he began a study of these languages, the +importance of the subject so growing upon him that he neglected his +business. Day after day he labored, putting a Bible and a Concordance +upon a pile of soap-boxes near the door of his store and poring over +them between customers, the store meantime taking care of itself. He +finally mastered<a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" /> Greek and Hebrew after a fashion, and finding the word +"repent" frequently used, and that God had made man in the image of +Himself, with a full knowledge of right and wrong, he gravitated toward +the belief that therefore his traducers in Noank knew what they were +doing, and that before he needed to forgive them—though his love might +cover all—they must repent.</p> + +<p>He read the Bible from beginning to end with this one feeling +subconsciously dominant, and all its loving commands about loving one +another, forgiving your brother seventy times seven, loving those that +hate you, returning good for evil, selling all that you have and giving +it to the poor, were made to wait upon the duty of others to repent. He +began to give this interpretation at Eustis, where he was allowed to +have a Sunday-school, until the minister came and told him once, "to his +face," as the local report ran: "We don't want you here."</p> + +<p>Meekly he went forth and, joining a church across the Sound on Long +Island, sailed over every Sunday and there advanced the same views until +he was personally snubbed by the minister and attacked by the local +papers. Leaving there he went to Amherst, always announcing now that he +held distinctive views about some things in the Bible and asking the +privilege of explaining. In this congregation he was still comfortably +at rest when I knew him.</p> + +<p>"All sensitiveness," the sail-maker had concluded after his long +account. "There ain't anything the matter with Elihu, except that he's +piqued and grieved. He wanted to be the big man, and he wasn't."</p> + +<p>I was thinking of this and of his tender relationship with children as I +had noticed it, and of his service to the late colonel when one day +being in the store, I said:</p> + +<p>"Do you stand on the Bible completely, Mr. Burridge?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," he replied, "I do."</p> + +<p>"Believe every word of it to be true?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>"If your brother has offended you, how many times must you forgive him?"</p> + +<p>"Seventy times seven."</p> + +<p>"Do you forgive your brothers?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" />Yes, sir—if they repent."</p> + +<p>"If they repent?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir, if they repent. That's the interpretation. In Matthew you +will find, 'If he repent, forgive him.'"</p> + +<p>"But if you don't forgive them, even before they repent," I said, +"aren't you harboring enmity?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir, I'm not treasuring up enmity. I only refuse to forgive them."</p> + +<p>I looked at the man, a little astonished, but he looked so sincere and +earnest that I could not help smiling.</p> + +<p>"How do you reconcile that with the command, 'Love one another?' You +surely can't love and refuse to forgive them at the same time?"</p> + +<p>"I don't refuse to forgive them," he repeated. "If John there," +indicating an old man in a sun-tanned coat who happened to be passing +through the store at the time, "should do me a wrong—I don't care what +it was, how great or how vile—if he should come to me and say, +'Burridge, I'm sorry,'" he executed a flashing oratorical move in +emphasis, and throwing back his head, exclaimed: "It's gone! It's gone! +There ain't any more of it! All gone!"</p> + +<p>I stood there quite dumbfounded by his virility, as the air vibrated +with his force and feeling. So manifestly was his reading of the Bible +colored by the grief of his own heart that it was almost painful to +tangle him with it. Goodness and mercy colored all his ideas, except in +relation to his one-time followers, those who had formerly been his +friends and now left him to himself.</p> + +<p>"Do you still visit the poor and the afflicted, as you once did?" I +asked him once.</p> + +<p>"I'd rather not say anything about that," he replied sternly.</p> + +<p>"But do you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>"Still make your annual New Year round?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>"Well, you'll get your reward for that, whatever you believe."</p> + +<p>"I've had my reward," he said slowly.</p> + +<p>"Had it?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" />Yes, sir, had it. Every hand that's been lifted to receive the little +I had to offer has been my reward."</p> + +<p>He smiled, and then said in seemingly the most untimely way:</p> + +<p>"I remember once going to a lonely woman here on New Year's Day and +taking her a little something—basket of grapes or fruit of some kind it +was. I was stopping a minute—never stay long, you know; just run in and +say 'Happy New Year!' leave what I have and get out—and so said, 'Good +morning, Aunt Mary!'</p> + +<p>"'Good morning, Elihu,' says she.</p> + +<p>"'Can't stay long, Aunt Mary,' I said. 'Just want to leave you these. +Happy New Year!'</p> + +<p>"Well, sir, you know I was just turning around and starting when she +caught hold of my sleeve and says:</p> + +<p>"'Elihu Burridge,' she says, 'give me that hand!' and do you know, +before I knew what she was about she took it up to her lips and kissed +it! Yes, she did—kissed my hand!</p> + +<p>"Now," he said, drawing himself up, with eyes bright with intense +feeling, "you know whether I've had my reward or not, don't you?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Vanity_Vanityquot_Saith_the_Preacher" id="Vanity_Vanityquot_Saith_the_Preacher" /><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" /><i>"Vanity, Vanity," Saith the Preacher</i></h2> + + +<p>Sometimes a single life will clearly and effectively illustrate a +period. Hence, to me, the importance of this one.</p> + +<p>I first met X—— at a time when American financial methods and American +finances were at their apex of daring and splendor, and when the world +was in a more or less tolerant mood toward their grandiose manners and +achievements. It was the golden day of Mr. Morgan, Senior, Mr. Belmont, +Mr. Harriman, Mr. Sage, Mr. Gates, Mr. Brady, and many, many others who +were still extant and ruling distinctly and drastically, as was proved +by the panic of 1907. In opposition to them and yet imitating their +methods, now an old story to those who have read "Frenzied Finance," +"Lawless Wealth," and other such exposures of the methods which produced +our enormous American fortunes, were such younger men as Charles W. +Morse (the victim of the 1907 panic), F. Augustus Heinze (another if +less conspicuous victim of the same "panic"), E.R. Thomas, an ambitious +young millionaire, himself born to money, David A. Sullivan, and X——. +I refuse to mention his name because he is still alive although no +longer conspicuous, and anxious perhaps to avoid the uncomfortable glare +of publicity when all the honors and comforts which made it endurable in +the first place are absent.</p> + +<p>The person who made X—— essentially interesting to me long before I +met him was one Lucien de Shay, a ne'er-do-well pianist and voice +culturist, who was also a connoisseur in the matters of rugs, hangings, +paintings and furniture, things in which X—— was just then most +intensely interested, erecting, as he was, a great house on Long Island +and but newly blossoming into the world of art or fashion or culture or +show—those various things which the American multi-millionaire always +wants to blossom or bloom into and which he does not always succeed in +doing. De Shay was one of those odd natures so common to the +metropolis—half artist and half man of fashion who attach themselves so +readily to men of strength and wealth, often as advisors and <a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" />counselors +in all matters of taste, social form and social progress. How this +particular person was rewarded I never quite knew, whether in cash or +something else. He was also a semi-confidant of mine, furnishing me +"tips" and material of one sort and another in connection with the +various publications I was then managing. As it turned out later, X—— +was not exactly a multi-millionaire as yet, merely a fledgling, although +the possibilities were there and his aims and ambitions were fast +nearing a practical triumph the end of which of course was to be, as in +the case of nearly all American multi-millionaires of the newer and +quicker order, bohemian or exotic and fleshly rather than cultural or +æsthetic pleasure, although the latter were never really exactly +ignored.</p> + +<p>But even so. He was a typical multi-millionaire in the showy and even +gaudy sense of the time. For if the staid and conservative and socially +well-placed rich have the great houses and the ease and the luxury of +paraphernalia, the bohemian rich of the X—— type have the flare, +recklessness and imagination which lend to their spendings and +flutterings a sparkle and a shine which the others can never hope to +match.</p> + +<p>Said this friend of mine to me one day: "Listen, I want you to meet this +man X——. You will like him. He is fine. You haven't any idea what a +fascinating person he really is. He looks like a Russian Grand Duke. He +has the manners and the tastes of a Medici or a Borgia. He is building a +great house down on Long Island that once it is done will have cost him +five or six hundred thousand. It's worth seeing already. His studio here +in the C—— studio building is a dream. It's thick with the loveliest +kinds of things. I've helped buy them myself. And he isn't dull. He +wrote a book at twenty, 'Icarus,' which is not bad either and which he +says is something like himself. He has read your book ("Sister Carrie") +and he sympathizes with that man Hurstwood. Says parts of it remind him +of his own struggles. That's why he wants to meet you. He once worked on +the newspapers too. God knows how he is making his money, but I know how +he is spending it. He's decided to live, and he's doing it splendidly. +It's wonderful."</p> + +<p>I took notice, although I had never even heard of the man. There were so +very, very many rich men in America. Later I <a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" />heard much more concerning +him from this same de Shay. Once he had been so far down in the scale +that he had to shine shoes for a living. Once he had walked the streets +of New York in the snow, his shoes cracked and broken, no overcoat, not +even a warm suit. He had come here a penniless emigrant from Russia. Now +he controlled four banks, one trust company, an insurance company, a +fire insurance company, a great real estate venture somewhere, and what +not. Naturally all of this interested me greatly. When are we +indifferent to a rise from nothing to something?</p> + +<p>At de Shay's invitation I journeyed up to X——'s studio one Wednesday +afternoon at four, my friend having telephoned me that if I could I must +come at once, that there was an especially interesting crowd already +assembled in the rooms, that I would meet a long list of celebrities. +Two or three opera singers of repute were already there, among them an +Italian singer and sorceress of great beauty, a veritable queen of the +genus adventuress, who was setting the town by the ears not only by her +loveliness but her voice. Her beauty was so remarkable that the Sunday +papers were giving full pages to her face and torso alone. There were to +be several light opera and stage beauties there also, a basso profundo +to sing, writers, artists, poets.</p> + +<p>I went. The place and the crowd literally enthralled me. It was so gay, +colorful, thrillful. The host and the guests were really interesting—to +me. Not that it was so marvelous as a studio or that it was so +gorgeously decorated and furnished—it was impressive enough in that +way—but that it was so gracefully and interestingly representative of a +kind of comfort disguised as elegance. The man had everything, or nearly +so—friends, advisors, servants, followers. A somewhat savage and +sybaritic nature, as I saw at once, was here disporting itself in +velvets and silks. The iron hand of power, if it was power, was being +most gracefully and agreeably disguised as the more or less flaccid one +of pleasure and friendship.</p> + +<p>My host was not visible at first, but I met a score of people whom I +knew by reputation, and listened to clatter and chatter of the most +approved metropolitan bohemian character. The Italian sorceress was +there, her gorgeous chain earrings tinkling mellifluously as she nodded +and gesticulated. De Shay <a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" />at once whispered in my ear that she was +X——'s very latest flame and an expensive one too. "You should see what +he buys her!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "God!" Actresses and society +women floated here and there in dreams of afternoon dresses. The +automobiles outside were making a perfect uproar. The poets and writers +fascinated me with their praises of the host's munificence and taste. At +a glance it was plain to me that he had managed to gather about him the +very element it would be most interesting to gather, supposing one +desired to be idle, carefree and socially and intellectually gay. If +America ever presented a smarter drawing-room I never saw it.</p> + +<p>My friend de Shay, being the fidus Achates of the host, had the power to +reveal the inner mysteries of this place to me, and on one or two +occasions when there were not so many present and while the others were +chattering in the various rooms—music-, dining-, ball-, library and so +forth—I was being shown the kitchen, pantry, wine cellar, and also +various secret doors and passages whereby mine host by pressing a flower +on a wall or a spring behind a picture could cause a door to fly open or +close which gave entrance to or from a room or passage in no way +connected with the others save by another secret door and leading always +to a private exit. I wondered at once at the character of the person who +could need, desire or value this. A secret bedroom, for instance; a +lounging-room! In one of these was a rather severe if handsome desk and +a steel safe and two chairs—no more; a very bare room. I wondered at +this silent and rather commercial sanctum in the center of this +frou-frou of gayety, no trace of the sound of which seemed to penetrate +here. What I also gained was a sense of an exotic, sybaritic and purely +pagan mind, one which knew little of the conventions of the world and +cared less.</p> + +<p>On my first visit, as I was leaving, I was introduced to the host just +within his picture gallery, hung with many fine examples of the Dutch +and Spanish schools. I found him to be as described: picturesque and +handsome, even though somewhat plump, phlegmatic and lethargic—yet +active enough. He was above the average in height, well built, florid, +with a huge, round handsome head, curly black hair, keen black <a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" />eyes, +heavy overhanging eyebrows, full red lips, a marked chin ornamented by a +goatee. In any costume ball he would have made an excellent Bacchus or +Pan. He appeared to have the free, easy and gracious manner of those who +have known much of life and have achieved, in part at least, their +desires. He smiled, wished to know if I had met all the guests, hoped +that the sideboard had not escaped me, that I had enjoyed the singing. +Would I come some evening when there was no crowd—or, better yet, dine +with him and my friend de Shay, whose personality appeared to be about +as agreeable to him as his own. He was sorry he could not give me more +attention now.</p> + +<p>Interestingly enough, and from the first, I was impressed with this man; +not because of his wealth (I knew richer men) but because of a something +about him which suggested dreams, romance, a kind of sense or love of +splendor and grandeur which one does not often encounter among the +really wealthy. Those cracked shoes were in my mind, I suppose. He +seemed to live among great things, but in no niggardly, parsimonious or +care-taking way. Here was ease, largess, a kind of lavishness which was +not ostentation but which seemed rather to say, "What are the minute +expenses of living and pleasuring as contrasted with the profits of +skill in the world outside?" He suggested the huge and Aladdin-like +adventures with which so many of the great financiers of the day, the +true tigers of Wall Street, were connected.</p> + +<p>It was not long thereafter that I was once more invited, this time to a +much more lavish affair and something much more sybaritic in its tone, +although I was really not conscious of what it was to be like when I +went there. It began at twelve midnight, and to this day it glitters in +my mind as among the few really barbaric and exotic things that I have +ever witnessed. Not that the trappings or hangings or setting were so +outré or amazing as that the atmosphere of the thing itself was relaxed, +bubbling, pagan. There were so many daring and seeking people there. The +thing sang and was talked of for months after—in whispers! The gayety! +The abandon! The sheer intoxication, mental and physical! I never saw +more daring costumes, so many really beautiful women (glitteringly so) +in one place at one time, wonderful specimens of exotic <a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" />and in the main +fleshy or sensuous femininity. There was, among other things, as I +recall, a large nickeled ice-tray on wheels packed with unopened bottles +of champagne, and you had but to lift a hand or wink an eye to have +another opened for you alone, ever over and over. And the tray was +always full. One wall of the dining-room farther on was laden with +delicate novelties in the way of food. A string quartette played for the +dancers in the music-room. There were a dozen corners in different rooms +screened with banks of flowers and concealing divans. The dancing and +singing were superb, individual, often abandoned in character, as was +the conversation. As the morning wore on (for it did not begin until +after midnight) the moods of all were either so mellowed or inflamed as +to make intentions, hopes, dreams, the most secret and sybaritic, the +order of expression. One was permitted to see human nature stripped of +much of its repression and daylight reserve or cant. At about four in +the morning came the engaged dancers, quite the pièce de +résistance—with wreaths about heads, waists and arms for clothing and +well, really nothing more beyond their beautiful figures—scattering +rose leaves or favors. These dancers the company itself finally joined, +single file at first, pellmell afterwards—artists, writers, +poets—dancing from room to room in crude Bacchic imitation of their +leaders—the women too—until all were singing, parading, swaying and +dancing in and out of the dozen rooms. And finally, liquor and food +affecting them, I suppose, many fell flat, unable to do anything +thereafter but lie upon divans or in corners until friends assisted them +elsewhere—to taxis finally. But mine host, as I recall him, was always +present, serene, sober, smiling, unaffected, bland and gracious and +untiring in his attention. He was there to keep order where otherwise +there would have been none.</p> + +<p>I mention this merely to indicate the character of a long series of such +events which covered the years 19— to 19—. During that time, for the +reason that I have first given (his curious pleasure in my company), I +was part and parcel of a dozen such more or less vivid affairs and +pleasurings, which stamped on my mind not only X—— but life itself, +the possibilities and resources of luxury where taste and appetite are +involved, the dreams of grandeur and happiness which float <a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" />in some +men's minds and which work out to a wild fruition—dreams so outré and +so splendid that only the tyrant of an obedient empire, with all the +resources of an enslaved and obedient people, could indulge with safety. +Thus once, I remember, that a dozen of us—writers and artists—being +assembled in his studio in New York one Friday afternoon for the mere +purpose of idling and drinking, he seeming to have nothing better to do +for the time being, he suddenly suggested, and as though it had but now +occurred to him, that we all adjourn to his country house on Long +Island, which was not yet quite finished (or, rather, furnished), but +which was in a sufficient state of completion to permit of appropriate +entertainment providing the necessaries were carried out there with us.</p> + +<p>As I came to think of this afterward, I decided that after all it was +not perhaps so unpremeditated as it seemed and that unconsciously we +served a very useful purpose. There was work to do, suggestions to be +obtained, an overseer, decorator and landscape gardener with whom +consultations were absolutely necessary; and nothing that X—— ever did +was without its element of calculation. Why not make a gala affair of a +rather dreary November task—</p> + +<p>Hence—</p> + +<p>At any rate the majority of us forthwith agreed, since plainly it meant +an outing of the most lavish and pleasing nature. At once four +automobiles were pressed into service, three from his own garage and one +specially engaged elsewhere. There was some telephoning <i>in re</i> culinary +supplies to a chef in charge of the famous restaurant below who was <i>en +rapport</i> with our host, and soon some baskets of food were produced and +subsequently the four cars made their appearance at the entryway below. +At dusk of a gray, cold, smoky day we were all bundled into +these—poets, playwrights, novelists, editors (he professed a great +contempt for actors), and forthwith we were off, to do forty-five miles +between five-thirty and seven p.m.</p> + +<p>I often think of that ride, the atmosphere of it, and what it told of +our host's point of view. He was always so grave, serene, watchful yet +pleasant and decidedly agreeable, gay even, without seeming so to be. +There was something so <a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" />amazingly warm and exotic about him and his, and +yet at the same time something so cold and calculated, as if after all +he were saying to himself, "I am the master of all this, am +stage-managing it for my own pleasure." I felt that he looked upon us +all not so much as intimates or friends as rather fine birds or +specimens of one kind and another, well qualified to help him with art +and social ideas if nothing more—hence his interest in us. Also, in his +estimation no doubt, we reflected some slight color or light into his +life, which he craved. We had done things too. Nevertheless, in his own +estimation, he was the master, the Can Grande. He could at will, "take +us up or leave us out," or so he thought. We were mere toys, fine +feathers, cap-and-bell artists. It was nice to, "take us around," have +us with him. Smothered in a great richly braided fur coat and fur cap, +he looked as much the Grand Duke as one might wish.</p> + +<p>But I liked him, truly. And what a delicious evening and holiday, all +told, he made of it for us. By leaving a trail of frightened horses, men +and women, and tearing through the gloom as though streets were his +private race-track—I myself as much frightened as any at the roaring +speed of the cars and the possibilities of the road—we arrived at +seven, and by eight were seated to a course dinner of the most +gratifying character. There was no heat in the house as yet, but from +somewhere great logs had been obtained and now blazed in the large +fireplaces. There was no electricity as yet—a private plant was being +installed—but candles and lamps blazed in lovely groups, casting a soft +glow over the great rooms. One room lacked a door, but an immense rug +took its place. There were rugs, hangings and paintings in profusion, +many of them as yet unhung. Some of the most interesting importations of +furniture and statuary were still in the cases in which they had +arrived, with marks of ships and the names of foreign cities upon the +cases. Scattered about the great living-room, dining-room, music-room +and library were enough rugs, divans and chairs as well as musical +instruments—a piano among others—to give the place an air of +completeness and luxury. The walls and ceilings had already been +decorated—in a most florid manner, I must say. Outside were great +balconies and verandahs commanding, as the following <a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" />morning proved, a +very splendid view of a very bleak sea. The sand dunes! The distant +floor of the sea! The ships! Upstairs were nine suites of one-and +two-rooms and bath. The basement was an intricate world of kitchen, +pantry, engine-room, furnace, wine cellars and what not. Outside was a +tawny waste of sand held together in places in the form of hummocks and +even concealing hills by sand-binding grasses.</p> + +<p>That night, because it was windy and dull and bleak, we stayed inside, I +for one going outside only long enough to discover that there were great +wide verandahs of concrete about the house, fit for great entertainments +in themselves, and near at hand, hummocks of sand. Inside all was warm +and flaring enough. The wine cellar seemed to contain all that one might +reasonably desire. Our host once out here was most gay in his mood. He +was most pleasantly interested in the progress of his new home, although +not intensely so. He seemed to have lived a great deal and to be making +the best of everything as though it were something to go through with. +With much talking on the part of us all, the evening passed swiftly +enough. Some of the men could play and sing. One poet recited enchanting +bits of verse. For our inspection certain pieces of furniture and +statuary were unpacked and displayed—a bronze faun some three feet in +height, for one thing. All the time I was sensible of being in contact +with some one who was really in touch with life in a very large way, +financially and otherwise. His mind seemed to be busy with all sorts of +things. There were two Syrians in Paris, he said, who owned a large +collection of rugs suitable for an exhibition. He had an agent who was +trying to secure the best of them for his new home. De Shay had recently +introduced him to a certain Italian count who had a great house in Italy +but could not afford its upkeep. He was going to take over a portion of +its furnishings, after due verification, of course. Did I know the +paintings of Monticelli and Mancini? He had just secured excellent +examples of both. Some time when his new home was further along I must +come out. Then the pictures would be hung, the statuary and furniture in +place. He would get up a week-end party for a select group.</p> + +<p>The talk drifted to music and the stage. At once I saw that because of +his taste, wealth and skill, women formed a large <a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" />and yet rather +toy-like portion of his life, holding about as much relation to his +inner life as do the concubines of an Asiatic sultan. Madame of the +earrings, as I learned from De Shay, was a source of great expense to +him, but at that she was elusive, not easily to be come at. The stage +and Broadway were full of many beauties in various walks of life, many +of whom he knew or to whom he could obtain access. Did I know thus, and +so—such-and-such, and one?</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you," he said after a time and when the wine glasses had been +refilled a number of times, "we must give a party out here some time, +something extraordinary, a real one. De Shay and Bielow" (naming another +artist) "and myself must think it out. I know three different +dancers"—and he began to enumerate their qualities. I saw plainly that +even though women played a minor part in his life, they were the fringe +and embroidery to his success and power. At one a.m. we went to our +rooms, having touched upon most of the themes dear to metropolitan +lovers of life and art.</p> + +<p>The next morning was wonderful—glittering, if windy. The sea sparkled +beyond the waste of sand. I noted anew the richness of the furnishings, +the greatness of the house. Set down in so much sand and facing the +great sea, it was wonderful. There was no order for breakfast; we came +down as we chose. A samovar and a coffee urn were alight on the table. +Rolls, chops, anything, were brought on order. Possibly because I was +one of the first about, my host singled me out—he was up and dressed +when I came down—and we strolled over the estate to see what we should +see.</p> + +<p>Curiously, although I had seen many country homes of pretension and even +luxury, I never saw one that appealed to me more on the ground of +promise and, after a fashion, of partial fulfillment. It was so +unpretentiously pretentious, so really grand in a limited and yet poetic +way. Exteriorly its placement, on a rise of ground commanding that vast +sweep of sea and sand, its verandahs, so very wide—great smooth floors +of red concrete—bordered with stone boxes for flowers and handsomely +designed stone benches, its long walks and drives but newly begun, its +stretch of beach, say a half mile away and possibly a mile and a half +long, to be left, as he remarked, "au naturel," driftwood, stones and +all, struck me <a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" />most favorably. Only one long pier for visiting yachts +was to be built, and a certain stretch of beach, not over three hundred +feet, cleared for bath houses and a smooth beach. On one spot of land, a +high hummock reaching out into the sea, had already been erected a small +vantage tower, open at the bottom for shade and rest, benches turning in +a circle upon a concrete floor, above it, a top looking more like a +small bleak lighthouse than anything else. In this upper portion was a +room reached by small spiral concrete stairs!</p> + +<p>I could not help noting the reserve and <i>savoir faire</i> with which my +host took all this. He was so healthy, assured, interested and, I am +glad to say, not exactly self-satisfied; at least he did not impress me +in that way—a most irritating condition. Plainly he was building a very +splendid thing. His life was nearing its apex. He must not only have had +millions, but great taste to have undertaken, let alone accomplished, as +much as was already visible here. Pointing to a bleak waste of sand +between the house and the sea—and it looked like a huge red and yellow +bird perched upon a waste of sand—he observed, "When you come again in +the spring, that will contain a garden of 40,000 roses. The wind is +nearly always off the sea here. I want the perfume to blow over the +verandahs. I can rotate the roses so that a big percentage of them will +always be in bloom."</p> + +<p>We visited the stables, the garage, an artesian well newly driven, a +drive that was to skirt the sea, a sunken garden some distance from the +house and away from the sea.</p> + +<p>Next spring I came once more—several times, in fact. The rose garden +was then in bloom, the drives finished, the pictures hung. Although this +was not a world in which society as yet deigned to move, it was entirely +conceivable that at a later period it might, and betimes it was crowded +with people smart enough and more agreeable in the main than the hardy, +strident members of the so-called really inner circles. There were +artists, writers, playwrights, singers, actresses, and some nondescript +figures of the ultra-social world—young men principally who seemed to +come here in connection with beautiful young women, models and other +girls whose beauty was their only recommendation to consideration.</p> + +<p>The scene was not without brilliance. A butler and nu<a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" />merous flunkeys +fluttered to and fro. Guests were received at the door by a footman. A +housekeeper and various severe-looking maids governed in the matter of +cleaning. One could play golf, tennis, bridge, motor, fish, swim, drink +in a free and even disconcerting manner or read quietly in one angle or +another of the grounds. There were affairs, much flirting and giggling, +suspicious wanderings to and fro at night—no questions asked as to who +came or whether one was married, so long as a reasonable amount of +decorum was maintained. It was the same on other occasions, only the +house and grounds were full to overflowing with guests and passing +friends, whose machines barked in the drives. I saw as many gay and +fascinating costumes and heard as much clever and at times informative +talk here as anywhere I have been.</p> + +<p>During this fall and winter I was engaged in work which kept me very +much to myself. During the period I read much of X——, banks he was +combining, new ventures he was undertaking. Yet all at once one winter's +day, and out of a clear sky, the papers were full of an enormous +financial crash of which he was the center. According to the newspapers, +the first and foremost of a chain of banks of which he was the head, to +say nothing of a bonding and realty company and some street-railway +project on Long Island, were all involved in the crash. Curiously, +although no derogatory mention had previously been made of him, the +articles and editorials were now most vituperative. Their venom was +especially noticeable. He was a get-rich-quick villain of the vilest +stripe; he had been juggling a bank, a trust company, an insurance +company and a land and street-railway speculative scheme as one would +glass balls. The money wherewith he gambled was not his. He had robbed +the poor, deceived them. Yet among all this and in the huge articles +which appeared the very first day, I noted one paragraph which stuck in +my mind, for I was naturally interested in all this and in him. It read:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Wall Street heard yesterday that Superintendent H——got his + first information concerning the state in which X——'s affairs + were from quarters where resentment may have been cherished + because of his activity in the Long Island Traction field. This is + one of the Street's 'clover patches' and <a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" />the success which the + newcomer seemed to be meeting did not provoke great pleasure."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Another item read:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"A hitch in a deal that was to have transferred the South Shore to + the New York and Queens County System, owned by the Long Island + Railroad, at a profit of almost $2,000,000 to X——, was the cause + of all the trouble. Very active displeasure on the part of certain + powers in Wall Street blocked, it is said, the closing of the deal + for the railroad. They did not want him in this field, and were + powerful enough to prevent it. At the same time pressure from + other directions was brought to bear on him. The clearing-house + refused to clear for his banks. X—— was in need of cash, but + still insisting on a high rate of remuneration for the road which + he had developed to an important point. Their sinister influences + entered and blocked the transfer until it was no longer possible + for him to hold out."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Along with these two items was a vast mass of data, really pages, +showing how, when, where he had done thus and so, "juggled accounts" +between one bank and another, all of which he controlled however, and +most of which he owned, drew out large sums and put in their place +mortgages on, or securities in, new companies which he was +organizing—tricks which were the ordinary routine of Wall Street and +hence rather ridiculous as the sub-stone of so vast a hue and cry.</p> + +<p>I was puzzled and, more than that, moved by the drama of the man's +sudden end, for I understood a little of finance and its ways, also of +what place and power had plainly come to mean to him. It must be +dreadful. Yet how could it be, I asked myself, if he really owned +fifty-one per cent or more in so many companies that he could be such a +dark villain? After all, ownership is ownership, and control, control. +On the face of the reports themselves his schemes did not look so black. +I read everything in connection with him with care.</p> + +<p>As the days passed various other things happened. For one thing, he +tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window of his studio in New +York; for another, he tried to take poison. Now of a sudden a bachelor +sister, of whom I had <a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" />never heard in all the time I had known him, put +in an appearance as his nearest of kin—a woman whose name was not his +own but a variation of it, an "-ovitch" having suddenly been tacked onto +it. She took him to a sanitarium, from which he was eventually turned +out as a criminal, then to a hospital, until finally he surrendered +himself to the police. The names of great lawyers and other bankers +began to enter the case. Alienists of repute, those fine chameleons of +the legal world, were employed who swore first that he was insane, then +that he was not. His sister, who was a physician and scientist of +repute, asked the transfer of all his property to her on the ground that +he was incompetent and that she was his next of kin. To this she swore, +giving as her reasons for believing him insane that he had "illusions of +grandeur" and that he believed himself "persecuted by eminent +financiers," things which smacked more of sanity than anything else to +me. At the same time he and she, as time rather indicated, had arranged +this in part in the hope of saving something out of the great wreck. +There were other curious features: Certain eminent men in politics and +finance who from revelations made by the books of the various banks were +in close financial if not personal relations with X—— denied this +completely. Curiously, the great cry on the part of these was that he +was insane, must be, and that he was all alone in his schemes. His life +on Broadway, on Long Island, in his studio in New York, were ransacked +for details. Enough could not be made of his gay, shameful, spendthrift +life. No one else, of course, had ever been either gay or shameful +before—especially not the eminent and hounding financiers.</p> + +<p>Then from somewhere appeared a new element. In a staggeringly low +tenement region in Brooklyn was discovered somehow or other a very old +man and woman, most unsatisfactory as relatives of such imposing people, +who insisted that they were his parents, that years before because he +and his sister were exceedingly restless and ambitious, they had left +them and had only returned occasionally to borrow money, finally ceasing +to come at all. In proof of this, letters, witnesses, old photos, were +produced. It really did appear as if he and his sister, although they +had long vigorously denied it, really were the son and daughter of the +two who had been <a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" />petty bakers in Brooklyn, laying up a little +competence of their own. I never knew who "dug" them up, but the reason +why was plain enough. The sister was laying claim to the property as the +next of kin. If this could be offset, even though X—— were insane, the +property would at once be thrown into the hands of the various creditors +and sold under a forced sale, of course—in other words, for a song—for +their benefit. Naturally it was of interest to those who wished to have +his affairs wound up to have the old people produced. But the great +financier had been spreading the report all along that he was from +Russia, that his parents, or pseudo-parents, were still there, but that +really he was the illegitimate son of the Czar of Russia, boarded out +originally with a poor family. Now, however, the old people were brought +from Brooklyn and compelled to confront him. It was never really proved +that he and his sister had neglected them utterly or had done anything +to seriously injure them, but rather that as they had grown in place and +station they had become more or less estranged and so ignored them, +having changed their names and soared in a world little dreamed of by +their parents. Also a perjury charge was made against the sister which +effectually prevented her from controlling his estate, a lease long +enough to give the financiers time for their work. Naturally there was a +great hue and cry over her, the scandal, the shame, that they should +thus publicly refuse to recognize their parents as they did or had when +confronted by them. Horrible! There were most heavily illustrated and +tearful Sunday articles, all blazoned forth with pictures of his house +and studio, his banks, cars, yacht, groups of guests, while the motives +of those who produced the parents were overlooked. The pictures of the +parents confronting X—— and his sister portrayed very old and feeble +people, and were rather moving. They insisted that they were his parents +and wept brokenly in their hands. But why? And he denying it! His +sister, who resented all this bitterly and who stood by him valiantly, +repudiated, for his sake of course, his and her so-called parents and +friends.</p> + +<p>I never saw such a running to cover of "friends" in all my life. Of all +those I had seen about his place and in his company, scores on scores of +people reasonably well known in the arts, the stage, the worlds of +finance and music, all eating his <a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" />dinners, riding in his cars, drinking +his wines, there was scarcely any one now who knew him anything more +than "casually" or "slightly"—oh, so slightly! When rumors as to the +midnight suppers, the Bacchic dancing, the automobile parties to his +great country place and the spirited frolics which occurred there began +to get abroad, there was no one whom I knew who had ever been there or +knew anything about him or them. For instance, of all the people who had +been close or closest and might therefore have been expected to be +friendly and deeply concerned was de Shay, his fidus Achates and +literally his pensioner—yet de Shay was almost the loudest in his +denunciation or at least deprecation of X——, his habits and methods! +Although it was he who had told me of Mme.—— and her relation to +X——, who urged me to come here, there and the other place, especially +where X—— was the host, always assuring me that it would be so +wonderful and that X—— was really such a great man, so generous, so +worth-while, he was now really the loudest or at least the most +stand-offish in his comments, pretending never to have been very close +to X——, and lifting his eyebrows in astonishment as though he had not +even guessed what he had actually engineered. His "Did-you-hears," +"Did-you-knows" and "Wouldn't-have-dreamed" would have done credit to a +tea-party. He was so shocked, especially at X——'s robbing poor +children and orphans, although in so far as my reading of the papers +went I could find nothing that went to prove that he had any intention +of robbing anybody—that is, directly. In the usual Wall Street high +finance style he was robbing Peter to pay Paul, that is, he was using +the monies of one corporation which he controlled to bolster up any of +the others which he controlled, and was "washing one hand with the +other," a proceeding so common in finance that to really radically and +truly oppose it, or do away with it, would mean to bring down the whole +fabric of finance in one grand crash.</p> + +<p>Be that as it may. In swift succession there now followed the so-called +"legal" seizure and confiscation of all his properties. In the first +place, by alienists representing the District Attorney and the State +banking department, he was declared sane and placed on trial for +embezzlement. Secondly, his sister's plea that his property be put into +her hands as trustee or <a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" />administrator was thrown out of court and she +herself arrested and confined for perjury on the ground that she had +perjured herself in swearing that she was his next of kin when in +reality his real parents, or so they swore, were alive and in America. +Next, his banks, trust companies and various concerns, including his +great country estate, were swiftly thrown into the hands of receivers +(what an appropriate name!) and wound up "for the benefit of creditors." +All the while X——was in prison, protesting that he was really not +guilty, that he was solvent, or had been until he was attacked by the +State bank examiner or the department back of him, and that he was the +victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy which was using the State banking +department and other means to drive him out of financial life, and that +solely because of his desire to grow and because by chance he had been +impinging upon one of the choicest and most closely guarded fields of +the ultra-rich of Wall Street—the street railway area in New York and +Brooklyn.</p> + +<p>One day, so he publicly swore to the grand jury, by which he was being +examined, as he was sitting in his great offices, in one of the great +sky-scrapers of New York, which occupied an entire floor and commanded +vast panoramas in every direction (another evidence of the man's insane +"delusion of grandeur," I presume), he was called to answer the +telephone. One Mr. Y——, so his assistant said, one of the eminent +financiers of Wall Street and America, was on the wire. Without any +preliminary and merely asking was this Mr. X——on the wire, the latter +proceeded, "This is Mr. Y——. Listen closely to what I am going to say. +I want you to get out of the street railway business in New York or +something is going to happen to you. I am giving you a reasonable +warning. Take it." Then the phone clicked most savagely and ominously +and superiorly at the other end.</p> + +<p>"I knew at the time," went on X——, addressing the grand jury, "that I +was really listening to the man who was most powerful in such affairs in +New York and elsewhere and that he meant what he said. At the same time +I was in no position to get out without closing up the one deal which +stood to net me two million dollars clear if I closed it. At the same +time I wanted to enter this field and didn't see why I <a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" />shouldn't. If I +didn't it spelled not ruin by any means but a considerable loss, a very +great loss, to me, in more ways than one. Oddly enough, just at this +time I was being pressed by those with whom I was associated to wind up +this particular venture and turn my attention to other things. I have +often wondered, in the light of their subsequent actions, why they +should have become so pressing just at this time. At the same time, +perhaps I was a little vain and self-sufficient. I had once got the +better of some agents of another great financier in a Western Power +deal, and I felt that I could put this thing through too. Hence I +refused to heed the warning. However, I found that all those who were +previously interested to buy or at least develop the property were now +suddenly grown cold, and a little later when, having entered on several +other matters, I needed considerable cash, the State banking department +descended on me and, crying fraud and insolvency, closed all my banks.</p> + +<p>"You know how it is when they do this to you. Cry 'Fire!' and you can +nearly wreck a perfectly good theater building. Depositors withdraw, +securities tumble, investigation and legal expenses begin, your +financial associates get frightened or ashamed and desert you. Nothing +is so squeamish or so retiring and nervous as money. Time will show that +I was not insolvent at the time. The books will show a few technically +illegal things, but so would the books or the affairs of any great bank, +especially at this time, if quickly examined. I was doing no more than +all were doing, but they wanted to get me out—and they did."</p> + +<p>Regardless of proceedings of various kinds—legal, technical and the +like—X—— was finally sent to the penitentiary, and spent some time +there. At the same time his confession finally wrecked about nine other +eminent men, financiers all. A dispassionate examination of all the +evidence eight years later caused me to conclude without hesitation that +the man had been a victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy, the object of +which was to oust him from opportunities and to forestall him in methods +which would certainly have led to enormous wealth. He was apparently in +a position and with the brains to do many of the things which the ablest +and coldest financiers of his day had been and were doing, and they did +not <a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" />want to be bothered with, would not brook, in short, his +approaching rivalry. Like the various usurpers of regal powers in +ancient days, they thought it best to kill a possible claimant to the +throne in his infancy.</p> + +<p>But that youth of his! The long and devious path by which he had come! +Among the papers relating to the case and to a time when he could not +have been more than eighteen, and when he was beginning his career as a +book agent, was a letter written to his mother (August, 1892), which +read:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"MY DEAR PARENTS: Please answer me at once if I can have anything + of you, or something of you or nothing. Remember this is the first + and the last time in my life that I beg of you anything. You have + given to the other child not $15 but hundreds, and now when I, the + very youngest, ask of you, my parents, $15, are you going to be so + hard-hearted as to refuse me? Without these $15 it is left to me + to be without income for two or three weeks.</p> + +<p> "For God's sake, remember what I ask of you, and send me at once + so that I should cease thinking of it. Leon, as I have told you, + will give me $10, $15 he has already paid for the contract, and + your $15 will make $25. Out of this I need $10 for a ticket and + $15 for two or three weeks' board and lodging.</p> + +<p> "Please answer at once. Don't wait for a minute, and send me the + money or write me one word 'not.' Remember this only that if you + refuse me I will have nothing in common with you.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Your son,<br /></span> +<span>"——"<br /></span> +</div></div></blockquote> + +<p>There was another bit of testimony on the part of one Henry Dom, a +baker, who for some strange reason came forward to identify him as some +one he had known years before in Williamsburgh, which read:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I easily recognize them" (X—— and his sister) "from their + pictures in the newspapers. I worked for X——'s father, who was a + baker in Williamsburgh, and frequently addressed letters that were + written by X—— Senior and his wife to Dr. Louise X—— who was + then studying medicine in Philadelphia. X—— was then a boy going + to school, but working in <a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" />his father's bakery mornings and + evenings. He did not want to do that, moaned a great deal, and his + parents humored him in his attitude. He was very vain, liked to + appear intellectual. They kept saying to their friends that he + should have a fine future. Five years later, after I had left them + once, I met the mother and she told me that X—— was studying + banking and getting along fine."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Some seven years after the failure and trial by which he had so +summarily been disposed of and after he had been released from prison, I +was standing at a certain unimportant street corner in New York waiting +for a car when I saw him. He was passing in the opposite direction, not +very briskly, and, as I saw, plainly meditatively. He was not so well +dressed. The clothes he wore while good were somehow different, lacking +in that exquisite something which had characterized him years before. +His hat—well, it was a hat, not a Romanoff shako nor a handsome panama +such as he had affected in the old days. He looked tired, a little worn +and dusty, I thought.</p> + +<p>My first impulse was of course to hail him, my second not, since he had +not seen me. It might have been embarrassing, and at any rate he might +not have even remembered me. But as he walked I thought of the great +house by the sea, the studio, the cars, the 40,000 roses, the crowds at +his summer place, the receptions in town and out, Madame of the earrings +(afterward married to a French nobleman), and then of the letter to his +mother as a boy, the broken shoes in the winter time, his denial of his +parents, the telephone message from the financial tiger. "Vanity, +vanity," saith the preacher. The shores of our social seas are strewn +with pathetic wrecks, the whitening bone of half-sand-buried ships.</p> + +<p>At the next corner he paused, a little uncertain apparently as to which +way to go, then turned to the left and was lost. I have never seen nor +heard of him since.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="The_Mighty_Rourke" id="The_Mighty_Rourke" /><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" /><i>The Mighty Rourke</i></h2> + + +<p>When I first met him he was laying the foundation for a small dynamo in +the engine-room of the repair shop at Spike, and he was most unusually +loud in his protestations and demands. He had with him a dozen Italians, +all short, swarthy fellows of from twenty-five to fifty years of age, +who were busy bringing material from a car that had been pushed in on +the side-track next to the building. This was loaded with crushed stone, +cement, old boards, wheelbarrows, tools, and the like, all of which were +to be used in the labor that he was about to undertake. He himself was +standing in the doorway of the shop where the work was to be conducted, +coat off, sleeves rolled up, and shouting with true Irish insistence, +"Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Get the shovels, now! Get the picks! Bring +some sand here! Bring some stone! Where's the cement, now? Where's the +cement? Jasus Christ! I must have some cement! What arre ye all doin'? +What do ye think ye're up here fer? Hurry, now, hurry! Bring the +cement!" and then, having concluded this amazing fanfare, calmly turning +to gaze about as if he were the only one in the world who had the right +to stand still.</p> + +<p>More or less oppressed with life myself at the time, I was against all +bosses, and particularly against so seemingly a vicious one as this. +"What a slave driver!" I thought. "What a brute!" And yet I remember +thinking that he was not exactly unpleasant to look at, either—quite +the contrary. He was medium in height, thick of body and neck, with +short gray hair and mustache, and bright, clear, twinkling Irish gray +eyes, and he carried himself with an air of unquestionable authority. It +was much as if he had said, "I am the boss here"; and, indeed, he was. +Is it this that sends the Irish to rule as captains of hundreds the +world over?</p> + +<p>The job he was bossing was not very intricate or important, but it was +interesting. It consisted of digging a trench ten by twelve feet, and +shaping it up with boards into a "form," after which concrete was to be +mixed and poured in, and some iron rods set to fasten the engine to—an +engine bed, no less. It was not so urgent but that it might have been +conducted <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" />with far less excitement, but what are you to do when you are +naturally excitable, love to make a great noise, and feel that things +are going forward whether they are or not? Plainly this particular +individual loved noise and a great stir. So eager was he to have done +with it, no matter what it was or where, that he was constantly trotting +to and fro, shouting, "Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Hurry, now, bring the +shovels! Bring the picks!" and occasionally bursting forth with a +perfect avalanche of orders. "Up with it! Down with it! Front with it! +Back with it! In with it! Out with it!" all coupled with his favorite +expletive, "Jasus Christ," which was as innocent of evil, I subsequently +came to know, as a prayer. In short, he was simply wild Irish, and that +was all there was to him—a delightful specimen, like Namgay Doola.</p> + +<p>But, as I say, at the time he seemed positively appalling to me, a +virulent specimen, and I thought, "The Irish brute! To think of human +beings having to work for a brute like that! To think of his driving men +like that!" However, I soon began to discover that he was not so bad as +he seemed, and then I began to like him.</p> + +<p>The thing that brought about this swift change of feeling in me was the +attitude of his men toward him. Although he was so insistent with his +commands, they did not seem to mind nor to strain themselves working. +They were not killing themselves, by any means. He would stand over +them, crying, "Up with it! Up with it! Up with it! Up with it!" or "Down +with it! Down with it! Down with it!" until you would have imagined +their nerves would be worn to a frazzle. As it was, however, they did +not seem to care any more than you would for the ticking of a clock; +rather, they appeared to take it as a matter of course, something that +had to be, and that one was prepared for. Their steps were in the main +as leisurely as those of idlers on Fifth Avenue or Broadway. They +carried boards or stone as one would objects of great value. One could +not help smiling at the incongruity of it; it was farcical. Finally +gathering the full import of it all, I ventured to laugh, and he turned +on me with a sharp and yet not unkindly retort.</p> + +<p>"Ha! ha! ha!" he mocked. "If ye had to work as hard as these min, ye +wouldn't laugh."</p> + +<p>I wanted to say, "Hard work, indeed!" but instead I <a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" />replied, "Is that +so? Well, I don't see that they're killing themselves, or you either. +You're not as fierce as you sound."</p> + +<p>Then I explained that I was not laughing at them but at him, and he took +it all in good part. Since I was only a nominal laborer here, not a real +one—permitted to work for my health, for twelve cents an hour—we fell +to conversing upon railroad matters, and in this way our period of +friendship began.</p> + +<p>As I learned that morning, Rourke was the foreman-mason for minor tasks +for all that part of the railroad that lay between New York and fifty +miles out, on three divisions. He had a dozen or so men under him and +was in possession of one car, which was shunted back and forth between +the places in which he happened to be working. He was a builder of +concrete platforms, culverts, coal-bins, sidewalks, bridge and building +piers, and, in fact, anything that could be made out of crushed stone +and cement, or bricks and stone, and he was sent here and there, as +necessity required. As he explained to me at the time, he sometimes rose +as early as four a.m. in order to get to his place of labor by seven. +The great railroad company for which he toiled was no gentle master, and +did not look upon his ease, or that of his men, as important. At the +same time, as he himself confessed, he did not mind hard work—liked it, +in short. He had been working now for the company for all of twenty-two +years, "rain or shine." Darkness or storm made no difference to him. +"Shewer, I have to be there," he observed once with his quizzical, +elusive Irish grin. "They're not payin' me wages fer lyin' in bed. If ye +was to get up that way yerself every day fer a year, me b'y," he added, +eyeing my spare and none too well articulated frame, "it'd make a man av +ye."</p> + +<p>"Yes?" I said tolerantly. "And how much do you get, Rourke?"</p> + +<p>"Two an' a half a day."</p> + +<p>"You don't say!" I replied, pretending admiration.</p> + +<p>The munificence of the corporation that paid him two and a half dollars +a day for ten hours' work, as well as for superintending and +constructing things of such importance, struck me forcibly. Perhaps, as +we say in America, he "had a right" to be happy, only I could not see +it. At the same time, I could <a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" />not help thinking that he was better +situated than myself at the time. I had been ill, and was now earning +only twelve cents an hour for ten hours' work, and the sight of the +foreman for whom I was working was a torture to my soul. He was such a +loud-mouthed, blustering, red-headed ignoramus, and I wanted to get out +from under him. At the same time, I was not without sufficient influence +so to do, providing I could find a foreman who could make use of me. The +great thing was to do this, and the more I eyed this particular specimen +of foreman the better I liked him. He was genial, really kindly, +amazingly simple and sincere. I decided to appeal to him to take me on +his staff.</p> + +<p>"How would you like to take me, Mr. Rourke, and let me work for you?" I +asked hopefully, after explaining to him why I was here.</p> + +<p>"Shewer," he replied. "Ye'd do fine."</p> + +<p>"Would I have to work with the Italians?" I asked, wondering how I would +make out with a pick and shovel. My frame was so spare at the time that +the question must have amused him, considering the type of physique +required for day labor.</p> + +<p>"There'll be plenty av work fer ye to do without ever yer layin' a hand +to a pick er shovel," he replied comfortingly. "Shewer, that's no work +fer white min. Let the nagurs do it. Look at their backs an' arrms, an' +then look at yers."</p> + +<p>I was ready to blush for shame. These poor Italians whom I was so ready +to contemn were immeasurably my physical superiors.</p> + +<p>"But why do you call them negroes, Rourke?" I asked after a time. +"They're not black."</p> + +<p>"Well, bedad, they're not white, that's waan thing shewer," he added. +"Aany man can tell that be lookin' at thim."</p> + +<p>I had to smile. It was so dogmatic and unreasoning.</p> + +<p>"Very well, then, they're black," I said, and we left the matter.</p> + +<p>Not long after I put in a plea to be transferred to him, at his request, +and it was granted. The day that I joined his flock, or gang, as he +called it, he was at Williamsbridge, a little station north on the +Harlem, building a concrete coal-bin. It was a pretty place, surrounded +by trees and a grass-<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" />plot, a vast improvement upon a dark indoor shop, +and seemed to me a veritable haven of rest. Ah, the smiling morning sun, +the green leaves, the gentle fresh winds of heaven!</p> + +<p>Rourke was down in an earthen excavation under the depot platform when I +arrived, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, and +when I looked in on him hopefully he looked up and smiled.</p> + +<p>"So here ye arre at last," he said with a grin.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I laughed.</p> + +<p>"Well, ye're jist in time; I waant ye to go down to the ahffice."</p> + +<p>"Certainly," I replied, but before I could say more he climbed out of +his hole, his white jeans odorous of the new-turned earth, and fished in +the pocket of an old gray coat which lay beside him for a soiled and +crumpled letter, which he finally unfolded with his thick, clumsy +fingers. Then he held it up and looked at it defiantly.</p> + +<p>"I waant ye to go to Woodlawn," he continued, "an' look after some bolts +that arre up there—there's a keg av thim—an' sign the bill fer thim, +an' ship thim down to me. An' thin I waant ye to go down to the ahffice +an' take thim this o.k." Here again he fished around and produced +another crumpled slip, this time of a yellow color (how well I came to +know them!), which I soon learned was an o.k. blank, a form which had to +be filled in and signed for everything received, if no more than a stick +of wood or a nail or a bolt. The company demanded these of all foremen, +in order to keep its records straight. Its accounting department was +useless without them. At the same time, Rourke kept talking of the +"nonsinse av it," and the "onraisonableness" of demanding o.k.s for +everything. "Ye'd think some one was goin' to sthale thim from thim," he +declared irritably and defiantly.</p> + +<p>I saw at once that some infraction of the railroad rules had occurred +and that he had been "called down," or "jacked up" about it, as the +railroad men expressed it. He was in a high state of dudgeon, and as +defiant and pugnacious as his royal Irish temper would allow. At the +same time he was pleased to think that I or some one had arrived who +would relieve him of this damnable "nonsinse," or so he hoped. He was +not so inexperienced as not to imagine that I could help him with <a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" />all +this. In fact, as time proved, this was my sole reason for being here.</p> + +<p>He flung a parting shot at his superior as I departed.</p> + +<p>"Tell him that I'll sign fer thim when I get thim, an' not before," he +declared.</p> + +<p>I went on my way, knowing full well that no such message was for +delivery, and that he did not intend that it should be. It was just the +Irish of it. I went off to Woodlawn and secured the bolts, after which I +went down to the "ahffice" and reported. There I found the chief clerk, +a mere slip of a dancing master in a high collar and attractive office +suit, who was also in a high state of dudgeon because Rourke, as he now +explained, had failed to render an o.k. for this and other things, and +did not seem to understand that he, the chief clerk, must have them to +make up his reports. Sometimes o.k.s did not come in for a month or +more, the goods lying around somewhere until Rourke could use them. He +wanted to know what explanation Rourke had to offer, and when I +suggested that the latter thought, apparently, that he could leave all +consignments of goods in one station or another until such time as he +needed them before he o.k.ed for them, he fairly foamed.</p> + +<p>"Say," he almost shouted, at the same time shoving his hands +distractedly through his hair, "what does he think I am? How does he +think I'm going to make up my books? He'll leave them there until he +needs them, will he? Well, he's a damned fool, and you go back and tell +him I said so. He's been long enough on the road to know better. You go +back and tell him I said that I want a signed form for everything +consigned to him the moment he learns that it's waiting for him, and I +want it right away, without fail, whether it's a single nut or a car of +sand. I want it. He's got to come to time about this now, or something's +going to drop. I'm not going to stand it any longer. How does he think +I'm going to make up my books? I wish he'd let you attend to these +matters while you're up there. It will save an awful lot of trouble in +this office and it may save him his job. There's one thing sure: he's +got to come to time from now on, or either he quits or I do."</p> + +<p>These same o.k.s plus about twenty-five long-drawn-out <a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" />reports or +calculations, retroactive and prospective, covering every possible +detail of his work from the acknowledgment of all material received up +to and including the expenditure of even so much as one mill's worth of +paper, were the bane of my good foreman's life. As I learned afterward, +he had nearly his whole family, at least a boy and two girls, assisting +him nights on this part of the work. In addition, while they were +absolutely of no import in so far as the actual work of construction was +concerned—and that was really all that interested Rourke—they were an +essential part of the system which made it possible for him to do the +work at all—a point which he did not seem to be able to get clear. At +the same time, there was an unsatisfactory side to this office +technicalia, and it was this: If a man could only sit down and reel off +a graphic account of all that he was doing, accompanied by facts and +figures, he was in excellent standing with his superiors, no matter what +his mechanical defects might be; whereas, if his reports were not clear, +or were insufficient, the efficiency of his work might well be +overlooked. In a vague way, Rourke sensed this and resented it. He knew +that his work was as good as could be done, and yet here were these +constant reports and o.k.s to irritate and delay him. Apparently they +aided actual construction no whit—but, of course, they did. Although he +was a better foreman than most, still, because of his lack of skill in +this matter of accounting, he was looked upon as more or less a failure, +especially by the chief clerk. Naturally, I explained that I would do my +best, and came away.</p> + +<p>When I returned, however, I decided to be politic. I could not very well +work with a pick and shovel, and this was about all that was left +outside of that. I therefore explained as best I could the sad plight of +the chief clerk, who stood in danger of losing his job unless these +things came in promptly.</p> + +<p>"You see how it is, Rourke, don't you?" I pleaded.</p> + +<p>He seemed to see, but he was still angry.</p> + +<p>"An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!" he echoed contentiously, but in a +somewhat more conciliatory spirit. "He wants an o.k. blank, does he? +Well, I expect ye might as well give thim to him, thin. I think the man +lives on thim things, the way he's aalways caallin' fer thim. Ye'd think +I <a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" />was a bookkeeper an' foreman at the same time; it's somethin' aaful. +An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!" and he sputtered to silence.</p> + +<p>A little while later he humorously explained that he had "clane forgot +thim, anyhow."</p> + +<p>The ensuing month was a busy one for us. We had a platform to lay at +Morrisania, a chimney to build at Tarrytown, a sidewalk to lay at White +Plains, and a large cistern to dig and wall in at Tuckahoe. Besides +these, there were platforms to build at Van Cortlandt and Mount Kisco, +water-towers at Highbridge and Ardsley, a sidewalk and drain at Caryl, a +culvert and an ash-pit at Bronx Park, and some forty concrete piers for +a building at Melrose—all of which required any amount of running and +figuring, to say nothing of the actual work of superintending and +constructing, which Rourke alone could look after. It seemed ridiculous +to me at the time that any one doing all this hard practical labor +should not be provided with a clerk or an accountant to take at least +some of this endless figuring off his hands. At the same time, if he had +been the least bit clever, he could have provided himself with one +permanently by turning one of his so-called laborers into a +clerk—carrying a clerk as a laborer—but plainly it had never occurred +to him. He depended on his family. The preliminary labor alone of +ordering and seeing that the material was duly shipped and unloaded was +one man's work; and yet Rourke was expected to do it all.</p> + +<p>In spite of all this, however, he displayed himself a masterful worker. +I have never seen a better. He preferred to superintend, of course, to +get down into the pit or up on the wall, and measure and direct. At the +same time, when necessary to expedite a difficult task, he would toil +for hours at a stretch with his trowel and his line and his level and +his plumb-bob, getting the work into shape, and you would never hear a +personal complaint from him concerning the weariness of labor. On the +contrary, he would whistle and sing until something went wrong, when +suddenly you would hear the most terrific uproar of words: "Come out av +that! Come out, now! Jasus Christ, man, have ye no sinse at aall? Put it +down! Put it down! What arre ye doin'? What did I tell ye? Have ye no +raison in ye, no sinse, ye h'athen nagur?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" />Great heavens!" I used to think, "what has happened now?"</p> + +<p>You would have imagined the most terrible calamity; and yet, all told, +it might be nothing of any great import—a little error of some kind, +more threatening than real, and soon adjusted. It might last for a few +moments, during which time the Italians would be seen hurrying excitedly +to and fro; and then there would come a lull, and Rourke would be heard +to raise his voice in tuneful melody, singing or humming or whistling +some old-fashioned Irish "Come-all-ye."</p> + +<p>But the thing in Rourke that would have pleased any one was his ready +grasp for the actualities of life—his full-fledged knowledge that work +is the thing, not argument, or reports, or plans, but the direct +accomplishment of something tangible, the thing itself. Thus, while I +was working with him, at least nothing that might concern the clerical +end of the labor could disturb him, but, if the sky fell, and eight +thousand chief clerks threatened to march upon him in a body demanding +reports and o.k.s, he would imperturbably make you wait until the work +was done. Once, when I interrupted him to question him concerning some +of these same wretched, pestering aftermaths of labor, concerning which +he alone could answer, he shut me off with: "The reports! The reports! +What good arre the reports! Ye make me sick. What have the reports to do +with the work? If it wasn't fer the work, where would the reports be?" +And I heartily echoed "Where?"</p> + +<p>Another thing was his charming attitude toward his men, kindly and sweet +for all his storming, that innate sense of something intimate and +fatherly. He had a way of saying kindly things in a joking manner which +touched them. When he arrived in the morning, for instance, it was +always in the cheeriest way that he began. "Come, now, b'ys, ye have a +good day's work before ye today. Get the shovels, Jimmie. Bring the +line, Matt!" and then he would go below himself, if below it was, and +there would be joy and peace until some obstacle to progress interfered. +I might say in passing that Matt and Jimmie, his faithful henchmen, were +each between forty and fifty, if they were a day—poor, gnarled, dusty, +storm-tossed Italians who had come from heaven knows where, had endured +God knows what, and were now rounding <a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" />out a work-a-day existence under +the sheltering wing of this same Rourke, a great and protecting power to +them.</p> + +<p>This same Matt was a funny little Italian, soft of voice and gentle of +manner, whom Rourke liked very much, but with whom he loved to quarrel. +He would go down in any hole where the latter was working, and almost +invariably shortly after you would hear the most amazing uproar issuing +therefrom, shouts of: "Put it here, I say! Put it here! Down with it! +Here! Here! Jasus Christ, have ye no sinse at aall?"—coupled, of +course, with occasional guttural growls from Matt, who was by no means +in awe of his master and who feared no personal blows. The latter had +been with Rourke for so long that he was not in the least overawed by +his yelling and could afford to take such liberties. Occasionally, not +always, Rourke would come climbing out of the hole, his face and neck +fairly scarlet with heat, raging and shouting, "I'll get shut av ye! +I'll have no more thruck with ye, ye blitherin', crazy loon! What good +arre ye? What work can ye do? Naathin'! Naathin'! I'll be shut av ye +now, an' thin maybe I'll have a little p'ace." Then he would dance +around and threaten and growl until something else would take his +attention, when he would quiet down and be as peaceful as ever. Somehow, +I always felt that in spite of all the difficulties involved, he enjoyed +these rows—must fight, in short, to be happy. Sometimes he would go +home without saying a word to Matt, a conclusion which at first I +imagined portended the end of the latter, but soon I came to know +better. For the next morning Matt would reappear as unconcernedly as +though nothing had happened, and Rourke would appear not to notice or +remember.</p> + +<p>Once, anent all this, I said to him, "Rourke, how many times have you +threatened to discharge Matt in the last three years?"</p> + +<p>"Shewer," he replied, with his ingratiating grin, "a man don't mane aall +he says aall the time."</p> + +<p>The most humorous of all his collection of workingmen, however, was the +aforementioned Jimmie, a dark, mild-eyed, soft-spoken Calabrian, who had +the shrewdness of a Machiavelli and the pertness of a crow. He lived in +the same neighborhood as Rourke, far out in one of those small towns on +<a name="Page_251" id="Page_251" />the Harlem, sheltering so many Italians, for, like a hen with a brood +of chicks, Rourke kept all his Italians gathered close about him. +Jimmie, curiously, was the one who was always selected to run his family +errands for him, a kind of valet to Rourke, as it were—selected for +some merit I could never discover, certainly not one of speed. He was +nevertheless constantly running here and there like an errand boy, his +worn, dusty, baggy clothes making him look like a dilapidated bandit +fresh from a sewer. On the job, however, no matter what it might be, +Jimmie could never be induced to do real, hard work. He was always above +it, or busy with something else. But as he was an expert cement-mixer +and knew just how to load and unload the tool-car, two sinecures of +sorts, nothing was ever said to him. If any one dared to reprove him, +myself for instance (a mere interloper to Jimmie), he would reply: "Yeh! +Yeh! I know-a my biz. I been now with Misha Rook fifteen year. I know-a +my biz." If you made any complaint to Rourke, he would merely grin and +say, "Ha! Jimmie's the sharp one," or perhaps, "I'll get ye yet, ye +fox," but more than that nothing was ever done.</p> + +<p>One day, however, Jimmie failed to comply with an extraordinary order of +Rourke's, which, while it resulted in no real damage, produced a most +laughable and yet characteristic scene. A strict rule of the company was +that no opening of any kind into which a person might possibly step or +fall should be left uncovered at any station during the approach, stay, +or departure of any train scheduled to stop at that station. Rourke was +well aware of this rule. He had a copy of it on file in his collection +of circulars. In addition, he had especially delegated Jimmie to attend +to this matter, a task which just suited the Italian as it gave him +ample time to idle about and pretend to be watching. This it was which +made the crime all the greater.</p> + +<p>On this particular occasion Jimmie had failed to attend to this matter. +We had been working on the platform at Williamsbridge, digging a pit for +a coal-bin, when a train bearing the general foreman came along. The +latter got off at the station especially to examine the work that had +been done so far. When the train arrived there was the hole wide open +with Rourke below shouting and gesticulating about something, <a name="Page_252" id="Page_252" />and +totally unconscious, of course, that his order had been neglected. The +general foreman, who was, by the way, I believe, an admirer of Rourke, +came forward, looked down, and said quietly: "This won't do, Rourke. +You'll have to keep the work covered when a train is approaching. I've +told you that before, you know."</p> + +<p>Rourke looked up, so astonished and ashamed that he should have been put +in such a position before his superior that he hardly knew what to say. +I doubt if any one ever had a greater capacity for respecting his +superiors, anyhow. Instead of trying to answer, he merely choked and +began to shout for Jimmie, who came running, crying, as he always did, +"What's da mat'? What's da mat'?"</p> + +<p>"What's da mat'? What's da mat'?" mocked Rourke, fairly seething with a +marvelous Irish fury. "What the devil do ye suppose is the mat'? What do +ye mane be waalkin' away an' l'avin' the hole uncovered? Didn't I tell +ye niver to l'ave a hole when a train's comin'? Didn't I tell ye to +attind to that an' naathin' else? An' now what have ye been doin'? Be +all the powers, what d'ye mane be l'avin' it? What else arre ye good +fer? What d'ye mane be lettin' a thing like that happen, an' Mr. Wilson +comin' along here, an' the hole open?"</p> + +<p>He was as red as a beet, purple almost, perspiring, apoplectic. During +all this tirade Mr. Wilson, a sad, dark, anæmic-looking person, troubled +with acute indigestion, I fancy, stood by with an amused, kindly, and +yet mock severe expression on his face. I am sure he did not wish to be +severe.</p> + +<p>Jimmie, dumbfounded, scarcely knew what to say. In the face of Rourke's +rage and the foreman's presence, he did his best to remedy his error by +covering the hole, at the same time stuttering something about going for +a trowel.</p> + +<p>"A trowel!" cried Rourke, glaring at him. "A trowel, ye h'athen ginny! +What'd ye be doin' lookin' fer a trowel, an' a train comin' that close +on ye it could 'a' knocked ye off the thrack? An' the hole open, an' Mr. +Wilson right here! Is that what I told ye? Is that what I pay ye fer? Be +all the saints! A trowel, is it? I'll trowel ye! I'll break yer h'athen +Eyetalian skull, I will. Get thim boards on, an' don't let me ketch ye +l'avin' such a place as that open again. I'll get shut av ye, ye +blitherin' lunatic."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253" />When it was all over and the train bearing the general foreman had +gone, Rourke quieted down, but not without many fulgurous flashes that +kept the poor Italian on tenterhooks.</p> + +<p>About an hour later, however, another train arrived, and, by reason of +some intervening necessity and the idle, wandering mood of the Italian, +the hole was open again. Jimmie was away behind the depot somewhere, +smoking perhaps, and Rourke was, as usual, down in the hole. This time +misfortune trebled itself, however, by bringing, not the general +foreman, but the supervisor himself, a grave, quiet man, of whom Rourke +stood in the greatest awe. He was so solid, so profound, so severe. I +don't believe I ever saw him smile. He walked up to the hole, and +looking reproachfully down, said: "Is this the way you leave your +excavations, Rourke, when a train is coming? Don't you know better than +to do a thing like that?"</p> + +<p>"Jimmie!" shouted Rourke, leaping to the surface of the earth with a +bound, "Jimmie! Now, be Jasus, where is that bla'guard Eyetalian? Didn't +I tell him not to l'ave this place open!" and he began shoving the +planks into place himself.</p> + +<p>Jimmie, suddenly made aware of this new catastrophe, came running as +fast as his short legs would carry him, scared almost out of his wits. +He was as pale as a very dark and dirty Italian could be, and so wrought +up that his facial expression changed involuntarily from moment to +moment. Rourke was in a fairly murderous mood, only he was so excited +and ashamed that he could not speak. Here was the supervisor, and here +was himself, and conditions—necessity for order, etc.—would not permit +him to kill the Italian in the former's presence. He could only choke +and wait. To think that he should be made a mark of like this, and that +in the face of his great supervisor! His face and neck were a beet-red, +and his eyes flashed with anger. He merely glared at his recalcitrant +henchman, as much as to say, "Wait!" When this train had departed and +the dignified supervisor had been carried safely out of hearing he +turned on Jimmie with all the fury of a masterful and excitable temper.</p> + +<p>"So ye'll naht cover the hole, after me tellin' ye naht fifteen minutes +ago, will ye?" he shouted. "Ye'll naht cover the hole! An' what'll ye be +tellin' me ye was doin' now?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_254" id="Page_254" />I carry da waut (water) for da concrete," pleaded Jimmie weakly.</p> + +<p>"Waut fer the concrete," almost moaned Rourke, so great was his fury, +his angry face shoved close to the Italian's own. "Waut fer the +concrete, is it? It's a pity ye didn't fall into yer waut fer the +concrete, ye damned nagur, an' drown! Waut fer the concrete, is it, an' +me here, an' Mr. Mills steppin' off an' lookin' in on me, ye +black-hearted son of a Eyetalian, ye! I'll waut fer the concrete ye! +I'll crack yer blitherin' Eyetalian skull with a pick, I will! I'll +chuck ye in yer waut fer the concrete till ye choke, ye flat-footed, +leather-headed lunatic! I'll tache ye to waalk aaf an' l'ave the hole +open, an' me in it. Now, be Jasus, get yer coat an' get out av this. +Get—I'm tellin' ye! I'll have no more thruck with ye! I'll throuble no +more with ye. Ye're no damned good. Out with ye! An' niver show me yer +face again!" And he made a motion as if he would grab him and rend him +limb from limb.</p> + +<p>Jimmie, well aware of his dire position, was too clever, however, to let +Rourke seize him. During all this conversation he had been slowly +backing away, always safely beyond Rourke's reach, and now ran—an +amazing feat for him. He had evidently been through many such scenes +before. He retreated first behind the depot, and then when Rourke had +gone to work once more down in his hole, came back and took a safe +position on guard over the hitherto sadly neglected opening. When the +next train came he was there to shove the boards over before it neared +the station, and nothing more was said about the matter. Rourke did not +appear to notice him. He did not even seem to see that he was there. The +next morning, however, when the latter came to work as usual, it was, +"Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie!" just as if nothing had happened. I was never +more astonished in my life.</p> + +<p>An incident, even more ridiculous, but illustrative of the atmosphere in +which Rourke dwelt, occurred at Highbridge one frosty October Sunday +morning, where because of seepage from a hill which threatened to +undermine some tracks, Rourke was ordered to hurry and build a drain—a +thing which, because the order came on Saturday afternoon, required +Sunday labor, a most unusual thing in his case. But in spite of the +order, Rourke, who was a good Catholic, felt <a name="Page_255" id="Page_255" />impelled before coming to +go to at least early mass, and in addition—a regular Sunday practice +with him, I presume—to put on a long-skirted Prince Albert coat, which +I had never seen before and which lent to his stocky figure some amusing +lines. It was really too tight, having been worn, I presume, every +Sunday regularly since his wedding day. In addition, he had donned a +brown derby hat which, to me at least, gave him a most unfamiliar look.</p> + +<p>I, being curious more than anything else and wishing to be out of doors +as much as possible, also went up, arriving on the scene about nine. +Rourke did not arrive until ten. In the meantime, I proceeded to build +myself a fire on the dock, for we were alongside the Harlem River and a +brisk wind was blowing. Then Rourke came, fresh from church, smiling and +genial, in the most cheerful Sunday-go-to-meeting frame of mind, but +plainly a little conscious of his grand garb.</p> + +<p>"My," I said, surveying him, "you look fine. I never saw you dressed up +before."</p> + +<p>"L'ave aaf with yer taalk," he replied. "I know well enough how I +look—good enough."</p> + +<p>Then he bestirred himself about the task of examining what had been done +so far. But I could see, in spite of all the busy assurance with which +he worked, that he was still highly conscious of his clothes and a +little disturbed by what I or others might think. His every-day garb +plainly suited his mood much better.</p> + +<p>Everything went smoothly until noon, not a cloud in the sky, when, +looking across the tracks at that hour, I beheld coming toward us with +more or less uncertain step another individual, stocky of figure and +evidently bent on seeing Rourke—an Irishman as large as Rourke, +younger, and, if anything, considerably coarser in fiber. He was very +red-faced, smooth shaven, with a black derby hat pulled down over his +eyes and wearing a somewhat faded tight-fitting brown suit. He was +drunk, or nearly so, that was plain from the first. From the moment +Rourke beheld him he seemed beside himself with anger or irritation. His +expression changed completely and he began to swell, as was customary +with him when he was angry, as though suffering from an internal +eruption of some kind.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_256" id="Page_256" />The bla'guard!" I heard him mutter. "Now, be gob, what'll that felly +be waantin'?" and then as the stranger drew nearer, "Who was it tould +him I was here? Maybe some waan at the ahffice."</p> + +<p>Regardless of his speculations on this score, the stranger picked his +way across the tracks and came directly to him, his face and manner +indicating no particularly friendly frame of mind.</p> + +<p>"Maybe ye'll be lettin' me have that money now," he began instanter, and +when Rourke made no reply, merely staring at him, he added, "I'll be +waantin' to know now, when it is ye're goin' to give me the rest av me +time fer that Scarborough job. I've been waitin' long enough."</p> + +<p>Rourke stirred irritably and aggressively before he spoke. He seemed +greatly put out, shamed, to think that the man should come here so, +especially on this peaceful Sabbath morning.</p> + +<p>"I've tould ye before," he replied defiantly after a time, "that ye've +had aall ye earned, an' more. Ye left me without finishin' yer work, an' +ye'll get no more time from me. If ye waant more, go down to the ahffice +an' see if they'll give it to ye. I have no money fer ye here," and he +resumed a comfortable position before the fire, his hands behind his +back.</p> + +<p>"It's siven dollars ye still owe me," returned the other, ignoring +Rourke's reply, "an' I waant it now."</p> + +<p>"Well, ye'll naht get it," replied my boss. "I've naathin' fer ye, I'm +tellin' ye. I owe ye naathin'."</p> + +<p>"Is that so?" returned the other. "Well, we'll see about that. Ye'll be +after givin' it to me, er I'll get it out of ye somehow. It's naht goin' +to be ch'ated out av me money I am."</p> + +<p>"I'm owin' ye naathin'," insisted Rourke. "Ye may as well go away from +here. Ye'll get naathin'. If ye waant anything more, go an' see the +ahffice," and now he strode away to where the Italians were, ignoring +the stranger completely and muttering something about his being drunk. +The latter followed him, however, over to where he stood, and continued +the dispute. Rourke ignored him as much as possible, only exclaiming +once, "L'ave me be, man. Ye're drunk."</p> + +<p>"I'm naht drunk," returned the other. "Once an' fer all now, I'm askin' +ye, arre ye goin' to give me that money?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_257" id="Page_257" />No," replied Rourke, "I'm naht."</p> + +<p>"Belave me," said the stranger, "I'll get it out av ye somehow," but for +the moment he made no move, merely hanging about in an uncertain way. He +seemed to have no definite plan for collecting the money, or if he had +he had by now abandoned it.</p> + +<p>Without paying any more attention to him, Rourke, still very irritated +and defiant, returned to the fire. He tried to appear calm and +indifferent, but the ex-workman, a non-union mason, I judged, followed +after, standing before him and staring in the defiant, irritating way a +drunken man will, not quite able to make up his mind what else to do. +Presently Rourke, more to relieve the tedium of an embarrassing +situation than anything else (a number of accusatory remarks having been +passed), turned and began poking at the blaze, finally bending over to +lay on a stick of wood. On the instant, and as if seized by sudden +inspiration, whether because the tails of Rourke's long coat hung out in +a most provoking fashion and suggested the thing that followed or not, I +don't know, but now the red-faced intruder jumped forward, and seizing +them in a most nimble and yet vigorous clutch, gave an amazing yank, +which severed them straight up the back, from seat to nape, at the same +time exclaiming:</p> + +<p>"Ye'll naht pay me, will ye? Ye'll naht, will ye?"</p> + +<p>On the instant a tremendous change came over the scene. It was as swift +as stage play. Instantly Rourke was upright and faced about, shouting, +"Now, be gob, ye've torn me coat, have ye! Now I'll tache ye! Now I'll +show ye! Wait! Get ready, now. Now I'll fix ye, ye drunken, thavin' +loafer," and at the same time he began to move upon the enemy in a kind +of rhythmic, cryptic circle (some law governing anger and emotion, I +presume), the while his hands opened and shut and his eyes looked as +though they would be veiled completely by his narrowing lids. At the +same time the stranger, apparently seeing his danger, began backing and +circling in the same way around Rourke, as well as around the fire, +until it looked as though they were performing a war dance. Round and +round they went like two Hopi bucks or Zulu warriors, their faces +displaying the most murderous cunning and intention to slay—only, +instead of feathers and beads, <a name="Page_258" id="Page_258" />they had on their negligible best. All +the while Rourke was calling, "Come on, now! Get ready, now! I'll show +ye, now! I'll fix ye, now! It's me coat ye'll rip, is it? Come on, now! +Get ready! Make yerself ready! I'm goin' to give ye the lickin' av yer +life! Come on, now! Come on, now! Come on, now!"</p> + +<p>It was as though each had been secreted from the other and had to be +sought out in some mysterious manner and in a circle. In spite of the +feeling of distress that an impending struggle of this kind gives one, I +could not help noting the comic condition of Rourke's back—the long +coat beautifully ripped straight up the back, its ends fluttering in the +wind like fans, and exposing his waistcoat and Sunday boiled white +shirt—and laying up a laugh for the future. It was too ridiculous. The +stranger had a most impressive and yet absurd air of drunken sternness +written in his face, a do-or-die look.</p> + +<p>Whether anything serious would really have happened I was never +permitted to learn, for now, in addition to myself and the Italians, all +of them excited and ready to defend their lord and master, some +passengers from the nearby station and the street above as well as a +foreman of a section gang helping at this same task, a great hulking +brute of a man who looked quite able to handle both Rourke and his +opponent at one and the same time, came forward and joined in this +excited circle. Considerable effort was made on the part of the latter +to learn just what the trouble was, after which the big foreman +interposed with:</p> + +<p>"What's the trouble here? Come, now! What's all this row, Rourke? Ye +wouldn't fight here, would ye? Have him arristed, er go to his home—ye +say ye know him—but don't be fightin' here. Supposin' waan av the +bosses should be comin' along now?" and at the same time he interposed +his great bulk between the two.</p> + +<p>Rourke, quieted some by this interruption but still sputtering with rage +and disgrace, shouted, "Lookit me coat! Lookit what he done to me coat! +See what he done to me coat! Man alive, d'ye think I'm goin' to stand +fer the likes av that? It's naht me that can be waalked on by a loafer +like that—an' me payin' him more than ever he was worth, an' him +waalkin' aaf an' l'avin' the job half done. I'll fix him this time. I'll +show him. I'll tache him to be comin' around an' disturbin' a man <a name="Page_259" id="Page_259" />when +he's at his work. I'll fix him now," and once more he began to move. But +the great foreman was not so easily to be disposed of.</p> + +<p>"Well then, let's caall the police," he argued in a highly conciliatory +mood. "Ye can't be fightin' him here. Sure, ye don't waant to do that. +What'll the chafe think? What is it ye'll think av yerself?"</p> + +<p>At the same time he turned to find the intruder and demand to know what +he meant by it, but the latter had already decamped. Seeing the crowd +that had and was gathering, and that he was likely to encounter more +forms of trouble than he had anticipated, he had started down the track +toward Mott Haven.</p> + +<p>"I'll fix ye!" Rourke shouted when he saw him going. "Ye'll pay fer +this. I'll have ye arristed. Wait! Ye'll naht get aaf so aisy this +time."</p> + +<p>But just the same the storm was over for the present, anyhow, the man +gone, and in a little while Rourke left for his home at Mount Vernon to +repair his tattered condition. I never saw a man so crestfallen, nor one +more determined to "have the laa on him" in my life. Afterwards, when I +inquired very cautiously what he had done about it—this was a week or +two later—he replied, "Shewer, what can ye do with a loafer like that? +He has no money, an' lockin' him up won't help his wife an' children +any."</p> + +<p>Thus ended a perfect scene out of Kilkenny.</p> + +<p>It was not so very long after I arrived that Rourke began to tell me of +a building which the company was going to erect in Mott Haven Yard, one +of its great switching centers. It was to be an important affair, +according to him, sixty by two hundred feet in breadth and length, of +brick and stone, and was to be built under a time limit of three months, +an arrangement by which the company hoped to find out how satisfactorily +it could do work for itself rather than by outside contract, which it +was always hoping to avoid. From his manner and conversation, I judged +that Rourke was eager to get this job, for he had been a contractor of +some ability in his day before he ever went to work for the company, and +felt, I am sure, that fate had done him an injustice in not allowing him +to remain one. In addition, he felt a little above the odds <a name="Page_260" id="Page_260" />and ends of +masonry that he was now called on to do, where formerly he had done so +much more important work. He was eager to be a real foreman once more, a +big one, and to show the company that he could erect this building and +thus make a little place for himself in the latter's good graces, +although to what end I could not quite make out. He would never have +made a suitable general foreman. At the same time, he was a little +afraid of the clerical details, those terrible nightmares of reports, +o.k.s and the like.</p> + +<p>"How arre ye feelin', Teddy, b'y?" he often inquired of me during this +period, with a greater show of interest in my troublesome health than +ever before. I talked of leaving, I suppose, from time to time because +sheer financial necessity was about to compel it.</p> + +<p>"Fine, Rourke," I would say, "never better. I'm feeling better every +day."</p> + +<p>"That's good. Ye're the right man in the right place now. If ye was to +sthay a year er two at this work it would be the makin' av ye. Ye're too +thin. Ye need more chist," and he would tap my bony chest in a kindly +manner. "I niver have a sick day, meself."</p> + +<p>"That's right, Rourke," I replied pleasantly, feeling keenly the need of +staying by so wonderful a lamp of health. "I intend to stick at it as +long as I can."</p> + +<p>"Ye ought to; it'll do ye good. If we get the new buildin' to build, +it'll be better yet for ye. Ye'll have plenty to do there to relave yer +mind."</p> + +<p>"Relieve, indeed!" I thought, but I did not say so. On the contrary I +felt so much sympathy for this lusty Irishman and his reasonable +ambitions that I desired to help him, and urged him to get it. I +suggested indirectly that I would see him through, which touched him +greatly. He was a grateful creature in his way, but so excitable and so +helplessly self-reliant that there was no way of aiding him without +doing it in a secret or rather self-effacing manner. He would have much +preferred to struggle along alone and fail, though I doubt whether real +failure could have come to Rourke so essentially capable was he.</p> + +<p>In another three weeks the work was really given him to do, and then +began one of the finest exhibitions of Irish <a name="Page_261" id="Page_261" />domination and +self-sufficiency that I have ever witnessed. We moved to Mott Haven +Yard, a great network of tracks and buildings, in the center of which +this new building was to be erected. Rourke was given a large force of +men, whom he fairly gloried in bossing. He had as many as forty +Italians, to say nothing of a number of pseudo-carpenters and masons +(not those shrewd hawks clever enough to belong to the union, but +wasters and failures of another type) who did the preliminary work of +digging for the foundation, etc. Handling these, Rourke was in his +element. He loved to see so much brisk work going on. He would trot to +and fro about the place, beaming in the most angelic fashion, and +shouting orders that could be heard all over the neighborhood. It was +delicious to watch him. At times he would stand by the long trenches +where the men were digging for the foundation, a great line of them, +their backs bent over their work, and rub his hands in pleasingly human +satisfaction, saying, "We're goin' along fine, Teddy. I can jist see me +way to the top av the buildin'," and then he would proceed to harass and +annoy his men out of pure exuberance of spirits.</p> + +<p>"Ye waant to dig it so, man," or, "Ye don't handle yer pick right; can't +ye see that? Hold it this way." Sometimes he would get down in the +trench and demonstrate just how it was to be done, a thing which greatly +amused some of the workmen. Frequently he would exhibit to me little +tricks or knacks of his trade, such as throwing a trowel ten feet so +that it would stick in a piece of wood; turning a shovel over with a +lump of dirt on it and not dropping the lump, and similar simple acts, +always adding, "Ye'll niver be a mason till ye can do that."</p> + +<p>When he was tired of fussing with the men outside he would come around +to the little wooden shed, where I was keeping the mass of orders and +reports in shape and getting his material ready for him, and look over +the papers in the most knowing manner. When he had satisfied himself +that everything was going right, he would exclaim, "Ye're jist the b'y +fer the place, Teddy. Ye'd made a good bookkeeper. If ever I get to be +Prisident, I'll make ye me Sicretary av State."</p> + +<p>But the thing which really interested and enthralled Rourke was the +coming of the masons—those hardy buccaneers of <a name="Page_262" id="Page_262" />the laboring world who +come and go as they please, asking no favors and brooking no +interference. Plainly he envied them their reckless independence at the +same time that he desired to control their labor in his favor—a task +worthy of the shrewdest diplomat. Never in my life have I seen such a +gay, ruthless, inconsiderate point of view as these same union masons +represented, a most astounding lot. They were—are, I suppose I should +say—our modern buccaneers and Captain Kidds of the laboring world, +demanding, if you please, their six a day, starting and stopping almost +when they please, doing just as little as they dare and yet face their +own decaying conscience, dropping any task at the most critical and +dangerous point, and in other ways rejoicing in and disporting +themselves in such a way as to annoy the representatives of any +corporation great or small that suffered the sad compulsion of employing +them. Seriously, I am not against union laborers. I like them. They +spell rude, blazing life. But when you have to deal with them!</p> + +<p>Plainly, Rourke anticipated endless rows. Their coming promised him the +opportunity he inmostly desired, I suppose, of once more fussing and +fuming with real, strong, determined and pugnacious men like himself, +who would not take his onslaughts tamely but would fight him back, as he +wished strong men to do. He was never weary of talking of them.</p> + +<p>"Wait till we have thirty er forty av thim on the line," he once +observed to me in connection with them, "every man layin' his six +hundred bricks a day, er takin' aaf his apron! Thim's the times ye'll +see what excitement manes, me b'y. Thim's the times."</p> + +<p>"What'll I see, Rourke?" I asked interestedly.</p> + +<p>"Throuble enough. Shewer, they're no crapin' Eyetalians, that'll let ye +taalk to thim as ye pl'ase. Indade not. Ye'll have to fight with them +fellies."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's a queer state of affairs," I remarked, and then added, "Do +you think you can handle them, Rourke?"</p> + +<p>"Handle thim!" he exclaimed, his glorious wrath kindling in anticipation +of a possible conflict. "Handle thim, an' the likes av a thousand av +thim! I know them aall, every waan av thim, an' their thricks. It's naht +foolin' me they'll be. But, me b'y," he added instructively, "it's a +fine job ye'll have runnin'<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263" /> down to the ahffice gettin' their time." +(This is the railroad man's expression for money due, or wages.) "Ye'll +have plenty av that to do, I'm tellin' ye."</p> + +<p>"You don't mean to say that you're going to discharge them, Rourke, do +you?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Shewer!" he exclaimed authoritatively. "Why shouldn't I? They're jist +the same as other min. Why shouldn't I?" Then he added, after a pause, +"But it's thim that'll be comin' to me askin' fer their time instid av +me givin' it to thim, niver fear. They're not the kind that'll let ye +taalk back to thim. If their work don't suit ye, it's 'give me me time.' +Wait till they'll be comin' round half drunk in the mornin', an' not +feelin' just right. Thim's the times ye'll find out what masons arre +made av, me b'y."</p> + +<p>I confess this probability did not seem as brilliant to me as it did to +him, but it had its humor. I expressed wonder that he would hire them if +they were such a bad lot.</p> + +<p>"Where else will ye get min?" he demanded to know. "The unions have the +best, an' the most av thim. Thim outside fellies don't amount to much. +They're aall pore, crapin' creatures. If it wasn't fer the railroad +bein' against the union I wouldn't have thim at aall, and besides," he +added thoughtfully, and with a keen show of feeling for their point of +view, "they have a right to do as they pl'ase. Shewer, it's no common +workmen they arre. They can lay their eight hundred bricks a day, if +they will, an' no advice from any waan. If ye was in their place ye'd do +the same. There's no sinse in allowin' another man to waalk on ye whin +ye can get another job. I don't blame thim. I was a mason wanst meself."</p> + +<p>"You don't mean to say that you acted as you say these men are going to +act?"</p> + +<p>"Shewer!"</p> + +<p>"Well, I shouldn't think you'd be very proud of it."</p> + +<p>"I have me rights," he declared, flaring up. "What kind av a man is it +that'll let himself be waalked on? There's no sinse in it. It's naht +natchral. It's naht intinded that it should be so."</p> + +<p>"Very well," I said, smoothing the whole thing over, and so that ended.</p> + +<p>Well, the masons came, and a fine lot of pirates they surely <a name="Page_264" id="Page_264" />were. Such +independence! Such defiance! Such feverish punctilio in regard to their +rights and what forms and procedures they were entitled to! I stared in +amazement. For the most part they were hale, healthy, industrious +looking creatures, but so obstreperously conscious of their own rights, +and so proud of their skill as masons, that there was no living with +them. Really, they would have tried the patience of a saint, let alone a +healthy, contentious Irish foreman-mason. "First off," as the railroad +men used to say, they wanted to know whether there were any non-union +men on the job, and if so, would they be discharged instanter?—if not, +no work—a situation which gave Rourke several splendid opportunities +for altercations, which he hastened to improve, although the non-union +men <i>went</i>, of course. Then they wanted to know when, where, and how +they were to get their money, whether on demand at any time they chose, +and this led to more trouble, since the railroad paid only once a month. +However, this was adjusted by a special arrangement being made whereby +the building department stood ready to pay them instantly on demand, +only I had to run down to the division office each time and get their +pay for them at any time that they came to ask for it! Then came an +argument (or many of them) as to the number of bricks they were to lay +an hour; the number of men they were to carry on one line, or wall; the +length of time they were supposed to work, or had worked, or would +work—all of which was pure food and drink to Rourke. He was in his +element at last, shouting, gesticulating, demanding that they leave or +go to——. After all these things had been adjusted, however, they +finally consented to go to work, and then of course the work flew. It +was a grand scene, really inspiring—forty or fifty masons on the line, +perhaps half as many helpers or mixers, the Italians carrying bricks, +and a score of carpenters now arriving under another foreman to set the +beams and lay the joists as the walls rose upward.</p> + +<p>Rourke was about all the time now, arguing and gesticulating with this +man or that, fighting with this one or the other, and calling always to +some mason or other to "come down" and get his "time." "Come down! Come +down!" I would hear, and then would see him rushing for the office, a +defiant and even threatening mason at his heels; Rourke <a name="Page_265" id="Page_265" />demanding that +I make out a time-check at once for the latter and go down to the +"ahffice" and get the money, the while the mason hung about attempting +to seduce other men to a similar point of view. Once in a while, but +only on rare occasions, Rourke would patch up a truce with a man. As a +rule, the mason was only too eager to leave and spend the money thus far +earned, while Rourke was curiously indifferent as to whether he went or +stayed. "'Tis to drink he waants," he would declare amusedly. To me it +was all like a scene out of comic opera.</p> + +<p>Toward the last, however, a natural calm set in, the result no doubt of +weariness and a sense of surfeit, which sent the building forward apace. +During this time Rourke was to be seen walking defiantly up and down the +upper scaffolding of the steadily rising walls, or down below on the +ground in front of his men, his hands behind his back, his face screwed +into a quizzical expression, his whole body bearing a look of bristling +content and pugnacity which was too delicious for words. Since things +were going especially well he could not say much, but still he could +look his contentiousness, and did. Even now he would occasionally manage +to pick a quarrel with some lusty mason or other, which resulted in the +customary descent to the office, but not often.</p> + +<p>But one cold December day, about three weeks later, when I was just +about to announce that I could no longer delay my departure, seeing that +my health was now as good, or nearly so, as my purse was lean, and that, +whether I would or no, I must arrange to make more money, that a most +dreadful accident occurred. It appeared that Rourke and a number of +Italians, including Matt and Jimmie, were down in the main room of the +building, now fast nearing completion, when the boiler of the hoisting +engine, which had been placed inside the building and just at the +juncture of three walls, blew up and knocked out this wall and the +joists of the second and third floors loose, thus precipitating all of +fifteen thousand bricks, which had been placed on the third floor, into +this room below. For a few moments there had been a veritable hurricane +of bricks and falling timber; and then, when it was over, it was found +that the mighty Rourke and five Italians were embedded in or under them, +and all but Jimmie more <a name="Page_266" id="Page_266" />or less seriously injured or killed. Two +Italians were killed outright. A third died later. Rourke, in +particular, was unfortunately placed and terribly injured. His body from +the waist down was completely buried by a pile of bricks, and across his +shoulder lay a great joist pressing where it had struck him, and cutting +his neck and ear. He was a pathetic sight when we entered, bleeding and +pain-wrenched yet grim and undaunted, as one might have expected.</p> + +<p>"I'm tight fast, me lad," he said when he could speak. "It's me legs +that's caught, not me body. But give a hand to the min, there. The +Eyetalians are underneath."</p> + +<p>Disregarding his suggestion, however, we began working about him, every +man throwing away bricks like a machine; but he would not have it.</p> + +<p>"'Tind to the min!" he insisted with all of his old firmness. "The +Eyetalians are under there—Matt an' Jimmie. Can't ye see that I'll be +all right till ye get thim out? Come, look after the min!"</p> + +<p>We fell to this end of the work, although by now others had arrived, and +soon there was a great crowd assisting—men coming from the yard and the +machine shop. Although embedded in this mass of material and most +severely injured, there was no gainsaying him, and he still insisted on +directing us as best he could. But now he was so picturesque, so much +nobler, really, than he had been in his healthier, uninjured days. A +fabled giant, he seemed to me, half-god, half-man, composed in part of +flesh, in part of brick and stone, gazing down on our earthly efforts +with the eye of a demi-god.</p> + +<p>"Come, now—get the j'ists from aaf the end, there. Take the bricks away +from that man. Can't ye see? There's where his head is—there. There! +Jasus Christ—theyer!"</p> + +<p>You would have thought we were Italians ourselves, poor wisps of +nothing, not his rescuers, but slaves, compelled to do his lordly +bidding.</p> + +<p>After a time, however, we managed to release him and all his five +helpers—two dead, as I say, and Matt badly cut about the head and +seriously injured, while Jimmie, the imperturbable, was but little the +worse for a brick mark on one shoulder. He was more or less frightened, +of course, and comic to look at, even in this dread situation. "Big-a +smash," he <a name="Page_267" id="Page_267" />exclaimed when he recovered himself. "Like-a da worl' fall. +Misha Rook! Misha Rook! Where Misha Rook?"</p> + +<p>"Here I am, ye Eyetalian scalawag," exclaimed the unyielding Rourke +genially, who was still partially embedded when Jimmie was released. +There was, however, a touch of sorrow in his voice as he added weakly, +"Arre ye hurted much?"</p> + +<p>"No, Misha Rook. Help Misha Rook," replied Jimmie, grabbing at bricks +himself, and so the rescue work of "Rook" went on.</p> + +<p>Finally he was released, although not without deprecating our efforts +the while (this wonderful and exceptional fuss over him), and exclaiming +at one point as we tugged at joists and beams rather frantically, "Take +yer time. Take yer time. I'm naht so bad fixed as aall that. Take yer +time. Get that board out o' the way there, Jimmie."</p> + +<p>But he was badly "fixed," and "hurted" unto death also, as we now found, +and as he insisted he was not. His hip was severely crushed by the +timbers and his legs broken, as well as his internal organs disarranged, +although we did not know how badly at the time. Only after we had +removed all the weight did he collapse and perhaps personally realize +how serious was his plight. He was laid on a canvas tarpaulin brought by +the yard-master and spread on the chip-strewn ground, while the doctors +from two ambulances worked over him. While they were examining his +wounds he took a critical and quizzical interest in what they were +doing, and offered one or two humorous suggestions. Finally, when they +were ready to move him he asked how he was, and on being told that he +was all right, looked curiously about until he caught my eye. I could +see that he realized how critical it was with him.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to see a priest, Teddy," he whispered, "and, if ye don't mind, +I'd like ye to go up to Mount Vernon an' tell me wife. They'll be after +telegraphin' her if ye don't. Break it aisy, if ye will. Don't let 'er +think there's anything serious. There's no need av it. I'm naht hurted +so bad as aall that."</p> + +<p>I promised, and the next moment one of the doctors shot a spray of +cocaine into his hip to relieve what he knew must be his dreadful pain. +A few moments later he lost consciousness, after which I left him to the +care of the hospital authorities and hurried away to send the priest and +to tell his wife.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268" />For a week thereafter he lingered in a very serious condition and +finally died, blood-poisoning having set in. I saw him at the hospital a +day or two before, and, trying to sympathize with his condition, I +frequently spoke of what I deemed the dreadful uncertainty of life and +the seeming carelessness of the engineer in charge of the hoisting +engine. He, however, had no complaint to make.</p> + +<p>"Ye must expect thim things," was his only comment. "Ye can't aalways +expect to go unhurted. I niver lost a man before, nor had one come to +haarm. 'Tis the way av things, ye see."</p> + +<p>Mighty Rourke! You would have thought the whole Italian population of +Mount Vernon knew and loved him, the way they turned out at his funeral. +It was a state affair for most of them, and they came in scores, packing +the little brick church at which he was accustomed to worship full to +overflowing. Matt was there, bandaged and sore, but sorrowful; and +Jimmie, artful and scheming in the past, but now thoroughly subdued. He +was all sorrow, and sniveled and blubbered and wept hot, blinding tears +through the dark, leathery fingers of his hands.</p> + +<p>"Misha Rook! Misha Rook!" I heard him say, as they bore the body in; and +when they carried it out of the church, he followed, head down. As they +lowered it to the grave he was inconsolable.</p> + +<p>"Misha Rook! Misha Rook! I work-a for him fifteen year!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="A_Mayor_and_His_People" id="A_Mayor_and_His_People" /><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269" /><i>A Mayor and His People</i></h2> + + +<p>Here is the story of an individual whose political and social example, +if such things are ever worth anything (the moralists to the contrary +notwithstanding), should have been, at the time, of the greatest +importance to every citizen of the United States. Only it was not. Or +was it? Who really knows? Anyway, he and his career are entirely +forgotten by now, and have been these many years.</p> + +<p>He was the mayor of one of those dreary New England mill towns in +northern Massachusetts—a bleak, pleasureless realm of about forty +thousand, where, from the time he was born until he finally left at the +age of thirty-six to seek his fortune elsewhere, he had resided without +change. During that time he had worked in various of the local mills, +which in one way and another involved nearly all of the population. He +was a mill shoe-maker by trade, or, in other words, a factory shoe-hand, +knowing only a part of all the processes necessary to make a shoe in +that fashion. Still, he was a fair workman, and earned as much as +fifteen or eighteen dollars a week at times—rather good pay for that +region. By temperament a humanitarian, or possibly because of his own +humble state one who was compelled to take cognizance of the +difficulties of others, he finally expressed his mental unrest by +organizing a club for the study and propagation of socialism, and later, +when it became powerful enough to have a candidate and look for +political expression of some kind, he was its first, and thereafter for +a number of years, its regular candidate for mayor. For a long time, or +until its membership became sufficient to attract some slight political +attention, its members (following our regular American, unintellectual +custom) were looked upon by the rest of the people as a body of harmless +kickers, filled with fool notions about a man's duty to his fellowman, +some silly dream about an honest and economical administration of public +affairs—their city's affairs, to be exact. We are so wise in America, +so interested in our fellowman, so regardful of his welfare. They were +so small in number, however, that they were little more than an object +of pleasant jest, useful for that purpose alone.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270" />This club, however, continued to put up its candidate until about 1895, +when suddenly it succeeded in polling the very modest number of +fifty-four votes—double the number it had succeeded in polling any +previous year. A year later one hundred and thirty-six were registered, +and the next year six hundred. Then suddenly the mayor who won that +year's battle died, and a special election was called. Here the club +polled six hundred and one, a total and astonishing gain of one. In 1898 +the perennial candidate was again nominated and received fifteen +hundred, and in 1899, when he ran again, twenty-three hundred votes, +which elected him.</p> + +<p>If this fact be registered casually here, it was not so regarded in that +typically New England mill town. Ever study New England—its Puritan, +self-defensive, but unintellectual and selfish psychology? Although this +poor little snip of a mayor was only elected for one year, men paused +astounded, those who had not voted for him, and several of the older +conventional political and religious order, wedded to their church and +all the routine of the average puritanic mill town, actually cried. No +one knew, of course, who the new mayor was, or what he stood for. There +were open assertions that the club behind him was anarchistic—that +ever-ready charge against anything new in America—and that the courts +should be called upon to prevent his being seated. And this from people +who were as poorly "off" commercially and socially as any might well be. +It was stated, as proving the worst, that he was, or had been, a mill +worker!—and, before that a grocery clerk—both at twelve a week, or +less!! Immediate division of property, the forcing of all employers to +pay as much as five a day to every laborer (an unheard-of sum in New +England), and general constraint and subversion of individual rights +(things then unknown in America, of course), loomed in the minds of +these conventional Americans as the natural and immediate result of so +modest a victory. The old-time politicians and corporations who +understood much better what the point was, the significance of this +straw, were more or less disgruntled, but satisfied that it could be +undone later.</p> + +<p>An actual conversation which occurred on one of the outlying street +corners one evening about dusk will best illustrate the entire +situation.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_271" id="Page_271" />Who is the man, anyway?" asked one citizen of a total stranger whom he +had chanced to meet.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no one in particular, I think. A grocery clerk, they say."</p> + +<p>"Astonishing, isn't it? Why, I never thought those people would get +anything. Why, they didn't even figure last year."</p> + +<p>"Seems to be considerable doubt as to just what he'll do."</p> + +<p>"That's what I've been wondering. I don't take much stock in all their +talk about anarchy. A man hasn't so very much power as mayor."</p> + +<p>"No," said the other.</p> + +<p>"We ought to give him a trial, anyway. He's won a big fight. I should +like to see him, see what he looks like."</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing startling. I know him."</p> + +<p>"Rather young, ain't he?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Where did he come from?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, right around here."</p> + +<p>"Was he a mill-hand?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>The stranger made inquiry as to other facts and then turned off at a +corner.</p> + +<p>"Well," he observed at parting, "I don't know. I'm inclined to believe +in the man. I should like to see him myself. Good-night."</p> + +<p>"Good-night," said the other, waving his hand. "When you see me again +you will know that you are looking at the mayor."</p> + +<p>The inquirer stared after him and saw a six-foot citizen, of otherwise +medium proportions, whose long, youthful face and mild gray eyes, with +just a suggestion of washed-out blue in them, were hardly what was to be +expected of a notorious and otherwise astounding political figure.</p> + +<p>"He is too young," was the earliest comments, when the public once +became aware of his personality.</p> + +<p>"Why, he is nothing but a grocery clerk," was another, the skeptical and +condemnatory possibilities of which need not be dilated upon here.</p> + +<p>And he was, in his way—nothing much of a genius, as such things go in +politics, but an interesting figure. Without <a name="Page_272" id="Page_272" />much taste (or its +cultivated shadow) or great vision of any kind, he was still a man who +sensed the evils of great and often unnecessary social inequalities and +the need of reorganizing influences, which would tend to narrow the vast +gulf between the unorganized and ignorant poor, and the huge +beneficiaries of unearned (yes, and not even understood) increment. For +what does the economic wisdom of the average capitalist amount to, after +all: the narrow, gourmandizing hunger of the average multi-millionaire?</p> + +<p>At any rate, people watched him as he went to and fro between his office +and his home, and reached the general conclusion after the first +excitement had died down that he did not amount to much.</p> + +<p>When introduced into his office in the small but pleasant city hall, he +came into contact with a "ring," and a fixed condition, which nobody +imagined a lone young mayor could change. Old-time politicians sat there +giving out contracts for street-cleaning, lighting, improvements and +supplies of all kinds, and a bond of mutual profit bound them closely +together.</p> + +<p>"I don't think he can do much to hurt us," these individuals said one to +another. "He don't amount to much."</p> + +<p>The mayor was not of a talkative or confiding turn. Neither was he cold +or wanting in good and natural manners. He was, however, of a +preoccupied turn of mind, "up in the air," some called it, and smoked a +good many cigars.</p> + +<p>"I think we ought to get together and have some sort of a conference +about the letting of contracts," said the president of the city council +to him one morning shortly after he had been installed. "You will find +these gentlemen ready to meet you half-way in these matters."</p> + +<p>"I'm very glad to hear that," he replied. "I've something to say in my +message to the council, which I'll send over in the morning."</p> + +<p>The old-time politician eyed him curiously, and he eyed the old-time +politician in turn, not aggressively, but as if they might come to a +very pleasant understanding if they wanted to, and then went back to his +office.</p> + +<p>The next day his message was made public, and this was its key-note:</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_273" id="Page_273" />All contract work for the city should be let with a proviso, that the +workmen employed receive not less than two dollars a day."</p> + +<p>The dissatisfied roar that followed was not long in making itself heard +all over the city.</p> + +<p>"Stuff and nonsense," yelled the office jobbers in a chorus. +"Socialism!" "Anarchy!" "This thing must be put down!" "The city would +be bankrupt in a year." "No contractor could afford to pay his ordinary +day laborers two a day. The city could not afford to pay any contractor +enough to do it."</p> + +<p>"The prosperity of the city is not greater than the prosperity of the +largest number of its component individuals," replied the mayor, in a +somewhat altruistic and economically abstruse argument on the floor of +the council hall. "We must find contractors."</p> + +<p>"We'll see about that," said the members of the opposition. "Why, the +man's crazy. If he thinks he can run this town on a goody-good basis and +make everybody rich and happy, he's going to get badly fooled, that's +all there is to that."</p> + +<p>Fortunately for him three of the eight council members were fellows of +the mayor's own economic beliefs, individuals elected on the same ticket +with him. These men could not carry a resolution, but they could stop +one from being carried over the mayor's veto. Hence it was found that if +the contracts could not be given to men satisfactory to the mayor they +could not be given at all, and he stood in a fair way to win.</p> + +<p>"What the hell's the use of us sitting here day after day!" were the +actual words of the leading members of the opposition in the council +some weeks later, when the fight became wearisome. "We can't pass the +contracts over his veto. I say let 'em go."</p> + +<p>So the proviso was tacked on, that two a day was the minimum wage to be +allowed, and the contracts passed.</p> + +<p>The mayor's followers were exceedingly jubilant at this, more so than +he, who was of a more cautious and less hopeful temperament.</p> + +<p>"Not out of the woods yet, gentlemen," he remarked to a group of his +adherents at the reform club. "We have to do a great many things +sensibly if we expect to keep the people's confidence and 'win again.'"</p> + +<p><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274" />Under the old system of letting contracts, whenever there was a wage +rate stipulated, men were paid little or nothing, and the work was not +done. There was no pretense of doing it. Garbage and ashes accumulated, +and papers littered the streets. The old contractor who had pocketed the +appropriated sum thought to do so again.</p> + +<p>"I hear the citizens are complaining as much as ever," said the mayor to +this individual one morning. "You will have to keep the streets clean."</p> + +<p>The contractor, a robust, thick-necked, heavy-jawed Irishman, of just so +much refinement as the sudden acquisition of a comfortable fortune would +allow, looked him quizzically over, wondering whether he was "out" for a +portion of the appropriation or whether he was really serious.</p> + +<p>"We can fix that between us," he said.</p> + +<p>"There's nothing to fix," replied the mayor. "All I want you to do is to +clean the streets."</p> + +<p>The contractor went away and for a few days after the streets were +really clean, but it was only for a few days.</p> + +<p>In his walks about the city the mayor himself found garbage and paper +uncollected, and then called upon his new acquaintance again.</p> + +<p>"I'm mentioning this for the last time, Mr. M——," he said. "You will +have to fulfill your contract, or resign in favor of some one who will."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'll clean them, well enough," said this individual, after five +minutes of rapid fire explanation. "Two dollars a day for men is high, +but I'll see that they're clean."</p> + +<p>Again he went away, and again the mayor sauntered about, and then one +morning sought out the contractor in his own office.</p> + +<p>"This is the end," he said, removing a cigar from his mouth and holding +it before him with his elbow at right angles. "You are discharged from +this work. I'll notify you officially to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"It can't be done the way you want it," the contractor exclaimed with an +oath. "There's no money in it at two dollars. Hell, anybody can see +that."</p> + +<p>"Very well," said the mayor in a kindly well-modulated tone. "Let +another man try, then."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275" />The next day he appointed a new contractor, and with a schedule before +him showing how many men should be employed and how much profit he might +expect, the latter succeeded. The garbage was daily removed, and the +streets carefully cleaned.</p> + +<p>Then there was a new manual training school about to be added to the +public school system at this time, and the contract for building was to +be let, when the mayor threw a bomb into the midst of the old-time +jobbers at the city council. A contractor had already been chosen by +them and the members were figuring out their profits, when at one of the +public discussions of the subject the mayor said:</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't the city build it, gentlemen?"</p> + +<p>"How can it?" exclaimed the councilmen. "The city isn't an individual; +it can't watch carefully."</p> + +<p>"It can hire its own architect, as well as any contractor. Let's try +it."</p> + +<p>There were sullen tempers in the council chamber after this, but the +mayor was insistent. He called an architect who made a ridiculously low +estimate. Never had a public building been estimated so cheaply before.</p> + +<p>"See here," said one of the councilmen when the plans were presented to +the chamber—"This isn't doing this city right, and the gentlemen of the +council ought to put their feet down on any such venture as this. You're +going to waste the city's money on some cheap thing in order to catch +votes."</p> + +<p>"I'll publish the cost of the goods as delivered," said the mayor. "Then +the people can look at the building when it's built. We'll see how cheap +it looks then."</p> + +<p>To head off political trickery on the part of the enemy he secured bills +for material as delivered, and publicly compared them with prices paid +for similar amounts of the same material used in other buildings. So the +public was kept aware of what was going on and the cry of cheapness for +political purposes set at naught. It was the first public structure +erected by the city, and by all means the cheapest and best of all the +city's buildings.</p> + +<p>Excellent as these services were in their way, the mayor realized later +that a powerful opposition was being generated and that if he were to +retain the interest of his constituents <a name="Page_276" id="Page_276" />he would have to set about +something which would endear him and his cause to the public.</p> + +<p>"I may be honest," he told one of his friends, "but honesty will play a +lone hand with these people. The public isn't interested in its own +welfare very much. It can't be bothered or hasn't the time. What I need +is something that will impress it and still be worth while. I can't be +reëlected on promises, or on my looks, either."</p> + +<p>When he looked about him, however, he found the possibility of +independent municipal action pretty well hampered by mandatory +legislation. He had promised, for instance, to do all he could to lower +the exorbitant gas rate and to abolish grade crossings, but the law said +that no municipality could do either of these things without first +voting to do so three years in succession—a little precaution taken by +the corporation representing such things long before he came into power. +Each vote must be for such contemplated action, or it could not become a +law.</p> + +<p>"I know well enough that promises are all right," he said to one of his +friends, "and that these laws are good enough excuses, but the public +won't take excuses from me for three years. If I want to be mayor again +I want to be doing something, and doing it quick."</p> + +<p>In the city was a gas corporation, originally capitalized at $45,000, +and subsequently increased to $75,000, which was earning that year the +actual sum of $58,000 over and above all expenses. It was getting ready +to inflate the capitalization, as usual, and water its stock to the +extent of $500,000, when it occurred to the mayor that if the +corporation was making such enormous profits out of a $75,000 investment +as to be able to offer to pay six per cent on $500,000 to investors, and +put the money it would get for such stocks into its pocket, perhaps it +could reduce the price of gas from one dollar and nineteen cents to a +more reasonable figure. There was the three years' voting law, however, +behind which, as behind an entrenchment, the very luxurious corporation +lay comfortable and indifferent.</p> + +<p>The mayor sent for his corporation counsel, and studied gas law for +awhile. He found that at the State capital there was a State board, or +commission, which had been created to <a name="Page_277" id="Page_277" />look after gas companies in +general, and to hear the complaints of municipalities which considered +themselves unjustly treated.</p> + +<p>"This is the thing for me," he said.</p> + +<p>Lacking the municipal authority himself, he decided to present the facts +in the case and appeal to this commission for a reduction of the gas +rate.</p> + +<p>When he came to talk about it he found that the opposition he would +generate would be something much more than local. Back of the local +reduction idea was the whole system of extortionate gas rates of the +State and of the nation; hundreds of fat, luxurious gas corporations +whose dividends would be threatened by any agitation on this question.</p> + +<p>"You mean to proceed with this scheme of yours?" asked a prominent +member of the local bar who called one morning to interview him. "I +represent the gentlemen who are interested in our local gas company."</p> + +<p>"I certainly do," replied the mayor.</p> + +<p>"Well," replied the uncredentialed representative of private interests, +after expostulating a long time and offering various "reasons" why it +would be more profitable and politically advantageous for the new mayor +not to proceed, "I've said all I can say. Now I want to tell you that +you are going up against a combination that will be your ruin. You're +not dealing with this town now; you're dealing with the State, the whole +nation. These corporations can't afford to let you win, and they won't. +You're not the one to do it; you're not big enough."</p> + +<p>The mayor smiled and replied that of course he could not say as to that.</p> + +<p>The lawyer went away, and that next day the mayor had his legal counsel +look up the annual reports of the company for the consecutive years of +its existence, as well as a bulletin issued by a firm of brokers, into +whose hands the matter of selling a vast amount of watered stock it +proposed to issue had been placed. He also sent for a gas expert and set +him to figuring out a case for the people.</p> + +<p>It was found by this gentleman that since the company was first +organized it had paid dividends on its capital stock at the rate of ten +per cent per annum, for the first thirty years; had made vast +improvements in the last ten, and notwithstanding <a name="Page_278" id="Page_278" />this fact, had paid +twenty per cent, and even twenty-five per cent per annum in dividends. +All the details of cost and expenditure were figured out, and then the +mayor with his counsel took the train for the State capitol.</p> + +<p>Never was there more excitement in political circles than when this +young representative of no important political organization whatsoever +arrived at the State capitol and walked, at the appointed time, into the +private audience room of the commission. Every gas company, as well as +every newspaper and every other representative of the people, had +curiously enough become interested in the fight he was making, and there +was a band of reporters at the hotel where he was stopping, as well as +in the commission chambers in the State capitol where the hearing was to +be. They wanted to know about him—why he was doing this, whether it +wasn't a "strike" or the work of some rival corporation. The fact that +he might foolishly be sincere was hard to believe.</p> + +<p>"Gentlemen," said the mayor, as he took his stand in front of an august +array of legal talent which was waiting to pick his argument to pieces +in the commission chambers at the capitol, "I miscalculated but one +thing in this case which I am about to lay before you, and that is the +extent of public interest. I came here prepared to make a private +argument, but now I want to ask the privilege of making it public. I see +the public itself is interested, or should be. I will ask leave to +postpone my argument until the day after tomorrow."</p> + +<p>There was considerable hemming and hawing over this, since from the +point of view of the corporation it was most undesirable, but the +commission was practically powerless to do aught but grant his request. +And meanwhile the interest created by the newspapers added power to his +cause. Hunting up the several representatives and senators from his +district, he compelled them to take cognizance of the cause for which he +was battling, and when the morning of the public hearing arrived a large +audience was assembled in the chamber of representatives.</p> + +<p>When the final moment arrived the young mayor came forward, and after +making a very simple statement of the cause which led him to request a +public hearing and the local condition which he considered unfair begged +leave to introduce <a name="Page_279" id="Page_279" />an expert, a national examiner of gas plants and +lighting facilities, for whom he had sent, and whose twenty years of +experience in this line had enabled him to prepare a paper on the +condition of the gas-payers in the mayor's city.</p> + +<p>The commission was not a little surprised by this, but signified its +willingness to hear the expert as counsel for the city, and as his +statement was read a very clear light was thrown upon the situation.</p> + +<p>Counsel for the various gas corporations interrupted freely. The mayor +himself was constantly drawn into the argument, but his replies were so +simple and convincing that there was not much satisfaction to be had in +stirring him. Instead, the various counsel took refuge in long-winded +discussions about the methods of conducting gas plants in other cities, +the cost of machinery, labor and the like, which took days and days, and +threatened to extend into weeks. The astounding facts concerning large +profits and the present intentions of not only this but every other +company in the State could not be dismissed. In fact the revelation of +huge corporation profits everywhere became so disturbing that after the +committee had considered and re-considered, it finally, when threatened +with political extermination, voted to reduce the price of gas to eighty +cents.</p> + +<p>It is needless to suggest the local influence of this decision. When the +mayor came home he received an ovation, and that at the hands of many of +the people who had once been so fearful of him, but he knew that this +enthusiasm would not last long. Many disgruntled elements were warring +against him, and others were being more and more stirred up. His home +life was looked into as well as his past, his least childish or private +actions. It was a case of finding other opportunities for public +usefulness, or falling into the innocuous peace which would result in +his defeat.</p> + +<p>In the platform on which he had been elected was a plank which declared +that it was the intention of this party, if elected, to abolish local +grade crossings, the maintenance of which had been the cause of numerous +accidents and much public complaint. With this plank he now proposed to +deal.</p> + +<p>In this of course he was hampered by the law before mentioned, which +declared that no city could abolish its grade <a name="Page_280" id="Page_280" />crossings without having +first submitted the matter to the people during three successive years +and obtained their approval each time. Behind this law was not now, +however, as in the case of the gas company, a small $500,000 +corporation, but all the railroads which controlled New England, and to +which brains and legislators, courts and juries, were mere adjuncts. +Furthermore, the question would have to be voted on at the same time as +his candidacy, and this would have deterred many another more ambitious +politician. The mayor was not to be deterred, however. He began his +agitation, and the enemy began theirs, but in the midst of what seemed +to be a fair battle the great railway company endeavored to steal a +march. There was suddenly and secretly introduced into the lower house +of the State legislature a bill which in deceptive phraseology declared +that the law which allowed all cities, by three successive votes, to +abolish grade crossings in three years, was, in the case of a particular +city mentioned, hereby abrogated for a term of four years. The question +might not even be discussed politically.</p> + +<p>When the news of this attempt reached the mayor, he took the first train +for the State capitol and arrived there just in time to come upon the +floor of the house when the bill was being taken up for discussion. He +asked leave to make a statement. Great excitement was aroused by his +timely arrival. Those who secretly favored the bill endeavored to have +the matter referred to a committee, but this was not to be. One member +moved to go on with the consideration of the bill, and after a close +vote the motion carried.</p> + +<p>The mayor was then introduced.</p> + +<p>After a few moments, in which the silent self-communing with which he +introduced himself impressed everyone with his sincerity, he said:</p> + +<p>"I am accused of objecting to this measure because its enactment will +remove, as a political issue, the one cause upon which I base my hope +for reëlection. If there are no elevated crossings to vote for, there +will be no excuse for voting for me. Gentlemen, you mistake the temper +and the intellect of the people of our city. It is you who see political +significance in this thing, but let me assure you that it is of a far +different kind from that which you conceive. If the passing of this +<a name="Page_281" id="Page_281" />measure had any significance to me other than the apparent wrong of it, +I would get down on my knees and urge its immediate acceptance. Nothing +could elect me quicker. Nothing could bury the opposition further from +view. If you wish above all things to accomplish my triumph you will +only need to interfere with the rights of our city in this arbitrary +manner, and you will have the thing done. I could absolutely ask nothing +more."</p> + +<p>The gentlemen who had this measure in charge weighed well these +assertions and trifled for weeks with the matter, trying to make up +their minds.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile election time approached, and amid the growing interest of +politics it was thought unwise to deal with it. A great fight was +arranged for locally, in which every conceivable element of opposition +was beautifully harmonized by forces and conceptions which it is almost +impossible to explain. Democrats, republicans, prohibitionists, saloon +men and religious circles, all were gathered into one harmonious body +and inspired with a single idea, that of defeating the mayor. From some +quarter, not exactly identified, was issued a call for a civic committee +of fifty, which should take into its hands the duty of rescuing the city +from what was termed a "throttling policy of commercial oppression and +anarchy." Democrats, republicans, liquor and anti-liquorites, were +invited to the same central meeting place, and came. Money was not +lacking, nor able minds, to prepare campaign literature. It was openly +charged that a blank check was handed in to the chairman of this body by +the railway whose crossings were in danger, to be filled out for any +amount necessary to the destruction of the official upstart who was +seeking to revolutionize old methods and conditions.</p> + +<p>As may be expected, this opposition did not lack daring in making +assertions contrary to facts. Charges were now made that the mayor was +in league with the railroad to foist upon the city a great burden of +expense, because the law under which cities could compel railroads to +elevate their tracks declared that one-fifth of the burden of expense +must be borne by the city and the remaining four-fifths by the railroad. +It would saddle a debt of $250,000 upon the taxpayers, they said, and +give them little in return. All the advantage would <a name="Page_282" id="Page_282" />be with the +railroad. "Postpone this action until the railroad can be forced to bear +the entire expense, as it justly should," declared handbill writers, +whose services were readily rendered to those who could afford to pay +for them.</p> + +<p>The mayor and his committee, although poor, answered with handbills and +street corner speeches, in which he showed that even with the +extravagantly estimated debt of $250,000, the city's tax-rate would not +be increased by quite six cents to the individual. The cry that each man +would have to pay five dollars more each year for ten years was thus +wholesomely disposed of, and the campaign proceeded.</p> + +<p>Now came every conceivable sort of charge. If he were not defeated, all +reputable merchants would surely leave the city. Capital was certainly +being scared off. There would be idle factories and empty stomachs. Look +out for hard times. No one but a fool would invest in a city thus +hampered.</p> + +<p>In reply the mayor preached a fair return by corporations for benefits +received. He, or rather his organization, took a door-to-door census of +his following, and discovered a very considerable increase in the number +of those intending to vote for him. The closest calculations of the +enemy were discovered, the actual number they had fixed upon as +sufficient to defeat him. This proved to the mayor that he must have +three hundred more votes if he wished to be absolutely sure. These he +hunted out from among the enemy, and had them pledged before the +eventual morning came.</p> + +<p>The night preceding election ended the campaign, for the enemy at least, +in a blaze of glory, so to speak. Dozens of speakers for both causes +were about the street corners and in the city meeting room.</p> + +<p>Oratory poured forth in streams, and gasoline-lighted band-wagons +rattled from street to street, emitting song and invective. Even a great +parade was arranged by the anti-mayoral forces, in which horses and men +to the number of hundreds were brought in from nearby cities and palmed +off as enthusiastic citizens.</p> + +<p>"Horses don't vote," a watchword handed out by the mayor, took the edge +off the extreme ardor of this invading throng, and set to laughing the +hundreds of his partisans, who needed such encouragement.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283" />Next day came the vote, and then for once, anyhow, he was justified. +Not only was a much larger vote cast than ever, but he thrashed the +enemy with a tail of two hundred votes to spare. It was an inspiring +victory from one point of view, but rather doleful for the enemy. The +latter had imported a carload of fireworks, which now stood sadly unused +upon the very tracks which, apparently, must in the future be raised. +The crowning insult was offered when the successful forces offered to +take them off their hands at half price.</p> + +<p>For a year thereafter (a mayor was elected yearly there), less was heard +of the commercial destruction of the city. Gas stood, as decided, at +eighty cents a thousand. A new manual training school, built at a very +nominal cost, a monument to municipal honesty, was also in evidence. The +public waterworks had also been enlarged and the rates reduced. The +streets were clean.</p> + +<p>Then the mayor made another innovation. During his first term of office +there had been a weekly meeting of the reform club, at which he appeared +and talked freely of his plans and difficulties. These meetings he now +proposed to make public.</p> + +<p>Every Wednesday evening for a year thereafter a spectacle of municipal +self-consciousness was witnessed, which those who saw it felt sure would +redound to the greater strength and popularity of the mayor. In a large +hall, devoted to public gatherings, a municipal meeting was held. Every +one was invited. The mayor was both host and guest, an individual who +chose to explain his conduct and his difficulties and to ask advice. +There his constituents gathered, not only to hear but to offer counsel.</p> + +<p>"Gentlemen," so ran the gist of his remarks on various of these +occasions, "the present week has proved a most trying one. I am +confronted by a number of difficult problems, which I will now try to +explain to you. In the first place, you know my limitations as to power +in the council. But three members now vote for me, and it is only by +mutual concessions that we move forward at all."</p> + +<p>Then would follow a detailed statement of the difficulties, and a +general discussion. The commonest laborer was free to offer his advice. +Every question was answered in the broadest spirit of fellowship. An +inquiry as to "what to do" frequently <a name="Page_284" id="Page_284" />brought the most helpful advice. +Weak and impossible solutions were met as such, and shown to be what +they were. Radicals were assuaged, conservatives urged forward. The +whole political situation was so detailed and explained that no +intelligent person could leave, it was thought, with a false impression +of the mayor's position or intent.</p> + +<p>With five thousand or more such associated citizens abroad each day +explaining, defending, approving the official conduct of the mayor, +because they understood it, no misleading conceptions, it was thought, +could arise. Men said that his purpose and current leaning in any matter +was always clear. He was thought to be closer to his constituency than +any other official within the whole range of the Americas and that there +could be nothing but unreasoning partisan opposition to his rule.</p> + +<p>After one year of such service a presidential campaign drew near, and +the mayor's campaign for reëlection had to be contested at the same +time. No gas monopoly evil was now a subject of contention. Streets were +clean, contracts fairly executed; the general municipal interests as +satisfactorily attended to as could be expected. Only the grade crossing +war remained as an issue, and that would require still another vote +after this. His record was the only available campaign argument.</p> + +<p>On the other side, however, were the two organizations of the locally +defeated great parties, and the railroad. The latter, insistent in its +bitterness, now organized these two bodies into a powerful opposition. +Newspapers were subsidized; the national significance of the campaign +magnified; a large number of railroad-hands colonized. When the final +weeks of the campaign arrived a bitter contest was waged, and money +triumphed. Five thousand four hundred votes were cast for the mayor. +Five thousand four hundred and fifty for the opposing candidate, who was +of the same party as the successful presidential nominee.</p> + +<p>It was a bitter blow, but still one easily borne by the mayor, who was +considerable of a philosopher. With simple, undisturbed grace he +retired, and three days later applied to one of the principal shoe +factories for work at his trade.</p> + +<p>"What? You're not looking for a job, are you?" exclaimed the astonished +foreman.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_285" id="Page_285" />I am," said the mayor.</p> + +<p>"You can go to work, all right, but I should think you could get into +something better now."</p> + +<p>"I suppose I can later," he replied, "when I complete my law studies. +Just now I want to do this for a change, to see how things are with the +rank and file." And donning the apron he had brought with him he went to +work.</p> + +<p>It was not long, however, before he was discharged, largely because of +partisan influence anxious to drive him out of that region. It was said +that this move of seeking a job in so simple a way was a bit of "grand +standing"—insincere—that he didn't need to do it, and that he was +trying to pile up political capital against the future. A little later a +local grocery man of his social faith offered him a position as clerk, +and for some odd reason—humanitarian and sectarian, possibly—he +accepted this. At any rate, here he labored for a little while. Again +many said he was attempting to make political capital out of this simple +life in order to further his political interests later, and this +possibly, even probably, was true. All men have methods of fighting for +that which they believe. So here he worked for a time, while a large +number of agencies pro and con continued to denounce or praise him, to +ridicule or extol his so-called Jeffersonian simplicity. It was at this +time that I encountered him—a tall, spare, capable and interesting +individual, who willingly took me into his confidence and explained all +that had hitherto befallen him. He was most interesting, really, a +figure to commemorate in this fashion.</p> + +<p>In one of the rooms of his very humble home—a kind of office or den, in +a small house such as any clerk or working-man might occupy—was a +collection of clippings, laudatory, inquiring, and abusive, which would +have done credit to a candidate for the highest office in the land. One +would have judged by the scrap-books and envelopes stuffed to +overflowing with long newspaper articles and editorials that had been +cut from papers all over the country from Florida to Oregon, that his +every movement at this time and earlier was all-essential to the people. +Plainly, he had been watched, spied upon, and ignored by one class, +while being hailed, praised and invited by another. Magazine editors had +called upon him for contributions, journalists from the large cities had +sought him <a name="Page_286" id="Page_286" />out to obtain his actual views, citizens' leagues in various +parts of the nation had invited him to come and speak, and yet he was +still a very young man in years, not over-intelligent politically or +philosophically, the ex-mayor of a small city, and the representative of +no great organization of any sort.</p> + +<p>In his retirement he was now comforted, if one can be so comforted, by +these memories, still fresh in his mind and by the hope possibly for his +own future, as well as by a droll humor with which he was wont to select +the sharpest and most willful slur upon his unimpeachable conduct as an +offering to public curiosity.</p> + +<p>"Do you really want to know what people think of me?" he said to me on +one occasion. "Well, here's something. Read this." And then he would +hand me a bunch of the bitterest attacks possible, attacks which +pictured him as a sly and treacherous enemy of the people—or worse yet +a bounding anarchistic ignoramus. Personally I could not help admiring +his stoic mood. It was superior to that of his detractors. Apparent +falsehoods did not anger him. Evident misunderstandings could not, +seemingly, disturb him.</p> + +<p>"What do you expect?" he once said to me, after I had made a very +careful study of his career for a current magazine, which, curiously, +was never published. I was trying to get him to admit that he believed +that his example might be fruitful of results agreeable to him in the +future. I could not conclude that he really agreed with me. "People do +not remember; they forget. They remember so long as you are directly +before them with something that interests them. That may be a lower +gas-rate, or a band that plays good music. People like strong people, +and only strong people, characters of that sort—good, bad or +indifferent—I've found that out. If a man or a corporation is stronger +than I am, comes along and denounces me, or spends more money than I do +(or can), buys more beers, makes larger promises, it is 'all day' for +me. What has happened in my case is that, for the present, anyhow, I +have come up against a strong corporation, stronger than I am. What I +now need to do is to go out somewhere and get some more strength in some +way, it doesn't matter much how. People are not so much interested in me +or you, or your or my ideals in their behalf, as they are in strength, +<a name="Page_287" id="Page_287" />an interesting spectacle. And they are easily deceived. These big +fighting corporations with their attorneys and politicians and +newspapers make me look weak—puny. So the people forget me. If I could +get out, raise one million or five hundred thousand dollars and give the +corporations a good drubbing, they would adore me—for awhile. Then I +would have to go out and get another five hundred thousand somewhere, or +do something else."</p> + +<p>"Quite so," I replied. "Yet <i>Vox populi, vox dei</i>."</p> + +<p>Sitting upon his own doorstep one evening, in a very modest quarter of +the city, I said:</p> + +<p>"Were you very much depressed by your defeat the last time?"</p> + +<p>"Not at all," he replied. "Action, reaction, that's the law. All these +things right themselves in time, I suppose, or, anyhow, they ought to. +Maybe they don't. Some man who can hand the people what they really need +or ought to have will triumph, I suppose, some time. I don't know, I'm +sure. I hope so. I think the world is moving on, all right."</p> + +<p>In his serene and youthful face, the pale blue, philosophical eyes, was +no evidence of dissatisfaction with the strange experiences through +which he had passed.</p> + +<p>"You're entirely philosophical, are you?"</p> + +<p>"As much as any one can be, I suppose. They seem to think that all my +work was an evidence of my worthlessness," he said. "Well, maybe it was. +Self-interest may be the true law, and the best force. I haven't quite +made up my mind yet. My sympathies of course are all the other way. 'He +ought to be sewing shoes in the penitentiary,' one paper once said of +me. Another advised me to try something that was not above my +intelligence, such as breaking rock or shoveling dirt. Most of them +agreed, however," he added with a humorous twitch of his large, +expressive mouth, "that I'll do very well if I will only stay where I +am, or, better yet, get out of here. They want me to leave. That's the +best solution for them."</p> + +<p>He seemed to repress a smile that was hovering on his lips.</p> + +<p>"The voice of the enemy," I commented.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir, the voice of the enemy," he added. "But don't think that I +think I'm done for. Not at all. I have just returned to my old ways in +order to think this thing out. In a year or <a name="Page_288" id="Page_288" />two I'll have solved my +problem, I hope. I may have to leave here, and I may not. Anyhow, I'll +turn up somewhere, with something."</p> + +<p>He did have to leave, however, public opinion never being allowed to +revert to him again, and five years later, in a fairly comfortable +managerial position in New York, he died. He had made a fight, well +enough, but the time, the place, the stars, perhaps, were not quite +right. He had no guiding genius, possibly, to pull him through. +Adherents did not flock to him and save him. Possibly he wasn't magnetic +enough—that pagan, non-moral, non-propagandistic quality, anyhow. The +fates did not fight for him as they do for some, those fates that ignore +the billions and billions of others who fail. Yet are not all lives more +or less failures, however successful they may appear to be at one time +or another, contrasted, let us say, with what they hoped for? We +compromise so much with everything—our dreams and all.</p> + +<p>As for his reforms, they may be coming fast enough, or they may not. <i>In +medias res.</i></p> + +<p>But as for him...?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="WLS" id="WLS" /><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289" /><i>W.L.S.</i></h2> + + +<p>Life's little ironies are not always manifest. We hear distant rumbling +sounds of its tragedies, but rarely are we permitted to witness the +reality. Therefore the real incidents which I am about to relate may +have some value.</p> + +<p>I first called upon W.L.S——, Jr., in the winter of 1895. I had known +of him before only by reputation, or, what is nearer the truth, by +seeing his name in one of the great Sunday papers attached to several +drawings of the most lively interest. These drawings depicted night +scenes of the city of New York, and appeared as colored supplements, +eleven by eighteen inches. They represented the spectacular scenes which +the citizen and the stranger most delight in—Madison Square in a +drizzle; the Bowery lighted by a thousand lamps and crowded with "L" and +surface cars; Sixth Avenue looking north from Fourteenth Street.</p> + +<p>I was a youthful editor at the time and on the lookout for interesting +illustrations of this sort, and when a little later I was in need of a +colored supplement for the Christmas number I decided to call upon +S——. I knew absolutely nothing about the world of art save what I had +gathered from books and current literary comment of all sorts, and was, +therefore, in a mood to behold something exceedingly bizarre in the +atmosphere with which I should find my illustrator surrounded.</p> + +<p>I was not disappointed. It was at the time when artists—I mean American +artists principally—went in very strongly for that sort of thing. Only +a few years before they had all been going to Paris, not so much to +paint as to find out and imitate how artists <i>do</i> and live. I was +greeted by a small, wiry, lean-looking individual arrayed in a bicycle +suit, whose countenance could be best described as wearing a perpetual +look of astonishment. He had one eye which fixed you with a strange, +unmoving solemnity, owing to the fact that it was glass. His skin was +anything but fair, and might be termed sallow. He wore a close, +sharp-pointed Vandyke beard, and his gold-bridge glasses sat at almost +right angles upon his nose. His forehead was high, his good eye alert, +his hair <a name="Page_290" id="Page_290" />sandy-colored and tousled, and his whole manner indicated +thought, feeling, remarkable nervous energy, and, above all, a rasping +and jovial sort of egotism which pleased me rather than otherwise.</p> + +<p>I noticed no more than this on my first visit, owing to the fact that I +was very much overawed and greatly concerned about the price which he +would charge me, not knowing what rate he might wish to exact, and being +desirous of coming away at least unabashed by his magnificence and +independence.</p> + +<p>"What's it for?" he asked, when I suggested a drawing.</p> + +<p>I informed him.</p> + +<p>"You say you want it for a double-page center?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll do it for three hundred dollars."</p> + +<p>I was taken considerably aback, as I had not contemplated paying more +than one hundred.</p> + +<p>"I get that from all the magazines," he added, seeing my hesitation, +"wherever a supplement is intended."</p> + +<p>"I don't think I could pay more than one hundred," I said, after a few +moments' consideration.</p> + +<p>"You couldn't?" he said, sharply, as if about to reprove me.</p> + +<p>I shook my head.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "let's see a copy of your publication."</p> + +<p>The chief value of this conversation was that it taught me that the +man's manner was no indication of his mood. I had thought he was +impatient and indifferent, but I saw now that he was not so, rather +brusque merely. He was simply excitable, somewhat like the French, and +meant only to be businesslike. The upshot of it all was that he agreed +to do it for one hundred and fifty, and asked me very solemnly to say +nothing about it.</p> + +<p>I may say here that I came upon S—— in the full blush of his fancies +and ambitions, and just when he was verging upon their realization. He +was not yet successful. A hundred and fifty dollars was a very fair +price indeed. His powers, however, had reached that stage where they +would soon command their full value.</p> + +<p>I could see at once that he was very ambitious. He was bubbling over +with the enthusiasm of youth and an intense <a name="Page_291" id="Page_291" />desire for recognition. He +knew he had talent. The knowledge of it gave him an air and an +independence of manner which might have been irritating to some. +Besides, he was slightly affected, argue to the contrary as he would, +and was altogether full of his own hopes and ambitions.</p> + +<p>The matter of painting this picture necessitated my presence on several +occasions, and during this time I got better acquainted with him. +Certain ideas and desires which we held in common drew us toward each +other, and I soon began to see that he was much above the average in +insight and skill. He talked with the greatest ease upon a score of +subjects—literature, art, politics, music, the drama, and history. He +seemed to have read the latest novels; to have seen many of the current +plays; to have talked with important people. Theodore Roosevelt, +previously Police Commissioner but then Governor, often came to his +studio to talk and play chess with him. A very able architect was his +friend. He had artist associates galore, many of whom had studios in the +same building or the immediate vicinity. And there were literary and +business men as well, all of whom seemed to enjoy his company, and who +were very fond of calling and spending an hour in his studio.</p> + +<p>I had only called the second time, and was going away, when he showed me +a steamship he had constructed with his own hands—a fair-sized model, +complete in every detail, even to the imitation stokers in the +boiler-room, and which would run by the hour if supplied with oil and +water. I soon learned that his skill in mechanical construction was +great. He was a member of several engineering societies, and devoted +some part of his carefully organized days to studying and keeping up +with problems in mechanics.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's nothing," he observed, when I marveled at the size and +perfection of the model. "I'll show you something else, if you have time +some day, which may amuse you."</p> + +<p>He then explained that he had constructed several model warships, and +that it was his pleasure to take them out and fight them on a pond +somewhere out on Long Island.</p> + +<p>"We'll go out some day," he said when I showed appropriate interest, +"and have them fight each other. You'll see how it's done!"</p> + +<p><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292" />I waited some time for this outing, and finally mentioned it.</p> + +<p>"We'll go tomorrow," he said. "Can you be around here by ten o'clock?"</p> + +<p>Ten the next morning saw me promptly at the studio, and five minutes +later we were off.</p> + +<p>When we arrived at Long Island City we went to the first convenient arm +of the sea and undid the precious fighters, in which he much delighted.</p> + +<p>After studying the contour of the little inlet for a few moments he took +some measurements with a tape-line, stuck up two twigs in two places for +guide posts, and proceeded to fire and get up steam in his war-ships. +Afterwards he set the rudders, and then took them to the water-side and +floated them at the points where he had placed the twigs.</p> + +<p>These few details accomplished, he again studied the situation +carefully, headed the vessels to the fraction of an inch toward a +certain point of the opposite shore, and began testing the steam.</p> + +<p>"When I say ready, you push this lever here," he said, indicating a +little brass handle fastened to the stern-post. "Don't let her move an +inch until you do that. You'll see some tall firing."</p> + +<p>He hastened to the other side where his own boat was anchored, and began +an excited examination. He was like a school-boy with a fine toy.</p> + +<p>At a word, I moved the lever as requested, and the two vessels began +steaming out toward one another. Their weight and speed were such that +the light wind blowing affected them not in the least, and their prows +struck with an audible crack. This threw them side by side, steaming +head on together. At the same time it operated to set in motion their +guns, which fired broadsides in such rapid succession as to give a +suggestion of rapid revolver practice. Quite a smoke rose, and when it +rolled away one of the vessels was already nearly under water and the +other was keeling with the inflow of water from the port side. S—lost +no time, but throwing off his coat, jumped in and swam to the rescue.</p> + +<p>Throughout this entire incident his manner was that of an enthusiastic +boy who had something exceedingly novel. He did not laugh. In all our +acquaintance I never once heard him <a name="Page_293" id="Page_293" />give a sound, hearty laugh. Instead +he cackled. His delight apparently could only express itself in that +way. In the main it showed itself in an excess of sharp movements, short +verbal expressions, gleams of the eye.</p> + +<p>I saw from this the man's delight in the science of engineering, and +humored him in it. He was thereafter at the greatest pains to show all +that he had under way in the mechanical line, and schemes he had for +enjoying himself in this work in the future. It seemed rather a +recreation for him than anything else. Like him, I could not help +delighting in the perfect toys which he created, but the intricate +details and slow process of manufacture were brain-racking. For not only +would he draw the engine in all its parts, but he would buy the raw +material and cast and drill and polish each separate part.</p> + +<p>Upon my second visit I was deeply impressed by the sight of a fine +passenger engine, a duplicate of the great 999 of the New York Central, +of those days. It stood on brass rails laid along an old library shelf +that had probably belonged to the previous occupant of the studio. This +engine was a splendid object to look upon, strong, heavy, +silent-running, with the fineness and grace of a perfect sewing-machine. +It was duly trimmed with brass and nickel, after the manner of the great +"flyers," and seemed so sturdy and powerful that one could not restrain +the desire to see it run.</p> + +<p>"How do you like that?" S—— exclaimed when he saw me looking at it.</p> + +<p>"It's splendid," I said.</p> + +<p>"See how she runs," he exclaimed, moving it up and down. "No noise about +that."</p> + +<p>He fairly caressed the mechanism with his hand, and went off into a most +careful analysis of its qualities.</p> + +<p>"I could build that engine," he exclaimed at last, enthusiastically, "if +I were down in the Baldwin Company's place. I could make her break the +record."</p> + +<p>"I haven't the slightest doubt in the world," I answered.</p> + +<p>This engine was a source of great expense to him, as well as the chief +point in a fine scheme. He had made brass rails for it—sufficient to +extend about the four sides of the studio—something like seventy feet. +He had made most hand<a name="Page_294" id="Page_294" />some passenger-cars with full equipment of brakes, +vestibules, Pintsch gas, and so on, and had painted on their sides "The +Great Pullman Line." One day, when we were quite friendly, he brought +from his home all the rails, in a carpet-bag, and gave an exhibition of +his engine's speed, attaching the cars and getting up sufficient steam +to cause the engine to race about the room at a rate which was actually +exciting. He had an arrangement by which it would pick up water and stop +automatically. It was on this occasion that he confided what he called +his great biograph scheme, the then forerunner of the latter day moving +pictures. It was all so new then, almost a rumor, like that of the +flying machine before it was invented.</p> + +<p>"I propose to let the people see the photographic representation of an +actual wreck—engine, cars, people, all tumbled down together after a +collision, and no imitation, either—the actual thing."</p> + +<p>"How do you propose to do it?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well, that's the thing," he said, banteringly. "Now, how do you suppose +I'd do it?"</p> + +<p>"Hire a railroad to have a wreck and kill a few people," I suggested.</p> + +<p>"Well, I've got a better thing than that. A railroad couldn't plan +anything more real than mine will be."</p> + +<p>I was intensely curious because of the novelty of the thing at that +time. The "Biograph" was in its infancy.</p> + +<p>"This is it," he exclaimed suddenly. "You see how realistic this engine +is, don't you?"</p> + +<p>I acknowledged that I did.</p> + +<p>"Well," he confided, "I'm building another just like it. It's costing me +three hundred dollars, and the passenger-cars will cost as much more. +Now, I'm going to fix up some scenery on my roof—a gorge, a line of +woods, a river, and a bridge. I'm going to make the water tumble over +big rocks just above the bridge and run underneath it. Then I'm going to +lay this track around these rocks, through the woods, across the bridge +and off into the woods again.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to put on the two trains and time them so they'll meet on the +bridge. Just when they come into view where they can see each other, a +post on the side of the track <a name="Page_295" id="Page_295" />will strike the cabs in such a way as to +throw the firemen out on the steps just as if they were going to jump. +When the engines take the bridge they'll explode caps that will set fire +to oil and powder under the cars and burn them up."</p> + +<p>"Then what?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well, I've got it planned automatically so that you will see people +jumping out of the cars and tumbling down on the rocks, the flames +springing up and taking to the cars, and all that. Don't you believe +it?" he added, as I smiled at the idea. "Look here," and he produced a +model of one of the occupants of the cars. He labored for an hour to +show all the intricate details, until I was compelled to admit the +practicability and novelty of the idea. Then he explained that +instantaneous photography, as it was then called, was to be applied at +such close range that the picture would appear life size. The actuality +of the occurrence would do the rest.</p> + +<p>Skepticism still lingered with me for a time, but when I saw the second +train growing, the figures and apparatus gradually being modeled, and +the correspondence and conferences going on between the artist and +several companies which wished to gain control of the result, I was +perfectly sure that his idea would some day be realized.</p> + +<p>As I have said, when I first met S—— he had not realized any of his +dreams. It was just at that moment that the tide was about to turn. He +surprised me by the assurance, born of his wonderful virility, with +which he went about all things.</p> + +<p>"I've got an order from the <i>Ladies' Home Journal</i>," he said to me one +day. "They came to me."</p> + +<p>"Good," I said. "What is it?"</p> + +<p>"Somebody's writing up the terminal facilities of New York."</p> + +<p>He had before him an Academy board, on which was sketched, in wash, a +midnight express striking out across the Jersey meadows with sparks +blazing from the smoke stacks and dim lights burning in the sleepers. It +was a vivid thing, strong with all the strength of an engine, and rich +in the go and enthusiasm which adhere to such mechanisms.</p> + +<p>"I want to make a good thing of this," he said. "It may do me some +good."</p> + +<p>A little later he received his first order from Harper's. He <a name="Page_296" id="Page_296" />could not +disguise that he was pleased, much as he tried to carry it off with an +air. It was just before the Spanish war broke out, and the sketches he +was to do related to the navy.</p> + +<p>He labored at this order with the most tireless enthusiasm. Marine +construction was his delight anyhow, and he spent hours and days making +studies about the great vessels, getting not only the atmosphere but the +mechanical detail. When he made the pictures they represented all that +he felt.</p> + +<p>"You know those drawings?" he said the day after he delivered them.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"I set a good stiff price on them and demanded my drawings back when +they were through."</p> + +<p>"Did you get them?"</p> + +<p>"Yep. It will give them more respect for what I'm trying to do," he +said.</p> + +<p>Not long after he illustrated one of Kipling's stories.</p> + +<p>He was in high feather at this, but grim and repressed withal. One could +see by the nervous movements of his wiry body that he was delighted over +it.</p> + +<p>At this time Kipling came to his studio. It was by special arrangement, +but S—— received him as if he were—well, as artists usually receive +authors. They talked over the galley proofs, and the author went away.</p> + +<p>"It's coming my way now," he said, when he could no longer conceal his +feelings. "I want to do something good on this."</p> + +<p>Through all this rise from obscurity to recognition he lived close to +his friends—a crowd of them, apparently, always in his studio jesting, +boxing, fencing—and interested himself in the mechanics I have +described. His drawing, his engine-building, his literary studies and +recreations were all mixed, jumbled, plunging him pell-mell, as it were, +on to distinction. In the first six months of his studio life he had +learned to fence, and often dropped his brush to put on the mask and +assume the foils with one of his companions.</p> + +<p>As our friendship increased I found how many were the man's +accomplishments and how wide his range of sympathies. He was an expert +bicyclist, as well as a trick rider, and <a name="Page_297" id="Page_297" />used a camera in a way to make +an amateur envious. He could sing, having a fine tenor voice, which I +heard the very day I learned that he could sing. It so happened that it +was my turn to buy the theater tickets, and I invited him to come with +me that especial evening.</p> + +<p>"Can't do it," he replied.</p> + +<p>"All right," I said.</p> + +<p>"I'm part of an entertainment tonight, or I would," he added +apologetically.</p> + +<p>"What do you do?" I inquired.</p> + +<p>"Sing."</p> + +<p>"Get out!" I said.</p> + +<p>"So be it," he answered. "Come up this evening."</p> + +<p>To this I finally agreed, and was surprised to observe the ease with +which he rendered his solo. He had an exquisitely clear and powerful +voice and received a long round of applause, which he refused to +acknowledge by singing again.</p> + +<p>The influence of success is easily observable in a man of so volatile a +nature. It seems to me that I could have told by his manner, day by day, +the inwash of the separate ripples of the inrolling tide of success. He +was all alive, full of plans, and the tale of his coming conquests was +told in his eye. Sometime in the second year of our acquaintance I +called at his studio in response to a card which he had stuck under my +office door. It was his habit to draw an outline head of himself, +something almost bordering upon a caricature, writing underneath it "I +called," together with any word he might have to say. This day he was in +his usual good spirits, and rallied me upon having an office which was +only a blind. He had a roundabout way of getting me to talk about his +personal affairs with him, and I soon saw that he had something very +interesting, to himself, to communicate. At last he said,—</p> + +<p>"I'm going to Europe next summer."</p> + +<p>"Is that so?" I replied. "For pleasure?"</p> + +<p>"Well, partly."</p> + +<p>"What's up outside of that?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to represent the American Architectural League at the +international convention."</p> + +<p>"I didn't know you were an architect," I said.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_298" id="Page_298" />Well, I'm not," he answered, "professionally. I've studied it pretty +thoroughly."</p> + +<p>"Well, you seem to be coming up, Louis," I remarked.</p> + +<p>"I'm doing all right," he answered.</p> + +<p>He went on working at his easel as if his fate depended upon what he was +doing. He had the fortunate quality of being able to work and converse +most entertainingly at the same time. He seemed to enjoy company under +such circumstances.</p> + +<p>"You didn't know I was a baron, did you?" he finally observed.</p> + +<p>"No," I answered, thinking he was exercising his fancy for the moment. +"Where do you keep your baronial lands, my lord?"</p> + +<p>"In Germany, kind sir," he replied, banteringly.</p> + +<p>Then in his customary excitable mood he dropped his brushes and stood +up.</p> + +<p>"You don't believe me, do you?" he exclaimed, looking over his drooping +glasses.</p> + +<p>"Why, certainly I believe you, if you are serious. Are you truly a +baron?"</p> + +<p>"It was this way," he said. "My grandfather was a baron. My father was +the younger of two brothers. His brother got the title and what was left +of the estate. That he managed to go through with, and then he died. +Now, no one has bothered about the title—"</p> + +<p>"And you're going back to claim it?"</p> + +<p>"Exactly."</p> + +<p>I took it all lightly at first, but in time I began to perceive that it +was a serious ambition. He truly wanted to be Baron S—— and add to +himself the luster of his ancestors.</p> + +<p>With all this, the man was really not so much an aristocrat in his mood +as a seeker after life and new experiences. Being a baron was merely a +new experience, or promised to be. He had the liveliest sympathies for +republican theories and institutions—only he considered his life a +thing apart. He had a fine mind, philosophically and logically poised. +He could reason upon all things, from the latest mathematical theorem to +Christian Science. Naturally, being so much of an individualist, he was +not drifting toward any belief in the latter, but <a name="Page_299" id="Page_299" />was never weary of +discussing the power of mind—a universal mind even—its wondrous +ramifications and influences. Also he was a student of the English +school of philosophy, and loved to get up mathematical and mechanical +demonstrations of certain philosophic truths. Thus he worked out by +means of a polygon, whose sides were of unequal lengths, a theory of +friendship which is too intricate to explain here.</p> + +<p>From now on I watched his career with the liveliest interest. He was a +charming and a warm friend, and never neglected for a moment the +obligations which such a relationship demands.</p> + +<p>I heard from him frequently in many and various ways, dined with him +regularly every second or third week, and rejoiced with him in his +triumphs, now more and more frequent. One spring he went to Europe and +spent the summer in tracing down his baronial claims, looking up various +artists and scientists and attending several scientific meetings here +and there at the same time. He did the illustrations for one of +Kipling's fast express stories which one of the magazines published, and +came back flushed and ready to try hard for a membership in the American +Water-Color Society.</p> + +<p>I shall never forget his anxiety to get into that mildly interesting +body. He worked hard and long on several pictures which should not only +be hung on the line but enlist sufficient interest among the artists to +gain him a vote of admission. He mentioned it frequently and fixed me +with his eyes to see what I thought of him.</p> + +<p>"Go ahead," I said; "you have more right to membership perhaps than many +another I know. Try hard."</p> + +<p>He painted not one, but four, pictures, and sent them all. They were +very interesting after their kind. Two were scenes from the great +railroad terminal yards; the others, landscapes in mist or rain. Three +of these pictures were passed and two of them hung on the line. The +third was <i>skyed</i>, but he was admitted to membership.</p> + +<p>I was delighted for his sake, for I could see, when he gave me the +intelligence, that it was a matter which had keyed up his whole nervous +system.</p> + +<p>Not long after this we were walking on Broadway, one drizzly autumn +evening, on our way to the theater. Life, <a name="Page_300" id="Page_300" />ambition, and our future were +the <i>small</i> subjects under discussion. The street, as usual, was +crowded. On every hand blazed the fire signs. The yellow lights were +beautifully reflected in the wet sidewalks and gray wet cobblestones +glistening with water.</p> + +<p>When we reached Greeley Square (at that time a brilliant and almost +sputtering spectacle of light and merriment), S—— took me by the arm.</p> + +<p>"Come over here," he said. "I want you to look at it from here."</p> + +<p>He took me to a point where, by the intersection of the lines of the +converging streets, one could not only see Greeley Square but a large +part of Herald Square, with its then huge theatrical sign of fire and +its measure of store lights and lamps of vehicles. It was a +kaleidoscopic and inspiring scene. The broad, converging walks were +alive with people. A perfect jam of vehicles marked the spot where the +horse and cable cars intersected. Overhead was the elevated station, its +lights augmented every few minutes by long trains of brightly lighted +cars filled with changing metropolitan crowds—crowds like shadows +moving in a dream.</p> + +<p>"Do you see the quality of that? Look at the blend of the lights and +shadows in there under the L."</p> + +<p>I looked and gazed in silent admiration.</p> + +<p>"See, right here before us—that pool of water there—do you get that? +Now, that isn't silver-colored, as it's usually represented. It's a +prism. Don't you see the hundred points of light?"</p> + +<p>I acknowledged the variety of color, which I had scarcely observed +before.</p> + +<p>"You may think one would skip that in viewing a great scene, but the +artist mustn't. He must get all, whether you notice it or not. It gives +feeling, even when you don't see it."</p> + +<p>I acknowledged the value of this ideal.</p> + +<p>"It's a great spectacle," he said. "It's got more flesh and blood in it +than people usually think. It's easy to make it too mechanical and +commonplace."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you paint it?" I asked.</p> + +<p>He turned on me as if he had been waiting for the suggestion.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_301" id="Page_301" />That's something I want to tell you," he said. "I am. I've sketched it +a half-dozen times already. I haven't got it yet. But I'm going to."</p> + +<p>I heard more of these dreams, intensifying all the while, until the +Spanish-American war broke out. Then he was off in a great rush of war +work. I scarcely saw him for six weeks, owing to some travels of my own, +but I saw his name. One day in Broadway I stopped to see why a large +crowd was gathered about a window in the Hoffman House. It was one of +S——'s drawings of our harbor defenses, done as if the artist had been +sitting at the bottom of the sea. The fishes, the green water, the hull +of a massive war-ship—all were there—and about, the grim torpedoes. +This put it into my head to go and see him. He was as tense and +strenuous as ever. The glittering treasure at the end of the rainbow was +more than ever in his eye. His body was almost sore from traveling.</p> + +<p>"I am in now," he said, referring to the war movement. "I am going to +Tampa."</p> + +<p>"Be gone long?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Not this first time. I'll only be down there three weeks."</p> + +<p>"I'll see you then."</p> + +<p>"Supposing we make it certain," he said. "What do you say to dining +together this coming Sunday three weeks?"</p> + +<p>I went away, wishing him a fine trip and feeling that his dreams must +now soon begin to come true. He was growing in reputation. Some war +pictures, such as he could do, would set people talking. Then he would +paint his prize pictures, finish his wreck scheme, become a baron, and +be a great man.</p> + +<p>Three weeks later I knocked at his studio door. It was a fine springlike +day, though it was in February. I expected confidently to hear his quick +aggressive step inside. Not a sound in reply. I knocked harder, but +still received no answer. Then I went to the other doors about. He might +be with his friends, but they were not in. I went away thinking that his +war duties had interfered, that he had not returned.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless there was something depressing about that portion of the +building in which his studio was located. I felt as if it should not be, +and decided to call again. Monday it was the same, and Tuesday.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302" />That same evening I was sitting in the library of the Salmagundi Club, +when a well-known artist addressed me.</p> + +<p>"You knew S——, didn't you?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Yes; what of it?"</p> + +<p>"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"What!" I said.</p> + +<p>"Yes, he died of fever, this morning."</p> + +<p>I looked at him without speaking for a moment.</p> + +<p>"Too bad," he said. "A clever boy, Louis. Awfully clever. I feel sorry +for his father."</p> + +<p>It did not take long to verify his statement. His name was in the +perfunctory death lists of the papers the next morning. No other notice +of any sort. Only a half-dozen seemed to know that he had ever lived.</p> + +<p>And yet it seemed <i>to me</i> that a great tragedy had happened—he was so +ambitious, so full of plans. His dreams were so near fulfillment.</p> + +<p>I saw the little grave afterward and the empty studio. His desks +revealed several inventions and many plans of useful things, but these +came to nothing. There was no one to continue the work.</p> + +<p>My feeling at the time was as if I had been looking at a beautiful lamp, +lighted, warm and irradiating a charming scene, and then suddenly that +it had been puffed out before my eyes, as if a hundred bubbles of +iridescent hues had been shattered by a breath. We toil so much, we +dream so richly, we hasten so fast, and, lo! the green door is opened. +We are through it, and its grassy surface has sealed us forever from all +which apparently we so much crave—even as, breathlessly, we are still +running.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p>[<i>Transcriber's Note: Typos have been corrected in this document, but +spelling and punctuation inconsistencies have been retained.</i>]</p> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14717 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c0501e6 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #14717 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14717) diff --git a/old/14717-8.txt b/old/14717-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6dd71d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14717-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12362 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Twelve Men, by Theodore Dreiser + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Twelve Men + +Author: Theodore Dreiser + +Release Date: January 17, 2005 [EBook #14717] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWELVE MEN *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + +TWELVE MEN + +BY + +Theodore Dreiser + +1919 + + + + +Contents + + I _Peter_ + II _A Doer of the Word_ + III _My Brother Paul_ + IV _The Country Doctor_ + V _Culhane, the Solid Man_ + VI _A True Patriarch_ + VII _De Maupassant, Jr._ +VIII _The Village Feudists_ + IX _Vanity, Vanity_ + X _The Mighty Rourke_ + XI _A Mayor and His People_ + XII _W.L.S._ + + + + +_Peter_ + + +In any group of men I have ever known, speaking from the point of view +of character and not that of physical appearance, Peter would stand out +as deliciously and irrefutably different. In the great waste of American +intellectual dreariness he was an oasis, a veritable spring in the +desert. He understood life. He knew men. He was free--spiritually, +morally, in a thousand ways, it seemed to me. + +As one drags along through this inexplicable existence one realizes how +such qualities stand out; not the pseudo freedom of strong men, +financially or physically, but the real, internal, spiritual freedom, +where the mind, as it were, stands up and looks at itself, faces Nature +unafraid, is aware of its own weaknesses, its strengths; examines its +own and the creative impulses of the universe and of men with a kindly +and non-dogmatic eye, in fact kicks dogma out of doors, and yet +deliberately and of choice holds fast to many, many simple and human +things, and rounds out life, or would, in a natural, normal, courageous, +healthy way. + +The first time I ever saw Peter was in St. Louis in 1892; I had come +down from Chicago to work on the St. Louis _Globe-Democrat_, and he was +a part of the art department force of that paper. At that time--and he +never seemed to change later even so much as a hair's worth until he +died in 1908--he was short, stocky and yet quick and even jerky in his +manner, with a bushy, tramp-like "get-up" of hair and beard, most +swiftly and astonishingly disposed of at times only to be regrown at +others, and always, and intentionally, I am sure, most amusing to +contemplate. In addition to all this he had an air of well-being, force +and alertness which belied the other surface characteristics as anything +more than a genial pose or bit of idle gayety. + +Plainly he took himself seriously and yet lightly, usually with an air +of suppressed gayety, as though saying, "This whole business of living +is a great joke." He always wore good and yet exceedingly mussy clothes, +at times bespattered with ink or, worse yet, even soup--an amazing +grotesquery that was the dismay of all who knew him, friends and +relatives especially. In addition he was nearly always liberally +besprinkled with tobacco dust, the source of which he used in all forms: +in pipe, cigar and plug, even cigarettes when he could obtain nothing +more substantial. One of the things about him which most impressed me at +that time and later was this love of the ridiculous or the grotesque, in +himself or others, which would not let him take anything in a dull or +conventional mood, would not even permit him to appear normal at times +but urged him on to all sorts of nonsense, in an effort, I suppose, to +entertain himself and make life seem less commonplace. + +And yet he loved life, in all its multiform and multiplex aspects and +with no desire or tendency to sniff, reform or improve anything. It was +good just as he found it, excellent. Life to Peter was indeed so +splendid that he was always very much wrought up about it, eager to +live, to study, to do a thousand things. For him it was a workshop for +the artist, the thinker, as well as the mere grubber, and without really +criticizing any one he was "for" the individual who is able to +understand, to portray or to create life, either feelingly and +artistically or with accuracy and discrimination. To him, as I saw then +and see even more clearly now, there was no high and no low. All things +were only relatively so. A thief was a thief, but he had his place. +Ditto the murderer. Ditto the saint. Not man but Nature was planning, or +at least doing, something which man could not understand, of which very +likely he was a mere tool. Peter was as much thrilled and entendered by +the brawling strumpet in the street or the bagnio as by the virgin with +her starry crown. The rich were rich and the poor poor, but all were in +the grip of imperial forces whose ruthless purposes or lack of them made +all men ridiculous, pathetic or magnificent, as you choose. He pitied +ignorance and necessity, and despised vanity and cruelty for cruelty's +sake, and the miserly hoarding of anything. He was liberal, material, +sensual and yet spiritual; and although he never had more than a little +money, out of the richness and fullness of his own temperament he seemed +able to generate a kind of atmosphere and texture in his daily life +which was rich and warm, splendid really in thought (the true reality) +if not in fact, and most grateful to all. Yet also, as I have said, +always he wished to _seem_ the clown, the scapegrace, the wanton and +the loon even, mouthing idle impossibilities at times and declaring his +profoundest faith in the most fantastic things. + +Do I seem to rave? I am dealing with a most significant person. + +In so far as I knew he was born into a mid-Western family of Irish +extraction whose habitat was southwest Missouri. In the town in which he +was reared there was not even a railroad until he was fairly well +grown--a fact which amused but never impressed him very much. Apropos of +this he once told me of a yokel who, never having seen a railroad, +entered the station with his wife and children long before train time, +bought his ticket and waited a while, looking out of the various +windows, then finally returned to the ticket-seller and asked, "When +does this thing start?" He meant the station building itself. At the +time Peter had entered upon art work he had scarcely prosecuted his +studies beyond, if so far as, the conventional high or grammar school, +and yet he was most amazingly informed and but little interested in what +any school or college had to offer. His father, curiously enough, was an +educated Irish-American, a lawyer by profession, and a Catholic. His +mother was an American Catholic, rather strict and narrow. His brothers +and sisters, of whom there were four, were, as I learned later, +astonishingly virile and interesting Americans of a rather wild, +unsettled type. They were all, in so far as I could judge from chance +meetings, agnostic, tense, quick-moving--so vital that they weighed on +one a little, as very intense temperaments are apt to do. One of the +brothers, K----, who seemed to seek me out ever so often for Peter's +sake, was so intense, nervous, rapid-talking, rapid-living, that he +frightened me a little. He loved noisy, garish places. He liked to play +the piano, stay up very late; he was a high liver, a "good dresser," as +the denizens of the Tenderloin would say, an excellent example of the +flashy, clever promoter. He was always representing a new company, +introducing something--a table or laxative water, a shaving soap, a +chewing gum, a safety razor, a bicycle, an automobile tire or the +machine itself. He was here, there, everywhere--in Waukesha, Wisconsin; +San Francisco; New York; New Orleans. "My, my! This is certainly +interesting!" he would exclaim, with an air which would have done credit +to a comedian and extending both hands. "Peter's pet friend, Dreiser! +Well, well, well! Let's have a drink. Let's have something to eat. I'm +only in town for a day. Maybe you'd like to go to a show--or hit the +high places? Would you? Well, well, well! Let's make a night of it! What +do you say?" and he would fix me with a glistening, nervous and what was +intended no doubt to be a reassuring eye, but which unsettled me as +thoroughly as the imminence of an earthquake. But I was talking of +Peter. + +The day I first saw him he was bent over a drawing-board illustrating a +snake story for one of the Sunday issues of the _Globe-Democrat_, which +apparently delighted in regaling its readers with most astounding +concoctions of this kind, and the snake he was drawing was most +disturbingly vital and reptilian, beady-eyed, with distended jaws, +extended tongue, most fatefully coiled. + +"My," I commented in passing, for I was in to see him about another +matter, "what a glorious snake!" + +"Yes, you can't make 'em too snaky for the snake-editor up front," he +returned, rising and dusting tobacco from his lap and shirtfront, for he +was in his shirt-sleeves. Then he expectorated not in but to one side of +a handsome polished brass cuspidor which contained not the least +evidence of use, the rubber mat upon which it stood being instead most +disturbingly "decorated." I was most impressed by this latter fact +although at the time I said nothing, being too new. Later, I may as well +say here, I discovered why. This was a bit of his clowning humor, a +purely manufactured and as it were mechanical joke or ebullience of +soul. If any one inadvertently or through unfamiliarity attempted to +expectorate in his "golden cuspidor," as he described it, he was always +quick to rise and interpose in the most solemn, almost sepulchral +manner, at the same time raising a hand. "Hold! Out--not in--to one +side, on the mat! That cost me seven dollars!" Then he would solemnly +seat himself and begin to draw again. I saw him do this to all but the +chiefest of the authorities of the paper. And all, even the dullest, +seemed to be amused, quite fascinated by the utter trumpery folly of it. + +But I am getting ahead of my tale. In so far as the snake was +concerned, he was referring to the assistant who had these snake stories +in charge. "The fatter and more venomous and more scaly they are," he +went on, "the better. I'd like it if we could use a little color in this +paper--red for eyes and tongue, and blue and green for scales. The +farmers upstate would love that. They like good but poisonous snakes." +Then he grinned, stood back and, cocking his head to one side in a most +examining and yet approving manner, ran his hand through his hair and +beard and added, "A snake can't be too vital, you know, for this paper. +We have to draw 'em strong, plenty of vitality, plenty of go." He +grinned most engagingly. + +I could not help laughing, of course. The impertinent air! The grand, +almost condescending manner! + +We soon became fast friends. + +In the same office in close contact with him was another person, one +D---- W----, also a newspaper artist, who, while being exceedingly +interesting and special in himself, still as a character never seems to +have served any greater purpose in my own mind than to have illustrated +how emphatic and important Peter was. He had a thin, pale, Dantesque +face, coal black, almost Indian-like hair most carefully parted in the +middle and oiled and slicked down at the sides and back until it looked +as though it had been glued. His eyes were small and black and querulous +but not mean--petted eyes they were--and the mouth had little lines at +each corner which seemed to say he had endured much, much pain, which of +course he had not, but which nevertheless seemed to ask for, and I +suppose earned him some, sympathy. Dick in his way was an actor, a +tragedian of sorts, but with an element of humor, cynicism and insight +which saved him from being utterly ridiculous. Like most actors, he was +a great poseur. He invariably affected the long, loose flowing tie with +a soft white or blue or green or brown linen shirt (would any American +imitation of the "Quartier Latin" denizen have been without one at that +date?), yellow or black gloves, a round, soft crush hat, very soft and +limp and very _different_, patent leather pumps, betimes a capecoat, a +slender cane, a boutonnière--all this in hard, smoky, noisy, commercial +St. Louis, full of middle-West business men and farmers! + +I would not mention this particular person save that for a time he, +Peter and myself were most intimately associated. We temporarily +constituted in our way a "soldiers three" of the newspaper world. For +some years after we were more or less definitely in touch as a group, +although later Peter and myself having drifted Eastward and hob-nobbing +as a pair had been finding more and more in common and had more and more +come to view Dick for what he was: a character of Dickensian, or perhaps +still better, Cruikshankian, proportions and qualities. But in those +days the three of us were all but inseparable; eating, working, playing, +all but sleeping together. I had a studio of sorts in a more or less +dilapidated factory section of St. Louis (Tenth near Market; now I +suppose briskly commercial), Dick had one at Broadway and Locust, +directly opposite the then famous Southern Hotel. Peter lived with his +family on the South Side, a most respectable and homey-home +neighborhood. + +It has been one of my commonest experiences, and one of the most +interesting to me, to note that nearly all of my keenest experiences +intellectually, my most gorgeous _rapprochements_ and swiftest +developments mentally, have been by, to, and through men, not women, +although there have been several exceptions to this. Nearly every +turning point in my career has been signalized by my meeting some man of +great force, to whom I owe some of the most ecstatic intellectual hours +of my life, hours in which life seemed to bloom forth into new aspects, +glowed as with the radiance of a gorgeous tropic day. + +Peter was one such. About my own age at this time, he was blessed with a +natural understanding which was simply Godlike. Although, like myself, +he was raised a Catholic and still pretending in a boisterous, +Rabelaisian way to have some reverence for that faith, he was amusingly +sympathetic to everything good, bad, indifferent--"in case there might +be something in it; you never can tell." Still he hadn't the least +interest in conforming to the tenets of the church and laughed at its +pretensions, preferring his own theories to any other. Apparently +nothing amused him so much as the thought of confession and communion, +of being shrived by some stout, healthy priest as worldly as himself, +and preferably Irish, like himself. At the same time he had a hearty +admiration for the Germans, all their ways, conservatisms, their +breweries, food and such things, and finally wound up by marrying a +German girl. + +As far as I could make out, Peter had no faith in anything except Nature +itself, and very little in that except in those aspects of beauty and +accident and reward and terrors with which it is filled and for which he +had an awe if not a reverence and in every manifestation of which he +took the greatest delight. Life was a delicious, brilliant mystery to +him, horrible in some respects, beautiful in others; a great adventure. +Unlike myself at the time, he had not the slightest trace of any +lingering Puritanism, and wished to live in a lush, vigorous, healthy, +free, at times almost barbaric, way. The negroes, the ancient Romans, +the Egyptians, tales of the Orient and the grotesque Dark Ages, our own +vile slums and evil quarters--how he reveled in these! He was for nights +of wandering, endless investigation, reading, singing, dancing, playing! + +Apropos of this I should like to relate here that one of his seemingly +gross but really innocent diversions was occasionally visiting a certain +black house of prostitution, of which there were many in St. Louis. Here +while he played a flute and some one else a tambourine or small drum, he +would have two or three of the inmates dance in some weird savage way +that took one instanter to the wilds of Central Africa. There was, so +far as I know, no payment of any kind made in connection with this. He +was a friend, in some crude, artistic or barbaric way. He satisfied, I +am positive, some love of color, sound and the dance in these queer +revels. + +Nor do I know how he achieved these friendships, such as they were. I +was never with him when he did. But aside from the satiation they +afforded his taste for the strange and picturesque, I am sure they +reflected no gross or sensual appetite. But I wish to attest in passing +that the mere witnessing of these free scenes had a tonic as well as +toxic effect on me. As I view myself now, I was a poor, spindling, +prying fish, anxious to know life, and yet because of my very narrow +training very fearsome of it, of what it might do to me, what dreadful +contagion of thought or deed it might open me to! Peter was not so. To +him all, positively _all_, life was good. It was a fascinating +spectacle, to be studied or observed and rejoiced in as a spectacle. +When I look back now on the shabby, poorly-lighted, low-ceiled room to +which he led me "for fun," the absolutely black or brown girls with +their white teeth and shiny eyes, the unexplainable, unintelligible love +of rhythm and the dance displayed, the beating of a drum, the sinuous, +winding motions of the body, I am grateful to him. He released my mind, +broadened my view, lengthened my perspective. For as I sat with him, +watching him beat his drum or play his flute, noted the gayety, his love +of color and effect, and feeling myself _low_, a criminal, disgraced, +the while I was staring with all my sight and enjoying it intensely, I +realized that I was dealing with a man who was "bigger" than I was in +many respects, saner, really more wholesome. I was a moral coward, and +he was not losing his life and desires through fear--which the majority +of us do. He was strong, vital, unafraid, and he made me so. + +But, lest I seem to make him low or impossible to those who +instinctively cannot accept life beyond the range of their own little +routine world, let me hasten to his other aspects. He was not low but +simple, brilliant and varied in his tastes. America and its point of +view, religious and otherwise, was simply amusing to him, not to be +taken seriously. He loved to contemplate man at his mysteries, rituals, +secret schools. He loved better yet ancient history, medieval inanities +and atrocities--a most singular, curious and wonderful mind. Already at +this age he knew many historians and scientists (their work), a most +astonishing and illuminating list to me--Maspero, Froude, Huxley, +Darwin, Wallace, Rawlinson, Froissart, Hallam, Taine, Avebury! The list +of painters, sculptors and architects with whose work he was familiar +and books about whom or illustrated by whom he knew, is too long to be +given here. His chief interest, in so far as I could make out, in these +opening days, was Egyptology and the study of things natural and +primeval--all the wonders of a natural, groping, savage world. + +"Dreiser," he exclaimed once with gusto, his bright beady eyes gleaming +with an immense human warmth, "you haven't the slightest idea of the +fascination of some of the old beliefs. Do you know the significance of +a scarab in Egyptian religious worship, for instance?" + +"A scarab? What's a scarab? I never heard of one," I answered. + +"A beetle, of course. An Egyptian beetle. You know what a beetle is, +don't you? Well, those things burrowed in the earth, the mud of the +Nile, at a certain period of their season to lay their eggs, and the +next spring, or whenever it was, the eggs would hatch and the beetles +would come up. Then the Egyptians imagined that the beetle hadn't died +at all, or if it had that it also had the power of restoring itself to +life, possessed immortality. So they thought it must be a god and began +to worship it," and he would pause and survey me with those amazing +eyes, bright as glass beads, to see if I were properly impressed. + +"You don't say!" + +"Sure. That's where the worship came from," and then he might go on and +add a bit about monkey-worship, the Zoroastrians and the Parsees, the +sacred bull of Egypt, its sex power as a reason for its religious +elevation, and of sex worship in general; the fantastic orgies at Sidon +and Tyre, where enormous images of the male and female sex organs were +carried aloft before the multitude. + +Being totally ignorant of these matters at the time, not a rumor of them +having reached me as yet in my meagre reading, I knew that it must be +so. It fired me with a keen desire to read--not the old orthodox +emasculated histories of the schools but those other books and pamphlets +to which I fancied he must have access. Eagerly I inquired of him where, +how. He told me that in some cases they were outlawed, banned or not +translated wholly or fully, owing to the puritanism and religiosity of +the day, but he gave me titles and authors to whom I might have access, +and the address of an old book-dealer or two who could get them for me. + +In addition he was interested in ethnology and geology, as well as +astronomy (the outstanding phases at least), and many, many phases of +applied art: pottery, rugs, pictures, engraving, wood-carving, +jewel-cutting and designing, and I know not what else, yet there was +always room even in his most serious studies for humor of the bizarre +and eccentric type, amounting to all but an obsession. He wanted to +laugh, and he found occasion for doing so under the most serious, or at +least semi-serious, circumstances. Thus I recall that one of the butts +of his extreme humor was this same Dick, whom he studied with the +greatest care for points worthy his humorous appreciation. Dick, in +addition to his genuinely lively mental interests, was a most romantic +person on one side, a most puling and complaining soul on the other. As +a newspaper artist I believe he was only a fairly respectable craftsman, +if so much, whereas Peter was much better, although he deferred to Dick +in the most persuasive manner and seemed to believe at times, though I +knew he did not, that Dick represented all there was to know in matters +artistic. + +Among other things at this time, the latter was, or pretended to be, +immensely interested in all things pertaining to the Chinese and to know +not only something of their language, which he had studied a little +somewhere, but also their history--a vague matter, as we all know--and +the spirit and significance of their art and customs. He sometimes +condescended to take us about with him to one or two Chinese restaurants +of the most beggarly description, and--as he wished to believe, because +of the romantic titillation involved--the hang-outs of crooks and +thieves and disreputable Tenderloin characters generally. (Of such was +the beginning of the Chinese restaurant in America.) He would introduce +us to a few of his Celestial friends, whose acquaintance apparently he +had been most assiduously cultivating for some time past and with whom +he was now on the best of terms. He had, as Peter pointed out to me, the +happy knack of persuading himself that there was something vastly +mysterious and superior about the whole Chinese race, that there was +some Chinese organization known as the Six Companions, which, so far as +I could make out from him, was ruling very nearly (and secretly, of +course) the entire habitable globe. For one thing it had some governing +connection with great constructive ventures of one kind and another in +all parts of the world, supplying, as he said, thousands of Chinese +laborers to any one who desired them, anywhere, and although they were +employed by others, ruling them with a rod of iron, cutting their +throats when they failed to perform their bounden duties and burying +them head down in a basket of rice, then transferring their remains +quietly to China in coffins made in China and brought for that purpose +to the country in which they were. The Chinese who had worked for the +builders of the Union Pacific had been supplied by this company, as I +understood from Dick. In regard to all this Peter used to analyze and +dispose of Dick's self-generated romance with the greatest gusto, +laughing the while and yet pretending to accept it all. + +But there was one phase of all this which interested Peter immensely. +Were there on sale in St. Louis any bits of jade, silks, needlework, +porcelains, basketry or figurines of true Chinese origin? He was far +more interested in this than in the social and economic sides of the +lives of the Chinese, and was constantly urging Dick to take him here, +there and everywhere in order that he might see for himself what of +these amazing wonders were locally extant, leading Dick in the process a +merry chase and a dog's life. Dick was compelled to persuade nearly all +of his boasted friends to produce all they had to show. Once, I recall, +a collection of rare Chinese porcelains being shown at the local museum +of art, there was nothing for it but that Dick must get one or more of +his Oriental friends to interpret this, that and the other symbol in +connection with this, that and the other vase--things which put him to +no end of trouble and which led to nothing, for among all the local +Chinese there was not one who knew anything about it, although they, +Dick included, were not honest enough to admit it. + +"You know, Dreiser," Peter said to me one day with the most delicious +gleam of semi-malicious, semi-tender humor, "I am really doing all this +just to torture Dick. He doesn't know a damned thing about it and +neither do these Chinese, but it's fun to haul 'em out there and make +'em sweat. The museum sells an illustrated monograph covering all this, +you know, with pictures of the genuinely historic pieces and +explanations of the various symbols in so far as they are known, but +Dick doesn't know that, and he's lying awake nights trying to find out +what they're all about. I like to see his expression and that of those +chinks when they examine those things." He subsided with a low chuckle +all the more disturbing because it was so obviously the product of +well-grounded knowledge. + +Another phase of this same humor related to the grand artistic, social +and other forms of life to which Dick was hoping to ascend via marriage +and which led him, because of a kind of anticipatory eagerness, into all +sorts of exaggerations of dress, manners, speech, style in writing or +drawing, and I know not what else. He had, as I have said, a "studio" in +Broadway, an ordinary large, square upper chamber of an old residence +turned commercial but which Dick had decorated in the most, to him, +recherché or _different_ manner possible. In Dick's gilding imagination +it was packed with the rarest and most carefully selected things, odd +bits of furniture, objects of art, pictures, books--things which the +ordinary antique shop provides in plenty but which to Dick, having been +reared in Bloomington, Illinois, were of the utmost artistic import. He +had vaulting ambitions and pretensions, literary and otherwise, having +by now composed various rondeaus, triolets, quatrains, sonnets, in +addition to a number of short stories over which he had literally slaved +and which, being rejected by many editors, were kept lying idly and +inconsequentially and seemingly inconspicuously about his place--the +more to astonish the poor unsophisticated "outsider." Besides it gave +him the opportunity of posing as misunderstood, neglected, depressed, as +becomes all great artists, poets, and thinkers. + +His great scheme or dream, however, was that of marriage to an heiress, +one of those very material and bovine daughters of the new rich in the +West end, and to this end he was bending all his artistic thought, +writing, dressing, dreaming the thing he wished. I myself had a marked +tendency in this direction, although from another point of view, and +speaking from mine purely, there was this difference between us: Dick +being an artist, rather remote and disdainful in manner and decidedly +handsome as well as poetic and better positioned than I, as I fancied, +was certain to achieve this gilded and crystal state, whereas I, not +being handsome nor an artist nor sufficiently poetic perhaps, could +scarcely aspire to so gorgeous a goal. Often, as around dinnertime he +ambled from the office arrayed in the latest mode--dark blue suit, +patent leather boots, a dark, round soft felt hat, loose tie blowing +idly about his neck, a thin cane in his hand--I was already almost +convinced that the anticipated end was at hand, this very evening +perhaps, and that I should never see him more except as the husband of a +very rich girl, never be permitted even to speak to him save as an +almost forgotten friend, and in passing! Even now perhaps he was on his +way to her, whereas I, poor oaf that I was, was moiling here over some +trucky work. Would my ship never come in? my great day never arrive? my +turn? Unkind heaven! + +As for Peter he was the sort of person who could swiftly detect, +understand and even sympathize with a point of view of this kind the +while he must laugh at it and his mind be busy with some plan of making +a fol-de-rol use of it. One day he came into the city-room where I was +working and bending over my desk fairly bursting with suppressed humor +announced, "Gee, Dreiser, I've just thought of a delicious trick to play +on Dick! Oh, Lord!" and he stopped and surveyed me with beady eyes the +while his round little body seemed to fairly swell with pent-up +laughter. "It's too rich! Oh, if it just works out Dick'll be sore! +Wait'll I tell you," he went on. "You know how crazy he is about rich +young heiresses? You know how he's always 'dressing up' and talking and +writing about marrying one of those girls in the West end?" (Dick was +forever composing a short story in which some lorn but perfect and great +artist was thus being received via love, the story being read to us +nights in his studio.) "That's all bluff, that talk of his of visiting +in those big houses out there. All he does is to dress up every night as +though he were going to a ball, and walk out that way and moon around. +Well, listen. Here's the idea. We'll go over to Mermod & Jaccards +to-morrow and get a few sheets of their best monogrammed paper, sample +sheets. Then we'll get up a letter and sign it with the most romantic +name we can think of--Juanita or Cyrene or Doris--and explain who she +is, the daughter of a millionaire living out there, and that she's been +strictly brought up but that in spite of all that she's seen his name in +the paper at the bottom of his pictures and wants to meet him, see? Then +we'll have her suggest that he come out to the west gate of, say, +Portland Place at seven o'clock and meet her. We'll have her describe +herself, see, young and beautiful, and some attractive costume she's to +wear, and we'll kill him. He'll fall hard. Then we'll happen by there at +the exact time when he's waiting, and detain him, urge him to come into +the park with us or to dinner. We'll look our worst so he'll be ashamed +of us. He'll squirm and get wild, but we'll hang on and spoil the date +for him, see? We'll insist in the letter that he must be alone, see, +because she's timid and afraid of being recognized. My God, he'll be +crazy! He'll think we've ruined his life--oh, ho, ho!" and he fairly +writhed with inward joy. + +The thing worked. It was cruel in its way, but when has man ever grieved +over the humorous ills of others? The paper was secured, the letter +written by a friend of Peter's in a nearby real estate office, after the +most careful deliberation as to wording on our part. Extreme youth, +beauty and a great mansion were all hinted at. The fascination of Dick +as a romantic figure was touched upon. He would know her by a green silk +scarf about her waist, for it was spring, the ideal season. Seven +o'clock was the hour. She could give him only a moment or two then--but +later--and she gave no address! + +The letter was mailed in the West end, as was meet and proper, and in +due season arrived at the office. Peter, working at the next easel, +observed him, as he told me, out of the corner of his eye. + +"You should have seen him, Dreiser," he exclaimed, hunting me up about +an hour after the letter arrived. "Oh, ho! Say, you know I believe he +thinks it's the real thing. It seemed to make him a little sick. He +tried to appear nonchalant, but a little later he got his hat and went +out, over to Deck's," a nearby saloon, "for a drink, for I followed him. +He's all fussed up. Wait'll we heave into view that night! I'm going to +get myself up like a joke, a hobo. I'll disgrace him. Oh, Lord, he'll be +crazy! He'll think we've ruined his life, scared her off. There's no +address. He can't do a thing. Oh, ho, ho, ho!" + +On the appointed day--and it was a delicious afternoon and evening, +aflame with sun and in May--Dick left off his work at three p.m., as +Peter came and told me, and departed, and then we went to make our +toilets. At six we met, took a car and stepped down not more than a +short block from the point of meeting. I shall never forget the +sweetness of the air, the something of sadness in the thought of love, +even in this form. The sun was singing its evensong, as were the birds. +But Peter--blessings or curses upon him!--was arrayed as only he could +array himself when he wished to look absolutely disconcerting--more like +an unwashed, uncombed tramp who had been sleeping out for weeks, than +anything else. His hair was over his eyes and ears, his face and hands +dirty, his shoes ditto. He had even blackened one tooth slightly. He had +on a collarless shirt, and yet he was jaunty withal and carried a cane, +if you please, assuming, as he always could and in the most aggravating +way, to be totally unconscious of the figure he cut. At one angle of his +multiplex character the man must have been a born actor. + +We waited a block away, concealed by a few trees, and at the exact hour +Dick appeared, hopeful and eager no doubt, and walking and looking +almost all that he hoped--delicate, pale, artistic. The new straw hat! +The pale green "artists'" shirt! His black, wide-buckled belt! The cane! +The dark-brown low shoes! The boutonnière! He was plainly ready for any +fate, his great moment. + +And then, before he could get the feeling that his admirer might not be +coming, we descended upon him in all our wretched nonchalance and +unworthiness--out of hell, as it were. We were most brisk, familiar, +affectionate. It was so fortunate to meet him so, so accidentally and +peradventure. The night was so fine. We were out for a stroll in the +park, to eat afterward. He must come along. + +I saw him look at Peter in that hat and no collar, and wilt. It was too +much. Such a friend--such friends (for on Peter's advice I was looking +as ill as I might, an easy matter)! No, he couldn't come. He was waiting +for some friends. We must excuse him. + +But Peter was not to be so easily shaken off. He launched into the most +brisk and serious conversation. He began his badger game by asking about +some work upon which Dick had been engaged before he left the office, +some order, how he was getting along with it, when it would be done; +and, when Dick evaded and then attempted to dismiss the subject, took +up another and began to expatiate on it, some work he himself was doing, +something that had developed in connection with it. He asked inane +questions, complimented Dick on his looks, began to tease him about some +girl. And poor Dick--his nervousness, his despair almost, the sense of +the waning of his opportunity! It was cruel. He was becoming more and +more restless, looking about more and more wearily and anxiously and +wishing to go or for us to go. He was horribly unhappy. Finally, after +ten or fifteen minutes had gone and various girls had crossed the plaza +in various directions, as well as carriages and saddle-horses--each one +carrying his heiress, no doubt!--he seemed to summon all his courage and +did his best to dispose of us. "You two'll have to excuse me," he +exclaimed almost wildly. "I can't wait." Those golden moments! She could +not approach! "My people aren't coming, I guess. I'll have to be going +on." + +He smiled weakly and made off, Peter half following and urging him to +come back. Then, since he would not, we stood there on the exact spot of +the rendezvous gazing smirkily after him. Then we went into the park a +few paces and sat on a bench in full view, talking--or Peter was--most +volubly. He was really choking with laughter. A little later, at +seven-thirty, we went cackling into the park, only to return in five +minutes as though we had changed our minds and were coming out--and saw +Dick bustling off at our approach. It was sad really. There was an +element of the tragic in it. But not to Peter. He was all laughter, all +but apoplectic gayety. "Oh, by George!" he choked. "This is too much! +Oh, ho! This is great! his poor heiress! And he came back! Har! Har! +Har!" + +"Peter, you dog," I said, "aren't you ashamed of yourself, to rub it in +this way?" + +"Not a bit, not a bit!" he insisted most enthusiastically. "Do him good. +Why shouldn't he suffer? He'll get over it. He's always bluffing about +his heiresses. Now he's lost a real one. Har! Har! Har!" and he fairly +choked, and for days and weeks and months he laughed, but he never told. +He merely chortled at his desk, and if any one asked him what he was +laughing about, even Dick, he would reply, "Oh, something--a joke I +played on a fellow once." + +If Dick ever guessed he never indicated as much. But that lost romance! +That faded dream! + +Not so long after this, the following winter, I left St. Louis and did +not see Peter for several years, during which time I drifted through +various cities to New York. We kept up a more or less desultory +correspondence which resulted eventually in his contributing to a paper +of which I had charge in New York, and later, in part at least I am +sure, in his coming there. I noticed one thing, that although Peter had +no fixed idea as to what he wished to be--being able to draw, write, +engrave, carve and what not--he was in no way troubled about it. "I +don't see just what it is that I am to do best," he said to me once. "It +may be that I will wind up as a painter or writer or collector--I can't +tell yet. I want to study, and meantime I'm making a living--that's all +I want now. I want to live, and I am living, in my way." + +Some men are masters of cities, or perhaps better, of all the elements +which enter into the making of them, and Peter was one. I think +sometimes that he was born a writer of great force and charm, only as +yet he had not found himself. I have known many writers, many geniuses +even, but not one his superior in intellect and romantic response to +life. He was a poet, thinker, artist, philosopher and master of prose, +as a posthumous volume ("Wolf, the Autobiography of a Cave Dweller") +amply proves, but he was not ready then to fully express himself, and it +troubled him not at all. He loved life's every facet, was gay and +helpful to himself and others, and yet always with an eye for the +undercurrent of human misery, error and tragedy as well as comedy. +Immediately upon coming to New York he began to examine and grasp it in +a large way, its museums, public buildings, geography, politics, but +after a very little while decided suddenly that he did not belong there +and without a by-your-leave, although once more we had fallen into each +other's ways, he departed without a word, and I did not hear from him +for months. Temporarily at least he felt that he had to obtain more +experience in a lesser field, and lost no time in so doing. The next I +knew he was connected, at a comfortable salary, with the then dominant +paper of Philadelphia. + +It was after he had established himself very firmly in Philadelphia that +we two finally began to understand each other fully, to sympathize +really with each other's point of view as opposed to the more or less +gay and casual nature of our earlier friendship. Also here perhaps, more +than before, we felt the binding influence of having worked together in +the West. It was here that I first noticed the ease with which he took +hold of a city, the many-sidedness of his peculiar character which led +him to reflect so many angles of it, which a less varied temperament +would never have touched upon. For, first of all, wherever he happened +to be, he was intensely interested in the age and history of his city, +its buildings and graveyards and tombstones which pointed to its past +life, then its present physical appearance, the chief characteristics of +the region in which it lay, its rivers, lakes, parks and adjacent places +and spots of interest (what rambles we took!), as well as its newest and +finest things architecturally. Nor did any one ever take a keener +interest in the current intellectual resources of a city--any city in +which he happened to be--its museums, libraries, old bookstores, +newspapers, magazines, and I know not what else. It was he who first +took me into Leary's bookstore in Philadelphia, descanting with his +usual gusto on its merits. Then and lastly he was keenly and wisely +interested in various currents of local politics, society and finance, +although he always considered the first a low mess, an arrangement or +adjustment of many necessary things among the lower orders. He seemed to +know or sense in some occult way everything that was going on in those +various realms. His mind was so full and rich that merely to be with him +was a delight. He gushed like a fountain, and yet not polemically, of +all he knew, heard, felt, suspected. His thoughts were so rich at times +that to me they were more like a mosaic of variegated and richly colored +stones and jewels. I felt always as though I were in the presence of a +great personage, not one who was reserved or pompous but a loose +bubbling temperament, wise beyond his years or day, and so truly great +that perhaps because of the intensity and immense variety of his +interests he would never shine in a world in which the most intensive +specialization, and that of a purely commercial character, was the grand +rôle. + +And yet I always felt that perhaps he might. He attracted people of all +grades so easily and warmly. His mind leaped from one interest to +another almost too swiftly, and yet the average man understood and liked +him. While in a way he contemned their mental states as limited or +bigoted, he enjoyed the conditions under which they lived, seemed to +wish to immerse himself in them. And yet nearly all his thoughts were, +from their point of view perhaps, dangerous. Among his friends he was +always talking freely, honestly, of things which the average man could +not or would not discuss, dismissing as trash illusion, lies or the +cunning work of self-seeking propagandists, most of the things currently +accepted as true. + +He was constantly commenting on the amazing dullness of man, his +prejudices, the astonishing manner in which he seized upon and clung +savagely or pathetically to the most ridiculous interpretations of life. +He was also forever noting that crass chance which wrecks so many of our +dreams and lives,--its fierce brutalities, its seemingly inane +indifference to wondrous things,--but never in a depressed or morbid +spirit; merely as a matter of the curious, as it were. But if any one +chanced to contradict him he was likely to prove liquid fire. At the +same time he was forever reading, reading, reading--history, archæology, +ethnology, geology, travel, medicine, biography, and descanting on the +wonders and idiosyncrasies of man and nature which they revealed. He was +never tired of talking of the intellectual and social conditions that +ruled in Greece and Rome from 600 B.C. on, the philosophies, the +travels, the art, the simple, natural pagan view of things, and +regretting that they were no more. He grieved at times, I think, that he +had not been of that world, might not have seen it, or, failing that, +might not see all the shards of those extinct civilizations. There was +something loving and sad in the manner in which at times, in one museum +and another, he would examine ancient art designs, those of the +Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, their public and private house plans, +their statues, book rolls, inscriptions, flambeaux, boats, swords, +chariots. Carthage, Rome, Greece, Phoenicia--their colonies, art and +trade stuffs, their foods, pleasures and worships--how he raved! A book +like Thaïs, Salammbo, Sonica, Quo Vadis, touched him to the quick. + +At the same time, and odd as it may seem, he was seemingly in intimate +contact with a circle of friends that rather astonished me by its +catholicity. It included, for instance, and quite naïvely, real estate +dealers, clerks, a bank cashier or two, some man who had a leather shop +or cigar factory in the downtown section, a drummer, a printer, two or +three newspaper artists and reporters--a list too long to catalogue here +and seemingly not interesting, at least not inspiring to look at or live +in contact with. Yet his relations with all of these were of a warm, +genial, helpful, homely character, quite intimate. He used them as one +might a mulch in which to grow things, or in other words he took them on +their own ground; a thing which I could never quite understand, being +more or less aloof myself and yet wishing always to be able so to do, to +take life, as he did. + +For he desired, and secured, their good will and drew them to him. He +took a simple, natural pleasure in the kinds of things they were able to +do, as well as the kinds of things he could do. With these, then, and a +type of girl who might not be classed above the clerk or manicure class, +he and they managed to eke out a social life, the outstanding phases of +which were dances, "parties," dinners at one simple home and another, +flirting, boating, and fishing expeditions in season, evenings out at +restaurants or the theater, and I know not what else. He could sing (a +very fair baritone), play the piano, cornet, flute, banjo, mandolin and +guitar, but always insisted that his favorite instruments were the +jews'-harp, the French harp (mouth organ) and a comb with a piece of +paper over it, against which he would blow with fierce energy, making +the most outrageous sounds, until stopped. At any "party" he was always +talking, jumping about, dancing, cooking something--fudge, taffy, a +rarebit, and insisting in the most mock-serious manner that all the +details be left strictly to him. "Now just cut out of this, all of you, +and leave this to your Uncle Dudley. Who's doing this? All I want is +sugar, chocolate, a pot, a big spoon, and I'll show you the best fudge +you ever ate." Then he would don an apron or towel and go to work in a +manner which would rob any gathering of a sense of stiffness and induce +a naturalness most intriguing, calculated to enhance the general +pleasure an hundredfold. + +Yes, Peter woke people up. He could convey or spread a sense of ease and +good nature and give and take among all. Wise as he was and not so +good-looking, he was still attractive to girls, very much so, and by no +means unconscious of their beauty. He could always, and easily, break +down their reserve, and was soon apparently on terms of absolute +friendship, exchanging all sorts of small gossip and news with them +about this, that and the other person about whom they knew. Indeed he +was such a general favorite and so seemingly impartial that it was hard +to say how he came close to any, and yet he did. At odd tête-à-tête +moments he was always making confessions as to "nights" or "afternoons." +"My God, Dreiser, I've found a peach! I can't tell you--but oh, +wonderful! Just what I need. This world's a healthy old place, eh? Let's +have another drink, what?" and he would order a stein or a half-schoppen +of light German beer and pour it down, grinning like a gargoyle. + +It was while he was in Philadelphia that he told me the beginnings of +the love affair which eventually ended in his marrying and settling down +into the homiest of home men I have ever seen and which for sheer +naïveté and charm is one of the best love stories I know anything about. +It appears that he was walking in some out-of-the-way factory realm of +North Philadelphia one Saturday afternoon about the first or second year +of his stay there, when, playing in the street with some other children, +he saw a girl of not more than thirteen or fourteen who, as he expressed +it to me, "came damned near being the prettiest thing I ever saw. She +had yellow hair and a short blue dress and pink bows in her hair--and +say, Dreiser, when I saw her I stopped flat and said 'me for that' if I +have to wait fifteen years! Dutchy--you never saw the beat! And poor! +Her shoes were clogs. She couldn't even talk English yet. Neither could +the other kids. They were all sausage--a regular German neighborhood. + +"But, say, I watched her a while and then I went over and said, 'Come +here, kid. Where do you live?' She didn't understand, and one of the +other kids translated for her, and then she said, 'Ich sprech nicht +English,'" and he mocked her. "That fixed her for me. One of the others +finally told me who she was and where she lived--and, say, I went right +home and began studying German. In three months I could make myself +understood, but before that, in two weeks, I hunted up her old man and +made him understand that I wanted to be friends with the family, to +learn German. I went out Sundays when they were all at home. There are +six children and I made friends with 'em all. For a long time I couldn't +make Madchen (that's what they call her) understand what it was all +about, but finally I did, and she knows now all right. And I'm crazy +about her and I'm going to marry her as soon as she's old enough." + +"How do you know that she'll have you?" I inquired. + +"Oh, she'll have me. I always tell her I'm going to marry her when she's +eighteen, and she says all right. And I really believe she does like me. +I'm crazy about her." + +Five years later, if I may anticipate a bit, after he had moved to +Newark and placed himself rather well in the journalistic field and was +able to carry out his plans in regard to himself, he suddenly returned +to Philadelphia and married, preparing beforehand an apartment which he +fancied would please her. It was a fortunate marriage in so far as love +and home pleasures were concerned. I never encountered a more delightful +atmosphere. + +All along in writing this I feel as though I were giving but the +thinnest portrait of Peter; he was so full and varied in his moods and +interests. To me he illustrated the joy that exists, on the one hand, in +the common, the so-called homely and what some might think ugly side of +life, certainly the very simple and ordinarily human aspect of things; +on the other, in the sheer comfort and satisfaction that might be taken +in things truly intellectual and artistic, but to which no great expense +attached--old books, prints, things connected with history and science +in their various forms, skill in matters relating to the applied arts +and what not, such as the coloring and firing of pottery and glass, the +making of baskets, hammocks and rugs, the carving of wood, the +collection and imitation of Japanese and Chinese prints, the art of +embalming as applied by the Egyptians (which, in connection with an +undertaker to whom he had attached himself, he attempted to revive or at +least play with, testing his skill for instance by embalming a dead cat +or two after the Egyptian manner). In all of these lines he trained +himself after a fashion and worked with skill, although invariably he +insisted that he was little more than a bungler, a poor follower after +the art of some one else. But most of all, at this time and later, he +was interested in collecting things Japanese and Chinese: netsukes, +inros, censors, images of jade and porcelain, teajars, vases, prints; +and it was while he was in Philadelphia and seemingly trifling about +with the group I have mentioned and making love to his little German +girl that he was running here and there to this museum and that and +laying the foundations of some of those interesting collections which +later he was fond of showing his friends or interested collectors. By +the time he had reached Newark, as chief cartoonist of the leading paper +there, he was in possession of a complete Tokaido (the forty views on +the road between Tokio and Kyoto), various prints by Hokusai, Sesshiu, +Sojo; a collection of one hundred inros, all of fifty netsukes, all of +thirty censers, lacquered boxes and teajars, and various other +exceedingly beautiful and valuable things--Mandarin skirts and coats, +among other things--which subsequently he sold or traded around among +one collector friend and another for things which they had. I recall his +selling his completed Tokaido, a labor which had extended over four +years, for over a thousand dollars. Just before he died he was trading +netsukes for inros and getting ready to sell all these latter to a man, +who in turn was going to sell his collection to a museum. + +But in between was this other, this ultra-human side, which ran to such +commonplaces as bowling, tennis-playing, golf, billiards, cards and +gambling with the dice--a thing which always struck me as having an odd +turn to it in connection with Peter, since he could be interested in so +many other things, and yet he pursued these commonplaces with as much +gusto at times as one possessed of a mania. At others he seemed not to +miss or think of them. Indeed, you could be sure of him and all his +interests, whatever they were, feeling that he had himself well in hand, +knew exactly how far he was going, and that when the time came he could +and would stop. Yet during the process of his momentary relaxation or +satiation, in whatever field it might be, he would give you a sense of +abandon, even ungovernable appetite, which to one who had not known him +long might have indicated a mania. + +Thus I remember once running over to Philadelphia to spend a Saturday +and Sunday with him, visits of this kind, in either direction, being of +the commonest occurrence. At that time he was living in some +quiet-looking boarding-house in South Fourth Street, but in which dwelt +or visited the group above-mentioned, and whenever I came there, at +least, there was always an atmosphere of intense gaming or playing in +some form, which conveyed to me nothing so much as a glorious sense of +life and pleasure. A dozen or more men might be seated at or standing +about a poker or dice table, in summer (often in winter) with their +coats off, their sleeves rolled up, Peter always conspicuous among them. +On the table or to one side would be money, a pitcher or a tin pail of +beer, boxes of cigarettes or cigars, and there would be Peter among the +players, flushed with excitement, his collar off, his hair awry, his +little figure stirring about here and there or gesticulating or lighting +a cigar or pouring down a glass of beer, shouting at the top of his +voice, his eyes aglow, "That's mine!" "I say it's not!" "Two on the +sixes!" "Three!" "Four!" "Ah, roll the bones! Roll the bones!" "Get off! +Get off! Come on now, Spikes--cough up! You've got the money now. Pay +back. No more loans if you don't." "Once on the fours--the fives--the +aces!" "Roll the bones! Roll the bones! Come on!" Or, if he saw me, +softening and saying, "Gee, Dreiser, I'm ahead twenty-eight so far!" or +"I've lost thirty all told. I'll stick this out, though, to win or lose +five more, and then I'll quit. I give notice, you fellows, five more, +one way or the other, and then I'm through. See? Say, these damned +sharks are always trying to turn a trick. And when they lose they don't +want to pay. I'm offa this for life unless I get a better deal." + +In the room there might be three or four girls--sisters, sweethearts, +pals of one or other of the players--some dancing, some playing the +piano or singing, and in addition the landlord and his wife, a slattern +pair usually, about whose past and present lives Peter seemed always to +know much. He had seduced them all apparently into a kind of rakish +camaraderie which was literally amazing to behold. It thrilled, +fascinated, at times frightened me, so thin and inadequate and +inefficient seemed my own point of view and appetite for life. He was +vigorous, charitable, pagan, gay, full of health and strength. He would +play at something, anything, indoors or out as occasion offered, until +he was fairly perspiring, when, throwing down whatever implement he had +in hand--be it cards, a tennis-racket, a golf club--would declare, +"That's enough! That's enough! I'm done now. I've licked-cha," or "I'm +licked. No more. Not another round. Come on, Dreiser, I know just the +place for us--" and then descanting on a steak or fish planked, or some +new method of serving corn or sweet potatoes or tomatoes, he would lead +the way somewhere to a favorite "rat's killer," as he used to say, or +grill or Chinese den, and order enough for four or five, unless stopped. +As he walked, and he always preferred to walk, the latest political row +or scandal, the latest discovery, tragedy or art topic would get his +keen attention. In his presence the whole world used to look different +to me, more colorful, more hopeful, more gay. Doors seemed to open; in +imagination I saw the interiors of a thousand realms--homes, factories, +laboratories, dens, resorts of pleasure. During his day such figures as +McKinley, Roosevelt, Hanna, Rockefeller, Rogers, Morgan, Peary, Harriman +were abroad and active, and their mental states and points of view and +interests--and sincerities and insincerities--were the subject of his +wholly brilliant analysis. He rather admired the clever opportunist, I +think, so long as he was not mean in view or petty, yet he scorned and +even despised the commercial viewpoint or trade reactions of a man like +McKinley. Rulers ought to be above mere commercialism. Once when I asked +him why he disliked McKinley so much he replied laconically, "The voice +is the voice of McKinley, but the hands--are the hands of Hanna." +Roosevelt seemed to amuse him always, to be a delightful if ridiculous +and self-interested "grandstander," as he always said, "always looking +out for Teddy, you bet," but good for the country, inspiring it with +visions. Rockefeller was wholly admirable as a force driving the country +on to autocracy, oligarchy, possibly revolution. Ditto Hanna, ditto +Morgan, ditto Harriman, ditto Rogers, unless checked. Peary might have, +and again might not have, discovered the North Pole. He refused to +judge. Old "Doc" Cook, the pseudo discoverer, who appeared very shortly +before he died, only drew forth chuckles of delight. "My God, the gall, +the nerve! And that wreath of roses the Danes put around his neck! It's +colossal, Dreiser. It's grand. Munchausen, Cook, Gulliver, Marco +Polo--they'll live forever, or ought to!" + +Some Saturday afternoons or Sundays, if he came to me or I to him in +time, we indulged in long idle rambles, anywhere, either going first by +streetcar, boat or train somewhere and then walking, or, if the mood was +not so, just walking on and on somewhere and talking. On such occasions +Peter was at his best and I could have listened forever, quite as the +disciples of Plato and Aristotle must have to them, to his discourses on +life, his broad and broadening conceptions of Nature--her cruelty, +beauty, mystery. Once, far out somewhere beyond Camden, we were idling +about an inlet where were boats and some fishermen and a trestle which +crossed it. Just as we were crossing it some men in a boat below +discovered the body of a possible suicide, in the water, days old and +discolored, but still intact and with the clothes of a man of at least +middle-class means. I was for leaving, being made a little sick by the +mere sight. Not so Peter. He was for joining in the effort which brought +the body to shore, and in a moment was back with the small group of +watermen, speculating and arguing as to the condition and character of +the dead man, making himself really one of the group. Finally he was +urging the men to search the pockets while some one went for the police. +But more than anything, with a hard and yet in its way humane realism +which put any courage of mine in that direction to the blush, he was all +for meditating on the state and nature of man, his chemical +components--chlorine, sulphuric acid, phosphoric acid, potassium, +sodium, calcium, magnesium, oxygen--and speculating as to which +particular chemicals in combination gave the strange metallic blues, +greens, yellows and browns to the decaying flesh! He had a great stomach +for life. The fact that insects were at work shocked him not at all. He +speculated as to _these_, their duties and functions! He asserted +boldly that man was merely a chemical formula at best, that something +much wiser than he had prepared him, for some not very brilliant purpose +of his or its own perhaps, and that he or it, whoever or whatever he or +it was, was neither good nor bad, as we imagined such things, but both. +He at once went off into the mysteries--where, when with me at least, he +seemed to prefer to dwell--talked of the divinations of the Chaldeans, +how they studied the positions of the stars and the entrails of dead +animals before going to war, talked of the horrible fetiches of the +Africans, the tricks and speculations of the priests of Greek and Roman +temples, finally telling me the story of the ambitious eel-seller who +anchored the dead horse in the stream in order to have plenty of eels +every morning for market. I revolted. I declared he was sickening. + +"My boy," he assured me, "you are too thin-skinned. You can't take life +that way. It's all good to me, whatever happens. We're here. We're not +running it. Why be afraid to look at it? The chemistry of a man's body +isn't any worse than the chemistry of anything else, and we're eating +the dead things we've killed all the time. A little more or a little +less in any direction--what difference?" + +Apropos of this same a little later--to shock me, of course, as he well +knew he could--he assured me that in eating a dish of chop suey in a +Chinese restaurant, a very low one, he had found and eaten a part of the +little finger of a child, and that "it was very good--very good, +indeed." + +"Dog!" I protested. "Swine! Thou ghoula!" but he merely chuckled +heartily and stuck to his tale! + +But if I paint this side of him it is to round out his wonderful, to me +almost incredible, figure. Insisting on such things, he was still and +always warm and human, sympathetic, diplomatic and cautious, according +to his company, so that he was really acceptable anywhere. Peter would +never shock those who did not want to be shocked. A minute or two or +five after such a discourse as the above he might be describing some +marvelously beautiful process of pollination among the flowers, the +history of some medieval trade guild or gazing at a beautiful scene and +conveying to one by his very attitude his unspoken emotion. + +After spending about two or three years in Philadelphia--which city +came to reflect for me the color of Peter's interests and mood--he +suddenly removed to Newark, having been nursing an arrangement with its +principal paper for some time. Some quarrel or dissatisfaction with the +director of his department caused him, without other notice, to paste +some crisp quotation from one of the poets on his desk and depart! In +Newark, a city to which before this I had paid not the slightest +attention, he found himself most happy; and I, living in New York close +at hand, felt that I possessed in it and him an earthly paradise. +Although it contained no more than 300,000 people and seemed, or had, a +drear factory realm only, he soon revealed it to me in quite another +light, because he was there. Very swiftly he found a wondrous canal +running right through it, under its market even, and we went walking +along its banks, out into the woods and fields. He found or created out +of an existing boardinghouse in a back street so colorful and gay a +thing that after a time it seemed to me to outdo that one of +Philadelphia. He joined a country club near Passaic, on the river of +that name, on the veranda of which we often dined. He found a Chinese +quarter with a restaurant or two; an amazing Italian section with a +restaurant; a man who had a $40,000 collection of rare Japanese and +Chinese curios, all in his rooms at the Essex County Insane Asylum, for +he was the chemist there; a man who was a playwright and manager in New +York; another who owned a newspaper syndicate; another who directed a +singing society; another who was president of a gun club; another who +owned and made or rather fired pottery for others. Peter was so restless +and vital that he was always branching out in a new direction. To my +astonishment he now took up the making and firing of pottery for +himself, being interested in reproducing various Chinese dishes and +vases of great beauty, the originals of which were in the Metropolitan +Museum of Art. His plan was first to copy the design, then buy, shape or +bake the clay at some pottery, then paint or decorate with liquid +porcelain at his own home, and fire. In the course of six or eight +months, working in his rooms Saturdays and Sundays and some mornings +before going to the office, he managed to produce three or four which +satisfied him and which he kept plates of real beauty. The others he +gave away. + +A little later, if you please, it was Turkish rug-making on a small +scale, the frame and materials for which he slowly accumulated, and then +providing himself with a pillow, Turkish-fashion, he crossed his legs +before it and began slowly but surely to produce a rug, the colors and +design of which were entirely satisfactory to me. As may be imagined, it +was slow and tedious work, undertaken at odd moments and when there was +nothing else for him to do, always when the light was good and never at +night, for he maintained that the coloring required the best of light. +Before this odd, homely, wooden machine, a combination of unpainted rods +and cords, he would sit, cross-legged or on a bench at times, and pound +and pick and tie and unravel--a most wearisome-looking task to me. + +"For heaven's sake," I once observed, "couldn't you think of anything +more interestingly insane to do than this? It's the slowest, most +painstaking work I ever saw." + +"That's just it, and that's just why I like it," he replied, never +looking at me but proceeding with his weaving in the most industrious +fashion. "You have just one outstanding fault, Dreiser. You don't know +how to make anything out of the little things of life. You want to +remember that this is an art, not a job. I'm discovering whether I can +make a Turkish carpet or not, and it gives me pleasure. If I can get so +much as one good spot of color worked out, one small portion of the +design, I'll be satisfied. I'll know then that I can do it, the whole +thing, don't you see? Some of these things have been the work of a +lifetime of one man. You call that a small thing? I don't. The pleasure +is in doing it, proving that you can, not in the rug itself." He clacked +and tied, congratulating himself vastly. In due course of time three or +four inches were finished, a soft and yet firm silky fabric, and he was +in great glee over it, showing it to all and insisting that in time (how +long? I often wondered) he would complete it and would then own a +splendid carpet. + +It was at this time that he built about him in Newark a structure of +friendships and interests which, it seemed to me, promised to be for +life. He interested himself intensely in the paper with which he was +connected and although he was only the cartoonist, still it was not long +before various departments and elements in connection with it seemed to +reflect his presence and to be alive with his own good will and +enthusiasm. Publisher, editor, art director, managing editor and +business manager, were all in friendly contact with him. He took out +life insurance for the benefit of the wife and children he was later to +have! With the manager of the engraving department he was working out +problems in connection with copperplate engraving and printing; with the +official photographer, art photography; with the art director, some +scheme for enlarging the local museum in some way. With his enduring +love of the fantastic and ridiculous it was not long before he had +successfully planned and executed a hoax of the most ridiculous +character, a piece of idle drollery almost too foolish to think of, and +yet which eventually succeeded in exciting the natives of at least four +States and was telegraphed to and talked about in a Sunday feature way, +by newspapers all over the country, and finally involved Peter as an +actor and stage manager of the most vivid type imaginable. And yet it +was all done really to amuse himself, to see if he could do it, as he +often told me. + +This particular hoax related to that silly old bugaboo of our boyhood +days, the escaped and wandering wild man, ferocious, blood-loving, +terrible. I knew nothing of it until Peter, one Sunday afternoon when we +were off for a walk a year or two after he had arrived in Newark, +suddenly announced apropos of nothing at all, "Dreiser, I've just hit +upon a great idea which I am working out with some of the boys down on +our paper. It's a dusty old fake, but it will do as well as any other, +better than if it were a really decent idea. I'm inventing a wild man. +You know how crazy the average dub is over anything strange, +different,'terrible.' Barnum was right, you know. There's one born every +minute. Well, I'm just getting this thing up now. It's as good as the +sacred white elephant or the blood-sweating hippopotamus. And what's +more, I'm going to stage it right here in little old Newark--and they'll +all fall for it, and don't you think they won't," and he chuckled most +ecstatically. + +"For heaven's sake, what's coming now?" I sighed. + +"Oh, very well. But I have it all worked out just the same. We're +beginning to run the preliminary telegrams every three or four days--one +from Ramblersville, South Jersey, let us say, another from Hohokus, +twenty-five miles farther on, four or five days later. By degrees as +spring comes on I'll bring him north--right up here into Essex County--a +genuine wild man, see, something fierce and terrible. We're giving him +long hair like a bison, red eyes, fangs, big hands and feet. He's +entirely naked--or will be when he gets here. He's eight feet tall. He +kills and eats horses, dogs, cattle, pigs, chickens. He frightens men +and women and children. I'm having him bound across lonely roads, look +in windows at night, stampede cattle and drive tramps and peddlers out +of the country. But say, wait and see. As summer comes on we'll make a +regular headliner of it. We'll give it pages on Sunday. We'll get the +rubes to looking for him in posses, offer rewards. Maybe some one will +actually capture and bring in some poor lunatic, a real wild man. You +can do anything if you just stir up the natives enough." + +I laughed. "You're crazy," I said. "What a low comedian you really are, +Peter!" + +Well, the weeks passed, and to mark progress he occasionally sent me +clippings of telegrams, cut not from his pages, if you please, but from +such austere journals as the _Sun_ and _World_ of New York, the _North +American_ of Philadelphia, the _Courant_ of Hartford, recording the +antics of his imaginary thing of the woods. Longish articles actually +began to appear here and there, in Eastern papers especially, describing +the exploits of this very elusive and moving demon. He had been seen in +a dozen fairly widely distributed places within the month, but always +coming northward. In one place he had killed three cows at once, in +another two, and eaten portions of them raw! Old Mrs. Gorswitch of +Dutchers Run, Pennsylvania, returning from a visit to her +daughter-in-law, Annie A. Gorswitch, and ambling along a lonely road in +Osgoroola County, was suddenly descended upon by a most horrific figure, +half man, half beast, very tall and with long hair and red, all but +bloody eyes who, looking at her with avid glance, made as if to seize +her, but a wagon approaching along the road from another direction, he +had desisted and fled, leaving old Mrs. Gorswitch in a faint upon the +ground. Barns and haystacks had been fired here and there, lonely widows +in distant cotes been made to abandon their homes through fear.... I +marveled at the assiduity and patience of the man. + +One day in June or July following, being in Newark and asking Peter +quite idly about his wild man, he replied, "Oh, it's great, great! +Couldn't be better! He'll soon be here now. We've got the whole thing +arranged now for next Sunday or Saturday--depends on which day I can get +off. We're going to photograph him. Wanto come over?" + +"What rot!" I said. "Who's going to pose? Where?" + +"Well," he chuckled, "come along and see. You'll find out fast enough. +We've got an actual wild man. I got him. I'll have him out here in the +woods. If you don't believe it, come over. You wouldn't believe me when +I said I could get the natives worked up. Well, they are. Look at +these," and he produced clippings from rival papers. The wild man was +actually being seen in Essex County, not twenty-five miles from Newark. +He had ravaged the property of people in five different States. It was +assumed that he was a lunatic turned savage, or that he had escaped from +a circus or trading-ship wrecked on the Jersey coast (suggestions made +by Peter himself). His depredations, all told, had by now run into +thousands, speaking financially. Staid residents were excited. Rewards +for his capture were being offered in different places. Posses of irate +citizens were, and would continue to be, after him, armed to the teeth, +until he was captured. Quite remarkable developments might be expected +at any time ... I stared. It seemed too ridiculous, and it was, and back +of it all was smirking, chuckling Peter, the center and fountain of it! + +"You dog!" I protested. "You clown!" He merely grinned. + +Not to miss so interesting a dénouement as the actual capture of this +prodigy of the wilds, I was up early and off the following Sunday to +Newark, where in Peter's apartment in due time I found him, his rooms in +a turmoil, he himself busy stuffing things into a bag, outside an +automobile waiting and within it the staff photographer as well as +several others, all grinning, and all of whom, as he informed me, were +to assist in the great work of tracking, ambushing and, if possible, +photographing the dread peril. + +"Yes, well, who's going to be him?" I insisted. + +"Never mind! Never mind! Don't be so inquisitive," chortled Peter. "A +wild man has his rights and privileges, as well as any other. Remember, +I caution all of you to be respectful in his presence. He's very +sensitive, and he doesn't like newspapermen anyhow. He'll be +photographed, and he'll be wild. That's all you need to know." + +In due time we arrived at as comfortable an abode for a wild man as well +might be. It was near the old Essex and Morris Canal, not far from +Boonton. A charming clump of brush and rock was selected, and here a +snapshot of a posse hunting, men peering cautiously from behind trees in +groups and looking as though they were most eager to discover something, +was made. Then Peter, slipping away--I suddenly saw him ambling toward +us, hair upstanding, body smeared with black muck, daubs of white about +the eyes, little tufts of wool about wrists and ankles and loins--as +good a figure of a wild man as one might wish, only not eight feet tall. + +"Peter!" I said. "How ridiculous! You loon!" + +"Have a care how you address me," he replied with solemn dignity. "A +wild man is a wild man. Our punctilio is not to be trifled with. I am of +the oldest, the most famous line of wild men extant. Touch me not." He +strode the grass with the air of a popular movie star, while he +discussed with the art director and photographer the most terrifying and +convincing attitudes of a wild man seen by accident and unconscious of +his pursuers. + +"But you're not eight feet tall!" I interjected at one point. + +"A small matter. A small matter," he replied airily. "I will be in the +picture. Nothing easier. We wild men, you know--" + +Some of the views were excellent, most striking. He leered most terribly +from arras of leaves or indicated fright or cunning. The man was a good +actor. For years I retained and may still have somewhere a full set of +the pictures as well as the double-page spread which followed the next +week. + +Well, the thing was appropriately discussed, as it should have been, +but the wild man got away, as was feared. He went into the nearby canal +and washed away all his terror, or rather he vanished into the dim +recesses of Peter's memory. He was only heard of a few times more in the +papers, his supposed body being found in some town in northeast +Pennsylvania--or in the small item that was "telegraphed" from there. As +for Peter, he emerged from the canal, or from its banks, a cleaner if +not a better man. He was grinning, combing his hair, adjusting his tie. + +"What a scamp!" I insisted lovingly. "What an incorrigible trickster!" + +"Dreiser, Dreiser," he chortled, "there's nothing like it. You should +not scoff. I am a public benefactor. I am really a creator. I have +created a being as distinct as any that ever lived. He is in many +minds--mine, yours. You know that you believe in him really. There he +was peeking out from between those bushes only fifteen minutes ago. And +he has made, and will make, thousands of people happy, thrill them, give +them a new interest. If Stevenson can create a Jekyll and Hyde, why +can't I create a wild man? I have. We have his picture to prove it. What +more do you wish?" + +I acquiesced. All told, it was a delightful bit of foolery and art, and +Peter was what he was first and foremost, an artist in the grotesque and +the ridiculous. + +For some time thereafter peace seemed to reign in his mind, only now it +was that the marriage and home and children idea began to grow. From +much of the foregoing it may have been assumed that Peter was out of +sympathy with the ordinary routine of life, despised the commonplace, +the purely practical. As a matter of fact it was just the other way +about. I never knew a man so radical in some of his viewpoints, so +versatile and yet so wholly, intentionally and cravingly, immersed in +the usual as Peter. He was all for creating, developing, brightening +life along simple rather than outré lines, in so far as he himself was +concerned. Nearly all of his arts and pleasures were decorative and +homey. A good grocer, a good barber, a good saloon-keeper, a good +tailor, a shoe maker, was just as interesting in his way to Peter as any +one or anything else, if not a little more so. He respected their lines, +their arts, their professions, and above all, where they had it, their +industry, sobriety and desire for fair dealing. He believed that +millions of men, especially those about him were doing the best they +could under the very severe conditions which life offered. He objected +to the idle, the too dull the swindlers and thieves as well as the +officiously puritanic or dogmatic. He resented, for himself at least, +solemn pomp and show. Little houses, little gardens, little porches, +simple cleanly neighborhoods with their air of routine, industry, +convention and order, fascinated him as apparently nothing else could. +He insisted that they were enough. A man did not need a great house +unless he was a public character with official duties. + +"Dreiser," he would say in Philadelphia and Newark, if not before, "it's +in just such a neighborhood as this that some day I'm going to live. I'm +going to have my little _frau_, my seven children, my chickens, dog, +cat, canary, best German style, my garden, my birdbox, my pipe; and +Sundays, by God, I'll march 'em all off to church, wife and seven kids, +as regular as clockwork, shined shoes, pigtails and all, and I'll lead +the procession." + +"Yes, yes," I said. "You talk." + +"Well, wait and see. Nothing in this world means so much to me as the +good old orderly home stuff. One ought to live and die in a family. It's +the right way. I'm cutting up now, sowing my wild oats, but that's +nothing. I'm just getting ready to eventually settle down and live, just +as I tell you, and be an ideal orderly citizen. It's the only way. It's +the way nature intends us to do. All this early kid stuff is passing, a +sorting-out process. We get over it. Every fellow does, or ought to be +able to, if he's worth anything, find some one woman that he can live +with and stick by her. That makes the world that you and I like to live +in, and you know it. There's a psychic call in all of us to it, I think. +It's the genius of our civilization, to marry one woman and settle down. +And when I do, no more of this all-night stuff with this, that and the +other lady. I'll be a model husband and father, sure as you're standing +there. Don't you think I won't. Smile if you want to--it's so. I'll have +my garden. I'll be friendly with my neighbors. You can come over then +and help us put the kids to bed." + +"Oh, Lord! This is a new bug now! We'll have the vine-covered cot idea +for a while, anyhow." + +"Oh, all right. Scoff if you want to. You'll see." + +Time went by. He was doing all the things I have indicated, living in a +kind of whirl of life. At the same time, from time to time, he would +come back to this thought. Once, it is true, I thought it was all over +with the little yellow-haired girl in Philadelphia. He talked of her +occasionally, but less and less. Out on the golf links near Passaic he +met another girl, one of a group that flourished there. I met her. She +was not unpleasing, a bit sensuous, rather attractive in dress and +manners, not very well informed, but gay, clever, up-to-date; such a +girl as would pass among other women as fairly satisfactory. + +For a time Peter seemed greatly attracted to her. She danced, played a +little, was fair at golf and tennis, and she was, or pretended to be, +intensely interested in him. He confessed at last that he believed he +was in love with her. + +"So it's all day with Philadelphia, is it?" I asked. + +"It's a shame," he replied, "but I'm afraid so. I'm having a hell of a +time with myself, my alleged conscience, I tell you." + +I heard little more about it. He had a fad for collecting rings at this +time, a whole casket full, like a Hindu prince, and he told me once he +was giving her her choice of them. + +Suddenly he announced that it was "all off" and that he was going to +marry the maid of Philadelphia. He had thrown the solitaire engagement +ring he had given her down a sewer! At first he would confess nothing as +to the reason or the details, but being so close to me it eventually +came out. Apparently, to the others as to myself, he had talked much of +his simple home plans, his future children--the good citizen idea. He +had talked it to his new love also, and she had sympathized and agreed. +Yet one day, after he had endowed her with the engagement ring, some +one, a member of the golf club, came and revealed a tale. The girl was +not "straight." She had been, mayhap was even then, "intimate" with +other men--one anyhow. She was in love with Peter well enough, as she +insisted afterward, and willing to undertake the life he suggested, but +she had not broken with the old atmosphere completely, or if she had it +was still not believed that she had. There were those who could not +only charge, but prove. A compromising note of some kind sent to some +one was involved, turned over to Peter. + +"Dreiser," he growled as he related the case to me, "it serves me right. +I ought to know better. I know the kind of woman I need. This one has +handed me a damned good wallop, and I deserve it. I might have guessed +that she wasn't suited to me. She was really too free--a life-lover more +than a wife. That home stuff! She was just stringing me because she +liked me. She isn't really my sort, not simple enough." + +"But you loved her, I thought?" + +"I did, or thought I did. Still, I used to wonder too. There were many +ways about her that troubled me. You think I'm kidding about this home +and family idea, but I'm not. It suits me, however flat it looks to you. +I want to do that, live that way, go through the normal routine +experience, and I'm going to do it." + +"But how did you break it off with her so swiftly?" I asked curiously. + +"Well, when I heard this I went direct to her and put it up to her. If +you'll believe me she never even denied it. Said it was all true, but +that she was in love with me all right, and would change and be all that +I wanted her to be." + +"Well, that's fair enough," I said, "if she loves you. You're no saint +yourself, you know. If you'd encourage her, maybe she'd make good." + +"Well, maybe, but I don't think so really," he returned, shaking his +head. "She likes me, but not enough, I'm afraid. She wouldn't run +straight, now that she's had this other. She'd mean to maybe, but she +wouldn't. I feel it about her. And anyhow I don't want to take any +chances. I like her--I'm crazy about her really, but I'm through. I'm +going to marry little Dutchy if she'll have me, and cut out this +old-line stuff. You'll have to stand up with me when I do." + +In three months more the new arrangement was consummated and little +Dutchy--or Zuleika, as he subsequently named her--was duly brought to +Newark and installed, at first in a charming apartment in a +conventionally respectable and cleanly neighborhood, later in a small +house with a "yard," lawn front and back, in one of the homiest of home +neighborhoods in Newark. It was positively entertaining to observe +Peter not only attempting to assume but assuming the rôle of the +conventional husband, and exactly nine months after he had been married, +to the hour, a father in this humble and yet, in so far as his +particular home was concerned, comfortable world. I have no space here +for more than the barest outline. I have already indicated his views, +most emphatically expressed and forecasted. He fulfilled them all to the +letter, up to the day of his death. In so far as I could make out, he +made about as satisfactory a husband and father and citizen as I have +ever seen. He did it deliberately, in cold reason, and yet with a warmth +and flare which puzzled me all the more since it _was_ based on reason +and forethought. I misdoubted. I was not quite willing to believe that +it would work out, and yet if ever a home was delightful, with a +charming and genuinely "happy" atmosphere, it was Peter's. + +"Here she is," he observed the day he married her, "me _frau_--Zuleika. +Isn't she a peach? Ever see any nicer hair than that? And these here, +now, pink cheeks? What? Look at 'em! And her little Dutchy nose! Isn't +it cute? Oh, Dutchy! And right here in me vest pocket is the golden band +wherewith I am to be chained to the floor, the domestic hearth. And +right there on her finger is my badge of prospective serfdom." Then, in +a loud aside to me, "In six months I'll be beating her. Come now, +Zuleika. We have to go through with this. You have to swear to be my +slave." + +And so they were married. + +And in the home afterward he was as busy and helpful and noisy as any +man about the house could ever hope to be. He was always fussing about +after hours "putting up" something or arranging his collections or +helping Zuleika wash and dry the dishes, or showing her how to cook +something if she didn't know how. He was running to the store or +bringing home things from the downtown market. Months before the first +child was born he was declaring most shamelessly, "In a few months now, +Dreiser, Zuleika and I are going to have our first calf. The bones roll +for a boy, but you never can tell. I'm offering up prayers and +oblations--both of us are. I make Zuleika pray every night. And say, +when it comes, no spoiling-the-kid stuff. No bawling or rocking it to +sleep nights permitted. Here's one kid that's going to be raised right. +I've worked out all the rules. No trashy baby-foods. Good old specially +brewed Culmbacher for the mother, and the kid afterwards if it wants it. +This is one family in which law and order are going to prevail--good old +'dichtig, wichtig' law and order." + +I used to chuckle the while I verbally denounced him for his coarse, +plebeian point of view and tastes. + +In a little while the child came, and to his immense satisfaction it was +a boy. I never saw a man "carry on" so, make over it, take such a +whole-souled interest in all those little things which supposedly made +for its health and well-being. For the first few weeks he still talked +of not having it petted or spoiled, but at the same time he was surely +and swiftly changing, and by the end of that time had become the most +doting, almost ridiculously fond papa that I ever saw. Always the child +must be in his lap at the most unseemly hours, when his wife would +permit it. When he went anywhere, or they, although they kept a maid the +child must be carried along by him on his shoulder. He liked nothing +better than to sit and hold it close, rocking in a rocking-chair +American style and singing, or come tramping into my home in New York, +the child looking like a woolen ball. At night if it stirred or +whimpered he was up and looking. And the baby-clothes!--and the +cradle!--and the toys!--colored rubber balls and soldiers the first or +second or third week! + +"What about that stern discipline that was to be put in force here--no +rocking, no getting up at night to coddle a weeping infant?" + +"Yes, I know. That's all good stuff before you get one. I've got one of +my own now, and I've got a new light on this. Say, Dreiser, take my +advice. Go through the routine. Don't try to escape. Have a kid or two +or three. There's a psychic punch to it you can't get any other way. +It's nature's way. It's a great scheme. You and your girl and your kid." + +As he talked he rocked, holding the baby boy to his breast. It was +wonderful. + +And Mrs. Peter--how happy she seemed. There was light in that house, +flowers, laughter, good fellowship. As in his old rooms so in this new +home he gathered a few of his old friends around him and some new ones, +friends of this region. In the course of a year or two he was on the +very best terms of friendship with his barber around the corner, his +grocer, some man who had a saloon and bowling alley in the neighborhood, +his tailor, and then just neighbors. The milkman, the coal man, the +druggist and cigar man at the next corner--all could tell you where +Peter lived. His little front "yard" had two beds of flowers all summer +long, his lot in the back was a garden--lettuce, onions, peas, beans. +Peter was always happiest when he could be home working, playing with +the baby, pushing him about in a go-cart, working in his garden, or +lying on the floor making something--an engraving or print or a box +which he was carving, the infant in some simple gingham romper crawling +about. He was always busy, but never too much so for a glance or a +mock-threatening, "Now say, not so much industry there. You leave my +things alone," to the child. Of a Sunday he sat out on the front porch +smoking, reading the Sunday paper, congratulating himself on his happy +married life, and most of the time holding the infant. Afternoons he +would carry it somewhere, anywhere, in his arms to his friends, the +Park, New York, to see me. At breakfast, dinner, supper the heir +presumptive was in a high-chair beside him. + +"Ah, now, here's a rubber spoon. Beat with that. It's less destructive +and less painful physically." + +"How about a nice prust" (crust) "dipped in bravery" (gravy) "--heh? Do +you suppose that would cut any of your teeth?" + +"Zuleika, this son of yours seems to think a spoonful of beer or two +might not hurt him. What do you say?" + +Occasionally, especially of a Saturday evening, he wanted to go bowling +and yet he wanted his heir. The problem was solved by fitting the latter +into a tight little sweater and cap and carrying him along on his +shoulder, into the bar for a beer, thence to the bowling alley, where +young hopeful was fastened into a chair on the side lines while Peter +and myself or some of his friends bowled. At ten or ten-thirty or +eleven, as the case might be, he was ready to leave, but before that +hour les ongfong might be sound asleep, hanging against Peter's scarf, +his interest in his toes or thumbs having given out. + +"Peter, look at that," I observed once. "Don't you think we'd better +take him home?" + +"Home nothing! Let him sleep. He can sleep here as well as anywhere, and +besides I like to look at him." And in the room would be a great crowd, +cigars, beers, laughter, and Peter's various friends as used to the +child's presence and as charmed by it as he was. He was just the man who +could do such things. His manner and point of view carried conviction. +He believed in doing all that he wanted to do simply and naturally, and +more and more as he went along people not only respected, I think they +adored him, especially the simple homely souls among whom he chose to +move and have his being. + +About this time there developed among those in his immediate +neighborhood a desire to elect him to some political position, that of +councilman, or State assemblyman, in the hope or thought that he would +rise to something higher. But he would none of it--not then anyhow. +Instead, about this time or a very little later, after the birth of his +second child (a girl), he devoted himself to the composition of a +brilliant piece of prose poetry ("Wolf"), which, coming from him, did +not surprise me in the least. If he had designed or constructed a great +building, painted a great picture, entered politics and been elected +governor or senator, I would have taken it all as a matter of course. He +could have. The material from which anything may rise was there. I asked +him to let me offer it to the publishing house with which I was +connected, and I recall with interest the comment of the oldest and most +experienced of the bookmen and salesmen among us. "You'll never make +much, if anything, on this book. It's too good, too poetic. But whether +it pays or not, I vote yes. I'd rather lose money on something like this +than make it on some of the trash we do make it on." + +Amen. I agreed then, and I agree now. + +The last phase of Peter was as interesting and dramatic as any of the +others. His married life was going forward about as he had planned. His +devotion to his home and children, his loving wife, his multiplex +interests, his various friends, was always a curiosity to me, +especially in view of his olden days. One day he was over in New York +visiting one of his favorite Chinese importing companies, through which +he had secured and was still securing occasional objects of art. He had +come down to me in my office at the Butterick Building to see if I would +not come over the following Saturday as usual and stay until Monday. He +had secured something, was planning something. I should see. At the +elevator he waved me a gay "so long--see you Saturday!" + +But on Friday, as I was talking with some one at my desk, a telegram was +handed me. It was from Mrs. Peter and read: "Peter died today at two of +pneumonia. Please come." + +I could scarcely believe it. I did not know that he had even been sick. +His little yellow-haired wife! The two children! His future! His +interests! I dropped everything and hurried to the nearest station. En +route I speculated on the mysteries on which he had so often +speculated--death, dissolution, uncertainty, the crude indifference or +cruelty of Nature. What would become of Mrs. Peter? His children? + +I arrived only to find a home atmosphere destroyed as by a wind that +puts out a light. There was Peter, stiff and cold, and in the other +rooms his babies, quite unconscious of what had happened, prattling as +usual, and Mrs. Peter practically numb and speechless. It had come so +suddenly, so out of a clear sky, that she could not realize, could not +even tell me at first. The doctor was there--also a friend of his, the +nearest barber! Also two or three representatives from his paper, the +owner of the bowling alley, the man who had the $40,000 collection of +curios. All were stunned, as I was. As his closest friend, I took +charge: wired his relatives, went to an undertaker who knew him to +arrange for his burial, in Newark or Philadelphia, as his wife should +wish, she having no connection with Newark other than Peter. + +It was most distressing, the sense of dull despair and unwarranted +disaster which hung over the place. It was as though impish and pagan +forces, or malign ones outside life, had committed a crime of the +ugliest character. On Monday, the day he saw me, he was well. On Tuesday +morning he had a slight cold but insisted on running out somewhere +without his overcoat, against which his wife protested. Tuesday night +he had a fever and took quinine and aspirin and a hot whiskey. +Wednesday morning he was worse and a doctor was called, but it was not +deemed serious. Wednesday night he was still worse and pneumonia had set +in. Thursday he was lower still, and by noon a metal syphon of oxygen +was sent for, to relieve the sense of suffocation setting in. Thursday +night he was weak and sinking, but expected to come round--and still, so +unexpected was the attack, so uncertain the probability of anything +fatal, that no word was sent, even to me. Friday morning he was no worse +and no better. "If he was no worse by night he might pull through." At +noon he was seized with a sudden sinking spell. Oxygen was applied by +his wife and a nurse, and the doctor sent for. By one-thirty he was +lower still, very low. "His face was blue, his lips ashen," his wife +told me. "We put the oxygen tube to his mouth and I said 'Can you speak, +Peter?' I was so nervous and frightened. He moved his head a little to +indicate 'no.' 'Peter,' I said, 'you mustn't let go! You must fight! +Think of me! Think of the babies!' I was a little crazy, I think, with +fear. He looked at me very fixedly. He stiffened and gritted his teeth +in a great effort. Then suddenly he collapsed and lay still. He was +dead." + +I could not help thinking of the force and energy--able at the last +minute, when he could not speak--to "grit his teeth" and "fight," a +minute before his death. What is the human spirit, or mind, that it can +fight so, to the very last? I felt as though some one, something, had +ruthlessly killed him, committed plain, unpunished murder--nothing more +and nothing less. + +And there were his cases of curios, his rug, his prints, his dishes, his +many, many schemes, his book to come out soon. I gazed and marveled. I +looked at his wife and babies, but could say nothing. It spelled, what +such things always spell, in the face of all our dreams, crass chance or +the willful, brutal indifference of Nature to all that relates to man. +If he is to prosper he must do so without her aid. + +That same night, sleeping in the room adjoining that in which was the +body, a pale candle burning near it, I felt as though Peter were walking +to and fro, to and fro, past me and into the room of his wife beyond, +thinking and grieving. His imagined wraith seemed horribly depressed +and distressed. Once he came over and moved his hand (something) over my +face. I felt him walking into the room where were his wife and kiddies, +but he could make no one see, hear, understand. I got up and looked at +his _cadaver_ a long time, then went to bed again. + +The next day and the next and the next were filled with many things. His +mother and sister came on from the West as well as the mother and +brother of his wife. I had to look after his affairs, adjusting the +matter of insurance which he left, his art objects, the burial of his +body "in consecrated ground" in Philadelphia, with the consent and aid +of the local Catholic parish rector, else no burial. His mother desired +it, but he had never been a good Catholic and there was trouble. The +local parish assistant refused me, even the rector. Finally I threatened +the good father with an appeal to the diocesan bishop on the ground of +plain common sense and courtesy to a Catholic family, if not charity to +a tortured mother and wife--and obtained consent. All along I felt as if +a great crime had been committed by some one, foul murder. I could not +get it out of my mind, and it made me angry, not sad. + +Two, three, five, seven years later, I visited the little family in +Philadelphia. The wife was with her mother and father in a simple little +home street in a factory district, secretary and stenographer to an +architect. She was little changed--a little stouter, not so carefree, +industrious, patient. His boy, the petted F----, could not even recall +his father, the girl not at all of course. And in the place were a few +of his prints, two or three Chinese dishes, pottered by himself, his +loom with the unfinished rug. I remained for dinner and dreamed old +dreams, but I was uncomfortable and left early. And Mrs. Peter, +accompanying me to the steps, looked after me as though I, alone, was +all that was left of the old life. + + + + +_A Doer of the Word_ + + +Noank is a little played-out fishing town on the southeastern coast of +Connecticut, lying half-way between New London and Stonington. Once it +was a profitable port for mackerel and cod fishing. Today its wharves +are deserted of all save a few lobster smacks. There is a shipyard, +employing three hundred and fifty men, a yacht-building establishment, +with two or three hired hands; a sail-loft, and some dozen or so shops +or sheds, where the odds and ends of fishing life are made and sold. +Everything is peaceful. The sound of the shipyard axes and hammers can +be heard for miles over the quiet waters of the bay. In the sunny lane +which follows the line of the shore, and along which a few shops +struggle in happy-go-lucky disorder, may be heard the voices and noises +of the workers at their work. Water gurgling about the stanchions of the +docks, the whistle of some fisherman as he dawdles over his nets, or +puts his fish ashore, the whirr of the single high-power sewing machine +in the sail-loft, often mingle in a pleasant harmony, and invite the +mind to repose and speculation. + +I was in a most examining and critical mood that summer, looking into +the nature and significance of many things, and was sitting one day in +the shed of the maker of sailboats, where a half-dozen characters of the +village were gathered, when some turn in the conversation brought up the +nature of man. He is queer, he is restless; life is not so very much +when you come to look upon many phases of it. + +"Did any of you ever know a contented man?" I inquired idly, merely for +the sake of something to say. + +There was silence for a moment, and one after another met my roving +glance with a thoughtful, self-involved and retrospective eye. + +Old Mr. Main was the first to answer. + +"Yes, I did. One." + +"So did I," put in the sailboat maker, as he stopped in his work to +think about it. + +"Yes, and I did," said a dark, squat, sunny, little old fisherman, who +sold cunners for bait in a little hut next door. + +"Maybe you and me are thinking of the same one, Jacob," said old Mr. +Main, looking inquisitively at the boat-builder. + +"I think we've all got the same man in mind, likely," returned the +builder. + +"Who is he?" I asked. + +"Charlie Potter," said the builder. + +"That's the man!" exclaimed Mr. Main. + +"Yes, I reckon Charlie Potter is contented, if anybody be," said an old +fisherman who had hitherto been silent. + +Such unanimity of opinion struck me forcibly. Charlie Potter--what a +humble name; not very remarkable, to say the least. And to hear him so +spoken of in this restless, religious, quibbling community made it all +the more interesting. + +"So you really think he is contented, do you?" I asked. + +"Yes, sir! Charlie Potter is a contented man," replied Mr. Main, with +convincing emphasis. + +"Well," I returned, "that's rather interesting. What sort of a man is +he?" + +"Oh, he's just an ordinary man, not much of anybody. Fishes and builds +boats occasionally," put in the boat-builder. + +"Is that all? Nothing else?" + +"He preaches now and then--not regularly," said Mr. Main. + +A-ha! I thought. A religionist! + +"A preacher is expected to set a good example," I said. + +"He ain't a regular preacher," said Mr. Main, rather quickly. "He's just +kind of around in religious work." + +"What do you mean?" I asked curiously, not quite catching the import of +this "around." + +"Well," answered the boat builder, "he don't take any money for what he +does. He ain't got anything." + +"What does he live on then?" I persisted, still wondering at the +significance of "around in religious work." + +"I don't know. He used to fish for a living. Fishes yet once in a while, +I believe." + +"He makes models of yachts," put in one of the bystanders. "He sold the +New Haven Road one for two hundred dollars here not long ago." + +A vision of a happy-go-lucky Jack-of-all-trades arose before me. A +visionary--a theorist. + +"What else?" I asked, hoping to draw them out. "What makes you all +think he is contented? What does he do that makes him so contented?" + +"Well," said Mr. Main, after a considerable pause and with much of +sympathetic emphasis in his voice, "Charlie Potter is just a good man, +that's all. That's why he's contented. He does as near as he can what he +thinks he ought to by other people--poor people." + +"You won't find anybody with a kinder heart than Charlie Potter," put in +the boat-builder. "That's the trouble with him, really. He's too good. +He don't look after himself right, I say. A fellow has to look out for +himself some in this world. If he don't, no one else will." + +"Right you are, Henry," echoed a truculent sea voice from somewhere. + +I was becoming both amused and interested, intensely so. + +"If he wasn't that way, he'd be a darned sight better off than he is," +said a thirty-year-old helper, from a far corner of the room. + +"What makes you say that?" I queried. "Isn't it better to be +kind-hearted and generous than not?" + +"It's all right to be kind-hearted and generous, but that ain't sayin' +that you've got to give your last cent away and let your family go +hungry." + +"Is that what Charlie Potter does?" + +"Well, no, maybe he don't, but he comes mighty near to it at times. He +and his wife and his adopted children have been pretty close to it at +times." + +You see, this was the center, nearly, for all village gossip and +philosophic speculation, and many of the most important local problems, +morally and intellectually speaking, were here thrashed put. + +"There's no doubt but that's where Charlie is wrong," put in old Mr. +Main a little later. "He don't always stop to think of his family." + +"What did he ever do that struck you as being over-generous?" I asked of +the young man who had spoken from the corner. + +"That's all right," he replied in a rather irritated and peevish tone; +"I ain't going to go into details now, but there's people around here +that hang on him, and that he's give to, that he hadn't orter." + +"I believe in lookin' out for Number One, that's what I believe in," +interrupted the boat-maker, laying down his rule and line. "This givin' +up everything and goin' without yourself may be all right, but I don't +believe it. A man's first duty is to his wife and children, that's what +I say." + +"That's the way it looks to me," put in Mr. Main. + +"Well, does Potter give up everything and go without things?" I asked +the boat-maker. + +"Purty blamed near it at times," he returned definitely, then addressing +the company in general he added, "Look at the time he worked over there +on Fisher's Island, at the Ellersbie farm--the time they were packing +the ice there. You remember that, Henry, don't you?" + +Mr. Main nodded. + +"What about it?" + +"What about it! Why, he give his rubber boots away, like a darned fool, +to old drunken Jimmy Harper, and him loafin' around half the year drunk, +and worked around on the ice without any shoes himself. He might 'a' +took cold and died." + +"Why did he do it?" I queried, very much interested by now. + +"Oh, Charlie's naturally big-hearted," put in the little old man who +sold cunners. "He believes in the Lord and the Bible. Stands right +square on it, only he don't belong to no church like. He's got the +biggest heart I ever saw in a livin' being." + +"Course the other fellow didn't have any shoes for to wear," put in the +boat-maker explanatorily, "but he never would work, anyhow." + +They lapsed into silence while the latter returned to his measuring, and +then out of the drift of thought came this from the helper in the +corner: + +"Yes, and look at the way Bailey used to sponge on him. Get his money +Saturday night and drink it all up, and then Sunday morning, when his +wife and children were hungry, go cryin' around Potter. Dinged if I'd +'a' helped him. But Potter'd take the food right off his breakfast table +and give it to him. I saw him do it! I don't think that's right. Not +when he's got four or five orphans of his own to care for." + +"His own children?" I interrupted, trying to get the thing straight. + +"No, sir; just children he picked up around, here and there." + +Here is a curious character, sure enough, I thought--one well worth +looking into. + +Another lull, and then as I was leaving the room to give the matter a +little quiet attention, I remarked to the boat-maker: + +"Outside of his foolish giving, you haven't anything against Charlie +Potter, have you?" + +"Not a thing," he replied, in apparent astonishment. "Charlie Potter's +one of the best men that ever lived. He's a good man." + +I smiled at the inconsistency and went my way. + +A day or two later the loft of the sail-maker, instead of the shed of +the boat-builder, happened to be my lounging place, and thinking of this +theme, now uppermost in my mind, I said to him: + +"Do you know a man around here by the name of Charlie Potter?" + +"Well, I might say that I do. He lived here for over fifteen years." + +"What sort of a man is he?" + +He stopped in his stitching a moment to look at me, and then said: + +"How d'ye mean? By trade, so to speak, or religious-like?" + +"What is it he has done," I said, "that makes him so popular with all +you people? Everybody says he's a good man. Just what do you mean by +that?" + +"Well," he said, ceasing his work as though the subject were one of +extreme importance to him, "he's a peculiar man, Charlie is. He believes +in giving nearly everything he has away, if any one else needs it. He'd +give the coat off his back if you asked him for it. Some folks condemn +him for this, and for not giving everything to his wife and them orphans +he has, but I always thought the man was nearer right than most of us. +I've got a family myself--but, then, so's he, now, for that matter. It's +pretty hard to live up to your light always." + +He looked away as if he expected some objection to be made to this, but +hearing none, he went on. "I always liked him personally very much. He +ain't around here now any more--lives up in Norwich, I think. He's a man +of his word, though, as truthful as kin be. He ain't never done nothin' +for me, I not bein' a takin' kind, but that's neither here nor there." + +He paused, in doubt apparently, as to what else to say. + +"You say he's so good," I said. "Tell me one thing that he ever did that +struck you as being preëminently good." + +"Well, now, I can't say as I kin, exactly, offhand," he replied, "there +bein' so many of them from time to time. He was always doin' things one +way and another. He give to everybody around here that asked him, and to +a good many that didn't. I remember once"--and a smile gave evidence of +a genial memory--"he give away a lot of pork that he'd put up for the +winter to some colored people back here--two or three barrels, maybe. +His wife didn't object, exactly, but my, how his mother-in-law did go on +about it. She was livin' with him then. She went and railed against him +all around." + +"She didn't like to give it to them, eh?" + +"Well, I should say not. She didn't set with his views, exactly--never +did. He took the pork, though--it was right in the coldest weather we +had that winter--and hauled it back about seven miles here to where they +lived, and handed it all out himself. Course they were awful hard up, +but then they might 'a' got along without it. They do now, sometimes. +Charlie's too good that way. It's his one fault, if you might so speak +of it." + +I smiled as the evidence accumulated. Houseless wayfarers, stopping to +find food and shelter under his roof, an orphan child carried seven +miles on foot from the bedside of a dead mother and cared for all +winter, three children, besides two of his own, being raised out of a +sense of affection and care for the fatherless. + +One day in the local post office I was idling a half hour with the +postmaster, when I again inquired: + +"Do you know Charlie Potter?" + +"I should think I did. Charlie Potter and I sailed together for +something over eleven years." + +"How do you mean sailed together?" + +"We were on the same schooner. This used to be a great port for mackerel +and cod. We were wrecked once together" + +"How was that?" + +"Oh, we went on rocks." + +"Any lives lost?" + +"No, but there came mighty near being. We helped each other in the boat. +I remember Charlie was the last one in that time. Wouldn't get in until +all the rest were safe." + +A sudden resolution came to me. + +"Do you know where he is now?" + +"Yes, he's up in Norwich, preaching or doing missionary work. He's kind +of busy all the time among the poor people, and so on. Never makes much +of anything out of it for himself, but just likes to do it, I guess." + +"Do you know how he manages to live?" + +"No, I don't, exactly. He believes in trusting to Providence for what he +needs. He works though, too, at one job and another. He's a carpenter +for one thing. Got an idea the Lord will send 'im whatever he needs." + +"Well, and does He?" + +"Well, he lives." A little later he added: + +"Oh, yes. There's nothing lazy about Charlie. He's a good worker. When +he was in the fishing line here there wasn't a man worked harder than he +did. They can't anybody lay anything like that against him." + +"Is he very difficult to talk to?" I asked, meditating on seeking him +out. I had so little to do at the time, the very idlest of summers, and +the reports of this man's deeds were haunting me. I wanted to discover +for myself whether he was real or not--whether the reports were true. +The Samaritan in people is so easily exaggerated at times. + +"Oh, no. He's one of the finest men that way I ever knew. You could see +him, well enough, if you went up to Norwich, providing he's up there. He +usually is, though, I think. He lives there with his wife and mother, +you know." + +I caught an afternoon boat for New London and Norwich at one-thirty, and +arrived in Norwich at five. The narrow streets of the thriving little +mill city were alive with people. I had no address, could not obtain +one, but through the open door of a news-stall near the boat landing I +called to the proprietor: + +"Do you know any one in Norwich by the name of Charlie Potter?" + +"The man who works around among the poor people here?" + +"That's the man." + +"Yes, I know him. He lives out on Summer Street, Number Twelve, I think. +You'll find it in the city directory." + +The ready reply was rather astonishing. Norwich has something like +thirty thousand people. + +I walked out in search of Summer Street and finally found a beautiful +lane of that name climbing upward over gentle slopes, arched completely +with elms. Some of the pretty porches of the cottages extended nearly to +the sidewalk. Hammocks, rocking-chairs on verandas, benches under the +trees--all attested the love of idleness and shade in summer. Only the +glimpse of mills and factories in the valley below evidenced the grimmer +life which gave rise mayhap to the need of a man to work among the poor. + +"Is this Summer Street?" I inquired of an old darky who was strolling +cityward in the cool of the evening. An umbrella was under his arm and +an evening paper under his spectacled nose. + +"Bress de Lord!" he said, looking vaguely around. "Ah couldn't say. Ah +knows dat street--been on it fifty times--but Ah never did know de name. +Ha, ha, ha!" + +The hills about echoed his hearty laugh. + +"You don't happen to know Charlie Potter?" + +"Oh, yas, sah. Ah knows Charlie Potter. Dat's his house right ovah dar." + +The house in which Charlie Potter lived was a two-story frame, +overhanging a sharp slope, which descended directly to the waters of the +pretty river below. For a mile or more, the valley of the river could be +seen, its slopes dotted with houses, the valley itself lined with mills. +Two little girls were upon the sloping lawn to the right of the house. A +stout, comfortable-looking man was sitting by a window on the left side +of the house, gazing out over the valley. + +"Is this where Charlie Potter lives?" I inquired of one of the children. + +"Yes, sir." + +"Did he live in Noank?" + +"Yes, sir." + +Just then a pleasant-faced woman of forty-five or fifty issued from a +vine-covered door. + +"Mr. Potter?" she replied to my inquiry. "He'll be right out." + +She went about some little work at the side of the house, and in a +moment Charlie Potter appeared. He was short, thick-set, and weighed no +less than two hundred pounds. His face and hands were sunburned and +brown like those of every fisherman of Noank. An old wrinkled coat and a +baggy pair of gray trousers clothed his form loosely. Two inches of a +spotted, soft-brimmed hat were pulled carelessly over his eyes. His face +was round and full, but slightly seamed. His hands were large, his walk +uneven, and rather inclined to a side swing, or the sailor's roll. He +seemed an odd, pudgy person for so large a fame. + +"Is this Mr. Potter?" + +"I'm the man." + +"I live on a little hummock at the east of Mystic Island, off Noank." + +"You do?" + +"I came up to have a talk with you." + +"Will you come inside, or shall we sit out here?" + +"Let's sit on the step." + +"All right, let's sit on the step." + +He waddled out of the gate and sank comfortably on the little low +doorstep, with his feet on the cool bricks below. I dropped into the +space beside him, and was greeted by as sweet and kind a look as I have +ever seen in a man's eyes. It was one of perfect courtesy and good +nature--void of all suspicion. + +"We were sitting down in the sailboat maker's place at Noank the other +day, and I asked a half dozen of the old fellows whether they had ever +known a contented man. They all thought a while, and then they said they +had. Old Mr. Main and the rest of them agreed that Charlie Potter was a +contented man. What I want to know is, are you?" + +I looked quizzically into his eyes to see what effect this would have, +and if there was no evidence of a mist of pleasure and affection being +vigorously restrained I was very much mistaken. Something seemed to hold +the man in helpless silence as he gazed vacantly at nothing. He breathed +heavily, then drew himself together and lifted one of his big hands, as +if to touch me, but refrained. + +"Yes, brother," he said after a time, "I _am_." + +"Well, that's good," I replied, taking a slight mental exception to the +use of the word brother. "What makes you contented?" + +"I don't know, unless it is that I've found out what I ought to do. You +see, I need so very little for myself that I couldn't be very unhappy." + +"What ought you to do?" + +"I ought to love my fellowmen." + +"And do you?" + +"Say, brother, but I do," he insisted quite simply and with no evidence +of chicane or make-believe--a simple, natural enthusiasm. "I love +everybody. There isn't anybody so low or so mean but I love him. I love +you, yes, I do. I love you." + +He reached out and touched me with his hand, and while I was inclined to +take exception to this very moral enthusiasm, I thrilled just the same +as I have not over the touch of any man in years. There was something +effective and electric about him, so very warm and foolishly human. The +glance which accompanied it spoke, it seemed, as truthfully as his +words. He probably did love me--or thought he did. What difference? + +We lapsed into silence. The scene below was so charming that I could +easily gaze at it in silence. This little house was very simple, not +poor, by no means prosperous, but well-ordered--such a home as such a +man might have. After a while I said: + +"It is very evident that you think the condition of some of your +fellowmen isn't what it ought to be. Tell me what you are trying to do. +What method have you for improving their condition?" + +"The way I reason is this-a-way," he began. "All that some people have +is their feelings, nothing else. Take a tramp, for instance, as I often +have. When you begin to sum up to see where to begin, you find that all +he has in the world, besides his pipe and a little tobacco, is his +feelings. It's all most people have, rich or poor, though a good many +think they have more than that. I try not to injure anybody's feelings." + +He looked at me as though he had expressed the solution of the +difficulties of the world, and the wonderful, kindly eyes beamed in rich +romance upon the scene. + +"Very good," I said, "but what do you do? How do you go about it to aid +your fellowmen?" + +"Well," he answered, unconsciously overlooking his own personal actions +in the matter, "I try to bring them the salvation which the Bible +teaches. You know I stand on the Bible, from cover to cover." + +"Yes, I know you stand on the Bible, but what do you do? You don't +merely preach the Bible to them. What do you do?" + +"No, sir, I don't preach the Bible at all. I stand on it myself. I try +as near as I can to do what it says. I go wherever I can be useful. If +anybody is sick or in trouble, I'm ready to go. I'll be a nurse. I'll +work and earn them food. I'll give them anything I can--that's what I +do." + +"How can you give when you haven't anything? They told me in Noank that +you never worked for money." + +"Not for myself alone. I never take any money for myself alone. That +would be self-seeking. Anything I earn or take is for the Lord, not me. +I never keep it. The Lord doesn't allow a man to be self-seeking." + +"Well, then, when you get money what do you do with it? You can't do and +live without money." + +He had been looking away across the river and the bridge to the city +below, but now he brought his eyes back and fixed them on me. + +"I've been working now for twenty years or more, and, although I've +never had more money than would last me a few days at a time, I've never +wanted for anything and I've been able to help others. I've run pretty +close sometimes. Time and time again I've been compelled to say, 'Lord, +I'm all out of coal,' or 'Lord, I'm going to have to ask you to get me +my fare to New Haven tomorrow,' but in the moment of my need He has +never forgotten me. Why, I've gone down to the depot time and time +again, when it was necessary for me to go, without five cents in my +pocket, and He's been there to meet me. Why, He wouldn't keep you +waiting when you're about His work. He wouldn't forget you--not for a +minute." + +I looked at the man in open-eyed amazement. + +"Do you mean to say that you would go down to a depot without money and +wait for money to come to you?" + +"Oh, brother," he said, with the softest light in his eyes, "if you only +knew what it is to have faith!" + +He laid his hand softly on mine. + +"What is car-fare to New Haven or to anywhere, to Him?" + +"But," I replied materially, "you haven't any car-fare when you go +there--how do you actually get it? Who gives it to you? Give me one +instance." + +"Why, it was only last week, brother, that a woman wrote me from Maiden, +Massachusetts, wanting me to come and see her. She's very sick with +consumption, and she thought she was going to die. I used to know her in +Noank, and she thought if she could get to see me she would feel better. + +"I didn't have any money at the time, but that didn't make any +difference. + +"'Lord,' I said, 'here's a woman sick in Maiden, and she wants me to +come to her. I haven't got any money, but I'll go right down to the +depot, in time to catch a certain train,' and I went. And while I was +standing there a man came up to me and said, 'Brother, I'm told to give +you this,' and he handed me ten dollars." + +"Did you know the man?" I exclaimed. + +"Never saw him before in my life," he replied, smiling genially. + +"And didn't he say anything more than that?" + +"No." + +I stared at him, and he added, as if to take the edge off my +astonishment: + +"Why, bless your heart, I knew he was from the Lord, just the moment I +saw him coming." + +"You mean to say you were standing there without a cent, expecting the +Lord to help you, and He did?" + +"'He shall call upon me, and I shall answer him,'" he answered simply, +quoting the Ninety-first Psalm. + +This incident was still the subject of my inquiry when a little colored +girl came out of the yard and paused a moment before us. + +"May I go down across the bridge, papa?" she asked. + +"Yes," he answered, and then as she tripped away, said: + +"She's one of my adopted children." He gazed between his knees at the +sidewalk. + +"Have you many others?" + +"Three." + +"Raising them, are you?" + +"Yes." + +"They seem to think, down in Noank, that living as you do and giving +everything away is satisfactory to you but rather hard on your wife and +children." + +"Well, it is true that she did feel a little uncertain in the beginning, +but she's never wanted for anything. She'll tell you herself that she's +never been without a thing that she really needed, and she's been +happy." + +He paused to meditate, I presume, over the opinion of his former fellow +townsmen, and then added: + +"It's true, there have been times when we have been right where we had +to have certain things pretty badly, before they came, but they never +failed to come." + +While he was still talking, Mrs. Potter came around the corner of the +house and out upon the sidewalk. She was going to the Saturday evening +market in the city below. + +"Here she is," he said. "Now you can ask her." + +"What is it?" she inquired, turning a serene and smiling face to me. + +"They still think, down in Noank, that you're not very happy with me," +he said. "They're afraid you want for something once in a while." + +She took this piece of neighborly interference in better fashion than +most would, I fancy. + +"I have never wanted for anything since I have been married to my +husband," she said. "I am thoroughly contented." + +She looked at him and he at her, and there passed between them an +affectionate glance. + +"Yes," he said, when she had passed after a pleasing little +conversation, "my wife has been a great help to me. She has never +complained." + +"People are inclined to talk a little," I said. + +"Well, you see, she never complained, but she did feel a little bit +worried in the beginning." + +"Have you a mission or a church here in Norwich?" + +"No, I don't believe in churches." + +"Not in churches?" + +"No. The sight of a minister preaching the word of God for so much a +year is all a mockery to me." + +"What do you believe in?" + +"Personal service. Churches and charitable institutions and societies +are all valueless. You can't reach your fellowman that way. They build +up buildings and pay salaries--but there's a better way." (I was +thinking of St. Francis and his original dream, before they threw him +out and established monasteries and a costume or uniform--the thing he +so much objected to.) "This giving of a few old clothes that the moths +will get anyhow, that won't do. You've got to give something of +yourself, and that's affection. Love is the only thing you can really +give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything. +Everything comes with it in some way or other." + +"How do you say?" I queried. "Money certainly comes handy sometimes." + +"Yes, when you give it with your own hand and heart--in no other way. It +comes to nothing just contributed to some thing. Ah!" he added, with +sudden animation, "the tangles men can get themselves into, the snarls, +the wretchedness! Troubles with women, with men whom they owe, with evil +things they say and think, until they can't walk down the street any +more without peeping about to see if they are followed. They can't look +you in die face; can't walk a straight course, but have got to sneak +around corners. Poor, miserable, unhappy--they're worrying and crying +and dodging one another!" + +He paused, lost in contemplation of the picture he had conjured up. + +"Yes," I went on catechistically, determined, if I could, to rout out +this matter of giving, this actual example of the modus operandi of +Christian charity. "What do you do? How do you get along without giving +them money?" + +"I don't get along without giving them some money. There are cases, lots +of them, where a little money is necessary. But, brother, it is so +little necessary at times. It isn't always money they want. You can't +reach them with old clothes and charity societies," he insisted. "You've +got to love them, brother. You've got to go to them and love them, just +as they are, scarred and miserable and bad-hearted." + +"Yes," I replied doubtfully, deciding to follow this up later. "But just +what is it you do in a needy case? One instance?" + +"Why, one night I was passing a little house in this town," he went on, +"and I heard a woman crying. I went right to the door and opened it, and +when I got inside she just stopped and looked at me. + +"'Madam,' I said, 'I have come to help you, if I can. Now you tell me +what you're crying for.' + +"Well, sir, you know she sat there and told me how her husband drank and +how she didn't have anything in the house to eat, and so I just gave her +all I had and told her I would see her husband for her, and the next day +I went and hunted him up and said to him, 'Oh, brother, I wish you would +open your eyes and see what you are doing. I wish you wouldn't do that +any more. It's only misery you are creating.' And, you know, I got to +telling about how badly his wife felt about it, and how I intended to +work and try and help her, and bless me if he didn't up and promise me +before I got through that he wouldn't do that any more. And he didn't. +He's working today, and it's been two years since I went to him, +nearly." + +His eyes were alight with his appreciation of personal service. + +"Yes, that's one instance," I said. + +"Oh, there are plenty of them," he replied. "It's the only way. Down +here in New London a couple of winters ago we had a terrible time of it. +That was the winter of the panic, you know. Cold--my, but that was a +cold winter, and thousands of people out of work--just thousands. It was +awful. I tried to do what I could here and there all along, but finally +things got so bad there that I went to the mayor. I saw they were +raising some kind of a fund to help the poor, so I told him that if he'd +give me a little of the money they were talking of spending that I'd +feed the hungry for a cent-and-a-half a meal." + +"A cent-and-a-half a meal!" + +"Yes, sir. They all thought it was rather curious, not possible at +first, but they gave me the money and I fed 'em." + +"Good meals?" + +"Yes, as good as I ever eat myself," he replied. + +"How did you do it?" I asked. + +"Oh, I can cook. I just went around to the markets, and told the +market-men what I wanted--heads of mackerel, and the part of the halibut +that's left after the rich man cuts off his steak--it's the poorest part +that he pays for, you know. And I went fishing myself two or three +times--borrowed a big boat and got men to help me--oh, I'm a good +fisherman, you know. And then I got the loan of an old covered brickyard +that no one was using any more, a great big thing that I could close up +and build fires in, and I put my kettle in there and rigged up tables +out of borrowed boards, and got people to loan me plates and spoons and +knives and forks and cups. I made fish chowder, and fish dinners, and +really I set a very fine table, I did, that winter." + +"For a cent-and-a-half a meal!" + +"Yes, sir, a cent-and-a-half a meal. Ask any one in New London. That's +all it cost me. The mayor said he was surprised at the way I did it." + +"Well, but there wasn't any particular personal service in the money +they gave you?" I asked, catching him up on that point. "They didn't +personally serve--those who gave you the money?" + +"No, sir, they didn't," he replied dreamily, with unconscious +simplicity. "But they gave through me, you see. That's the way it was. I +gave the personal service. Don't you see? That's the way." + +"Yes, that's the way," I smiled, avoiding as far as possible a further +discussion of this contradiction, so unconscious on his part, and in the +drag of his thought he took up another idea. + +"I clothed 'em that winter, too--went around and got barrels and boxes +of old clothing. Some of them felt a little ashamed to put on the +things, but I got over that, all right. I was wearing them myself, and I +just told them, 'Don't feel badly, brother. I'm wearing them out of the +same barrel with you--I'm wearing them out of the same barrel.' Got my +clothes entirely free for that winter." + +"Can you always get all the aid you need for such enterprises?" + +"Usually, and then I can earn a good deal of money when I work steadily. +I can get a hundred and fifty dollars for a little yacht, you know, +every time I find time to make one; and I can make a good deal of money +out of fishing. I went out fishing here on the Fourth of July and caught +two hundred blackfish--four and five pounds, almost, every one of them." + +"That ought to be profitable," I said. + +"Well, it was," he replied. + +"How much did you get for them?" + +"Oh, I didn't sell them," he said. "I never take money for my work that +way. I gave them all away." + +"What did you do?" I asked, laughing--"advertise for people to come for +them?" + +"No. My wife took some, and my daughters, and I took the rest and we +carried them around to people that we thought would like to have them." + +"Well, that wasn't so profitable, was it?" I commented amusedly. + +"Yes, they were fine fish," he replied, not seeming to have heard me. + +We dropped the subject of personal service at this point, and I +expressed the opinion that his service was only a temporary expedient. +Times changed, and with them, people. They forgot. Perhaps those he +aided were none the better for accepting his charity. + +"I know what you mean," he said. "But that don't make any difference. +You just have to keep on giving, that's all, see? Not all of 'em turn +back. It helps a lot. Money is the only dangerous thing to give--but I +never give money--not very often. I give myself, rather, as much as +possible. I give food and clothing, too, but I try to show 'em a new +way--that's not money, you know. So many people need a new way. They're +looking for it often, only they don't seem to know how. But God, dear +brother, however poor or mean they are--He knows. You've got to reach +the heart, you know, and I let Him help me. You've got to make a man +over in his soul, if you want to help him, and money won't help you to +do that, you know. No, it won't." + +He looked up at me in clear-eyed faith. It was remarkable. + +"Make them over?" I queried, still curious, for it was all like a +romance, and rather fantastic to me. "What do you mean? How do you make +them over?" + +"Oh, in their attitude, that's how. You've got to change a man and bring +him out of self-seeking if you really want to make him good. Most men +are so tangled up in their own errors and bad ways, and so worried over +their seekings, that unless you can set them to giving it's no use. +They're always seeking, and they don't know what they want half the +time. Money isn't the thing. Why, half of them wouldn't understand how +to use it if they had it. Their minds are not bright enough. Their +perceptions are not clear enough. All you can do is to make them content +with themselves. And that, giving to others will do. I never saw the man +or the woman yet who couldn't be happy if you could make them feel the +need of living for others, of doing something for somebody besides +themselves. It's a fact. Selfish people are never happy." + +He rubbed his hands as if he saw the solution of the world's +difficulties very clearly, and I said to him: + +"Well, now, you've got a man out of the mire, and 'saved,' as you call +it, and then what? What comes next?" + +"Well, then he's saved," he replied. "Happiness comes next--content." + +"I know. But must he go to church, or conform to certain rules?" + +"No, no, no!" he replied sweetly. "Nothing to do except to be good to +others. 'True religion and undefiled before our God and Father is +this,'" he quoted, "'to visit the widow and the orphan in their +affliction and to keep unspotted from the world. Charity is kind,' you +know. 'Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh not its +own.'" + +"Well," I said, rather aimlessly, I will admit, for this high faith +staggered me. (How high! How high!) "And then what?" + +"Well, then the world would come about. It would be so much better. All +the misery is in the lack of sympathy one with another. When we get that +straightened out we can work in peace. There are lots of things to do, +you know." + +Yes, I thought, looking down on the mills and the driving force of +self-interest--on greed, lust, love of pleasure, all their fantastic and +yet moving dreams. + +"I'm an ignorant man myself, and I don't know all," he went on, "and I'd +like to study. My, but I'd like to look into all things, but I can't do +it now. We can't stop until this thing is straightened out. Some time, +maybe," and he looked peacefully away. + +"By the way," I said, "whatever became of the man to whom you gave your +rubber boots over on Fisher's Island?" + +His face lit up as if it were the most natural thing that I should know +about it. + +"Say," he exclaimed, in the most pleased and confidential way, as if we +were talking about a mutual friend, "I saw him not long ago. And, do you +know, he's a good man now--really, he is. Sober and hard-working. And, +say, would you believe it, he told me that I was the cause of it--just +that miserable old pair of rubber boots--what do you think of that?" + +I shook his hand at parting, and as we stood looking at each other in +the shadow of the evening I asked him: + +"Are you afraid to die?" + +"Say, brother, but I'm not," he returned. "It hasn't any terror for me +at all. I'm just as willing. My, but I'm willing." + +He smiled and gripped me heartily again, and, as I was starting to go, +said: + +"If I die tonight, it'll be all right. He'll use me just as long as He +needs me. That I know. Good-by." + +"Good-by," I called back. + +He hung by his fence, looking down upon the city. As I turned the next +corner I saw him awakening from his reflection and waddling stolidly +back into the house. + + + + +_My Brother Paul_ + + +I like best to think of him as he was at the height of his all-too-brief +reputation and success, when, as the author and composer of various +American popular successes ("On the Banks of the Wabash," "Just Tell +Them That You Saw Me," and various others), as a third owner of one of +the most successful popular music publishing houses in the city and as +an actor and playwright of some small repute, he was wont to spin like a +moth in the white light of Broadway. By reason of a little luck and some +talent he had come so far, done so much for himself. In his day he had +been by turn a novitiate in a Western seminary which trained aspirants +for the Catholic priesthood; a singer and entertainer with a +perambulating cure-all oil troupe or wagon ("Hamlin's Wizard Oil") +traveling throughout Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; both end- and middle-man +with one, two or three different minstrel companies of repute; the +editor or originator and author of a "funny column" in a Western small +city paper; the author of the songs mentioned and a hundred others; a +black-face monologue artist; a white-face ditto, at Tony Pastor's, +Miner's and Niblo's of the old days; a comic lead; co-star and star in +such melodramas and farces as "The Danger Signal," "The Two Johns," "A +Tin Soldier," "The Midnight Bell," "A Green Goods Man" (a farce which he +himself wrote, by the way), and others. The man had a genius for the +kind of gayety, poetry and romance which may, and no doubt must be, +looked upon as exceedingly middle-class but which nonetheless had as +much charm as anything in this world can well have. He had at this time +absolutely no cares or financial worries of any kind, and this plus his +health, self-amusing disposition and talent for entertaining, made him a +most fascinating figure to contemplate. + +My first recollection of him is of myself as a boy often and he a man of +twenty-five (my oldest brother). He had come back to the town in which +we were then living solely to find his mother and help her. Six or seven +years before he had left without any explanation as to where he was +going, tired of or irritated by the routine of a home which for any +genuine opportunity it offered him might as well never have existed. It +was run dominantly by my father in the interest of religious and moral +theories, with which this boy had little sympathy. He was probably not +understood by any one save my mother, who understood or at least +sympathized with us all. Placed in a school which was to turn him out a +priest, he had decamped, and now seven years later was here in this +small town, with fur coat and silk hat, a smart cane--a gentleman of the +theatrical profession. He had joined a minstrel show somewhere and had +become an "end-man." He had suspected that we were not as fortunate in +this world's goods as might be and so had returned. His really great +heart had called him. + +But the thing which haunts me, and which was typical of him then as +throughout life, was the spirit which he then possessed and conveyed. It +was one of an agile geniality, unmarred by thought of a serious +character but warm and genuinely tender and with a taste for simple +beauty which was most impressive. He was already the author of a cheap +songbook, "_The Paul Dresser Songster_" ("All the Songs Sung in the +Show"), and some copies of this he had with him, one of which he gave +me. But we having no musical instrument of any kind, he taught me some +of the melodies "by ear." The home in which by force of poverty we were +compelled to live was most unprepossessing and inconvenient, and the +result of his coming could but be our request for, or at least the +obvious need of, assistance. Still he was as much an enthusiastic part +of it as though he belonged to it. He was happy in it, and the cause of +his happiness was my mother, of whom he was intensely fond. I recall how +he hung about her in the kitchen or wherever she happened to be, how +enthusiastically he related all his plans for the future, his amusing +difficulties in the past. He was very grand and youthfully +self-important, or so we all thought, and still he patted her on the +shoulder or put his arm about her and kissed her. Until she died years +later she was truly his uppermost thought, crying with her at times over +her troubles and his. He contributed regularly to her support and sent +home all his cast-off clothing to be made over for the younger ones. +(Bless her tired hands!) + +As I look back now on my life, I realize quite clearly that of all the +members of my family, subsequent to my mother's death, the only one who +truly understood me, or, better yet, sympathized with my intellectual +and artistic point of view, was, strange as it may seem, this same Paul, +my dearest brother. Not that he was in any way fitted intellectually or +otherwise to enjoy high forms of art and learning and so guide me, or +that he understood, even in later years (long after I had written +"Sister Carrie," for instance), what it was that I was attempting to do; +he never did. His world was that of the popular song, the middle-class +actor or comedian, the middle-class comedy, and such humorous æsthetes +of the writing world as Bill Nye, Petroleum V. Nasby, the authors of the +Spoopendyke Papers, and "Samantha at Saratoga." As far as I could make +out--and I say this in no lofty, condescending spirit, by any means--he +was entirely full of simple, middle-class romance, middle-class humor, +middle-class tenderness and middle-class grossness, all of which I am +very free to say early disarmed and won me completely and kept me so +much his debtor that I should hesitate to try to acknowledge or explain +all that he did for or meant to me. + +Imagine, if you can, a man weighing all of three hundred pounds, not +more than five feet ten-and-one-half inches in height and yet of so +lithesome a build that he gave not the least sense of either undue +weight or lethargy. His temperament, always ebullient and radiant, +presented him as a clever, eager, cheerful, emotional and always highly +illusioned person with so collie-like a warmth that one found him +compelling interest and even admiration. Easily cast down at times by +the most trivial matters, at others, and for the most part, he was so +spirited and bubbly and emotional and sentimental that your fiercest or +most gloomy intellectual rages or moods could scarcely withstand his +smile. This tenderness or sympathy of his, a very human appreciation of +the weaknesses and errors as well as the toils and tribulations of most +of us, was by far his outstanding and most engaging quality, and gave +him a very definite force and charm. Admitting, as I freely do, that he +was very sensuous (gross, some people might have called him), that he +had an intense, possibly an undue fondness for women, a frivolous, +childish, horse-playish sense of humor at times, still he had other +qualities which were absolutely adorable. Life seemed positively to +spring up fountain-like in him. One felt in him a capacity to do (in +his possibly limited field); an ability to achieve, whether he was doing +so at the moment or not, and a supreme willingness to share and radiate +his success--qualities exceedingly rare, I believe. Some people are so +successful, and yet you know their success is purely selfish--exclusive, +not inclusive; they never permit you to share in their lives. Not so my +good brother. He was generous to the point of self-destruction, and that +is literally true. He was the mark if not the prey of all those who +desired much or little for nothing, those who previously might not have +rendered him a service of any kind. He was all life and color, and +thousands (I use the word with care) noted and commented on it. + +When I first came to New York he was easily the foremost popular +song-writer of the day and was the cause of my coming, so soon at least, +having established himself in the publishing field and being so +comfortably settled as to offer me a kind of anchorage in so troubled a +commercial sea. I was very much afraid of New York, but with him here it +seemed not so bad. The firm of which he was a part had a floor or two in +an old residence turned office building, as so many are in New York, in +Twentieth Street very close to Broadway, and here, during the summer +months (1894-7) when the various theatrical road-companies, one of which +he was always a part, had returned for the closed season, he was to be +found aiding his concern in the reception and care of possible +applicants for songs and attracting by his personality such virtuosi of +the vaudeville and comedy stage as were likely to make the instrumental +publications of his firm a success. + +I may as well say here that he had no more business skill than a fly. At +the same time, he was in no wise sycophantic where either wealth, power +or fame was concerned. He considered himself a personage of sorts, and +was. The minister, the moralist, the religionist, the narrow, dogmatic +and self-centered in any field were likely to be the butt of his humor, +and he could imitate so many phases of character so cleverly that he was +the life of any idle pleasure-seeking party anywhere. To this day I +recall his characterization of an old Irish washerwoman arguing; a +stout, truculent German laying down the law; lean, gloomy, out-at-elbows +actors of the Hamlet or classic school complaining of their fate; the +stingy skinflint haggling over a dollar, and always with a skill for +titillating the risibilities which is vivid to me even to this day. +Other butts of his humor were the actor, the Irish day-laborer, the +negro and the Hebrew. And how he could imitate them! It is useless to +try to indicate such things in writing, the facial expression, the +intonation, the gestures; these are not things of words. Perhaps I can +best indicate the direction of his mind, if not his manner, by the +following: + +One night as we were on our way to a theater there stood on a nearby +corner in the cold a blind man singing and at the same time holding out +a little tin cup into which the coins of the charitably inclined were +supposed to be dropped. At once my brother noticed him, for he had an +eye for this sort of thing, the pathos of poverty as opposed to so gay a +scene, the street with its hurrying theater crowds. At the same time, so +inherently mischievous was his nature that although his sympathy for the +suffering or the ill-used of fate was overwhelming, he could not resist +combining his intended charity with a touch of the ridiculous. + +"Got any pennies?" he demanded. + +"Three or four." + +Going over to an outdoor candystand he exchanged a quarter for pennies, +then came back and waited until the singer, who had ceased singing, +should begin a new melody. A custom of the singer's, since the song was +of no import save as a means of attracting attention to him, was to +interpolate a "Thank you" after each coin dropped in his cup and between +the words of the song, regardless. It was this little idiosyncrasy which +evidently had attracted my brother's attention, although it had not +mine. Standing quite close, his pennies in his hand, he waited until the +singer had resumed, then began dropping pennies, waiting each time for +the "Thank you," which caused the song to go about as follows: + +"Da-a-'ling" (Clink!--"Thank you!") "I am--" (Clink!--"Thank you!") +"growing o-o-o-ld" (Clink!--"Thank you!"), "Silve-e-r--" (Clink!--"Thank +you!") "threads among the--" (Clink!--"Thank you!") "go-o-o-ld--" +(Clink! "Thank you!"). "Shine upon my-y" (Clink!--"Thank you!") +"bro-o-ow toda-a-y" (Clink!--"Thank you!"), "Life is--" (Clink!--"Thank +you!") "fading fast a-a-wa-a-ay" (Clink!--"Thank you!")--and so on ad +infinitum, until finally the beggar himself seemed to hesitate a little +and waver, only so solemn was his rôle of want and despair that of +course he dared not but had to go on until the last penny was in, and +until he was saying more "Thank yous" than words of the song. A +passer-by noticing it had begun to "Haw-haw!", at which others joined +in, myself included. The beggar himself, a rather sniveling specimen, +finally realizing what a figure he was cutting with his song and thanks, +emptied the coins into his hand and with an indescribably wry +expression, half-uncertainty and half smile, exclaimed, "I'll have to +thank you as long as you keep putting pennies in, I suppose. God bless +you!" + +My brother came away smiling and content. + +However, it is not as a humorist or song-writer or publisher that I wish +to portray him, but as an odd, lovable personality, possessed of so many +interesting and peculiar and almost indescribable traits. Of all +characters in fiction he perhaps most suggests Jack Falstaff, with his +love of women, his bravado and bluster and his innate good nature and +sympathy. Sympathy was really his outstanding characteristic, even more +than humor, although the latter was always present. One might recite a +thousand incidents of his generosity and out-of-hand charity, which +contained no least thought of return or reward. I recall that once there +was a boy who had been reared in one of the towns in which we had once +lived who had never had a chance in his youth, educationally or in any +other way, and, having turned out "bad" and sunk to the level of a bank +robber, had been detected in connection with three other men in the act +of robbing a bank, the watchman of which was subsequently killed in the +mêlée and escape. Of all four criminals only this one had been caught. +Somewhere in prison he had heard sung one of my brother's sentimental +ballads, "The Convict and the Bird," and recollecting that he had known +Paul wrote him, setting forth his life history and that now he had no +money or friends. + +At once my good brother was alive to the pathos of it. He showed the +letter to me and wanted to know what could be done. I suggested a +lawyer, of course, one of those brilliant legal friends of his--always +he had enthusiastic admirers in all walks--who might take the case for +little or nothing. There was the leader of Tammany Hall, Richard Croker, +who could be reached, he being a friend of Paul's. There was the +Governor himself to whom a plain recitation of the boy's unfortunate +life might be addressed, and with some hope of profit. + +All of these things he did, and more. He went to the prison (Sing Sing), +saw the warden and told him the story of the boy's life, then went to +the boy, or man, himself and gave him some money. He was introduced to +the Governor through influential friends and permitted to tell the tale. +There was much delay, a reprieve, a commutation of the death penalty to +life imprisonment--the best that could be done. But he was so grateful +for that, so pleased. You would have thought at the time that it was his +own life that had been spared. + +"Good heavens!" I jested. "You'd think you'd done the man an inestimable +service, getting him in the penitentiary for life!" + +"That's right," he grinned--an unbelievably provoking smile. "He'd +better be dead, wouldn't he? Well, I'll write and ask him which he'd +rather have." + +I recall again taking him to task for going to the rescue of a "down and +out" actor who had been highly successful and apparently not very +sympathetic in his day, one of that more or less gaudy clan that wastes +its substance, or so it seemed to me then, in riotous living. But now +being old and entirely discarded and forgotten, he was in need of +sympathy and aid. By some chance he knew Paul, or Paul had known him, +and now because of the former's obvious prosperity--he was much in the +papers at the time--he had appealed to him. The man lived with a sister +in a wretched little town far out on Long Island. On receiving his +appeal Paul seemed to wish to investigate for himself, possibly to +indulge in a little lofty romance or sentiment. At any rate he wanted me +to go along for the sake of companionship, so one dreary November +afternoon we went, saw the pantaloon, who did not impress me very much +even in his age and misery for he still had a few of his theatrical +manners and insincerities, and as we were coming away I said, "Paul, why +should you be the goat in every case?" for I had noted ever since I had +been in New York, which was several years then, that he was a victim of +many such importunities. If it was not the widow of a deceased friend +who needed a ton of coal or a sack of flour, or the reckless, headstrong +boy of parents too poor to save him from a term in jail or the +reformatory and who asked for fine-money or an appeal to higher powers +for clemency, or a wastrel actor or actress "down and out" and unable to +"get back to New York" and requiring his or her railroad fare wired +prepaid, it was the dead wastrel actor or actress who needed a coffin +and a decent form of burial. + +"Well, you know how it is, Thee" (he nearly always addressed me thus), +"when you're old and sick. As long as you're up and around and have +money, everybody's your friend. But once you're down and out no one +wants to see you any more--see?" Almost amusingly he was always sad over +those who had once been prosperous but who were now old and forgotten. +Some of his silliest tender songs conveyed as much. + +"Quite so," I complained, rather brashly, I suppose, "but why didn't he +save a little money when he had it? He made as much as you'll ever +make." The man had been a star. "He had plenty of it, didn't he? Why +should he come to you?" + +"Well, you know how it is, Thee," he explained in the kindliest and most +apologetic way. "When you're young and healthy like that you don't +think. I know how it is; I'm that way myself. We all have a little of it +in us. I have; you have. And anyhow youth's the time to spend money if +you're to get any good of it, isn't it? Of course when you're old you +can't expect much, but still I always feel as though I'd like to help +some of these old people." His eyes at such times always seemed more +like those of a mother contemplating a sick or injured child than those +of a man contemplating life. + +"But, Paul," I insisted on another occasion when he had just wired +twenty-five dollars somewhere to help bury some one. (My spirit was not +so niggardly as fearsome. I was constantly terrified in those days by +the thought of a poverty-stricken old age for myself and him--why, I +don't know. I was by no means incompetent.) "Why don't you save your +money? Why should you give it to every Tom, Dick and Harry that asks +you? You're not a charity organization, and you're not called upon to +feed and clothe and bury all the wasters who happen to cross your path. +If you were down and out how many do you suppose would help you?" + +"Well, you know," and his voice and manner were largely those of mother, +the same wonder, the same wistfulness and sweetness, the same bubbling +charity and tenderness of heart, "I can't say I haven't got it, can I?" +He was at the height of his success at the time. "And anyhow, what's the +use being so hard on people? We're all likely to get that way. You don't +know what pulls people down sometimes--not wasting always. It's +thoughtlessness, or trying to be happy. Remember how poor we were and +how mamma and papa used to worry." Often these references to mother or +father or their difficulties would bring tears to his eyes. "I can't +stand to see people suffer, that's all, not if I have anything," and his +eyes glowed sweetly. "And, after all," he added apologetically, "the +little I give isn't much. They don't get so much out of me. They don't +come to me every day." + +Another time--one Christmas Eve it was, when I was comparatively new to +New York (my second or third year), I was a little uncertain what to do, +having no connections outside of Paul and two sisters, one of whom was +then out of the city. The other, owing to various difficulties of her +own and a temporary estrangement from us--more our fault than hers--was +therefore not available. The rather drab state into which she had +allowed her marital affections to lead her was the main reason that kept +us apart. At any rate I felt that I could not, or rather would not, go +there. At the same time, owing to some difficulty or irritation with the +publishing house of which my brother was then part owner (it was +publishing the magazine which I was editing), we twain were also +estranged, nothing very deep really--a temporary feeling of distance and +indifference. + +So I had no place to go except to my room, which was in a poor part of +the town, or out to dine where best I might--some moderate-priced hotel, +was my thought. I had not seen my brother in three or four days, but +after I had strolled a block or two up Broadway I encountered him. I +have always thought that he had kept an eye on me and had really +followed me; was looking, in short, to see what I would do As usual he +was most smartly and comfortably dressed. + +"Where you going, Thee?" he called cheerfully. + +"Oh, no place in particular," I replied rather suavely, I presume. "Just +going up the street." + +"Now, see here, sport," he began--a favorite expression of his, +"sport"--with his face abeam, "what's the use you and me quarreling? +It's Christmas Eve, ain't it? It's a shame! Come on, let's have a drink +and then go out to dinner." + +"Well," I said, rather uncompromisingly, for at times his seemingly +extreme success and well-being irritated me, "I'll have a drink, but as +for dinner I have another engagement." + +"Aw, don't say that. What's the use being sore? You know I always feel +the same even if we do quarrel at times. Cut it out. Come on. You know +I'm your brother, and you're mine. It's all right with me, Thee. Let's +make it up, will you? Put 'er there! Come on, now. We'll go and have a +drink, see, something hot--it's Christmas Eve, sport. The old home +stuff." + +He smiled winsomely, coaxingly, really tenderly, as only he could smile. +I "gave in." But now as we entered the nearest shining bar, a Christmas +crowd buzzing within and without (it was the old Fifth Avenue Hotel), a +new thought seemed to strike him. + +"Seen E---- lately?" he inquired, mentioning the name of the troubled +sister who was having a very hard time indeed. Her husband had left her +and she was struggling over the care of two children. + +"No," I replied, rather shamefacedly, "not in a week or two--maybe +more." + +He clicked his tongue. He himself had not been near her in a month or +more. His face fell, and he looked very depressed. + +"It's too bad--a shame really. We oughtn't to do this way, you know, +sport. It ain't right. What do you say to our going around there," it +was in the upper thirties, "and see how she's making out?--take her a +few things, eh? Whaddya say?" + +I hadn't a spare dollar myself, but I knew well enough what he meant by +"take a few things" and who would pay for them. + +"Well, we'll have to hurry if we want to get anything now," I urged, +falling in with the idea since it promised peace, plenty and good will +all around, and we rushed the drink and departed. Near at hand was a +branch of one of the greatest grocery companies of the city, and near +it, too, his then favorite hotel, the Continental. En route we meditated +on the impossibility of delivery, the fact that we would have to carry +the things ourselves, but he at last solved that by declaring that he +could commandeer negro porters or bootblacks from the Continental. We +entered, and by sheer smiles on his part and some blarney heaped upon a +floor-manager, secured a turkey, sweet potatoes, peas, beans, a salad, a +strip of bacon, a ham, plum pudding, a basket of luscious fruit and I +know not what else--provender, I am sure, for a dozen meals. While it +was being wrapped and packed in borrowed baskets, soon to be returned, +he went across the way to the hotel and came back with three grinning +darkies who for the tip they knew they would receive preceded us up +Broadway, the nearest path to our destination. On the way a few +additional things were picked up: holly wreaths, toys, candy, nuts--and +then, really not knowing whether our plan might not mis-carry, we made +our way through the side street and to the particular apartment, or, +rather, flat-house, door, a most amusing Christmas procession, I fancy, +wondering and worrying now whether she would be there. + +But the door clicked in answer to our ring, and up we marched, the three +darkies first, instructed to inquire for her and then insist on leaving +the goods, while we lagged behind to see how she would take it. + +The stage arrangement worked as planned. My sister opened the door and +from the steps below we could hear her protesting that she had ordered +nothing, but the door being open the negroes walked in and a moment or +two afterwards ourselves. The packages were being piled on table and +floor, while my sister, unable quite to grasp this sudden visitation and +change of heart, stared. + +"Just thought we'd come around and have supper with you, E----, and +maybe dinner tomorrow if you'll let us," my brother chortled. "Merry +Christmas, you know. Christmas Eve. The good old home stuff--see? Old +sport here and I thought we couldn't stay away--tonight, anyhow." + +He beamed on her in his most affectionate way, but she, suffering +regret over the recent estrangement as well as the difficulties of life +itself and the joy of this reunion, burst into tears, while the two +little ones danced about, and he and I put our arms about her. + +"There, there! It's all over now," he declared, tears welling in his +eyes. "It's all off. We'll can this scrapping stuff. Thee and I are a +couple of bums and we know it, but you can forgive us, can't you? We +ought to be ashamed of ourselves, all of us, and that's the truth. We've +been quarreling, too, haven't spoken for a week. Ain't that so, sport? +But it's all right now, eh?" + +There were tears in my eyes, too. One couldn't resist him. He had the +power of achieving the tenderest results in the simplest ways. We then +had supper, and breakfast the next morning, all staying and helping, +even to the washing and drying of the dishes, and thereafter for I don't +know how long we were all on the most affectionate terms, and he +eventually died in this sister's home, ministered to with absolutely +restless devotion by her for weeks before the end finally came. + +But, as I have said, I always prefer to think of him at this, the very +apex or tower window of his life. For most of this period he was gay and +carefree. The music company of which he was a third owner was at the +very top of its success. Its songs, as well as his, were everywhere. He +had in turn at this time a suite at the Gilsey House, the Marlborough, +the Normandie--always on Broadway, you see. The limelight district was +his home. He rose in the morning to the clang of the cars and the honk +of the automobiles outside; he retired at night as a gang of repair men +under flaring torches might be repairing a track, or the milk trucks +were rumbling to and from the ferries. He was in his way a public +restaurant and hotel favorite, a shining light in the theater managers' +offices, hotel bars and lobbies and wherever those flies of the +Tenderloin, those passing lords and celebrities of the sporting, +theatrical, newspaper and other worlds, are wont to gather. One of his +intimates, as I now recall, was "Bat" Masterson, the Western and now +retired (to Broadway!) bad man; Muldoon, the famous wrestler; Tod Sloan, +the jockey; "Battling" Nelson; James J. Corbett; Kid McCoy; Terry +McGovern--prize-fighters all. Such Tammany district leaders as James +Murphy, "The" McManus, Chrystie and Timothy Sullivan, Richard Carroll, +and even Richard Croker, the then reigning Tammany boss, were all on his +visiting list. He went to their meetings, rallies and district doings +generally to sing and play, and they came to his "office" occasionally. +Various high and mighties of the Roman Church, "fathers" with fine +parishes and good wine cellars, and judges of various municipal courts, +were also of his peculiar world. He was always running to one or the +other "to get somebody out," or they to him to get him to contribute +something to something, or to sing and play or act, and betimes they +were meeting each other in hotel grills or elsewhere and having a drink +and telling "funny stories." + +Apropos of this sense of humor of his, this love of horse-play almost, I +remember that once he had a new story to tell--a vulgar one of +course--and with it he had been making me and a dozen others laugh until +the tears coursed down our cheeks. It seemed new to everybody and, true +to his rather fantastic moods, he was determined to be the first to tell +it along Broadway. For some reason he was anxious to have me go along +with him, possibly because he found me at that time an unvarying +fountain of approval and laughter, possibly because he liked to show me +off as his rising brother, as he insisted that I was. At between six and +seven of a spring or summer evening, therefore, we issued from his suite +at the Gilsey House, whither he had returned to dress, and invading the +bar below were at once centered among a group who knew him. A whiskey, a +cigar, the story told to one, two, three, five, ten to roars of +laughter, and we were off, over the way to Weber & Fields (the Musical +Burlesque House Supreme of those days) in the same block, where to the +ticket seller and house manager, both of whom he knew, it was told. More +laughter, a cigar perhaps. Then we were off again, this time to the +ticket seller of Palmer's Theater at Thirtieth Street, thence to the bar +of the Grand Hotel at Thirty-first, the Imperial at Thirty-second, the +Martinique at Thirty-third, a famous drug-store at the southwest corner +of Thirty-fourth and Broadway, now gone of course, the manager of which +was a friend of his. It was a warm, moony night, and he took a glass of +vichy "for looks' sake," as he said. + +Then to the quondam Hotel Aulic at Thirty-fifth and Broadway--the center +and home of the then much-berated "Hotel Aulic or Actors' School of +Philosophy," and a most impressive actors' rendezvous where might have +been seen in the course of an evening all the "second leads" and "light +comedians" and "heavies" of this, that and the other road company, all +blazing with startling clothes and all explaining how they "knocked 'em" +here and there: in Peoria, Pasadena, Walla-Walla and where not. My +brother shone like a star when only one is in the sky. + +Over the way then to the Herald Building, its owls' eyes glowing in the +night, its presses thundering, the elevated thundering beside it. Here +was a business manager whom he knew. Then to the Herald Square Theater +on the opposite side of the street, ablaze with a small electric +sign--among the newest in the city. In this, as in the business office +of the _Herald_ was another manager, and he knew them all. Thence to the +Marlborough bar and lobby at Thirty-sixth, the manager's office of the +Knickerbocker Theater at Thirty-eighth, stopping at the bar and lobby of +the Normandie, where some blazing professional beauty of the stage +waylaid him and exchanged theatrical witticisms with him--and what else? +Thence to the manager's office of the Casino at Thirty-ninth, some bar +which was across the street, another in Thirty-ninth west of Broadway, +an Italian restaurant on the ground floor of the Metropolitan at +Fortieth and Broadway, and at last but by no means least and by such +slow stages to the very door of the then Mecca of Meccas of all +theater- and sportdom, the sanctum sanctorum of all those sportively au +fait, "wise," the "real thing"--the Hotel Metropole at Broadway and +Forty-second Street, the then extreme northern limit of the white-light +district. And what a realm! Rounders and what not were here ensconced at +round tables, their backs against the leather-cushioned wall seats, the +adjoining windows open to all Broadway and the then all but somber +Forty-second Street. + +It was wonderful, the loud clothes, the bright straw hats, the canes, +the diamonds, the "hot" socks, the air of security and well-being, so +easily assumed by those who gain an all too brief hour in this pretty, +petty world of make-believe and pleasure and pseudo-fame. Among them my +dearest brother was at his best. It was "Paul" here and "Paul" +there--"Why, hello, Dresser, you're just in time! Come on in. What'll +you have? Let me tell you something, Paul, a good one--". More drinks, +cigars, tales--magnificent tales of successes made, "great shows" given, +fights, deaths, marvelous winnings at cards, trickeries in racing, +prize-fighting; the "dogs" that some people were, the magnificent, +magnanimous "God's own salt" that others were. The oaths, stories of +women, what low, vice-besmeared, crime-soaked ghoulas certain reigning +beauties of the town or stage were--and so on and so on ad infinitum. + +But his story?--ah, yes. I had all but forgotten. It was told in every +place, not once but seven, eight, nine, ten times. We did not eat until +we reached the Metropole, and it was ten-thirty when we reached it! The +handshakes, the road stories--"This is my brother Theodore. He writes; +he's a newspaper man." The roars of laughter, the drinks! "Ah, my boy, +that's good, but let me tell you one--one that I heard out in Louisville +the other day." A seedy, shabby ne'er-do-well of a song-writer maybe +stopping the successful author in the midst of a tale to borrow a +dollar. Another actor, shabby and distrait, reciting the sad tale of a +year's misfortunes. Everywhere my dear brother was called to, slapped on +the back, chuckled with. He was successful. One of his best songs was +the rage, he had an interest in a going musical concern, he could confer +benefits, favors. + +Ah, me! Ah, me! That one could be so great, and that it should not last +for ever and for ever! + +Another of his outstanding characteristics was his love of women, a +really amusing and at times ridiculous quality. He was always sighing +over the beauty, innocence, sweetness, this and that, of young +maidenhood in his songs, but in real life he seemed to desire and +attract quite a different type--the young and beautiful, it is true, but +also the old, the homely and the somewhat savage--a catholicity of taste +I could never quite stomach. It was "Paul dearest" here and "Paul +dearest" there, especially in his work in connection with the +music-house and the stage. In the former, popular ballad singers of +both sexes, some of the women most attractive and willful, were most +numerous, coming in daily from all parts of the world apparently to find +songs which they could sing on the American or even the English stage. +And it was a part of his duty, as a member of the firm and the one who +principally "handled" the so-called professional inquirers, to meet them +and see that they were shown what the catalogue contained. Occasionally +there was an aspiring female song-writer, often mere women visitors. + +Regardless, however, of whether they were young, old, attractive or +repulsive, male or female, I never knew any one whose manner was more +uniformly winsome or who seemed so easily to disarm or relax an +indifferent or irritated mood. He was positive sunshine, the same in +quality as that of a bright spring morning. His blue eyes focused +mellowly, his lips were tendrilled with smiles. He had a brisk, quick +manner, always somehow suggestive of my mother, who was never brisk. + +And how he fascinated them, the women! Their quite shameless daring +where he was concerned! Positively, in the face of it I used to wonder +what had become of all the vaunted and so-called "stabilizing morality" +of the world. None of it seemed to be in the possession of these women, +especially the young and beautiful. They were distant and freezing +enough to all who did not interest them, but let a personality such as +his come into view and they were all wiles, bending and alluring graces. +It was so obvious, this fascination he had for them and they for him, +that at times it took on a comic look. + +"Get onto the hit he's making," one would nudge another and remark. + +"Say, some tenderness, that!" This in reference to a smile or a melting +glance on the part of a female. + +"Nothing like a way with the ladies. Some baby, eh, boys?"--this +following the flick of a skirt and a backward-tossed glance perhaps, as +some noticeable beauty passed out. + +"No wonder he's cheerful," a sour and yet philosophic vaudevillian, who +was mostly out of a job and hung about the place for what free meals he +could obtain, once remarked to me in a heavy and morose undertone. "If +I had that many women crazy about me I'd be too." + +And the results of these encounters with beauty! Always he had something +most important to attend to, morning, noon or night, and whenever I +encountered him after some such statement "the important thing" was, of +course, a woman. As time went on and he began to look upon me as +something more than a thin, spindling, dyspeptic and disgruntled youth, +he began to wish to introduce me to some of his marvelous followers, and +then I could see how completely dependent upon beauty in the flesh he +was, how it made his life and world. + +One day as we were all sitting in the office, a large group of +vaudevillians, song-writers, singers, a chance remark gave rise to a +subsequent practical joke at Paul's expense. "I'll bet," observed some +one, "that if a strange man were to rush in here with a revolver and +say, 'Where's the man that seduced my wife?' Paul would be the first to +duck. He wouldn't wait to find out whether he was the one meant or not." + +Much laughter followed, and some thought. The subject of this banter +was, of course, not present at the time. There was one actor who hung +about there who was decidedly skillful in make-up. On more than one +occasion he had disguised himself there in the office for our benefit. +Coöperating with us, he disguised himself now as a very severe and even +savage-looking person of about thirty-five--side-burns, mustachios and +goatee. Then, with our aid, timing his arrival to an hour when Paul was +certain to be at his desk, he entered briskly and vigorously and, +looking about with a savage air, demanded, "Where is Paul Dresser?" + +The latter turned almost apprehensively, I thought, and at once seemed +by no means captivated by the man's looks. + +"That's Mr. Dresser there," explained one of the confederates most +willingly. + +The stranger turned and glared at him. "So you're the scoundrel that's +been running around with my wife, are you?" he demanded, approaching him +and placing one hand on his right hip. + +Paul made no effort to explain. It did not occur to him to deny the +allegation, although he had never seen the man before. With a rising +and backward movement he fell against the rail behind him, lifting both +hands in fright and exclaiming, "Why--why--Don't shoot!" His expression +was one of guilt, astonishment, perplexity. As some one afterwards said, +"As puzzled as if he was trying to discover which injured husband it +might be." The shout that went up--for it was agreed beforehand that the +joke must not be carried far--convinced him that a hoax had been +perpetrated, and the removal by the actor of his hat, sideburns and +mustache revealed the true character of the injured husband. At first +inclined to be angry and sulky, later on he saw the humor of his own +indefinite position in the matter and laughed as heartily as any. But I +fancy it developed a strain of uncertainty in him also in regard to +injured husbands, for he was never afterwards inclined to interest +himself in the much-married, and gave such wives a wide berth. + +But his great forte was of course his song-writing, and of this, before +I speak of anything else, I wish to have my say. It was a gift, quite a +compelling one, out of which, before he died, he had made thousands, all +spent in the manner described. Never having the least power to interpret +anything in a fine musical way, still he was always full of music of a +tender, sometimes sad, sometimes gay, kind--that of the ballad-maker of +a nation. He was constantly attempting to work them out of himself, not +quickly but slowly, brooding as it were over the piano wherever he might +find one and could have a little solitude, at times on the organ (his +favorite instrument), improvising various sad or wistful strains, some +of which he jotted down, others of which, having mastered, he strove to +fit words to. At such times he preferred to be alone or with some one +whose temperament in no way clashed but rather harmonized with his own. +Living with one of my sisters for a period of years, he had a room +specially fitted up for his composing work, a very small room for so +very large a man, within which he would shut himself and thrum a melody +by the hour, especially toward evening or at night. He seemed to have a +peculiar fondness for the twilight hour, and at this time might thrum +over one strain and another until over some particular one, a new song +usually, he would be in tears! + +And what pale little things they were really, mere bits and scraps of +sentiment and melodrama in story form, most asinine sighings over home +and mother and lost sweethearts and dead heroes such as never were in +real life, and yet with something about them, in the music at least, +which always appealed to me intensely and must have appealed to others, +since they attained so wide a circulation. They bespoke, as I always +felt, a wistful, seeking, uncertain temperament, tender and illusioned, +with no practical knowledge of any side of life, but full of a true +poetic feeling for the mystery and pathos of life and death, the wonder +of the waters, the stars, the flowers, accidents of life, success, +failure. Beginning with a song called "Wide Wings" (published by a small +retail music-house in Evansville, Indiana), and followed by such +national successes as "The Letter That Never Came," "I Believe It, For +My Mother Told Me So" (!), "The Convict and the Bird," "The Pardon Came +Too Late," "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," "The Blue and the Grey," +"On the Bowery," "On the Banks of the Wabash," and a number of others, +he was never content to rest and never really happy, I think, save when +composing. During this time, however, he was at different periods all +the things I have described--a black-face monologue artist, an end- and +at times a middle-man, a publisher, and so on. + +I recall being with him at the time he composed two of his most famous +successes: "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," and "On the Banks of the +Wabash," and noting his peculiar mood, almost amounting to a deep +depression which ended a little later in marked elation or satisfaction, +once he had succeeded in evoking something which really pleased him. + +The first of these songs must have followed an actual encounter with +some woman or girl whose life had seemingly if not actually gone to +wreck on the shore of love or passion. At any rate he came into the +office of his publishing house one gray November Sunday afternoon--it +was our custom to go there occasionally, a dozen or more congenial +souls, about as one might go to a club--and going into a small room +which was fitted up with a piano as a "try-out" room (professionals +desiring a song were frequently taught it in the office), he began +improvising, or rather repeating over and over, a certain strain which +was evidently in his mind. A little while later he came out and said, +"Listen to this, will you, Thee?" + +He played and sang the first verse and chorus. In the middle of the +latter, so moved was he by the sentiment of it, his voice broke and he +had to stop. Tears stood in his eyes and he wiped them away. A moment or +two later he was able to go through it without wavering and I thought it +charming for the type of thing it was intended to be. Later on (the +following spring) I was literally astonished to see how, after those +various efforts usually made by popular music publishers to make a song +"go"--advertising it in the _Clipper_ and _Mirror_, getting various +vaudeville singers to sing it, and so forth--it suddenly began to sell, +thousands upon thousands of copies being wrapped in great bundles under +my very eyes and shipped express or freight to various parts of the +country. Letters and telegrams, even, from all parts of the nation began +to pour in--"Forward express today ---- copies of Dresser's 'Tell Them +That You Saw Me.'" The firm was at once as busy as a bee-hive, on "easy +street" again, as the expression went, "in clover." Just before this +there had been a slight slump in its business and in my brother's +finances, but now once more he was his most engaging self. Every one in +that layer of life which understands or takes an interest in popular +songs and their creators knew of him and his song, his latest success. +He was, as it were, a revivified figure on Broadway. His barbers, +barkeepers, hotel clerks, theatrical box-office clerks, hotel managers +and the stars and singers of the street knew of it and him. Some +enterprising button firm got out a button on which the phrase was +printed. Comedians on the stage, newspaper paragraphers, his bank teller +or his tailor, even staid business men wishing to appear "up-to-date," +used it as a parting salute. The hand-organs, the bands and the theater +orchestras everywhere were using it. One could scarcely turn a corner or +go into a cheap music hall or variety house without hearing a parody of +it. It was wonderful, the enormous furore that it seemed to create, and +of course my dear brother was privileged to walk about smiling and +secure, his bank account large, his friends numerous, in the pink of +health, and gloating over the fact that he was a success, well known, a +genuine creator of popular songs. + +It was the same with "On the Banks of the Wabash," possibly an even +greater success, for it came eventually to be adopted by his native +State as its State song, and in that region streets and a town were +named after him. In an almost unintentional and unthinking way I had a +hand in that, and it has always cheered me to think that I had, although +I have never had the least talent for musical composition or song +versification. It was one of those delightful summer Sunday mornings +(1896, I believe), when I was still connected with his firm as editor of +the little monthly they were issuing, and he and myself, living with my +sister E----, that we had gone over to this office to do a little work. +I had a number of current magazines I wished to examine; he was always +wishing to compose something, to express that ebullient and emotional +soul of his in some way. + +"What do you suppose would make a good song these days?" he asked in an +idle, meditative mood, sitting at the piano and thrumming while I at a +nearby table was looking over my papers. "Why don't you give me an idea +for one once in a while, sport? You ought to be able to suggest +something." + +"Me?" I queried, almost contemptuously, I suppose. I could be very lofty +at times in regard to his work, much as I admired him--vain and yet more +or less dependent snip that I was. "I can't write those things. Why +don't you write something about a State or a river? Look at 'My Old +Kentucky Home,' 'Dixie,' 'Old Black Joe'--why don't you do something +like that, something that suggests a part of America? People like that. +Take Indiana--what's the matter with it--the Wabash River? It's as good +as any other river, and you were 'raised' beside it." + +I have to smile even now as I recall the apparent zest or feeling with +which all at once he seized on this. It seemed to appeal to him +immensely. "That's not a bad idea," he agreed, "but how would you go +about it? Why don't you write the words and let me put the music to +them? We'll do it together!" + +"But I can't," I replied. "I don't know how to do those things. You +write it. I'll help--maybe." + +After a little urging--I think the fineness of the morning had as much +to do with it as anything--I took a piece of paper and after meditating +a while scribbled in the most tentative manner imaginable the first +verse and chorus of that song almost as it was published. I think one or +two lines were too long or didn't rhyme, but eventually either he or I +hammered them into shape, but before that I rather shamefacedly turned +them over to him, for somehow I was convinced that this work was not for +me and that I was rather loftily and cynically attempting what my good +brother would do in all faith and feeling. + +He read it, insisted that it was fine and that I should do a second +verse, something with a story in it, a girl perhaps--a task which I +solemnly rejected. + +"No, you put it in. It's yours. I'm through." + +Some time later, disagreeing with the firm as to the conduct of the +magazine, I left--really was forced out--which raised a little feeling +on my part; not on his, I am sure, for I was very difficult to deal +with. + +Time passed and I heard nothing. I had been able to succeed in a +somewhat different realm, that of the magazine contributor, and although +I thought a great deal of my brother I paid very little attention to him +or his affairs, being much more concerned with my own. One spring night, +however, the following year, as I was lying in my bed trying to sleep, I +heard a quartette of boys in the distance approaching along the street +in which I had my room. I could not make out the words at first but the +melody at once attracted my attention. It was plaintive and compelling. +I listened, attracted, satisfied that it was some new popular success +that had "caught on." As they drew near my window I heard the words "On +the Banks of the Wabash" most mellifluously harmonized. + +I jumped up. They were my words! It was Paul's song! He had another +"hit" then--"On the Banks of the Wabash," and they were singing it in +the streets already! I leaned out of the window and listened as they +approached and passed on, their arms about each other's shoulders, the +whole song being sung in the still street, as it were, for my benefit. +The night was so warm, delicious. A full moon was overhead. I was young, +lonely, wistful. It brought back so much of my already spent youth that +I was ready to cry--for joy principally. In three more months it was +everywhere, in the papers, on the stage, on the street-organs, played by +orchestras, bands, whistled and sung in the streets. One day on Broadway +near the Marlborough I met my brother, gold-headed cane, silk shirt, a +smart summer suit, a gay straw hat. + +"Ah," I said, rather sarcastically, for I still felt peeved that he had +shown so little interest in my affairs at the time I was leaving. "On +the banks, I see." + +"On the banks," he replied cordially. "You turned the trick for me, +Thee, that time. What are you doing now? Why don't you ever come and see +me? I'm still your brother, you know. A part of that is really yours." + +"Cut that!" I replied most savagely. "I couldn't write a song like that +in a million years. You know I couldn't. The words are nothing." + +"Oh, all right. It's true, though, you know. Where do you keep yourself? +Why don't you come and see me? Why be down on me? I live here, you +know." He looked up at the then brisk and successful hotel. + +"Well, maybe I will some time," I said distantly, but with no particular +desire to mend matters, and we parted. + +There was, however, several years later, a sequel to all this and one so +characteristic of him that it has always remained in my mind as one of +the really beautiful things of life, and I might as well tell it here +and now. About five years later I had become so disappointed in +connection with my work and the unfriendly pressure of life that I had +suffered what subsequently appeared to have been a purely psychic +breakdown or relapse, not physical, but one which left me in no mood or +condition to go on with my work, or any work indeed in any form. Hope +had disappeared in a sad haze. I could apparently succeed in nothing, do +nothing mentally that was worth while. At the same time I had all but +retired from the world, living on less and less until finally I had +descended into those depths where I was in the grip of actual want, with +no place to which my pride would let me turn. I had always been too vain +and self-centered. Apparently there was but one door, and I was very +close to it. To match my purse I had retired to a still sorrier +neighborhood in B----, one of the poorest. I desired most of all to be +let alone, to be to myself. Still I could not be, for occasionally I +met people, and certain prospects and necessities drove me to various +publishing houses. One day as I was walking in some street near Broadway +(not on it) in New York, I ran into my brother quite by accident, he as +prosperous and comfortable as ever. I think I resented him more than +ever. He was of course astonished, shocked, as I could plainly see, by +my appearance and desire not to be seen. He demanded to know where I was +living, wanted me to come then and there and stay with him, wanted me to +tell him what the trouble was--all of which I rather stubbornly refused +to do and finally got away--not however without giving him my address, +though with the caution that I wanted nothing. + +The next morning he was there bright and early in a cab. He was the most +vehement, the most tender, the most disturbed creature I have ever seen. +He was like a distrait mother with a sick child more than anything else. + +"For God's sake," he commented when he saw me, "living in a place like +this--and at this number, too!" (130 it was, and he was superstitious as +to the thirteen.) "I knew there'd be a damned thirteen in it!" he +ejaculated. "And me over in New York! Jesus Christ! And you sick and run +down this way! I might have known. It's just like you. I haven't heard a +thing about you in I don't know when. Well, I'm not going back without +you, that's all. You've got to come with me now, see? Get your clothes, +that's all. The cabby'll take your trunk. I know just the place for you, +and you're going there tomorrow or next day or next week, but you're +coming with me now. My God, I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself, +and me feeling the way I do about you!" His eyes all but brimmed. + +I was so morose and despondent that, grateful as I felt, I could +scarcely take his mood at its value. I resented it, resented myself, my +state, life. + +"I can't," I said finally, or so I thought. "I won't. I don't need your +help. You don't owe me anything. You've done enough already." + +"Owe, hell!" he retorted. "Who's talking about 'owe'? And you my +brother--my own flesh and blood! Why, Thee, for that matter, I owe you +half of 'On the Banks,' and you know it. You can't go on living like +this. You're sick and discouraged. You can't fool me. Why, Thee, you're +a big man. You've just got to come out of this! Damn it--don't you +see--don't make me"--and he took out his handkerchief and wiped his +eyes. "You can't help yourself now, but you can later, don't you see? +Come on. Get your things. I'd never forgive myself if I didn't. You've +got to come, that's all. I won't go without you," and he began looking +about for my bag and trunk. + +I still protested weakly, but in vain. His affection was so overwhelming +and tender that it made me weak. I allowed him to help me get my things +together. Then he paid the bill, a small one, and on the way to the +hotel insisted on forcing a roll of bills on me, all that he had with +him. I was compelled at once, that same day or the next, to indulge in a +suit, hat, shoes, underwear, all that I needed. A bedroom adjoining his +suite at the hotel was taken, and for two days I lived there, later +accompanying him in his car to a famous sanitarium in Westchester, one +in charge of an old friend of his, a well-known ex-wrestler whose fame +for this sort of work was great. Here I was booked for six weeks, all +expenses paid, until I should "be on my feet again," as he expressed it. +Then he left, only to visit and revisit me until I returned to the city, +fairly well restored in nerves if not in health. + +But could one ever forget the mingled sadness and fervor of his original +appeal, the actual distress written in his face, the unlimited generosity +of his mood and deed as well as his unmerited self-denunciation? One +pictures such tenderness and concern as existing between parents and +children, but rarely between brothers. Here he was evincing the same +thing, as soft as love itself, and he a man of years and some affairs +and I an irritable, distrait and peevish soul. + +Take note, ye men of satire and spleen. All men are not selfish or hard. + +The final phase of course related to his untimely end. He was not quite +fifty-five when he died, and with a slightly more rugged quality of mind +he might have lasted to seventy. It was due really to the failure of his +firm (internal dissensions and rivalries, in no way due to him, however, +as I have been told) and what he foolishly deemed to be the end of his +financial and social glory. His was one of those simple, confiding, +non-hardy dispositions, warm and colorful but intensely sensitive, +easily and even fatally chilled by the icy blasts of human difficulty, +however slight. You have no doubt seen some animals, cats, dogs, birds, +of an especially affectionate nature, which when translated to a strange +or unfriendly climate soon droop and die. They have no spiritual +resources wherewith to contemplate what they do not understand or know. +Now his friends would leave him. Now that bright world of which he had +been a part would know him no more. It was pathetic, really. He emanated +a kind of fear. Depression and even despair seemed to hang about him +like a cloak. He could not shake it off. And yet, literally, in his case +there was nothing to fear, if he had only known. + +And yet two years before he did die, I knew he would. Fantastic as it +may seem, to be shut out from that bright world of which he deemed +himself an essential figure was all but unendurable. He had no ready +money now--not the same amount anyhow. He could not greet his old-time +friends so gayly, entertain so freely. Meeting him on Broadway shortly +after the failure and asking after his affairs, he talked of going into +business for himself as a publisher, but I realized that he could not. +He had neither the ability nor the talent for that, nor the heart. He +was not a business man but a song-writer and actor, had never been +anything but that. He tried in this new situation to write songs, but he +could not. They were too morbid. What he needed was some one to buoy him +up, a manager, a strong confidant of some kind, some one who would have +taken his affairs in hand and shown him what to do. As it was he had no +one. His friends, like winter-frightened birds, had already departed. +Personally, I was in no position to do anything at the time, being more +or less depressed myself and but slowly emerging from difficulties which +had held me for a number of years. + +About a year or so after he failed my sister E---- announced that Paul +had been there and that he was coming to live with her. He could not pay +so much then, being involved with all sorts of examinations of one kind +and another, but neither did he have to. Her memory was not short; she +gave him the fullness of her home. A few months later he was ostensibly +connected with another publishing house, but by then he was feeling so +poorly physically and was finding consolation probably in some drinking +and the caresses of those feminine friends who have, alas, only caresses +to offer. A little later I met a doctor who said, "Paul cannot live. He +has pernicious anæmia. He is breaking down inside and doesn't know it. +He can't last long. He's too depressed." I knew it was so and what the +remedy was--money and success once more, the petty pettings and flattery +of that little world of which he had been a part but which now was no +more for him. Of all those who had been so lavish in their greetings and +companionship earlier in his life, scarcely one, so far as I could make +out, found him in that retired world to which he was forced. One or two +pegged-out actors sought him and borrowed a little of the little that he +had; a few others came when he had nothing at all. His partners, +quarreling among themselves and feeling that they had done him an +injustice, remained religiously away. He found, as he often told my +sister, broken horse-shoes (a "bad sign"), met cross-eyed women, another +"bad sign," was pursued apparently by the inimical number thirteen--and +all these little straws depressed him horribly. Finally, being no longer +strong enough to be about, he took to his bed and remained there days at +a time, feeling well while in bed but weak when up. For a little while +he would go "downtown" to see this, that and the other person, but would +soon return. One day on coming back home he found one of his hats lying +on his bed, accidentally put there by one of the children, and according +to my sister, who was present at the time, he was all but petrified by +the sight of it. To him it was the death-sign. Some one had told him so +not long before!!! + +Then, not incuriously, seeing the affectional tie that had always held +us, he wanted to see me every day. He had a desire to talk to me about +his early life, the romance of it--maybe I could write a story some +time, tell something about him! (Best of brothers, here it is, a thin +little flower to lay at your feet!) To please him I made notes, although +I knew most of it. On these occasions he was always his old self, full +of ridiculous stories, quips and slight _mots_, all in his old and best +vein. He would soon be himself, he now insisted. + +Then one evening in late November, before I had time to call upon him +(I lived about a mile away), a hurry-call came from E----. He had +suddenly died at five in the afternoon; a blood-vessel had burst in the +head. When I arrived he was already cold in death, his soft hands folded +over his chest, his face turned to one side on the pillow, that +indescribable sweetness of expression about the eyes and mouth--the +empty shell of the beetle. There were tears, a band of reporters from +the papers, the next day obituary news articles, and after that a host +of friends and flowers, flowers, flowers. It is amazing what +satisfaction the average mind takes in standardized floral forms--broken +columns and gates ajar! + +Being ostensibly a Catholic, a Catholic sister-in-law and other +relatives insistently arranged for a solemn high requiem mass at the +church of one of his favorite rectors. All Broadway was there, more +flowers, his latest song read from the altar. Then there was a carriage +procession to a distant Catholic graveyard somewhere, his friend, the +rector of the church, officiating at the grave. It was so cold and +dreary there, horrible. Later on he was removed to Chicago. + +But still I think of him as not there or anywhere in the realm of space, +but on Broadway between Twenty-ninth and Forty-second Streets, the +spring and summer time at hand, the doors of the grills and bars of the +hotels open, the rout of actors and actresses ambling to and fro, his +own delicious presence dressed in his best, his "funny" stories, his +songs being ground out by the hand organs, his friends extending their +hands, clapping him on the shoulder, cackling over the latest idle yarn. + +Ah, Broadway! Broadway! And you, my good brother! Here is the story that +you wanted me to write, this little testimony to your memory, a pale, +pale symbol of all I think and feel. Where are the thousand yarns I have +laughed over, the music, the lights, the song? + +Peace, peace. So shall it soon be with all of us. It was a dream. It is. +I am. You are. And shall we grieve over or hark back to dreams? + + + + +_The County Doctor_ + + +How well I remember him--the tall, grave, slightly bent figure, the head +like Plato's or that of Diogenes, the mild, kindly, brown-gray eyes +peering, all too kindly, into the faces of dishonest men. In addition, +he wore long, full, brown-gray whiskers, a long gray overcoat (soiled +and patched toward the last) in winter, a soft black hat that hung +darkeningly over his eyes. But what a doctor! And how simple and often +non-drug-storey were so many of his remedies! + +"My son, your father is very sick. Now, I'll tell you what you can do +for me. You go out here along the Cheevertown road about a mile or two +and ask any farmer this side of the creek to let you have a good big +handful of peach sprigs--about so many, see? Say that Doctor Gridley +said he was to give them to you for him. Then, Mrs. ----, when he brings +them, you take a few, not more than seven or eight, and break them up +and steep them in hot water until you have an amber-colored tea. Give +Mr. ---- about three or four tea-spoonfuls of that every three or four +hours, and I hope we'll find he'll do better. This kidney case is +severe, I know, but he'll come around all right." + +And he did. My father had been very ill with gall stones, so weak at +last that we thought he was sure to die. The house was so somber at the +time. Over it hung an atmosphere of depression and fear, with pity for +the sufferer, and groans of distress on his part. And then there were +the solemn visits of the doctor, made pleasant by his wise, kindly humor +and his hopeful predictions and ending in this seemingly mild +prescription, which resulted, in this case, in a cure. He was seemingly +so remote at times, in reality so near, and wholly thoughtful. + +On this occasion I went out along the long, cold, country road of a +March evening. I was full of thoughts of his importance as a doctor. He +seemed so necessary to us, as he did to everybody. I knew nothing about +medicine, or how lives were saved, but I felt sure that he did and that +he would save my father in spite of his always conservative, +speculative, doubtful manner. What a wonderful man he must be to know +all these things--that peach sprouts, for instance, were an antidote to +the agony of gall stones! + +As I walked along, the simplicity of country life and its needs and +deprivations were impressed upon me, even though I was so young. So few +here could afford to pay for expensive prescriptions--ourselves +especially--and Dr. Gridley knew that and took it into consideration, so +rarely did he order anything from a drug-store. Most often, what he +prescribed he took out of a case, compounded, as it were, in our +presence. + +A brisk wind had fluttered snow in the morning, and now the ground was +white, with a sinking red sun shining across it, a sense of spring in +the air. Being unknown to these farmers, I wondered if any one of them +would really cut me a double handful of fresh young peach sprigs or +suckers from their young trees, as the doctor had said. Did they really +know him? Some one along the road--a home-driving farmer--told me of an +old Mr. Mills who had a five-acre orchard farther on. In a little while +I came to his door and was confronted by a thin, gaunt, bespectacled +woman, who called back to a man inside: + +"Henry, here's a little boy says Dr. Gridley said you were to cut him a +double handful of peach sprigs." + +Henry now came forward--a tall, bony farmer in high boots and an old +wool-lined leather coat, and a cap of wool. + +"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he?" he observed, eyeing me most critically. + +"Yes, sir." + +"What's the matter? What does he want with 'em? Do ya know?" + +"Yes, sir. My father's sick with kidney trouble, and Dr. Gridley said I +was to come out here." + +"Oh, all right. Wait'll I git my big knife," and back he went, returning +later with a large horn-handled knife, which he opened. He preceded me +out through the barn lot and into the orchard beyond. + +"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he, huh?" he asked as he went. "Well, I guess +we all have ter comply with whatever the doctor orders. We're all apt +ter git sick now an' ag'in," and talking trivialities of a like +character, he cut me an armful, saying: "I might as well give ya too +many as too few. Peach sprigs! Now, I never heered o' them bein' good +fer anythin', but I reckon the doctor knows what he's talkin' about. He +usually does--or that's what we think around here, anyhow." + +In the dusk I trudged home with my armful, my fingers cold. The next +morning, the tea having been brewed and taken, my father was better. In +a week or two he was up and around, as well as ever, and during this +time he commented on the efficacy of this tea, which was something new +to him, a strange remedy, and which caused the whole incident to be +impressed upon my mind. The doctor had told him that at any time in the +future if he was so troubled and could get fresh young peach sprigs for +a tea, he would find that it would help him. And the drug expense was +exactly nothing. + +In later years I came to know him better--this thoughtful, crusty, +kindly soul, always so ready to come at all hours when his cases +permitted, so anxious to see that his patients were not taxed beyond +their financial resources. + +I remember once, one of my sisters being very ill, so ill that we were +beginning to fear death, one and another of us had to take turn sitting +up with her at night to help and to give her her medicine regularly. +During one of the nights when I was sitting up, dozing, reading and +listening to the wind in the pines outside, she seemed persistently to +get worse. Her fever rose, and she complained of such aches and pains +that finally I had to go and call my mother. A consultation with her +finally resulted in my being sent for Dr. Gridley--no telephones in +those days--to tell him, although she hesitated so to do, how sister was +and ask him if he would not come. + +I was only fourteen. The street along which I had to go was quite dark, +the town lights being put out at two a.m., for reasons of thrift +perhaps. There was a high wind that cried in the trees. My shoes on the +board walks, here and there, sounded like the thuds of a giant. I recall +progressing in a shivery ghost-like sort of way, expecting at any step +to encounter goblins of the most approved form, until finally the +well-known outlines of the house of the doctor on the main +street--yellow, many-roomed, a wide porch in front--came, because of a +very small lamp in a very large glass case to one side of the door, into +view. + +Here I knocked, and then knocked more. No reply. I then made a still +more forceful effort. Finally, through one of the red glass panels which +graced either side of the door I saw the lengthy figure of the doctor, +arrayed in a long white nightshirt, and carrying a small glass +hand-lamp, come into view at the head of the stairs. His feet were in +gray flannel slippers, and his whiskers stuck out most grotesquely. + +"Wait! Wait!" I heard him call. "I'll be there! I'm coming! Don't make +such a fuss! It seems as though I never get a real good night's rest any +more." + +He came on, opened the door, and looked out. + +"Well," he demanded, a little fussily for him, "what's the matter now?" + +"Doctor," I began, and proceeded to explain all my sister's aches and +pains, winding up by saying that my mother said "wouldn't he please come +at once?" + +"Your mother!" he grumbled. "What can I do if I do come down? Not a +thing. Feel her pulse and tell her she's all right! That's every bit I +can do. Your mother knows that as well as I do. That disease has to run +its course." He looked at me as though I were to blame, then added, +"Calling me up this way at three in the morning!" + +"But she's in such pain, Doctor," I complained. + +"All right--everybody has to have a little pain! You can't be sick +without it." + +"I know," I replied disconsolately, believing sincerely that my sister +might die, "but she's in such awful pain, Doctor." + +"Well, go on," he replied, turning up the light. "I know it's all +foolishness, but I'll come. You go back and tell your mother that I'll +be there in a little bit, but it's all nonsense, nonsense. She isn't a +bit sicker than I am right this minute, not a bit--" and he closed the +door and went upstairs. + +To me this seemed just the least bit harsh for the doctor, although, as +I reasoned afterwards, he was probably half-asleep and tired--dragged +out of his bed, possibly, once or twice before in the same night. As I +returned home I felt even more fearful, for once, as I was passing a +woodshed which I could not see, a rooster suddenly flapped his wings and +crowed--a sound which caused me to leap all of nineteen feet Fahrenheit, +sidewise. Then, as I walked along a fence which later by day I saw had +a comfortable resting board on top, two lambent golden eyes surveyed me +out of inky darkness! Great Hamlet's father, how my heart sank! Once +more I leaped to the cloddy roadway and seizing a cobblestone or hunk of +mud hurled it with all my might, and quite involuntarily. Then I ran +until I fell into a crossing ditch. It was an amazing--almost a +tragic--experience, then. + +In due time the doctor came--and I never quite forgave him for not +making me wait and go back with him. He was too sleepy, though, I am +sure. The seizure was apparently nothing which could not have waited +until morning. However, he left some new cure, possibly clear water in a +bottle, and left again. But the night trials of doctors and their +patients, especially in the country, was fixed in my mind then. + +One of the next interesting impressions I gained of the doctor was that +of seeing him hobbling about our town on crutches, his medicine case +held in one hand along with a crutch, visiting his patients, when he +himself appeared to be so ill as to require medical attention. He was +suffering from some severe form of rheumatism at the time, but this, +apparently, was not sufficient to keep him from those who in his +judgment probably needed his services more than he did his rest. + +One of the truly interesting things about Dr. Gridley, as I early began +to note, was his profound indifference to what might be called his +material welfare. Why, I have often asked myself, should a man of so +much genuine ability choose to ignore the gauds and plaudits and +pleasures of the gayer, smarter world outside, in which he might readily +have shone, to thus devote himself and all his talents to a simple rural +community? That he was an extremely able physician there was not the +slightest doubt. Other physicians from other towns about, and even so +far away as Chicago, were repeatedly calling him into consultation. That +he knew life--much of it--as only a priest or a doctor of true wisdom +can know it, was evident from many incidents, of which I subsequently +learned, and yet here he was, hidden away in this simple rural world, +surrounded probably by his Rabelais, his Burton, his Frazer, and his +Montaigne, and dreaming what dreams--thinking what thoughts? + +"Say," an old patient, friend and neighbor of his once remarked to me +years later, when we had both moved to another city, "one of the +sweetest recollections of my life is to picture old Dr. Gridley, Ed +Boulder who used to run the hotel over at Sleichertown, Congressman +Barr, and Judge Morgan, sitting out in front of Boulder's hotel over +there of a summer's evening and haw-hawing over the funny stories which +Boulder was always telling while they were waiting for the Pierceton +bus. Dr. Gridley's laugh, so soft to begin with, but growing in force +and volume until it was a jolly shout. And the green fields all around. +And Mrs. Calder's drove of geese over the way honking, too, as geese +will whenever people begin to talk or laugh. It was delicious." + +One of the most significant traits of his character, as may be inferred, +was his absolute indifference to actual money, the very cash, one would +think, with which he needed to buy his own supplies. During his life, +his wife, who was a thrifty, hard-working woman, used frequently, as I +learned after, to comment on this, but to no result. He could not be +made to charge where he did not need to, nor collect where he knew that +the people were poor. + +"Once he became angry at my uncle," his daughter once told me, "because +he offered to collect for him for three per cent, dunning his patients +for their debts, and another time he dissolved a partnership with a +local physician who insisted that he ought to be more careful to charge +and collect." + +This generosity on his part frequently led to some very interesting +results. On one occasion, for instance, when he was sitting out on his +front lawn in Warsaw, smoking, his chair tilted back against a tree and +his legs crossed in the fashion known as "jack-knife," a poorly dressed +farmer without a coat came up and after saluting the doctor began to +explain that his wife was sick and that he had come to get the doctor's +advice. He seemed quite disturbed, and every now and then wiped his +brow, while the doctor listened with an occasional question or gently +accented "uh-huh, uh-huh," until the story was all told and the advice +ready to be received. When this was given in a low, reassuring tone, he +took from his pocket his little book of blanks and wrote out a +prescription, which he gave to the man and began talking again. The +latter took out a silver dollar and handed it to the doctor, who turned +it idly between his fingers for a few seconds, then searched in his +pocket for a mate to it, and playing with them a while as he talked, +finally handed back the dollar to the farmer. + +"You take that," he said pleasantly, "and go down to the drug-store and +have the prescription filled. I think your wife will be all right." + +When he had gone the doctor sat there a long time, meditatively puffing +the smoke from his cob pipe, and turning his own dollar in his hand. +After a time he looked up at his daughter, who was present, and said: + +"I was just thinking what a short time it took me to write that +prescription, and what a long time it took him to earn that dollar. I +guess he needs the dollar more than I do." + +In the same spirit of this generosity he was once sitting in his yard of +a summer day, sunning himself and smoking, a favorite pleasure of his, +when two men rode up to his gate from opposite directions and +simultaneously hailed him. He arose and went out to meet them. His wife, +who was sewing just inside the hall as she usually was when her husband +was outside, leaned forward in her chair to see through the door, and +took note of who they were. Both were men in whose families the doctor +had practiced for years. One was a prosperous farmer who always paid his +"doctor's bills," and the other was a miller, a "ne'er-do-well," with a +delicate wife and a family of sickly children, who never asked for a +statement and never had one sent him, and who only occasionally and at +great intervals handed the doctor a dollar in payment for his many +services. Both men talked to him a little while and then rode away, +after which he returned to the house, calling to Enoch, his old negro +servant, to bring his horse, and then went into his study to prepare his +medicine case. Mrs. Gridley, who was naturally interested in his +financial welfare, and who at times had to plead with him not to let his +generosity stand wholly in the way of his judgment, inquired of him as +he came out: + +"Now, Doctor, which of those two men are you going with?" + +"Why, Miss Susan," he replied--a favorite manner of addressing his wife, +of whom he was very fond--the note of apology in his voice showing that +he knew very well what she was thinking about, "I'm going with W----." + +"I don't think that is right," she replied with mild emphasis. "Mr. +N---- is as good a friend of yours as W----, and he always pays you." + +"Now, Miss Susan," he returned coaxingly, "N---- can go to Pierceton and +get Doctor Bodine, and W---- can't get any one but me. You surely +wouldn't have him left without any one?" + +What the effect of such an attitude was may be judged when it is related +that there was scarcely a man, woman or child in the entire county who +had not at some time or other been directly or indirectly benefited by +the kindly wisdom of this Samaritan. He was nearly everybody's doctor, +in the last extremity, either as consultant or otherwise. Everywhere he +went, by every lane and hollow that he fared, he was constantly being +called into service by some one--the well-to-do as well as by those who +had nothing; and in both cases he was equally keen to give the same +degree of painstaking skill, finding something in the very poor--a +humanness possibly--which detained and fascinated him and made him a +little more prone to linger at their bedsides than anywhere else. + +"He was always doing it," said his daughter, "and my mother used to +worry over it. She declared that of all things earthly, papa loved an +unfortunate person; the greater the misfortune, the greater his care." + +In illustration of his easy and practically controlling attitude toward +the very well-to-do, who were his patients also, let me narrate this: + +In our town was an old and very distinguished colonel, comparatively +rich and very crotchety, who had won considerable honors for himself +during the Civil War. He was a figure, and very much looked up to by +all. People were, in the main, overawed by and highly respectful of him. +A remote, stern soul, yet to Dr. Gridley he was little more than a child +or schoolboy--one to be bossed on occasion and made to behave. Plainly, +the doctor had the conviction that all of us, great and small, were very +much in need of sympathy and care, and that he, the doctor, was the one +to provide it. At any rate, he had known the colonel long and well, and +in a public place--at the principal street corner, for instance, or in +the postoffice where we school children were wont to congregate--it was +not at all surprising to hear him take the old colonel, who was quite +frail now, to task for not taking better care of himself--coming out, +for instance, without his rubbers, or his overcoat, in wet or chilly +weather, and in other ways misbehaving himself. + +"There you go again!" I once heard him call to the colonel, as the +latter was leaving the postoffice and he was entering (there was no +rural free delivery in those days) "--walking around without your +rubbers, and no overcoat! You want to get me up in the night again, do +you?" + +"It didn't seem so damp when I started out, Doctor." + +"And of course it was too much trouble to go back! You wouldn't feel +that way if you couldn't come out at all, perhaps!" + +"I'll put 'em on! I'll put 'em on! Only, please don't fuss, Doctor. I'll +go back to the house and put 'em on." + +The doctor merely stared after him quizzically, like an old +schoolmaster, as the rather stately colonel marched off to his home. + +Another of his patients was an old Mr. Pegram, a large, kind, +big-hearted man, who was very fond of the doctor, but who had an +exceedingly irascible temper. He was the victim of some obscure malady +which medicine apparently failed at times to relieve. This seemed to +increase his irritability a great deal, so much so that the doctor had +at last discovered that if he could get Mr. Pegram angry enough the +malady would occasionally disappear. This seemed at times as good a +remedy as any, and in consequence he was occasionally inclined to try +it. + +Among other things, this old gentleman was the possessor of a handsome +buffalo robe, which, according to a story that long went the rounds +locally, he once promised to leave to the doctor when he died. At the +same time all reference to death both pained and irritated him +greatly--a fact which the doctor knew. Finding the old gentleman in a +most complaining and hopeless mood one night, not to be dealt with, +indeed, in any reasoning way, the doctor returned to his home, and early +the next day, without any other word, sent old Enoch, his negro +servant, around to get, as he said, the buffalo robe--a request which +would indicate, of course that the doctor had concluded that old Mr. +Pegram had died, or was about to--a hopeless case. When ushered into the +latter's presence, Enoch began innocently enough: + +"De doctah say dat now dat Mr. Peg'am hab subspired, he was to hab dat +ba--ba--buffalo robe." + +"What!" shouted the old irascible, rising and clambering out of his bed. +"What's that? Buffalo robe! By God! You go back and tell old Doc Gridley +that I ain't dead yet by a damned sight! No, sir!" and forthwith he +dressed himself and was out and around the same day. + +Persons who met the doctor, as I heard years later from his daughter and +from others who had known him, were frequently asking him, just in a +social way, what to do for certain ailments, and he would as often reply +in a humorous and half-vagrom manner that if he were in their place he +would do or take so-and-so, not meaning really that they should do so +but merely to get rid of them, and indicating of course any one of a +hundred harmless things--never one that could really have proved +injurious to any one. Once, according to his daughter, as he was driving +into town from somewhere, he met a man on a lumber wagon whom he +scarcely knew but who knew him well enough, who stopped and showed him a +sore on the upper tip of his ear, asking him what he would do for it. + +"Oh," said the doctor, idly and jestingly, "I think I'd cut it off." + +"Yes," said the man, very much pleased with this free advice, "with +what, Doctor?" + +"Oh, I think I'd use a pair of scissors," he replied amusedly, scarcely +assuming that his jesting would be taken seriously. + +The driver jogged on and the doctor did not see or hear of him again +until some two months later when, meeting him in the street, the driver +smilingly approached him and enthusiastically exclaimed: + +"Well, Doc, you see I cut 'er off, and she got well!" + +"Yes," replied the doctor solemnly, not remembering anything about the +case but willing to appear interested, "--what was it you cut off?" + +"Why, that sore on my ear up here, you know. You told me to cut it off, +and I did." + +"Yes," said the doctor, becoming curious and a little amazed, "with +what?" + +"Why, with a pair of scissors, Doc, just like you said." + +The doctor stared at him, the whole thing coming gradually back to him. + +"But didn't you have some trouble in cutting it off?" he inquired, in +disturbed astonishment. + +"No, no," said the driver, "I made 'em sharp, all right. I spent two +days whettin' 'em up, and Bob Hart cut 'er off fer me. They cut, all +right, but I tell you she hurt when she went through the gristle." + +He smiled in pleased remembrance of his surgical operation, and the +doctor smiled also, but, according to his daughter, he decided to give +no more idle advice of that kind. + +In the school which I attended for a period were two of his sons, Fred +and Walter. Both were very fond of birds, and kept a number of one kind +or another about their home--not in cages, as some might, but inveigled +and trained as pets, and living in the various open bird-houses fixed +about the yard on poles. The doctor himself was intensely fond of these +and all other birds, and, according to his daughter and his sons, always +anticipated the spring return of many of diem--black-birds, blue jays, +wrens and robins--with a hopeful, "Well, now, they'll soon be here +again." During the summer, according to her, he was always an interested +spectator of their gyrations in the air, and when evening would come was +never so happy as when standing and staring at them gathering from all +directions to their roosts in the trees or the birdhouses. Similarly, +when the fall approached and they would begin their long flight +Southward, he would sometimes stand and scan the sky and trees in vain +for a final glimpse of his feathered friends, and when in the gathering +darkness they were no longer to be seen would turn away toward the +house, saying sadly to his daughter: + +"Well, Dollie, the blackbirds are all gone. I am sorry. I like to see +them, and I am always sorry to lose them, and sorry to know that winter +is coming." + +"Usually about the 25th or 26th of December," his daughter once +quaintly added to me, "he would note that the days were beginning to get +longer, and cheer up, as spring was certain to follow soon and bring +them all back again." + +One of the most interesting of his bird friendships was that which +existed between him and a pair of crows he and his sons had raised, +"Jim" and "Zip" by name. These crows came to know him well, and were +finally so humanly attached to him that, according to his family, they +would often fly two or three miles out of town to meet him and would +then accompany him, lighting on fences and trees by the way, and cawing +to him as he drove along! Both of them were great thieves, and would +steal anything from a bit of thread up to a sewing machine, if they +could have carried it. They were always walking about the house, +cheerfully looking for what they might devour, and on one occasion +carried off a set of spoons, which they hid about the eaves of the +house. On another occasion they stole a half dozen tin-handled pocket +knives, which the doctor had bought for the children and which the crows +seemed to like for the brightness of the metal. They were recovered once +by the children, stolen again by the crows, recovered once more, and so +on, until at last it was a question as to which were the rightful +owners. + +The doctor was sitting in front of a store one day in the business-heart +of town, where also he liked to linger in fair weather, when suddenly he +saw one of his crows flying high overhead and bearing something in its +beak, which it dropped into the road scarcely a hundred feet away. +Interested to see what it was the bird had been carrying, he went to the +spot where he saw it fall and found one of the tin-handled knives, which +the crow had been carrying to a safe hiding-place. He picked it up and +when he returned home that night asked one of his boys if he could lend +him a knife. + +"No," said his son. "Our knives are all lost. The crows took them." + +"I knew that," said the doctor sweetly, "and so, when I met Zip uptown +just now, I asked her to lend me one, and she did. Here it is." + +He pulled out the knife and handed it to the boy and, when the latter +expressed doubt and wonder, insisted that the crow had loaned it to him; +a joke which ended in his always asking one of the children to run and +ask Zip if she would lend him a knife, whenever he chanced to need one. + +Although a sad man at times, as I understood, the doctor was not a +pessimist, and in many ways, both by practical jokes and the humoring of +odd characters, sought relief from the intense emotional strain which +the large practice of his profession put upon him. One of his greatest +reliefs was the carrying out of these little practical jokes, and he had +been known to go to much trouble at times to work up a good laugh. + +One of the, to him, richest jokes, and one which he always enjoyed +telling, related to a country singing school which was located in the +neighborhood of Pierceton, in which reading (the alphabet, at least), +spelling, geography, arithmetic, rules of grammar, and so forth, were +still taught by a process of singing. The method adopted in this form of +education was to have the scholar memorize all knowledge by singing it. +Thus in the case of geography the students would sing the name of the +country, then its mountains, then the highest peaks, cities, rivers, +principal points of interest, and so on, until all information about +that particular country had been duly memorized in song or rhyme. +Occasionally they would have a school-day on which the local dignitaries +would be invited, and on a number of these occasions the doctor was, for +amusement's sake merely, a grave and reverent listener. On one occasion, +however, he was merely passing the school, when hearing "Africa-a, +Africa-a, mountains of the moo-oo-oon" drawled out of the windows, he +decided to stop in and listen a while. Having tethered his horse outside +he knocked at the door and was received by the little English singing +teacher who, after showing him to a seat, immediately called upon the +class for an exhibition of their finest wisdom. When they had finished +this the teacher turned to him and inquired if there was anything he +would especially like them to sing. + +"No," said the doctor gravely, and no doubt with an amused twinkle in +his eye, "I had thought of asking you to sing the Rocky Mountains, but +as the mountains are so high, and the amount of time I have so limited, +I have decided that perhaps it will be asking too much." + +"Oh, not at all, not at all" airily replied the teacher, and turning to +his class, he exclaimed with a very superior smile: "Now, ladies and +gentlemen, 'ere is a scientific gentleman who thinks it is 'arder to +sing of _'igh_ mountings than it is to sing of _low_ mountings," and +forthwith the class began to demonstrate that in respect to vocalization +there was no difference at all. + +Only those, however, who knew Dr. Gridley in the sickroom, and knew him +well, ever discovered the really finest trait of his character: a keen, +unshielded sensibility to and sympathy for all human suffering, that +could not bear to inflict the slightest additional pain. He was really, +in the main, a man of soft tones and unctuous laughter, of gentle touch +and gentle step, and a devotion to duty that carried him far beyond his +interests or his personal well-being. One of his chiefest oppositions, +according to his daughter, was to telling the friends or relatives of +any stricken person that there was no hope. Instead, he would use every +delicate shade of phrasing and tone in imparting the fateful words, in +order if possible to give less pain. "I remember in the case of my +father," said one of his friends, "when the last day came. Knowing the +end was near, he was compelled to make some preliminary discouraging +remark, and I bent over with my ear against my father's chest and said, +'Doctor Gridley, the disease is under control, I think. I can hear the +respiration to the bottom of the lungs.' + +"'Yes, yes,' he answered me sadly, but now with an implication which +could by no means be misunderstood, 'it is nearly always so. The failure +is in the recuperative energy. Vitality runs too low.' It meant from the +first, 'Your father will not live.'" + +In the case of a little child with meningitis, the same person was sent +to him to ask what of the child--better or worse. His answer was: "He is +passing as free from pain as ever I knew a case of this kind." + +In yet another case of a dying woman, one of her relatives inquired: +"Doctor, is this case dangerous?" "Not in the nature of the malady, +madam," was his sad and sympathetic reply, "but fatal in the condition +it meets. Hope is broken. There is nothing to resist the damage." + +One of his patients was a farmer who lived in an old-time log house a +few miles out from Silver Lake, who while working about his barn met +with a very serious accident which involved a possible injury to the +gall bladder. The main accident was not in itself fatal, but the +possible injury to the gall bladder was, and this, if it existed, would +show as a yellow tint in the eyeball on the tenth day. Fearing the +danger of this, he communicated the possibility to the relatives, saying +that he could do little after that time but that he would come just the +same and make the patient as comfortable as possible. For nine days he +came, sitting by the bedside and whiling away many a weary hour for the +sufferer, until the tenth morning. On this day, according to his +daughter, who had it from the sick man's relatives, his face but ill +concealed the anxiety he felt. Coming up to the door, he entered just +far enough to pretend to reach for a water bucket. With this in his hand +he turned and gave one long keen look in the eye of the sick man, then +walked down the yard to a chair under a tree some distance from the +house, where he sat, drooping and apparently grieved, the certainty of +the death of the patient affecting him as much as if he were his own +child. + +"There was no need for words," said one of them. "Every curve and droop +of his figure, as he walked slowly and with bent head, told all of us +who saw him that hope was gone and that death had won the victory." + +One of his perpetual charges, as I learned later, was a poor old +unfortunate by the name of Id Logan, who had a little cabin and an acre +of ground a half dozen miles west of Warsaw, and who existed from year +to year heaven only knows how. + +Id never had any money, friends or relatives, and was always troubled +with illness or hunger in some form or other, and yet the doctor always +spoke of him sympathetically as "Poor old Id Logan" and would often call +out there on his rounds to see how he was getting along. One snowy +winter's evening as he was traveling homeward after a long day's ride, +he chanced to recollect the fact that he was in the neighborhood of his +worthless old charge, and fancying that he might be in need of something +turned his horse into the lane which led up to the door. When he reached +the house he noticed that no smoke was coming from the chimney and that +the windows were slightly rimmed with frost, as if there were no heat +within. Rapping at the door and receiving no response, he opened it and +went in. There he found his old charge, sick and wandering in his mind, +lying upon a broken-down bed and moaning in pain. There was no fire in +the fireplace. The coverings with which the bed was fitted were but two +or three old worn and faded quilts, and the snow was sifting in badly +through the cracks where the chinking had fallen out between the logs, +and under the doors and windows. + +Going up to the sufferer and finding that some one of his old, and to +the doctor well-known, maladies had at last secured a fatal grip upon +him, he first administered a tonic which he knew would give him as much +strength as possible, and then went out into the yard, where, after +putting up his horse, he gathered chips and wood from under the snow and +built a roaring fire. Having done this, he put on the kettle, trimmed +the lamp, and after preparing such stimulants as the patient could +stand, took his place at the bedside, where he remained the whole night +long, keeping the fire going and the patient as comfortable as possible. +Toward morning the sufferer died and when the sun was well up he finally +returned to his family, who anxiously solicited him as to his +whereabouts. + +"I was with Id Logan," he said. + +"What's ailing him now?" his daughter inquired. + +"Nothing now," he returned. "It was only last night," and for years +afterward he commented on the death of "poor old Id," saying always at +the conclusion of his remarks that it must be a dreadful thing to be +sick and die without friends. + +His love for his old friends and familiar objects was striking, and he +could no more bear to see an old friend move away than he could to lose +one of his patients. One of his oldest friends was a fine old Christian +lady by the name of Weeks, who lived down in Louter Creek bottoms and in +whose household he had practiced for nearly fifty years. During the +latter part of his life, however, this family began to break up, and +finally when there was no one left but the mother she decided to move +over into Whitley County, where she could stay with her daughter. Just +before going, however, she expressed a wish to see Doctor Gridley, and +he called in upon her. A little dinner had been prepared in honor of +his coming. After it was over and the old times were fully discussed he +was about to take his leave when Mrs. Weeks disappeared from the room +and then returned, bearing upon her arm a beautiful yarn spread which +she held out before her and, in her nervous, feeble way getting the +attention of the little audience, said: + +"Doctor, I am going up to Whitley now to live with my daughter, and I +don't suppose I will get to see you very often any more. Like myself, +you are getting old, and it will be too far for you to come. But I want +to give you this spread that I have woven with my own hands since I have +been sixty years of age. It isn't very much, but it is meant for a token +of the love and esteem I bear you, and in remembrance of all that you +have done for me and mine." + +Her eyes were wet and her voice quivering as she brought it forward. The +doctor, who had been wholly taken by surprise by this kindly +manifestation of regard, had arisen during her impromptu address and now +stood before her, dignified and emotionally grave, his own eyes wet with +tears of appreciation. + +Balancing the homely gift upon his extended hands, he waited until the +force of his own sentiment had slightly subsided, when he replied: + +"Madam, I appreciate this gift with which you have chosen to remember me +as much as I honor the sentiment which has produced it. There are, I +know, threads of feeling woven into it stronger than any cords of wool, +and more enduring than all the fabrics of this world. I have been your +physician now for fifty years, and have been a witness of your joys and +sorrows. But, as much as I esteem you, and as highly as I prize this +token of your regard, I can accept it but upon one condition, and that +is, Mrs. Weeks, that you promise me that no matter how dark the night, +how stormy the sky, or how deep the waters that intervene, you will not +fail to send for me in your hour of need. It is both my privilege and my +pleasure, and I should not rest content unless I knew it were so." + +When the old lady had promised, he took his spread and going out to his +horse, rode away to his own home, where he related this incident, and +ended with, "Now I want this put on my bed." + +His daughter, who lovingly humored his every whim, immediately complied +with his wish, and from that day to the hour of his death the spread was +never out of his service. + +One of the most pleasing incidents to me was one which related to his +last illness and death. Always, during his later years, when he felt the +least bit ill, he refused to prescribe for himself, saying that a +doctor, if he knew anything at all, was never such a fool as to take any +of his own medicine. Instead, and in sequence to this humorous attitude, +he would always send for one of the younger men of the vicinity who were +beginning to practice here, one, for instance, who having other merits +needed some assurance and a bit of superior recognition occasionally to +help him along. On this occasion he called in a very sober young doctor, +one who was greatly admired but had very little practice as yet, and +saying, "Doctor, I'm sick today," lay back on his bed and waited for +further developments. + +The latter, owing to Dr. Gridley's great repute and knowledge, was very +much flustered, so much so that he scarcely knew what to do. + +"Well, Doctor," he finally said, after looking at his tongue, taking his +pulse and feeling his forehead, "you're really a better judge of your +own condition than I am, I'm sure. What do you think I ought to give +you?" + +"Now, Doctor," replied Gridley sweetly, "I'm your patient, and you're my +doctor. I wouldn't prescribe for myself for anything in the world, and +I'm going to take whatever you give me. That's why I called you in. Now, +you just give me what you think my condition requires, and I'll take +it." + +The young doctor, meditating on all that was new or faddistic, decided +at last that just for variation's sake he would give the doctor +something of which he had only recently heard, a sample of which he had +with him and which had been acclaimed in the medical papers as very +effective. Without asking the doctor whether he had ever heard of it, or +what he thought, he merely prescribed it. + +"Well, now, I like that," commented Gridley solemnly. "I never heard of +that before in my life, but it sounds plausible. I'll take it, and we'll +see. What's more, I like a young doctor like yourself who thinks up ways +of his own--" and, according to his daughter, he did take it, and was +helped, saying always that what young doctors needed to do was to keep +abreast of the latest medical developments, that medicine was changing, +and perhaps it was just as well that old doctors died! He was so old and +feeble, however, that he did not long survive, and when the time came +was really glad to go. + +One of the sweetest and most interesting of all his mental phases was, +as I have reason to know, his attitude toward the problem of suffering +and death, an attitude so full of the human qualities of wonder, +sympathy, tenderness, and trust, that he could scarcely view them +without exhibiting the emotion he felt. He was a constant student of the +phenomena of dissolution, and in one instance calmly declared it as his +belief that when a man was dead he was dead and that was the end of him, +consciously. At other times he modified his view to one of an almost +prayerful hope, and in reading Emily Brontë's somewhat morbid story of +"Wuthering Heights," his copy of which I long had in my possession, I +noted that he had annotated numerous passages relative to death and a +future life with interesting comments of his own. To one of these +passages, which reads: + + "I don't know if it be a peculiarity with me, but I am seldom + otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, + provided no frenzied or despairing mourner shares the duty with + me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I + feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the + eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its + duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness," + +he had added on the margin: + + "How often I have felt this very emotion. How natural I know it to + be. And what a consolation in the thought!" + +Writing a final prescription for a young clergyman who was dying, and +for whom he had been most tenderly solicitous, he added to the list of +drugs he had written in Latin, the lines: + + "In life's closing hour, when the trembling soul flies + And death stills the heart's last emotion, + Oh, then may the angel of mercy arise + Like a star on eternity's ocean!" + +When he himself was upon his death-bed he greeted his old friend Colonel +Dyer--he of the absent overcoat and over-shoes--with: + +"Dyer, I'm almost gone. I am in the shadow of death. I am standing upon +the very brink. I cannot see clearly, I cannot speak coherently, the +film of death obstructs my sight. I know what this means. It is the end, +but all is well with me. I have no fear. I have said and done things +that would have been better left unsaid and undone, but I have never +willfully wronged a man in my life. I have no concern for myself. I am +concerned only for those I leave behind. I never saved money, and I die +as poor as when I was born. We do not know what there is in the future +now shut out from our view by a very thin veil. It seems to me there is +a hand somewhere that will lead us safely across, but I cannot tell. No +one can tell." + +This interesting speech, made scarcely a day before he closed his eyes +in death, was typical of his whole generous, trustful, philosophical +point of view. + +"If there be green fields and placid waters beyond the river that he so +calmly crossed," so ran an editorial in the local county paper edited by +one of his most ardent admirers, "reserved for those who believe in and +practice upon the principle of 'Do unto others as you would have them do +unto you,' then this Samaritan of the medical profession is safe from +all harm. If there be no consciousness, but only a mingling of that +which was gentleness and tenderness here with the earth and the waters, +then the greenness of the one and the sparkling limpidity of the other +are richer for that he lived, and wrought, and returned unto them so +trustingly again." + + + + +_Culhane, the Solid Man_ + + +I met him in connection with a psychic depression which only partially +reflected itself in my physical condition. I might almost say that I was +sick spiritually. At the same time I was rather strongly imbued with a +contempt for him and his cure. I had heard of him for years. To begin +with, he was a wrestler of repute, or rather ex-wrestler, retired +undefeated champion of the world. As a boy I had known that he had +toured America with Modjeska as Charles, the wrestler, in "As You Like +It." Before or after that he had trained John L. Sullivan, the world's +champion prize fighter of his day, for one of his most successful +fights, and that at a time when Sullivan was unfitted to fight any one. +Before that, in succession, from youth up, he had been a peasant +farmer's son in Ireland, a scullion in a ship's kitchen earning his way +to America, a "beef slinger" for a packing company, a cooks' assistant +and waiter in a Bowery restaurant, a bouncer in a saloon, a rubber down +at prize fights, a policeman, a private in the army during the Civil +War, a ticket-taker, exhibition wrestler, "short-change man" with a +minstrel company, later a circus, until having attained his greatest +fame as champion wrestler of the world, and as trainer of John L. +Sullivan, he finally opened a sporting sanitarium in some county in +upper New York State which later evolved into the great and now +decidedly fashionable institution in Westchester, near New York. + +It has always been interesting to me to see in what awe men of this type +or profession are held by many in the more intellectual walks of life as +well as by those whose respectful worship is less surprising,--those who +revere strength, agility, physical courage, so-called, brute or +otherwise. There is a kind of retiring worshipfulness, especially in men +and children of the lower walks, for this type, which must be flattering +in the extreme. + +However, in so far as Culhane was concerned at this time, the case was +different. Whatever he had been in his youth he was not that now, or at +least his earlier rawness had long since been glazed over by other +experiences. Self-education, an acquired politeness among strangers and +a knowledge of the manners and customs of the better-to-do, permitted +him to associate with them and to accept if not copy their manners and +to a certain extent their customs in his relations with them. Literally, +he owned hundreds of the best acres of the land about him, in one of the +most fashionable residence sections of the East. He had already given +away to some Sisters of Mercy a great estate in northern New York. His +stables contained every type of fashionable vehicle and stalled and fed +sixty or seventy of the worst horses, purposely so chosen, for the use +of his "guests." Men of all professions visited his place, paid him +gladly the six hundred dollars in advance which he asked for the course +of six weeks' training, and brought, or attempted to, their own cars and +retinues, which they lodged in the vicinity but could not use. I myself +was introduced or rather foisted upon him by my dear brother, whose +friend if not crony--if such a thing could have been said to exist in +his life--he was. I was taken to him in a very somber and depressed mood +and left; he rarely if ever received guests in person or at once. On the +way, and before I had been introduced, I was instructed by my good +brother as to his moods, methods, airs and tricks, supposed or rumored +to be so beneficial in so many cases. They were very rough--purposely +so. + +The day I arrived, and before I saw him, I was very much impressed with +the simplicity yet distinction of the inn or sanitarium or "repair +shop," as subsequently I learned he was accustomed to refer to it, +perched upon a rise of ground and commanding a quite wonderful panorama. +It was spring and quite warm and bright. The cropped enclosure which +surrounded it, a great square of green fenced with high, well-trimmed +privet, was good to look upon, level and smooth. The house, standing in +the center of this, was large and oblong and gray, with very simple +French windows reaching to the floor and great wide balustraded +balconies reaching out from the second floor, shaded with awnings and +set with rockers. The land on which this inn stood sloped very gradually +to the Sound, miles away to the southeast, and the spires of churches +and the gables of villages rising in between, as well as various +toy-like sails upon the water, were no small portion of its charm. To +the west for a score of miles the green-covered earth rose and fell in +undulating beauty, and here again the roofs and spires of nearby +villages might in fair weather be seen nestling peacefully among the +trees. Due south there was a suggestion of water and some peculiar +configuration, which by day seemed to have no significance other than +that which attached to the vague outlines of a distant landscape. By +night, however, the soft glow emanating from myriads of lights +identified it as the body and length of the merry, night-reveling New +York. Northward the green waves repeated themselves unendingly until +they passed into a dim green-blue haze. + +Interiorly, as I learned later, this place was most cleverly and +sensibly arranged for the purpose for which it was intended. It was airy +and well-appointed, with, on the ground floor, a great gymnasium +containing, outside of an alcove at one end where hung four or five +punching bags, only medicine balls. At the other end was an office or +receiving-room, baggage or store-room, and locker and dining-room. To +the east at the center extended a wing containing a number of +shower-baths, a lounging room and sun parlor. On the second floor, on +either side of a wide airy hall which ran from an immense library, +billiard and smoking-room at one end to Culhane's private suite at the +other, were two rows of bedrooms, perhaps a hundred all told, which gave +in turn, each one, upon either side, on to the balconies previously +mentioned. These rooms were arranged somewhat like the rooms of a +passenger steamer, with its center aisle and its outer decks and doors +opening upon it. In another wing on the ground floor were kitchens, +servants' quarters, and what not else! Across the immense lawn or campus +to the east, four-square to the sanitarium, stood a rather grandiose +stable, almost as impressive as the main building. About the place, and +always more or less in evidence, were servants, ostlers, waiting-maids +and always a decidedly large company of men of practically all +professions, ages, and one might almost say nationalities. That is as +nationalities are represented in America, by first and second +generations. + +The day I arrived I did not see my prospective host or manager or +trainer for an hour or two after I came, being allowed to wait about +until the very peculiar temperament which he possessed would permit him +to come and see me. When he did show up, a more savage and yet +gentlemanly-looking animal in clothes _de rigueur_ I have never seen. He +was really very princely in build and manner, shapely and grand, like +those portraits that have come down to us of Richelieu and the Duc de +Guise--fawn-colored riding trousers, bright red waistcoat, +black-and-white check riding coat, brown leather riding boots and +leggings with the essential spurs, and a riding quirt. And yet really, +at that moment he reminded me not so much of a man, in his supremely +well-tailored riding costume, as of a tiger or a very ferocious and yet +at times purring cat, beautifully dressed, as in our children's +storybooks, a kind of tiger in collar and boots. He was so lithe, +silent, cat-like in his tread. In his hard, clear, gray animal eyes was +that swift, incisive, restless, searching glance which sometimes +troubles us in the presence of animals. It was hard to believe that he +was all of sixty, as I had been told. He looked the very well-preserved +man of fifty or less. The short trimmed mustache and goatee which he +wore were gray and added to his grand air. His hair, cut a close +pompadour, the ends of his heavy eyebrow hairs turned upward, gave him a +still more distinguished air. He looked very virile, very intelligent, +very indifferent, intolerant and even threatening. + +"Well," he exclaimed on sight, "you wish to see me?" + +I gave him my name. + +"Yes, that's so. Your brother spoke to me about you. Well, take a seat. +You will be looked after." + +He walked off, and after an hour or so I was still waiting, for what I +scarcely knew--a room, something to eat possibly, some one to speak a +friendly word to me, but no one did. + +While I was waiting in this rather nondescript antechamber, hung with +hats, caps, riding whips and gauntlets, I had an opportunity to study +some of the men with whom presumably I was to live for a number of +weeks. It was between two and three in the afternoon, and many of them +were idling about in pairs or threes, talking, reading, all in rather +commonplace athletic costumes--soft woolen shirts, knee trousers, +stockings and running or walking shoes. They were in the main evidently +of the so-called learned professions or the arts--doctors, lawyers, +preachers, actors, writers, with a goodly sprinkling of merchants, +manufacturers and young and middle-aged society men, as well as +politicians and monied idlers, generally a little the worse for their +pleasures or weaknesses. A distinguished judge of one of the superior +courts of New York and an actor known everywhere in the English-speaking +world were instantly recognized by me. Others, as I was subsequently +informed, were related by birth or achievement to some one fact or +another of public significance. The reason for the presence of so many +people rather above than under the average in intellect lay, as I came +to believe later, in their ability or that of some one connected with +them to sincerely appreciate or to at least be amused and benefited by +the somewhat different theory of physical repair which the lord of the +manor had invented, or for which at least he had become famous. + +I have remarked that I was not inclined to be impressed. Sanitariums +with their isms and theories did not appeal to me. However, as I was +waiting here an incident occurred which stuck in my mind. A smart +conveyance drove up, occupied by a singularly lean and haughty-looking +individual, who, after looking about him, expecting some one to come out +to him no doubt, clambered cautiously out, and after seeing that his +various grips and one trunk were properly deposited on the gravel square +outside, paid and feed his driver, then walked in and remarked: + +"Ah--where is Mr. Culhane?" + +"I don't know, sir," I replied, being the only one present. "He was +here, but he's gone. I presume some one will show up presently." + +He walked up and down a little while, and then added: "Um--rather +peculiar method of receiving one, isn't it? I wired him I'd be here." He +walked restlessly and almost waspishly to and fro, looking out of the +window at times, at others commenting on the rather casual character of +it all. I agreed. + +Thus, some fifteen minutes having gone by without any one approaching +us, and occasional servants or "guests" passing through the room or +being seen in the offing without even so much as vouchsafing a word or +appearing to be interested in us, the new arrival grew excited. + +"This is very unusual," he fumed, walking up and down. "I wired him +only three hours ago. I've been here now fully three-quarters of an +hour! A most unheard-of method of doing business, I should say!" + +Presently our stern, steely-eyed host returned. He seemed to be going +somewhere, to be nowise interested in us. Yet into our presence, +probably into the consciousness of this new "guest," he carried that air +of savage strength and indifference, eyeing the stranger quite sharply +and making no effort to apologize for our long wait. + +"You wish to see me?" he inquired brusquely once more. + +Like a wasp, the stranger was vibrant with rage. Plainly he felt himself +insulted or terribly underrated. + +"Are you Mr. Culhane?" he asked crisply. + +"Yes." + +"I am Mr. Squiers," he exclaimed. "I wired you from Buffalo and ordered +a room," this last with an irritated wave of the hand. + +"Oh, no, you didn't order any room," replied the host sourly and with an +obvious desire to show his indifference and contempt even. "You wired to +know if you _could engage_ a room." + +He paused. The temperature seemed to drop perceptibly. The prospective +guest seemed to realize that he had made a mistake somewhere, had been +misinformed as to conditions here. + +"Oh! Um--ah! Yes! Well, have you a room?" + +"I don't know. I doubt it. We don't take every one." His eyes seemed to +bore into the interior of his would-be guest. + +"Well, but I was told--my friend, Mr. X----," the stranger began a +rapid, semi-irritated, semi-apologetic explanation of how he came to be +here. + +"I don't know anything about your friend or what he told you. If he told +you you could order a room by telegraph, he's mistaken. Anyhow, you're +not dealing with him, but with me. Now that you're here, though, if you +want to sit down and rest yourself a little I'll see what I can do for +you. I can't decide now whether I can let you stay. You'll have to wait +a while." He turned and walked off. + +The other stared. "Well," he commented to me after a time, walking and +twisting, "if a man wants to come here I suppose he has to put up with +such things, but it's certainly unusual, isn't it?" He sat down, wilted, +and waited. + +Later a clerk in charge of the registry book took us in hand, and then I +heard him explaining that his lungs were not in good shape. He had come +a long way--Denver, I believe. He had heard that all one needed to do +was to wire, especially one in his circumstances. + +"Some people think that way," solemnly commented the clerk, "but they +don't know Mr. Culhane. He does about as he pleases in these matters. He +doesn't do this any more to make money but rather to amuse himself, I +think. He always has more applicants than he accepts." + +I began to see a light. Perhaps there was something to this place after +all. I did not even partially sense the drift of the situation, though, +until bedtime when, after having been served a very frugal meal and +shown to my very simple room, a kind of cell, promptly at nine o'clock +lights were turned off. I lit a small candle and was looking over some +things which I had placed in a grip, when I heard a voice in the hall +outside: "Candles out, please! Candles out! All guests in bed!" Then it +came to me that a very rigorous régime was being enforced here. + +The next morning as I was still soundly sleeping at five-thirty a loud +rap sounded at my door. The night before I had noticed above my bed a +framed sign which read: "Guests must be dressed in running trunks, shoes +and sweater, and appear in the gymnasium by six sharp." "Gymnasium at +six! Gymnasium at six!" a voice echoed down the hall. I bounced out of +bed. Something about the very air of the place made me feel that it was +dangerous to attempt to trifle with the routine here. The tiger-like +eyes of my host did not appeal to me as retaining any softer ray in them +for me than for others. I had paid my six hundred ... I had better earn +it. I was down in the great room in my trunks, sweater, dressing-gown, +running shoes in less than five minutes. + +And that room! By that time as odd a company of people as I have ever +seen in a gymnasium had already begun to assemble. The leanness! the +osseosity! the grandiloquent whiskers parted in the middle! the +mustachios! the goatees! the fat, Hoti-like stomachs! the protuberant +knees! the thin arms! the bald or semi-bald pates! the spectacles or +horn glasses or pince-nezes!--laid aside a few moments later, as the +exercises began. Youth and strength in the pink of condition, when clad +only in trunks, a sweater and running shoes, are none too +acceptable--but middle age! And out in the world, I reflected rather +sadly, they all wore the best of clothes, had their cars, servants, city +and country houses perhaps, their factories, employees, institutions. +Ridiculous! Pitiful! As lymphatic and flabby as oysters without their +shells, myself included. It was really painful. + +Even as I meditated, however, I was advised, by many who saw that I was +a stranger, to choose a partner, any partner, for medicine ball +practice, for it might save me being taken or called by _him_. I +hastened so to do. Even as we were assembling or beginning to practice, +keeping two or three light medicine balls going between each pair, our +host entered--that iron man, that mount of brawn. In his cowled +dressing-gown he looked more like some great monk or fighting abbot of +the medieval years than a trainer. He walked to the center, hung up his +cowl and revealed himself lithe and lion-like and costumed like +ourselves. But how much more attractive as he strode about, his legs +lean and sturdy, his chest full, his arms powerful and graceful! At once +he seized a large leather-covered medicine ball, as had all the others, +and calling a name to which responded a lean whiskerando with a +semi-bald pate, thin legs and arms, and very much caricatured, I +presume, by the wearing of trunks and sweater. Taking his place opposite +the host, he was immediately made the recipient of a volley of balls and +brow-beating epithets. + +"Hurry up now! Faster! Ah, come on! Put the ball back to me! Put the +ball back! Do you want to keep it all day? Great God! What are you +standing there for? What are you standing there for? What do you think +you're doing--drinking tea? Come on! I haven't all morning for you +alone. Move! Move, you ham! You call yourself an editor! Why, you +couldn't edit a handbill! You can't even throw a ball straight! Throw it +straight! Throw it straight! For Christ's sake where do you think I +am--out in the office? Throw it straight! Hell!" and all the time one +and another ball, grabbed from anywhere, for the floor was always +littered with them, would be thrown in the victim's direction, and +before he could well appreciate what was happening to him he was being +struck, once in the neck and again on the chest by the rapidly delivered +six ounce air-filled balls, two of which at least he and the host were +supposed to keep in constant motion between them. Later, a ball striking +him in the stomach, he emitted a weak "Ooph!" and laying his hands over +the affected part ceased all effort. At this the master of the situation +only smirked on him leoninely and holding up a ball as if to throw it +continued, "What's the matter with you now? Come on! What do you want to +stop for? What do you want to stand there for? You're not hurt. How do +you expect to get anywhere if you can't keep two silly little balls like +these going between us?" (There had probably been six or eight.) "Here I +am sixty and you're forty, and you can't even keep up with me. And you +pretend to give the general public advice on life! Well, go on; God pity +the public, is all I say," and he dismissed him, calling out another +name. + +Now came a fat, bald soul, with dewlaps and a protruding stomach, who +later I learned was a manufacturer of clothing--six hundred employees +under him--down in health and nerves, really all "shot to pieces" +physically. Plainly nervous at the sound of his name, he puffed quickly +into position, grabbing wildly after the purposely eccentric throws +which his host made and which kept him running to left and right in an +all but panicky mood. + +"Move! Move!" insisted our host as before, and, if anything, more +irritably. "Say, you work like a crab! What a motion! If you had more +head and less guts you could do this better. A fine specimen you are! +This is what comes of riding about in taxis and eating midnight suppers +instead of exercising. Wake up! Wake up! A belt would have kept your +stomach in long ago. A little less food and less sleep, and you wouldn't +have any fat cheeks. Even your hair might stay on! Wake up! Wake up! +What do you want to do--die?" and as he talked he pitched the balls so +quickly that his victim looked at times as though he were about to weep. +His physical deficiencies were all too plain in every way. He was +generally obese and looked as though he might drop, his face a flaming +red, his hands trembling and missing, when a "Well, go on," sounded and +a third victim was called. This time it was a well-known actor who +responded, a star, rather spry and well set up, but still nervous, for +he realized quite well what was before him. He had been here for weeks +and was in pretty fair trim, but still he was plainly on edge. He ran +and began receiving and tossing as swiftly as he could, but as with the +others so it was his turn now to be given such a grilling and +tongue-lashing as falls to few of us in this world, let alone among the +successful in the realm of the footlights. "Say, you're not an +actor--you're a woman! You're a stewed onion! Move! Move! Come on! Come +on! Look at those motions now, will you? Look at that one arm up! Where +do you suppose the ball is? On the ceiling? It's not a lamp! Come on! +Come on! It's a wonder when you're killed as Hamlet that you don't stay +dead. You are. You're really dead now, you know. Move! Move!" and so it +would go until finally the poor thespian, no match for his master and +beset by flying balls, landing upon his neck, ear, stomach, finally gave +up and cried: + +"Well, I can't go any faster than I can, can I? I can't do any more than +I can!" + +"Ah, go on! Go back into the chorus!" called his host, who now abandoned +him. "Get somebody from the baby class to play marbles with you," and he +called another. + +By now, as may well be imagined, I was fairly stirred up as to the +probabilities of the situation. He might call me! The man who was +playing opposite me--a small, decayed person who chose me, I think, +because he knew I was new, innocuous and probably awkward--seemed to +realize my thoughts as well as his own. By lively exercise with me he +was doing his utmost to create an impression of great and valuable +effort here. "Come on, let's play fast so he won't notice us," he said +most pathetically at one point. You would have thought I had known him +all my life. + +But he didn't call us--not this morning at any rate. Whether owing to +our efforts or the fact that I at least was too insignificant, too +obscure, we escaped. He did reach me, however, on the fourth or fifth +day, and no spindling failure could have done worse. I was struck and +tripped and pounded until I all but fell prone upon the floor, half +convinced that I was being killed, but I was not. I was merely sent +stumbling and drooping back to the sidelines to recover while he +tortured some one else. But the names he called me! The comments on my +none too smoothly articulated bones--and my alleged mind! As in my +schooldays when, a laggard in the fierce and seemingly malevolent +atmosphere in which I was taught my ABC's, I crept shamefacedly and +beaten from the scene. + +It was in the adjoining bathroom, where the host daily personally +superintended the ablutions of his guests, that even more of his +remarkable method was revealed. Here a goodly portion of the force of +his method was his skill in removing any sense of ability, agility, +authority or worth from those with whom he dealt. Apparently to him, in +his strength and energy, they were all children, weaklings, failures, +numbskulls, no matter what they might be in the world outside. They had +no understanding of the most important of their possessions, their +bodies. And here again, even more than in the gymnasium, they were at +the disadvantage of feeling themselves spectacles, for here they were +naked. However grand an osseous, leathery lawyer or judge or doctor or +politician or society man may look out in the world addressing a jury or +a crowd or walking in some favorite place, glistening in his raiment, +here, whiskered, thin of legs, arms and neck, with bulging brow and +stripped not only of his gown but everything else this side of his +skin--well, draw your own conclusion. For after performing certain +additional exercises--one hundred times up on your toes, one hundred +times (if you could) squatting to your knees, one hundred times throwing +your arms out straight before you from your chest or up from your +shoulders or out at right angles, right and left from your body and back +to your hips until your fingers touched and the sweat once more ran--you +were then ready to be told (for once in your life) how to swiftly and +agilely take a bath. + +"Well, now, you're ready, are you?" this to a noble jurist who, like +myself perhaps, had arrived only the day before. "Come on, now. Now you +have just ten seconds in which to jump under the water and get yourself +wet all over, twenty seconds in which to jump out and soap yourself +thoroughly, ten seconds in which to get back in again and rinse off all +the soap, and twenty seconds in which to rub and dry your skin +thoroughly--now start!" + +The distinguished jurist began, but instead of following the advice +given him for rapid action huddled himself in a shivering position under +the water and stood all but inert despite the previous explanation of +the host that the sole method of escaping the weakening influence of +cold water was by counteracting it with activity, when it would prove +beneficial. + +He was such a noble, stalky, bony affair, his gold eyeglasses laid aside +for the time being, his tweeds and carefully laundered linen all +dispensed with during his stay here. As he came, meticulously and +gingerly and quite undone by his efforts, from under the water, where he +had been most roughly urged by Culhane, I hoped that he and not I would +continue to be seized upon by this savage who seemed to take infinite +delight in disturbing the social and intellectual poise of us all. + +"Soap yourself!" exclaimed the latter most harshly now that the bather +was out in the room once more. "Soap your chest! Soap your stomach! Soap +your arms, damn it! Soap your arms! And don't rub them all day either! +Now soap your legs, damn it! Soap your legs! Don't you know how to soap +your legs! Don't stand there all day! Soap your legs! Now turn round and +soap your back--soap your back! For Christ's sake, soap your back! Do it +quick--quick! Now come back under the water again and see if you can get +it off. Don't act as though you were cold molasses! Move! Move! Lord, +you act as though you had all day--as though you had never taken a bath +in your life! I never saw such an old poke. You come up here and expect +me to do some things for you, and then you stand around as though you +were made of bone! Quick now, move!" + +The noble jurist did as demanded--that is, as quickly as he could--only +the mental inadequacy and feebleness which he displayed before all the +others, of course, was the worst of his cruel treatment here, and in +this as in many instances it cut deep. So often it was the shock to +one's dignity more than anything else which hurt so, to be called an old +poke when one was perhaps a grave and reverent senior, or to be told +that one was made of bone when one was a famous doctor or merchant. +Once under the water this particular specimen had begun by nervously +rubbing his hands and face in order to get the soap off, and when +shouted at and abused for that had then turned his attention to one +other spot--the back of his left forearm. + +Mine host seemed enraged. "Well, well!" he exclaimed irascibly, watching +him as might a hawk. "Are you going to spend all day rubbing that one +spot? For God's sake, don't you know enough to rub your whole body and +get out from under the water? Move! Move! Rub your chest! Rub your +belly! Hell, rub your back! Rub your toes and get out!" + +When routed from the ludicrous effort of vigorously rubbing one spot he +was continually being driven on to some other, as though his body were +some vast complex machine which he had never rightly understood before. +He was very much flustered of course and seemed wholly unable to grasp +how it was done, let alone please his exacting host. + +"Come on!" insisted the latter finally and wearily. "Get out from under +the water. A lot you know about washing yourself! For a man who has been +on the bench for fifteen years you're the dullest person I ever met. If +you bathe like that at home, how do you keep clean? Come on out and dry +yourself!" + +The distinguished victim, drying himself rather ruefully on an +exceedingly rough towel, looked a little weary and disgusted. "Such +language!" some one afterwards said he said to some one else. "He's not +used to dealing with gentlemen, that's plain. The man talks like a +blackguard. And to think we pay for such things! Well, well! I'll not +stand it, I'm afraid. I've had about enough. It's positively revolting, +positively revolting!" But he stayed on, just the same--second thoughts, +a good breakfast, his own physical needs. At any rate weeks later he was +still there and in much better shape physically if not mentally. + +About the second or third day I witnessed another such spectacle, which +made me laugh--only not in my host's presence--nay, verily! For into +this same chamber had come another distinguished personage, a lawyer or +society man, I couldn't tell which, who was washing himself rather +leisurely, as was _not_ the prescribed way, when suddenly he was spied +by mine host, who was invariably instructing some one in this swift +one-minute or less system. Now he eyed the operation narrowly for a few +seconds, then came over and exclaimed: + +"Wash your toes, can't you? Wash your toes! Can't you wash your toes?" + +The skilled gentleman, realizing that he was now living under very +different conditions from those to which presumably he was accustomed, +reached down and began to rub the tops of his toes but without any +desire apparently to widen the operation. + +"Here!" called the host, this time much more sharply, "I said wash your +toes, not the outside of them! Soap them! Don't you know how to wash +your toes yet? You're old enough, God knows! Wash between 'em! Wash +under 'em!" + +"Certainly I know how to wash my toes," replied the other irritably and +straightening up, "and what's more, I'd like you to know that I am a +gentleman." + +"Well, then, if you're a gentleman," retorted the other, "you ought to +know how to wash your toes. Wash 'em--and don't talk back!" + +"Pah!" exclaimed the bather now, looking twice as ridiculous as before. +"I'm not used to having such language addressed to me." + +"I can't help that," said Culhane. "If you knew how to wash your toes +perhaps you wouldn't have to have such language addressed to you." + +"Oh, hell!" fumed the other. "This is positively outrageous! I'll leave +the place, by George!" + +"Very well," rejoined the other, "only before you go you'll have to wash +your toes!" + +And he did, the host standing by and calmly watching the performance +until it was finally completed. + +It was just this atmosphere which made the place the most astonishing in +which I have ever been. It seemed to be drawing the celebrated and the +successful as a magnet might iron, and yet it offered conditions which +one might presume they would be most opposed to. No one here was really +any one, however much he might be outside. Our host was all. He had a +great blazing personality which dominated everybody, and he did not +hesitate to show before one and all that he did so do. + +Breakfast here consisted of a cereal, a chop and coffee--plentiful but +very plain, I thought. After breakfast, between eight-thirty and eleven, +we were free to do as we chose: write letters, pack our bags if we were +leaving, do up our laundry to be sent out, read, or merely sit about. At +eleven, or ten-thirty, according to the nature of the exercise, one had +to join a group, either one that was to do the long or short block, as +they were known here, or one that was to ride horseback, all exercises +being so timed that by proper execution one would arrive at the bathroom +door in time to bathe, dress and take ten minutes' rest before luncheon. +These exercises were simple enough in themselves, consisting, as they +did in the case of the long and the short blocks (the long block seven, +the short four miles in length), of our walking, or walking and running +betimes, about or over courses laid up hill and down dale, over or +through unpaved mudroads in many instances, along dry or wet beds of +brooks or streams, and across stony or weedy fields, often still damp +with dew or the spring rains. But in most cases, when people had not +taken any regular exercise for a long time, this was by no means easy. +The first day I thought I should never make it, and I was by no means a +poor walker. Others, the new ones especially, often gave out and had to +be sent for, or came in an hour late to be most severely and +irritatingly ragged by the host. He seemed to all but despise weakness +and had apparently a thousand disagreeable ways of showing it. + +"If you want to see what poor bags of mush some people can become," he +once said in regard to some poor specimen who had seemingly had great +difficulty in doing the short block, "look at this. Here comes a man +sent out to do four measly country miles in fifty minutes, and look at +him. You'd think he was going to die. He probably thinks so himself. In +New York he'd do seventeen miles in a night running from barroom to +barroom or one lobster palace to another--that's a good name for them, +by the way--and never say a word. But out here in the country, with +plenty of fresh air and a night's rest and a good breakfast, he can't +even do four miles in fifty minutes! Think of it! And he probably +thinks of himself as a man--boasts before his friends, or his wife, +anyhow. Lord!" + +A day or two later there arrived here a certain major of the United +States Army, a large, broad-chested, rather pompous person of about +forty-eight or -nine, who from taking his ease in one sinecure and +another had finally reached the place where he was unable to endure +certain tests (or he thought so) which were about to be made with a view +to retiring certain officers grown fat in the service. As he explained +to Culhane, and the latter was always open and ribald afterward in his +comments on those who offered explanations of any kind, his plan was to +take the course here in order to be able to make the difficult tests +later. + +Culhane resented this, I think. He resented people using him or his +methods to get anywhere, do anything more in life than he could do, and +yet he received them. He felt, and I think in the main that he was +right, that they looked down on him because of his lowly birth and +purely material and mechanical career, and yet having attained some +distinction by it he could not forego this work which raised him, in a +way, to a position of dominance over these people. Now the sight of +presumably so efficient a person in need of aid or exercise, to be built +up, was all that was required to spur him on to the most waspish or +wolfish attitude imaginable. In part at least he argued, I think (for in +the last analysis he was really too wise and experienced to take any +such petty view, although there is a subconscious "past-lack" motivating +impulse in all our views), that here he was, an ex-policeman, +ex-wrestler, ex-prize fighter, ex-private, ex-waiter, beef-carrier, +bouncer, trainer; and here was this grand major, trained at West Point, +who actually didn't know any more about life or how to take care of his +body than to be compelled to come here, broken down at forty-eight, +whereas he, because of his stamina and Spartan energy, had been able to +survive in perfect condition until sixty and was now in a position to +rebuild all these men and wastrels and to control this great +institution. And to a certain extent he was right, although he seemed to +forget or not to know that he was not the creator of his own great +strength, by any means, impulses and tendencies over which he had no +control having arranged for that. + +However that may be, here was the major a suppliant for his services, +and here was he, Culhane, and although the major was paying well for his +minute room and his probably greatly decreased diet, still Culhane could +not resist the temptation to make a show of him, to picture him as the +more or less pathetic example that he was, in order perhaps that he, +Culhane, might shine by contrast. Thus on the first day, having sent him +around the short block with the others, it was found at twelve, when the +"joggers" were expected to return, and again at twelve-thirty when they +were supposed to take their places at the luncheon table, that the heavy +major had not arrived. He had been seen and passed by all, of course. +After the first mile or two probably he had given out and was making his +way as best he might up hill and down dale, or along some more direct +road, to the "shop," or maybe he had dropped out entirely, as some did, +via a kindly truck or farmer's wagon, and was on his way to the nearest +railway station. + +At any rate, as Culhane sat down at his very small private table, which +stood in the center of the dining-room and far apart from the others (a +vantage point, as it were), he looked about and, not seeing the new +guest, inquired, "Has any one seen that alleged army officer who arrived +here this morning?" + +No one could say anything more than that they had left him two or three +miles back. + +"I thought so," he said tersely. "There you have a fine example of the +desk general and major--we had 'em in the army--men who sit in a swivel +chair all day, wear a braided uniform and issue orders to other people. +You'd think a man like that who had been trained at West Point and seen +service in the Philippines would have sense enough to keep himself in +condition. Not at all. As soon as they get a little way up in their +profession they want to sit around hotel grills or society ballrooms and +show off, tell how wonderful they are. Here's a man, an army officer, in +such rotten shape that if I sent a good horse after him now it's ten to +one he couldn't get on him. I'll have to send a truck or some such +thing." + +He subsided. About an hour later the major did appear, much the worse +for wear. A groom with a horse had been sent out after him, and, as the +latter confided to some one afterward, he "had to help the major on." +From that time on, on the short block and the long, as well as on those +horseback tours which every second or third morning we were supposed to +take, the major was his especial target. He loved to pick on him, to +tell him that he was "nearly all guts"--a phrase which literally +sickened me at that time--to ask him how he expected to stay in the army +if he couldn't do this or that, what good was he to the army, how could +any soldier respect a thing like him, and so on _ad infinitum_ until, +while at first I pitied the major, later on I admired his pluck. Culhane +foisted upon him his sorriest and boniest nag, the meanest animal he +could find, yet he never complained; and although he forced on him all +the foods he knew the major could not like, still there was no +complaint; he insisted that he should be out and around of an afternoon +when most of us lay about, allowed him no drinks whatever, although he +was accustomed to them. The major, as I learned afterwards, stayed not +six but twelve weeks and passed the tests which permitted him to remain +in the army. + +But to return to Culhane himself. The latter's method always contained +this element of nag and pester which, along with his brazen reliance on +and pride in his brute strength at sixty, made all these others look so +puny and ineffectual. They might have brains and skill but here they +were in his institution, more or less undone nervously and physically, +and here he was, cold, contemptuous, not caring much whether they came, +stayed or went, and laughing at them even as they raged. Now and then it +was rumored that he found some single individual in whom he would take +an interest, but not often. In the main I think he despised them one and +all for the puny machines they were. He even despised life and the +pleasures and dissipations or swinish indolence which, in his judgment, +characterized most men. I recall once, for instance, his telling us how +as a private in the United States Army when the division of which he was +a unit was shut up in winter quarters, huddled about stoves, smoking (as +he characterized them) "filthy pipes" or chewing tobacco and spitting, +actually lousy, and never changing their clothes for weeks on end--how +he, revolting at all this and the disease and fevers ensuing, had kept +out of doors as much as possible, even in the coldest weather, and +finding no other way of keeping clean the single shift of underwear and +the one uniform he possessed he had, every other day or so, washed all, +uniform and underwear, with or without soap as conditions might compel, +in a nearby stream, often breaking the ice to get to the water, and +dancing about naked in the cold, running and jumping, while they dried +on bushes or the branch of a tree. + +"Those poor rats," he added most contemptuously, "used to sit inside and +wonder at me or laugh and jeer, hovering over their stoves, but a lot of +them died that very winter, and here I am today." + +And well we knew it. I used to study the faces of many of the puffy, +gelatinous souls, so long confined to their comfortable offices, +restaurants and homes that two hours on horseback all but wore them out, +and wonder how this appealed to them. I think that in the main they took +it as an illustration of either one of two things: insanity, or giant +and therefore not-to-be-imitated strength. + +But in regard to them Culhane was by no means so tolerant. One day, as I +recall, there arrived at the sanitarium a stout and mushy-looking +Hebrew, with a semi-bald pate, protruding paunch and fat arms and legs, +who applied to Culhane for admission. And, as much to irritate his other +guests, I think, as to torture this particular specimen into some +semblance of vitality, he admitted him. And thereafter, from the hour he +entered until he left about the time I did, Culhane seemed to follow him +with a wolfish and savage idea. He gave him a most damnable and savage +horse, one that kicked and bit, and at mounting time would place Mr. +Itzky (I think his name was) up near the front of the procession where +he could watch him. Always at mount-time, when we were permitted to +ride, there was inside the great stable a kind of preliminary military +inspection of all our accouterments, seeing that we had to saddle and +bridle and bring forth our own steeds. This particular person could not +saddle a horse very well nor put on his bit and bridle. The animal was +inclined to rear and plunge when he came near, to fix him with an evil +eye and bite at him. + +And above all things Culhane seemed to value strain of this kind. If he +could just make his guests feel the pressure of necessity in connection +with their work he was happy. To this end he would employ the most +contemptuous and grilling comment. Thus to Mr. Itzky he was most unkind. +He would look over all most cynically, examining the saddles and +bridles, and then say, "Oh, I see you haven't learned how to tighten a +belly-band yet," or "I do believe you have your saddle hind-side to. You +would if you could, that's one thing sure. How do you expect a horse to +be sensible or quiet when he knows that he isn't saddled right? Any +horse knows that much, and whether he has an ass for a rider. I'd kick +and bite too if I were some of these horses, having a lot of damned +fools and wasters to pack all over the country. Loosen that belt and +fasten it right" (there might be nothing wrong with it) "and move your +saddle up. Do you want to sit over the horse's rump?" + +Then would come the fateful moment of mounting. There was of course the +accepted and perfect way--his way: left foot in stirrup, an easy +balanced spring and light descent into the seat. One should be able to +slip the right foot into the right stirrup with the same motion of +mounting. But imagine fifty, sixty, seventy men, all sizes, weights and +differing conditions of health and mood. A number of these people had +never ridden a horse before coming here and were as nervous and +frightened as children. Such mounts! Such fumbling around, once they +were in their saddles, for the right stirrup! And all the while Culhane +would be sitting out front like an army captain on the only decent steed +in the place, eyeing us with a look of infinite and weary contempt that +served to increase our troubles a thousandfold. + +"Well, you're all on, are you? You all do it so gracefully I like to sit +here and admire you. Hulbert there throws his leg over his horse's back +so artistically that he almost kicks his teeth out. And Effingham does +his best to fall off on the other side. And where's Itzky? I don't even +see him. Oh, yes, there he is. Well" (this to Itzky, frantically +endeavoring to get one fat foot in a stirrup and pull himself up), "what +about you? Can't you get your leg that high? Here's a man who for +twenty-five years has been running a cloak-and-suit business and +employing five hundred people, but he can't get on a horse! Imagine! +Five hundred people dependent on that for their living!" (At this point, +say, Itzky succeeds in mounting.) "Well, he's actually on! Now see if +you can stick while we ride a block or two. You'll find the right +stirrup, Itzky, just a little forward of your horse's belly on the right +side--see? A fine bunch this is to lead out through a gentleman's +country! Hell, no wonder I've got a bad reputation throughout this +section! Well, forward, and see if you can keep from falling off." + +Then we were out through the stable-door and the privet gate at a smart +trot, only to burst into a headlong gallop a little farther on down the +road. To the seasoned riders it was all well enough, but to beginners, +those nervous about horses, fearful about themselves! The first day, not +having ridden in years and being uncertain as to my skill, I could +scarcely stay on. Several days later, I by then having become a +reasonably seasoned rider, it was Mr. Itzky who appeared on the scene, +and after him various others. On this particular trip I am thinking of, +Mr. Itzky fell or rolled off and could not again mount. He was miles +from the repair shop and Culhane, discovering his plight, was by no +means sympathetic. We had a short ride back to where he sat lamely by +the roadside viewing disconsolately the cavalcade and the country in +general. + +"Well, what's the matter with you now?" It was Culhane, eyeing him most +severely. + +"I hef hurt my foot. I kent stay on." + +"You mean you'd rather walk, do you, and lead your horse?" + +"Vell, I kent ride." + +"All right, then, you lead your horse back to the stable if you want any +lunch, and hereafter you run with the baby-class on the short block +until you think you can ride without falling off. What's the good of my +keeping a stable of first-class horses at the service of a lot of +mush-heads who don't even know how to use 'em? All they do is ruin 'em. +In a week or two, after a good horse is put in the stable, he's not fit +for a gentleman to ride. They pull and haul and kick and beat, when as +a matter of fact the horse has a damned sight more sense than they +have." + +We rode off, leaving Itzky alone. The men on either side of me--we were +riding three abreast--scoffed under their breath at the statement that +we were furnished decent horses. "The nerve! This nag!" "This bag of +bones!" "To think a thing like this should be called a horse!" But there +were no outward murmurs and no particular sympathy for Mr. Itzky. He was +a fat stuff, a sweat-shop manufacturer, they would bet; let him walk and +sweat. + +So much for sympathy in this gay realm where all were seeking to restore +their own little bodies, whatever happened. + +So many of these men varied so greatly in their looks, capacities and +troubles that they were always amusing. Thus I recall one lean iron +manufacturer, the millionaire president of a great "frog and switch" +company, who had come on from Kansas City, troubled with anæmia, +neurasthenia, "nervous derangement of the heart" and various other +things. He was over fifty, very much concerned about himself, his +family, his business, his friends; anxious to obtain the benefits of +this celebrated course of which he had heard so much. Walking or running +near me on his first day, he took occasion to make inquiries in regard +to Culhane, the life here, and later on confidences as to his own +condition. It appeared that his chief trouble was his heart, a kind of +phantom disturbance which made him fear that he was about to drop dead +and which came and went, leaving him uncertain as to whether he had it +or not. On entering he had confided to Culhane the mysteries of his +case, and the latter had examined him, pronouncing him ("Rather +roughly," as he explained to me), quite fit to do "all the silly work he +would have to do here." + +Nevertheless while we were out on the short block his heart was hurting +him. At the same time it had been made rather clear to him that if he +wished to stay here he would have to fulfill all the obligations +imposed. After a mile or two or three of quick walking and jogging he +was saying to me, "You know, I'm not really sure that I can do this. +It's very severe, more so than I thought. My heart is not doing very +well. It feels very fluttery." + +"But," I said, "if he told you you could stand it, you can, I'm sure. +It's not very likely he'd say you could if you couldn't. He examined +you, didn't he? I don't believe he'd deliberately put a strain on any +one who couldn't stand it." + +"Yes," he admitted doubtfully, "that's true perhaps." + +Still he continued to complain and complain and to grow more and more +worried, until finally he slowed up and was lost in the background. + +Reaching the gymnasium at the proper time I bathed and dressed myself +quickly and waited on the balcony over the bathroom to see what would +happen in this case. As a rule Culhane stood in or near the door at this +time, having just returned from some route or "block" himself, to see +how the others were faring. And he was there when the iron manufacturer +came limping up, fifteen minutes late, one hand over his heart, the +other to his mouth, and exclaiming as he drew near, "I do believe, Mr. +Culhane, that I can't stand this. I'm afraid there is something the +matter with my heart. It's fluttering so." + +"To hell with your heart! Didn't I tell you there was nothing the matter +with it? Get into the bath!" + +The troubled manufacturer, overawed or reassured as the case might be, +entered the bath and ten minutes later might have been seen entering the +dining-room, as comfortable apparently as any one. Afterwards he +confessed to me on one of our jogs that there was something about +Culhane which _gave him confidence_ and made him believe that there +wasn't anything wrong with his heart--which there wasn't, I presume. + +The intensely interesting thing about Culhane was this different, very +original and forthright if at times brutal point of view. It was a +blazing material world of which he was the center, the sun, and yet +always I had the sense of very great life. With no knowledge of or +interest in the superior mental sciences or arts or philosophies, still +he seemed to suggest and even live them. He was in his way an +exemplification of that ancient Greek regimen and stark thought which +brought back the ten thousand from Cunaxa. He seemed even to suggest in +his rough way historical perspective and balance. He knew men, and +apparently he sensed how at best and at bottom life was to be lived, +with not too much emotional or appetitive swaying in any one direction, +and not too little either. + +Yet in "trapseing" about this particular realm each day with ministers, +lawyers, doctors, actors, manufacturers, papa's or mamma's young +hopefuls and petted heirs, young scapegraces and so-called "society men" +of the extreme "upper crust," stuffed and plethoric with money and as +innocent of sound knowledge or necessary energy in some instances as any +one might well be, one could not help speculating as to how it was that +such a man, as indifferent and all but discourteous as this one, could +attract them (and so many) to him. They came from all parts of +America--the Pacific, the Gulf, the Atlantic and Canada--and yet, +although they did not relish, him or his treatment of them, once here +they stayed. Walking or running or idling about with them one could +always hear from one or another that Culhane was too harsh, a "bounder," +an "upstart," a "cheap pugilist" or "wrestler" at best (I myself thought +so at times when I was angry), yet here they were, and here I was, and +staying. He was low, vulgar--yet here we were. And yet, meditating on +him, I began to think that he was really one of the most remarkable men +I had ever known, for these people he dealt with were of all the most +difficult to deal with. In the main they were of that order or condition +of mind which springs from (1), too much wealth too easily acquired or +inherited; or (2), from a blazing material success, the cause of which +was their own savage self-interested viewpoint. Hence a colder and in +some respects a more critical group of men I have never known. Most of +them had already seen so much of life in a libertine way that there was +little left to enjoy. They sniffed at almost everything, Culhane +included, and yet they were obviously drawn to him. I tried to explain +this to myself on the ground that there is some iron power in some +people which literally compels this, whether one will or no; or that +they were in the main so tired of life and so truly selfish and +egotistic that it required some such different iron or caviar mood plus +such a threatening regimen to make them really take an interest. Sick as +they were, he was about the only thing left on which they could sharpen +their teeth with any result. + +As I have said, a part of Culhane's general scheme was to arrange the +starting time for the walks and jogs about the long and short blocks so +that if one moved along briskly he reached the sanitarium at +twelve-thirty and had a few minutes in which to bathe and cool off and +change his clothes before entering the dining-room, where, if not at the +bathroom door beforehand, Culhane would be waiting, seated at his little +table, ready to keep watch on the time and condition of all those due. +Thus one day, a group of us having done the long block in less time than +we should have devoted to it, came in panting and rejoicing that we had +cut the record by seven minutes. We did not know that he was around. But +in the dining-room as we entered he scoffed at our achievement. + +"You think you're smart, don't you?" he said sourly and without any +preliminary statement as to how he knew we had done it in less time. +"You come out here and pay me one hundred a week and then you want to be +cute and play tricks with your own money and health. I want you to +remember just one thing: my reputation is just as much involved with the +results here as your money. I don't need anybody's money, and I do need +my orders obeyed. Now you all have watches. You just time yourselves and +do that block in the time required. If you can't do it, that's one +thing; I can forgive a man too weak or sick to do it. But I haven't any +use for a mere smart aleck, and I don't want any more of it, see?" + +That luncheon was very sad. + +Another thing in connection with these luncheons and dinners, which were +sharply timed to the minute, were these crisp table speeches, often made +_in re_ some particular offender or his offense, at other times mere +sarcastic comments on life in general and the innate cussedness of human +nature, which amused at the same time that they were certain to irritate +some. For who is it that is not interested in hearing the peccadilloes +of his neighbor aired? + +Thus while I was there, there was a New York society man by the name of +Blake, who unfortunately was given to severe periods of alcoholism, the +results of which were, after a time, nervous disorders which sent him +here. In many ways he was as amiable and courteous and considerate a +soul as one could meet anywhere. He had that smooth, gracious something +about him--good nature, for one thing, a kind of understanding and +sympathy for various forms of life--which left him highly noncensorious, +if genially examining at times. But his love of drink, or rather his +mild attempts here to arrange some method by which in this droughty +world he could obtain a little, aroused in Culhane not so much +opposition as an amused contempt, for at bottom I think he really liked +the man. Blake was so orderly, so sincere in his attempts to fulfill +conditions, only about once every week or so he would suggest that he be +allowed to go to White Plains or Rye, or even New York, on some errand +or other--most of which requests were promptly and nearly always +publicly refused. For although Culhane had his private suite at one end +of the great building, where one might suppose one might go to make a +private plea, still one could never find him there. He refused to +receive complaints or requests or visits of any kind there. If you +wanted to speak to him you had to do it when he was with the group in +its entirety--a commonsense enough policy. But just the same there were +those who had reasonable requests or complaints, and these, by a fine +intuition as to who was who in this institution and what might be +expected of each one, he managed to hear very softly, withdrawing slowly +as they talked or inviting them into the office. In the main however the +requests were very much like those of Blake--men who wanted to get off +somewhere for a day or two, feeling, as they did after a week or two or +three, especially fit and beginning to think no doubt of the various +comforts and pleasures which the city offered. + +But to all these he was more or less adamant. By hook or by crook, by +special arrangements with friends or agents in nearby towns and the +principal showy resorts of New York, he managed to know, providing they +did leave the grounds, either with or without his consent, about where +they were and what they had done, and in case any of his rules or their +agreements were broken their privileges were thereafter cut off or they +were promptly ejected, their trunks being set out on the roadway in +front of the estate and they being left to make their way to shelter +elsewhere as best they might. + +On one occasion, however, Blake had been allowed to go to New York over +Saturday and Sunday to attend to some urgent business, as he said, he on +his honor having promised to avoid the white lights. Nevertheless he did +not manage so to do but instead, in some comfortable section of that +region, was seen drinking enough to last him until perhaps he should +have another opportunity to return to the city. + +On his return to the "shop" on Monday morning or late Sunday night, +Culhane pretended not to see him until noonday lunch, when, his jog over +the long block done with and his bath taken, he came dapperly into the +dining-room, wishing to look as innocent and fit as possible. But +Culhane was there before him at his little table in the center of the +room, and patting the head of one of the two pure-blooded collies that +always followed him about on the grounds or in the house, began as +follows: + +"A dog," he said very distinctly and in his most cynical tone and +apparently apropos of nothing, which usually augured that the lightning +of his criticism was about to strike somewhere, "is so much better than +the average man that it's an insult to the dog to compare them. The +dog's really decent. He has no sloppy vices. You set a plate of food +before a regularly-fed, blooded dog, and he won't think of gorging +himself sick or silly. He eats what he needs, and then stops. So does a +cat" (which is of course by no means true, but still--). "A dog doesn't +get a red nose from drinking too much." By now all eyes were turning in +the direction of Blake, whose nose was faintly tinged. "He doesn't get +gonorrhea or syphilis." The united glances veered in the direction of +three or four young scapegraces of wealth, all of whom were suspected of +these diseases. "He doesn't hang around hotel bars and swill and get his +tongue thick and talk about how rich he is or how old his family is." +(This augured that Blake did such things, which I doubt, but once more +all eyes were shifted to him.) "He doesn't break his word. Within the +limits of his poor little brain he's faithful. He does what he thinks +he's called upon to do. + +"But you take a man--more especially a gentleman--one of these fellows +who is always very pointed in emphasizing that he is a gentleman" (which +Blake never did). "Let him inherit eight or ten millions, give him a +college education, let him be socially well connected, and what does he +do? Not a damned thing if he can help it except contract vices--run from +one saloon to another, one gambling house to another, one girl to +another, one meal to another. He doesn't need to know anything +necessarily. He may be the lowest dog physically and in every other way, +and still he's a gentleman--because he has money, wears spats and a high +hat. Why I've seen fifty poor boob prize fighters in my time who could +put it all over most of the so-called gentlemen I have ever seen. They +kept their word. They tried to be physically fit. They tried to stand up +in the world and earn their own living and be somebody." (He was +probably thinking of himself.) "But a gentleman wants to boast of his +past and his family, to tell you that he must go to the city on +business--his lawyers or some directors want to see him. Then he swills +around at hotel bars, stays with some of his lady whores, and then comes +back here and expects me to pull him into shape again, to make his nose +a little less red. He thinks he can use my place to fall back on when he +can't go any longer, to fix him up to do some more swilling later on. + +"Well, I want to serve notice on all so-called gentlemen here, and _one +gentleman_ in particular" (and he heavily and sardonically emphasized +the words), "that it won't do. This isn't a hospital attached to a +whorehouse or a saloon. And as for the trashy little six hundred paid +here, I don't need it. I've turned away more men who have been here once +or twice and have shown me that they were just using this place and me +as something to help them go on with their lousy drinking and carousing, +than would fill this building. Sensible men know it. They don't try to +use me. It's only the wastrels, or their mothers or fathers who bring +their boys and husbands and cry, who try to use me, and I take 'em once +or twice, but not oftener. When a man goes out of here cured, I know he +is cured. I never want to see him again. I want him to go out in the +world and stand up. I don't want him to come back here in six months +sniveling to be put in shape again. He disgusts me. He makes me sick. I +feel like ordering him off the place, and I do, and that's the end of +him. Let him go and bamboozle somebody else. I've shown him all I know. +There's no mystery. He can do as much for himself, once he's been here, +as I can. If he won't, well and good. And I'm saying one thing more: +There's one man here to whom this particularly applies today. This is +his last call. He's been here twice. When he goes out this time he can't +come back. Now see if some of you can remember some of the things I've +been telling you." + +He subsided and opened his little pint of wine. + +Another day while I was there he began as follows: + +"If there's one class of men that needs to be improved in this country, +it's lawyers. I don't know why it is, but there's something in the very +nature of the work of a lawyer which appears to make him cynical and to +want to wear a know-it-all look. Most lawyers are little more than +sharper crooks than the crooks they have to deal with. They're always +trying to get in on some case or other where they have to outwit the +law, save some one from getting what he justly deserves, and then they +are supposed to be honest and high-minded! Think of it! To judge by some +of the specimens I get up here," and then some lawyer in the place would +turn a shrewd inquiring glance in his direction or steadfastly gaze at +his plate or out the window, while the others stared at him, "you would +think they were the salt of the earth or that they were following a +really noble profession or that they were above or better than other men +in their abilities. Well, if being conniving and tricky are fine traits, +I suppose they are, but personally I can't see it. Generally speaking, +they're physically the poorest fish I get here. They're slow and +meditative and sallow, mostly because they get too little exercise, I +presume. And they're never direct and enthusiastic in an argument. A +lawyer always wants to stick in an 'if' or a 'but,' to get around you in +some way. He's never willing to answer you quickly or directly. I've +watched 'em now for nearly fifteen years, and they're all more or less +alike. They think they're very individual and different, but they're +not. Most of them don't know nearly as much about life as a good, +all-around business or society man," this in the absence of any desire +to discuss these two breeds for the time being. "For the life of me I +could never see why a really attractive woman would ever want to marry a +lawyer"--and so he would talk on, revealing one little unsatisfactory +trait after another in connection with the tribe, sand-papering their +raw places as it were, until you would about conclude, supposing you had +never heard him talk concerning any other profession, that lawyers were +the most ignoble, the pettiest, the most inefficient physically and +mentally, of all the men he had ever encountered; and in his noble +savage state there would not be one to disagree with him, for he had +such an animal, tiger-like mien that you had the feeling that instead of +an argument you would get a physical rip which would leave you bleeding +for days. + +The next day, or a day or two or four or six later--according to his +mood--it would be doctors or merchants or society men or politicians he +would discourse about--and, kind heaven, what a drubbing they would get! +He seemed always to be meditating on the vulnerable points of his +victims, anxious (and yet presumably not) to show them what poor, +fallible, shabby, petty and all but drooling creatures they were. Thus +in regard to merchants: + +"The average man who has a little business of some kind, a factory or a +wholesale or brokerage house or a hotel or a restaurant, usually has a +distinctly middle-class mind." At this all the merchants and +manufacturers were likely to give a very sharp ear. "As a rule, you'll +find that they know just the one little line with which they're +connected, and nothing more. One man knows all about cloaks and suits" +(this may have been a slap at poor Itzky) "or he knows a little +something about leather goods or shoes or lamps or furniture, and that's +all he knows. If he's an American he'll buckle down to that little +business and work night and day, sweat blood and make every one else +connected with him sweat it, underpay his employees, swindle his +friends, half-starve himself and his family, in order to get a few +thousand dollars and seem as good as some one else who has a few +thousand. And yet he doesn't want to be different from--he wants to be +just like--the other fellow. If some one in his line has a house up on +the Hudson or on Riverside Drive, when he gets his money he wants to go +there and live. If the fellow in his line, or some other that he knows +something about, belongs to a certain club, he has to belong to it even +if the club doesn't want him or he wouldn't look well in it. He wants to +have the same tailor, the same grocer, smoke the same brand of cigars +and go to the same summer resort as the other fellow. They even want to +look alike. God! And then when they're just like every one else, they +think they're somebody. They haven't a single idea outside their line, +and yet because they've made money they want to tell other people how +to live and think. Imagine a rich butcher or cloak-maker, or any one +else, presuming to tell me how to think or live!" + +He stared about him as though he saw many exemplifications of his +picture present. And it was always interesting to see how those whom his +description really did fit look as though he could not possibly be +referring to them. + +Of all types or professions that came here, I think he disliked doctors +most. The reason was of course that the work they did or were about to +do in the world bordered on that which he was trying to accomplish, and +the chances were that they sniffed at or at least critically examined +what he was doing with an eye to finding its weak spots. In many cases +no doubt he fancied that they were there to study and copy his methods +and ideas, without having the decency later on to attribute their +knowledge to him. It was short shrift for any one of them with ideas or +"notions" unfriendly to him advanced in his presence. For a little while +during my stay there was a smooth-faced, rather solid physically and +decidedly self-opinionated mentally, doctor who ate at the same small +table as I and who was never tired of airing his views, medical and +otherwise. He confided to me rather loftily that there was, to be sure, +something to Culhane's views and methods but that they were +"over-emphasized here, over-emphasized." Still, one could over-emphasize +the value of drugs too. As for himself he had decided to achieve a happy +medium if possible, and for this reason (for one) he had come here to +study Culhane. + +As for Culhane, in spite of the young doctor's condescension and +understanding, or perhaps better yet because of it, he thoroughly +disliked, barely tolerated, him, and was never tired of commenting on +little dancing medics with their "pill cases" and easily acquired book +knowledge, boasting of their supposed learning "which somebody else had +paid for," as he once said--their fathers, of course. And when they were +sick, some of them at least, they had to come out here to him, or they +came to steal his theory and start a shabby grafting sanitarium of their +own. He knew them. + +One noon we were at lunch. Occasionally before seating himself at his +small central table he would walk or glance about and, having good eyes, +would spy some little defect or delinquency somewhere and of course +immediately act upon it. One of the rules of the repair shop was that +you were to eat what was put before you, especially when it differed +from what your table companion received. Thus a fat man at a table with +a lean one might receive a small portion of lean meat, no potatoes and +no bread or one little roll, whereas his lean acquaintance opposite +would be receiving a large portion of fat meat, a baked or boiled +potato, plenty of bread and butter, and possibly a side dish of some +kind. Now it might well be, as indeed was often the case, that each +would be dissatisfied with his apportionment and would attempt to change +plates. + +But this was the one thing that Culhane would not endure. So upon one +occasion, passing near the table at which sat myself and the +above-mentioned doctor, table-mates for the time being, he noticed that +he was not eating his carrots, a dish which had been especially prepared +for him, I imagine--for if one unconsciously ignored certain things the +first day or two of his stay, those very things would be all but rammed +down his throat during the remainder of his stay; a thing concerning +which one guest and another occasionally cautioned newcomers. However +this may have been in this particular case, he noticed the uneaten +carrots and, pausing a moment, observed: + +"What's the matter? Aren't you eating your carrots?" We had almost +finished eating. + +"Who, me?" replied the medic, looking up. "Oh, no, I never eat carrots, +you know. I don't like them." + +"Oh, don't you?" said Culhane sweetly. "You don't like them, and so you +don't eat them! Well, suppose you eat them here. They may do you a +little good just as a change." + +"But I never eat carrots," retorted the medic tersely and with a slight +show of resentment or opposition, scenting perhaps a new order. + +"No, not outside perhaps, but here you do. You eat carrots here, see?" + +"Yes, but why should I eat them if I don't like them? They don't agree +with me. Must I eat something that doesn't agree with me just because +it's a rule or to please you?" + +"To please me, or the carrots, or any damned thing you please--but eat +'em." + +The doctor subsided. For a day or two he went about commenting on what a +farce the whole thing was, how ridiculous to make any one eat what was +not suited to him, but just the same while he was there he ate them. + +As for myself, I was very fond of large boiled potatoes and substantial +orders of fat and lean meat, and in consequence, having been so foolish +as to show this preference, I received but the weakest, most +contemptible and puling little spuds and pale orders of meat--with, it +is true, plenty of other "side dishes"; whereas a later table-mate of +mine, a distressed and neurasthenic society man, was receiving--I soon +learned he especially abhorred them--potatoes as big as my two fists. + +"Now look at that! Now look at that!" he often said peevishly and with a +kind of sickly whine in his voice when he saw one being put before him. +"He knows I don't like potatoes, and see what I get! And look at the +little bit of a thing he gives you! It's a shame, the way he nags +people, especially over this food question. I don't think there's a +thing to it. I don't think eating a big potato does me a bit of good, or +you the little one, and yet I have to eat the blank-blank things or get +out. And I need to get on my feet just now." + +"Well, cheer up," I said sympathetically and with an eye on the large +potato perhaps. "He isn't always looking, and we can fix it. You mash up +your big potato and put butter and salt on it, and I'll do the same with +my little one. Then when he's not looking we'll shift." + +"Oh, that's all right," he commented, "but we'd better look out. If he +sees us he'll be as sore as the devil." + +This system worked well enough for a time, and for days I was getting +all the potato I wanted and congratulating myself on my skill, when one +day as I was slyly forking potatoes out of his dish, moved helpfully in +my direction, I saw Culhane approaching and feared that our trick had +been discovered. It had. Perhaps some snaky waitress has told on us, or +he had seen us, even from his table. + +"Now I know what's going on here at this table," he growled savagely, +"and I want you two to cut it out. This big boob here" (he was referring +to my esteemed self) "who hasn't strength of will or character enough to +keep himself in good health and has to be brought up here by his +brother, hasn't brains enough to see that when I plan a thing for his +benefit it is for his benefit, and not mine. Like most of the other +damned fools that come up here and waste their money and my time, he +thinks I'm playing some cute game with him--tag or something that will +let him show how much cuter he is than I am. And he's supposed to be a +writer and have a little horse-sense! His brother claims it, anyhow. And +as for this other simp here," and now he was addressing the assembled +diners while nodding toward my friend, "it hasn't been three weeks since +he was begging to know what I could do for him. And now look at +him--entering into a petty little game of potato-cheating! + +"I swear," he went on savagely, talking to the room in general, +"sometimes I don't know what to do with such damned fools. The right +thing would be to set these two, and about fifty others in this place, +out on the main road with their trunks and let them go to hell. They +don't deserve the attention of a conscientious man. I prohibit +gambling--what happens? A lot of nincompoops and mental lightweights +with more money than brains sneak off into a field of an afternoon on +the excuse that they are going for a walk, and then sit down and lose or +win a bucket of money just to show off what hells of fellows they are, +what sports, what big 'I ams.' I prohibit cigarette-smoking, not because +I think it's literally going to kill anybody but because I think it +looks bad here, sets a bad example to a lot of young wasters who come +here and who ought to be broken of the vice, and besides, because I +don't like cigarette-smoking here--don't want it and won't have it. What +happens? A lot of sissies and mamma's boys and pet heirs, whose fathers +haven't got enough brains to cut 'em off and make 'em get out and work, +come up here, sneak in cigarettes or get the servants to, and then hide +out behind the barn or a tree down in the lot and sneak and smoke like +a lot of cheap schoolboys. God, it makes me sick! What's the use of a +man working out a fact during a lifetime and letting other people have +the benefit of it--not because he needs their money, but that they need +his help--if all the time he is going to have such cattle to deal with? +Not one out of twenty or forty men that come here really wants me to +help him or to help himself. What he wants is to have some one drive him +in the way he ought to go, kick him into it, instead of his buckling +down and helping himself. What's the good of bothering with such damned +fools? A man ought to take the whole pack and run 'em off the place with +a dog-whip." He waved his hand in the air. "It's sickening. It's +impossible. + +"As for you two," he added, turning to us, but suddenly stopped. "Hell, +what's the use! Why should I bother with you? Do as you damned well +please, and stay sick or die!" + +He turned on his heel and walked out of the dining-room, leaving us to +sit there. I was so dumbfounded by the harangue our pseudo-cleverness +had released that I could scarcely speak. My appetite was gone and I +felt wretched. To think of having been the cause of this unnecessary +tongue-lashing to the others! And I felt that we were, and justly, the +target for their rather censorious eyes. + +"My God!" moaned my companion most dolefully. "That's always the way +with me. Nothing that I ever do comes out right. All my life I've been +unlucky. My mother died when I was seven, and my father's never had any +use for me. I started in three or four businesses four or five years +ago, but none of them ever came out right. My yacht burned last summer, +and I've had neurasthenia for two years." He catalogued a list of ills +that would have done honor to Job himself, and he was worth nine +millions, so I heard! + +Two or three additional and amusing incidents, and I am done. + +One of the most outré things in connection with our rides about the +countryside was Culhane's attitude toward life and the natives and +passing strangers as representing life. Thus one day, as I recall very +well, we were riding along a backwoods country road, very shadowy and +branch-covered, a great company of us four abreast, when suddenly and +after his very military fashion there came a "Halt! Right by fours! +Right dress! Face!" and presently we were all lined up in a row facing a +greensward which had suddenly been revealed to the left and on which, +and before a small plumber's stove standing outside some gentleman's +stable, was stretched a plumber and his helper. The former, a man of +perhaps thirty-five, the latter a lad of, say, fourteen or fifteen, were +both very grimy and dirty, but taking their ease in the morning sun, a +little pot of lead on the stove being waited for, I presume, that it +might boil. + +Culhane, leaving his place at the head of the column, returned to the +center nearest the plumber and his helper and pointing at them and +addressing us in a very clear voice, said: + +"There you have it. There's American labor for you, at its best--union +labor, the poor, downtrodden workingman. Look at him." We all looked. +"This poor hard-working plumber here," and at that the latter stirred +and sat up, scarcely even now grasping what it was all about, so +suddenly had we descended upon him, "earns or demands sixty cents an +hour, and this poor sweating little helper here has to have forty. +They're working now. They're waiting for that little bit of lead to +boil, at a dollar an hour between them. They can't do a thing, either of +'em, until it does, and lead has to be well done, you know, before it +can be used. + +"Well, now, these two here," he continued, suddenly shifting his tone +from one of light sarcasm to a kind of savage contempt, "imagine they +are getting along, making life a lot better for themselves, when they +lie about this way and swindle another man out of his honest due in +connection with the work he is paying for. He can't help himself. He +can't know everything. If he did he'd probably find what's wrong in +there and fix it himself in three minutes. But if he did that and the +union heard of it they'd boycott him. They'd come around and blackmail +him, blow up his barn, or make him pay for the work he did himself. I +know 'em. I have to deal with 'em. They fix my pipes in the same way +that these two are fixing his--lying on the grass at a dollar an hour. +And they want five dollars a pound for every bit of lead they use. If +they forget anything and have to go back to town for it, you pay for +it, at a dollar an hour. They get on the job at nine and quit at four, +in the country. If you say anything, they quit altogether--they're +_union_ laborers--and they won't let any one else do it, either. Once +they're on the job they have to rest every few minutes, like these two. +Something has to boil, or they have to wait for something. Isn't it +wonderful! Isn't it beautiful! And all of us of course are made free and +equal! They're just as good as we are! If you work and make money and +have any plumbing to do you have to support 'em--Right by fours! Guide +right! Forward!" and off we trotted, breaking into a headlong gallop a +little farther on as if he wished to outrun the mood which was holding +him at the moment. + +The plumber and his assistant, fully awake now to the import of what had +occurred, stared after us. The journeyman plumber, who was short and +fat, sat and blinked. At last he recovered his wits sufficiently to cry, +"Aw, go to hell, you ---- ---- ----!" but by that time we were well along +the road and I am not sure that Culhane even heard. + +Another day as we were riding along a road which led into a nearby city +of, say, twenty thousand, we encountered a beer truck of great size and +on its seat so large and ruddy and obese a German as one might go a long +way and still not see. It was very hot. The German was drowsy and taking +his time in the matter of driving. As we drew near, Culhane suddenly +called a halt and, lining us up as was his rule, called to the horses of +the brewery wagon, who also obeyed his lusty "Whoa!" The driver, from +his high perch above, stared down on us with mingled curiosity and +wonder. + +"Now, here's an illustration of what I mean," Culhane began, apropos of +nothing at all, "when I say that the word man ought to be modified or +changed in some way so that when we use it we would mean something more +definite than we mean now. That thing you see sitting up on that +wagon-seat there--call that a man? And then call me one? Or a man like +Charles A. Dana? Or a man like General Grant? Hell! Look at him! Look at +his shape! Look at that stomach! You think a thing like that--call it a +man if you want to--has any brains or that he's really any better than a +pig in a sty? If you turn a horse out to shift for himself he'll eat +just enough to keep in condition; same way with a dog, a cat or a bird. +But let one of these things, that some people call a _man_, come along, +give him a job and enough money or a chance to stuff himself, and see +what happens. A thing like that connects himself with one end of a beer +hose and then he thinks he's all right. He gets enough guts to start a +sausage factory, and then he blows up, I suppose, or rots. Think of it! +And we call him a man--or some do!" + +During this amazing and wholly unexpected harangue (I never saw him stop +any one before), the heavy driver, who did not understand English very +well, first gazed and then strained with his eyebrows, not being able +quite to make out what it was all about. From the chuckling and laughter +that finally set up in one place and another he began dimly to +comprehend that he was being made fun of, used as an unsatisfactory jest +of some kind. Finally his face clouded for a storm and his eyes blazed, +the while his fat red cheeks grew redder. "_Donnervetter!_" he began +gutturally to roar. "_Schweine hunde! Hunds knoche! Nach der polizei +soll man reufen!_" + +I for one pulled my horse cautiously back, as he cracked a great whip, +and, charging savagely through us, drove on. Culhane, having made his +unkind comments, gave orders for our orderly formation once more and +calmly led us away. + +Perhaps the most amusing phase of him was his opposition to and contempt +for inefficiency of any kind. If he asked you to do anything, no matter +what, and you didn't at once leap to the task ready and willing and able +so to do, he scarcely had words enough with which to express himself. On +one occasion, as I recall all too well, he took us for a drive in his +tally-ho--one or two or three that he possessed--a great lumbering, +highly lacquered, yellow-wheeled vehicle, to which he attached seven or +eight or nine horses, I forget which. This tally-ho ride was a regular +Sunday morning or afternoon affair unless it was raining, a call +suddenly sounding from about the grounds somewhere at eleven or at two +in the afternoon, "Tally-ho at eleven-thirty" (or two-thirty, as the +case might be). "All aboard!" Gathering all the reins in his hands and +perching himself in the high seat above, with perhaps one of his guests +beside him, all the rest crowded willy-nilly on the seats within and on +top, he would carry us off, careening about the countryside most madly, +several of his hostlers acting as liveried footmen or outriders and one +of them perched up behind on the little seat, the technical name of +which I have forgotten, waving and blowing the long silver trumpet, the +regulation blasts on which had to be exactly as made and provided for +such occasions. Often, having been given no warning as to just when it +was to be, there would be a mad scramble to get into our _de rigueur_ +Sunday clothes, for Culhane would not endure any flaws in our +appearance, and if we were not ready and waiting when one of his +stablemen swung the vehicle up to the door at the appointed time he was +absolutely furious. + +On the particular occasion I have in mind we all clambered on in good +time, all spick and span and in our very best, shaved, powdered, hands +appropriately gloved, our whiskers curled and parted, our shoes shined, +our hats brushed; and up in front was Culhane, gentleman de luxe for the +occasion, his long-tailed whip looped exactly as it should be, no doubt, +ready to be flicked out over the farthest horse's head, and up behind +was the trumpeter--high hat, yellow-topped boots, a uniform of some +grand color, I forget which. + +But, as it turned out on this occasion, there had been a hitch at the +last minute. The regular hostler or stableman who acted as footman +extraordinary and trumpeter plenipotentiary, the one who could truly and +ably blow this magnificent horn, was sick or his mother was dead. At any +rate, there he wasn't. And in order not to irritate Culhane, a second +hostler had been dressed and given his seat and horn--only he couldn't +blow it. As we began to clamber in I heard him asking, "Can any of you +gentleman blow the trumpet? Do any of you gentleman know the regular +trumpet call?" + +No one responded, although there was much discussion in a low key. Some +could, or thought they could, but hesitated to assume so frightful a +risk. At the same time Culhane, hearing the fuss and knowing perhaps +that his substitute could not trumpet, turned grimly around and said, +"Say, do you mean to say there isn't any one back there who knows how to +blow that thing? What's the matter with you, Caswell?" he called to +one, and getting only mumbled explanations from that quarter, called to +another, "How about you, Drewberry? Or you, Crashaw?" + +All three apologized briskly. They were terrified by the mere thought of +trying. Indeed no one seemed eager to assume the responsibility, until +finally he became so threatening and assured us so volubly that unless +some immediate and cheerful response were made he would never again +waste one blank minute on a lot of blank-blank this and thats, that one +youth, a rash young society somebody from Rochester, volunteered more or +less feebly that he "thought" that "maybe he could manage it." He took a +seat directly under the pompously placed trumpeter, and we were off. + +"Heigh-ho!" Out the gate and down the road and up a nearby slope at a +smart clip, all of us gazing cheerfully and possibly vainly about, for +it was a bright day and a gay country. Now the trumpeter, as is provided +for on all such occasions, lifted the trumpet to his lips and began on +the grandiose "ta-ra-ta-ta," but to our grief and pain, although he got +through fairly successfully on his first attempt, there was one place +where there was a slight hitch, a "false crack," as some one rowdyishly +remarked. Culhane, although tucking up his lines and stiffening his back +irritably at this flaw, said nothing. For after all a poor trumpeter was +better than none at all. A little later, however, the trumpeter having +hesitated to begin again, he called back, "Well, what about the horn? +What about the horn? Can't you do something with it? Have you quit for +the day?" + +Up went the horn once more, and a most noble and encouraging +"Ta-ra-ta-ta" was begun, but just at the critical point, and when we +were all most prayerfully hoping against hope, as it were, that this +time he would round the dangerous curves of it gracefully and come to a +grand finish, there was a most disconcerting and disheartening squeak. +It was pathetic, ghastly. As one man we wilted. What would Culhane say +to that? We were not long in doubt. "Great Christ!" he shouted, looking +back and showing a countenance so black that it was positively +terrifying. "Who did that? Throw him off! What do you think--that I want +the whole country to know I'm airing a lot of lunatics? Somebody who +can blow that thing, take it and blow it, for God's sake! I'm not going +to drive around here without a trumpeter!" + +For a few moments there was more or less painful gabbling in all the +rows, pathetic whisperings and "go ons" or eager urgings of one and +another to sacrifice himself upon the altar of necessity, insistences by +the ex-trumpeter that he had blown trumpets in his day as good as any +one--what the deuce had got into him anyhow? It must be the horn! + +"Well," shouted Culhane finally, as a stop-gap to all this, "isn't any +one going to blow that thing? Do you mean to tell me that I'm hauling +all of you around, with not a man among you able to blow a dinky little +horn? What's the use of my keeping a lot of fancy vehicles in my barn +when all I have to deal with is a lot of shoe salesmen and floorwalkers? +Hell! Any child can blow it. It's as easy as a fish-horn. If I hadn't +these horses to attend to I'd blow it myself. Come on--come on! +Kerrigan, what's the matter with you blowing it?" + +"The truth is, Mr. Culhane," explained Mr. Kerrigan, the very dapper and +polite heir of a Philadelphia starch millionaire, "I haven't had any +chance to practice with one of those for several years. I'll try it if +you want me to, but I can't guarantee--" + +"Try!" insisted Culhane violently. "You can't do any worse than that +other mutt, if you blow for a million years. Blow it! Blow it!" + +Mr. Kerrigan turned back and being very cheerfully tendered the horn by +the last failure, wetted and adjusted his lips, lifted it upward and +backward--and-- + +It was pathetic. It was positively dreadful, the wheezing, grinding +sounds that were emitted. + +"God!" shouted Culhane, pulling up the coach to a dead stop. "Stop that! +Whoa! Whoa!!! Do you mean to say that that's the best you can do? Well, +this finishes me! Whoa! What kind of a bunch of cattle have I got up +here, anyhow? Whoa! And out in this country too where I'm known and +where they know all about such things! God! Whoa! Here I spend thousands +of dollars to get together an equipment that will make a pleasant +afternoon for a crowd of gentlemen, and this is what I draw--hams! A lot +of barflies who never saw a tally-ho! Well, I'm done! I'm through! I'll +split the damned thing up for firewood before I ever take it out again! +Get down! Get out, all of you! I'll not haul one of you back a step! +Walk back or anywhere you please--to hell, for all I care! I'm through! +Get out! I'm going to turn around and get back to the barn as quick as I +can--up some alley if I can find one. To think of having such a bunch of +hacks to deal with!" + +Humbly and wearily we climbed down and, while he drove savagely on to +some turning-place, stood about first in small groups, then by twos and +threes began making our way--rather gingerly, I must confess, in our +fine clothes--along the winding road back to the place on the hill. But +such swearing! Such un-Sabbath-like comments! The number of times his +sturdy Irish soul was wished into innermost and almost sacrosanct +portions of Sheol! He was cursed from more angles and in more +artistically and architecturally nobly constructed phrases and even +paragraphs than any human being that I have ever heard of before or +since, phrases so livid and glistening that they smoked. + +Talk about the carved ivories of speech! The mosaics of verbal precious +stones! + +You should have heard us on our way back! + +And still we stayed. + + * * * * * + +Some two years later I was passing this place in company with some +friends, when I asked my host, who also knew of the place, to turn in. +During my stay it had been the privilege and custom among those who knew +much of this institution to drive through the grounds and past the very +doors of the "repair shop," even to stop if Culhane chanced to be +visible and talking to or at least greeting him, in some cases. A custom +of Culhane's was, in the summer time, to have erected on the lawn a +large green-and-white striped marquee tent, a very handsome thing +indeed, in which was placed a field-officer's table and several camp +chairs, and some books and papers. Here of a hot day, when he was not +busy with us, he would sit and read. And when he was in here or +somewhere about, a little pennant was run up, possibly as guide to +visiting guests or friends. At any rate, it was the presence of this +pennant which caused me to know that he was about and to wish that I +might have a look at him once more, great lion that he was. As "guests," +none of us were ever allowed to come within more than ten feet of it, +let alone in it. As passing visitors, however, we might, and many did, +stop, remind him that we had once been his humble slaves, and ask leave +to congratulate him on his health and sturdy years. At such times, if +the visitors looked interesting enough, or he remembered them well, he +would deign to come to the tent-fly and, standing there à la Napoleon at +Lodi or Grant in the Wilderness, be for the first time in his relations +with them a bit civil. + +Anyway, on this occasion, urged on by curiosity to see my liege once +more and also to learn whether he would remember me at all, I had my +present host roll his car up to the tent door, where Culhane was +reading. Feeling that by this venturesome deed I had "let myself in for +it" and had to "make a showing," I climbed briskly out and, approaching, +recalled myself to him. With a semi-wry expression, half smile, half +contemptuous curl of the corners of his mouth, he recalled me and took +my extended hand; then seeing that possibly my friends if not myself +looked interesting, he arose and came to the door. I introduced +them--one a naval officer of distinction, the other the owner of a great +estate some miles farther on. For the first time in my relations with +him I had an opportunity to note how grandly gracious he could be. He +accepted my friends' congratulations as to the view with a princely nod +and suggested that on other days it was even better. He was soon to be +busy now or he would have some one show my friends through the shop. +Some Saturday afternoon, if they would telephone or stop in passing, he +would oblige. + +I noted at once that he had not aged in the least. He was sixty-two +or -three now and as vigorous and trim as ever. And now he treated me as +courteously and formally as though he had never browbeaten me in the +least. "Good heavens," I said, "how much better to be a visitor than a +guest!" After a moment or two we offered many thanks and sped on, but +not without many a backward glance on my part, for the place fascinated +me. That simply furnished institution! That severe regimen! This +latter-day Stoic and Spartan in his tent! And, above all things, and the +most astounding to me, so little could one know him, the book he had +been reading and which he had laid upon his little table as I entered--I +could not help noting the title for he laid it back up, open face +down--was Lecky's "History of European Morals"! + +Now! + +Well! + + +IN RETROSPECT + +Two years after this visit, in a serious attempt to set down what I +really did think of him, I arranged the following thoughts with which I +closed my sketch then and which I now append for what they may be worth. +They represented my best thought concerning him then: + +"Thomas Culhane belongs to that class of society which the preachers and +the world's army of conventional merchants, lawyers, judges and +reputable citizens generally are presumably, if one may judge by the +moral and religious literature of the day, trying to reach and reform. +Yet here at his sanitarium are gathered representatives of those same +orders, the so-called better element. And here we see them suddenly +dominated, mind and soul, by this being whom they, theoretically at +least, look upon as a brand to be snatched from the burning. + +"As the Church and society view Culhane, so they view all life outside +their own immediate circles. Culhane is in fact a conspicuous figure +among the semi-taboo. He has been referred to in many an argument and +platform and pulpit and in the press as a type of man whose influence is +supposed to be vitiating. Now a minister enters the sanitarium, broken +down by his habits of life, and this same Culhane is able to penetrate +him, to see that his dogmatic and dictatorial mental habits are the +cause of his ailment, and he has the moral courage to shock him, to drag +him by apparently brutal processes out of his rut. He reads the man +accurately, he knows him better than he knows himself, and he effects a +cure. + +"This astonishing condition is certainly a new light for those seeking +to labor among men. Those who are successful gamblers, pugilists, +pickpockets, saloon-keepers, book-makers, jockeys and the like are so +by reason of their intelligence, their innate mental acumen and +perception. It is a fact that in the sporting world and among the +unconventional men-about-town you will often find as good if not better +judges of human nature than elsewhere. Contact with a rough and ready +and all-too-revealing world teaches them much. The world's customary +pretensions and delusions are in the main ripped away. They are bruised +by rough facts. Often the men gathered in some such café and whom +preachers and moralists are most ready to condemn have a clearer +perception of preachers, church organizations and reformers and their +relative importance in the multitudinous life of the world than the +preachers, church congregations and reformers have of those in the café +or the world outside to which they belong. + +"This is why, in my humble judgment, the Church and those associated +with its aims make no more progress than they do. While they are +consciously eager to better the world, they are so wrapped up in +themselves and their theories, so hampered by their arbitrary and +limited conceptions of good and evil, that the great majority of men +move about them unseen, except in a far-away and superficial manner. Men +are not influenced at arm's length. It would be interesting to know if +some day a preacher or judge, who, offended by Mr. Culhane's profanity +and brutality, will be able to reach the gladiator and convert him to +his views as readily as the gladiator is able to rid him of his +ailment." + +In justice to the preachers, moralists, et cetera, I should now like to +add that it is probably not any of the virtues or perfections +represented by a man like Culhane with which they are quarreling, but +the vices of many who are in no wise like him and do not stand for the +things he stands for. At the same time, the so-called "sports" might +well reply that it is not with any of the really admirable qualities of +the "unco guid" that they quarrel, but their too narrow interpretations +of virtue and duty and their groundless generalization as to types and +classes. + +Be it so. + +Here is meat for a thousand controversies. + + + + +_A True Patriarch_ + + +In the streets of a certain moderate-sized county seat in Missouri not +many years ago might have been seen a true patriarch. Tall, +white-haired, stout in body and mind, he roamed among his neighbors, +dispensing sympathy and a curiously genial human interest through the +leisure of his day. One might have taken him to be Walt Whitman, of whom +he was the living counterpart; or, in the clear eye, high forehead and +thick, appealing white hair, have seen a marked similarity to Bryant as +he appeared in his later years. Already at this time he had seen man's +allotted term on earth, and yet he was still strong in the councils of +his people and rich in the accumulated interests of a lifetime. + +At the particular time in question he was most interesting for the +eccentricities which years of stalwart independence had developed, but +these were lovable peculiarities and only severed from remarkable +actions by the compelling power of time and his increasing infirmities. +The loud, though pleasant, voice, and strong, often fiery, declamatory +manner, were remnants of the days when his fellow-citizens were wholly +swayed by the magnificence of his orations. Charmingly simple in manner, +he still represented with it that old courtesy which made every stranger +his guest. When moved by righteous indignation, there cropped out the +daring and domineering insistence of one who had always followed what he +considered to be the right, and who knew its power. + +Even then, old as he was, if there were any topic worthy of discussion, +and his fellow-citizens were in danger of going wrong, he became an +haranguing prophet, as it were, a local Isaiah or Jeremiah. Every gate +heard him, for he stopped on his rounds in front of each, and calling +out the inhabitant poured forth such a volume of fact and argument as +tended to remove all doubt of what he, at least, considered right. All +of this he invariably accompanied by a magnificence of gesture worthy of +a great orator. + +At such times his mind, apparently, was almost wholly engrossed with +these matters, and I have it from one of his daughters, who, besides +being his daughter, was a sincere admirer of his, that often he might +have been seen coming down his private lawn, and even the public streets +when there was no one near to hear him, shaking his head, gesticulating, +sometimes sweeping upward with his arms, as if addressing his +fellow-citizens in assemblage. + +"He used to push his big hat well back upon his forehead," she said on +one occasion, "and often in winter, forgetful of the bitter cold, would +take off his overcoat and carry it on his arm. Occasionally he would +stop quite still, as if he were addressing a companion, and with +sweeping gestures illustrate some idea or other, although, of course, +there was no one present. Then, planting his big cane forcibly with each +step, as though still emphasizing his recently stated ideas, he would +come forward and enter the house." + +The same suggestion of mental concentration might have been seen in +everything that he did, and I personally have seen him leading a pet +Jersey cow home for milking with the same dignity of bearing and +forcefulness of manner that characterized him when he stood before his +fellow-citizens at a public meeting addressing them on some important +topic. He never appeared to have a sense of difference from or +superiority over his fellowmen, but only the keenest sympathy with all +things human. Every man was his brother, every human being honest. A cow +or a horse was as much to be treated with sympathy and charity as a man +or a woman. If a purse was lost, forty-nine out of every fifty men would +return it without thought of reward, if you were to believe him. + +In the little town where he had lived so many years, and where he +finally died, he knew every living creature from cattle upwards, and +could call each by name. The sick, the poor, the widows, the orphans, +the insane, and dependents of all kinds, were his especial care. Every +Sunday afternoon for years, it was his custom to go the rounds of the +indigent, frequently carrying a basket of his good wife's dinner. This +he distributed, along with consolation and advice. Occasionally he would +return home of a winter's day very much engrossed with the discovery of +some condition of distress hitherto unseen. + +"Mother," he would say to his wife in that same oratorical manner +previously noted, as he entered the house, "I've found such a poor +family. They have moved into the old saloon below Solmson's. You know +how open that is." This was delivered in the most dramatic style after +he had indicated something important by throwing his overcoat on the bed +and standing his cane in the corner. "There's a man and several children +there. The mother is dead. They were on their way to Kansas, but it got +so cold they've had to stop here until the winter is broken. They're +without food; almost no clothing. Can't we find something for them?" + +"On these occasions," said his daughter to me once, "he would, as he +nearly always did, talk to himself on the way, as if he were discussing +politics. But you could never tell what he was coming for." + +Then with his own labor he would help his wife seek out the odds and +ends that could be spared, and so armed, would return, arguing by the +way as if an errand of mercy were the last thing he contemplated. Nearly +always the subject of these orations was some public wrong or error +which should receive, although in all likelihood it did not, immediate +attention. + +Always of a reverent, although not exactly religious, turn of mind, he +took considerable interest in religious ministration, though he steadily +and persistently refused, in his later years, to go to church. He had +St. James's formula to quote in self-defense, which insists that "Pure +religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, To visit the +fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted +from the world." Often, when pressed too close, he would deliver this +with kindly violence. One of the most touching anecdotes representative +of this was related to me by his daughter, who said: + +"Mr. Kent, a poor man of our town, was sick for months previous to his +death, and my father used to go often, sometimes daily, to visit him. He +would spend perhaps a few minutes, perhaps an hour, with him, singing, +praying, and ministering to his spiritual wants. The pastor of the +church living so far away and coming only once a month, this duty +devolved upon some one, and my father did his share, and always felt +more than repaid for the time spent by the gratitude shown by the many +poor people he aided in this way. + +"Mr. Kent's favorite song, for instance, was 'On Jordan's Stormy Banks +I Stand.' This he would have my father sing, and his clear voice could +often be heard in the latter's small house, and seemed to impart +strength to the sick man. + +"Upon one occasion, I remember, Mr. Kent expressed a desire to hear a +certain song. My father was not very familiar with it but, anxious to +grant his request, came home and asked me if I would get a friend of +mine and go and sing the song for him. + +"We entered the sick-room, he leading us by the hand, for we were +children at the time. Mr. Kent's face at once brightened, and father +said to him: + +"'Mr. Kent, I told you this morning that I couldn't sing the song you +asked for, but these girls know it, and have come to sing it for you.' + +"Then, waving his hand gently toward us, he said: + +"'Sing, children.' + +"We did so, and when we had finished he knelt and offered a prayer, not +for the poor man's recovery but that he might put his trust in the Lord +and meet death without fear. I have never been more deeply impressed nor +felt more confident in the presence of death, for the man died soon +after, soothed into perfect peace." + +On another occasion he was sitting with some friends in front of the +courthouse in his town, talking and sunning himself, when a neighbor +came running up in great excitement, calling: + +"Mr. White, Mr. White, come, right quick. Mrs. Sadler wants you." + +He explained that the woman in question was dying, and, being afraid she +would strangle in her last moments, had asked the bystanders to run for +him, her old acquaintance, in the efficacy of whose prayers she had +great faith. The old patriarch was without a coat at the time, but, +unmindful of that, hastened after. + +"Mr. White," exclaimed the sick woman excitedly upon seeing him, "I want +you to pray that I won't strangle. I'm not afraid to die, but I don't +want to die that way. I want you to offer a prayer for me that I may be +saved from that. I'm so afraid." + +Seeing by the woman's manner that she was very much overwrought, he +used all his art to soothe her. + +"Have no fear, Mrs. Sadler, now," he exclaimed solemnly. "You won't +strangle. I will ask the Lord for you, and this evil will not come upon +you. You need not have any fear." + +"Kneel down, you," he commanded, turning upon the assembled neighbors +and relatives who had followed or had been there before him, while he +pushed back his white hair from his forehead. "Let us now pray that this +good woman here be allowed to pass away in peace." And even with the +rustle of kneeling that accompanied his words he lifted up his coatless +arms and began to pray. + +Through his magnificent phraseology, no doubt, as well as his profound +faith, he succeeded in inducing a feeling of peace and quiet in all his +hearers, the sick woman included, who, listening, sank into a restful +stupor, from which all agony of mind had apparently disappeared. Then +when the physical atmosphere of the room had been thus reorganized, he +ceased and retired to the yard in front of the house, where on a bench +under a shade tree he seated himself to wipe his moist brow and recover +his composure. In a few moments a slight commotion in the sick-room +denoted that the end had come. Several neighbors came out, and one said, +"Well, it is all over, Mr. White. She is dead." + +"Yes," he replied with great assurance. "She didn't strangle, did she?" + +"No," said the other, "the Lord granted her request." + +"I knew He would," he replied in his customary loud and confident tone. +"Prayer is always answered." + +Then, after viewing the dead woman and making additional comments, he +was off, as placid as though nothing had occurred. + +I happened to hear of this some time after, and one day, while sitting +with him on his front porch, said, "Mr. White, do you really believe +that the Lord directly answered your prayer in that instance?" + +"Answered!" he almost shouted defiantly and yet with a kind of human +tenderness that one could never mistake. "Of course He answered! Why +wouldn't He--a faithful old servant like that? To be sure, He answered." + +"Might it not have been merely the change of atmosphere which your +voice and strength introduced? The quality of your own thoughts goes for +something in such matters. Mind acts on mind." + +"Certainly," he said, in a manner as agreeable as if it had always been +a doctrine with him. "I know that. But, after all, what is _that_--my +mind, your mind, the sound of voices? It's all the Lord anyhow, whatever +you think." + +How could one gainsay such a religionist as that? + +The poor, the blind, the insane, and sufferers of all sorts, as I have +said before, were always objects of his keenest sympathies. Evidence of +it flashed out at the most unexpected moments--loud, rough exclamations, +which, however, always contained a note so tender and suggestive as to +defy translation. Thus, while we were sitting on his front porch one day +and hotly discussing politics to while away a dull afternoon, there came +down the street, past his home, a queer, ragged, half-demented +individual, who gazed about in an aimless sort of way, peering queerly +over fences, looking idly down the road, staring strangely overhead into +the blue. It was apparent, in a moment, that the man was crazy, some +demented creature, harmless enough, however, to be allowed abroad and so +save the county the expense of caring for him. The old man broke a +sentence short in order to point and shake his head emotionally. + +"Look at that," he said to me, with a pathetic sweep of the arm, "now +just look at that! There's a poor, demented soul, with no one to look +after him. His brother is a hard-working saddler. His sister is dead. No +money to speak of, any of them." He paused a moment, and then added, "I +don't know what we're to do in such cases. The state and the county +don't always do their duty. Most people here are too poor to help, there +are so many to be taken care of. It seems almost at times as if you +can't do anything but leave them to the mercy of God, and yet you can't +do that either, quite," and he once more shook his head sadly. + +I was for denouncing the county, but he explained very charitably that +it was already very heavily taxed by such cases. He did not seem to know +exactly what should be done at the time, but he was very sorry, very, +and for the time being the warm argument in which he had been indulging +was completely forgotten. Now he lapsed into silence and all +communication was suspended, while he rocked silently in his great chair +and thought. + +One day in passing the local poor-farm (and this is of my own +knowledge), he came upon a man beating a poor idiot with a whip. The +latter was incapable of reasoning and therefore of understanding why it +was that he was being beaten. The two were beside a wood-pile and the +demented one was crying. In a moment the old patriarch had jumped out of +his conveyance, leaped over the fence, and confronted the amazed +attendant with an uplifted arm. + +"Not another lick!" he fairly shouted. "What do you mean by striking an +idiot?" + +"Why," explained the attendant, "I want him to carry in the wood, and he +won't do it." + +"It is not his place to bring in the wood. He isn't put here for that, +and in the next place he can't understand what you mean. He's put here +to be taken care of. Don't you dare strike him again. I'll see about +this, and you." + +Knowing his interrupter well, his position and power in the community, +the man endeavored to explain that some work must be done by the +inmates, and that this one was refractory. The only way he had of making +him understand was by whipping him. + +"Not another word," the old man blustered, overawing the county +hireling. "You've done a wrong, and you know it. I'll see to this," and +off he bustled to the county courthouse, leaving the transgressor so +badly frightened that whips thereafter were carefully concealed, in this +institution at least. The court, which was held in his home town, was +not in session at the time, and only the clerk was present when he came +tramping down the aisle and stood before the latter with his right hand +uplifted in the position of one about to make oath. + +"Swear me," he called solemnly, and without further explanation, as the +latter stared at him. "I want you to take this testimony under oath." + +The clerk knew well enough the remarkable characteristics of his guest, +whose actions were only too often inexplicable from the ground point of +policy and convention. Without ado, after swearing him, he got out ink +and paper, and the patriarch began. + +"I saw," he said, "in the yard of the county farm of this county, not +over an hour ago, a poor helpless idiot, too weak-minded to understand +what was required of him, and put in that institution by the people of +this county to be cared for, being beaten with a cowhide by Mark +Sheffels, who is an attendant there, because the idiot did not +understand enough to carry in wood, which the people have hired Mark +Sheffels to carry in. Think of it," he added, quite forgetting the +nature of his testimony and that he was now speaking for dictation and +not for an audience to hear, and going off into a most scorching and +brilliant arraignment of the entire system in which such brutality could +occur, "a poor helpless idiot, unable to frame in his own disordered +mind a single clear sentence, being beaten by a sensible, healthy brute +too lazy and trifling to perform the duties for which he was hired and +which he personally is supposed to perform." + +There was more to the effect, for instance, that the American people and +the people of this county should be ashamed to think that such crimes +should be permitted and go unpunished, and that this was a fair sample. +The clerk, realizing the importance of Mr. White in the community, and +the likelihood of his following up his charges very vigorously, quietly +followed his address in a very deferential way, jotting down such +salient features as he had time to write. When he was through, however, +he ventured to lift his voice in protest. + +"You know, Mr. White," he said, "Sheffels is a member of our party, and +was appointed by us. Of course, now, it's too bad that this thing should +have happened, and he ought to be dropped, but if you are going to make +a public matter of it in this way it may hurt us in the election next +month." + +The old patriarch threw back his head and gazed at him in the most +blazing way, almost without comprehension, apparently, of so petty a +view. + +"What!" he exclaimed. "What's that got to do with it? Do you want the +Democratic Party to starve the poor and beat the insane?" + +The opposition was rather flattened by the reply, and left the old +gentleman to storm out. For once, at least, in this particular instance, +anyhow, he had purified the political atmosphere, as if by lightning, +and within the month following the offending attendant was dropped. + +Politics, however, had long known his influence in a similar way. There +was a time when he was the chief political figure in the county, and +possessed the gift of oratory, apparently, beyond that of any of his +fellow-citizens. Men came miles to hear him, and he took occasion to +voice his views on every important issue. It was his custom in those +days, for instance, when he had anything of special importance to say, +to have printed at his own expense a few placards announcing his coming, +which he would then carry to the town selected for his address and +personally nail up. When the hour came, a crowd, as I am told, was never +wanting. Citizens and farmers of both parties for miles about usually +came to hear him. + +Personally I never knew how towering his figure had been in the past, or +how truly he had been admired, until one day I drifted in upon a lone +bachelor who occupied a hut some fifteen miles from the patriarch's home +and who was rather noted in the community at the time that I was there +for his love of seclusion and indifference to current events. He had not +visited the nearest neighboring village in something like five years, +and had not been to the moderate-sized county seat in ten. Naturally he +treasured memories of his younger days and more varied activity. + +"I don't know," he said to me one day, in discussing modern statesmen +and political fame in general, "but getting up in politics is a queer +game. I can't understand it. Men that you'd think ought to get up don't +seem to. It doesn't seem to be real greatness that helps 'em along." + +"What makes you say that?" I asked. + +"Well, there used to be a man over here at Danville that I always +thought would get up, and yet he didn't. He was the finest orator I ever +heard." + +"Who was he?" I asked. + +"Arch White," he said quietly. "He was really a great man. He was a good +man. Why, many's the time I've driven fifteen miles to hear him. I used +to like to go into Danville just for that reason. He used to be around +there, and sometimes he'd talk a little. He could stir a fellow up." + +"Oratory alone won't make a statesman," I ventured, more to draw him out +than to object. + +"Oh, I know," he answered, "but White was a good man. The +plainest-spoken fellow I ever heard. He seemed to be able to tell us +just what was the matter with us, or at least I thought so. He always +seemed a wonderful speaker to me. I've seen as many as two thousand +people up at High Hill hollerin' over what he was saying until you could +hear them for miles." + +"Why didn't he get up, then, do you suppose?" I now asked on my part. + +"I dunno," he answered. "Guess he was too honest, maybe. It's sometimes +that way in politics, you know. He was a mighty determined man, and one +that would talk out in convention, whatever happened. Whenever they got +to twisting things too much and doing what wasn't just honest, I suppose +he'd kick out. Anyhow, he didn't get up, and I've always wondered at +it." + +In Danville one might hear other stories wholly bearing out this latter +opinion, and always interesting--delightful, really. Thus, a long, +enduring political quarrel was once generated by an incident of no great +importance, save that it revealed an odd streak in the old patriarch's +character and his interpretation of charity and duty. + +A certain young man, well known to the people of this county and to the +patriarch, came to Danville one day and either drank up or gambled away +a certain sum of money intrusted to him by his aunt for disposition in +an entirely different manner. When the day was all over, however, he was +not too drunk to realize that he was in a rather serious predicament, +and so, riding out of town, traveled a little way and then tearing his +clothes and marking his skin, returned, complaining that he had been set +upon by the wayside, beaten, and finally robbed. His clothes were in a +fine state of dilapidation after his efforts, and even his body bore +marks which amply seconded his protestation. In the slush and rain of +the dark village street he was finally picked up by the county treasurer +seemingly in a wretched state, and the latter, knowing the generosity +of White and the fact that his door was always open to those in +distress, took the young man by the arm and led him to the patriarch's +door, where he personally applied for him. The old patriarch, holding a +lamp over his head, finally appeared and peered outward into the +darkness. + +"Yes," he exclaimed, as he always did, eyeing the victim; "what is it +you want of me?" + +"Mr. White," said the treasurer, "it's me. I've got young Squiers here, +who needs your sympathy and aid tonight. He's been beaten and robbed out +here on the road while he was on his way to his mother's home." + +"Who?" inquired the patriarch, stepping out on the porch and eyeing the +newcomer, the while he held the lamp down so as to get a good look. +"Billy Squiers!" he exclaimed when he saw who it was. "Mr. Morton, I'll +not take this man into my house. I know him. He's a drunkard and a liar. +No man has robbed him. This is all a pretense, and I want you to take +him away from here. Put him in the hotel. I'll pay his expenses for the +night, but he can't come into my home," and he retired, closing the door +after him. + +The treasurer fell back amazed at this onslaught, but recovered +sufficiently to knock at the door once more and declare to his friend +that he deemed him no Christian in taking such a stand and that true +religion commanded otherwise, even though he suspected the worst. The +man was injured and penniless. He even went so far as to quote the +parable of the good Samaritan who passed down by way of Jericho and +rescued him who had fallen among thieves. The argument had long +continued into the night and rain before the old patriarch finally waved +them both away. + +"Don't you quote Scripture to me," he finally shouted defiantly, still +holding the light and flourishing it in an oratorical sweep. "I know my +Bible. There's nothing in it requiring me to shield liars and drunkards, +not a bit of it," and once more he went in and closed the door. + +Nevertheless the youth was housed and fed at his expense and no charge +of any kind made against him, although many believed, as did Mr. White, +that he was guilty of theft, whereas others of the opposing political +camp believed not. However, considerable opposition, based on old Mr. +White's lack of humanity in this instance, was generated by this +argument, and for years he was taunted with it although he always +maintained that he was justified and that the Lord did not require any +such service of him. + +The crowning quality of nearly all of his mercies, as one may easily +see, was their humor. Even he was not unaware, in retrospect, of the +figure he made at times, and would smilingly tell, under provocation, of +his peculiar attitude on one occasion or another. Partially from +himself, from those who saw it, and the judge presiding in the case, was +the following characteristic anecdote gathered. + +In the same community with him at one time lived a certain man by the +name of Moore, who in his day had been an expert tobacco picker, but who +later had come by an injury to his hand and so turned cobbler, and a +rather helpless, although not hopeless, one at that. Mr. White had known +this man from boyhood up, and had been a witness at various times to the +many changes in his fortunes, from the time, for instance, when he had +earned as much as several dollars a day--good pay in that region--to the +hour when he took a cobbler's kit upon his back and began to eke out a +bare livelihood for his old age by traveling about the countryside +mending shoes. At the time under consideration, this ex-tobacco picker +had degenerated into so humble a thing as Uncle Bobby Moore, a poor, +half-remembered cobbler, whose earlier state but few knew, and who at +this time had only a few charitably inclined friends, with some of whom +he spent the more pleasant portion of the year from spring to fall. +Thus, it was his custom to begin his annual pilgrimage with a visit of +ten days to Mr. White, where he would sit and cobble shoes for all the +members of the household. From here he would go to another acquaintance +some ten miles farther on, where he could enjoy the early fruit which +was then ripening in delicious quantity. Then he would visit a friendly +farmer whose home was upon the Missouri River still farther away, where +he did his annual fishing, and so on by slow degrees, until at last he +would reach a neighborhood rich in cider presses, where he would wind up +the fall, and so end his travel for the winter, beginning his peculiar +round once more the following spring at the home of Mr. White. +Naturally the old patriarch knew him and liked him passing well. + +As he grew older, however, Uncle Bobby reached the place where even by +this method and his best efforts he could scarcely make enough to +sustain him in comfort during the winter season, which was one of nearly +six months, free as his food and lodging occasionally were. He was too +feeble. Not desiring to put himself upon any friend for more than a +short visit, he finally applied to the patriarch. + +"I come to you, Mr. White," he said, "because I don't think I can do for +myself any longer in the winter season. My hand hurts a good deal and I +get tired so easily. I want to know if you'd won't help me to get into +the county farm during the winter months, anyhow. In summer I can still +look out for myself, I think." + +In short, he made it clear that in summer he preferred to be out so that +he might visit his friends and still enjoy his declining years. + +The old patriarch was visibly moved by this appeal, and seizing him by +the arm and leading off toward the courthouse where the judge governing +such cases was then sitting he exclaimed, "Come right down here, Uncle +Bobby. I'll see what can be done about this. Your old age shouldn't be +troubled in this fashion--not after all the efforts you have made to +maintain yourself," and bursting in on the court a few moments later, +where a trial was holding at the time, he deliberately led his charge +down the aisle, disturbing the court proceedings by so doing, and +calling as he came: + +"Your Honor, I want you to hear this case especially. It's a very +important and a very sad case, indeed." + +Agape, the spectators paused to listen. The judge, an old and +appreciative friend of his, turned a solemn eye upon this latest +evidence of eccentricity. + +"What is it, Mr. White?" he inquired. + +"Your Honor," returned the latter in his most earnest and oratorical +manner, "this man here, as you may or may not know, is an old and +honorable citizen of this county. He has been here nearly all the days +of his life, and every day of that time he has earned an honest living. +These people here," he said, gazing about upon the interested +spectators, "can witness whether or not he was one of the best tobacco +pickers this county ever saw. Mayhew," he interrupted himself to call to +a spectator on one of the benches, "you know whether Uncle Bobby always +earned an honest living. Speak up. Tell the Court, did he?" + +"Yes, Mr. White," said Mayhew quickly, "he did." + +"Morrison," he called, turning in another direction, where an aged +farmer sat, "what do you know of this man?" + +Mr. Morrison was about to reply, when the Court interfered. + +"The Court knows, Mr. White, that he is an honest man. Now what would +you have it do?" + +"Well, your Honor," resumed the speaker, indifferently following his own +oratorical bent, the while the company surveyed him, amused and smiling, +"this man has always earned an honest living until he injured his hand +here in some way a number of years ago, and since then it has been +difficult for him to make his way and he has been cobbling for a living. +However, he is getting so old now that he can't even earn much at that, +except in the spring and summer, and so I brought him here to have him +assigned a place in the county infirmary. I want you to make out an +order admitting him to that institution, so that I can take it and go +with him and see that he is comfortably placed." + +"All right, Mr. White," replied the judge, surveying the two figures in +mid-aisle, "I so order." + +"But, your Honor," he went on, "there's an exception I want made in this +case. Mr. Moore has a few friends that he likes to visit in the summer, +and who like to have him visit them. I want him to have the privilege of +coming out in the summer to see these people and to see me." + +"All right, Mr. White," said the judge, "he shall have that privilege. +Now, what else?" + +Satisfied in these particulars, the aged citizen led his charge away, +and then went with him to the infirmary, where he presented the order of +the Court and then left him. + +Things went very well with his humble client for a certain time, and +Uncle Bobby was thought to be well disposed of, when one day he came to +his friend again. It appeared that only recently he had been changed +about in his quarters at the infirmary and put into a room with a +slightly demented individual, whose nocturnal wanderings greatly +disturbed his very necessary sleep. + +"I want to know if you won't have them put me by myself, Mr. White," he +concluded. "I need my sleep. But they say they can't do it without an +order." + +Once more the old patriarch led his charge before the Court, then +sitting, as it happened, and breaking in upon the general proceedings as +before, began: + +"Your Honor, this man here, Mr. Moore, whom I brought before you some +time ago, has been comfortably housed by your order, and he's deeply +grateful for it, as he will tell you, and as I can, but he's an old man, +your Honor, and, above all things, needs his rest. Now, of late they've +been quartering him with a poor, demented sufferer down there who walks +a good deal in his sleep, and it wears upon him. I've come here with him +to ask you to allow him to have a room by himself, where he will be +alone and rest undisturbed." + +"Very well, Mr. White," said the Court, "it shall be as you request." + +Without replying, the old gentleman turned and led the supplicant away. + +Everything went peacefully now for a number of years, until finally +Uncle Bobby, having grown so feeble with age that he feared he was soon +to die, came to his friend and asked him to promise him one thing. + +"What is it?" asked the latter. + +By way of replying, the supplicant described an old oak tree which grew +in the yard of the Baptist Church some miles from Danville, and said: + +"I want you to promise that when I am dead, wherever I happen to be at +the time, that you will see that I am buried under that tree." He gave +no particular reason save that he had always liked the tree and the view +it commanded, but made his request a very secret matter and begged to be +assured that Mr. White would come and get his body and carry it to the +old oak. + +The latter, always a respecter of the peculiarities and crotchets of his +friends, promised. After a few years went by, suddenly one day he +learned that Uncle Bobby was not only dead but buried, a thing which +astonished him greatly. No one locally being supposed to know that he +was to have had any special form of burial, the old patriarch at once +recalled his promise. + +"Where is his body?" he asked. + +"Why, they buried it under the old white oak over at Mt. Horeb Church," +was the answer. + +"What!" he exclaimed, too astonished to think of anything save his lost +privilege of mercy, "who told them to bury him there?" + +"Why, _he_ did," said the friend. "It was his last wish, I believe." + +"The confounded villain," he shouted, amusingly enough. "He led me to +believe that I was the only one he told. I alone was to have looked +after his burial, and now look at him--going and having himself buried +without a word. The scoundrel! Would you believe that an old friend like +Uncle Bobby would do anything like that? However," he added after a +time, "I think I know how it was. He got so old and feeble here of late +that he must have lost his mind--otherwise he would never have done +anything like that to me." + +And with this he was satisfied to rest and let bygones be bygones. + + + + +_De Maupassant, Junior_ + + +He dawned on me in the spring of 1906, a stocky, sturdy, penetrative +temperament of not more than twenty-four or -five years of age, steady of +eye, rather aloof and yet pervasive and bristling; a devouring type. +Without saying much, and seeming to take anything I had to say with a +grain of salt, he managed to impress himself on me at once. Frankly, I +liked him very much, although I could see at a glance that he was not so +very much impressed with me. I was an older man than he by, say, ten +years, an editor of an unimportant magazine, newly brought in (which he +did not know) to turn it into something better. In order to earn a few +dollars he had undertaken to prepare for the previous editor a most +ridiculous article, some silly thing about newspaper writing as a career +for women. It had been ordered or encouraged, and I felt that it was but +just that it should be paid for. + +"Why do you waste your time on a thing like that?" I inquired, smiling +and trying to criticize and yet encourage him at one and the same time, +for I had been annoyed by many similar assignments given out by the old +management which could not now be used. "You look to me to have too much +force and sense for that. Why not undertake something worth your time?" + +"My time, hell!" he bristled, like a fighting sledge-dog, of which by +the way he reminded me. "You show me a magazine in this town that would +buy anything that I thought worthy of my time! You're like all the rest +of them: you talk big, but you really don't want anything very +important. You want little things probably, written to a theory or down +to 'our policy.' I know. Give me the stuff. You don't have to take it. +It was ordered, but I'll throw it in the waste basket." + +"Not so fast! Not so fast!" I replied, admiring his courage and moved by +his contempt of the editorial and book publishing conditions in America. +He was so young and raw and savage in his way, quite animal, and yet how +interesting! There was something as fresh and clean about him as a newly +plowed field or the virgin prairies. He typified for me all the young +unsophisticated strength of my country, but with more "punch" than it +usually manifests, in matters intellectual at least. "Now, don't get +excited, and don't snarl," I cooed. "I know what you say is true. They +don't really want much of what you have to offer. I don't. Working for +some one else, as most of us do, for the dear circulation department, +it's not possible for us to get very far above crowd needs and tastes. +I've been in your position exactly. I am now. Where do you come from?" + +He told me--Missouri--and some very few years before from its state +university. + +"And what is it you want to do?" + +"What's that to you?" he replied irritatingly, with an ingrowing and +obvious self-conviction of superiority and withdrawing as though he +highly resented my question as condescending and intrusive. "You +probably wouldn't understand if I told you. Just now I want to write +enough magazine stuff to make a living, that's all." + +"Dear, dear!" I said, laughing at the slap. "What a bravo we are! +Really, you're interesting. But suppose now you and I get down to brass +tacks. You want to do something interesting, if you can, and get paid +for it. I rather like you, and anyhow you look to me as though you might +do the things I want, or some of them. Now, you want to do the least +silly thing you can--something better than this. I want the least silly +stuff I can get away with in this magazine--genuine color out of the +life of New York, if such a thing can be published in an ordinary +magazine. Roughly, here's the kind of thing I want," and I outlined to +him the probable policy of the magazine under my direction. I had taken +an anæmic "white-light" monthly known as _The Broadway_ (!) and was +attempting to recast it into a national or international metropolitan +picture. He thawed slightly. + +"Well, maybe with that sort of idea behind it, it might come to +something. I don't know. It's _possible_ that you may be the one to do +it." He emphasized the "possible." "At any rate, it's worth trying. +Judging by the snide editors and publications in this town, no one in +America wants anything decent." His lip curled. "I have ambitions of my +own, but I don't expect to work them out through the magazines of this +town; maybe not of this country. I didn't know that any change was +under way here." + +"Well, it is," I said. "Still, you can't expect much from this either, +remember. After all, it seeks to be a popular magazine. We'll see how +far we can go with really interesting material. And now if you know of +any others like yourself, bring them in here. I need them. I'll pay you +for that article, only I'll include it in a better price I'll give you +for something else later, see?" + +I smiled and he smiled. His was a warmth which was infectious when he +chose to yield, but it was always a repressed warmth, cynical, a bit +hard; heat chained to a purpose, I thought. He went away and I saw him +no more until about a week later when he brought me his first attempt to +give me what I wanted. + +In the meantime I was busy organizing a staff which should if possible, +I decided after seeing him, include him. I could probably use him as a +salaried "special" writer, provided he could be trained to write +"specials." He looked so intelligent and ambitious that he promised +much. Besides, the little article which he had left when he came again, +while not well organized or arranged as to its ideas or best points, was +exceedingly well written from the point of mere expression. + +And the next thing I had given him to attempt was even better. It was, +if I recall correctly, a stirring picture of the East Side, intended to +appeal to readers elsewhere than in the city, but while in the matter of +color and definiteness of expression as well as choice of words it was +exceptional, it was lacking in, quite as the first one had been, the +arrangement of its best points. This I explained to him, and also made +it clear to him that I could show him how if he would let me. He seemed +willing enough, quite anxious, although always with an air of reserve, +as if he were accommodating himself to me in this much but no more. He +grasped the idea of order swiftly, and in a little while, having worked +at a table in an outer room, brought me the rearranged material, almost +if not quite satisfactory. During a number of weeks and months +thereafter, working on one "special" and another in this way with me, he +seemed finally to grasp the theory I had, or at least to develop a +method of his own which was quite as satisfactory to me, and I was very +much pleased. A little later I employed him at a regular salary. + +It was pathetic, as I look at it now, the things we were trying to do +and the conditions under which we were trying to do them--the raw +commercial force and theory which underlay the whole thing, the +necessity of explaining and fighting for so much that one should not, as +I saw it then, have to argue over at all. We were in new rooms, in a new +building, filled with lumber not yet placed and awaiting the completion +of partitions which, as some one remarked, "would divide us up." Our +publisher and owner was a small, energetic, vibrant and colorful soul, +all egotism and middle-class conviction as to the need of "push," +ambition, "closeness to life," "punch," and what not else, American to +the core, and descending on us, or me rather, hourly as it were, +demanding the "hows" and the "whyfors" of the dream which the little +group I was swiftly gathering about me was seeking to make real. + +It was essential to me, therefore, that something different should be +done, some new fresh note concerning metropolitan life and action be +struck; the old, slow and somewhat grandiose methods of reporting and +describing things dispensed with, at least in this instance, and here +was a youth who seemed able to help me do it. He was so vigorous, so +avid of life, so anxious to picture the very atmosphere which this +magazine was now seeking to portray. I felt stronger, better for having +him around. The growth of the city, the character and atmosphere of a +given neighborhood, the facts concerning some great social fortune, +event, condition, crime interested him intensely; on the other hand he +was so very easy to teach, quick to sense what was wanted and the order +in which it must be presented. A few brief technical explanations from +me, and he had the art of writing a "special" at his fingertips, and +thereafter gave me no real difficulty. + +But what was more interesting to me than his success in grasping my +theory of "special" writing was his own character, as it was revealed to +me from day to day in intimate working contact with him under these +conditions. Here, as I soon learned, and was glad to learn, was no +namby-pamby scribbler of the old happy-ending, pretty-nothing school of +literary composition. On the contrary he sounded, for the first time in +my dealings with literary aspirants of every kind, that sure, sane, +penetrating, non-sentimental note so common to the best writers of the +Continent, a note entirely free from mush, bravado and cant. He had a +style as clear as water, as simple as rain; color, romance, humor; and +if a little too much of vanity and self-importance, still one could +forgive him for they were rather well-based. Already used to dealing +with literary and artistic aspirants of different kinds in connection +with the publications of which I had been a part, this one appealed to +me as being the best of them all and a very refreshing change. + +One day, only a few weeks after I had met him, seeing that I was alert +for fiction, poetry and short essays or prose phantasies, all +illustrative of the spirit of New York, he brought me a little poem +entitled "Neuvain," which interested me greatly. It was so brief and +forceful and yet so delicate, a double triolet of the old French order, +but with the modernity and flavor of the streets outside, the conduit +cars, hand-organs and dancing children of the pavements. The title +seemed affected, seeing that the English word "Spring" would have done +as well, but it was typical of his mood at the time, his literary +adorations. He was in leash to the French school of which de Maupassant +was the outstanding luminary, only I did not know it at the time. + +"Charming," I exclaimed quite enthusiastically. "I like this. Let me see +anything else you have. Do you write short stories?" + +For answer he merely stared at me for a little while in the most +examining and arrogant and contemptuous way, as much as to say, "Let me +see if you are really worth my time and trouble in this matter," or +"This sad specimen of alleged mentality is just beginning to suspect +that I might write a short story." Seeing that I merely smiled most +genially in return, he finally deigned to say, "Sure, I write short +stories. What do you think I'm in the writing game for?" + +"But you might be interested in novels only or plays, or poetry." + +"No," he returned after a pause and with that same air of unrelieved +condescension, "the short story is what I want to specialize in." + +"Well," I said to myself, "here is a young cub who certainly has talent, +is crowded with it, and yet owing to the kind of thing he is starting +out to do and the fact that life will give him slaps and to spare before +he is many years older, he needs to be encouraged. I was like that +myself not so long ago. And besides, if I do not encourage this type of +work financially (which is the best way of all), who will?" + +About a week later I was given another and still more gratifying +surprise, for one day, in his usual condescending manner, he brought to +me two short pieces of fiction and laid them most gingerly on my desk +with scarcely a word--"Here was something I might read if I chose," I +believe. The reading of these two stories gave me as much of a start as +though I had discovered a fully developed genius. They were so truly new +or different in their point of view, so very clear, incisive, brief, +with so much point in them (_The Second Motive_; _The Right Man_). For +by then having been struggling with the short-story problem in other +magazine offices before this, I had become not a little pessimistic as +to the trend of American short fiction, as well as long--the +impossibility of finding any, even supposing it publishable once we had +it. My own experience with "Sister Carrie" as well as the fierce +opposition or chilling indifference which, as I saw, overtook all those +who attempted anything even partially serious in America, was enough to +make me believe that the world took anything even slightly approximating +the truth as one of the rankest and most criminal offenses possible. One +dared not "talk out loud," one dared not report life as it was, as one +lived it. And one of the primary warnings I had received from the +president of this very organization--a most eager and ambitious and +distressing example of that American pseudo-morality which combines a +pirate-like acquisitiveness with an inward and absolute conviction of +righteousness--was that while he wanted something new in fiction, +something more virile and life-like than that "mush," as he +characterized it, to be found in the current magazines, still (1), it +must have a strong appeal for the general reader (!); and (2), be very +compelling in fact and _clean_, as the dear general reader would of +course understand that word--a solid little pair of millstones which +would unquestionably end in macerating everything vital out of any good +story. + +Still I did not despair; something might be done. And though I sighed, I +hoped to be able to make my superior stretch a point in favor of the +exceptional thing, or, as the slang phrase went, "slip a few over on +him," but that of course meant nothing or something, as you choose. My +dream was really to find one or many like this youth, or a pungent kind +of realism that would be true and yet within such limits as would make +it usable. Imagine, then, my satisfaction in finding these two things, +tales that I could not only admire genuinely but that I could publish, +things that ought to have an interest for all who knew even a little +about life. True, they were ironic, cruel, but still with humor and +color, so deftly and cleanly told that they were smile-provoking. I +called him and said as much, or nearly so--a mistake, as I sometimes +think now, for art should be long--and bought them forthwith, hoping, +almost against hope, to find many more such like them. + +By this time, by the way, and as I should have said before, I had still +further enlarged my staff by one art director of the most flamboyant and +erratic character, a genius of sorts, volatile, restless, emotional, +colorful, a veritable Verlaine-Baudelaire-Rops soul, who, not content to +arrange and decorate the magazine each month, must needs wish to write, +paint, compose verse and music and stage plays, as well as move in an +upper social world, _entrée_ to which was his by birth. Again, there was +by now an Irish-Catholic makeup editor, a graduate of some distinguished +sectarian school, who was more interested in St. Jerome and his +_Vulgate_, as an embodiment of classic Latin, than he was in getting out +the magazine. Still he had the advantage of being interesting--"and I +learned about Horace from him." Again, there was a most interesting and +youthful and pretty, if severe, example of the Wellesley-Mt. +Holyoke-Bryn Mawr school of literary art and criticism, a most +engagingly interesting intellectual maiden, who functioned as assistant +editor and reader in an adjoining room, along with the art-director, the +makeup editor and an office boy. This very valuable and in some +respects remarkable young woman, who while holding me in proper +contempt, I fear, for my rather loose and unliterary ways, was still, as +I had suspected before employing her, as keen for something new and +vital in fiction and every other phase of the scriptic art as any one +well could be. She was ever for culling, sorting, eliminating--repression +carried to the N-th power. At first L---- cordially hated her, calling +her a "simp," a "bluff," a "la-de-da," and what not. In addition to +these there was a constantly swelling band of writers, artists, poets, +critics, dreamers of reforms social, and I know not what else, who, +holding the hope of achieving their ends or aims through some really +forceful magazine, were by now beginning to make our place a center. It +fairly swarmed for a time with aspirants; an amusing, vivid, strident +world. + +As for L----, all this being new to him, he was as interested, +fascinated even, as any one well might be. He responded to it almost +gayly at times, wondering whether something wonderful, international, +enduring might not be made to come of it. He rapidly developed into one +of the most pertinacious and even disconcerting youths I have ever met. +At times he seemed to have a positive genius for saying and doing +irritable and disagreeable things, not only to me but to others. Never +having heard of me before he met me here, he was convinced, I think, +that I was a mere nothing, with some slight possibilities as an editor +maybe, certainly with none as a writer or as one who could even suggest +anything to writers. I had helped him, but that was as it should be. As +for my art-director, he was at first a fool, later a genius; ditto my +makeup man. + +As for Miss E----, the Wellesley-Bryn Mawr-Mt. Holyoke assistant, who +from the first had agreed with me that here indeed was a writer of +promise, a genius really, he, as I have said, at first despised her. +Later, by dint of exulting in his force, sincerity of purpose, his keen +insight and all but braggart strength, she managed, probably on account +of her looks and physical graces, to install herself in his confidence +and to convince him that she was not only an honest admirer of his skill +but one who had taste and judgment of no mean caliber. Thereafter he +was about as agreeable as a semi-caged wild animal would be about any +office. + +But above all he was affronted by M----, the publisher of the paper, +concerning whom he could find no words equal to his contemptuous +thoughts of him. The publisher, as L---- made quite bold to say to me, +was little more than a "dodging, rat-like financial ferret," a +"financial stool-pigeon for some trust or other," a "shrewd, material +little shopkeeper." This because M---- was accustomed to enter and force +a conversation here and there, anxious of course to gather the full +import of all these various energies and enthusiasms. One of the things +which L---- most resented in him at the time was his air of supreme +material well-being, his obvious attempt and wish not to convey it, his +carefully-cut clothes, his car, his numerous assistants and secretaries +following him here and there from various other organizations with which +he was connected. + +M----'s idea, as he always said, was to spend and to live, only it +wasn't. He merely induced others so to do. One of his customs (and it +must have impressed L---- very much, innocent newcomer that he was) was +to have one or another of his hirelings announce his passing from one +"important" meeting to another, within or without his own building, +telephone messages being "thrown in" on his line or barred out, wherever +he happened to be at the moment and when, presumably, he was deep in one +of those literary conferences or confidences with one employee or +another or with a group, for which he rapidly developed a passion. +Another of his vanities was to have his automobile announced and he be +almost forced into it by impetuous secretaries, who, because of orders +previously given, insisted that he must be made to keep certain +important engagements. Or he would send for one of his hirelings, +wherever he chanced to be--club, restaurant, his home--midnight if +necessary, to confer with him on some subject of great moment, and the +hireling was supposed to call a taxi and come post haste in order that +he might not be kept waiting. + +"God!" L---- once remarked in my presence. "To think that a thinking +being has to be beholden to a thing like that for his weekly income! +Somebody ought to tap him with a feather-duster and kill him!" + +But the manner in which L---- developed in this atmosphere! It was +interesting. At first, before the magazine became so significant or +well-organized, it was a great pleasure for me to associate with him +outside office hours, and a curious and vivid companion he made. He was +so intensely avid of life, so intolerant of the old, of anything +different to that which he personally desired or saw, that at times it +was most difficult to say anything at all for fear of meeting a rebuff +or at least a caustic objection. As I was very pleased to note, he had a +passion for seeing, as all youth should have when it first comes to the +great city--the great bridges, the new tunnels just then being completed +or dug, the harbor and bay, Coney Island, the two new and great railway +terminals, then under construction. Most, though, he reveled in +different and even depressing neighborhoods--Eighth Avenue, for +instance, about which he later wrote a story, and a very good one ("A +Quiet Duet"); Hell's Kitchen, that neighborhood that lies (or did), on +the West Side of Manhattan, between Eighth and Tenth Avenues, +Thirty-sixth and Forty-first Streets; Little Italy, the region below +Delancey and north of Worth Street on the East Side; Chinatown; +Washington Street (Syria in America); the Greeks in Twenty-seventh and +-eighth Streets, West Side. All these and many more phases of New York's +multiplex life took his full and restless attention. Once he said to me +quite excitedly, walking up Eighth Avenue at two in the morning--I was +showing him some rear tenement slums in the summertime--"God, how I hate +to go to bed in this town! I'm afraid something will happen while I'm +asleep and I won't see it!" That was exactly how he felt all the time, I +am sure. + +And in those days he was most simple, a very Spartan of a boy. He hadn't +the least taste for drink, lived in a small hall-bedroom +somewhere--Eighth Avenue, I believe--and took his meals in those shabby +little quick-lunch rooms where the characters were more important to him +than the food. (My hat--my hat is in my hand!) Intellectually he was so +stern and ambitious that I all but stood in awe of and reverence before +him. Here, I said to myself, is one who will really do; let him be as +savage as he pleases. In America he probably needs to be. + +And during this short time, what scraps of his early life he revealed! +By degrees I picked up bits of his early deprivations and difficulties, +if such they might be called. He had been a newspaper reporter, or had +tried to be, in Kansas City, had worked in the college restaurant and +laundry of the middle-West State university from which he had graduated, +to help pay his way. Afterward he had assisted the janitor of some great +skyscraper somewhere--Kansas City, I believe--and, what was most +pleasing to me, he in nowise emphasized these as youthful difficulties +or made any comment as to their being "hard." Neither did he try to +boastingly minimize them as nothing at all--another wretched pose. From +him I learned that throughout his youth he had been carried here and +there by the iron woman who was his mother and whom he seemed to adore +in some grim contentious way, smothering his comments as though he +disliked to say anything at all, and yet describing her at times as +coarse and vulgar, but a mother to him "all right," someone who had made +marked sacrifices for him. + +She had once "run" a restaurant in a Western mining camp, had then or +later carried him as a puling baby under her shawl or cloak across the +Mojave Desert, on foot a part of the way. Apparently he did not know who +his father was, and he was not very much concerned to know whether she +did or not. His father had died, he said, when he was a baby. Later his +mother, then a cook in some railroad hotel in Texas, had sent him to +school there. Later still she had been a "bawler out," if you know what +that means, an employee of a loan shark and used by him to compel +delinquent, albeit petty and pathetic, creditors to pay their dues or +then and there, before all their fellow-workers, be screamed at for +their delinquency about the shop in which they worked! Later she became +a private detective! an insurance agent--God knows what--a kind of rough +man-woman, as she turned out to be, but all the while clinging to this +boy, her pet, no doubt her dream of perfection. She had by turns sent +him to common and high school and to college, remitting him such sums of +money as she might to pay his way. Later still (at that very time in +fact) she was seeking to come to New York to keep house for him, only +he would not have that, perhaps sensing the need of greater freedom. But +he wrote her regularly, as he confessed to me, and in later years I +believe sent her a part of his earnings, which were to be saved by her +for him against a rainy day. Among his posthumous writings later I found +a very lovely story ("His Mother"), describing her and himself in +unsparing and yet loving terms, a compound of the tender and the brutal +in his own soul. + +The thing that always made me hope for the best was that at that time he +was not at all concerned with the petty little _moralic_ and economic +definitions and distinctions which were floating about his American +world in one form and another. Indeed he seemed to be entirely free of +and even alien to them. What he had heard about the indwelling and +abiding perfections of the human soul had gone, and rightly so, in one +ear and out the other. He respected the virtues, but he knew of and +reckoned with die antipathetic vices which gave them their reason for +being. To him the thief was almost as important as the saint, the reason +for the saint's being. And, better still, he had not the least interest +in American politics or society--a wonderful sign. The American dream of +"getting ahead" financially and socially was not part of him--another +mark royal. All life was fascinating, acceptable, to be interpreted if +one had the skill; it was a great distinction to have the skill--worth +endless pains to acquire it. + +But how unwilling would the average American of his day have been, +stuffed as he was and still is with book and picture drivel about +artists and art, to accept L---- as anything more than a raw, callow +yokel, presuming to assail the outer portals of the temple with his +muddy feet! A romping, stamping, irritable soul, with more the air of a +young railroad brakeman or "hand," than an artist, and with so much +coarse language at times and such brutality of thought as to bar him +completely, one might say, from having anything to do with great +fiction, great artistic conceptions, or the temple of art. What, sit +with the mighty!--that coarse youth, with darkish-brown hair parted at +one side and combed over one ear, in the manner of a grandiose barber; +with those thick-soled and none too shapely brown shoes, that none too +well-made store suit of clothes, that little round brown hat, more +often a cap, pulled rather savagely and vulgarly, even insultingly, over +one eye; that coarse frieze overcoat, still worn on cold spring days, +its "corners" back and front turned up by the damp and from being +indifferently sat on; that brash corn-cob pipe and bag of cheap tobacco, +extracted and lit at odd moments; what, that youth with the aggressive, +irritating vibrant manner--almost the young tough with a chip on his +shoulder looking for one to even so much as indicate that he is not all +he should be! Positively, there was something brutal and yet cosmic (not +comic) about him, his intellectual and art pretensions considered. At +times his waspishness and bravado palled even on me. He was too +aggressive, too forceful, too intolerant, I said. He should be softer. +At other times I felt that he needed to be all that and more to "get +by," as he would have said. I wanted to modify him a little--and yet I +didn't--and I remained drawn to him in spite of many irritating little +circumstances, all but infuriating at times, and actually calculated, it +seemed, with a kind of savage skill to reduce what he conceived to be my +lofty superiority. At times I thought he ought to be killed--like a +father meditating on an unruly son--but the mood soon passed and his +literary ability made amends for everything. + +In so far as the magazine was concerned, once it began to grow and +attract attention he was for me its most important asset; not that he +did so much directly as that he provided a definite standard toward +which we all had to work. Not incuriously, he was swiftly recognized for +what he was by all who came in touch with the magazine. In the first +place, interested in his progress, I had seen to it that he was properly +introduced wherever that was possible and of benefit to him, and later +on, by sheer force of his mental capacity and integrity, his dreams and +his critical skill, he managed to center about him an entire band of +seeking young writers, artists, poets, playwrights, aspiring musicians; +an amusing and as interesting a group as I have ever seen. Their points +of rendezvous appeared to be those same shabby quick-lunches in back +streets or even on the principal thoroughfares about Times Square, or +they met in each other's rooms or my office at night after I had gone, +giving me as an excuse that they had work to do. And during all this +time the air fairly hummed with rumors of new singers, dancers, plays, +stories being begun or under way, articles and essays contemplated; +avid, if none too well financed frolics or bohemian midnight suppers +here and there. Money was by no means plentiful, and in consequence +there was endless borrowing and "paying up" among them. Among the most +enthusiastic members of this circle, as I had begun to note, and finally +rather nervously, were my art-director, a valiant knight in Bohemia if +ever there was one, and she of Bryn Mawr-Wellesley standards. My makeup +editor, as well as various contributors who had since become more or +less closely identified with the magazine, were also following him up +all the time. + +If not directly profitable it was enlivening, and I was fairly well +convinced by now that from the point of view of being "aware," "in touch +with," "in sympathy with" many of the principal tendencies and +undercurrents which make for a magazine's success and precedence, this +group was as valuable to me as any might well be. It constituted a +"kitchen cabinet" of sorts and brought hundreds of interesting ideas to +the surface, and from all directions. Now it would be a new and hitherto +unheard-of tenor who was to be brought from abroad and introduced with +great noise to repute-loving Americans; a new sculptor or painter who +had never been heard of in America; a great actor, perhaps, or poet or +writer. I listened to any quantity of gossip in regard to new movements +that were ready to burst upon the world, in sculpture, painting, the +scriptic art. About the whole group there was much that was exceedingly +warm, youthful, full of dreams. They were intensely informative and full +of hope, and I used to look at them and wonder which one, if any, was +destined to have his dreams realized. + +Of L---- however I never had the least doubt. He began, it is true, to +adopt rather more liberal tendencies, to wish always to be part and +parcel of this gayety, this rushing here and there; and he drank at +times--due principally, as I thought, to my wildling art-director, who +had no sense or reserve in matters material or artistic and who was all +for a bacchanalian career, cost what it might. On more than one occasion +I heard L---- declaring roundly, apropos of some group scheme of +pilgrimage, "No, no! I will not. I am going _home_ now!" He had a story +he wanted to work on, an article to finish. At the same time he would +often agree that if by a certain time, when he was through, they were +still at a certain place, or a second or third, he would look them up. +Never, apparently, did his work suffer in the least. + +And it was about this time that I began to gather the true source and +import of his literary predisposition. He was literally obsessed, as I +now discovered, with Continental and more especially the French +conception of art in writing. He had studied the works as well as the +temperaments and experiences (more especially the latter, I fear) of +such writers as de Maupassant, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Balzac, de Musset, +Sand, Daudet, Dumas junior, and Zola, as well as a number of the more +recent writers: Hervieu, Bourget, Louys and their contemporaries. Most +of all, though, he was impressed, and deeply, by the life and art of de +Maupassant, his method of approach, his unbiased outlook on life, his +freedom from moral and religious and even sentimental predisposition. In +the beginning of his literary career I really believe he slaved to +imitate him exactly, although he could not very well escape the American +temperament and rearing by which he was hopelessly conditioned. A +certain Western critic and editor, to whom he had first addressed his +hopes and scribblings before coming to me, writing me after L----'s +death in reference to a period antedating that in which I had known him, +observed, "He was crazy about the _fin de siècle_ stuff that then held +the boards and from which (I hope the recording angel will put it to my +credit) I steered him clear." I think so; but he was still very much +interested in it. He admired Aubrey Beardsley, the poster artists of +France, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rops, the Yellow Book, even Oscar Wilde, +although his was a far more substantial and plebeian and even radical +point of view. + +Unfortunately for L----, I have always thought, there now thrust himself +forward the publisher and owner of the magazine, who from previously +having been content to see that the mercantile affairs of the magazine +were in good order, had decided that since it was attracting attention +he should be allowed to share in its literary and artistic prestige, +should indeed be closely identified with it and recognized as its true +source and inspiration--a thing which in no fashion had been +contemplated by me when I went there. From having agreed very distinctly +with me that no such interference would at any time be indulged in, he +now came forward with a plan for an advisory council which was to +consist of himself and the very members of the staff which I had +created. + +I could not object and it did not disturb me so much personally. For +some time I had been sensing that the thing was for me no end in itself, +but an incident. This same I felt to be true for L----, who had been +taking more and more interest in the magazine's technical composition. +At the same time I saw no immediate way of arranging my affairs and +departing, which left me, for a very little while, more or less of a +spectator. During this time I had the dissatisfaction of noting the +growth of an influence with L---- which could, as I saw, prove only +harmful. M---- was no suitable guide for him. He was a brilliant but +superficial and very material type who was convinced that in the having +and holding of many things material--houses, lands, corporation stocks, +a place in the clubs and circles of those who were materially +prosperous--was really to achieve all that was significant in the now or +the hereafter. Knowing comparatively nothing of either art or letters, +or that subtle thing which makes for personality and atmosphere in a +magazine or in writing (and especially the latter), that grateful +something which attracts and detains one, he was nevertheless convinced +that he did. And what was more, he was determined not only to make +friends with and hold all those whom I might have attracted, providing +they could prove useful to him, but also a number of a much more +successful group in these fields, those who had already achieved repute +in a more commonplace and popular way and were therefore presumably +possessed of a following and with the power to exact a high return for +their product, and for the magazine, regardless of intrinsic merit. His +constant talk was of money, its power to attract and buy, the +significance of all things material. He now wanted the magazine to be +representative of this glowing element, and at the same time, +paradoxical as it might seem, the best that might be in literary and +artistic thought. + +Naturally the thing was impossible, but he had a facile and specious +method of arguing, a most gay and in some respects magnetic personality, +far from stodgy or gross, which for a time attracted many to him. Very +briskly then indeed he proceeded to make friends with all those with +whom I had surrounded myself, to enter into long and even private +discussions with them as to the proper conduct of the magazine, to hint +quite broadly at a glorious future in which all, each one particularly +to whom he talked, was to share. Curiously, this new and (as I would +have thought) inimical personality of M---- seemed to appeal to L---- +very much. + +I do not claim that the result was fatal. It may even, or at least +might, have had value, combined with an older or slightly more balanced +temperament. But it seemed to me that it offered too quickly what should +have come, if at all, as the result of much effort. For in regard to the +very things L---- should have most guarded against--show and the shallow +pleasures of social and night and material life in New York--M---- was +most specious. I never knew a more intriguing and fascinating man in +this respect nor one who cared less for those he used to obtain his +unimportant ends. He had positive genius for making the gaudy and the +unworthy seem worthy and even perfect. During his earlier days there, +L---- had more than once "cursed him out" (in his absence, of course), +to use his own expressive phrase, for his middle-West trade views, as he +described them, his shabby social and material ideals, and yet, as I +could plainly see, even at that time the virus of his theories was +working. For it must be remembered that L---- was very new to New York, +very young, and never having had much of anything he was no doubt +slightly envious of the man's material facility, the sense of +all-sufficiency, exclusiveness and even a kind of petty trade grandeur +with which he tried to surround himself. + +Well, that might not have proved fatal either, only L---- needed some one +to keep him true to himself, his individual capabilities, to constantly +caution and if possible sober him to his very severe taste, and as it +was he was all but surrounded by acolytes and servitors. + +A little later, having left M----'s and assumed another editorial +position, and being compelled to follow the various current magazines +more or less professionally, I was disturbed to note that there began to +appear in various publications--especially M----'s, which was +flourishing greatly for the moment--stories which while exhibiting much +of the deftness and repression as well as an avidity for the true color +of things, still showed what I had at first feared they might: a decided +compromise. That curse of all American fiction, the necessarily happy +ending, had been impressed on him--by whom? To my sincere +dissatisfaction, he began writing stories, some at least, which +concerned (1), a young woman who successfully abandoned art dreams for +advertising; (2), a middle-aged charmer, female, who attempted +_libertinage_ and was defeated, American style; (3), a Christmas picture +with sweetness and light reigning on every hand (Dickens at his +sentimentalest could have done no worse); (4), a Broadway press agent +who, attempting to bring patronage to a great hotel via chic vice, +accidentally and unintentionally mates an all-too-good young society man +turned hotel manager to a grand heiress. And so on and so on, not ad +infinitum but for a period at least--the ten years in which he managed +to live and work. + +And, what was more, during this new period I heard and occasionally saw +discouraging things in connection with him from time to time. True to +his great promise, for I sincerely think M---- had a genuine fondness +for his young protégé, as much of a fondness as he could well have for +anything, he guaranteed him perhaps as much as three thousand a year; +sent him to Stockholm at the age of twenty-four or -five to meet and +greet the famous false pole discoverer, Doctor Cook; allowed him to go +to Paris in connection with various articles; to Rome; sent him into the +middle and far West; to Broadway for dramatic and social studies. Well +and good, only he wanted always in what was done for him the "uplift" +note, the happy ending--or at least one not vulgar or low--whereas my +idea in connection with L----, gifted as he was, was that he should +confine himself to fiction as an art and without any regard to theories +or types of ending, believing, as I did, that he would definitely +establish himself in that way in the long run. I had no objection of +course to experiences of various kinds, his taking up with any line of +work which might seem at the moment far removed from realistic writing, +providing always that the star of his ideal was in sight. Whenever he +wrote, be it early or late, it must be in the clear, incisive, +uncompromising vein of these first stories and with that passion for +revelation which characterized him at first, that same unbiased and +unfettered non-moral viewpoint. + +But after meeting with and working for M---- under this new arrangement +and being apparently fascinated for the moment by his personality, he +seemed to me to gradually lose sight of his ideal, to be actually taken +in by the plausible arguments which the latter could spin with the ease +that a spider spins gossamer. In that respect I insist that M---- was a +bad influence. Under his tutelage L---- gradually became, for instance, +an habitué of a well-known and pseudo-bohemian chop-house, a most +mawkish and naïvely imitative affair, intended frankly to be a copy or +even the original, forsooth, of an old English inn, done, in so far as +its woodwork was concerned, in smoked or dark-stained oak to represent +an old English interior, its walls covered with long-stemmed pipes and +pictures of English hunting and drinking scenes, its black-stained but +unvarnished tables littered with riding, driving and country-life +society papers, to give it that air of _sans ceremonie_ with an upper +world of which its habitués probably possessed no least inkling but most +eagerly craved. Here, along with a goodly group of his latter-day +friends, far different from those by whom he had first been +surrounded--a pretentious society poet of no great merit but +considerable self-emphasis, a Wall Street broker, posing as a club man, +_raconteur_, "first-nighter" and what not, and several young and +ambitious playwrights, all seeking the heaven of a Broadway success--he +began to pose as one of the intimates of the great city, its bosom child +as it were, the cynosure and favorite of its most glittering +precincts--a most M-----like proceeding. His clothes by now, for I saw +him on occasion, had taken on a more lustrous if less convincing aspect +than those he had worn when I first knew him. The small round hat or +rakish cap, typical of his Western dreams, had now given way to a most +pretentious square-topped derby, beloved, I believe, of undertakers and +a certain severe type of banker as well as some clergymen, only it was a +light brown. His suit and waistcoat were of a bright English tweed, +reddish-brown or herring-bone gray by turns, his shoes box-toed +perfections of the button type. He carried a heavy cane, often a bright +leather manuscript case, and seemed intensely absorbed in the great and +dramatic business of living and writing. "One must," so I read him at +this time, "take the pleasures as well as the labors of this world with +the utmost severity." Here, with a grand manner, he patronized the +manager and the waiters, sent word to his friend the cook, who probably +did not know him at all, that his chop or steak was to be done just so. +These friends of his, or at least one of them (the poet) he met every +day at five for an all-essential game of chess, after which an evening +paper was read and the chop ordered. Ale--not beer--in a pewter mug was +_comme il faut_, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy of +the name, to drink. + +I am sorry to write so, for after all youth must have its fling. Still, +I had expected better of L----, and I was a little disappointed to see +that earlier dream of simplicity and privation giving way to an +absolutely worthless show. Besides, twenty or thirty such stories as +"The Right Man," "Sweet Dreams," "The Man With the Broken Fingers," "The +Second Motive," would outweigh a thousand of the things he was getting +published and the profits of which permitted him these airs. + +Again, during the early days of his success with M----, he had +married--a young nurse who had previously been a clerk in a store, a +serious, earnest and from one point of view helpful person, seeing that +she could keep his domestic affairs in order and bear him children, +which she did, but she had no understanding of, or flair for, the type +of thing he was called upon to do. She had no instinct for literature or +the arts, and aside from her domestic capacities little skill or taste +for "socializing." And, naturally, he was neglecting her. His head was +probably surging with great ideas of art and hence a social supremacy +which might well carry him anywhere. He had bought a farm some distance +from New York, where in a community supposedly inhabited by successful +and superior men of letters he posed as a farmer at times, mowing and +cocking hay as became a Western plow-boy; and also, as the mood moved +him, and as became a great and secluded writer, working in a den +entirely surrounded by books in fine leather bindings (!) and being +visited by those odd satellites of the scriptic art who see in genius of +this type the _summum bonum_ of life. It was the thing to do at that +time, for a writer to own a farm and work it. Horace had. One individual +in particular, a man of genuine literary and critical ability and great +taste in the matter of all the arts but with no least interest in or +tolerance for the simplicities of effort, came here occasionally, as I +heard, to help him pile hay, and this in a silk shirt and a monocle; a +second--and a most fascinating intellectual _flaneur_, who, however, had +no vision or the gift of dreams--came to eat, drink, talk of many things +to be done, to steal a few ideas, borrow a little money perhaps or +consume a little morphine, and depart; a third came to spout of his +success in connection with plays, or his proposed successes; a fourth to +paint a picture, urged on by L----; a fifth to compose rural verse; a +sixth, a broker or race-track tout or city bar-tender (for color, this +last), to marvel that one of L----'s sense, or any one indeed, should +live in the country at all. There were drinking bouts, absolute +drunkenness, in which, according to the Johnsonian tradition and that of +Messieurs Rabelais and Molière, the weary intellect and one's guiding +genius were immersed in a comforting Lethe of rye. + +Such things cost money, however. In addition, my young friend, due to a +desire no doubt to share in the material splendors of his age (a +doctrine M---- was ever fond of spouting--and as a duty, if you please), +had saddled himself, for a time at least, with an apartment in an +exclusive square on the East Side, the rent of which was a severe drain. +Before this there had been, and after it were still, others, obligations +too much for him to bear financially, all in the main taken for show, +that he might be considered a literary success. Now and again (so I was +told by several of his intimates), confronted by a sudden exhaustion of +his bank balance, he would leave some excellent apartment house or +neighborhood, where for a few months he had been living in grand style, +extracting his furniture as best he might, or leaving it and various +debts beside, and would take refuge in some shabby tenement, or rear +rooms even, and where, touched by remorse or encouraged by the great +literary and art traditions (Balzac, Baudelaire, Johnson, Goldsmith, +Verlaine) he would toil unendingly at definite money-yielding +manuscripts, the results of which carried to some well-paying +_successful magazine_ would yield him sufficient to return to the white +lights--often even to take a better apartment than that which last had +been his. By now, however, one of the two children he eventually left +behind him had been born. His domestic cares were multiplying, the +marriage idea dull. Still he did not hesitate to continue those dinners +given to his friends, the above-mentioned group or its spiritual kin, +either in his apartment or in a bohemian restaurant of great show in New +York. In short, he was a fairly successful short-story writer and critic +in whom still persisted a feeling that he would yet triumph in the +adjacent if somewhat more difficult field of popular fiction. + +It was during this period, if I may interpolate an incident, that I was +waiting one night in a Broadway theater lobby for a friend to appear, +when who should arrive on the scene but L----, most outlandishly dressed +in what I took to be a _reductio ad absurdum_ of his first pose, as I +now half-feared it to be: that of the uncouth and rugged young American, +disclaiming style in dress at least, and content to be a clod in looks +so long as he was a Shelley in brains. His suit was of that coarse +ill-fitting character described as Store, and shelf-worn; his shoes all +but dusty brogans, his headgear a long-visored yellowish-and-brown +cross-barred cap. He had on a short, badly-cut frieze overcoat, his +hands stuck defiantly in his trousers pockets, forcing its lapels wide +open. And he appeared to be partially if not entirely drunk, and very +insolent. I had the idea that the drunkenness and the dress were a pose, +or else that he had been in some neighborhood in search of copy which +required such an outfit. Charitably let us accept the last. He was +accompanied by two satellic souls who were doing their best to restrain +him. + +"Come, now! Don't make a scene. We'll see the show all right!" + +"Sure we'll see the show!" he returned contentiously. "Where's the +manager?" + +A smug mannikin whose uniform was a dress suit, the business manager +himself, eyed him in no friendly spirit from a nearby corner. + +"This is Mr. L----," one of the satellites now approached and explained +to the manager. "He's connected with M----'s Magazine. He does short +stories and dramatics occasionally." + +The manager bowed. After all, M----'s Magazine had come to have some +significance on Broadway. It was as well to be civil. Courtesy was +extended for three, and they went in. + +As for myself, I resented the mood and the change. It was in no way my +affair--his life was his own--and still I resented it. I did not believe +that he was as bad as he seemed. He had too much genuine sense. It was +just boyish swagger and show, and still it was time that he was getting +over that and settling down. I really hoped that time would modify all +this. + +One thing that made me hope for the best was that very shortly after +this M----'s Magazine blew completely up, leaving him without that +semi-financial protection which I felt was doing him so much harm. The +next favorable sign that I observed was that a small volume of short +stories, some sixteen in number, and containing the cream of his work up +to that time, was brought to a publishing house with which I was +financially identified at the time, and although no word was said to me +(I really think he took great care not to see me), still it was left and +on my advice eventually published (it sold, I believe, a little under +five hundred copies). But the thing that cheered me was that it +contained not one story which could be looked upon as a compromise with +his first views. And better, it had been brought to the concern with +which I was connected--intentionally, I am sure. I was glad to have had +a hand in its publication. "At least," I said, "he has not lost sight of +his first ideal. He may go on now." + +And thereafter, in one magazine and another, excellent enough to have +but a small circulation, I saw something of his which had genuine merit. +A Western critical journal began to publish a series of essays by him, +for which I am sure he received nothing at all. Again, three or four +years later, a second volume of stories, almost if not quite as good as +his first, was issued by this same Western paper. He was trying to do +serious work; but he still sought and apparently craved those grand +scenes on the farm or in some New York restaurant or an expensive +apartment, and when he could no longer afford it. He still wrote +happy-ending, or compromise, stories for any such magazine as would +receive him, and was apparently building up a reasonably secure market +for them. In the meantime the moving-picture scenario market had +developed, and he wrote for it. His eyes were also turning toward the +stage, as one completed manuscript and several "starts" turned over to +me after his death proved. One day some one who knew him and me quite +well assured me that L----, having sent out many excellent stories only +to have them returned, had one day cried and then raged, cursing America +for its attitude toward serious letters--an excellent sign, I thought, +good medicine for one who must eventually forsake his hope of material +grandeur and find himself. "In time, in time," I said, "he will eat +through the husks of these other things, the 'M---- complex,' and do +something splendid. He can't help it. But this fantastic dream of +grandeur, of being a popular success, will have to be lived down." + +For a time now I heard but little more save once that he was connected +with a moving-picture concern, suggesting plots and making some money. +Then I saw a second series of essays in the same Western critical +paper--that of the editor who had published his book--and some of them +were excellent, very searching and sincere. I felt that he was moving +along the right line, although they earned him nothing. Then one week, +very much to my surprise, there was a very glowing and extended +commentary on myself, concerning which for the time being I decided to +make no comment; and a little later, perhaps three weeks, a telephone +call. Did I recall him? (!) Could he come and see me? (!) I invited him +to dinner, and he came, carrying, of all things--and for him, the +ex-railroad boy--a great armful of red roses. This touched me. + +"What's the idea?" I inquired jovially, laughing at him. + +He blushed like a girl, a little irritably too, I thought, for he found +me (as perhaps he had hoped not to) examining and critical, and he may +have felt that I was laughing at him, which I wasn't. "I wished to give +them to you, and I brought 'em. Why shouldn't I?" + +"You know you should bring them if you want me to have them, and I'm +only too glad to get them, anyway. Don't think I'm criticizing." + +He smiled and began at once on the "old days," as he now called them, a +sad commentary on our drifting days. Indeed he seemed able to talk of +little else or fast enough or with too much enthusiasm. He went over +many things and people--M----; K----, the wonderful art-director, now +insane and a wreck; the group of which he and I had once been a part; +his youthful and unsophisticated viewpoint at the time. "You know," he +confessed quite frankly finally, "my mother always told me then and +afterwards that I made a mistake in leaving you. You were the better +influence for me. She was right. I know it now. Still, a life's a life, +and we have to work through it and ourselves somehow." + +I agreed heartily. + +He told me of his wife, children, farm, his health and his difficulties. +It appeared that he was making a bare living at times, at others doing +very well. His great bane was the popular magazine, the difficulty of +selling a good thing. It was true, I said, and at midnight he left, +promising to come again, inviting me to come to his place in the country +at my convenience. I promised. + +But one thing and another interfered. I went South. One day six months +later, after I had returned, he called up once more, saying he wished to +see me. Of course I asked him down and he came and spoke of his health. +Some doctor, an old college pal of his, was assuring him that he had +Bright's disease and that he might die at any time. He wanted to know, +in case anything happened to him, would I look after his many mss., most +of which, the most serious efforts at least, had never been published. I +agreed. Then he went away and I never saw him again. A year later I was +one day informed that he had died three days before of kidney trouble. +He had been West to see a moving-picture director; on his way East he +had been taken ill and had stopped off with friends somewhere to be +treated, or operated upon. A few weeks later he had returned to New +York, but refusing to rest and believing that he could not die, so soon, +had kept out of doors and in the city, until suddenly he did collapse. +Or, rather, he met his favorite doctor, an intellectual savage like +himself, who with some weird desire to appear forceful, definite, +unsentimental perhaps--a mental condition L---- most fancied--had told +him to go home and to bed, for he would be dead in forty-eight hours!--a +fine bit of assurance which perhaps as much as anything else assisted +L---- to die. At any rate and in spite of the ministrations of his wife, +who wished to defy the doctor and who in her hope for herself and her +children as well as him strove to contend against this gloom, he did so +go to bed and did die. On the last day, realizing no doubt how utterly +indifferent his life had been, how his main aspirations or great dreams +had been in the main nullified by passions, necessities, crass chance +(how well he was fitted to understand that!) he broke down and cried for +hours. Then he died. + +A friend who had known much of this last period, said to me rather +satirically, "He was dealing with death in the shape of a medic. Have +you ever seen him?" The doctor, he meant. "He looks like an +advertisement for an undertaker. I do believe he was trying to discover +whether he could kill somebody by the power of suggestion, and he met +L---- in the nick of time. You know how really sensitive he was. Well, +that medic killed him, the same as you would kill a bird with a bullet. +He said 'You're already dead,' and he was." + +And--oh yes--M----, his former patron. At the time of L----'s sickness +and death he was still owing him $1100 for services rendered during the +last days of that unfortunate magazine. He had never been called upon to +pay his debts, for he had sunk through one easy trapdoor of bankruptcy +only to rise out of another, smiling and with the means to continue. +Yes, he was rich again, rated A No. 1, the president of a great +corporation, and with L----'s $1100 still unpaid and now not legally +"collectible." His bank balance, established by a friend at the time, +was exactly one hundred thousand. + +But Mrs. L----, anxious to find some way out of her difficulty since her +husband was lying cold, and knowing of no one else to whom to turn, had +written to him. There was no food in the house, no medicine, no way to +feed the children at the moment. That matter of $1100 now--could he +spare a little? L---- had thought-- + +A letter in answer was not long in arriving, and a most moving M----y +document it was. M---- had been stunned by the dreadful news, stunned. +Could it really be? Could it? His young brilliant friend? Impossible! At +the dread, pathetic news he had cried--yes he had--cried--and cried--and +cried--and then he had even cried some more. Life was so sad, so grim. +As for him, his own affairs were never in so wretched a condition. It +was unfortunate. Debts there were on every hand. They haunted him, +robbed him of his sleep. He himself scarcely knew which way to turn. +They stood in serried ranks, his debts. A slight push on the part of any +one, and he would be crushed--crushed--go down in ruin. And so, as much +as he was torn, and as much as he cried, even now, he could do nothing, +nothing, nothing. He was agonized, beaten to earth, but still--. Then, +having signed it, there was a P.S. or an N.B. This stated that in +looking over his affairs he had just discovered that by stinting himself +in another direction he _could_ manage to scrape together twenty-five +dollars, and this he was enclosing. Would that God had designed that he +should be better placed at this sad hour! + + * * * * * + +However that may be, I at once sent for the mss. and they came, a +jumbled mass in two suitcases and a portfolio; and a third suitcase, so +I was informed, containing all of a hundred mss., mostly stories, had +been lost somewhere! There had been much financial trouble of late and +more than one enforced move. Mrs. L---- had been compelled--but I will +not tell all. Suffice it to say that he had such an end as his own +realistic pen might have satirically craved. + +The mss., finally sorted, tabulated and read, yielded two small volumes +of excellent tales, all unpublished, the published material being all +but uniformly worthless. There was also the attempt at a popular comedy, +previously mentioned, a sad affair, and a volume of essays, as well as a +very, very slender but charming volume of verse, in case a publisher +could ever be found for them--a most agreeable little group, showing a +pleasing sense of form and color and emotion. I arranged them as best I +could and finally-- + +But they are still unpublished. + + * * * * * + +P.S. As for the sum total of the work left by L----, its very best, it +might be said that although he was not a great psychologist, still, +owing to a certain pretentiousness of assertion at times, one might +unthinkingly suppose he was. Neither had he, as yet, any fixed theories +of art or definite style of his own, imitating as he was now de +Maupassant, now O. Henry, now Poe; but also it must be said that slowly +and surely he was approximating one, original and forceful and +water-clear in expression and naturalness. At times he veered to a +rather showy technique, at others to a cold and even harsh simplicity. +Yet always in the main he had color, beauty, emotion, poignance when +necessary. Like his idol, de Maupassant, he had no moral or strong +social prejudices, no really great or disturbing imagination, no wealth +of perplexing ideas. He saw America and life as something to be painted +as all masters see life and paint it. Gifted with a true vein of satire, +he had not, at the time of his death, quite mastered its possibilities. +He still retained prejudice of one type or another, which he permitted +to interfere with the very smooth arrangement of his colors. At the same +time, had he not been disturbed by so many of the things which in +America, as elsewhere, ordinarily assail an ambitious and earnest +writer--the prejudice against naturalness and sincerity in matters of +the intellect and the facts of life, and the consequent difficulty of +any one so gifted in obtaining funds at any time--he might have done +much better sooner. He was certain to come into his own eventually had +he lived. His very accurate and sensitive powers of observation, his +literary taste, his energy and pride in his work, were destined to carry +him there. It could not have been otherwise. Ten years more, judging by +the rate at which he worked, his annual product and that which he did +leave, one might say that in the pantheon of American letters it is +certain that he would have proved a durable if not one of its great +figures, and he might well have been that. As it stands, it is not +impossible that he will be so recognized, if for no more than the sure +promise of his genius. + + + + +_The Village Feudists_ + + +In a certain Connecticut fishing-town sometime since, where, besides +lobstering, a shipyard and some sail-boat-building there existed the +several shops and stores which catered to the wants of those who labored +in those lines, there dwelt a groceryman by the name of Elihu Burridge, +whose life and methods strongly point the moral and social successes and +failures of the rural man. + +Sixty years of age, with the vanities and desires of the average man's +life behind rather than before him, he was at the time not unlike the +conventional drawings of Parson Thirdly, which graced the humorous +papers of that day. Two moon-shaped eyes, a long upper lip, a mouth like +the sickle moon turned downward, prominent ears, a rather long face and +a mutton-chop-shaped whisker on either cheek, served to give him that +clerical appearance which the humorous artists so religiously seek to +depict. Add to this that he was middle-sized, clerically spare in form, +reserved and quiet in demeanor, and one can see how he might very +readily give the impression of being a minister. His clothes, however, +were old, his trousers torn but neatly mended, his little blue gingham +jumper which he wore about the store greasy and aged. Everything about +him and his store was so still and dark that one might have been +inclined on first sight to consider him crusty and morose. + +Even more remarkable than himself, however, was his store. I have seen +many in my time that were striking because of their neatness; I never +saw one before that struck me as more remarkable for its disorder. In +the first place it was filled neck-deep with barrels and boxes in the +utmost confusion. Dark, greasy, provision-lined alleys led off into +dingy sections which the eye could not penetrate. Old signs hung about, +advertising things which had long since ceased to sell and were +forgotten by the public. There were pictures in once gilt but now +time-blackened frames, wherein queerly depicted children and +pompous-looking grocers offered one commodity and another, all now +almost obliterated by fly-specks. Shelves were marked on the walls by +signs now nearly illegible. Cobwebs hung thickly from corners and +pillars. There were oil, lard, and a dust-laden scum of some sort on +three of the numerous scales with which he occasionally weighed things +and on many exteriors of once salable articles. Pork, lard, molasses, +and nails were packed in different corners of the place in barrels. +Lying about were household utensils, ship-rigging, furniture and a +hundred other things which had nothing to do with the grocery business. + +As I entered the store the first afternoon I noticed a Bible open at +Judges and a number of slips of paper on which questions had been +written. On my second visit for oil and vinegar, two strangers from off +a vagrant yacht which had entered the little harbor nudged one another +and demanded to know whether either had ever seen anything like it. On +the third, my companion protested that it was not clean, and seeing that +there were other stores we decided to buy our things elsewhere. This was +not so easily accomplished. + +"Where can I get a flatiron?" I inquired at the Postoffice when I first +entered the village. + +"Most likely at Burridge's," was the reply. + +"Do you know where I can get a pair of row-locks?" I asked of a boy who +was lounging about the town dock. + +"At Burridge's," he replied. + +When we wanted oars, pickles of a certain variety, golden syrup, and a +dozen other things which were essential at times, we were compelled to +go to Burridge's, so that at last he obtained a very fair portion of our +trade despite the condition of his store. + +During all these earlier dealings there cropped up something curt and +dry in his conversation. One day we lost a fruit jar which he had +loaned, and I took one very much like it back in its place. When I began +to apologize he interrupted me with, "A jar's a jar, isn't it?" + +Another time, when I remarked in a conciliatory tone that he owed me +eight cents for a can of potted ham which had proved stale, he +exclaimed, "Well, I won't owe you long," and forthwith pulled the money +out of the loose jacket of his jumper and paid me. + +I inquired one day if a certain thing were good. "If it isn't," he +replied, with a peculiar elevation of the eyebrows, "your money is. You +can have that back." + +"That's the way you do business, is it?" + +"Yes, sir," he replied, and his long upper lip thinned out along the +line of the lower one like a vise. + +I was in search of a rocking-chair one day and was directed to +Burridge's as the only place likely to have any! + +"Do you keep furniture?" I inquired. + +"Some," he said. + +"Have you a rocking-chair?" + +"No, sir." + +A day or two later I was in search of a table and on going to Burridge's +found that he had gone to a neighboring city. + +"Have you got a table?" I inquired of the clerk. + +"I don't know," he replied. "There's some furniture in the back room, +but I don't know as I dare to sell any of it while he's away." + +"Why?" + +"Well, he don't like me to sell any of it. He's kind of queer that way. +I dunno what he intends to do with it. Gar!" he added in a strangely +electric way, "he's a queer man! He's got a lot of things back +there--chairs and tables and everything. He's got a lot more in a loft +up the street here. He never seems to want to sell any of 'em. Heard him +tell people he didn't have any." + +I shook my head in puzzled desperation. + +"Come on, let's go back and look anyway. There's no harm in seeing if he +has one." + +We went back and there amid pork and molasses barrels, old papers, boxes +and signs, was furniture in considerable quantity--tables, +rocking-chairs, washstands, bureaus--all cornered and tumbled about. + +"Why, here are rocking-chairs, lots of them," I exclaimed. "Just the +kind I want! He said he didn't have any." + +"Gar! I dunno," replied the clerk. "Here's a table, but I wouldn't dare +sell it to you." + +"Why should he say he didn't have a rocking-chair?" + +"Gar! I dunno. He's goin' out of the furniture business. He don't want +to sell any. I don't know what he intends to do with it." + +"Well," I said in despair, "what about the table? You can sell that, +can't you?" + +"I couldn't--not till he comes back. I don't know what he'd want to do +about it." + +"What's the price of it?" + +"I dunno. He could tell you." + +I went out of the thick-aired stuffy backroom with its unwashed windows, +and when I got opposite the Bible near the door I said: + +"What's the matter with him anyhow? Why doesn't he straighten things out +here?" + +Again the clerk awoke. "Huh!" he exclaimed. "Straighten it out! Gar! I'd +like to see anybody try it." + +"It could be," I said encouragingly. + +"Gar!" he chuckled. "One man did try to straighten it out once when Mr. +Burridge was away. Got about a third of it cleaned up when he come back. +Gar! You oughta seen him! Gar!" + +"What did he do?" + +"What did he do! What didn't he do! Gar! Just took things an' threw them +about again. Said he couldn't find anything." + +"You don't say!" + +"Gar! I should say so! Man come in an' asked for a hammer. Said he +couldn't find any hammer, things was so mixed up. Did it with screws, +water-buckets an' everything just the same. Took 'em right off the +shelves, where they was all in groups, an' scattered 'em all over the +room. Gar! 'Now I guess I can find something when I want it,' he said." +The clerk paused to squint and add, "There ain't anybody tried any +straightenin' out around here since then, you bet. Gar!" + +"How long ago has that been?" + +"About fourteen years now." + +Surprised by this sharp variation from the ordinary standards of trade, +I began thinking of possible conditions which had produced it, when one +evening I happened in on the local barber. He was a lean, inquisitive +individual with a shock of sandy hair and a conspicuous desire to appear +a well-rounded social factor. + +"What sort of person is this Burridge over here? He keeps such a +peculiar store." + +"Elihu is a bit peculiar," he replied, his smile betraying a desire to +appear conservative. "The fault with Elihu, if he has one, is that he's +terribly strong on religion. Can't seem to agree with anybody around +here." + +"What's the trouble?" I asked. + +"It's more'n I could ever make out, what is the matter with him. They're +all a little bit cracked on the subject around here. Nothing but +revivals and meetin's, year in and year out. They're stronger on it +winters than they are in summer." + +"How do you mean?" + +"Well, they'll be more against yachtin' and Sunday pleasures when they +can't go than when they can." + +"What about Elihu?" I asked. + +"Well, he can't seem to get along, somehow. He used to belong to the +Baptist Church, but he got out o' that. Then he went to a church up in +Graylock, but he had a fallin' out up there. Then he went to Northfield +and Eustis. He's been all around, even over on Long Island. He goes to +church up at Amherst now, I believe." + +"What seems to be the trouble?" + +"Oh, he's just strong-headed, I guess." He paused, and ideas lagged +until finally I observed: + +"It's a very interesting store he keeps." + +"It's just as Billy Drumgold told him once: 'Burridge,' he says, 'you've +got everything in this store that belongs to a full-rigged ship 'cept +one thing.' 'What's that?' Burridge asks. 'A second-hand pulpit.' 'Got +that too,' he answered, and takes him upstairs, and there he had one +sure enough." + +"Well," I said, "what was he doing with it?" + +"Danged if I know. He had it all right. Has it yet, so they say." + +Days passed and as the summer waned the evidences of a peculiar life +accumulated. Noank, apparently, was at outs with Burridge on the subject +of religion, and he with it. There were instances of genuine hard +feeling against him. + +Writing a letter in the Postoffice one day I ventured to take up this +matter with the postmaster. + +"You know Mr. Burridge, don't you--the grocer?" + +"Well, I should guess I did," he replied with a flare. + +"Anything wrong with him?" + +"Oh, about everything that's just plain cussed--the most wrangling man +alive. I never saw such a man. He don't get his mail here no more +because he's mad at me, I guess. Took it away because I had Mr. Palmer's +help in my fight, I suppose. Wrote me that I should send all his mail up +to Mystic, and he goes there three or four miles out of his way every +day, just to spite me. It's against the law. I hadn't ought to be doing +it, re-addressing his envelopes three or four times a day, but I do do +it. He's a strong-headed man, that's the trouble with Elihu." + +I had no time to follow this up then, but a little later, sitting in the +shop of the principal sailboat maker, which was situated in the quiet +little lane which follows the line of the village, I was one day +surprised by the sudden warm feeling which the name of Elihu generated. +Something had brought up the subject of religion, and I said that +Burridge seemed rather religious. + +"Yes," said the sailboat maker quickly, "he's religious, all right, only +he reads the Bible for others, not for himself." + +"What do you mean by that?" + +"Why, he wants to run things, that's what. As long as you agree with +Elihu, why, everything's all right. When you don't, the Bible's against +you. That's the way he is." + +"Did he ever disagree with you?" I asked, suspecting some personal +animus in the matter. + +"Me and Elihu was always good friends as long as I agreed with him," he +went on bitterly. "We've been raised together, man and boy, for pretty +near sixty years. We never had a word of any kind but what was friendly, +as long as I agreed with him, but just as soon as I didn't he took a set +against me, and we ain't never spoke a word since." + +"What was the trouble?" I inquired sweetly, anxious to come at the +kernel of this queer situation. + +"Well," he said, dropping his work and looking up to impress me, "I'm a +man that'll sometimes say what I don't believe; that is, I'll agree with +what I hadn't ought to, just to be friendly like. I did that way a lot +o' times with Elihu till one day he came to me with something about +particular salvation. I'm a little more liberal myself. I believe in +universal redemption by faith alone. Well, Elihu came to me and began +telling me what he believed. Finally he asked me something about +particular salvation and wanted to know whether I didn't agree with him. +I didn't, and told him so. From that day on he took a set against me, +and he ain't never spoke a word to me since." + +I was unaware that there was anything besides a religious disagreement +in this local situation until one day I happened to come into a second +friendly contact with the postmaster. We were speaking of the +characteristics of certain individuals, and I mentioned Burridge. + +"He's all right when you take him the way he wants to be taken. When you +don't you'll find him quite a different man." + +"He seems to be straightforward and honest," I said. + +"There ain't anything you can tell me about Elihu Burridge that I don't +know," he replied feelingly. "Not a thing. I've lived with him, as you +might say, all my life. Been raised right here in town with him, and we +went to school together. Man and boy, there ain't ever been a thing that +Elihu has agreed with, without he could have the running of it. You +can't tell me anything about him that I don't know." + +I could not help smiling at the warmth of feeling, although something +about the man's manner bespoke a touch of heart-ache, as if he were +privately grieving. + +"What was the trouble between you two?" I asked. + +"It's more'n I could ever find out," he replied in a voice that was +really mournful, so difficult and non-understandable was the subject to +him. "Before I started to work for this office there wasn't a day that I +didn't meet and speak friendly with Elihu. He used to have a good many +deeds and papers to sign, and he never failed to call me in when I was +passing. When I started to work for this office I noticed he took on a +cold manner toward me, and I tried to think of something I might have +done, but I couldn't. Finally I wrote and asked him if there was +anything between us if he wouldn't set a time and place so's we might +talk it over and come to an understanding." He paused and then added, "I +wish you could see the letter he wrote me. Comin' from a Christian +man--from him to me--I wish you could see it." + +"Why don't you show it to me?" I asked inquisitively. + +He went back into the office and returned with an ancient-looking +document, four years old it proved to be, which he had been treasuring. +He handed me the thumbed and already yellowed page, and I read: + + "MATTHEW HOLCOMB, ESQUIRE, + + "DEAR SIR:--In reply to your letter asking me to set a time and + place in which we might talk over the trouble between us, would + say that the time be Eternity and the place where God shall call + us to judgment. + + "Very truly, + "ELIHU BURRIDGE." + +His eyes rested on me while I read, and the moment I finished he began +with: + +"I never said one word against that man, not one word. I never did a +thing he could take offense at, not one thing. I don't know how a man +can justify himself writing like that." + +"Perhaps it's political," I said. "You don't belong to the same party, +do you?" + +"Yes, we do," he said. "Sometimes I've thought that maybe it was because +I had the support of the shipyard when I first tried to get this office, +but then that wasn't anything between him and me," and he looked away as +if the mystery were inexplicable. + +This shipyard was conducted by a most forceful man but one as narrow and +religionistic as this region in which it had had its rise. Old Mr. +Palmer, the aged founder of it, had long been a notable figure in the +streets and private chambers of the village. The principal grocery +store, coal-yard, sail-loft, hotel and other institutions were conducted +in its interests. His opinion was always foremost in the decision of the +local authorities. He was still, reticent, unobtrusive. Once I saw him +most considerately helping a cripple up the lane to the local Baptist +Church. + +"What's the trouble between Burridge and Palmer?" I asked of the +sail-maker finally, coming to think that here, if anywhere, lay the +solution of the difficulty. + +"Two big fish in too small a basket," he responded laconically. + +"Can't agree, eh?" + +"They both want to lead, or did," he said. "Elihu's a beaten man, +though, now." He paused and then added, "I'm sorry for Elihu. He's a +good man at heart, one of the kindest men you ever saw, when you let him +follow his natural way. He's good to the poor, and he's carried more +slow-pay people than any man in this country, I do believe. He won't +collect an old debt by law. Don't believe in it. No, sir. Just a +kind-hearted man, but he loves to rule." + +"How about Palmer?" I inquired. + +"Just the same way exactly. He loves to rule, too. Got a good heart, +too, but he's got a lot more money than Elihu and so people pay more +attention to him, that's all. When Elihu was getting the attention he +was just the finest man you ever saw, kind, generous, good-natured. +People love to be petted, at least some people do--you know they do. +When you don't pet 'em they get kind o' sour and crabbed like. Now +that's all that's the matter with Elihu, every bit of it. He's sour, +now, and a little lonely, I expect. He's drove away every one from him, +or nearly all, 'cept his wife and some of his kin. Anybody can do a good +grocery business here, with the strangers off the boats"--the harbor was +a lively one--"all you have to do is carry a good stock. That's why he +gets along so well. But he's drove nearly all the local folks away from +him." + +I listened to this comfortable sail-loft sage, and going back to the +grocery store one afternoon took another look at the long, grim-faced +silent figure. He was sitting in the shadow of one of his moldy corners, +and if there had ever been any light of merriment in his face it was not +there now. He looked as fixed and solemn as an ancient puritan, and yet +there was something so melancholy in the man's eye, so sad and +disappointed, that it seemed anything but hard. Two or three little +children were playing about the door and when he came forward to wait on +me one of them sidled forward and put her chubby hand in his. + +"Your children?" I asked, by way of reaching some friendly +understanding. + +"No," he replied, looking fondly down, "she belongs to a French lady up +the street here. She often comes down to see me, don't you?" and he +reached over and took the fat little cheek between his thumb and +forefinger. + +The little one rubbed her face against his worn baggy trousers' leg and +put her arm about his knee. Quietly he stood there in a simple way until +she loosened her hold upon him, when he went about his labor. + +I was sitting one day in the loft of the comfortable sail-maker, who, by +the way, was brother-in-law to Burridge, when I said to him: + +"I wish you'd tell me the details about Elihu. How did he come to be +what he is? You ought to know; you've lived here all your life." + +"So I do know," he replied genially. "What do you want me to tell you?" + +"The whole story of the trouble between him and Palmer; how he comes to +be at outs with all these people." + +"Well," he began, and here followed with many interruptions and side +elucidations, which for want of space have been eliminated, the +following details: + +Twenty-five years before Elihu had been the leading citizen of Noank. +From operating a small grocery at the close of the Civil War he branched +out until he sold everything from ship-rigging to hardware. Noank was +then in the height of its career as a fishing town and as a port from +which expeditions of all sorts were wont to sail. Whaling was still in +force, and vessels for whaling expeditions were equipped here. Wealthy +sea-captains frequently loaded fine three-masted schooners here for +various trading expeditions to all parts of the world; the fishers for +mackerel, cod and herring were making three hundred and fifty dollars a +day in season, and thousands of dollars' worth of supplies were annually +purchased here. + +Burridge was then the only tradesman of any importance and, being of a +liberal, strong-minded and yet religious turn, attracted the majority of +this business to him. He had houses and lands, was a deacon in the local +Baptist Church and a counselor in matters political, social and +religious, whose advice was seldom rejected. Every Fourth of July during +these years it was his custom to collect all the children of the town in +front of his store and treat them to ice-cream. Every Christmas Eve he +traveled about the streets in a wagon, which carried half a dozen +barrels of candy and nuts, which he would ladle out to the merry +shouting throng of pursuing youngsters, until all were satisfied. For +the skating season he prepared a pond, spending several thousand dollars +damming up a small stream, in order that the children might have a place +to skate. He created a library where all might obtain suitable reading, +particularly the young. + +On New Year's morning it was his custom to visit all the poor and +bereaved and lonely in Noank, taking a great dray full of presents and +leaving a little something with his greetings and a pleasant handshake +at every door. The lonely rich as well as the lonely poor were included, +for he was certain, as he frequently declared, that the rich could be +lonely too. + +He once told his brother-in-law that one New Year's Day a voice called +to him in church: "Elihu Burridge, how about the lonely rich and poor of +Noank?" "Up I got," he concluded, "and from that day to this I have +never neglected them." + +When any one died who had a little estate to be looked after for the +benefit of widows or orphans, Burridge was the one to take charge of it. +People on their deathbeds sent for him, and he always responded, taking +energetic charge of everything and refusing to take a penny for his +services. After a number of years the old judge to whom he always +repaired with these matters of probate, knowing his generosity in this +respect, also refused to accept any fee. When he saw him coming he would +exclaim: + +"Well, Elihu, what is it this time? Another widow or orphan that we've +got to look after?" + +After Elihu had explained what it was, he would add: + +"Well, Elihu, I do hope that some day some rich man will call you to +straighten out his affairs. I'd like to see _you_ get a little +something, so that _I_ might get a little something. Eh, Elihu?" Then he +would jocularly poke his companion in charity in the ribs. + +These general benefactions were continuous and coeval with his local +prosperity and dominance, and their modification as well as the man's +general decline the result of the rise of this other individual--Robert +Palmer,--"operating" to take the color of power and preëminence from +him. + +Palmer was the owner of a small shipyard here at the time, a thing which +was not much at first but which grew swiftly. He was born in Noank +also, a few years before Burridge, and as a builder of vessels had been +slowly forging his way to a moderate competence when Elihu was already +successful. He was a keen, fine-featured, energetic individual, with +excellent commercial and strong religious instincts, and by dint of hard +labor and a saving disposition he obtained, soon after the Civil War, a +powerful foothold. Many vessels were ordered here from other cities. +Eventually he began to build barges in large numbers for a great +railroad company. + +Early becoming a larger employer of labor than any one else in the +vicinity he soon began to branch out, possessed himself of the allied +industries of ship-rigging, chandlering, and finally established a +grocery store for his employees, and opened a hotel. Now the local +citizens began to look upon him as their leading citizen. They were +always talking of his rise, frequently in the presence of Burridge. He +said nothing at first, pretending to believe that his quondam leadership +was unimpaired. Again, there were those who, having followed the various +branches of labor which Palmer eventually consolidated, viewed this +growth with sullen and angry eyes. They still sided with Burridge, or +pretended still to believe that he was the more important citizen of the +two. In the course of time, however--a period of thirty years or +more--some of them failed; others died; still others were driven away +for want of a livelihood. Only Burridge's position and business +remained, but in a sadly weakened state. He was no longer a man of any +great importance. + +Not unnaturally, this question of local supremacy was first tested in +the one place in which local supremacy is usually tested--the church +where they both worshiped. Although only one of five trustees, Burridge +had been the will of the body. Always, whatever he thought, the others +had almost immediately agreed to it. But now that Palmer had become a +power, many of those ardent in the church and beholden to him for profit +became his humble followers. They elected him trustee and did what he +wished, or what they thought he wished. To Burridge this made them +sycophants, slaves. + +Now followed the kind of trivialities by which most human feuds are +furthered. The first test of strength came when a vagrant evangelist +from Alabama arrived and desired to use the church for a series of +evening lectures. The question had to be decided at once. Palmer was +absent at the time. + +"Here is a request for the use of the church," said one of the trustees, +explaining its nature. + +"Well," said Burridge, "you'd better let him have it." + +"Do you think we ought to do anything about it," the trustee replied, +"until Mr. Palmer returns?" + +Although Burridge saw no reason for waiting, the other trustees did, and +upon that the board rested. Burridge was furious. By one fell stroke he +was put in second place, a man who had to await the return of +Palmer--and that in his own church, so to speak. + +"Why," he told some one, "the rest of us are nothing. This man is a +king." + +From that time on differences of opinion within the church and elsewhere +were common. Although no personal animosity was ever admitted, local +issues almost invariably found these two men opposed to each other. +There was the question of whether the village should be made into a +borough--a most trivial matter; another, that of creating public works +for the manufacture of gas and distribution of water; a third, that of +naming a State representative. Naturally, while these things might be to +the advantage of Palmer or not, they were of no great import to +Burridge, but yet he managed to see in them an attempt or attempts to +saddle a large public debt upon widows and orphans, those who could not +afford or did not need these things, and he proceeded to so express +himself at various public meetings. Slowly the breach widened. Burridge +became little more than a malcontent in many people's eyes. He was a +"knocker," a man who wanted to hold the community back. + +Although defeated in many instances he won in others, and this did not +help matters any. At this point, among other things the decay of the +fishing industry helped to fix definitely the position of the two men as +that of victor and vanquished. Whaling died out, then mackerel and cod +were caught only at farther and farther distances from the town, and +finally three- and even two-masted schooners ceased entirely to buy their +outfits here, and Burridge was left dependent upon local patronage or +smaller harbor trade for his support. Coextensively, he had the +dissatisfaction of seeing Palmer's industries grow until eventually +three hundred and fifty men were upon his payrolls and even his foremen +and superintendents were considered influential townspeople. Palmer's +son and two daughters grew up and married, branched out and became +owners of industries which had formerly belonged to men who had traded +with Burridge. He saw his grocery trade dwindle and sink, while with age +his religiosity grew, and he began to be little more than a petty +disputant, one constantly arguing as to whether the interpretation of +the Bible as handed down from the pulpit of what he now considered _his_ +recalcitrant church was sound or not. When those who years before had +followed him obediently now pricked him with theological pins and +ventured to disagree with him, he was quick and sometimes foolish in his +replies. Thus, once a former friend and fellow-church-member who had +gone over to the opposition came into his store one morning and said: + +"Elihu, for a man that's as strong on religion as you are, I see you do +one thing that can't quite be justified by the Book." + +"What's that?" inquired Burridge, looking up. + +"I see you sell tobacco." + +"I see you chew it," returned the host grimly. + +"I know I do," returned his visitor, "but I'll tell you what I'll do, +Elihu. If you'll quit selling, I'll quit chewing it," and he looked as +if he had set a fancy trap for his straw-balancing brother, as he held +him to be. + +"It's a bargain," said Burridge on the instant. "It's a bargain!" + +And from that day on tobacco was not offered for sale in that store, +although there was a large local demand for it. + +Again, in the pride of his original leadership, he had accepted the +conduct of the local cemetery, a thing which was more a burden than a +source of profit. With his customary liberality in all things reflecting +credit upon himself he had spent his own money in improving it, much +more than ever the wardens of the church would have thought of returning +to him. In one instance, when a new receiving vault was desired, he had +added seven hundred dollars of his own to three hundred gathered by the +church trustees for the purpose, and the vault was immediately +constructed. Frequently also, in his pride of place, he had been given +to asserting he was tired of conducting the cemetery and wished he could +resign. + +In these later evil days, therefore, the trustees, following the star of +the newer power, saw fit to intimate that perhaps some one else would be +glad to look after it if he was tired of it. Instantly the fact that he +could no longer boast as formerly came home to him. He was not essential +any longer in anything. The church did not want him to have a hand in +any of its affairs! The thought of this so weighed on him that +eventually he resigned from this particular task, but thereafter also +every man who had concurred in accepting his resignation was his bitter +enemy. He spoke acidly of the seven hundred he had spent, and jibed at +the decisions of the trustees in other matters. Soon he became a +disturbing element in the church, taking a solemn vow never to enter the +graveyard again, and not long after resigned all his other official +duties--passing the plate, et cetera--although he still attended +services there. + +Decoration Day rolled around, the G.A.R. Post of which he was an ardent +member prepared for the annual memorial services over the graves of its +dead comrades. Early on the morning of the thirtieth of May they +gathered before their lodge hall, Burridge among them, and after +arranging the details marched conspicuously to the cemetery where the +placing of the wreaths and the firing of the salute were to take place. +No one thought of Burridge until the gate was reached, when, gun over +shoulder and uniform in perfect trim, he fell conspicuously out of line +and marched away home alone. It was the cemetery he had vowed not to +enter, his old pet and protégé. + +Men now looked askance at him. He was becoming queer, no doubt of it, +not really sensible--or was he? Up in Northfield, a nearby town, dwelt a +colonel of the Civil War who had led the very regiment of which Burridge +was a member but who during the war had come into serious difficulty +through a tangle of orders, and had been dishonorably discharged. +Although wounded in one of the engagements in which the regiment had +distinguished itself, he had been allowed to languish almost forgotten +for years and finally, failing to get a pension, had died in poverty. +On his deathbed he had sent for Burridge, and reminding him of the +battle in which he had led him asked that after he was gone, for the +sake of his family, he would take up the matter of a pension and if +possible have his record purged of the stigma and the pension awarded. + +Burridge agreed most enthusiastically. Going to the local congressman, +he at once began a campaign, but because of the feeling against him two +years passed without anything being done. Later he took up the matter in +his own G.A.R. Post, but there also failing to find the measure of his +own enthusiasm, he went finally direct to one of the senators of the +State and laying the matter before him had the records examined by +Congress and the dead colonel honorably discharged. + +One day thereafter in the local G.A.R. he commented unfavorably upon the +indifference which he deemed had been shown. + +"There wouldn't have been half so much delay if the man hadn't been a +deserter," said one of his enemies--one who was a foreman in Palmer's +shipyard. + +Instantly Burridge was upon his feet, his eyes aflame with feeling. +Always an orator, with a strangely declamatory style he launched into a +detailed account of the late colonel's life and services, his wounds, +his long sufferings and final death in poverty, winding up with a vivid +word picture of a battle (Antietam), in which the colonel had gallantly +captured a rebel flag and come by his injury. + +When he was through there was great excitement in the Post and much +feeling in his favor, but he rather weakened the effect by at once +demanding that the traitorous words be withdrawn, and failing to compel +this, preferred charges against the man who had uttered them and +attempted to have him court-martialed. + +So great was the bitterness engendered by this that the Post was now +practically divided, and being unable to compel what he considered +justice he finally resigned. Subsequently he took issue with his former +fellow-soldiers in various ways, commenting satirically on their church +regularity and professed Christianity, as opposed to their indifference +to the late colonel, and denouncing in various public conversations the +double-mindedness and sharp dealings of the "little gods," as he termed +those who ran the G.A.R. Post, the church, and the shipyards. + +Not long after his religious affairs reached a climax when the minister, +once a good friend of his, following the lead of the dominant star, Mr. +Palmer, publicly denounced him from the pulpit one Sunday as an enemy of +the church and of true Christianity! + +"There is a man in this congregation," he exclaimed in a burst of +impassioned oratory, "who poses as a Christian and a Baptist, who is in +his heart's depth the church's worst enemy. Hell and all its devils +could have no worse feelings of evil against the faith than he, and he +doesn't sell tobacco, either!" + +The last reference at once fixed the identity of the person, and caused +Burridge to get up and leave the church. He pondered over this for a +time, severed his connections with the body, and having visited Graylock +one Sunday drove there every Sabbath thereafter, each time going to a +different church. After enduring this for six months he generated a +longing for a more convenient meeting-place, and finally allied himself +with the Baptist Church of Eustis. Here his anchor might possibly have +remained fast had it not been that subtle broodings over his wrongs, a +calm faith in the righteousness of his own attitude, and disgust with +those whom he saw calmly expatiating upon the doctrines and dogmas of +religion in his own town finally caused him to suspect a universal +misreading of the Bible. This doubt, together with his own desire for +justification according to the Word, finally put the idea in his mind to +make a study of the Bible himself. He would read it, he said. He would +study Hebrew and Greek, and refer all questionable readings of words and +passages back to the original tongue in which it had been written. + +With this end in view he began a study of these languages, the +importance of the subject so growing upon him that he neglected his +business. Day after day he labored, putting a Bible and a Concordance +upon a pile of soap-boxes near the door of his store and poring over +them between customers, the store meantime taking care of itself. He +finally mastered Greek and Hebrew after a fashion, and finding the word +"repent" frequently used, and that God had made man in the image of +Himself, with a full knowledge of right and wrong, he gravitated toward +the belief that therefore his traducers in Noank knew what they were +doing, and that before he needed to forgive them--though his love might +cover all--they must repent. + +He read the Bible from beginning to end with this one feeling +subconsciously dominant, and all its loving commands about loving one +another, forgiving your brother seventy times seven, loving those that +hate you, returning good for evil, selling all that you have and giving +it to the poor, were made to wait upon the duty of others to repent. He +began to give this interpretation at Eustis, where he was allowed to +have a Sunday-school, until the minister came and told him once, "to his +face," as the local report ran: "We don't want you here." + +Meekly he went forth and, joining a church across the Sound on Long +Island, sailed over every Sunday and there advanced the same views until +he was personally snubbed by the minister and attacked by the local +papers. Leaving there he went to Amherst, always announcing now that he +held distinctive views about some things in the Bible and asking the +privilege of explaining. In this congregation he was still comfortably +at rest when I knew him. + +"All sensitiveness," the sail-maker had concluded after his long +account. "There ain't anything the matter with Elihu, except that he's +piqued and grieved. He wanted to be the big man, and he wasn't." + +I was thinking of this and of his tender relationship with children as I +had noticed it, and of his service to the late colonel when one day +being in the store, I said: + +"Do you stand on the Bible completely, Mr. Burridge?" + +"Yes, sir," he replied, "I do." + +"Believe every word of it to be true?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"If your brother has offended you, how many times must you forgive him?" + +"Seventy times seven." + +"Do you forgive your brothers?" + +"Yes, sir--if they repent." + +"If they repent?" + +"Yes, sir, if they repent. That's the interpretation. In Matthew you +will find, 'If he repent, forgive him.'" + +"But if you don't forgive them, even before they repent," I said, +"aren't you harboring enmity?" + +"No, sir, I'm not treasuring up enmity. I only refuse to forgive them." + +I looked at the man, a little astonished, but he looked so sincere and +earnest that I could not help smiling. + +"How do you reconcile that with the command, 'Love one another?' You +surely can't love and refuse to forgive them at the same time?" + +"I don't refuse to forgive them," he repeated. "If John there," +indicating an old man in a sun-tanned coat who happened to be passing +through the store at the time, "should do me a wrong--I don't care what +it was, how great or how vile--if he should come to me and say, +'Burridge, I'm sorry,'" he executed a flashing oratorical move in +emphasis, and throwing back his head, exclaimed: "It's gone! It's gone! +There ain't any more of it! All gone!" + +I stood there quite dumbfounded by his virility, as the air vibrated +with his force and feeling. So manifestly was his reading of the Bible +colored by the grief of his own heart that it was almost painful to +tangle him with it. Goodness and mercy colored all his ideas, except in +relation to his one-time followers, those who had formerly been his +friends and now left him to himself. + +"Do you still visit the poor and the afflicted, as you once did?" I +asked him once. + +"I'd rather not say anything about that," he replied sternly. + +"But do you?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Still make your annual New Year round?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Well, you'll get your reward for that, whatever you believe." + +"I've had my reward," he said slowly. + +"Had it?" + +"Yes, sir, had it. Every hand that's been lifted to receive the little +I had to offer has been my reward." + +He smiled, and then said in seemingly the most untimely way: + +"I remember once going to a lonely woman here on New Year's Day and +taking her a little something--basket of grapes or fruit of some kind it +was. I was stopping a minute--never stay long, you know; just run in and +say 'Happy New Year!' leave what I have and get out--and so said, 'Good +morning, Aunt Mary!' + +"'Good morning, Elihu,' says she. + +"'Can't stay long, Aunt Mary,' I said. 'Just want to leave you these. +Happy New Year!' + +"Well, sir, you know I was just turning around and starting when she +caught hold of my sleeve and says: + +"'Elihu Burridge,' she says, 'give me that hand!' and do you know, +before I knew what she was about she took it up to her lips and kissed +it! Yes, she did--kissed my hand! + +"Now," he said, drawing himself up, with eyes bright with intense +feeling, "you know whether I've had my reward or not, don't you?" + + + + +_"Vanity, Vanity," Saith the Preacher_ + + +Sometimes a single life will clearly and effectively illustrate a +period. Hence, to me, the importance of this one. + +I first met X---- at a time when American financial methods and American +finances were at their apex of daring and splendor, and when the world +was in a more or less tolerant mood toward their grandiose manners and +achievements. It was the golden day of Mr. Morgan, Senior, Mr. Belmont, +Mr. Harriman, Mr. Sage, Mr. Gates, Mr. Brady, and many, many others who +were still extant and ruling distinctly and drastically, as was proved +by the panic of 1907. In opposition to them and yet imitating their +methods, now an old story to those who have read "Frenzied Finance," +"Lawless Wealth," and other such exposures of the methods which produced +our enormous American fortunes, were such younger men as Charles W. +Morse (the victim of the 1907 panic), F. Augustus Heinze (another if +less conspicuous victim of the same "panic"), E.R. Thomas, an ambitious +young millionaire, himself born to money, David A. Sullivan, and X----. +I refuse to mention his name because he is still alive although no +longer conspicuous, and anxious perhaps to avoid the uncomfortable glare +of publicity when all the honors and comforts which made it endurable in +the first place are absent. + +The person who made X---- essentially interesting to me long before I +met him was one Lucien de Shay, a ne'er-do-well pianist and voice +culturist, who was also a connoisseur in the matters of rugs, hangings, +paintings and furniture, things in which X---- was just then most +intensely interested, erecting, as he was, a great house on Long Island +and but newly blossoming into the world of art or fashion or culture or +show--those various things which the American multi-millionaire always +wants to blossom or bloom into and which he does not always succeed in +doing. De Shay was one of those odd natures so common to the +metropolis--half artist and half man of fashion who attach themselves so +readily to men of strength and wealth, often as advisors and counselors +in all matters of taste, social form and social progress. How this +particular person was rewarded I never quite knew, whether in cash or +something else. He was also a semi-confidant of mine, furnishing me +"tips" and material of one sort and another in connection with the +various publications I was then managing. As it turned out later, X---- +was not exactly a multi-millionaire as yet, merely a fledgling, although +the possibilities were there and his aims and ambitions were fast +nearing a practical triumph the end of which of course was to be, as in +the case of nearly all American multi-millionaires of the newer and +quicker order, bohemian or exotic and fleshly rather than cultural or +æsthetic pleasure, although the latter were never really exactly +ignored. + +But even so. He was a typical multi-millionaire in the showy and even +gaudy sense of the time. For if the staid and conservative and socially +well-placed rich have the great houses and the ease and the luxury of +paraphernalia, the bohemian rich of the X---- type have the flare, +recklessness and imagination which lend to their spendings and +flutterings a sparkle and a shine which the others can never hope to +match. + +Said this friend of mine to me one day: "Listen, I want you to meet this +man X----. You will like him. He is fine. You haven't any idea what a +fascinating person he really is. He looks like a Russian Grand Duke. He +has the manners and the tastes of a Medici or a Borgia. He is building a +great house down on Long Island that once it is done will have cost him +five or six hundred thousand. It's worth seeing already. His studio here +in the C---- studio building is a dream. It's thick with the loveliest +kinds of things. I've helped buy them myself. And he isn't dull. He +wrote a book at twenty, 'Icarus,' which is not bad either and which he +says is something like himself. He has read your book ("Sister Carrie") +and he sympathizes with that man Hurstwood. Says parts of it remind him +of his own struggles. That's why he wants to meet you. He once worked on +the newspapers too. God knows how he is making his money, but I know how +he is spending it. He's decided to live, and he's doing it splendidly. +It's wonderful." + +I took notice, although I had never even heard of the man. There were so +very, very many rich men in America. Later I heard much more concerning +him from this same de Shay. Once he had been so far down in the scale +that he had to shine shoes for a living. Once he had walked the streets +of New York in the snow, his shoes cracked and broken, no overcoat, not +even a warm suit. He had come here a penniless emigrant from Russia. Now +he controlled four banks, one trust company, an insurance company, a +fire insurance company, a great real estate venture somewhere, and what +not. Naturally all of this interested me greatly. When are we +indifferent to a rise from nothing to something? + +At de Shay's invitation I journeyed up to X----'s studio one Wednesday +afternoon at four, my friend having telephoned me that if I could I must +come at once, that there was an especially interesting crowd already +assembled in the rooms, that I would meet a long list of celebrities. +Two or three opera singers of repute were already there, among them an +Italian singer and sorceress of great beauty, a veritable queen of the +genus adventuress, who was setting the town by the ears not only by her +loveliness but her voice. Her beauty was so remarkable that the Sunday +papers were giving full pages to her face and torso alone. There were to +be several light opera and stage beauties there also, a basso profundo +to sing, writers, artists, poets. + +I went. The place and the crowd literally enthralled me. It was so gay, +colorful, thrillful. The host and the guests were really interesting--to +me. Not that it was so marvelous as a studio or that it was so +gorgeously decorated and furnished--it was impressive enough in that +way--but that it was so gracefully and interestingly representative of a +kind of comfort disguised as elegance. The man had everything, or nearly +so--friends, advisors, servants, followers. A somewhat savage and +sybaritic nature, as I saw at once, was here disporting itself in +velvets and silks. The iron hand of power, if it was power, was being +most gracefully and agreeably disguised as the more or less flaccid one +of pleasure and friendship. + +My host was not visible at first, but I met a score of people whom I +knew by reputation, and listened to clatter and chatter of the most +approved metropolitan bohemian character. The Italian sorceress was +there, her gorgeous chain earrings tinkling mellifluously as she nodded +and gesticulated. De Shay at once whispered in my ear that she was +X----'s very latest flame and an expensive one too. "You should see what +he buys her!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "God!" Actresses and society +women floated here and there in dreams of afternoon dresses. The +automobiles outside were making a perfect uproar. The poets and writers +fascinated me with their praises of the host's munificence and taste. At +a glance it was plain to me that he had managed to gather about him the +very element it would be most interesting to gather, supposing one +desired to be idle, carefree and socially and intellectually gay. If +America ever presented a smarter drawing-room I never saw it. + +My friend de Shay, being the fidus Achates of the host, had the power to +reveal the inner mysteries of this place to me, and on one or two +occasions when there were not so many present and while the others were +chattering in the various rooms--music-, dining-, ball-, library and so +forth--I was being shown the kitchen, pantry, wine cellar, and also +various secret doors and passages whereby mine host by pressing a flower +on a wall or a spring behind a picture could cause a door to fly open or +close which gave entrance to or from a room or passage in no way +connected with the others save by another secret door and leading always +to a private exit. I wondered at once at the character of the person who +could need, desire or value this. A secret bedroom, for instance; a +lounging-room! In one of these was a rather severe if handsome desk and +a steel safe and two chairs--no more; a very bare room. I wondered at +this silent and rather commercial sanctum in the center of this +frou-frou of gayety, no trace of the sound of which seemed to penetrate +here. What I also gained was a sense of an exotic, sybaritic and purely +pagan mind, one which knew little of the conventions of the world and +cared less. + +On my first visit, as I was leaving, I was introduced to the host just +within his picture gallery, hung with many fine examples of the Dutch +and Spanish schools. I found him to be as described: picturesque and +handsome, even though somewhat plump, phlegmatic and lethargic--yet +active enough. He was above the average in height, well built, florid, +with a huge, round handsome head, curly black hair, keen black eyes, +heavy overhanging eyebrows, full red lips, a marked chin ornamented by a +goatee. In any costume ball he would have made an excellent Bacchus or +Pan. He appeared to have the free, easy and gracious manner of those who +have known much of life and have achieved, in part at least, their +desires. He smiled, wished to know if I had met all the guests, hoped +that the sideboard had not escaped me, that I had enjoyed the singing. +Would I come some evening when there was no crowd--or, better yet, dine +with him and my friend de Shay, whose personality appeared to be about +as agreeable to him as his own. He was sorry he could not give me more +attention now. + +Interestingly enough, and from the first, I was impressed with this man; +not because of his wealth (I knew richer men) but because of a something +about him which suggested dreams, romance, a kind of sense or love of +splendor and grandeur which one does not often encounter among the +really wealthy. Those cracked shoes were in my mind, I suppose. He +seemed to live among great things, but in no niggardly, parsimonious or +care-taking way. Here was ease, largess, a kind of lavishness which was +not ostentation but which seemed rather to say, "What are the minute +expenses of living and pleasuring as contrasted with the profits of +skill in the world outside?" He suggested the huge and Aladdin-like +adventures with which so many of the great financiers of the day, the +true tigers of Wall Street, were connected. + +It was not long thereafter that I was once more invited, this time to a +much more lavish affair and something much more sybaritic in its tone, +although I was really not conscious of what it was to be like when I +went there. It began at twelve midnight, and to this day it glitters in +my mind as among the few really barbaric and exotic things that I have +ever witnessed. Not that the trappings or hangings or setting were so +outré or amazing as that the atmosphere of the thing itself was relaxed, +bubbling, pagan. There were so many daring and seeking people there. The +thing sang and was talked of for months after--in whispers! The gayety! +The abandon! The sheer intoxication, mental and physical! I never saw +more daring costumes, so many really beautiful women (glitteringly so) +in one place at one time, wonderful specimens of exotic and in the main +fleshy or sensuous femininity. There was, among other things, as I +recall, a large nickeled ice-tray on wheels packed with unopened bottles +of champagne, and you had but to lift a hand or wink an eye to have +another opened for you alone, ever over and over. And the tray was +always full. One wall of the dining-room farther on was laden with +delicate novelties in the way of food. A string quartette played for the +dancers in the music-room. There were a dozen corners in different rooms +screened with banks of flowers and concealing divans. The dancing and +singing were superb, individual, often abandoned in character, as was +the conversation. As the morning wore on (for it did not begin until +after midnight) the moods of all were either so mellowed or inflamed as +to make intentions, hopes, dreams, the most secret and sybaritic, the +order of expression. One was permitted to see human nature stripped of +much of its repression and daylight reserve or cant. At about four in +the morning came the engaged dancers, quite the pièce de +résistance--with wreaths about heads, waists and arms for clothing and +well, really nothing more beyond their beautiful figures--scattering +rose leaves or favors. These dancers the company itself finally joined, +single file at first, pellmell afterwards--artists, writers, +poets--dancing from room to room in crude Bacchic imitation of their +leaders--the women too--until all were singing, parading, swaying and +dancing in and out of the dozen rooms. And finally, liquor and food +affecting them, I suppose, many fell flat, unable to do anything +thereafter but lie upon divans or in corners until friends assisted them +elsewhere--to taxis finally. But mine host, as I recall him, was always +present, serene, sober, smiling, unaffected, bland and gracious and +untiring in his attention. He was there to keep order where otherwise +there would have been none. + +I mention this merely to indicate the character of a long series of such +events which covered the years 19-- to 19--. During that time, for the +reason that I have first given (his curious pleasure in my company), I +was part and parcel of a dozen such more or less vivid affairs and +pleasurings, which stamped on my mind not only X---- but life itself, +the possibilities and resources of luxury where taste and appetite are +involved, the dreams of grandeur and happiness which float in some +men's minds and which work out to a wild fruition--dreams so outré and +so splendid that only the tyrant of an obedient empire, with all the +resources of an enslaved and obedient people, could indulge with safety. +Thus once, I remember, that a dozen of us--writers and artists--being +assembled in his studio in New York one Friday afternoon for the mere +purpose of idling and drinking, he seeming to have nothing better to do +for the time being, he suddenly suggested, and as though it had but now +occurred to him, that we all adjourn to his country house on Long +Island, which was not yet quite finished (or, rather, furnished), but +which was in a sufficient state of completion to permit of appropriate +entertainment providing the necessaries were carried out there with us. + +As I came to think of this afterward, I decided that after all it was +not perhaps so unpremeditated as it seemed and that unconsciously we +served a very useful purpose. There was work to do, suggestions to be +obtained, an overseer, decorator and landscape gardener with whom +consultations were absolutely necessary; and nothing that X---- ever did +was without its element of calculation. Why not make a gala affair of a +rather dreary November task-- + +Hence-- + +At any rate the majority of us forthwith agreed, since plainly it meant +an outing of the most lavish and pleasing nature. At once four +automobiles were pressed into service, three from his own garage and one +specially engaged elsewhere. There was some telephoning _in re_ culinary +supplies to a chef in charge of the famous restaurant below who was _en +rapport_ with our host, and soon some baskets of food were produced and +subsequently the four cars made their appearance at the entryway below. +At dusk of a gray, cold, smoky day we were all bundled into +these--poets, playwrights, novelists, editors (he professed a great +contempt for actors), and forthwith we were off, to do forty-five miles +between five-thirty and seven p.m. + +I often think of that ride, the atmosphere of it, and what it told of +our host's point of view. He was always so grave, serene, watchful yet +pleasant and decidedly agreeable, gay even, without seeming so to be. +There was something so amazingly warm and exotic about him and his, and +yet at the same time something so cold and calculated, as if after all +he were saying to himself, "I am the master of all this, am +stage-managing it for my own pleasure." I felt that he looked upon us +all not so much as intimates or friends as rather fine birds or +specimens of one kind and another, well qualified to help him with art +and social ideas if nothing more--hence his interest in us. Also, in his +estimation no doubt, we reflected some slight color or light into his +life, which he craved. We had done things too. Nevertheless, in his own +estimation, he was the master, the Can Grande. He could at will, "take +us up or leave us out," or so he thought. We were mere toys, fine +feathers, cap-and-bell artists. It was nice to, "take us around," have +us with him. Smothered in a great richly braided fur coat and fur cap, +he looked as much the Grand Duke as one might wish. + +But I liked him, truly. And what a delicious evening and holiday, all +told, he made of it for us. By leaving a trail of frightened horses, men +and women, and tearing through the gloom as though streets were his +private race-track--I myself as much frightened as any at the roaring +speed of the cars and the possibilities of the road--we arrived at +seven, and by eight were seated to a course dinner of the most +gratifying character. There was no heat in the house as yet, but from +somewhere great logs had been obtained and now blazed in the large +fireplaces. There was no electricity as yet--a private plant was being +installed--but candles and lamps blazed in lovely groups, casting a soft +glow over the great rooms. One room lacked a door, but an immense rug +took its place. There were rugs, hangings and paintings in profusion, +many of them as yet unhung. Some of the most interesting importations of +furniture and statuary were still in the cases in which they had +arrived, with marks of ships and the names of foreign cities upon the +cases. Scattered about the great living-room, dining-room, music-room +and library were enough rugs, divans and chairs as well as musical +instruments--a piano among others--to give the place an air of +completeness and luxury. The walls and ceilings had already been +decorated--in a most florid manner, I must say. Outside were great +balconies and verandahs commanding, as the following morning proved, a +very splendid view of a very bleak sea. The sand dunes! The distant +floor of the sea! The ships! Upstairs were nine suites of one- and +two-rooms and bath. The basement was an intricate world of kitchen, +pantry, engine-room, furnace, wine cellars and what not. Outside was a +tawny waste of sand held together in places in the form of hummocks and +even concealing hills by sand-binding grasses. + +That night, because it was windy and dull and bleak, we stayed inside, I +for one going outside only long enough to discover that there were great +wide verandahs of concrete about the house, fit for great entertainments +in themselves, and near at hand, hummocks of sand. Inside all was warm +and flaring enough. The wine cellar seemed to contain all that one might +reasonably desire. Our host once out here was most gay in his mood. He +was most pleasantly interested in the progress of his new home, although +not intensely so. He seemed to have lived a great deal and to be making +the best of everything as though it were something to go through with. +With much talking on the part of us all, the evening passed swiftly +enough. Some of the men could play and sing. One poet recited enchanting +bits of verse. For our inspection certain pieces of furniture and +statuary were unpacked and displayed--a bronze faun some three feet in +height, for one thing. All the time I was sensible of being in contact +with some one who was really in touch with life in a very large way, +financially and otherwise. His mind seemed to be busy with all sorts of +things. There were two Syrians in Paris, he said, who owned a large +collection of rugs suitable for an exhibition. He had an agent who was +trying to secure the best of them for his new home. De Shay had recently +introduced him to a certain Italian count who had a great house in Italy +but could not afford its upkeep. He was going to take over a portion of +its furnishings, after due verification, of course. Did I know the +paintings of Monticelli and Mancini? He had just secured excellent +examples of both. Some time when his new home was further along I must +come out. Then the pictures would be hung, the statuary and furniture in +place. He would get up a week-end party for a select group. + +The talk drifted to music and the stage. At once I saw that because of +his taste, wealth and skill, women formed a large and yet rather +toy-like portion of his life, holding about as much relation to his +inner life as do the concubines of an Asiatic sultan. Madame of the +earrings, as I learned from De Shay, was a source of great expense to +him, but at that she was elusive, not easily to be come at. The stage +and Broadway were full of many beauties in various walks of life, many +of whom he knew or to whom he could obtain access. Did I know thus, and +so--such-and-such, and one? + +"I'll tell you," he said after a time and when the wine glasses had been +refilled a number of times, "we must give a party out here some time, +something extraordinary, a real one. De Shay and Bielow" (naming another +artist) "and myself must think it out. I know three different +dancers"--and he began to enumerate their qualities. I saw plainly that +even though women played a minor part in his life, they were the fringe +and embroidery to his success and power. At one a.m. we went to our +rooms, having touched upon most of the themes dear to metropolitan +lovers of life and art. + +The next morning was wonderful--glittering, if windy. The sea sparkled +beyond the waste of sand. I noted anew the richness of the furnishings, +the greatness of the house. Set down in so much sand and facing the +great sea, it was wonderful. There was no order for breakfast; we came +down as we chose. A samovar and a coffee urn were alight on the table. +Rolls, chops, anything, were brought on order. Possibly because I was +one of the first about, my host singled me out--he was up and dressed +when I came down--and we strolled over the estate to see what we should +see. + +Curiously, although I had seen many country homes of pretension and even +luxury, I never saw one that appealed to me more on the ground of +promise and, after a fashion, of partial fulfillment. It was so +unpretentiously pretentious, so really grand in a limited and yet poetic +way. Exteriorly its placement, on a rise of ground commanding that vast +sweep of sea and sand, its verandahs, so very wide--great smooth floors +of red concrete--bordered with stone boxes for flowers and handsomely +designed stone benches, its long walks and drives but newly begun, its +stretch of beach, say a half mile away and possibly a mile and a half +long, to be left, as he remarked, "au naturel," driftwood, stones and +all, struck me most favorably. Only one long pier for visiting yachts +was to be built, and a certain stretch of beach, not over three hundred +feet, cleared for bath houses and a smooth beach. On one spot of land, a +high hummock reaching out into the sea, had already been erected a small +vantage tower, open at the bottom for shade and rest, benches turning in +a circle upon a concrete floor, above it, a top looking more like a +small bleak lighthouse than anything else. In this upper portion was a +room reached by small spiral concrete stairs! + +I could not help noting the reserve and _savoir faire_ with which my +host took all this. He was so healthy, assured, interested and, I am +glad to say, not exactly self-satisfied; at least he did not impress me +in that way--a most irritating condition. Plainly he was building a very +splendid thing. His life was nearing its apex. He must not only have had +millions, but great taste to have undertaken, let alone accomplished, as +much as was already visible here. Pointing to a bleak waste of sand +between the house and the sea--and it looked like a huge red and yellow +bird perched upon a waste of sand--he observed, "When you come again in +the spring, that will contain a garden of 40,000 roses. The wind is +nearly always off the sea here. I want the perfume to blow over the +verandahs. I can rotate the roses so that a big percentage of them will +always be in bloom." + +We visited the stables, the garage, an artesian well newly driven, a +drive that was to skirt the sea, a sunken garden some distance from the +house and away from the sea. + +Next spring I came once more--several times, in fact. The rose garden +was then in bloom, the drives finished, the pictures hung. Although this +was not a world in which society as yet deigned to move, it was entirely +conceivable that at a later period it might, and betimes it was crowded +with people smart enough and more agreeable in the main than the hardy, +strident members of the so-called really inner circles. There were +artists, writers, playwrights, singers, actresses, and some nondescript +figures of the ultra-social world--young men principally who seemed to +come here in connection with beautiful young women, models and other +girls whose beauty was their only recommendation to consideration. + +The scene was not without brilliance. A butler and numerous flunkeys +fluttered to and fro. Guests were received at the door by a footman. A +housekeeper and various severe-looking maids governed in the matter of +cleaning. One could play golf, tennis, bridge, motor, fish, swim, drink +in a free and even disconcerting manner or read quietly in one angle or +another of the grounds. There were affairs, much flirting and giggling, +suspicious wanderings to and fro at night--no questions asked as to who +came or whether one was married, so long as a reasonable amount of +decorum was maintained. It was the same on other occasions, only the +house and grounds were full to overflowing with guests and passing +friends, whose machines barked in the drives. I saw as many gay and +fascinating costumes and heard as much clever and at times informative +talk here as anywhere I have been. + +During this fall and winter I was engaged in work which kept me very +much to myself. During the period I read much of X----, banks he was +combining, new ventures he was undertaking. Yet all at once one winter's +day, and out of a clear sky, the papers were full of an enormous +financial crash of which he was the center. According to the newspapers, +the first and foremost of a chain of banks of which he was the head, to +say nothing of a bonding and realty company and some street-railway +project on Long Island, were all involved in the crash. Curiously, +although no derogatory mention had previously been made of him, the +articles and editorials were now most vituperative. Their venom was +especially noticeable. He was a get-rich-quick villain of the vilest +stripe; he had been juggling a bank, a trust company, an insurance +company and a land and street-railway speculative scheme as one would +glass balls. The money wherewith he gambled was not his. He had robbed +the poor, deceived them. Yet among all this and in the huge articles +which appeared the very first day, I noted one paragraph which stuck in +my mind, for I was naturally interested in all this and in him. It read: + + "Wall Street heard yesterday that Superintendent H---- got his + first information concerning the state in which X----'s affairs + were from quarters where resentment may have been cherished + because of his activity in the Long Island Traction field. This is + one of the Street's 'clover patches' and the success which the + newcomer seemed to be meeting did not provoke great pleasure." + +Another item read: + + "A hitch in a deal that was to have transferred the South Shore to + the New York and Queens County System, owned by the Long Island + Railroad, at a profit of almost $2,000,000 to X----, was the cause + of all the trouble. Very active displeasure on the part of certain + powers in Wall Street blocked, it is said, the closing of the deal + for the railroad. They did not want him in this field, and were + powerful enough to prevent it. At the same time pressure from + other directions was brought to bear on him. The clearing-house + refused to clear for his banks. X---- was in need of cash, but + still insisting on a high rate of remuneration for the road which + he had developed to an important point. Their sinister influences + entered and blocked the transfer until it was no longer possible + for him to hold out." + +Along with these two items was a vast mass of data, really pages, +showing how, when, where he had done thus and so, "juggled accounts" +between one bank and another, all of which he controlled however, and +most of which he owned, drew out large sums and put in their place +mortgages on, or securities in, new companies which he was +organizing--tricks which were the ordinary routine of Wall Street and +hence rather ridiculous as the sub-stone of so vast a hue and cry. + +I was puzzled and, more than that, moved by the drama of the man's +sudden end, for I understood a little of finance and its ways, also of +what place and power had plainly come to mean to him. It must be +dreadful. Yet how could it be, I asked myself, if he really owned +fifty-one per cent or more in so many companies that he could be such a +dark villain? After all, ownership is ownership, and control, control. +On the face of the reports themselves his schemes did not look so black. +I read everything in connection with him with care. + +As the days passed various other things happened. For one thing, he +tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window of his studio in New +York; for another, he tried to take poison. Now of a sudden a bachelor +sister, of whom I had never heard in all the time I had known him, put +in an appearance as his nearest of kin--a woman whose name was not his +own but a variation of it, an "-ovitch" having suddenly been tacked onto +it. She took him to a sanitarium, from which he was eventually turned +out as a criminal, then to a hospital, until finally he surrendered +himself to the police. The names of great lawyers and other bankers +began to enter the case. Alienists of repute, those fine chameleons of +the legal world, were employed who swore first that he was insane, then +that he was not. His sister, who was a physician and scientist of +repute, asked the transfer of all his property to her on the ground that +he was incompetent and that she was his next of kin. To this she swore, +giving as her reasons for believing him insane that he had "illusions of +grandeur" and that he believed himself "persecuted by eminent +financiers," things which smacked more of sanity than anything else to +me. At the same time he and she, as time rather indicated, had arranged +this in part in the hope of saving something out of the great wreck. +There were other curious features: Certain eminent men in politics and +finance who from revelations made by the books of the various banks were +in close financial if not personal relations with X---- denied this +completely. Curiously, the great cry on the part of these was that he +was insane, must be, and that he was all alone in his schemes. His life +on Broadway, on Long Island, in his studio in New York, were ransacked +for details. Enough could not be made of his gay, shameful, spendthrift +life. No one else, of course, had ever been either gay or shameful +before--especially not the eminent and hounding financiers. + +Then from somewhere appeared a new element. In a staggeringly low +tenement region in Brooklyn was discovered somehow or other a very old +man and woman, most unsatisfactory as relatives of such imposing people, +who insisted that they were his parents, that years before because he +and his sister were exceedingly restless and ambitious, they had left +them and had only returned occasionally to borrow money, finally ceasing +to come at all. In proof of this, letters, witnesses, old photos, were +produced. It really did appear as if he and his sister, although they +had long vigorously denied it, really were the son and daughter of the +two who had been petty bakers in Brooklyn, laying up a little +competence of their own. I never knew who "dug" them up, but the reason +why was plain enough. The sister was laying claim to the property as the +next of kin. If this could be offset, even though X---- were insane, the +property would at once be thrown into the hands of the various creditors +and sold under a forced sale, of course--in other words, for a song--for +their benefit. Naturally it was of interest to those who wished to have +his affairs wound up to have the old people produced. But the great +financier had been spreading the report all along that he was from +Russia, that his parents, or pseudo-parents, were still there, but that +really he was the illegitimate son of the Czar of Russia, boarded out +originally with a poor family. Now, however, the old people were brought +from Brooklyn and compelled to confront him. It was never really proved +that he and his sister had neglected them utterly or had done anything +to seriously injure them, but rather that as they had grown in place and +station they had become more or less estranged and so ignored them, +having changed their names and soared in a world little dreamed of by +their parents. Also a perjury charge was made against the sister which +effectually prevented her from controlling his estate, a lease long +enough to give the financiers time for their work. Naturally there was a +great hue and cry over her, the scandal, the shame, that they should +thus publicly refuse to recognize their parents as they did or had when +confronted by them. Horrible! There were most heavily illustrated and +tearful Sunday articles, all blazoned forth with pictures of his house +and studio, his banks, cars, yacht, groups of guests, while the motives +of those who produced the parents were overlooked. The pictures of the +parents confronting X---- and his sister portrayed very old and feeble +people, and were rather moving. They insisted that they were his parents +and wept brokenly in their hands. But why? And he denying it! His +sister, who resented all this bitterly and who stood by him valiantly, +repudiated, for his sake of course, his and her so-called parents and +friends. + +I never saw such a running to cover of "friends" in all my life. Of all +those I had seen about his place and in his company, scores on scores of +people reasonably well known in the arts, the stage, the worlds of +finance and music, all eating his dinners, riding in his cars, drinking +his wines, there was scarcely any one now who knew him anything more +than "casually" or "slightly"--oh, so slightly! When rumors as to the +midnight suppers, the Bacchic dancing, the automobile parties to his +great country place and the spirited frolics which occurred there began +to get abroad, there was no one whom I knew who had ever been there or +knew anything about him or them. For instance, of all the people who had +been close or closest and might therefore have been expected to be +friendly and deeply concerned was de Shay, his fidus Achates and +literally his pensioner--yet de Shay was almost the loudest in his +denunciation or at least deprecation of X----, his habits and methods! +Although it was he who had told me of Mme. ---- and her relation to +X----, who urged me to come here, there and the other place, especially +where X---- was the host, always assuring me that it would be so +wonderful and that X---- was really such a great man, so generous, so +worth-while, he was now really the loudest or at least the most +stand-offish in his comments, pretending never to have been very close +to X----, and lifting his eyebrows in astonishment as though he had not +even guessed what he had actually engineered. His "Did-you-hears," +"Did-you-knows" and "Wouldn't-have-dreamed" would have done credit to a +tea-party. He was so shocked, especially at X----'s robbing poor +children and orphans, although in so far as my reading of the papers +went I could find nothing that went to prove that he had any intention +of robbing anybody--that is, directly. In the usual Wall Street high +finance style he was robbing Peter to pay Paul, that is, he was using +the monies of one corporation which he controlled to bolster up any of +the others which he controlled, and was "washing one hand with the +other," a proceeding so common in finance that to really radically and +truly oppose it, or do away with it, would mean to bring down the whole +fabric of finance in one grand crash. + +Be that as it may. In swift succession there now followed the so-called +"legal" seizure and confiscation of all his properties. In the first +place, by alienists representing the District Attorney and the State +banking department, he was declared sane and placed on trial for +embezzlement. Secondly, his sister's plea that his property be put into +her hands as trustee or administrator was thrown out of court and she +herself arrested and confined for perjury on the ground that she had +perjured herself in swearing that she was his next of kin when in +reality his real parents, or so they swore, were alive and in America. +Next, his banks, trust companies and various concerns, including his +great country estate, were swiftly thrown into the hands of receivers +(what an appropriate name!) and wound up "for the benefit of creditors." +All the while X---- was in prison, protesting that he was really not +guilty, that he was solvent, or had been until he was attacked by the +State bank examiner or the department back of him, and that he was the +victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy which was using the State banking +department and other means to drive him out of financial life, and that +solely because of his desire to grow and because by chance he had been +impinging upon one of the choicest and most closely guarded fields of +the ultra-rich of Wall Street--the street railway area in New York and +Brooklyn. + +One day, so he publicly swore to the grand jury, by which he was being +examined, as he was sitting in his great offices, in one of the great +sky-scrapers of New York, which occupied an entire floor and commanded +vast panoramas in every direction (another evidence of the man's insane +"delusion of grandeur," I presume), he was called to answer the +telephone. One Mr. Y----, so his assistant said, one of the eminent +financiers of Wall Street and America, was on the wire. Without any +preliminary and merely asking was this Mr. X---- on the wire, the latter +proceeded, "This is Mr. Y----. Listen closely to what I am going to say. +I want you to get out of the street railway business in New York or +something is going to happen to you. I am giving you a reasonable +warning. Take it." Then the phone clicked most savagely and ominously +and superiorly at the other end. + +"I knew at the time," went on X----, addressing the grand jury, "that I +was really listening to the man who was most powerful in such affairs in +New York and elsewhere and that he meant what he said. At the same time +I was in no position to get out without closing up the one deal which +stood to net me two million dollars clear if I closed it. At the same +time I wanted to enter this field and didn't see why I shouldn't. If I +didn't it spelled not ruin by any means but a considerable loss, a very +great loss, to me, in more ways than one. Oddly enough, just at this +time I was being pressed by those with whom I was associated to wind up +this particular venture and turn my attention to other things. I have +often wondered, in the light of their subsequent actions, why they +should have become so pressing just at this time. At the same time, +perhaps I was a little vain and self-sufficient. I had once got the +better of some agents of another great financier in a Western Power +deal, and I felt that I could put this thing through too. Hence I +refused to heed the warning. However, I found that all those who were +previously interested to buy or at least develop the property were now +suddenly grown cold, and a little later when, having entered on several +other matters, I needed considerable cash, the State banking department +descended on me and, crying fraud and insolvency, closed all my banks. + +"You know how it is when they do this to you. Cry 'Fire!' and you can +nearly wreck a perfectly good theater building. Depositors withdraw, +securities tumble, investigation and legal expenses begin, your +financial associates get frightened or ashamed and desert you. Nothing +is so squeamish or so retiring and nervous as money. Time will show that +I was not insolvent at the time. The books will show a few technically +illegal things, but so would the books or the affairs of any great bank, +especially at this time, if quickly examined. I was doing no more than +all were doing, but they wanted to get me out--and they did." + +Regardless of proceedings of various kinds--legal, technical and the +like--X---- was finally sent to the penitentiary, and spent some time +there. At the same time his confession finally wrecked about nine other +eminent men, financiers all. A dispassionate examination of all the +evidence eight years later caused me to conclude without hesitation that +the man had been a victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy, the object of +which was to oust him from opportunities and to forestall him in methods +which would certainly have led to enormous wealth. He was apparently in +a position and with the brains to do many of the things which the ablest +and coldest financiers of his day had been and were doing, and they did +not want to be bothered with, would not brook, in short, his +approaching rivalry. Like the various usurpers of regal powers in +ancient days, they thought it best to kill a possible claimant to the +throne in his infancy. + +But that youth of his! The long and devious path by which he had come! +Among the papers relating to the case and to a time when he could not +have been more than eighteen, and when he was beginning his career as a +book agent, was a letter written to his mother (August, 1892), which +read: + + "MY DEAR PARENTS: Please answer me at once if I can have anything + of you, or something of you or nothing. Remember this is the first + and the last time in my life that I beg of you anything. You have + given to the other child not $15 but hundreds, and now when I, the + very youngest, ask of you, my parents, $15, are you going to be so + hard-hearted as to refuse me? Without these $15 it is left to me + to be without income for two or three weeks. + + "For God's sake, remember what I ask of you, and send me at once + so that I should cease thinking of it. Leon, as I have told you, + will give me $10, $15 he has already paid for the contract, and + your $15 will make $25. Out of this I need $10 for a ticket and + $15 for two or three weeks' board and lodging. + + "Please answer at once. Don't wait for a minute, and send me the + money or write me one word 'not.' Remember this only that if you + refuse me I will have nothing in common with you. + + "Your son, + "----" + +There was another bit of testimony on the part of one Henry Dom, a +baker, who for some strange reason came forward to identify him as some +one he had known years before in Williamsburgh, which read: + + "I easily recognize them" (X---- and his sister) "from their + pictures in the newspapers. I worked for X----'s father, who was a + baker in Williamsburgh, and frequently addressed letters that were + written by X---- Senior and his wife to Dr. Louise X---- who was + then studying medicine in Philadelphia. X---- was then a boy going + to school, but working in his father's bakery mornings and + evenings. He did not want to do that, moaned a great deal, and his + parents humored him in his attitude. He was very vain, liked to + appear intellectual. They kept saying to their friends that he + should have a fine future. Five years later, after I had left them + once, I met the mother and she told me that X---- was studying + banking and getting along fine." + +Some seven years after the failure and trial by which he had so +summarily been disposed of and after he had been released from prison, I +was standing at a certain unimportant street corner in New York waiting +for a car when I saw him. He was passing in the opposite direction, not +very briskly, and, as I saw, plainly meditatively. He was not so well +dressed. The clothes he wore while good were somehow different, lacking +in that exquisite something which had characterized him years before. +His hat--well, it was a hat, not a Romanoff shako nor a handsome panama +such as he had affected in the old days. He looked tired, a little worn +and dusty, I thought. + +My first impulse was of course to hail him, my second not, since he had +not seen me. It might have been embarrassing, and at any rate he might +not have even remembered me. But as he walked I thought of the great +house by the sea, the studio, the cars, the 40,000 roses, the crowds at +his summer place, the receptions in town and out, Madame of the earrings +(afterward married to a French nobleman), and then of the letter to his +mother as a boy, the broken shoes in the winter time, his denial of his +parents, the telephone message from the financial tiger. "Vanity, +vanity," saith the preacher. The shores of our social seas are strewn +with pathetic wrecks, the whitening bone of half-sand-buried ships. + +At the next corner he paused, a little uncertain apparently as to which +way to go, then turned to the left and was lost. I have never seen nor +heard of him since. + + + + +_The Mighty Rourke_ + + +When I first met him he was laying the foundation for a small dynamo in +the engine-room of the repair shop at Spike, and he was most unusually +loud in his protestations and demands. He had with him a dozen Italians, +all short, swarthy fellows of from twenty-five to fifty years of age, +who were busy bringing material from a car that had been pushed in on +the side-track next to the building. This was loaded with crushed stone, +cement, old boards, wheelbarrows, tools, and the like, all of which were +to be used in the labor that he was about to undertake. He himself was +standing in the doorway of the shop where the work was to be conducted, +coat off, sleeves rolled up, and shouting with true Irish insistence, +"Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Get the shovels, now! Get the picks! Bring +some sand here! Bring some stone! Where's the cement, now? Where's the +cement? Jasus Christ! I must have some cement! What arre ye all doin'? +What do ye think ye're up here fer? Hurry, now, hurry! Bring the +cement!" and then, having concluded this amazing fanfare, calmly turning +to gaze about as if he were the only one in the world who had the right +to stand still. + +More or less oppressed with life myself at the time, I was against all +bosses, and particularly against so seemingly a vicious one as this. +"What a slave driver!" I thought. "What a brute!" And yet I remember +thinking that he was not exactly unpleasant to look at, either--quite +the contrary. He was medium in height, thick of body and neck, with +short gray hair and mustache, and bright, clear, twinkling Irish gray +eyes, and he carried himself with an air of unquestionable authority. It +was much as if he had said, "I am the boss here"; and, indeed, he was. +Is it this that sends the Irish to rule as captains of hundreds the +world over? + +The job he was bossing was not very intricate or important, but it was +interesting. It consisted of digging a trench ten by twelve feet, and +shaping it up with boards into a "form," after which concrete was to be +mixed and poured in, and some iron rods set to fasten the engine to--an +engine bed, no less. It was not so urgent but that it might have been +conducted with far less excitement, but what are you to do when you are +naturally excitable, love to make a great noise, and feel that things +are going forward whether they are or not? Plainly this particular +individual loved noise and a great stir. So eager was he to have done +with it, no matter what it was or where, that he was constantly trotting +to and fro, shouting, "Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Hurry, now, bring the +shovels! Bring the picks!" and occasionally bursting forth with a +perfect avalanche of orders. "Up with it! Down with it! Front with it! +Back with it! In with it! Out with it!" all coupled with his favorite +expletive, "Jasus Christ," which was as innocent of evil, I subsequently +came to know, as a prayer. In short, he was simply wild Irish, and that +was all there was to him--a delightful specimen, like Namgay Doola. + +But, as I say, at the time he seemed positively appalling to me, a +virulent specimen, and I thought, "The Irish brute! To think of human +beings having to work for a brute like that! To think of his driving men +like that!" However, I soon began to discover that he was not so bad as +he seemed, and then I began to like him. + +The thing that brought about this swift change of feeling in me was the +attitude of his men toward him. Although he was so insistent with his +commands, they did not seem to mind nor to strain themselves working. +They were not killing themselves, by any means. He would stand over +them, crying, "Up with it! Up with it! Up with it! Up with it!" or "Down +with it! Down with it! Down with it!" until you would have imagined +their nerves would be worn to a frazzle. As it was, however, they did +not seem to care any more than you would for the ticking of a clock; +rather, they appeared to take it as a matter of course, something that +had to be, and that one was prepared for. Their steps were in the main +as leisurely as those of idlers on Fifth Avenue or Broadway. They +carried boards or stone as one would objects of great value. One could +not help smiling at the incongruity of it; it was farcical. Finally +gathering the full import of it all, I ventured to laugh, and he turned +on me with a sharp and yet not unkindly retort. + +"Ha! ha! ha!" he mocked. "If ye had to work as hard as these min, ye +wouldn't laugh." + +I wanted to say, "Hard work, indeed!" but instead I replied, "Is that +so? Well, I don't see that they're killing themselves, or you either. +You're not as fierce as you sound." + +Then I explained that I was not laughing at them but at him, and he took +it all in good part. Since I was only a nominal laborer here, not a real +one--permitted to work for my health, for twelve cents an hour--we fell +to conversing upon railroad matters, and in this way our period of +friendship began. + +As I learned that morning, Rourke was the foreman-mason for minor tasks +for all that part of the railroad that lay between New York and fifty +miles out, on three divisions. He had a dozen or so men under him and +was in possession of one car, which was shunted back and forth between +the places in which he happened to be working. He was a builder of +concrete platforms, culverts, coal-bins, sidewalks, bridge and building +piers, and, in fact, anything that could be made out of crushed stone +and cement, or bricks and stone, and he was sent here and there, as +necessity required. As he explained to me at the time, he sometimes rose +as early as four a.m. in order to get to his place of labor by seven. +The great railroad company for which he toiled was no gentle master, and +did not look upon his ease, or that of his men, as important. At the +same time, as he himself confessed, he did not mind hard work--liked it, +in short. He had been working now for the company for all of twenty-two +years, "rain or shine." Darkness or storm made no difference to him. +"Shewer, I have to be there," he observed once with his quizzical, +elusive Irish grin. "They're not payin' me wages fer lyin' in bed. If ye +was to get up that way yerself every day fer a year, me b'y," he added, +eyeing my spare and none too well articulated frame, "it'd make a man av +ye." + +"Yes?" I said tolerantly. "And how much do you get, Rourke?" + +"Two an' a half a day." + +"You don't say!" I replied, pretending admiration. + +The munificence of the corporation that paid him two and a half dollars +a day for ten hours' work, as well as for superintending and +constructing things of such importance, struck me forcibly. Perhaps, as +we say in America, he "had a right" to be happy, only I could not see +it. At the same time, I could not help thinking that he was better +situated than myself at the time. I had been ill, and was now earning +only twelve cents an hour for ten hours' work, and the sight of the +foreman for whom I was working was a torture to my soul. He was such a +loud-mouthed, blustering, red-headed ignoramus, and I wanted to get out +from under him. At the same time, I was not without sufficient influence +so to do, providing I could find a foreman who could make use of me. The +great thing was to do this, and the more I eyed this particular specimen +of foreman the better I liked him. He was genial, really kindly, +amazingly simple and sincere. I decided to appeal to him to take me on +his staff. + +"How would you like to take me, Mr. Rourke, and let me work for you?" I +asked hopefully, after explaining to him why I was here. + +"Shewer," he replied. "Ye'd do fine." + +"Would I have to work with the Italians?" I asked, wondering how I would +make out with a pick and shovel. My frame was so spare at the time that +the question must have amused him, considering the type of physique +required for day labor. + +"There'll be plenty av work fer ye to do without ever yer layin' a hand +to a pick er shovel," he replied comfortingly. "Shewer, that's no work +fer white min. Let the nagurs do it. Look at their backs an' arrms, an' +then look at yers." + +I was ready to blush for shame. These poor Italians whom I was so ready +to contemn were immeasurably my physical superiors. + +"But why do you call them negroes, Rourke?" I asked after a time. +"They're not black." + +"Well, bedad, they're not white, that's waan thing shewer," he added. +"Aany man can tell that be lookin' at thim." + +I had to smile. It was so dogmatic and unreasoning. + +"Very well, then, they're black," I said, and we left the matter. + +Not long after I put in a plea to be transferred to him, at his request, +and it was granted. The day that I joined his flock, or gang, as he +called it, he was at Williamsbridge, a little station north on the +Harlem, building a concrete coal-bin. It was a pretty place, surrounded +by trees and a grass-plot, a vast improvement upon a dark indoor shop, +and seemed to me a veritable haven of rest. Ah, the smiling morning sun, +the green leaves, the gentle fresh winds of heaven! + +Rourke was down in an earthen excavation under the depot platform when I +arrived, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, and +when I looked in on him hopefully he looked up and smiled. + +"So here ye arre at last," he said with a grin. + +"Yes," I laughed. + +"Well, ye're jist in time; I waant ye to go down to the ahffice." + +"Certainly," I replied, but before I could say more he climbed out of +his hole, his white jeans odorous of the new-turned earth, and fished in +the pocket of an old gray coat which lay beside him for a soiled and +crumpled letter, which he finally unfolded with his thick, clumsy +fingers. Then he held it up and looked at it defiantly. + +"I waant ye to go to Woodlawn," he continued, "an' look after some bolts +that arre up there--there's a keg av thim--an' sign the bill fer thim, +an' ship thim down to me. An' thin I waant ye to go down to the ahffice +an' take thim this o.k." Here again he fished around and produced +another crumpled slip, this time of a yellow color (how well I came to +know them!), which I soon learned was an o.k. blank, a form which had to +be filled in and signed for everything received, if no more than a stick +of wood or a nail or a bolt. The company demanded these of all foremen, +in order to keep its records straight. Its accounting department was +useless without them. At the same time, Rourke kept talking of the +"nonsinse av it," and the "onraisonableness" of demanding o.k.s for +everything. "Ye'd think some one was goin' to sthale thim from thim," he +declared irritably and defiantly. + +I saw at once that some infraction of the railroad rules had occurred +and that he had been "called down," or "jacked up" about it, as the +railroad men expressed it. He was in a high state of dudgeon, and as +defiant and pugnacious as his royal Irish temper would allow. At the +same time he was pleased to think that I or some one had arrived who +would relieve him of this damnable "nonsinse," or so he hoped. He was +not so inexperienced as not to imagine that I could help him with all +this. In fact, as time proved, this was my sole reason for being here. + +He flung a parting shot at his superior as I departed. + +"Tell him that I'll sign fer thim when I get thim, an' not before," he +declared. + +I went on my way, knowing full well that no such message was for +delivery, and that he did not intend that it should be. It was just the +Irish of it. I went off to Woodlawn and secured the bolts, after which I +went down to the "ahffice" and reported. There I found the chief clerk, +a mere slip of a dancing master in a high collar and attractive office +suit, who was also in a high state of dudgeon because Rourke, as he now +explained, had failed to render an o.k. for this and other things, and +did not seem to understand that he, the chief clerk, must have them to +make up his reports. Sometimes o.k.s did not come in for a month or +more, the goods lying around somewhere until Rourke could use them. He +wanted to know what explanation Rourke had to offer, and when I +suggested that the latter thought, apparently, that he could leave all +consignments of goods in one station or another until such time as he +needed them before he o.k.ed for them, he fairly foamed. + +"Say," he almost shouted, at the same time shoving his hands +distractedly through his hair, "what does he think I am? How does he +think I'm going to make up my books? He'll leave them there until he +needs them, will he? Well, he's a damned fool, and you go back and tell +him I said so. He's been long enough on the road to know better. You go +back and tell him I said that I want a signed form for everything +consigned to him the moment he learns that it's waiting for him, and I +want it right away, without fail, whether it's a single nut or a car of +sand. I want it. He's got to come to time about this now, or something's +going to drop. I'm not going to stand it any longer. How does he think +I'm going to make up my books? I wish he'd let you attend to these +matters while you're up there. It will save an awful lot of trouble in +this office and it may save him his job. There's one thing sure: he's +got to come to time from now on, or either he quits or I do." + +These same o.k.s plus about twenty-five long-drawn-out reports or +calculations, retroactive and prospective, covering every possible +detail of his work from the acknowledgment of all material received up +to and including the expenditure of even so much as one mill's worth of +paper, were the bane of my good foreman's life. As I learned afterward, +he had nearly his whole family, at least a boy and two girls, assisting +him nights on this part of the work. In addition, while they were +absolutely of no import in so far as the actual work of construction was +concerned--and that was really all that interested Rourke--they were an +essential part of the system which made it possible for him to do the +work at all--a point which he did not seem to be able to get clear. At +the same time, there was an unsatisfactory side to this office +technicalia, and it was this: If a man could only sit down and reel off +a graphic account of all that he was doing, accompanied by facts and +figures, he was in excellent standing with his superiors, no matter what +his mechanical defects might be; whereas, if his reports were not clear, +or were insufficient, the efficiency of his work might well be +overlooked. In a vague way, Rourke sensed this and resented it. He knew +that his work was as good as could be done, and yet here were these +constant reports and o.k.s to irritate and delay him. Apparently they +aided actual construction no whit--but, of course, they did. Although he +was a better foreman than most, still, because of his lack of skill in +this matter of accounting, he was looked upon as more or less a failure, +especially by the chief clerk. Naturally, I explained that I would do my +best, and came away. + +When I returned, however, I decided to be politic. I could not very well +work with a pick and shovel, and this was about all that was left +outside of that. I therefore explained as best I could the sad plight of +the chief clerk, who stood in danger of losing his job unless these +things came in promptly. + +"You see how it is, Rourke, don't you?" I pleaded. + +He seemed to see, but he was still angry. + +"An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!" he echoed contentiously, but in a +somewhat more conciliatory spirit. "He wants an o.k. blank, does he? +Well, I expect ye might as well give thim to him, thin. I think the man +lives on thim things, the way he's aalways caallin' fer thim. Ye'd think +I was a bookkeeper an' foreman at the same time; it's somethin' aaful. +An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!" and he sputtered to silence. + +A little while later he humorously explained that he had "clane forgot +thim, anyhow." + +The ensuing month was a busy one for us. We had a platform to lay at +Morrisania, a chimney to build at Tarrytown, a sidewalk to lay at White +Plains, and a large cistern to dig and wall in at Tuckahoe. Besides +these, there were platforms to build at Van Cortlandt and Mount Kisco, +water-towers at Highbridge and Ardsley, a sidewalk and drain at Caryl, a +culvert and an ash-pit at Bronx Park, and some forty concrete piers for +a building at Melrose--all of which required any amount of running and +figuring, to say nothing of the actual work of superintending and +constructing, which Rourke alone could look after. It seemed ridiculous +to me at the time that any one doing all this hard practical labor +should not be provided with a clerk or an accountant to take at least +some of this endless figuring off his hands. At the same time, if he had +been the least bit clever, he could have provided himself with one +permanently by turning one of his so-called laborers into a +clerk--carrying a clerk as a laborer--but plainly it had never occurred +to him. He depended on his family. The preliminary labor alone of +ordering and seeing that the material was duly shipped and unloaded was +one man's work; and yet Rourke was expected to do it all. + +In spite of all this, however, he displayed himself a masterful worker. +I have never seen a better. He preferred to superintend, of course, to +get down into the pit or up on the wall, and measure and direct. At the +same time, when necessary to expedite a difficult task, he would toil +for hours at a stretch with his trowel and his line and his level and +his plumb-bob, getting the work into shape, and you would never hear a +personal complaint from him concerning the weariness of labor. On the +contrary, he would whistle and sing until something went wrong, when +suddenly you would hear the most terrific uproar of words: "Come out av +that! Come out, now! Jasus Christ, man, have ye no sinse at aall? Put it +down! Put it down! What arre ye doin'? What did I tell ye? Have ye no +raison in ye, no sinse, ye h'athen nagur?" + +"Great heavens!" I used to think, "what has happened now?" + +You would have imagined the most terrible calamity; and yet, all told, +it might be nothing of any great import--a little error of some kind, +more threatening than real, and soon adjusted. It might last for a few +moments, during which time the Italians would be seen hurrying excitedly +to and fro; and then there would come a lull, and Rourke would be heard +to raise his voice in tuneful melody, singing or humming or whistling +some old-fashioned Irish "Come-all-ye." + +But the thing in Rourke that would have pleased any one was his ready +grasp for the actualities of life--his full-fledged knowledge that work +is the thing, not argument, or reports, or plans, but the direct +accomplishment of something tangible, the thing itself. Thus, while I +was working with him, at least nothing that might concern the clerical +end of the labor could disturb him, but, if the sky fell, and eight +thousand chief clerks threatened to march upon him in a body demanding +reports and o.k.s, he would imperturbably make you wait until the work +was done. Once, when I interrupted him to question him concerning some +of these same wretched, pestering aftermaths of labor, concerning which +he alone could answer, he shut me off with: "The reports! The reports! +What good arre the reports! Ye make me sick. What have the reports to do +with the work? If it wasn't fer the work, where would the reports be?" +And I heartily echoed "Where?" + +Another thing was his charming attitude toward his men, kindly and sweet +for all his storming, that innate sense of something intimate and +fatherly. He had a way of saying kindly things in a joking manner which +touched them. When he arrived in the morning, for instance, it was +always in the cheeriest way that he began. "Come, now, b'ys, ye have a +good day's work before ye today. Get the shovels, Jimmie. Bring the +line, Matt!" and then he would go below himself, if below it was, and +there would be joy and peace until some obstacle to progress interfered. +I might say in passing that Matt and Jimmie, his faithful henchmen, were +each between forty and fifty, if they were a day--poor, gnarled, dusty, +storm-tossed Italians who had come from heaven knows where, had endured +God knows what, and were now rounding out a work-a-day existence under +the sheltering wing of this same Rourke, a great and protecting power to +them. + +This same Matt was a funny little Italian, soft of voice and gentle of +manner, whom Rourke liked very much, but with whom he loved to quarrel. +He would go down in any hole where the latter was working, and almost +invariably shortly after you would hear the most amazing uproar issuing +therefrom, shouts of: "Put it here, I say! Put it here! Down with it! +Here! Here! Jasus Christ, have ye no sinse at aall?"--coupled, of +course, with occasional guttural growls from Matt, who was by no means +in awe of his master and who feared no personal blows. The latter had +been with Rourke for so long that he was not in the least overawed by +his yelling and could afford to take such liberties. Occasionally, not +always, Rourke would come climbing out of the hole, his face and neck +fairly scarlet with heat, raging and shouting, "I'll get shut av ye! +I'll have no more thruck with ye, ye blitherin', crazy loon! What good +arre ye? What work can ye do? Naathin'! Naathin'! I'll be shut av ye +now, an' thin maybe I'll have a little p'ace." Then he would dance +around and threaten and growl until something else would take his +attention, when he would quiet down and be as peaceful as ever. Somehow, +I always felt that in spite of all the difficulties involved, he enjoyed +these rows--must fight, in short, to be happy. Sometimes he would go +home without saying a word to Matt, a conclusion which at first I +imagined portended the end of the latter, but soon I came to know +better. For the next morning Matt would reappear as unconcernedly as +though nothing had happened, and Rourke would appear not to notice or +remember. + +Once, anent all this, I said to him, "Rourke, how many times have you +threatened to discharge Matt in the last three years?" + +"Shewer," he replied, with his ingratiating grin, "a man don't mane aall +he says aall the time." + +The most humorous of all his collection of workingmen, however, was the +aforementioned Jimmie, a dark, mild-eyed, soft-spoken Calabrian, who had +the shrewdness of a Machiavelli and the pertness of a crow. He lived in +the same neighborhood as Rourke, far out in one of those small towns on +the Harlem, sheltering so many Italians, for, like a hen with a brood +of chicks, Rourke kept all his Italians gathered close about him. +Jimmie, curiously, was the one who was always selected to run his family +errands for him, a kind of valet to Rourke, as it were--selected for +some merit I could never discover, certainly not one of speed. He was +nevertheless constantly running here and there like an errand boy, his +worn, dusty, baggy clothes making him look like a dilapidated bandit +fresh from a sewer. On the job, however, no matter what it might be, +Jimmie could never be induced to do real, hard work. He was always above +it, or busy with something else. But as he was an expert cement-mixer +and knew just how to load and unload the tool-car, two sinecures of +sorts, nothing was ever said to him. If any one dared to reprove him, +myself for instance (a mere interloper to Jimmie), he would reply: "Yeh! +Yeh! I know-a my biz. I been now with Misha Rook fifteen year. I know-a +my biz." If you made any complaint to Rourke, he would merely grin and +say, "Ha! Jimmie's the sharp one," or perhaps, "I'll get ye yet, ye +fox," but more than that nothing was ever done. + +One day, however, Jimmie failed to comply with an extraordinary order of +Rourke's, which, while it resulted in no real damage, produced a most +laughable and yet characteristic scene. A strict rule of the company was +that no opening of any kind into which a person might possibly step or +fall should be left uncovered at any station during the approach, stay, +or departure of any train scheduled to stop at that station. Rourke was +well aware of this rule. He had a copy of it on file in his collection +of circulars. In addition, he had especially delegated Jimmie to attend +to this matter, a task which just suited the Italian as it gave him +ample time to idle about and pretend to be watching. This it was which +made the crime all the greater. + +On this particular occasion Jimmie had failed to attend to this matter. +We had been working on the platform at Williamsbridge, digging a pit for +a coal-bin, when a train bearing the general foreman came along. The +latter got off at the station especially to examine the work that had +been done so far. When the train arrived there was the hole wide open +with Rourke below shouting and gesticulating about something, and +totally unconscious, of course, that his order had been neglected. The +general foreman, who was, by the way, I believe, an admirer of Rourke, +came forward, looked down, and said quietly: "This won't do, Rourke. +You'll have to keep the work covered when a train is approaching. I've +told you that before, you know." + +Rourke looked up, so astonished and ashamed that he should have been put +in such a position before his superior that he hardly knew what to say. +I doubt if any one ever had a greater capacity for respecting his +superiors, anyhow. Instead of trying to answer, he merely choked and +began to shout for Jimmie, who came running, crying, as he always did, +"What's da mat'? What's da mat'?" + +"What's da mat'? What's da mat'?" mocked Rourke, fairly seething with a +marvelous Irish fury. "What the devil do ye suppose is the mat'? What do +ye mane be waalkin' away an' l'avin' the hole uncovered? Didn't I tell +ye niver to l'ave a hole when a train's comin'? Didn't I tell ye to +attind to that an' naathin' else? An' now what have ye been doin'? Be +all the powers, what d'ye mane be l'avin' it? What else arre ye good +fer? What d'ye mane be lettin' a thing like that happen, an' Mr. Wilson +comin' along here, an' the hole open?" + +He was as red as a beet, purple almost, perspiring, apoplectic. During +all this tirade Mr. Wilson, a sad, dark, anæmic-looking person, troubled +with acute indigestion, I fancy, stood by with an amused, kindly, and +yet mock severe expression on his face. I am sure he did not wish to be +severe. + +Jimmie, dumbfounded, scarcely knew what to say. In the face of Rourke's +rage and the foreman's presence, he did his best to remedy his error by +covering the hole, at the same time stuttering something about going for +a trowel. + +"A trowel!" cried Rourke, glaring at him. "A trowel, ye h'athen ginny! +What'd ye be doin' lookin' fer a trowel, an' a train comin' that close +on ye it could 'a' knocked ye off the thrack? An' the hole open, an' Mr. +Wilson right here! Is that what I told ye? Is that what I pay ye fer? Be +all the saints! A trowel, is it? I'll trowel ye! I'll break yer h'athen +Eyetalian skull, I will. Get thim boards on, an' don't let me ketch ye +l'avin' such a place as that open again. I'll get shut av ye, ye +blitherin' lunatic." + +When it was all over and the train bearing the general foreman had +gone, Rourke quieted down, but not without many fulgurous flashes that +kept the poor Italian on tenterhooks. + +About an hour later, however, another train arrived, and, by reason of +some intervening necessity and the idle, wandering mood of the Italian, +the hole was open again. Jimmie was away behind the depot somewhere, +smoking perhaps, and Rourke was, as usual, down in the hole. This time +misfortune trebled itself, however, by bringing, not the general +foreman, but the supervisor himself, a grave, quiet man, of whom Rourke +stood in the greatest awe. He was so solid, so profound, so severe. I +don't believe I ever saw him smile. He walked up to the hole, and +looking reproachfully down, said: "Is this the way you leave your +excavations, Rourke, when a train is coming? Don't you know better than +to do a thing like that?" + +"Jimmie!" shouted Rourke, leaping to the surface of the earth with a +bound, "Jimmie! Now, be Jasus, where is that bla'guard Eyetalian? Didn't +I tell him not to l'ave this place open!" and he began shoving the +planks into place himself. + +Jimmie, suddenly made aware of this new catastrophe, came running as +fast as his short legs would carry him, scared almost out of his wits. +He was as pale as a very dark and dirty Italian could be, and so wrought +up that his facial expression changed involuntarily from moment to +moment. Rourke was in a fairly murderous mood, only he was so excited +and ashamed that he could not speak. Here was the supervisor, and here +was himself, and conditions--necessity for order, etc.--would not permit +him to kill the Italian in the former's presence. He could only choke +and wait. To think that he should be made a mark of like this, and that +in the face of his great supervisor! His face and neck were a beet-red, +and his eyes flashed with anger. He merely glared at his recalcitrant +henchman, as much as to say, "Wait!" When this train had departed and +the dignified supervisor had been carried safely out of hearing he +turned on Jimmie with all the fury of a masterful and excitable temper. + +"So ye'll naht cover the hole, after me tellin' ye naht fifteen minutes +ago, will ye?" he shouted. "Ye'll naht cover the hole! An' what'll ye be +tellin' me ye was doin' now?" + +"I carry da waut (water) for da concrete," pleaded Jimmie weakly. + +"Waut fer the concrete," almost moaned Rourke, so great was his fury, +his angry face shoved close to the Italian's own. "Waut fer the +concrete, is it? It's a pity ye didn't fall into yer waut fer the +concrete, ye damned nagur, an' drown! Waut fer the concrete, is it, an' +me here, an' Mr. Mills steppin' off an' lookin' in on me, ye +black-hearted son of a Eyetalian, ye! I'll waut fer the concrete ye! +I'll crack yer blitherin' Eyetalian skull with a pick, I will! I'll +chuck ye in yer waut fer the concrete till ye choke, ye flat-footed, +leather-headed lunatic! I'll tache ye to waalk aaf an' l'ave the hole +open, an' me in it. Now, be Jasus, get yer coat an' get out av this. +Get--I'm tellin' ye! I'll have no more thruck with ye! I'll throuble no +more with ye. Ye're no damned good. Out with ye! An' niver show me yer +face again!" And he made a motion as if he would grab him and rend him +limb from limb. + +Jimmie, well aware of his dire position, was too clever, however, to let +Rourke seize him. During all this conversation he had been slowly +backing away, always safely beyond Rourke's reach, and now ran--an +amazing feat for him. He had evidently been through many such scenes +before. He retreated first behind the depot, and then when Rourke had +gone to work once more down in his hole, came back and took a safe +position on guard over the hitherto sadly neglected opening. When the +next train came he was there to shove the boards over before it neared +the station, and nothing more was said about the matter. Rourke did not +appear to notice him. He did not even seem to see that he was there. The +next morning, however, when the latter came to work as usual, it was, +"Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie!" just as if nothing had happened. I was never +more astonished in my life. + +An incident, even more ridiculous, but illustrative of the atmosphere in +which Rourke dwelt, occurred at Highbridge one frosty October Sunday +morning, where because of seepage from a hill which threatened to +undermine some tracks, Rourke was ordered to hurry and build a drain--a +thing which, because the order came on Saturday afternoon, required +Sunday labor, a most unusual thing in his case. But in spite of the +order, Rourke, who was a good Catholic, felt impelled before coming to +go to at least early mass, and in addition--a regular Sunday practice +with him, I presume--to put on a long-skirted Prince Albert coat, which +I had never seen before and which lent to his stocky figure some amusing +lines. It was really too tight, having been worn, I presume, every +Sunday regularly since his wedding day. In addition, he had donned a +brown derby hat which, to me at least, gave him a most unfamiliar look. + +I, being curious more than anything else and wishing to be out of doors +as much as possible, also went up, arriving on the scene about nine. +Rourke did not arrive until ten. In the meantime, I proceeded to build +myself a fire on the dock, for we were alongside the Harlem River and a +brisk wind was blowing. Then Rourke came, fresh from church, smiling and +genial, in the most cheerful Sunday-go-to-meeting frame of mind, but +plainly a little conscious of his grand garb. + +"My," I said, surveying him, "you look fine. I never saw you dressed up +before." + +"L'ave aaf with yer taalk," he replied. "I know well enough how I +look--good enough." + +Then he bestirred himself about the task of examining what had been done +so far. But I could see, in spite of all the busy assurance with which +he worked, that he was still highly conscious of his clothes and a +little disturbed by what I or others might think. His every-day garb +plainly suited his mood much better. + +Everything went smoothly until noon, not a cloud in the sky, when, +looking across the tracks at that hour, I beheld coming toward us with +more or less uncertain step another individual, stocky of figure and +evidently bent on seeing Rourke--an Irishman as large as Rourke, +younger, and, if anything, considerably coarser in fiber. He was very +red-faced, smooth shaven, with a black derby hat pulled down over his +eyes and wearing a somewhat faded tight-fitting brown suit. He was +drunk, or nearly so, that was plain from the first. From the moment +Rourke beheld him he seemed beside himself with anger or irritation. His +expression changed completely and he began to swell, as was customary +with him when he was angry, as though suffering from an internal +eruption of some kind. + +"The bla'guard!" I heard him mutter. "Now, be gob, what'll that felly +be waantin'?" and then as the stranger drew nearer, "Who was it tould +him I was here? Maybe some waan at the ahffice." + +Regardless of his speculations on this score, the stranger picked his +way across the tracks and came directly to him, his face and manner +indicating no particularly friendly frame of mind. + +"Maybe ye'll be lettin' me have that money now," he began instanter, and +when Rourke made no reply, merely staring at him, he added, "I'll be +waantin' to know now, when it is ye're goin' to give me the rest av me +time fer that Scarborough job. I've been waitin' long enough." + +Rourke stirred irritably and aggressively before he spoke. He seemed +greatly put out, shamed, to think that the man should come here so, +especially on this peaceful Sabbath morning. + +"I've tould ye before," he replied defiantly after a time, "that ye've +had aall ye earned, an' more. Ye left me without finishin' yer work, an' +ye'll get no more time from me. If ye waant more, go down to the ahffice +an' see if they'll give it to ye. I have no money fer ye here," and he +resumed a comfortable position before the fire, his hands behind his +back. + +"It's siven dollars ye still owe me," returned the other, ignoring +Rourke's reply, "an' I waant it now." + +"Well, ye'll naht get it," replied my boss. "I've naathin' fer ye, I'm +tellin' ye. I owe ye naathin'." + +"Is that so?" returned the other. "Well, we'll see about that. Ye'll be +after givin' it to me, er I'll get it out of ye somehow. It's naht goin' +to be ch'ated out av me money I am." + +"I'm owin' ye naathin'," insisted Rourke. "Ye may as well go away from +here. Ye'll get naathin'. If ye waant anything more, go an' see the +ahffice," and now he strode away to where the Italians were, ignoring +the stranger completely and muttering something about his being drunk. +The latter followed him, however, over to where he stood, and continued +the dispute. Rourke ignored him as much as possible, only exclaiming +once, "L'ave me be, man. Ye're drunk." + +"I'm naht drunk," returned the other. "Once an' fer all now, I'm askin' +ye, arre ye goin' to give me that money?" + +"No," replied Rourke, "I'm naht." + +"Belave me," said the stranger, "I'll get it out av ye somehow," but for +the moment he made no move, merely hanging about in an uncertain way. He +seemed to have no definite plan for collecting the money, or if he had +he had by now abandoned it. + +Without paying any more attention to him, Rourke, still very irritated +and defiant, returned to the fire. He tried to appear calm and +indifferent, but the ex-workman, a non-union mason, I judged, followed +after, standing before him and staring in the defiant, irritating way a +drunken man will, not quite able to make up his mind what else to do. +Presently Rourke, more to relieve the tedium of an embarrassing +situation than anything else (a number of accusatory remarks having been +passed), turned and began poking at the blaze, finally bending over to +lay on a stick of wood. On the instant, and as if seized by sudden +inspiration, whether because the tails of Rourke's long coat hung out in +a most provoking fashion and suggested the thing that followed or not, I +don't know, but now the red-faced intruder jumped forward, and seizing +them in a most nimble and yet vigorous clutch, gave an amazing yank, +which severed them straight up the back, from seat to nape, at the same +time exclaiming: + +"Ye'll naht pay me, will ye? Ye'll naht, will ye?" + +On the instant a tremendous change came over the scene. It was as swift +as stage play. Instantly Rourke was upright and faced about, shouting, +"Now, be gob, ye've torn me coat, have ye! Now I'll tache ye! Now I'll +show ye! Wait! Get ready, now. Now I'll fix ye, ye drunken, thavin' +loafer," and at the same time he began to move upon the enemy in a kind +of rhythmic, cryptic circle (some law governing anger and emotion, I +presume), the while his hands opened and shut and his eyes looked as +though they would be veiled completely by his narrowing lids. At the +same time the stranger, apparently seeing his danger, began backing and +circling in the same way around Rourke, as well as around the fire, +until it looked as though they were performing a war dance. Round and +round they went like two Hopi bucks or Zulu warriors, their faces +displaying the most murderous cunning and intention to slay--only, +instead of feathers and beads, they had on their negligible best. All +the while Rourke was calling, "Come on, now! Get ready, now! I'll show +ye, now! I'll fix ye, now! It's me coat ye'll rip, is it? Come on, now! +Get ready! Make yerself ready! I'm goin' to give ye the lickin' av yer +life! Come on, now! Come on, now! Come on, now!" + +It was as though each had been secreted from the other and had to be +sought out in some mysterious manner and in a circle. In spite of the +feeling of distress that an impending struggle of this kind gives one, I +could not help noting the comic condition of Rourke's back--the long +coat beautifully ripped straight up the back, its ends fluttering in the +wind like fans, and exposing his waistcoat and Sunday boiled white +shirt--and laying up a laugh for the future. It was too ridiculous. The +stranger had a most impressive and yet absurd air of drunken sternness +written in his face, a do-or-die look. + +Whether anything serious would really have happened I was never +permitted to learn, for now, in addition to myself and the Italians, all +of them excited and ready to defend their lord and master, some +passengers from the nearby station and the street above as well as a +foreman of a section gang helping at this same task, a great hulking +brute of a man who looked quite able to handle both Rourke and his +opponent at one and the same time, came forward and joined in this +excited circle. Considerable effort was made on the part of the latter +to learn just what the trouble was, after which the big foreman +interposed with: + +"What's the trouble here? Come, now! What's all this row, Rourke? Ye +wouldn't fight here, would ye? Have him arristed, er go to his home--ye +say ye know him--but don't be fightin' here. Supposin' waan av the +bosses should be comin' along now?" and at the same time he interposed +his great bulk between the two. + +Rourke, quieted some by this interruption but still sputtering with rage +and disgrace, shouted, "Lookit me coat! Lookit what he done to me coat! +See what he done to me coat! Man alive, d'ye think I'm goin' to stand +fer the likes av that? It's naht me that can be waalked on by a loafer +like that--an' me payin' him more than ever he was worth, an' him +waalkin' aaf an' l'avin' the job half done. I'll fix him this time. I'll +show him. I'll tache him to be comin' around an' disturbin' a man when +he's at his work. I'll fix him now," and once more he began to move. But +the great foreman was not so easily to be disposed of. + +"Well then, let's caall the police," he argued in a highly conciliatory +mood. "Ye can't be fightin' him here. Sure, ye don't waant to do that. +What'll the chafe think? What is it ye'll think av yerself?" + +At the same time he turned to find the intruder and demand to know what +he meant by it, but the latter had already decamped. Seeing the crowd +that had and was gathering, and that he was likely to encounter more +forms of trouble than he had anticipated, he had started down the track +toward Mott Haven. + +"I'll fix ye!" Rourke shouted when he saw him going. "Ye'll pay fer +this. I'll have ye arristed. Wait! Ye'll naht get aaf so aisy this +time." + +But just the same the storm was over for the present, anyhow, the man +gone, and in a little while Rourke left for his home at Mount Vernon to +repair his tattered condition. I never saw a man so crestfallen, nor one +more determined to "have the laa on him" in my life. Afterwards, when I +inquired very cautiously what he had done about it--this was a week or +two later--he replied, "Shewer, what can ye do with a loafer like that? +He has no money, an' lockin' him up won't help his wife an' children +any." + +Thus ended a perfect scene out of Kilkenny. + +It was not so very long after I arrived that Rourke began to tell me of +a building which the company was going to erect in Mott Haven Yard, one +of its great switching centers. It was to be an important affair, +according to him, sixty by two hundred feet in breadth and length, of +brick and stone, and was to be built under a time limit of three months, +an arrangement by which the company hoped to find out how satisfactorily +it could do work for itself rather than by outside contract, which it +was always hoping to avoid. From his manner and conversation, I judged +that Rourke was eager to get this job, for he had been a contractor of +some ability in his day before he ever went to work for the company, and +felt, I am sure, that fate had done him an injustice in not allowing him +to remain one. In addition, he felt a little above the odds and ends of +masonry that he was now called on to do, where formerly he had done so +much more important work. He was eager to be a real foreman once more, a +big one, and to show the company that he could erect this building and +thus make a little place for himself in the latter's good graces, +although to what end I could not quite make out. He would never have +made a suitable general foreman. At the same time, he was a little +afraid of the clerical details, those terrible nightmares of reports, +o.k.s and the like. + +"How arre ye feelin', Teddy, b'y?" he often inquired of me during this +period, with a greater show of interest in my troublesome health than +ever before. I talked of leaving, I suppose, from time to time because +sheer financial necessity was about to compel it. + +"Fine, Rourke," I would say, "never better. I'm feeling better every +day." + +"That's good. Ye're the right man in the right place now. If ye was to +sthay a year er two at this work it would be the makin' av ye. Ye're too +thin. Ye need more chist," and he would tap my bony chest in a kindly +manner. "I niver have a sick day, meself." + +"That's right, Rourke," I replied pleasantly, feeling keenly the need of +staying by so wonderful a lamp of health. "I intend to stick at it as +long as I can." + +"Ye ought to; it'll do ye good. If we get the new buildin' to build, +it'll be better yet for ye. Ye'll have plenty to do there to relave yer +mind." + +"Relieve, indeed!" I thought, but I did not say so. On the contrary I +felt so much sympathy for this lusty Irishman and his reasonable +ambitions that I desired to help him, and urged him to get it. I +suggested indirectly that I would see him through, which touched him +greatly. He was a grateful creature in his way, but so excitable and so +helplessly self-reliant that there was no way of aiding him without +doing it in a secret or rather self-effacing manner. He would have much +preferred to struggle along alone and fail, though I doubt whether real +failure could have come to Rourke so essentially capable was he. + +In another three weeks the work was really given him to do, and then +began one of the finest exhibitions of Irish domination and +self-sufficiency that I have ever witnessed. We moved to Mott Haven +Yard, a great network of tracks and buildings, in the center of which +this new building was to be erected. Rourke was given a large force of +men, whom he fairly gloried in bossing. He had as many as forty +Italians, to say nothing of a number of pseudo-carpenters and masons +(not those shrewd hawks clever enough to belong to the union, but +wasters and failures of another type) who did the preliminary work of +digging for the foundation, etc. Handling these, Rourke was in his +element. He loved to see so much brisk work going on. He would trot to +and fro about the place, beaming in the most angelic fashion, and +shouting orders that could be heard all over the neighborhood. It was +delicious to watch him. At times he would stand by the long trenches +where the men were digging for the foundation, a great line of them, +their backs bent over their work, and rub his hands in pleasingly human +satisfaction, saying, "We're goin' along fine, Teddy. I can jist see me +way to the top av the buildin'," and then he would proceed to harass and +annoy his men out of pure exuberance of spirits. + +"Ye waant to dig it so, man," or, "Ye don't handle yer pick right; can't +ye see that? Hold it this way." Sometimes he would get down in the +trench and demonstrate just how it was to be done, a thing which greatly +amused some of the workmen. Frequently he would exhibit to me little +tricks or knacks of his trade, such as throwing a trowel ten feet so +that it would stick in a piece of wood; turning a shovel over with a +lump of dirt on it and not dropping the lump, and similar simple acts, +always adding, "Ye'll niver be a mason till ye can do that." + +When he was tired of fussing with the men outside he would come around +to the little wooden shed, where I was keeping the mass of orders and +reports in shape and getting his material ready for him, and look over +the papers in the most knowing manner. When he had satisfied himself +that everything was going right, he would exclaim, "Ye're jist the b'y +fer the place, Teddy. Ye'd made a good bookkeeper. If ever I get to be +Prisident, I'll make ye me Sicretary av State." + +But the thing which really interested and enthralled Rourke was the +coming of the masons--those hardy buccaneers of the laboring world who +come and go as they please, asking no favors and brooking no +interference. Plainly he envied them their reckless independence at the +same time that he desired to control their labor in his favor--a task +worthy of the shrewdest diplomat. Never in my life have I seen such a +gay, ruthless, inconsiderate point of view as these same union masons +represented, a most astounding lot. They were--are, I suppose I should +say--our modern buccaneers and Captain Kidds of the laboring world, +demanding, if you please, their six a day, starting and stopping almost +when they please, doing just as little as they dare and yet face their +own decaying conscience, dropping any task at the most critical and +dangerous point, and in other ways rejoicing in and disporting +themselves in such a way as to annoy the representatives of any +corporation great or small that suffered the sad compulsion of employing +them. Seriously, I am not against union laborers. I like them. They +spell rude, blazing life. But when you have to deal with them! + +Plainly, Rourke anticipated endless rows. Their coming promised him the +opportunity he inmostly desired, I suppose, of once more fussing and +fuming with real, strong, determined and pugnacious men like himself, +who would not take his onslaughts tamely but would fight him back, as he +wished strong men to do. He was never weary of talking of them. + +"Wait till we have thirty er forty av thim on the line," he once +observed to me in connection with them, "every man layin' his six +hundred bricks a day, er takin' aaf his apron! Thim's the times ye'll +see what excitement manes, me b'y. Thim's the times." + +"What'll I see, Rourke?" I asked interestedly. + +"Throuble enough. Shewer, they're no crapin' Eyetalians, that'll let ye +taalk to thim as ye pl'ase. Indade not. Ye'll have to fight with them +fellies." + +"Well, that's a queer state of affairs," I remarked, and then added, "Do +you think you can handle them, Rourke?" + +"Handle thim!" he exclaimed, his glorious wrath kindling in anticipation +of a possible conflict. "Handle thim, an' the likes av a thousand av +thim! I know them aall, every waan av thim, an' their thricks. It's naht +foolin' me they'll be. But, me b'y," he added instructively, "it's a +fine job ye'll have runnin' down to the ahffice gettin' their time." +(This is the railroad man's expression for money due, or wages.) "Ye'll +have plenty av that to do, I'm tellin' ye." + +"You don't mean to say that you're going to discharge them, Rourke, do +you?" I asked. + +"Shewer!" he exclaimed authoritatively. "Why shouldn't I? They're jist +the same as other min. Why shouldn't I?" Then he added, after a pause, +"But it's thim that'll be comin' to me askin' fer their time instid av +me givin' it to thim, niver fear. They're not the kind that'll let ye +taalk back to thim. If their work don't suit ye, it's 'give me me time.' +Wait till they'll be comin' round half drunk in the mornin', an' not +feelin' just right. Thim's the times ye'll find out what masons arre +made av, me b'y." + +I confess this probability did not seem as brilliant to me as it did to +him, but it had its humor. I expressed wonder that he would hire them if +they were such a bad lot. + +"Where else will ye get min?" he demanded to know. "The unions have the +best, an' the most av thim. Thim outside fellies don't amount to much. +They're aall pore, crapin' creatures. If it wasn't fer the railroad +bein' against the union I wouldn't have thim at aall, and besides," he +added thoughtfully, and with a keen show of feeling for their point of +view, "they have a right to do as they pl'ase. Shewer, it's no common +workmen they arre. They can lay their eight hundred bricks a day, if +they will, an' no advice from any waan. If ye was in their place ye'd do +the same. There's no sinse in allowin' another man to waalk on ye whin +ye can get another job. I don't blame thim. I was a mason wanst meself." + +"You don't mean to say that you acted as you say these men are going to +act?" + +"Shewer!" + +"Well, I shouldn't think you'd be very proud of it." + +"I have me rights," he declared, flaring up. "What kind av a man is it +that'll let himself be waalked on? There's no sinse in it. It's naht +natchral. It's naht intinded that it should be so." + +"Very well," I said, smoothing the whole thing over, and so that ended. + +Well, the masons came, and a fine lot of pirates they surely were. Such +independence! Such defiance! Such feverish punctilio in regard to their +rights and what forms and procedures they were entitled to! I stared in +amazement. For the most part they were hale, healthy, industrious +looking creatures, but so obstreperously conscious of their own rights, +and so proud of their skill as masons, that there was no living with +them. Really, they would have tried the patience of a saint, let alone a +healthy, contentious Irish foreman-mason. "First off," as the railroad +men used to say, they wanted to know whether there were any non-union +men on the job, and if so, would they be discharged instanter?--if not, +no work--a situation which gave Rourke several splendid opportunities +for altercations, which he hastened to improve, although the non-union +men _went_, of course. Then they wanted to know when, where, and how +they were to get their money, whether on demand at any time they chose, +and this led to more trouble, since the railroad paid only once a month. +However, this was adjusted by a special arrangement being made whereby +the building department stood ready to pay them instantly on demand, +only I had to run down to the division office each time and get their +pay for them at any time that they came to ask for it! Then came an +argument (or many of them) as to the number of bricks they were to lay +an hour; the number of men they were to carry on one line, or wall; the +length of time they were supposed to work, or had worked, or would +work--all of which was pure food and drink to Rourke. He was in his +element at last, shouting, gesticulating, demanding that they leave or +go to ----. After all these things had been adjusted, however, they +finally consented to go to work, and then of course the work flew. It +was a grand scene, really inspiring--forty or fifty masons on the line, +perhaps half as many helpers or mixers, the Italians carrying bricks, +and a score of carpenters now arriving under another foreman to set the +beams and lay the joists as the walls rose upward. + +Rourke was about all the time now, arguing and gesticulating with this +man or that, fighting with this one or the other, and calling always to +some mason or other to "come down" and get his "time." "Come down! Come +down!" I would hear, and then would see him rushing for the office, a +defiant and even threatening mason at his heels; Rourke demanding that +I make out a time-check at once for the latter and go down to the +"ahffice" and get the money, the while the mason hung about attempting +to seduce other men to a similar point of view. Once in a while, but +only on rare occasions, Rourke would patch up a truce with a man. As a +rule, the mason was only too eager to leave and spend the money thus far +earned, while Rourke was curiously indifferent as to whether he went or +stayed. "'Tis to drink he waants," he would declare amusedly. To me it +was all like a scene out of comic opera. + +Toward the last, however, a natural calm set in, the result no doubt of +weariness and a sense of surfeit, which sent the building forward apace. +During this time Rourke was to be seen walking defiantly up and down the +upper scaffolding of the steadily rising walls, or down below on the +ground in front of his men, his hands behind his back, his face screwed +into a quizzical expression, his whole body bearing a look of bristling +content and pugnacity which was too delicious for words. Since things +were going especially well he could not say much, but still he could +look his contentiousness, and did. Even now he would occasionally manage +to pick a quarrel with some lusty mason or other, which resulted in the +customary descent to the office, but not often. + +But one cold December day, about three weeks later, when I was just +about to announce that I could no longer delay my departure, seeing that +my health was now as good, or nearly so, as my purse was lean, and that, +whether I would or no, I must arrange to make more money, that a most +dreadful accident occurred. It appeared that Rourke and a number of +Italians, including Matt and Jimmie, were down in the main room of the +building, now fast nearing completion, when the boiler of the hoisting +engine, which had been placed inside the building and just at the +juncture of three walls, blew up and knocked out this wall and the +joists of the second and third floors loose, thus precipitating all of +fifteen thousand bricks, which had been placed on the third floor, into +this room below. For a few moments there had been a veritable hurricane +of bricks and falling timber; and then, when it was over, it was found +that the mighty Rourke and five Italians were embedded in or under them, +and all but Jimmie more or less seriously injured or killed. Two +Italians were killed outright. A third died later. Rourke, in +particular, was unfortunately placed and terribly injured. His body from +the waist down was completely buried by a pile of bricks, and across his +shoulder lay a great joist pressing where it had struck him, and cutting +his neck and ear. He was a pathetic sight when we entered, bleeding and +pain-wrenched yet grim and undaunted, as one might have expected. + +"I'm tight fast, me lad," he said when he could speak. "It's me legs +that's caught, not me body. But give a hand to the min, there. The +Eyetalians are underneath." + +Disregarding his suggestion, however, we began working about him, every +man throwing away bricks like a machine; but he would not have it. + +"'Tind to the min!" he insisted with all of his old firmness. "The +Eyetalians are under there--Matt an' Jimmie. Can't ye see that I'll be +all right till ye get thim out? Come, look after the min!" + +We fell to this end of the work, although by now others had arrived, and +soon there was a great crowd assisting--men coming from the yard and the +machine shop. Although embedded in this mass of material and most +severely injured, there was no gainsaying him, and he still insisted on +directing us as best he could. But now he was so picturesque, so much +nobler, really, than he had been in his healthier, uninjured days. A +fabled giant, he seemed to me, half-god, half-man, composed in part of +flesh, in part of brick and stone, gazing down on our earthly efforts +with the eye of a demi-god. + +"Come, now--get the j'ists from aaf the end, there. Take the bricks away +from that man. Can't ye see? There's where his head is--there. There! +Jasus Christ--theyer!" + +You would have thought we were Italians ourselves, poor wisps of +nothing, not his rescuers, but slaves, compelled to do his lordly +bidding. + +After a time, however, we managed to release him and all his five +helpers--two dead, as I say, and Matt badly cut about the head and +seriously injured, while Jimmie, the imperturbable, was but little the +worse for a brick mark on one shoulder. He was more or less frightened, +of course, and comic to look at, even in this dread situation. "Big-a +smash," he exclaimed when he recovered himself. "Like-a da worl' fall. +Misha Rook! Misha Rook! Where Misha Rook?" + +"Here I am, ye Eyetalian scalawag," exclaimed the unyielding Rourke +genially, who was still partially embedded when Jimmie was released. +There was, however, a touch of sorrow in his voice as he added weakly, +"Arre ye hurted much?" + +"No, Misha Rook. Help Misha Rook," replied Jimmie, grabbing at bricks +himself, and so the rescue work of "Rook" went on. + +Finally he was released, although not without deprecating our efforts +the while (this wonderful and exceptional fuss over him), and exclaiming +at one point as we tugged at joists and beams rather frantically, "Take +yer time. Take yer time. I'm naht so bad fixed as aall that. Take yer +time. Get that board out o' the way there, Jimmie." + +But he was badly "fixed," and "hurted" unto death also, as we now found, +and as he insisted he was not. His hip was severely crushed by the +timbers and his legs broken, as well as his internal organs disarranged, +although we did not know how badly at the time. Only after we had +removed all the weight did he collapse and perhaps personally realize +how serious was his plight. He was laid on a canvas tarpaulin brought by +the yard-master and spread on the chip-strewn ground, while the doctors +from two ambulances worked over him. While they were examining his +wounds he took a critical and quizzical interest in what they were +doing, and offered one or two humorous suggestions. Finally, when they +were ready to move him he asked how he was, and on being told that he +was all right, looked curiously about until he caught my eye. I could +see that he realized how critical it was with him. + +"I'd like to see a priest, Teddy," he whispered, "and, if ye don't mind, +I'd like ye to go up to Mount Vernon an' tell me wife. They'll be after +telegraphin' her if ye don't. Break it aisy, if ye will. Don't let 'er +think there's anything serious. There's no need av it. I'm naht hurted +so bad as aall that." + +I promised, and the next moment one of the doctors shot a spray of +cocaine into his hip to relieve what he knew must be his dreadful pain. +A few moments later he lost consciousness, after which I left him to the +care of the hospital authorities and hurried away to send the priest and +to tell his wife. + +For a week thereafter he lingered in a very serious condition and +finally died, blood-poisoning having set in. I saw him at the hospital a +day or two before, and, trying to sympathize with his condition, I +frequently spoke of what I deemed the dreadful uncertainty of life and +the seeming carelessness of the engineer in charge of the hoisting +engine. He, however, had no complaint to make. + +"Ye must expect thim things," was his only comment. "Ye can't aalways +expect to go unhurted. I niver lost a man before, nor had one come to +haarm. 'Tis the way av things, ye see." + +Mighty Rourke! You would have thought the whole Italian population of +Mount Vernon knew and loved him, the way they turned out at his funeral. +It was a state affair for most of them, and they came in scores, packing +the little brick church at which he was accustomed to worship full to +overflowing. Matt was there, bandaged and sore, but sorrowful; and +Jimmie, artful and scheming in the past, but now thoroughly subdued. He +was all sorrow, and sniveled and blubbered and wept hot, blinding tears +through the dark, leathery fingers of his hands. + +"Misha Rook! Misha Rook!" I heard him say, as they bore the body in; and +when they carried it out of the church, he followed, head down. As they +lowered it to the grave he was inconsolable. + +"Misha Rook! Misha Rook! I work-a for him fifteen year!" + + + + +_A Mayor and His People_ + + +Here is the story of an individual whose political and social example, +if such things are ever worth anything (the moralists to the contrary +notwithstanding), should have been, at the time, of the greatest +importance to every citizen of the United States. Only it was not. Or +was it? Who really knows? Anyway, he and his career are entirely +forgotten by now, and have been these many years. + +He was the mayor of one of those dreary New England mill towns in +northern Massachusetts--a bleak, pleasureless realm of about forty +thousand, where, from the time he was born until he finally left at the +age of thirty-six to seek his fortune elsewhere, he had resided without +change. During that time he had worked in various of the local mills, +which in one way and another involved nearly all of the population. He +was a mill shoe-maker by trade, or, in other words, a factory shoe-hand, +knowing only a part of all the processes necessary to make a shoe in +that fashion. Still, he was a fair workman, and earned as much as +fifteen or eighteen dollars a week at times--rather good pay for that +region. By temperament a humanitarian, or possibly because of his own +humble state one who was compelled to take cognizance of the +difficulties of others, he finally expressed his mental unrest by +organizing a club for the study and propagation of socialism, and later, +when it became powerful enough to have a candidate and look for +political expression of some kind, he was its first, and thereafter for +a number of years, its regular candidate for mayor. For a long time, or +until its membership became sufficient to attract some slight political +attention, its members (following our regular American, unintellectual +custom) were looked upon by the rest of the people as a body of harmless +kickers, filled with fool notions about a man's duty to his fellowman, +some silly dream about an honest and economical administration of public +affairs--their city's affairs, to be exact. We are so wise in America, +so interested in our fellowman, so regardful of his welfare. They were +so small in number, however, that they were little more than an object +of pleasant jest, useful for that purpose alone. + +This club, however, continued to put up its candidate until about 1895, +when suddenly it succeeded in polling the very modest number of +fifty-four votes--double the number it had succeeded in polling any +previous year. A year later one hundred and thirty-six were registered, +and the next year six hundred. Then suddenly the mayor who won that +year's battle died, and a special election was called. Here the club +polled six hundred and one, a total and astonishing gain of one. In 1898 +the perennial candidate was again nominated and received fifteen +hundred, and in 1899, when he ran again, twenty-three hundred votes, +which elected him. + +If this fact be registered casually here, it was not so regarded in that +typically New England mill town. Ever study New England--its Puritan, +self-defensive, but unintellectual and selfish psychology? Although this +poor little snip of a mayor was only elected for one year, men paused +astounded, those who had not voted for him, and several of the older +conventional political and religious order, wedded to their church and +all the routine of the average puritanic mill town, actually cried. No +one knew, of course, who the new mayor was, or what he stood for. There +were open assertions that the club behind him was anarchistic--that +ever-ready charge against anything new in America--and that the courts +should be called upon to prevent his being seated. And this from people +who were as poorly "off" commercially and socially as any might well be. +It was stated, as proving the worst, that he was, or had been, a mill +worker!--and, before that a grocery clerk--both at twelve a week, or +less!! Immediate division of property, the forcing of all employers to +pay as much as five a day to every laborer (an unheard-of sum in New +England), and general constraint and subversion of individual rights +(things then unknown in America, of course), loomed in the minds of +these conventional Americans as the natural and immediate result of so +modest a victory. The old-time politicians and corporations who +understood much better what the point was, the significance of this +straw, were more or less disgruntled, but satisfied that it could be +undone later. + +An actual conversation which occurred on one of the outlying street +corners one evening about dusk will best illustrate the entire +situation. + +"Who is the man, anyway?" asked one citizen of a total stranger whom he +had chanced to meet. + +"Oh, no one in particular, I think. A grocery clerk, they say." + +"Astonishing, isn't it? Why, I never thought those people would get +anything. Why, they didn't even figure last year." + +"Seems to be considerable doubt as to just what he'll do." + +"That's what I've been wondering. I don't take much stock in all their +talk about anarchy. A man hasn't so very much power as mayor." + +"No," said the other. + +"We ought to give him a trial, anyway. He's won a big fight. I should +like to see him, see what he looks like." + +"Oh, nothing startling. I know him." + +"Rather young, ain't he?" + +"Yes." + +"Where did he come from?" + +"Oh, right around here." + +"Was he a mill-hand?" + +"Yes." + +The stranger made inquiry as to other facts and then turned off at a +corner. + +"Well," he observed at parting, "I don't know. I'm inclined to believe +in the man. I should like to see him myself. Good-night." + +"Good-night," said the other, waving his hand. "When you see me again +you will know that you are looking at the mayor." + +The inquirer stared after him and saw a six-foot citizen, of otherwise +medium proportions, whose long, youthful face and mild gray eyes, with +just a suggestion of washed-out blue in them, were hardly what was to be +expected of a notorious and otherwise astounding political figure. + +"He is too young," was the earliest comments, when the public once +became aware of his personality. + +"Why, he is nothing but a grocery clerk," was another, the skeptical and +condemnatory possibilities of which need not be dilated upon here. + +And he was, in his way--nothing much of a genius, as such things go in +politics, but an interesting figure. Without much taste (or its +cultivated shadow) or great vision of any kind, he was still a man who +sensed the evils of great and often unnecessary social inequalities and +the need of reorganizing influences, which would tend to narrow the vast +gulf between the unorganized and ignorant poor, and the huge +beneficiaries of unearned (yes, and not even understood) increment. For +what does the economic wisdom of the average capitalist amount to, after +all: the narrow, gourmandizing hunger of the average multi-millionaire? + +At any rate, people watched him as he went to and fro between his office +and his home, and reached the general conclusion after the first +excitement had died down that he did not amount to much. + +When introduced into his office in the small but pleasant city hall, he +came into contact with a "ring," and a fixed condition, which nobody +imagined a lone young mayor could change. Old-time politicians sat there +giving out contracts for street-cleaning, lighting, improvements and +supplies of all kinds, and a bond of mutual profit bound them closely +together. + +"I don't think he can do much to hurt us," these individuals said one to +another. "He don't amount to much." + +The mayor was not of a talkative or confiding turn. Neither was he cold +or wanting in good and natural manners. He was, however, of a +preoccupied turn of mind, "up in the air," some called it, and smoked a +good many cigars. + +"I think we ought to get together and have some sort of a conference +about the letting of contracts," said the president of the city council +to him one morning shortly after he had been installed. "You will find +these gentlemen ready to meet you half-way in these matters." + +"I'm very glad to hear that," he replied. "I've something to say in my +message to the council, which I'll send over in the morning." + +The old-time politician eyed him curiously, and he eyed the old-time +politician in turn, not aggressively, but as if they might come to a +very pleasant understanding if they wanted to, and then went back to his +office. + +The next day his message was made public, and this was its key-note: + +"All contract work for the city should be let with a proviso, that the +workmen employed receive not less than two dollars a day." + +The dissatisfied roar that followed was not long in making itself heard +all over the city. + +"Stuff and nonsense," yelled the office jobbers in a chorus. +"Socialism!" "Anarchy!" "This thing must be put down!" "The city would +be bankrupt in a year." "No contractor could afford to pay his ordinary +day laborers two a day. The city could not afford to pay any contractor +enough to do it." + +"The prosperity of the city is not greater than the prosperity of the +largest number of its component individuals," replied the mayor, in a +somewhat altruistic and economically abstruse argument on the floor of +the council hall. "We must find contractors." + +"We'll see about that," said the members of the opposition. "Why, the +man's crazy. If he thinks he can run this town on a goody-good basis and +make everybody rich and happy, he's going to get badly fooled, that's +all there is to that." + +Fortunately for him three of the eight council members were fellows of +the mayor's own economic beliefs, individuals elected on the same ticket +with him. These men could not carry a resolution, but they could stop +one from being carried over the mayor's veto. Hence it was found that if +the contracts could not be given to men satisfactory to the mayor they +could not be given at all, and he stood in a fair way to win. + +"What the hell's the use of us sitting here day after day!" were the +actual words of the leading members of the opposition in the council +some weeks later, when the fight became wearisome. "We can't pass the +contracts over his veto. I say let 'em go." + +So the proviso was tacked on, that two a day was the minimum wage to be +allowed, and the contracts passed. + +The mayor's followers were exceedingly jubilant at this, more so than +he, who was of a more cautious and less hopeful temperament. + +"Not out of the woods yet, gentlemen," he remarked to a group of his +adherents at the reform club. "We have to do a great many things +sensibly if we expect to keep the people's confidence and 'win again.'" + +Under the old system of letting contracts, whenever there was a wage +rate stipulated, men were paid little or nothing, and the work was not +done. There was no pretense of doing it. Garbage and ashes accumulated, +and papers littered the streets. The old contractor who had pocketed the +appropriated sum thought to do so again. + +"I hear the citizens are complaining as much as ever," said the mayor to +this individual one morning. "You will have to keep the streets clean." + +The contractor, a robust, thick-necked, heavy-jawed Irishman, of just so +much refinement as the sudden acquisition of a comfortable fortune would +allow, looked him quizzically over, wondering whether he was "out" for a +portion of the appropriation or whether he was really serious. + +"We can fix that between us," he said. + +"There's nothing to fix," replied the mayor. "All I want you to do is to +clean the streets." + +The contractor went away and for a few days after the streets were +really clean, but it was only for a few days. + +In his walks about the city the mayor himself found garbage and paper +uncollected, and then called upon his new acquaintance again. + +"I'm mentioning this for the last time, Mr. M----," he said. "You will +have to fulfill your contract, or resign in favor of some one who will." + +"Oh, I'll clean them, well enough," said this individual, after five +minutes of rapid fire explanation. "Two dollars a day for men is high, +but I'll see that they're clean." + +Again he went away, and again the mayor sauntered about, and then one +morning sought out the contractor in his own office. + +"This is the end," he said, removing a cigar from his mouth and holding +it before him with his elbow at right angles. "You are discharged from +this work. I'll notify you officially to-morrow." + +"It can't be done the way you want it," the contractor exclaimed with an +oath. "There's no money in it at two dollars. Hell, anybody can see +that." + +"Very well," said the mayor in a kindly well-modulated tone. "Let +another man try, then." + +The next day he appointed a new contractor, and with a schedule before +him showing how many men should be employed and how much profit he might +expect, the latter succeeded. The garbage was daily removed, and the +streets carefully cleaned. + +Then there was a new manual training school about to be added to the +public school system at this time, and the contract for building was to +be let, when the mayor threw a bomb into the midst of the old-time +jobbers at the city council. A contractor had already been chosen by +them and the members were figuring out their profits, when at one of the +public discussions of the subject the mayor said: + +"Why shouldn't the city build it, gentlemen?" + +"How can it?" exclaimed the councilmen. "The city isn't an individual; +it can't watch carefully." + +"It can hire its own architect, as well as any contractor. Let's try +it." + +There were sullen tempers in the council chamber after this, but the +mayor was insistent. He called an architect who made a ridiculously low +estimate. Never had a public building been estimated so cheaply before. + +"See here," said one of the councilmen when the plans were presented to +the chamber--"This isn't doing this city right, and the gentlemen of the +council ought to put their feet down on any such venture as this. You're +going to waste the city's money on some cheap thing in order to catch +votes." + +"I'll publish the cost of the goods as delivered," said the mayor. "Then +the people can look at the building when it's built. We'll see how cheap +it looks then." + +To head off political trickery on the part of the enemy he secured bills +for material as delivered, and publicly compared them with prices paid +for similar amounts of the same material used in other buildings. So the +public was kept aware of what was going on and the cry of cheapness for +political purposes set at naught. It was the first public structure +erected by the city, and by all means the cheapest and best of all the +city's buildings. + +Excellent as these services were in their way, the mayor realized later +that a powerful opposition was being generated and that if he were to +retain the interest of his constituents he would have to set about +something which would endear him and his cause to the public. + +"I may be honest," he told one of his friends, "but honesty will play a +lone hand with these people. The public isn't interested in its own +welfare very much. It can't be bothered or hasn't the time. What I need +is something that will impress it and still be worth while. I can't be +reëlected on promises, or on my looks, either." + +When he looked about him, however, he found the possibility of +independent municipal action pretty well hampered by mandatory +legislation. He had promised, for instance, to do all he could to lower +the exorbitant gas rate and to abolish grade crossings, but the law said +that no municipality could do either of these things without first +voting to do so three years in succession--a little precaution taken by +the corporation representing such things long before he came into power. +Each vote must be for such contemplated action, or it could not become a +law. + +"I know well enough that promises are all right," he said to one of his +friends, "and that these laws are good enough excuses, but the public +won't take excuses from me for three years. If I want to be mayor again +I want to be doing something, and doing it quick." + +In the city was a gas corporation, originally capitalized at $45,000, +and subsequently increased to $75,000, which was earning that year the +actual sum of $58,000 over and above all expenses. It was getting ready +to inflate the capitalization, as usual, and water its stock to the +extent of $500,000, when it occurred to the mayor that if the +corporation was making such enormous profits out of a $75,000 investment +as to be able to offer to pay six per cent on $500,000 to investors, and +put the money it would get for such stocks into its pocket, perhaps it +could reduce the price of gas from one dollar and nineteen cents to a +more reasonable figure. There was the three years' voting law, however, +behind which, as behind an entrenchment, the very luxurious corporation +lay comfortable and indifferent. + +The mayor sent for his corporation counsel, and studied gas law for +awhile. He found that at the State capital there was a State board, or +commission, which had been created to look after gas companies in +general, and to hear the complaints of municipalities which considered +themselves unjustly treated. + +"This is the thing for me," he said. + +Lacking the municipal authority himself, he decided to present the facts +in the case and appeal to this commission for a reduction of the gas +rate. + +When he came to talk about it he found that the opposition he would +generate would be something much more than local. Back of the local +reduction idea was the whole system of extortionate gas rates of the +State and of the nation; hundreds of fat, luxurious gas corporations +whose dividends would be threatened by any agitation on this question. + +"You mean to proceed with this scheme of yours?" asked a prominent +member of the local bar who called one morning to interview him. "I +represent the gentlemen who are interested in our local gas company." + +"I certainly do," replied the mayor. + +"Well," replied the uncredentialed representative of private interests, +after expostulating a long time and offering various "reasons" why it +would be more profitable and politically advantageous for the new mayor +not to proceed, "I've said all I can say. Now I want to tell you that +you are going up against a combination that will be your ruin. You're +not dealing with this town now; you're dealing with the State, the whole +nation. These corporations can't afford to let you win, and they won't. +You're not the one to do it; you're not big enough." + +The mayor smiled and replied that of course he could not say as to that. + +The lawyer went away, and that next day the mayor had his legal counsel +look up the annual reports of the company for the consecutive years of +its existence, as well as a bulletin issued by a firm of brokers, into +whose hands the matter of selling a vast amount of watered stock it +proposed to issue had been placed. He also sent for a gas expert and set +him to figuring out a case for the people. + +It was found by this gentleman that since the company was first +organized it had paid dividends on its capital stock at the rate of ten +per cent per annum, for the first thirty years; had made vast +improvements in the last ten, and notwithstanding this fact, had paid +twenty per cent, and even twenty-five per cent per annum in dividends. +All the details of cost and expenditure were figured out, and then the +mayor with his counsel took the train for the State capitol. + +Never was there more excitement in political circles than when this +young representative of no important political organization whatsoever +arrived at the State capitol and walked, at the appointed time, into the +private audience room of the commission. Every gas company, as well as +every newspaper and every other representative of the people, had +curiously enough become interested in the fight he was making, and there +was a band of reporters at the hotel where he was stopping, as well as +in the commission chambers in the State capitol where the hearing was to +be. They wanted to know about him--why he was doing this, whether it +wasn't a "strike" or the work of some rival corporation. The fact that +he might foolishly be sincere was hard to believe. + +"Gentlemen," said the mayor, as he took his stand in front of an august +array of legal talent which was waiting to pick his argument to pieces +in the commission chambers at the capitol, "I miscalculated but one +thing in this case which I am about to lay before you, and that is the +extent of public interest. I came here prepared to make a private +argument, but now I want to ask the privilege of making it public. I see +the public itself is interested, or should be. I will ask leave to +postpone my argument until the day after tomorrow." + +There was considerable hemming and hawing over this, since from the +point of view of the corporation it was most undesirable, but the +commission was practically powerless to do aught but grant his request. +And meanwhile the interest created by the newspapers added power to his +cause. Hunting up the several representatives and senators from his +district, he compelled them to take cognizance of the cause for which he +was battling, and when the morning of the public hearing arrived a large +audience was assembled in the chamber of representatives. + +When the final moment arrived the young mayor came forward, and after +making a very simple statement of the cause which led him to request a +public hearing and the local condition which he considered unfair begged +leave to introduce an expert, a national examiner of gas plants and +lighting facilities, for whom he had sent, and whose twenty years of +experience in this line had enabled him to prepare a paper on the +condition of the gas-payers in the mayor's city. + +The commission was not a little surprised by this, but signified its +willingness to hear the expert as counsel for the city, and as his +statement was read a very clear light was thrown upon the situation. + +Counsel for the various gas corporations interrupted freely. The mayor +himself was constantly drawn into the argument, but his replies were so +simple and convincing that there was not much satisfaction to be had in +stirring him. Instead, the various counsel took refuge in long-winded +discussions about the methods of conducting gas plants in other cities, +the cost of machinery, labor and the like, which took days and days, and +threatened to extend into weeks. The astounding facts concerning large +profits and the present intentions of not only this but every other +company in the State could not be dismissed. In fact the revelation of +huge corporation profits everywhere became so disturbing that after the +committee had considered and re-considered, it finally, when threatened +with political extermination, voted to reduce the price of gas to eighty +cents. + +It is needless to suggest the local influence of this decision. When the +mayor came home he received an ovation, and that at the hands of many of +the people who had once been so fearful of him, but he knew that this +enthusiasm would not last long. Many disgruntled elements were warring +against him, and others were being more and more stirred up. His home +life was looked into as well as his past, his least childish or private +actions. It was a case of finding other opportunities for public +usefulness, or falling into the innocuous peace which would result in +his defeat. + +In the platform on which he had been elected was a plank which declared +that it was the intention of this party, if elected, to abolish local +grade crossings, the maintenance of which had been the cause of numerous +accidents and much public complaint. With this plank he now proposed to +deal. + +In this of course he was hampered by the law before mentioned, which +declared that no city could abolish its grade crossings without having +first submitted the matter to the people during three successive years +and obtained their approval each time. Behind this law was not now, +however, as in the case of the gas company, a small $500,000 +corporation, but all the railroads which controlled New England, and to +which brains and legislators, courts and juries, were mere adjuncts. +Furthermore, the question would have to be voted on at the same time as +his candidacy, and this would have deterred many another more ambitious +politician. The mayor was not to be deterred, however. He began his +agitation, and the enemy began theirs, but in the midst of what seemed +to be a fair battle the great railway company endeavored to steal a +march. There was suddenly and secretly introduced into the lower house +of the State legislature a bill which in deceptive phraseology declared +that the law which allowed all cities, by three successive votes, to +abolish grade crossings in three years, was, in the case of a particular +city mentioned, hereby abrogated for a term of four years. The question +might not even be discussed politically. + +When the news of this attempt reached the mayor, he took the first train +for the State capitol and arrived there just in time to come upon the +floor of the house when the bill was being taken up for discussion. He +asked leave to make a statement. Great excitement was aroused by his +timely arrival. Those who secretly favored the bill endeavored to have +the matter referred to a committee, but this was not to be. One member +moved to go on with the consideration of the bill, and after a close +vote the motion carried. + +The mayor was then introduced. + +After a few moments, in which the silent self-communing with which he +introduced himself impressed everyone with his sincerity, he said: + +"I am accused of objecting to this measure because its enactment will +remove, as a political issue, the one cause upon which I base my hope +for reëlection. If there are no elevated crossings to vote for, there +will be no excuse for voting for me. Gentlemen, you mistake the temper +and the intellect of the people of our city. It is you who see political +significance in this thing, but let me assure you that it is of a far +different kind from that which you conceive. If the passing of this +measure had any significance to me other than the apparent wrong of it, +I would get down on my knees and urge its immediate acceptance. Nothing +could elect me quicker. Nothing could bury the opposition further from +view. If you wish above all things to accomplish my triumph you will +only need to interfere with the rights of our city in this arbitrary +manner, and you will have the thing done. I could absolutely ask nothing +more." + +The gentlemen who had this measure in charge weighed well these +assertions and trifled for weeks with the matter, trying to make up +their minds. + +Meanwhile election time approached, and amid the growing interest of +politics it was thought unwise to deal with it. A great fight was +arranged for locally, in which every conceivable element of opposition +was beautifully harmonized by forces and conceptions which it is almost +impossible to explain. Democrats, republicans, prohibitionists, saloon +men and religious circles, all were gathered into one harmonious body +and inspired with a single idea, that of defeating the mayor. From some +quarter, not exactly identified, was issued a call for a civic committee +of fifty, which should take into its hands the duty of rescuing the city +from what was termed a "throttling policy of commercial oppression and +anarchy." Democrats, republicans, liquor and anti-liquorites, were +invited to the same central meeting place, and came. Money was not +lacking, nor able minds, to prepare campaign literature. It was openly +charged that a blank check was handed in to the chairman of this body by +the railway whose crossings were in danger, to be filled out for any +amount necessary to the destruction of the official upstart who was +seeking to revolutionize old methods and conditions. + +As may be expected, this opposition did not lack daring in making +assertions contrary to facts. Charges were now made that the mayor was +in league with the railroad to foist upon the city a great burden of +expense, because the law under which cities could compel railroads to +elevate their tracks declared that one-fifth of the burden of expense +must be borne by the city and the remaining four-fifths by the railroad. +It would saddle a debt of $250,000 upon the taxpayers, they said, and +give them little in return. All the advantage would be with the +railroad. "Postpone this action until the railroad can be forced to bear +the entire expense, as it justly should," declared handbill writers, +whose services were readily rendered to those who could afford to pay +for them. + +The mayor and his committee, although poor, answered with handbills and +street corner speeches, in which he showed that even with the +extravagantly estimated debt of $250,000, the city's tax-rate would not +be increased by quite six cents to the individual. The cry that each man +would have to pay five dollars more each year for ten years was thus +wholesomely disposed of, and the campaign proceeded. + +Now came every conceivable sort of charge. If he were not defeated, all +reputable merchants would surely leave the city. Capital was certainly +being scared off. There would be idle factories and empty stomachs. Look +out for hard times. No one but a fool would invest in a city thus +hampered. + +In reply the mayor preached a fair return by corporations for benefits +received. He, or rather his organization, took a door-to-door census of +his following, and discovered a very considerable increase in the number +of those intending to vote for him. The closest calculations of the +enemy were discovered, the actual number they had fixed upon as +sufficient to defeat him. This proved to the mayor that he must have +three hundred more votes if he wished to be absolutely sure. These he +hunted out from among the enemy, and had them pledged before the +eventual morning came. + +The night preceding election ended the campaign, for the enemy at least, +in a blaze of glory, so to speak. Dozens of speakers for both causes +were about the street corners and in the city meeting room. + +Oratory poured forth in streams, and gasoline-lighted band-wagons +rattled from street to street, emitting song and invective. Even a great +parade was arranged by the anti-mayoral forces, in which horses and men +to the number of hundreds were brought in from nearby cities and palmed +off as enthusiastic citizens. + +"Horses don't vote," a watchword handed out by the mayor, took the edge +off the extreme ardor of this invading throng, and set to laughing the +hundreds of his partisans, who needed such encouragement. + +Next day came the vote, and then for once, anyhow, he was justified. +Not only was a much larger vote cast than ever, but he thrashed the +enemy with a tail of two hundred votes to spare. It was an inspiring +victory from one point of view, but rather doleful for the enemy. The +latter had imported a carload of fireworks, which now stood sadly unused +upon the very tracks which, apparently, must in the future be raised. +The crowning insult was offered when the successful forces offered to +take them off their hands at half price. + +For a year thereafter (a mayor was elected yearly there), less was heard +of the commercial destruction of the city. Gas stood, as decided, at +eighty cents a thousand. A new manual training school, built at a very +nominal cost, a monument to municipal honesty, was also in evidence. The +public waterworks had also been enlarged and the rates reduced. The +streets were clean. + +Then the mayor made another innovation. During his first term of office +there had been a weekly meeting of the reform club, at which he appeared +and talked freely of his plans and difficulties. These meetings he now +proposed to make public. + +Every Wednesday evening for a year thereafter a spectacle of municipal +self-consciousness was witnessed, which those who saw it felt sure would +redound to the greater strength and popularity of the mayor. In a large +hall, devoted to public gatherings, a municipal meeting was held. Every +one was invited. The mayor was both host and guest, an individual who +chose to explain his conduct and his difficulties and to ask advice. +There his constituents gathered, not only to hear but to offer counsel. + +"Gentlemen," so ran the gist of his remarks on various of these +occasions, "the present week has proved a most trying one. I am +confronted by a number of difficult problems, which I will now try to +explain to you. In the first place, you know my limitations as to power +in the council. But three members now vote for me, and it is only by +mutual concessions that we move forward at all." + +Then would follow a detailed statement of the difficulties, and a +general discussion. The commonest laborer was free to offer his advice. +Every question was answered in the broadest spirit of fellowship. An +inquiry as to "what to do" frequently brought the most helpful advice. +Weak and impossible solutions were met as such, and shown to be what +they were. Radicals were assuaged, conservatives urged forward. The +whole political situation was so detailed and explained that no +intelligent person could leave, it was thought, with a false impression +of the mayor's position or intent. + +With five thousand or more such associated citizens abroad each day +explaining, defending, approving the official conduct of the mayor, +because they understood it, no misleading conceptions, it was thought, +could arise. Men said that his purpose and current leaning in any matter +was always clear. He was thought to be closer to his constituency than +any other official within the whole range of the Americas and that there +could be nothing but unreasoning partisan opposition to his rule. + +After one year of such service a presidential campaign drew near, and +the mayor's campaign for reëlection had to be contested at the same +time. No gas monopoly evil was now a subject of contention. Streets were +clean, contracts fairly executed; the general municipal interests as +satisfactorily attended to as could be expected. Only the grade crossing +war remained as an issue, and that would require still another vote +after this. His record was the only available campaign argument. + +On the other side, however, were the two organizations of the locally +defeated great parties, and the railroad. The latter, insistent in its +bitterness, now organized these two bodies into a powerful opposition. +Newspapers were subsidized; the national significance of the campaign +magnified; a large number of railroad-hands colonized. When the final +weeks of the campaign arrived a bitter contest was waged, and money +triumphed. Five thousand four hundred votes were cast for the mayor. +Five thousand four hundred and fifty for the opposing candidate, who was +of the same party as the successful presidential nominee. + +It was a bitter blow, but still one easily borne by the mayor, who was +considerable of a philosopher. With simple, undisturbed grace he +retired, and three days later applied to one of the principal shoe +factories for work at his trade. + +"What? You're not looking for a job, are you?" exclaimed the astonished +foreman. + +"I am," said the mayor. + +"You can go to work, all right, but I should think you could get into +something better now." + +"I suppose I can later," he replied, "when I complete my law studies. +Just now I want to do this for a change, to see how things are with the +rank and file." And donning the apron he had brought with him he went to +work. + +It was not long, however, before he was discharged, largely because of +partisan influence anxious to drive him out of that region. It was said +that this move of seeking a job in so simple a way was a bit of "grand +standing"--insincere--that he didn't need to do it, and that he was +trying to pile up political capital against the future. A little later a +local grocery man of his social faith offered him a position as clerk, +and for some odd reason--humanitarian and sectarian, possibly--he +accepted this. At any rate, here he labored for a little while. Again +many said he was attempting to make political capital out of this simple +life in order to further his political interests later, and this +possibly, even probably, was true. All men have methods of fighting for +that which they believe. So here he worked for a time, while a large +number of agencies pro and con continued to denounce or praise him, to +ridicule or extol his so-called Jeffersonian simplicity. It was at this +time that I encountered him--a tall, spare, capable and interesting +individual, who willingly took me into his confidence and explained all +that had hitherto befallen him. He was most interesting, really, a +figure to commemorate in this fashion. + +In one of the rooms of his very humble home--a kind of office or den, in +a small house such as any clerk or working-man might occupy--was a +collection of clippings, laudatory, inquiring, and abusive, which would +have done credit to a candidate for the highest office in the land. One +would have judged by the scrap-books and envelopes stuffed to +overflowing with long newspaper articles and editorials that had been +cut from papers all over the country from Florida to Oregon, that his +every movement at this time and earlier was all-essential to the people. +Plainly, he had been watched, spied upon, and ignored by one class, +while being hailed, praised and invited by another. Magazine editors had +called upon him for contributions, journalists from the large cities had +sought him out to obtain his actual views, citizens' leagues in various +parts of the nation had invited him to come and speak, and yet he was +still a very young man in years, not over-intelligent politically or +philosophically, the ex-mayor of a small city, and the representative of +no great organization of any sort. + +In his retirement he was now comforted, if one can be so comforted, by +these memories, still fresh in his mind and by the hope possibly for his +own future, as well as by a droll humor with which he was wont to select +the sharpest and most willful slur upon his unimpeachable conduct as an +offering to public curiosity. + +"Do you really want to know what people think of me?" he said to me on +one occasion. "Well, here's something. Read this." And then he would +hand me a bunch of the bitterest attacks possible, attacks which +pictured him as a sly and treacherous enemy of the people--or worse yet +a bounding anarchistic ignoramus. Personally I could not help admiring +his stoic mood. It was superior to that of his detractors. Apparent +falsehoods did not anger him. Evident misunderstandings could not, +seemingly, disturb him. + +"What do you expect?" he once said to me, after I had made a very +careful study of his career for a current magazine, which, curiously, +was never published. I was trying to get him to admit that he believed +that his example might be fruitful of results agreeable to him in the +future. I could not conclude that he really agreed with me. "People do +not remember; they forget. They remember so long as you are directly +before them with something that interests them. That may be a lower +gas-rate, or a band that plays good music. People like strong people, +and only strong people, characters of that sort--good, bad or +indifferent--I've found that out. If a man or a corporation is stronger +than I am, comes along and denounces me, or spends more money than I do +(or can), buys more beers, makes larger promises, it is 'all day' for +me. What has happened in my case is that, for the present, anyhow, I +have come up against a strong corporation, stronger than I am. What I +now need to do is to go out somewhere and get some more strength in some +way, it doesn't matter much how. People are not so much interested in me +or you, or your or my ideals in their behalf, as they are in strength, +an interesting spectacle. And they are easily deceived. These big +fighting corporations with their attorneys and politicians and +newspapers make me look weak--puny. So the people forget me. If I could +get out, raise one million or five hundred thousand dollars and give the +corporations a good drubbing, they would adore me--for awhile. Then I +would have to go out and get another five hundred thousand somewhere, or +do something else." + +"Quite so," I replied. "Yet _Vox populi, vox dei_." + +Sitting upon his own doorstep one evening, in a very modest quarter of +the city, I said: + +"Were you very much depressed by your defeat the last time?" + +"Not at all," he replied. "Action, reaction, that's the law. All these +things right themselves in time, I suppose, or, anyhow, they ought to. +Maybe they don't. Some man who can hand the people what they really need +or ought to have will triumph, I suppose, some time. I don't know, I'm +sure. I hope so. I think the world is moving on, all right." + +In his serene and youthful face, the pale blue, philosophical eyes, was +no evidence of dissatisfaction with the strange experiences through +which he had passed. + +"You're entirely philosophical, are you?" + +"As much as any one can be, I suppose. They seem to think that all my +work was an evidence of my worthlessness," he said. "Well, maybe it was. +Self-interest may be the true law, and the best force. I haven't quite +made up my mind yet. My sympathies of course are all the other way. 'He +ought to be sewing shoes in the penitentiary,' one paper once said of +me. Another advised me to try something that was not above my +intelligence, such as breaking rock or shoveling dirt. Most of them +agreed, however," he added with a humorous twitch of his large, +expressive mouth, "that I'll do very well if I will only stay where I +am, or, better yet, get out of here. They want me to leave. That's the +best solution for them." + +He seemed to repress a smile that was hovering on his lips. + +"The voice of the enemy," I commented. + +"Yes, sir, the voice of the enemy," he added. "But don't think that I +think I'm done for. Not at all. I have just returned to my old ways in +order to think this thing out. In a year or two I'll have solved my +problem, I hope. I may have to leave here, and I may not. Anyhow, I'll +turn up somewhere, with something." + +He did have to leave, however, public opinion never being allowed to +revert to him again, and five years later, in a fairly comfortable +managerial position in New York, he died. He had made a fight, well +enough, but the time, the place, the stars, perhaps, were not quite +right. He had no guiding genius, possibly, to pull him through. +Adherents did not flock to him and save him. Possibly he wasn't magnetic +enough--that pagan, non-moral, non-propagandistic quality, anyhow. The +fates did not fight for him as they do for some, those fates that ignore +the billions and billions of others who fail. Yet are not all lives more +or less failures, however successful they may appear to be at one time +or another, contrasted, let us say, with what they hoped for? We +compromise so much with everything--our dreams and all. + +As for his reforms, they may be coming fast enough, or they may not. _In +medias res._ + +But as for him...? + + + + +_W.L.S._ + + +Life's little ironies are not always manifest. We hear distant rumbling +sounds of its tragedies, but rarely are we permitted to witness the +reality. Therefore the real incidents which I am about to relate may +have some value. + +I first called upon W.L. S----, Jr., in the winter of 1895. I had known +of him before only by reputation, or, what is nearer the truth, by +seeing his name in one of the great Sunday papers attached to several +drawings of the most lively interest. These drawings depicted night +scenes of the city of New York, and appeared as colored supplements, +eleven by eighteen inches. They represented the spectacular scenes which +the citizen and the stranger most delight in--Madison Square in a +drizzle; the Bowery lighted by a thousand lamps and crowded with "L" and +surface cars; Sixth Avenue looking north from Fourteenth Street. + +I was a youthful editor at the time and on the lookout for interesting +illustrations of this sort, and when a little later I was in need of a +colored supplement for the Christmas number I decided to call upon +S----. I knew absolutely nothing about the world of art save what I had +gathered from books and current literary comment of all sorts, and was, +therefore, in a mood to behold something exceedingly bizarre in the +atmosphere with which I should find my illustrator surrounded. + +I was not disappointed. It was at the time when artists--I mean American +artists principally--went in very strongly for that sort of thing. Only +a few years before they had all been going to Paris, not so much to +paint as to find out and imitate how artists _do_ and live. I was +greeted by a small, wiry, lean-looking individual arrayed in a bicycle +suit, whose countenance could be best described as wearing a perpetual +look of astonishment. He had one eye which fixed you with a strange, +unmoving solemnity, owing to the fact that it was glass. His skin was +anything but fair, and might be termed sallow. He wore a close, +sharp-pointed Vandyke beard, and his gold-bridge glasses sat at almost +right angles upon his nose. His forehead was high, his good eye alert, +his hair sandy-colored and tousled, and his whole manner indicated +thought, feeling, remarkable nervous energy, and, above all, a rasping +and jovial sort of egotism which pleased me rather than otherwise. + +I noticed no more than this on my first visit, owing to the fact that I +was very much overawed and greatly concerned about the price which he +would charge me, not knowing what rate he might wish to exact, and being +desirous of coming away at least unabashed by his magnificence and +independence. + +"What's it for?" he asked, when I suggested a drawing. + +I informed him. + +"You say you want it for a double-page center?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, I'll do it for three hundred dollars." + +I was taken considerably aback, as I had not contemplated paying more +than one hundred. + +"I get that from all the magazines," he added, seeing my hesitation, +"wherever a supplement is intended." + +"I don't think I could pay more than one hundred," I said, after a few +moments' consideration. + +"You couldn't?" he said, sharply, as if about to reprove me. + +I shook my head. + +"Well," he said, "let's see a copy of your publication." + +The chief value of this conversation was that it taught me that the +man's manner was no indication of his mood. I had thought he was +impatient and indifferent, but I saw now that he was not so, rather +brusque merely. He was simply excitable, somewhat like the French, and +meant only to be businesslike. The upshot of it all was that he agreed +to do it for one hundred and fifty, and asked me very solemnly to say +nothing about it. + +I may say here that I came upon S---- in the full blush of his fancies +and ambitions, and just when he was verging upon their realization. He +was not yet successful. A hundred and fifty dollars was a very fair +price indeed. His powers, however, had reached that stage where they +would soon command their full value. + +I could see at once that he was very ambitious. He was bubbling over +with the enthusiasm of youth and an intense desire for recognition. He +knew he had talent. The knowledge of it gave him an air and an +independence of manner which might have been irritating to some. +Besides, he was slightly affected, argue to the contrary as he would, +and was altogether full of his own hopes and ambitions. + +The matter of painting this picture necessitated my presence on several +occasions, and during this time I got better acquainted with him. +Certain ideas and desires which we held in common drew us toward each +other, and I soon began to see that he was much above the average in +insight and skill. He talked with the greatest ease upon a score of +subjects--literature, art, politics, music, the drama, and history. He +seemed to have read the latest novels; to have seen many of the current +plays; to have talked with important people. Theodore Roosevelt, +previously Police Commissioner but then Governor, often came to his +studio to talk and play chess with him. A very able architect was his +friend. He had artist associates galore, many of whom had studios in the +same building or the immediate vicinity. And there were literary and +business men as well, all of whom seemed to enjoy his company, and who +were very fond of calling and spending an hour in his studio. + +I had only called the second time, and was going away, when he showed me +a steamship he had constructed with his own hands--a fair-sized model, +complete in every detail, even to the imitation stokers in the +boiler-room, and which would run by the hour if supplied with oil and +water. I soon learned that his skill in mechanical construction was +great. He was a member of several engineering societies, and devoted +some part of his carefully organized days to studying and keeping up +with problems in mechanics. + +"Oh, that's nothing," he observed, when I marveled at the size and +perfection of the model. "I'll show you something else, if you have time +some day, which may amuse you." + +He then explained that he had constructed several model warships, and +that it was his pleasure to take them out and fight them on a pond +somewhere out on Long Island. + +"We'll go out some day," he said when I showed appropriate interest, +"and have them fight each other. You'll see how it's done!" + +I waited some time for this outing, and finally mentioned it. + +"We'll go tomorrow," he said. "Can you be around here by ten o'clock?" + +Ten the next morning saw me promptly at the studio, and five minutes +later we were off. + +When we arrived at Long Island City we went to the first convenient arm +of the sea and undid the precious fighters, in which he much delighted. + +After studying the contour of the little inlet for a few moments he took +some measurements with a tape-line, stuck up two twigs in two places for +guide posts, and proceeded to fire and get up steam in his war-ships. +Afterwards he set the rudders, and then took them to the water-side and +floated them at the points where he had placed the twigs. + +These few details accomplished, he again studied the situation +carefully, headed the vessels to the fraction of an inch toward a +certain point of the opposite shore, and began testing the steam. + +"When I say ready, you push this lever here," he said, indicating a +little brass handle fastened to the stern-post. "Don't let her move an +inch until you do that. You'll see some tall firing." + +He hastened to the other side where his own boat was anchored, and began +an excited examination. He was like a school-boy with a fine toy. + +At a word, I moved the lever as requested, and the two vessels began +steaming out toward one another. Their weight and speed were such that +the light wind blowing affected them not in the least, and their prows +struck with an audible crack. This threw them side by side, steaming +head on together. At the same time it operated to set in motion their +guns, which fired broadsides in such rapid succession as to give a +suggestion of rapid revolver practice. Quite a smoke rose, and when it +rolled away one of the vessels was already nearly under water and the +other was keeling with the inflow of water from the port side. S---- lost +no time, but throwing off his coat, jumped in and swam to the rescue. + +Throughout this entire incident his manner was that of an enthusiastic +boy who had something exceedingly novel. He did not laugh. In all our +acquaintance I never once heard him give a sound, hearty laugh. Instead +he cackled. His delight apparently could only express itself in that +way. In the main it showed itself in an excess of sharp movements, short +verbal expressions, gleams of the eye. + +I saw from this the man's delight in the science of engineering, and +humored him in it. He was thereafter at the greatest pains to show all +that he had under way in the mechanical line, and schemes he had for +enjoying himself in this work in the future. It seemed rather a +recreation for him than anything else. Like him, I could not help +delighting in the perfect toys which he created, but the intricate +details and slow process of manufacture were brain-racking. For not only +would he draw the engine in all its parts, but he would buy the raw +material and cast and drill and polish each separate part. + +Upon my second visit I was deeply impressed by the sight of a fine +passenger engine, a duplicate of the great 999 of the New York Central, +of those days. It stood on brass rails laid along an old library shelf +that had probably belonged to the previous occupant of the studio. This +engine was a splendid object to look upon, strong, heavy, +silent-running, with the fineness and grace of a perfect sewing-machine. +It was duly trimmed with brass and nickel, after the manner of the great +"flyers," and seemed so sturdy and powerful that one could not restrain +the desire to see it run. + +"How do you like that?" S---- exclaimed when he saw me looking at it. + +"It's splendid," I said. + +"See how she runs," he exclaimed, moving it up and down. "No noise about +that." + +He fairly caressed the mechanism with his hand, and went off into a most +careful analysis of its qualities. + +"I could build that engine," he exclaimed at last, enthusiastically, "if +I were down in the Baldwin Company's place. I could make her break the +record." + +"I haven't the slightest doubt in the world," I answered. + +This engine was a source of great expense to him, as well as the chief +point in a fine scheme. He had made brass rails for it--sufficient to +extend about the four sides of the studio--something like seventy feet. +He had made most handsome passenger-cars with full equipment of brakes, +vestibules, Pintsch gas, and so on, and had painted on their sides "The +Great Pullman Line." One day, when we were quite friendly, he brought +from his home all the rails, in a carpet-bag, and gave an exhibition of +his engine's speed, attaching the cars and getting up sufficient steam +to cause the engine to race about the room at a rate which was actually +exciting. He had an arrangement by which it would pick up water and stop +automatically. It was on this occasion that he confided what he called +his great biograph scheme, the then forerunner of the latter day moving +pictures. It was all so new then, almost a rumor, like that of the +flying machine before it was invented. + +"I propose to let the people see the photographic representation of an +actual wreck--engine, cars, people, all tumbled down together after a +collision, and no imitation, either--the actual thing." + +"How do you propose to do it?" I asked. + +"Well, that's the thing," he said, banteringly. "Now, how do you suppose +I'd do it?" + +"Hire a railroad to have a wreck and kill a few people," I suggested. + +"Well, I've got a better thing than that. A railroad couldn't plan +anything more real than mine will be." + +I was intensely curious because of the novelty of the thing at that +time. The "Biograph" was in its infancy. + +"This is it," he exclaimed suddenly. "You see how realistic this engine +is, don't you?" + +I acknowledged that I did. + +"Well," he confided, "I'm building another just like it. It's costing me +three hundred dollars, and the passenger-cars will cost as much more. +Now, I'm going to fix up some scenery on my roof--a gorge, a line of +woods, a river, and a bridge. I'm going to make the water tumble over +big rocks just above the bridge and run underneath it. Then I'm going to +lay this track around these rocks, through the woods, across the bridge +and off into the woods again. + +"I'm going to put on the two trains and time them so they'll meet on the +bridge. Just when they come into view where they can see each other, a +post on the side of the track will strike the cabs in such a way as to +throw the firemen out on the steps just as if they were going to jump. +When the engines take the bridge they'll explode caps that will set fire +to oil and powder under the cars and burn them up." + +"Then what?" I asked. + +"Well, I've got it planned automatically so that you will see people +jumping out of the cars and tumbling down on the rocks, the flames +springing up and taking to the cars, and all that. Don't you believe +it?" he added, as I smiled at the idea. "Look here," and he produced a +model of one of the occupants of the cars. He labored for an hour to +show all the intricate details, until I was compelled to admit the +practicability and novelty of the idea. Then he explained that +instantaneous photography, as it was then called, was to be applied at +such close range that the picture would appear life size. The actuality +of the occurrence would do the rest. + +Skepticism still lingered with me for a time, but when I saw the second +train growing, the figures and apparatus gradually being modeled, and +the correspondence and conferences going on between the artist and +several companies which wished to gain control of the result, I was +perfectly sure that his idea would some day be realized. + +As I have said, when I first met S---- he had not realized any of his +dreams. It was just at that moment that the tide was about to turn. He +surprised me by the assurance, born of his wonderful virility, with +which he went about all things. + +"I've got an order from the _Ladies' Home Journal_," he said to me one +day. "They came to me." + +"Good," I said. "What is it?" + +"Somebody's writing up the terminal facilities of New York." + +He had before him an Academy board, on which was sketched, in wash, a +midnight express striking out across the Jersey meadows with sparks +blazing from the smoke stacks and dim lights burning in the sleepers. It +was a vivid thing, strong with all the strength of an engine, and rich +in the go and enthusiasm which adhere to such mechanisms. + +"I want to make a good thing of this," he said. "It may do me some +good." + +A little later he received his first order from Harper's. He could not +disguise that he was pleased, much as he tried to carry it off with an +air. It was just before the Spanish war broke out, and the sketches he +was to do related to the navy. + +He labored at this order with the most tireless enthusiasm. Marine +construction was his delight anyhow, and he spent hours and days making +studies about the great vessels, getting not only the atmosphere but the +mechanical detail. When he made the pictures they represented all that +he felt. + +"You know those drawings?" he said the day after he delivered them. + +"Yes." + +"I set a good stiff price on them and demanded my drawings back when +they were through." + +"Did you get them?" + +"Yep. It will give them more respect for what I'm trying to do," he +said. + +Not long after he illustrated one of Kipling's stories. + +He was in high feather at this, but grim and repressed withal. One could +see by the nervous movements of his wiry body that he was delighted over +it. + +At this time Kipling came to his studio. It was by special arrangement, +but S---- received him as if he were--well, as artists usually receive +authors. They talked over the galley proofs, and the author went away. + +"It's coming my way now," he said, when he could no longer conceal his +feelings. "I want to do something good on this." + +Through all this rise from obscurity to recognition he lived close to +his friends--a crowd of them, apparently, always in his studio jesting, +boxing, fencing--and interested himself in the mechanics I have +described. His drawing, his engine-building, his literary studies and +recreations were all mixed, jumbled, plunging him pell-mell, as it were, +on to distinction. In the first six months of his studio life he had +learned to fence, and often dropped his brush to put on the mask and +assume the foils with one of his companions. + +As our friendship increased I found how many were the man's +accomplishments and how wide his range of sympathies. He was an expert +bicyclist, as well as a trick rider, and used a camera in a way to make +an amateur envious. He could sing, having a fine tenor voice, which I +heard the very day I learned that he could sing. It so happened that it +was my turn to buy the theater tickets, and I invited him to come with +me that especial evening. + +"Can't do it," he replied. + +"All right," I said. + +"I'm part of an entertainment tonight, or I would," he added +apologetically. + +"What do you do?" I inquired. + +"Sing." + +"Get out!" I said. + +"So be it," he answered. "Come up this evening." + +To this I finally agreed, and was surprised to observe the ease with +which he rendered his solo. He had an exquisitely clear and powerful +voice and received a long round of applause, which he refused to +acknowledge by singing again. + +The influence of success is easily observable in a man of so volatile a +nature. It seems to me that I could have told by his manner, day by day, +the inwash of the separate ripples of the inrolling tide of success. He +was all alive, full of plans, and the tale of his coming conquests was +told in his eye. Sometime in the second year of our acquaintance I +called at his studio in response to a card which he had stuck under my +office door. It was his habit to draw an outline head of himself, +something almost bordering upon a caricature, writing underneath it "I +called," together with any word he might have to say. This day he was in +his usual good spirits, and rallied me upon having an office which was +only a blind. He had a roundabout way of getting me to talk about his +personal affairs with him, and I soon saw that he had something very +interesting, to himself, to communicate. At last he said,-- + +"I'm going to Europe next summer." + +"Is that so?" I replied. "For pleasure?" + +"Well, partly." + +"What's up outside of that?" I asked. + +"I'm going to represent the American Architectural League at the +international convention." + +"I didn't know you were an architect," I said. + +"Well, I'm not," he answered, "professionally. I've studied it pretty +thoroughly." + +"Well, you seem to be coming up, Louis," I remarked. + +"I'm doing all right," he answered. + +He went on working at his easel as if his fate depended upon what he was +doing. He had the fortunate quality of being able to work and converse +most entertainingly at the same time. He seemed to enjoy company under +such circumstances. + +"You didn't know I was a baron, did you?" he finally observed. + +"No," I answered, thinking he was exercising his fancy for the moment. +"Where do you keep your baronial lands, my lord?" + +"In Germany, kind sir," he replied, banteringly. + +Then in his customary excitable mood he dropped his brushes and stood +up. + +"You don't believe me, do you?" he exclaimed, looking over his drooping +glasses. + +"Why, certainly I believe you, if you are serious. Are you truly a +baron?" + +"It was this way," he said. "My grandfather was a baron. My father was +the younger of two brothers. His brother got the title and what was left +of the estate. That he managed to go through with, and then he died. +Now, no one has bothered about the title--" + +"And you're going back to claim it?" + +"Exactly." + +I took it all lightly at first, but in time I began to perceive that it +was a serious ambition. He truly wanted to be Baron S---- and add to +himself the luster of his ancestors. + +With all this, the man was really not so much an aristocrat in his mood +as a seeker after life and new experiences. Being a baron was merely a +new experience, or promised to be. He had the liveliest sympathies for +republican theories and institutions--only he considered his life a +thing apart. He had a fine mind, philosophically and logically poised. +He could reason upon all things, from the latest mathematical theorem to +Christian Science. Naturally, being so much of an individualist, he was +not drifting toward any belief in the latter, but was never weary of +discussing the power of mind--a universal mind even--its wondrous +ramifications and influences. Also he was a student of the English +school of philosophy, and loved to get up mathematical and mechanical +demonstrations of certain philosophic truths. Thus he worked out by +means of a polygon, whose sides were of unequal lengths, a theory of +friendship which is too intricate to explain here. + +From now on I watched his career with the liveliest interest. He was a +charming and a warm friend, and never neglected for a moment the +obligations which such a relationship demands. + +I heard from him frequently in many and various ways, dined with him +regularly every second or third week, and rejoiced with him in his +triumphs, now more and more frequent. One spring he went to Europe and +spent the summer in tracing down his baronial claims, looking up various +artists and scientists and attending several scientific meetings here +and there at the same time. He did the illustrations for one of +Kipling's fast express stories which one of the magazines published, and +came back flushed and ready to try hard for a membership in the American +Water-Color Society. + +I shall never forget his anxiety to get into that mildly interesting +body. He worked hard and long on several pictures which should not only +be hung on the line but enlist sufficient interest among the artists to +gain him a vote of admission. He mentioned it frequently and fixed me +with his eyes to see what I thought of him. + +"Go ahead," I said; "you have more right to membership perhaps than many +another I know. Try hard." + +He painted not one, but four, pictures, and sent them all. They were +very interesting after their kind. Two were scenes from the great +railroad terminal yards; the others, landscapes in mist or rain. Three +of these pictures were passed and two of them hung on the line. The +third was _skyed_, but he was admitted to membership. + +I was delighted for his sake, for I could see, when he gave me the +intelligence, that it was a matter which had keyed up his whole nervous +system. + +Not long after this we were walking on Broadway, one drizzly autumn +evening, on our way to the theater. Life, ambition, and our future were +the _small_ subjects under discussion. The street, as usual, was +crowded. On every hand blazed the fire signs. The yellow lights were +beautifully reflected in the wet sidewalks and gray wet cobblestones +glistening with water. + +When we reached Greeley Square (at that time a brilliant and almost +sputtering spectacle of light and merriment), S---- took me by the arm. + +"Come over here," he said. "I want you to look at it from here." + +He took me to a point where, by the intersection of the lines of the +converging streets, one could not only see Greeley Square but a large +part of Herald Square, with its then huge theatrical sign of fire and +its measure of store lights and lamps of vehicles. It was a +kaleidoscopic and inspiring scene. The broad, converging walks were +alive with people. A perfect jam of vehicles marked the spot where the +horse and cable cars intersected. Overhead was the elevated station, its +lights augmented every few minutes by long trains of brightly lighted +cars filled with changing metropolitan crowds--crowds like shadows +moving in a dream. + +"Do you see the quality of that? Look at the blend of the lights and +shadows in there under the L." + +I looked and gazed in silent admiration. + +"See, right here before us--that pool of water there--do you get that? +Now, that isn't silver-colored, as it's usually represented. It's a +prism. Don't you see the hundred points of light?" + +I acknowledged the variety of color, which I had scarcely observed +before. + +"You may think one would skip that in viewing a great scene, but the +artist mustn't. He must get all, whether you notice it or not. It gives +feeling, even when you don't see it." + +I acknowledged the value of this ideal. + +"It's a great spectacle," he said. "It's got more flesh and blood in it +than people usually think. It's easy to make it too mechanical and +commonplace." + +"Why don't you paint it?" I asked. + +He turned on me as if he had been waiting for the suggestion. + +"That's something I want to tell you," he said. "I am. I've sketched it +a half-dozen times already. I haven't got it yet. But I'm going to." + +I heard more of these dreams, intensifying all the while, until the +Spanish-American war broke out. Then he was off in a great rush of war +work. I scarcely saw him for six weeks, owing to some travels of my own, +but I saw his name. One day in Broadway I stopped to see why a large +crowd was gathered about a window in the Hoffman House. It was one of +S----'s drawings of our harbor defenses, done as if the artist had been +sitting at the bottom of the sea. The fishes, the green water, the hull +of a massive war-ship--all were there--and about, the grim torpedoes. +This put it into my head to go and see him. He was as tense and +strenuous as ever. The glittering treasure at the end of the rainbow was +more than ever in his eye. His body was almost sore from traveling. + +"I am in now," he said, referring to the war movement. "I am going to +Tampa." + +"Be gone long?" I asked. + +"Not this first time. I'll only be down there three weeks." + +"I'll see you then." + +"Supposing we make it certain," he said. "What do you say to dining +together this coming Sunday three weeks?" + +I went away, wishing him a fine trip and feeling that his dreams must +now soon begin to come true. He was growing in reputation. Some war +pictures, such as he could do, would set people talking. Then he would +paint his prize pictures, finish his wreck scheme, become a baron, and +be a great man. + +Three weeks later I knocked at his studio door. It was a fine springlike +day, though it was in February. I expected confidently to hear his quick +aggressive step inside. Not a sound in reply. I knocked harder, but +still received no answer. Then I went to the other doors about. He might +be with his friends, but they were not in. I went away thinking that his +war duties had interfered, that he had not returned. + +Nevertheless there was something depressing about that portion of the +building in which his studio was located. I felt as if it should not be, +and decided to call again. Monday it was the same, and Tuesday. + +That same evening I was sitting in the library of the Salmagundi Club, +when a well-known artist addressed me. + +"You knew S----, didn't you?" he said. + +"Yes; what of it?" + +"You knew he was dead, didn't you?" + +"What!" I said. + +"Yes, he died of fever, this morning." + +I looked at him without speaking for a moment. + +"Too bad," he said. "A clever boy, Louis. Awfully clever. I feel sorry +for his father." + +It did not take long to verify his statement. His name was in the +perfunctory death lists of the papers the next morning. No other notice +of any sort. Only a half-dozen seemed to know that he had ever lived. + +And yet it seemed _to me_ that a great tragedy had happened--he was so +ambitious, so full of plans. His dreams were so near fulfillment. + +I saw the little grave afterward and the empty studio. His desks +revealed several inventions and many plans of useful things, but these +came to nothing. There was no one to continue the work. + +My feeling at the time was as if I had been looking at a beautiful lamp, +lighted, warm and irradiating a charming scene, and then suddenly that +it had been puffed out before my eyes, as if a hundred bubbles of +iridescent hues had been shattered by a breath. We toil so much, we +dream so richly, we hasten so fast, and, lo! the green door is opened. +We are through it, and its grassy surface has sealed us forever from all +which apparently we so much crave--even as, breathlessly, we are still +running. + +[Transcriber's Note: Typos have been corrected in this document, but +spelling and punctuation inconsistencies have been retained.] + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Twelve Men, by Theodore Dreiser + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWELVE MEN *** + +***** This file should be named 14717-8.txt or 14717-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/7/1/14717/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Twelve Men + +Author: Theodore Dreiser + +Release Date: January 17, 2005 [EBook #14717] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWELVE MEN *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<h1>TWELVE MEN</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>Theodore Dreiser</h2> + +<h4>1919</h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Contents" id="Contents" />Contents</h2> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> + <a href="#Peter"><b>Peter</b></a><br /> + <a href="#A_Doer_of_the_Word"><b>A Doer of the Word</b></a><br /> + <a href="#My_Brother_Paul"><b>My Brother Paul</b></a><br /> + <a href="#The_County_Doctor"><b>The County Doctor</b></a><br /> + <a href="#Culhane_the_Solid_Man"><b>Culhane, the Solid Man</b></a><br /> + <a href="#A_True_Patriarch"><b>A True Patriarch</b></a><br /> + <a href="#De_Maupassant_Junior"><b>De Maupassant, Junior</b></a><br /> + <a href="#The_Village_Feudists"><b>The Village Feudists</b></a><br /> + <a href="#Vanity_Vanityquot_Saith_the_Preacher"><b>"Vanity, Vanity," Saith the Preacher</b></a><br /> + <a href="#The_Mighty_Rourke"><b>The Mighty Rourke</b></a><br /> + <a href="#A_Mayor_and_His_People"><b>A Mayor and His People</b></a><br /> + <a href="#WLS"><b>W.L.S.</b></a><br /> + </p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Peter" id="Peter" /><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" /><i>Peter</i></h2> + + +<p>In any group of men I have ever known, speaking from the point of view +of character and not that of physical appearance, Peter would stand out +as deliciously and irrefutably different. In the great waste of American +intellectual dreariness he was an oasis, a veritable spring in the +desert. He understood life. He knew men. He was free—spiritually, +morally, in a thousand ways, it seemed to me.</p> + +<p>As one drags along through this inexplicable existence one realizes how +such qualities stand out; not the pseudo freedom of strong men, +financially or physically, but the real, internal, spiritual freedom, +where the mind, as it were, stands up and looks at itself, faces Nature +unafraid, is aware of its own weaknesses, its strengths; examines its +own and the creative impulses of the universe and of men with a kindly +and non-dogmatic eye, in fact kicks dogma out of doors, and yet +deliberately and of choice holds fast to many, many simple and human +things, and rounds out life, or would, in a natural, normal, courageous, +healthy way.</p> + +<p>The first time I ever saw Peter was in St. Louis in 1892; I had come +down from Chicago to work on the St. Louis <i>Globe-Democrat</i>, and he was +a part of the art department force of that paper. At that time—and he +never seemed to change later even so much as a hair's worth until he +died in 1908—he was short, stocky and yet quick and even jerky in his +manner, with a bushy, tramp-like "get-up" of hair and beard, most +swiftly and astonishingly disposed of at times only to be regrown at +others, and always, and intentionally, I am sure, most amusing to +contemplate. In addition to all this he had an air of well-being, force +and alertness which belied the other surface characteristics as anything +more than a genial pose or bit of idle gayety.</p> + +<p>Plainly he took himself seriously and yet lightly, usually with an air +of suppressed gayety, as though saying, "This whole business of living +is a great joke." He always wore good and yet exceedingly mussy clothes, +at times bespattered with ink or, worse yet, even soup—an amazing +grotesquery that was the dismay of all who knew him, friends and +relatives <a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" />especially. In addition he was nearly always liberally +besprinkled with tobacco dust, the source of which he used in all forms: +in pipe, cigar and plug, even cigarettes when he could obtain nothing +more substantial. One of the things about him which most impressed me at +that time and later was this love of the ridiculous or the grotesque, in +himself or others, which would not let him take anything in a dull or +conventional mood, would not even permit him to appear normal at times +but urged him on to all sorts of nonsense, in an effort, I suppose, to +entertain himself and make life seem less commonplace.</p> + +<p>And yet he loved life, in all its multiform and multiplex aspects and +with no desire or tendency to sniff, reform or improve anything. It was +good just as he found it, excellent. Life to Peter was indeed so +splendid that he was always very much wrought up about it, eager to +live, to study, to do a thousand things. For him it was a workshop for +the artist, the thinker, as well as the mere grubber, and without really +criticizing any one he was "for" the individual who is able to +understand, to portray or to create life, either feelingly and +artistically or with accuracy and discrimination. To him, as I saw then +and see even more clearly now, there was no high and no low. All things +were only relatively so. A thief was a thief, but he had his place. +Ditto the murderer. Ditto the saint. Not man but Nature was planning, or +at least doing, something which man could not understand, of which very +likely he was a mere tool. Peter was as much thrilled and entendered by +the brawling strumpet in the street or the bagnio as by the virgin with +her starry crown. The rich were rich and the poor poor, but all were in +the grip of imperial forces whose ruthless purposes or lack of them made +all men ridiculous, pathetic or magnificent, as you choose. He pitied +ignorance and necessity, and despised vanity and cruelty for cruelty's +sake, and the miserly hoarding of anything. He was liberal, material, +sensual and yet spiritual; and although he never had more than a little +money, out of the richness and fullness of his own temperament he seemed +able to generate a kind of atmosphere and texture in his daily life +which was rich and warm, splendid really in thought (the true reality) +if not in fact, and most grateful to all. Yet also, as I have said, +<a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" />always he wished to <i>seem</i> the clown, the scapegrace, the wanton and +the loon even, mouthing idle impossibilities at times and declaring his +profoundest faith in the most fantastic things.</p> + +<p>Do I seem to rave? I am dealing with a most significant person.</p> + +<p>In so far as I knew he was born into a mid-Western family of Irish +extraction whose habitat was southwest Missouri. In the town in which he +was reared there was not even a railroad until he was fairly well +grown—a fact which amused but never impressed him very much. Apropos of +this he once told me of a yokel who, never having seen a railroad, +entered the station with his wife and children long before train time, +bought his ticket and waited a while, looking out of the various +windows, then finally returned to the ticket-seller and asked, "When +does this thing start?" He meant the station building itself. At the +time Peter had entered upon art work he had scarcely prosecuted his +studies beyond, if so far as, the conventional high or grammar school, +and yet he was most amazingly informed and but little interested in what +any school or college had to offer. His father, curiously enough, was an +educated Irish-American, a lawyer by profession, and a Catholic. His +mother was an American Catholic, rather strict and narrow. His brothers +and sisters, of whom there were four, were, as I learned later, +astonishingly virile and interesting Americans of a rather wild, +unsettled type. They were all, in so far as I could judge from chance +meetings, agnostic, tense, quick-moving—so vital that they weighed on +one a little, as very intense temperaments are apt to do. One of the +brothers, K——, who seemed to seek me out ever so often for Peter's +sake, was so intense, nervous, rapid-talking, rapid-living, that he +frightened me a little. He loved noisy, garish places. He liked to play +the piano, stay up very late; he was a high liver, a "good dresser," as +the denizens of the Tenderloin would say, an excellent example of the +flashy, clever promoter. He was always representing a new company, +introducing something—a table or laxative water, a shaving soap, a +chewing gum, a safety razor, a bicycle, an automobile tire or the +machine itself. He was here, there, everywhere—in Waukesha, Wisconsin; +San Francisco; New York; New Orleans.<a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" /> "My, my! This is certainly +interesting!" he would exclaim, with an air which would have done credit +to a comedian and extending both hands. "Peter's pet friend, Dreiser! +Well, well, well! Let's have a drink. Let's have something to eat. I'm +only in town for a day. Maybe you'd like to go to a show—or hit the +high places? Would you? Well, well, well! Let's make a night of it! What +do you say?" and he would fix me with a glistening, nervous and what was +intended no doubt to be a reassuring eye, but which unsettled me as +thoroughly as the imminence of an earthquake. But I was talking of +Peter.</p> + +<p>The day I first saw him he was bent over a drawing-board illustrating a +snake story for one of the Sunday issues of the <i>Globe-Democrat</i>, which +apparently delighted in regaling its readers with most astounding +concoctions of this kind, and the snake he was drawing was most +disturbingly vital and reptilian, beady-eyed, with distended jaws, +extended tongue, most fatefully coiled.</p> + +<p>"My," I commented in passing, for I was in to see him about another +matter, "what a glorious snake!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you can't make 'em too snaky for the snake-editor up front," he +returned, rising and dusting tobacco from his lap and shirtfront, for he +was in his shirt-sleeves. Then he expectorated not in but to one side of +a handsome polished brass cuspidor which contained not the least +evidence of use, the rubber mat upon which it stood being instead most +disturbingly "decorated." I was most impressed by this latter fact +although at the time I said nothing, being too new. Later, I may as well +say here, I discovered why. This was a bit of his clowning humor, a +purely manufactured and as it were mechanical joke or ebullience of +soul. If any one inadvertently or through unfamiliarity attempted to +expectorate in his "golden cuspidor," as he described it, he was always +quick to rise and interpose in the most solemn, almost sepulchral +manner, at the same time raising a hand. "Hold! Out—not in—to one +side, on the mat! That cost me seven dollars!" Then he would solemnly +seat himself and begin to draw again. I saw him do this to all but the +chiefest of the authorities of the paper. And all, even the dullest, +seemed to be amused, quite fascinated by the utter trumpery folly of it.</p> + +<p>But I am getting ahead of my tale. In so far as the snake <a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" />was +concerned, he was referring to the assistant who had these snake stories +in charge. "The fatter and more venomous and more scaly they are," he +went on, "the better. I'd like it if we could use a little color in this +paper—red for eyes and tongue, and blue and green for scales. The +farmers upstate would love that. They like good but poisonous snakes." +Then he grinned, stood back and, cocking his head to one side in a most +examining and yet approving manner, ran his hand through his hair and +beard and added, "A snake can't be too vital, you know, for this paper. +We have to draw 'em strong, plenty of vitality, plenty of go." He +grinned most engagingly.</p> + +<p>I could not help laughing, of course. The impertinent air! The grand, +almost condescending manner!</p> + +<p>We soon became fast friends.</p> + +<p>In the same office in close contact with him was another person, one +D—— W——, also a newspaper artist, who, while being exceedingly +interesting and special in himself, still as a character never seems to +have served any greater purpose in my own mind than to have illustrated +how emphatic and important Peter was. He had a thin, pale, Dantesque +face, coal black, almost Indian-like hair most carefully parted in the +middle and oiled and slicked down at the sides and back until it looked +as though it had been glued. His eyes were small and black and querulous +but not mean—petted eyes they were—and the mouth had little lines at +each corner which seemed to say he had endured much, much pain, which of +course he had not, but which nevertheless seemed to ask for, and I +suppose earned him some, sympathy. Dick in his way was an actor, a +tragedian of sorts, but with an element of humor, cynicism and insight +which saved him from being utterly ridiculous. Like most actors, he was +a great poseur. He invariably affected the long, loose flowing tie with +a soft white or blue or green or brown linen shirt (would any American +imitation of the "Quartier Latin" denizen have been without one at that +date?), yellow or black gloves, a round, soft crush hat, very soft and +limp and very <i>different</i>, patent leather pumps, betimes a capecoat, a +slender cane, a boutonnière—all this in hard, smoky, noisy, commercial +St. Louis, full of middle-West business men and farmers!</p> + +<p>I would not mention this particular person save that for a <a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" />time he, +Peter and myself were most intimately associated. We temporarily +constituted in our way a "soldiers three" of the newspaper world. For +some years after we were more or less definitely in touch as a group, +although later Peter and myself having drifted Eastward and hob-nobbing +as a pair had been finding more and more in common and had more and more +come to view Dick for what he was: a character of Dickensian, or perhaps +still better, Cruikshankian, proportions and qualities. But in those +days the three of us were all but inseparable; eating, working, playing, +all but sleeping together. I had a studio of sorts in a more or less +dilapidated factory section of St. Louis (Tenth near Market; now I +suppose briskly commercial), Dick had one at Broadway and Locust, +directly opposite the then famous Southern Hotel. Peter lived with his +family on the South Side, a most respectable and homey-home +neighborhood.</p> + +<p>It has been one of my commonest experiences, and one of the most +interesting to me, to note that nearly all of my keenest experiences +intellectually, my most gorgeous <i>rapprochements</i> and swiftest +developments mentally, have been by, to, and through men, not women, +although there have been several exceptions to this. Nearly every +turning point in my career has been signalized by my meeting some man of +great force, to whom I owe some of the most ecstatic intellectual hours +of my life, hours in which life seemed to bloom forth into new aspects, +glowed as with the radiance of a gorgeous tropic day.</p> + +<p>Peter was one such. About my own age at this time, he was blessed with a +natural understanding which was simply Godlike. Although, like myself, +he was raised a Catholic and still pretending in a boisterous, +Rabelaisian way to have some reverence for that faith, he was amusingly +sympathetic to everything good, bad, indifferent—"in case there might +be something in it; you never can tell." Still he hadn't the least +interest in conforming to the tenets of the church and laughed at its +pretensions, preferring his own theories to any other. Apparently +nothing amused him so much as the thought of confession and communion, +of being shrived by some stout, healthy priest as worldly as himself, +and preferably Irish, like himself. At the same time he had a hearty +<a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" />admiration for the Germans, all their ways, conservatisms, their +breweries, food and such things, and finally wound up by marrying a +German girl.</p> + +<p>As far as I could make out, Peter had no faith in anything except Nature +itself, and very little in that except in those aspects of beauty and +accident and reward and terrors with which it is filled and for which he +had an awe if not a reverence and in every manifestation of which he +took the greatest delight. Life was a delicious, brilliant mystery to +him, horrible in some respects, beautiful in others; a great adventure. +Unlike myself at the time, he had not the slightest trace of any +lingering Puritanism, and wished to live in a lush, vigorous, healthy, +free, at times almost barbaric, way. The negroes, the ancient Romans, +the Egyptians, tales of the Orient and the grotesque Dark Ages, our own +vile slums and evil quarters—how he reveled in these! He was for nights +of wandering, endless investigation, reading, singing, dancing, playing!</p> + +<p>Apropos of this I should like to relate here that one of his seemingly +gross but really innocent diversions was occasionally visiting a certain +black house of prostitution, of which there were many in St. Louis. Here +while he played a flute and some one else a tambourine or small drum, he +would have two or three of the inmates dance in some weird savage way +that took one instanter to the wilds of Central Africa. There was, so +far as I know, no payment of any kind made in connection with this. He +was a friend, in some crude, artistic or barbaric way. He satisfied, I +am positive, some love of color, sound and the dance in these queer +revels.</p> + +<p>Nor do I know how he achieved these friendships, such as they were. I +was never with him when he did. But aside from the satiation they +afforded his taste for the strange and picturesque, I am sure they +reflected no gross or sensual appetite. But I wish to attest in passing +that the mere witnessing of these free scenes had a tonic as well as +toxic effect on me. As I view myself now, I was a poor, spindling, +prying fish, anxious to know life, and yet because of my very narrow +training very fearsome of it, of what it might do to me, what dreadful +contagion of thought or deed it might open me to! Peter was not so. To +him all, positively <i>all</i>, life was good. It was a <a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" />fascinating +spectacle, to be studied or observed and rejoiced in as a spectacle. +When I look back now on the shabby, poorly-lighted, low-ceiled room to +which he led me "for fun," the absolutely black or brown girls with +their white teeth and shiny eyes, the unexplainable, unintelligible love +of rhythm and the dance displayed, the beating of a drum, the sinuous, +winding motions of the body, I am grateful to him. He released my mind, +broadened my view, lengthened my perspective. For as I sat with him, +watching him beat his drum or play his flute, noted the gayety, his love +of color and effect, and feeling myself <i>low</i>, a criminal, disgraced, +the while I was staring with all my sight and enjoying it intensely, I +realized that I was dealing with a man who was "bigger" than I was in +many respects, saner, really more wholesome. I was a moral coward, and +he was not losing his life and desires through fear—which the majority +of us do. He was strong, vital, unafraid, and he made me so.</p> + +<p>But, lest I seem to make him low or impossible to those who +instinctively cannot accept life beyond the range of their own little +routine world, let me hasten to his other aspects. He was not low but +simple, brilliant and varied in his tastes. America and its point of +view, religious and otherwise, was simply amusing to him, not to be +taken seriously. He loved to contemplate man at his mysteries, rituals, +secret schools. He loved better yet ancient history, medieval inanities +and atrocities—a most singular, curious and wonderful mind. Already at +this age he knew many historians and scientists (their work), a most +astonishing and illuminating list to me—Maspero, Froude, Huxley, +Darwin, Wallace, Rawlinson, Froissart, Hallam, Taine, Avebury! The list +of painters, sculptors and architects with whose work he was familiar +and books about whom or illustrated by whom he knew, is too long to be +given here. His chief interest, in so far as I could make out, in these +opening days, was Egyptology and the study of things natural and +primeval—all the wonders of a natural, groping, savage world.</p> + +<p>"Dreiser," he exclaimed once with gusto, his bright beady eyes gleaming +with an immense human warmth, "you haven't the slightest idea of the +fascination of some of the old beliefs.<a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" /> Do you know the significance of +a scarab in Egyptian religious worship, for instance?"</p> + +<p>"A scarab? What's a scarab? I never heard of one," I answered.</p> + +<p>"A beetle, of course. An Egyptian beetle. You know what a beetle is, +don't you? Well, those things burrowed in the earth, the mud of the +Nile, at a certain period of their season to lay their eggs, and the +next spring, or whenever it was, the eggs would hatch and the beetles +would come up. Then the Egyptians imagined that the beetle hadn't died +at all, or if it had that it also had the power of restoring itself to +life, possessed immortality. So they thought it must be a god and began +to worship it," and he would pause and survey me with those amazing +eyes, bright as glass beads, to see if I were properly impressed.</p> + +<p>"You don't say!"</p> + +<p>"Sure. That's where the worship came from," and then he might go on and +add a bit about monkey-worship, the Zoroastrians and the Parsees, the +sacred bull of Egypt, its sex power as a reason for its religious +elevation, and of sex worship in general; the fantastic orgies at Sidon +and Tyre, where enormous images of the male and female sex organs were +carried aloft before the multitude.</p> + +<p>Being totally ignorant of these matters at the time, not a rumor of them +having reached me as yet in my meagre reading, I knew that it must be +so. It fired me with a keen desire to read—not the old orthodox +emasculated histories of the schools but those other books and pamphlets +to which I fancied he must have access. Eagerly I inquired of him where, +how. He told me that in some cases they were outlawed, banned or not +translated wholly or fully, owing to the puritanism and religiosity of +the day, but he gave me titles and authors to whom I might have access, +and the address of an old book-dealer or two who could get them for me.</p> + +<p>In addition he was interested in ethnology and geology, as well as +astronomy (the outstanding phases at least), and many, many phases of +applied art: pottery, rugs, pictures, engraving, wood-carving, +jewel-cutting and designing, and I know not what else, yet there was +always room even in his <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" />most serious studies for humor of the bizarre +and eccentric type, amounting to all but an obsession. He wanted to +laugh, and he found occasion for doing so under the most serious, or at +least semi-serious, circumstances. Thus I recall that one of the butts +of his extreme humor was this same Dick, whom he studied with the +greatest care for points worthy his humorous appreciation. Dick, in +addition to his genuinely lively mental interests, was a most romantic +person on one side, a most puling and complaining soul on the other. As +a newspaper artist I believe he was only a fairly respectable craftsman, +if so much, whereas Peter was much better, although he deferred to Dick +in the most persuasive manner and seemed to believe at times, though I +knew he did not, that Dick represented all there was to know in matters +artistic.</p> + +<p>Among other things at this time, the latter was, or pretended to be, +immensely interested in all things pertaining to the Chinese and to know +not only something of their language, which he had studied a little +somewhere, but also their history—a vague matter, as we all know—and +the spirit and significance of their art and customs. He sometimes +condescended to take us about with him to one or two Chinese restaurants +of the most beggarly description, and—as he wished to believe, because +of the romantic titillation involved—the hang-outs of crooks and +thieves and disreputable Tenderloin characters generally. (Of such was +the beginning of the Chinese restaurant in America.) He would introduce +us to a few of his Celestial friends, whose acquaintance apparently he +had been most assiduously cultivating for some time past and with whom +he was now on the best of terms. He had, as Peter pointed out to me, the +happy knack of persuading himself that there was something vastly +mysterious and superior about the whole Chinese race, that there was +some Chinese organization known as the Six Companions, which, so far as +I could make out from him, was ruling very nearly (and secretly, of +course) the entire habitable globe. For one thing it had some governing +connection with great constructive ventures of one kind and another in +all parts of the world, supplying, as he said, thousands of Chinese +laborers to any one who desired them, anywhere, and although they were +employed by others, ruling them with a rod of iron, <a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" />cutting their +throats when they failed to perform their bounden duties and burying +them head down in a basket of rice, then transferring their remains +quietly to China in coffins made in China and brought for that purpose +to the country in which they were. The Chinese who had worked for the +builders of the Union Pacific had been supplied by this company, as I +understood from Dick. In regard to all this Peter used to analyze and +dispose of Dick's self-generated romance with the greatest gusto, +laughing the while and yet pretending to accept it all.</p> + +<p>But there was one phase of all this which interested Peter immensely. +Were there on sale in St. Louis any bits of jade, silks, needlework, +porcelains, basketry or figurines of true Chinese origin? He was far +more interested in this than in the social and economic sides of the +lives of the Chinese, and was constantly urging Dick to take him here, +there and everywhere in order that he might see for himself what of +these amazing wonders were locally extant, leading Dick in the process a +merry chase and a dog's life. Dick was compelled to persuade nearly all +of his boasted friends to produce all they had to show. Once, I recall, +a collection of rare Chinese porcelains being shown at the local museum +of art, there was nothing for it but that Dick must get one or more of +his Oriental friends to interpret this, that and the other symbol in +connection with this, that and the other vase—things which put him to +no end of trouble and which led to nothing, for among all the local +Chinese there was not one who knew anything about it, although they, +Dick included, were not honest enough to admit it.</p> + +<p>"You know, Dreiser," Peter said to me one day with the most delicious +gleam of semi-malicious, semi-tender humor, "I am really doing all this +just to torture Dick. He doesn't know a damned thing about it and +neither do these Chinese, but it's fun to haul 'em out there and make +'em sweat. The museum sells an illustrated monograph covering all this, +you know, with pictures of the genuinely historic pieces and +explanations of the various symbols in so far as they are known, but +Dick doesn't know that, and he's lying awake nights trying to find out +what they're all about. I like to see his expression and that of those +chinks when they examine those <a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" />things." He subsided with a low chuckle +all the more disturbing because it was so obviously the product of +well-grounded knowledge.</p> + +<p>Another phase of this same humor related to the grand artistic, social +and other forms of life to which Dick was hoping to ascend via marriage +and which led him, because of a kind of anticipatory eagerness, into all +sorts of exaggerations of dress, manners, speech, style in writing or +drawing, and I know not what else. He had, as I have said, a "studio" in +Broadway, an ordinary large, square upper chamber of an old residence +turned commercial but which Dick had decorated in the most, to him, +recherché or <i>different</i> manner possible. In Dick's gilding imagination +it was packed with the rarest and most carefully selected things, odd +bits of furniture, objects of art, pictures, books—things which the +ordinary antique shop provides in plenty but which to Dick, having been +reared in Bloomington, Illinois, were of the utmost artistic import. He +had vaulting ambitions and pretensions, literary and otherwise, having +by now composed various rondeaus, triolets, quatrains, sonnets, in +addition to a number of short stories over which he had literally slaved +and which, being rejected by many editors, were kept lying idly and +inconsequentially and seemingly inconspicuously about his place—the +more to astonish the poor unsophisticated "outsider." Besides it gave +him the opportunity of posing as misunderstood, neglected, depressed, as +becomes all great artists, poets, and thinkers.</p> + +<p>His great scheme or dream, however, was that of marriage to an heiress, +one of those very material and bovine daughters of the new rich in the +West end, and to this end he was bending all his artistic thought, +writing, dressing, dreaming the thing he wished. I myself had a marked +tendency in this direction, although from another point of view, and +speaking from mine purely, there was this difference between us: Dick +being an artist, rather remote and disdainful in manner and decidedly +handsome as well as poetic and better positioned than I, as I fancied, +was certain to achieve this gilded and crystal state, whereas I, not +being handsome nor an artist nor sufficiently poetic perhaps, could +scarcely aspire to so gorgeous a goal. Often, as around dinnertime he +ambled from <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" />the office arrayed in the latest mode—dark blue suit, +patent leather boots, a dark, round soft felt hat, loose tie blowing +idly about his neck, a thin cane in his hand—I was already almost +convinced that the anticipated end was at hand, this very evening +perhaps, and that I should never see him more except as the husband of a +very rich girl, never be permitted even to speak to him save as an +almost forgotten friend, and in passing! Even now perhaps he was on his +way to her, whereas I, poor oaf that I was, was moiling here over some +trucky work. Would my ship never come in? my great day never arrive? my +turn? Unkind heaven!</p> + +<p>As for Peter he was the sort of person who could swiftly detect, +understand and even sympathize with a point of view of this kind the +while he must laugh at it and his mind be busy with some plan of making +a fol-de-rol use of it. One day he came into the city-room where I was +working and bending over my desk fairly bursting with suppressed humor +announced, "Gee, Dreiser, I've just thought of a delicious trick to play +on Dick! Oh, Lord!" and he stopped and surveyed me with beady eyes the +while his round little body seemed to fairly swell with pent-up +laughter. "It's too rich! Oh, if it just works out Dick'll be sore! +Wait'll I tell you," he went on. "You know how crazy he is about rich +young heiresses? You know how he's always 'dressing up' and talking and +writing about marrying one of those girls in the West end?" (Dick was +forever composing a short story in which some lorn but perfect and great +artist was thus being received via love, the story being read to us +nights in his studio.) "That's all bluff, that talk of his of visiting +in those big houses out there. All he does is to dress up every night as +though he were going to a ball, and walk out that way and moon around. +Well, listen. Here's the idea. We'll go over to Mermod & Jaccards +to-morrow and get a few sheets of their best monogrammed paper, sample +sheets. Then we'll get up a letter and sign it with the most romantic +name we can think of—Juanita or Cyrene or Doris—and explain who she +is, the daughter of a millionaire living out there, and that she's been +strictly brought up but that in spite of all that she's seen his name in +the paper at the bottom of his pictures and wants to meet him, see? Then +we'll have her suggest that he come out to the <a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" />west gate of, say, +Portland Place at seven o'clock and meet her. We'll have her describe +herself, see, young and beautiful, and some attractive costume she's to +wear, and we'll kill him. He'll fall hard. Then we'll happen by there at +the exact time when he's waiting, and detain him, urge him to come into +the park with us or to dinner. We'll look our worst so he'll be ashamed +of us. He'll squirm and get wild, but we'll hang on and spoil the date +for him, see? We'll insist in the letter that he must be alone, see, +because she's timid and afraid of being recognized. My God, he'll be +crazy! He'll think we've ruined his life—oh, ho, ho!" and he fairly +writhed with inward joy.</p> + +<p>The thing worked. It was cruel in its way, but when has man ever grieved +over the humorous ills of others? The paper was secured, the letter +written by a friend of Peter's in a nearby real estate office, after the +most careful deliberation as to wording on our part. Extreme youth, +beauty and a great mansion were all hinted at. The fascination of Dick +as a romantic figure was touched upon. He would know her by a green silk +scarf about her waist, for it was spring, the ideal season. Seven +o'clock was the hour. She could give him only a moment or two then—but +later—and she gave no address!</p> + +<p>The letter was mailed in the West end, as was meet and proper, and in +due season arrived at the office. Peter, working at the next easel, +observed him, as he told me, out of the corner of his eye.</p> + +<p>"You should have seen him, Dreiser," he exclaimed, hunting me up about +an hour after the letter arrived. "Oh, ho! Say, you know I believe he +thinks it's the real thing. It seemed to make him a little sick. He +tried to appear nonchalant, but a little later he got his hat and went +out, over to Deck's," a nearby saloon, "for a drink, for I followed him. +He's all fussed up. Wait'll we heave into view that night! I'm going to +get myself up like a joke, a hobo. I'll disgrace him. Oh, Lord, he'll be +crazy! He'll think we've ruined his life, scared her off. There's no +address. He can't do a thing. Oh, ho, ho, ho!"</p> + +<p>On the appointed day—and it was a delicious afternoon and evening, +aflame with sun and in May—Dick left off his work at three p.m., as +Peter came and told me, and departed, <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" />and then we went to make our +toilets. At six we met, took a car and stepped down not more than a +short block from the point of meeting. I shall never forget the +sweetness of the air, the something of sadness in the thought of love, +even in this form. The sun was singing its evensong, as were the birds. +But Peter—blessings or curses upon him!—was arrayed as only he could +array himself when he wished to look absolutely disconcerting—more like +an unwashed, uncombed tramp who had been sleeping out for weeks, than +anything else. His hair was over his eyes and ears, his face and hands +dirty, his shoes ditto. He had even blackened one tooth slightly. He had +on a collarless shirt, and yet he was jaunty withal and carried a cane, +if you please, assuming, as he always could and in the most aggravating +way, to be totally unconscious of the figure he cut. At one angle of his +multiplex character the man must have been a born actor.</p> + +<p>We waited a block away, concealed by a few trees, and at the exact hour +Dick appeared, hopeful and eager no doubt, and walking and looking +almost all that he hoped—delicate, pale, artistic. The new straw hat! +The pale green "artists'" shirt! His black, wide-buckled belt! The cane! +The dark-brown low shoes! The boutonnière! He was plainly ready for any +fate, his great moment.</p> + +<p>And then, before he could get the feeling that his admirer might not be +coming, we descended upon him in all our wretched nonchalance and +unworthiness—out of hell, as it were. We were most brisk, familiar, +affectionate. It was so fortunate to meet him so, so accidentally and +peradventure. The night was so fine. We were out for a stroll in the +park, to eat afterward. He must come along.</p> + +<p>I saw him look at Peter in that hat and no collar, and wilt. It was too +much. Such a friend—such friends (for on Peter's advice I was looking +as ill as I might, an easy matter)! No, he couldn't come. He was waiting +for some friends. We must excuse him.</p> + +<p>But Peter was not to be so easily shaken off. He launched into the most +brisk and serious conversation. He began his badger game by asking about +some work upon which Dick had been engaged before he left the office, +some order, how he was getting along with it, when it would be done; +and, <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" />when Dick evaded and then attempted to dismiss the subject, took +up another and began to expatiate on it, some work he himself was doing, +something that had developed in connection with it. He asked inane +questions, complimented Dick on his looks, began to tease him about some +girl. And poor Dick—his nervousness, his despair almost, the sense of +the waning of his opportunity! It was cruel. He was becoming more and +more restless, looking about more and more wearily and anxiously and +wishing to go or for us to go. He was horribly unhappy. Finally, after +ten or fifteen minutes had gone and various girls had crossed the plaza +in various directions, as well as carriages and saddle-horses—each one +carrying his heiress, no doubt!—he seemed to summon all his courage and +did his best to dispose of us. "You two'll have to excuse me," he +exclaimed almost wildly. "I can't wait." Those golden moments! She could +not approach! "My people aren't coming, I guess. I'll have to be going +on."</p> + +<p>He smiled weakly and made off, Peter half following and urging him to +come back. Then, since he would not, we stood there on the exact spot of +the rendezvous gazing smirkily after him. Then we went into the park a +few paces and sat on a bench in full view, talking—or Peter was—most +volubly. He was really choking with laughter. A little later, at +seven-thirty, we went cackling into the park, only to return in five +minutes as though we had changed our minds and were coming out—and saw +Dick bustling off at our approach. It was sad really. There was an +element of the tragic in it. But not to Peter. He was all laughter, all +but apoplectic gayety. "Oh, by George!" he choked. "This is too much! +Oh, ho! This is great! his poor heiress! And he came back! Har! Har! +Har!"</p> + +<p>"Peter, you dog," I said, "aren't you ashamed of yourself, to rub it in +this way?"</p> + +<p>"Not a bit, not a bit!" he insisted most enthusiastically. "Do him good. +Why shouldn't he suffer? He'll get over it. He's always bluffing about +his heiresses. Now he's lost a real one. Har! Har! Har!" and he fairly +choked, and for days and weeks and months he laughed, but he never told. +He merely chortled at his desk, and if any one asked him what he was +<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" />laughing about, even Dick, he would reply, "Oh, something—a joke I +played on a fellow once."</p> + +<p>If Dick ever guessed he never indicated as much. But that lost romance! +That faded dream!</p> + +<p>Not so long after this, the following winter, I left St. Louis and did +not see Peter for several years, during which time I drifted through +various cities to New York. We kept up a more or less desultory +correspondence which resulted eventually in his contributing to a paper +of which I had charge in New York, and later, in part at least I am +sure, in his coming there. I noticed one thing, that although Peter had +no fixed idea as to what he wished to be—being able to draw, write, +engrave, carve and what not—he was in no way troubled about it. "I +don't see just what it is that I am to do best," he said to me once. "It +may be that I will wind up as a painter or writer or collector—I can't +tell yet. I want to study, and meantime I'm making a living—that's all +I want now. I want to live, and I am living, in my way."</p> + +<p>Some men are masters of cities, or perhaps better, of all the elements +which enter into the making of them, and Peter was one. I think +sometimes that he was born a writer of great force and charm, only as +yet he had not found himself. I have known many writers, many geniuses +even, but not one his superior in intellect and romantic response to +life. He was a poet, thinker, artist, philosopher and master of prose, +as a posthumous volume ("Wolf, the Autobiography of a Cave Dweller") +amply proves, but he was not ready then to fully express himself, and it +troubled him not at all. He loved life's every facet, was gay and +helpful to himself and others, and yet always with an eye for the +undercurrent of human misery, error and tragedy as well as comedy. +Immediately upon coming to New York he began to examine and grasp it in +a large way, its museums, public buildings, geography, politics, but +after a very little while decided suddenly that he did not belong there +and without a by-your-leave, although once more we had fallen into each +other's ways, he departed without a word, and I did not hear from him +for months. Temporarily at least he felt that he had to obtain more +experience in a lesser field, and lost no time in so doing. The next I +knew he <a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" />was connected, at a comfortable salary, with the then dominant +paper of Philadelphia.</p> + +<p>It was after he had established himself very firmly in Philadelphia that +we two finally began to understand each other fully, to sympathize +really with each other's point of view as opposed to the more or less +gay and casual nature of our earlier friendship. Also here perhaps, more +than before, we felt the binding influence of having worked together in +the West. It was here that I first noticed the ease with which he took +hold of a city, the many-sidedness of his peculiar character which led +him to reflect so many angles of it, which a less varied temperament +would never have touched upon. For, first of all, wherever he happened +to be, he was intensely interested in the age and history of his city, +its buildings and graveyards and tombstones which pointed to its past +life, then its present physical appearance, the chief characteristics of +the region in which it lay, its rivers, lakes, parks and adjacent places +and spots of interest (what rambles we took!), as well as its newest and +finest things architecturally. Nor did any one ever take a keener +interest in the current intellectual resources of a city—any city in +which he happened to be—its museums, libraries, old bookstores, +newspapers, magazines, and I know not what else. It was he who first +took me into Leary's bookstore in Philadelphia, descanting with his +usual gusto on its merits. Then and lastly he was keenly and wisely +interested in various currents of local politics, society and finance, +although he always considered the first a low mess, an arrangement or +adjustment of many necessary things among the lower orders. He seemed to +know or sense in some occult way everything that was going on in those +various realms. His mind was so full and rich that merely to be with him +was a delight. He gushed like a fountain, and yet not polemically, of +all he knew, heard, felt, suspected. His thoughts were so rich at times +that to me they were more like a mosaic of variegated and richly colored +stones and jewels. I felt always as though I were in the presence of a +great personage, not one who was reserved or pompous but a loose +bubbling temperament, wise beyond his years or day, and so truly great +that perhaps because of the intensity and immense variety of his +interests he would never shine in a world in which the most <a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" />intensive +specialization, and that of a purely commercial character, was the grand +rôle.</p> + +<p>And yet I always felt that perhaps he might. He attracted people of all +grades so easily and warmly. His mind leaped from one interest to +another almost too swiftly, and yet the average man understood and liked +him. While in a way he contemned their mental states as limited or +bigoted, he enjoyed the conditions under which they lived, seemed to +wish to immerse himself in them. And yet nearly all his thoughts were, +from their point of view perhaps, dangerous. Among his friends he was +always talking freely, honestly, of things which the average man could +not or would not discuss, dismissing as trash illusion, lies or the +cunning work of self-seeking propagandists, most of the things currently +accepted as true.</p> + +<p>He was constantly commenting on the amazing dullness of man, his +prejudices, the astonishing manner in which he seized upon and clung +savagely or pathetically to the most ridiculous interpretations of life. +He was also forever noting that crass chance which wrecks so many of our +dreams and lives,—its fierce brutalities, its seemingly inane +indifference to wondrous things,—but never in a depressed or morbid +spirit; merely as a matter of the curious, as it were. But if any one +chanced to contradict him he was likely to prove liquid fire. At the +same time he was forever reading, reading, reading—history, archæology, +ethnology, geology, travel, medicine, biography, and descanting on the +wonders and idiosyncrasies of man and nature which they revealed. He was +never tired of talking of the intellectual and social conditions that +ruled in Greece and Rome from 600 B.C. on, the philosophies, the +travels, the art, the simple, natural pagan view of things, and +regretting that they were no more. He grieved at times, I think, that he +had not been of that world, might not have seen it, or, failing that, +might not see all the shards of those extinct civilizations. There was +something loving and sad in the manner in which at times, in one museum +and another, he would examine ancient art designs, those of the +Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, their public and private house plans, +their statues, book rolls, inscriptions, flambeaux, boats, swords, +chariots. Carthage, Rome, Greece, Phoenicia—their <a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" />colonies, art and +trade stuffs, their foods, pleasures and worships—how he raved! A book +like Thaïs, Salammbo, Sonica, Quo Vadis, touched him to the quick.</p> + +<p>At the same time, and odd as it may seem, he was seemingly in intimate +contact with a circle of friends that rather astonished me by its +catholicity. It included, for instance, and quite naïvely, real estate +dealers, clerks, a bank cashier or two, some man who had a leather shop +or cigar factory in the downtown section, a drummer, a printer, two or +three newspaper artists and reporters—a list too long to catalogue here +and seemingly not interesting, at least not inspiring to look at or live +in contact with. Yet his relations with all of these were of a warm, +genial, helpful, homely character, quite intimate. He used them as one +might a mulch in which to grow things, or in other words he took them on +their own ground; a thing which I could never quite understand, being +more or less aloof myself and yet wishing always to be able so to do, to +take life, as he did.</p> + +<p>For he desired, and secured, their good will and drew them to him. He +took a simple, natural pleasure in the kinds of things they were able to +do, as well as the kinds of things he could do. With these, then, and a +type of girl who might not be classed above the clerk or manicure class, +he and they managed to eke out a social life, the outstanding phases of +which were dances, "parties," dinners at one simple home and another, +flirting, boating, and fishing expeditions in season, evenings out at +restaurants or the theater, and I know not what else. He could sing (a +very fair baritone), play the piano, cornet, flute, banjo, mandolin and +guitar, but always insisted that his favorite instruments were the +jews'-harp, the French harp (mouth organ) and a comb with a piece of +paper over it, against which he would blow with fierce energy, making +the most outrageous sounds, until stopped. At any "party" he was always +talking, jumping about, dancing, cooking something—fudge, taffy, a +rarebit, and insisting in the most mock-serious manner that all the +details be left strictly to him. "Now just cut out of this, all of you, +and leave this to your Uncle Dudley. Who's doing this? All I want is +sugar, chocolate, a pot, a big spoon, and I'll show you the best fudge +you ever ate." Then he would don an apron or towel and go to <a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" />work in a +manner which would rob any gathering of a sense of stiffness and induce +a naturalness most intriguing, calculated to enhance the general +pleasure an hundredfold.</p> + +<p>Yes, Peter woke people up. He could convey or spread a sense of ease and +good nature and give and take among all. Wise as he was and not so +good-looking, he was still attractive to girls, very much so, and by no +means unconscious of their beauty. He could always, and easily, break +down their reserve, and was soon apparently on terms of absolute +friendship, exchanging all sorts of small gossip and news with them +about this, that and the other person about whom they knew. Indeed he +was such a general favorite and so seemingly impartial that it was hard +to say how he came close to any, and yet he did. At odd tête-à-tête +moments he was always making confessions as to "nights" or "afternoons." +"My God, Dreiser, I've found a peach! I can't tell you—but oh, +wonderful! Just what I need. This world's a healthy old place, eh? Let's +have another drink, what?" and he would order a stein or a half-schoppen +of light German beer and pour it down, grinning like a gargoyle.</p> + +<p>It was while he was in Philadelphia that he told me the beginnings of +the love affair which eventually ended in his marrying and settling down +into the homiest of home men I have ever seen and which for sheer +naïveté and charm is one of the best love stories I know anything about. +It appears that he was walking in some out-of-the-way factory realm of +North Philadelphia one Saturday afternoon about the first or second year +of his stay there, when, playing in the street with some other children, +he saw a girl of not more than thirteen or fourteen who, as he expressed +it to me, "came damned near being the prettiest thing I ever saw. She +had yellow hair and a short blue dress and pink bows in her hair—and +say, Dreiser, when I saw her I stopped flat and said 'me for that' if I +have to wait fifteen years! Dutchy—you never saw the beat! And poor! +Her shoes were clogs. She couldn't even talk English yet. Neither could +the other kids. They were all sausage—a regular German neighborhood.</p> + +<p>"But, say, I watched her a while and then I went over and said, 'Come +here, kid. Where do you live?' She didn't understand, and one of the +other kids translated for her, and then <a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" />she said, 'Ich sprech nicht +English,'" and he mocked her. "That fixed her for me. One of the others +finally told me who she was and where she lived—and, say, I went right +home and began studying German. In three months I could make myself +understood, but before that, in two weeks, I hunted up her old man and +made him understand that I wanted to be friends with the family, to +learn German. I went out Sundays when they were all at home. There are +six children and I made friends with 'em all. For a long time I couldn't +make Madchen (that's what they call her) understand what it was all +about, but finally I did, and she knows now all right. And I'm crazy +about her and I'm going to marry her as soon as she's old enough."</p> + +<p>"How do you know that she'll have you?" I inquired.</p> + +<p>"Oh, she'll have me. I always tell her I'm going to marry her when she's +eighteen, and she says all right. And I really believe she does like me. +I'm crazy about her."</p> + +<p>Five years later, if I may anticipate a bit, after he had moved to +Newark and placed himself rather well in the journalistic field and was +able to carry out his plans in regard to himself, he suddenly returned +to Philadelphia and married, preparing beforehand an apartment which he +fancied would please her. It was a fortunate marriage in so far as love +and home pleasures were concerned. I never encountered a more delightful +atmosphere.</p> + +<p>All along in writing this I feel as though I were giving but the +thinnest portrait of Peter; he was so full and varied in his moods and +interests. To me he illustrated the joy that exists, on the one hand, in +the common, the so-called homely and what some might think ugly side of +life, certainly the very simple and ordinarily human aspect of things; +on the other, in the sheer comfort and satisfaction that might be taken +in things truly intellectual and artistic, but to which no great expense +attached—old books, prints, things connected with history and science +in their various forms, skill in matters relating to the applied arts +and what not, such as the coloring and firing of pottery and glass, the +making of baskets, hammocks and rugs, the carving of wood, the +collection and imitation of Japanese and Chinese prints, the art of +embalming as applied by the Egyptians (which, in connec<a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" />tion with an +undertaker to whom he had attached himself, he attempted to revive or at +least play with, testing his skill for instance by embalming a dead cat +or two after the Egyptian manner). In all of these lines he trained +himself after a fashion and worked with skill, although invariably he +insisted that he was little more than a bungler, a poor follower after +the art of some one else. But most of all, at this time and later, he +was interested in collecting things Japanese and Chinese: netsukes, +inros, censors, images of jade and porcelain, teajars, vases, prints; +and it was while he was in Philadelphia and seemingly trifling about +with the group I have mentioned and making love to his little German +girl that he was running here and there to this museum and that and +laying the foundations of some of those interesting collections which +later he was fond of showing his friends or interested collectors. By +the time he had reached Newark, as chief cartoonist of the leading paper +there, he was in possession of a complete Tokaido (the forty views on +the road between Tokio and Kyoto), various prints by Hokusai, Sesshiu, +Sojo; a collection of one hundred inros, all of fifty netsukes, all of +thirty censers, lacquered boxes and teajars, and various other +exceedingly beautiful and valuable things—Mandarin skirts and coats, +among other things—which subsequently he sold or traded around among +one collector friend and another for things which they had. I recall his +selling his completed Tokaido, a labor which had extended over four +years, for over a thousand dollars. Just before he died he was trading +netsukes for inros and getting ready to sell all these latter to a man, +who in turn was going to sell his collection to a museum.</p> + +<p>But in between was this other, this ultra-human side, which ran to such +commonplaces as bowling, tennis-playing, golf, billiards, cards and +gambling with the dice—a thing which always struck me as having an odd +turn to it in connection with Peter, since he could be interested in so +many other things, and yet he pursued these commonplaces with as much +gusto at times as one possessed of a mania. At others he seemed not to +miss or think of them. Indeed, you could be sure of him and all his +interests, whatever they were, feeling that he had himself well in hand, +knew exactly how far he was <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" />going, and that when the time came he could +and would stop. Yet during the process of his momentary relaxation or +satiation, in whatever field it might be, he would give you a sense of +abandon, even ungovernable appetite, which to one who had not known him +long might have indicated a mania.</p> + +<p>Thus I remember once running over to Philadelphia to spend a Saturday +and Sunday with him, visits of this kind, in either direction, being of +the commonest occurrence. At that time he was living in some +quiet-looking boarding-house in South Fourth Street, but in which dwelt +or visited the group above-mentioned, and whenever I came there, at +least, there was always an atmosphere of intense gaming or playing in +some form, which conveyed to me nothing so much as a glorious sense of +life and pleasure. A dozen or more men might be seated at or standing +about a poker or dice table, in summer (often in winter) with their +coats off, their sleeves rolled up, Peter always conspicuous among them. +On the table or to one side would be money, a pitcher or a tin pail of +beer, boxes of cigarettes or cigars, and there would be Peter among the +players, flushed with excitement, his collar off, his hair awry, his +little figure stirring about here and there or gesticulating or lighting +a cigar or pouring down a glass of beer, shouting at the top of his +voice, his eyes aglow, "That's mine!" "I say it's not!" "Two on the +sixes!" "Three!" "Four!" "Ah, roll the bones! Roll the bones!" "Get off! +Get off! Come on now, Spikes—cough up! You've got the money now. Pay +back. No more loans if you don't." "Once on the fours—the fives—the +aces!" "Roll the bones! Roll the bones! Come on!" Or, if he saw me, +softening and saying, "Gee, Dreiser, I'm ahead twenty-eight so far!" or +"I've lost thirty all told. I'll stick this out, though, to win or lose +five more, and then I'll quit. I give notice, you fellows, five more, +one way or the other, and then I'm through. See? Say, these damned +sharks are always trying to turn a trick. And when they lose they don't +want to pay. I'm offa this for life unless I get a better deal."</p> + +<p>In the room there might be three or four girls—sisters, sweethearts, +pals of one or other of the players—some dancing, some playing the +piano or singing, and in addition the landlord and his wife, a slattern +pair usually, about whose <a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" />past and present lives Peter seemed always to +know much. He had seduced them all apparently into a kind of rakish +camaraderie which was literally amazing to behold. It thrilled, +fascinated, at times frightened me, so thin and inadequate and +inefficient seemed my own point of view and appetite for life. He was +vigorous, charitable, pagan, gay, full of health and strength. He would +play at something, anything, indoors or out as occasion offered, until +he was fairly perspiring, when, throwing down whatever implement he had +in hand—be it cards, a tennis-racket, a golf club—would declare, +"That's enough! That's enough! I'm done now. I've licked-cha," or "I'm +licked. No more. Not another round. Come on, Dreiser, I know just the +place for us—" and then descanting on a steak or fish planked, or some +new method of serving corn or sweet potatoes or tomatoes, he would lead +the way somewhere to a favorite "rat's killer," as he used to say, or +grill or Chinese den, and order enough for four or five, unless stopped. +As he walked, and he always preferred to walk, the latest political row +or scandal, the latest discovery, tragedy or art topic would get his +keen attention. In his presence the whole world used to look different +to me, more colorful, more hopeful, more gay. Doors seemed to open; in +imagination I saw the interiors of a thousand realms—homes, factories, +laboratories, dens, resorts of pleasure. During his day such figures as +McKinley, Roosevelt, Hanna, Rockefeller, Rogers, Morgan, Peary, Harriman +were abroad and active, and their mental states and points of view and +interests—and sincerities and insincerities—were the subject of his +wholly brilliant analysis. He rather admired the clever opportunist, I +think, so long as he was not mean in view or petty, yet he scorned and +even despised the commercial viewpoint or trade reactions of a man like +McKinley. Rulers ought to be above mere commercialism. Once when I asked +him why he disliked McKinley so much he replied laconically, "The voice +is the voice of McKinley, but the hands—are the hands of Hanna." +Roosevelt seemed to amuse him always, to be a delightful if ridiculous +and self-interested "grandstander," as he always said, "always looking +out for Teddy, you bet," but good for the country, inspiring it with +visions. Rockefeller was wholly admirable as a force driving the country +on to autocracy, <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" />oligarchy, possibly revolution. Ditto Hanna, ditto +Morgan, ditto Harriman, ditto Rogers, unless checked. Peary might have, +and again might not have, discovered the North Pole. He refused to +judge. Old "Doc" Cook, the pseudo discoverer, who appeared very shortly +before he died, only drew forth chuckles of delight. "My God, the gall, +the nerve! And that wreath of roses the Danes put around his neck! It's +colossal, Dreiser. It's grand. Munchausen, Cook, Gulliver, Marco +Polo—they'll live forever, or ought to!"</p> + +<p>Some Saturday afternoons or Sundays, if he came to me or I to him in +time, we indulged in long idle rambles, anywhere, either going first by +streetcar, boat or train somewhere and then walking, or, if the mood was +not so, just walking on and on somewhere and talking. On such occasions +Peter was at his best and I could have listened forever, quite as the +disciples of Plato and Aristotle must have to them, to his discourses on +life, his broad and broadening conceptions of Nature—her cruelty, +beauty, mystery. Once, far out somewhere beyond Camden, we were idling +about an inlet where were boats and some fishermen and a trestle which +crossed it. Just as we were crossing it some men in a boat below +discovered the body of a possible suicide, in the water, days old and +discolored, but still intact and with the clothes of a man of at least +middle-class means. I was for leaving, being made a little sick by the +mere sight. Not so Peter. He was for joining in the effort which brought +the body to shore, and in a moment was back with the small group of +watermen, speculating and arguing as to the condition and character of +the dead man, making himself really one of the group. Finally he was +urging the men to search the pockets while some one went for the police. +But more than anything, with a hard and yet in its way humane realism +which put any courage of mine in that direction to the blush, he was all +for meditating on the state and nature of man, his chemical +components—chlorine, sulphuric acid, phosphoric acid, potassium, +sodium, calcium, magnesium, oxygen—and speculating as to which +particular chemicals in combination gave the strange metallic blues, +greens, yellows and browns to the decaying flesh! He had a great stomach +for life. The fact that insects were at work shocked him not at all. He +speculated as to <i>these</i>, their duties <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" />and functions! He asserted +boldly that man was merely a chemical formula at best, that something +much wiser than he had prepared him, for some not very brilliant purpose +of his or its own perhaps, and that he or it, whoever or whatever he or +it was, was neither good nor bad, as we imagined such things, but both. +He at once went off into the mysteries—where, when with me at least, he +seemed to prefer to dwell—talked of the divinations of the Chaldeans, +how they studied the positions of the stars and the entrails of dead +animals before going to war, talked of the horrible fetiches of the +Africans, the tricks and speculations of the priests of Greek and Roman +temples, finally telling me the story of the ambitious eel-seller who +anchored the dead horse in the stream in order to have plenty of eels +every morning for market. I revolted. I declared he was sickening.</p> + +<p>"My boy," he assured me, "you are too thin-skinned. You can't take life +that way. It's all good to me, whatever happens. We're here. We're not +running it. Why be afraid to look at it? The chemistry of a man's body +isn't any worse than the chemistry of anything else, and we're eating +the dead things we've killed all the time. A little more or a little +less in any direction—what difference?"</p> + +<p>Apropos of this same a little later—to shock me, of course, as he well +knew he could—he assured me that in eating a dish of chop suey in a +Chinese restaurant, a very low one, he had found and eaten a part of the +little finger of a child, and that "it was very good—very good, +indeed."</p> + +<p>"Dog!" I protested. "Swine! Thou ghoula!" but he merely chuckled +heartily and stuck to his tale!</p> + +<p>But if I paint this side of him it is to round out his wonderful, to me +almost incredible, figure. Insisting on such things, he was still and +always warm and human, sympathetic, diplomatic and cautious, according +to his company, so that he was really acceptable anywhere. Peter would +never shock those who did not want to be shocked. A minute or two or +five after such a discourse as the above he might be describing some +marvelously beautiful process of pollination among the flowers, the +history of some medieval trade guild or gazing at a beautiful scene and +conveying to one by his very attitude his unspoken emotion.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" />After spending about two or three years in Philadelphia—which city +came to reflect for me the color of Peter's interests and mood—he +suddenly removed to Newark, having been nursing an arrangement with its +principal paper for some time. Some quarrel or dissatisfaction with the +director of his department caused him, without other notice, to paste +some crisp quotation from one of the poets on his desk and depart! In +Newark, a city to which before this I had paid not the slightest +attention, he found himself most happy; and I, living in New York close +at hand, felt that I possessed in it and him an earthly paradise. +Although it contained no more than 300,000 people and seemed, or had, a +drear factory realm only, he soon revealed it to me in quite another +light, because he was there. Very swiftly he found a wondrous canal +running right through it, under its market even, and we went walking +along its banks, out into the woods and fields. He found or created out +of an existing boardinghouse in a back street so colorful and gay a +thing that after a time it seemed to me to outdo that one of +Philadelphia. He joined a country club near Passaic, on the river of +that name, on the veranda of which we often dined. He found a Chinese +quarter with a restaurant or two; an amazing Italian section with a +restaurant; a man who had a $40,000 collection of rare Japanese and +Chinese curios, all in his rooms at the Essex County Insane Asylum, for +he was the chemist there; a man who was a playwright and manager in New +York; another who owned a newspaper syndicate; another who directed a +singing society; another who was president of a gun club; another who +owned and made or rather fired pottery for others. Peter was so restless +and vital that he was always branching out in a new direction. To my +astonishment he now took up the making and firing of pottery for +himself, being interested in reproducing various Chinese dishes and +vases of great beauty, the originals of which were in the Metropolitan +Museum of Art. His plan was first to copy the design, then buy, shape or +bake the clay at some pottery, then paint or decorate with liquid +porcelain at his own home, and fire. In the course of six or eight +months, working in his rooms Saturdays and Sundays and some mornings +before going to the office, he managed to <a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" />produce three or four which +satisfied him and which he kept plates of real beauty. The others he +gave away.</p> + +<p>A little later, if you please, it was Turkish rug-making on a small +scale, the frame and materials for which he slowly accumulated, and then +providing himself with a pillow, Turkish-fashion, he crossed his legs +before it and began slowly but surely to produce a rug, the colors and +design of which were entirely satisfactory to me. As may be imagined, it +was slow and tedious work, undertaken at odd moments and when there was +nothing else for him to do, always when the light was good and never at +night, for he maintained that the coloring required the best of light. +Before this odd, homely, wooden machine, a combination of unpainted rods +and cords, he would sit, cross-legged or on a bench at times, and pound +and pick and tie and unravel—a most wearisome-looking task to me.</p> + +<p>"For heaven's sake," I once observed, "couldn't you think of anything +more interestingly insane to do than this? It's the slowest, most +painstaking work I ever saw."</p> + +<p>"That's just it, and that's just why I like it," he replied, never +looking at me but proceeding with his weaving in the most industrious +fashion. "You have just one outstanding fault, Dreiser. You don't know +how to make anything out of the little things of life. You want to +remember that this is an art, not a job. I'm discovering whether I can +make a Turkish carpet or not, and it gives me pleasure. If I can get so +much as one good spot of color worked out, one small portion of the +design, I'll be satisfied. I'll know then that I can do it, the whole +thing, don't you see? Some of these things have been the work of a +lifetime of one man. You call that a small thing? I don't. The pleasure +is in doing it, proving that you can, not in the rug itself." He clacked +and tied, congratulating himself vastly. In due course of time three or +four inches were finished, a soft and yet firm silky fabric, and he was +in great glee over it, showing it to all and insisting that in time (how +long? I often wondered) he would complete it and would then own a +splendid carpet.</p> + +<p>It was at this time that he built about him in Newark a structure of +friendships and interests which, it seemed to me, <a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" />promised to be for +life. He interested himself intensely in the paper with which he was +connected and although he was only the cartoonist, still it was not long +before various departments and elements in connection with it seemed to +reflect his presence and to be alive with his own good will and +enthusiasm. Publisher, editor, art director, managing editor and +business manager, were all in friendly contact with him. He took out +life insurance for the benefit of the wife and children he was later to +have! With the manager of the engraving department he was working out +problems in connection with copperplate engraving and printing; with the +official photographer, art photography; with the art director, some +scheme for enlarging the local museum in some way. With his enduring +love of the fantastic and ridiculous it was not long before he had +successfully planned and executed a hoax of the most ridiculous +character, a piece of idle drollery almost too foolish to think of, and +yet which eventually succeeded in exciting the natives of at least four +States and was telegraphed to and talked about in a Sunday feature way, +by newspapers all over the country, and finally involved Peter as an +actor and stage manager of the most vivid type imaginable. And yet it +was all done really to amuse himself, to see if he could do it, as he +often told me.</p> + +<p>This particular hoax related to that silly old bugaboo of our boyhood +days, the escaped and wandering wild man, ferocious, blood-loving, +terrible. I knew nothing of it until Peter, one Sunday afternoon when we +were off for a walk a year or two after he had arrived in Newark, +suddenly announced apropos of nothing at all, "Dreiser, I've just hit +upon a great idea which I am working out with some of the boys down on +our paper. It's a dusty old fake, but it will do as well as any other, +better than if it were a really decent idea. I'm inventing a wild man. +You know how crazy the average dub is over anything strange, +different,'terrible.' Barnum was right, you know. There's one born every +minute. Well, I'm just getting this thing up now. It's as good as the +sacred white elephant or the blood-sweating hippopotamus. And what's +more, I'm going to stage it right here in little old Newark—and they'll +all fall for it, and don't you think they won't," and he chuckled most +ecstatically.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" />For heaven's sake, what's coming now?" I sighed.</p> + +<p>"Oh, very well. But I have it all worked out just the same. We're +beginning to run the preliminary telegrams every three or four days—one +from Ramblersville, South Jersey, let us say, another from Hohokus, +twenty-five miles farther on, four or five days later. By degrees as +spring comes on I'll bring him north—right up here into Essex County—a +genuine wild man, see, something fierce and terrible. We're giving him +long hair like a bison, red eyes, fangs, big hands and feet. He's +entirely naked—or will be when he gets here. He's eight feet tall. He +kills and eats horses, dogs, cattle, pigs, chickens. He frightens men +and women and children. I'm having him bound across lonely roads, look +in windows at night, stampede cattle and drive tramps and peddlers out +of the country. But say, wait and see. As summer comes on we'll make a +regular headliner of it. We'll give it pages on Sunday. We'll get the +rubes to looking for him in posses, offer rewards. Maybe some one will +actually capture and bring in some poor lunatic, a real wild man. You +can do anything if you just stir up the natives enough."</p> + +<p>I laughed. "You're crazy," I said. "What a low comedian you really are, +Peter!"</p> + +<p>Well, the weeks passed, and to mark progress he occasionally sent me +clippings of telegrams, cut not from his pages, if you please, but from +such austere journals as the <i>Sun</i> and <i>World</i> of New York, the <i>North +American</i> of Philadelphia, the <i>Courant</i> of Hartford, recording the +antics of his imaginary thing of the woods. Longish articles actually +began to appear here and there, in Eastern papers especially, describing +the exploits of this very elusive and moving demon. He had been seen in +a dozen fairly widely distributed places within the month, but always +coming northward. In one place he had killed three cows at once, in +another two, and eaten portions of them raw! Old Mrs. Gorswitch of +Dutchers Run, Pennsylvania, returning from a visit to her +daughter-in-law, Annie A. Gorswitch, and ambling along a lonely road in +Osgoroola County, was suddenly descended upon by a most horrific figure, +half man, half beast, very tall and with long hair and red, all but +bloody eyes who, looking at her with avid glance, made as if to seize +her, but a wagon approaching along the <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" />road from another direction, he +had desisted and fled, leaving old Mrs. Gorswitch in a faint upon the +ground. Barns and haystacks had been fired here and there, lonely widows +in distant cotes been made to abandon their homes through fear.... I +marveled at the assiduity and patience of the man.</p> + +<p>One day in June or July following, being in Newark and asking Peter +quite idly about his wild man, he replied, "Oh, it's great, great! +Couldn't be better! He'll soon be here now. We've got the whole thing +arranged now for next Sunday or Saturday—depends on which day I can get +off. We're going to photograph him. Wanto come over?"</p> + +<p>"What rot!" I said. "Who's going to pose? Where?"</p> + +<p>"Well," he chuckled, "come along and see. You'll find out fast enough. +We've got an actual wild man. I got him. I'll have him out here in the +woods. If you don't believe it, come over. You wouldn't believe me when +I said I could get the natives worked up. Well, they are. Look at +these," and he produced clippings from rival papers. The wild man was +actually being seen in Essex County, not twenty-five miles from Newark. +He had ravaged the property of people in five different States. It was +assumed that he was a lunatic turned savage, or that he had escaped from +a circus or trading-ship wrecked on the Jersey coast (suggestions made +by Peter himself). His depredations, all told, had by now run into +thousands, speaking financially. Staid residents were excited. Rewards +for his capture were being offered in different places. Posses of irate +citizens were, and would continue to be, after him, armed to the teeth, +until he was captured. Quite remarkable developments might be expected +at any time ... I stared. It seemed too ridiculous, and it was, and back +of it all was smirking, chuckling Peter, the center and fountain of it!</p> + +<p>"You dog!" I protested. "You clown!" He merely grinned.</p> + +<p>Not to miss so interesting a dénouement as the actual capture of this +prodigy of the wilds, I was up early and off the following Sunday to +Newark, where in Peter's apartment in due time I found him, his rooms in +a turmoil, he himself busy stuffing things into a bag, outside an +automobile waiting and within it the staff photographer as well as +several others, all grinning, and all of whom, as he informed me, were +to assist <a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" />in the great work of tracking, ambushing and, if possible, +photographing the dread peril.</p> + +<p>"Yes, well, who's going to be him?" I insisted.</p> + +<p>"Never mind! Never mind! Don't be so inquisitive," chortled Peter. "A +wild man has his rights and privileges, as well as any other. Remember, +I caution all of you to be respectful in his presence. He's very +sensitive, and he doesn't like newspapermen anyhow. He'll be +photographed, and he'll be wild. That's all you need to know."</p> + +<p>In due time we arrived at as comfortable an abode for a wild man as well +might be. It was near the old Essex and Morris Canal, not far from +Boonton. A charming clump of brush and rock was selected, and here a +snapshot of a posse hunting, men peering cautiously from behind trees in +groups and looking as though they were most eager to discover something, +was made. Then Peter, slipping away—I suddenly saw him ambling toward +us, hair upstanding, body smeared with black muck, daubs of white about +the eyes, little tufts of wool about wrists and ankles and loins—as +good a figure of a wild man as one might wish, only not eight feet tall.</p> + +<p>"Peter!" I said. "How ridiculous! You loon!"</p> + +<p>"Have a care how you address me," he replied with solemn dignity. "A +wild man is a wild man. Our punctilio is not to be trifled with. I am of +the oldest, the most famous line of wild men extant. Touch me not." He +strode the grass with the air of a popular movie star, while he +discussed with the art director and photographer the most terrifying and +convincing attitudes of a wild man seen by accident and unconscious of +his pursuers.</p> + +<p>"But you're not eight feet tall!" I interjected at one point.</p> + +<p>"A small matter. A small matter," he replied airily. "I will be in the +picture. Nothing easier. We wild men, you know—"</p> + +<p>Some of the views were excellent, most striking. He leered most terribly +from arras of leaves or indicated fright or cunning. The man was a good +actor. For years I retained and may still have somewhere a full set of +the pictures as well as the double-page spread which followed the next +week.</p> + +<p>Well, the thing was appropriately discussed, as it should <a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" />have been, +but the wild man got away, as was feared. He went into the nearby canal +and washed away all his terror, or rather he vanished into the dim +recesses of Peter's memory. He was only heard of a few times more in the +papers, his supposed body being found in some town in northeast +Pennsylvania—or in the small item that was "telegraphed" from there. As +for Peter, he emerged from the canal, or from its banks, a cleaner if +not a better man. He was grinning, combing his hair, adjusting his tie.</p> + +<p>"What a scamp!" I insisted lovingly. "What an incorrigible trickster!"</p> + +<p>"Dreiser, Dreiser," he chortled, "there's nothing like it. You should +not scoff. I am a public benefactor. I am really a creator. I have +created a being as distinct as any that ever lived. He is in many +minds—mine, yours. You know that you believe in him really. There he +was peeking out from between those bushes only fifteen minutes ago. And +he has made, and will make, thousands of people happy, thrill them, give +them a new interest. If Stevenson can create a Jekyll and Hyde, why +can't I create a wild man? I have. We have his picture to prove it. What +more do you wish?"</p> + +<p>I acquiesced. All told, it was a delightful bit of foolery and art, and +Peter was what he was first and foremost, an artist in the grotesque and +the ridiculous.</p> + +<p>For some time thereafter peace seemed to reign in his mind, only now it +was that the marriage and home and children idea began to grow. From +much of the foregoing it may have been assumed that Peter was out of +sympathy with the ordinary routine of life, despised the commonplace, +the purely practical. As a matter of fact it was just the other way +about. I never knew a man so radical in some of his viewpoints, so +versatile and yet so wholly, intentionally and cravingly, immersed in +the usual as Peter. He was all for creating, developing, brightening +life along simple rather than outré lines, in so far as he himself was +concerned. Nearly all of his arts and pleasures were decorative and +homey. A good grocer, a good barber, a good saloon-keeper, a good +tailor, a shoe maker, was just as interesting in his way to Peter as any +one or anything else, if not a little more so. He respected their lines, +their arts, their professions, and above all, where they <a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" />had it, their +industry, sobriety and desire for fair dealing. He believed that +millions of men, especially those about him were doing the best they +could under the very severe conditions which life offered. He objected +to the idle, the too dull the swindlers and thieves as well as the +officiously puritanic or dogmatic. He resented, for himself at least, +solemn pomp and show. Little houses, little gardens, little porches, +simple cleanly neighborhoods with their air of routine, industry, +convention and order, fascinated him as apparently nothing else could. +He insisted that they were enough. A man did not need a great house +unless he was a public character with official duties.</p> + +<p>"Dreiser," he would say in Philadelphia and Newark, if not before, "it's +in just such a neighborhood as this that some day I'm going to live. I'm +going to have my little <i>frau</i>, my seven children, my chickens, dog, +cat, canary, best German style, my garden, my birdbox, my pipe; and +Sundays, by God, I'll march 'em all off to church, wife and seven kids, +as regular as clockwork, shined shoes, pigtails and all, and I'll lead +the procession."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," I said. "You talk."</p> + +<p>"Well, wait and see. Nothing in this world means so much to me as the +good old orderly home stuff. One ought to live and die in a family. It's +the right way. I'm cutting up now, sowing my wild oats, but that's +nothing. I'm just getting ready to eventually settle down and live, just +as I tell you, and be an ideal orderly citizen. It's the only way. It's +the way nature intends us to do. All this early kid stuff is passing, a +sorting-out process. We get over it. Every fellow does, or ought to be +able to, if he's worth anything, find some one woman that he can live +with and stick by her. That makes the world that you and I like to live +in, and you know it. There's a psychic call in all of us to it, I think. +It's the genius of our civilization, to marry one woman and settle down. +And when I do, no more of this all-night stuff with this, that and the +other lady. I'll be a model husband and father, sure as you're standing +there. Don't you think I won't. Smile if you want to—it's so. I'll have +my garden. I'll be friendly with my neighbors. You can come over then +and help us put the kids to bed."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" />Oh, Lord! This is a new bug now! We'll have the vine-covered cot idea +for a while, anyhow."</p> + +<p>"Oh, all right. Scoff if you want to. You'll see."</p> + +<p>Time went by. He was doing all the things I have indicated, living in a +kind of whirl of life. At the same time, from time to time, he would +come back to this thought. Once, it is true, I thought it was all over +with the little yellow-haired girl in Philadelphia. He talked of her +occasionally, but less and less. Out on the golf links near Passaic he +met another girl, one of a group that flourished there. I met her. She +was not unpleasing, a bit sensuous, rather attractive in dress and +manners, not very well informed, but gay, clever, up-to-date; such a +girl as would pass among other women as fairly satisfactory.</p> + +<p>For a time Peter seemed greatly attracted to her. She danced, played a +little, was fair at golf and tennis, and she was, or pretended to be, +intensely interested in him. He confessed at last that he believed he +was in love with her.</p> + +<p>"So it's all day with Philadelphia, is it?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"It's a shame," he replied, "but I'm afraid so. I'm having a hell of a +time with myself, my alleged conscience, I tell you."</p> + +<p>I heard little more about it. He had a fad for collecting rings at this +time, a whole casket full, like a Hindu prince, and he told me once he +was giving her her choice of them.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he announced that it was "all off" and that he was going to +marry the maid of Philadelphia. He had thrown the solitaire engagement +ring he had given her down a sewer! At first he would confess nothing as +to the reason or the details, but being so close to me it eventually +came out. Apparently, to the others as to myself, he had talked much of +his simple home plans, his future children—the good citizen idea. He +had talked it to his new love also, and she had sympathized and agreed. +Yet one day, after he had endowed her with the engagement ring, some +one, a member of the golf club, came and revealed a tale. The girl was +not "straight." She had been, mayhap was even then, "intimate" with +other men—one anyhow. She was in love with Peter well enough, as she +insisted afterward, and willing to undertake the life he suggested, but +she had not broken with the old atmosphere completely, or if she had it +was still not believed that she had.<a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" /> There were those who could not +only charge, but prove. A compromising note of some kind sent to some +one was involved, turned over to Peter.</p> + +<p>"Dreiser," he growled as he related the case to me, "it serves me right. +I ought to know better. I know the kind of woman I need. This one has +handed me a damned good wallop, and I deserve it. I might have guessed +that she wasn't suited to me. She was really too free—a life-lover more +than a wife. That home stuff! She was just stringing me because she +liked me. She isn't really my sort, not simple enough."</p> + +<p>"But you loved her, I thought?"</p> + +<p>"I did, or thought I did. Still, I used to wonder too. There were many +ways about her that troubled me. You think I'm kidding about this home +and family idea, but I'm not. It suits me, however flat it looks to you. +I want to do that, live that way, go through the normal routine +experience, and I'm going to do it."</p> + +<p>"But how did you break it off with her so swiftly?" I asked curiously.</p> + +<p>"Well, when I heard this I went direct to her and put it up to her. If +you'll believe me she never even denied it. Said it was all true, but +that she was in love with me all right, and would change and be all that +I wanted her to be."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's fair enough," I said, "if she loves you. You're no saint +yourself, you know. If you'd encourage her, maybe she'd make good."</p> + +<p>"Well, maybe, but I don't think so really," he returned, shaking his +head. "She likes me, but not enough, I'm afraid. She wouldn't run +straight, now that she's had this other. She'd mean to maybe, but she +wouldn't. I feel it about her. And anyhow I don't want to take any +chances. I like her—I'm crazy about her really, but I'm through. I'm +going to marry little Dutchy if she'll have me, and cut out this +old-line stuff. You'll have to stand up with me when I do."</p> + +<p>In three months more the new arrangement was consummated and little +Dutchy—or Zuleika, as he subsequently named her—was duly brought to +Newark and installed, at first in a charming apartment in a +conventionally respectable and cleanly neighborhood, later in a small +house with a "yard," lawn front and back, in one of the homiest of home +<a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" />neighborhoods in Newark. It was positively entertaining to observe +Peter not only attempting to assume but assuming the rôle of the +conventional husband, and exactly nine months after he had been married, +to the hour, a father in this humble and yet, in so far as his +particular home was concerned, comfortable world. I have no space here +for more than the barest outline. I have already indicated his views, +most emphatically expressed and forecasted. He fulfilled them all to the +letter, up to the day of his death. In so far as I could make out, he +made about as satisfactory a husband and father and citizen as I have +ever seen. He did it deliberately, in cold reason, and yet with a warmth +and flare which puzzled me all the more since it <i>was</i> based on reason +and forethought. I misdoubted. I was not quite willing to believe that +it would work out, and yet if ever a home was delightful, with a +charming and genuinely "happy" atmosphere, it was Peter's.</p> + +<p>"Here she is," he observed the day he married her, "me <i>frau</i>—Zuleika. +Isn't she a peach? Ever see any nicer hair than that? And these here, +now, pink cheeks? What? Look at 'em! And her little Dutchy nose! Isn't +it cute? Oh, Dutchy! And right here in me vest pocket is the golden band +wherewith I am to be chained to the floor, the domestic hearth. And +right there on her finger is my badge of prospective serfdom." Then, in +a loud aside to me, "In six months I'll be beating her. Come now, +Zuleika. We have to go through with this. You have to swear to be my +slave."</p> + +<p>And so they were married.</p> + +<p>And in the home afterward he was as busy and helpful and noisy as any +man about the house could ever hope to be. He was always fussing about +after hours "putting up" something or arranging his collections or +helping Zuleika wash and dry the dishes, or showing her how to cook +something if she didn't know how. He was running to the store or +bringing home things from the downtown market. Months before the first +child was born he was declaring most shamelessly, "In a few months now, +Dreiser, Zuleika and I are going to have our first calf. The bones roll +for a boy, but you never can tell. I'm offering up prayers and +oblations—both of us are. I make Zuleika pray every night. And say, +when it comes, no <a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" />spoiling-the-kid stuff. No bawling or rocking it to +sleep nights permitted. Here's one kid that's going to be raised right. +I've worked out all the rules. No trashy baby-foods. Good old specially +brewed Culmbacher for the mother, and the kid afterwards if it wants it. +This is one family in which law and order are going to prevail—good old +'dichtig, wichtig' law and order."</p> + +<p>I used to chuckle the while I verbally denounced him for his coarse, +plebeian point of view and tastes.</p> + +<p>In a little while the child came, and to his immense satisfaction it was +a boy. I never saw a man "carry on" so, make over it, take such a +whole-souled interest in all those little things which supposedly made +for its health and well-being. For the first few weeks he still talked +of not having it petted or spoiled, but at the same time he was surely +and swiftly changing, and by the end of that time had become the most +doting, almost ridiculously fond papa that I ever saw. Always the child +must be in his lap at the most unseemly hours, when his wife would +permit it. When he went anywhere, or they, although they kept a maid the +child must be carried along by him on his shoulder. He liked nothing +better than to sit and hold it close, rocking in a rocking-chair +American style and singing, or come tramping into my home in New York, +the child looking like a woolen ball. At night if it stirred or +whimpered he was up and looking. And the baby-clothes!—and the +cradle!—and the toys!—colored rubber balls and soldiers the first or +second or third week!</p> + +<p>"What about that stern discipline that was to be put in force here—no +rocking, no getting up at night to coddle a weeping infant?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know. That's all good stuff before you get one. I've got one of +my own now, and I've got a new light on this. Say, Dreiser, take my +advice. Go through the routine. Don't try to escape. Have a kid or two +or three. There's a psychic punch to it you can't get any other way. +It's nature's way. It's a great scheme. You and your girl and your kid."</p> + +<p>As he talked he rocked, holding the baby boy to his breast. It was +wonderful.</p> + +<p>And Mrs. Peter—how happy she seemed. There was light in that house, +flowers, laughter, good fellowship. As in his <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" />old rooms so in this new +home he gathered a few of his old friends around him and some new ones, +friends of this region. In the course of a year or two he was on the +very best terms of friendship with his barber around the corner, his +grocer, some man who had a saloon and bowling alley in the neighborhood, +his tailor, and then just neighbors. The milkman, the coal man, the +druggist and cigar man at the next corner—all could tell you where +Peter lived. His little front "yard" had two beds of flowers all summer +long, his lot in the back was a garden—lettuce, onions, peas, beans. +Peter was always happiest when he could be home working, playing with +the baby, pushing him about in a go-cart, working in his garden, or +lying on the floor making something—an engraving or print or a box +which he was carving, the infant in some simple gingham romper crawling +about. He was always busy, but never too much so for a glance or a +mock-threatening, "Now say, not so much industry there. You leave my +things alone," to the child. Of a Sunday he sat out on the front porch +smoking, reading the Sunday paper, congratulating himself on his happy +married life, and most of the time holding the infant. Afternoons he +would carry it somewhere, anywhere, in his arms to his friends, the +Park, New York, to see me. At breakfast, dinner, supper the heir +presumptive was in a high-chair beside him.</p> + +<p>"Ah, now, here's a rubber spoon. Beat with that. It's less destructive +and less painful physically."</p> + +<p>"How about a nice prust" (crust) "dipped in bravery" (gravy) "—heh? Do +you suppose that would cut any of your teeth?"</p> + +<p>"Zuleika, this son of yours seems to think a spoonful of beer or two +might not hurt him. What do you say?"</p> + +<p>Occasionally, especially of a Saturday evening, he wanted to go bowling +and yet he wanted his heir. The problem was solved by fitting the latter +into a tight little sweater and cap and carrying him along on his +shoulder, into the bar for a beer, thence to the bowling alley, where +young hopeful was fastened into a chair on the side lines while Peter +and myself or some of his friends bowled. At ten or ten-thirty or +eleven, as the case might be, he was ready to leave, but before that +hour les ongfong might be sound asleep, hanging against<a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" /> Peter's scarf, +his interest in his toes or thumbs having given out.</p> + +<p>"Peter, look at that," I observed once. "Don't you think we'd better +take him home?"</p> + +<p>"Home nothing! Let him sleep. He can sleep here as well as anywhere, and +besides I like to look at him." And in the room would be a great crowd, +cigars, beers, laughter, and Peter's various friends as used to the +child's presence and as charmed by it as he was. He was just the man who +could do such things. His manner and point of view carried conviction. +He believed in doing all that he wanted to do simply and naturally, and +more and more as he went along people not only respected, I think they +adored him, especially the simple homely souls among whom he chose to +move and have his being.</p> + +<p>About this time there developed among those in his immediate +neighborhood a desire to elect him to some political position, that of +councilman, or State assemblyman, in the hope or thought that he would +rise to something higher. But he would none of it—not then anyhow. +Instead, about this time or a very little later, after the birth of his +second child (a girl), he devoted himself to the composition of a +brilliant piece of prose poetry ("Wolf"), which, coming from him, did +not surprise me in the least. If he had designed or constructed a great +building, painted a great picture, entered politics and been elected +governor or senator, I would have taken it all as a matter of course. He +could have. The material from which anything may rise was there. I asked +him to let me offer it to the publishing house with which I was +connected, and I recall with interest the comment of the oldest and most +experienced of the bookmen and salesmen among us. "You'll never make +much, if anything, on this book. It's too good, too poetic. But whether +it pays or not, I vote yes. I'd rather lose money on something like this +than make it on some of the trash we do make it on."</p> + +<p>Amen. I agreed then, and I agree now.</p> + +<p>The last phase of Peter was as interesting and dramatic as any of the +others. His married life was going forward about as he had planned. His +devotion to his home and children, his loving wife, his multiplex +interests, his various friends, <a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" />was always a curiosity to me, +especially in view of his olden days. One day he was over in New York +visiting one of his favorite Chinese importing companies, through which +he had secured and was still securing occasional objects of art. He had +come down to me in my office at the Butterick Building to see if I would +not come over the following Saturday as usual and stay until Monday. He +had secured something, was planning something. I should see. At the +elevator he waved me a gay "so long—see you Saturday!"</p> + +<p>But on Friday, as I was talking with some one at my desk, a telegram was +handed me. It was from Mrs. Peter and read: "Peter died today at two of +pneumonia. Please come."</p> + +<p>I could scarcely believe it. I did not know that he had even been sick. +His little yellow-haired wife! The two children! His future! His +interests! I dropped everything and hurried to the nearest station. En +route I speculated on the mysteries on which he had so often +speculated—death, dissolution, uncertainty, the crude indifference or +cruelty of Nature. What would become of Mrs. Peter? His children?</p> + +<p>I arrived only to find a home atmosphere destroyed as by a wind that +puts out a light. There was Peter, stiff and cold, and in the other +rooms his babies, quite unconscious of what had happened, prattling as +usual, and Mrs. Peter practically numb and speechless. It had come so +suddenly, so out of a clear sky, that she could not realize, could not +even tell me at first. The doctor was there—also a friend of his, the +nearest barber! Also two or three representatives from his paper, the +owner of the bowling alley, the man who had the $40,000 collection of +curios. All were stunned, as I was. As his closest friend, I took +charge: wired his relatives, went to an undertaker who knew him to +arrange for his burial, in Newark or Philadelphia, as his wife should +wish, she having no connection with Newark other than Peter.</p> + +<p>It was most distressing, the sense of dull despair and unwarranted +disaster which hung over the place. It was as though impish and pagan +forces, or malign ones outside life, had committed a crime of the +ugliest character. On Monday, the day he saw me, he was well. On Tuesday +morning he had a slight cold but insisted on running out somewhere +without his overcoat, against which his wife protested. Tuesday night +<a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" />he had a fever and took quinine and aspirin and a hot whiskey. +Wednesday morning he was worse and a doctor was called, but it was not +deemed serious. Wednesday night he was still worse and pneumonia had set +in. Thursday he was lower still, and by noon a metal syphon of oxygen +was sent for, to relieve the sense of suffocation setting in. Thursday +night he was weak and sinking, but expected to come round—and still, so +unexpected was the attack, so uncertain the probability of anything +fatal, that no word was sent, even to me. Friday morning he was no worse +and no better. "If he was no worse by night he might pull through." At +noon he was seized with a sudden sinking spell. Oxygen was applied by +his wife and a nurse, and the doctor sent for. By one-thirty he was +lower still, very low. "His face was blue, his lips ashen," his wife +told me. "We put the oxygen tube to his mouth and I said 'Can you speak, +Peter?' I was so nervous and frightened. He moved his head a little to +indicate 'no.' 'Peter,' I said, 'you mustn't let go! You must fight! +Think of me! Think of the babies!' I was a little crazy, I think, with +fear. He looked at me very fixedly. He stiffened and gritted his teeth +in a great effort. Then suddenly he collapsed and lay still. He was +dead."</p> + +<p>I could not help thinking of the force and energy—able at the last +minute, when he could not speak—to "grit his teeth" and "fight," a +minute before his death. What is the human spirit, or mind, that it can +fight so, to the very last? I felt as though some one, something, had +ruthlessly killed him, committed plain, unpunished murder—nothing more +and nothing less.</p> + +<p>And there were his cases of curios, his rug, his prints, his dishes, his +many, many schemes, his book to come out soon. I gazed and marveled. I +looked at his wife and babies, but could say nothing. It spelled, what +such things always spell, in the face of all our dreams, crass chance or +the willful, brutal indifference of Nature to all that relates to man. +If he is to prosper he must do so without her aid.</p> + +<p>That same night, sleeping in the room adjoining that in which was the +body, a pale candle burning near it, I felt as though Peter were walking +to and fro, to and fro, past me and into the room of his wife beyond, +thinking and grieving.<a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" /> His imagined wraith seemed horribly depressed +and distressed. Once he came over and moved his hand (something) over my +face. I felt him walking into the room where were his wife and kiddies, +but he could make no one see, hear, understand. I got up and looked at +his <i>cadaver</i> a long time, then went to bed again.</p> + +<p>The next day and the next and the next were filled with many things. His +mother and sister came on from the West as well as the mother and +brother of his wife. I had to look after his affairs, adjusting the +matter of insurance which he left, his art objects, the burial of his +body "in consecrated ground" in Philadelphia, with the consent and aid +of the local Catholic parish rector, else no burial. His mother desired +it, but he had never been a good Catholic and there was trouble. The +local parish assistant refused me, even the rector. Finally I threatened +the good father with an appeal to the diocesan bishop on the ground of +plain common sense and courtesy to a Catholic family, if not charity to +a tortured mother and wife—and obtained consent. All along I felt as if +a great crime had been committed by some one, foul murder. I could not +get it out of my mind, and it made me angry, not sad.</p> + +<p>Two, three, five, seven years later, I visited the little family in +Philadelphia. The wife was with her mother and father in a simple little +home street in a factory district, secretary and stenographer to an +architect. She was little changed—a little stouter, not so carefree, +industrious, patient. His boy, the petted F——, could not even recall +his father, the girl not at all of course. And in the place were a few +of his prints, two or three Chinese dishes, pottered by himself, his +loom with the unfinished rug. I remained for dinner and dreamed old +dreams, but I was uncomfortable and left early. And Mrs. Peter, +accompanying me to the steps, looked after me as though I, alone, was +all that was left of the old life.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="A_Doer_of_the_Word" id="A_Doer_of_the_Word" /><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" /><i>A Doer of the Word</i></h2> + + +<p>Noank is a little played-out fishing town on the southeastern coast of +Connecticut, lying half-way between New London and Stonington. Once it +was a profitable port for mackerel and cod fishing. Today its wharves +are deserted of all save a few lobster smacks. There is a shipyard, +employing three hundred and fifty men, a yacht-building establishment, +with two or three hired hands; a sail-loft, and some dozen or so shops +or sheds, where the odds and ends of fishing life are made and sold. +Everything is peaceful. The sound of the shipyard axes and hammers can +be heard for miles over the quiet waters of the bay. In the sunny lane +which follows the line of the shore, and along which a few shops +struggle in happy-go-lucky disorder, may be heard the voices and noises +of the workers at their work. Water gurgling about the stanchions of the +docks, the whistle of some fisherman as he dawdles over his nets, or +puts his fish ashore, the whirr of the single high-power sewing machine +in the sail-loft, often mingle in a pleasant harmony, and invite the +mind to repose and speculation.</p> + +<p>I was in a most examining and critical mood that summer, looking into +the nature and significance of many things, and was sitting one day in +the shed of the maker of sailboats, where a half-dozen characters of the +village were gathered, when some turn in the conversation brought up the +nature of man. He is queer, he is restless; life is not so very much +when you come to look upon many phases of it.</p> + +<p>"Did any of you ever know a contented man?" I inquired idly, merely for +the sake of something to say.</p> + +<p>There was silence for a moment, and one after another met my roving +glance with a thoughtful, self-involved and retrospective eye.</p> + +<p>Old Mr. Main was the first to answer.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I did. One."</p> + +<p>"So did I," put in the sailboat maker, as he stopped in his work to +think about it.</p> + +<p>"Yes, and I did," said a dark, squat, sunny, little old fisherman, who +sold cunners for bait in a little hut next door.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" />Maybe you and me are thinking of the same one, Jacob," said old Mr. +Main, looking inquisitively at the boat-builder.</p> + +<p>"I think we've all got the same man in mind, likely," returned the +builder.</p> + +<p>"Who is he?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Charlie Potter," said the builder.</p> + +<p>"That's the man!" exclaimed Mr. Main.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I reckon Charlie Potter is contented, if anybody be," said an old +fisherman who had hitherto been silent.</p> + +<p>Such unanimity of opinion struck me forcibly. Charlie Potter—what a +humble name; not very remarkable, to say the least. And to hear him so +spoken of in this restless, religious, quibbling community made it all +the more interesting.</p> + +<p>"So you really think he is contented, do you?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir! Charlie Potter is a contented man," replied Mr. Main, with +convincing emphasis.</p> + +<p>"Well," I returned, "that's rather interesting. What sort of a man is +he?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's just an ordinary man, not much of anybody. Fishes and builds +boats occasionally," put in the boat-builder.</p> + +<p>"Is that all? Nothing else?"</p> + +<p>"He preaches now and then—not regularly," said Mr. Main.</p> + +<p>A-ha! I thought. A religionist!</p> + +<p>"A preacher is expected to set a good example," I said.</p> + +<p>"He ain't a regular preacher," said Mr. Main, rather quickly. "He's just +kind of around in religious work."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" I asked curiously, not quite catching the import of +this "around."</p> + +<p>"Well," answered the boat builder, "he don't take any money for what he +does. He ain't got anything."</p> + +<p>"What does he live on then?" I persisted, still wondering at the +significance of "around in religious work."</p> + +<p>"I don't know. He used to fish for a living. Fishes yet once in a while, +I believe."</p> + +<p>"He makes models of yachts," put in one of the bystanders. "He sold the +New Haven Road one for two hundred dollars here not long ago."</p> + +<p>A vision of a happy-go-lucky Jack-of-all-trades arose before me. A +visionary—a theorist.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" />What else?" I asked, hoping to draw them out. "What makes you all +think he is contented? What does he do that makes him so contented?"</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mr. Main, after a considerable pause and with much of +sympathetic emphasis in his voice, "Charlie Potter is just a good man, +that's all. That's why he's contented. He does as near as he can what he +thinks he ought to by other people—poor people."</p> + +<p>"You won't find anybody with a kinder heart than Charlie Potter," put in +the boat-builder. "That's the trouble with him, really. He's too good. +He don't look after himself right, I say. A fellow has to look out for +himself some in this world. If he don't, no one else will."</p> + +<p>"Right you are, Henry," echoed a truculent sea voice from somewhere.</p> + +<p>I was becoming both amused and interested, intensely so.</p> + +<p>"If he wasn't that way, he'd be a darned sight better off than he is," +said a thirty-year-old helper, from a far corner of the room.</p> + +<p>"What makes you say that?" I queried. "Isn't it better to be +kind-hearted and generous than not?"</p> + +<p>"It's all right to be kind-hearted and generous, but that ain't sayin' +that you've got to give your last cent away and let your family go +hungry."</p> + +<p>"Is that what Charlie Potter does?"</p> + +<p>"Well, no, maybe he don't, but he comes mighty near to it at times. He +and his wife and his adopted children have been pretty close to it at +times."</p> + +<p>You see, this was the center, nearly, for all village gossip and +philosophic speculation, and many of the most important local problems, +morally and intellectually speaking, were here thrashed put.</p> + +<p>"There's no doubt but that's where Charlie is wrong," put in old Mr. +Main a little later. "He don't always stop to think of his family."</p> + +<p>"What did he ever do that struck you as being over-generous?" I asked of +the young man who had spoken from the corner.</p> + +<p>"That's all right," he replied in a rather irritated and peevish tone; +"I ain't going to go into details now, but there's <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" />people around here +that hang on him, and that he's give to, that he hadn't orter."</p> + +<p>"I believe in lookin' out for Number One, that's what I believe in," +interrupted the boat-maker, laying down his rule and line. "This givin' +up everything and goin' without yourself may be all right, but I don't +believe it. A man's first duty is to his wife and children, that's what +I say."</p> + +<p>"That's the way it looks to me," put in Mr. Main.</p> + +<p>"Well, does Potter give up everything and go without things?" I asked +the boat-maker.</p> + +<p>"Purty blamed near it at times," he returned definitely, then addressing +the company in general he added, "Look at the time he worked over there +on Fisher's Island, at the Ellersbie farm—the time they were packing +the ice there. You remember that, Henry, don't you?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Main nodded.</p> + +<p>"What about it?"</p> + +<p>"What about it! Why, he give his rubber boots away, like a darned fool, +to old drunken Jimmy Harper, and him loafin' around half the year drunk, +and worked around on the ice without any shoes himself. He might 'a' +took cold and died."</p> + +<p>"Why did he do it?" I queried, very much interested by now.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Charlie's naturally big-hearted," put in the little old man who +sold cunners. "He believes in the Lord and the Bible. Stands right +square on it, only he don't belong to no church like. He's got the +biggest heart I ever saw in a livin' being."</p> + +<p>"Course the other fellow didn't have any shoes for to wear," put in the +boat-maker explanatorily, "but he never would work, anyhow."</p> + +<p>They lapsed into silence while the latter returned to his measuring, and +then out of the drift of thought came this from the helper in the +corner:</p> + +<p>"Yes, and look at the way Bailey used to sponge on him. Get his money +Saturday night and drink it all up, and then Sunday morning, when his +wife and children were hungry, go cryin' around Potter. Dinged if I'd +'a' helped him. But Potter'd take the food right off his breakfast table +and give it to him. I saw him do it! I don't think that's right. Not +when he's got four or five orphans of his own to care for."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" />His own children?" I interrupted, trying to get the thing straight.</p> + +<p>"No, sir; just children he picked up around, here and there."</p> + +<p>Here is a curious character, sure enough, I thought—one well worth +looking into.</p> + +<p>Another lull, and then as I was leaving the room to give the matter a +little quiet attention, I remarked to the boat-maker:</p> + +<p>"Outside of his foolish giving, you haven't anything against Charlie +Potter, have you?"</p> + +<p>"Not a thing," he replied, in apparent astonishment. "Charlie Potter's +one of the best men that ever lived. He's a good man."</p> + +<p>I smiled at the inconsistency and went my way.</p> + +<p>A day or two later the loft of the sail-maker, instead of the shed of +the boat-builder, happened to be my lounging place, and thinking of this +theme, now uppermost in my mind, I said to him:</p> + +<p>"Do you know a man around here by the name of Charlie Potter?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I might say that I do. He lived here for over fifteen years."</p> + +<p>"What sort of a man is he?"</p> + +<p>He stopped in his stitching a moment to look at me, and then said:</p> + +<p>"How d'ye mean? By trade, so to speak, or religious-like?"</p> + +<p>"What is it he has done," I said, "that makes him so popular with all +you people? Everybody says he's a good man. Just what do you mean by +that?"</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, ceasing his work as though the subject were one of +extreme importance to him, "he's a peculiar man, Charlie is. He believes +in giving nearly everything he has away, if any one else needs it. He'd +give the coat off his back if you asked him for it. Some folks condemn +him for this, and for not giving everything to his wife and them orphans +he has, but I always thought the man was nearer right than most of us. +I've got a family myself—but, then, so's he, now, for that matter. It's +pretty hard to live up to your light always."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" />He looked away as if he expected some objection to be made to this, but +hearing none, he went on. "I always liked him personally very much. He +ain't around here now any more—lives up in Norwich, I think. He's a man +of his word, though, as truthful as kin be. He ain't never done nothin' +for me, I not bein' a takin' kind, but that's neither here nor there."</p> + +<p>He paused, in doubt apparently, as to what else to say.</p> + +<p>"You say he's so good," I said. "Tell me one thing that he ever did that +struck you as being preëminently good."</p> + +<p>"Well, now, I can't say as I kin, exactly, offhand," he replied, "there +bein' so many of them from time to time. He was always doin' things one +way and another. He give to everybody around here that asked him, and to +a good many that didn't. I remember once"—and a smile gave evidence of +a genial memory—"he give away a lot of pork that he'd put up for the +winter to some colored people back here—two or three barrels, maybe. +His wife didn't object, exactly, but my, how his mother-in-law did go on +about it. She was livin' with him then. She went and railed against him +all around."</p> + +<p>"She didn't like to give it to them, eh?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I should say not. She didn't set with his views, exactly—never +did. He took the pork, though—it was right in the coldest weather we +had that winter—and hauled it back about seven miles here to where they +lived, and handed it all out himself. Course they were awful hard up, +but then they might 'a' got along without it. They do now, sometimes. +Charlie's too good that way. It's his one fault, if you might so speak +of it."</p> + +<p>I smiled as the evidence accumulated. Houseless wayfarers, stopping to +find food and shelter under his roof, an orphan child carried seven +miles on foot from the bedside of a dead mother and cared for all +winter, three children, besides two of his own, being raised out of a +sense of affection and care for the fatherless.</p> + +<p>One day in the local post office I was idling a half hour with the +postmaster, when I again inquired:</p> + +<p>"Do you know Charlie Potter?"</p> + +<p>"I should think I did. Charlie Potter and I sailed together for +something over eleven years."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" />How do you mean sailed together?"</p> + +<p>"We were on the same schooner. This used to be a great port for mackerel +and cod. We were wrecked once together"</p> + +<p>"How was that?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, we went on rocks."</p> + +<p>"Any lives lost?"</p> + +<p>"No, but there came mighty near being. We helped each other in the boat. +I remember Charlie was the last one in that time. Wouldn't get in until +all the rest were safe."</p> + +<p>A sudden resolution came to me.</p> + +<p>"Do you know where he is now?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, he's up in Norwich, preaching or doing missionary work. He's kind +of busy all the time among the poor people, and so on. Never makes much +of anything out of it for himself, but just likes to do it, I guess."</p> + +<p>"Do you know how he manages to live?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't, exactly. He believes in trusting to Providence for what he +needs. He works though, too, at one job and another. He's a carpenter +for one thing. Got an idea the Lord will send 'im whatever he needs."</p> + +<p>"Well, and does He?"</p> + +<p>"Well, he lives." A little later he added:</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes. There's nothing lazy about Charlie. He's a good worker. When +he was in the fishing line here there wasn't a man worked harder than he +did. They can't anybody lay anything like that against him."</p> + +<p>"Is he very difficult to talk to?" I asked, meditating on seeking him +out. I had so little to do at the time, the very idlest of summers, and +the reports of this man's deeds were haunting me. I wanted to discover +for myself whether he was real or not—whether the reports were true. +The Samaritan in people is so easily exaggerated at times.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no. He's one of the finest men that way I ever knew. You could see +him, well enough, if you went up to Norwich, providing he's up there. He +usually is, though, I think. He lives there with his wife and mother, +you know."</p> + +<p>I caught an afternoon boat for New London and Norwich at one-thirty, and +arrived in Norwich at five. The narrow streets of the thriving little +mill city were alive with people. I had no address, could not obtain +one, but through the open <a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" />door of a news-stall near the boat landing I +called to the proprietor:</p> + +<p>"Do you know any one in Norwich by the name of Charlie Potter?"</p> + +<p>"The man who works around among the poor people here?"</p> + +<p>"That's the man."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know him. He lives out on Summer Street, Number Twelve, I think. +You'll find it in the city directory."</p> + +<p>The ready reply was rather astonishing. Norwich has something like +thirty thousand people.</p> + +<p>I walked out in search of Summer Street and finally found a beautiful +lane of that name climbing upward over gentle slopes, arched completely +with elms. Some of the pretty porches of the cottages extended nearly to +the sidewalk. Hammocks, rocking-chairs on verandas, benches under the +trees—all attested the love of idleness and shade in summer. Only the +glimpse of mills and factories in the valley below evidenced the grimmer +life which gave rise mayhap to the need of a man to work among the poor.</p> + +<p>"Is this Summer Street?" I inquired of an old darky who was strolling +cityward in the cool of the evening. An umbrella was under his arm and +an evening paper under his spectacled nose.</p> + +<p>"Bress de Lord!" he said, looking vaguely around. "Ah couldn't say. Ah +knows dat street—been on it fifty times—but Ah never did know de name. +Ha, ha, ha!"</p> + +<p>The hills about echoed his hearty laugh.</p> + +<p>"You don't happen to know Charlie Potter?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yas, sah. Ah knows Charlie Potter. Dat's his house right ovah dar."</p> + +<p>The house in which Charlie Potter lived was a two-story frame, +overhanging a sharp slope, which descended directly to the waters of the +pretty river below. For a mile or more, the valley of the river could be +seen, its slopes dotted with houses, the valley itself lined with mills. +Two little girls were upon the sloping lawn to the right of the house. A +stout, comfortable-looking man was sitting by a window on the left side +of the house, gazing out over the valley.</p> + +<p>"Is this where Charlie Potter lives?" I inquired of one of the children.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" />Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>"Did he live in Noank?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>Just then a pleasant-faced woman of forty-five or fifty issued from a +vine-covered door.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Potter?" she replied to my inquiry. "He'll be right out."</p> + +<p>She went about some little work at the side of the house, and in a +moment Charlie Potter appeared. He was short, thick-set, and weighed no +less than two hundred pounds. His face and hands were sunburned and +brown like those of every fisherman of Noank. An old wrinkled coat and a +baggy pair of gray trousers clothed his form loosely. Two inches of a +spotted, soft-brimmed hat were pulled carelessly over his eyes. His face +was round and full, but slightly seamed. His hands were large, his walk +uneven, and rather inclined to a side swing, or the sailor's roll. He +seemed an odd, pudgy person for so large a fame.</p> + +<p>"Is this Mr. Potter?"</p> + +<p>"I'm the man."</p> + +<p>"I live on a little hummock at the east of Mystic Island, off Noank."</p> + +<p>"You do?"</p> + +<p>"I came up to have a talk with you."</p> + +<p>"Will you come inside, or shall we sit out here?"</p> + +<p>"Let's sit on the step."</p> + +<p>"All right, let's sit on the step."</p> + +<p>He waddled out of the gate and sank comfortably on the little low +doorstep, with his feet on the cool bricks below. I dropped into the +space beside him, and was greeted by as sweet and kind a look as I have +ever seen in a man's eyes. It was one of perfect courtesy and good +nature—void of all suspicion.</p> + +<p>"We were sitting down in the sailboat maker's place at Noank the other +day, and I asked a half dozen of the old fellows whether they had ever +known a contented man. They all thought a while, and then they said they +had. Old Mr. Main and the rest of them agreed that Charlie Potter was a +contented man. What I want to know is, are you?"</p> + +<p>I looked quizzically into his eyes to see what effect this <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" />would have, +and if there was no evidence of a mist of pleasure and affection being +vigorously restrained I was very much mistaken. Something seemed to hold +the man in helpless silence as he gazed vacantly at nothing. He breathed +heavily, then drew himself together and lifted one of his big hands, as +if to touch me, but refrained.</p> + +<p>"Yes, brother," he said after a time, "I <i>am</i>."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's good," I replied, taking a slight mental exception to the +use of the word brother. "What makes you contented?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, unless it is that I've found out what I ought to do. You +see, I need so very little for myself that I couldn't be very unhappy."</p> + +<p>"What ought you to do?"</p> + +<p>"I ought to love my fellowmen."</p> + +<p>"And do you?"</p> + +<p>"Say, brother, but I do," he insisted quite simply and with no evidence +of chicane or make-believe—a simple, natural enthusiasm. "I love +everybody. There isn't anybody so low or so mean but I love him. I love +you, yes, I do. I love you."</p> + +<p>He reached out and touched me with his hand, and while I was inclined to +take exception to this very moral enthusiasm, I thrilled just the same +as I have not over the touch of any man in years. There was something +effective and electric about him, so very warm and foolishly human. The +glance which accompanied it spoke, it seemed, as truthfully as his +words. He probably did love me—or thought he did. What difference?</p> + +<p>We lapsed into silence. The scene below was so charming that I could +easily gaze at it in silence. This little house was very simple, not +poor, by no means prosperous, but well-ordered—such a home as such a +man might have. After a while I said:</p> + +<p>"It is very evident that you think the condition of some of your +fellowmen isn't what it ought to be. Tell me what you are trying to do. +What method have you for improving their condition?"</p> + +<p>"The way I reason is this-a-way," he began. "All that some people have +is their feelings, nothing else. Take a tramp, for instance, as I often +have. When you begin to sum up to see <a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" />where to begin, you find that all +he has in the world, besides his pipe and a little tobacco, is his +feelings. It's all most people have, rich or poor, though a good many +think they have more than that. I try not to injure anybody's feelings."</p> + +<p>He looked at me as though he had expressed the solution of the +difficulties of the world, and the wonderful, kindly eyes beamed in rich +romance upon the scene.</p> + +<p>"Very good," I said, "but what do you do? How do you go about it to aid +your fellowmen?"</p> + +<p>"Well," he answered, unconsciously overlooking his own personal actions +in the matter, "I try to bring them the salvation which the Bible +teaches. You know I stand on the Bible, from cover to cover."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know you stand on the Bible, but what do you do? You don't +merely preach the Bible to them. What do you do?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir, I don't preach the Bible at all. I stand on it myself. I try +as near as I can to do what it says. I go wherever I can be useful. If +anybody is sick or in trouble, I'm ready to go. I'll be a nurse. I'll +work and earn them food. I'll give them anything I can—that's what I +do."</p> + +<p>"How can you give when you haven't anything? They told me in Noank that +you never worked for money."</p> + +<p>"Not for myself alone. I never take any money for myself alone. That +would be self-seeking. Anything I earn or take is for the Lord, not me. +I never keep it. The Lord doesn't allow a man to be self-seeking."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, when you get money what do you do with it? You can't do and +live without money."</p> + +<p>He had been looking away across the river and the bridge to the city +below, but now he brought his eyes back and fixed them on me.</p> + +<p>"I've been working now for twenty years or more, and, although I've +never had more money than would last me a few days at a time, I've never +wanted for anything and I've been able to help others. I've run pretty +close sometimes. Time and time again I've been compelled to say, 'Lord, +I'm all out of coal,' or 'Lord, I'm going to have to ask you to get me +my fare to New Haven tomorrow,' but in the moment of my need He has +never forgotten me. Why, I've gone down to the depot time and time +again, when it was necessary for <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" />me to go, without five cents in my +pocket, and He's been there to meet me. Why, He wouldn't keep you +waiting when you're about His work. He wouldn't forget you—not for a +minute."</p> + +<p>I looked at the man in open-eyed amazement.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to say that you would go down to a depot without money and +wait for money to come to you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, brother," he said, with the softest light in his eyes, "if you only +knew what it is to have faith!"</p> + +<p>He laid his hand softly on mine.</p> + +<p>"What is car-fare to New Haven or to anywhere, to Him?"</p> + +<p>"But," I replied materially, "you haven't any car-fare when you go +there—how do you actually get it? Who gives it to you? Give me one +instance."</p> + +<p>"Why, it was only last week, brother, that a woman wrote me from Maiden, +Massachusetts, wanting me to come and see her. She's very sick with +consumption, and she thought she was going to die. I used to know her in +Noank, and she thought if she could get to see me she would feel better.</p> + +<p>"I didn't have any money at the time, but that didn't make any +difference.</p> + +<p>"'Lord,' I said, 'here's a woman sick in Maiden, and she wants me to +come to her. I haven't got any money, but I'll go right down to the +depot, in time to catch a certain train,' and I went. And while I was +standing there a man came up to me and said, 'Brother, I'm told to give +you this,' and he handed me ten dollars."</p> + +<p>"Did you know the man?" I exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"Never saw him before in my life," he replied, smiling genially.</p> + +<p>"And didn't he say anything more than that?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>I stared at him, and he added, as if to take the edge off my +astonishment:</p> + +<p>"Why, bless your heart, I knew he was from the Lord, just the moment I +saw him coming."</p> + +<p>"You mean to say you were standing there without a cent, expecting the +Lord to help you, and He did?"</p> + +<p>"'He shall call upon me, and I shall answer him,'" he answered simply, +quoting the Ninety-first Psalm.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" />This incident was still the subject of my inquiry when a little colored +girl came out of the yard and paused a moment before us.</p> + +<p>"May I go down across the bridge, papa?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he answered, and then as she tripped away, said:</p> + +<p>"She's one of my adopted children." He gazed between his knees at the +sidewalk.</p> + +<p>"Have you many others?"</p> + +<p>"Three."</p> + +<p>"Raising them, are you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"They seem to think, down in Noank, that living as you do and giving +everything away is satisfactory to you but rather hard on your wife and +children."</p> + +<p>"Well, it is true that she did feel a little uncertain in the beginning, +but she's never wanted for anything. She'll tell you herself that she's +never been without a thing that she really needed, and she's been +happy."</p> + +<p>He paused to meditate, I presume, over the opinion of his former fellow +townsmen, and then added:</p> + +<p>"It's true, there have been times when we have been right where we had +to have certain things pretty badly, before they came, but they never +failed to come."</p> + +<p>While he was still talking, Mrs. Potter came around the corner of the +house and out upon the sidewalk. She was going to the Saturday evening +market in the city below.</p> + +<p>"Here she is," he said. "Now you can ask her."</p> + +<p>"What is it?" she inquired, turning a serene and smiling face to me.</p> + +<p>"They still think, down in Noank, that you're not very happy with me," +he said. "They're afraid you want for something once in a while."</p> + +<p>She took this piece of neighborly interference in better fashion than +most would, I fancy.</p> + +<p>"I have never wanted for anything since I have been married to my +husband," she said. "I am thoroughly contented."</p> + +<p>She looked at him and he at her, and there passed between them an +affectionate glance.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, when she had passed after a pleasing little +<a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" />conversation, "my wife has been a great help to me. She has never +complained."</p> + +<p>"People are inclined to talk a little," I said.</p> + +<p>"Well, you see, she never complained, but she did feel a little bit +worried in the beginning."</p> + +<p>"Have you a mission or a church here in Norwich?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't believe in churches."</p> + +<p>"Not in churches?"</p> + +<p>"No. The sight of a minister preaching the word of God for so much a +year is all a mockery to me."</p> + +<p>"What do you believe in?"</p> + +<p>"Personal service. Churches and charitable institutions and societies +are all valueless. You can't reach your fellowman that way. They build +up buildings and pay salaries—but there's a better way." (I was +thinking of St. Francis and his original dream, before they threw him +out and established monasteries and a costume or uniform—the thing he +so much objected to.) "This giving of a few old clothes that the moths +will get anyhow, that won't do. You've got to give something of +yourself, and that's affection. Love is the only thing you can really +give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything. +Everything comes with it in some way or other."</p> + +<p>"How do you say?" I queried. "Money certainly comes handy sometimes."</p> + +<p>"Yes, when you give it with your own hand and heart—in no other way. It +comes to nothing just contributed to some thing. Ah!" he added, with +sudden animation, "the tangles men can get themselves into, the snarls, +the wretchedness! Troubles with women, with men whom they owe, with evil +things they say and think, until they can't walk down the street any +more without peeping about to see if they are followed. They can't look +you in die face; can't walk a straight course, but have got to sneak +around corners. Poor, miserable, unhappy—they're worrying and crying +and dodging one another!"</p> + +<p>He paused, lost in contemplation of the picture he had conjured up.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I went on catechistically, determined, if I could, to rout out +this matter of giving, this actual example of the <a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" />modus operandi of +Christian charity. "What do you do? How do you get along without giving +them money?"</p> + +<p>"I don't get along without giving them some money. There are cases, lots +of them, where a little money is necessary. But, brother, it is so +little necessary at times. It isn't always money they want. You can't +reach them with old clothes and charity societies," he insisted. "You've +got to love them, brother. You've got to go to them and love them, just +as they are, scarred and miserable and bad-hearted."</p> + +<p>"Yes," I replied doubtfully, deciding to follow this up later. "But just +what is it you do in a needy case? One instance?"</p> + +<p>"Why, one night I was passing a little house in this town," he went on, +"and I heard a woman crying. I went right to the door and opened it, and +when I got inside she just stopped and looked at me.</p> + +<p>"'Madam,' I said, 'I have come to help you, if I can. Now you tell me +what you're crying for.'</p> + +<p>"Well, sir, you know she sat there and told me how her husband drank and +how she didn't have anything in the house to eat, and so I just gave her +all I had and told her I would see her husband for her, and the next day +I went and hunted him up and said to him, 'Oh, brother, I wish you would +open your eyes and see what you are doing. I wish you wouldn't do that +any more. It's only misery you are creating.' And, you know, I got to +telling about how badly his wife felt about it, and how I intended to +work and try and help her, and bless me if he didn't up and promise me +before I got through that he wouldn't do that any more. And he didn't. +He's working today, and it's been two years since I went to him, +nearly."</p> + +<p>His eyes were alight with his appreciation of personal service.</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's one instance," I said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, there are plenty of them," he replied. "It's the only way. Down +here in New London a couple of winters ago we had a terrible time of it. +That was the winter of the panic, you know. Cold—my, but that was a +cold winter, and thousands of people out of work—just thousands. It was +awful. I tried to do what I could here and there all along, but finally +things got so bad there that I went to the mayor. I saw they <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" />were +raising some kind of a fund to help the poor, so I told him that if he'd +give me a little of the money they were talking of spending that I'd +feed the hungry for a cent-and-a-half a meal."</p> + +<p>"A cent-and-a-half a meal!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir. They all thought it was rather curious, not possible at +first, but they gave me the money and I fed 'em."</p> + +<p>"Good meals?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, as good as I ever eat myself," he replied.</p> + +<p>"How did you do it?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I can cook. I just went around to the markets, and told the +market-men what I wanted—heads of mackerel, and the part of the halibut +that's left after the rich man cuts off his steak—it's the poorest part +that he pays for, you know. And I went fishing myself two or three +times—borrowed a big boat and got men to help me—oh, I'm a good +fisherman, you know. And then I got the loan of an old covered brickyard +that no one was using any more, a great big thing that I could close up +and build fires in, and I put my kettle in there and rigged up tables +out of borrowed boards, and got people to loan me plates and spoons and +knives and forks and cups. I made fish chowder, and fish dinners, and +really I set a very fine table, I did, that winter."</p> + +<p>"For a cent-and-a-half a meal!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir, a cent-and-a-half a meal. Ask any one in New London. That's +all it cost me. The mayor said he was surprised at the way I did it."</p> + +<p>"Well, but there wasn't any particular personal service in the money +they gave you?" I asked, catching him up on that point. "They didn't +personally serve—those who gave you the money?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir, they didn't," he replied dreamily, with unconscious +simplicity. "But they gave through me, you see. That's the way it was. I +gave the personal service. Don't you see? That's the way."</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's the way," I smiled, avoiding as far as possible a further +discussion of this contradiction, so unconscious on his part, and in the +drag of his thought he took up another idea.</p> + +<p>"I clothed 'em that winter, too—went around and got barrels and boxes +of old clothing. Some of them felt a little <a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" />ashamed to put on the +things, but I got over that, all right. I was wearing them myself, and I +just told them, 'Don't feel badly, brother. I'm wearing them out of the +same barrel with you—I'm wearing them out of the same barrel.' Got my +clothes entirely free for that winter."</p> + +<p>"Can you always get all the aid you need for such enterprises?"</p> + +<p>"Usually, and then I can earn a good deal of money when I work steadily. +I can get a hundred and fifty dollars for a little yacht, you know, +every time I find time to make one; and I can make a good deal of money +out of fishing. I went out fishing here on the Fourth of July and caught +two hundred blackfish—four and five pounds, almost, every one of them."</p> + +<p>"That ought to be profitable," I said.</p> + +<p>"Well, it was," he replied.</p> + +<p>"How much did you get for them?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I didn't sell them," he said. "I never take money for my work that +way. I gave them all away."</p> + +<p>"What did you do?" I asked, laughing—"advertise for people to come for +them?"</p> + +<p>"No. My wife took some, and my daughters, and I took the rest and we +carried them around to people that we thought would like to have them."</p> + +<p>"Well, that wasn't so profitable, was it?" I commented amusedly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, they were fine fish," he replied, not seeming to have heard me.</p> + +<p>We dropped the subject of personal service at this point, and I +expressed the opinion that his service was only a temporary expedient. +Times changed, and with them, people. They forgot. Perhaps those he +aided were none the better for accepting his charity.</p> + +<p>"I know what you mean," he said. "But that don't make any difference. +You just have to keep on giving, that's all, see? Not all of 'em turn +back. It helps a lot. Money is the only dangerous thing to give—but I +never give money—not very often. I give myself, rather, as much as +possible. I give food and clothing, too, but I try to show 'em a new +way—that's not money, you know. So many people need a new way.<a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" /> They're +looking for it often, only they don't seem to know how. But God, dear +brother, however poor or mean they are—He knows. You've got to reach +the heart, you know, and I let Him help me. You've got to make a man +over in his soul, if you want to help him, and money won't help you to +do that, you know. No, it won't."</p> + +<p>He looked up at me in clear-eyed faith. It was remarkable.</p> + +<p>"Make them over?" I queried, still curious, for it was all like a +romance, and rather fantastic to me. "What do you mean? How do you make +them over?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, in their attitude, that's how. You've got to change a man and bring +him out of self-seeking if you really want to make him good. Most men +are so tangled up in their own errors and bad ways, and so worried over +their seekings, that unless you can set them to giving it's no use. +They're always seeking, and they don't know what they want half the +time. Money isn't the thing. Why, half of them wouldn't understand how +to use it if they had it. Their minds are not bright enough. Their +perceptions are not clear enough. All you can do is to make them content +with themselves. And that, giving to others will do. I never saw the man +or the woman yet who couldn't be happy if you could make them feel the +need of living for others, of doing something for somebody besides +themselves. It's a fact. Selfish people are never happy."</p> + +<p>He rubbed his hands as if he saw the solution of the world's +difficulties very clearly, and I said to him:</p> + +<p>"Well, now, you've got a man out of the mire, and 'saved,' as you call +it, and then what? What comes next?"</p> + +<p>"Well, then he's saved," he replied. "Happiness comes next—content."</p> + +<p>"I know. But must he go to church, or conform to certain rules?"</p> + +<p>"No, no, no!" he replied sweetly. "Nothing to do except to be good to +others. 'True religion and undefiled before our God and Father is +this,'" he quoted, "'to visit the widow and the orphan in their +affliction and to keep unspotted from the world. Charity is kind,' you +know. 'Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh not its +own.'"</p> + +<p>"Well," I said, rather aimlessly, I will admit, for this high <a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" />faith +staggered me. (How high! How high!) "And then what?"</p> + +<p>"Well, then the world would come about. It would be so much better. All +the misery is in the lack of sympathy one with another. When we get that +straightened out we can work in peace. There are lots of things to do, +you know."</p> + +<p>Yes, I thought, looking down on the mills and the driving force of +self-interest—on greed, lust, love of pleasure, all their fantastic and +yet moving dreams.</p> + +<p>"I'm an ignorant man myself, and I don't know all," he went on, "and I'd +like to study. My, but I'd like to look into all things, but I can't do +it now. We can't stop until this thing is straightened out. Some time, +maybe," and he looked peacefully away.</p> + +<p>"By the way," I said, "whatever became of the man to whom you gave your +rubber boots over on Fisher's Island?"</p> + +<p>His face lit up as if it were the most natural thing that I should know +about it.</p> + +<p>"Say," he exclaimed, in the most pleased and confidential way, as if we +were talking about a mutual friend, "I saw him not long ago. And, do you +know, he's a good man now—really, he is. Sober and hard-working. And, +say, would you believe it, he told me that I was the cause of it—just +that miserable old pair of rubber boots—what do you think of that?"</p> + +<p>I shook his hand at parting, and as we stood looking at each other in +the shadow of the evening I asked him:</p> + +<p>"Are you afraid to die?"</p> + +<p>"Say, brother, but I'm not," he returned. "It hasn't any terror for me +at all. I'm just as willing. My, but I'm willing."</p> + +<p>He smiled and gripped me heartily again, and, as I was starting to go, +said:</p> + +<p>"If I die tonight, it'll be all right. He'll use me just as long as He +needs me. That I know. Good-by."</p> + +<p>"Good-by," I called back.</p> + +<p>He hung by his fence, looking down upon the city. As I turned the next +corner I saw him awakening from his reflection and waddling stolidly +back into the house.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="My_Brother_Paul" id="My_Brother_Paul" /><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" /><i>My Brother Paul</i></h2> + + +<p>I like best to think of him as he was at the height of his all-too-brief +reputation and success, when, as the author and composer of various +American popular successes ("On the Banks of the Wabash," "Just Tell +Them That You Saw Me," and various others), as a third owner of one of +the most successful popular music publishing houses in the city and as +an actor and playwright of some small repute, he was wont to spin like a +moth in the white light of Broadway. By reason of a little luck and some +talent he had come so far, done so much for himself. In his day he had +been by turn a novitiate in a Western seminary which trained aspirants +for the Catholic priesthood; a singer and entertainer with a +perambulating cure-all oil troupe or wagon ("Hamlin's Wizard Oil") +traveling throughout Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; both end- and middle-man +with one, two or three different minstrel companies of repute; the +editor or originator and author of a "funny column" in a Western small +city paper; the author of the songs mentioned and a hundred others; a +black-face monologue artist; a white-face ditto, at Tony Pastor's, +Miner's and Niblo's of the old days; a comic lead; co-star and star in +such melodramas and farces as "The Danger Signal," "The Two Johns," "A +Tin Soldier," "The Midnight Bell," "A Green Goods Man" (a farce which he +himself wrote, by the way), and others. The man had a genius for the +kind of gayety, poetry and romance which may, and no doubt must be, +looked upon as exceedingly middle-class but which nonetheless had as +much charm as anything in this world can well have. He had at this time +absolutely no cares or financial worries of any kind, and this plus his +health, self-amusing disposition and talent for entertaining, made him a +most fascinating figure to contemplate.</p> + +<p>My first recollection of him is of myself as a boy often and he a man of +twenty-five (my oldest brother). He had come back to the town in which +we were then living solely to find his mother and help her. Six or seven +years before he had left without any explanation as to where he was +going, tired of or irritated by the routine of a home which for any +genuine <a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" />opportunity it offered him might as well never have existed. It +was run dominantly by my father in the interest of religious and moral +theories, with which this boy had little sympathy. He was probably not +understood by any one save my mother, who understood or at least +sympathized with us all. Placed in a school which was to turn him out a +priest, he had decamped, and now seven years later was here in this +small town, with fur coat and silk hat, a smart cane—a gentleman of the +theatrical profession. He had joined a minstrel show somewhere and had +become an "end-man." He had suspected that we were not as fortunate in +this world's goods as might be and so had returned. His really great +heart had called him.</p> + +<p>But the thing which haunts me, and which was typical of him then as +throughout life, was the spirit which he then possessed and conveyed. It +was one of an agile geniality, unmarred by thought of a serious +character but warm and genuinely tender and with a taste for simple +beauty which was most impressive. He was already the author of a cheap +songbook, "<i>The Paul Dresser Songster</i>" ("All the Songs Sung in the +Show"), and some copies of this he had with him, one of which he gave +me. But we having no musical instrument of any kind, he taught me some +of the melodies "by ear." The home in which by force of poverty we were +compelled to live was most unprepossessing and inconvenient, and the +result of his coming could but be our request for, or at least the +obvious need of, assistance. Still he was as much an enthusiastic part +of it as though he belonged to it. He was happy in it, and the cause of +his happiness was my mother, of whom he was intensely fond. I recall how +he hung about her in the kitchen or wherever she happened to be, how +enthusiastically he related all his plans for the future, his amusing +difficulties in the past. He was very grand and youthfully +self-important, or so we all thought, and still he patted her on the +shoulder or put his arm about her and kissed her. Until she died years +later she was truly his uppermost thought, crying with her at times over +her troubles and his. He contributed regularly to her support and sent +home all his cast-off clothing to be made over for the younger ones. +(Bless her tired hands!)</p> + +<p>As I look back now on my life, I realize quite clearly that of all the +members of my family, subsequent to my mother's <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" />death, the only one who +truly understood me, or, better yet, sympathized with my intellectual +and artistic point of view, was, strange as it may seem, this same Paul, +my dearest brother. Not that he was in any way fitted intellectually or +otherwise to enjoy high forms of art and learning and so guide me, or +that he understood, even in later years (long after I had written +"Sister Carrie," for instance), what it was that I was attempting to do; +he never did. His world was that of the popular song, the middle-class +actor or comedian, the middle-class comedy, and such humorous æsthetes +of the writing world as Bill Nye, Petroleum V. Nasby, the authors of the +Spoopendyke Papers, and "Samantha at Saratoga." As far as I could make +out—and I say this in no lofty, condescending spirit, by any means—he +was entirely full of simple, middle-class romance, middle-class humor, +middle-class tenderness and middle-class grossness, all of which I am +very free to say early disarmed and won me completely and kept me so +much his debtor that I should hesitate to try to acknowledge or explain +all that he did for or meant to me.</p> + +<p>Imagine, if you can, a man weighing all of three hundred pounds, not +more than five feet ten-and-one-half inches in height and yet of so +lithesome a build that he gave not the least sense of either undue +weight or lethargy. His temperament, always ebullient and radiant, +presented him as a clever, eager, cheerful, emotional and always highly +illusioned person with so collie-like a warmth that one found him +compelling interest and even admiration. Easily cast down at times by +the most trivial matters, at others, and for the most part, he was so +spirited and bubbly and emotional and sentimental that your fiercest or +most gloomy intellectual rages or moods could scarcely withstand his +smile. This tenderness or sympathy of his, a very human appreciation of +the weaknesses and errors as well as the toils and tribulations of most +of us, was by far his outstanding and most engaging quality, and gave +him a very definite force and charm. Admitting, as I freely do, that he +was very sensuous (gross, some people might have called him), that he +had an intense, possibly an undue fondness for women, a frivolous, +childish, horse-playish sense of humor at times, still he had other +qualities which were absolutely adorable. Life seemed positively to +spring up fountain-<a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" />like in him. One felt in him a capacity to do (in +his possibly limited field); an ability to achieve, whether he was doing +so at the moment or not, and a supreme willingness to share and radiate +his success—qualities exceedingly rare, I believe. Some people are so +successful, and yet you know their success is purely selfish—exclusive, +not inclusive; they never permit you to share in their lives. Not so my +good brother. He was generous to the point of self-destruction, and that +is literally true. He was the mark if not the prey of all those who +desired much or little for nothing, those who previously might not have +rendered him a service of any kind. He was all life and color, and +thousands (I use the word with care) noted and commented on it.</p> + +<p>When I first came to New York he was easily the foremost popular +song-writer of the day and was the cause of my coming, so soon at least, +having established himself in the publishing field and being so +comfortably settled as to offer me a kind of anchorage in so troubled a +commercial sea. I was very much afraid of New York, but with him here it +seemed not so bad. The firm of which he was a part had a floor or two in +an old residence turned office building, as so many are in New York, in +Twentieth Street very close to Broadway, and here, during the summer +months (1894-7) when the various theatrical road-companies, one of which +he was always a part, had returned for the closed season, he was to be +found aiding his concern in the reception and care of possible +applicants for songs and attracting by his personality such virtuosi of +the vaudeville and comedy stage as were likely to make the instrumental +publications of his firm a success.</p> + +<p>I may as well say here that he had no more business skill than a fly. At +the same time, he was in no wise sycophantic where either wealth, power +or fame was concerned. He considered himself a personage of sorts, and +was. The minister, the moralist, the religionist, the narrow, dogmatic +and self-centered in any field were likely to be the butt of his humor, +and he could imitate so many phases of character so cleverly that he was +the life of any idle pleasure-seeking party anywhere. To this day I +recall his characterization of an old Irish washerwoman arguing; a +stout, truculent German laying down the law; lean, gloomy, out-at-elbows +actors of the<a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" /> Hamlet or classic school complaining of their fate; the +stingy skinflint haggling over a dollar, and always with a skill for +titillating the risibilities which is vivid to me even to this day. +Other butts of his humor were the actor, the Irish day-laborer, the +negro and the Hebrew. And how he could imitate them! It is useless to +try to indicate such things in writing, the facial expression, the +intonation, the gestures; these are not things of words. Perhaps I can +best indicate the direction of his mind, if not his manner, by the +following:</p> + +<p>One night as we were on our way to a theater there stood on a nearby +corner in the cold a blind man singing and at the same time holding out +a little tin cup into which the coins of the charitably inclined were +supposed to be dropped. At once my brother noticed him, for he had an +eye for this sort of thing, the pathos of poverty as opposed to so gay a +scene, the street with its hurrying theater crowds. At the same time, so +inherently mischievous was his nature that although his sympathy for the +suffering or the ill-used of fate was overwhelming, he could not resist +combining his intended charity with a touch of the ridiculous.</p> + +<p>"Got any pennies?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Three or four."</p> + +<p>Going over to an outdoor candystand he exchanged a quarter for pennies, +then came back and waited until the singer, who had ceased singing, +should begin a new melody. A custom of the singer's, since the song was +of no import save as a means of attracting attention to him, was to +interpolate a "Thank you" after each coin dropped in his cup and between +the words of the song, regardless. It was this little idiosyncrasy which +evidently had attracted my brother's attention, although it had not +mine. Standing quite close, his pennies in his hand, he waited until the +singer had resumed, then began dropping pennies, waiting each time for +the "Thank you," which caused the song to go about as follows:</p> + +<p>"Da-a-'ling" (Clink!—"Thank you!") "I am—" (Clink!—"Thank you!") +"growing o-o-o-ld" (Clink!—"Thank you!"), "Silve-e-r—" (Clink!—"Thank +you!") "threads among the—" (Clink!—"Thank you!") "go-o-o-ld—" +(Clink! "Thank you!"). "Shine upon my-y" (Clink!—"Thank you!") +"bro-o-ow toda-a-y" (Clink!—"Thank you!"), "Life is—" (Clink!—"Thank<a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" /> +you!") "fading fast a-a-wa-a-ay" (Clink!—"Thank you!")—and so on ad +infinitum, until finally the beggar himself seemed to hesitate a little +and waver, only so solemn was his rôle of want and despair that of +course he dared not but had to go on until the last penny was in, and +until he was saying more "Thank yous" than words of the song. A +passer-by noticing it had begun to "Haw-haw!", at which others joined +in, myself included. The beggar himself, a rather sniveling specimen, +finally realizing what a figure he was cutting with his song and thanks, +emptied the coins into his hand and with an indescribably wry +expression, half-uncertainty and half smile, exclaimed, "I'll have to +thank you as long as you keep putting pennies in, I suppose. God bless +you!"</p> + +<p>My brother came away smiling and content.</p> + +<p>However, it is not as a humorist or song-writer or publisher that I wish +to portray him, but as an odd, lovable personality, possessed of so many +interesting and peculiar and almost indescribable traits. Of all +characters in fiction he perhaps most suggests Jack Falstaff, with his +love of women, his bravado and bluster and his innate good nature and +sympathy. Sympathy was really his outstanding characteristic, even more +than humor, although the latter was always present. One might recite a +thousand incidents of his generosity and out-of-hand charity, which +contained no least thought of return or reward. I recall that once there +was a boy who had been reared in one of the towns in which we had once +lived who had never had a chance in his youth, educationally or in any +other way, and, having turned out "bad" and sunk to the level of a bank +robber, had been detected in connection with three other men in the act +of robbing a bank, the watchman of which was subsequently killed in the +mêlée and escape. Of all four criminals only this one had been caught. +Somewhere in prison he had heard sung one of my brother's sentimental +ballads, "The Convict and the Bird," and recollecting that he had known +Paul wrote him, setting forth his life history and that now he had no +money or friends.</p> + +<p>At once my good brother was alive to the pathos of it. He showed the +letter to me and wanted to know what could be done. I suggested a +lawyer, of course, one of those brilliant legal friends of his—always +he had enthusiastic admirers in <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" />all walks—who might take the case for +little or nothing. There was the leader of Tammany Hall, Richard Croker, +who could be reached, he being a friend of Paul's. There was the +Governor himself to whom a plain recitation of the boy's unfortunate +life might be addressed, and with some hope of profit.</p> + +<p>All of these things he did, and more. He went to the prison (Sing Sing), +saw the warden and told him the story of the boy's life, then went to +the boy, or man, himself and gave him some money. He was introduced to +the Governor through influential friends and permitted to tell the tale. +There was much delay, a reprieve, a commutation of the death penalty to +life imprisonment—the best that could be done. But he was so grateful +for that, so pleased. You would have thought at the time that it was his +own life that had been spared.</p> + +<p>"Good heavens!" I jested. "You'd think you'd done the man an inestimable +service, getting him in the penitentiary for life!"</p> + +<p>"That's right," he grinned—an unbelievably provoking smile. "He'd +better be dead, wouldn't he? Well, I'll write and ask him which he'd +rather have."</p> + +<p>I recall again taking him to task for going to the rescue of a "down and +out" actor who had been highly successful and apparently not very +sympathetic in his day, one of that more or less gaudy clan that wastes +its substance, or so it seemed to me then, in riotous living. But now +being old and entirely discarded and forgotten, he was in need of +sympathy and aid. By some chance he knew Paul, or Paul had known him, +and now because of the former's obvious prosperity—he was much in the +papers at the time—he had appealed to him. The man lived with a sister +in a wretched little town far out on Long Island. On receiving his +appeal Paul seemed to wish to investigate for himself, possibly to +indulge in a little lofty romance or sentiment. At any rate he wanted me +to go along for the sake of companionship, so one dreary November +afternoon we went, saw the pantaloon, who did not impress me very much +even in his age and misery for he still had a few of his theatrical +manners and insincerities, and as we were coming away I said, "Paul, why +should you be the goat in <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" />every case?" for I had noted ever since I had +been in New York, which was several years then, that he was a victim of +many such importunities. If it was not the widow of a deceased friend +who needed a ton of coal or a sack of flour, or the reckless, headstrong +boy of parents too poor to save him from a term in jail or the +reformatory and who asked for fine-money or an appeal to higher powers +for clemency, or a wastrel actor or actress "down and out" and unable to +"get back to New York" and requiring his or her railroad fare wired +prepaid, it was the dead wastrel actor or actress who needed a coffin +and a decent form of burial.</p> + +<p>"Well, you know how it is, Thee" (he nearly always addressed me thus), +"when you're old and sick. As long as you're up and around and have +money, everybody's your friend. But once you're down and out no one +wants to see you any more—see?" Almost amusingly he was always sad over +those who had once been prosperous but who were now old and forgotten. +Some of his silliest tender songs conveyed as much.</p> + +<p>"Quite so," I complained, rather brashly, I suppose, "but why didn't he +save a little money when he had it? He made as much as you'll ever +make." The man had been a star. "He had plenty of it, didn't he? Why +should he come to you?"</p> + +<p>"Well, you know how it is, Thee," he explained in the kindliest and most +apologetic way. "When you're young and healthy like that you don't +think. I know how it is; I'm that way myself. We all have a little of it +in us. I have; you have. And anyhow youth's the time to spend money if +you're to get any good of it, isn't it? Of course when you're old you +can't expect much, but still I always feel as though I'd like to help +some of these old people." His eyes at such times always seemed more +like those of a mother contemplating a sick or injured child than those +of a man contemplating life.</p> + +<p>"But, Paul," I insisted on another occasion when he had just wired +twenty-five dollars somewhere to help bury some one. (My spirit was not +so niggardly as fearsome. I was constantly terrified in those days by +the thought of a poverty-stricken old age for myself and him—why, I +don't know. I was by no means incompetent.) "Why don't you save your +money? Why should you give it to every Tom, Dick and<a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" /> Harry that asks +you? You're not a charity organization, and you're not called upon to +feed and clothe and bury all the wasters who happen to cross your path. +If you were down and out how many do you suppose would help you?"</p> + +<p>"Well, you know," and his voice and manner were largely those of mother, +the same wonder, the same wistfulness and sweetness, the same bubbling +charity and tenderness of heart, "I can't say I haven't got it, can I?" +He was at the height of his success at the time. "And anyhow, what's the +use being so hard on people? We're all likely to get that way. You don't +know what pulls people down sometimes—not wasting always. It's +thoughtlessness, or trying to be happy. Remember how poor we were and +how mamma and papa used to worry." Often these references to mother or +father or their difficulties would bring tears to his eyes. "I can't +stand to see people suffer, that's all, not if I have anything," and his +eyes glowed sweetly. "And, after all," he added apologetically, "the +little I give isn't much. They don't get so much out of me. They don't +come to me every day."</p> + +<p>Another time—one Christmas Eve it was, when I was comparatively new to +New York (my second or third year), I was a little uncertain what to do, +having no connections outside of Paul and two sisters, one of whom was +then out of the city. The other, owing to various difficulties of her +own and a temporary estrangement from us—more our fault than hers—was +therefore not available. The rather drab state into which she had +allowed her marital affections to lead her was the main reason that kept +us apart. At any rate I felt that I could not, or rather would not, go +there. At the same time, owing to some difficulty or irritation with the +publishing house of which my brother was then part owner (it was +publishing the magazine which I was editing), we twain were also +estranged, nothing very deep really—a temporary feeling of distance and +indifference.</p> + +<p>So I had no place to go except to my room, which was in a poor part of +the town, or out to dine where best I might—some moderate-priced hotel, +was my thought. I had not seen my brother in three or four days, but +after I had strolled a block or two up Broadway I encountered him. I +have always thought that he had kept an eye on me and had really +<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" />followed me; was looking, in short, to see what I would do As usual he +was most smartly and comfortably dressed.</p> + +<p>"Where you going, Thee?" he called cheerfully.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no place in particular," I replied rather suavely, I presume. "Just +going up the street."</p> + +<p>"Now, see here, sport," he began—a favorite expression of his, +"sport"—with his face abeam, "what's the use you and me quarreling? +It's Christmas Eve, ain't it? It's a shame! Come on, let's have a drink +and then go out to dinner."</p> + +<p>"Well," I said, rather uncompromisingly, for at times his seemingly +extreme success and well-being irritated me, "I'll have a drink, but as +for dinner I have another engagement."</p> + +<p>"Aw, don't say that. What's the use being sore? You know I always feel +the same even if we do quarrel at times. Cut it out. Come on. You know +I'm your brother, and you're mine. It's all right with me, Thee. Let's +make it up, will you? Put 'er there! Come on, now. We'll go and have a +drink, see, something hot—it's Christmas Eve, sport. The old home +stuff."</p> + +<p>He smiled winsomely, coaxingly, really tenderly, as only he could smile. +I "gave in." But now as we entered the nearest shining bar, a Christmas +crowd buzzing within and without (it was the old Fifth Avenue Hotel), a +new thought seemed to strike him.</p> + +<p>"Seen E—— lately?" he inquired, mentioning the name of the troubled +sister who was having a very hard time indeed. Her husband had left her +and she was struggling over the care of two children.</p> + +<p>"No," I replied, rather shamefacedly, "not in a week or two—maybe +more."</p> + +<p>He clicked his tongue. He himself had not been near her in a month or +more. His face fell, and he looked very depressed.</p> + +<p>"It's too bad—a shame really. We oughtn't to do this way, you know, +sport. It ain't right. What do you say to our going around there," it +was in the upper thirties, "and see how she's making out?—take her a +few things, eh? Whaddya say?"</p> + +<p>I hadn't a spare dollar myself, but I knew well enough what he meant by +"take a few things" and who would pay for them.</p> + +<p>"Well, we'll have to hurry if we want to get anything now,"<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" /> I urged, +falling in with the idea since it promised peace, plenty and good will +all around, and we rushed the drink and departed. Near at hand was a +branch of one of the greatest grocery companies of the city, and near +it, too, his then favorite hotel, the Continental. En route we meditated +on the impossibility of delivery, the fact that we would have to carry +the things ourselves, but he at last solved that by declaring that he +could commandeer negro porters or bootblacks from the Continental. We +entered, and by sheer smiles on his part and some blarney heaped upon a +floor-manager, secured a turkey, sweet potatoes, peas, beans, a salad, a +strip of bacon, a ham, plum pudding, a basket of luscious fruit and I +know not what else—provender, I am sure, for a dozen meals. While it +was being wrapped and packed in borrowed baskets, soon to be returned, +he went across the way to the hotel and came back with three grinning +darkies who for the tip they knew they would receive preceded us up +Broadway, the nearest path to our destination. On the way a few +additional things were picked up: holly wreaths, toys, candy, nuts—and +then, really not knowing whether our plan might not mis-carry, we made +our way through the side street and to the particular apartment, or, +rather, flat-house, door, a most amusing Christmas procession, I fancy, +wondering and worrying now whether she would be there.</p> + +<p>But the door clicked in answer to our ring, and up we marched, the three +darkies first, instructed to inquire for her and then insist on leaving +the goods, while we lagged behind to see how she would take it.</p> + +<p>The stage arrangement worked as planned. My sister opened the door and +from the steps below we could hear her protesting that she had ordered +nothing, but the door being open the negroes walked in and a moment or +two afterwards ourselves. The packages were being piled on table and +floor, while my sister, unable quite to grasp this sudden visitation and +change of heart, stared.</p> + +<p>"Just thought we'd come around and have supper with you, E——, and +maybe dinner tomorrow if you'll let us," my brother chortled. "Merry +Christmas, you know. Christmas Eve. The good old home stuff—see? Old +sport here and I thought we couldn't stay away—tonight, anyhow."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" />He beamed on her in his most affectionate way, but she, suffering +regret over the recent estrangement as well as the difficulties of life +itself and the joy of this reunion, burst into tears, while the two +little ones danced about, and he and I put our arms about her.</p> + +<p>"There, there! It's all over now," he declared, tears welling in his +eyes. "It's all off. We'll can this scrapping stuff. Thee and I are a +couple of bums and we know it, but you can forgive us, can't you? We +ought to be ashamed of ourselves, all of us, and that's the truth. We've +been quarreling, too, haven't spoken for a week. Ain't that so, sport? +But it's all right now, eh?"</p> + +<p>There were tears in my eyes, too. One couldn't resist him. He had the +power of achieving the tenderest results in the simplest ways. We then +had supper, and breakfast the next morning, all staying and helping, +even to the washing and drying of the dishes, and thereafter for I don't +know how long we were all on the most affectionate terms, and he +eventually died in this sister's home, ministered to with absolutely +restless devotion by her for weeks before the end finally came.</p> + +<p>But, as I have said, I always prefer to think of him at this, the very +apex or tower window of his life. For most of this period he was gay and +carefree. The music company of which he was a third owner was at the +very top of its success. Its songs, as well as his, were everywhere. He +had in turn at this time a suite at the Gilsey House, the Marlborough, +the Normandie—always on Broadway, you see. The limelight district was +his home. He rose in the morning to the clang of the cars and the honk +of the automobiles outside; he retired at night as a gang of repair men +under flaring torches might be repairing a track, or the milk trucks +were rumbling to and from the ferries. He was in his way a public +restaurant and hotel favorite, a shining light in the theater managers' +offices, hotel bars and lobbies and wherever those flies of the +Tenderloin, those passing lords and celebrities of the sporting, +theatrical, newspaper and other worlds, are wont to gather. One of his +intimates, as I now recall, was "Bat" Masterson, the Western and now +retired (to Broadway!) bad man; Muldoon, the famous wrestler; Tod Sloan, +the jockey; "Battling" Nelson;<a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" /> James J. Corbett; Kid McCoy; Terry +McGovern—prize-fighters all. Such Tammany district leaders as James +Murphy, "The" McManus, Chrystie and Timothy Sullivan, Richard Carroll, +and even Richard Croker, the then reigning Tammany boss, were all on his +visiting list. He went to their meetings, rallies and district doings +generally to sing and play, and they came to his "office" occasionally. +Various high and mighties of the Roman Church, "fathers" with fine +parishes and good wine cellars, and judges of various municipal courts, +were also of his peculiar world. He was always running to one or the +other "to get somebody out," or they to him to get him to contribute +something to something, or to sing and play or act, and betimes they +were meeting each other in hotel grills or elsewhere and having a drink +and telling "funny stories."</p> + +<p>Apropos of this sense of humor of his, this love of horse-play almost, I +remember that once he had a new story to tell—a vulgar one of +course—and with it he had been making me and a dozen others laugh until +the tears coursed down our cheeks. It seemed new to everybody and, true +to his rather fantastic moods, he was determined to be the first to tell +it along Broadway. For some reason he was anxious to have me go along +with him, possibly because he found me at that time an unvarying +fountain of approval and laughter, possibly because he liked to show me +off as his rising brother, as he insisted that I was. At between six and +seven of a spring or summer evening, therefore, we issued from his suite +at the Gilsey House, whither he had returned to dress, and invading the +bar below were at once centered among a group who knew him. A whiskey, a +cigar, the story told to one, two, three, five, ten to roars of +laughter, and we were off, over the way to Weber & Fields (the Musical +Burlesque House Supreme of those days) in the same block, where to the +ticket seller and house manager, both of whom he knew, it was told. More +laughter, a cigar perhaps. Then we were off again, this time to the +ticket seller of Palmer's Theater at Thirtieth Street, thence to the bar +of the Grand Hotel at Thirty-first, the Imperial at Thirty-second, the +Martinique at Thirty-third, a famous drug-store at the southwest corner +of Thirty-fourth and Broadway, now gone of course, the manager of which +<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" />was a friend of his. It was a warm, moony night, and he took a glass of +vichy "for looks' sake," as he said.</p> + +<p>Then to the quondam Hotel Aulic at Thirty-fifth and Broadway—the center +and home of the then much-berated "Hotel Aulic or Actors' School of +Philosophy," and a most impressive actors' rendezvous where might have +been seen in the course of an evening all the "second leads" and "light +comedians" and "heavies" of this, that and the other road company, all +blazing with startling clothes and all explaining how they "knocked 'em" +here and there: in Peoria, Pasadena, Walla-Walla and where not. My +brother shone like a star when only one is in the sky.</p> + +<p>Over the way then to the Herald Building, its owls' eyes glowing in the +night, its presses thundering, the elevated thundering beside it. Here +was a business manager whom he knew. Then to the Herald Square Theater +on the opposite side of the street, ablaze with a small electric +sign—among the newest in the city. In this, as in the business office +of the <i>Herald</i> was another manager, and he knew them all. Thence to the +Marlborough bar and lobby at Thirty-sixth, the manager's office of the +Knickerbocker Theater at Thirty-eighth, stopping at the bar and lobby of +the Normandie, where some blazing professional beauty of the stage +waylaid him and exchanged theatrical witticisms with him—and what else? +Thence to the manager's office of the Casino at Thirty-ninth, some bar +which was across the street, another in Thirty-ninth west of Broadway, +an Italian restaurant on the ground floor of the Metropolitan at +Fortieth and Broadway, and at last but by no means least and by such +slow stages to the very door of the then Mecca of Meccas of all +theater- and sportdom, the sanctum sanctorum of all those sportively au +fait, "wise," the "real thing"—the Hotel Metropole at Broadway and +Forty-second Street, the then extreme northern limit of the white-light +district. And what a realm! Rounders and what not were here ensconced at +round tables, their backs against the leather-cushioned wall seats, the +adjoining windows open to all Broadway and the then all but somber +Forty-second Street.</p> + +<p>It was wonderful, the loud clothes, the bright straw hats, the canes, +the diamonds, the "hot" socks, the air of security <a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" />and well-being, so +easily assumed by those who gain an all too brief hour in this pretty, +petty world of make-believe and pleasure and pseudo-fame. Among them my +dearest brother was at his best. It was "Paul" here and "Paul" +there—"Why, hello, Dresser, you're just in time! Come on in. What'll +you have? Let me tell you something, Paul, a good one—". More drinks, +cigars, tales—magnificent tales of successes made, "great shows" given, +fights, deaths, marvelous winnings at cards, trickeries in racing, +prize-fighting; the "dogs" that some people were, the magnificent, +magnanimous "God's own salt" that others were. The oaths, stories of +women, what low, vice-besmeared, crime-soaked ghoulas certain reigning +beauties of the town or stage were—and so on and so on ad infinitum.</p> + +<p>But his story?—ah, yes. I had all but forgotten. It was told in every +place, not once but seven, eight, nine, ten times. We did not eat until +we reached the Metropole, and it was ten-thirty when we reached it! The +handshakes, the road stories—"This is my brother Theodore. He writes; +he's a newspaper man." The roars of laughter, the drinks! "Ah, my boy, +that's good, but let me tell you one—one that I heard out in Louisville +the other day." A seedy, shabby ne'er-do-well of a song-writer maybe +stopping the successful author in the midst of a tale to borrow a +dollar. Another actor, shabby and distrait, reciting the sad tale of a +year's misfortunes. Everywhere my dear brother was called to, slapped on +the back, chuckled with. He was successful. One of his best songs was +the rage, he had an interest in a going musical concern, he could confer +benefits, favors.</p> + +<p>Ah, me! Ah, me! That one could be so great, and that it should not last +for ever and for ever!</p> + +<p>Another of his outstanding characteristics was his love of women, a +really amusing and at times ridiculous quality. He was always sighing +over the beauty, innocence, sweetness, this and that, of young +maidenhood in his songs, but in real life he seemed to desire and +attract quite a different type—the young and beautiful, it is true, but +also the old, the homely and the somewhat savage—a catholicity of taste +I could never quite stomach. It was "Paul dearest" here and "Paul +dearest" there, especially in his work in connection with the +music-<a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" />house and the stage. In the former, popular ballad singers of +both sexes, some of the women most attractive and willful, were most +numerous, coming in daily from all parts of the world apparently to find +songs which they could sing on the American or even the English stage. +And it was a part of his duty, as a member of the firm and the one who +principally "handled" the so-called professional inquirers, to meet them +and see that they were shown what the catalogue contained. Occasionally +there was an aspiring female song-writer, often mere women visitors.</p> + +<p>Regardless, however, of whether they were young, old, attractive or +repulsive, male or female, I never knew any one whose manner was more +uniformly winsome or who seemed so easily to disarm or relax an +indifferent or irritated mood. He was positive sunshine, the same in +quality as that of a bright spring morning. His blue eyes focused +mellowly, his lips were tendrilled with smiles. He had a brisk, quick +manner, always somehow suggestive of my mother, who was never brisk.</p> + +<p>And how he fascinated them, the women! Their quite shameless daring +where he was concerned! Positively, in the face of it I used to wonder +what had become of all the vaunted and so-called "stabilizing morality" +of the world. None of it seemed to be in the possession of these women, +especially the young and beautiful. They were distant and freezing +enough to all who did not interest them, but let a personality such as +his come into view and they were all wiles, bending and alluring graces. +It was so obvious, this fascination he had for them and they for him, +that at times it took on a comic look.</p> + +<p>"Get onto the hit he's making," one would nudge another and remark.</p> + +<p>"Say, some tenderness, that!" This in reference to a smile or a melting +glance on the part of a female.</p> + +<p>"Nothing like a way with the ladies. Some baby, eh, boys?"—this +following the flick of a skirt and a backward-tossed glance perhaps, as +some noticeable beauty passed out.</p> + +<p>"No wonder he's cheerful," a sour and yet philosophic vaudevillian, who +was mostly out of a job and hung about the place for what free meals he +could obtain, once remarked <a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" />to me in a heavy and morose undertone. "If +I had that many women crazy about me I'd be too."</p> + +<p>And the results of these encounters with beauty! Always he had something +most important to attend to, morning, noon or night, and whenever I +encountered him after some such statement "the important thing" was, of +course, a woman. As time went on and he began to look upon me as +something more than a thin, spindling, dyspeptic and disgruntled youth, +he began to wish to introduce me to some of his marvelous followers, and +then I could see how completely dependent upon beauty in the flesh he +was, how it made his life and world.</p> + +<p>One day as we were all sitting in the office, a large group of +vaudevillians, song-writers, singers, a chance remark gave rise to a +subsequent practical joke at Paul's expense. "I'll bet," observed some +one, "that if a strange man were to rush in here with a revolver and +say, 'Where's the man that seduced my wife?' Paul would be the first to +duck. He wouldn't wait to find out whether he was the one meant or not."</p> + +<p>Much laughter followed, and some thought. The subject of this banter +was, of course, not present at the time. There was one actor who hung +about there who was decidedly skillful in make-up. On more than one +occasion he had disguised himself there in the office for our benefit. +Coöperating with us, he disguised himself now as a very severe and even +savage-looking person of about thirty-five—side-burns, mustachios and +goatee. Then, with our aid, timing his arrival to an hour when Paul was +certain to be at his desk, he entered briskly and vigorously and, +looking about with a savage air, demanded, "Where is Paul Dresser?"</p> + +<p>The latter turned almost apprehensively, I thought, and at once seemed +by no means captivated by the man's looks.</p> + +<p>"That's Mr. Dresser there," explained one of the confederates most +willingly.</p> + +<p>The stranger turned and glared at him. "So you're the scoundrel that's +been running around with my wife, are you?" he demanded, approaching him +and placing one hand on his right hip.</p> + +<p>Paul made no effort to explain. It did not occur to him to deny the +allegation, although he had never seen the man <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" />before. With a rising +and backward movement he fell against the rail behind him, lifting both +hands in fright and exclaiming, "Why—why—Don't shoot!" His expression +was one of guilt, astonishment, perplexity. As some one afterwards said, +"As puzzled as if he was trying to discover which injured husband it +might be." The shout that went up—for it was agreed beforehand that the +joke must not be carried far—convinced him that a hoax had been +perpetrated, and the removal by the actor of his hat, sideburns and +mustache revealed the true character of the injured husband. At first +inclined to be angry and sulky, later on he saw the humor of his own +indefinite position in the matter and laughed as heartily as any. But I +fancy it developed a strain of uncertainty in him also in regard to +injured husbands, for he was never afterwards inclined to interest +himself in the much-married, and gave such wives a wide berth.</p> + +<p>But his great forte was of course his song-writing, and of this, before +I speak of anything else, I wish to have my say. It was a gift, quite a +compelling one, out of which, before he died, he had made thousands, all +spent in the manner described. Never having the least power to interpret +anything in a fine musical way, still he was always full of music of a +tender, sometimes sad, sometimes gay, kind—that of the ballad-maker of +a nation. He was constantly attempting to work them out of himself, not +quickly but slowly, brooding as it were over the piano wherever he might +find one and could have a little solitude, at times on the organ (his +favorite instrument), improvising various sad or wistful strains, some +of which he jotted down, others of which, having mastered, he strove to +fit words to. At such times he preferred to be alone or with some one +whose temperament in no way clashed but rather harmonized with his own. +Living with one of my sisters for a period of years, he had a room +specially fitted up for his composing work, a very small room for so +very large a man, within which he would shut himself and thrum a melody +by the hour, especially toward evening or at night. He seemed to have a +peculiar fondness for the twilight hour, and at this time might thrum +over one strain and another until over some particular one, a new song +usually, he would be in tears!</p> + +<p><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" />And what pale little things they were really, mere bits and scraps of +sentiment and melodrama in story form, most asinine sighings over home +and mother and lost sweethearts and dead heroes such as never were in +real life, and yet with something about them, in the music at least, +which always appealed to me intensely and must have appealed to others, +since they attained so wide a circulation. They bespoke, as I always +felt, a wistful, seeking, uncertain temperament, tender and illusioned, +with no practical knowledge of any side of life, but full of a true +poetic feeling for the mystery and pathos of life and death, the wonder +of the waters, the stars, the flowers, accidents of life, success, +failure. Beginning with a song called "Wide Wings" (published by a small +retail music-house in Evansville, Indiana), and followed by such +national successes as "The Letter That Never Came," "I Believe It, For +My Mother Told Me So" (!), "The Convict and the Bird," "The Pardon Came +Too Late," "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," "The Blue and the Grey," +"On the Bowery," "On the Banks of the Wabash," and a number of others, +he was never content to rest and never really happy, I think, save when +composing. During this time, however, he was at different periods all +the things I have described—a black-face monologue artist, an end- and +at times a middle-man, a publisher, and so on.</p> + +<p>I recall being with him at the time he composed two of his most famous +successes: "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," and "On the Banks of the +Wabash," and noting his peculiar mood, almost amounting to a deep +depression which ended a little later in marked elation or satisfaction, +once he had succeeded in evoking something which really pleased him.</p> + +<p>The first of these songs must have followed an actual encounter with +some woman or girl whose life had seemingly if not actually gone to +wreck on the shore of love or passion. At any rate he came into the +office of his publishing house one gray November Sunday afternoon—it +was our custom to go there occasionally, a dozen or more congenial +souls, about as one might go to a club—and going into a small room +which was fitted up with a piano as a "try-out" room (professionals +desiring a song were frequently taught it in the office), he began +improvising, or rather repeating over and over, a <a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" />certain strain which +was evidently in his mind. A little while later he came out and said, +"Listen to this, will you, Thee?"</p> + +<p>He played and sang the first verse and chorus. In the middle of the +latter, so moved was he by the sentiment of it, his voice broke and he +had to stop. Tears stood in his eyes and he wiped them away. A moment or +two later he was able to go through it without wavering and I thought it +charming for the type of thing it was intended to be. Later on (the +following spring) I was literally astonished to see how, after those +various efforts usually made by popular music publishers to make a song +"go"—advertising it in the <i>Clipper</i> and <i>Mirror</i>, getting various +vaudeville singers to sing it, and so forth—it suddenly began to sell, +thousands upon thousands of copies being wrapped in great bundles under +my very eyes and shipped express or freight to various parts of the +country. Letters and telegrams, even, from all parts of the nation began +to pour in—"Forward express today —— copies of Dresser's 'Tell Them +That You Saw Me.'" The firm was at once as busy as a bee-hive, on "easy +street" again, as the expression went, "in clover." Just before this +there had been a slight slump in its business and in my brother's +finances, but now once more he was his most engaging self. Every one in +that layer of life which understands or takes an interest in popular +songs and their creators knew of him and his song, his latest success. +He was, as it were, a revivified figure on Broadway. His barbers, +barkeepers, hotel clerks, theatrical box-office clerks, hotel managers +and the stars and singers of the street knew of it and him. Some +enterprising button firm got out a button on which the phrase was +printed. Comedians on the stage, newspaper paragraphers, his bank teller +or his tailor, even staid business men wishing to appear "up-to-date," +used it as a parting salute. The hand-organs, the bands and the theater +orchestras everywhere were using it. One could scarcely turn a corner or +go into a cheap music hall or variety house without hearing a parody of +it. It was wonderful, the enormous furore that it seemed to create, and +of course my dear brother was privileged to walk about smiling and +secure, his bank account large, his friends numerous, in the pink of +health, and gloating over the fact that he was a success, well known, a +genuine creator of popular songs.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" />It was the same with "On the Banks of the Wabash," possibly an even +greater success, for it came eventually to be adopted by his native +State as its State song, and in that region streets and a town were +named after him. In an almost unintentional and unthinking way I had a +hand in that, and it has always cheered me to think that I had, although +I have never had the least talent for musical composition or song +versification. It was one of those delightful summer Sunday mornings +(1896, I believe), when I was still connected with his firm as editor of +the little monthly they were issuing, and he and myself, living with my +sister E——, that we had gone over to this office to do a little work. +I had a number of current magazines I wished to examine; he was always +wishing to compose something, to express that ebullient and emotional +soul of his in some way.</p> + +<p>"What do you suppose would make a good song these days?" he asked in an +idle, meditative mood, sitting at the piano and thrumming while I at a +nearby table was looking over my papers. "Why don't you give me an idea +for one once in a while, sport? You ought to be able to suggest +something."</p> + +<p>"Me?" I queried, almost contemptuously, I suppose. I could be very lofty +at times in regard to his work, much as I admired him—vain and yet more +or less dependent snip that I was. "I can't write those things. Why +don't you write something about a State or a river? Look at 'My Old +Kentucky Home,' 'Dixie,' 'Old Black Joe'—why don't you do something +like that, something that suggests a part of America? People like that. +Take Indiana—what's the matter with it—the Wabash River? It's as good +as any other river, and you were 'raised' beside it."</p> + +<p>I have to smile even now as I recall the apparent zest or feeling with +which all at once he seized on this. It seemed to appeal to him +immensely. "That's not a bad idea," he agreed, "but how would you go +about it? Why don't you write the words and let me put the music to +them? We'll do it together!"</p> + +<p>"But I can't," I replied. "I don't know how to do those things. You +write it. I'll help—maybe."</p> + +<p>After a little urging—I think the fineness of the morning <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" />had as much +to do with it as anything—I took a piece of paper and after meditating +a while scribbled in the most tentative manner imaginable the first +verse and chorus of that song almost as it was published. I think one or +two lines were too long or didn't rhyme, but eventually either he or I +hammered them into shape, but before that I rather shamefacedly turned +them over to him, for somehow I was convinced that this work was not for +me and that I was rather loftily and cynically attempting what my good +brother would do in all faith and feeling.</p> + +<p>He read it, insisted that it was fine and that I should do a second +verse, something with a story in it, a girl perhaps—a task which I +solemnly rejected.</p> + +<p>"No, you put it in. It's yours. I'm through."</p> + +<p>Some time later, disagreeing with the firm as to the conduct of the +magazine, I left—really was forced out—which raised a little feeling +on my part; not on his, I am sure, for I was very difficult to deal +with.</p> + +<p>Time passed and I heard nothing. I had been able to succeed in a +somewhat different realm, that of the magazine contributor, and although +I thought a great deal of my brother I paid very little attention to him +or his affairs, being much more concerned with my own. One spring night, +however, the following year, as I was lying in my bed trying to sleep, I +heard a quartette of boys in the distance approaching along the street +in which I had my room. I could not make out the words at first but the +melody at once attracted my attention. It was plaintive and compelling. +I listened, attracted, satisfied that it was some new popular success +that had "caught on." As they drew near my window I heard the words "On +the Banks of the Wabash" most mellifluously harmonized.</p> + +<p>I jumped up. They were my words! It was Paul's song! He had another +"hit" then—"On the Banks of the Wabash," and they were singing it in +the streets already! I leaned out of the window and listened as they +approached and passed on, their arms about each other's shoulders, the +whole song being sung in the still street, as it were, for my benefit. +The night was so warm, delicious. A full moon was overhead. I was young, +lonely, wistful. It brought back so much of my already spent youth that +I was ready to cry—for joy principally. In <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" />three more months it was +everywhere, in the papers, on the stage, on the street-organs, played by +orchestras, bands, whistled and sung in the streets. One day on Broadway +near the Marlborough I met my brother, gold-headed cane, silk shirt, a +smart summer suit, a gay straw hat.</p> + +<p>"Ah," I said, rather sarcastically, for I still felt peeved that he had +shown so little interest in my affairs at the time I was leaving. "On +the banks, I see."</p> + +<p>"On the banks," he replied cordially. "You turned the trick for me, +Thee, that time. What are you doing now? Why don't you ever come and see +me? I'm still your brother, you know. A part of that is really yours."</p> + +<p>"Cut that!" I replied most savagely. "I couldn't write a song like that +in a million years. You know I couldn't. The words are nothing."</p> + +<p>"Oh, all right. It's true, though, you know. Where do you keep yourself? +Why don't you come and see me? Why be down on me? I live here, you +know." He looked up at the then brisk and successful hotel.</p> + +<p>"Well, maybe I will some time," I said distantly, but with no particular +desire to mend matters, and we parted.</p> + +<p>There was, however, several years later, a sequel to all this and one so +characteristic of him that it has always remained in my mind as one of +the really beautiful things of life, and I might as well tell it here +and now. About five years later I had become so disappointed in +connection with my work and the unfriendly pressure of life that I had +suffered what subsequently appeared to have been a purely psychic +breakdown or relapse, not physical, but one which left me in no mood or +condition to go on with my work, or any work indeed in any form. Hope +had disappeared in a sad haze. I could apparently succeed in nothing, do +nothing mentally that was worth while. At the same time I had all but +retired from the world, living on less and less until finally I had +descended into those depths where I was in the grip of actual want, with +no place to which my pride would let me turn. I had always been too vain +and self-centered. Apparently there was but one door, and I was very +close to it. To match my purse I had retired to a still sorrier +neighborhood in B——, one of the poorest. I desired most of all to be +let alone, to be to myself. Still I <a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" />could not be, for occasionally I +met people, and certain prospects and necessities drove me to various +publishing houses. One day as I was walking in some street near Broadway +(not on it) in New York, I ran into my brother quite by accident, he as +prosperous and comfortable as ever. I think I resented him more than +ever. He was of course astonished, shocked, as I could plainly see, by +my appearance and desire not to be seen. He demanded to know where I was +living, wanted me to come then and there and stay with him, wanted me to +tell him what the trouble was—all of which I rather stubbornly refused +to do and finally got away—not however without giving him my address, +though with the caution that I wanted nothing.</p> + +<p>The next morning he was there bright and early in a cab. He was the most +vehement, the most tender, the most disturbed creature I have ever seen. +He was like a distrait mother with a sick child more than anything else.</p> + +<p>"For God's sake," he commented when he saw me, "living in a place like +this—and at this number, too!" (130 it was, and he was superstitious as +to the thirteen.) "I knew there'd be a damned thirteen in it!" he +ejaculated. "And me over in New York! Jesus Christ! And you sick and run +down this way! I might have known. It's just like you. I haven't heard a +thing about you in I don't know when. Well, I'm not going back without +you, that's all. You've got to come with me now, see? Get your clothes, +that's all. The cabby'll take your trunk. I know just the place for you, +and you're going there tomorrow or next day or next week, but you're +coming with me now. My God, I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself, +and me feeling the way I do about you!" His eyes all but brimmed.</p> + +<p>I was so morose and despondent that, grateful as I felt, I could +scarcely take his mood at its value. I resented it, resented myself, my +state, life.</p> + +<p>"I can't," I said finally, or so I thought. "I won't. I don't need your +help. You don't owe me anything. You've done enough already."</p> + +<p>"Owe, hell!" he retorted. "Who's talking about 'owe'? And you my +brother—my own flesh and blood! Why, Thee, for that matter, I owe you +half of 'On the Banks,' and you know <a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" />it. You can't go on living like +this. You're sick and discouraged. You can't fool me. Why, Thee, you're +a big man. You've just got to come out of this! Damn it—don't you +see—don't make me"—and he took out his handkerchief and wiped his +eyes. "You can't help yourself now, but you can later, don't you see? +Come on. Get your things. I'd never forgive myself if I didn't. You've +got to come, that's all. I won't go without you," and he began looking +about for my bag and trunk.</p> + +<p>I still protested weakly, but in vain. His affection was so overwhelming +and tender that it made me weak. I allowed him to help me get my things +together. Then he paid the bill, a small one, and on the way to the +hotel insisted on forcing a roll of bills on me, all that he had with +him. I was compelled at once, that same day or the next, to indulge in a +suit, hat, shoes, underwear, all that I needed. A bedroom adjoining his +suite at the hotel was taken, and for two days I lived there, later +accompanying him in his car to a famous sanitarium in Westchester, one +in charge of an old friend of his, a well-known ex-wrestler whose fame +for this sort of work was great. Here I was booked for six weeks, all +expenses paid, until I should "be on my feet again," as he expressed it. +Then he left, only to visit and revisit me until I returned to the city, +fairly well restored in nerves if not in health.</p> + +<p>But could one ever forget the mingled sadness and fervor of his original +appeal, the actual distress written in his face, the unlimited generosity +of his mood and deed as well as his unmerited self-denunciation? One +pictures such tenderness and concern as existing between parents and +children, but rarely between brothers. Here he was evincing the same +thing, as soft as love itself, and he a man of years and some affairs +and I an irritable, distrait and peevish soul.</p> + +<p>Take note, ye men of satire and spleen. All men are not selfish or hard.</p> + +<p>The final phase of course related to his untimely end. He was not quite +fifty-five when he died, and with a slightly more rugged quality of mind +he might have lasted to seventy. It was due really to the failure of his +firm (internal dissensions and rivalries, in no way due to him, however, +as I have been told) and what he foolishly deemed to be the end of his +financial and social glory. His was one of those simple, confiding, +<a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" />non-hardy dispositions, warm and colorful but intensely sensitive, +easily and even fatally chilled by the icy blasts of human difficulty, +however slight. You have no doubt seen some animals, cats, dogs, birds, +of an especially affectionate nature, which when translated to a strange +or unfriendly climate soon droop and die. They have no spiritual +resources wherewith to contemplate what they do not understand or know. +Now his friends would leave him. Now that bright world of which he had +been a part would know him no more. It was pathetic, really. He emanated +a kind of fear. Depression and even despair seemed to hang about him +like a cloak. He could not shake it off. And yet, literally, in his case +there was nothing to fear, if he had only known.</p> + +<p>And yet two years before he did die, I knew he would. Fantastic as it +may seem, to be shut out from that bright world of which he deemed +himself an essential figure was all but unendurable. He had no ready +money now—not the same amount anyhow. He could not greet his old-time +friends so gayly, entertain so freely. Meeting him on Broadway shortly +after the failure and asking after his affairs, he talked of going into +business for himself as a publisher, but I realized that he could not. +He had neither the ability nor the talent for that, nor the heart. He +was not a business man but a song-writer and actor, had never been +anything but that. He tried in this new situation to write songs, but he +could not. They were too morbid. What he needed was some one to buoy him +up, a manager, a strong confidant of some kind, some one who would have +taken his affairs in hand and shown him what to do. As it was he had no +one. His friends, like winter-frightened birds, had already departed. +Personally, I was in no position to do anything at the time, being more +or less depressed myself and but slowly emerging from difficulties which +had held me for a number of years.</p> + +<p>About a year or so after he failed my sister E—— announced that Paul +had been there and that he was coming to live with her. He could not pay +so much then, being involved with all sorts of examinations of one kind +and another, but neither did he have to. Her memory was not short; she +gave him the fullness of her home. A few months later he was ostensibly +connected with another publishing house, but by <a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" />then he was feeling so +poorly physically and was finding consolation probably in some drinking +and the caresses of those feminine friends who have, alas, only caresses +to offer. A little later I met a doctor who said, "Paul cannot live. He +has pernicious anæmia. He is breaking down inside and doesn't know it. +He can't last long. He's too depressed." I knew it was so and what the +remedy was—money and success once more, the petty pettings and flattery +of that little world of which he had been a part but which now was no +more for him. Of all those who had been so lavish in their greetings and +companionship earlier in his life, scarcely one, so far as I could make +out, found him in that retired world to which he was forced. One or two +pegged-out actors sought him and borrowed a little of the little that he +had; a few others came when he had nothing at all. His partners, +quarreling among themselves and feeling that they had done him an +injustice, remained religiously away. He found, as he often told my +sister, broken horse-shoes (a "bad sign"), met cross-eyed women, another +"bad sign," was pursued apparently by the inimical number thirteen—and +all these little straws depressed him horribly. Finally, being no longer +strong enough to be about, he took to his bed and remained there days at +a time, feeling well while in bed but weak when up. For a little while +he would go "downtown" to see this, that and the other person, but would +soon return. One day on coming back home he found one of his hats lying +on his bed, accidentally put there by one of the children, and according +to my sister, who was present at the time, he was all but petrified by +the sight of it. To him it was the death-sign. Some one had told him so +not long before!!!</p> + +<p>Then, not incuriously, seeing the affectional tie that had always held +us, he wanted to see me every day. He had a desire to talk to me about +his early life, the romance of it—maybe I could write a story some +time, tell something about him! (Best of brothers, here it is, a thin +little flower to lay at your feet!) To please him I made notes, although +I knew most of it. On these occasions he was always his old self, full +of ridiculous stories, quips and slight <i>mots</i>, all in his old and best +vein. He would soon be himself, he now insisted.</p> + +<p>Then one evening in late November, before I had time to <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" />call upon him +(I lived about a mile away), a hurry-call came from E——. He had +suddenly died at five in the afternoon; a blood-vessel had burst in the +head. When I arrived he was already cold in death, his soft hands folded +over his chest, his face turned to one side on the pillow, that +indescribable sweetness of expression about the eyes and mouth—the +empty shell of the beetle. There were tears, a band of reporters from +the papers, the next day obituary news articles, and after that a host +of friends and flowers, flowers, flowers. It is amazing what +satisfaction the average mind takes in standardized floral forms—broken +columns and gates ajar!</p> + +<p>Being ostensibly a Catholic, a Catholic sister-in-law and other +relatives insistently arranged for a solemn high requiem mass at the +church of one of his favorite rectors. All Broadway was there, more +flowers, his latest song read from the altar. Then there was a carriage +procession to a distant Catholic graveyard somewhere, his friend, the +rector of the church, officiating at the grave. It was so cold and +dreary there, horrible. Later on he was removed to Chicago.</p> + +<p>But still I think of him as not there or anywhere in the realm of space, +but on Broadway between Twenty-ninth and Forty-second Streets, the +spring and summer time at hand, the doors of the grills and bars of the +hotels open, the rout of actors and actresses ambling to and fro, his +own delicious presence dressed in his best, his "funny" stories, his +songs being ground out by the hand organs, his friends extending their +hands, clapping him on the shoulder, cackling over the latest idle yarn.</p> + +<p>Ah, Broadway! Broadway! And you, my good brother! Here is the story that +you wanted me to write, this little testimony to your memory, a pale, +pale symbol of all I think and feel. Where are the thousand yarns I have +laughed over, the music, the lights, the song?</p> + +<p>Peace, peace. So shall it soon be with all of us. It was a dream. It is. +I am. You are. And shall we grieve over or hark back to dreams?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="The_County_Doctor" id="The_County_Doctor" /><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" /><i>The County Doctor</i></h2> + + +<p>How well I remember him—the tall, grave, slightly bent figure, the head +like Plato's or that of Diogenes, the mild, kindly, brown-gray eyes +peering, all too kindly, into the faces of dishonest men. In addition, +he wore long, full, brown-gray whiskers, a long gray overcoat (soiled +and patched toward the last) in winter, a soft black hat that hung +darkeningly over his eyes. But what a doctor! And how simple and often +non-drug-storey were so many of his remedies!</p> + +<p>"My son, your father is very sick. Now, I'll tell you what you can do +for me. You go out here along the Cheevertown road about a mile or two +and ask any farmer this side of the creek to let you have a good big +handful of peach sprigs—about so many, see? Say that Doctor Gridley +said he was to give them to you for him. Then, Mrs. ——, when he brings +them, you take a few, not more than seven or eight, and break them up +and steep them in hot water until you have an amber-colored tea. Give +Mr. —— about three or four tea-spoonfuls of that every three or four +hours, and I hope we'll find he'll do better. This kidney case is +severe, I know, but he'll come around all right."</p> + +<p>And he did. My father had been very ill with gall stones, so weak at +last that we thought he was sure to die. The house was so somber at the +time. Over it hung an atmosphere of depression and fear, with pity for +the sufferer, and groans of distress on his part. And then there were +the solemn visits of the doctor, made pleasant by his wise, kindly humor +and his hopeful predictions and ending in this seemingly mild +prescription, which resulted, in this case, in a cure. He was seemingly +so remote at times, in reality so near, and wholly thoughtful.</p> + +<p>On this occasion I went out along the long, cold, country road of a +March evening. I was full of thoughts of his importance as a doctor. He +seemed so necessary to us, as he did to everybody. I knew nothing about +medicine, or how lives were saved, but I felt sure that he did and that +he would save my father in spite of his always conservative, +speculative, doubtful manner. What a wonderful man he must be to know +all these <a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" />things—that peach sprouts, for instance, were an antidote to +the agony of gall stones!</p> + +<p>As I walked along, the simplicity of country life and its needs and +deprivations were impressed upon me, even though I was so young. So few +here could afford to pay for expensive prescriptions—ourselves +especially—and Dr. Gridley knew that and took it into consideration, so +rarely did he order anything from a drug-store. Most often, what he +prescribed he took out of a case, compounded, as it were, in our +presence.</p> + +<p>A brisk wind had fluttered snow in the morning, and now the ground was +white, with a sinking red sun shining across it, a sense of spring in +the air. Being unknown to these farmers, I wondered if any one of them +would really cut me a double handful of fresh young peach sprigs or +suckers from their young trees, as the doctor had said. Did they really +know him? Some one along the road—a home-driving farmer—told me of an +old Mr. Mills who had a five-acre orchard farther on. In a little while +I came to his door and was confronted by a thin, gaunt, bespectacled +woman, who called back to a man inside:</p> + +<p>"Henry, here's a little boy says Dr. Gridley said you were to cut him a +double handful of peach sprigs."</p> + +<p>Henry now came forward—a tall, bony farmer in high boots and an old +wool-lined leather coat, and a cap of wool.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he?" he observed, eyeing me most critically.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>"What's the matter? What does he want with 'em? Do ya know?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir. My father's sick with kidney trouble, and Dr. Gridley said I +was to come out here."</p> + +<p>"Oh, all right. Wait'll I git my big knife," and back he went, returning +later with a large horn-handled knife, which he opened. He preceded me +out through the barn lot and into the orchard beyond.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he, huh?" he asked as he went. "Well, I guess +we all have ter comply with whatever the doctor orders. We're all apt +ter git sick now an' ag'in," and talking trivialities of a like +character, he cut me an armful, saying:<a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" /> "I might as well give ya too +many as too few. Peach sprigs! Now, I never heered o' them bein' good +fer anythin', but I reckon the doctor knows what he's talkin' about. He +usually does—or that's what we think around here, anyhow."</p> + +<p>In the dusk I trudged home with my armful, my fingers cold. The next +morning, the tea having been brewed and taken, my father was better. In +a week or two he was up and around, as well as ever, and during this +time he commented on the efficacy of this tea, which was something new +to him, a strange remedy, and which caused the whole incident to be +impressed upon my mind. The doctor had told him that at any time in the +future if he was so troubled and could get fresh young peach sprigs for +a tea, he would find that it would help him. And the drug expense was +exactly nothing.</p> + +<p>In later years I came to know him better—this thoughtful, crusty, +kindly soul, always so ready to come at all hours when his cases +permitted, so anxious to see that his patients were not taxed beyond +their financial resources.</p> + +<p>I remember once, one of my sisters being very ill, so ill that we were +beginning to fear death, one and another of us had to take turn sitting +up with her at night to help and to give her her medicine regularly. +During one of the nights when I was sitting up, dozing, reading and +listening to the wind in the pines outside, she seemed persistently to +get worse. Her fever rose, and she complained of such aches and pains +that finally I had to go and call my mother. A consultation with her +finally resulted in my being sent for Dr. Gridley—no telephones in +those days—to tell him, although she hesitated so to do, how sister was +and ask him if he would not come.</p> + +<p>I was only fourteen. The street along which I had to go was quite dark, +the town lights being put out at two a.m., for reasons of thrift +perhaps. There was a high wind that cried in the trees. My shoes on the +board walks, here and there, sounded like the thuds of a giant. I recall +progressing in a shivery ghost-like sort of way, expecting at any step +to encounter goblins of the most approved form, until finally the +well-known outlines of the house of the doctor on the main +street—yellow, many-roomed, a wide porch in front—came, because of a +very small lamp in a very large glass case to one side of the door, into +view.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" />Here I knocked, and then knocked more. No reply. I then made a still +more forceful effort. Finally, through one of the red glass panels which +graced either side of the door I saw the lengthy figure of the doctor, +arrayed in a long white nightshirt, and carrying a small glass +hand-lamp, come into view at the head of the stairs. His feet were in +gray flannel slippers, and his whiskers stuck out most grotesquely.</p> + +<p>"Wait! Wait!" I heard him call. "I'll be there! I'm coming! Don't make +such a fuss! It seems as though I never get a real good night's rest any +more."</p> + +<p>He came on, opened the door, and looked out.</p> + +<p>"Well," he demanded, a little fussily for him, "what's the matter now?"</p> + +<p>"Doctor," I began, and proceeded to explain all my sister's aches and +pains, winding up by saying that my mother said "wouldn't he please come +at once?"</p> + +<p>"Your mother!" he grumbled. "What can I do if I do come down? Not a +thing. Feel her pulse and tell her she's all right! That's every bit I +can do. Your mother knows that as well as I do. That disease has to run +its course." He looked at me as though I were to blame, then added, +"Calling me up this way at three in the morning!"</p> + +<p>"But she's in such pain, Doctor," I complained.</p> + +<p>"All right—everybody has to have a little pain! You can't be sick +without it."</p> + +<p>"I know," I replied disconsolately, believing sincerely that my sister +might die, "but she's in such awful pain, Doctor."</p> + +<p>"Well, go on," he replied, turning up the light. "I know it's all +foolishness, but I'll come. You go back and tell your mother that I'll +be there in a little bit, but it's all nonsense, nonsense. She isn't a +bit sicker than I am right this minute, not a bit—" and he closed the +door and went upstairs.</p> + +<p>To me this seemed just the least bit harsh for the doctor, although, as +I reasoned afterwards, he was probably half-asleep and tired—dragged +out of his bed, possibly, once or twice before in the same night. As I +returned home I felt even more fearful, for once, as I was passing a +woodshed which I could not see, a rooster suddenly flapped his wings and +crowed—a sound which caused me to leap all of nineteen feet Fahrenheit, +sidewise. Then, as I walked along a fence which <a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" />later by day I saw had +a comfortable resting board on top, two lambent golden eyes surveyed me +out of inky darkness! Great Hamlet's father, how my heart sank! Once +more I leaped to the cloddy roadway and seizing a cobblestone or hunk of +mud hurled it with all my might, and quite involuntarily. Then I ran +until I fell into a crossing ditch. It was an amazing—almost a +tragic—experience, then.</p> + +<p>In due time the doctor came—and I never quite forgave him for not +making me wait and go back with him. He was too sleepy, though, I am +sure. The seizure was apparently nothing which could not have waited +until morning. However, he left some new cure, possibly clear water in a +bottle, and left again. But the night trials of doctors and their +patients, especially in the country, was fixed in my mind then.</p> + +<p>One of the next interesting impressions I gained of the doctor was that +of seeing him hobbling about our town on crutches, his medicine case +held in one hand along with a crutch, visiting his patients, when he +himself appeared to be so ill as to require medical attention. He was +suffering from some severe form of rheumatism at the time, but this, +apparently, was not sufficient to keep him from those who in his +judgment probably needed his services more than he did his rest.</p> + +<p>One of the truly interesting things about Dr. Gridley, as I early began +to note, was his profound indifference to what might be called his +material welfare. Why, I have often asked myself, should a man of so +much genuine ability choose to ignore the gauds and plaudits and +pleasures of the gayer, smarter world outside, in which he might readily +have shone, to thus devote himself and all his talents to a simple rural +community? That he was an extremely able physician there was not the +slightest doubt. Other physicians from other towns about, and even so +far away as Chicago, were repeatedly calling him into consultation. That +he knew life—much of it—as only a priest or a doctor of true wisdom +can know it, was evident from many incidents, of which I subsequently +learned, and yet here he was, hidden away in this simple rural world, +surrounded probably by his Rabelais, his Burton, his Frazer, and his +Montaigne, and dreaming what dreams—thinking what thoughts?</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" />Say," an old patient, friend and neighbor of his once remarked to me +years later, when we had both moved to another city, "one of the +sweetest recollections of my life is to picture old Dr. Gridley, Ed +Boulder who used to run the hotel over at Sleichertown, Congressman +Barr, and Judge Morgan, sitting out in front of Boulder's hotel over +there of a summer's evening and haw-hawing over the funny stories which +Boulder was always telling while they were waiting for the Pierceton +bus. Dr. Gridley's laugh, so soft to begin with, but growing in force +and volume until it was a jolly shout. And the green fields all around. +And Mrs. Calder's drove of geese over the way honking, too, as geese +will whenever people begin to talk or laugh. It was delicious."</p> + +<p>One of the most significant traits of his character, as may be inferred, +was his absolute indifference to actual money, the very cash, one would +think, with which he needed to buy his own supplies. During his life, +his wife, who was a thrifty, hard-working woman, used frequently, as I +learned after, to comment on this, but to no result. He could not be +made to charge where he did not need to, nor collect where he knew that +the people were poor.</p> + +<p>"Once he became angry at my uncle," his daughter once told me, "because +he offered to collect for him for three per cent, dunning his patients +for their debts, and another time he dissolved a partnership with a +local physician who insisted that he ought to be more careful to charge +and collect."</p> + +<p>This generosity on his part frequently led to some very interesting +results. On one occasion, for instance, when he was sitting out on his +front lawn in Warsaw, smoking, his chair tilted back against a tree and +his legs crossed in the fashion known as "jack-knife," a poorly dressed +farmer without a coat came up and after saluting the doctor began to +explain that his wife was sick and that he had come to get the doctor's +advice. He seemed quite disturbed, and every now and then wiped his +brow, while the doctor listened with an occasional question or gently +accented "uh-huh, uh-huh," until the story was all told and the advice +ready to be received. When this was given in a low, reassuring tone, he +took from his pocket his little book of blanks and wrote out a +prescription, which he gave to the man and began talking again. The +latter took <a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" />out a silver dollar and handed it to the doctor, who turned +it idly between his fingers for a few seconds, then searched in his +pocket for a mate to it, and playing with them a while as he talked, +finally handed back the dollar to the farmer.</p> + +<p>"You take that," he said pleasantly, "and go down to the drug-store and +have the prescription filled. I think your wife will be all right."</p> + +<p>When he had gone the doctor sat there a long time, meditatively puffing +the smoke from his cob pipe, and turning his own dollar in his hand. +After a time he looked up at his daughter, who was present, and said:</p> + +<p>"I was just thinking what a short time it took me to write that +prescription, and what a long time it took him to earn that dollar. I +guess he needs the dollar more than I do."</p> + +<p>In the same spirit of this generosity he was once sitting in his yard of +a summer day, sunning himself and smoking, a favorite pleasure of his, +when two men rode up to his gate from opposite directions and +simultaneously hailed him. He arose and went out to meet them. His wife, +who was sewing just inside the hall as she usually was when her husband +was outside, leaned forward in her chair to see through the door, and +took note of who they were. Both were men in whose families the doctor +had practiced for years. One was a prosperous farmer who always paid his +"doctor's bills," and the other was a miller, a "ne'er-do-well," with a +delicate wife and a family of sickly children, who never asked for a +statement and never had one sent him, and who only occasionally and at +great intervals handed the doctor a dollar in payment for his many +services. Both men talked to him a little while and then rode away, +after which he returned to the house, calling to Enoch, his old negro +servant, to bring his horse, and then went into his study to prepare his +medicine case. Mrs. Gridley, who was naturally interested in his +financial welfare, and who at times had to plead with him not to let his +generosity stand wholly in the way of his judgment, inquired of him as +he came out:</p> + +<p>"Now, Doctor, which of those two men are you going with?"</p> + +<p>"Why, Miss Susan," he replied—a favorite manner of addressing his wife, +of whom he was very fond—the note of <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" />apology in his voice showing that +he knew very well what she was thinking about, "I'm going with W——."</p> + +<p>"I don't think that is right," she replied with mild emphasis. "Mr. +N—— is as good a friend of yours as W——, and he always pays you."</p> + +<p>"Now, Miss Susan," he returned coaxingly, "N—— can go to Pierceton and +get Doctor Bodine, and W—— can't get any one but me. You surely +wouldn't have him left without any one?"</p> + +<p>What the effect of such an attitude was may be judged when it is related +that there was scarcely a man, woman or child in the entire county who +had not at some time or other been directly or indirectly benefited by +the kindly wisdom of this Samaritan. He was nearly everybody's doctor, +in the last extremity, either as consultant or otherwise. Everywhere he +went, by every lane and hollow that he fared, he was constantly being +called into service by some one—the well-to-do as well as by those who +had nothing; and in both cases he was equally keen to give the same +degree of painstaking skill, finding something in the very poor—a +humanness possibly—which detained and fascinated him and made him a +little more prone to linger at their bedsides than anywhere else.</p> + +<p>"He was always doing it," said his daughter, "and my mother used to +worry over it. She declared that of all things earthly, papa loved an +unfortunate person; the greater the misfortune, the greater his care."</p> + +<p>In illustration of his easy and practically controlling attitude toward +the very well-to-do, who were his patients also, let me narrate this:</p> + +<p>In our town was an old and very distinguished colonel, comparatively +rich and very crotchety, who had won considerable honors for himself +during the Civil War. He was a figure, and very much looked up to by +all. People were, in the main, overawed by and highly respectful of him. +A remote, stern soul, yet to Dr. Gridley he was little more than a child +or schoolboy—one to be bossed on occasion and made to behave. Plainly, +the doctor had the conviction that all of us, great and small, were very +much in need of sympathy and care, and that he, the doctor, was the one +to provide it. At any rate, he had known the colonel long and well, and +in a <a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" />public place—at the principal street corner, for instance, or in +the postoffice where we school children were wont to congregate—it was +not at all surprising to hear him take the old colonel, who was quite +frail now, to task for not taking better care of himself—coming out, +for instance, without his rubbers, or his overcoat, in wet or chilly +weather, and in other ways misbehaving himself.</p> + +<p>"There you go again!" I once heard him call to the colonel, as the +latter was leaving the postoffice and he was entering (there was no +rural free delivery in those days) "—walking around without your +rubbers, and no overcoat! You want to get me up in the night again, do +you?"</p> + +<p>"It didn't seem so damp when I started out, Doctor."</p> + +<p>"And of course it was too much trouble to go back! You wouldn't feel +that way if you couldn't come out at all, perhaps!"</p> + +<p>"I'll put 'em on! I'll put 'em on! Only, please don't fuss, Doctor. I'll +go back to the house and put 'em on."</p> + +<p>The doctor merely stared after him quizzically, like an old +schoolmaster, as the rather stately colonel marched off to his home.</p> + +<p>Another of his patients was an old Mr. Pegram, a large, kind, +big-hearted man, who was very fond of the doctor, but who had an +exceedingly irascible temper. He was the victim of some obscure malady +which medicine apparently failed at times to relieve. This seemed to +increase his irritability a great deal, so much so that the doctor had +at last discovered that if he could get Mr. Pegram angry enough the +malady would occasionally disappear. This seemed at times as good a +remedy as any, and in consequence he was occasionally inclined to try +it.</p> + +<p>Among other things, this old gentleman was the possessor of a handsome +buffalo robe, which, according to a story that long went the rounds +locally, he once promised to leave to the doctor when he died. At the +same time all reference to death both pained and irritated him +greatly—a fact which the doctor knew. Finding the old gentleman in a +most complaining and hopeless mood one night, not to be dealt with, +indeed, in any reasoning way, the doctor returned to his home, and early +the next day, without any other word, sent old<a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" /> Enoch, his negro +servant, around to get, as he said, the buffalo robe—a request which +would indicate, of course that the doctor had concluded that old Mr. +Pegram had died, or was about to—a hopeless case. When ushered into the +latter's presence, Enoch began innocently enough:</p> + +<p>"De doctah say dat now dat Mr. Peg'am hab subspired, he was to hab dat +ba—ba—buffalo robe."</p> + +<p>"What!" shouted the old irascible, rising and clambering out of his bed. +"What's that? Buffalo robe! By God! You go back and tell old Doc Gridley +that I ain't dead yet by a damned sight! No, sir!" and forthwith he +dressed himself and was out and around the same day.</p> + +<p>Persons who met the doctor, as I heard years later from his daughter and +from others who had known him, were frequently asking him, just in a +social way, what to do for certain ailments, and he would as often reply +in a humorous and half-vagrom manner that if he were in their place he +would do or take so-and-so, not meaning really that they should do so +but merely to get rid of them, and indicating of course any one of a +hundred harmless things—never one that could really have proved +injurious to any one. Once, according to his daughter, as he was driving +into town from somewhere, he met a man on a lumber wagon whom he +scarcely knew but who knew him well enough, who stopped and showed him a +sore on the upper tip of his ear, asking him what he would do for it.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said the doctor, idly and jestingly, "I think I'd cut it off."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the man, very much pleased with this free advice, "with +what, Doctor?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I think I'd use a pair of scissors," he replied amusedly, scarcely +assuming that his jesting would be taken seriously.</p> + +<p>The driver jogged on and the doctor did not see or hear of him again +until some two months later when, meeting him in the street, the driver +smilingly approached him and enthusiastically exclaimed:</p> + +<p>"Well, Doc, you see I cut 'er off, and she got well!"</p> + +<p>"Yes," replied the doctor solemnly, not remembering anything about the +case but willing to appear interested, "—what was it you cut off?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" />Why, that sore on my ear up here, you know. You told me to cut it off, +and I did."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the doctor, becoming curious and a little amazed, "with +what?"</p> + +<p>"Why, with a pair of scissors, Doc, just like you said."</p> + +<p>The doctor stared at him, the whole thing coming gradually back to him.</p> + +<p>"But didn't you have some trouble in cutting it off?" he inquired, in +disturbed astonishment.</p> + +<p>"No, no," said the driver, "I made 'em sharp, all right. I spent two +days whettin' 'em up, and Bob Hart cut 'er off fer me. They cut, all +right, but I tell you she hurt when she went through the gristle."</p> + +<p>He smiled in pleased remembrance of his surgical operation, and the +doctor smiled also, but, according to his daughter, he decided to give +no more idle advice of that kind.</p> + +<p>In the school which I attended for a period were two of his sons, Fred +and Walter. Both were very fond of birds, and kept a number of one kind +or another about their home—not in cages, as some might, but inveigled +and trained as pets, and living in the various open bird-houses fixed +about the yard on poles. The doctor himself was intensely fond of these +and all other birds, and, according to his daughter and his sons, always +anticipated the spring return of many of diem—black-birds, blue jays, +wrens and robins—with a hopeful, "Well, now, they'll soon be here +again." During the summer, according to her, he was always an interested +spectator of their gyrations in the air, and when evening would come was +never so happy as when standing and staring at them gathering from all +directions to their roosts in the trees or the birdhouses. Similarly, +when the fall approached and they would begin their long flight +Southward, he would sometimes stand and scan the sky and trees in vain +for a final glimpse of his feathered friends, and when in the gathering +darkness they were no longer to be seen would turn away toward the +house, saying sadly to his daughter:</p> + +<p>"Well, Dollie, the blackbirds are all gone. I am sorry. I like to see +them, and I am always sorry to lose them, and sorry to know that winter +is coming."</p> + +<p>"Usually about the 25th or 26th of December," his daughter <a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" />once +quaintly added to me, "he would note that the days were beginning to get +longer, and cheer up, as spring was certain to follow soon and bring +them all back again."</p> + +<p>One of the most interesting of his bird friendships was that which +existed between him and a pair of crows he and his sons had raised, +"Jim" and "Zip" by name. These crows came to know him well, and were +finally so humanly attached to him that, according to his family, they +would often fly two or three miles out of town to meet him and would +then accompany him, lighting on fences and trees by the way, and cawing +to him as he drove along! Both of them were great thieves, and would +steal anything from a bit of thread up to a sewing machine, if they +could have carried it. They were always walking about the house, +cheerfully looking for what they might devour, and on one occasion +carried off a set of spoons, which they hid about the eaves of the +house. On another occasion they stole a half dozen tin-handled pocket +knives, which the doctor had bought for the children and which the crows +seemed to like for the brightness of the metal. They were recovered once +by the children, stolen again by the crows, recovered once more, and so +on, until at last it was a question as to which were the rightful +owners.</p> + +<p>The doctor was sitting in front of a store one day in the business-heart +of town, where also he liked to linger in fair weather, when suddenly he +saw one of his crows flying high overhead and bearing something in its +beak, which it dropped into the road scarcely a hundred feet away. +Interested to see what it was the bird had been carrying, he went to the +spot where he saw it fall and found one of the tin-handled knives, which +the crow had been carrying to a safe hiding-place. He picked it up and +when he returned home that night asked one of his boys if he could lend +him a knife.</p> + +<p>"No," said his son. "Our knives are all lost. The crows took them."</p> + +<p>"I knew that," said the doctor sweetly, "and so, when I met Zip uptown +just now, I asked her to lend me one, and she did. Here it is."</p> + +<p>He pulled out the knife and handed it to the boy and, when the latter +expressed doubt and wonder, insisted that the crow had loaned it to him; +a joke which ended in his always <a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" />asking one of the children to run and +ask Zip if she would lend him a knife, whenever he chanced to need one.</p> + +<p>Although a sad man at times, as I understood, the doctor was not a +pessimist, and in many ways, both by practical jokes and the humoring of +odd characters, sought relief from the intense emotional strain which +the large practice of his profession put upon him. One of his greatest +reliefs was the carrying out of these little practical jokes, and he had +been known to go to much trouble at times to work up a good laugh.</p> + +<p>One of the, to him, richest jokes, and one which he always enjoyed +telling, related to a country singing school which was located in the +neighborhood of Pierceton, in which reading (the alphabet, at least), +spelling, geography, arithmetic, rules of grammar, and so forth, were +still taught by a process of singing. The method adopted in this form of +education was to have the scholar memorize all knowledge by singing it. +Thus in the case of geography the students would sing the name of the +country, then its mountains, then the highest peaks, cities, rivers, +principal points of interest, and so on, until all information about +that particular country had been duly memorized in song or rhyme. +Occasionally they would have a school-day on which the local dignitaries +would be invited, and on a number of these occasions the doctor was, for +amusement's sake merely, a grave and reverent listener. On one occasion, +however, he was merely passing the school, when hearing "Africa-a, +Africa-a, mountains of the moo-oo-oon" drawled out of the windows, he +decided to stop in and listen a while. Having tethered his horse outside +he knocked at the door and was received by the little English singing +teacher who, after showing him to a seat, immediately called upon the +class for an exhibition of their finest wisdom. When they had finished +this the teacher turned to him and inquired if there was anything he +would especially like them to sing.</p> + +<p>"No," said the doctor gravely, and no doubt with an amused twinkle in +his eye, "I had thought of asking you to sing the Rocky Mountains, but +as the mountains are so high, and the amount of time I have so limited, +I have decided that perhaps it will be asking too much."</p> + +<p>"Oh, not at all, not at all" airily replied the teacher, and turning to +his class, he exclaimed with a very superior smile:<a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" /> "Now, ladies and +gentlemen, 'ere is a scientific gentleman who thinks it is 'arder to +sing of <i>'igh</i> mountings than it is to sing of <i>low</i> mountings," and +forthwith the class began to demonstrate that in respect to vocalization +there was no difference at all.</p> + +<p>Only those, however, who knew Dr. Gridley in the sickroom, and knew him +well, ever discovered the really finest trait of his character: a keen, +unshielded sensibility to and sympathy for all human suffering, that +could not bear to inflict the slightest additional pain. He was really, +in the main, a man of soft tones and unctuous laughter, of gentle touch +and gentle step, and a devotion to duty that carried him far beyond his +interests or his personal well-being. One of his chiefest oppositions, +according to his daughter, was to telling the friends or relatives of +any stricken person that there was no hope. Instead, he would use every +delicate shade of phrasing and tone in imparting the fateful words, in +order if possible to give less pain. "I remember in the case of my +father," said one of his friends, "when the last day came. Knowing the +end was near, he was compelled to make some preliminary discouraging +remark, and I bent over with my ear against my father's chest and said, +'Doctor Gridley, the disease is under control, I think. I can hear the +respiration to the bottom of the lungs.'</p> + +<p>"'Yes, yes,' he answered me sadly, but now with an implication which +could by no means be misunderstood, 'it is nearly always so. The failure +is in the recuperative energy. Vitality runs too low.' It meant from the +first, 'Your father will not live.'"</p> + +<p>In the case of a little child with meningitis, the same person was sent +to him to ask what of the child—better or worse. His answer was: "He is +passing as free from pain as ever I knew a case of this kind."</p> + +<p>In yet another case of a dying woman, one of her relatives inquired: +"Doctor, is this case dangerous?" "Not in the nature of the malady, +madam," was his sad and sympathetic reply, "but fatal in the condition +it meets. Hope is broken. There is nothing to resist the damage."</p> + +<p>One of his patients was a farmer who lived in an old-time log house a +few miles out from Silver Lake, who while <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" />working about his barn met +with a very serious accident which involved a possible injury to the +gall bladder. The main accident was not in itself fatal, but the +possible injury to the gall bladder was, and this, if it existed, would +show as a yellow tint in the eyeball on the tenth day. Fearing the +danger of this, he communicated the possibility to the relatives, saying +that he could do little after that time but that he would come just the +same and make the patient as comfortable as possible. For nine days he +came, sitting by the bedside and whiling away many a weary hour for the +sufferer, until the tenth morning. On this day, according to his +daughter, who had it from the sick man's relatives, his face but ill +concealed the anxiety he felt. Coming up to the door, he entered just +far enough to pretend to reach for a water bucket. With this in his hand +he turned and gave one long keen look in the eye of the sick man, then +walked down the yard to a chair under a tree some distance from the +house, where he sat, drooping and apparently grieved, the certainty of +the death of the patient affecting him as much as if he were his own +child.</p> + +<p>"There was no need for words," said one of them. "Every curve and droop +of his figure, as he walked slowly and with bent head, told all of us +who saw him that hope was gone and that death had won the victory."</p> + +<p>One of his perpetual charges, as I learned later, was a poor old +unfortunate by the name of Id Logan, who had a little cabin and an acre +of ground a half dozen miles west of Warsaw, and who existed from year +to year heaven only knows how.</p> + +<p>Id never had any money, friends or relatives, and was always troubled +with illness or hunger in some form or other, and yet the doctor always +spoke of him sympathetically as "Poor old Id Logan" and would often call +out there on his rounds to see how he was getting along. One snowy +winter's evening as he was traveling homeward after a long day's ride, +he chanced to recollect the fact that he was in the neighborhood of his +worthless old charge, and fancying that he might be in need of something +turned his horse into the lane which led up to the door. When he reached +the house he noticed that no smoke was coming from the chimney and that +the windows were slightly rimmed with frost, as if there were no <a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" />heat +within. Rapping at the door and receiving no response, he opened it and +went in. There he found his old charge, sick and wandering in his mind, +lying upon a broken-down bed and moaning in pain. There was no fire in +the fireplace. The coverings with which the bed was fitted were but two +or three old worn and faded quilts, and the snow was sifting in badly +through the cracks where the chinking had fallen out between the logs, +and under the doors and windows.</p> + +<p>Going up to the sufferer and finding that some one of his old, and to +the doctor well-known, maladies had at last secured a fatal grip upon +him, he first administered a tonic which he knew would give him as much +strength as possible, and then went out into the yard, where, after +putting up his horse, he gathered chips and wood from under the snow and +built a roaring fire. Having done this, he put on the kettle, trimmed +the lamp, and after preparing such stimulants as the patient could +stand, took his place at the bedside, where he remained the whole night +long, keeping the fire going and the patient as comfortable as possible. +Toward morning the sufferer died and when the sun was well up he finally +returned to his family, who anxiously solicited him as to his +whereabouts.</p> + +<p>"I was with Id Logan," he said.</p> + +<p>"What's ailing him now?" his daughter inquired.</p> + +<p>"Nothing now," he returned. "It was only last night," and for years +afterward he commented on the death of "poor old Id," saying always at +the conclusion of his remarks that it must be a dreadful thing to be +sick and die without friends.</p> + +<p>His love for his old friends and familiar objects was striking, and he +could no more bear to see an old friend move away than he could to lose +one of his patients. One of his oldest friends was a fine old Christian +lady by the name of Weeks, who lived down in Louter Creek bottoms and in +whose household he had practiced for nearly fifty years. During the +latter part of his life, however, this family began to break up, and +finally when there was no one left but the mother she decided to move +over into Whitley County, where she could stay with her daughter. Just +before going, however, she expressed a wish to see Doctor Gridley, and +he called in upon her. A little dinner had been prepared in honor <a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" />of +his coming. After it was over and the old times were fully discussed he +was about to take his leave when Mrs. Weeks disappeared from the room +and then returned, bearing upon her arm a beautiful yarn spread which +she held out before her and, in her nervous, feeble way getting the +attention of the little audience, said:</p> + +<p>"Doctor, I am going up to Whitley now to live with my daughter, and I +don't suppose I will get to see you very often any more. Like myself, +you are getting old, and it will be too far for you to come. But I want +to give you this spread that I have woven with my own hands since I have +been sixty years of age. It isn't very much, but it is meant for a token +of the love and esteem I bear you, and in remembrance of all that you +have done for me and mine."</p> + +<p>Her eyes were wet and her voice quivering as she brought it forward. The +doctor, who had been wholly taken by surprise by this kindly +manifestation of regard, had arisen during her impromptu address and now +stood before her, dignified and emotionally grave, his own eyes wet with +tears of appreciation.</p> + +<p>Balancing the homely gift upon his extended hands, he waited until the +force of his own sentiment had slightly subsided, when he replied:</p> + +<p>"Madam, I appreciate this gift with which you have chosen to remember me +as much as I honor the sentiment which has produced it. There are, I +know, threads of feeling woven into it stronger than any cords of wool, +and more enduring than all the fabrics of this world. I have been your +physician now for fifty years, and have been a witness of your joys and +sorrows. But, as much as I esteem you, and as highly as I prize this +token of your regard, I can accept it but upon one condition, and that +is, Mrs. Weeks, that you promise me that no matter how dark the night, +how stormy the sky, or how deep the waters that intervene, you will not +fail to send for me in your hour of need. It is both my privilege and my +pleasure, and I should not rest content unless I knew it were so."</p> + +<p>When the old lady had promised, he took his spread and going out to his +horse, rode away to his own home, where he related this incident, and +ended with, "Now I want this put on my bed."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" />His daughter, who lovingly humored his every whim, immediately complied +with his wish, and from that day to the hour of his death the spread was +never out of his service.</p> + +<p>One of the most pleasing incidents to me was one which related to his +last illness and death. Always, during his later years, when he felt the +least bit ill, he refused to prescribe for himself, saying that a +doctor, if he knew anything at all, was never such a fool as to take any +of his own medicine. Instead, and in sequence to this humorous attitude, +he would always send for one of the younger men of the vicinity who were +beginning to practice here, one, for instance, who having other merits +needed some assurance and a bit of superior recognition occasionally to +help him along. On this occasion he called in a very sober young doctor, +one who was greatly admired but had very little practice as yet, and +saying, "Doctor, I'm sick today," lay back on his bed and waited for +further developments.</p> + +<p>The latter, owing to Dr. Gridley's great repute and knowledge, was very +much flustered, so much so that he scarcely knew what to do.</p> + +<p>"Well, Doctor," he finally said, after looking at his tongue, taking his +pulse and feeling his forehead, "you're really a better judge of your +own condition than I am, I'm sure. What do you think I ought to give +you?"</p> + +<p>"Now, Doctor," replied Gridley sweetly, "I'm your patient, and you're my +doctor. I wouldn't prescribe for myself for anything in the world, and +I'm going to take whatever you give me. That's why I called you in. Now, +you just give me what you think my condition requires, and I'll take +it."</p> + +<p>The young doctor, meditating on all that was new or faddistic, decided +at last that just for variation's sake he would give the doctor +something of which he had only recently heard, a sample of which he had +with him and which had been acclaimed in the medical papers as very +effective. Without asking the doctor whether he had ever heard of it, or +what he thought, he merely prescribed it.</p> + +<p>"Well, now, I like that," commented Gridley solemnly. "I never heard of +that before in my life, but it sounds plausible. I'll take it, and we'll +see. What's more, I like a young doctor like yourself who thinks up ways +of his own—" and, <a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" />according to his daughter, he did take it, and was +helped, saying always that what young doctors needed to do was to keep +abreast of the latest medical developments, that medicine was changing, +and perhaps it was just as well that old doctors died! He was so old and +feeble, however, that he did not long survive, and when the time came +was really glad to go.</p> + +<p>One of the sweetest and most interesting of all his mental phases was, +as I have reason to know, his attitude toward the problem of suffering +and death, an attitude so full of the human qualities of wonder, +sympathy, tenderness, and trust, that he could scarcely view them +without exhibiting the emotion he felt. He was a constant student of the +phenomena of dissolution, and in one instance calmly declared it as his +belief that when a man was dead he was dead and that was the end of him, +consciously. At other times he modified his view to one of an almost +prayerful hope, and in reading Emily Brontë's somewhat morbid story of +"Wuthering Heights," his copy of which I long had in my possession, I +noted that he had annotated numerous passages relative to death and a +future life with interesting comments of his own. To one of these +passages, which reads:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I don't know if it be a peculiarity with me, but I am seldom + otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, + provided no frenzied or despairing mourner shares the duty with + me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I + feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter—the + eternity they have entered—where life is boundless in its + duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness,"</p></blockquote> + +<p>he had added on the margin:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"How often I have felt this very emotion. How natural I know it to + be. And what a consolation in the thought!"</p></blockquote> + +<p>Writing a final prescription for a young clergyman who was dying, and +for whom he had been most tenderly solicitous, he added to the list of +drugs he had written in Latin, the lines:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" /> +<span>"In life's closing hour, when the trembling soul flies<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And death stills the heart's last emotion,<br /></span> +<span>Oh, then may the angel of mercy arise<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Like a star on eternity's ocean!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When he himself was upon his death-bed he greeted his old friend Colonel +Dyer—he of the absent overcoat and over-shoes—with:</p> + +<p>"Dyer, I'm almost gone. I am in the shadow of death. I am standing upon +the very brink. I cannot see clearly, I cannot speak coherently, the +film of death obstructs my sight. I know what this means. It is the end, +but all is well with me. I have no fear. I have said and done things +that would have been better left unsaid and undone, but I have never +willfully wronged a man in my life. I have no concern for myself. I am +concerned only for those I leave behind. I never saved money, and I die +as poor as when I was born. We do not know what there is in the future +now shut out from our view by a very thin veil. It seems to me there is +a hand somewhere that will lead us safely across, but I cannot tell. No +one can tell."</p> + +<p>This interesting speech, made scarcely a day before he closed his eyes +in death, was typical of his whole generous, trustful, philosophical +point of view.</p> + +<p>"If there be green fields and placid waters beyond the river that he so +calmly crossed," so ran an editorial in the local county paper edited by +one of his most ardent admirers, "reserved for those who believe in and +practice upon the principle of 'Do unto others as you would have them do +unto you,' then this Samaritan of the medical profession is safe from +all harm. If there be no consciousness, but only a mingling of that +which was gentleness and tenderness here with the earth and the waters, +then the greenness of the one and the sparkling limpidity of the other +are richer for that he lived, and wrought, and returned unto them so +trustingly again."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Culhane_the_Solid_Man" id="Culhane_the_Solid_Man" /><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" /><i>Culhane, the Solid Man</i></h2> + + +<p>I met him in connection with a psychic depression which only partially +reflected itself in my physical condition. I might almost say that I was +sick spiritually. At the same time I was rather strongly imbued with a +contempt for him and his cure. I had heard of him for years. To begin +with, he was a wrestler of repute, or rather ex-wrestler, retired +undefeated champion of the world. As a boy I had known that he had +toured America with Modjeska as Charles, the wrestler, in "As You Like +It." Before or after that he had trained John L. Sullivan, the world's +champion prize fighter of his day, for one of his most successful +fights, and that at a time when Sullivan was unfitted to fight any one. +Before that, in succession, from youth up, he had been a peasant +farmer's son in Ireland, a scullion in a ship's kitchen earning his way +to America, a "beef slinger" for a packing company, a cooks' assistant +and waiter in a Bowery restaurant, a bouncer in a saloon, a rubber down +at prize fights, a policeman, a private in the army during the Civil +War, a ticket-taker, exhibition wrestler, "short-change man" with a +minstrel company, later a circus, until having attained his greatest +fame as champion wrestler of the world, and as trainer of John L. +Sullivan, he finally opened a sporting sanitarium in some county in +upper New York State which later evolved into the great and now +decidedly fashionable institution in Westchester, near New York.</p> + +<p>It has always been interesting to me to see in what awe men of this type +or profession are held by many in the more intellectual walks of life as +well as by those whose respectful worship is less surprising,—those who +revere strength, agility, physical courage, so-called, brute or +otherwise. There is a kind of retiring worshipfulness, especially in men +and children of the lower walks, for this type, which must be flattering +in the extreme.</p> + +<p>However, in so far as Culhane was concerned at this time, the case was +different. Whatever he had been in his youth he was not that now, or at +least his earlier rawness had long since been glazed over by other +experiences. Self-education, an <a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" />acquired politeness among strangers and +a knowledge of the manners and customs of the better-to-do, permitted +him to associate with them and to accept if not copy their manners and +to a certain extent their customs in his relations with them. Literally, +he owned hundreds of the best acres of the land about him, in one of the +most fashionable residence sections of the East. He had already given +away to some Sisters of Mercy a great estate in northern New York. His +stables contained every type of fashionable vehicle and stalled and fed +sixty or seventy of the worst horses, purposely so chosen, for the use +of his "guests." Men of all professions visited his place, paid him +gladly the six hundred dollars in advance which he asked for the course +of six weeks' training, and brought, or attempted to, their own cars and +retinues, which they lodged in the vicinity but could not use. I myself +was introduced or rather foisted upon him by my dear brother, whose +friend if not crony—if such a thing could have been said to exist in +his life—he was. I was taken to him in a very somber and depressed mood +and left; he rarely if ever received guests in person or at once. On the +way, and before I had been introduced, I was instructed by my good +brother as to his moods, methods, airs and tricks, supposed or rumored +to be so beneficial in so many cases. They were very rough—purposely +so.</p> + +<p>The day I arrived, and before I saw him, I was very much impressed with +the simplicity yet distinction of the inn or sanitarium or "repair +shop," as subsequently I learned he was accustomed to refer to it, +perched upon a rise of ground and commanding a quite wonderful panorama. +It was spring and quite warm and bright. The cropped enclosure which +surrounded it, a great square of green fenced with high, well-trimmed +privet, was good to look upon, level and smooth. The house, standing in +the center of this, was large and oblong and gray, with very simple +French windows reaching to the floor and great wide balustraded +balconies reaching out from the second floor, shaded with awnings and +set with rockers. The land on which this inn stood sloped very gradually +to the Sound, miles away to the southeast, and the spires of churches +and the gables of villages rising in between, as well as various +toy-like sails upon the water, were no small <a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" />portion of its charm. To +the west for a score of miles the green-covered earth rose and fell in +undulating beauty, and here again the roofs and spires of nearby +villages might in fair weather be seen nestling peacefully among the +trees. Due south there was a suggestion of water and some peculiar +configuration, which by day seemed to have no significance other than +that which attached to the vague outlines of a distant landscape. By +night, however, the soft glow emanating from myriads of lights +identified it as the body and length of the merry, night-reveling New +York. Northward the green waves repeated themselves unendingly until +they passed into a dim green-blue haze.</p> + +<p>Interiorly, as I learned later, this place was most cleverly and +sensibly arranged for the purpose for which it was intended. It was airy +and well-appointed, with, on the ground floor, a great gymnasium +containing, outside of an alcove at one end where hung four or five +punching bags, only medicine balls. At the other end was an office or +receiving-room, baggage or store-room, and locker and dining-room. To +the east at the center extended a wing containing a number of +shower-baths, a lounging room and sun parlor. On the second floor, on +either side of a wide airy hall which ran from an immense library, +billiard and smoking-room at one end to Culhane's private suite at the +other, were two rows of bedrooms, perhaps a hundred all told, which gave +in turn, each one, upon either side, on to the balconies previously +mentioned. These rooms were arranged somewhat like the rooms of a +passenger steamer, with its center aisle and its outer decks and doors +opening upon it. In another wing on the ground floor were kitchens, +servants' quarters, and what not else! Across the immense lawn or campus +to the east, four-square to the sanitarium, stood a rather grandiose +stable, almost as impressive as the main building. About the place, and +always more or less in evidence, were servants, ostlers, waiting-maids +and always a decidedly large company of men of practically all +professions, ages, and one might almost say nationalities. That is as +nationalities are represented in America, by first and second +generations.</p> + +<p>The day I arrived I did not see my prospective host or manager or +trainer for an hour or two after I came, being allowed <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" />to wait about +until the very peculiar temperament which he possessed would permit him +to come and see me. When he did show up, a more savage and yet +gentlemanly-looking animal in clothes <i>de rigueur</i> I have never seen. He +was really very princely in build and manner, shapely and grand, like +those portraits that have come down to us of Richelieu and the Duc de +Guise—fawn-colored riding trousers, bright red waistcoat, +black-and-white check riding coat, brown leather riding boots and +leggings with the essential spurs, and a riding quirt. And yet really, +at that moment he reminded me not so much of a man, in his supremely +well-tailored riding costume, as of a tiger or a very ferocious and yet +at times purring cat, beautifully dressed, as in our children's +storybooks, a kind of tiger in collar and boots. He was so lithe, +silent, cat-like in his tread. In his hard, clear, gray animal eyes was +that swift, incisive, restless, searching glance which sometimes +troubles us in the presence of animals. It was hard to believe that he +was all of sixty, as I had been told. He looked the very well-preserved +man of fifty or less. The short trimmed mustache and goatee which he +wore were gray and added to his grand air. His hair, cut a close +pompadour, the ends of his heavy eyebrow hairs turned upward, gave him a +still more distinguished air. He looked very virile, very intelligent, +very indifferent, intolerant and even threatening.</p> + +<p>"Well," he exclaimed on sight, "you wish to see me?"</p> + +<p>I gave him my name.</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's so. Your brother spoke to me about you. Well, take a seat. +You will be looked after."</p> + +<p>He walked off, and after an hour or so I was still waiting, for what I +scarcely knew—a room, something to eat possibly, some one to speak a +friendly word to me, but no one did.</p> + +<p>While I was waiting in this rather nondescript antechamber, hung with +hats, caps, riding whips and gauntlets, I had an opportunity to study +some of the men with whom presumably I was to live for a number of +weeks. It was between two and three in the afternoon, and many of them +were idling about in pairs or threes, talking, reading, all in rather +commonplace athletic costumes—soft woolen shirts, knee trousers, +stockings and running or walking shoes. They were in the main evidently +of the so-called learned professions or the <a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" />arts—doctors, lawyers, +preachers, actors, writers, with a goodly sprinkling of merchants, +manufacturers and young and middle-aged society men, as well as +politicians and monied idlers, generally a little the worse for their +pleasures or weaknesses. A distinguished judge of one of the superior +courts of New York and an actor known everywhere in the English-speaking +world were instantly recognized by me. Others, as I was subsequently +informed, were related by birth or achievement to some one fact or +another of public significance. The reason for the presence of so many +people rather above than under the average in intellect lay, as I came +to believe later, in their ability or that of some one connected with +them to sincerely appreciate or to at least be amused and benefited by +the somewhat different theory of physical repair which the lord of the +manor had invented, or for which at least he had become famous.</p> + +<p>I have remarked that I was not inclined to be impressed. Sanitariums +with their isms and theories did not appeal to me. However, as I was +waiting here an incident occurred which stuck in my mind. A smart +conveyance drove up, occupied by a singularly lean and haughty-looking +individual, who, after looking about him, expecting some one to come out +to him no doubt, clambered cautiously out, and after seeing that his +various grips and one trunk were properly deposited on the gravel square +outside, paid and feed his driver, then walked in and remarked:</p> + +<p>"Ah—where is Mr. Culhane?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, sir," I replied, being the only one present. "He was +here, but he's gone. I presume some one will show up presently."</p> + +<p>He walked up and down a little while, and then added: "Um—rather +peculiar method of receiving one, isn't it? I wired him I'd be here." He +walked restlessly and almost waspishly to and fro, looking out of the +window at times, at others commenting on the rather casual character of +it all. I agreed.</p> + +<p>Thus, some fifteen minutes having gone by without any one approaching +us, and occasional servants or "guests" passing through the room or +being seen in the offing without even so much as vouchsafing a word or +appearing to be interested in us, the new arrival grew excited.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" />This is very unusual," he fumed, walking up and down. "I wired him +only three hours ago. I've been here now fully three-quarters of an +hour! A most unheard-of method of doing business, I should say!"</p> + +<p>Presently our stern, steely-eyed host returned. He seemed to be going +somewhere, to be nowise interested in us. Yet into our presence, +probably into the consciousness of this new "guest," he carried that air +of savage strength and indifference, eyeing the stranger quite sharply +and making no effort to apologize for our long wait.</p> + +<p>"You wish to see me?" he inquired brusquely once more.</p> + +<p>Like a wasp, the stranger was vibrant with rage. Plainly he felt himself +insulted or terribly underrated.</p> + +<p>"Are you Mr. Culhane?" he asked crisply.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"I am Mr. Squiers," he exclaimed. "I wired you from Buffalo and ordered +a room," this last with an irritated wave of the hand.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, you didn't order any room," replied the host sourly and with an +obvious desire to show his indifference and contempt even. "You wired to +know if you <i>could engage</i> a room."</p> + +<p>He paused. The temperature seemed to drop perceptibly. The prospective +guest seemed to realize that he had made a mistake somewhere, had been +misinformed as to conditions here.</p> + +<p>"Oh! Um—ah! Yes! Well, have you a room?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I doubt it. We don't take every one." His eyes seemed to +bore into the interior of his would-be guest.</p> + +<p>"Well, but I was told—my friend, Mr. X——," the stranger began a +rapid, semi-irritated, semi-apologetic explanation of how he came to be +here.</p> + +<p>"I don't know anything about your friend or what he told you. If he told +you you could order a room by telegraph, he's mistaken. Anyhow, you're +not dealing with him, but with me. Now that you're here, though, if you +want to sit down and rest yourself a little I'll see what I can do for +you. I can't decide now whether I can let you stay. You'll have to wait +a while." He turned and walked off.</p> + +<p>The other stared. "Well," he commented to me after a time, <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" />walking and +twisting, "if a man wants to come here I suppose he has to put up with +such things, but it's certainly unusual, isn't it?" He sat down, wilted, +and waited.</p> + +<p>Later a clerk in charge of the registry book took us in hand, and then I +heard him explaining that his lungs were not in good shape. He had come +a long way—Denver, I believe. He had heard that all one needed to do +was to wire, especially one in his circumstances.</p> + +<p>"Some people think that way," solemnly commented the clerk, "but they +don't know Mr. Culhane. He does about as he pleases in these matters. He +doesn't do this any more to make money but rather to amuse himself, I +think. He always has more applicants than he accepts."</p> + +<p>I began to see a light. Perhaps there was something to this place after +all. I did not even partially sense the drift of the situation, though, +until bedtime when, after having been served a very frugal meal and +shown to my very simple room, a kind of cell, promptly at nine o'clock +lights were turned off. I lit a small candle and was looking over some +things which I had placed in a grip, when I heard a voice in the hall +outside: "Candles out, please! Candles out! All guests in bed!" Then it +came to me that a very rigorous régime was being enforced here.</p> + +<p>The next morning as I was still soundly sleeping at five-thirty a loud +rap sounded at my door. The night before I had noticed above my bed a +framed sign which read: "Guests must be dressed in running trunks, shoes +and sweater, and appear in the gymnasium by six sharp." "Gymnasium at +six! Gymnasium at six!" a voice echoed down the hall. I bounced out of +bed. Something about the very air of the place made me feel that it was +dangerous to attempt to trifle with the routine here. The tiger-like +eyes of my host did not appeal to me as retaining any softer ray in them +for me than for others. I had paid my six hundred ... I had better earn +it. I was down in the great room in my trunks, sweater, dressing-gown, +running shoes in less than five minutes.</p> + +<p>And that room! By that time as odd a company of people as I have ever +seen in a gymnasium had already begun to assemble. The leanness! the +osseosity! the grandiloquent whiskers parted in the middle! the +mustachios! the goatees!<a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" /> the fat, Hoti-like stomachs! the protuberant +knees! the thin arms! the bald or semi-bald pates! the spectacles or +horn glasses or pince-nezes!—laid aside a few moments later, as the +exercises began. Youth and strength in the pink of condition, when clad +only in trunks, a sweater and running shoes, are none too +acceptable—but middle age! And out in the world, I reflected rather +sadly, they all wore the best of clothes, had their cars, servants, city +and country houses perhaps, their factories, employees, institutions. +Ridiculous! Pitiful! As lymphatic and flabby as oysters without their +shells, myself included. It was really painful.</p> + +<p>Even as I meditated, however, I was advised, by many who saw that I was +a stranger, to choose a partner, any partner, for medicine ball +practice, for it might save me being taken or called by <i>him</i>. I +hastened so to do. Even as we were assembling or beginning to practice, +keeping two or three light medicine balls going between each pair, our +host entered—that iron man, that mount of brawn. In his cowled +dressing-gown he looked more like some great monk or fighting abbot of +the medieval years than a trainer. He walked to the center, hung up his +cowl and revealed himself lithe and lion-like and costumed like +ourselves. But how much more attractive as he strode about, his legs +lean and sturdy, his chest full, his arms powerful and graceful! At once +he seized a large leather-covered medicine ball, as had all the others, +and calling a name to which responded a lean whiskerando with a +semi-bald pate, thin legs and arms, and very much caricatured, I +presume, by the wearing of trunks and sweater. Taking his place opposite +the host, he was immediately made the recipient of a volley of balls and +brow-beating epithets.</p> + +<p>"Hurry up now! Faster! Ah, come on! Put the ball back to me! Put the +ball back! Do you want to keep it all day? Great God! What are you +standing there for? What are you standing there for? What do you think +you're doing—drinking tea? Come on! I haven't all morning for you +alone. Move! Move, you ham! You call yourself an editor! Why, you +couldn't edit a handbill! You can't even throw a ball straight! Throw it +straight! Throw it straight! For Christ's sake where do you think I +am—out in the office? Throw it straight! Hell!" and all the time one +and another ball, grabbed from <a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" />anywhere, for the floor was always +littered with them, would be thrown in the victim's direction, and +before he could well appreciate what was happening to him he was being +struck, once in the neck and again on the chest by the rapidly delivered +six ounce air-filled balls, two of which at least he and the host were +supposed to keep in constant motion between them. Later, a ball striking +him in the stomach, he emitted a weak "Ooph!" and laying his hands over +the affected part ceased all effort. At this the master of the situation +only smirked on him leoninely and holding up a ball as if to throw it +continued, "What's the matter with you now? Come on! What do you want to +stop for? What do you want to stand there for? You're not hurt. How do +you expect to get anywhere if you can't keep two silly little balls like +these going between us?" (There had probably been six or eight.) "Here I +am sixty and you're forty, and you can't even keep up with me. And you +pretend to give the general public advice on life! Well, go on; God pity +the public, is all I say," and he dismissed him, calling out another +name.</p> + +<p>Now came a fat, bald soul, with dewlaps and a protruding stomach, who +later I learned was a manufacturer of clothing—six hundred employees +under him—down in health and nerves, really all "shot to pieces" +physically. Plainly nervous at the sound of his name, he puffed quickly +into position, grabbing wildly after the purposely eccentric throws +which his host made and which kept him running to left and right in an +all but panicky mood.</p> + +<p>"Move! Move!" insisted our host as before, and, if anything, more +irritably. "Say, you work like a crab! What a motion! If you had more +head and less guts you could do this better. A fine specimen you are! +This is what comes of riding about in taxis and eating midnight suppers +instead of exercising. Wake up! Wake up! A belt would have kept your +stomach in long ago. A little less food and less sleep, and you wouldn't +have any fat cheeks. Even your hair might stay on! Wake up! Wake up! +What do you want to do—die?" and as he talked he pitched the balls so +quickly that his victim looked at times as though he were about to weep. +His physical deficiencies were all too plain in every way. He was +generally obese and looked as though he might drop, his face a flaming +red, his <a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" />hands trembling and missing, when a "Well, go on," sounded and +a third victim was called. This time it was a well-known actor who +responded, a star, rather spry and well set up, but still nervous, for +he realized quite well what was before him. He had been here for weeks +and was in pretty fair trim, but still he was plainly on edge. He ran +and began receiving and tossing as swiftly as he could, but as with the +others so it was his turn now to be given such a grilling and +tongue-lashing as falls to few of us in this world, let alone among the +successful in the realm of the footlights. "Say, you're not an +actor—you're a woman! You're a stewed onion! Move! Move! Come on! Come +on! Look at those motions now, will you? Look at that one arm up! Where +do you suppose the ball is? On the ceiling? It's not a lamp! Come on! +Come on! It's a wonder when you're killed as Hamlet that you don't stay +dead. You are. You're really dead now, you know. Move! Move!" and so it +would go until finally the poor thespian, no match for his master and +beset by flying balls, landing upon his neck, ear, stomach, finally gave +up and cried:</p> + +<p>"Well, I can't go any faster than I can, can I? I can't do any more than +I can!"</p> + +<p>"Ah, go on! Go back into the chorus!" called his host, who now abandoned +him. "Get somebody from the baby class to play marbles with you," and he +called another.</p> + +<p>By now, as may well be imagined, I was fairly stirred up as to the +probabilities of the situation. He might call me! The man who was +playing opposite me—a small, decayed person who chose me, I think, +because he knew I was new, innocuous and probably awkward—seemed to +realize my thoughts as well as his own. By lively exercise with me he +was doing his utmost to create an impression of great and valuable +effort here. "Come on, let's play fast so he won't notice us," he said +most pathetically at one point. You would have thought I had known him +all my life.</p> + +<p>But he didn't call us—not this morning at any rate. Whether owing to +our efforts or the fact that I at least was too insignificant, too +obscure, we escaped. He did reach me, however, on the fourth or fifth +day, and no spindling failure could have done worse. I was struck and +tripped and pounded until I all but fell prone upon the floor, half +con<a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" />vinced that I was being killed, but I was not. I was merely sent +stumbling and drooping back to the sidelines to recover while he +tortured some one else. But the names he called me! The comments on my +none too smoothly articulated bones—and my alleged mind! As in my +schooldays when, a laggard in the fierce and seemingly malevolent +atmosphere in which I was taught my ABC's, I crept shamefacedly and +beaten from the scene.</p> + +<p>It was in the adjoining bathroom, where the host daily personally +superintended the ablutions of his guests, that even more of his +remarkable method was revealed. Here a goodly portion of the force of +his method was his skill in removing any sense of ability, agility, +authority or worth from those with whom he dealt. Apparently to him, in +his strength and energy, they were all children, weaklings, failures, +numbskulls, no matter what they might be in the world outside. They had +no understanding of the most important of their possessions, their +bodies. And here again, even more than in the gymnasium, they were at +the disadvantage of feeling themselves spectacles, for here they were +naked. However grand an osseous, leathery lawyer or judge or doctor or +politician or society man may look out in the world addressing a jury or +a crowd or walking in some favorite place, glistening in his raiment, +here, whiskered, thin of legs, arms and neck, with bulging brow and +stripped not only of his gown but everything else this side of his +skin—well, draw your own conclusion. For after performing certain +additional exercises—one hundred times up on your toes, one hundred +times (if you could) squatting to your knees, one hundred times throwing +your arms out straight before you from your chest or up from your +shoulders or out at right angles, right and left from your body and back +to your hips until your fingers touched and the sweat once more ran—you +were then ready to be told (for once in your life) how to swiftly and +agilely take a bath.</p> + +<p>"Well, now, you're ready, are you?" this to a noble jurist who, like +myself perhaps, had arrived only the day before. "Come on, now. Now you +have just ten seconds in which to jump under the water and get yourself +wet all over, twenty seconds in which to jump out and soap yourself +thoroughly, <a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" />ten seconds in which to get back in again and rinse off all +the soap, and twenty seconds in which to rub and dry your skin +thoroughly—now start!"</p> + +<p>The distinguished jurist began, but instead of following the advice +given him for rapid action huddled himself in a shivering position under +the water and stood all but inert despite the previous explanation of +the host that the sole method of escaping the weakening influence of +cold water was by counteracting it with activity, when it would prove +beneficial.</p> + +<p>He was such a noble, stalky, bony affair, his gold eyeglasses laid aside +for the time being, his tweeds and carefully laundered linen all +dispensed with during his stay here. As he came, meticulously and +gingerly and quite undone by his efforts, from under the water, where he +had been most roughly urged by Culhane, I hoped that he and not I would +continue to be seized upon by this savage who seemed to take infinite +delight in disturbing the social and intellectual poise of us all.</p> + +<p>"Soap yourself!" exclaimed the latter most harshly now that the bather +was out in the room once more. "Soap your chest! Soap your stomach! Soap +your arms, damn it! Soap your arms! And don't rub them all day either! +Now soap your legs, damn it! Soap your legs! Don't you know how to soap +your legs! Don't stand there all day! Soap your legs! Now turn round and +soap your back—soap your back! For Christ's sake, soap your back! Do it +quick—quick! Now come back under the water again and see if you can get +it off. Don't act as though you were cold molasses! Move! Move! Lord, +you act as though you had all day—as though you had never taken a bath +in your life! I never saw such an old poke. You come up here and expect +me to do some things for you, and then you stand around as though you +were made of bone! Quick now, move!"</p> + +<p>The noble jurist did as demanded—that is, as quickly as he could—only +the mental inadequacy and feebleness which he displayed before all the +others, of course, was the worst of his cruel treatment here, and in +this as in many instances it cut deep. So often it was the shock to +one's dignity more than anything else which hurt so, to be called an old +poke when one was perhaps a grave and reverent senior, or to be told +that one was made of bone when one was a famous doctor or <a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" />merchant. +Once under the water this particular specimen had begun by nervously +rubbing his hands and face in order to get the soap off, and when +shouted at and abused for that had then turned his attention to one +other spot—the back of his left forearm.</p> + +<p>Mine host seemed enraged. "Well, well!" he exclaimed irascibly, watching +him as might a hawk. "Are you going to spend all day rubbing that one +spot? For God's sake, don't you know enough to rub your whole body and +get out from under the water? Move! Move! Rub your chest! Rub your +belly! Hell, rub your back! Rub your toes and get out!"</p> + +<p>When routed from the ludicrous effort of vigorously rubbing one spot he +was continually being driven on to some other, as though his body were +some vast complex machine which he had never rightly understood before. +He was very much flustered of course and seemed wholly unable to grasp +how it was done, let alone please his exacting host.</p> + +<p>"Come on!" insisted the latter finally and wearily. "Get out from under +the water. A lot you know about washing yourself! For a man who has been +on the bench for fifteen years you're the dullest person I ever met. If +you bathe like that at home, how do you keep clean? Come on out and dry +yourself!"</p> + +<p>The distinguished victim, drying himself rather ruefully on an +exceedingly rough towel, looked a little weary and disgusted. "Such +language!" some one afterwards said he said to some one else. "He's not +used to dealing with gentlemen, that's plain. The man talks like a +blackguard. And to think we pay for such things! Well, well! I'll not +stand it, I'm afraid. I've had about enough. It's positively revolting, +positively revolting!" But he stayed on, just the same—second thoughts, +a good breakfast, his own physical needs. At any rate weeks later he was +still there and in much better shape physically if not mentally.</p> + +<p>About the second or third day I witnessed another such spectacle, which +made me laugh—only not in my host's presence—nay, verily! For into +this same chamber had come another distinguished personage, a lawyer or +society man, I couldn't tell which, who was washing himself rather +leisurely, <a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" />as was <i>not</i> the prescribed way, when suddenly he was spied +by mine host, who was invariably instructing some one in this swift +one-minute or less system. Now he eyed the operation narrowly for a few +seconds, then came over and exclaimed:</p> + +<p>"Wash your toes, can't you? Wash your toes! Can't you wash your toes?"</p> + +<p>The skilled gentleman, realizing that he was now living under very +different conditions from those to which presumably he was accustomed, +reached down and began to rub the tops of his toes but without any +desire apparently to widen the operation.</p> + +<p>"Here!" called the host, this time much more sharply, "I said wash your +toes, not the outside of them! Soap them! Don't you know how to wash +your toes yet? You're old enough, God knows! Wash between 'em! Wash +under 'em!"</p> + +<p>"Certainly I know how to wash my toes," replied the other irritably and +straightening up, "and what's more, I'd like you to know that I am a +gentleman."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, if you're a gentleman," retorted the other, "you ought to +know how to wash your toes. Wash 'em—and don't talk back!"</p> + +<p>"Pah!" exclaimed the bather now, looking twice as ridiculous as before. +"I'm not used to having such language addressed to me."</p> + +<p>"I can't help that," said Culhane. "If you knew how to wash your toes +perhaps you wouldn't have to have such language addressed to you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, hell!" fumed the other. "This is positively outrageous! I'll leave +the place, by George!"</p> + +<p>"Very well," rejoined the other, "only before you go you'll have to wash +your toes!"</p> + +<p>And he did, the host standing by and calmly watching the performance +until it was finally completed.</p> + +<p>It was just this atmosphere which made the place the most astonishing in +which I have ever been. It seemed to be drawing the celebrated and the +successful as a magnet might iron, and yet it offered conditions which +one might presume they would be most opposed to. No one here was really +any one, however much he might be outside. Our host was all. He had <a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" />a +great blazing personality which dominated everybody, and he did not +hesitate to show before one and all that he did so do.</p> + +<p>Breakfast here consisted of a cereal, a chop and coffee—plentiful but +very plain, I thought. After breakfast, between eight-thirty and eleven, +we were free to do as we chose: write letters, pack our bags if we were +leaving, do up our laundry to be sent out, read, or merely sit about. At +eleven, or ten-thirty, according to the nature of the exercise, one had +to join a group, either one that was to do the long or short block, as +they were known here, or one that was to ride horseback, all exercises +being so timed that by proper execution one would arrive at the bathroom +door in time to bathe, dress and take ten minutes' rest before luncheon. +These exercises were simple enough in themselves, consisting, as they +did in the case of the long and the short blocks (the long block seven, +the short four miles in length), of our walking, or walking and running +betimes, about or over courses laid up hill and down dale, over or +through unpaved mudroads in many instances, along dry or wet beds of +brooks or streams, and across stony or weedy fields, often still damp +with dew or the spring rains. But in most cases, when people had not +taken any regular exercise for a long time, this was by no means easy. +The first day I thought I should never make it, and I was by no means a +poor walker. Others, the new ones especially, often gave out and had to +be sent for, or came in an hour late to be most severely and +irritatingly ragged by the host. He seemed to all but despise weakness +and had apparently a thousand disagreeable ways of showing it.</p> + +<p>"If you want to see what poor bags of mush some people can become," he +once said in regard to some poor specimen who had seemingly had great +difficulty in doing the short block, "look at this. Here comes a man +sent out to do four measly country miles in fifty minutes, and look at +him. You'd think he was going to die. He probably thinks so himself. In +New York he'd do seventeen miles in a night running from barroom to +barroom or one lobster palace to another—that's a good name for them, +by the way—and never say a word. But out here in the country, with +plenty of fresh air and a night's rest and a good breakfast, he can't +even do four miles <a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" />in fifty minutes! Think of it! And he probably +thinks of himself as a man—boasts before his friends, or his wife, +anyhow. Lord!"</p> + +<p>A day or two later there arrived here a certain major of the United +States Army, a large, broad-chested, rather pompous person of about +forty-eight or-nine, who from taking his ease in one sinecure and +another had finally reached the place where he was unable to endure +certain tests (or he thought so) which were about to be made with a view +to retiring certain officers grown fat in the service. As he explained +to Culhane, and the latter was always open and ribald afterward in his +comments on those who offered explanations of any kind, his plan was to +take the course here in order to be able to make the difficult tests +later.</p> + +<p>Culhane resented this, I think. He resented people using him or his +methods to get anywhere, do anything more in life than he could do, and +yet he received them. He felt, and I think in the main that he was +right, that they looked down on him because of his lowly birth and +purely material and mechanical career, and yet having attained some +distinction by it he could not forego this work which raised him, in a +way, to a position of dominance over these people. Now the sight of +presumably so efficient a person in need of aid or exercise, to be built +up, was all that was required to spur him on to the most waspish or +wolfish attitude imaginable. In part at least he argued, I think (for in +the last analysis he was really too wise and experienced to take any +such petty view, although there is a subconscious "past-lack" motivating +impulse in all our views), that here he was, an ex-policeman, +ex-wrestler, ex-prize fighter, ex-private, ex-waiter, beef-carrier, +bouncer, trainer; and here was this grand major, trained at West Point, +who actually didn't know any more about life or how to take care of his +body than to be compelled to come here, broken down at forty-eight, +whereas he, because of his stamina and Spartan energy, had been able to +survive in perfect condition until sixty and was now in a position to +rebuild all these men and wastrels and to control this great +institution. And to a certain extent he was right, although he seemed to +forget or not to know that he was not the creator of his own great +strength, by any means, impulses and <a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" />tendencies over which he had no +control having arranged for that.</p> + +<p>However that may be, here was the major a suppliant for his services, +and here was he, Culhane, and although the major was paying well for his +minute room and his probably greatly decreased diet, still Culhane could +not resist the temptation to make a show of him, to picture him as the +more or less pathetic example that he was, in order perhaps that he, +Culhane, might shine by contrast. Thus on the first day, having sent him +around the short block with the others, it was found at twelve, when the +"joggers" were expected to return, and again at twelve-thirty when they +were supposed to take their places at the luncheon table, that the heavy +major had not arrived. He had been seen and passed by all, of course. +After the first mile or two probably he had given out and was making his +way as best he might up hill and down dale, or along some more direct +road, to the "shop," or maybe he had dropped out entirely, as some did, +via a kindly truck or farmer's wagon, and was on his way to the nearest +railway station.</p> + +<p>At any rate, as Culhane sat down at his very small private table, which +stood in the center of the dining-room and far apart from the others (a +vantage point, as it were), he looked about and, not seeing the new +guest, inquired, "Has any one seen that alleged army officer who arrived +here this morning?"</p> + +<p>No one could say anything more than that they had left him two or three +miles back.</p> + +<p>"I thought so," he said tersely. "There you have a fine example of the +desk general and major—we had 'em in the army—men who sit in a swivel +chair all day, wear a braided uniform and issue orders to other people. +You'd think a man like that who had been trained at West Point and seen +service in the Philippines would have sense enough to keep himself in +condition. Not at all. As soon as they get a little way up in their +profession they want to sit around hotel grills or society ballrooms and +show off, tell how wonderful they are. Here's a man, an army officer, in +such rotten shape that if I sent a good horse after him now it's ten to +one he couldn't get on him. I'll have to send a truck or some such +thing."</p> + +<p>He subsided. About an hour later the major did appear, much the worse +for wear. A groom with a horse had been <a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" />sent out after him, and, as the +latter confided to some one afterward, he "had to help the major on." +From that time on, on the short block and the long, as well as on those +horseback tours which every second or third morning we were supposed to +take, the major was his especial target. He loved to pick on him, to +tell him that he was "nearly all guts"—a phrase which literally +sickened me at that time—to ask him how he expected to stay in the army +if he couldn't do this or that, what good was he to the army, how could +any soldier respect a thing like him, and so on <i>ad infinitum</i> until, +while at first I pitied the major, later on I admired his pluck. Culhane +foisted upon him his sorriest and boniest nag, the meanest animal he +could find, yet he never complained; and although he forced on him all +the foods he knew the major could not like, still there was no +complaint; he insisted that he should be out and around of an afternoon +when most of us lay about, allowed him no drinks whatever, although he +was accustomed to them. The major, as I learned afterwards, stayed not +six but twelve weeks and passed the tests which permitted him to remain +in the army.</p> + +<p>But to return to Culhane himself. The latter's method always contained +this element of nag and pester which, along with his brazen reliance on +and pride in his brute strength at sixty, made all these others look so +puny and ineffectual. They might have brains and skill but here they +were in his institution, more or less undone nervously and physically, +and here he was, cold, contemptuous, not caring much whether they came, +stayed or went, and laughing at them even as they raged. Now and then it +was rumored that he found some single individual in whom he would take +an interest, but not often. In the main I think he despised them one and +all for the puny machines they were. He even despised life and the +pleasures and dissipations or swinish indolence which, in his judgment, +characterized most men. I recall once, for instance, his telling us how +as a private in the United States Army when the division of which he was +a unit was shut up in winter quarters, huddled about stoves, smoking (as +he characterized them) "filthy pipes" or chewing tobacco and spitting, +actually lousy, and never changing their clothes for weeks on end—how +he, revolting at all this and the disease <a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" />and fevers ensuing, had kept +out of doors as much as possible, even in the coldest weather, and +finding no other way of keeping clean the single shift of underwear and +the one uniform he possessed he had, every other day or so, washed all, +uniform and underwear, with or without soap as conditions might compel, +in a nearby stream, often breaking the ice to get to the water, and +dancing about naked in the cold, running and jumping, while they dried +on bushes or the branch of a tree.</p> + +<p>"Those poor rats," he added most contemptuously, "used to sit inside and +wonder at me or laugh and jeer, hovering over their stoves, but a lot of +them died that very winter, and here I am today."</p> + +<p>And well we knew it. I used to study the faces of many of the puffy, +gelatinous souls, so long confined to their comfortable offices, +restaurants and homes that two hours on horseback all but wore them out, +and wonder how this appealed to them. I think that in the main they took +it as an illustration of either one of two things: insanity, or giant +and therefore not-to-be-imitated strength.</p> + +<p>But in regard to them Culhane was by no means so tolerant. One day, as I +recall, there arrived at the sanitarium a stout and mushy-looking +Hebrew, with a semi-bald pate, protruding paunch and fat arms and legs, +who applied to Culhane for admission. And, as much to irritate his other +guests, I think, as to torture this particular specimen into some +semblance of vitality, he admitted him. And thereafter, from the hour he +entered until he left about the time I did, Culhane seemed to follow him +with a wolfish and savage idea. He gave him a most damnable and savage +horse, one that kicked and bit, and at mounting time would place Mr. +Itzky (I think his name was) up near the front of the procession where +he could watch him. Always at mount-time, when we were permitted to +ride, there was inside the great stable a kind of preliminary military +inspection of all our accouterments, seeing that we had to saddle and +bridle and bring forth our own steeds. This particular person could not +saddle a horse very well nor put on his bit and bridle. The animal was +inclined to rear and plunge when he came near, to fix him with an evil +eye and bite at him.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" />And above all things Culhane seemed to value strain of this kind. If he +could just make his guests feel the pressure of necessity in connection +with their work he was happy. To this end he would employ the most +contemptuous and grilling comment. Thus to Mr. Itzky he was most unkind. +He would look over all most cynically, examining the saddles and +bridles, and then say, "Oh, I see you haven't learned how to tighten a +belly-band yet," or "I do believe you have your saddle hind-side to. You +would if you could, that's one thing sure. How do you expect a horse to +be sensible or quiet when he knows that he isn't saddled right? Any +horse knows that much, and whether he has an ass for a rider. I'd kick +and bite too if I were some of these horses, having a lot of damned +fools and wasters to pack all over the country. Loosen that belt and +fasten it right" (there might be nothing wrong with it) "and move your +saddle up. Do you want to sit over the horse's rump?"</p> + +<p>Then would come the fateful moment of mounting. There was of course the +accepted and perfect way—his way: left foot in stirrup, an easy +balanced spring and light descent into the seat. One should be able to +slip the right foot into the right stirrup with the same motion of +mounting. But imagine fifty, sixty, seventy men, all sizes, weights and +differing conditions of health and mood. A number of these people had +never ridden a horse before coming here and were as nervous and +frightened as children. Such mounts! Such fumbling around, once they +were in their saddles, for the right stirrup! And all the while Culhane +would be sitting out front like an army captain on the only decent steed +in the place, eyeing us with a look of infinite and weary contempt that +served to increase our troubles a thousandfold.</p> + +<p>"Well, you're all on, are you? You all do it so gracefully I like to sit +here and admire you. Hulbert there throws his leg over his horse's back +so artistically that he almost kicks his teeth out. And Effingham does +his best to fall off on the other side. And where's Itzky? I don't even +see him. Oh, yes, there he is. Well" (this to Itzky, frantically +endeavoring to get one fat foot in a stirrup and pull himself up), "what +about you? Can't you get your leg that high? Here's a man who for +twenty-five years has been running a cloak-and-suit business <a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" />and +employing five hundred people, but he can't get on a horse! Imagine! +Five hundred people dependent on that for their living!" (At this point, +say, Itzky succeeds in mounting.) "Well, he's actually on! Now see if +you can stick while we ride a block or two. You'll find the right +stirrup, Itzky, just a little forward of your horse's belly on the right +side—see? A fine bunch this is to lead out through a gentleman's +country! Hell, no wonder I've got a bad reputation throughout this +section! Well, forward, and see if you can keep from falling off."</p> + +<p>Then we were out through the stable-door and the privet gate at a smart +trot, only to burst into a headlong gallop a little farther on down the +road. To the seasoned riders it was all well enough, but to beginners, +those nervous about horses, fearful about themselves! The first day, not +having ridden in years and being uncertain as to my skill, I could +scarcely stay on. Several days later, I by then having become a +reasonably seasoned rider, it was Mr. Itzky who appeared on the scene, +and after him various others. On this particular trip I am thinking of, +Mr. Itzky fell or rolled off and could not again mount. He was miles +from the repair shop and Culhane, discovering his plight, was by no +means sympathetic. We had a short ride back to where he sat lamely by +the roadside viewing disconsolately the cavalcade and the country in +general.</p> + +<p>"Well, what's the matter with you now?" It was Culhane, eyeing him most +severely.</p> + +<p>"I hef hurt my foot. I kent stay on."</p> + +<p>"You mean you'd rather walk, do you, and lead your horse?"</p> + +<p>"Vell, I kent ride."</p> + +<p>"All right, then, you lead your horse back to the stable if you want any +lunch, and hereafter you run with the baby-class on the short block +until you think you can ride without falling off. What's the good of my +keeping a stable of first-class horses at the service of a lot of +mush-heads who don't even know how to use 'em? All they do is ruin 'em. +In a week or two, after a good horse is put in the stable, he's not fit +for a gentleman to ride. They pull and haul and kick and beat, <a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" />when as +a matter of fact the horse has a damned sight more sense than they +have."</p> + +<p>We rode off, leaving Itzky alone. The men on either side of me—we were +riding three abreast—scoffed under their breath at the statement that +we were furnished decent horses. "The nerve! This nag!" "This bag of +bones!" "To think a thing like this should be called a horse!" But there +were no outward murmurs and no particular sympathy for Mr. Itzky. He was +a fat stuff, a sweat-shop manufacturer, they would bet; let him walk and +sweat.</p> + +<p>So much for sympathy in this gay realm where all were seeking to restore +their own little bodies, whatever happened.</p> + +<p>So many of these men varied so greatly in their looks, capacities and +troubles that they were always amusing. Thus I recall one lean iron +manufacturer, the millionaire president of a great "frog and switch" +company, who had come on from Kansas City, troubled with anæmia, +neurasthenia, "nervous derangement of the heart" and various other +things. He was over fifty, very much concerned about himself, his +family, his business, his friends; anxious to obtain the benefits of +this celebrated course of which he had heard so much. Walking or running +near me on his first day, he took occasion to make inquiries in regard +to Culhane, the life here, and later on confidences as to his own +condition. It appeared that his chief trouble was his heart, a kind of +phantom disturbance which made him fear that he was about to drop dead +and which came and went, leaving him uncertain as to whether he had it +or not. On entering he had confided to Culhane the mysteries of his +case, and the latter had examined him, pronouncing him ("Rather +roughly," as he explained to me), quite fit to do "all the silly work he +would have to do here."</p> + +<p>Nevertheless while we were out on the short block his heart was hurting +him. At the same time it had been made rather clear to him that if he +wished to stay here he would have to fulfill all the obligations +imposed. After a mile or two or three of quick walking and jogging he +was saying to me, "You know, I'm not really sure that I can do this. +It's very severe, more so than I thought. My heart is not doing very +well. It feels very fluttery."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" />But," I said, "if he told you you could stand it, you can, I'm sure. +It's not very likely he'd say you could if you couldn't. He examined +you, didn't he? I don't believe he'd deliberately put a strain on any +one who couldn't stand it."</p> + +<p>"Yes," he admitted doubtfully, "that's true perhaps."</p> + +<p>Still he continued to complain and complain and to grow more and more +worried, until finally he slowed up and was lost in the background.</p> + +<p>Reaching the gymnasium at the proper time I bathed and dressed myself +quickly and waited on the balcony over the bathroom to see what would +happen in this case. As a rule Culhane stood in or near the door at this +time, having just returned from some route or "block" himself, to see +how the others were faring. And he was there when the iron manufacturer +came limping up, fifteen minutes late, one hand over his heart, the +other to his mouth, and exclaiming as he drew near, "I do believe, Mr. +Culhane, that I can't stand this. I'm afraid there is something the +matter with my heart. It's fluttering so."</p> + +<p>"To hell with your heart! Didn't I tell you there was nothing the matter +with it? Get into the bath!"</p> + +<p>The troubled manufacturer, overawed or reassured as the case might be, +entered the bath and ten minutes later might have been seen entering the +dining-room, as comfortable apparently as any one. Afterwards he +confessed to me on one of our jogs that there was something about +Culhane which <i>gave him confidence</i> and made him believe that there +wasn't anything wrong with his heart—which there wasn't, I presume.</p> + +<p>The intensely interesting thing about Culhane was this different, very +original and forthright if at times brutal point of view. It was a +blazing material world of which he was the center, the sun, and yet +always I had the sense of very great life. With no knowledge of or +interest in the superior mental sciences or arts or philosophies, still +he seemed to suggest and even live them. He was in his way an +exemplification of that ancient Greek regimen and stark thought which +brought back the ten thousand from Cunaxa. He seemed even to suggest in +his rough way historical perspective and balance. He knew men, and +apparently he sensed how at best and at bottom life was to be lived, +with not too much emotional or appetitive swaying in any one direction, +and not too little either.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" />Yet in "trapseing" about this particular realm each day with ministers, +lawyers, doctors, actors, manufacturers, papa's or mamma's young +hopefuls and petted heirs, young scapegraces and so-called "society men" +of the extreme "upper crust," stuffed and plethoric with money and as +innocent of sound knowledge or necessary energy in some instances as any +one might well be, one could not help speculating as to how it was that +such a man, as indifferent and all but discourteous as this one, could +attract them (and so many) to him. They came from all parts of +America—the Pacific, the Gulf, the Atlantic and Canada—and yet, +although they did not relish, him or his treatment of them, once here +they stayed. Walking or running or idling about with them one could +always hear from one or another that Culhane was too harsh, a "bounder," +an "upstart," a "cheap pugilist" or "wrestler" at best (I myself thought +so at times when I was angry), yet here they were, and here I was, and +staying. He was low, vulgar—yet here we were. And yet, meditating on +him, I began to think that he was really one of the most remarkable men +I had ever known, for these people he dealt with were of all the most +difficult to deal with. In the main they were of that order or condition +of mind which springs from (1), too much wealth too easily acquired or +inherited; or (2), from a blazing material success, the cause of which +was their own savage self-interested viewpoint. Hence a colder and in +some respects a more critical group of men I have never known. Most of +them had already seen so much of life in a libertine way that there was +little left to enjoy. They sniffed at almost everything, Culhane +included, and yet they were obviously drawn to him. I tried to explain +this to myself on the ground that there is some iron power in some +people which literally compels this, whether one will or no; or that +they were in the main so tired of life and so truly selfish and +egotistic that it required some such different iron or caviar mood plus +such a threatening regimen to make them really take an interest. Sick as +they were, he was about the only thing left on which they could sharpen +their teeth with any result.</p> + +<p>As I have said, a part of Culhane's general scheme was to arrange the +starting time for the walks and jogs about the long and short blocks so +that if one moved along briskly he <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" />reached the sanitarium at +twelve-thirty and had a few minutes in which to bathe and cool off and +change his clothes before entering the dining-room, where, if not at the +bathroom door beforehand, Culhane would be waiting, seated at his little +table, ready to keep watch on the time and condition of all those due. +Thus one day, a group of us having done the long block in less time than +we should have devoted to it, came in panting and rejoicing that we had +cut the record by seven minutes. We did not know that he was around. But +in the dining-room as we entered he scoffed at our achievement.</p> + +<p>"You think you're smart, don't you?" he said sourly and without any +preliminary statement as to how he knew we had done it in less time. +"You come out here and pay me one hundred a week and then you want to be +cute and play tricks with your own money and health. I want you to +remember just one thing: my reputation is just as much involved with the +results here as your money. I don't need anybody's money, and I do need +my orders obeyed. Now you all have watches. You just time yourselves and +do that block in the time required. If you can't do it, that's one +thing; I can forgive a man too weak or sick to do it. But I haven't any +use for a mere smart aleck, and I don't want any more of it, see?"</p> + +<p>That luncheon was very sad.</p> + +<p>Another thing in connection with these luncheons and dinners, which were +sharply timed to the minute, were these crisp table speeches, often made +<i>in re</i> some particular offender or his offense, at other times mere +sarcastic comments on life in general and the innate cussedness of human +nature, which amused at the same time that they were certain to irritate +some. For who is it that is not interested in hearing the peccadilloes +of his neighbor aired?</p> + +<p>Thus while I was there, there was a New York society man by the name of +Blake, who unfortunately was given to severe periods of alcoholism, the +results of which were, after a time, nervous disorders which sent him +here. In many ways he was as amiable and courteous and considerate a +soul as one could meet anywhere. He had that smooth, gracious something +about him—good nature, for one thing, a kind of understanding and +sympathy for various forms of life—which left him highly noncensorious, +if genially examining at times. But <a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" />his love of drink, or rather his +mild attempts here to arrange some method by which in this droughty +world he could obtain a little, aroused in Culhane not so much +opposition as an amused contempt, for at bottom I think he really liked +the man. Blake was so orderly, so sincere in his attempts to fulfill +conditions, only about once every week or so he would suggest that he be +allowed to go to White Plains or Rye, or even New York, on some errand +or other—most of which requests were promptly and nearly always +publicly refused. For although Culhane had his private suite at one end +of the great building, where one might suppose one might go to make a +private plea, still one could never find him there. He refused to +receive complaints or requests or visits of any kind there. If you +wanted to speak to him you had to do it when he was with the group in +its entirety—a commonsense enough policy. But just the same there were +those who had reasonable requests or complaints, and these, by a fine +intuition as to who was who in this institution and what might be +expected of each one, he managed to hear very softly, withdrawing slowly +as they talked or inviting them into the office. In the main however the +requests were very much like those of Blake—men who wanted to get off +somewhere for a day or two, feeling, as they did after a week or two or +three, especially fit and beginning to think no doubt of the various +comforts and pleasures which the city offered.</p> + +<p>But to all these he was more or less adamant. By hook or by crook, by +special arrangements with friends or agents in nearby towns and the +principal showy resorts of New York, he managed to know, providing they +did leave the grounds, either with or without his consent, about where +they were and what they had done, and in case any of his rules or their +agreements were broken their privileges were thereafter cut off or they +were promptly ejected, their trunks being set out on the roadway in +front of the estate and they being left to make their way to shelter +elsewhere as best they might.</p> + +<p>On one occasion, however, Blake had been allowed to go to New York over +Saturday and Sunday to attend to some urgent business, as he said, he on +his honor having promised to avoid the white lights. Nevertheless he did +not manage so to do but instead, in some comfortable section of that +region, <a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" />was seen drinking enough to last him until perhaps he should +have another opportunity to return to the city.</p> + +<p>On his return to the "shop" on Monday morning or late Sunday night, +Culhane pretended not to see him until noonday lunch, when, his jog over +the long block done with and his bath taken, he came dapperly into the +dining-room, wishing to look as innocent and fit as possible. But +Culhane was there before him at his little table in the center of the +room, and patting the head of one of the two pure-blooded collies that +always followed him about on the grounds or in the house, began as +follows:</p> + +<p>"A dog," he said very distinctly and in his most cynical tone and +apparently apropos of nothing, which usually augured that the lightning +of his criticism was about to strike somewhere, "is so much better than +the average man that it's an insult to the dog to compare them. The +dog's really decent. He has no sloppy vices. You set a plate of food +before a regularly-fed, blooded dog, and he won't think of gorging +himself sick or silly. He eats what he needs, and then stops. So does a +cat" (which is of course by no means true, but still—). "A dog doesn't +get a red nose from drinking too much." By now all eyes were turning in +the direction of Blake, whose nose was faintly tinged. "He doesn't get +gonorrhea or syphilis." The united glances veered in the direction of +three or four young scapegraces of wealth, all of whom were suspected of +these diseases. "He doesn't hang around hotel bars and swill and get his +tongue thick and talk about how rich he is or how old his family is." +(This augured that Blake did such things, which I doubt, but once more +all eyes were shifted to him.) "He doesn't break his word. Within the +limits of his poor little brain he's faithful. He does what he thinks +he's called upon to do.</p> + +<p>"But you take a man—more especially a gentleman—one of these fellows +who is always very pointed in emphasizing that he is a gentleman" (which +Blake never did). "Let him inherit eight or ten millions, give him a +college education, let him be socially well connected, and what does he +do? Not a damned thing if he can help it except contract vices—run from +one saloon to another, one gambling house to another, one girl to +another, one meal to another. He doesn't need to <a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" />know anything +necessarily. He may be the lowest dog physically and in every other way, +and still he's a gentleman—because he has money, wears spats and a high +hat. Why I've seen fifty poor boob prize fighters in my time who could +put it all over most of the so-called gentlemen I have ever seen. They +kept their word. They tried to be physically fit. They tried to stand up +in the world and earn their own living and be somebody." (He was +probably thinking of himself.) "But a gentleman wants to boast of his +past and his family, to tell you that he must go to the city on +business—his lawyers or some directors want to see him. Then he swills +around at hotel bars, stays with some of his lady whores, and then comes +back here and expects me to pull him into shape again, to make his nose +a little less red. He thinks he can use my place to fall back on when he +can't go any longer, to fix him up to do some more swilling later on.</p> + +<p>"Well, I want to serve notice on all so-called gentlemen here, and <i>one +gentleman</i> in particular" (and he heavily and sardonically emphasized +the words), "that it won't do. This isn't a hospital attached to a +whorehouse or a saloon. And as for the trashy little six hundred paid +here, I don't need it. I've turned away more men who have been here once +or twice and have shown me that they were just using this place and me +as something to help them go on with their lousy drinking and carousing, +than would fill this building. Sensible men know it. They don't try to +use me. It's only the wastrels, or their mothers or fathers who bring +their boys and husbands and cry, who try to use me, and I take 'em once +or twice, but not oftener. When a man goes out of here cured, I know he +is cured. I never want to see him again. I want him to go out in the +world and stand up. I don't want him to come back here in six months +sniveling to be put in shape again. He disgusts me. He makes me sick. I +feel like ordering him off the place, and I do, and that's the end of +him. Let him go and bamboozle somebody else. I've shown him all I know. +There's no mystery. He can do as much for himself, once he's been here, +as I can. If he won't, well and good. And I'm saying one thing more: +There's one man here to whom this particularly applies today. This is +his last call. He's been here twice. When he goes out this time he can't +come back. Now <a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" />see if some of you can remember some of the things I've +been telling you."</p> + +<p>He subsided and opened his little pint of wine.</p> + +<p>Another day while I was there he began as follows:</p> + +<p>"If there's one class of men that needs to be improved in this country, +it's lawyers. I don't know why it is, but there's something in the very +nature of the work of a lawyer which appears to make him cynical and to +want to wear a know-it-all look. Most lawyers are little more than +sharper crooks than the crooks they have to deal with. They're always +trying to get in on some case or other where they have to outwit the +law, save some one from getting what he justly deserves, and then they +are supposed to be honest and high-minded! Think of it! To judge by some +of the specimens I get up here," and then some lawyer in the place would +turn a shrewd inquiring glance in his direction or steadfastly gaze at +his plate or out the window, while the others stared at him, "you would +think they were the salt of the earth or that they were following a +really noble profession or that they were above or better than other men +in their abilities. Well, if being conniving and tricky are fine traits, +I suppose they are, but personally I can't see it. Generally speaking, +they're physically the poorest fish I get here. They're slow and +meditative and sallow, mostly because they get too little exercise, I +presume. And they're never direct and enthusiastic in an argument. A +lawyer always wants to stick in an 'if' or a 'but,' to get around you in +some way. He's never willing to answer you quickly or directly. I've +watched 'em now for nearly fifteen years, and they're all more or less +alike. They think they're very individual and different, but they're +not. Most of them don't know nearly as much about life as a good, +all-around business or society man," this in the absence of any desire +to discuss these two breeds for the time being. "For the life of me I +could never see why a really attractive woman would ever want to marry a +lawyer"—and so he would talk on, revealing one little unsatisfactory +trait after another in connection with the tribe, sand-papering their +raw places as it were, until you would about conclude, supposing you had +never heard him talk concerning any other profession, that lawyers were +the most ignoble, the pettiest, the most inefficient physically and +mentally, of all the <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" />men he had ever encountered; and in his noble +savage state there would not be one to disagree with him, for he had +such an animal, tiger-like mien that you had the feeling that instead of +an argument you would get a physical rip which would leave you bleeding +for days.</p> + +<p>The next day, or a day or two or four or six later—according to his +mood—it would be doctors or merchants or society men or politicians he +would discourse about—and, kind heaven, what a drubbing they would get! +He seemed always to be meditating on the vulnerable points of his +victims, anxious (and yet presumably not) to show them what poor, +fallible, shabby, petty and all but drooling creatures they were. Thus +in regard to merchants:</p> + +<p>"The average man who has a little business of some kind, a factory or a +wholesale or brokerage house or a hotel or a restaurant, usually has a +distinctly middle-class mind." At this all the merchants and +manufacturers were likely to give a very sharp ear. "As a rule, you'll +find that they know just the one little line with which they're +connected, and nothing more. One man knows all about cloaks and suits" +(this may have been a slap at poor Itzky) "or he knows a little +something about leather goods or shoes or lamps or furniture, and that's +all he knows. If he's an American he'll buckle down to that little +business and work night and day, sweat blood and make every one else +connected with him sweat it, underpay his employees, swindle his +friends, half-starve himself and his family, in order to get a few +thousand dollars and seem as good as some one else who has a few +thousand. And yet he doesn't want to be different from—he wants to be +just like—the other fellow. If some one in his line has a house up on +the Hudson or on Riverside Drive, when he gets his money he wants to go +there and live. If the fellow in his line, or some other that he knows +something about, belongs to a certain club, he has to belong to it even +if the club doesn't want him or he wouldn't look well in it. He wants to +have the same tailor, the same grocer, smoke the same brand of cigars +and go to the same summer resort as the other fellow. They even want to +look alike. God! And then when they're just like every one else, they +think they're somebody. They haven't a single idea outside their line, +and <a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" />yet because they've made money they want to tell other people how +to live and think. Imagine a rich butcher or cloak-maker, or any one +else, presuming to tell me how to think or live!"</p> + +<p>He stared about him as though he saw many exemplifications of his +picture present. And it was always interesting to see how those whom his +description really did fit look as though he could not possibly be +referring to them.</p> + +<p>Of all types or professions that came here, I think he disliked doctors +most. The reason was of course that the work they did or were about to +do in the world bordered on that which he was trying to accomplish, and +the chances were that they sniffed at or at least critically examined +what he was doing with an eye to finding its weak spots. In many cases +no doubt he fancied that they were there to study and copy his methods +and ideas, without having the decency later on to attribute their +knowledge to him. It was short shrift for any one of them with ideas or +"notions" unfriendly to him advanced in his presence. For a little while +during my stay there was a smooth-faced, rather solid physically and +decidedly self-opinionated mentally, doctor who ate at the same small +table as I and who was never tired of airing his views, medical and +otherwise. He confided to me rather loftily that there was, to be sure, +something to Culhane's views and methods but that they were +"over-emphasized here, over-emphasized." Still, one could over-emphasize +the value of drugs too. As for himself he had decided to achieve a happy +medium if possible, and for this reason (for one) he had come here to +study Culhane.</p> + +<p>As for Culhane, in spite of the young doctor's condescension and +understanding, or perhaps better yet because of it, he thoroughly +disliked, barely tolerated, him, and was never tired of commenting on +little dancing medics with their "pill cases" and easily acquired book +knowledge, boasting of their supposed learning "which somebody else had +paid for," as he once said—their fathers, of course. And when they were +sick, some of them at least, they had to come out here to him, or they +came to steal his theory and start a shabby grafting sanitarium of their +own. He knew them.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" />One noon we were at lunch. Occasionally before seating himself at his +small central table he would walk or glance about and, having good eyes, +would spy some little defect or delinquency somewhere and of course +immediately act upon it. One of the rules of the repair shop was that +you were to eat what was put before you, especially when it differed +from what your table companion received. Thus a fat man at a table with +a lean one might receive a small portion of lean meat, no potatoes and +no bread or one little roll, whereas his lean acquaintance opposite +would be receiving a large portion of fat meat, a baked or boiled +potato, plenty of bread and butter, and possibly a side dish of some +kind. Now it might well be, as indeed was often the case, that each +would be dissatisfied with his apportionment and would attempt to change +plates.</p> + +<p>But this was the one thing that Culhane would not endure. So upon one +occasion, passing near the table at which sat myself and the +above-mentioned doctor, table-mates for the time being, he noticed that +he was not eating his carrots, a dish which had been especially prepared +for him, I imagine—for if one unconsciously ignored certain things the +first day or two of his stay, those very things would be all but rammed +down his throat during the remainder of his stay; a thing concerning +which one guest and another occasionally cautioned newcomers. However +this may have been in this particular case, he noticed the uneaten +carrots and, pausing a moment, observed:</p> + +<p>"What's the matter? Aren't you eating your carrots?" We had almost +finished eating.</p> + +<p>"Who, me?" replied the medic, looking up. "Oh, no, I never eat carrots, +you know. I don't like them."</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't you?" said Culhane sweetly. "You don't like them, and so you +don't eat them! Well, suppose you eat them here. They may do you a +little good just as a change."</p> + +<p>"But I never eat carrots," retorted the medic tersely and with a slight +show of resentment or opposition, scenting perhaps a new order.</p> + +<p>"No, not outside perhaps, but here you do. You eat carrots here, see?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" />Yes, but why should I eat them if I don't like them? They don't agree +with me. Must I eat something that doesn't agree with me just because +it's a rule or to please you?"</p> + +<p>"To please me, or the carrots, or any damned thing you please—but eat +'em."</p> + +<p>The doctor subsided. For a day or two he went about commenting on what a +farce the whole thing was, how ridiculous to make any one eat what was +not suited to him, but just the same while he was there he ate them.</p> + +<p>As for myself, I was very fond of large boiled potatoes and substantial +orders of fat and lean meat, and in consequence, having been so foolish +as to show this preference, I received but the weakest, most +contemptible and puling little spuds and pale orders of meat—with, it +is true, plenty of other "side dishes"; whereas a later table-mate of +mine, a distressed and neurasthenic society man, was receiving—I soon +learned he especially abhorred them—potatoes as big as my two fists.</p> + +<p>"Now look at that! Now look at that!" he often said peevishly and with a +kind of sickly whine in his voice when he saw one being put before him. +"He knows I don't like potatoes, and see what I get! And look at the +little bit of a thing he gives you! It's a shame, the way he nags +people, especially over this food question. I don't think there's a +thing to it. I don't think eating a big potato does me a bit of good, or +you the little one, and yet I have to eat the blank-blank things or get +out. And I need to get on my feet just now."</p> + +<p>"Well, cheer up," I said sympathetically and with an eye on the large +potato perhaps. "He isn't always looking, and we can fix it. You mash up +your big potato and put butter and salt on it, and I'll do the same with +my little one. Then when he's not looking we'll shift."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's all right," he commented, "but we'd better look out. If he +sees us he'll be as sore as the devil."</p> + +<p>This system worked well enough for a time, and for days I was getting +all the potato I wanted and congratulating myself on my skill, when one +day as I was slyly forking potatoes out of his dish, moved helpfully in +my direction, I saw Culhane approaching and feared that our trick had +been discovered. It <a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" />had. Perhaps some snaky waitress has told on us, or +he had seen us, even from his table.</p> + +<p>"Now I know what's going on here at this table," he growled savagely, +"and I want you two to cut it out. This big boob here" (he was referring +to my esteemed self) "who hasn't strength of will or character enough to +keep himself in good health and has to be brought up here by his +brother, hasn't brains enough to see that when I plan a thing for his +benefit it is for his benefit, and not mine. Like most of the other +damned fools that come up here and waste their money and my time, he +thinks I'm playing some cute game with him—tag or something that will +let him show how much cuter he is than I am. And he's supposed to be a +writer and have a little horse-sense! His brother claims it, anyhow. And +as for this other simp here," and now he was addressing the assembled +diners while nodding toward my friend, "it hasn't been three weeks since +he was begging to know what I could do for him. And now look at +him—entering into a petty little game of potato-cheating!</p> + +<p>"I swear," he went on savagely, talking to the room in general, +"sometimes I don't know what to do with such damned fools. The right +thing would be to set these two, and about fifty others in this place, +out on the main road with their trunks and let them go to hell. They +don't deserve the attention of a conscientious man. I prohibit +gambling—what happens? A lot of nincompoops and mental lightweights +with more money than brains sneak off into a field of an afternoon on +the excuse that they are going for a walk, and then sit down and lose or +win a bucket of money just to show off what hells of fellows they are, +what sports, what big 'I ams.' I prohibit cigarette-smoking, not because +I think it's literally going to kill anybody but because I think it +looks bad here, sets a bad example to a lot of young wasters who come +here and who ought to be broken of the vice, and besides, because I +don't like cigarette-smoking here—don't want it and won't have it. What +happens? A lot of sissies and mamma's boys and pet heirs, whose fathers +haven't got enough brains to cut 'em off and make 'em get out and work, +come up here, sneak in cigarettes or get the servants to, and then hide +out behind <a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" />the barn or a tree down in the lot and sneak and smoke like +a lot of cheap schoolboys. God, it makes me sick! What's the use of a +man working out a fact during a lifetime and letting other people have +the benefit of it—not because he needs their money, but that they need +his help—if all the time he is going to have such cattle to deal with? +Not one out of twenty or forty men that come here really wants me to +help him or to help himself. What he wants is to have some one drive him +in the way he ought to go, kick him into it, instead of his buckling +down and helping himself. What's the good of bothering with such damned +fools? A man ought to take the whole pack and run 'em off the place with +a dog-whip." He waved his hand in the air. "It's sickening. It's +impossible.</p> + +<p>"As for you two," he added, turning to us, but suddenly stopped. "Hell, +what's the use! Why should I bother with you? Do as you damned well +please, and stay sick or die!"</p> + +<p>He turned on his heel and walked out of the dining-room, leaving us to +sit there. I was so dumbfounded by the harangue our pseudo-cleverness +had released that I could scarcely speak. My appetite was gone and I +felt wretched. To think of having been the cause of this unnecessary +tongue-lashing to the others! And I felt that we were, and justly, the +target for their rather censorious eyes.</p> + +<p>"My God!" moaned my companion most dolefully. "That's always the way +with me. Nothing that I ever do comes out right. All my life I've been +unlucky. My mother died when I was seven, and my father's never had any +use for me. I started in three or four businesses four or five years +ago, but none of them ever came out right. My yacht burned last summer, +and I've had neurasthenia for two years." He catalogued a list of ills +that would have done honor to Job himself, and he was worth nine +millions, so I heard!</p> + +<p>Two or three additional and amusing incidents, and I am done.</p> + +<p>One of the most outré things in connection with our rides about the +countryside was Culhane's attitude toward life and the natives and +passing strangers as representing life. Thus one day, as I recall very +well, we were riding along a backwoods country road, very shadowy and +branch-covered, a great company of us four abreast, when suddenly and +after <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" />his very military fashion there came a "Halt! Right by fours! +Right dress! Face!" and presently we were all lined up in a row facing a +greensward which had suddenly been revealed to the left and on which, +and before a small plumber's stove standing outside some gentleman's +stable, was stretched a plumber and his helper. The former, a man of +perhaps thirty-five, the latter a lad of, say, fourteen or fifteen, were +both very grimy and dirty, but taking their ease in the morning sun, a +little pot of lead on the stove being waited for, I presume, that it +might boil.</p> + +<p>Culhane, leaving his place at the head of the column, returned to the +center nearest the plumber and his helper and pointing at them and +addressing us in a very clear voice, said:</p> + +<p>"There you have it. There's American labor for you, at its best—union +labor, the poor, downtrodden workingman. Look at him." We all looked. +"This poor hard-working plumber here," and at that the latter stirred +and sat up, scarcely even now grasping what it was all about, so +suddenly had we descended upon him, "earns or demands sixty cents an +hour, and this poor sweating little helper here has to have forty. +They're working now. They're waiting for that little bit of lead to +boil, at a dollar an hour between them. They can't do a thing, either of +'em, until it does, and lead has to be well done, you know, before it +can be used.</p> + +<p>"Well, now, these two here," he continued, suddenly shifting his tone +from one of light sarcasm to a kind of savage contempt, "imagine they +are getting along, making life a lot better for themselves, when they +lie about this way and swindle another man out of his honest due in +connection with the work he is paying for. He can't help himself. He +can't know everything. If he did he'd probably find what's wrong in +there and fix it himself in three minutes. But if he did that and the +union heard of it they'd boycott him. They'd come around and blackmail +him, blow up his barn, or make him pay for the work he did himself. I +know 'em. I have to deal with 'em. They fix my pipes in the same way +that these two are fixing his—lying on the grass at a dollar an hour. +And they want five dollars a pound for every bit of lead they use. If +they forget anything and have to go back to town for it, you pay <a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" />for +it, at a dollar an hour. They get on the job at nine and quit at four, +in the country. If you say anything, they quit altogether—they're +<i>union</i> laborers—and they won't let any one else do it, either. Once +they're on the job they have to rest every few minutes, like these two. +Something has to boil, or they have to wait for something. Isn't it +wonderful! Isn't it beautiful! And all of us of course are made free and +equal! They're just as good as we are! If you work and make money and +have any plumbing to do you have to support 'em—Right by fours! Guide +right! Forward!" and off we trotted, breaking into a headlong gallop a +little farther on as if he wished to outrun the mood which was holding +him at the moment.</p> + +<p>The plumber and his assistant, fully awake now to the import of what had +occurred, stared after us. The journeyman plumber, who was short and +fat, sat and blinked. At last he recovered his wits sufficiently to cry, +"Aw, go to hell, you ——————!" but by that time we were well along +the road and I am not sure that Culhane even heard.</p> + +<p>Another day as we were riding along a road which led into a nearby city +of, say, twenty thousand, we encountered a beer truck of great size and +on its seat so large and ruddy and obese a German as one might go a long +way and still not see. It was very hot. The German was drowsy and taking +his time in the matter of driving. As we drew near, Culhane suddenly +called a halt and, lining us up as was his rule, called to the horses of +the brewery wagon, who also obeyed his lusty "Whoa!" The driver, from +his high perch above, stared down on us with mingled curiosity and +wonder.</p> + +<p>"Now, here's an illustration of what I mean," Culhane began, apropos of +nothing at all, "when I say that the word man ought to be modified or +changed in some way so that when we use it we would mean something more +definite than we mean now. That thing you see sitting up on that +wagon-seat there—call that a man? And then call me one? Or a man like +Charles A. Dana? Or a man like General Grant? Hell! Look at him! Look at +his shape! Look at that stomach! You think a thing like that—call it a +man if you want to—has any brains or that he's really any better than a +pig in a sty? If you turn a horse out to shift for himself he'll eat +just enough to <a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" />keep in condition; same way with a dog, a cat or a bird. +But let one of these things, that some people call a <i>man</i>, come along, +give him a job and enough money or a chance to stuff himself, and see +what happens. A thing like that connects himself with one end of a beer +hose and then he thinks he's all right. He gets enough guts to start a +sausage factory, and then he blows up, I suppose, or rots. Think of it! +And we call him a man—or some do!"</p> + +<p>During this amazing and wholly unexpected harangue (I never saw him stop +any one before), the heavy driver, who did not understand English very +well, first gazed and then strained with his eyebrows, not being able +quite to make out what it was all about. From the chuckling and laughter +that finally set up in one place and another he began dimly to +comprehend that he was being made fun of, used as an unsatisfactory jest +of some kind. Finally his face clouded for a storm and his eyes blazed, +the while his fat red cheeks grew redder. "<i>Donnervetter!</i>" he began +gutturally to roar. "<i>Schweine hunde! Hunds knoche! Nach der polizei +soll man reufen!</i>"</p> + +<p>I for one pulled my horse cautiously back, as he cracked a great whip, +and, charging savagely through us, drove on. Culhane, having made his +unkind comments, gave orders for our orderly formation once more and +calmly led us away.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the most amusing phase of him was his opposition to and contempt +for inefficiency of any kind. If he asked you to do anything, no matter +what, and you didn't at once leap to the task ready and willing and able +so to do, he scarcely had words enough with which to express himself. On +one occasion, as I recall all too well, he took us for a drive in his +tally-ho—one or two or three that he possessed—a great lumbering, +highly lacquered, yellow-wheeled vehicle, to which he attached seven or +eight or nine horses, I forget which. This tally-ho ride was a regular +Sunday morning or afternoon affair unless it was raining, a call +suddenly sounding from about the grounds somewhere at eleven or at two +in the afternoon, "Tally-ho at eleven-thirty" (or two-thirty, as the +case might be). "All aboard!" Gathering all the reins in his hands and +perching himself in the high seat above, with perhaps one of his guests +beside him, all the rest crowded <a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" />willy-nilly on the seats within and on +top, he would carry us off, careening about the countryside most madly, +several of his hostlers acting as liveried footmen or outriders and one +of them perched up behind on the little seat, the technical name of +which I have forgotten, waving and blowing the long silver trumpet, the +regulation blasts on which had to be exactly as made and provided for +such occasions. Often, having been given no warning as to just when it +was to be, there would be a mad scramble to get into our <i>de rigueur</i> +Sunday clothes, for Culhane would not endure any flaws in our +appearance, and if we were not ready and waiting when one of his +stablemen swung the vehicle up to the door at the appointed time he was +absolutely furious.</p> + +<p>On the particular occasion I have in mind we all clambered on in good +time, all spick and span and in our very best, shaved, powdered, hands +appropriately gloved, our whiskers curled and parted, our shoes shined, +our hats brushed; and up in front was Culhane, gentleman de luxe for the +occasion, his long-tailed whip looped exactly as it should be, no doubt, +ready to be flicked out over the farthest horse's head, and up behind +was the trumpeter—high hat, yellow-topped boots, a uniform of some +grand color, I forget which.</p> + +<p>But, as it turned out on this occasion, there had been a hitch at the +last minute. The regular hostler or stableman who acted as footman +extraordinary and trumpeter plenipotentiary, the one who could truly and +ably blow this magnificent horn, was sick or his mother was dead. At any +rate, there he wasn't. And in order not to irritate Culhane, a second +hostler had been dressed and given his seat and horn—only he couldn't +blow it. As we began to clamber in I heard him asking, "Can any of you +gentleman blow the trumpet? Do any of you gentleman know the regular +trumpet call?"</p> + +<p>No one responded, although there was much discussion in a low key. Some +could, or thought they could, but hesitated to assume so frightful a +risk. At the same time Culhane, hearing the fuss and knowing perhaps +that his substitute could not trumpet, turned grimly around and said, +"Say, do you mean to say there isn't any one back there who knows how to +blow that thing? What's the matter with you, Caswell?" he <a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" />called to +one, and getting only mumbled explanations from that quarter, called to +another, "How about you, Drewberry? Or you, Crashaw?"</p> + +<p>All three apologized briskly. They were terrified by the mere thought of +trying. Indeed no one seemed eager to assume the responsibility, until +finally he became so threatening and assured us so volubly that unless +some immediate and cheerful response were made he would never again +waste one blank minute on a lot of blank-blank this and thats, that one +youth, a rash young society somebody from Rochester, volunteered more or +less feebly that he "thought" that "maybe he could manage it." He took a +seat directly under the pompously placed trumpeter, and we were off.</p> + +<p>"Heigh-ho!" Out the gate and down the road and up a nearby slope at a +smart clip, all of us gazing cheerfully and possibly vainly about, for +it was a bright day and a gay country. Now the trumpeter, as is provided +for on all such occasions, lifted the trumpet to his lips and began on +the grandiose "ta-ra-ta-ta," but to our grief and pain, although he got +through fairly successfully on his first attempt, there was one place +where there was a slight hitch, a "false crack," as some one rowdyishly +remarked. Culhane, although tucking up his lines and stiffening his back +irritably at this flaw, said nothing. For after all a poor trumpeter was +better than none at all. A little later, however, the trumpeter having +hesitated to begin again, he called back, "Well, what about the horn? +What about the horn? Can't you do something with it? Have you quit for +the day?"</p> + +<p>Up went the horn once more, and a most noble and encouraging +"Ta-ra-ta-ta" was begun, but just at the critical point, and when we +were all most prayerfully hoping against hope, as it were, that this +time he would round the dangerous curves of it gracefully and come to a +grand finish, there was a most disconcerting and disheartening squeak. +It was pathetic, ghastly. As one man we wilted. What would Culhane say +to that? We were not long in doubt. "Great Christ!" he shouted, looking +back and showing a countenance so black that it was positively +terrifying. "Who did that? Throw him off! What do you think—that I want +the whole country to know I'm <a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" />airing a lot of lunatics? Somebody who +can blow that thing, take it and blow it, for God's sake! I'm not going +to drive around here without a trumpeter!"</p> + +<p>For a few moments there was more or less painful gabbling in all the +rows, pathetic whisperings and "go ons" or eager urgings of one and +another to sacrifice himself upon the altar of necessity, insistences by +the ex-trumpeter that he had blown trumpets in his day as good as any +one—what the deuce had got into him anyhow? It must be the horn!</p> + +<p>"Well," shouted Culhane finally, as a stop-gap to all this, "isn't any +one going to blow that thing? Do you mean to tell me that I'm hauling +all of you around, with not a man among you able to blow a dinky little +horn? What's the use of my keeping a lot of fancy vehicles in my barn +when all I have to deal with is a lot of shoe salesmen and floorwalkers? +Hell! Any child can blow it. It's as easy as a fish-horn. If I hadn't +these horses to attend to I'd blow it myself. Come on—come on! +Kerrigan, what's the matter with you blowing it?"</p> + +<p>"The truth is, Mr. Culhane," explained Mr. Kerrigan, the very dapper and +polite heir of a Philadelphia starch millionaire, "I haven't had any +chance to practice with one of those for several years. I'll try it if +you want me to, but I can't guarantee—"</p> + +<p>"Try!" insisted Culhane violently. "You can't do any worse than that +other mutt, if you blow for a million years. Blow it! Blow it!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Kerrigan turned back and being very cheerfully tendered the horn by +the last failure, wetted and adjusted his lips, lifted it upward and +backward—and—</p> + +<p>It was pathetic. It was positively dreadful, the wheezing, grinding +sounds that were emitted.</p> + +<p>"God!" shouted Culhane, pulling up the coach to a dead stop. "Stop that! +Whoa! Whoa!!! Do you mean to say that that's the best you can do? Well, +this finishes me! Whoa! What kind of a bunch of cattle have I got up +here, anyhow? Whoa! And out in this country too where I'm known and +where they know all about such things! God! Whoa! Here I spend thousands +of dollars to get together an equipment that will make a pleasant +afternoon for a crowd of gentlemen, and this is what I draw—hams! A lot +of barflies who never saw a <a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" />tally-ho! Well, I'm done! I'm through! I'll +split the damned thing up for firewood before I ever take it out again! +Get down! Get out, all of you! I'll not haul one of you back a step! +Walk back or anywhere you please—to hell, for all I care! I'm through! +Get out! I'm going to turn around and get back to the barn as quick as I +can—up some alley if I can find one. To think of having such a bunch of +hacks to deal with!"</p> + +<p>Humbly and wearily we climbed down and, while he drove savagely on to +some turning-place, stood about first in small groups, then by twos and +threes began making our way—rather gingerly, I must confess, in our +fine clothes—along the winding road back to the place on the hill. But +such swearing! Such un-Sabbath-like comments! The number of times his +sturdy Irish soul was wished into innermost and almost sacrosanct +portions of Sheol! He was cursed from more angles and in more +artistically and architecturally nobly constructed phrases and even +paragraphs than any human being that I have ever heard of before or +since, phrases so livid and glistening that they smoked.</p> + +<p>Talk about the carved ivories of speech! The mosaics of verbal precious +stones!</p> + +<p>You should have heard us on our way back!</p> + +<p>And still we stayed.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Some two years later I was passing this place in company with some +friends, when I asked my host, who also knew of the place, to turn in. +During my stay it had been the privilege and custom among those who knew +much of this institution to drive through the grounds and past the very +doors of the "repair shop," even to stop if Culhane chanced to be +visible and talking to or at least greeting him, in some cases. A custom +of Culhane's was, in the summer time, to have erected on the lawn a +large green-and-white striped marquee tent, a very handsome thing +indeed, in which was placed a field-officer's table and several camp +chairs, and some books and papers. Here of a hot day, when he was not +busy with us, he would sit and read. And when he was in here or +somewhere about, a little pennant was run up, possibly as guide to +visiting guests or friends. At any rate, it was the presence of this +<a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" />pennant which caused me to know that he was about and to wish that I +might have a look at him once more, great lion that he was. As "guests," +none of us were ever allowed to come within more than ten feet of it, +let alone in it. As passing visitors, however, we might, and many did, +stop, remind him that we had once been his humble slaves, and ask leave +to congratulate him on his health and sturdy years. At such times, if +the visitors looked interesting enough, or he remembered them well, he +would deign to come to the tent-fly and, standing there à la Napoleon at +Lodi or Grant in the Wilderness, be for the first time in his relations +with them a bit civil.</p> + +<p>Anyway, on this occasion, urged on by curiosity to see my liege once +more and also to learn whether he would remember me at all, I had my +present host roll his car up to the tent door, where Culhane was +reading. Feeling that by this venturesome deed I had "let myself in for +it" and had to "make a showing," I climbed briskly out and, approaching, +recalled myself to him. With a semi-wry expression, half smile, half +contemptuous curl of the corners of his mouth, he recalled me and took +my extended hand; then seeing that possibly my friends if not myself +looked interesting, he arose and came to the door. I introduced +them—one a naval officer of distinction, the other the owner of a great +estate some miles farther on. For the first time in my relations with +him I had an opportunity to note how grandly gracious he could be. He +accepted my friends' congratulations as to the view with a princely nod +and suggested that on other days it was even better. He was soon to be +busy now or he would have some one show my friends through the shop. +Some Saturday afternoon, if they would telephone or stop in passing, he +would oblige.</p> + +<p>I noted at once that he had not aged in the least. He was sixty-two +or-three now and as vigorous and trim as ever. And now he treated me as +courteously and formally as though he had never browbeaten me in the +least. "Good heavens," I said, "how much better to be a visitor than a +guest!" After a moment or two we offered many thanks and sped on, but +not without many a backward glance on my part, for the place fascinated +me. That simply furnished institution! That severe <a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" />regimen! This +latter-day Stoic and Spartan in his tent! And, above all things, and the +most astounding to me, so little could one know him, the book he had +been reading and which he had laid upon his little table as I entered—I +could not help noting the title for he laid it back up, open face +down—was Lecky's "History of European Morals"!</p> + +<p>Now!</p> + +<p>Well!</p> + + +<p>IN RETROSPECT</p> + +<p>Two years after this visit, in a serious attempt to set down what I +really did think of him, I arranged the following thoughts with which I +closed my sketch then and which I now append for what they may be worth. +They represented my best thought concerning him then:</p> + +<p>"Thomas Culhane belongs to that class of society which the preachers and +the world's army of conventional merchants, lawyers, judges and +reputable citizens generally are presumably, if one may judge by the +moral and religious literature of the day, trying to reach and reform. +Yet here at his sanitarium are gathered representatives of those same +orders, the so-called better element. And here we see them suddenly +dominated, mind and soul, by this being whom they, theoretically at +least, look upon as a brand to be snatched from the burning.</p> + +<p>"As the Church and society view Culhane, so they view all life outside +their own immediate circles. Culhane is in fact a conspicuous figure +among the semi-taboo. He has been referred to in many an argument and +platform and pulpit and in the press as a type of man whose influence is +supposed to be vitiating. Now a minister enters the sanitarium, broken +down by his habits of life, and this same Culhane is able to penetrate +him, to see that his dogmatic and dictatorial mental habits are the +cause of his ailment, and he has the moral courage to shock him, to drag +him by apparently brutal processes out of his rut. He reads the man +accurately, he knows him better than he knows himself, and he effects a +cure.</p> + +<p>"This astonishing condition is certainly a new light for those seeking +to labor among men. Those who are successful gamblers, pugilists, +pickpockets, saloon-keepers, book-<a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" />makers, jockeys and the like are so +by reason of their intelligence, their innate mental acumen and +perception. It is a fact that in the sporting world and among the +unconventional men-about-town you will often find as good if not better +judges of human nature than elsewhere. Contact with a rough and ready +and all-too-revealing world teaches them much. The world's customary +pretensions and delusions are in the main ripped away. They are bruised +by rough facts. Often the men gathered in some such café and whom +preachers and moralists are most ready to condemn have a clearer +perception of preachers, church organizations and reformers and their +relative importance in the multitudinous life of the world than the +preachers, church congregations and reformers have of those in the café +or the world outside to which they belong.</p> + +<p>"This is why, in my humble judgment, the Church and those associated +with its aims make no more progress than they do. While they are +consciously eager to better the world, they are so wrapped up in +themselves and their theories, so hampered by their arbitrary and +limited conceptions of good and evil, that the great majority of men +move about them unseen, except in a far-away and superficial manner. Men +are not influenced at arm's length. It would be interesting to know if +some day a preacher or judge, who, offended by Mr. Culhane's profanity +and brutality, will be able to reach the gladiator and convert him to +his views as readily as the gladiator is able to rid him of his +ailment."</p> + +<p>In justice to the preachers, moralists, et cetera, I should now like to +add that it is probably not any of the virtues or perfections +represented by a man like Culhane with which they are quarreling, but +the vices of many who are in no wise like him and do not stand for the +things he stands for. At the same time, the so-called "sports" might +well reply that it is not with any of the really admirable qualities of +the "unco guid" that they quarrel, but their too narrow interpretations +of virtue and duty and their groundless generalization as to types and +classes.</p> + +<p>Be it so.</p> + +<p>Here is meat for a thousand controversies.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="A_True_Patriarch" id="A_True_Patriarch" /><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" /><i>A True Patriarch</i></h2> + + +<p>In the streets of a certain moderate-sized county seat in Missouri not +many years ago might have been seen a true patriarch. Tall, +white-haired, stout in body and mind, he roamed among his neighbors, +dispensing sympathy and a curiously genial human interest through the +leisure of his day. One might have taken him to be Walt Whitman, of whom +he was the living counterpart; or, in the clear eye, high forehead and +thick, appealing white hair, have seen a marked similarity to Bryant as +he appeared in his later years. Already at this time he had seen man's +allotted term on earth, and yet he was still strong in the councils of +his people and rich in the accumulated interests of a lifetime.</p> + +<p>At the particular time in question he was most interesting for the +eccentricities which years of stalwart independence had developed, but +these were lovable peculiarities and only severed from remarkable +actions by the compelling power of time and his increasing infirmities. +The loud, though pleasant, voice, and strong, often fiery, declamatory +manner, were remnants of the days when his fellow-citizens were wholly +swayed by the magnificence of his orations. Charmingly simple in manner, +he still represented with it that old courtesy which made every stranger +his guest. When moved by righteous indignation, there cropped out the +daring and domineering insistence of one who had always followed what he +considered to be the right, and who knew its power.</p> + +<p>Even then, old as he was, if there were any topic worthy of discussion, +and his fellow-citizens were in danger of going wrong, he became an +haranguing prophet, as it were, a local Isaiah or Jeremiah. Every gate +heard him, for he stopped on his rounds in front of each, and calling +out the inhabitant poured forth such a volume of fact and argument as +tended to remove all doubt of what he, at least, considered right. All +of this he invariably accompanied by a magnificence of gesture worthy of +a great orator.</p> + +<p>At such times his mind, apparently, was almost wholly engrossed with +these matters, and I have it from one of his daughters, who, besides +being his daughter, was a sincere <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" />admirer of his, that often he might +have been seen coming down his private lawn, and even the public streets +when there was no one near to hear him, shaking his head, gesticulating, +sometimes sweeping upward with his arms, as if addressing his +fellow-citizens in assemblage.</p> + +<p>"He used to push his big hat well back upon his forehead," she said on +one occasion, "and often in winter, forgetful of the bitter cold, would +take off his overcoat and carry it on his arm. Occasionally he would +stop quite still, as if he were addressing a companion, and with +sweeping gestures illustrate some idea or other, although, of course, +there was no one present. Then, planting his big cane forcibly with each +step, as though still emphasizing his recently stated ideas, he would +come forward and enter the house."</p> + +<p>The same suggestion of mental concentration might have been seen in +everything that he did, and I personally have seen him leading a pet +Jersey cow home for milking with the same dignity of bearing and +forcefulness of manner that characterized him when he stood before his +fellow-citizens at a public meeting addressing them on some important +topic. He never appeared to have a sense of difference from or +superiority over his fellowmen, but only the keenest sympathy with all +things human. Every man was his brother, every human being honest. A cow +or a horse was as much to be treated with sympathy and charity as a man +or a woman. If a purse was lost, forty-nine out of every fifty men would +return it without thought of reward, if you were to believe him.</p> + +<p>In the little town where he had lived so many years, and where he +finally died, he knew every living creature from cattle upwards, and +could call each by name. The sick, the poor, the widows, the orphans, +the insane, and dependents of all kinds, were his especial care. Every +Sunday afternoon for years, it was his custom to go the rounds of the +indigent, frequently carrying a basket of his good wife's dinner. This +he distributed, along with consolation and advice. Occasionally he would +return home of a winter's day very much engrossed with the discovery of +some condition of distress hitherto unseen.</p> + +<p>"Mother," he would say to his wife in that same oratorical manner +previously noted, as he entered the house, "I've found <a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" />such a poor +family. They have moved into the old saloon below Solmson's. You know +how open that is." This was delivered in the most dramatic style after +he had indicated something important by throwing his overcoat on the bed +and standing his cane in the corner. "There's a man and several children +there. The mother is dead. They were on their way to Kansas, but it got +so cold they've had to stop here until the winter is broken. They're +without food; almost no clothing. Can't we find something for them?"</p> + +<p>"On these occasions," said his daughter to me once, "he would, as he +nearly always did, talk to himself on the way, as if he were discussing +politics. But you could never tell what he was coming for."</p> + +<p>Then with his own labor he would help his wife seek out the odds and +ends that could be spared, and so armed, would return, arguing by the +way as if an errand of mercy were the last thing he contemplated. Nearly +always the subject of these orations was some public wrong or error +which should receive, although in all likelihood it did not, immediate +attention.</p> + +<p>Always of a reverent, although not exactly religious, turn of mind, he +took considerable interest in religious ministration, though he steadily +and persistently refused, in his later years, to go to church. He had +St. James's formula to quote in self-defense, which insists that "Pure +religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, To visit the +fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted +from the world." Often, when pressed too close, he would deliver this +with kindly violence. One of the most touching anecdotes representative +of this was related to me by his daughter, who said:</p> + +<p>"Mr. Kent, a poor man of our town, was sick for months previous to his +death, and my father used to go often, sometimes daily, to visit him. He +would spend perhaps a few minutes, perhaps an hour, with him, singing, +praying, and ministering to his spiritual wants. The pastor of the +church living so far away and coming only once a month, this duty +devolved upon some one, and my father did his share, and always felt +more than repaid for the time spent by the gratitude shown by the many +poor people he aided in this way.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" />Mr. Kent's favorite song, for instance, was 'On Jordan's Stormy Banks +I Stand.' This he would have my father sing, and his clear voice could +often be heard in the latter's small house, and seemed to impart +strength to the sick man.</p> + +<p>"Upon one occasion, I remember, Mr. Kent expressed a desire to hear a +certain song. My father was not very familiar with it but, anxious to +grant his request, came home and asked me if I would get a friend of +mine and go and sing the song for him.</p> + +<p>"We entered the sick-room, he leading us by the hand, for we were +children at the time. Mr. Kent's face at once brightened, and father +said to him:</p> + +<p>"'Mr. Kent, I told you this morning that I couldn't sing the song you +asked for, but these girls know it, and have come to sing it for you.'</p> + +<p>"Then, waving his hand gently toward us, he said:</p> + +<p>"'Sing, children.'</p> + +<p>"We did so, and when we had finished he knelt and offered a prayer, not +for the poor man's recovery but that he might put his trust in the Lord +and meet death without fear. I have never been more deeply impressed nor +felt more confident in the presence of death, for the man died soon +after, soothed into perfect peace."</p> + +<p>On another occasion he was sitting with some friends in front of the +courthouse in his town, talking and sunning himself, when a neighbor +came running up in great excitement, calling:</p> + +<p>"Mr. White, Mr. White, come, right quick. Mrs. Sadler wants you."</p> + +<p>He explained that the woman in question was dying, and, being afraid she +would strangle in her last moments, had asked the bystanders to run for +him, her old acquaintance, in the efficacy of whose prayers she had +great faith. The old patriarch was without a coat at the time, but, +unmindful of that, hastened after.</p> + +<p>"Mr. White," exclaimed the sick woman excitedly upon seeing him, "I want +you to pray that I won't strangle. I'm not afraid to die, but I don't +want to die that way. I want you to offer a prayer for me that I may be +saved from that. I'm so afraid."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" />Seeing by the woman's manner that she was very much overwrought, he +used all his art to soothe her.</p> + +<p>"Have no fear, Mrs. Sadler, now," he exclaimed solemnly. "You won't +strangle. I will ask the Lord for you, and this evil will not come upon +you. You need not have any fear."</p> + +<p>"Kneel down, you," he commanded, turning upon the assembled neighbors +and relatives who had followed or had been there before him, while he +pushed back his white hair from his forehead. "Let us now pray that this +good woman here be allowed to pass away in peace." And even with the +rustle of kneeling that accompanied his words he lifted up his coatless +arms and began to pray.</p> + +<p>Through his magnificent phraseology, no doubt, as well as his profound +faith, he succeeded in inducing a feeling of peace and quiet in all his +hearers, the sick woman included, who, listening, sank into a restful +stupor, from which all agony of mind had apparently disappeared. Then +when the physical atmosphere of the room had been thus reorganized, he +ceased and retired to the yard in front of the house, where on a bench +under a shade tree he seated himself to wipe his moist brow and recover +his composure. In a few moments a slight commotion in the sick-room +denoted that the end had come. Several neighbors came out, and one said, +"Well, it is all over, Mr. White. She is dead."</p> + +<p>"Yes," he replied with great assurance. "She didn't strangle, did she?"</p> + +<p>"No," said the other, "the Lord granted her request."</p> + +<p>"I knew He would," he replied in his customary loud and confident tone. +"Prayer is always answered."</p> + +<p>Then, after viewing the dead woman and making additional comments, he +was off, as placid as though nothing had occurred.</p> + +<p>I happened to hear of this some time after, and one day, while sitting +with him on his front porch, said, "Mr. White, do you really believe +that the Lord directly answered your prayer in that instance?"</p> + +<p>"Answered!" he almost shouted defiantly and yet with a kind of human +tenderness that one could never mistake. "Of course He answered! Why +wouldn't He—a faithful old servant like that? To be sure, He answered."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" />Might it not have been merely the change of atmosphere which your +voice and strength introduced? The quality of your own thoughts goes for +something in such matters. Mind acts on mind."</p> + +<p>"Certainly," he said, in a manner as agreeable as if it had always been +a doctrine with him. "I know that. But, after all, what is <i>that</i>—my +mind, your mind, the sound of voices? It's all the Lord anyhow, whatever +you think."</p> + +<p>How could one gainsay such a religionist as that?</p> + +<p>The poor, the blind, the insane, and sufferers of all sorts, as I have +said before, were always objects of his keenest sympathies. Evidence of +it flashed out at the most unexpected moments—loud, rough exclamations, +which, however, always contained a note so tender and suggestive as to +defy translation. Thus, while we were sitting on his front porch one day +and hotly discussing politics to while away a dull afternoon, there came +down the street, past his home, a queer, ragged, half-demented +individual, who gazed about in an aimless sort of way, peering queerly +over fences, looking idly down the road, staring strangely overhead into +the blue. It was apparent, in a moment, that the man was crazy, some +demented creature, harmless enough, however, to be allowed abroad and so +save the county the expense of caring for him. The old man broke a +sentence short in order to point and shake his head emotionally.</p> + +<p>"Look at that," he said to me, with a pathetic sweep of the arm, "now +just look at that! There's a poor, demented soul, with no one to look +after him. His brother is a hard-working saddler. His sister is dead. No +money to speak of, any of them." He paused a moment, and then added, "I +don't know what we're to do in such cases. The state and the county +don't always do their duty. Most people here are too poor to help, there +are so many to be taken care of. It seems almost at times as if you +can't do anything but leave them to the mercy of God, and yet you can't +do that either, quite," and he once more shook his head sadly.</p> + +<p>I was for denouncing the county, but he explained very charitably that +it was already very heavily taxed by such cases. He did not seem to know +exactly what should be done at the time, but he was very sorry, very, +and for the time being the <a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" />warm argument in which he had been indulging +was completely forgotten. Now he lapsed into silence and all +communication was suspended, while he rocked silently in his great chair +and thought.</p> + +<p>One day in passing the local poor-farm (and this is of my own +knowledge), he came upon a man beating a poor idiot with a whip. The +latter was incapable of reasoning and therefore of understanding why it +was that he was being beaten. The two were beside a wood-pile and the +demented one was crying. In a moment the old patriarch had jumped out of +his conveyance, leaped over the fence, and confronted the amazed +attendant with an uplifted arm.</p> + +<p>"Not another lick!" he fairly shouted. "What do you mean by striking an +idiot?"</p> + +<p>"Why," explained the attendant, "I want him to carry in the wood, and he +won't do it."</p> + +<p>"It is not his place to bring in the wood. He isn't put here for that, +and in the next place he can't understand what you mean. He's put here +to be taken care of. Don't you dare strike him again. I'll see about +this, and you."</p> + +<p>Knowing his interrupter well, his position and power in the community, +the man endeavored to explain that some work must be done by the +inmates, and that this one was refractory. The only way he had of making +him understand was by whipping him.</p> + +<p>"Not another word," the old man blustered, overawing the county +hireling. "You've done a wrong, and you know it. I'll see to this," and +off he bustled to the county courthouse, leaving the transgressor so +badly frightened that whips thereafter were carefully concealed, in this +institution at least. The court, which was held in his home town, was +not in session at the time, and only the clerk was present when he came +tramping down the aisle and stood before the latter with his right hand +uplifted in the position of one about to make oath.</p> + +<p>"Swear me," he called solemnly, and without further explanation, as the +latter stared at him. "I want you to take this testimony under oath."</p> + +<p>The clerk knew well enough the remarkable characteristics of his guest, +whose actions were only too often inexplicable from the ground point of +policy and convention. Without <a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" />ado, after swearing him, he got out ink +and paper, and the patriarch began.</p> + +<p>"I saw," he said, "in the yard of the county farm of this county, not +over an hour ago, a poor helpless idiot, too weak-minded to understand +what was required of him, and put in that institution by the people of +this county to be cared for, being beaten with a cowhide by Mark +Sheffels, who is an attendant there, because the idiot did not +understand enough to carry in wood, which the people have hired Mark +Sheffels to carry in. Think of it," he added, quite forgetting the +nature of his testimony and that he was now speaking for dictation and +not for an audience to hear, and going off into a most scorching and +brilliant arraignment of the entire system in which such brutality could +occur, "a poor helpless idiot, unable to frame in his own disordered +mind a single clear sentence, being beaten by a sensible, healthy brute +too lazy and trifling to perform the duties for which he was hired and +which he personally is supposed to perform."</p> + +<p>There was more to the effect, for instance, that the American people and +the people of this county should be ashamed to think that such crimes +should be permitted and go unpunished, and that this was a fair sample. +The clerk, realizing the importance of Mr. White in the community, and +the likelihood of his following up his charges very vigorously, quietly +followed his address in a very deferential way, jotting down such +salient features as he had time to write. When he was through, however, +he ventured to lift his voice in protest.</p> + +<p>"You know, Mr. White," he said, "Sheffels is a member of our party, and +was appointed by us. Of course, now, it's too bad that this thing should +have happened, and he ought to be dropped, but if you are going to make +a public matter of it in this way it may hurt us in the election next +month."</p> + +<p>The old patriarch threw back his head and gazed at him in the most +blazing way, almost without comprehension, apparently, of so petty a +view.</p> + +<p>"What!" he exclaimed. "What's that got to do with it? Do you want the +Democratic Party to starve the poor and beat the insane?"</p> + +<p>The opposition was rather flattened by the reply, and left <a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" />the old +gentleman to storm out. For once, at least, in this particular instance, +anyhow, he had purified the political atmosphere, as if by lightning, +and within the month following the offending attendant was dropped.</p> + +<p>Politics, however, had long known his influence in a similar way. There +was a time when he was the chief political figure in the county, and +possessed the gift of oratory, apparently, beyond that of any of his +fellow-citizens. Men came miles to hear him, and he took occasion to +voice his views on every important issue. It was his custom in those +days, for instance, when he had anything of special importance to say, +to have printed at his own expense a few placards announcing his coming, +which he would then carry to the town selected for his address and +personally nail up. When the hour came, a crowd, as I am told, was never +wanting. Citizens and farmers of both parties for miles about usually +came to hear him.</p> + +<p>Personally I never knew how towering his figure had been in the past, or +how truly he had been admired, until one day I drifted in upon a lone +bachelor who occupied a hut some fifteen miles from the patriarch's home +and who was rather noted in the community at the time that I was there +for his love of seclusion and indifference to current events. He had not +visited the nearest neighboring village in something like five years, +and had not been to the moderate-sized county seat in ten. Naturally he +treasured memories of his younger days and more varied activity.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," he said to me one day, in discussing modern statesmen +and political fame in general, "but getting up in politics is a queer +game. I can't understand it. Men that you'd think ought to get up don't +seem to. It doesn't seem to be real greatness that helps 'em along."</p> + +<p>"What makes you say that?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well, there used to be a man over here at Danville that I always +thought would get up, and yet he didn't. He was the finest orator I ever +heard."</p> + +<p>"Who was he?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Arch White," he said quietly. "He was really a great man. He was a good +man. Why, many's the time I've driven fifteen miles to hear him. I used +to like to go into Danville just for <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" />that reason. He used to be around +there, and sometimes he'd talk a little. He could stir a fellow up."</p> + +<p>"Oratory alone won't make a statesman," I ventured, more to draw him out +than to object.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know," he answered, "but White was a good man. The +plainest-spoken fellow I ever heard. He seemed to be able to tell us +just what was the matter with us, or at least I thought so. He always +seemed a wonderful speaker to me. I've seen as many as two thousand +people up at High Hill hollerin' over what he was saying until you could +hear them for miles."</p> + +<p>"Why didn't he get up, then, do you suppose?" I now asked on my part.</p> + +<p>"I dunno," he answered. "Guess he was too honest, maybe. It's sometimes +that way in politics, you know. He was a mighty determined man, and one +that would talk out in convention, whatever happened. Whenever they got +to twisting things too much and doing what wasn't just honest, I suppose +he'd kick out. Anyhow, he didn't get up, and I've always wondered at +it."</p> + +<p>In Danville one might hear other stories wholly bearing out this latter +opinion, and always interesting—delightful, really. Thus, a long, +enduring political quarrel was once generated by an incident of no great +importance, save that it revealed an odd streak in the old patriarch's +character and his interpretation of charity and duty.</p> + +<p>A certain young man, well known to the people of this county and to the +patriarch, came to Danville one day and either drank up or gambled away +a certain sum of money intrusted to him by his aunt for disposition in +an entirely different manner. When the day was all over, however, he was +not too drunk to realize that he was in a rather serious predicament, +and so, riding out of town, traveled a little way and then tearing his +clothes and marking his skin, returned, complaining that he had been set +upon by the wayside, beaten, and finally robbed. His clothes were in a +fine state of dilapidation after his efforts, and even his body bore +marks which amply seconded his protestation. In the slush and rain of +the dark village street he was finally picked up by the county treasurer +seemingly in a wretched state, and the latter, knowing <a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" />the generosity +of White and the fact that his door was always open to those in +distress, took the young man by the arm and led him to the patriarch's +door, where he personally applied for him. The old patriarch, holding a +lamp over his head, finally appeared and peered outward into the +darkness.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he exclaimed, as he always did, eyeing the victim; "what is it +you want of me?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. White," said the treasurer, "it's me. I've got young Squiers here, +who needs your sympathy and aid tonight. He's been beaten and robbed out +here on the road while he was on his way to his mother's home."</p> + +<p>"Who?" inquired the patriarch, stepping out on the porch and eyeing the +newcomer, the while he held the lamp down so as to get a good look. +"Billy Squiers!" he exclaimed when he saw who it was. "Mr. Morton, I'll +not take this man into my house. I know him. He's a drunkard and a liar. +No man has robbed him. This is all a pretense, and I want you to take +him away from here. Put him in the hotel. I'll pay his expenses for the +night, but he can't come into my home," and he retired, closing the door +after him.</p> + +<p>The treasurer fell back amazed at this onslaught, but recovered +sufficiently to knock at the door once more and declare to his friend +that he deemed him no Christian in taking such a stand and that true +religion commanded otherwise, even though he suspected the worst. The +man was injured and penniless. He even went so far as to quote the +parable of the good Samaritan who passed down by way of Jericho and +rescued him who had fallen among thieves. The argument had long +continued into the night and rain before the old patriarch finally waved +them both away.</p> + +<p>"Don't you quote Scripture to me," he finally shouted defiantly, still +holding the light and flourishing it in an oratorical sweep. "I know my +Bible. There's nothing in it requiring me to shield liars and drunkards, +not a bit of it," and once more he went in and closed the door.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless the youth was housed and fed at his expense and no charge +of any kind made against him, although many believed, as did Mr. White, +that he was guilty of theft, whereas others of the opposing political +camp believed not. However, considerable opposition, based on old Mr. +White's <a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" />lack of humanity in this instance, was generated by this +argument, and for years he was taunted with it although he always +maintained that he was justified and that the Lord did not require any +such service of him.</p> + +<p>The crowning quality of nearly all of his mercies, as one may easily +see, was their humor. Even he was not unaware, in retrospect, of the +figure he made at times, and would smilingly tell, under provocation, of +his peculiar attitude on one occasion or another. Partially from +himself, from those who saw it, and the judge presiding in the case, was +the following characteristic anecdote gathered.</p> + +<p>In the same community with him at one time lived a certain man by the +name of Moore, who in his day had been an expert tobacco picker, but who +later had come by an injury to his hand and so turned cobbler, and a +rather helpless, although not hopeless, one at that. Mr. White had known +this man from boyhood up, and had been a witness at various times to the +many changes in his fortunes, from the time, for instance, when he had +earned as much as several dollars a day—good pay in that region—to the +hour when he took a cobbler's kit upon his back and began to eke out a +bare livelihood for his old age by traveling about the countryside +mending shoes. At the time under consideration, this ex-tobacco picker +had degenerated into so humble a thing as Uncle Bobby Moore, a poor, +half-remembered cobbler, whose earlier state but few knew, and who at +this time had only a few charitably inclined friends, with some of whom +he spent the more pleasant portion of the year from spring to fall. +Thus, it was his custom to begin his annual pilgrimage with a visit of +ten days to Mr. White, where he would sit and cobble shoes for all the +members of the household. From here he would go to another acquaintance +some ten miles farther on, where he could enjoy the early fruit which +was then ripening in delicious quantity. Then he would visit a friendly +farmer whose home was upon the Missouri River still farther away, where +he did his annual fishing, and so on by slow degrees, until at last he +would reach a neighborhood rich in cider presses, where he would wind up +the fall, and so end his travel for the winter, beginning his peculiar +round once more the <a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" />following spring at the home of Mr. White. +Naturally the old patriarch knew him and liked him passing well.</p> + +<p>As he grew older, however, Uncle Bobby reached the place where even by +this method and his best efforts he could scarcely make enough to +sustain him in comfort during the winter season, which was one of nearly +six months, free as his food and lodging occasionally were. He was too +feeble. Not desiring to put himself upon any friend for more than a +short visit, he finally applied to the patriarch.</p> + +<p>"I come to you, Mr. White," he said, "because I don't think I can do for +myself any longer in the winter season. My hand hurts a good deal and I +get tired so easily. I want to know if you'd won't help me to get into +the county farm during the winter months, anyhow. In summer I can still +look out for myself, I think."</p> + +<p>In short, he made it clear that in summer he preferred to be out so that +he might visit his friends and still enjoy his declining years.</p> + +<p>The old patriarch was visibly moved by this appeal, and seizing him by +the arm and leading off toward the courthouse where the judge governing +such cases was then sitting he exclaimed, "Come right down here, Uncle +Bobby. I'll see what can be done about this. Your old age shouldn't be +troubled in this fashion—not after all the efforts you have made to +maintain yourself," and bursting in on the court a few moments later, +where a trial was holding at the time, he deliberately led his charge +down the aisle, disturbing the court proceedings by so doing, and +calling as he came:</p> + +<p>"Your Honor, I want you to hear this case especially. It's a very +important and a very sad case, indeed."</p> + +<p>Agape, the spectators paused to listen. The judge, an old and +appreciative friend of his, turned a solemn eye upon this latest +evidence of eccentricity.</p> + +<p>"What is it, Mr. White?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>"Your Honor," returned the latter in his most earnest and oratorical +manner, "this man here, as you may or may not know, is an old and +honorable citizen of this county. He has been here nearly all the days +of his life, and every day of that time he has earned an honest living. +These people here," he <a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" />said, gazing about upon the interested +spectators, "can witness whether or not he was one of the best tobacco +pickers this county ever saw. Mayhew," he interrupted himself to call to +a spectator on one of the benches, "you know whether Uncle Bobby always +earned an honest living. Speak up. Tell the Court, did he?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Mr. White," said Mayhew quickly, "he did."</p> + +<p>"Morrison," he called, turning in another direction, where an aged +farmer sat, "what do you know of this man?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Morrison was about to reply, when the Court interfered.</p> + +<p>"The Court knows, Mr. White, that he is an honest man. Now what would +you have it do?"</p> + +<p>"Well, your Honor," resumed the speaker, indifferently following his own +oratorical bent, the while the company surveyed him, amused and smiling, +"this man has always earned an honest living until he injured his hand +here in some way a number of years ago, and since then it has been +difficult for him to make his way and he has been cobbling for a living. +However, he is getting so old now that he can't even earn much at that, +except in the spring and summer, and so I brought him here to have him +assigned a place in the county infirmary. I want you to make out an +order admitting him to that institution, so that I can take it and go +with him and see that he is comfortably placed."</p> + +<p>"All right, Mr. White," replied the judge, surveying the two figures in +mid-aisle, "I so order."</p> + +<p>"But, your Honor," he went on, "there's an exception I want made in this +case. Mr. Moore has a few friends that he likes to visit in the summer, +and who like to have him visit them. I want him to have the privilege of +coming out in the summer to see these people and to see me."</p> + +<p>"All right, Mr. White," said the judge, "he shall have that privilege. +Now, what else?"</p> + +<p>Satisfied in these particulars, the aged citizen led his charge away, +and then went with him to the infirmary, where he presented the order of +the Court and then left him.</p> + +<p>Things went very well with his humble client for a certain time, and +Uncle Bobby was thought to be well disposed of, when one day he came to +his friend again. It appeared that <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" />only recently he had been changed +about in his quarters at the infirmary and put into a room with a +slightly demented individual, whose nocturnal wanderings greatly +disturbed his very necessary sleep.</p> + +<p>"I want to know if you won't have them put me by myself, Mr. White," he +concluded. "I need my sleep. But they say they can't do it without an +order."</p> + +<p>Once more the old patriarch led his charge before the Court, then +sitting, as it happened, and breaking in upon the general proceedings as +before, began:</p> + +<p>"Your Honor, this man here, Mr. Moore, whom I brought before you some +time ago, has been comfortably housed by your order, and he's deeply +grateful for it, as he will tell you, and as I can, but he's an old man, +your Honor, and, above all things, needs his rest. Now, of late they've +been quartering him with a poor, demented sufferer down there who walks +a good deal in his sleep, and it wears upon him. I've come here with him +to ask you to allow him to have a room by himself, where he will be +alone and rest undisturbed."</p> + +<p>"Very well, Mr. White," said the Court, "it shall be as you request."</p> + +<p>Without replying, the old gentleman turned and led the supplicant away.</p> + +<p>Everything went peacefully now for a number of years, until finally +Uncle Bobby, having grown so feeble with age that he feared he was soon +to die, came to his friend and asked him to promise him one thing.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" asked the latter.</p> + +<p>By way of replying, the supplicant described an old oak tree which grew +in the yard of the Baptist Church some miles from Danville, and said:</p> + +<p>"I want you to promise that when I am dead, wherever I happen to be at +the time, that you will see that I am buried under that tree." He gave +no particular reason save that he had always liked the tree and the view +it commanded, but made his request a very secret matter and begged to be +assured that Mr. White would come and get his body and carry it to the +old oak.</p> + +<p>The latter, always a respecter of the peculiarities and crotchets of his +friends, promised. After a few years went by, <a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" />suddenly one day he +learned that Uncle Bobby was not only dead but buried, a thing which +astonished him greatly. No one locally being supposed to know that he +was to have had any special form of burial, the old patriarch at once +recalled his promise.</p> + +<p>"Where is his body?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Why, they buried it under the old white oak over at Mt. Horeb Church," +was the answer.</p> + +<p>"What!" he exclaimed, too astonished to think of anything save his lost +privilege of mercy, "who told them to bury him there?"</p> + +<p>"Why, <i>he</i> did," said the friend. "It was his last wish, I believe."</p> + +<p>"The confounded villain," he shouted, amusingly enough. "He led me to +believe that I was the only one he told. I alone was to have looked +after his burial, and now look at him—going and having himself buried +without a word. The scoundrel! Would you believe that an old friend like +Uncle Bobby would do anything like that? However," he added after a +time, "I think I know how it was. He got so old and feeble here of late +that he must have lost his mind—otherwise he would never have done +anything like that to me."</p> + +<p>And with this he was satisfied to rest and let bygones be bygones.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="De_Maupassant_Junior" id="De_Maupassant_Junior" /><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" /><i>De Maupassant, Junior</i></h2> + + +<p>He dawned on me in the spring of 1906, a stocky, sturdy, penetrative +temperament of not more than twenty-four or-five years of age, steady of +eye, rather aloof and yet pervasive and bristling; a devouring type. +Without saying much, and seeming to take anything I had to say with a +grain of salt, he managed to impress himself on me at once. Frankly, I +liked him very much, although I could see at a glance that he was not so +very much impressed with me. I was an older man than he by, say, ten +years, an editor of an unimportant magazine, newly brought in (which he +did not know) to turn it into something better. In order to earn a few +dollars he had undertaken to prepare for the previous editor a most +ridiculous article, some silly thing about newspaper writing as a career +for women. It had been ordered or encouraged, and I felt that it was but +just that it should be paid for.</p> + +<p>"Why do you waste your time on a thing like that?" I inquired, smiling +and trying to criticize and yet encourage him at one and the same time, +for I had been annoyed by many similar assignments given out by the old +management which could not now be used. "You look to me to have too much +force and sense for that. Why not undertake something worth your time?"</p> + +<p>"My time, hell!" he bristled, like a fighting sledge-dog, of which by +the way he reminded me. "You show me a magazine in this town that would +buy anything that I thought worthy of my time! You're like all the rest +of them: you talk big, but you really don't want anything very +important. You want little things probably, written to a theory or down +to 'our policy.' I know. Give me the stuff. You don't have to take it. +It was ordered, but I'll throw it in the waste basket."</p> + +<p>"Not so fast! Not so fast!" I replied, admiring his courage and moved by +his contempt of the editorial and book publishing conditions in America. +He was so young and raw and savage in his way, quite animal, and yet how +interesting! There was something as fresh and clean about him as a newly +plowed field or the virgin prairies. He typified for me all the <a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" />young +unsophisticated strength of my country, but with more "punch" than it +usually manifests, in matters intellectual at least. "Now, don't get +excited, and don't snarl," I cooed. "I know what you say is true. They +don't really want much of what you have to offer. I don't. Working for +some one else, as most of us do, for the dear circulation department, +it's not possible for us to get very far above crowd needs and tastes. +I've been in your position exactly. I am now. Where do you come from?"</p> + +<p>He told me—Missouri—and some very few years before from its state +university.</p> + +<p>"And what is it you want to do?"</p> + +<p>"What's that to you?" he replied irritatingly, with an ingrowing and +obvious self-conviction of superiority and withdrawing as though he +highly resented my question as condescending and intrusive. "You +probably wouldn't understand if I told you. Just now I want to write +enough magazine stuff to make a living, that's all."</p> + +<p>"Dear, dear!" I said, laughing at the slap. "What a bravo we are! +Really, you're interesting. But suppose now you and I get down to brass +tacks. You want to do something interesting, if you can, and get paid +for it. I rather like you, and anyhow you look to me as though you might +do the things I want, or some of them. Now, you want to do the least +silly thing you can—something better than this. I want the least silly +stuff I can get away with in this magazine—genuine color out of the +life of New York, if such a thing can be published in an ordinary +magazine. Roughly, here's the kind of thing I want," and I outlined to +him the probable policy of the magazine under my direction. I had taken +an anæmic "white-light" monthly known as <i>The Broadway</i> (!) and was +attempting to recast it into a national or international metropolitan +picture. He thawed slightly.</p> + +<p>"Well, maybe with that sort of idea behind it, it might come to +something. I don't know. It's <i>possible</i> that you may be the one to do +it." He emphasized the "possible." "At any rate, it's worth trying. +Judging by the snide editors and publications in this town, no one in +America wants anything decent." His lip curled. "I have ambitions of my +own, but I don't expect to work them out through the magazines of this +<a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" />town; maybe not of this country. I didn't know that any change was +under way here."</p> + +<p>"Well, it is," I said. "Still, you can't expect much from this either, +remember. After all, it seeks to be a popular magazine. We'll see how +far we can go with really interesting material. And now if you know of +any others like yourself, bring them in here. I need them. I'll pay you +for that article, only I'll include it in a better price I'll give you +for something else later, see?"</p> + +<p>I smiled and he smiled. His was a warmth which was infectious when he +chose to yield, but it was always a repressed warmth, cynical, a bit +hard; heat chained to a purpose, I thought. He went away and I saw him +no more until about a week later when he brought me his first attempt to +give me what I wanted.</p> + +<p>In the meantime I was busy organizing a staff which should if possible, +I decided after seeing him, include him. I could probably use him as a +salaried "special" writer, provided he could be trained to write +"specials." He looked so intelligent and ambitious that he promised +much. Besides, the little article which he had left when he came again, +while not well organized or arranged as to its ideas or best points, was +exceedingly well written from the point of mere expression.</p> + +<p>And the next thing I had given him to attempt was even better. It was, +if I recall correctly, a stirring picture of the East Side, intended to +appeal to readers elsewhere than in the city, but while in the matter of +color and definiteness of expression as well as choice of words it was +exceptional, it was lacking in, quite as the first one had been, the +arrangement of its best points. This I explained to him, and also made +it clear to him that I could show him how if he would let me. He seemed +willing enough, quite anxious, although always with an air of reserve, +as if he were accommodating himself to me in this much but no more. He +grasped the idea of order swiftly, and in a little while, having worked +at a table in an outer room, brought me the rearranged material, almost +if not quite satisfactory. During a number of weeks and months +thereafter, working on one "special" and another in this way with me, he +seemed finally to grasp the theory I had, or at least to develop a +method of his own which was quite as satisfactory <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" />to me, and I was very +much pleased. A little later I employed him at a regular salary.</p> + +<p>It was pathetic, as I look at it now, the things we were trying to do +and the conditions under which we were trying to do them—the raw +commercial force and theory which underlay the whole thing, the +necessity of explaining and fighting for so much that one should not, as +I saw it then, have to argue over at all. We were in new rooms, in a new +building, filled with lumber not yet placed and awaiting the completion +of partitions which, as some one remarked, "would divide us up." Our +publisher and owner was a small, energetic, vibrant and colorful soul, +all egotism and middle-class conviction as to the need of "push," +ambition, "closeness to life," "punch," and what not else, American to +the core, and descending on us, or me rather, hourly as it were, +demanding the "hows" and the "whyfors" of the dream which the little +group I was swiftly gathering about me was seeking to make real.</p> + +<p>It was essential to me, therefore, that something different should be +done, some new fresh note concerning metropolitan life and action be +struck; the old, slow and somewhat grandiose methods of reporting and +describing things dispensed with, at least in this instance, and here +was a youth who seemed able to help me do it. He was so vigorous, so +avid of life, so anxious to picture the very atmosphere which this +magazine was now seeking to portray. I felt stronger, better for having +him around. The growth of the city, the character and atmosphere of a +given neighborhood, the facts concerning some great social fortune, +event, condition, crime interested him intensely; on the other hand he +was so very easy to teach, quick to sense what was wanted and the order +in which it must be presented. A few brief technical explanations from +me, and he had the art of writing a "special" at his fingertips, and +thereafter gave me no real difficulty.</p> + +<p>But what was more interesting to me than his success in grasping my +theory of "special" writing was his own character, as it was revealed to +me from day to day in intimate working contact with him under these +conditions. Here, as I soon learned, and was glad to learn, was no +namby-pamby scrib<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" />bler of the old happy-ending, pretty-nothing school of +literary composition. On the contrary he sounded, for the first time in +my dealings with literary aspirants of every kind, that sure, sane, +penetrating, non-sentimental note so common to the best writers of the +Continent, a note entirely free from mush, bravado and cant. He had a +style as clear as water, as simple as rain; color, romance, humor; and +if a little too much of vanity and self-importance, still one could +forgive him for they were rather well-based. Already used to dealing +with literary and artistic aspirants of different kinds in connection +with the publications of which I had been a part, this one appealed to +me as being the best of them all and a very refreshing change.</p> + +<p>One day, only a few weeks after I had met him, seeing that I was alert +for fiction, poetry and short essays or prose phantasies, all +illustrative of the spirit of New York, he brought me a little poem +entitled "Neuvain," which interested me greatly. It was so brief and +forceful and yet so delicate, a double triolet of the old French order, +but with the modernity and flavor of the streets outside, the conduit +cars, hand-organs and dancing children of the pavements. The title +seemed affected, seeing that the English word "Spring" would have done +as well, but it was typical of his mood at the time, his literary +adorations. He was in leash to the French school of which de Maupassant +was the outstanding luminary, only I did not know it at the time.</p> + +<p>"Charming," I exclaimed quite enthusiastically. "I like this. Let me see +anything else you have. Do you write short stories?"</p> + +<p>For answer he merely stared at me for a little while in the most +examining and arrogant and contemptuous way, as much as to say, "Let me +see if you are really worth my time and trouble in this matter," or +"This sad specimen of alleged mentality is just beginning to suspect +that I might write a short story." Seeing that I merely smiled most +genially in return, he finally deigned to say, "Sure, I write short +stories. What do you think I'm in the writing game for?"</p> + +<p>"But you might be interested in novels only or plays, or poetry."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" />No," he returned after a pause and with that same air of unrelieved +condescension, "the short story is what I want to specialize in."</p> + +<p>"Well," I said to myself, "here is a young cub who certainly has talent, +is crowded with it, and yet owing to the kind of thing he is starting +out to do and the fact that life will give him slaps and to spare before +he is many years older, he needs to be encouraged. I was like that +myself not so long ago. And besides, if I do not encourage this type of +work financially (which is the best way of all), who will?"</p> + +<p>About a week later I was given another and still more gratifying +surprise, for one day, in his usual condescending manner, he brought to +me two short pieces of fiction and laid them most gingerly on my desk +with scarcely a word—"Here was something I might read if I chose," I +believe. The reading of these two stories gave me as much of a start as +though I had discovered a fully developed genius. They were so truly new +or different in their point of view, so very clear, incisive, brief, +with so much point in them (<i>The Second Motive</i>; <i>The Right Man</i>). For +by then having been struggling with the short-story problem in other +magazine offices before this, I had become not a little pessimistic as +to the trend of American short fiction, as well as long—the +impossibility of finding any, even supposing it publishable once we had +it. My own experience with "Sister Carrie" as well as the fierce +opposition or chilling indifference which, as I saw, overtook all those +who attempted anything even partially serious in America, was enough to +make me believe that the world took anything even slightly approximating +the truth as one of the rankest and most criminal offenses possible. One +dared not "talk out loud," one dared not report life as it was, as one +lived it. And one of the primary warnings I had received from the +president of this very organization—a most eager and ambitious and +distressing example of that American pseudo-morality which combines a +pirate-like acquisitiveness with an inward and absolute conviction of +righteousness—was that while he wanted something new in fiction, +something more virile and life-like than that "mush," as he +characterized it, to be found in the current magazines, still (1), it +must have a strong appeal for the general reader (!); and (2), be very +compelling in fact <a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" />and <i>clean</i>, as the dear general reader would of +course understand that word—a solid little pair of millstones which +would unquestionably end in macerating everything vital out of any good +story.</p> + +<p>Still I did not despair; something might be done. And though I sighed, I +hoped to be able to make my superior stretch a point in favor of the +exceptional thing, or, as the slang phrase went, "slip a few over on +him," but that of course meant nothing or something, as you choose. My +dream was really to find one or many like this youth, or a pungent kind +of realism that would be true and yet within such limits as would make +it usable. Imagine, then, my satisfaction in finding these two things, +tales that I could not only admire genuinely but that I could publish, +things that ought to have an interest for all who knew even a little +about life. True, they were ironic, cruel, but still with humor and +color, so deftly and cleanly told that they were smile-provoking. I +called him and said as much, or nearly so—a mistake, as I sometimes +think now, for art should be long—and bought them forthwith, hoping, +almost against hope, to find many more such like them.</p> + +<p>By this time, by the way, and as I should have said before, I had still +further enlarged my staff by one art director of the most flamboyant and +erratic character, a genius of sorts, volatile, restless, emotional, +colorful, a veritable Verlaine-Baudelaire-Rops soul, who, not content to +arrange and decorate the magazine each month, must needs wish to write, +paint, compose verse and music and stage plays, as well as move in an +upper social world, <i>entrée</i> to which was his by birth. Again, there was +by now an Irish-Catholic makeup editor, a graduate of some distinguished +sectarian school, who was more interested in St. Jerome and his +<i>Vulgate</i>, as an embodiment of classic Latin, than he was in getting out +the magazine. Still he had the advantage of being interesting—"and I +learned about Horace from him." Again, there was a most interesting and +youthful and pretty, if severe, example of the Wellesley-Mt. +Holyoke-Bryn Mawr school of literary art and criticism, a most +engagingly interesting intellectual maiden, who functioned as assistant +editor and reader in an adjoining room, along with the art-director, the +makeup editor and an office <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" />boy. This very valuable and in some +respects remarkable young woman, who while holding me in proper +contempt, I fear, for my rather loose and unliterary ways, was still, as +I had suspected before employing her, as keen for something new and +vital in fiction and every other phase of the scriptic art as any one +well could be. She was ever for culling, sorting, eliminating—repression +carried to the N-th power. At first L——cordially hated her, calling +her a "simp," a "bluff," a "la-de-da," and what not. In addition to +these there was a constantly swelling band of writers, artists, poets, +critics, dreamers of reforms social, and I know not what else, who, +holding the hope of achieving their ends or aims through some really +forceful magazine, were by now beginning to make our place a center. It +fairly swarmed for a time with aspirants; an amusing, vivid, strident +world.</p> + +<p>As for L——, all this being new to him, he was as interested, +fascinated even, as any one well might be. He responded to it almost +gayly at times, wondering whether something wonderful, international, +enduring might not be made to come of it. He rapidly developed into one +of the most pertinacious and even disconcerting youths I have ever met. +At times he seemed to have a positive genius for saying and doing +irritable and disagreeable things, not only to me but to others. Never +having heard of me before he met me here, he was convinced, I think, +that I was a mere nothing, with some slight possibilities as an editor +maybe, certainly with none as a writer or as one who could even suggest +anything to writers. I had helped him, but that was as it should be. As +for my art-director, he was at first a fool, later a genius; ditto my +makeup man.</p> + +<p>As for Miss E——, the Wellesley-Bryn Mawr-Mt. Holyoke assistant, who +from the first had agreed with me that here indeed was a writer of +promise, a genius really, he, as I have said, at first despised her. +Later, by dint of exulting in his force, sincerity of purpose, his keen +insight and all but braggart strength, she managed, probably on account +of her looks and physical graces, to install herself in his confidence +and to convince him that she was not only an honest admirer of his skill +but one who had taste and judgment of no mean caliber.<a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" /> Thereafter he +was about as agreeable as a semi-caged wild animal would be about any +office.</p> + +<p>But above all he was affronted by M——, the publisher of the paper, +concerning whom he could find no words equal to his contemptuous +thoughts of him. The publisher, as L——made quite bold to say to me, +was little more than a "dodging, rat-like financial ferret," a +"financial stool-pigeon for some trust or other," a "shrewd, material +little shopkeeper." This because M—— was accustomed to enter and force +a conversation here and there, anxious of course to gather the full +import of all these various energies and enthusiasms. One of the things +which L—— most resented in him at the time was his air of supreme +material well-being, his obvious attempt and wish not to convey it, his +carefully-cut clothes, his car, his numerous assistants and secretaries +following him here and there from various other organizations with which +he was connected.</p> + +<p>M——'s idea, as he always said, was to spend and to live, only it +wasn't. He merely induced others so to do. One of his customs (and it +must have impressed L—— very much, innocent newcomer that he was) was +to have one or another of his hirelings announce his passing from one +"important" meeting to another, within or without his own building, +telephone messages being "thrown in" on his line or barred out, wherever +he happened to be at the moment and when, presumably, he was deep in one +of those literary conferences or confidences with one employee or +another or with a group, for which he rapidly developed a passion. +Another of his vanities was to have his automobile announced and he be +almost forced into it by impetuous secretaries, who, because of orders +previously given, insisted that he must be made to keep certain +important engagements. Or he would send for one of his hirelings, +wherever he chanced to be—club, restaurant, his home—midnight if +necessary, to confer with him on some subject of great moment, and the +hireling was supposed to call a taxi and come post haste in order that +he might not be kept waiting.</p> + +<p>"God!" L—— once remarked in my presence. "To think that a thinking +being has to be beholden to a thing like that <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" />for his weekly income! +Somebody ought to tap him with a feather-duster and kill him!"</p> + +<p>But the manner in which L—— developed in this atmosphere! It was +interesting. At first, before the magazine became so significant or +well-organized, it was a great pleasure for me to associate with him +outside office hours, and a curious and vivid companion he made. He was +so intensely avid of life, so intolerant of the old, of anything +different to that which he personally desired or saw, that at times it +was most difficult to say anything at all for fear of meeting a rebuff +or at least a caustic objection. As I was very pleased to note, he had a +passion for seeing, as all youth should have when it first comes to the +great city—the great bridges, the new tunnels just then being completed +or dug, the harbor and bay, Coney Island, the two new and great railway +terminals, then under construction. Most, though, he reveled in +different and even depressing neighborhoods—Eighth Avenue, for +instance, about which he later wrote a story, and a very good one ("A +Quiet Duet"); Hell's Kitchen, that neighborhood that lies (or did), on +the West Side of Manhattan, between Eighth and Tenth Avenues, +Thirty-sixth and Forty-first Streets; Little Italy, the region below +Delancey and north of Worth Street on the East Side; Chinatown; +Washington Street (Syria in America); the Greeks in Twenty-seventh and +-eighth Streets, West Side. All these and many more phases of New York's +multiplex life took his full and restless attention. Once he said to me +quite excitedly, walking up Eighth Avenue at two in the morning—I was +showing him some rear tenement slums in the summertime—"God, how I hate +to go to bed in this town! I'm afraid something will happen while I'm +asleep and I won't see it!" That was exactly how he felt all the time, I +am sure.</p> + +<p>And in those days he was most simple, a very Spartan of a boy. He hadn't +the least taste for drink, lived in a small hall-bedroom +somewhere—Eighth Avenue, I believe—and took his meals in those shabby +little quick-lunch rooms where the characters were more important to him +than the food. (My hat—my hat is in my hand!) Intellectually he was so +stern and ambitious that I all but stood in awe of and reverence before +him. Here, I said to myself, is one who will really do; <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" />let him be as +savage as he pleases. In America he probably needs to be.</p> + +<p>And during this short time, what scraps of his early life he revealed! +By degrees I picked up bits of his early deprivations and difficulties, +if such they might be called. He had been a newspaper reporter, or had +tried to be, in Kansas City, had worked in the college restaurant and +laundry of the middle-West State university from which he had graduated, +to help pay his way. Afterward he had assisted the janitor of some great +skyscraper somewhere—Kansas City, I believe—and, what was most +pleasing to me, he in nowise emphasized these as youthful difficulties +or made any comment as to their being "hard." Neither did he try to +boastingly minimize them as nothing at all—another wretched pose. From +him I learned that throughout his youth he had been carried here and +there by the iron woman who was his mother and whom he seemed to adore +in some grim contentious way, smothering his comments as though he +disliked to say anything at all, and yet describing her at times as +coarse and vulgar, but a mother to him "all right," someone who had made +marked sacrifices for him.</p> + +<p>She had once "run" a restaurant in a Western mining camp, had then or +later carried him as a puling baby under her shawl or cloak across the +Mojave Desert, on foot a part of the way. Apparently he did not know who +his father was, and he was not very much concerned to know whether she +did or not. His father had died, he said, when he was a baby. Later his +mother, then a cook in some railroad hotel in Texas, had sent him to +school there. Later still she had been a "bawler out," if you know what +that means, an employee of a loan shark and used by him to compel +delinquent, albeit petty and pathetic, creditors to pay their dues or +then and there, before all their fellow-workers, be screamed at for +their delinquency about the shop in which they worked! Later she became +a private detective! an insurance agent—God knows what—a kind of rough +man-woman, as she turned out to be, but all the while clinging to this +boy, her pet, no doubt her dream of perfection. She had by turns sent +him to common and high school and to college, remitting him such sums of +money as she might to pay his way. Later still (at that very time in +fact)<a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" /> she was seeking to come to New York to keep house for him, only +he would not have that, perhaps sensing the need of greater freedom. But +he wrote her regularly, as he confessed to me, and in later years I +believe sent her a part of his earnings, which were to be saved by her +for him against a rainy day. Among his posthumous writings later I found +a very lovely story ("His Mother"), describing her and himself in +unsparing and yet loving terms, a compound of the tender and the brutal +in his own soul.</p> + +<p>The thing that always made me hope for the best was that at that time he +was not at all concerned with the petty little <i>moralic</i> and economic +definitions and distinctions which were floating about his American +world in one form and another. Indeed he seemed to be entirely free of +and even alien to them. What he had heard about the indwelling and +abiding perfections of the human soul had gone, and rightly so, in one +ear and out the other. He respected the virtues, but he knew of and +reckoned with die antipathetic vices which gave them their reason for +being. To him the thief was almost as important as the saint, the reason +for the saint's being. And, better still, he had not the least interest +in American politics or society—a wonderful sign. The American dream of +"getting ahead" financially and socially was not part of him—another +mark royal. All life was fascinating, acceptable, to be interpreted if +one had the skill; it was a great distinction to have the skill—worth +endless pains to acquire it.</p> + +<p>But how unwilling would the average American of his day have been, +stuffed as he was and still is with book and picture drivel about +artists and art, to accept L—— as anything more than a raw, callow +yokel, presuming to assail the outer portals of the temple with his +muddy feet! A romping, stamping, irritable soul, with more the air of a +young railroad brakeman or "hand," than an artist, and with so much +coarse language at times and such brutality of thought as to bar him +completely, one might say, from having anything to do with great +fiction, great artistic conceptions, or the temple of art. What, sit +with the mighty!—that coarse youth, with darkish-brown hair parted at +one side and combed over one ear, in the manner of a grandiose barber; +with those thick-soled and none too shapely brown shoes, that none too +well-made store suit <a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" />of clothes, that little round brown hat, more +often a cap, pulled rather savagely and vulgarly, even insultingly, over +one eye; that coarse frieze overcoat, still worn on cold spring days, +its "corners" back and front turned up by the damp and from being +indifferently sat on; that brash corn-cob pipe and bag of cheap tobacco, +extracted and lit at odd moments; what, that youth with the aggressive, +irritating vibrant manner—almost the young tough with a chip on his +shoulder looking for one to even so much as indicate that he is not all +he should be! Positively, there was something brutal and yet cosmic (not +comic) about him, his intellectual and art pretensions considered. At +times his waspishness and bravado palled even on me. He was too +aggressive, too forceful, too intolerant, I said. He should be softer. +At other times I felt that he needed to be all that and more to "get +by," as he would have said. I wanted to modify him a little—and yet I +didn't—and I remained drawn to him in spite of many irritating little +circumstances, all but infuriating at times, and actually calculated, it +seemed, with a kind of savage skill to reduce what he conceived to be my +lofty superiority. At times I thought he ought to be killed—like a +father meditating on an unruly son—but the mood soon passed and his +literary ability made amends for everything.</p> + +<p>In so far as the magazine was concerned, once it began to grow and +attract attention he was for me its most important asset; not that he +did so much directly as that he provided a definite standard toward +which we all had to work. Not incuriously, he was swiftly recognized for +what he was by all who came in touch with the magazine. In the first +place, interested in his progress, I had seen to it that he was properly +introduced wherever that was possible and of benefit to him, and later +on, by sheer force of his mental capacity and integrity, his dreams and +his critical skill, he managed to center about him an entire band of +seeking young writers, artists, poets, playwrights, aspiring musicians; +an amusing and as interesting a group as I have ever seen. Their points +of rendezvous appeared to be those same shabby quick-lunches in back +streets or even on the principal thoroughfares about Times Square, or +they met in each other's rooms or my office at night after I had gone, +giving me as an excuse that they had <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" />work to do. And during all this +time the air fairly hummed with rumors of new singers, dancers, plays, +stories being begun or under way, articles and essays contemplated; +avid, if none too well financed frolics or bohemian midnight suppers +here and there. Money was by no means plentiful, and in consequence +there was endless borrowing and "paying up" among them. Among the most +enthusiastic members of this circle, as I had begun to note, and finally +rather nervously, were my art-director, a valiant knight in Bohemia if +ever there was one, and she of Bryn Mawr-Wellesley standards. My makeup +editor, as well as various contributors who had since become more or +less closely identified with the magazine, were also following him up +all the time.</p> + +<p>If not directly profitable it was enlivening, and I was fairly well +convinced by now that from the point of view of being "aware," "in touch +with," "in sympathy with" many of the principal tendencies and +undercurrents which make for a magazine's success and precedence, this +group was as valuable to me as any might well be. It constituted a +"kitchen cabinet" of sorts and brought hundreds of interesting ideas to +the surface, and from all directions. Now it would be a new and hitherto +unheard-of tenor who was to be brought from abroad and introduced with +great noise to repute-loving Americans; a new sculptor or painter who +had never been heard of in America; a great actor, perhaps, or poet or +writer. I listened to any quantity of gossip in regard to new movements +that were ready to burst upon the world, in sculpture, painting, the +scriptic art. About the whole group there was much that was exceedingly +warm, youthful, full of dreams. They were intensely informative and full +of hope, and I used to look at them and wonder which one, if any, was +destined to have his dreams realized.</p> + +<p>Of L—— however I never had the least doubt. He began, it is true, to +adopt rather more liberal tendencies, to wish always to be part and +parcel of this gayety, this rushing here and there; and he drank at +times—due principally, as I thought, to my wildling art-director, who +had no sense or reserve in matters material or artistic and who was all +for a bacchanalian career, cost what it might. On more than one occasion +I heard L—— declaring roundly, apropos of some <a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" />group scheme of +pilgrimage, "No, no! I will not. I am going <i>home</i> now!" He had a story +he wanted to work on, an article to finish. At the same time he would +often agree that if by a certain time, when he was through, they were +still at a certain place, or a second or third, he would look them up. +Never, apparently, did his work suffer in the least.</p> + +<p>And it was about this time that I began to gather the true source and +import of his literary predisposition. He was literally obsessed, as I +now discovered, with Continental and more especially the French +conception of art in writing. He had studied the works as well as the +temperaments and experiences (more especially the latter, I fear) of +such writers as de Maupassant, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Balzac, de Musset, +Sand, Daudet, Dumas junior, and Zola, as well as a number of the more +recent writers: Hervieu, Bourget, Louys and their contemporaries. Most +of all, though, he was impressed, and deeply, by the life and art of de +Maupassant, his method of approach, his unbiased outlook on life, his +freedom from moral and religious and even sentimental predisposition. In +the beginning of his literary career I really believe he slaved to +imitate him exactly, although he could not very well escape the American +temperament and rearing by which he was hopelessly conditioned. A +certain Western critic and editor, to whom he had first addressed his +hopes and scribblings before coming to me, writing me after L——'s +death in reference to a period antedating that in which I had known him, +observed, "He was crazy about the <i>fin de siècle</i> stuff that then held +the boards and from which (I hope the recording angel will put it to my +credit) I steered him clear." I think so; but he was still very much +interested in it. He admired Aubrey Beardsley, the poster artists of +France, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rops, the Yellow Book, even Oscar Wilde, +although his was a far more substantial and plebeian and even radical +point of view.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately for L——, I have always thought, there now thrust himself +forward the publisher and owner of the magazine, who from previously +having been content to see that the mercantile affairs of the magazine +were in good order, had decided that since it was attracting attention +he should be allowed to share in its literary and artistic prestige, +<a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" />should indeed be closely identified with it and recognized as its true +source and inspiration—a thing which in no fashion had been +contemplated by me when I went there. From having agreed very distinctly +with me that no such interference would at any time be indulged in, he +now came forward with a plan for an advisory council which was to +consist of himself and the very members of the staff which I had +created.</p> + +<p>I could not object and it did not disturb me so much personally. For +some time I had been sensing that the thing was for me no end in itself, +but an incident. This same I felt to be true for L——, who had been +taking more and more interest in the magazine's technical composition. +At the same time I saw no immediate way of arranging my affairs and +departing, which left me, for a very little while, more or less of a +spectator. During this time I had the dissatisfaction of noting the +growth of an influence with L—— which could, as I saw, prove only +harmful. M—— was no suitable guide for him. He was a brilliant but +superficial and very material type who was convinced that in the having +and holding of many things material—houses, lands, corporation stocks, +a place in the clubs and circles of those who were materially +prosperous—was really to achieve all that was significant in the now or +the hereafter. Knowing comparatively nothing of either art or letters, +or that subtle thing which makes for personality and atmosphere in a +magazine or in writing (and especially the latter), that grateful +something which attracts and detains one, he was nevertheless convinced +that he did. And what was more, he was determined not only to make +friends with and hold all those whom I might have attracted, providing +they could prove useful to him, but also a number of a much more +successful group in these fields, those who had already achieved repute +in a more commonplace and popular way and were therefore presumably +possessed of a following and with the power to exact a high return for +their product, and for the magazine, regardless of intrinsic merit. His +constant talk was of money, its power to attract and buy, the +significance of all things material. He now wanted the magazine to be +representative of this glowing element, and at the same time, +paradoxical as it might seem, the best that might be in literary and +artistic thought.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" />Naturally the thing was impossible, but he had a facile and specious +method of arguing, a most gay and in some respects magnetic personality, +far from stodgy or gross, which for a time attracted many to him. Very +briskly then indeed he proceeded to make friends with all those with +whom I had surrounded myself, to enter into long and even private +discussions with them as to the proper conduct of the magazine, to hint +quite broadly at a glorious future in which all, each one particularly +to whom he talked, was to share. Curiously, this new and (as I would +have thought) inimical personality of M—— seemed to appeal to L—— +very much.</p> + +<p>I do not claim that the result was fatal. It may even, or at least +might, have had value, combined with an older or slightly more balanced +temperament. But it seemed to me that it offered too quickly what should +have come, if at all, as the result of much effort. For in regard to the +very things L—— should have most guarded against—show and the shallow +pleasures of social and night and material life in New York—M—— was +most specious. I never knew a more intriguing and fascinating man in +this respect nor one who cared less for those he used to obtain his +unimportant ends. He had positive genius for making the gaudy and the +unworthy seem worthy and even perfect. During his earlier days there, +L—— had more than once "cursed him out" (in his absence, of course), +to use his own expressive phrase, for his middle-West trade views, as he +described them, his shabby social and material ideals, and yet, as I +could plainly see, even at that time the virus of his theories was +working. For it must be remembered that L—— was very new to New York, +very young, and never having had much of anything he was no doubt +slightly envious of the man's material facility, the sense of +all-sufficiency, exclusiveness and even a kind of petty trade grandeur +with which he tried to surround himself.</p> + +<p>Well, that might not have proved fatal either, only L——needed some one +to keep him true to himself, his individual capabilities, to constantly +caution and if possible sober him to his very severe taste, and as it +was he was all but surrounded by acolytes and servitors.</p> + +<p>A little later, having left M——'s and assumed another editorial +position, and being compelled to follow the various <a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" />current magazines +more or less professionally, I was disturbed to note that there began to +appear in various publications—especially M——'s, which was +flourishing greatly for the moment—stories which while exhibiting much +of the deftness and repression as well as an avidity for the true color +of things, still showed what I had at first feared they might: a decided +compromise. That curse of all American fiction, the necessarily happy +ending, had been impressed on him—by whom? To my sincere +dissatisfaction, he began writing stories, some at least, which +concerned (1), a young woman who successfully abandoned art dreams for +advertising; (2), a middle-aged charmer, female, who attempted +<i>libertinage</i> and was defeated, American style; (3), a Christmas picture +with sweetness and light reigning on every hand (Dickens at his +sentimentalest could have done no worse); (4), a Broadway press agent +who, attempting to bring patronage to a great hotel via chic vice, +accidentally and unintentionally mates an all-too-good young society man +turned hotel manager to a grand heiress. And so on and so on, not ad +infinitum but for a period at least—the ten years in which he managed +to live and work.</p> + +<p>And, what was more, during this new period I heard and occasionally saw +discouraging things in connection with him from time to time. True to +his great promise, for I sincerely think M—— had a genuine fondness +for his young protégé, as much of a fondness as he could well have for +anything, he guaranteed him perhaps as much as three thousand a year; +sent him to Stockholm at the age of twenty-four or-five to meet and +greet the famous false pole discoverer, Doctor Cook; allowed him to go +to Paris in connection with various articles; to Rome; sent him into the +middle and far West; to Broadway for dramatic and social studies. Well +and good, only he wanted always in what was done for him the "uplift" +note, the happy ending—or at least one not vulgar or low—whereas my +idea in connection with L——, gifted as he was, was that he should +confine himself to fiction as an art and without any regard to theories +or types of ending, believing, as I did, that he would definitely +establish himself in that way in the long run. I had no objection of +course to experiences of various kinds, his taking up with any line of +work which <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" />might seem at the moment far removed from realistic writing, +providing always that the star of his ideal was in sight. Whenever he +wrote, be it early or late, it must be in the clear, incisive, +uncompromising vein of these first stories and with that passion for +revelation which characterized him at first, that same unbiased and +unfettered non-moral viewpoint.</p> + +<p>But after meeting with and working for M—— under this new arrangement +and being apparently fascinated for the moment by his personality, he +seemed to me to gradually lose sight of his ideal, to be actually taken +in by the plausible arguments which the latter could spin with the ease +that a spider spins gossamer. In that respect I insist that M—— was a +bad influence. Under his tutelage L—— gradually became, for instance, +an habitué of a well-known and pseudo-bohemian chop-house, a most +mawkish and naïvely imitative affair, intended frankly to be a copy or +even the original, forsooth, of an old English inn, done, in so far as +its woodwork was concerned, in smoked or dark-stained oak to represent +an old English interior, its walls covered with long-stemmed pipes and +pictures of English hunting and drinking scenes, its black-stained but +unvarnished tables littered with riding, driving and country-life +society papers, to give it that air of <i>sans ceremonie</i> with an upper +world of which its habitués probably possessed no least inkling but most +eagerly craved. Here, along with a goodly group of his latter-day +friends, far different from those by whom he had first been +surrounded—a pretentious society poet of no great merit but +considerable self-emphasis, a Wall Street broker, posing as a club man, +<i>raconteur</i>, "first-nighter" and what not, and several young and +ambitious playwrights, all seeking the heaven of a Broadway success—he +began to pose as one of the intimates of the great city, its bosom child +as it were, the cynosure and favorite of its most glittering +precincts—a most M—— like proceeding. His clothes by now, for I saw +him on occasion, had taken on a more lustrous if less convincing aspect +than those he had worn when I first knew him. The small round hat or +rakish cap, typical of his Western dreams, had now given way to a most +pretentious square-topped derby, beloved, I believe, of undertakers and +a certain severe type of banker as well as some clergymen, only it was a +light brown.<a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" /> His suit and waistcoat were of a bright English tweed, +reddish-brown or herring-bone gray by turns, his shoes box-toed +perfections of the button type. He carried a heavy cane, often a bright +leather manuscript case, and seemed intensely absorbed in the great and +dramatic business of living and writing. "One must," so I read him at +this time, "take the pleasures as well as the labors of this world with +the utmost severity." Here, with a grand manner, he patronized the +manager and the waiters, sent word to his friend the cook, who probably +did not know him at all, that his chop or steak was to be done just so. +These friends of his, or at least one of them (the poet) he met every +day at five for an all-essential game of chess, after which an evening +paper was read and the chop ordered. Ale—not beer—in a pewter mug was +<i>comme il faut</i>, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy of +the name, to drink.</p> + +<p>I am sorry to write so, for after all youth must have its fling. Still, +I had expected better of L——, and I was a little disappointed to see +that earlier dream of simplicity and privation giving way to an +absolutely worthless show. Besides, twenty or thirty such stories as +"The Right Man," "Sweet Dreams," "The Man With the Broken Fingers," "The +Second Motive," would outweigh a thousand of the things he was getting +published and the profits of which permitted him these airs.</p> + +<p>Again, during the early days of his success with M——, he had +married—a young nurse who had previously been a clerk in a store, a +serious, earnest and from one point of view helpful person, seeing that +she could keep his domestic affairs in order and bear him children, +which she did, but she had no understanding of, or flair for, the type +of thing he was called upon to do. She had no instinct for literature or +the arts, and aside from her domestic capacities little skill or taste +for "socializing." And, naturally, he was neglecting her. His head was +probably surging with great ideas of art and hence a social supremacy +which might well carry him anywhere. He had bought a farm some distance +from New York, where in a community supposedly inhabited by successful +and superior men of letters he posed as a farmer at times, mowing and +cocking hay as became a Western plow-boy; and also, as the <a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" />mood moved +him, and as became a great and secluded writer, working in a den +entirely surrounded by books in fine leather bindings (!) and being +visited by those odd satellites of the scriptic art who see in genius of +this type the <i>summum bonum</i> of life. It was the thing to do at that +time, for a writer to own a farm and work it. Horace had. One individual +in particular, a man of genuine literary and critical ability and great +taste in the matter of all the arts but with no least interest in or +tolerance for the simplicities of effort, came here occasionally, as I +heard, to help him pile hay, and this in a silk shirt and a monocle; a +second—and a most fascinating intellectual <i>flaneur</i>, who, however, had +no vision or the gift of dreams—came to eat, drink, talk of many things +to be done, to steal a few ideas, borrow a little money perhaps or +consume a little morphine, and depart; a third came to spout of his +success in connection with plays, or his proposed successes; a fourth to +paint a picture, urged on by L——; a fifth to compose rural verse; a +sixth, a broker or race-track tout or city bar-tender (for color, this +last), to marvel that one of L——'s sense, or any one indeed, should +live in the country at all. There were drinking bouts, absolute +drunkenness, in which, according to the Johnsonian tradition and that of +Messieurs Rabelais and Molière, the weary intellect and one's guiding +genius were immersed in a comforting Lethe of rye.</p> + +<p>Such things cost money, however. In addition, my young friend, due to a +desire no doubt to share in the material splendors of his age (a +doctrine M—— was ever fond of spouting—and as a duty, if you please), +had saddled himself, for a time at least, with an apartment in an +exclusive square on the East Side, the rent of which was a severe drain. +Before this there had been, and after it were still, others, obligations +too much for him to bear financially, all in the main taken for show, +that he might be considered a literary success. Now and again (so I was +told by several of his intimates), confronted by a sudden exhaustion of +his bank balance, he would leave some excellent apartment house or +neighborhood, where for a few months he had been living in grand style, +extracting his furniture as best he might, or leaving it and various +debts beside, and would take refuge in some shabby tenement, or rear +rooms even, and where, touched by re<a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" />morse or encouraged by the great +literary and art traditions (Balzac, Baudelaire, Johnson, Goldsmith, +Verlaine) he would toil unendingly at definite money-yielding +manuscripts, the results of which carried to some well-paying +<i>successful magazine</i> would yield him sufficient to return to the white +lights—often even to take a better apartment than that which last had +been his. By now, however, one of the two children he eventually left +behind him had been born. His domestic cares were multiplying, the +marriage idea dull. Still he did not hesitate to continue those dinners +given to his friends, the above-mentioned group or its spiritual kin, +either in his apartment or in a bohemian restaurant of great show in New +York. In short, he was a fairly successful short-story writer and critic +in whom still persisted a feeling that he would yet triumph in the +adjacent if somewhat more difficult field of popular fiction.</p> + +<p>It was during this period, if I may interpolate an incident, that I was +waiting one night in a Broadway theater lobby for a friend to appear, +when who should arrive on the scene but L——, most outlandishly dressed +in what I took to be a <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of his first pose, as I +now half-feared it to be: that of the uncouth and rugged young American, +disclaiming style in dress at least, and content to be a clod in looks +so long as he was a Shelley in brains. His suit was of that coarse +ill-fitting character described as Store, and shelf-worn; his shoes all +but dusty brogans, his headgear a long-visored yellowish-and-brown +cross-barred cap. He had on a short, badly-cut frieze overcoat, his +hands stuck defiantly in his trousers pockets, forcing its lapels wide +open. And he appeared to be partially if not entirely drunk, and very +insolent. I had the idea that the drunkenness and the dress were a pose, +or else that he had been in some neighborhood in search of copy which +required such an outfit. Charitably let us accept the last. He was +accompanied by two satellic souls who were doing their best to restrain +him.</p> + +<p>"Come, now! Don't make a scene. We'll see the show all right!"</p> + +<p>"Sure we'll see the show!" he returned contentiously. "Where's the +manager?"</p> + +<p>A smug mannikin whose uniform was a dress suit, the <a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" />business manager +himself, eyed him in no friendly spirit from a nearby corner.</p> + +<p>"This is Mr. L——," one of the satellites now approached and explained +to the manager. "He's connected with M——'s Magazine. He does short +stories and dramatics occasionally."</p> + +<p>The manager bowed. After all, M——'s Magazine had come to have some +significance on Broadway. It was as well to be civil. Courtesy was +extended for three, and they went in.</p> + +<p>As for myself, I resented the mood and the change. It was in no way my +affair—his life was his own—and still I resented it. I did not believe +that he was as bad as he seemed. He had too much genuine sense. It was +just boyish swagger and show, and still it was time that he was getting +over that and settling down. I really hoped that time would modify all +this.</p> + +<p>One thing that made me hope for the best was that very shortly after +this M——'s Magazine blew completely up, leaving him without that +semi-financial protection which I felt was doing him so much harm. The +next favorable sign that I observed was that a small volume of short +stories, some sixteen in number, and containing the cream of his work up +to that time, was brought to a publishing house with which I was +financially identified at the time, and although no word was said to me +(I really think he took great care not to see me), still it was left and +on my advice eventually published (it sold, I believe, a little under +five hundred copies). But the thing that cheered me was that it +contained not one story which could be looked upon as a compromise with +his first views. And better, it had been brought to the concern with +which I was connected—intentionally, I am sure. I was glad to have had +a hand in its publication. "At least," I said, "he has not lost sight of +his first ideal. He may go on now."</p> + +<p>And thereafter, in one magazine and another, excellent enough to have +but a small circulation, I saw something of his which had genuine merit. +A Western critical journal began to publish a series of essays by him, +for which I am sure he received nothing at all. Again, three or four +years later, a second volume of stories, almost if not quite as good as +his first, was issued by this same Western paper. He was trying to do +serious work; but he still sought and apparently craved those <a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" />grand +scenes on the farm or in some New York restaurant or an expensive +apartment, and when he could no longer afford it. He still wrote +happy-ending, or compromise, stories for any such magazine as would +receive him, and was apparently building up a reasonably secure market +for them. In the meantime the moving-picture scenario market had +developed, and he wrote for it. His eyes were also turning toward the +stage, as one completed manuscript and several "starts" turned over to +me after his death proved. One day some one who knew him and me quite +well assured me that L——, having sent out many excellent stories only +to have them returned, had one day cried and then raged, cursing America +for its attitude toward serious letters—an excellent sign, I thought, +good medicine for one who must eventually forsake his hope of material +grandeur and find himself. "In time, in time," I said, "he will eat +through the husks of these other things, the 'M—— complex,' and do +something splendid. He can't help it. But this fantastic dream of +grandeur, of being a popular success, will have to be lived down."</p> + +<p>For a time now I heard but little more save once that he was connected +with a moving-picture concern, suggesting plots and making some money. +Then I saw a second series of essays in the same Western critical +paper—that of the editor who had published his book—and some of them +were excellent, very searching and sincere. I felt that he was moving +along the right line, although they earned him nothing. Then one week, +very much to my surprise, there was a very glowing and extended +commentary on myself, concerning which for the time being I decided to +make no comment; and a little later, perhaps three weeks, a telephone +call. Did I recall him? (!) Could he come and see me? (!) I invited him +to dinner, and he came, carrying, of all things—and for him, the +ex-railroad boy—a great armful of red roses. This touched me.</p> + +<p>"What's the idea?" I inquired jovially, laughing at him.</p> + +<p>He blushed like a girl, a little irritably too, I thought, for he found +me (as perhaps he had hoped not to) examining and critical, and he may +have felt that I was laughing at him, which I wasn't. "I wished to give +them to you, and I brought 'em. Why shouldn't I?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" />You know you should bring them if you want me to have them, and I'm +only too glad to get them, anyway. Don't think I'm criticizing."</p> + +<p>He smiled and began at once on the "old days," as he now called them, a +sad commentary on our drifting days. Indeed he seemed able to talk of +little else or fast enough or with too much enthusiasm. He went over +many things and people—M——; K——, the wonderful art-director, now +insane and a wreck; the group of which he and I had once been a part; +his youthful and unsophisticated viewpoint at the time. "You know," he +confessed quite frankly finally, "my mother always told me then and +afterwards that I made a mistake in leaving you. You were the better +influence for me. She was right. I know it now. Still, a life's a life, +and we have to work through it and ourselves somehow."</p> + +<p>I agreed heartily.</p> + +<p>He told me of his wife, children, farm, his health and his difficulties. +It appeared that he was making a bare living at times, at others doing +very well. His great bane was the popular magazine, the difficulty of +selling a good thing. It was true, I said, and at midnight he left, +promising to come again, inviting me to come to his place in the country +at my convenience. I promised.</p> + +<p>But one thing and another interfered. I went South. One day six months +later, after I had returned, he called up once more, saying he wished to +see me. Of course I asked him down and he came and spoke of his health. +Some doctor, an old college pal of his, was assuring him that he had +Bright's disease and that he might die at any time. He wanted to know, +in case anything happened to him, would I look after his many mss., most +of which, the most serious efforts at least, had never been published. I +agreed. Then he went away and I never saw him again. A year later I was +one day informed that he had died three days before of kidney trouble. +He had been West to see a moving-picture director; on his way East he +had been taken ill and had stopped off with friends somewhere to be +treated, or operated upon. A few weeks later he had returned to New +York, but refusing to rest and believing that he could not die, so soon, +had kept out of doors and in the city, until suddenly he did collapse. +Or, <a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" />rather, he met his favorite doctor, an intellectual savage like +himself, who with some weird desire to appear forceful, definite, +unsentimental perhaps—a mental condition L——most fancied—had told +him to go home and to bed, for he would be dead in forty-eight hours!—a +fine bit of assurance which perhaps as much as anything else assisted +L—— to die. At any rate and in spite of the ministrations of his wife, +who wished to defy the doctor and who in her hope for herself and her +children as well as him strove to contend against this gloom, he did so +go to bed and did die. On the last day, realizing no doubt how utterly +indifferent his life had been, how his main aspirations or great dreams +had been in the main nullified by passions, necessities, crass chance +(how well he was fitted to understand that!) he broke down and cried for +hours. Then he died.</p> + +<p>A friend who had known much of this last period, said to me rather +satirically, "He was dealing with death in the shape of a medic. Have +you ever seen him?" The doctor, he meant. "He looks like an +advertisement for an undertaker. I do believe he was trying to discover +whether he could kill somebody by the power of suggestion, and he met +L—— in the nick of time. You know how really sensitive he was. Well, +that medic killed him, the same as you would kill a bird with a bullet. +He said 'You're already dead,' and he was."</p> + +<p>And—oh yes—M——, his former patron. At the time of L——'s sickness +and death he was still owing him $1100 for services rendered during the +last days of that unfortunate magazine. He had never been called upon to +pay his debts, for he had sunk through one easy trapdoor of bankruptcy +only to rise out of another, smiling and with the means to continue. +Yes, he was rich again, rated A No. 1, the president of a great +corporation, and with L——'s $1100 still unpaid and now not legally +"collectible." His bank balance, established by a friend at the time, +was exactly one hundred thousand.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. L——, anxious to find some way out of her difficulty since her +husband was lying cold, and knowing of no one else to whom to turn, had +written to him. There was no food in the house, no medicine, no way to +feed the children at the moment. That matter of $1100 now—could he +spare a little? L—- had thought——</p> + +<p><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" />A letter in answer was not long in arriving, and a most moving M——y +document it was. M—— had been stunned by the dreadful news, stunned. +Could it really be? Could it? His young brilliant friend? Impossible! At +the dread, pathetic news he had cried—yes he had—cried—and cried—and +cried—and then he had even cried some more. Life was so sad, so grim. +As for him, his own affairs were never in so wretched a condition. It +was unfortunate. Debts there were on every hand. They haunted him, +robbed him of his sleep. He himself scarcely knew which way to turn. +They stood in serried ranks, his debts. A slight push on the part of any +one, and he would be crushed—crushed—go down in ruin. And so, as much +as he was torn, and as much as he cried, even now, he could do nothing, +nothing, nothing. He was agonized, beaten to earth, but still——. Then, +having signed it, there was a P.S. or an N.B. This stated that in +looking over his affairs he had just discovered that by stinting himself +in another direction he <i>could</i> manage to scrape together twenty-five +dollars, and this he was enclosing. Would that God had designed that he +should be better placed at this sad hour!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>However that may be, I at once sent for the mss. and they came, a +jumbled mass in two suitcases and a portfolio; and a third suitcase, so +I was informed, containing all of a hundred mss., mostly stories, had +been lost somewhere! There had been much financial trouble of late and +more than one enforced move. Mrs. L—— had been compelled—but I will +not tell all. Suffice it to say that he had such an end as his own +realistic pen might have satirically craved.</p> + +<p>The mss., finally sorted, tabulated and read, yielded two small volumes +of excellent tales, all unpublished, the published material being all +but uniformly worthless. There was also the attempt at a popular comedy, +previously mentioned, a sad affair, and a volume of essays, as well as a +very, very slender but charming volume of verse, in case a publisher +could ever be found for them—a most agreeable little group, showing a +pleasing sense of form and color and emotion. I arranged them as best I +could and finally——</p> + +<p>But they are still unpublished.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" />P.S. As for the sum total of the work left by L——, its very best, it +might be said that although he was not a great psychologist, still, +owing to a certain pretentiousness of assertion at times, one might +unthinkingly suppose he was. Neither had he, as yet, any fixed theories +of art or definite style of his own, imitating as he was now de +Maupassant, now O. Henry, now Poe; but also it must be said that slowly +and surely he was approximating one, original and forceful and +water-clear in expression and naturalness. At times he veered to a +rather showy technique, at others to a cold and even harsh simplicity. +Yet always in the main he had color, beauty, emotion, poignance when +necessary. Like his idol, de Maupassant, he had no moral or strong +social prejudices, no really great or disturbing imagination, no wealth +of perplexing ideas. He saw America and life as something to be painted +as all masters see life and paint it. Gifted with a true vein of satire, +he had not, at the time of his death, quite mastered its possibilities. +He still retained prejudice of one type or another, which he permitted +to interfere with the very smooth arrangement of his colors. At the same +time, had he not been disturbed by so many of the things which in +America, as elsewhere, ordinarily assail an ambitious and earnest +writer—the prejudice against naturalness and sincerity in matters of +the intellect and the facts of life, and the consequent difficulty of +any one so gifted in obtaining funds at any time—he might have done +much better sooner. He was certain to come into his own eventually had +he lived. His very accurate and sensitive powers of observation, his +literary taste, his energy and pride in his work, were destined to carry +him there. It could not have been otherwise. Ten years more, judging by +the rate at which he worked, his annual product and that which he did +leave, one might say that in the pantheon of American letters it is +certain that he would have proved a durable if not one of its great +figures, and he might well have been that. As it stands, it is not +impossible that he will be so recognized, if for no more than the sure +promise of his genius.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="The_Village_Feudists" id="The_Village_Feudists" /><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" /><i>The Village Feudists</i></h2> + + +<p>In a certain Connecticut fishing-town sometime since, where, besides +lobstering, a shipyard and some sail-boat-building there existed the +several shops and stores which catered to the wants of those who labored +in those lines, there dwelt a groceryman by the name of Elihu Burridge, +whose life and methods strongly point the moral and social successes and +failures of the rural man.</p> + +<p>Sixty years of age, with the vanities and desires of the average man's +life behind rather than before him, he was at the time not unlike the +conventional drawings of Parson Thirdly, which graced the humorous +papers of that day. Two moon-shaped eyes, a long upper lip, a mouth like +the sickle moon turned downward, prominent ears, a rather long face and +a mutton-chop-shaped whisker on either cheek, served to give him that +clerical appearance which the humorous artists so religiously seek to +depict. Add to this that he was middle-sized, clerically spare in form, +reserved and quiet in demeanor, and one can see how he might very +readily give the impression of being a minister. His clothes, however, +were old, his trousers torn but neatly mended, his little blue gingham +jumper which he wore about the store greasy and aged. Everything about +him and his store was so still and dark that one might have been +inclined on first sight to consider him crusty and morose.</p> + +<p>Even more remarkable than himself, however, was his store. I have seen +many in my time that were striking because of their neatness; I never +saw one before that struck me as more remarkable for its disorder. In +the first place it was filled neck-deep with barrels and boxes in the +utmost confusion. Dark, greasy, provision-lined alleys led off into +dingy sections which the eye could not penetrate. Old signs hung about, +advertising things which had long since ceased to sell and were +forgotten by the public. There were pictures in once gilt but now +time-blackened frames, wherein queerly depicted children and +pompous-looking grocers offered one commodity and another, all now +almost obliterated by fly-specks. Shelves were marked on the walls by +<a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" />signs now nearly illegible. Cobwebs hung thickly from corners and +pillars. There were oil, lard, and a dust-laden scum of some sort on +three of the numerous scales with which he occasionally weighed things +and on many exteriors of once salable articles. Pork, lard, molasses, +and nails were packed in different corners of the place in barrels. +Lying about were household utensils, ship-rigging, furniture and a +hundred other things which had nothing to do with the grocery business.</p> + +<p>As I entered the store the first afternoon I noticed a Bible open at +Judges and a number of slips of paper on which questions had been +written. On my second visit for oil and vinegar, two strangers from off +a vagrant yacht which had entered the little harbor nudged one another +and demanded to know whether either had ever seen anything like it. On +the third, my companion protested that it was not clean, and seeing that +there were other stores we decided to buy our things elsewhere. This was +not so easily accomplished.</p> + +<p>"Where can I get a flatiron?" I inquired at the Postoffice when I first +entered the village.</p> + +<p>"Most likely at Burridge's," was the reply.</p> + +<p>"Do you know where I can get a pair of row-locks?" I asked of a boy who +was lounging about the town dock.</p> + +<p>"At Burridge's," he replied.</p> + +<p>When we wanted oars, pickles of a certain variety, golden syrup, and a +dozen other things which were essential at times, we were compelled to +go to Burridge's, so that at last he obtained a very fair portion of our +trade despite the condition of his store.</p> + +<p>During all these earlier dealings there cropped up something curt and +dry in his conversation. One day we lost a fruit jar which he had +loaned, and I took one very much like it back in its place. When I began +to apologize he interrupted me with, "A jar's a jar, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>Another time, when I remarked in a conciliatory tone that he owed me +eight cents for a can of potted ham which had proved stale, he +exclaimed, "Well, I won't owe you long," and forthwith pulled the money +out of the loose jacket of his jumper and paid me.</p> + +<p>I inquired one day if a certain thing were good. "If it isn't,"<a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" /> he +replied, with a peculiar elevation of the eyebrows, "your money is. You +can have that back."</p> + +<p>"That's the way you do business, is it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," he replied, and his long upper lip thinned out along the +line of the lower one like a vise.</p> + +<p>I was in search of a rocking-chair one day and was directed to +Burridge's as the only place likely to have any!</p> + +<p>"Do you keep furniture?" I inquired.</p> + +<p>"Some," he said.</p> + +<p>"Have you a rocking-chair?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir."</p> + +<p>A day or two later I was in search of a table and on going to Burridge's +found that he had gone to a neighboring city.</p> + +<p>"Have you got a table?" I inquired of the clerk.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," he replied. "There's some furniture in the back room, +but I don't know as I dare to sell any of it while he's away."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Well, he don't like me to sell any of it. He's kind of queer that way. +I dunno what he intends to do with it. Gar!" he added in a strangely +electric way, "he's a queer man! He's got a lot of things back +there—chairs and tables and everything. He's got a lot more in a loft +up the street here. He never seems to want to sell any of 'em. Heard him +tell people he didn't have any."</p> + +<p>I shook my head in puzzled desperation.</p> + +<p>"Come on, let's go back and look anyway. There's no harm in seeing if he +has one."</p> + +<p>We went back and there amid pork and molasses barrels, old papers, boxes +and signs, was furniture in considerable quantity—tables, +rocking-chairs, washstands, bureaus—all cornered and tumbled about.</p> + +<p>"Why, here are rocking-chairs, lots of them," I exclaimed. "Just the +kind I want! He said he didn't have any."</p> + +<p>"Gar! I dunno," replied the clerk. "Here's a table, but I wouldn't dare +sell it to you."</p> + +<p>"Why should he say he didn't have a rocking-chair?"</p> + +<p>"Gar! I dunno. He's goin' out of the furniture business. He don't want +to sell any. I don't know what he intends to do with it."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" />Well," I said in despair, "what about the table? You can sell that, +can't you?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't—not till he comes back. I don't know what he'd want to do +about it."</p> + +<p>"What's the price of it?"</p> + +<p>"I dunno. He could tell you."</p> + +<p>I went out of the thick-aired stuffy backroom with its unwashed windows, +and when I got opposite the Bible near the door I said:</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with him anyhow? Why doesn't he straighten things out +here?"</p> + +<p>Again the clerk awoke. "Huh!" he exclaimed. "Straighten it out! Gar! I'd +like to see anybody try it."</p> + +<p>"It could be," I said encouragingly.</p> + +<p>"Gar!" he chuckled. "One man did try to straighten it out once when Mr. +Burridge was away. Got about a third of it cleaned up when he come back. +Gar! You oughta seen him! Gar!"</p> + +<p>"What did he do?"</p> + +<p>"What did he do! What didn't he do! Gar! Just took things an' threw them +about again. Said he couldn't find anything."</p> + +<p>"You don't say!"</p> + +<p>"Gar! I should say so! Man come in an' asked for a hammer. Said he +couldn't find any hammer, things was so mixed up. Did it with screws, +water-buckets an' everything just the same. Took 'em right off the +shelves, where they was all in groups, an' scattered 'em all over the +room. Gar! 'Now I guess I can find something when I want it,' he said." +The clerk paused to squint and add, "There ain't anybody tried any +straightenin' out around here since then, you bet. Gar!"</p> + +<p>"How long ago has that been?"</p> + +<p>"About fourteen years now."</p> + +<p>Surprised by this sharp variation from the ordinary standards of trade, +I began thinking of possible conditions which had produced it, when one +evening I happened in on the local barber. He was a lean, inquisitive +individual with a shock of sandy hair and a conspicuous desire to appear +a well-rounded social factor.</p> + +<p>"What sort of person is this Burridge over here? He keeps such a +peculiar store."</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" />Elihu is a bit peculiar," he replied, his smile betraying a desire to +appear conservative. "The fault with Elihu, if he has one, is that he's +terribly strong on religion. Can't seem to agree with anybody around +here."</p> + +<p>"What's the trouble?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"It's more'n I could ever make out, what is the matter with him. They're +all a little bit cracked on the subject around here. Nothing but +revivals and meetin's, year in and year out. They're stronger on it +winters than they are in summer."</p> + +<p>"How do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Well, they'll be more against yachtin' and Sunday pleasures when they +can't go than when they can."</p> + +<p>"What about Elihu?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well, he can't seem to get along, somehow. He used to belong to the +Baptist Church, but he got out o' that. Then he went to a church up in +Graylock, but he had a fallin' out up there. Then he went to Northfield +and Eustis. He's been all around, even over on Long Island. He goes to +church up at Amherst now, I believe."</p> + +<p>"What seems to be the trouble?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's just strong-headed, I guess." He paused, and ideas lagged +until finally I observed:</p> + +<p>"It's a very interesting store he keeps."</p> + +<p>"It's just as Billy Drumgold told him once: 'Burridge,' he says, 'you've +got everything in this store that belongs to a full-rigged ship 'cept +one thing.' 'What's that?' Burridge asks. 'A second-hand pulpit.' 'Got +that too,' he answered, and takes him upstairs, and there he had one +sure enough."</p> + +<p>"Well," I said, "what was he doing with it?"</p> + +<p>"Danged if I know. He had it all right. Has it yet, so they say."</p> + +<p>Days passed and as the summer waned the evidences of a peculiar life +accumulated. Noank, apparently, was at outs with Burridge on the subject +of religion, and he with it. There were instances of genuine hard +feeling against him.</p> + +<p>Writing a letter in the Postoffice one day I ventured to take up this +matter with the postmaster.</p> + +<p>"You know Mr. Burridge, don't you—the grocer?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I should guess I did," he replied with a flare.</p> + +<p>"Anything wrong with him?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" />Oh, about everything that's just plain cussed—the most wrangling man +alive. I never saw such a man. He don't get his mail here no more +because he's mad at me, I guess. Took it away because I had Mr. Palmer's +help in my fight, I suppose. Wrote me that I should send all his mail up +to Mystic, and he goes there three or four miles out of his way every +day, just to spite me. It's against the law. I hadn't ought to be doing +it, re-addressing his envelopes three or four times a day, but I do do +it. He's a strong-headed man, that's the trouble with Elihu."</p> + +<p>I had no time to follow this up then, but a little later, sitting in the +shop of the principal sailboat maker, which was situated in the quiet +little lane which follows the line of the village, I was one day +surprised by the sudden warm feeling which the name of Elihu generated. +Something had brought up the subject of religion, and I said that +Burridge seemed rather religious.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the sailboat maker quickly, "he's religious, all right, only +he reads the Bible for others, not for himself."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean by that?"</p> + +<p>"Why, he wants to run things, that's what. As long as you agree with +Elihu, why, everything's all right. When you don't, the Bible's against +you. That's the way he is."</p> + +<p>"Did he ever disagree with you?" I asked, suspecting some personal +animus in the matter.</p> + +<p>"Me and Elihu was always good friends as long as I agreed with him," he +went on bitterly. "We've been raised together, man and boy, for pretty +near sixty years. We never had a word of any kind but what was friendly, +as long as I agreed with him, but just as soon as I didn't he took a set +against me, and we ain't never spoke a word since."</p> + +<p>"What was the trouble?" I inquired sweetly, anxious to come at the +kernel of this queer situation.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, dropping his work and looking up to impress me, "I'm a +man that'll sometimes say what I don't believe; that is, I'll agree with +what I hadn't ought to, just to be friendly like. I did that way a lot +o' times with Elihu till one day he came to me with something about +particular salvation. I'm a little more liberal myself. I believe in +universal redemption by faith alone. Well, Elihu came to me and began +telling <a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" />me what he believed. Finally he asked me something about +particular salvation and wanted to know whether I didn't agree with him. +I didn't, and told him so. From that day on he took a set against me, +and he ain't never spoke a word to me since."</p> + +<p>I was unaware that there was anything besides a religious disagreement +in this local situation until one day I happened to come into a second +friendly contact with the postmaster. We were speaking of the +characteristics of certain individuals, and I mentioned Burridge.</p> + +<p>"He's all right when you take him the way he wants to be taken. When you +don't you'll find him quite a different man."</p> + +<p>"He seems to be straightforward and honest," I said.</p> + +<p>"There ain't anything you can tell me about Elihu Burridge that I don't +know," he replied feelingly. "Not a thing. I've lived with him, as you +might say, all my life. Been raised right here in town with him, and we +went to school together. Man and boy, there ain't ever been a thing that +Elihu has agreed with, without he could have the running of it. You +can't tell me anything about him that I don't know."</p> + +<p>I could not help smiling at the warmth of feeling, although something +about the man's manner bespoke a touch of heart-ache, as if he were +privately grieving.</p> + +<p>"What was the trouble between you two?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"It's more'n I could ever find out," he replied in a voice that was +really mournful, so difficult and non-understandable was the subject to +him. "Before I started to work for this office there wasn't a day that I +didn't meet and speak friendly with Elihu. He used to have a good many +deeds and papers to sign, and he never failed to call me in when I was +passing. When I started to work for this office I noticed he took on a +cold manner toward me, and I tried to think of something I might have +done, but I couldn't. Finally I wrote and asked him if there was +anything between us if he wouldn't set a time and place so's we might +talk it over and come to an understanding." He paused and then added, "I +wish you could see the letter he wrote me. Comin' from a Christian +man—from him to me—I wish you could see it."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you show it to me?" I asked inquisitively.</p> + +<p>He went back into the office and returned with an ancient-<a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" />looking +document, four years old it proved to be, which he had been treasuring. +He handed me the thumbed and already yellowed page, and I read:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"MATTHEW HOLCOMB, ESQUIRE,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<blockquote><p>"DEAR SIR:—In reply to your letter asking me to set a time and + place in which we might talk over the trouble between us, would + say that the time be Eternity and the place where God shall call + us to judgment.</p></blockquote> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Very truly,<br /></span> +<span>"ELIHU BURRIDGE."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His eyes rested on me while I read, and the moment I finished he began +with:</p> + +<p>"I never said one word against that man, not one word. I never did a +thing he could take offense at, not one thing. I don't know how a man +can justify himself writing like that."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it's political," I said. "You don't belong to the same party, +do you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, we do," he said. "Sometimes I've thought that maybe it was because +I had the support of the shipyard when I first tried to get this office, +but then that wasn't anything between him and me," and he looked away as +if the mystery were inexplicable.</p> + +<p>This shipyard was conducted by a most forceful man but one as narrow and +religionistic as this region in which it had had its rise. Old Mr. +Palmer, the aged founder of it, had long been a notable figure in the +streets and private chambers of the village. The principal grocery +store, coal-yard, sail-loft, hotel and other institutions were conducted +in its interests. His opinion was always foremost in the decision of the +local authorities. He was still, reticent, unobtrusive. Once I saw him +most considerately helping a cripple up the lane to the local Baptist +Church.</p> + +<p>"What's the trouble between Burridge and Palmer?" I asked of the +sail-maker finally, coming to think that here, if anywhere, lay the +solution of the difficulty.</p> + +<p>"Two big fish in too small a basket," he responded laconically.</p> + +<p>"Can't agree, eh?"</p> + +<p>"They both want to lead, or did," he said. "Elihu's a beaten <a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" />man, +though, now." He paused and then added, "I'm sorry for Elihu. He's a +good man at heart, one of the kindest men you ever saw, when you let him +follow his natural way. He's good to the poor, and he's carried more +slow-pay people than any man in this country, I do believe. He won't +collect an old debt by law. Don't believe in it. No, sir. Just a +kind-hearted man, but he loves to rule."</p> + +<p>"How about Palmer?" I inquired.</p> + +<p>"Just the same way exactly. He loves to rule, too. Got a good heart, +too, but he's got a lot more money than Elihu and so people pay more +attention to him, that's all. When Elihu was getting the attention he +was just the finest man you ever saw, kind, generous, good-natured. +People love to be petted, at least some people do—you know they do. +When you don't pet 'em they get kind o' sour and crabbed like. Now +that's all that's the matter with Elihu, every bit of it. He's sour, +now, and a little lonely, I expect. He's drove away every one from him, +or nearly all, 'cept his wife and some of his kin. Anybody can do a good +grocery business here, with the strangers off the boats"—the harbor was +a lively one—"all you have to do is carry a good stock. That's why he +gets along so well. But he's drove nearly all the local folks away from +him."</p> + +<p>I listened to this comfortable sail-loft sage, and going back to the +grocery store one afternoon took another look at the long, grim-faced +silent figure. He was sitting in the shadow of one of his moldy corners, +and if there had ever been any light of merriment in his face it was not +there now. He looked as fixed and solemn as an ancient puritan, and yet +there was something so melancholy in the man's eye, so sad and +disappointed, that it seemed anything but hard. Two or three little +children were playing about the door and when he came forward to wait on +me one of them sidled forward and put her chubby hand in his.</p> + +<p>"Your children?" I asked, by way of reaching some friendly +understanding.</p> + +<p>"No," he replied, looking fondly down, "she belongs to a French lady up +the street here. She often comes down to see me, don't you?" and he +reached over and took the fat little cheek between his thumb and +forefinger.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" />The little one rubbed her face against his worn baggy trousers' leg and +put her arm about his knee. Quietly he stood there in a simple way until +she loosened her hold upon him, when he went about his labor.</p> + +<p>I was sitting one day in the loft of the comfortable sail-maker, who, by +the way, was brother-in-law to Burridge, when I said to him:</p> + +<p>"I wish you'd tell me the details about Elihu. How did he come to be +what he is? You ought to know; you've lived here all your life."</p> + +<p>"So I do know," he replied genially. "What do you want me to tell you?"</p> + +<p>"The whole story of the trouble between him and Palmer; how he comes to +be at outs with all these people."</p> + +<p>"Well," he began, and here followed with many interruptions and side +elucidations, which for want of space have been eliminated, the +following details:</p> + +<p>Twenty-five years before Elihu had been the leading citizen of Noank. +From operating a small grocery at the close of the Civil War he branched +out until he sold everything from ship-rigging to hardware. Noank was +then in the height of its career as a fishing town and as a port from +which expeditions of all sorts were wont to sail. Whaling was still in +force, and vessels for whaling expeditions were equipped here. Wealthy +sea-captains frequently loaded fine three-masted schooners here for +various trading expeditions to all parts of the world; the fishers for +mackerel, cod and herring were making three hundred and fifty dollars a +day in season, and thousands of dollars' worth of supplies were annually +purchased here.</p> + +<p>Burridge was then the only tradesman of any importance and, being of a +liberal, strong-minded and yet religious turn, attracted the majority of +this business to him. He had houses and lands, was a deacon in the local +Baptist Church and a counselor in matters political, social and +religious, whose advice was seldom rejected. Every Fourth of July during +these years it was his custom to collect all the children of the town in +front of his store and treat them to ice-cream. Every Christmas Eve he +traveled about the streets in a wagon, which carried half a dozen +barrels of candy and nuts, which he would ladle out to the merry +shouting throng of pursuing <a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" />youngsters, until all were satisfied. For +the skating season he prepared a pond, spending several thousand dollars +damming up a small stream, in order that the children might have a place +to skate. He created a library where all might obtain suitable reading, +particularly the young.</p> + +<p>On New Year's morning it was his custom to visit all the poor and +bereaved and lonely in Noank, taking a great dray full of presents and +leaving a little something with his greetings and a pleasant handshake +at every door. The lonely rich as well as the lonely poor were included, +for he was certain, as he frequently declared, that the rich could be +lonely too.</p> + +<p>He once told his brother-in-law that one New Year's Day a voice called +to him in church: "Elihu Burridge, how about the lonely rich and poor of +Noank?" "Up I got," he concluded, "and from that day to this I have +never neglected them."</p> + +<p>When any one died who had a little estate to be looked after for the +benefit of widows or orphans, Burridge was the one to take charge of it. +People on their deathbeds sent for him, and he always responded, taking +energetic charge of everything and refusing to take a penny for his +services. After a number of years the old judge to whom he always +repaired with these matters of probate, knowing his generosity in this +respect, also refused to accept any fee. When he saw him coming he would +exclaim:</p> + +<p>"Well, Elihu, what is it this time? Another widow or orphan that we've +got to look after?"</p> + +<p>After Elihu had explained what it was, he would add:</p> + +<p>"Well, Elihu, I do hope that some day some rich man will call you to +straighten out his affairs. I'd like to see <i>you</i> get a little +something, so that <i>I</i> might get a little something. Eh, Elihu?" Then he +would jocularly poke his companion in charity in the ribs.</p> + +<p>These general benefactions were continuous and coeval with his local +prosperity and dominance, and their modification as well as the man's +general decline the result of the rise of this other individual—Robert +Palmer,—"operating" to take the color of power and preëminence from +him.</p> + +<p>Palmer was the owner of a small shipyard here at the time, a thing which +was not much at first but which grew swiftly.<a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" /> He was born in Noank +also, a few years before Burridge, and as a builder of vessels had been +slowly forging his way to a moderate competence when Elihu was already +successful. He was a keen, fine-featured, energetic individual, with +excellent commercial and strong religious instincts, and by dint of hard +labor and a saving disposition he obtained, soon after the Civil War, a +powerful foothold. Many vessels were ordered here from other cities. +Eventually he began to build barges in large numbers for a great +railroad company.</p> + +<p>Early becoming a larger employer of labor than any one else in the +vicinity he soon began to branch out, possessed himself of the allied +industries of ship-rigging, chandlering, and finally established a +grocery store for his employees, and opened a hotel. Now the local +citizens began to look upon him as their leading citizen. They were +always talking of his rise, frequently in the presence of Burridge. He +said nothing at first, pretending to believe that his quondam leadership +was unimpaired. Again, there were those who, having followed the various +branches of labor which Palmer eventually consolidated, viewed this +growth with sullen and angry eyes. They still sided with Burridge, or +pretended still to believe that he was the more important citizen of the +two. In the course of time, however—a period of thirty years or +more—some of them failed; others died; still others were driven away +for want of a livelihood. Only Burridge's position and business +remained, but in a sadly weakened state. He was no longer a man of any +great importance.</p> + +<p>Not unnaturally, this question of local supremacy was first tested in +the one place in which local supremacy is usually tested—the church +where they both worshiped. Although only one of five trustees, Burridge +had been the will of the body. Always, whatever he thought, the others +had almost immediately agreed to it. But now that Palmer had become a +power, many of those ardent in the church and beholden to him for profit +became his humble followers. They elected him trustee and did what he +wished, or what they thought he wished. To Burridge this made them +sycophants, slaves.</p> + +<p>Now followed the kind of trivialities by which most human feuds are +furthered. The first test of strength came when a vagrant evangelist +from Alabama arrived and desired to use <a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" />the church for a series of +evening lectures. The question had to be decided at once. Palmer was +absent at the time.</p> + +<p>"Here is a request for the use of the church," said one of the trustees, +explaining its nature.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Burridge, "you'd better let him have it."</p> + +<p>"Do you think we ought to do anything about it," the trustee replied, +"until Mr. Palmer returns?"</p> + +<p>Although Burridge saw no reason for waiting, the other trustees did, and +upon that the board rested. Burridge was furious. By one fell stroke he +was put in second place, a man who had to await the return of +Palmer—and that in his own church, so to speak.</p> + +<p>"Why," he told some one, "the rest of us are nothing. This man is a +king."</p> + +<p>From that time on differences of opinion within the church and elsewhere +were common. Although no personal animosity was ever admitted, local +issues almost invariably found these two men opposed to each other. +There was the question of whether the village should be made into a +borough—a most trivial matter; another, that of creating public works +for the manufacture of gas and distribution of water; a third, that of +naming a State representative. Naturally, while these things might be to +the advantage of Palmer or not, they were of no great import to +Burridge, but yet he managed to see in them an attempt or attempts to +saddle a large public debt upon widows and orphans, those who could not +afford or did not need these things, and he proceeded to so express +himself at various public meetings. Slowly the breach widened. Burridge +became little more than a malcontent in many people's eyes. He was a +"knocker," a man who wanted to hold the community back.</p> + +<p>Although defeated in many instances he won in others, and this did not +help matters any. At this point, among other things the decay of the +fishing industry helped to fix definitely the position of the two men as +that of victor and vanquished. Whaling died out, then mackerel and cod +were caught only at farther and farther distances from the town, and +finally three-and even two-masted schooners ceased entirely to buy their +outfits here, and Burridge was left dependent upon local patronage or +smaller harbor trade for his support. Coexten<a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" />sively, he had the +dissatisfaction of seeing Palmer's industries grow until eventually +three hundred and fifty men were upon his payrolls and even his foremen +and superintendents were considered influential townspeople. Palmer's +son and two daughters grew up and married, branched out and became +owners of industries which had formerly belonged to men who had traded +with Burridge. He saw his grocery trade dwindle and sink, while with age +his religiosity grew, and he began to be little more than a petty +disputant, one constantly arguing as to whether the interpretation of +the Bible as handed down from the pulpit of what he now considered <i>his</i> +recalcitrant church was sound or not. When those who years before had +followed him obediently now pricked him with theological pins and +ventured to disagree with him, he was quick and sometimes foolish in his +replies. Thus, once a former friend and fellow-church-member who had +gone over to the opposition came into his store one morning and said:</p> + +<p>"Elihu, for a man that's as strong on religion as you are, I see you do +one thing that can't quite be justified by the Book."</p> + +<p>"What's that?" inquired Burridge, looking up.</p> + +<p>"I see you sell tobacco."</p> + +<p>"I see you chew it," returned the host grimly.</p> + +<p>"I know I do," returned his visitor, "but I'll tell you what I'll do, +Elihu. If you'll quit selling, I'll quit chewing it," and he looked as +if he had set a fancy trap for his straw-balancing brother, as he held +him to be.</p> + +<p>"It's a bargain," said Burridge on the instant. "It's a bargain!"</p> + +<p>And from that day on tobacco was not offered for sale in that store, +although there was a large local demand for it.</p> + +<p>Again, in the pride of his original leadership, he had accepted the +conduct of the local cemetery, a thing which was more a burden than a +source of profit. With his customary liberality in all things reflecting +credit upon himself he had spent his own money in improving it, much +more than ever the wardens of the church would have thought of returning +to him. In one instance, when a new receiving vault was desired, he had +added seven hundred dollars of his own to three hundred gathered by the +church trustees for the purpose, and <a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" />the vault was immediately +constructed. Frequently also, in his pride of place, he had been given +to asserting he was tired of conducting the cemetery and wished he could +resign.</p> + +<p>In these later evil days, therefore, the trustees, following the star of +the newer power, saw fit to intimate that perhaps some one else would be +glad to look after it if he was tired of it. Instantly the fact that he +could no longer boast as formerly came home to him. He was not essential +any longer in anything. The church did not want him to have a hand in +any of its affairs! The thought of this so weighed on him that +eventually he resigned from this particular task, but thereafter also +every man who had concurred in accepting his resignation was his bitter +enemy. He spoke acidly of the seven hundred he had spent, and jibed at +the decisions of the trustees in other matters. Soon he became a +disturbing element in the church, taking a solemn vow never to enter the +graveyard again, and not long after resigned all his other official +duties—passing the plate, et cetera—although he still attended +services there.</p> + +<p>Decoration Day rolled around, the G.A.R. Post of which he was an ardent +member prepared for the annual memorial services over the graves of its +dead comrades. Early on the morning of the thirtieth of May they +gathered before their lodge hall, Burridge among them, and after +arranging the details marched conspicuously to the cemetery where the +placing of the wreaths and the firing of the salute were to take place. +No one thought of Burridge until the gate was reached, when, gun over +shoulder and uniform in perfect trim, he fell conspicuously out of line +and marched away home alone. It was the cemetery he had vowed not to +enter, his old pet and protégé.</p> + +<p>Men now looked askance at him. He was becoming queer, no doubt of it, +not really sensible—or was he? Up in Northfield, a nearby town, dwelt a +colonel of the Civil War who had led the very regiment of which Burridge +was a member but who during the war had come into serious difficulty +through a tangle of orders, and had been dishonorably discharged. +Although wounded in one of the engagements in which the regiment had +distinguished itself, he had been allowed to languish almost forgotten +for years and finally, <a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" />failing to get a pension, had died in poverty. +On his deathbed he had sent for Burridge, and reminding him of the +battle in which he had led him asked that after he was gone, for the +sake of his family, he would take up the matter of a pension and if +possible have his record purged of the stigma and the pension awarded.</p> + +<p>Burridge agreed most enthusiastically. Going to the local congressman, +he at once began a campaign, but because of the feeling against him two +years passed without anything being done. Later he took up the matter in +his own G.A.R. Post, but there also failing to find the measure of his +own enthusiasm, he went finally direct to one of the senators of the +State and laying the matter before him had the records examined by +Congress and the dead colonel honorably discharged.</p> + +<p>One day thereafter in the local G.A.R. he commented unfavorably upon the +indifference which he deemed had been shown.</p> + +<p>"There wouldn't have been half so much delay if the man hadn't been a +deserter," said one of his enemies—one who was a foreman in Palmer's +shipyard.</p> + +<p>Instantly Burridge was upon his feet, his eyes aflame with feeling. +Always an orator, with a strangely declamatory style he launched into a +detailed account of the late colonel's life and services, his wounds, +his long sufferings and final death in poverty, winding up with a vivid +word picture of a battle (Antietam), in which the colonel had gallantly +captured a rebel flag and come by his injury.</p> + +<p>When he was through there was great excitement in the Post and much +feeling in his favor, but he rather weakened the effect by at once +demanding that the traitorous words be withdrawn, and failing to compel +this, preferred charges against the man who had uttered them and +attempted to have him court-martialed.</p> + +<p>So great was the bitterness engendered by this that the Post was now +practically divided, and being unable to compel what he considered +justice he finally resigned. Subsequently he took issue with his former +fellow-soldiers in various ways, commenting satirically on their church +regularity and professed Christianity, as opposed to their indifference +to the late <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" />colonel, and denouncing in various public conversations the +double-mindedness and sharp dealings of the "little gods," as he termed +those who ran the G.A.R. Post, the church, and the shipyards.</p> + +<p>Not long after his religious affairs reached a climax when the minister, +once a good friend of his, following the lead of the dominant star, Mr. +Palmer, publicly denounced him from the pulpit one Sunday as an enemy of +the church and of true Christianity!</p> + +<p>"There is a man in this congregation," he exclaimed in a burst of +impassioned oratory, "who poses as a Christian and a Baptist, who is in +his heart's depth the church's worst enemy. Hell and all its devils +could have no worse feelings of evil against the faith than he, and he +doesn't sell tobacco, either!"</p> + +<p>The last reference at once fixed the identity of the person, and caused +Burridge to get up and leave the church. He pondered over this for a +time, severed his connections with the body, and having visited Graylock +one Sunday drove there every Sabbath thereafter, each time going to a +different church. After enduring this for six months he generated a +longing for a more convenient meeting-place, and finally allied himself +with the Baptist Church of Eustis. Here his anchor might possibly have +remained fast had it not been that subtle broodings over his wrongs, a +calm faith in the righteousness of his own attitude, and disgust with +those whom he saw calmly expatiating upon the doctrines and dogmas of +religion in his own town finally caused him to suspect a universal +misreading of the Bible. This doubt, together with his own desire for +justification according to the Word, finally put the idea in his mind to +make a study of the Bible himself. He would read it, he said. He would +study Hebrew and Greek, and refer all questionable readings of words and +passages back to the original tongue in which it had been written.</p> + +<p>With this end in view he began a study of these languages, the +importance of the subject so growing upon him that he neglected his +business. Day after day he labored, putting a Bible and a Concordance +upon a pile of soap-boxes near the door of his store and poring over +them between customers, the store meantime taking care of itself. He +finally mastered<a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" /> Greek and Hebrew after a fashion, and finding the word +"repent" frequently used, and that God had made man in the image of +Himself, with a full knowledge of right and wrong, he gravitated toward +the belief that therefore his traducers in Noank knew what they were +doing, and that before he needed to forgive them—though his love might +cover all—they must repent.</p> + +<p>He read the Bible from beginning to end with this one feeling +subconsciously dominant, and all its loving commands about loving one +another, forgiving your brother seventy times seven, loving those that +hate you, returning good for evil, selling all that you have and giving +it to the poor, were made to wait upon the duty of others to repent. He +began to give this interpretation at Eustis, where he was allowed to +have a Sunday-school, until the minister came and told him once, "to his +face," as the local report ran: "We don't want you here."</p> + +<p>Meekly he went forth and, joining a church across the Sound on Long +Island, sailed over every Sunday and there advanced the same views until +he was personally snubbed by the minister and attacked by the local +papers. Leaving there he went to Amherst, always announcing now that he +held distinctive views about some things in the Bible and asking the +privilege of explaining. In this congregation he was still comfortably +at rest when I knew him.</p> + +<p>"All sensitiveness," the sail-maker had concluded after his long +account. "There ain't anything the matter with Elihu, except that he's +piqued and grieved. He wanted to be the big man, and he wasn't."</p> + +<p>I was thinking of this and of his tender relationship with children as I +had noticed it, and of his service to the late colonel when one day +being in the store, I said:</p> + +<p>"Do you stand on the Bible completely, Mr. Burridge?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," he replied, "I do."</p> + +<p>"Believe every word of it to be true?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>"If your brother has offended you, how many times must you forgive him?"</p> + +<p>"Seventy times seven."</p> + +<p>"Do you forgive your brothers?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" />Yes, sir—if they repent."</p> + +<p>"If they repent?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir, if they repent. That's the interpretation. In Matthew you +will find, 'If he repent, forgive him.'"</p> + +<p>"But if you don't forgive them, even before they repent," I said, +"aren't you harboring enmity?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir, I'm not treasuring up enmity. I only refuse to forgive them."</p> + +<p>I looked at the man, a little astonished, but he looked so sincere and +earnest that I could not help smiling.</p> + +<p>"How do you reconcile that with the command, 'Love one another?' You +surely can't love and refuse to forgive them at the same time?"</p> + +<p>"I don't refuse to forgive them," he repeated. "If John there," +indicating an old man in a sun-tanned coat who happened to be passing +through the store at the time, "should do me a wrong—I don't care what +it was, how great or how vile—if he should come to me and say, +'Burridge, I'm sorry,'" he executed a flashing oratorical move in +emphasis, and throwing back his head, exclaimed: "It's gone! It's gone! +There ain't any more of it! All gone!"</p> + +<p>I stood there quite dumbfounded by his virility, as the air vibrated +with his force and feeling. So manifestly was his reading of the Bible +colored by the grief of his own heart that it was almost painful to +tangle him with it. Goodness and mercy colored all his ideas, except in +relation to his one-time followers, those who had formerly been his +friends and now left him to himself.</p> + +<p>"Do you still visit the poor and the afflicted, as you once did?" I +asked him once.</p> + +<p>"I'd rather not say anything about that," he replied sternly.</p> + +<p>"But do you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>"Still make your annual New Year round?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>"Well, you'll get your reward for that, whatever you believe."</p> + +<p>"I've had my reward," he said slowly.</p> + +<p>"Had it?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" />Yes, sir, had it. Every hand that's been lifted to receive the little +I had to offer has been my reward."</p> + +<p>He smiled, and then said in seemingly the most untimely way:</p> + +<p>"I remember once going to a lonely woman here on New Year's Day and +taking her a little something—basket of grapes or fruit of some kind it +was. I was stopping a minute—never stay long, you know; just run in and +say 'Happy New Year!' leave what I have and get out—and so said, 'Good +morning, Aunt Mary!'</p> + +<p>"'Good morning, Elihu,' says she.</p> + +<p>"'Can't stay long, Aunt Mary,' I said. 'Just want to leave you these. +Happy New Year!'</p> + +<p>"Well, sir, you know I was just turning around and starting when she +caught hold of my sleeve and says:</p> + +<p>"'Elihu Burridge,' she says, 'give me that hand!' and do you know, +before I knew what she was about she took it up to her lips and kissed +it! Yes, she did—kissed my hand!</p> + +<p>"Now," he said, drawing himself up, with eyes bright with intense +feeling, "you know whether I've had my reward or not, don't you?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Vanity_Vanityquot_Saith_the_Preacher" id="Vanity_Vanityquot_Saith_the_Preacher" /><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" /><i>"Vanity, Vanity," Saith the Preacher</i></h2> + + +<p>Sometimes a single life will clearly and effectively illustrate a +period. Hence, to me, the importance of this one.</p> + +<p>I first met X—— at a time when American financial methods and American +finances were at their apex of daring and splendor, and when the world +was in a more or less tolerant mood toward their grandiose manners and +achievements. It was the golden day of Mr. Morgan, Senior, Mr. Belmont, +Mr. Harriman, Mr. Sage, Mr. Gates, Mr. Brady, and many, many others who +were still extant and ruling distinctly and drastically, as was proved +by the panic of 1907. In opposition to them and yet imitating their +methods, now an old story to those who have read "Frenzied Finance," +"Lawless Wealth," and other such exposures of the methods which produced +our enormous American fortunes, were such younger men as Charles W. +Morse (the victim of the 1907 panic), F. Augustus Heinze (another if +less conspicuous victim of the same "panic"), E.R. Thomas, an ambitious +young millionaire, himself born to money, David A. Sullivan, and X——. +I refuse to mention his name because he is still alive although no +longer conspicuous, and anxious perhaps to avoid the uncomfortable glare +of publicity when all the honors and comforts which made it endurable in +the first place are absent.</p> + +<p>The person who made X—— essentially interesting to me long before I +met him was one Lucien de Shay, a ne'er-do-well pianist and voice +culturist, who was also a connoisseur in the matters of rugs, hangings, +paintings and furniture, things in which X—— was just then most +intensely interested, erecting, as he was, a great house on Long Island +and but newly blossoming into the world of art or fashion or culture or +show—those various things which the American multi-millionaire always +wants to blossom or bloom into and which he does not always succeed in +doing. De Shay was one of those odd natures so common to the +metropolis—half artist and half man of fashion who attach themselves so +readily to men of strength and wealth, often as advisors and <a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" />counselors +in all matters of taste, social form and social progress. How this +particular person was rewarded I never quite knew, whether in cash or +something else. He was also a semi-confidant of mine, furnishing me +"tips" and material of one sort and another in connection with the +various publications I was then managing. As it turned out later, X—— +was not exactly a multi-millionaire as yet, merely a fledgling, although +the possibilities were there and his aims and ambitions were fast +nearing a practical triumph the end of which of course was to be, as in +the case of nearly all American multi-millionaires of the newer and +quicker order, bohemian or exotic and fleshly rather than cultural or +æsthetic pleasure, although the latter were never really exactly +ignored.</p> + +<p>But even so. He was a typical multi-millionaire in the showy and even +gaudy sense of the time. For if the staid and conservative and socially +well-placed rich have the great houses and the ease and the luxury of +paraphernalia, the bohemian rich of the X—— type have the flare, +recklessness and imagination which lend to their spendings and +flutterings a sparkle and a shine which the others can never hope to +match.</p> + +<p>Said this friend of mine to me one day: "Listen, I want you to meet this +man X——. You will like him. He is fine. You haven't any idea what a +fascinating person he really is. He looks like a Russian Grand Duke. He +has the manners and the tastes of a Medici or a Borgia. He is building a +great house down on Long Island that once it is done will have cost him +five or six hundred thousand. It's worth seeing already. His studio here +in the C—— studio building is a dream. It's thick with the loveliest +kinds of things. I've helped buy them myself. And he isn't dull. He +wrote a book at twenty, 'Icarus,' which is not bad either and which he +says is something like himself. He has read your book ("Sister Carrie") +and he sympathizes with that man Hurstwood. Says parts of it remind him +of his own struggles. That's why he wants to meet you. He once worked on +the newspapers too. God knows how he is making his money, but I know how +he is spending it. He's decided to live, and he's doing it splendidly. +It's wonderful."</p> + +<p>I took notice, although I had never even heard of the man. There were so +very, very many rich men in America. Later I <a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" />heard much more concerning +him from this same de Shay. Once he had been so far down in the scale +that he had to shine shoes for a living. Once he had walked the streets +of New York in the snow, his shoes cracked and broken, no overcoat, not +even a warm suit. He had come here a penniless emigrant from Russia. Now +he controlled four banks, one trust company, an insurance company, a +fire insurance company, a great real estate venture somewhere, and what +not. Naturally all of this interested me greatly. When are we +indifferent to a rise from nothing to something?</p> + +<p>At de Shay's invitation I journeyed up to X——'s studio one Wednesday +afternoon at four, my friend having telephoned me that if I could I must +come at once, that there was an especially interesting crowd already +assembled in the rooms, that I would meet a long list of celebrities. +Two or three opera singers of repute were already there, among them an +Italian singer and sorceress of great beauty, a veritable queen of the +genus adventuress, who was setting the town by the ears not only by her +loveliness but her voice. Her beauty was so remarkable that the Sunday +papers were giving full pages to her face and torso alone. There were to +be several light opera and stage beauties there also, a basso profundo +to sing, writers, artists, poets.</p> + +<p>I went. The place and the crowd literally enthralled me. It was so gay, +colorful, thrillful. The host and the guests were really interesting—to +me. Not that it was so marvelous as a studio or that it was so +gorgeously decorated and furnished—it was impressive enough in that +way—but that it was so gracefully and interestingly representative of a +kind of comfort disguised as elegance. The man had everything, or nearly +so—friends, advisors, servants, followers. A somewhat savage and +sybaritic nature, as I saw at once, was here disporting itself in +velvets and silks. The iron hand of power, if it was power, was being +most gracefully and agreeably disguised as the more or less flaccid one +of pleasure and friendship.</p> + +<p>My host was not visible at first, but I met a score of people whom I +knew by reputation, and listened to clatter and chatter of the most +approved metropolitan bohemian character. The Italian sorceress was +there, her gorgeous chain earrings tinkling mellifluously as she nodded +and gesticulated. De Shay <a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" />at once whispered in my ear that she was +X——'s very latest flame and an expensive one too. "You should see what +he buys her!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "God!" Actresses and society +women floated here and there in dreams of afternoon dresses. The +automobiles outside were making a perfect uproar. The poets and writers +fascinated me with their praises of the host's munificence and taste. At +a glance it was plain to me that he had managed to gather about him the +very element it would be most interesting to gather, supposing one +desired to be idle, carefree and socially and intellectually gay. If +America ever presented a smarter drawing-room I never saw it.</p> + +<p>My friend de Shay, being the fidus Achates of the host, had the power to +reveal the inner mysteries of this place to me, and on one or two +occasions when there were not so many present and while the others were +chattering in the various rooms—music-, dining-, ball-, library and so +forth—I was being shown the kitchen, pantry, wine cellar, and also +various secret doors and passages whereby mine host by pressing a flower +on a wall or a spring behind a picture could cause a door to fly open or +close which gave entrance to or from a room or passage in no way +connected with the others save by another secret door and leading always +to a private exit. I wondered at once at the character of the person who +could need, desire or value this. A secret bedroom, for instance; a +lounging-room! In one of these was a rather severe if handsome desk and +a steel safe and two chairs—no more; a very bare room. I wondered at +this silent and rather commercial sanctum in the center of this +frou-frou of gayety, no trace of the sound of which seemed to penetrate +here. What I also gained was a sense of an exotic, sybaritic and purely +pagan mind, one which knew little of the conventions of the world and +cared less.</p> + +<p>On my first visit, as I was leaving, I was introduced to the host just +within his picture gallery, hung with many fine examples of the Dutch +and Spanish schools. I found him to be as described: picturesque and +handsome, even though somewhat plump, phlegmatic and lethargic—yet +active enough. He was above the average in height, well built, florid, +with a huge, round handsome head, curly black hair, keen black <a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" />eyes, +heavy overhanging eyebrows, full red lips, a marked chin ornamented by a +goatee. In any costume ball he would have made an excellent Bacchus or +Pan. He appeared to have the free, easy and gracious manner of those who +have known much of life and have achieved, in part at least, their +desires. He smiled, wished to know if I had met all the guests, hoped +that the sideboard had not escaped me, that I had enjoyed the singing. +Would I come some evening when there was no crowd—or, better yet, dine +with him and my friend de Shay, whose personality appeared to be about +as agreeable to him as his own. He was sorry he could not give me more +attention now.</p> + +<p>Interestingly enough, and from the first, I was impressed with this man; +not because of his wealth (I knew richer men) but because of a something +about him which suggested dreams, romance, a kind of sense or love of +splendor and grandeur which one does not often encounter among the +really wealthy. Those cracked shoes were in my mind, I suppose. He +seemed to live among great things, but in no niggardly, parsimonious or +care-taking way. Here was ease, largess, a kind of lavishness which was +not ostentation but which seemed rather to say, "What are the minute +expenses of living and pleasuring as contrasted with the profits of +skill in the world outside?" He suggested the huge and Aladdin-like +adventures with which so many of the great financiers of the day, the +true tigers of Wall Street, were connected.</p> + +<p>It was not long thereafter that I was once more invited, this time to a +much more lavish affair and something much more sybaritic in its tone, +although I was really not conscious of what it was to be like when I +went there. It began at twelve midnight, and to this day it glitters in +my mind as among the few really barbaric and exotic things that I have +ever witnessed. Not that the trappings or hangings or setting were so +outré or amazing as that the atmosphere of the thing itself was relaxed, +bubbling, pagan. There were so many daring and seeking people there. The +thing sang and was talked of for months after—in whispers! The gayety! +The abandon! The sheer intoxication, mental and physical! I never saw +more daring costumes, so many really beautiful women (glitteringly so) +in one place at one time, wonderful specimens of exotic <a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" />and in the main +fleshy or sensuous femininity. There was, among other things, as I +recall, a large nickeled ice-tray on wheels packed with unopened bottles +of champagne, and you had but to lift a hand or wink an eye to have +another opened for you alone, ever over and over. And the tray was +always full. One wall of the dining-room farther on was laden with +delicate novelties in the way of food. A string quartette played for the +dancers in the music-room. There were a dozen corners in different rooms +screened with banks of flowers and concealing divans. The dancing and +singing were superb, individual, often abandoned in character, as was +the conversation. As the morning wore on (for it did not begin until +after midnight) the moods of all were either so mellowed or inflamed as +to make intentions, hopes, dreams, the most secret and sybaritic, the +order of expression. One was permitted to see human nature stripped of +much of its repression and daylight reserve or cant. At about four in +the morning came the engaged dancers, quite the pièce de +résistance—with wreaths about heads, waists and arms for clothing and +well, really nothing more beyond their beautiful figures—scattering +rose leaves or favors. These dancers the company itself finally joined, +single file at first, pellmell afterwards—artists, writers, +poets—dancing from room to room in crude Bacchic imitation of their +leaders—the women too—until all were singing, parading, swaying and +dancing in and out of the dozen rooms. And finally, liquor and food +affecting them, I suppose, many fell flat, unable to do anything +thereafter but lie upon divans or in corners until friends assisted them +elsewhere—to taxis finally. But mine host, as I recall him, was always +present, serene, sober, smiling, unaffected, bland and gracious and +untiring in his attention. He was there to keep order where otherwise +there would have been none.</p> + +<p>I mention this merely to indicate the character of a long series of such +events which covered the years 19— to 19—. During that time, for the +reason that I have first given (his curious pleasure in my company), I +was part and parcel of a dozen such more or less vivid affairs and +pleasurings, which stamped on my mind not only X—— but life itself, +the possibilities and resources of luxury where taste and appetite are +involved, the dreams of grandeur and happiness which float <a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" />in some +men's minds and which work out to a wild fruition—dreams so outré and +so splendid that only the tyrant of an obedient empire, with all the +resources of an enslaved and obedient people, could indulge with safety. +Thus once, I remember, that a dozen of us—writers and artists—being +assembled in his studio in New York one Friday afternoon for the mere +purpose of idling and drinking, he seeming to have nothing better to do +for the time being, he suddenly suggested, and as though it had but now +occurred to him, that we all adjourn to his country house on Long +Island, which was not yet quite finished (or, rather, furnished), but +which was in a sufficient state of completion to permit of appropriate +entertainment providing the necessaries were carried out there with us.</p> + +<p>As I came to think of this afterward, I decided that after all it was +not perhaps so unpremeditated as it seemed and that unconsciously we +served a very useful purpose. There was work to do, suggestions to be +obtained, an overseer, decorator and landscape gardener with whom +consultations were absolutely necessary; and nothing that X—— ever did +was without its element of calculation. Why not make a gala affair of a +rather dreary November task—</p> + +<p>Hence—</p> + +<p>At any rate the majority of us forthwith agreed, since plainly it meant +an outing of the most lavish and pleasing nature. At once four +automobiles were pressed into service, three from his own garage and one +specially engaged elsewhere. There was some telephoning <i>in re</i> culinary +supplies to a chef in charge of the famous restaurant below who was <i>en +rapport</i> with our host, and soon some baskets of food were produced and +subsequently the four cars made their appearance at the entryway below. +At dusk of a gray, cold, smoky day we were all bundled into +these—poets, playwrights, novelists, editors (he professed a great +contempt for actors), and forthwith we were off, to do forty-five miles +between five-thirty and seven p.m.</p> + +<p>I often think of that ride, the atmosphere of it, and what it told of +our host's point of view. He was always so grave, serene, watchful yet +pleasant and decidedly agreeable, gay even, without seeming so to be. +There was something so <a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" />amazingly warm and exotic about him and his, and +yet at the same time something so cold and calculated, as if after all +he were saying to himself, "I am the master of all this, am +stage-managing it for my own pleasure." I felt that he looked upon us +all not so much as intimates or friends as rather fine birds or +specimens of one kind and another, well qualified to help him with art +and social ideas if nothing more—hence his interest in us. Also, in his +estimation no doubt, we reflected some slight color or light into his +life, which he craved. We had done things too. Nevertheless, in his own +estimation, he was the master, the Can Grande. He could at will, "take +us up or leave us out," or so he thought. We were mere toys, fine +feathers, cap-and-bell artists. It was nice to, "take us around," have +us with him. Smothered in a great richly braided fur coat and fur cap, +he looked as much the Grand Duke as one might wish.</p> + +<p>But I liked him, truly. And what a delicious evening and holiday, all +told, he made of it for us. By leaving a trail of frightened horses, men +and women, and tearing through the gloom as though streets were his +private race-track—I myself as much frightened as any at the roaring +speed of the cars and the possibilities of the road—we arrived at +seven, and by eight were seated to a course dinner of the most +gratifying character. There was no heat in the house as yet, but from +somewhere great logs had been obtained and now blazed in the large +fireplaces. There was no electricity as yet—a private plant was being +installed—but candles and lamps blazed in lovely groups, casting a soft +glow over the great rooms. One room lacked a door, but an immense rug +took its place. There were rugs, hangings and paintings in profusion, +many of them as yet unhung. Some of the most interesting importations of +furniture and statuary were still in the cases in which they had +arrived, with marks of ships and the names of foreign cities upon the +cases. Scattered about the great living-room, dining-room, music-room +and library were enough rugs, divans and chairs as well as musical +instruments—a piano among others—to give the place an air of +completeness and luxury. The walls and ceilings had already been +decorated—in a most florid manner, I must say. Outside were great +balconies and verandahs commanding, as the following <a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" />morning proved, a +very splendid view of a very bleak sea. The sand dunes! The distant +floor of the sea! The ships! Upstairs were nine suites of one-and +two-rooms and bath. The basement was an intricate world of kitchen, +pantry, engine-room, furnace, wine cellars and what not. Outside was a +tawny waste of sand held together in places in the form of hummocks and +even concealing hills by sand-binding grasses.</p> + +<p>That night, because it was windy and dull and bleak, we stayed inside, I +for one going outside only long enough to discover that there were great +wide verandahs of concrete about the house, fit for great entertainments +in themselves, and near at hand, hummocks of sand. Inside all was warm +and flaring enough. The wine cellar seemed to contain all that one might +reasonably desire. Our host once out here was most gay in his mood. He +was most pleasantly interested in the progress of his new home, although +not intensely so. He seemed to have lived a great deal and to be making +the best of everything as though it were something to go through with. +With much talking on the part of us all, the evening passed swiftly +enough. Some of the men could play and sing. One poet recited enchanting +bits of verse. For our inspection certain pieces of furniture and +statuary were unpacked and displayed—a bronze faun some three feet in +height, for one thing. All the time I was sensible of being in contact +with some one who was really in touch with life in a very large way, +financially and otherwise. His mind seemed to be busy with all sorts of +things. There were two Syrians in Paris, he said, who owned a large +collection of rugs suitable for an exhibition. He had an agent who was +trying to secure the best of them for his new home. De Shay had recently +introduced him to a certain Italian count who had a great house in Italy +but could not afford its upkeep. He was going to take over a portion of +its furnishings, after due verification, of course. Did I know the +paintings of Monticelli and Mancini? He had just secured excellent +examples of both. Some time when his new home was further along I must +come out. Then the pictures would be hung, the statuary and furniture in +place. He would get up a week-end party for a select group.</p> + +<p>The talk drifted to music and the stage. At once I saw that because of +his taste, wealth and skill, women formed a large <a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" />and yet rather +toy-like portion of his life, holding about as much relation to his +inner life as do the concubines of an Asiatic sultan. Madame of the +earrings, as I learned from De Shay, was a source of great expense to +him, but at that she was elusive, not easily to be come at. The stage +and Broadway were full of many beauties in various walks of life, many +of whom he knew or to whom he could obtain access. Did I know thus, and +so—such-and-such, and one?</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you," he said after a time and when the wine glasses had been +refilled a number of times, "we must give a party out here some time, +something extraordinary, a real one. De Shay and Bielow" (naming another +artist) "and myself must think it out. I know three different +dancers"—and he began to enumerate their qualities. I saw plainly that +even though women played a minor part in his life, they were the fringe +and embroidery to his success and power. At one a.m. we went to our +rooms, having touched upon most of the themes dear to metropolitan +lovers of life and art.</p> + +<p>The next morning was wonderful—glittering, if windy. The sea sparkled +beyond the waste of sand. I noted anew the richness of the furnishings, +the greatness of the house. Set down in so much sand and facing the +great sea, it was wonderful. There was no order for breakfast; we came +down as we chose. A samovar and a coffee urn were alight on the table. +Rolls, chops, anything, were brought on order. Possibly because I was +one of the first about, my host singled me out—he was up and dressed +when I came down—and we strolled over the estate to see what we should +see.</p> + +<p>Curiously, although I had seen many country homes of pretension and even +luxury, I never saw one that appealed to me more on the ground of +promise and, after a fashion, of partial fulfillment. It was so +unpretentiously pretentious, so really grand in a limited and yet poetic +way. Exteriorly its placement, on a rise of ground commanding that vast +sweep of sea and sand, its verandahs, so very wide—great smooth floors +of red concrete—bordered with stone boxes for flowers and handsomely +designed stone benches, its long walks and drives but newly begun, its +stretch of beach, say a half mile away and possibly a mile and a half +long, to be left, as he remarked, "au naturel," driftwood, stones and +all, struck me <a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" />most favorably. Only one long pier for visiting yachts +was to be built, and a certain stretch of beach, not over three hundred +feet, cleared for bath houses and a smooth beach. On one spot of land, a +high hummock reaching out into the sea, had already been erected a small +vantage tower, open at the bottom for shade and rest, benches turning in +a circle upon a concrete floor, above it, a top looking more like a +small bleak lighthouse than anything else. In this upper portion was a +room reached by small spiral concrete stairs!</p> + +<p>I could not help noting the reserve and <i>savoir faire</i> with which my +host took all this. He was so healthy, assured, interested and, I am +glad to say, not exactly self-satisfied; at least he did not impress me +in that way—a most irritating condition. Plainly he was building a very +splendid thing. His life was nearing its apex. He must not only have had +millions, but great taste to have undertaken, let alone accomplished, as +much as was already visible here. Pointing to a bleak waste of sand +between the house and the sea—and it looked like a huge red and yellow +bird perched upon a waste of sand—he observed, "When you come again in +the spring, that will contain a garden of 40,000 roses. The wind is +nearly always off the sea here. I want the perfume to blow over the +verandahs. I can rotate the roses so that a big percentage of them will +always be in bloom."</p> + +<p>We visited the stables, the garage, an artesian well newly driven, a +drive that was to skirt the sea, a sunken garden some distance from the +house and away from the sea.</p> + +<p>Next spring I came once more—several times, in fact. The rose garden +was then in bloom, the drives finished, the pictures hung. Although this +was not a world in which society as yet deigned to move, it was entirely +conceivable that at a later period it might, and betimes it was crowded +with people smart enough and more agreeable in the main than the hardy, +strident members of the so-called really inner circles. There were +artists, writers, playwrights, singers, actresses, and some nondescript +figures of the ultra-social world—young men principally who seemed to +come here in connection with beautiful young women, models and other +girls whose beauty was their only recommendation to consideration.</p> + +<p>The scene was not without brilliance. A butler and nu<a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" />merous flunkeys +fluttered to and fro. Guests were received at the door by a footman. A +housekeeper and various severe-looking maids governed in the matter of +cleaning. One could play golf, tennis, bridge, motor, fish, swim, drink +in a free and even disconcerting manner or read quietly in one angle or +another of the grounds. There were affairs, much flirting and giggling, +suspicious wanderings to and fro at night—no questions asked as to who +came or whether one was married, so long as a reasonable amount of +decorum was maintained. It was the same on other occasions, only the +house and grounds were full to overflowing with guests and passing +friends, whose machines barked in the drives. I saw as many gay and +fascinating costumes and heard as much clever and at times informative +talk here as anywhere I have been.</p> + +<p>During this fall and winter I was engaged in work which kept me very +much to myself. During the period I read much of X——, banks he was +combining, new ventures he was undertaking. Yet all at once one winter's +day, and out of a clear sky, the papers were full of an enormous +financial crash of which he was the center. According to the newspapers, +the first and foremost of a chain of banks of which he was the head, to +say nothing of a bonding and realty company and some street-railway +project on Long Island, were all involved in the crash. Curiously, +although no derogatory mention had previously been made of him, the +articles and editorials were now most vituperative. Their venom was +especially noticeable. He was a get-rich-quick villain of the vilest +stripe; he had been juggling a bank, a trust company, an insurance +company and a land and street-railway speculative scheme as one would +glass balls. The money wherewith he gambled was not his. He had robbed +the poor, deceived them. Yet among all this and in the huge articles +which appeared the very first day, I noted one paragraph which stuck in +my mind, for I was naturally interested in all this and in him. It read:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Wall Street heard yesterday that Superintendent H——got his + first information concerning the state in which X——'s affairs + were from quarters where resentment may have been cherished + because of his activity in the Long Island Traction field. This is + one of the Street's 'clover patches' and <a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" />the success which the + newcomer seemed to be meeting did not provoke great pleasure."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Another item read:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"A hitch in a deal that was to have transferred the South Shore to + the New York and Queens County System, owned by the Long Island + Railroad, at a profit of almost $2,000,000 to X——, was the cause + of all the trouble. Very active displeasure on the part of certain + powers in Wall Street blocked, it is said, the closing of the deal + for the railroad. They did not want him in this field, and were + powerful enough to prevent it. At the same time pressure from + other directions was brought to bear on him. The clearing-house + refused to clear for his banks. X—— was in need of cash, but + still insisting on a high rate of remuneration for the road which + he had developed to an important point. Their sinister influences + entered and blocked the transfer until it was no longer possible + for him to hold out."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Along with these two items was a vast mass of data, really pages, +showing how, when, where he had done thus and so, "juggled accounts" +between one bank and another, all of which he controlled however, and +most of which he owned, drew out large sums and put in their place +mortgages on, or securities in, new companies which he was +organizing—tricks which were the ordinary routine of Wall Street and +hence rather ridiculous as the sub-stone of so vast a hue and cry.</p> + +<p>I was puzzled and, more than that, moved by the drama of the man's +sudden end, for I understood a little of finance and its ways, also of +what place and power had plainly come to mean to him. It must be +dreadful. Yet how could it be, I asked myself, if he really owned +fifty-one per cent or more in so many companies that he could be such a +dark villain? After all, ownership is ownership, and control, control. +On the face of the reports themselves his schemes did not look so black. +I read everything in connection with him with care.</p> + +<p>As the days passed various other things happened. For one thing, he +tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window of his studio in New +York; for another, he tried to take poison. Now of a sudden a bachelor +sister, of whom I had <a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" />never heard in all the time I had known him, put +in an appearance as his nearest of kin—a woman whose name was not his +own but a variation of it, an "-ovitch" having suddenly been tacked onto +it. She took him to a sanitarium, from which he was eventually turned +out as a criminal, then to a hospital, until finally he surrendered +himself to the police. The names of great lawyers and other bankers +began to enter the case. Alienists of repute, those fine chameleons of +the legal world, were employed who swore first that he was insane, then +that he was not. His sister, who was a physician and scientist of +repute, asked the transfer of all his property to her on the ground that +he was incompetent and that she was his next of kin. To this she swore, +giving as her reasons for believing him insane that he had "illusions of +grandeur" and that he believed himself "persecuted by eminent +financiers," things which smacked more of sanity than anything else to +me. At the same time he and she, as time rather indicated, had arranged +this in part in the hope of saving something out of the great wreck. +There were other curious features: Certain eminent men in politics and +finance who from revelations made by the books of the various banks were +in close financial if not personal relations with X—— denied this +completely. Curiously, the great cry on the part of these was that he +was insane, must be, and that he was all alone in his schemes. His life +on Broadway, on Long Island, in his studio in New York, were ransacked +for details. Enough could not be made of his gay, shameful, spendthrift +life. No one else, of course, had ever been either gay or shameful +before—especially not the eminent and hounding financiers.</p> + +<p>Then from somewhere appeared a new element. In a staggeringly low +tenement region in Brooklyn was discovered somehow or other a very old +man and woman, most unsatisfactory as relatives of such imposing people, +who insisted that they were his parents, that years before because he +and his sister were exceedingly restless and ambitious, they had left +them and had only returned occasionally to borrow money, finally ceasing +to come at all. In proof of this, letters, witnesses, old photos, were +produced. It really did appear as if he and his sister, although they +had long vigorously denied it, really were the son and daughter of the +two who had been <a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" />petty bakers in Brooklyn, laying up a little +competence of their own. I never knew who "dug" them up, but the reason +why was plain enough. The sister was laying claim to the property as the +next of kin. If this could be offset, even though X—— were insane, the +property would at once be thrown into the hands of the various creditors +and sold under a forced sale, of course—in other words, for a song—for +their benefit. Naturally it was of interest to those who wished to have +his affairs wound up to have the old people produced. But the great +financier had been spreading the report all along that he was from +Russia, that his parents, or pseudo-parents, were still there, but that +really he was the illegitimate son of the Czar of Russia, boarded out +originally with a poor family. Now, however, the old people were brought +from Brooklyn and compelled to confront him. It was never really proved +that he and his sister had neglected them utterly or had done anything +to seriously injure them, but rather that as they had grown in place and +station they had become more or less estranged and so ignored them, +having changed their names and soared in a world little dreamed of by +their parents. Also a perjury charge was made against the sister which +effectually prevented her from controlling his estate, a lease long +enough to give the financiers time for their work. Naturally there was a +great hue and cry over her, the scandal, the shame, that they should +thus publicly refuse to recognize their parents as they did or had when +confronted by them. Horrible! There were most heavily illustrated and +tearful Sunday articles, all blazoned forth with pictures of his house +and studio, his banks, cars, yacht, groups of guests, while the motives +of those who produced the parents were overlooked. The pictures of the +parents confronting X—— and his sister portrayed very old and feeble +people, and were rather moving. They insisted that they were his parents +and wept brokenly in their hands. But why? And he denying it! His +sister, who resented all this bitterly and who stood by him valiantly, +repudiated, for his sake of course, his and her so-called parents and +friends.</p> + +<p>I never saw such a running to cover of "friends" in all my life. Of all +those I had seen about his place and in his company, scores on scores of +people reasonably well known in the arts, the stage, the worlds of +finance and music, all eating his <a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" />dinners, riding in his cars, drinking +his wines, there was scarcely any one now who knew him anything more +than "casually" or "slightly"—oh, so slightly! When rumors as to the +midnight suppers, the Bacchic dancing, the automobile parties to his +great country place and the spirited frolics which occurred there began +to get abroad, there was no one whom I knew who had ever been there or +knew anything about him or them. For instance, of all the people who had +been close or closest and might therefore have been expected to be +friendly and deeply concerned was de Shay, his fidus Achates and +literally his pensioner—yet de Shay was almost the loudest in his +denunciation or at least deprecation of X——, his habits and methods! +Although it was he who had told me of Mme.—— and her relation to +X——, who urged me to come here, there and the other place, especially +where X—— was the host, always assuring me that it would be so +wonderful and that X—— was really such a great man, so generous, so +worth-while, he was now really the loudest or at least the most +stand-offish in his comments, pretending never to have been very close +to X——, and lifting his eyebrows in astonishment as though he had not +even guessed what he had actually engineered. His "Did-you-hears," +"Did-you-knows" and "Wouldn't-have-dreamed" would have done credit to a +tea-party. He was so shocked, especially at X——'s robbing poor +children and orphans, although in so far as my reading of the papers +went I could find nothing that went to prove that he had any intention +of robbing anybody—that is, directly. In the usual Wall Street high +finance style he was robbing Peter to pay Paul, that is, he was using +the monies of one corporation which he controlled to bolster up any of +the others which he controlled, and was "washing one hand with the +other," a proceeding so common in finance that to really radically and +truly oppose it, or do away with it, would mean to bring down the whole +fabric of finance in one grand crash.</p> + +<p>Be that as it may. In swift succession there now followed the so-called +"legal" seizure and confiscation of all his properties. In the first +place, by alienists representing the District Attorney and the State +banking department, he was declared sane and placed on trial for +embezzlement. Secondly, his sister's plea that his property be put into +her hands as trustee or <a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" />administrator was thrown out of court and she +herself arrested and confined for perjury on the ground that she had +perjured herself in swearing that she was his next of kin when in +reality his real parents, or so they swore, were alive and in America. +Next, his banks, trust companies and various concerns, including his +great country estate, were swiftly thrown into the hands of receivers +(what an appropriate name!) and wound up "for the benefit of creditors." +All the while X——was in prison, protesting that he was really not +guilty, that he was solvent, or had been until he was attacked by the +State bank examiner or the department back of him, and that he was the +victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy which was using the State banking +department and other means to drive him out of financial life, and that +solely because of his desire to grow and because by chance he had been +impinging upon one of the choicest and most closely guarded fields of +the ultra-rich of Wall Street—the street railway area in New York and +Brooklyn.</p> + +<p>One day, so he publicly swore to the grand jury, by which he was being +examined, as he was sitting in his great offices, in one of the great +sky-scrapers of New York, which occupied an entire floor and commanded +vast panoramas in every direction (another evidence of the man's insane +"delusion of grandeur," I presume), he was called to answer the +telephone. One Mr. Y——, so his assistant said, one of the eminent +financiers of Wall Street and America, was on the wire. Without any +preliminary and merely asking was this Mr. X——on the wire, the latter +proceeded, "This is Mr. Y——. Listen closely to what I am going to say. +I want you to get out of the street railway business in New York or +something is going to happen to you. I am giving you a reasonable +warning. Take it." Then the phone clicked most savagely and ominously +and superiorly at the other end.</p> + +<p>"I knew at the time," went on X——, addressing the grand jury, "that I +was really listening to the man who was most powerful in such affairs in +New York and elsewhere and that he meant what he said. At the same time +I was in no position to get out without closing up the one deal which +stood to net me two million dollars clear if I closed it. At the same +time I wanted to enter this field and didn't see why I <a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" />shouldn't. If I +didn't it spelled not ruin by any means but a considerable loss, a very +great loss, to me, in more ways than one. Oddly enough, just at this +time I was being pressed by those with whom I was associated to wind up +this particular venture and turn my attention to other things. I have +often wondered, in the light of their subsequent actions, why they +should have become so pressing just at this time. At the same time, +perhaps I was a little vain and self-sufficient. I had once got the +better of some agents of another great financier in a Western Power +deal, and I felt that I could put this thing through too. Hence I +refused to heed the warning. However, I found that all those who were +previously interested to buy or at least develop the property were now +suddenly grown cold, and a little later when, having entered on several +other matters, I needed considerable cash, the State banking department +descended on me and, crying fraud and insolvency, closed all my banks.</p> + +<p>"You know how it is when they do this to you. Cry 'Fire!' and you can +nearly wreck a perfectly good theater building. Depositors withdraw, +securities tumble, investigation and legal expenses begin, your +financial associates get frightened or ashamed and desert you. Nothing +is so squeamish or so retiring and nervous as money. Time will show that +I was not insolvent at the time. The books will show a few technically +illegal things, but so would the books or the affairs of any great bank, +especially at this time, if quickly examined. I was doing no more than +all were doing, but they wanted to get me out—and they did."</p> + +<p>Regardless of proceedings of various kinds—legal, technical and the +like—X—— was finally sent to the penitentiary, and spent some time +there. At the same time his confession finally wrecked about nine other +eminent men, financiers all. A dispassionate examination of all the +evidence eight years later caused me to conclude without hesitation that +the man had been a victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy, the object of +which was to oust him from opportunities and to forestall him in methods +which would certainly have led to enormous wealth. He was apparently in +a position and with the brains to do many of the things which the ablest +and coldest financiers of his day had been and were doing, and they did +not <a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" />want to be bothered with, would not brook, in short, his +approaching rivalry. Like the various usurpers of regal powers in +ancient days, they thought it best to kill a possible claimant to the +throne in his infancy.</p> + +<p>But that youth of his! The long and devious path by which he had come! +Among the papers relating to the case and to a time when he could not +have been more than eighteen, and when he was beginning his career as a +book agent, was a letter written to his mother (August, 1892), which +read:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"MY DEAR PARENTS: Please answer me at once if I can have anything + of you, or something of you or nothing. Remember this is the first + and the last time in my life that I beg of you anything. You have + given to the other child not $15 but hundreds, and now when I, the + very youngest, ask of you, my parents, $15, are you going to be so + hard-hearted as to refuse me? Without these $15 it is left to me + to be without income for two or three weeks.</p> + +<p> "For God's sake, remember what I ask of you, and send me at once + so that I should cease thinking of it. Leon, as I have told you, + will give me $10, $15 he has already paid for the contract, and + your $15 will make $25. Out of this I need $10 for a ticket and + $15 for two or three weeks' board and lodging.</p> + +<p> "Please answer at once. Don't wait for a minute, and send me the + money or write me one word 'not.' Remember this only that if you + refuse me I will have nothing in common with you.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Your son,<br /></span> +<span>"——"<br /></span> +</div></div></blockquote> + +<p>There was another bit of testimony on the part of one Henry Dom, a +baker, who for some strange reason came forward to identify him as some +one he had known years before in Williamsburgh, which read:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I easily recognize them" (X—— and his sister) "from their + pictures in the newspapers. I worked for X——'s father, who was a + baker in Williamsburgh, and frequently addressed letters that were + written by X—— Senior and his wife to Dr. Louise X—— who was + then studying medicine in Philadelphia. X—— was then a boy going + to school, but working in <a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" />his father's bakery mornings and + evenings. He did not want to do that, moaned a great deal, and his + parents humored him in his attitude. He was very vain, liked to + appear intellectual. They kept saying to their friends that he + should have a fine future. Five years later, after I had left them + once, I met the mother and she told me that X—— was studying + banking and getting along fine."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Some seven years after the failure and trial by which he had so +summarily been disposed of and after he had been released from prison, I +was standing at a certain unimportant street corner in New York waiting +for a car when I saw him. He was passing in the opposite direction, not +very briskly, and, as I saw, plainly meditatively. He was not so well +dressed. The clothes he wore while good were somehow different, lacking +in that exquisite something which had characterized him years before. +His hat—well, it was a hat, not a Romanoff shako nor a handsome panama +such as he had affected in the old days. He looked tired, a little worn +and dusty, I thought.</p> + +<p>My first impulse was of course to hail him, my second not, since he had +not seen me. It might have been embarrassing, and at any rate he might +not have even remembered me. But as he walked I thought of the great +house by the sea, the studio, the cars, the 40,000 roses, the crowds at +his summer place, the receptions in town and out, Madame of the earrings +(afterward married to a French nobleman), and then of the letter to his +mother as a boy, the broken shoes in the winter time, his denial of his +parents, the telephone message from the financial tiger. "Vanity, +vanity," saith the preacher. The shores of our social seas are strewn +with pathetic wrecks, the whitening bone of half-sand-buried ships.</p> + +<p>At the next corner he paused, a little uncertain apparently as to which +way to go, then turned to the left and was lost. I have never seen nor +heard of him since.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="The_Mighty_Rourke" id="The_Mighty_Rourke" /><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" /><i>The Mighty Rourke</i></h2> + + +<p>When I first met him he was laying the foundation for a small dynamo in +the engine-room of the repair shop at Spike, and he was most unusually +loud in his protestations and demands. He had with him a dozen Italians, +all short, swarthy fellows of from twenty-five to fifty years of age, +who were busy bringing material from a car that had been pushed in on +the side-track next to the building. This was loaded with crushed stone, +cement, old boards, wheelbarrows, tools, and the like, all of which were +to be used in the labor that he was about to undertake. He himself was +standing in the doorway of the shop where the work was to be conducted, +coat off, sleeves rolled up, and shouting with true Irish insistence, +"Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Get the shovels, now! Get the picks! Bring +some sand here! Bring some stone! Where's the cement, now? Where's the +cement? Jasus Christ! I must have some cement! What arre ye all doin'? +What do ye think ye're up here fer? Hurry, now, hurry! Bring the +cement!" and then, having concluded this amazing fanfare, calmly turning +to gaze about as if he were the only one in the world who had the right +to stand still.</p> + +<p>More or less oppressed with life myself at the time, I was against all +bosses, and particularly against so seemingly a vicious one as this. +"What a slave driver!" I thought. "What a brute!" And yet I remember +thinking that he was not exactly unpleasant to look at, either—quite +the contrary. He was medium in height, thick of body and neck, with +short gray hair and mustache, and bright, clear, twinkling Irish gray +eyes, and he carried himself with an air of unquestionable authority. It +was much as if he had said, "I am the boss here"; and, indeed, he was. +Is it this that sends the Irish to rule as captains of hundreds the +world over?</p> + +<p>The job he was bossing was not very intricate or important, but it was +interesting. It consisted of digging a trench ten by twelve feet, and +shaping it up with boards into a "form," after which concrete was to be +mixed and poured in, and some iron rods set to fasten the engine to—an +engine bed, no less. It was not so urgent but that it might have been +conducted <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" />with far less excitement, but what are you to do when you are +naturally excitable, love to make a great noise, and feel that things +are going forward whether they are or not? Plainly this particular +individual loved noise and a great stir. So eager was he to have done +with it, no matter what it was or where, that he was constantly trotting +to and fro, shouting, "Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Hurry, now, bring the +shovels! Bring the picks!" and occasionally bursting forth with a +perfect avalanche of orders. "Up with it! Down with it! Front with it! +Back with it! In with it! Out with it!" all coupled with his favorite +expletive, "Jasus Christ," which was as innocent of evil, I subsequently +came to know, as a prayer. In short, he was simply wild Irish, and that +was all there was to him—a delightful specimen, like Namgay Doola.</p> + +<p>But, as I say, at the time he seemed positively appalling to me, a +virulent specimen, and I thought, "The Irish brute! To think of human +beings having to work for a brute like that! To think of his driving men +like that!" However, I soon began to discover that he was not so bad as +he seemed, and then I began to like him.</p> + +<p>The thing that brought about this swift change of feeling in me was the +attitude of his men toward him. Although he was so insistent with his +commands, they did not seem to mind nor to strain themselves working. +They were not killing themselves, by any means. He would stand over +them, crying, "Up with it! Up with it! Up with it! Up with it!" or "Down +with it! Down with it! Down with it!" until you would have imagined +their nerves would be worn to a frazzle. As it was, however, they did +not seem to care any more than you would for the ticking of a clock; +rather, they appeared to take it as a matter of course, something that +had to be, and that one was prepared for. Their steps were in the main +as leisurely as those of idlers on Fifth Avenue or Broadway. They +carried boards or stone as one would objects of great value. One could +not help smiling at the incongruity of it; it was farcical. Finally +gathering the full import of it all, I ventured to laugh, and he turned +on me with a sharp and yet not unkindly retort.</p> + +<p>"Ha! ha! ha!" he mocked. "If ye had to work as hard as these min, ye +wouldn't laugh."</p> + +<p>I wanted to say, "Hard work, indeed!" but instead I <a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" />replied, "Is that +so? Well, I don't see that they're killing themselves, or you either. +You're not as fierce as you sound."</p> + +<p>Then I explained that I was not laughing at them but at him, and he took +it all in good part. Since I was only a nominal laborer here, not a real +one—permitted to work for my health, for twelve cents an hour—we fell +to conversing upon railroad matters, and in this way our period of +friendship began.</p> + +<p>As I learned that morning, Rourke was the foreman-mason for minor tasks +for all that part of the railroad that lay between New York and fifty +miles out, on three divisions. He had a dozen or so men under him and +was in possession of one car, which was shunted back and forth between +the places in which he happened to be working. He was a builder of +concrete platforms, culverts, coal-bins, sidewalks, bridge and building +piers, and, in fact, anything that could be made out of crushed stone +and cement, or bricks and stone, and he was sent here and there, as +necessity required. As he explained to me at the time, he sometimes rose +as early as four a.m. in order to get to his place of labor by seven. +The great railroad company for which he toiled was no gentle master, and +did not look upon his ease, or that of his men, as important. At the +same time, as he himself confessed, he did not mind hard work—liked it, +in short. He had been working now for the company for all of twenty-two +years, "rain or shine." Darkness or storm made no difference to him. +"Shewer, I have to be there," he observed once with his quizzical, +elusive Irish grin. "They're not payin' me wages fer lyin' in bed. If ye +was to get up that way yerself every day fer a year, me b'y," he added, +eyeing my spare and none too well articulated frame, "it'd make a man av +ye."</p> + +<p>"Yes?" I said tolerantly. "And how much do you get, Rourke?"</p> + +<p>"Two an' a half a day."</p> + +<p>"You don't say!" I replied, pretending admiration.</p> + +<p>The munificence of the corporation that paid him two and a half dollars +a day for ten hours' work, as well as for superintending and +constructing things of such importance, struck me forcibly. Perhaps, as +we say in America, he "had a right" to be happy, only I could not see +it. At the same time, I could <a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" />not help thinking that he was better +situated than myself at the time. I had been ill, and was now earning +only twelve cents an hour for ten hours' work, and the sight of the +foreman for whom I was working was a torture to my soul. He was such a +loud-mouthed, blustering, red-headed ignoramus, and I wanted to get out +from under him. At the same time, I was not without sufficient influence +so to do, providing I could find a foreman who could make use of me. The +great thing was to do this, and the more I eyed this particular specimen +of foreman the better I liked him. He was genial, really kindly, +amazingly simple and sincere. I decided to appeal to him to take me on +his staff.</p> + +<p>"How would you like to take me, Mr. Rourke, and let me work for you?" I +asked hopefully, after explaining to him why I was here.</p> + +<p>"Shewer," he replied. "Ye'd do fine."</p> + +<p>"Would I have to work with the Italians?" I asked, wondering how I would +make out with a pick and shovel. My frame was so spare at the time that +the question must have amused him, considering the type of physique +required for day labor.</p> + +<p>"There'll be plenty av work fer ye to do without ever yer layin' a hand +to a pick er shovel," he replied comfortingly. "Shewer, that's no work +fer white min. Let the nagurs do it. Look at their backs an' arrms, an' +then look at yers."</p> + +<p>I was ready to blush for shame. These poor Italians whom I was so ready +to contemn were immeasurably my physical superiors.</p> + +<p>"But why do you call them negroes, Rourke?" I asked after a time. +"They're not black."</p> + +<p>"Well, bedad, they're not white, that's waan thing shewer," he added. +"Aany man can tell that be lookin' at thim."</p> + +<p>I had to smile. It was so dogmatic and unreasoning.</p> + +<p>"Very well, then, they're black," I said, and we left the matter.</p> + +<p>Not long after I put in a plea to be transferred to him, at his request, +and it was granted. The day that I joined his flock, or gang, as he +called it, he was at Williamsbridge, a little station north on the +Harlem, building a concrete coal-bin. It was a pretty place, surrounded +by trees and a grass-<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" />plot, a vast improvement upon a dark indoor shop, +and seemed to me a veritable haven of rest. Ah, the smiling morning sun, +the green leaves, the gentle fresh winds of heaven!</p> + +<p>Rourke was down in an earthen excavation under the depot platform when I +arrived, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, and +when I looked in on him hopefully he looked up and smiled.</p> + +<p>"So here ye arre at last," he said with a grin.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I laughed.</p> + +<p>"Well, ye're jist in time; I waant ye to go down to the ahffice."</p> + +<p>"Certainly," I replied, but before I could say more he climbed out of +his hole, his white jeans odorous of the new-turned earth, and fished in +the pocket of an old gray coat which lay beside him for a soiled and +crumpled letter, which he finally unfolded with his thick, clumsy +fingers. Then he held it up and looked at it defiantly.</p> + +<p>"I waant ye to go to Woodlawn," he continued, "an' look after some bolts +that arre up there—there's a keg av thim—an' sign the bill fer thim, +an' ship thim down to me. An' thin I waant ye to go down to the ahffice +an' take thim this o.k." Here again he fished around and produced +another crumpled slip, this time of a yellow color (how well I came to +know them!), which I soon learned was an o.k. blank, a form which had to +be filled in and signed for everything received, if no more than a stick +of wood or a nail or a bolt. The company demanded these of all foremen, +in order to keep its records straight. Its accounting department was +useless without them. At the same time, Rourke kept talking of the +"nonsinse av it," and the "onraisonableness" of demanding o.k.s for +everything. "Ye'd think some one was goin' to sthale thim from thim," he +declared irritably and defiantly.</p> + +<p>I saw at once that some infraction of the railroad rules had occurred +and that he had been "called down," or "jacked up" about it, as the +railroad men expressed it. He was in a high state of dudgeon, and as +defiant and pugnacious as his royal Irish temper would allow. At the +same time he was pleased to think that I or some one had arrived who +would relieve him of this damnable "nonsinse," or so he hoped. He was +not so inexperienced as not to imagine that I could help him with <a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" />all +this. In fact, as time proved, this was my sole reason for being here.</p> + +<p>He flung a parting shot at his superior as I departed.</p> + +<p>"Tell him that I'll sign fer thim when I get thim, an' not before," he +declared.</p> + +<p>I went on my way, knowing full well that no such message was for +delivery, and that he did not intend that it should be. It was just the +Irish of it. I went off to Woodlawn and secured the bolts, after which I +went down to the "ahffice" and reported. There I found the chief clerk, +a mere slip of a dancing master in a high collar and attractive office +suit, who was also in a high state of dudgeon because Rourke, as he now +explained, had failed to render an o.k. for this and other things, and +did not seem to understand that he, the chief clerk, must have them to +make up his reports. Sometimes o.k.s did not come in for a month or +more, the goods lying around somewhere until Rourke could use them. He +wanted to know what explanation Rourke had to offer, and when I +suggested that the latter thought, apparently, that he could leave all +consignments of goods in one station or another until such time as he +needed them before he o.k.ed for them, he fairly foamed.</p> + +<p>"Say," he almost shouted, at the same time shoving his hands +distractedly through his hair, "what does he think I am? How does he +think I'm going to make up my books? He'll leave them there until he +needs them, will he? Well, he's a damned fool, and you go back and tell +him I said so. He's been long enough on the road to know better. You go +back and tell him I said that I want a signed form for everything +consigned to him the moment he learns that it's waiting for him, and I +want it right away, without fail, whether it's a single nut or a car of +sand. I want it. He's got to come to time about this now, or something's +going to drop. I'm not going to stand it any longer. How does he think +I'm going to make up my books? I wish he'd let you attend to these +matters while you're up there. It will save an awful lot of trouble in +this office and it may save him his job. There's one thing sure: he's +got to come to time from now on, or either he quits or I do."</p> + +<p>These same o.k.s plus about twenty-five long-drawn-out <a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" />reports or +calculations, retroactive and prospective, covering every possible +detail of his work from the acknowledgment of all material received up +to and including the expenditure of even so much as one mill's worth of +paper, were the bane of my good foreman's life. As I learned afterward, +he had nearly his whole family, at least a boy and two girls, assisting +him nights on this part of the work. In addition, while they were +absolutely of no import in so far as the actual work of construction was +concerned—and that was really all that interested Rourke—they were an +essential part of the system which made it possible for him to do the +work at all—a point which he did not seem to be able to get clear. At +the same time, there was an unsatisfactory side to this office +technicalia, and it was this: If a man could only sit down and reel off +a graphic account of all that he was doing, accompanied by facts and +figures, he was in excellent standing with his superiors, no matter what +his mechanical defects might be; whereas, if his reports were not clear, +or were insufficient, the efficiency of his work might well be +overlooked. In a vague way, Rourke sensed this and resented it. He knew +that his work was as good as could be done, and yet here were these +constant reports and o.k.s to irritate and delay him. Apparently they +aided actual construction no whit—but, of course, they did. Although he +was a better foreman than most, still, because of his lack of skill in +this matter of accounting, he was looked upon as more or less a failure, +especially by the chief clerk. Naturally, I explained that I would do my +best, and came away.</p> + +<p>When I returned, however, I decided to be politic. I could not very well +work with a pick and shovel, and this was about all that was left +outside of that. I therefore explained as best I could the sad plight of +the chief clerk, who stood in danger of losing his job unless these +things came in promptly.</p> + +<p>"You see how it is, Rourke, don't you?" I pleaded.</p> + +<p>He seemed to see, but he was still angry.</p> + +<p>"An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!" he echoed contentiously, but in a +somewhat more conciliatory spirit. "He wants an o.k. blank, does he? +Well, I expect ye might as well give thim to him, thin. I think the man +lives on thim things, the way he's aalways caallin' fer thim. Ye'd think +I <a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" />was a bookkeeper an' foreman at the same time; it's somethin' aaful. +An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!" and he sputtered to silence.</p> + +<p>A little while later he humorously explained that he had "clane forgot +thim, anyhow."</p> + +<p>The ensuing month was a busy one for us. We had a platform to lay at +Morrisania, a chimney to build at Tarrytown, a sidewalk to lay at White +Plains, and a large cistern to dig and wall in at Tuckahoe. Besides +these, there were platforms to build at Van Cortlandt and Mount Kisco, +water-towers at Highbridge and Ardsley, a sidewalk and drain at Caryl, a +culvert and an ash-pit at Bronx Park, and some forty concrete piers for +a building at Melrose—all of which required any amount of running and +figuring, to say nothing of the actual work of superintending and +constructing, which Rourke alone could look after. It seemed ridiculous +to me at the time that any one doing all this hard practical labor +should not be provided with a clerk or an accountant to take at least +some of this endless figuring off his hands. At the same time, if he had +been the least bit clever, he could have provided himself with one +permanently by turning one of his so-called laborers into a +clerk—carrying a clerk as a laborer—but plainly it had never occurred +to him. He depended on his family. The preliminary labor alone of +ordering and seeing that the material was duly shipped and unloaded was +one man's work; and yet Rourke was expected to do it all.</p> + +<p>In spite of all this, however, he displayed himself a masterful worker. +I have never seen a better. He preferred to superintend, of course, to +get down into the pit or up on the wall, and measure and direct. At the +same time, when necessary to expedite a difficult task, he would toil +for hours at a stretch with his trowel and his line and his level and +his plumb-bob, getting the work into shape, and you would never hear a +personal complaint from him concerning the weariness of labor. On the +contrary, he would whistle and sing until something went wrong, when +suddenly you would hear the most terrific uproar of words: "Come out av +that! Come out, now! Jasus Christ, man, have ye no sinse at aall? Put it +down! Put it down! What arre ye doin'? What did I tell ye? Have ye no +raison in ye, no sinse, ye h'athen nagur?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" />Great heavens!" I used to think, "what has happened now?"</p> + +<p>You would have imagined the most terrible calamity; and yet, all told, +it might be nothing of any great import—a little error of some kind, +more threatening than real, and soon adjusted. It might last for a few +moments, during which time the Italians would be seen hurrying excitedly +to and fro; and then there would come a lull, and Rourke would be heard +to raise his voice in tuneful melody, singing or humming or whistling +some old-fashioned Irish "Come-all-ye."</p> + +<p>But the thing in Rourke that would have pleased any one was his ready +grasp for the actualities of life—his full-fledged knowledge that work +is the thing, not argument, or reports, or plans, but the direct +accomplishment of something tangible, the thing itself. Thus, while I +was working with him, at least nothing that might concern the clerical +end of the labor could disturb him, but, if the sky fell, and eight +thousand chief clerks threatened to march upon him in a body demanding +reports and o.k.s, he would imperturbably make you wait until the work +was done. Once, when I interrupted him to question him concerning some +of these same wretched, pestering aftermaths of labor, concerning which +he alone could answer, he shut me off with: "The reports! The reports! +What good arre the reports! Ye make me sick. What have the reports to do +with the work? If it wasn't fer the work, where would the reports be?" +And I heartily echoed "Where?"</p> + +<p>Another thing was his charming attitude toward his men, kindly and sweet +for all his storming, that innate sense of something intimate and +fatherly. He had a way of saying kindly things in a joking manner which +touched them. When he arrived in the morning, for instance, it was +always in the cheeriest way that he began. "Come, now, b'ys, ye have a +good day's work before ye today. Get the shovels, Jimmie. Bring the +line, Matt!" and then he would go below himself, if below it was, and +there would be joy and peace until some obstacle to progress interfered. +I might say in passing that Matt and Jimmie, his faithful henchmen, were +each between forty and fifty, if they were a day—poor, gnarled, dusty, +storm-tossed Italians who had come from heaven knows where, had endured +God knows what, and were now rounding <a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" />out a work-a-day existence under +the sheltering wing of this same Rourke, a great and protecting power to +them.</p> + +<p>This same Matt was a funny little Italian, soft of voice and gentle of +manner, whom Rourke liked very much, but with whom he loved to quarrel. +He would go down in any hole where the latter was working, and almost +invariably shortly after you would hear the most amazing uproar issuing +therefrom, shouts of: "Put it here, I say! Put it here! Down with it! +Here! Here! Jasus Christ, have ye no sinse at aall?"—coupled, of +course, with occasional guttural growls from Matt, who was by no means +in awe of his master and who feared no personal blows. The latter had +been with Rourke for so long that he was not in the least overawed by +his yelling and could afford to take such liberties. Occasionally, not +always, Rourke would come climbing out of the hole, his face and neck +fairly scarlet with heat, raging and shouting, "I'll get shut av ye! +I'll have no more thruck with ye, ye blitherin', crazy loon! What good +arre ye? What work can ye do? Naathin'! Naathin'! I'll be shut av ye +now, an' thin maybe I'll have a little p'ace." Then he would dance +around and threaten and growl until something else would take his +attention, when he would quiet down and be as peaceful as ever. Somehow, +I always felt that in spite of all the difficulties involved, he enjoyed +these rows—must fight, in short, to be happy. Sometimes he would go +home without saying a word to Matt, a conclusion which at first I +imagined portended the end of the latter, but soon I came to know +better. For the next morning Matt would reappear as unconcernedly as +though nothing had happened, and Rourke would appear not to notice or +remember.</p> + +<p>Once, anent all this, I said to him, "Rourke, how many times have you +threatened to discharge Matt in the last three years?"</p> + +<p>"Shewer," he replied, with his ingratiating grin, "a man don't mane aall +he says aall the time."</p> + +<p>The most humorous of all his collection of workingmen, however, was the +aforementioned Jimmie, a dark, mild-eyed, soft-spoken Calabrian, who had +the shrewdness of a Machiavelli and the pertness of a crow. He lived in +the same neighborhood as Rourke, far out in one of those small towns on +<a name="Page_251" id="Page_251" />the Harlem, sheltering so many Italians, for, like a hen with a brood +of chicks, Rourke kept all his Italians gathered close about him. +Jimmie, curiously, was the one who was always selected to run his family +errands for him, a kind of valet to Rourke, as it were—selected for +some merit I could never discover, certainly not one of speed. He was +nevertheless constantly running here and there like an errand boy, his +worn, dusty, baggy clothes making him look like a dilapidated bandit +fresh from a sewer. On the job, however, no matter what it might be, +Jimmie could never be induced to do real, hard work. He was always above +it, or busy with something else. But as he was an expert cement-mixer +and knew just how to load and unload the tool-car, two sinecures of +sorts, nothing was ever said to him. If any one dared to reprove him, +myself for instance (a mere interloper to Jimmie), he would reply: "Yeh! +Yeh! I know-a my biz. I been now with Misha Rook fifteen year. I know-a +my biz." If you made any complaint to Rourke, he would merely grin and +say, "Ha! Jimmie's the sharp one," or perhaps, "I'll get ye yet, ye +fox," but more than that nothing was ever done.</p> + +<p>One day, however, Jimmie failed to comply with an extraordinary order of +Rourke's, which, while it resulted in no real damage, produced a most +laughable and yet characteristic scene. A strict rule of the company was +that no opening of any kind into which a person might possibly step or +fall should be left uncovered at any station during the approach, stay, +or departure of any train scheduled to stop at that station. Rourke was +well aware of this rule. He had a copy of it on file in his collection +of circulars. In addition, he had especially delegated Jimmie to attend +to this matter, a task which just suited the Italian as it gave him +ample time to idle about and pretend to be watching. This it was which +made the crime all the greater.</p> + +<p>On this particular occasion Jimmie had failed to attend to this matter. +We had been working on the platform at Williamsbridge, digging a pit for +a coal-bin, when a train bearing the general foreman came along. The +latter got off at the station especially to examine the work that had +been done so far. When the train arrived there was the hole wide open +with Rourke below shouting and gesticulating about something, <a name="Page_252" id="Page_252" />and +totally unconscious, of course, that his order had been neglected. The +general foreman, who was, by the way, I believe, an admirer of Rourke, +came forward, looked down, and said quietly: "This won't do, Rourke. +You'll have to keep the work covered when a train is approaching. I've +told you that before, you know."</p> + +<p>Rourke looked up, so astonished and ashamed that he should have been put +in such a position before his superior that he hardly knew what to say. +I doubt if any one ever had a greater capacity for respecting his +superiors, anyhow. Instead of trying to answer, he merely choked and +began to shout for Jimmie, who came running, crying, as he always did, +"What's da mat'? What's da mat'?"</p> + +<p>"What's da mat'? What's da mat'?" mocked Rourke, fairly seething with a +marvelous Irish fury. "What the devil do ye suppose is the mat'? What do +ye mane be waalkin' away an' l'avin' the hole uncovered? Didn't I tell +ye niver to l'ave a hole when a train's comin'? Didn't I tell ye to +attind to that an' naathin' else? An' now what have ye been doin'? Be +all the powers, what d'ye mane be l'avin' it? What else arre ye good +fer? What d'ye mane be lettin' a thing like that happen, an' Mr. Wilson +comin' along here, an' the hole open?"</p> + +<p>He was as red as a beet, purple almost, perspiring, apoplectic. During +all this tirade Mr. Wilson, a sad, dark, anæmic-looking person, troubled +with acute indigestion, I fancy, stood by with an amused, kindly, and +yet mock severe expression on his face. I am sure he did not wish to be +severe.</p> + +<p>Jimmie, dumbfounded, scarcely knew what to say. In the face of Rourke's +rage and the foreman's presence, he did his best to remedy his error by +covering the hole, at the same time stuttering something about going for +a trowel.</p> + +<p>"A trowel!" cried Rourke, glaring at him. "A trowel, ye h'athen ginny! +What'd ye be doin' lookin' fer a trowel, an' a train comin' that close +on ye it could 'a' knocked ye off the thrack? An' the hole open, an' Mr. +Wilson right here! Is that what I told ye? Is that what I pay ye fer? Be +all the saints! A trowel, is it? I'll trowel ye! I'll break yer h'athen +Eyetalian skull, I will. Get thim boards on, an' don't let me ketch ye +l'avin' such a place as that open again. I'll get shut av ye, ye +blitherin' lunatic."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253" />When it was all over and the train bearing the general foreman had +gone, Rourke quieted down, but not without many fulgurous flashes that +kept the poor Italian on tenterhooks.</p> + +<p>About an hour later, however, another train arrived, and, by reason of +some intervening necessity and the idle, wandering mood of the Italian, +the hole was open again. Jimmie was away behind the depot somewhere, +smoking perhaps, and Rourke was, as usual, down in the hole. This time +misfortune trebled itself, however, by bringing, not the general +foreman, but the supervisor himself, a grave, quiet man, of whom Rourke +stood in the greatest awe. He was so solid, so profound, so severe. I +don't believe I ever saw him smile. He walked up to the hole, and +looking reproachfully down, said: "Is this the way you leave your +excavations, Rourke, when a train is coming? Don't you know better than +to do a thing like that?"</p> + +<p>"Jimmie!" shouted Rourke, leaping to the surface of the earth with a +bound, "Jimmie! Now, be Jasus, where is that bla'guard Eyetalian? Didn't +I tell him not to l'ave this place open!" and he began shoving the +planks into place himself.</p> + +<p>Jimmie, suddenly made aware of this new catastrophe, came running as +fast as his short legs would carry him, scared almost out of his wits. +He was as pale as a very dark and dirty Italian could be, and so wrought +up that his facial expression changed involuntarily from moment to +moment. Rourke was in a fairly murderous mood, only he was so excited +and ashamed that he could not speak. Here was the supervisor, and here +was himself, and conditions—necessity for order, etc.—would not permit +him to kill the Italian in the former's presence. He could only choke +and wait. To think that he should be made a mark of like this, and that +in the face of his great supervisor! His face and neck were a beet-red, +and his eyes flashed with anger. He merely glared at his recalcitrant +henchman, as much as to say, "Wait!" When this train had departed and +the dignified supervisor had been carried safely out of hearing he +turned on Jimmie with all the fury of a masterful and excitable temper.</p> + +<p>"So ye'll naht cover the hole, after me tellin' ye naht fifteen minutes +ago, will ye?" he shouted. "Ye'll naht cover the hole! An' what'll ye be +tellin' me ye was doin' now?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_254" id="Page_254" />I carry da waut (water) for da concrete," pleaded Jimmie weakly.</p> + +<p>"Waut fer the concrete," almost moaned Rourke, so great was his fury, +his angry face shoved close to the Italian's own. "Waut fer the +concrete, is it? It's a pity ye didn't fall into yer waut fer the +concrete, ye damned nagur, an' drown! Waut fer the concrete, is it, an' +me here, an' Mr. Mills steppin' off an' lookin' in on me, ye +black-hearted son of a Eyetalian, ye! I'll waut fer the concrete ye! +I'll crack yer blitherin' Eyetalian skull with a pick, I will! I'll +chuck ye in yer waut fer the concrete till ye choke, ye flat-footed, +leather-headed lunatic! I'll tache ye to waalk aaf an' l'ave the hole +open, an' me in it. Now, be Jasus, get yer coat an' get out av this. +Get—I'm tellin' ye! I'll have no more thruck with ye! I'll throuble no +more with ye. Ye're no damned good. Out with ye! An' niver show me yer +face again!" And he made a motion as if he would grab him and rend him +limb from limb.</p> + +<p>Jimmie, well aware of his dire position, was too clever, however, to let +Rourke seize him. During all this conversation he had been slowly +backing away, always safely beyond Rourke's reach, and now ran—an +amazing feat for him. He had evidently been through many such scenes +before. He retreated first behind the depot, and then when Rourke had +gone to work once more down in his hole, came back and took a safe +position on guard over the hitherto sadly neglected opening. When the +next train came he was there to shove the boards over before it neared +the station, and nothing more was said about the matter. Rourke did not +appear to notice him. He did not even seem to see that he was there. The +next morning, however, when the latter came to work as usual, it was, +"Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie!" just as if nothing had happened. I was never +more astonished in my life.</p> + +<p>An incident, even more ridiculous, but illustrative of the atmosphere in +which Rourke dwelt, occurred at Highbridge one frosty October Sunday +morning, where because of seepage from a hill which threatened to +undermine some tracks, Rourke was ordered to hurry and build a drain—a +thing which, because the order came on Saturday afternoon, required +Sunday labor, a most unusual thing in his case. But in spite of the +order, Rourke, who was a good Catholic, felt <a name="Page_255" id="Page_255" />impelled before coming to +go to at least early mass, and in addition—a regular Sunday practice +with him, I presume—to put on a long-skirted Prince Albert coat, which +I had never seen before and which lent to his stocky figure some amusing +lines. It was really too tight, having been worn, I presume, every +Sunday regularly since his wedding day. In addition, he had donned a +brown derby hat which, to me at least, gave him a most unfamiliar look.</p> + +<p>I, being curious more than anything else and wishing to be out of doors +as much as possible, also went up, arriving on the scene about nine. +Rourke did not arrive until ten. In the meantime, I proceeded to build +myself a fire on the dock, for we were alongside the Harlem River and a +brisk wind was blowing. Then Rourke came, fresh from church, smiling and +genial, in the most cheerful Sunday-go-to-meeting frame of mind, but +plainly a little conscious of his grand garb.</p> + +<p>"My," I said, surveying him, "you look fine. I never saw you dressed up +before."</p> + +<p>"L'ave aaf with yer taalk," he replied. "I know well enough how I +look—good enough."</p> + +<p>Then he bestirred himself about the task of examining what had been done +so far. But I could see, in spite of all the busy assurance with which +he worked, that he was still highly conscious of his clothes and a +little disturbed by what I or others might think. His every-day garb +plainly suited his mood much better.</p> + +<p>Everything went smoothly until noon, not a cloud in the sky, when, +looking across the tracks at that hour, I beheld coming toward us with +more or less uncertain step another individual, stocky of figure and +evidently bent on seeing Rourke—an Irishman as large as Rourke, +younger, and, if anything, considerably coarser in fiber. He was very +red-faced, smooth shaven, with a black derby hat pulled down over his +eyes and wearing a somewhat faded tight-fitting brown suit. He was +drunk, or nearly so, that was plain from the first. From the moment +Rourke beheld him he seemed beside himself with anger or irritation. His +expression changed completely and he began to swell, as was customary +with him when he was angry, as though suffering from an internal +eruption of some kind.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_256" id="Page_256" />The bla'guard!" I heard him mutter. "Now, be gob, what'll that felly +be waantin'?" and then as the stranger drew nearer, "Who was it tould +him I was here? Maybe some waan at the ahffice."</p> + +<p>Regardless of his speculations on this score, the stranger picked his +way across the tracks and came directly to him, his face and manner +indicating no particularly friendly frame of mind.</p> + +<p>"Maybe ye'll be lettin' me have that money now," he began instanter, and +when Rourke made no reply, merely staring at him, he added, "I'll be +waantin' to know now, when it is ye're goin' to give me the rest av me +time fer that Scarborough job. I've been waitin' long enough."</p> + +<p>Rourke stirred irritably and aggressively before he spoke. He seemed +greatly put out, shamed, to think that the man should come here so, +especially on this peaceful Sabbath morning.</p> + +<p>"I've tould ye before," he replied defiantly after a time, "that ye've +had aall ye earned, an' more. Ye left me without finishin' yer work, an' +ye'll get no more time from me. If ye waant more, go down to the ahffice +an' see if they'll give it to ye. I have no money fer ye here," and he +resumed a comfortable position before the fire, his hands behind his +back.</p> + +<p>"It's siven dollars ye still owe me," returned the other, ignoring +Rourke's reply, "an' I waant it now."</p> + +<p>"Well, ye'll naht get it," replied my boss. "I've naathin' fer ye, I'm +tellin' ye. I owe ye naathin'."</p> + +<p>"Is that so?" returned the other. "Well, we'll see about that. Ye'll be +after givin' it to me, er I'll get it out of ye somehow. It's naht goin' +to be ch'ated out av me money I am."</p> + +<p>"I'm owin' ye naathin'," insisted Rourke. "Ye may as well go away from +here. Ye'll get naathin'. If ye waant anything more, go an' see the +ahffice," and now he strode away to where the Italians were, ignoring +the stranger completely and muttering something about his being drunk. +The latter followed him, however, over to where he stood, and continued +the dispute. Rourke ignored him as much as possible, only exclaiming +once, "L'ave me be, man. Ye're drunk."</p> + +<p>"I'm naht drunk," returned the other. "Once an' fer all now, I'm askin' +ye, arre ye goin' to give me that money?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_257" id="Page_257" />No," replied Rourke, "I'm naht."</p> + +<p>"Belave me," said the stranger, "I'll get it out av ye somehow," but for +the moment he made no move, merely hanging about in an uncertain way. He +seemed to have no definite plan for collecting the money, or if he had +he had by now abandoned it.</p> + +<p>Without paying any more attention to him, Rourke, still very irritated +and defiant, returned to the fire. He tried to appear calm and +indifferent, but the ex-workman, a non-union mason, I judged, followed +after, standing before him and staring in the defiant, irritating way a +drunken man will, not quite able to make up his mind what else to do. +Presently Rourke, more to relieve the tedium of an embarrassing +situation than anything else (a number of accusatory remarks having been +passed), turned and began poking at the blaze, finally bending over to +lay on a stick of wood. On the instant, and as if seized by sudden +inspiration, whether because the tails of Rourke's long coat hung out in +a most provoking fashion and suggested the thing that followed or not, I +don't know, but now the red-faced intruder jumped forward, and seizing +them in a most nimble and yet vigorous clutch, gave an amazing yank, +which severed them straight up the back, from seat to nape, at the same +time exclaiming:</p> + +<p>"Ye'll naht pay me, will ye? Ye'll naht, will ye?"</p> + +<p>On the instant a tremendous change came over the scene. It was as swift +as stage play. Instantly Rourke was upright and faced about, shouting, +"Now, be gob, ye've torn me coat, have ye! Now I'll tache ye! Now I'll +show ye! Wait! Get ready, now. Now I'll fix ye, ye drunken, thavin' +loafer," and at the same time he began to move upon the enemy in a kind +of rhythmic, cryptic circle (some law governing anger and emotion, I +presume), the while his hands opened and shut and his eyes looked as +though they would be veiled completely by his narrowing lids. At the +same time the stranger, apparently seeing his danger, began backing and +circling in the same way around Rourke, as well as around the fire, +until it looked as though they were performing a war dance. Round and +round they went like two Hopi bucks or Zulu warriors, their faces +displaying the most murderous cunning and intention to slay—only, +instead of feathers and beads, <a name="Page_258" id="Page_258" />they had on their negligible best. All +the while Rourke was calling, "Come on, now! Get ready, now! I'll show +ye, now! I'll fix ye, now! It's me coat ye'll rip, is it? Come on, now! +Get ready! Make yerself ready! I'm goin' to give ye the lickin' av yer +life! Come on, now! Come on, now! Come on, now!"</p> + +<p>It was as though each had been secreted from the other and had to be +sought out in some mysterious manner and in a circle. In spite of the +feeling of distress that an impending struggle of this kind gives one, I +could not help noting the comic condition of Rourke's back—the long +coat beautifully ripped straight up the back, its ends fluttering in the +wind like fans, and exposing his waistcoat and Sunday boiled white +shirt—and laying up a laugh for the future. It was too ridiculous. The +stranger had a most impressive and yet absurd air of drunken sternness +written in his face, a do-or-die look.</p> + +<p>Whether anything serious would really have happened I was never +permitted to learn, for now, in addition to myself and the Italians, all +of them excited and ready to defend their lord and master, some +passengers from the nearby station and the street above as well as a +foreman of a section gang helping at this same task, a great hulking +brute of a man who looked quite able to handle both Rourke and his +opponent at one and the same time, came forward and joined in this +excited circle. Considerable effort was made on the part of the latter +to learn just what the trouble was, after which the big foreman +interposed with:</p> + +<p>"What's the trouble here? Come, now! What's all this row, Rourke? Ye +wouldn't fight here, would ye? Have him arristed, er go to his home—ye +say ye know him—but don't be fightin' here. Supposin' waan av the +bosses should be comin' along now?" and at the same time he interposed +his great bulk between the two.</p> + +<p>Rourke, quieted some by this interruption but still sputtering with rage +and disgrace, shouted, "Lookit me coat! Lookit what he done to me coat! +See what he done to me coat! Man alive, d'ye think I'm goin' to stand +fer the likes av that? It's naht me that can be waalked on by a loafer +like that—an' me payin' him more than ever he was worth, an' him +waalkin' aaf an' l'avin' the job half done. I'll fix him this time. I'll +show him. I'll tache him to be comin' around an' disturbin' a man <a name="Page_259" id="Page_259" />when +he's at his work. I'll fix him now," and once more he began to move. But +the great foreman was not so easily to be disposed of.</p> + +<p>"Well then, let's caall the police," he argued in a highly conciliatory +mood. "Ye can't be fightin' him here. Sure, ye don't waant to do that. +What'll the chafe think? What is it ye'll think av yerself?"</p> + +<p>At the same time he turned to find the intruder and demand to know what +he meant by it, but the latter had already decamped. Seeing the crowd +that had and was gathering, and that he was likely to encounter more +forms of trouble than he had anticipated, he had started down the track +toward Mott Haven.</p> + +<p>"I'll fix ye!" Rourke shouted when he saw him going. "Ye'll pay fer +this. I'll have ye arristed. Wait! Ye'll naht get aaf so aisy this +time."</p> + +<p>But just the same the storm was over for the present, anyhow, the man +gone, and in a little while Rourke left for his home at Mount Vernon to +repair his tattered condition. I never saw a man so crestfallen, nor one +more determined to "have the laa on him" in my life. Afterwards, when I +inquired very cautiously what he had done about it—this was a week or +two later—he replied, "Shewer, what can ye do with a loafer like that? +He has no money, an' lockin' him up won't help his wife an' children +any."</p> + +<p>Thus ended a perfect scene out of Kilkenny.</p> + +<p>It was not so very long after I arrived that Rourke began to tell me of +a building which the company was going to erect in Mott Haven Yard, one +of its great switching centers. It was to be an important affair, +according to him, sixty by two hundred feet in breadth and length, of +brick and stone, and was to be built under a time limit of three months, +an arrangement by which the company hoped to find out how satisfactorily +it could do work for itself rather than by outside contract, which it +was always hoping to avoid. From his manner and conversation, I judged +that Rourke was eager to get this job, for he had been a contractor of +some ability in his day before he ever went to work for the company, and +felt, I am sure, that fate had done him an injustice in not allowing him +to remain one. In addition, he felt a little above the odds <a name="Page_260" id="Page_260" />and ends of +masonry that he was now called on to do, where formerly he had done so +much more important work. He was eager to be a real foreman once more, a +big one, and to show the company that he could erect this building and +thus make a little place for himself in the latter's good graces, +although to what end I could not quite make out. He would never have +made a suitable general foreman. At the same time, he was a little +afraid of the clerical details, those terrible nightmares of reports, +o.k.s and the like.</p> + +<p>"How arre ye feelin', Teddy, b'y?" he often inquired of me during this +period, with a greater show of interest in my troublesome health than +ever before. I talked of leaving, I suppose, from time to time because +sheer financial necessity was about to compel it.</p> + +<p>"Fine, Rourke," I would say, "never better. I'm feeling better every +day."</p> + +<p>"That's good. Ye're the right man in the right place now. If ye was to +sthay a year er two at this work it would be the makin' av ye. Ye're too +thin. Ye need more chist," and he would tap my bony chest in a kindly +manner. "I niver have a sick day, meself."</p> + +<p>"That's right, Rourke," I replied pleasantly, feeling keenly the need of +staying by so wonderful a lamp of health. "I intend to stick at it as +long as I can."</p> + +<p>"Ye ought to; it'll do ye good. If we get the new buildin' to build, +it'll be better yet for ye. Ye'll have plenty to do there to relave yer +mind."</p> + +<p>"Relieve, indeed!" I thought, but I did not say so. On the contrary I +felt so much sympathy for this lusty Irishman and his reasonable +ambitions that I desired to help him, and urged him to get it. I +suggested indirectly that I would see him through, which touched him +greatly. He was a grateful creature in his way, but so excitable and so +helplessly self-reliant that there was no way of aiding him without +doing it in a secret or rather self-effacing manner. He would have much +preferred to struggle along alone and fail, though I doubt whether real +failure could have come to Rourke so essentially capable was he.</p> + +<p>In another three weeks the work was really given him to do, and then +began one of the finest exhibitions of Irish <a name="Page_261" id="Page_261" />domination and +self-sufficiency that I have ever witnessed. We moved to Mott Haven +Yard, a great network of tracks and buildings, in the center of which +this new building was to be erected. Rourke was given a large force of +men, whom he fairly gloried in bossing. He had as many as forty +Italians, to say nothing of a number of pseudo-carpenters and masons +(not those shrewd hawks clever enough to belong to the union, but +wasters and failures of another type) who did the preliminary work of +digging for the foundation, etc. Handling these, Rourke was in his +element. He loved to see so much brisk work going on. He would trot to +and fro about the place, beaming in the most angelic fashion, and +shouting orders that could be heard all over the neighborhood. It was +delicious to watch him. At times he would stand by the long trenches +where the men were digging for the foundation, a great line of them, +their backs bent over their work, and rub his hands in pleasingly human +satisfaction, saying, "We're goin' along fine, Teddy. I can jist see me +way to the top av the buildin'," and then he would proceed to harass and +annoy his men out of pure exuberance of spirits.</p> + +<p>"Ye waant to dig it so, man," or, "Ye don't handle yer pick right; can't +ye see that? Hold it this way." Sometimes he would get down in the +trench and demonstrate just how it was to be done, a thing which greatly +amused some of the workmen. Frequently he would exhibit to me little +tricks or knacks of his trade, such as throwing a trowel ten feet so +that it would stick in a piece of wood; turning a shovel over with a +lump of dirt on it and not dropping the lump, and similar simple acts, +always adding, "Ye'll niver be a mason till ye can do that."</p> + +<p>When he was tired of fussing with the men outside he would come around +to the little wooden shed, where I was keeping the mass of orders and +reports in shape and getting his material ready for him, and look over +the papers in the most knowing manner. When he had satisfied himself +that everything was going right, he would exclaim, "Ye're jist the b'y +fer the place, Teddy. Ye'd made a good bookkeeper. If ever I get to be +Prisident, I'll make ye me Sicretary av State."</p> + +<p>But the thing which really interested and enthralled Rourke was the +coming of the masons—those hardy buccaneers of <a name="Page_262" id="Page_262" />the laboring world who +come and go as they please, asking no favors and brooking no +interference. Plainly he envied them their reckless independence at the +same time that he desired to control their labor in his favor—a task +worthy of the shrewdest diplomat. Never in my life have I seen such a +gay, ruthless, inconsiderate point of view as these same union masons +represented, a most astounding lot. They were—are, I suppose I should +say—our modern buccaneers and Captain Kidds of the laboring world, +demanding, if you please, their six a day, starting and stopping almost +when they please, doing just as little as they dare and yet face their +own decaying conscience, dropping any task at the most critical and +dangerous point, and in other ways rejoicing in and disporting +themselves in such a way as to annoy the representatives of any +corporation great or small that suffered the sad compulsion of employing +them. Seriously, I am not against union laborers. I like them. They +spell rude, blazing life. But when you have to deal with them!</p> + +<p>Plainly, Rourke anticipated endless rows. Their coming promised him the +opportunity he inmostly desired, I suppose, of once more fussing and +fuming with real, strong, determined and pugnacious men like himself, +who would not take his onslaughts tamely but would fight him back, as he +wished strong men to do. He was never weary of talking of them.</p> + +<p>"Wait till we have thirty er forty av thim on the line," he once +observed to me in connection with them, "every man layin' his six +hundred bricks a day, er takin' aaf his apron! Thim's the times ye'll +see what excitement manes, me b'y. Thim's the times."</p> + +<p>"What'll I see, Rourke?" I asked interestedly.</p> + +<p>"Throuble enough. Shewer, they're no crapin' Eyetalians, that'll let ye +taalk to thim as ye pl'ase. Indade not. Ye'll have to fight with them +fellies."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's a queer state of affairs," I remarked, and then added, "Do +you think you can handle them, Rourke?"</p> + +<p>"Handle thim!" he exclaimed, his glorious wrath kindling in anticipation +of a possible conflict. "Handle thim, an' the likes av a thousand av +thim! I know them aall, every waan av thim, an' their thricks. It's naht +foolin' me they'll be. But, me b'y," he added instructively, "it's a +fine job ye'll have runnin'<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263" /> down to the ahffice gettin' their time." +(This is the railroad man's expression for money due, or wages.) "Ye'll +have plenty av that to do, I'm tellin' ye."</p> + +<p>"You don't mean to say that you're going to discharge them, Rourke, do +you?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Shewer!" he exclaimed authoritatively. "Why shouldn't I? They're jist +the same as other min. Why shouldn't I?" Then he added, after a pause, +"But it's thim that'll be comin' to me askin' fer their time instid av +me givin' it to thim, niver fear. They're not the kind that'll let ye +taalk back to thim. If their work don't suit ye, it's 'give me me time.' +Wait till they'll be comin' round half drunk in the mornin', an' not +feelin' just right. Thim's the times ye'll find out what masons arre +made av, me b'y."</p> + +<p>I confess this probability did not seem as brilliant to me as it did to +him, but it had its humor. I expressed wonder that he would hire them if +they were such a bad lot.</p> + +<p>"Where else will ye get min?" he demanded to know. "The unions have the +best, an' the most av thim. Thim outside fellies don't amount to much. +They're aall pore, crapin' creatures. If it wasn't fer the railroad +bein' against the union I wouldn't have thim at aall, and besides," he +added thoughtfully, and with a keen show of feeling for their point of +view, "they have a right to do as they pl'ase. Shewer, it's no common +workmen they arre. They can lay their eight hundred bricks a day, if +they will, an' no advice from any waan. If ye was in their place ye'd do +the same. There's no sinse in allowin' another man to waalk on ye whin +ye can get another job. I don't blame thim. I was a mason wanst meself."</p> + +<p>"You don't mean to say that you acted as you say these men are going to +act?"</p> + +<p>"Shewer!"</p> + +<p>"Well, I shouldn't think you'd be very proud of it."</p> + +<p>"I have me rights," he declared, flaring up. "What kind av a man is it +that'll let himself be waalked on? There's no sinse in it. It's naht +natchral. It's naht intinded that it should be so."</p> + +<p>"Very well," I said, smoothing the whole thing over, and so that ended.</p> + +<p>Well, the masons came, and a fine lot of pirates they surely <a name="Page_264" id="Page_264" />were. Such +independence! Such defiance! Such feverish punctilio in regard to their +rights and what forms and procedures they were entitled to! I stared in +amazement. For the most part they were hale, healthy, industrious +looking creatures, but so obstreperously conscious of their own rights, +and so proud of their skill as masons, that there was no living with +them. Really, they would have tried the patience of a saint, let alone a +healthy, contentious Irish foreman-mason. "First off," as the railroad +men used to say, they wanted to know whether there were any non-union +men on the job, and if so, would they be discharged instanter?—if not, +no work—a situation which gave Rourke several splendid opportunities +for altercations, which he hastened to improve, although the non-union +men <i>went</i>, of course. Then they wanted to know when, where, and how +they were to get their money, whether on demand at any time they chose, +and this led to more trouble, since the railroad paid only once a month. +However, this was adjusted by a special arrangement being made whereby +the building department stood ready to pay them instantly on demand, +only I had to run down to the division office each time and get their +pay for them at any time that they came to ask for it! Then came an +argument (or many of them) as to the number of bricks they were to lay +an hour; the number of men they were to carry on one line, or wall; the +length of time they were supposed to work, or had worked, or would +work—all of which was pure food and drink to Rourke. He was in his +element at last, shouting, gesticulating, demanding that they leave or +go to——. After all these things had been adjusted, however, they +finally consented to go to work, and then of course the work flew. It +was a grand scene, really inspiring—forty or fifty masons on the line, +perhaps half as many helpers or mixers, the Italians carrying bricks, +and a score of carpenters now arriving under another foreman to set the +beams and lay the joists as the walls rose upward.</p> + +<p>Rourke was about all the time now, arguing and gesticulating with this +man or that, fighting with this one or the other, and calling always to +some mason or other to "come down" and get his "time." "Come down! Come +down!" I would hear, and then would see him rushing for the office, a +defiant and even threatening mason at his heels; Rourke <a name="Page_265" id="Page_265" />demanding that +I make out a time-check at once for the latter and go down to the +"ahffice" and get the money, the while the mason hung about attempting +to seduce other men to a similar point of view. Once in a while, but +only on rare occasions, Rourke would patch up a truce with a man. As a +rule, the mason was only too eager to leave and spend the money thus far +earned, while Rourke was curiously indifferent as to whether he went or +stayed. "'Tis to drink he waants," he would declare amusedly. To me it +was all like a scene out of comic opera.</p> + +<p>Toward the last, however, a natural calm set in, the result no doubt of +weariness and a sense of surfeit, which sent the building forward apace. +During this time Rourke was to be seen walking defiantly up and down the +upper scaffolding of the steadily rising walls, or down below on the +ground in front of his men, his hands behind his back, his face screwed +into a quizzical expression, his whole body bearing a look of bristling +content and pugnacity which was too delicious for words. Since things +were going especially well he could not say much, but still he could +look his contentiousness, and did. Even now he would occasionally manage +to pick a quarrel with some lusty mason or other, which resulted in the +customary descent to the office, but not often.</p> + +<p>But one cold December day, about three weeks later, when I was just +about to announce that I could no longer delay my departure, seeing that +my health was now as good, or nearly so, as my purse was lean, and that, +whether I would or no, I must arrange to make more money, that a most +dreadful accident occurred. It appeared that Rourke and a number of +Italians, including Matt and Jimmie, were down in the main room of the +building, now fast nearing completion, when the boiler of the hoisting +engine, which had been placed inside the building and just at the +juncture of three walls, blew up and knocked out this wall and the +joists of the second and third floors loose, thus precipitating all of +fifteen thousand bricks, which had been placed on the third floor, into +this room below. For a few moments there had been a veritable hurricane +of bricks and falling timber; and then, when it was over, it was found +that the mighty Rourke and five Italians were embedded in or under them, +and all but Jimmie more <a name="Page_266" id="Page_266" />or less seriously injured or killed. Two +Italians were killed outright. A third died later. Rourke, in +particular, was unfortunately placed and terribly injured. His body from +the waist down was completely buried by a pile of bricks, and across his +shoulder lay a great joist pressing where it had struck him, and cutting +his neck and ear. He was a pathetic sight when we entered, bleeding and +pain-wrenched yet grim and undaunted, as one might have expected.</p> + +<p>"I'm tight fast, me lad," he said when he could speak. "It's me legs +that's caught, not me body. But give a hand to the min, there. The +Eyetalians are underneath."</p> + +<p>Disregarding his suggestion, however, we began working about him, every +man throwing away bricks like a machine; but he would not have it.</p> + +<p>"'Tind to the min!" he insisted with all of his old firmness. "The +Eyetalians are under there—Matt an' Jimmie. Can't ye see that I'll be +all right till ye get thim out? Come, look after the min!"</p> + +<p>We fell to this end of the work, although by now others had arrived, and +soon there was a great crowd assisting—men coming from the yard and the +machine shop. Although embedded in this mass of material and most +severely injured, there was no gainsaying him, and he still insisted on +directing us as best he could. But now he was so picturesque, so much +nobler, really, than he had been in his healthier, uninjured days. A +fabled giant, he seemed to me, half-god, half-man, composed in part of +flesh, in part of brick and stone, gazing down on our earthly efforts +with the eye of a demi-god.</p> + +<p>"Come, now—get the j'ists from aaf the end, there. Take the bricks away +from that man. Can't ye see? There's where his head is—there. There! +Jasus Christ—theyer!"</p> + +<p>You would have thought we were Italians ourselves, poor wisps of +nothing, not his rescuers, but slaves, compelled to do his lordly +bidding.</p> + +<p>After a time, however, we managed to release him and all his five +helpers—two dead, as I say, and Matt badly cut about the head and +seriously injured, while Jimmie, the imperturbable, was but little the +worse for a brick mark on one shoulder. He was more or less frightened, +of course, and comic to look at, even in this dread situation. "Big-a +smash," he <a name="Page_267" id="Page_267" />exclaimed when he recovered himself. "Like-a da worl' fall. +Misha Rook! Misha Rook! Where Misha Rook?"</p> + +<p>"Here I am, ye Eyetalian scalawag," exclaimed the unyielding Rourke +genially, who was still partially embedded when Jimmie was released. +There was, however, a touch of sorrow in his voice as he added weakly, +"Arre ye hurted much?"</p> + +<p>"No, Misha Rook. Help Misha Rook," replied Jimmie, grabbing at bricks +himself, and so the rescue work of "Rook" went on.</p> + +<p>Finally he was released, although not without deprecating our efforts +the while (this wonderful and exceptional fuss over him), and exclaiming +at one point as we tugged at joists and beams rather frantically, "Take +yer time. Take yer time. I'm naht so bad fixed as aall that. Take yer +time. Get that board out o' the way there, Jimmie."</p> + +<p>But he was badly "fixed," and "hurted" unto death also, as we now found, +and as he insisted he was not. His hip was severely crushed by the +timbers and his legs broken, as well as his internal organs disarranged, +although we did not know how badly at the time. Only after we had +removed all the weight did he collapse and perhaps personally realize +how serious was his plight. He was laid on a canvas tarpaulin brought by +the yard-master and spread on the chip-strewn ground, while the doctors +from two ambulances worked over him. While they were examining his +wounds he took a critical and quizzical interest in what they were +doing, and offered one or two humorous suggestions. Finally, when they +were ready to move him he asked how he was, and on being told that he +was all right, looked curiously about until he caught my eye. I could +see that he realized how critical it was with him.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to see a priest, Teddy," he whispered, "and, if ye don't mind, +I'd like ye to go up to Mount Vernon an' tell me wife. They'll be after +telegraphin' her if ye don't. Break it aisy, if ye will. Don't let 'er +think there's anything serious. There's no need av it. I'm naht hurted +so bad as aall that."</p> + +<p>I promised, and the next moment one of the doctors shot a spray of +cocaine into his hip to relieve what he knew must be his dreadful pain. +A few moments later he lost consciousness, after which I left him to the +care of the hospital authorities and hurried away to send the priest and +to tell his wife.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268" />For a week thereafter he lingered in a very serious condition and +finally died, blood-poisoning having set in. I saw him at the hospital a +day or two before, and, trying to sympathize with his condition, I +frequently spoke of what I deemed the dreadful uncertainty of life and +the seeming carelessness of the engineer in charge of the hoisting +engine. He, however, had no complaint to make.</p> + +<p>"Ye must expect thim things," was his only comment. "Ye can't aalways +expect to go unhurted. I niver lost a man before, nor had one come to +haarm. 'Tis the way av things, ye see."</p> + +<p>Mighty Rourke! You would have thought the whole Italian population of +Mount Vernon knew and loved him, the way they turned out at his funeral. +It was a state affair for most of them, and they came in scores, packing +the little brick church at which he was accustomed to worship full to +overflowing. Matt was there, bandaged and sore, but sorrowful; and +Jimmie, artful and scheming in the past, but now thoroughly subdued. He +was all sorrow, and sniveled and blubbered and wept hot, blinding tears +through the dark, leathery fingers of his hands.</p> + +<p>"Misha Rook! Misha Rook!" I heard him say, as they bore the body in; and +when they carried it out of the church, he followed, head down. As they +lowered it to the grave he was inconsolable.</p> + +<p>"Misha Rook! Misha Rook! I work-a for him fifteen year!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="A_Mayor_and_His_People" id="A_Mayor_and_His_People" /><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269" /><i>A Mayor and His People</i></h2> + + +<p>Here is the story of an individual whose political and social example, +if such things are ever worth anything (the moralists to the contrary +notwithstanding), should have been, at the time, of the greatest +importance to every citizen of the United States. Only it was not. Or +was it? Who really knows? Anyway, he and his career are entirely +forgotten by now, and have been these many years.</p> + +<p>He was the mayor of one of those dreary New England mill towns in +northern Massachusetts—a bleak, pleasureless realm of about forty +thousand, where, from the time he was born until he finally left at the +age of thirty-six to seek his fortune elsewhere, he had resided without +change. During that time he had worked in various of the local mills, +which in one way and another involved nearly all of the population. He +was a mill shoe-maker by trade, or, in other words, a factory shoe-hand, +knowing only a part of all the processes necessary to make a shoe in +that fashion. Still, he was a fair workman, and earned as much as +fifteen or eighteen dollars a week at times—rather good pay for that +region. By temperament a humanitarian, or possibly because of his own +humble state one who was compelled to take cognizance of the +difficulties of others, he finally expressed his mental unrest by +organizing a club for the study and propagation of socialism, and later, +when it became powerful enough to have a candidate and look for +political expression of some kind, he was its first, and thereafter for +a number of years, its regular candidate for mayor. For a long time, or +until its membership became sufficient to attract some slight political +attention, its members (following our regular American, unintellectual +custom) were looked upon by the rest of the people as a body of harmless +kickers, filled with fool notions about a man's duty to his fellowman, +some silly dream about an honest and economical administration of public +affairs—their city's affairs, to be exact. We are so wise in America, +so interested in our fellowman, so regardful of his welfare. They were +so small in number, however, that they were little more than an object +of pleasant jest, useful for that purpose alone.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270" />This club, however, continued to put up its candidate until about 1895, +when suddenly it succeeded in polling the very modest number of +fifty-four votes—double the number it had succeeded in polling any +previous year. A year later one hundred and thirty-six were registered, +and the next year six hundred. Then suddenly the mayor who won that +year's battle died, and a special election was called. Here the club +polled six hundred and one, a total and astonishing gain of one. In 1898 +the perennial candidate was again nominated and received fifteen +hundred, and in 1899, when he ran again, twenty-three hundred votes, +which elected him.</p> + +<p>If this fact be registered casually here, it was not so regarded in that +typically New England mill town. Ever study New England—its Puritan, +self-defensive, but unintellectual and selfish psychology? Although this +poor little snip of a mayor was only elected for one year, men paused +astounded, those who had not voted for him, and several of the older +conventional political and religious order, wedded to their church and +all the routine of the average puritanic mill town, actually cried. No +one knew, of course, who the new mayor was, or what he stood for. There +were open assertions that the club behind him was anarchistic—that +ever-ready charge against anything new in America—and that the courts +should be called upon to prevent his being seated. And this from people +who were as poorly "off" commercially and socially as any might well be. +It was stated, as proving the worst, that he was, or had been, a mill +worker!—and, before that a grocery clerk—both at twelve a week, or +less!! Immediate division of property, the forcing of all employers to +pay as much as five a day to every laborer (an unheard-of sum in New +England), and general constraint and subversion of individual rights +(things then unknown in America, of course), loomed in the minds of +these conventional Americans as the natural and immediate result of so +modest a victory. The old-time politicians and corporations who +understood much better what the point was, the significance of this +straw, were more or less disgruntled, but satisfied that it could be +undone later.</p> + +<p>An actual conversation which occurred on one of the outlying street +corners one evening about dusk will best illustrate the entire +situation.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_271" id="Page_271" />Who is the man, anyway?" asked one citizen of a total stranger whom he +had chanced to meet.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no one in particular, I think. A grocery clerk, they say."</p> + +<p>"Astonishing, isn't it? Why, I never thought those people would get +anything. Why, they didn't even figure last year."</p> + +<p>"Seems to be considerable doubt as to just what he'll do."</p> + +<p>"That's what I've been wondering. I don't take much stock in all their +talk about anarchy. A man hasn't so very much power as mayor."</p> + +<p>"No," said the other.</p> + +<p>"We ought to give him a trial, anyway. He's won a big fight. I should +like to see him, see what he looks like."</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing startling. I know him."</p> + +<p>"Rather young, ain't he?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Where did he come from?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, right around here."</p> + +<p>"Was he a mill-hand?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>The stranger made inquiry as to other facts and then turned off at a +corner.</p> + +<p>"Well," he observed at parting, "I don't know. I'm inclined to believe +in the man. I should like to see him myself. Good-night."</p> + +<p>"Good-night," said the other, waving his hand. "When you see me again +you will know that you are looking at the mayor."</p> + +<p>The inquirer stared after him and saw a six-foot citizen, of otherwise +medium proportions, whose long, youthful face and mild gray eyes, with +just a suggestion of washed-out blue in them, were hardly what was to be +expected of a notorious and otherwise astounding political figure.</p> + +<p>"He is too young," was the earliest comments, when the public once +became aware of his personality.</p> + +<p>"Why, he is nothing but a grocery clerk," was another, the skeptical and +condemnatory possibilities of which need not be dilated upon here.</p> + +<p>And he was, in his way—nothing much of a genius, as such things go in +politics, but an interesting figure. Without <a name="Page_272" id="Page_272" />much taste (or its +cultivated shadow) or great vision of any kind, he was still a man who +sensed the evils of great and often unnecessary social inequalities and +the need of reorganizing influences, which would tend to narrow the vast +gulf between the unorganized and ignorant poor, and the huge +beneficiaries of unearned (yes, and not even understood) increment. For +what does the economic wisdom of the average capitalist amount to, after +all: the narrow, gourmandizing hunger of the average multi-millionaire?</p> + +<p>At any rate, people watched him as he went to and fro between his office +and his home, and reached the general conclusion after the first +excitement had died down that he did not amount to much.</p> + +<p>When introduced into his office in the small but pleasant city hall, he +came into contact with a "ring," and a fixed condition, which nobody +imagined a lone young mayor could change. Old-time politicians sat there +giving out contracts for street-cleaning, lighting, improvements and +supplies of all kinds, and a bond of mutual profit bound them closely +together.</p> + +<p>"I don't think he can do much to hurt us," these individuals said one to +another. "He don't amount to much."</p> + +<p>The mayor was not of a talkative or confiding turn. Neither was he cold +or wanting in good and natural manners. He was, however, of a +preoccupied turn of mind, "up in the air," some called it, and smoked a +good many cigars.</p> + +<p>"I think we ought to get together and have some sort of a conference +about the letting of contracts," said the president of the city council +to him one morning shortly after he had been installed. "You will find +these gentlemen ready to meet you half-way in these matters."</p> + +<p>"I'm very glad to hear that," he replied. "I've something to say in my +message to the council, which I'll send over in the morning."</p> + +<p>The old-time politician eyed him curiously, and he eyed the old-time +politician in turn, not aggressively, but as if they might come to a +very pleasant understanding if they wanted to, and then went back to his +office.</p> + +<p>The next day his message was made public, and this was its key-note:</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_273" id="Page_273" />All contract work for the city should be let with a proviso, that the +workmen employed receive not less than two dollars a day."</p> + +<p>The dissatisfied roar that followed was not long in making itself heard +all over the city.</p> + +<p>"Stuff and nonsense," yelled the office jobbers in a chorus. +"Socialism!" "Anarchy!" "This thing must be put down!" "The city would +be bankrupt in a year." "No contractor could afford to pay his ordinary +day laborers two a day. The city could not afford to pay any contractor +enough to do it."</p> + +<p>"The prosperity of the city is not greater than the prosperity of the +largest number of its component individuals," replied the mayor, in a +somewhat altruistic and economically abstruse argument on the floor of +the council hall. "We must find contractors."</p> + +<p>"We'll see about that," said the members of the opposition. "Why, the +man's crazy. If he thinks he can run this town on a goody-good basis and +make everybody rich and happy, he's going to get badly fooled, that's +all there is to that."</p> + +<p>Fortunately for him three of the eight council members were fellows of +the mayor's own economic beliefs, individuals elected on the same ticket +with him. These men could not carry a resolution, but they could stop +one from being carried over the mayor's veto. Hence it was found that if +the contracts could not be given to men satisfactory to the mayor they +could not be given at all, and he stood in a fair way to win.</p> + +<p>"What the hell's the use of us sitting here day after day!" were the +actual words of the leading members of the opposition in the council +some weeks later, when the fight became wearisome. "We can't pass the +contracts over his veto. I say let 'em go."</p> + +<p>So the proviso was tacked on, that two a day was the minimum wage to be +allowed, and the contracts passed.</p> + +<p>The mayor's followers were exceedingly jubilant at this, more so than +he, who was of a more cautious and less hopeful temperament.</p> + +<p>"Not out of the woods yet, gentlemen," he remarked to a group of his +adherents at the reform club. "We have to do a great many things +sensibly if we expect to keep the people's confidence and 'win again.'"</p> + +<p><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274" />Under the old system of letting contracts, whenever there was a wage +rate stipulated, men were paid little or nothing, and the work was not +done. There was no pretense of doing it. Garbage and ashes accumulated, +and papers littered the streets. The old contractor who had pocketed the +appropriated sum thought to do so again.</p> + +<p>"I hear the citizens are complaining as much as ever," said the mayor to +this individual one morning. "You will have to keep the streets clean."</p> + +<p>The contractor, a robust, thick-necked, heavy-jawed Irishman, of just so +much refinement as the sudden acquisition of a comfortable fortune would +allow, looked him quizzically over, wondering whether he was "out" for a +portion of the appropriation or whether he was really serious.</p> + +<p>"We can fix that between us," he said.</p> + +<p>"There's nothing to fix," replied the mayor. "All I want you to do is to +clean the streets."</p> + +<p>The contractor went away and for a few days after the streets were +really clean, but it was only for a few days.</p> + +<p>In his walks about the city the mayor himself found garbage and paper +uncollected, and then called upon his new acquaintance again.</p> + +<p>"I'm mentioning this for the last time, Mr. M——," he said. "You will +have to fulfill your contract, or resign in favor of some one who will."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'll clean them, well enough," said this individual, after five +minutes of rapid fire explanation. "Two dollars a day for men is high, +but I'll see that they're clean."</p> + +<p>Again he went away, and again the mayor sauntered about, and then one +morning sought out the contractor in his own office.</p> + +<p>"This is the end," he said, removing a cigar from his mouth and holding +it before him with his elbow at right angles. "You are discharged from +this work. I'll notify you officially to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"It can't be done the way you want it," the contractor exclaimed with an +oath. "There's no money in it at two dollars. Hell, anybody can see +that."</p> + +<p>"Very well," said the mayor in a kindly well-modulated tone. "Let +another man try, then."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275" />The next day he appointed a new contractor, and with a schedule before +him showing how many men should be employed and how much profit he might +expect, the latter succeeded. The garbage was daily removed, and the +streets carefully cleaned.</p> + +<p>Then there was a new manual training school about to be added to the +public school system at this time, and the contract for building was to +be let, when the mayor threw a bomb into the midst of the old-time +jobbers at the city council. A contractor had already been chosen by +them and the members were figuring out their profits, when at one of the +public discussions of the subject the mayor said:</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't the city build it, gentlemen?"</p> + +<p>"How can it?" exclaimed the councilmen. "The city isn't an individual; +it can't watch carefully."</p> + +<p>"It can hire its own architect, as well as any contractor. Let's try +it."</p> + +<p>There were sullen tempers in the council chamber after this, but the +mayor was insistent. He called an architect who made a ridiculously low +estimate. Never had a public building been estimated so cheaply before.</p> + +<p>"See here," said one of the councilmen when the plans were presented to +the chamber—"This isn't doing this city right, and the gentlemen of the +council ought to put their feet down on any such venture as this. You're +going to waste the city's money on some cheap thing in order to catch +votes."</p> + +<p>"I'll publish the cost of the goods as delivered," said the mayor. "Then +the people can look at the building when it's built. We'll see how cheap +it looks then."</p> + +<p>To head off political trickery on the part of the enemy he secured bills +for material as delivered, and publicly compared them with prices paid +for similar amounts of the same material used in other buildings. So the +public was kept aware of what was going on and the cry of cheapness for +political purposes set at naught. It was the first public structure +erected by the city, and by all means the cheapest and best of all the +city's buildings.</p> + +<p>Excellent as these services were in their way, the mayor realized later +that a powerful opposition was being generated and that if he were to +retain the interest of his constituents <a name="Page_276" id="Page_276" />he would have to set about +something which would endear him and his cause to the public.</p> + +<p>"I may be honest," he told one of his friends, "but honesty will play a +lone hand with these people. The public isn't interested in its own +welfare very much. It can't be bothered or hasn't the time. What I need +is something that will impress it and still be worth while. I can't be +reëlected on promises, or on my looks, either."</p> + +<p>When he looked about him, however, he found the possibility of +independent municipal action pretty well hampered by mandatory +legislation. He had promised, for instance, to do all he could to lower +the exorbitant gas rate and to abolish grade crossings, but the law said +that no municipality could do either of these things without first +voting to do so three years in succession—a little precaution taken by +the corporation representing such things long before he came into power. +Each vote must be for such contemplated action, or it could not become a +law.</p> + +<p>"I know well enough that promises are all right," he said to one of his +friends, "and that these laws are good enough excuses, but the public +won't take excuses from me for three years. If I want to be mayor again +I want to be doing something, and doing it quick."</p> + +<p>In the city was a gas corporation, originally capitalized at $45,000, +and subsequently increased to $75,000, which was earning that year the +actual sum of $58,000 over and above all expenses. It was getting ready +to inflate the capitalization, as usual, and water its stock to the +extent of $500,000, when it occurred to the mayor that if the +corporation was making such enormous profits out of a $75,000 investment +as to be able to offer to pay six per cent on $500,000 to investors, and +put the money it would get for such stocks into its pocket, perhaps it +could reduce the price of gas from one dollar and nineteen cents to a +more reasonable figure. There was the three years' voting law, however, +behind which, as behind an entrenchment, the very luxurious corporation +lay comfortable and indifferent.</p> + +<p>The mayor sent for his corporation counsel, and studied gas law for +awhile. He found that at the State capital there was a State board, or +commission, which had been created to <a name="Page_277" id="Page_277" />look after gas companies in +general, and to hear the complaints of municipalities which considered +themselves unjustly treated.</p> + +<p>"This is the thing for me," he said.</p> + +<p>Lacking the municipal authority himself, he decided to present the facts +in the case and appeal to this commission for a reduction of the gas +rate.</p> + +<p>When he came to talk about it he found that the opposition he would +generate would be something much more than local. Back of the local +reduction idea was the whole system of extortionate gas rates of the +State and of the nation; hundreds of fat, luxurious gas corporations +whose dividends would be threatened by any agitation on this question.</p> + +<p>"You mean to proceed with this scheme of yours?" asked a prominent +member of the local bar who called one morning to interview him. "I +represent the gentlemen who are interested in our local gas company."</p> + +<p>"I certainly do," replied the mayor.</p> + +<p>"Well," replied the uncredentialed representative of private interests, +after expostulating a long time and offering various "reasons" why it +would be more profitable and politically advantageous for the new mayor +not to proceed, "I've said all I can say. Now I want to tell you that +you are going up against a combination that will be your ruin. You're +not dealing with this town now; you're dealing with the State, the whole +nation. These corporations can't afford to let you win, and they won't. +You're not the one to do it; you're not big enough."</p> + +<p>The mayor smiled and replied that of course he could not say as to that.</p> + +<p>The lawyer went away, and that next day the mayor had his legal counsel +look up the annual reports of the company for the consecutive years of +its existence, as well as a bulletin issued by a firm of brokers, into +whose hands the matter of selling a vast amount of watered stock it +proposed to issue had been placed. He also sent for a gas expert and set +him to figuring out a case for the people.</p> + +<p>It was found by this gentleman that since the company was first +organized it had paid dividends on its capital stock at the rate of ten +per cent per annum, for the first thirty years; had made vast +improvements in the last ten, and notwithstanding <a name="Page_278" id="Page_278" />this fact, had paid +twenty per cent, and even twenty-five per cent per annum in dividends. +All the details of cost and expenditure were figured out, and then the +mayor with his counsel took the train for the State capitol.</p> + +<p>Never was there more excitement in political circles than when this +young representative of no important political organization whatsoever +arrived at the State capitol and walked, at the appointed time, into the +private audience room of the commission. Every gas company, as well as +every newspaper and every other representative of the people, had +curiously enough become interested in the fight he was making, and there +was a band of reporters at the hotel where he was stopping, as well as +in the commission chambers in the State capitol where the hearing was to +be. They wanted to know about him—why he was doing this, whether it +wasn't a "strike" or the work of some rival corporation. The fact that +he might foolishly be sincere was hard to believe.</p> + +<p>"Gentlemen," said the mayor, as he took his stand in front of an august +array of legal talent which was waiting to pick his argument to pieces +in the commission chambers at the capitol, "I miscalculated but one +thing in this case which I am about to lay before you, and that is the +extent of public interest. I came here prepared to make a private +argument, but now I want to ask the privilege of making it public. I see +the public itself is interested, or should be. I will ask leave to +postpone my argument until the day after tomorrow."</p> + +<p>There was considerable hemming and hawing over this, since from the +point of view of the corporation it was most undesirable, but the +commission was practically powerless to do aught but grant his request. +And meanwhile the interest created by the newspapers added power to his +cause. Hunting up the several representatives and senators from his +district, he compelled them to take cognizance of the cause for which he +was battling, and when the morning of the public hearing arrived a large +audience was assembled in the chamber of representatives.</p> + +<p>When the final moment arrived the young mayor came forward, and after +making a very simple statement of the cause which led him to request a +public hearing and the local condition which he considered unfair begged +leave to introduce <a name="Page_279" id="Page_279" />an expert, a national examiner of gas plants and +lighting facilities, for whom he had sent, and whose twenty years of +experience in this line had enabled him to prepare a paper on the +condition of the gas-payers in the mayor's city.</p> + +<p>The commission was not a little surprised by this, but signified its +willingness to hear the expert as counsel for the city, and as his +statement was read a very clear light was thrown upon the situation.</p> + +<p>Counsel for the various gas corporations interrupted freely. The mayor +himself was constantly drawn into the argument, but his replies were so +simple and convincing that there was not much satisfaction to be had in +stirring him. Instead, the various counsel took refuge in long-winded +discussions about the methods of conducting gas plants in other cities, +the cost of machinery, labor and the like, which took days and days, and +threatened to extend into weeks. The astounding facts concerning large +profits and the present intentions of not only this but every other +company in the State could not be dismissed. In fact the revelation of +huge corporation profits everywhere became so disturbing that after the +committee had considered and re-considered, it finally, when threatened +with political extermination, voted to reduce the price of gas to eighty +cents.</p> + +<p>It is needless to suggest the local influence of this decision. When the +mayor came home he received an ovation, and that at the hands of many of +the people who had once been so fearful of him, but he knew that this +enthusiasm would not last long. Many disgruntled elements were warring +against him, and others were being more and more stirred up. His home +life was looked into as well as his past, his least childish or private +actions. It was a case of finding other opportunities for public +usefulness, or falling into the innocuous peace which would result in +his defeat.</p> + +<p>In the platform on which he had been elected was a plank which declared +that it was the intention of this party, if elected, to abolish local +grade crossings, the maintenance of which had been the cause of numerous +accidents and much public complaint. With this plank he now proposed to +deal.</p> + +<p>In this of course he was hampered by the law before mentioned, which +declared that no city could abolish its grade <a name="Page_280" id="Page_280" />crossings without having +first submitted the matter to the people during three successive years +and obtained their approval each time. Behind this law was not now, +however, as in the case of the gas company, a small $500,000 +corporation, but all the railroads which controlled New England, and to +which brains and legislators, courts and juries, were mere adjuncts. +Furthermore, the question would have to be voted on at the same time as +his candidacy, and this would have deterred many another more ambitious +politician. The mayor was not to be deterred, however. He began his +agitation, and the enemy began theirs, but in the midst of what seemed +to be a fair battle the great railway company endeavored to steal a +march. There was suddenly and secretly introduced into the lower house +of the State legislature a bill which in deceptive phraseology declared +that the law which allowed all cities, by three successive votes, to +abolish grade crossings in three years, was, in the case of a particular +city mentioned, hereby abrogated for a term of four years. The question +might not even be discussed politically.</p> + +<p>When the news of this attempt reached the mayor, he took the first train +for the State capitol and arrived there just in time to come upon the +floor of the house when the bill was being taken up for discussion. He +asked leave to make a statement. Great excitement was aroused by his +timely arrival. Those who secretly favored the bill endeavored to have +the matter referred to a committee, but this was not to be. One member +moved to go on with the consideration of the bill, and after a close +vote the motion carried.</p> + +<p>The mayor was then introduced.</p> + +<p>After a few moments, in which the silent self-communing with which he +introduced himself impressed everyone with his sincerity, he said:</p> + +<p>"I am accused of objecting to this measure because its enactment will +remove, as a political issue, the one cause upon which I base my hope +for reëlection. If there are no elevated crossings to vote for, there +will be no excuse for voting for me. Gentlemen, you mistake the temper +and the intellect of the people of our city. It is you who see political +significance in this thing, but let me assure you that it is of a far +different kind from that which you conceive. If the passing of this +<a name="Page_281" id="Page_281" />measure had any significance to me other than the apparent wrong of it, +I would get down on my knees and urge its immediate acceptance. Nothing +could elect me quicker. Nothing could bury the opposition further from +view. If you wish above all things to accomplish my triumph you will +only need to interfere with the rights of our city in this arbitrary +manner, and you will have the thing done. I could absolutely ask nothing +more."</p> + +<p>The gentlemen who had this measure in charge weighed well these +assertions and trifled for weeks with the matter, trying to make up +their minds.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile election time approached, and amid the growing interest of +politics it was thought unwise to deal with it. A great fight was +arranged for locally, in which every conceivable element of opposition +was beautifully harmonized by forces and conceptions which it is almost +impossible to explain. Democrats, republicans, prohibitionists, saloon +men and religious circles, all were gathered into one harmonious body +and inspired with a single idea, that of defeating the mayor. From some +quarter, not exactly identified, was issued a call for a civic committee +of fifty, which should take into its hands the duty of rescuing the city +from what was termed a "throttling policy of commercial oppression and +anarchy." Democrats, republicans, liquor and anti-liquorites, were +invited to the same central meeting place, and came. Money was not +lacking, nor able minds, to prepare campaign literature. It was openly +charged that a blank check was handed in to the chairman of this body by +the railway whose crossings were in danger, to be filled out for any +amount necessary to the destruction of the official upstart who was +seeking to revolutionize old methods and conditions.</p> + +<p>As may be expected, this opposition did not lack daring in making +assertions contrary to facts. Charges were now made that the mayor was +in league with the railroad to foist upon the city a great burden of +expense, because the law under which cities could compel railroads to +elevate their tracks declared that one-fifth of the burden of expense +must be borne by the city and the remaining four-fifths by the railroad. +It would saddle a debt of $250,000 upon the taxpayers, they said, and +give them little in return. All the advantage would <a name="Page_282" id="Page_282" />be with the +railroad. "Postpone this action until the railroad can be forced to bear +the entire expense, as it justly should," declared handbill writers, +whose services were readily rendered to those who could afford to pay +for them.</p> + +<p>The mayor and his committee, although poor, answered with handbills and +street corner speeches, in which he showed that even with the +extravagantly estimated debt of $250,000, the city's tax-rate would not +be increased by quite six cents to the individual. The cry that each man +would have to pay five dollars more each year for ten years was thus +wholesomely disposed of, and the campaign proceeded.</p> + +<p>Now came every conceivable sort of charge. If he were not defeated, all +reputable merchants would surely leave the city. Capital was certainly +being scared off. There would be idle factories and empty stomachs. Look +out for hard times. No one but a fool would invest in a city thus +hampered.</p> + +<p>In reply the mayor preached a fair return by corporations for benefits +received. He, or rather his organization, took a door-to-door census of +his following, and discovered a very considerable increase in the number +of those intending to vote for him. The closest calculations of the +enemy were discovered, the actual number they had fixed upon as +sufficient to defeat him. This proved to the mayor that he must have +three hundred more votes if he wished to be absolutely sure. These he +hunted out from among the enemy, and had them pledged before the +eventual morning came.</p> + +<p>The night preceding election ended the campaign, for the enemy at least, +in a blaze of glory, so to speak. Dozens of speakers for both causes +were about the street corners and in the city meeting room.</p> + +<p>Oratory poured forth in streams, and gasoline-lighted band-wagons +rattled from street to street, emitting song and invective. Even a great +parade was arranged by the anti-mayoral forces, in which horses and men +to the number of hundreds were brought in from nearby cities and palmed +off as enthusiastic citizens.</p> + +<p>"Horses don't vote," a watchword handed out by the mayor, took the edge +off the extreme ardor of this invading throng, and set to laughing the +hundreds of his partisans, who needed such encouragement.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283" />Next day came the vote, and then for once, anyhow, he was justified. +Not only was a much larger vote cast than ever, but he thrashed the +enemy with a tail of two hundred votes to spare. It was an inspiring +victory from one point of view, but rather doleful for the enemy. The +latter had imported a carload of fireworks, which now stood sadly unused +upon the very tracks which, apparently, must in the future be raised. +The crowning insult was offered when the successful forces offered to +take them off their hands at half price.</p> + +<p>For a year thereafter (a mayor was elected yearly there), less was heard +of the commercial destruction of the city. Gas stood, as decided, at +eighty cents a thousand. A new manual training school, built at a very +nominal cost, a monument to municipal honesty, was also in evidence. The +public waterworks had also been enlarged and the rates reduced. The +streets were clean.</p> + +<p>Then the mayor made another innovation. During his first term of office +there had been a weekly meeting of the reform club, at which he appeared +and talked freely of his plans and difficulties. These meetings he now +proposed to make public.</p> + +<p>Every Wednesday evening for a year thereafter a spectacle of municipal +self-consciousness was witnessed, which those who saw it felt sure would +redound to the greater strength and popularity of the mayor. In a large +hall, devoted to public gatherings, a municipal meeting was held. Every +one was invited. The mayor was both host and guest, an individual who +chose to explain his conduct and his difficulties and to ask advice. +There his constituents gathered, not only to hear but to offer counsel.</p> + +<p>"Gentlemen," so ran the gist of his remarks on various of these +occasions, "the present week has proved a most trying one. I am +confronted by a number of difficult problems, which I will now try to +explain to you. In the first place, you know my limitations as to power +in the council. But three members now vote for me, and it is only by +mutual concessions that we move forward at all."</p> + +<p>Then would follow a detailed statement of the difficulties, and a +general discussion. The commonest laborer was free to offer his advice. +Every question was answered in the broadest spirit of fellowship. An +inquiry as to "what to do" frequently <a name="Page_284" id="Page_284" />brought the most helpful advice. +Weak and impossible solutions were met as such, and shown to be what +they were. Radicals were assuaged, conservatives urged forward. The +whole political situation was so detailed and explained that no +intelligent person could leave, it was thought, with a false impression +of the mayor's position or intent.</p> + +<p>With five thousand or more such associated citizens abroad each day +explaining, defending, approving the official conduct of the mayor, +because they understood it, no misleading conceptions, it was thought, +could arise. Men said that his purpose and current leaning in any matter +was always clear. He was thought to be closer to his constituency than +any other official within the whole range of the Americas and that there +could be nothing but unreasoning partisan opposition to his rule.</p> + +<p>After one year of such service a presidential campaign drew near, and +the mayor's campaign for reëlection had to be contested at the same +time. No gas monopoly evil was now a subject of contention. Streets were +clean, contracts fairly executed; the general municipal interests as +satisfactorily attended to as could be expected. Only the grade crossing +war remained as an issue, and that would require still another vote +after this. His record was the only available campaign argument.</p> + +<p>On the other side, however, were the two organizations of the locally +defeated great parties, and the railroad. The latter, insistent in its +bitterness, now organized these two bodies into a powerful opposition. +Newspapers were subsidized; the national significance of the campaign +magnified; a large number of railroad-hands colonized. When the final +weeks of the campaign arrived a bitter contest was waged, and money +triumphed. Five thousand four hundred votes were cast for the mayor. +Five thousand four hundred and fifty for the opposing candidate, who was +of the same party as the successful presidential nominee.</p> + +<p>It was a bitter blow, but still one easily borne by the mayor, who was +considerable of a philosopher. With simple, undisturbed grace he +retired, and three days later applied to one of the principal shoe +factories for work at his trade.</p> + +<p>"What? You're not looking for a job, are you?" exclaimed the astonished +foreman.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_285" id="Page_285" />I am," said the mayor.</p> + +<p>"You can go to work, all right, but I should think you could get into +something better now."</p> + +<p>"I suppose I can later," he replied, "when I complete my law studies. +Just now I want to do this for a change, to see how things are with the +rank and file." And donning the apron he had brought with him he went to +work.</p> + +<p>It was not long, however, before he was discharged, largely because of +partisan influence anxious to drive him out of that region. It was said +that this move of seeking a job in so simple a way was a bit of "grand +standing"—insincere—that he didn't need to do it, and that he was +trying to pile up political capital against the future. A little later a +local grocery man of his social faith offered him a position as clerk, +and for some odd reason—humanitarian and sectarian, possibly—he +accepted this. At any rate, here he labored for a little while. Again +many said he was attempting to make political capital out of this simple +life in order to further his political interests later, and this +possibly, even probably, was true. All men have methods of fighting for +that which they believe. So here he worked for a time, while a large +number of agencies pro and con continued to denounce or praise him, to +ridicule or extol his so-called Jeffersonian simplicity. It was at this +time that I encountered him—a tall, spare, capable and interesting +individual, who willingly took me into his confidence and explained all +that had hitherto befallen him. He was most interesting, really, a +figure to commemorate in this fashion.</p> + +<p>In one of the rooms of his very humble home—a kind of office or den, in +a small house such as any clerk or working-man might occupy—was a +collection of clippings, laudatory, inquiring, and abusive, which would +have done credit to a candidate for the highest office in the land. One +would have judged by the scrap-books and envelopes stuffed to +overflowing with long newspaper articles and editorials that had been +cut from papers all over the country from Florida to Oregon, that his +every movement at this time and earlier was all-essential to the people. +Plainly, he had been watched, spied upon, and ignored by one class, +while being hailed, praised and invited by another. Magazine editors had +called upon him for contributions, journalists from the large cities had +sought him <a name="Page_286" id="Page_286" />out to obtain his actual views, citizens' leagues in various +parts of the nation had invited him to come and speak, and yet he was +still a very young man in years, not over-intelligent politically or +philosophically, the ex-mayor of a small city, and the representative of +no great organization of any sort.</p> + +<p>In his retirement he was now comforted, if one can be so comforted, by +these memories, still fresh in his mind and by the hope possibly for his +own future, as well as by a droll humor with which he was wont to select +the sharpest and most willful slur upon his unimpeachable conduct as an +offering to public curiosity.</p> + +<p>"Do you really want to know what people think of me?" he said to me on +one occasion. "Well, here's something. Read this." And then he would +hand me a bunch of the bitterest attacks possible, attacks which +pictured him as a sly and treacherous enemy of the people—or worse yet +a bounding anarchistic ignoramus. Personally I could not help admiring +his stoic mood. It was superior to that of his detractors. Apparent +falsehoods did not anger him. Evident misunderstandings could not, +seemingly, disturb him.</p> + +<p>"What do you expect?" he once said to me, after I had made a very +careful study of his career for a current magazine, which, curiously, +was never published. I was trying to get him to admit that he believed +that his example might be fruitful of results agreeable to him in the +future. I could not conclude that he really agreed with me. "People do +not remember; they forget. They remember so long as you are directly +before them with something that interests them. That may be a lower +gas-rate, or a band that plays good music. People like strong people, +and only strong people, characters of that sort—good, bad or +indifferent—I've found that out. If a man or a corporation is stronger +than I am, comes along and denounces me, or spends more money than I do +(or can), buys more beers, makes larger promises, it is 'all day' for +me. What has happened in my case is that, for the present, anyhow, I +have come up against a strong corporation, stronger than I am. What I +now need to do is to go out somewhere and get some more strength in some +way, it doesn't matter much how. People are not so much interested in me +or you, or your or my ideals in their behalf, as they are in strength, +<a name="Page_287" id="Page_287" />an interesting spectacle. And they are easily deceived. These big +fighting corporations with their attorneys and politicians and +newspapers make me look weak—puny. So the people forget me. If I could +get out, raise one million or five hundred thousand dollars and give the +corporations a good drubbing, they would adore me—for awhile. Then I +would have to go out and get another five hundred thousand somewhere, or +do something else."</p> + +<p>"Quite so," I replied. "Yet <i>Vox populi, vox dei</i>."</p> + +<p>Sitting upon his own doorstep one evening, in a very modest quarter of +the city, I said:</p> + +<p>"Were you very much depressed by your defeat the last time?"</p> + +<p>"Not at all," he replied. "Action, reaction, that's the law. All these +things right themselves in time, I suppose, or, anyhow, they ought to. +Maybe they don't. Some man who can hand the people what they really need +or ought to have will triumph, I suppose, some time. I don't know, I'm +sure. I hope so. I think the world is moving on, all right."</p> + +<p>In his serene and youthful face, the pale blue, philosophical eyes, was +no evidence of dissatisfaction with the strange experiences through +which he had passed.</p> + +<p>"You're entirely philosophical, are you?"</p> + +<p>"As much as any one can be, I suppose. They seem to think that all my +work was an evidence of my worthlessness," he said. "Well, maybe it was. +Self-interest may be the true law, and the best force. I haven't quite +made up my mind yet. My sympathies of course are all the other way. 'He +ought to be sewing shoes in the penitentiary,' one paper once said of +me. Another advised me to try something that was not above my +intelligence, such as breaking rock or shoveling dirt. Most of them +agreed, however," he added with a humorous twitch of his large, +expressive mouth, "that I'll do very well if I will only stay where I +am, or, better yet, get out of here. They want me to leave. That's the +best solution for them."</p> + +<p>He seemed to repress a smile that was hovering on his lips.</p> + +<p>"The voice of the enemy," I commented.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir, the voice of the enemy," he added. "But don't think that I +think I'm done for. Not at all. I have just returned to my old ways in +order to think this thing out. In a year or <a name="Page_288" id="Page_288" />two I'll have solved my +problem, I hope. I may have to leave here, and I may not. Anyhow, I'll +turn up somewhere, with something."</p> + +<p>He did have to leave, however, public opinion never being allowed to +revert to him again, and five years later, in a fairly comfortable +managerial position in New York, he died. He had made a fight, well +enough, but the time, the place, the stars, perhaps, were not quite +right. He had no guiding genius, possibly, to pull him through. +Adherents did not flock to him and save him. Possibly he wasn't magnetic +enough—that pagan, non-moral, non-propagandistic quality, anyhow. The +fates did not fight for him as they do for some, those fates that ignore +the billions and billions of others who fail. Yet are not all lives more +or less failures, however successful they may appear to be at one time +or another, contrasted, let us say, with what they hoped for? We +compromise so much with everything—our dreams and all.</p> + +<p>As for his reforms, they may be coming fast enough, or they may not. <i>In +medias res.</i></p> + +<p>But as for him...?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="WLS" id="WLS" /><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289" /><i>W.L.S.</i></h2> + + +<p>Life's little ironies are not always manifest. We hear distant rumbling +sounds of its tragedies, but rarely are we permitted to witness the +reality. Therefore the real incidents which I am about to relate may +have some value.</p> + +<p>I first called upon W.L.S——, Jr., in the winter of 1895. I had known +of him before only by reputation, or, what is nearer the truth, by +seeing his name in one of the great Sunday papers attached to several +drawings of the most lively interest. These drawings depicted night +scenes of the city of New York, and appeared as colored supplements, +eleven by eighteen inches. They represented the spectacular scenes which +the citizen and the stranger most delight in—Madison Square in a +drizzle; the Bowery lighted by a thousand lamps and crowded with "L" and +surface cars; Sixth Avenue looking north from Fourteenth Street.</p> + +<p>I was a youthful editor at the time and on the lookout for interesting +illustrations of this sort, and when a little later I was in need of a +colored supplement for the Christmas number I decided to call upon +S——. I knew absolutely nothing about the world of art save what I had +gathered from books and current literary comment of all sorts, and was, +therefore, in a mood to behold something exceedingly bizarre in the +atmosphere with which I should find my illustrator surrounded.</p> + +<p>I was not disappointed. It was at the time when artists—I mean American +artists principally—went in very strongly for that sort of thing. Only +a few years before they had all been going to Paris, not so much to +paint as to find out and imitate how artists <i>do</i> and live. I was +greeted by a small, wiry, lean-looking individual arrayed in a bicycle +suit, whose countenance could be best described as wearing a perpetual +look of astonishment. He had one eye which fixed you with a strange, +unmoving solemnity, owing to the fact that it was glass. His skin was +anything but fair, and might be termed sallow. He wore a close, +sharp-pointed Vandyke beard, and his gold-bridge glasses sat at almost +right angles upon his nose. His forehead was high, his good eye alert, +his hair <a name="Page_290" id="Page_290" />sandy-colored and tousled, and his whole manner indicated +thought, feeling, remarkable nervous energy, and, above all, a rasping +and jovial sort of egotism which pleased me rather than otherwise.</p> + +<p>I noticed no more than this on my first visit, owing to the fact that I +was very much overawed and greatly concerned about the price which he +would charge me, not knowing what rate he might wish to exact, and being +desirous of coming away at least unabashed by his magnificence and +independence.</p> + +<p>"What's it for?" he asked, when I suggested a drawing.</p> + +<p>I informed him.</p> + +<p>"You say you want it for a double-page center?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll do it for three hundred dollars."</p> + +<p>I was taken considerably aback, as I had not contemplated paying more +than one hundred.</p> + +<p>"I get that from all the magazines," he added, seeing my hesitation, +"wherever a supplement is intended."</p> + +<p>"I don't think I could pay more than one hundred," I said, after a few +moments' consideration.</p> + +<p>"You couldn't?" he said, sharply, as if about to reprove me.</p> + +<p>I shook my head.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "let's see a copy of your publication."</p> + +<p>The chief value of this conversation was that it taught me that the +man's manner was no indication of his mood. I had thought he was +impatient and indifferent, but I saw now that he was not so, rather +brusque merely. He was simply excitable, somewhat like the French, and +meant only to be businesslike. The upshot of it all was that he agreed +to do it for one hundred and fifty, and asked me very solemnly to say +nothing about it.</p> + +<p>I may say here that I came upon S—— in the full blush of his fancies +and ambitions, and just when he was verging upon their realization. He +was not yet successful. A hundred and fifty dollars was a very fair +price indeed. His powers, however, had reached that stage where they +would soon command their full value.</p> + +<p>I could see at once that he was very ambitious. He was bubbling over +with the enthusiasm of youth and an intense <a name="Page_291" id="Page_291" />desire for recognition. He +knew he had talent. The knowledge of it gave him an air and an +independence of manner which might have been irritating to some. +Besides, he was slightly affected, argue to the contrary as he would, +and was altogether full of his own hopes and ambitions.</p> + +<p>The matter of painting this picture necessitated my presence on several +occasions, and during this time I got better acquainted with him. +Certain ideas and desires which we held in common drew us toward each +other, and I soon began to see that he was much above the average in +insight and skill. He talked with the greatest ease upon a score of +subjects—literature, art, politics, music, the drama, and history. He +seemed to have read the latest novels; to have seen many of the current +plays; to have talked with important people. Theodore Roosevelt, +previously Police Commissioner but then Governor, often came to his +studio to talk and play chess with him. A very able architect was his +friend. He had artist associates galore, many of whom had studios in the +same building or the immediate vicinity. And there were literary and +business men as well, all of whom seemed to enjoy his company, and who +were very fond of calling and spending an hour in his studio.</p> + +<p>I had only called the second time, and was going away, when he showed me +a steamship he had constructed with his own hands—a fair-sized model, +complete in every detail, even to the imitation stokers in the +boiler-room, and which would run by the hour if supplied with oil and +water. I soon learned that his skill in mechanical construction was +great. He was a member of several engineering societies, and devoted +some part of his carefully organized days to studying and keeping up +with problems in mechanics.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's nothing," he observed, when I marveled at the size and +perfection of the model. "I'll show you something else, if you have time +some day, which may amuse you."</p> + +<p>He then explained that he had constructed several model warships, and +that it was his pleasure to take them out and fight them on a pond +somewhere out on Long Island.</p> + +<p>"We'll go out some day," he said when I showed appropriate interest, +"and have them fight each other. You'll see how it's done!"</p> + +<p><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292" />I waited some time for this outing, and finally mentioned it.</p> + +<p>"We'll go tomorrow," he said. "Can you be around here by ten o'clock?"</p> + +<p>Ten the next morning saw me promptly at the studio, and five minutes +later we were off.</p> + +<p>When we arrived at Long Island City we went to the first convenient arm +of the sea and undid the precious fighters, in which he much delighted.</p> + +<p>After studying the contour of the little inlet for a few moments he took +some measurements with a tape-line, stuck up two twigs in two places for +guide posts, and proceeded to fire and get up steam in his war-ships. +Afterwards he set the rudders, and then took them to the water-side and +floated them at the points where he had placed the twigs.</p> + +<p>These few details accomplished, he again studied the situation +carefully, headed the vessels to the fraction of an inch toward a +certain point of the opposite shore, and began testing the steam.</p> + +<p>"When I say ready, you push this lever here," he said, indicating a +little brass handle fastened to the stern-post. "Don't let her move an +inch until you do that. You'll see some tall firing."</p> + +<p>He hastened to the other side where his own boat was anchored, and began +an excited examination. He was like a school-boy with a fine toy.</p> + +<p>At a word, I moved the lever as requested, and the two vessels began +steaming out toward one another. Their weight and speed were such that +the light wind blowing affected them not in the least, and their prows +struck with an audible crack. This threw them side by side, steaming +head on together. At the same time it operated to set in motion their +guns, which fired broadsides in such rapid succession as to give a +suggestion of rapid revolver practice. Quite a smoke rose, and when it +rolled away one of the vessels was already nearly under water and the +other was keeling with the inflow of water from the port side. S—lost +no time, but throwing off his coat, jumped in and swam to the rescue.</p> + +<p>Throughout this entire incident his manner was that of an enthusiastic +boy who had something exceedingly novel. He did not laugh. In all our +acquaintance I never once heard him <a name="Page_293" id="Page_293" />give a sound, hearty laugh. Instead +he cackled. His delight apparently could only express itself in that +way. In the main it showed itself in an excess of sharp movements, short +verbal expressions, gleams of the eye.</p> + +<p>I saw from this the man's delight in the science of engineering, and +humored him in it. He was thereafter at the greatest pains to show all +that he had under way in the mechanical line, and schemes he had for +enjoying himself in this work in the future. It seemed rather a +recreation for him than anything else. Like him, I could not help +delighting in the perfect toys which he created, but the intricate +details and slow process of manufacture were brain-racking. For not only +would he draw the engine in all its parts, but he would buy the raw +material and cast and drill and polish each separate part.</p> + +<p>Upon my second visit I was deeply impressed by the sight of a fine +passenger engine, a duplicate of the great 999 of the New York Central, +of those days. It stood on brass rails laid along an old library shelf +that had probably belonged to the previous occupant of the studio. This +engine was a splendid object to look upon, strong, heavy, +silent-running, with the fineness and grace of a perfect sewing-machine. +It was duly trimmed with brass and nickel, after the manner of the great +"flyers," and seemed so sturdy and powerful that one could not restrain +the desire to see it run.</p> + +<p>"How do you like that?" S—— exclaimed when he saw me looking at it.</p> + +<p>"It's splendid," I said.</p> + +<p>"See how she runs," he exclaimed, moving it up and down. "No noise about +that."</p> + +<p>He fairly caressed the mechanism with his hand, and went off into a most +careful analysis of its qualities.</p> + +<p>"I could build that engine," he exclaimed at last, enthusiastically, "if +I were down in the Baldwin Company's place. I could make her break the +record."</p> + +<p>"I haven't the slightest doubt in the world," I answered.</p> + +<p>This engine was a source of great expense to him, as well as the chief +point in a fine scheme. He had made brass rails for it—sufficient to +extend about the four sides of the studio—something like seventy feet. +He had made most hand<a name="Page_294" id="Page_294" />some passenger-cars with full equipment of brakes, +vestibules, Pintsch gas, and so on, and had painted on their sides "The +Great Pullman Line." One day, when we were quite friendly, he brought +from his home all the rails, in a carpet-bag, and gave an exhibition of +his engine's speed, attaching the cars and getting up sufficient steam +to cause the engine to race about the room at a rate which was actually +exciting. He had an arrangement by which it would pick up water and stop +automatically. It was on this occasion that he confided what he called +his great biograph scheme, the then forerunner of the latter day moving +pictures. It was all so new then, almost a rumor, like that of the +flying machine before it was invented.</p> + +<p>"I propose to let the people see the photographic representation of an +actual wreck—engine, cars, people, all tumbled down together after a +collision, and no imitation, either—the actual thing."</p> + +<p>"How do you propose to do it?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well, that's the thing," he said, banteringly. "Now, how do you suppose +I'd do it?"</p> + +<p>"Hire a railroad to have a wreck and kill a few people," I suggested.</p> + +<p>"Well, I've got a better thing than that. A railroad couldn't plan +anything more real than mine will be."</p> + +<p>I was intensely curious because of the novelty of the thing at that +time. The "Biograph" was in its infancy.</p> + +<p>"This is it," he exclaimed suddenly. "You see how realistic this engine +is, don't you?"</p> + +<p>I acknowledged that I did.</p> + +<p>"Well," he confided, "I'm building another just like it. It's costing me +three hundred dollars, and the passenger-cars will cost as much more. +Now, I'm going to fix up some scenery on my roof—a gorge, a line of +woods, a river, and a bridge. I'm going to make the water tumble over +big rocks just above the bridge and run underneath it. Then I'm going to +lay this track around these rocks, through the woods, across the bridge +and off into the woods again.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to put on the two trains and time them so they'll meet on the +bridge. Just when they come into view where they can see each other, a +post on the side of the track <a name="Page_295" id="Page_295" />will strike the cabs in such a way as to +throw the firemen out on the steps just as if they were going to jump. +When the engines take the bridge they'll explode caps that will set fire +to oil and powder under the cars and burn them up."</p> + +<p>"Then what?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well, I've got it planned automatically so that you will see people +jumping out of the cars and tumbling down on the rocks, the flames +springing up and taking to the cars, and all that. Don't you believe +it?" he added, as I smiled at the idea. "Look here," and he produced a +model of one of the occupants of the cars. He labored for an hour to +show all the intricate details, until I was compelled to admit the +practicability and novelty of the idea. Then he explained that +instantaneous photography, as it was then called, was to be applied at +such close range that the picture would appear life size. The actuality +of the occurrence would do the rest.</p> + +<p>Skepticism still lingered with me for a time, but when I saw the second +train growing, the figures and apparatus gradually being modeled, and +the correspondence and conferences going on between the artist and +several companies which wished to gain control of the result, I was +perfectly sure that his idea would some day be realized.</p> + +<p>As I have said, when I first met S—— he had not realized any of his +dreams. It was just at that moment that the tide was about to turn. He +surprised me by the assurance, born of his wonderful virility, with +which he went about all things.</p> + +<p>"I've got an order from the <i>Ladies' Home Journal</i>," he said to me one +day. "They came to me."</p> + +<p>"Good," I said. "What is it?"</p> + +<p>"Somebody's writing up the terminal facilities of New York."</p> + +<p>He had before him an Academy board, on which was sketched, in wash, a +midnight express striking out across the Jersey meadows with sparks +blazing from the smoke stacks and dim lights burning in the sleepers. It +was a vivid thing, strong with all the strength of an engine, and rich +in the go and enthusiasm which adhere to such mechanisms.</p> + +<p>"I want to make a good thing of this," he said. "It may do me some +good."</p> + +<p>A little later he received his first order from Harper's. He <a name="Page_296" id="Page_296" />could not +disguise that he was pleased, much as he tried to carry it off with an +air. It was just before the Spanish war broke out, and the sketches he +was to do related to the navy.</p> + +<p>He labored at this order with the most tireless enthusiasm. Marine +construction was his delight anyhow, and he spent hours and days making +studies about the great vessels, getting not only the atmosphere but the +mechanical detail. When he made the pictures they represented all that +he felt.</p> + +<p>"You know those drawings?" he said the day after he delivered them.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"I set a good stiff price on them and demanded my drawings back when +they were through."</p> + +<p>"Did you get them?"</p> + +<p>"Yep. It will give them more respect for what I'm trying to do," he +said.</p> + +<p>Not long after he illustrated one of Kipling's stories.</p> + +<p>He was in high feather at this, but grim and repressed withal. One could +see by the nervous movements of his wiry body that he was delighted over +it.</p> + +<p>At this time Kipling came to his studio. It was by special arrangement, +but S—— received him as if he were—well, as artists usually receive +authors. They talked over the galley proofs, and the author went away.</p> + +<p>"It's coming my way now," he said, when he could no longer conceal his +feelings. "I want to do something good on this."</p> + +<p>Through all this rise from obscurity to recognition he lived close to +his friends—a crowd of them, apparently, always in his studio jesting, +boxing, fencing—and interested himself in the mechanics I have +described. His drawing, his engine-building, his literary studies and +recreations were all mixed, jumbled, plunging him pell-mell, as it were, +on to distinction. In the first six months of his studio life he had +learned to fence, and often dropped his brush to put on the mask and +assume the foils with one of his companions.</p> + +<p>As our friendship increased I found how many were the man's +accomplishments and how wide his range of sympathies. He was an expert +bicyclist, as well as a trick rider, and <a name="Page_297" id="Page_297" />used a camera in a way to make +an amateur envious. He could sing, having a fine tenor voice, which I +heard the very day I learned that he could sing. It so happened that it +was my turn to buy the theater tickets, and I invited him to come with +me that especial evening.</p> + +<p>"Can't do it," he replied.</p> + +<p>"All right," I said.</p> + +<p>"I'm part of an entertainment tonight, or I would," he added +apologetically.</p> + +<p>"What do you do?" I inquired.</p> + +<p>"Sing."</p> + +<p>"Get out!" I said.</p> + +<p>"So be it," he answered. "Come up this evening."</p> + +<p>To this I finally agreed, and was surprised to observe the ease with +which he rendered his solo. He had an exquisitely clear and powerful +voice and received a long round of applause, which he refused to +acknowledge by singing again.</p> + +<p>The influence of success is easily observable in a man of so volatile a +nature. It seems to me that I could have told by his manner, day by day, +the inwash of the separate ripples of the inrolling tide of success. He +was all alive, full of plans, and the tale of his coming conquests was +told in his eye. Sometime in the second year of our acquaintance I +called at his studio in response to a card which he had stuck under my +office door. It was his habit to draw an outline head of himself, +something almost bordering upon a caricature, writing underneath it "I +called," together with any word he might have to say. This day he was in +his usual good spirits, and rallied me upon having an office which was +only a blind. He had a roundabout way of getting me to talk about his +personal affairs with him, and I soon saw that he had something very +interesting, to himself, to communicate. At last he said,—</p> + +<p>"I'm going to Europe next summer."</p> + +<p>"Is that so?" I replied. "For pleasure?"</p> + +<p>"Well, partly."</p> + +<p>"What's up outside of that?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to represent the American Architectural League at the +international convention."</p> + +<p>"I didn't know you were an architect," I said.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_298" id="Page_298" />Well, I'm not," he answered, "professionally. I've studied it pretty +thoroughly."</p> + +<p>"Well, you seem to be coming up, Louis," I remarked.</p> + +<p>"I'm doing all right," he answered.</p> + +<p>He went on working at his easel as if his fate depended upon what he was +doing. He had the fortunate quality of being able to work and converse +most entertainingly at the same time. He seemed to enjoy company under +such circumstances.</p> + +<p>"You didn't know I was a baron, did you?" he finally observed.</p> + +<p>"No," I answered, thinking he was exercising his fancy for the moment. +"Where do you keep your baronial lands, my lord?"</p> + +<p>"In Germany, kind sir," he replied, banteringly.</p> + +<p>Then in his customary excitable mood he dropped his brushes and stood +up.</p> + +<p>"You don't believe me, do you?" he exclaimed, looking over his drooping +glasses.</p> + +<p>"Why, certainly I believe you, if you are serious. Are you truly a +baron?"</p> + +<p>"It was this way," he said. "My grandfather was a baron. My father was +the younger of two brothers. His brother got the title and what was left +of the estate. That he managed to go through with, and then he died. +Now, no one has bothered about the title—"</p> + +<p>"And you're going back to claim it?"</p> + +<p>"Exactly."</p> + +<p>I took it all lightly at first, but in time I began to perceive that it +was a serious ambition. He truly wanted to be Baron S—— and add to +himself the luster of his ancestors.</p> + +<p>With all this, the man was really not so much an aristocrat in his mood +as a seeker after life and new experiences. Being a baron was merely a +new experience, or promised to be. He had the liveliest sympathies for +republican theories and institutions—only he considered his life a +thing apart. He had a fine mind, philosophically and logically poised. +He could reason upon all things, from the latest mathematical theorem to +Christian Science. Naturally, being so much of an individualist, he was +not drifting toward any belief in the latter, but <a name="Page_299" id="Page_299" />was never weary of +discussing the power of mind—a universal mind even—its wondrous +ramifications and influences. Also he was a student of the English +school of philosophy, and loved to get up mathematical and mechanical +demonstrations of certain philosophic truths. Thus he worked out by +means of a polygon, whose sides were of unequal lengths, a theory of +friendship which is too intricate to explain here.</p> + +<p>From now on I watched his career with the liveliest interest. He was a +charming and a warm friend, and never neglected for a moment the +obligations which such a relationship demands.</p> + +<p>I heard from him frequently in many and various ways, dined with him +regularly every second or third week, and rejoiced with him in his +triumphs, now more and more frequent. One spring he went to Europe and +spent the summer in tracing down his baronial claims, looking up various +artists and scientists and attending several scientific meetings here +and there at the same time. He did the illustrations for one of +Kipling's fast express stories which one of the magazines published, and +came back flushed and ready to try hard for a membership in the American +Water-Color Society.</p> + +<p>I shall never forget his anxiety to get into that mildly interesting +body. He worked hard and long on several pictures which should not only +be hung on the line but enlist sufficient interest among the artists to +gain him a vote of admission. He mentioned it frequently and fixed me +with his eyes to see what I thought of him.</p> + +<p>"Go ahead," I said; "you have more right to membership perhaps than many +another I know. Try hard."</p> + +<p>He painted not one, but four, pictures, and sent them all. They were +very interesting after their kind. Two were scenes from the great +railroad terminal yards; the others, landscapes in mist or rain. Three +of these pictures were passed and two of them hung on the line. The +third was <i>skyed</i>, but he was admitted to membership.</p> + +<p>I was delighted for his sake, for I could see, when he gave me the +intelligence, that it was a matter which had keyed up his whole nervous +system.</p> + +<p>Not long after this we were walking on Broadway, one drizzly autumn +evening, on our way to the theater. Life, <a name="Page_300" id="Page_300" />ambition, and our future were +the <i>small</i> subjects under discussion. The street, as usual, was +crowded. On every hand blazed the fire signs. The yellow lights were +beautifully reflected in the wet sidewalks and gray wet cobblestones +glistening with water.</p> + +<p>When we reached Greeley Square (at that time a brilliant and almost +sputtering spectacle of light and merriment), S—— took me by the arm.</p> + +<p>"Come over here," he said. "I want you to look at it from here."</p> + +<p>He took me to a point where, by the intersection of the lines of the +converging streets, one could not only see Greeley Square but a large +part of Herald Square, with its then huge theatrical sign of fire and +its measure of store lights and lamps of vehicles. It was a +kaleidoscopic and inspiring scene. The broad, converging walks were +alive with people. A perfect jam of vehicles marked the spot where the +horse and cable cars intersected. Overhead was the elevated station, its +lights augmented every few minutes by long trains of brightly lighted +cars filled with changing metropolitan crowds—crowds like shadows +moving in a dream.</p> + +<p>"Do you see the quality of that? Look at the blend of the lights and +shadows in there under the L."</p> + +<p>I looked and gazed in silent admiration.</p> + +<p>"See, right here before us—that pool of water there—do you get that? +Now, that isn't silver-colored, as it's usually represented. It's a +prism. Don't you see the hundred points of light?"</p> + +<p>I acknowledged the variety of color, which I had scarcely observed +before.</p> + +<p>"You may think one would skip that in viewing a great scene, but the +artist mustn't. He must get all, whether you notice it or not. It gives +feeling, even when you don't see it."</p> + +<p>I acknowledged the value of this ideal.</p> + +<p>"It's a great spectacle," he said. "It's got more flesh and blood in it +than people usually think. It's easy to make it too mechanical and +commonplace."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you paint it?" I asked.</p> + +<p>He turned on me as if he had been waiting for the suggestion.</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_301" id="Page_301" />That's something I want to tell you," he said. "I am. I've sketched it +a half-dozen times already. I haven't got it yet. But I'm going to."</p> + +<p>I heard more of these dreams, intensifying all the while, until the +Spanish-American war broke out. Then he was off in a great rush of war +work. I scarcely saw him for six weeks, owing to some travels of my own, +but I saw his name. One day in Broadway I stopped to see why a large +crowd was gathered about a window in the Hoffman House. It was one of +S——'s drawings of our harbor defenses, done as if the artist had been +sitting at the bottom of the sea. The fishes, the green water, the hull +of a massive war-ship—all were there—and about, the grim torpedoes. +This put it into my head to go and see him. He was as tense and +strenuous as ever. The glittering treasure at the end of the rainbow was +more than ever in his eye. His body was almost sore from traveling.</p> + +<p>"I am in now," he said, referring to the war movement. "I am going to +Tampa."</p> + +<p>"Be gone long?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Not this first time. I'll only be down there three weeks."</p> + +<p>"I'll see you then."</p> + +<p>"Supposing we make it certain," he said. "What do you say to dining +together this coming Sunday three weeks?"</p> + +<p>I went away, wishing him a fine trip and feeling that his dreams must +now soon begin to come true. He was growing in reputation. Some war +pictures, such as he could do, would set people talking. Then he would +paint his prize pictures, finish his wreck scheme, become a baron, and +be a great man.</p> + +<p>Three weeks later I knocked at his studio door. It was a fine springlike +day, though it was in February. I expected confidently to hear his quick +aggressive step inside. Not a sound in reply. I knocked harder, but +still received no answer. Then I went to the other doors about. He might +be with his friends, but they were not in. I went away thinking that his +war duties had interfered, that he had not returned.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless there was something depressing about that portion of the +building in which his studio was located. I felt as if it should not be, +and decided to call again. Monday it was the same, and Tuesday.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302" />That same evening I was sitting in the library of the Salmagundi Club, +when a well-known artist addressed me.</p> + +<p>"You knew S——, didn't you?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Yes; what of it?"</p> + +<p>"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"What!" I said.</p> + +<p>"Yes, he died of fever, this morning."</p> + +<p>I looked at him without speaking for a moment.</p> + +<p>"Too bad," he said. "A clever boy, Louis. Awfully clever. I feel sorry +for his father."</p> + +<p>It did not take long to verify his statement. His name was in the +perfunctory death lists of the papers the next morning. No other notice +of any sort. Only a half-dozen seemed to know that he had ever lived.</p> + +<p>And yet it seemed <i>to me</i> that a great tragedy had happened—he was so +ambitious, so full of plans. His dreams were so near fulfillment.</p> + +<p>I saw the little grave afterward and the empty studio. His desks +revealed several inventions and many plans of useful things, but these +came to nothing. There was no one to continue the work.</p> + +<p>My feeling at the time was as if I had been looking at a beautiful lamp, +lighted, warm and irradiating a charming scene, and then suddenly that +it had been puffed out before my eyes, as if a hundred bubbles of +iridescent hues had been shattered by a breath. We toil so much, we +dream so richly, we hasten so fast, and, lo! the green door is opened. +We are through it, and its grassy surface has sealed us forever from all +which apparently we so much crave—even as, breathlessly, we are still +running.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p>[<i>Transcriber's Note: Typos have been corrected in this document, but +spelling and punctuation inconsistencies have been retained.</i>]</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Twelve Men, by Theodore Dreiser + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWELVE MEN *** + +***** This file should be named 14717-h.htm or 14717-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/7/1/14717/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Twelve Men + +Author: Theodore Dreiser + +Release Date: January 17, 2005 [EBook #14717] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWELVE MEN *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + +TWELVE MEN + +BY + +Theodore Dreiser + +1919 + + + + +Contents + + I _Peter_ + II _A Doer of the Word_ + III _My Brother Paul_ + IV _The Country Doctor_ + V _Culhane, the Solid Man_ + VI _A True Patriarch_ + VII _De Maupassant, Jr._ +VIII _The Village Feudists_ + IX _Vanity, Vanity_ + X _The Mighty Rourke_ + XI _A Mayor and His People_ + XII _W.L.S._ + + + + +_Peter_ + + +In any group of men I have ever known, speaking from the point of view +of character and not that of physical appearance, Peter would stand out +as deliciously and irrefutably different. In the great waste of American +intellectual dreariness he was an oasis, a veritable spring in the +desert. He understood life. He knew men. He was free--spiritually, +morally, in a thousand ways, it seemed to me. + +As one drags along through this inexplicable existence one realizes how +such qualities stand out; not the pseudo freedom of strong men, +financially or physically, but the real, internal, spiritual freedom, +where the mind, as it were, stands up and looks at itself, faces Nature +unafraid, is aware of its own weaknesses, its strengths; examines its +own and the creative impulses of the universe and of men with a kindly +and non-dogmatic eye, in fact kicks dogma out of doors, and yet +deliberately and of choice holds fast to many, many simple and human +things, and rounds out life, or would, in a natural, normal, courageous, +healthy way. + +The first time I ever saw Peter was in St. Louis in 1892; I had come +down from Chicago to work on the St. Louis _Globe-Democrat_, and he was +a part of the art department force of that paper. At that time--and he +never seemed to change later even so much as a hair's worth until he +died in 1908--he was short, stocky and yet quick and even jerky in his +manner, with a bushy, tramp-like "get-up" of hair and beard, most +swiftly and astonishingly disposed of at times only to be regrown at +others, and always, and intentionally, I am sure, most amusing to +contemplate. In addition to all this he had an air of well-being, force +and alertness which belied the other surface characteristics as anything +more than a genial pose or bit of idle gayety. + +Plainly he took himself seriously and yet lightly, usually with an air +of suppressed gayety, as though saying, "This whole business of living +is a great joke." He always wore good and yet exceedingly mussy clothes, +at times bespattered with ink or, worse yet, even soup--an amazing +grotesquery that was the dismay of all who knew him, friends and +relatives especially. In addition he was nearly always liberally +besprinkled with tobacco dust, the source of which he used in all forms: +in pipe, cigar and plug, even cigarettes when he could obtain nothing +more substantial. One of the things about him which most impressed me at +that time and later was this love of the ridiculous or the grotesque, in +himself or others, which would not let him take anything in a dull or +conventional mood, would not even permit him to appear normal at times +but urged him on to all sorts of nonsense, in an effort, I suppose, to +entertain himself and make life seem less commonplace. + +And yet he loved life, in all its multiform and multiplex aspects and +with no desire or tendency to sniff, reform or improve anything. It was +good just as he found it, excellent. Life to Peter was indeed so +splendid that he was always very much wrought up about it, eager to +live, to study, to do a thousand things. For him it was a workshop for +the artist, the thinker, as well as the mere grubber, and without really +criticizing any one he was "for" the individual who is able to +understand, to portray or to create life, either feelingly and +artistically or with accuracy and discrimination. To him, as I saw then +and see even more clearly now, there was no high and no low. All things +were only relatively so. A thief was a thief, but he had his place. +Ditto the murderer. Ditto the saint. Not man but Nature was planning, or +at least doing, something which man could not understand, of which very +likely he was a mere tool. Peter was as much thrilled and entendered by +the brawling strumpet in the street or the bagnio as by the virgin with +her starry crown. The rich were rich and the poor poor, but all were in +the grip of imperial forces whose ruthless purposes or lack of them made +all men ridiculous, pathetic or magnificent, as you choose. He pitied +ignorance and necessity, and despised vanity and cruelty for cruelty's +sake, and the miserly hoarding of anything. He was liberal, material, +sensual and yet spiritual; and although he never had more than a little +money, out of the richness and fullness of his own temperament he seemed +able to generate a kind of atmosphere and texture in his daily life +which was rich and warm, splendid really in thought (the true reality) +if not in fact, and most grateful to all. Yet also, as I have said, +always he wished to _seem_ the clown, the scapegrace, the wanton and +the loon even, mouthing idle impossibilities at times and declaring his +profoundest faith in the most fantastic things. + +Do I seem to rave? I am dealing with a most significant person. + +In so far as I knew he was born into a mid-Western family of Irish +extraction whose habitat was southwest Missouri. In the town in which he +was reared there was not even a railroad until he was fairly well +grown--a fact which amused but never impressed him very much. Apropos of +this he once told me of a yokel who, never having seen a railroad, +entered the station with his wife and children long before train time, +bought his ticket and waited a while, looking out of the various +windows, then finally returned to the ticket-seller and asked, "When +does this thing start?" He meant the station building itself. At the +time Peter had entered upon art work he had scarcely prosecuted his +studies beyond, if so far as, the conventional high or grammar school, +and yet he was most amazingly informed and but little interested in what +any school or college had to offer. His father, curiously enough, was an +educated Irish-American, a lawyer by profession, and a Catholic. His +mother was an American Catholic, rather strict and narrow. His brothers +and sisters, of whom there were four, were, as I learned later, +astonishingly virile and interesting Americans of a rather wild, +unsettled type. They were all, in so far as I could judge from chance +meetings, agnostic, tense, quick-moving--so vital that they weighed on +one a little, as very intense temperaments are apt to do. One of the +brothers, K----, who seemed to seek me out ever so often for Peter's +sake, was so intense, nervous, rapid-talking, rapid-living, that he +frightened me a little. He loved noisy, garish places. He liked to play +the piano, stay up very late; he was a high liver, a "good dresser," as +the denizens of the Tenderloin would say, an excellent example of the +flashy, clever promoter. He was always representing a new company, +introducing something--a table or laxative water, a shaving soap, a +chewing gum, a safety razor, a bicycle, an automobile tire or the +machine itself. He was here, there, everywhere--in Waukesha, Wisconsin; +San Francisco; New York; New Orleans. "My, my! This is certainly +interesting!" he would exclaim, with an air which would have done credit +to a comedian and extending both hands. "Peter's pet friend, Dreiser! +Well, well, well! Let's have a drink. Let's have something to eat. I'm +only in town for a day. Maybe you'd like to go to a show--or hit the +high places? Would you? Well, well, well! Let's make a night of it! What +do you say?" and he would fix me with a glistening, nervous and what was +intended no doubt to be a reassuring eye, but which unsettled me as +thoroughly as the imminence of an earthquake. But I was talking of +Peter. + +The day I first saw him he was bent over a drawing-board illustrating a +snake story for one of the Sunday issues of the _Globe-Democrat_, which +apparently delighted in regaling its readers with most astounding +concoctions of this kind, and the snake he was drawing was most +disturbingly vital and reptilian, beady-eyed, with distended jaws, +extended tongue, most fatefully coiled. + +"My," I commented in passing, for I was in to see him about another +matter, "what a glorious snake!" + +"Yes, you can't make 'em too snaky for the snake-editor up front," he +returned, rising and dusting tobacco from his lap and shirtfront, for he +was in his shirt-sleeves. Then he expectorated not in but to one side of +a handsome polished brass cuspidor which contained not the least +evidence of use, the rubber mat upon which it stood being instead most +disturbingly "decorated." I was most impressed by this latter fact +although at the time I said nothing, being too new. Later, I may as well +say here, I discovered why. This was a bit of his clowning humor, a +purely manufactured and as it were mechanical joke or ebullience of +soul. If any one inadvertently or through unfamiliarity attempted to +expectorate in his "golden cuspidor," as he described it, he was always +quick to rise and interpose in the most solemn, almost sepulchral +manner, at the same time raising a hand. "Hold! Out--not in--to one +side, on the mat! That cost me seven dollars!" Then he would solemnly +seat himself and begin to draw again. I saw him do this to all but the +chiefest of the authorities of the paper. And all, even the dullest, +seemed to be amused, quite fascinated by the utter trumpery folly of it. + +But I am getting ahead of my tale. In so far as the snake was +concerned, he was referring to the assistant who had these snake stories +in charge. "The fatter and more venomous and more scaly they are," he +went on, "the better. I'd like it if we could use a little color in this +paper--red for eyes and tongue, and blue and green for scales. The +farmers upstate would love that. They like good but poisonous snakes." +Then he grinned, stood back and, cocking his head to one side in a most +examining and yet approving manner, ran his hand through his hair and +beard and added, "A snake can't be too vital, you know, for this paper. +We have to draw 'em strong, plenty of vitality, plenty of go." He +grinned most engagingly. + +I could not help laughing, of course. The impertinent air! The grand, +almost condescending manner! + +We soon became fast friends. + +In the same office in close contact with him was another person, one +D---- W----, also a newspaper artist, who, while being exceedingly +interesting and special in himself, still as a character never seems to +have served any greater purpose in my own mind than to have illustrated +how emphatic and important Peter was. He had a thin, pale, Dantesque +face, coal black, almost Indian-like hair most carefully parted in the +middle and oiled and slicked down at the sides and back until it looked +as though it had been glued. His eyes were small and black and querulous +but not mean--petted eyes they were--and the mouth had little lines at +each corner which seemed to say he had endured much, much pain, which of +course he had not, but which nevertheless seemed to ask for, and I +suppose earned him some, sympathy. Dick in his way was an actor, a +tragedian of sorts, but with an element of humor, cynicism and insight +which saved him from being utterly ridiculous. Like most actors, he was +a great poseur. He invariably affected the long, loose flowing tie with +a soft white or blue or green or brown linen shirt (would any American +imitation of the "Quartier Latin" denizen have been without one at that +date?), yellow or black gloves, a round, soft crush hat, very soft and +limp and very _different_, patent leather pumps, betimes a capecoat, a +slender cane, a boutonniere--all this in hard, smoky, noisy, commercial +St. Louis, full of middle-West business men and farmers! + +I would not mention this particular person save that for a time he, +Peter and myself were most intimately associated. We temporarily +constituted in our way a "soldiers three" of the newspaper world. For +some years after we were more or less definitely in touch as a group, +although later Peter and myself having drifted Eastward and hob-nobbing +as a pair had been finding more and more in common and had more and more +come to view Dick for what he was: a character of Dickensian, or perhaps +still better, Cruikshankian, proportions and qualities. But in those +days the three of us were all but inseparable; eating, working, playing, +all but sleeping together. I had a studio of sorts in a more or less +dilapidated factory section of St. Louis (Tenth near Market; now I +suppose briskly commercial), Dick had one at Broadway and Locust, +directly opposite the then famous Southern Hotel. Peter lived with his +family on the South Side, a most respectable and homey-home +neighborhood. + +It has been one of my commonest experiences, and one of the most +interesting to me, to note that nearly all of my keenest experiences +intellectually, my most gorgeous _rapprochements_ and swiftest +developments mentally, have been by, to, and through men, not women, +although there have been several exceptions to this. Nearly every +turning point in my career has been signalized by my meeting some man of +great force, to whom I owe some of the most ecstatic intellectual hours +of my life, hours in which life seemed to bloom forth into new aspects, +glowed as with the radiance of a gorgeous tropic day. + +Peter was one such. About my own age at this time, he was blessed with a +natural understanding which was simply Godlike. Although, like myself, +he was raised a Catholic and still pretending in a boisterous, +Rabelaisian way to have some reverence for that faith, he was amusingly +sympathetic to everything good, bad, indifferent--"in case there might +be something in it; you never can tell." Still he hadn't the least +interest in conforming to the tenets of the church and laughed at its +pretensions, preferring his own theories to any other. Apparently +nothing amused him so much as the thought of confession and communion, +of being shrived by some stout, healthy priest as worldly as himself, +and preferably Irish, like himself. At the same time he had a hearty +admiration for the Germans, all their ways, conservatisms, their +breweries, food and such things, and finally wound up by marrying a +German girl. + +As far as I could make out, Peter had no faith in anything except Nature +itself, and very little in that except in those aspects of beauty and +accident and reward and terrors with which it is filled and for which he +had an awe if not a reverence and in every manifestation of which he +took the greatest delight. Life was a delicious, brilliant mystery to +him, horrible in some respects, beautiful in others; a great adventure. +Unlike myself at the time, he had not the slightest trace of any +lingering Puritanism, and wished to live in a lush, vigorous, healthy, +free, at times almost barbaric, way. The negroes, the ancient Romans, +the Egyptians, tales of the Orient and the grotesque Dark Ages, our own +vile slums and evil quarters--how he reveled in these! He was for nights +of wandering, endless investigation, reading, singing, dancing, playing! + +Apropos of this I should like to relate here that one of his seemingly +gross but really innocent diversions was occasionally visiting a certain +black house of prostitution, of which there were many in St. Louis. Here +while he played a flute and some one else a tambourine or small drum, he +would have two or three of the inmates dance in some weird savage way +that took one instanter to the wilds of Central Africa. There was, so +far as I know, no payment of any kind made in connection with this. He +was a friend, in some crude, artistic or barbaric way. He satisfied, I +am positive, some love of color, sound and the dance in these queer +revels. + +Nor do I know how he achieved these friendships, such as they were. I +was never with him when he did. But aside from the satiation they +afforded his taste for the strange and picturesque, I am sure they +reflected no gross or sensual appetite. But I wish to attest in passing +that the mere witnessing of these free scenes had a tonic as well as +toxic effect on me. As I view myself now, I was a poor, spindling, +prying fish, anxious to know life, and yet because of my very narrow +training very fearsome of it, of what it might do to me, what dreadful +contagion of thought or deed it might open me to! Peter was not so. To +him all, positively _all_, life was good. It was a fascinating +spectacle, to be studied or observed and rejoiced in as a spectacle. +When I look back now on the shabby, poorly-lighted, low-ceiled room to +which he led me "for fun," the absolutely black or brown girls with +their white teeth and shiny eyes, the unexplainable, unintelligible love +of rhythm and the dance displayed, the beating of a drum, the sinuous, +winding motions of the body, I am grateful to him. He released my mind, +broadened my view, lengthened my perspective. For as I sat with him, +watching him beat his drum or play his flute, noted the gayety, his love +of color and effect, and feeling myself _low_, a criminal, disgraced, +the while I was staring with all my sight and enjoying it intensely, I +realized that I was dealing with a man who was "bigger" than I was in +many respects, saner, really more wholesome. I was a moral coward, and +he was not losing his life and desires through fear--which the majority +of us do. He was strong, vital, unafraid, and he made me so. + +But, lest I seem to make him low or impossible to those who +instinctively cannot accept life beyond the range of their own little +routine world, let me hasten to his other aspects. He was not low but +simple, brilliant and varied in his tastes. America and its point of +view, religious and otherwise, was simply amusing to him, not to be +taken seriously. He loved to contemplate man at his mysteries, rituals, +secret schools. He loved better yet ancient history, medieval inanities +and atrocities--a most singular, curious and wonderful mind. Already at +this age he knew many historians and scientists (their work), a most +astonishing and illuminating list to me--Maspero, Froude, Huxley, +Darwin, Wallace, Rawlinson, Froissart, Hallam, Taine, Avebury! The list +of painters, sculptors and architects with whose work he was familiar +and books about whom or illustrated by whom he knew, is too long to be +given here. His chief interest, in so far as I could make out, in these +opening days, was Egyptology and the study of things natural and +primeval--all the wonders of a natural, groping, savage world. + +"Dreiser," he exclaimed once with gusto, his bright beady eyes gleaming +with an immense human warmth, "you haven't the slightest idea of the +fascination of some of the old beliefs. Do you know the significance of +a scarab in Egyptian religious worship, for instance?" + +"A scarab? What's a scarab? I never heard of one," I answered. + +"A beetle, of course. An Egyptian beetle. You know what a beetle is, +don't you? Well, those things burrowed in the earth, the mud of the +Nile, at a certain period of their season to lay their eggs, and the +next spring, or whenever it was, the eggs would hatch and the beetles +would come up. Then the Egyptians imagined that the beetle hadn't died +at all, or if it had that it also had the power of restoring itself to +life, possessed immortality. So they thought it must be a god and began +to worship it," and he would pause and survey me with those amazing +eyes, bright as glass beads, to see if I were properly impressed. + +"You don't say!" + +"Sure. That's where the worship came from," and then he might go on and +add a bit about monkey-worship, the Zoroastrians and the Parsees, the +sacred bull of Egypt, its sex power as a reason for its religious +elevation, and of sex worship in general; the fantastic orgies at Sidon +and Tyre, where enormous images of the male and female sex organs were +carried aloft before the multitude. + +Being totally ignorant of these matters at the time, not a rumor of them +having reached me as yet in my meagre reading, I knew that it must be +so. It fired me with a keen desire to read--not the old orthodox +emasculated histories of the schools but those other books and pamphlets +to which I fancied he must have access. Eagerly I inquired of him where, +how. He told me that in some cases they were outlawed, banned or not +translated wholly or fully, owing to the puritanism and religiosity of +the day, but he gave me titles and authors to whom I might have access, +and the address of an old book-dealer or two who could get them for me. + +In addition he was interested in ethnology and geology, as well as +astronomy (the outstanding phases at least), and many, many phases of +applied art: pottery, rugs, pictures, engraving, wood-carving, +jewel-cutting and designing, and I know not what else, yet there was +always room even in his most serious studies for humor of the bizarre +and eccentric type, amounting to all but an obsession. He wanted to +laugh, and he found occasion for doing so under the most serious, or at +least semi-serious, circumstances. Thus I recall that one of the butts +of his extreme humor was this same Dick, whom he studied with the +greatest care for points worthy his humorous appreciation. Dick, in +addition to his genuinely lively mental interests, was a most romantic +person on one side, a most puling and complaining soul on the other. As +a newspaper artist I believe he was only a fairly respectable craftsman, +if so much, whereas Peter was much better, although he deferred to Dick +in the most persuasive manner and seemed to believe at times, though I +knew he did not, that Dick represented all there was to know in matters +artistic. + +Among other things at this time, the latter was, or pretended to be, +immensely interested in all things pertaining to the Chinese and to know +not only something of their language, which he had studied a little +somewhere, but also their history--a vague matter, as we all know--and +the spirit and significance of their art and customs. He sometimes +condescended to take us about with him to one or two Chinese restaurants +of the most beggarly description, and--as he wished to believe, because +of the romantic titillation involved--the hang-outs of crooks and +thieves and disreputable Tenderloin characters generally. (Of such was +the beginning of the Chinese restaurant in America.) He would introduce +us to a few of his Celestial friends, whose acquaintance apparently he +had been most assiduously cultivating for some time past and with whom +he was now on the best of terms. He had, as Peter pointed out to me, the +happy knack of persuading himself that there was something vastly +mysterious and superior about the whole Chinese race, that there was +some Chinese organization known as the Six Companions, which, so far as +I could make out from him, was ruling very nearly (and secretly, of +course) the entire habitable globe. For one thing it had some governing +connection with great constructive ventures of one kind and another in +all parts of the world, supplying, as he said, thousands of Chinese +laborers to any one who desired them, anywhere, and although they were +employed by others, ruling them with a rod of iron, cutting their +throats when they failed to perform their bounden duties and burying +them head down in a basket of rice, then transferring their remains +quietly to China in coffins made in China and brought for that purpose +to the country in which they were. The Chinese who had worked for the +builders of the Union Pacific had been supplied by this company, as I +understood from Dick. In regard to all this Peter used to analyze and +dispose of Dick's self-generated romance with the greatest gusto, +laughing the while and yet pretending to accept it all. + +But there was one phase of all this which interested Peter immensely. +Were there on sale in St. Louis any bits of jade, silks, needlework, +porcelains, basketry or figurines of true Chinese origin? He was far +more interested in this than in the social and economic sides of the +lives of the Chinese, and was constantly urging Dick to take him here, +there and everywhere in order that he might see for himself what of +these amazing wonders were locally extant, leading Dick in the process a +merry chase and a dog's life. Dick was compelled to persuade nearly all +of his boasted friends to produce all they had to show. Once, I recall, +a collection of rare Chinese porcelains being shown at the local museum +of art, there was nothing for it but that Dick must get one or more of +his Oriental friends to interpret this, that and the other symbol in +connection with this, that and the other vase--things which put him to +no end of trouble and which led to nothing, for among all the local +Chinese there was not one who knew anything about it, although they, +Dick included, were not honest enough to admit it. + +"You know, Dreiser," Peter said to me one day with the most delicious +gleam of semi-malicious, semi-tender humor, "I am really doing all this +just to torture Dick. He doesn't know a damned thing about it and +neither do these Chinese, but it's fun to haul 'em out there and make +'em sweat. The museum sells an illustrated monograph covering all this, +you know, with pictures of the genuinely historic pieces and +explanations of the various symbols in so far as they are known, but +Dick doesn't know that, and he's lying awake nights trying to find out +what they're all about. I like to see his expression and that of those +chinks when they examine those things." He subsided with a low chuckle +all the more disturbing because it was so obviously the product of +well-grounded knowledge. + +Another phase of this same humor related to the grand artistic, social +and other forms of life to which Dick was hoping to ascend via marriage +and which led him, because of a kind of anticipatory eagerness, into all +sorts of exaggerations of dress, manners, speech, style in writing or +drawing, and I know not what else. He had, as I have said, a "studio" in +Broadway, an ordinary large, square upper chamber of an old residence +turned commercial but which Dick had decorated in the most, to him, +recherche or _different_ manner possible. In Dick's gilding imagination +it was packed with the rarest and most carefully selected things, odd +bits of furniture, objects of art, pictures, books--things which the +ordinary antique shop provides in plenty but which to Dick, having been +reared in Bloomington, Illinois, were of the utmost artistic import. He +had vaulting ambitions and pretensions, literary and otherwise, having +by now composed various rondeaus, triolets, quatrains, sonnets, in +addition to a number of short stories over which he had literally slaved +and which, being rejected by many editors, were kept lying idly and +inconsequentially and seemingly inconspicuously about his place--the +more to astonish the poor unsophisticated "outsider." Besides it gave +him the opportunity of posing as misunderstood, neglected, depressed, as +becomes all great artists, poets, and thinkers. + +His great scheme or dream, however, was that of marriage to an heiress, +one of those very material and bovine daughters of the new rich in the +West end, and to this end he was bending all his artistic thought, +writing, dressing, dreaming the thing he wished. I myself had a marked +tendency in this direction, although from another point of view, and +speaking from mine purely, there was this difference between us: Dick +being an artist, rather remote and disdainful in manner and decidedly +handsome as well as poetic and better positioned than I, as I fancied, +was certain to achieve this gilded and crystal state, whereas I, not +being handsome nor an artist nor sufficiently poetic perhaps, could +scarcely aspire to so gorgeous a goal. Often, as around dinnertime he +ambled from the office arrayed in the latest mode--dark blue suit, +patent leather boots, a dark, round soft felt hat, loose tie blowing +idly about his neck, a thin cane in his hand--I was already almost +convinced that the anticipated end was at hand, this very evening +perhaps, and that I should never see him more except as the husband of a +very rich girl, never be permitted even to speak to him save as an +almost forgotten friend, and in passing! Even now perhaps he was on his +way to her, whereas I, poor oaf that I was, was moiling here over some +trucky work. Would my ship never come in? my great day never arrive? my +turn? Unkind heaven! + +As for Peter he was the sort of person who could swiftly detect, +understand and even sympathize with a point of view of this kind the +while he must laugh at it and his mind be busy with some plan of making +a fol-de-rol use of it. One day he came into the city-room where I was +working and bending over my desk fairly bursting with suppressed humor +announced, "Gee, Dreiser, I've just thought of a delicious trick to play +on Dick! Oh, Lord!" and he stopped and surveyed me with beady eyes the +while his round little body seemed to fairly swell with pent-up +laughter. "It's too rich! Oh, if it just works out Dick'll be sore! +Wait'll I tell you," he went on. "You know how crazy he is about rich +young heiresses? You know how he's always 'dressing up' and talking and +writing about marrying one of those girls in the West end?" (Dick was +forever composing a short story in which some lorn but perfect and great +artist was thus being received via love, the story being read to us +nights in his studio.) "That's all bluff, that talk of his of visiting +in those big houses out there. All he does is to dress up every night as +though he were going to a ball, and walk out that way and moon around. +Well, listen. Here's the idea. We'll go over to Mermod & Jaccards +to-morrow and get a few sheets of their best monogrammed paper, sample +sheets. Then we'll get up a letter and sign it with the most romantic +name we can think of--Juanita or Cyrene or Doris--and explain who she +is, the daughter of a millionaire living out there, and that she's been +strictly brought up but that in spite of all that she's seen his name in +the paper at the bottom of his pictures and wants to meet him, see? Then +we'll have her suggest that he come out to the west gate of, say, +Portland Place at seven o'clock and meet her. We'll have her describe +herself, see, young and beautiful, and some attractive costume she's to +wear, and we'll kill him. He'll fall hard. Then we'll happen by there at +the exact time when he's waiting, and detain him, urge him to come into +the park with us or to dinner. We'll look our worst so he'll be ashamed +of us. He'll squirm and get wild, but we'll hang on and spoil the date +for him, see? We'll insist in the letter that he must be alone, see, +because she's timid and afraid of being recognized. My God, he'll be +crazy! He'll think we've ruined his life--oh, ho, ho!" and he fairly +writhed with inward joy. + +The thing worked. It was cruel in its way, but when has man ever grieved +over the humorous ills of others? The paper was secured, the letter +written by a friend of Peter's in a nearby real estate office, after the +most careful deliberation as to wording on our part. Extreme youth, +beauty and a great mansion were all hinted at. The fascination of Dick +as a romantic figure was touched upon. He would know her by a green silk +scarf about her waist, for it was spring, the ideal season. Seven +o'clock was the hour. She could give him only a moment or two then--but +later--and she gave no address! + +The letter was mailed in the West end, as was meet and proper, and in +due season arrived at the office. Peter, working at the next easel, +observed him, as he told me, out of the corner of his eye. + +"You should have seen him, Dreiser," he exclaimed, hunting me up about +an hour after the letter arrived. "Oh, ho! Say, you know I believe he +thinks it's the real thing. It seemed to make him a little sick. He +tried to appear nonchalant, but a little later he got his hat and went +out, over to Deck's," a nearby saloon, "for a drink, for I followed him. +He's all fussed up. Wait'll we heave into view that night! I'm going to +get myself up like a joke, a hobo. I'll disgrace him. Oh, Lord, he'll be +crazy! He'll think we've ruined his life, scared her off. There's no +address. He can't do a thing. Oh, ho, ho, ho!" + +On the appointed day--and it was a delicious afternoon and evening, +aflame with sun and in May--Dick left off his work at three p.m., as +Peter came and told me, and departed, and then we went to make our +toilets. At six we met, took a car and stepped down not more than a +short block from the point of meeting. I shall never forget the +sweetness of the air, the something of sadness in the thought of love, +even in this form. The sun was singing its evensong, as were the birds. +But Peter--blessings or curses upon him!--was arrayed as only he could +array himself when he wished to look absolutely disconcerting--more like +an unwashed, uncombed tramp who had been sleeping out for weeks, than +anything else. His hair was over his eyes and ears, his face and hands +dirty, his shoes ditto. He had even blackened one tooth slightly. He had +on a collarless shirt, and yet he was jaunty withal and carried a cane, +if you please, assuming, as he always could and in the most aggravating +way, to be totally unconscious of the figure he cut. At one angle of his +multiplex character the man must have been a born actor. + +We waited a block away, concealed by a few trees, and at the exact hour +Dick appeared, hopeful and eager no doubt, and walking and looking +almost all that he hoped--delicate, pale, artistic. The new straw hat! +The pale green "artists'" shirt! His black, wide-buckled belt! The cane! +The dark-brown low shoes! The boutonniere! He was plainly ready for any +fate, his great moment. + +And then, before he could get the feeling that his admirer might not be +coming, we descended upon him in all our wretched nonchalance and +unworthiness--out of hell, as it were. We were most brisk, familiar, +affectionate. It was so fortunate to meet him so, so accidentally and +peradventure. The night was so fine. We were out for a stroll in the +park, to eat afterward. He must come along. + +I saw him look at Peter in that hat and no collar, and wilt. It was too +much. Such a friend--such friends (for on Peter's advice I was looking +as ill as I might, an easy matter)! No, he couldn't come. He was waiting +for some friends. We must excuse him. + +But Peter was not to be so easily shaken off. He launched into the most +brisk and serious conversation. He began his badger game by asking about +some work upon which Dick had been engaged before he left the office, +some order, how he was getting along with it, when it would be done; +and, when Dick evaded and then attempted to dismiss the subject, took +up another and began to expatiate on it, some work he himself was doing, +something that had developed in connection with it. He asked inane +questions, complimented Dick on his looks, began to tease him about some +girl. And poor Dick--his nervousness, his despair almost, the sense of +the waning of his opportunity! It was cruel. He was becoming more and +more restless, looking about more and more wearily and anxiously and +wishing to go or for us to go. He was horribly unhappy. Finally, after +ten or fifteen minutes had gone and various girls had crossed the plaza +in various directions, as well as carriages and saddle-horses--each one +carrying his heiress, no doubt!--he seemed to summon all his courage and +did his best to dispose of us. "You two'll have to excuse me," he +exclaimed almost wildly. "I can't wait." Those golden moments! She could +not approach! "My people aren't coming, I guess. I'll have to be going +on." + +He smiled weakly and made off, Peter half following and urging him to +come back. Then, since he would not, we stood there on the exact spot of +the rendezvous gazing smirkily after him. Then we went into the park a +few paces and sat on a bench in full view, talking--or Peter was--most +volubly. He was really choking with laughter. A little later, at +seven-thirty, we went cackling into the park, only to return in five +minutes as though we had changed our minds and were coming out--and saw +Dick bustling off at our approach. It was sad really. There was an +element of the tragic in it. But not to Peter. He was all laughter, all +but apoplectic gayety. "Oh, by George!" he choked. "This is too much! +Oh, ho! This is great! his poor heiress! And he came back! Har! Har! +Har!" + +"Peter, you dog," I said, "aren't you ashamed of yourself, to rub it in +this way?" + +"Not a bit, not a bit!" he insisted most enthusiastically. "Do him good. +Why shouldn't he suffer? He'll get over it. He's always bluffing about +his heiresses. Now he's lost a real one. Har! Har! Har!" and he fairly +choked, and for days and weeks and months he laughed, but he never told. +He merely chortled at his desk, and if any one asked him what he was +laughing about, even Dick, he would reply, "Oh, something--a joke I +played on a fellow once." + +If Dick ever guessed he never indicated as much. But that lost romance! +That faded dream! + +Not so long after this, the following winter, I left St. Louis and did +not see Peter for several years, during which time I drifted through +various cities to New York. We kept up a more or less desultory +correspondence which resulted eventually in his contributing to a paper +of which I had charge in New York, and later, in part at least I am +sure, in his coming there. I noticed one thing, that although Peter had +no fixed idea as to what he wished to be--being able to draw, write, +engrave, carve and what not--he was in no way troubled about it. "I +don't see just what it is that I am to do best," he said to me once. "It +may be that I will wind up as a painter or writer or collector--I can't +tell yet. I want to study, and meantime I'm making a living--that's all +I want now. I want to live, and I am living, in my way." + +Some men are masters of cities, or perhaps better, of all the elements +which enter into the making of them, and Peter was one. I think +sometimes that he was born a writer of great force and charm, only as +yet he had not found himself. I have known many writers, many geniuses +even, but not one his superior in intellect and romantic response to +life. He was a poet, thinker, artist, philosopher and master of prose, +as a posthumous volume ("Wolf, the Autobiography of a Cave Dweller") +amply proves, but he was not ready then to fully express himself, and it +troubled him not at all. He loved life's every facet, was gay and +helpful to himself and others, and yet always with an eye for the +undercurrent of human misery, error and tragedy as well as comedy. +Immediately upon coming to New York he began to examine and grasp it in +a large way, its museums, public buildings, geography, politics, but +after a very little while decided suddenly that he did not belong there +and without a by-your-leave, although once more we had fallen into each +other's ways, he departed without a word, and I did not hear from him +for months. Temporarily at least he felt that he had to obtain more +experience in a lesser field, and lost no time in so doing. The next I +knew he was connected, at a comfortable salary, with the then dominant +paper of Philadelphia. + +It was after he had established himself very firmly in Philadelphia that +we two finally began to understand each other fully, to sympathize +really with each other's point of view as opposed to the more or less +gay and casual nature of our earlier friendship. Also here perhaps, more +than before, we felt the binding influence of having worked together in +the West. It was here that I first noticed the ease with which he took +hold of a city, the many-sidedness of his peculiar character which led +him to reflect so many angles of it, which a less varied temperament +would never have touched upon. For, first of all, wherever he happened +to be, he was intensely interested in the age and history of his city, +its buildings and graveyards and tombstones which pointed to its past +life, then its present physical appearance, the chief characteristics of +the region in which it lay, its rivers, lakes, parks and adjacent places +and spots of interest (what rambles we took!), as well as its newest and +finest things architecturally. Nor did any one ever take a keener +interest in the current intellectual resources of a city--any city in +which he happened to be--its museums, libraries, old bookstores, +newspapers, magazines, and I know not what else. It was he who first +took me into Leary's bookstore in Philadelphia, descanting with his +usual gusto on its merits. Then and lastly he was keenly and wisely +interested in various currents of local politics, society and finance, +although he always considered the first a low mess, an arrangement or +adjustment of many necessary things among the lower orders. He seemed to +know or sense in some occult way everything that was going on in those +various realms. His mind was so full and rich that merely to be with him +was a delight. He gushed like a fountain, and yet not polemically, of +all he knew, heard, felt, suspected. His thoughts were so rich at times +that to me they were more like a mosaic of variegated and richly colored +stones and jewels. I felt always as though I were in the presence of a +great personage, not one who was reserved or pompous but a loose +bubbling temperament, wise beyond his years or day, and so truly great +that perhaps because of the intensity and immense variety of his +interests he would never shine in a world in which the most intensive +specialization, and that of a purely commercial character, was the grand +role. + +And yet I always felt that perhaps he might. He attracted people of all +grades so easily and warmly. His mind leaped from one interest to +another almost too swiftly, and yet the average man understood and liked +him. While in a way he contemned their mental states as limited or +bigoted, he enjoyed the conditions under which they lived, seemed to +wish to immerse himself in them. And yet nearly all his thoughts were, +from their point of view perhaps, dangerous. Among his friends he was +always talking freely, honestly, of things which the average man could +not or would not discuss, dismissing as trash illusion, lies or the +cunning work of self-seeking propagandists, most of the things currently +accepted as true. + +He was constantly commenting on the amazing dullness of man, his +prejudices, the astonishing manner in which he seized upon and clung +savagely or pathetically to the most ridiculous interpretations of life. +He was also forever noting that crass chance which wrecks so many of our +dreams and lives,--its fierce brutalities, its seemingly inane +indifference to wondrous things,--but never in a depressed or morbid +spirit; merely as a matter of the curious, as it were. But if any one +chanced to contradict him he was likely to prove liquid fire. At the +same time he was forever reading, reading, reading--history, archaeology, +ethnology, geology, travel, medicine, biography, and descanting on the +wonders and idiosyncrasies of man and nature which they revealed. He was +never tired of talking of the intellectual and social conditions that +ruled in Greece and Rome from 600 B.C. on, the philosophies, the +travels, the art, the simple, natural pagan view of things, and +regretting that they were no more. He grieved at times, I think, that he +had not been of that world, might not have seen it, or, failing that, +might not see all the shards of those extinct civilizations. There was +something loving and sad in the manner in which at times, in one museum +and another, he would examine ancient art designs, those of the +Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, their public and private house plans, +their statues, book rolls, inscriptions, flambeaux, boats, swords, +chariots. Carthage, Rome, Greece, Phoenicia--their colonies, art and +trade stuffs, their foods, pleasures and worships--how he raved! A book +like Thais, Salammbo, Sonica, Quo Vadis, touched him to the quick. + +At the same time, and odd as it may seem, he was seemingly in intimate +contact with a circle of friends that rather astonished me by its +catholicity. It included, for instance, and quite naively, real estate +dealers, clerks, a bank cashier or two, some man who had a leather shop +or cigar factory in the downtown section, a drummer, a printer, two or +three newspaper artists and reporters--a list too long to catalogue here +and seemingly not interesting, at least not inspiring to look at or live +in contact with. Yet his relations with all of these were of a warm, +genial, helpful, homely character, quite intimate. He used them as one +might a mulch in which to grow things, or in other words he took them on +their own ground; a thing which I could never quite understand, being +more or less aloof myself and yet wishing always to be able so to do, to +take life, as he did. + +For he desired, and secured, their good will and drew them to him. He +took a simple, natural pleasure in the kinds of things they were able to +do, as well as the kinds of things he could do. With these, then, and a +type of girl who might not be classed above the clerk or manicure class, +he and they managed to eke out a social life, the outstanding phases of +which were dances, "parties," dinners at one simple home and another, +flirting, boating, and fishing expeditions in season, evenings out at +restaurants or the theater, and I know not what else. He could sing (a +very fair baritone), play the piano, cornet, flute, banjo, mandolin and +guitar, but always insisted that his favorite instruments were the +jews'-harp, the French harp (mouth organ) and a comb with a piece of +paper over it, against which he would blow with fierce energy, making +the most outrageous sounds, until stopped. At any "party" he was always +talking, jumping about, dancing, cooking something--fudge, taffy, a +rarebit, and insisting in the most mock-serious manner that all the +details be left strictly to him. "Now just cut out of this, all of you, +and leave this to your Uncle Dudley. Who's doing this? All I want is +sugar, chocolate, a pot, a big spoon, and I'll show you the best fudge +you ever ate." Then he would don an apron or towel and go to work in a +manner which would rob any gathering of a sense of stiffness and induce +a naturalness most intriguing, calculated to enhance the general +pleasure an hundredfold. + +Yes, Peter woke people up. He could convey or spread a sense of ease and +good nature and give and take among all. Wise as he was and not so +good-looking, he was still attractive to girls, very much so, and by no +means unconscious of their beauty. He could always, and easily, break +down their reserve, and was soon apparently on terms of absolute +friendship, exchanging all sorts of small gossip and news with them +about this, that and the other person about whom they knew. Indeed he +was such a general favorite and so seemingly impartial that it was hard +to say how he came close to any, and yet he did. At odd tete-a-tete +moments he was always making confessions as to "nights" or "afternoons." +"My God, Dreiser, I've found a peach! I can't tell you--but oh, +wonderful! Just what I need. This world's a healthy old place, eh? Let's +have another drink, what?" and he would order a stein or a half-schoppen +of light German beer and pour it down, grinning like a gargoyle. + +It was while he was in Philadelphia that he told me the beginnings of +the love affair which eventually ended in his marrying and settling down +into the homiest of home men I have ever seen and which for sheer +naivete and charm is one of the best love stories I know anything about. +It appears that he was walking in some out-of-the-way factory realm of +North Philadelphia one Saturday afternoon about the first or second year +of his stay there, when, playing in the street with some other children, +he saw a girl of not more than thirteen or fourteen who, as he expressed +it to me, "came damned near being the prettiest thing I ever saw. She +had yellow hair and a short blue dress and pink bows in her hair--and +say, Dreiser, when I saw her I stopped flat and said 'me for that' if I +have to wait fifteen years! Dutchy--you never saw the beat! And poor! +Her shoes were clogs. She couldn't even talk English yet. Neither could +the other kids. They were all sausage--a regular German neighborhood. + +"But, say, I watched her a while and then I went over and said, 'Come +here, kid. Where do you live?' She didn't understand, and one of the +other kids translated for her, and then she said, 'Ich sprech nicht +English,'" and he mocked her. "That fixed her for me. One of the others +finally told me who she was and where she lived--and, say, I went right +home and began studying German. In three months I could make myself +understood, but before that, in two weeks, I hunted up her old man and +made him understand that I wanted to be friends with the family, to +learn German. I went out Sundays when they were all at home. There are +six children and I made friends with 'em all. For a long time I couldn't +make Madchen (that's what they call her) understand what it was all +about, but finally I did, and she knows now all right. And I'm crazy +about her and I'm going to marry her as soon as she's old enough." + +"How do you know that she'll have you?" I inquired. + +"Oh, she'll have me. I always tell her I'm going to marry her when she's +eighteen, and she says all right. And I really believe she does like me. +I'm crazy about her." + +Five years later, if I may anticipate a bit, after he had moved to +Newark and placed himself rather well in the journalistic field and was +able to carry out his plans in regard to himself, he suddenly returned +to Philadelphia and married, preparing beforehand an apartment which he +fancied would please her. It was a fortunate marriage in so far as love +and home pleasures were concerned. I never encountered a more delightful +atmosphere. + +All along in writing this I feel as though I were giving but the +thinnest portrait of Peter; he was so full and varied in his moods and +interests. To me he illustrated the joy that exists, on the one hand, in +the common, the so-called homely and what some might think ugly side of +life, certainly the very simple and ordinarily human aspect of things; +on the other, in the sheer comfort and satisfaction that might be taken +in things truly intellectual and artistic, but to which no great expense +attached--old books, prints, things connected with history and science +in their various forms, skill in matters relating to the applied arts +and what not, such as the coloring and firing of pottery and glass, the +making of baskets, hammocks and rugs, the carving of wood, the +collection and imitation of Japanese and Chinese prints, the art of +embalming as applied by the Egyptians (which, in connection with an +undertaker to whom he had attached himself, he attempted to revive or at +least play with, testing his skill for instance by embalming a dead cat +or two after the Egyptian manner). In all of these lines he trained +himself after a fashion and worked with skill, although invariably he +insisted that he was little more than a bungler, a poor follower after +the art of some one else. But most of all, at this time and later, he +was interested in collecting things Japanese and Chinese: netsukes, +inros, censors, images of jade and porcelain, teajars, vases, prints; +and it was while he was in Philadelphia and seemingly trifling about +with the group I have mentioned and making love to his little German +girl that he was running here and there to this museum and that and +laying the foundations of some of those interesting collections which +later he was fond of showing his friends or interested collectors. By +the time he had reached Newark, as chief cartoonist of the leading paper +there, he was in possession of a complete Tokaido (the forty views on +the road between Tokio and Kyoto), various prints by Hokusai, Sesshiu, +Sojo; a collection of one hundred inros, all of fifty netsukes, all of +thirty censers, lacquered boxes and teajars, and various other +exceedingly beautiful and valuable things--Mandarin skirts and coats, +among other things--which subsequently he sold or traded around among +one collector friend and another for things which they had. I recall his +selling his completed Tokaido, a labor which had extended over four +years, for over a thousand dollars. Just before he died he was trading +netsukes for inros and getting ready to sell all these latter to a man, +who in turn was going to sell his collection to a museum. + +But in between was this other, this ultra-human side, which ran to such +commonplaces as bowling, tennis-playing, golf, billiards, cards and +gambling with the dice--a thing which always struck me as having an odd +turn to it in connection with Peter, since he could be interested in so +many other things, and yet he pursued these commonplaces with as much +gusto at times as one possessed of a mania. At others he seemed not to +miss or think of them. Indeed, you could be sure of him and all his +interests, whatever they were, feeling that he had himself well in hand, +knew exactly how far he was going, and that when the time came he could +and would stop. Yet during the process of his momentary relaxation or +satiation, in whatever field it might be, he would give you a sense of +abandon, even ungovernable appetite, which to one who had not known him +long might have indicated a mania. + +Thus I remember once running over to Philadelphia to spend a Saturday +and Sunday with him, visits of this kind, in either direction, being of +the commonest occurrence. At that time he was living in some +quiet-looking boarding-house in South Fourth Street, but in which dwelt +or visited the group above-mentioned, and whenever I came there, at +least, there was always an atmosphere of intense gaming or playing in +some form, which conveyed to me nothing so much as a glorious sense of +life and pleasure. A dozen or more men might be seated at or standing +about a poker or dice table, in summer (often in winter) with their +coats off, their sleeves rolled up, Peter always conspicuous among them. +On the table or to one side would be money, a pitcher or a tin pail of +beer, boxes of cigarettes or cigars, and there would be Peter among the +players, flushed with excitement, his collar off, his hair awry, his +little figure stirring about here and there or gesticulating or lighting +a cigar or pouring down a glass of beer, shouting at the top of his +voice, his eyes aglow, "That's mine!" "I say it's not!" "Two on the +sixes!" "Three!" "Four!" "Ah, roll the bones! Roll the bones!" "Get off! +Get off! Come on now, Spikes--cough up! You've got the money now. Pay +back. No more loans if you don't." "Once on the fours--the fives--the +aces!" "Roll the bones! Roll the bones! Come on!" Or, if he saw me, +softening and saying, "Gee, Dreiser, I'm ahead twenty-eight so far!" or +"I've lost thirty all told. I'll stick this out, though, to win or lose +five more, and then I'll quit. I give notice, you fellows, five more, +one way or the other, and then I'm through. See? Say, these damned +sharks are always trying to turn a trick. And when they lose they don't +want to pay. I'm offa this for life unless I get a better deal." + +In the room there might be three or four girls--sisters, sweethearts, +pals of one or other of the players--some dancing, some playing the +piano or singing, and in addition the landlord and his wife, a slattern +pair usually, about whose past and present lives Peter seemed always to +know much. He had seduced them all apparently into a kind of rakish +camaraderie which was literally amazing to behold. It thrilled, +fascinated, at times frightened me, so thin and inadequate and +inefficient seemed my own point of view and appetite for life. He was +vigorous, charitable, pagan, gay, full of health and strength. He would +play at something, anything, indoors or out as occasion offered, until +he was fairly perspiring, when, throwing down whatever implement he had +in hand--be it cards, a tennis-racket, a golf club--would declare, +"That's enough! That's enough! I'm done now. I've licked-cha," or "I'm +licked. No more. Not another round. Come on, Dreiser, I know just the +place for us--" and then descanting on a steak or fish planked, or some +new method of serving corn or sweet potatoes or tomatoes, he would lead +the way somewhere to a favorite "rat's killer," as he used to say, or +grill or Chinese den, and order enough for four or five, unless stopped. +As he walked, and he always preferred to walk, the latest political row +or scandal, the latest discovery, tragedy or art topic would get his +keen attention. In his presence the whole world used to look different +to me, more colorful, more hopeful, more gay. Doors seemed to open; in +imagination I saw the interiors of a thousand realms--homes, factories, +laboratories, dens, resorts of pleasure. During his day such figures as +McKinley, Roosevelt, Hanna, Rockefeller, Rogers, Morgan, Peary, Harriman +were abroad and active, and their mental states and points of view and +interests--and sincerities and insincerities--were the subject of his +wholly brilliant analysis. He rather admired the clever opportunist, I +think, so long as he was not mean in view or petty, yet he scorned and +even despised the commercial viewpoint or trade reactions of a man like +McKinley. Rulers ought to be above mere commercialism. Once when I asked +him why he disliked McKinley so much he replied laconically, "The voice +is the voice of McKinley, but the hands--are the hands of Hanna." +Roosevelt seemed to amuse him always, to be a delightful if ridiculous +and self-interested "grandstander," as he always said, "always looking +out for Teddy, you bet," but good for the country, inspiring it with +visions. Rockefeller was wholly admirable as a force driving the country +on to autocracy, oligarchy, possibly revolution. Ditto Hanna, ditto +Morgan, ditto Harriman, ditto Rogers, unless checked. Peary might have, +and again might not have, discovered the North Pole. He refused to +judge. Old "Doc" Cook, the pseudo discoverer, who appeared very shortly +before he died, only drew forth chuckles of delight. "My God, the gall, +the nerve! And that wreath of roses the Danes put around his neck! It's +colossal, Dreiser. It's grand. Munchausen, Cook, Gulliver, Marco +Polo--they'll live forever, or ought to!" + +Some Saturday afternoons or Sundays, if he came to me or I to him in +time, we indulged in long idle rambles, anywhere, either going first by +streetcar, boat or train somewhere and then walking, or, if the mood was +not so, just walking on and on somewhere and talking. On such occasions +Peter was at his best and I could have listened forever, quite as the +disciples of Plato and Aristotle must have to them, to his discourses on +life, his broad and broadening conceptions of Nature--her cruelty, +beauty, mystery. Once, far out somewhere beyond Camden, we were idling +about an inlet where were boats and some fishermen and a trestle which +crossed it. Just as we were crossing it some men in a boat below +discovered the body of a possible suicide, in the water, days old and +discolored, but still intact and with the clothes of a man of at least +middle-class means. I was for leaving, being made a little sick by the +mere sight. Not so Peter. He was for joining in the effort which brought +the body to shore, and in a moment was back with the small group of +watermen, speculating and arguing as to the condition and character of +the dead man, making himself really one of the group. Finally he was +urging the men to search the pockets while some one went for the police. +But more than anything, with a hard and yet in its way humane realism +which put any courage of mine in that direction to the blush, he was all +for meditating on the state and nature of man, his chemical +components--chlorine, sulphuric acid, phosphoric acid, potassium, +sodium, calcium, magnesium, oxygen--and speculating as to which +particular chemicals in combination gave the strange metallic blues, +greens, yellows and browns to the decaying flesh! He had a great stomach +for life. The fact that insects were at work shocked him not at all. He +speculated as to _these_, their duties and functions! He asserted +boldly that man was merely a chemical formula at best, that something +much wiser than he had prepared him, for some not very brilliant purpose +of his or its own perhaps, and that he or it, whoever or whatever he or +it was, was neither good nor bad, as we imagined such things, but both. +He at once went off into the mysteries--where, when with me at least, he +seemed to prefer to dwell--talked of the divinations of the Chaldeans, +how they studied the positions of the stars and the entrails of dead +animals before going to war, talked of the horrible fetiches of the +Africans, the tricks and speculations of the priests of Greek and Roman +temples, finally telling me the story of the ambitious eel-seller who +anchored the dead horse in the stream in order to have plenty of eels +every morning for market. I revolted. I declared he was sickening. + +"My boy," he assured me, "you are too thin-skinned. You can't take life +that way. It's all good to me, whatever happens. We're here. We're not +running it. Why be afraid to look at it? The chemistry of a man's body +isn't any worse than the chemistry of anything else, and we're eating +the dead things we've killed all the time. A little more or a little +less in any direction--what difference?" + +Apropos of this same a little later--to shock me, of course, as he well +knew he could--he assured me that in eating a dish of chop suey in a +Chinese restaurant, a very low one, he had found and eaten a part of the +little finger of a child, and that "it was very good--very good, +indeed." + +"Dog!" I protested. "Swine! Thou ghoula!" but he merely chuckled +heartily and stuck to his tale! + +But if I paint this side of him it is to round out his wonderful, to me +almost incredible, figure. Insisting on such things, he was still and +always warm and human, sympathetic, diplomatic and cautious, according +to his company, so that he was really acceptable anywhere. Peter would +never shock those who did not want to be shocked. A minute or two or +five after such a discourse as the above he might be describing some +marvelously beautiful process of pollination among the flowers, the +history of some medieval trade guild or gazing at a beautiful scene and +conveying to one by his very attitude his unspoken emotion. + +After spending about two or three years in Philadelphia--which city +came to reflect for me the color of Peter's interests and mood--he +suddenly removed to Newark, having been nursing an arrangement with its +principal paper for some time. Some quarrel or dissatisfaction with the +director of his department caused him, without other notice, to paste +some crisp quotation from one of the poets on his desk and depart! In +Newark, a city to which before this I had paid not the slightest +attention, he found himself most happy; and I, living in New York close +at hand, felt that I possessed in it and him an earthly paradise. +Although it contained no more than 300,000 people and seemed, or had, a +drear factory realm only, he soon revealed it to me in quite another +light, because he was there. Very swiftly he found a wondrous canal +running right through it, under its market even, and we went walking +along its banks, out into the woods and fields. He found or created out +of an existing boardinghouse in a back street so colorful and gay a +thing that after a time it seemed to me to outdo that one of +Philadelphia. He joined a country club near Passaic, on the river of +that name, on the veranda of which we often dined. He found a Chinese +quarter with a restaurant or two; an amazing Italian section with a +restaurant; a man who had a $40,000 collection of rare Japanese and +Chinese curios, all in his rooms at the Essex County Insane Asylum, for +he was the chemist there; a man who was a playwright and manager in New +York; another who owned a newspaper syndicate; another who directed a +singing society; another who was president of a gun club; another who +owned and made or rather fired pottery for others. Peter was so restless +and vital that he was always branching out in a new direction. To my +astonishment he now took up the making and firing of pottery for +himself, being interested in reproducing various Chinese dishes and +vases of great beauty, the originals of which were in the Metropolitan +Museum of Art. His plan was first to copy the design, then buy, shape or +bake the clay at some pottery, then paint or decorate with liquid +porcelain at his own home, and fire. In the course of six or eight +months, working in his rooms Saturdays and Sundays and some mornings +before going to the office, he managed to produce three or four which +satisfied him and which he kept plates of real beauty. The others he +gave away. + +A little later, if you please, it was Turkish rug-making on a small +scale, the frame and materials for which he slowly accumulated, and then +providing himself with a pillow, Turkish-fashion, he crossed his legs +before it and began slowly but surely to produce a rug, the colors and +design of which were entirely satisfactory to me. As may be imagined, it +was slow and tedious work, undertaken at odd moments and when there was +nothing else for him to do, always when the light was good and never at +night, for he maintained that the coloring required the best of light. +Before this odd, homely, wooden machine, a combination of unpainted rods +and cords, he would sit, cross-legged or on a bench at times, and pound +and pick and tie and unravel--a most wearisome-looking task to me. + +"For heaven's sake," I once observed, "couldn't you think of anything +more interestingly insane to do than this? It's the slowest, most +painstaking work I ever saw." + +"That's just it, and that's just why I like it," he replied, never +looking at me but proceeding with his weaving in the most industrious +fashion. "You have just one outstanding fault, Dreiser. You don't know +how to make anything out of the little things of life. You want to +remember that this is an art, not a job. I'm discovering whether I can +make a Turkish carpet or not, and it gives me pleasure. If I can get so +much as one good spot of color worked out, one small portion of the +design, I'll be satisfied. I'll know then that I can do it, the whole +thing, don't you see? Some of these things have been the work of a +lifetime of one man. You call that a small thing? I don't. The pleasure +is in doing it, proving that you can, not in the rug itself." He clacked +and tied, congratulating himself vastly. In due course of time three or +four inches were finished, a soft and yet firm silky fabric, and he was +in great glee over it, showing it to all and insisting that in time (how +long? I often wondered) he would complete it and would then own a +splendid carpet. + +It was at this time that he built about him in Newark a structure of +friendships and interests which, it seemed to me, promised to be for +life. He interested himself intensely in the paper with which he was +connected and although he was only the cartoonist, still it was not long +before various departments and elements in connection with it seemed to +reflect his presence and to be alive with his own good will and +enthusiasm. Publisher, editor, art director, managing editor and +business manager, were all in friendly contact with him. He took out +life insurance for the benefit of the wife and children he was later to +have! With the manager of the engraving department he was working out +problems in connection with copperplate engraving and printing; with the +official photographer, art photography; with the art director, some +scheme for enlarging the local museum in some way. With his enduring +love of the fantastic and ridiculous it was not long before he had +successfully planned and executed a hoax of the most ridiculous +character, a piece of idle drollery almost too foolish to think of, and +yet which eventually succeeded in exciting the natives of at least four +States and was telegraphed to and talked about in a Sunday feature way, +by newspapers all over the country, and finally involved Peter as an +actor and stage manager of the most vivid type imaginable. And yet it +was all done really to amuse himself, to see if he could do it, as he +often told me. + +This particular hoax related to that silly old bugaboo of our boyhood +days, the escaped and wandering wild man, ferocious, blood-loving, +terrible. I knew nothing of it until Peter, one Sunday afternoon when we +were off for a walk a year or two after he had arrived in Newark, +suddenly announced apropos of nothing at all, "Dreiser, I've just hit +upon a great idea which I am working out with some of the boys down on +our paper. It's a dusty old fake, but it will do as well as any other, +better than if it were a really decent idea. I'm inventing a wild man. +You know how crazy the average dub is over anything strange, +different,'terrible.' Barnum was right, you know. There's one born every +minute. Well, I'm just getting this thing up now. It's as good as the +sacred white elephant or the blood-sweating hippopotamus. And what's +more, I'm going to stage it right here in little old Newark--and they'll +all fall for it, and don't you think they won't," and he chuckled most +ecstatically. + +"For heaven's sake, what's coming now?" I sighed. + +"Oh, very well. But I have it all worked out just the same. We're +beginning to run the preliminary telegrams every three or four days--one +from Ramblersville, South Jersey, let us say, another from Hohokus, +twenty-five miles farther on, four or five days later. By degrees as +spring comes on I'll bring him north--right up here into Essex County--a +genuine wild man, see, something fierce and terrible. We're giving him +long hair like a bison, red eyes, fangs, big hands and feet. He's +entirely naked--or will be when he gets here. He's eight feet tall. He +kills and eats horses, dogs, cattle, pigs, chickens. He frightens men +and women and children. I'm having him bound across lonely roads, look +in windows at night, stampede cattle and drive tramps and peddlers out +of the country. But say, wait and see. As summer comes on we'll make a +regular headliner of it. We'll give it pages on Sunday. We'll get the +rubes to looking for him in posses, offer rewards. Maybe some one will +actually capture and bring in some poor lunatic, a real wild man. You +can do anything if you just stir up the natives enough." + +I laughed. "You're crazy," I said. "What a low comedian you really are, +Peter!" + +Well, the weeks passed, and to mark progress he occasionally sent me +clippings of telegrams, cut not from his pages, if you please, but from +such austere journals as the _Sun_ and _World_ of New York, the _North +American_ of Philadelphia, the _Courant_ of Hartford, recording the +antics of his imaginary thing of the woods. Longish articles actually +began to appear here and there, in Eastern papers especially, describing +the exploits of this very elusive and moving demon. He had been seen in +a dozen fairly widely distributed places within the month, but always +coming northward. In one place he had killed three cows at once, in +another two, and eaten portions of them raw! Old Mrs. Gorswitch of +Dutchers Run, Pennsylvania, returning from a visit to her +daughter-in-law, Annie A. Gorswitch, and ambling along a lonely road in +Osgoroola County, was suddenly descended upon by a most horrific figure, +half man, half beast, very tall and with long hair and red, all but +bloody eyes who, looking at her with avid glance, made as if to seize +her, but a wagon approaching along the road from another direction, he +had desisted and fled, leaving old Mrs. Gorswitch in a faint upon the +ground. Barns and haystacks had been fired here and there, lonely widows +in distant cotes been made to abandon their homes through fear.... I +marveled at the assiduity and patience of the man. + +One day in June or July following, being in Newark and asking Peter +quite idly about his wild man, he replied, "Oh, it's great, great! +Couldn't be better! He'll soon be here now. We've got the whole thing +arranged now for next Sunday or Saturday--depends on which day I can get +off. We're going to photograph him. Wanto come over?" + +"What rot!" I said. "Who's going to pose? Where?" + +"Well," he chuckled, "come along and see. You'll find out fast enough. +We've got an actual wild man. I got him. I'll have him out here in the +woods. If you don't believe it, come over. You wouldn't believe me when +I said I could get the natives worked up. Well, they are. Look at +these," and he produced clippings from rival papers. The wild man was +actually being seen in Essex County, not twenty-five miles from Newark. +He had ravaged the property of people in five different States. It was +assumed that he was a lunatic turned savage, or that he had escaped from +a circus or trading-ship wrecked on the Jersey coast (suggestions made +by Peter himself). His depredations, all told, had by now run into +thousands, speaking financially. Staid residents were excited. Rewards +for his capture were being offered in different places. Posses of irate +citizens were, and would continue to be, after him, armed to the teeth, +until he was captured. Quite remarkable developments might be expected +at any time ... I stared. It seemed too ridiculous, and it was, and back +of it all was smirking, chuckling Peter, the center and fountain of it! + +"You dog!" I protested. "You clown!" He merely grinned. + +Not to miss so interesting a denouement as the actual capture of this +prodigy of the wilds, I was up early and off the following Sunday to +Newark, where in Peter's apartment in due time I found him, his rooms in +a turmoil, he himself busy stuffing things into a bag, outside an +automobile waiting and within it the staff photographer as well as +several others, all grinning, and all of whom, as he informed me, were +to assist in the great work of tracking, ambushing and, if possible, +photographing the dread peril. + +"Yes, well, who's going to be him?" I insisted. + +"Never mind! Never mind! Don't be so inquisitive," chortled Peter. "A +wild man has his rights and privileges, as well as any other. Remember, +I caution all of you to be respectful in his presence. He's very +sensitive, and he doesn't like newspapermen anyhow. He'll be +photographed, and he'll be wild. That's all you need to know." + +In due time we arrived at as comfortable an abode for a wild man as well +might be. It was near the old Essex and Morris Canal, not far from +Boonton. A charming clump of brush and rock was selected, and here a +snapshot of a posse hunting, men peering cautiously from behind trees in +groups and looking as though they were most eager to discover something, +was made. Then Peter, slipping away--I suddenly saw him ambling toward +us, hair upstanding, body smeared with black muck, daubs of white about +the eyes, little tufts of wool about wrists and ankles and loins--as +good a figure of a wild man as one might wish, only not eight feet tall. + +"Peter!" I said. "How ridiculous! You loon!" + +"Have a care how you address me," he replied with solemn dignity. "A +wild man is a wild man. Our punctilio is not to be trifled with. I am of +the oldest, the most famous line of wild men extant. Touch me not." He +strode the grass with the air of a popular movie star, while he +discussed with the art director and photographer the most terrifying and +convincing attitudes of a wild man seen by accident and unconscious of +his pursuers. + +"But you're not eight feet tall!" I interjected at one point. + +"A small matter. A small matter," he replied airily. "I will be in the +picture. Nothing easier. We wild men, you know--" + +Some of the views were excellent, most striking. He leered most terribly +from arras of leaves or indicated fright or cunning. The man was a good +actor. For years I retained and may still have somewhere a full set of +the pictures as well as the double-page spread which followed the next +week. + +Well, the thing was appropriately discussed, as it should have been, +but the wild man got away, as was feared. He went into the nearby canal +and washed away all his terror, or rather he vanished into the dim +recesses of Peter's memory. He was only heard of a few times more in the +papers, his supposed body being found in some town in northeast +Pennsylvania--or in the small item that was "telegraphed" from there. As +for Peter, he emerged from the canal, or from its banks, a cleaner if +not a better man. He was grinning, combing his hair, adjusting his tie. + +"What a scamp!" I insisted lovingly. "What an incorrigible trickster!" + +"Dreiser, Dreiser," he chortled, "there's nothing like it. You should +not scoff. I am a public benefactor. I am really a creator. I have +created a being as distinct as any that ever lived. He is in many +minds--mine, yours. You know that you believe in him really. There he +was peeking out from between those bushes only fifteen minutes ago. And +he has made, and will make, thousands of people happy, thrill them, give +them a new interest. If Stevenson can create a Jekyll and Hyde, why +can't I create a wild man? I have. We have his picture to prove it. What +more do you wish?" + +I acquiesced. All told, it was a delightful bit of foolery and art, and +Peter was what he was first and foremost, an artist in the grotesque and +the ridiculous. + +For some time thereafter peace seemed to reign in his mind, only now it +was that the marriage and home and children idea began to grow. From +much of the foregoing it may have been assumed that Peter was out of +sympathy with the ordinary routine of life, despised the commonplace, +the purely practical. As a matter of fact it was just the other way +about. I never knew a man so radical in some of his viewpoints, so +versatile and yet so wholly, intentionally and cravingly, immersed in +the usual as Peter. He was all for creating, developing, brightening +life along simple rather than outre lines, in so far as he himself was +concerned. Nearly all of his arts and pleasures were decorative and +homey. A good grocer, a good barber, a good saloon-keeper, a good +tailor, a shoe maker, was just as interesting in his way to Peter as any +one or anything else, if not a little more so. He respected their lines, +their arts, their professions, and above all, where they had it, their +industry, sobriety and desire for fair dealing. He believed that +millions of men, especially those about him were doing the best they +could under the very severe conditions which life offered. He objected +to the idle, the too dull the swindlers and thieves as well as the +officiously puritanic or dogmatic. He resented, for himself at least, +solemn pomp and show. Little houses, little gardens, little porches, +simple cleanly neighborhoods with their air of routine, industry, +convention and order, fascinated him as apparently nothing else could. +He insisted that they were enough. A man did not need a great house +unless he was a public character with official duties. + +"Dreiser," he would say in Philadelphia and Newark, if not before, "it's +in just such a neighborhood as this that some day I'm going to live. I'm +going to have my little _frau_, my seven children, my chickens, dog, +cat, canary, best German style, my garden, my birdbox, my pipe; and +Sundays, by God, I'll march 'em all off to church, wife and seven kids, +as regular as clockwork, shined shoes, pigtails and all, and I'll lead +the procession." + +"Yes, yes," I said. "You talk." + +"Well, wait and see. Nothing in this world means so much to me as the +good old orderly home stuff. One ought to live and die in a family. It's +the right way. I'm cutting up now, sowing my wild oats, but that's +nothing. I'm just getting ready to eventually settle down and live, just +as I tell you, and be an ideal orderly citizen. It's the only way. It's +the way nature intends us to do. All this early kid stuff is passing, a +sorting-out process. We get over it. Every fellow does, or ought to be +able to, if he's worth anything, find some one woman that he can live +with and stick by her. That makes the world that you and I like to live +in, and you know it. There's a psychic call in all of us to it, I think. +It's the genius of our civilization, to marry one woman and settle down. +And when I do, no more of this all-night stuff with this, that and the +other lady. I'll be a model husband and father, sure as you're standing +there. Don't you think I won't. Smile if you want to--it's so. I'll have +my garden. I'll be friendly with my neighbors. You can come over then +and help us put the kids to bed." + +"Oh, Lord! This is a new bug now! We'll have the vine-covered cot idea +for a while, anyhow." + +"Oh, all right. Scoff if you want to. You'll see." + +Time went by. He was doing all the things I have indicated, living in a +kind of whirl of life. At the same time, from time to time, he would +come back to this thought. Once, it is true, I thought it was all over +with the little yellow-haired girl in Philadelphia. He talked of her +occasionally, but less and less. Out on the golf links near Passaic he +met another girl, one of a group that flourished there. I met her. She +was not unpleasing, a bit sensuous, rather attractive in dress and +manners, not very well informed, but gay, clever, up-to-date; such a +girl as would pass among other women as fairly satisfactory. + +For a time Peter seemed greatly attracted to her. She danced, played a +little, was fair at golf and tennis, and she was, or pretended to be, +intensely interested in him. He confessed at last that he believed he +was in love with her. + +"So it's all day with Philadelphia, is it?" I asked. + +"It's a shame," he replied, "but I'm afraid so. I'm having a hell of a +time with myself, my alleged conscience, I tell you." + +I heard little more about it. He had a fad for collecting rings at this +time, a whole casket full, like a Hindu prince, and he told me once he +was giving her her choice of them. + +Suddenly he announced that it was "all off" and that he was going to +marry the maid of Philadelphia. He had thrown the solitaire engagement +ring he had given her down a sewer! At first he would confess nothing as +to the reason or the details, but being so close to me it eventually +came out. Apparently, to the others as to myself, he had talked much of +his simple home plans, his future children--the good citizen idea. He +had talked it to his new love also, and she had sympathized and agreed. +Yet one day, after he had endowed her with the engagement ring, some +one, a member of the golf club, came and revealed a tale. The girl was +not "straight." She had been, mayhap was even then, "intimate" with +other men--one anyhow. She was in love with Peter well enough, as she +insisted afterward, and willing to undertake the life he suggested, but +she had not broken with the old atmosphere completely, or if she had it +was still not believed that she had. There were those who could not +only charge, but prove. A compromising note of some kind sent to some +one was involved, turned over to Peter. + +"Dreiser," he growled as he related the case to me, "it serves me right. +I ought to know better. I know the kind of woman I need. This one has +handed me a damned good wallop, and I deserve it. I might have guessed +that she wasn't suited to me. She was really too free--a life-lover more +than a wife. That home stuff! She was just stringing me because she +liked me. She isn't really my sort, not simple enough." + +"But you loved her, I thought?" + +"I did, or thought I did. Still, I used to wonder too. There were many +ways about her that troubled me. You think I'm kidding about this home +and family idea, but I'm not. It suits me, however flat it looks to you. +I want to do that, live that way, go through the normal routine +experience, and I'm going to do it." + +"But how did you break it off with her so swiftly?" I asked curiously. + +"Well, when I heard this I went direct to her and put it up to her. If +you'll believe me she never even denied it. Said it was all true, but +that she was in love with me all right, and would change and be all that +I wanted her to be." + +"Well, that's fair enough," I said, "if she loves you. You're no saint +yourself, you know. If you'd encourage her, maybe she'd make good." + +"Well, maybe, but I don't think so really," he returned, shaking his +head. "She likes me, but not enough, I'm afraid. She wouldn't run +straight, now that she's had this other. She'd mean to maybe, but she +wouldn't. I feel it about her. And anyhow I don't want to take any +chances. I like her--I'm crazy about her really, but I'm through. I'm +going to marry little Dutchy if she'll have me, and cut out this +old-line stuff. You'll have to stand up with me when I do." + +In three months more the new arrangement was consummated and little +Dutchy--or Zuleika, as he subsequently named her--was duly brought to +Newark and installed, at first in a charming apartment in a +conventionally respectable and cleanly neighborhood, later in a small +house with a "yard," lawn front and back, in one of the homiest of home +neighborhoods in Newark. It was positively entertaining to observe +Peter not only attempting to assume but assuming the role of the +conventional husband, and exactly nine months after he had been married, +to the hour, a father in this humble and yet, in so far as his +particular home was concerned, comfortable world. I have no space here +for more than the barest outline. I have already indicated his views, +most emphatically expressed and forecasted. He fulfilled them all to the +letter, up to the day of his death. In so far as I could make out, he +made about as satisfactory a husband and father and citizen as I have +ever seen. He did it deliberately, in cold reason, and yet with a warmth +and flare which puzzled me all the more since it _was_ based on reason +and forethought. I misdoubted. I was not quite willing to believe that +it would work out, and yet if ever a home was delightful, with a +charming and genuinely "happy" atmosphere, it was Peter's. + +"Here she is," he observed the day he married her, "me _frau_--Zuleika. +Isn't she a peach? Ever see any nicer hair than that? And these here, +now, pink cheeks? What? Look at 'em! And her little Dutchy nose! Isn't +it cute? Oh, Dutchy! And right here in me vest pocket is the golden band +wherewith I am to be chained to the floor, the domestic hearth. And +right there on her finger is my badge of prospective serfdom." Then, in +a loud aside to me, "In six months I'll be beating her. Come now, +Zuleika. We have to go through with this. You have to swear to be my +slave." + +And so they were married. + +And in the home afterward he was as busy and helpful and noisy as any +man about the house could ever hope to be. He was always fussing about +after hours "putting up" something or arranging his collections or +helping Zuleika wash and dry the dishes, or showing her how to cook +something if she didn't know how. He was running to the store or +bringing home things from the downtown market. Months before the first +child was born he was declaring most shamelessly, "In a few months now, +Dreiser, Zuleika and I are going to have our first calf. The bones roll +for a boy, but you never can tell. I'm offering up prayers and +oblations--both of us are. I make Zuleika pray every night. And say, +when it comes, no spoiling-the-kid stuff. No bawling or rocking it to +sleep nights permitted. Here's one kid that's going to be raised right. +I've worked out all the rules. No trashy baby-foods. Good old specially +brewed Culmbacher for the mother, and the kid afterwards if it wants it. +This is one family in which law and order are going to prevail--good old +'dichtig, wichtig' law and order." + +I used to chuckle the while I verbally denounced him for his coarse, +plebeian point of view and tastes. + +In a little while the child came, and to his immense satisfaction it was +a boy. I never saw a man "carry on" so, make over it, take such a +whole-souled interest in all those little things which supposedly made +for its health and well-being. For the first few weeks he still talked +of not having it petted or spoiled, but at the same time he was surely +and swiftly changing, and by the end of that time had become the most +doting, almost ridiculously fond papa that I ever saw. Always the child +must be in his lap at the most unseemly hours, when his wife would +permit it. When he went anywhere, or they, although they kept a maid the +child must be carried along by him on his shoulder. He liked nothing +better than to sit and hold it close, rocking in a rocking-chair +American style and singing, or come tramping into my home in New York, +the child looking like a woolen ball. At night if it stirred or +whimpered he was up and looking. And the baby-clothes!--and the +cradle!--and the toys!--colored rubber balls and soldiers the first or +second or third week! + +"What about that stern discipline that was to be put in force here--no +rocking, no getting up at night to coddle a weeping infant?" + +"Yes, I know. That's all good stuff before you get one. I've got one of +my own now, and I've got a new light on this. Say, Dreiser, take my +advice. Go through the routine. Don't try to escape. Have a kid or two +or three. There's a psychic punch to it you can't get any other way. +It's nature's way. It's a great scheme. You and your girl and your kid." + +As he talked he rocked, holding the baby boy to his breast. It was +wonderful. + +And Mrs. Peter--how happy she seemed. There was light in that house, +flowers, laughter, good fellowship. As in his old rooms so in this new +home he gathered a few of his old friends around him and some new ones, +friends of this region. In the course of a year or two he was on the +very best terms of friendship with his barber around the corner, his +grocer, some man who had a saloon and bowling alley in the neighborhood, +his tailor, and then just neighbors. The milkman, the coal man, the +druggist and cigar man at the next corner--all could tell you where +Peter lived. His little front "yard" had two beds of flowers all summer +long, his lot in the back was a garden--lettuce, onions, peas, beans. +Peter was always happiest when he could be home working, playing with +the baby, pushing him about in a go-cart, working in his garden, or +lying on the floor making something--an engraving or print or a box +which he was carving, the infant in some simple gingham romper crawling +about. He was always busy, but never too much so for a glance or a +mock-threatening, "Now say, not so much industry there. You leave my +things alone," to the child. Of a Sunday he sat out on the front porch +smoking, reading the Sunday paper, congratulating himself on his happy +married life, and most of the time holding the infant. Afternoons he +would carry it somewhere, anywhere, in his arms to his friends, the +Park, New York, to see me. At breakfast, dinner, supper the heir +presumptive was in a high-chair beside him. + +"Ah, now, here's a rubber spoon. Beat with that. It's less destructive +and less painful physically." + +"How about a nice prust" (crust) "dipped in bravery" (gravy) "--heh? Do +you suppose that would cut any of your teeth?" + +"Zuleika, this son of yours seems to think a spoonful of beer or two +might not hurt him. What do you say?" + +Occasionally, especially of a Saturday evening, he wanted to go bowling +and yet he wanted his heir. The problem was solved by fitting the latter +into a tight little sweater and cap and carrying him along on his +shoulder, into the bar for a beer, thence to the bowling alley, where +young hopeful was fastened into a chair on the side lines while Peter +and myself or some of his friends bowled. At ten or ten-thirty or +eleven, as the case might be, he was ready to leave, but before that +hour les ongfong might be sound asleep, hanging against Peter's scarf, +his interest in his toes or thumbs having given out. + +"Peter, look at that," I observed once. "Don't you think we'd better +take him home?" + +"Home nothing! Let him sleep. He can sleep here as well as anywhere, and +besides I like to look at him." And in the room would be a great crowd, +cigars, beers, laughter, and Peter's various friends as used to the +child's presence and as charmed by it as he was. He was just the man who +could do such things. His manner and point of view carried conviction. +He believed in doing all that he wanted to do simply and naturally, and +more and more as he went along people not only respected, I think they +adored him, especially the simple homely souls among whom he chose to +move and have his being. + +About this time there developed among those in his immediate +neighborhood a desire to elect him to some political position, that of +councilman, or State assemblyman, in the hope or thought that he would +rise to something higher. But he would none of it--not then anyhow. +Instead, about this time or a very little later, after the birth of his +second child (a girl), he devoted himself to the composition of a +brilliant piece of prose poetry ("Wolf"), which, coming from him, did +not surprise me in the least. If he had designed or constructed a great +building, painted a great picture, entered politics and been elected +governor or senator, I would have taken it all as a matter of course. He +could have. The material from which anything may rise was there. I asked +him to let me offer it to the publishing house with which I was +connected, and I recall with interest the comment of the oldest and most +experienced of the bookmen and salesmen among us. "You'll never make +much, if anything, on this book. It's too good, too poetic. But whether +it pays or not, I vote yes. I'd rather lose money on something like this +than make it on some of the trash we do make it on." + +Amen. I agreed then, and I agree now. + +The last phase of Peter was as interesting and dramatic as any of the +others. His married life was going forward about as he had planned. His +devotion to his home and children, his loving wife, his multiplex +interests, his various friends, was always a curiosity to me, +especially in view of his olden days. One day he was over in New York +visiting one of his favorite Chinese importing companies, through which +he had secured and was still securing occasional objects of art. He had +come down to me in my office at the Butterick Building to see if I would +not come over the following Saturday as usual and stay until Monday. He +had secured something, was planning something. I should see. At the +elevator he waved me a gay "so long--see you Saturday!" + +But on Friday, as I was talking with some one at my desk, a telegram was +handed me. It was from Mrs. Peter and read: "Peter died today at two of +pneumonia. Please come." + +I could scarcely believe it. I did not know that he had even been sick. +His little yellow-haired wife! The two children! His future! His +interests! I dropped everything and hurried to the nearest station. En +route I speculated on the mysteries on which he had so often +speculated--death, dissolution, uncertainty, the crude indifference or +cruelty of Nature. What would become of Mrs. Peter? His children? + +I arrived only to find a home atmosphere destroyed as by a wind that +puts out a light. There was Peter, stiff and cold, and in the other +rooms his babies, quite unconscious of what had happened, prattling as +usual, and Mrs. Peter practically numb and speechless. It had come so +suddenly, so out of a clear sky, that she could not realize, could not +even tell me at first. The doctor was there--also a friend of his, the +nearest barber! Also two or three representatives from his paper, the +owner of the bowling alley, the man who had the $40,000 collection of +curios. All were stunned, as I was. As his closest friend, I took +charge: wired his relatives, went to an undertaker who knew him to +arrange for his burial, in Newark or Philadelphia, as his wife should +wish, she having no connection with Newark other than Peter. + +It was most distressing, the sense of dull despair and unwarranted +disaster which hung over the place. It was as though impish and pagan +forces, or malign ones outside life, had committed a crime of the +ugliest character. On Monday, the day he saw me, he was well. On Tuesday +morning he had a slight cold but insisted on running out somewhere +without his overcoat, against which his wife protested. Tuesday night +he had a fever and took quinine and aspirin and a hot whiskey. +Wednesday morning he was worse and a doctor was called, but it was not +deemed serious. Wednesday night he was still worse and pneumonia had set +in. Thursday he was lower still, and by noon a metal syphon of oxygen +was sent for, to relieve the sense of suffocation setting in. Thursday +night he was weak and sinking, but expected to come round--and still, so +unexpected was the attack, so uncertain the probability of anything +fatal, that no word was sent, even to me. Friday morning he was no worse +and no better. "If he was no worse by night he might pull through." At +noon he was seized with a sudden sinking spell. Oxygen was applied by +his wife and a nurse, and the doctor sent for. By one-thirty he was +lower still, very low. "His face was blue, his lips ashen," his wife +told me. "We put the oxygen tube to his mouth and I said 'Can you speak, +Peter?' I was so nervous and frightened. He moved his head a little to +indicate 'no.' 'Peter,' I said, 'you mustn't let go! You must fight! +Think of me! Think of the babies!' I was a little crazy, I think, with +fear. He looked at me very fixedly. He stiffened and gritted his teeth +in a great effort. Then suddenly he collapsed and lay still. He was +dead." + +I could not help thinking of the force and energy--able at the last +minute, when he could not speak--to "grit his teeth" and "fight," a +minute before his death. What is the human spirit, or mind, that it can +fight so, to the very last? I felt as though some one, something, had +ruthlessly killed him, committed plain, unpunished murder--nothing more +and nothing less. + +And there were his cases of curios, his rug, his prints, his dishes, his +many, many schemes, his book to come out soon. I gazed and marveled. I +looked at his wife and babies, but could say nothing. It spelled, what +such things always spell, in the face of all our dreams, crass chance or +the willful, brutal indifference of Nature to all that relates to man. +If he is to prosper he must do so without her aid. + +That same night, sleeping in the room adjoining that in which was the +body, a pale candle burning near it, I felt as though Peter were walking +to and fro, to and fro, past me and into the room of his wife beyond, +thinking and grieving. His imagined wraith seemed horribly depressed +and distressed. Once he came over and moved his hand (something) over my +face. I felt him walking into the room where were his wife and kiddies, +but he could make no one see, hear, understand. I got up and looked at +his _cadaver_ a long time, then went to bed again. + +The next day and the next and the next were filled with many things. His +mother and sister came on from the West as well as the mother and +brother of his wife. I had to look after his affairs, adjusting the +matter of insurance which he left, his art objects, the burial of his +body "in consecrated ground" in Philadelphia, with the consent and aid +of the local Catholic parish rector, else no burial. His mother desired +it, but he had never been a good Catholic and there was trouble. The +local parish assistant refused me, even the rector. Finally I threatened +the good father with an appeal to the diocesan bishop on the ground of +plain common sense and courtesy to a Catholic family, if not charity to +a tortured mother and wife--and obtained consent. All along I felt as if +a great crime had been committed by some one, foul murder. I could not +get it out of my mind, and it made me angry, not sad. + +Two, three, five, seven years later, I visited the little family in +Philadelphia. The wife was with her mother and father in a simple little +home street in a factory district, secretary and stenographer to an +architect. She was little changed--a little stouter, not so carefree, +industrious, patient. His boy, the petted F----, could not even recall +his father, the girl not at all of course. And in the place were a few +of his prints, two or three Chinese dishes, pottered by himself, his +loom with the unfinished rug. I remained for dinner and dreamed old +dreams, but I was uncomfortable and left early. And Mrs. Peter, +accompanying me to the steps, looked after me as though I, alone, was +all that was left of the old life. + + + + +_A Doer of the Word_ + + +Noank is a little played-out fishing town on the southeastern coast of +Connecticut, lying half-way between New London and Stonington. Once it +was a profitable port for mackerel and cod fishing. Today its wharves +are deserted of all save a few lobster smacks. There is a shipyard, +employing three hundred and fifty men, a yacht-building establishment, +with two or three hired hands; a sail-loft, and some dozen or so shops +or sheds, where the odds and ends of fishing life are made and sold. +Everything is peaceful. The sound of the shipyard axes and hammers can +be heard for miles over the quiet waters of the bay. In the sunny lane +which follows the line of the shore, and along which a few shops +struggle in happy-go-lucky disorder, may be heard the voices and noises +of the workers at their work. Water gurgling about the stanchions of the +docks, the whistle of some fisherman as he dawdles over his nets, or +puts his fish ashore, the whirr of the single high-power sewing machine +in the sail-loft, often mingle in a pleasant harmony, and invite the +mind to repose and speculation. + +I was in a most examining and critical mood that summer, looking into +the nature and significance of many things, and was sitting one day in +the shed of the maker of sailboats, where a half-dozen characters of the +village were gathered, when some turn in the conversation brought up the +nature of man. He is queer, he is restless; life is not so very much +when you come to look upon many phases of it. + +"Did any of you ever know a contented man?" I inquired idly, merely for +the sake of something to say. + +There was silence for a moment, and one after another met my roving +glance with a thoughtful, self-involved and retrospective eye. + +Old Mr. Main was the first to answer. + +"Yes, I did. One." + +"So did I," put in the sailboat maker, as he stopped in his work to +think about it. + +"Yes, and I did," said a dark, squat, sunny, little old fisherman, who +sold cunners for bait in a little hut next door. + +"Maybe you and me are thinking of the same one, Jacob," said old Mr. +Main, looking inquisitively at the boat-builder. + +"I think we've all got the same man in mind, likely," returned the +builder. + +"Who is he?" I asked. + +"Charlie Potter," said the builder. + +"That's the man!" exclaimed Mr. Main. + +"Yes, I reckon Charlie Potter is contented, if anybody be," said an old +fisherman who had hitherto been silent. + +Such unanimity of opinion struck me forcibly. Charlie Potter--what a +humble name; not very remarkable, to say the least. And to hear him so +spoken of in this restless, religious, quibbling community made it all +the more interesting. + +"So you really think he is contented, do you?" I asked. + +"Yes, sir! Charlie Potter is a contented man," replied Mr. Main, with +convincing emphasis. + +"Well," I returned, "that's rather interesting. What sort of a man is +he?" + +"Oh, he's just an ordinary man, not much of anybody. Fishes and builds +boats occasionally," put in the boat-builder. + +"Is that all? Nothing else?" + +"He preaches now and then--not regularly," said Mr. Main. + +A-ha! I thought. A religionist! + +"A preacher is expected to set a good example," I said. + +"He ain't a regular preacher," said Mr. Main, rather quickly. "He's just +kind of around in religious work." + +"What do you mean?" I asked curiously, not quite catching the import of +this "around." + +"Well," answered the boat builder, "he don't take any money for what he +does. He ain't got anything." + +"What does he live on then?" I persisted, still wondering at the +significance of "around in religious work." + +"I don't know. He used to fish for a living. Fishes yet once in a while, +I believe." + +"He makes models of yachts," put in one of the bystanders. "He sold the +New Haven Road one for two hundred dollars here not long ago." + +A vision of a happy-go-lucky Jack-of-all-trades arose before me. A +visionary--a theorist. + +"What else?" I asked, hoping to draw them out. "What makes you all +think he is contented? What does he do that makes him so contented?" + +"Well," said Mr. Main, after a considerable pause and with much of +sympathetic emphasis in his voice, "Charlie Potter is just a good man, +that's all. That's why he's contented. He does as near as he can what he +thinks he ought to by other people--poor people." + +"You won't find anybody with a kinder heart than Charlie Potter," put in +the boat-builder. "That's the trouble with him, really. He's too good. +He don't look after himself right, I say. A fellow has to look out for +himself some in this world. If he don't, no one else will." + +"Right you are, Henry," echoed a truculent sea voice from somewhere. + +I was becoming both amused and interested, intensely so. + +"If he wasn't that way, he'd be a darned sight better off than he is," +said a thirty-year-old helper, from a far corner of the room. + +"What makes you say that?" I queried. "Isn't it better to be +kind-hearted and generous than not?" + +"It's all right to be kind-hearted and generous, but that ain't sayin' +that you've got to give your last cent away and let your family go +hungry." + +"Is that what Charlie Potter does?" + +"Well, no, maybe he don't, but he comes mighty near to it at times. He +and his wife and his adopted children have been pretty close to it at +times." + +You see, this was the center, nearly, for all village gossip and +philosophic speculation, and many of the most important local problems, +morally and intellectually speaking, were here thrashed put. + +"There's no doubt but that's where Charlie is wrong," put in old Mr. +Main a little later. "He don't always stop to think of his family." + +"What did he ever do that struck you as being over-generous?" I asked of +the young man who had spoken from the corner. + +"That's all right," he replied in a rather irritated and peevish tone; +"I ain't going to go into details now, but there's people around here +that hang on him, and that he's give to, that he hadn't orter." + +"I believe in lookin' out for Number One, that's what I believe in," +interrupted the boat-maker, laying down his rule and line. "This givin' +up everything and goin' without yourself may be all right, but I don't +believe it. A man's first duty is to his wife and children, that's what +I say." + +"That's the way it looks to me," put in Mr. Main. + +"Well, does Potter give up everything and go without things?" I asked +the boat-maker. + +"Purty blamed near it at times," he returned definitely, then addressing +the company in general he added, "Look at the time he worked over there +on Fisher's Island, at the Ellersbie farm--the time they were packing +the ice there. You remember that, Henry, don't you?" + +Mr. Main nodded. + +"What about it?" + +"What about it! Why, he give his rubber boots away, like a darned fool, +to old drunken Jimmy Harper, and him loafin' around half the year drunk, +and worked around on the ice without any shoes himself. He might 'a' +took cold and died." + +"Why did he do it?" I queried, very much interested by now. + +"Oh, Charlie's naturally big-hearted," put in the little old man who +sold cunners. "He believes in the Lord and the Bible. Stands right +square on it, only he don't belong to no church like. He's got the +biggest heart I ever saw in a livin' being." + +"Course the other fellow didn't have any shoes for to wear," put in the +boat-maker explanatorily, "but he never would work, anyhow." + +They lapsed into silence while the latter returned to his measuring, and +then out of the drift of thought came this from the helper in the +corner: + +"Yes, and look at the way Bailey used to sponge on him. Get his money +Saturday night and drink it all up, and then Sunday morning, when his +wife and children were hungry, go cryin' around Potter. Dinged if I'd +'a' helped him. But Potter'd take the food right off his breakfast table +and give it to him. I saw him do it! I don't think that's right. Not +when he's got four or five orphans of his own to care for." + +"His own children?" I interrupted, trying to get the thing straight. + +"No, sir; just children he picked up around, here and there." + +Here is a curious character, sure enough, I thought--one well worth +looking into. + +Another lull, and then as I was leaving the room to give the matter a +little quiet attention, I remarked to the boat-maker: + +"Outside of his foolish giving, you haven't anything against Charlie +Potter, have you?" + +"Not a thing," he replied, in apparent astonishment. "Charlie Potter's +one of the best men that ever lived. He's a good man." + +I smiled at the inconsistency and went my way. + +A day or two later the loft of the sail-maker, instead of the shed of +the boat-builder, happened to be my lounging place, and thinking of this +theme, now uppermost in my mind, I said to him: + +"Do you know a man around here by the name of Charlie Potter?" + +"Well, I might say that I do. He lived here for over fifteen years." + +"What sort of a man is he?" + +He stopped in his stitching a moment to look at me, and then said: + +"How d'ye mean? By trade, so to speak, or religious-like?" + +"What is it he has done," I said, "that makes him so popular with all +you people? Everybody says he's a good man. Just what do you mean by +that?" + +"Well," he said, ceasing his work as though the subject were one of +extreme importance to him, "he's a peculiar man, Charlie is. He believes +in giving nearly everything he has away, if any one else needs it. He'd +give the coat off his back if you asked him for it. Some folks condemn +him for this, and for not giving everything to his wife and them orphans +he has, but I always thought the man was nearer right than most of us. +I've got a family myself--but, then, so's he, now, for that matter. It's +pretty hard to live up to your light always." + +He looked away as if he expected some objection to be made to this, but +hearing none, he went on. "I always liked him personally very much. He +ain't around here now any more--lives up in Norwich, I think. He's a man +of his word, though, as truthful as kin be. He ain't never done nothin' +for me, I not bein' a takin' kind, but that's neither here nor there." + +He paused, in doubt apparently, as to what else to say. + +"You say he's so good," I said. "Tell me one thing that he ever did that +struck you as being preeminently good." + +"Well, now, I can't say as I kin, exactly, offhand," he replied, "there +bein' so many of them from time to time. He was always doin' things one +way and another. He give to everybody around here that asked him, and to +a good many that didn't. I remember once"--and a smile gave evidence of +a genial memory--"he give away a lot of pork that he'd put up for the +winter to some colored people back here--two or three barrels, maybe. +His wife didn't object, exactly, but my, how his mother-in-law did go on +about it. She was livin' with him then. She went and railed against him +all around." + +"She didn't like to give it to them, eh?" + +"Well, I should say not. She didn't set with his views, exactly--never +did. He took the pork, though--it was right in the coldest weather we +had that winter--and hauled it back about seven miles here to where they +lived, and handed it all out himself. Course they were awful hard up, +but then they might 'a' got along without it. They do now, sometimes. +Charlie's too good that way. It's his one fault, if you might so speak +of it." + +I smiled as the evidence accumulated. Houseless wayfarers, stopping to +find food and shelter under his roof, an orphan child carried seven +miles on foot from the bedside of a dead mother and cared for all +winter, three children, besides two of his own, being raised out of a +sense of affection and care for the fatherless. + +One day in the local post office I was idling a half hour with the +postmaster, when I again inquired: + +"Do you know Charlie Potter?" + +"I should think I did. Charlie Potter and I sailed together for +something over eleven years." + +"How do you mean sailed together?" + +"We were on the same schooner. This used to be a great port for mackerel +and cod. We were wrecked once together" + +"How was that?" + +"Oh, we went on rocks." + +"Any lives lost?" + +"No, but there came mighty near being. We helped each other in the boat. +I remember Charlie was the last one in that time. Wouldn't get in until +all the rest were safe." + +A sudden resolution came to me. + +"Do you know where he is now?" + +"Yes, he's up in Norwich, preaching or doing missionary work. He's kind +of busy all the time among the poor people, and so on. Never makes much +of anything out of it for himself, but just likes to do it, I guess." + +"Do you know how he manages to live?" + +"No, I don't, exactly. He believes in trusting to Providence for what he +needs. He works though, too, at one job and another. He's a carpenter +for one thing. Got an idea the Lord will send 'im whatever he needs." + +"Well, and does He?" + +"Well, he lives." A little later he added: + +"Oh, yes. There's nothing lazy about Charlie. He's a good worker. When +he was in the fishing line here there wasn't a man worked harder than he +did. They can't anybody lay anything like that against him." + +"Is he very difficult to talk to?" I asked, meditating on seeking him +out. I had so little to do at the time, the very idlest of summers, and +the reports of this man's deeds were haunting me. I wanted to discover +for myself whether he was real or not--whether the reports were true. +The Samaritan in people is so easily exaggerated at times. + +"Oh, no. He's one of the finest men that way I ever knew. You could see +him, well enough, if you went up to Norwich, providing he's up there. He +usually is, though, I think. He lives there with his wife and mother, +you know." + +I caught an afternoon boat for New London and Norwich at one-thirty, and +arrived in Norwich at five. The narrow streets of the thriving little +mill city were alive with people. I had no address, could not obtain +one, but through the open door of a news-stall near the boat landing I +called to the proprietor: + +"Do you know any one in Norwich by the name of Charlie Potter?" + +"The man who works around among the poor people here?" + +"That's the man." + +"Yes, I know him. He lives out on Summer Street, Number Twelve, I think. +You'll find it in the city directory." + +The ready reply was rather astonishing. Norwich has something like +thirty thousand people. + +I walked out in search of Summer Street and finally found a beautiful +lane of that name climbing upward over gentle slopes, arched completely +with elms. Some of the pretty porches of the cottages extended nearly to +the sidewalk. Hammocks, rocking-chairs on verandas, benches under the +trees--all attested the love of idleness and shade in summer. Only the +glimpse of mills and factories in the valley below evidenced the grimmer +life which gave rise mayhap to the need of a man to work among the poor. + +"Is this Summer Street?" I inquired of an old darky who was strolling +cityward in the cool of the evening. An umbrella was under his arm and +an evening paper under his spectacled nose. + +"Bress de Lord!" he said, looking vaguely around. "Ah couldn't say. Ah +knows dat street--been on it fifty times--but Ah never did know de name. +Ha, ha, ha!" + +The hills about echoed his hearty laugh. + +"You don't happen to know Charlie Potter?" + +"Oh, yas, sah. Ah knows Charlie Potter. Dat's his house right ovah dar." + +The house in which Charlie Potter lived was a two-story frame, +overhanging a sharp slope, which descended directly to the waters of the +pretty river below. For a mile or more, the valley of the river could be +seen, its slopes dotted with houses, the valley itself lined with mills. +Two little girls were upon the sloping lawn to the right of the house. A +stout, comfortable-looking man was sitting by a window on the left side +of the house, gazing out over the valley. + +"Is this where Charlie Potter lives?" I inquired of one of the children. + +"Yes, sir." + +"Did he live in Noank?" + +"Yes, sir." + +Just then a pleasant-faced woman of forty-five or fifty issued from a +vine-covered door. + +"Mr. Potter?" she replied to my inquiry. "He'll be right out." + +She went about some little work at the side of the house, and in a +moment Charlie Potter appeared. He was short, thick-set, and weighed no +less than two hundred pounds. His face and hands were sunburned and +brown like those of every fisherman of Noank. An old wrinkled coat and a +baggy pair of gray trousers clothed his form loosely. Two inches of a +spotted, soft-brimmed hat were pulled carelessly over his eyes. His face +was round and full, but slightly seamed. His hands were large, his walk +uneven, and rather inclined to a side swing, or the sailor's roll. He +seemed an odd, pudgy person for so large a fame. + +"Is this Mr. Potter?" + +"I'm the man." + +"I live on a little hummock at the east of Mystic Island, off Noank." + +"You do?" + +"I came up to have a talk with you." + +"Will you come inside, or shall we sit out here?" + +"Let's sit on the step." + +"All right, let's sit on the step." + +He waddled out of the gate and sank comfortably on the little low +doorstep, with his feet on the cool bricks below. I dropped into the +space beside him, and was greeted by as sweet and kind a look as I have +ever seen in a man's eyes. It was one of perfect courtesy and good +nature--void of all suspicion. + +"We were sitting down in the sailboat maker's place at Noank the other +day, and I asked a half dozen of the old fellows whether they had ever +known a contented man. They all thought a while, and then they said they +had. Old Mr. Main and the rest of them agreed that Charlie Potter was a +contented man. What I want to know is, are you?" + +I looked quizzically into his eyes to see what effect this would have, +and if there was no evidence of a mist of pleasure and affection being +vigorously restrained I was very much mistaken. Something seemed to hold +the man in helpless silence as he gazed vacantly at nothing. He breathed +heavily, then drew himself together and lifted one of his big hands, as +if to touch me, but refrained. + +"Yes, brother," he said after a time, "I _am_." + +"Well, that's good," I replied, taking a slight mental exception to the +use of the word brother. "What makes you contented?" + +"I don't know, unless it is that I've found out what I ought to do. You +see, I need so very little for myself that I couldn't be very unhappy." + +"What ought you to do?" + +"I ought to love my fellowmen." + +"And do you?" + +"Say, brother, but I do," he insisted quite simply and with no evidence +of chicane or make-believe--a simple, natural enthusiasm. "I love +everybody. There isn't anybody so low or so mean but I love him. I love +you, yes, I do. I love you." + +He reached out and touched me with his hand, and while I was inclined to +take exception to this very moral enthusiasm, I thrilled just the same +as I have not over the touch of any man in years. There was something +effective and electric about him, so very warm and foolishly human. The +glance which accompanied it spoke, it seemed, as truthfully as his +words. He probably did love me--or thought he did. What difference? + +We lapsed into silence. The scene below was so charming that I could +easily gaze at it in silence. This little house was very simple, not +poor, by no means prosperous, but well-ordered--such a home as such a +man might have. After a while I said: + +"It is very evident that you think the condition of some of your +fellowmen isn't what it ought to be. Tell me what you are trying to do. +What method have you for improving their condition?" + +"The way I reason is this-a-way," he began. "All that some people have +is their feelings, nothing else. Take a tramp, for instance, as I often +have. When you begin to sum up to see where to begin, you find that all +he has in the world, besides his pipe and a little tobacco, is his +feelings. It's all most people have, rich or poor, though a good many +think they have more than that. I try not to injure anybody's feelings." + +He looked at me as though he had expressed the solution of the +difficulties of the world, and the wonderful, kindly eyes beamed in rich +romance upon the scene. + +"Very good," I said, "but what do you do? How do you go about it to aid +your fellowmen?" + +"Well," he answered, unconsciously overlooking his own personal actions +in the matter, "I try to bring them the salvation which the Bible +teaches. You know I stand on the Bible, from cover to cover." + +"Yes, I know you stand on the Bible, but what do you do? You don't +merely preach the Bible to them. What do you do?" + +"No, sir, I don't preach the Bible at all. I stand on it myself. I try +as near as I can to do what it says. I go wherever I can be useful. If +anybody is sick or in trouble, I'm ready to go. I'll be a nurse. I'll +work and earn them food. I'll give them anything I can--that's what I +do." + +"How can you give when you haven't anything? They told me in Noank that +you never worked for money." + +"Not for myself alone. I never take any money for myself alone. That +would be self-seeking. Anything I earn or take is for the Lord, not me. +I never keep it. The Lord doesn't allow a man to be self-seeking." + +"Well, then, when you get money what do you do with it? You can't do and +live without money." + +He had been looking away across the river and the bridge to the city +below, but now he brought his eyes back and fixed them on me. + +"I've been working now for twenty years or more, and, although I've +never had more money than would last me a few days at a time, I've never +wanted for anything and I've been able to help others. I've run pretty +close sometimes. Time and time again I've been compelled to say, 'Lord, +I'm all out of coal,' or 'Lord, I'm going to have to ask you to get me +my fare to New Haven tomorrow,' but in the moment of my need He has +never forgotten me. Why, I've gone down to the depot time and time +again, when it was necessary for me to go, without five cents in my +pocket, and He's been there to meet me. Why, He wouldn't keep you +waiting when you're about His work. He wouldn't forget you--not for a +minute." + +I looked at the man in open-eyed amazement. + +"Do you mean to say that you would go down to a depot without money and +wait for money to come to you?" + +"Oh, brother," he said, with the softest light in his eyes, "if you only +knew what it is to have faith!" + +He laid his hand softly on mine. + +"What is car-fare to New Haven or to anywhere, to Him?" + +"But," I replied materially, "you haven't any car-fare when you go +there--how do you actually get it? Who gives it to you? Give me one +instance." + +"Why, it was only last week, brother, that a woman wrote me from Maiden, +Massachusetts, wanting me to come and see her. She's very sick with +consumption, and she thought she was going to die. I used to know her in +Noank, and she thought if she could get to see me she would feel better. + +"I didn't have any money at the time, but that didn't make any +difference. + +"'Lord,' I said, 'here's a woman sick in Maiden, and she wants me to +come to her. I haven't got any money, but I'll go right down to the +depot, in time to catch a certain train,' and I went. And while I was +standing there a man came up to me and said, 'Brother, I'm told to give +you this,' and he handed me ten dollars." + +"Did you know the man?" I exclaimed. + +"Never saw him before in my life," he replied, smiling genially. + +"And didn't he say anything more than that?" + +"No." + +I stared at him, and he added, as if to take the edge off my +astonishment: + +"Why, bless your heart, I knew he was from the Lord, just the moment I +saw him coming." + +"You mean to say you were standing there without a cent, expecting the +Lord to help you, and He did?" + +"'He shall call upon me, and I shall answer him,'" he answered simply, +quoting the Ninety-first Psalm. + +This incident was still the subject of my inquiry when a little colored +girl came out of the yard and paused a moment before us. + +"May I go down across the bridge, papa?" she asked. + +"Yes," he answered, and then as she tripped away, said: + +"She's one of my adopted children." He gazed between his knees at the +sidewalk. + +"Have you many others?" + +"Three." + +"Raising them, are you?" + +"Yes." + +"They seem to think, down in Noank, that living as you do and giving +everything away is satisfactory to you but rather hard on your wife and +children." + +"Well, it is true that she did feel a little uncertain in the beginning, +but she's never wanted for anything. She'll tell you herself that she's +never been without a thing that she really needed, and she's been +happy." + +He paused to meditate, I presume, over the opinion of his former fellow +townsmen, and then added: + +"It's true, there have been times when we have been right where we had +to have certain things pretty badly, before they came, but they never +failed to come." + +While he was still talking, Mrs. Potter came around the corner of the +house and out upon the sidewalk. She was going to the Saturday evening +market in the city below. + +"Here she is," he said. "Now you can ask her." + +"What is it?" she inquired, turning a serene and smiling face to me. + +"They still think, down in Noank, that you're not very happy with me," +he said. "They're afraid you want for something once in a while." + +She took this piece of neighborly interference in better fashion than +most would, I fancy. + +"I have never wanted for anything since I have been married to my +husband," she said. "I am thoroughly contented." + +She looked at him and he at her, and there passed between them an +affectionate glance. + +"Yes," he said, when she had passed after a pleasing little +conversation, "my wife has been a great help to me. She has never +complained." + +"People are inclined to talk a little," I said. + +"Well, you see, she never complained, but she did feel a little bit +worried in the beginning." + +"Have you a mission or a church here in Norwich?" + +"No, I don't believe in churches." + +"Not in churches?" + +"No. The sight of a minister preaching the word of God for so much a +year is all a mockery to me." + +"What do you believe in?" + +"Personal service. Churches and charitable institutions and societies +are all valueless. You can't reach your fellowman that way. They build +up buildings and pay salaries--but there's a better way." (I was +thinking of St. Francis and his original dream, before they threw him +out and established monasteries and a costume or uniform--the thing he +so much objected to.) "This giving of a few old clothes that the moths +will get anyhow, that won't do. You've got to give something of +yourself, and that's affection. Love is the only thing you can really +give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything. +Everything comes with it in some way or other." + +"How do you say?" I queried. "Money certainly comes handy sometimes." + +"Yes, when you give it with your own hand and heart--in no other way. It +comes to nothing just contributed to some thing. Ah!" he added, with +sudden animation, "the tangles men can get themselves into, the snarls, +the wretchedness! Troubles with women, with men whom they owe, with evil +things they say and think, until they can't walk down the street any +more without peeping about to see if they are followed. They can't look +you in die face; can't walk a straight course, but have got to sneak +around corners. Poor, miserable, unhappy--they're worrying and crying +and dodging one another!" + +He paused, lost in contemplation of the picture he had conjured up. + +"Yes," I went on catechistically, determined, if I could, to rout out +this matter of giving, this actual example of the modus operandi of +Christian charity. "What do you do? How do you get along without giving +them money?" + +"I don't get along without giving them some money. There are cases, lots +of them, where a little money is necessary. But, brother, it is so +little necessary at times. It isn't always money they want. You can't +reach them with old clothes and charity societies," he insisted. "You've +got to love them, brother. You've got to go to them and love them, just +as they are, scarred and miserable and bad-hearted." + +"Yes," I replied doubtfully, deciding to follow this up later. "But just +what is it you do in a needy case? One instance?" + +"Why, one night I was passing a little house in this town," he went on, +"and I heard a woman crying. I went right to the door and opened it, and +when I got inside she just stopped and looked at me. + +"'Madam,' I said, 'I have come to help you, if I can. Now you tell me +what you're crying for.' + +"Well, sir, you know she sat there and told me how her husband drank and +how she didn't have anything in the house to eat, and so I just gave her +all I had and told her I would see her husband for her, and the next day +I went and hunted him up and said to him, 'Oh, brother, I wish you would +open your eyes and see what you are doing. I wish you wouldn't do that +any more. It's only misery you are creating.' And, you know, I got to +telling about how badly his wife felt about it, and how I intended to +work and try and help her, and bless me if he didn't up and promise me +before I got through that he wouldn't do that any more. And he didn't. +He's working today, and it's been two years since I went to him, +nearly." + +His eyes were alight with his appreciation of personal service. + +"Yes, that's one instance," I said. + +"Oh, there are plenty of them," he replied. "It's the only way. Down +here in New London a couple of winters ago we had a terrible time of it. +That was the winter of the panic, you know. Cold--my, but that was a +cold winter, and thousands of people out of work--just thousands. It was +awful. I tried to do what I could here and there all along, but finally +things got so bad there that I went to the mayor. I saw they were +raising some kind of a fund to help the poor, so I told him that if he'd +give me a little of the money they were talking of spending that I'd +feed the hungry for a cent-and-a-half a meal." + +"A cent-and-a-half a meal!" + +"Yes, sir. They all thought it was rather curious, not possible at +first, but they gave me the money and I fed 'em." + +"Good meals?" + +"Yes, as good as I ever eat myself," he replied. + +"How did you do it?" I asked. + +"Oh, I can cook. I just went around to the markets, and told the +market-men what I wanted--heads of mackerel, and the part of the halibut +that's left after the rich man cuts off his steak--it's the poorest part +that he pays for, you know. And I went fishing myself two or three +times--borrowed a big boat and got men to help me--oh, I'm a good +fisherman, you know. And then I got the loan of an old covered brickyard +that no one was using any more, a great big thing that I could close up +and build fires in, and I put my kettle in there and rigged up tables +out of borrowed boards, and got people to loan me plates and spoons and +knives and forks and cups. I made fish chowder, and fish dinners, and +really I set a very fine table, I did, that winter." + +"For a cent-and-a-half a meal!" + +"Yes, sir, a cent-and-a-half a meal. Ask any one in New London. That's +all it cost me. The mayor said he was surprised at the way I did it." + +"Well, but there wasn't any particular personal service in the money +they gave you?" I asked, catching him up on that point. "They didn't +personally serve--those who gave you the money?" + +"No, sir, they didn't," he replied dreamily, with unconscious +simplicity. "But they gave through me, you see. That's the way it was. I +gave the personal service. Don't you see? That's the way." + +"Yes, that's the way," I smiled, avoiding as far as possible a further +discussion of this contradiction, so unconscious on his part, and in the +drag of his thought he took up another idea. + +"I clothed 'em that winter, too--went around and got barrels and boxes +of old clothing. Some of them felt a little ashamed to put on the +things, but I got over that, all right. I was wearing them myself, and I +just told them, 'Don't feel badly, brother. I'm wearing them out of the +same barrel with you--I'm wearing them out of the same barrel.' Got my +clothes entirely free for that winter." + +"Can you always get all the aid you need for such enterprises?" + +"Usually, and then I can earn a good deal of money when I work steadily. +I can get a hundred and fifty dollars for a little yacht, you know, +every time I find time to make one; and I can make a good deal of money +out of fishing. I went out fishing here on the Fourth of July and caught +two hundred blackfish--four and five pounds, almost, every one of them." + +"That ought to be profitable," I said. + +"Well, it was," he replied. + +"How much did you get for them?" + +"Oh, I didn't sell them," he said. "I never take money for my work that +way. I gave them all away." + +"What did you do?" I asked, laughing--"advertise for people to come for +them?" + +"No. My wife took some, and my daughters, and I took the rest and we +carried them around to people that we thought would like to have them." + +"Well, that wasn't so profitable, was it?" I commented amusedly. + +"Yes, they were fine fish," he replied, not seeming to have heard me. + +We dropped the subject of personal service at this point, and I +expressed the opinion that his service was only a temporary expedient. +Times changed, and with them, people. They forgot. Perhaps those he +aided were none the better for accepting his charity. + +"I know what you mean," he said. "But that don't make any difference. +You just have to keep on giving, that's all, see? Not all of 'em turn +back. It helps a lot. Money is the only dangerous thing to give--but I +never give money--not very often. I give myself, rather, as much as +possible. I give food and clothing, too, but I try to show 'em a new +way--that's not money, you know. So many people need a new way. They're +looking for it often, only they don't seem to know how. But God, dear +brother, however poor or mean they are--He knows. You've got to reach +the heart, you know, and I let Him help me. You've got to make a man +over in his soul, if you want to help him, and money won't help you to +do that, you know. No, it won't." + +He looked up at me in clear-eyed faith. It was remarkable. + +"Make them over?" I queried, still curious, for it was all like a +romance, and rather fantastic to me. "What do you mean? How do you make +them over?" + +"Oh, in their attitude, that's how. You've got to change a man and bring +him out of self-seeking if you really want to make him good. Most men +are so tangled up in their own errors and bad ways, and so worried over +their seekings, that unless you can set them to giving it's no use. +They're always seeking, and they don't know what they want half the +time. Money isn't the thing. Why, half of them wouldn't understand how +to use it if they had it. Their minds are not bright enough. Their +perceptions are not clear enough. All you can do is to make them content +with themselves. And that, giving to others will do. I never saw the man +or the woman yet who couldn't be happy if you could make them feel the +need of living for others, of doing something for somebody besides +themselves. It's a fact. Selfish people are never happy." + +He rubbed his hands as if he saw the solution of the world's +difficulties very clearly, and I said to him: + +"Well, now, you've got a man out of the mire, and 'saved,' as you call +it, and then what? What comes next?" + +"Well, then he's saved," he replied. "Happiness comes next--content." + +"I know. But must he go to church, or conform to certain rules?" + +"No, no, no!" he replied sweetly. "Nothing to do except to be good to +others. 'True religion and undefiled before our God and Father is +this,'" he quoted, "'to visit the widow and the orphan in their +affliction and to keep unspotted from the world. Charity is kind,' you +know. 'Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh not its +own.'" + +"Well," I said, rather aimlessly, I will admit, for this high faith +staggered me. (How high! How high!) "And then what?" + +"Well, then the world would come about. It would be so much better. All +the misery is in the lack of sympathy one with another. When we get that +straightened out we can work in peace. There are lots of things to do, +you know." + +Yes, I thought, looking down on the mills and the driving force of +self-interest--on greed, lust, love of pleasure, all their fantastic and +yet moving dreams. + +"I'm an ignorant man myself, and I don't know all," he went on, "and I'd +like to study. My, but I'd like to look into all things, but I can't do +it now. We can't stop until this thing is straightened out. Some time, +maybe," and he looked peacefully away. + +"By the way," I said, "whatever became of the man to whom you gave your +rubber boots over on Fisher's Island?" + +His face lit up as if it were the most natural thing that I should know +about it. + +"Say," he exclaimed, in the most pleased and confidential way, as if we +were talking about a mutual friend, "I saw him not long ago. And, do you +know, he's a good man now--really, he is. Sober and hard-working. And, +say, would you believe it, he told me that I was the cause of it--just +that miserable old pair of rubber boots--what do you think of that?" + +I shook his hand at parting, and as we stood looking at each other in +the shadow of the evening I asked him: + +"Are you afraid to die?" + +"Say, brother, but I'm not," he returned. "It hasn't any terror for me +at all. I'm just as willing. My, but I'm willing." + +He smiled and gripped me heartily again, and, as I was starting to go, +said: + +"If I die tonight, it'll be all right. He'll use me just as long as He +needs me. That I know. Good-by." + +"Good-by," I called back. + +He hung by his fence, looking down upon the city. As I turned the next +corner I saw him awakening from his reflection and waddling stolidly +back into the house. + + + + +_My Brother Paul_ + + +I like best to think of him as he was at the height of his all-too-brief +reputation and success, when, as the author and composer of various +American popular successes ("On the Banks of the Wabash," "Just Tell +Them That You Saw Me," and various others), as a third owner of one of +the most successful popular music publishing houses in the city and as +an actor and playwright of some small repute, he was wont to spin like a +moth in the white light of Broadway. By reason of a little luck and some +talent he had come so far, done so much for himself. In his day he had +been by turn a novitiate in a Western seminary which trained aspirants +for the Catholic priesthood; a singer and entertainer with a +perambulating cure-all oil troupe or wagon ("Hamlin's Wizard Oil") +traveling throughout Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; both end- and middle-man +with one, two or three different minstrel companies of repute; the +editor or originator and author of a "funny column" in a Western small +city paper; the author of the songs mentioned and a hundred others; a +black-face monologue artist; a white-face ditto, at Tony Pastor's, +Miner's and Niblo's of the old days; a comic lead; co-star and star in +such melodramas and farces as "The Danger Signal," "The Two Johns," "A +Tin Soldier," "The Midnight Bell," "A Green Goods Man" (a farce which he +himself wrote, by the way), and others. The man had a genius for the +kind of gayety, poetry and romance which may, and no doubt must be, +looked upon as exceedingly middle-class but which nonetheless had as +much charm as anything in this world can well have. He had at this time +absolutely no cares or financial worries of any kind, and this plus his +health, self-amusing disposition and talent for entertaining, made him a +most fascinating figure to contemplate. + +My first recollection of him is of myself as a boy often and he a man of +twenty-five (my oldest brother). He had come back to the town in which +we were then living solely to find his mother and help her. Six or seven +years before he had left without any explanation as to where he was +going, tired of or irritated by the routine of a home which for any +genuine opportunity it offered him might as well never have existed. It +was run dominantly by my father in the interest of religious and moral +theories, with which this boy had little sympathy. He was probably not +understood by any one save my mother, who understood or at least +sympathized with us all. Placed in a school which was to turn him out a +priest, he had decamped, and now seven years later was here in this +small town, with fur coat and silk hat, a smart cane--a gentleman of the +theatrical profession. He had joined a minstrel show somewhere and had +become an "end-man." He had suspected that we were not as fortunate in +this world's goods as might be and so had returned. His really great +heart had called him. + +But the thing which haunts me, and which was typical of him then as +throughout life, was the spirit which he then possessed and conveyed. It +was one of an agile geniality, unmarred by thought of a serious +character but warm and genuinely tender and with a taste for simple +beauty which was most impressive. He was already the author of a cheap +songbook, "_The Paul Dresser Songster_" ("All the Songs Sung in the +Show"), and some copies of this he had with him, one of which he gave +me. But we having no musical instrument of any kind, he taught me some +of the melodies "by ear." The home in which by force of poverty we were +compelled to live was most unprepossessing and inconvenient, and the +result of his coming could but be our request for, or at least the +obvious need of, assistance. Still he was as much an enthusiastic part +of it as though he belonged to it. He was happy in it, and the cause of +his happiness was my mother, of whom he was intensely fond. I recall how +he hung about her in the kitchen or wherever she happened to be, how +enthusiastically he related all his plans for the future, his amusing +difficulties in the past. He was very grand and youthfully +self-important, or so we all thought, and still he patted her on the +shoulder or put his arm about her and kissed her. Until she died years +later she was truly his uppermost thought, crying with her at times over +her troubles and his. He contributed regularly to her support and sent +home all his cast-off clothing to be made over for the younger ones. +(Bless her tired hands!) + +As I look back now on my life, I realize quite clearly that of all the +members of my family, subsequent to my mother's death, the only one who +truly understood me, or, better yet, sympathized with my intellectual +and artistic point of view, was, strange as it may seem, this same Paul, +my dearest brother. Not that he was in any way fitted intellectually or +otherwise to enjoy high forms of art and learning and so guide me, or +that he understood, even in later years (long after I had written +"Sister Carrie," for instance), what it was that I was attempting to do; +he never did. His world was that of the popular song, the middle-class +actor or comedian, the middle-class comedy, and such humorous aesthetes +of the writing world as Bill Nye, Petroleum V. Nasby, the authors of the +Spoopendyke Papers, and "Samantha at Saratoga." As far as I could make +out--and I say this in no lofty, condescending spirit, by any means--he +was entirely full of simple, middle-class romance, middle-class humor, +middle-class tenderness and middle-class grossness, all of which I am +very free to say early disarmed and won me completely and kept me so +much his debtor that I should hesitate to try to acknowledge or explain +all that he did for or meant to me. + +Imagine, if you can, a man weighing all of three hundred pounds, not +more than five feet ten-and-one-half inches in height and yet of so +lithesome a build that he gave not the least sense of either undue +weight or lethargy. His temperament, always ebullient and radiant, +presented him as a clever, eager, cheerful, emotional and always highly +illusioned person with so collie-like a warmth that one found him +compelling interest and even admiration. Easily cast down at times by +the most trivial matters, at others, and for the most part, he was so +spirited and bubbly and emotional and sentimental that your fiercest or +most gloomy intellectual rages or moods could scarcely withstand his +smile. This tenderness or sympathy of his, a very human appreciation of +the weaknesses and errors as well as the toils and tribulations of most +of us, was by far his outstanding and most engaging quality, and gave +him a very definite force and charm. Admitting, as I freely do, that he +was very sensuous (gross, some people might have called him), that he +had an intense, possibly an undue fondness for women, a frivolous, +childish, horse-playish sense of humor at times, still he had other +qualities which were absolutely adorable. Life seemed positively to +spring up fountain-like in him. One felt in him a capacity to do (in +his possibly limited field); an ability to achieve, whether he was doing +so at the moment or not, and a supreme willingness to share and radiate +his success--qualities exceedingly rare, I believe. Some people are so +successful, and yet you know their success is purely selfish--exclusive, +not inclusive; they never permit you to share in their lives. Not so my +good brother. He was generous to the point of self-destruction, and that +is literally true. He was the mark if not the prey of all those who +desired much or little for nothing, those who previously might not have +rendered him a service of any kind. He was all life and color, and +thousands (I use the word with care) noted and commented on it. + +When I first came to New York he was easily the foremost popular +song-writer of the day and was the cause of my coming, so soon at least, +having established himself in the publishing field and being so +comfortably settled as to offer me a kind of anchorage in so troubled a +commercial sea. I was very much afraid of New York, but with him here it +seemed not so bad. The firm of which he was a part had a floor or two in +an old residence turned office building, as so many are in New York, in +Twentieth Street very close to Broadway, and here, during the summer +months (1894-7) when the various theatrical road-companies, one of which +he was always a part, had returned for the closed season, he was to be +found aiding his concern in the reception and care of possible +applicants for songs and attracting by his personality such virtuosi of +the vaudeville and comedy stage as were likely to make the instrumental +publications of his firm a success. + +I may as well say here that he had no more business skill than a fly. At +the same time, he was in no wise sycophantic where either wealth, power +or fame was concerned. He considered himself a personage of sorts, and +was. The minister, the moralist, the religionist, the narrow, dogmatic +and self-centered in any field were likely to be the butt of his humor, +and he could imitate so many phases of character so cleverly that he was +the life of any idle pleasure-seeking party anywhere. To this day I +recall his characterization of an old Irish washerwoman arguing; a +stout, truculent German laying down the law; lean, gloomy, out-at-elbows +actors of the Hamlet or classic school complaining of their fate; the +stingy skinflint haggling over a dollar, and always with a skill for +titillating the risibilities which is vivid to me even to this day. +Other butts of his humor were the actor, the Irish day-laborer, the +negro and the Hebrew. And how he could imitate them! It is useless to +try to indicate such things in writing, the facial expression, the +intonation, the gestures; these are not things of words. Perhaps I can +best indicate the direction of his mind, if not his manner, by the +following: + +One night as we were on our way to a theater there stood on a nearby +corner in the cold a blind man singing and at the same time holding out +a little tin cup into which the coins of the charitably inclined were +supposed to be dropped. At once my brother noticed him, for he had an +eye for this sort of thing, the pathos of poverty as opposed to so gay a +scene, the street with its hurrying theater crowds. At the same time, so +inherently mischievous was his nature that although his sympathy for the +suffering or the ill-used of fate was overwhelming, he could not resist +combining his intended charity with a touch of the ridiculous. + +"Got any pennies?" he demanded. + +"Three or four." + +Going over to an outdoor candystand he exchanged a quarter for pennies, +then came back and waited until the singer, who had ceased singing, +should begin a new melody. A custom of the singer's, since the song was +of no import save as a means of attracting attention to him, was to +interpolate a "Thank you" after each coin dropped in his cup and between +the words of the song, regardless. It was this little idiosyncrasy which +evidently had attracted my brother's attention, although it had not +mine. Standing quite close, his pennies in his hand, he waited until the +singer had resumed, then began dropping pennies, waiting each time for +the "Thank you," which caused the song to go about as follows: + +"Da-a-'ling" (Clink!--"Thank you!") "I am--" (Clink!--"Thank you!") +"growing o-o-o-ld" (Clink!--"Thank you!"), "Silve-e-r--" (Clink!--"Thank +you!") "threads among the--" (Clink!--"Thank you!") "go-o-o-ld--" +(Clink! "Thank you!"). "Shine upon my-y" (Clink!--"Thank you!") +"bro-o-ow toda-a-y" (Clink!--"Thank you!"), "Life is--" (Clink!--"Thank +you!") "fading fast a-a-wa-a-ay" (Clink!--"Thank you!")--and so on ad +infinitum, until finally the beggar himself seemed to hesitate a little +and waver, only so solemn was his role of want and despair that of +course he dared not but had to go on until the last penny was in, and +until he was saying more "Thank yous" than words of the song. A +passer-by noticing it had begun to "Haw-haw!", at which others joined +in, myself included. The beggar himself, a rather sniveling specimen, +finally realizing what a figure he was cutting with his song and thanks, +emptied the coins into his hand and with an indescribably wry +expression, half-uncertainty and half smile, exclaimed, "I'll have to +thank you as long as you keep putting pennies in, I suppose. God bless +you!" + +My brother came away smiling and content. + +However, it is not as a humorist or song-writer or publisher that I wish +to portray him, but as an odd, lovable personality, possessed of so many +interesting and peculiar and almost indescribable traits. Of all +characters in fiction he perhaps most suggests Jack Falstaff, with his +love of women, his bravado and bluster and his innate good nature and +sympathy. Sympathy was really his outstanding characteristic, even more +than humor, although the latter was always present. One might recite a +thousand incidents of his generosity and out-of-hand charity, which +contained no least thought of return or reward. I recall that once there +was a boy who had been reared in one of the towns in which we had once +lived who had never had a chance in his youth, educationally or in any +other way, and, having turned out "bad" and sunk to the level of a bank +robber, had been detected in connection with three other men in the act +of robbing a bank, the watchman of which was subsequently killed in the +melee and escape. Of all four criminals only this one had been caught. +Somewhere in prison he had heard sung one of my brother's sentimental +ballads, "The Convict and the Bird," and recollecting that he had known +Paul wrote him, setting forth his life history and that now he had no +money or friends. + +At once my good brother was alive to the pathos of it. He showed the +letter to me and wanted to know what could be done. I suggested a +lawyer, of course, one of those brilliant legal friends of his--always +he had enthusiastic admirers in all walks--who might take the case for +little or nothing. There was the leader of Tammany Hall, Richard Croker, +who could be reached, he being a friend of Paul's. There was the +Governor himself to whom a plain recitation of the boy's unfortunate +life might be addressed, and with some hope of profit. + +All of these things he did, and more. He went to the prison (Sing Sing), +saw the warden and told him the story of the boy's life, then went to +the boy, or man, himself and gave him some money. He was introduced to +the Governor through influential friends and permitted to tell the tale. +There was much delay, a reprieve, a commutation of the death penalty to +life imprisonment--the best that could be done. But he was so grateful +for that, so pleased. You would have thought at the time that it was his +own life that had been spared. + +"Good heavens!" I jested. "You'd think you'd done the man an inestimable +service, getting him in the penitentiary for life!" + +"That's right," he grinned--an unbelievably provoking smile. "He'd +better be dead, wouldn't he? Well, I'll write and ask him which he'd +rather have." + +I recall again taking him to task for going to the rescue of a "down and +out" actor who had been highly successful and apparently not very +sympathetic in his day, one of that more or less gaudy clan that wastes +its substance, or so it seemed to me then, in riotous living. But now +being old and entirely discarded and forgotten, he was in need of +sympathy and aid. By some chance he knew Paul, or Paul had known him, +and now because of the former's obvious prosperity--he was much in the +papers at the time--he had appealed to him. The man lived with a sister +in a wretched little town far out on Long Island. On receiving his +appeal Paul seemed to wish to investigate for himself, possibly to +indulge in a little lofty romance or sentiment. At any rate he wanted me +to go along for the sake of companionship, so one dreary November +afternoon we went, saw the pantaloon, who did not impress me very much +even in his age and misery for he still had a few of his theatrical +manners and insincerities, and as we were coming away I said, "Paul, why +should you be the goat in every case?" for I had noted ever since I had +been in New York, which was several years then, that he was a victim of +many such importunities. If it was not the widow of a deceased friend +who needed a ton of coal or a sack of flour, or the reckless, headstrong +boy of parents too poor to save him from a term in jail or the +reformatory and who asked for fine-money or an appeal to higher powers +for clemency, or a wastrel actor or actress "down and out" and unable to +"get back to New York" and requiring his or her railroad fare wired +prepaid, it was the dead wastrel actor or actress who needed a coffin +and a decent form of burial. + +"Well, you know how it is, Thee" (he nearly always addressed me thus), +"when you're old and sick. As long as you're up and around and have +money, everybody's your friend. But once you're down and out no one +wants to see you any more--see?" Almost amusingly he was always sad over +those who had once been prosperous but who were now old and forgotten. +Some of his silliest tender songs conveyed as much. + +"Quite so," I complained, rather brashly, I suppose, "but why didn't he +save a little money when he had it? He made as much as you'll ever +make." The man had been a star. "He had plenty of it, didn't he? Why +should he come to you?" + +"Well, you know how it is, Thee," he explained in the kindliest and most +apologetic way. "When you're young and healthy like that you don't +think. I know how it is; I'm that way myself. We all have a little of it +in us. I have; you have. And anyhow youth's the time to spend money if +you're to get any good of it, isn't it? Of course when you're old you +can't expect much, but still I always feel as though I'd like to help +some of these old people." His eyes at such times always seemed more +like those of a mother contemplating a sick or injured child than those +of a man contemplating life. + +"But, Paul," I insisted on another occasion when he had just wired +twenty-five dollars somewhere to help bury some one. (My spirit was not +so niggardly as fearsome. I was constantly terrified in those days by +the thought of a poverty-stricken old age for myself and him--why, I +don't know. I was by no means incompetent.) "Why don't you save your +money? Why should you give it to every Tom, Dick and Harry that asks +you? You're not a charity organization, and you're not called upon to +feed and clothe and bury all the wasters who happen to cross your path. +If you were down and out how many do you suppose would help you?" + +"Well, you know," and his voice and manner were largely those of mother, +the same wonder, the same wistfulness and sweetness, the same bubbling +charity and tenderness of heart, "I can't say I haven't got it, can I?" +He was at the height of his success at the time. "And anyhow, what's the +use being so hard on people? We're all likely to get that way. You don't +know what pulls people down sometimes--not wasting always. It's +thoughtlessness, or trying to be happy. Remember how poor we were and +how mamma and papa used to worry." Often these references to mother or +father or their difficulties would bring tears to his eyes. "I can't +stand to see people suffer, that's all, not if I have anything," and his +eyes glowed sweetly. "And, after all," he added apologetically, "the +little I give isn't much. They don't get so much out of me. They don't +come to me every day." + +Another time--one Christmas Eve it was, when I was comparatively new to +New York (my second or third year), I was a little uncertain what to do, +having no connections outside of Paul and two sisters, one of whom was +then out of the city. The other, owing to various difficulties of her +own and a temporary estrangement from us--more our fault than hers--was +therefore not available. The rather drab state into which she had +allowed her marital affections to lead her was the main reason that kept +us apart. At any rate I felt that I could not, or rather would not, go +there. At the same time, owing to some difficulty or irritation with the +publishing house of which my brother was then part owner (it was +publishing the magazine which I was editing), we twain were also +estranged, nothing very deep really--a temporary feeling of distance and +indifference. + +So I had no place to go except to my room, which was in a poor part of +the town, or out to dine where best I might--some moderate-priced hotel, +was my thought. I had not seen my brother in three or four days, but +after I had strolled a block or two up Broadway I encountered him. I +have always thought that he had kept an eye on me and had really +followed me; was looking, in short, to see what I would do As usual he +was most smartly and comfortably dressed. + +"Where you going, Thee?" he called cheerfully. + +"Oh, no place in particular," I replied rather suavely, I presume. "Just +going up the street." + +"Now, see here, sport," he began--a favorite expression of his, +"sport"--with his face abeam, "what's the use you and me quarreling? +It's Christmas Eve, ain't it? It's a shame! Come on, let's have a drink +and then go out to dinner." + +"Well," I said, rather uncompromisingly, for at times his seemingly +extreme success and well-being irritated me, "I'll have a drink, but as +for dinner I have another engagement." + +"Aw, don't say that. What's the use being sore? You know I always feel +the same even if we do quarrel at times. Cut it out. Come on. You know +I'm your brother, and you're mine. It's all right with me, Thee. Let's +make it up, will you? Put 'er there! Come on, now. We'll go and have a +drink, see, something hot--it's Christmas Eve, sport. The old home +stuff." + +He smiled winsomely, coaxingly, really tenderly, as only he could smile. +I "gave in." But now as we entered the nearest shining bar, a Christmas +crowd buzzing within and without (it was the old Fifth Avenue Hotel), a +new thought seemed to strike him. + +"Seen E---- lately?" he inquired, mentioning the name of the troubled +sister who was having a very hard time indeed. Her husband had left her +and she was struggling over the care of two children. + +"No," I replied, rather shamefacedly, "not in a week or two--maybe +more." + +He clicked his tongue. He himself had not been near her in a month or +more. His face fell, and he looked very depressed. + +"It's too bad--a shame really. We oughtn't to do this way, you know, +sport. It ain't right. What do you say to our going around there," it +was in the upper thirties, "and see how she's making out?--take her a +few things, eh? Whaddya say?" + +I hadn't a spare dollar myself, but I knew well enough what he meant by +"take a few things" and who would pay for them. + +"Well, we'll have to hurry if we want to get anything now," I urged, +falling in with the idea since it promised peace, plenty and good will +all around, and we rushed the drink and departed. Near at hand was a +branch of one of the greatest grocery companies of the city, and near +it, too, his then favorite hotel, the Continental. En route we meditated +on the impossibility of delivery, the fact that we would have to carry +the things ourselves, but he at last solved that by declaring that he +could commandeer negro porters or bootblacks from the Continental. We +entered, and by sheer smiles on his part and some blarney heaped upon a +floor-manager, secured a turkey, sweet potatoes, peas, beans, a salad, a +strip of bacon, a ham, plum pudding, a basket of luscious fruit and I +know not what else--provender, I am sure, for a dozen meals. While it +was being wrapped and packed in borrowed baskets, soon to be returned, +he went across the way to the hotel and came back with three grinning +darkies who for the tip they knew they would receive preceded us up +Broadway, the nearest path to our destination. On the way a few +additional things were picked up: holly wreaths, toys, candy, nuts--and +then, really not knowing whether our plan might not mis-carry, we made +our way through the side street and to the particular apartment, or, +rather, flat-house, door, a most amusing Christmas procession, I fancy, +wondering and worrying now whether she would be there. + +But the door clicked in answer to our ring, and up we marched, the three +darkies first, instructed to inquire for her and then insist on leaving +the goods, while we lagged behind to see how she would take it. + +The stage arrangement worked as planned. My sister opened the door and +from the steps below we could hear her protesting that she had ordered +nothing, but the door being open the negroes walked in and a moment or +two afterwards ourselves. The packages were being piled on table and +floor, while my sister, unable quite to grasp this sudden visitation and +change of heart, stared. + +"Just thought we'd come around and have supper with you, E----, and +maybe dinner tomorrow if you'll let us," my brother chortled. "Merry +Christmas, you know. Christmas Eve. The good old home stuff--see? Old +sport here and I thought we couldn't stay away--tonight, anyhow." + +He beamed on her in his most affectionate way, but she, suffering +regret over the recent estrangement as well as the difficulties of life +itself and the joy of this reunion, burst into tears, while the two +little ones danced about, and he and I put our arms about her. + +"There, there! It's all over now," he declared, tears welling in his +eyes. "It's all off. We'll can this scrapping stuff. Thee and I are a +couple of bums and we know it, but you can forgive us, can't you? We +ought to be ashamed of ourselves, all of us, and that's the truth. We've +been quarreling, too, haven't spoken for a week. Ain't that so, sport? +But it's all right now, eh?" + +There were tears in my eyes, too. One couldn't resist him. He had the +power of achieving the tenderest results in the simplest ways. We then +had supper, and breakfast the next morning, all staying and helping, +even to the washing and drying of the dishes, and thereafter for I don't +know how long we were all on the most affectionate terms, and he +eventually died in this sister's home, ministered to with absolutely +restless devotion by her for weeks before the end finally came. + +But, as I have said, I always prefer to think of him at this, the very +apex or tower window of his life. For most of this period he was gay and +carefree. The music company of which he was a third owner was at the +very top of its success. Its songs, as well as his, were everywhere. He +had in turn at this time a suite at the Gilsey House, the Marlborough, +the Normandie--always on Broadway, you see. The limelight district was +his home. He rose in the morning to the clang of the cars and the honk +of the automobiles outside; he retired at night as a gang of repair men +under flaring torches might be repairing a track, or the milk trucks +were rumbling to and from the ferries. He was in his way a public +restaurant and hotel favorite, a shining light in the theater managers' +offices, hotel bars and lobbies and wherever those flies of the +Tenderloin, those passing lords and celebrities of the sporting, +theatrical, newspaper and other worlds, are wont to gather. One of his +intimates, as I now recall, was "Bat" Masterson, the Western and now +retired (to Broadway!) bad man; Muldoon, the famous wrestler; Tod Sloan, +the jockey; "Battling" Nelson; James J. Corbett; Kid McCoy; Terry +McGovern--prize-fighters all. Such Tammany district leaders as James +Murphy, "The" McManus, Chrystie and Timothy Sullivan, Richard Carroll, +and even Richard Croker, the then reigning Tammany boss, were all on his +visiting list. He went to their meetings, rallies and district doings +generally to sing and play, and they came to his "office" occasionally. +Various high and mighties of the Roman Church, "fathers" with fine +parishes and good wine cellars, and judges of various municipal courts, +were also of his peculiar world. He was always running to one or the +other "to get somebody out," or they to him to get him to contribute +something to something, or to sing and play or act, and betimes they +were meeting each other in hotel grills or elsewhere and having a drink +and telling "funny stories." + +Apropos of this sense of humor of his, this love of horse-play almost, I +remember that once he had a new story to tell--a vulgar one of +course--and with it he had been making me and a dozen others laugh until +the tears coursed down our cheeks. It seemed new to everybody and, true +to his rather fantastic moods, he was determined to be the first to tell +it along Broadway. For some reason he was anxious to have me go along +with him, possibly because he found me at that time an unvarying +fountain of approval and laughter, possibly because he liked to show me +off as his rising brother, as he insisted that I was. At between six and +seven of a spring or summer evening, therefore, we issued from his suite +at the Gilsey House, whither he had returned to dress, and invading the +bar below were at once centered among a group who knew him. A whiskey, a +cigar, the story told to one, two, three, five, ten to roars of +laughter, and we were off, over the way to Weber & Fields (the Musical +Burlesque House Supreme of those days) in the same block, where to the +ticket seller and house manager, both of whom he knew, it was told. More +laughter, a cigar perhaps. Then we were off again, this time to the +ticket seller of Palmer's Theater at Thirtieth Street, thence to the bar +of the Grand Hotel at Thirty-first, the Imperial at Thirty-second, the +Martinique at Thirty-third, a famous drug-store at the southwest corner +of Thirty-fourth and Broadway, now gone of course, the manager of which +was a friend of his. It was a warm, moony night, and he took a glass of +vichy "for looks' sake," as he said. + +Then to the quondam Hotel Aulic at Thirty-fifth and Broadway--the center +and home of the then much-berated "Hotel Aulic or Actors' School of +Philosophy," and a most impressive actors' rendezvous where might have +been seen in the course of an evening all the "second leads" and "light +comedians" and "heavies" of this, that and the other road company, all +blazing with startling clothes and all explaining how they "knocked 'em" +here and there: in Peoria, Pasadena, Walla-Walla and where not. My +brother shone like a star when only one is in the sky. + +Over the way then to the Herald Building, its owls' eyes glowing in the +night, its presses thundering, the elevated thundering beside it. Here +was a business manager whom he knew. Then to the Herald Square Theater +on the opposite side of the street, ablaze with a small electric +sign--among the newest in the city. In this, as in the business office +of the _Herald_ was another manager, and he knew them all. Thence to the +Marlborough bar and lobby at Thirty-sixth, the manager's office of the +Knickerbocker Theater at Thirty-eighth, stopping at the bar and lobby of +the Normandie, where some blazing professional beauty of the stage +waylaid him and exchanged theatrical witticisms with him--and what else? +Thence to the manager's office of the Casino at Thirty-ninth, some bar +which was across the street, another in Thirty-ninth west of Broadway, +an Italian restaurant on the ground floor of the Metropolitan at +Fortieth and Broadway, and at last but by no means least and by such +slow stages to the very door of the then Mecca of Meccas of all +theater- and sportdom, the sanctum sanctorum of all those sportively au +fait, "wise," the "real thing"--the Hotel Metropole at Broadway and +Forty-second Street, the then extreme northern limit of the white-light +district. And what a realm! Rounders and what not were here ensconced at +round tables, their backs against the leather-cushioned wall seats, the +adjoining windows open to all Broadway and the then all but somber +Forty-second Street. + +It was wonderful, the loud clothes, the bright straw hats, the canes, +the diamonds, the "hot" socks, the air of security and well-being, so +easily assumed by those who gain an all too brief hour in this pretty, +petty world of make-believe and pleasure and pseudo-fame. Among them my +dearest brother was at his best. It was "Paul" here and "Paul" +there--"Why, hello, Dresser, you're just in time! Come on in. What'll +you have? Let me tell you something, Paul, a good one--". More drinks, +cigars, tales--magnificent tales of successes made, "great shows" given, +fights, deaths, marvelous winnings at cards, trickeries in racing, +prize-fighting; the "dogs" that some people were, the magnificent, +magnanimous "God's own salt" that others were. The oaths, stories of +women, what low, vice-besmeared, crime-soaked ghoulas certain reigning +beauties of the town or stage were--and so on and so on ad infinitum. + +But his story?--ah, yes. I had all but forgotten. It was told in every +place, not once but seven, eight, nine, ten times. We did not eat until +we reached the Metropole, and it was ten-thirty when we reached it! The +handshakes, the road stories--"This is my brother Theodore. He writes; +he's a newspaper man." The roars of laughter, the drinks! "Ah, my boy, +that's good, but let me tell you one--one that I heard out in Louisville +the other day." A seedy, shabby ne'er-do-well of a song-writer maybe +stopping the successful author in the midst of a tale to borrow a +dollar. Another actor, shabby and distrait, reciting the sad tale of a +year's misfortunes. Everywhere my dear brother was called to, slapped on +the back, chuckled with. He was successful. One of his best songs was +the rage, he had an interest in a going musical concern, he could confer +benefits, favors. + +Ah, me! Ah, me! That one could be so great, and that it should not last +for ever and for ever! + +Another of his outstanding characteristics was his love of women, a +really amusing and at times ridiculous quality. He was always sighing +over the beauty, innocence, sweetness, this and that, of young +maidenhood in his songs, but in real life he seemed to desire and +attract quite a different type--the young and beautiful, it is true, but +also the old, the homely and the somewhat savage--a catholicity of taste +I could never quite stomach. It was "Paul dearest" here and "Paul +dearest" there, especially in his work in connection with the +music-house and the stage. In the former, popular ballad singers of +both sexes, some of the women most attractive and willful, were most +numerous, coming in daily from all parts of the world apparently to find +songs which they could sing on the American or even the English stage. +And it was a part of his duty, as a member of the firm and the one who +principally "handled" the so-called professional inquirers, to meet them +and see that they were shown what the catalogue contained. Occasionally +there was an aspiring female song-writer, often mere women visitors. + +Regardless, however, of whether they were young, old, attractive or +repulsive, male or female, I never knew any one whose manner was more +uniformly winsome or who seemed so easily to disarm or relax an +indifferent or irritated mood. He was positive sunshine, the same in +quality as that of a bright spring morning. His blue eyes focused +mellowly, his lips were tendrilled with smiles. He had a brisk, quick +manner, always somehow suggestive of my mother, who was never brisk. + +And how he fascinated them, the women! Their quite shameless daring +where he was concerned! Positively, in the face of it I used to wonder +what had become of all the vaunted and so-called "stabilizing morality" +of the world. None of it seemed to be in the possession of these women, +especially the young and beautiful. They were distant and freezing +enough to all who did not interest them, but let a personality such as +his come into view and they were all wiles, bending and alluring graces. +It was so obvious, this fascination he had for them and they for him, +that at times it took on a comic look. + +"Get onto the hit he's making," one would nudge another and remark. + +"Say, some tenderness, that!" This in reference to a smile or a melting +glance on the part of a female. + +"Nothing like a way with the ladies. Some baby, eh, boys?"--this +following the flick of a skirt and a backward-tossed glance perhaps, as +some noticeable beauty passed out. + +"No wonder he's cheerful," a sour and yet philosophic vaudevillian, who +was mostly out of a job and hung about the place for what free meals he +could obtain, once remarked to me in a heavy and morose undertone. "If +I had that many women crazy about me I'd be too." + +And the results of these encounters with beauty! Always he had something +most important to attend to, morning, noon or night, and whenever I +encountered him after some such statement "the important thing" was, of +course, a woman. As time went on and he began to look upon me as +something more than a thin, spindling, dyspeptic and disgruntled youth, +he began to wish to introduce me to some of his marvelous followers, and +then I could see how completely dependent upon beauty in the flesh he +was, how it made his life and world. + +One day as we were all sitting in the office, a large group of +vaudevillians, song-writers, singers, a chance remark gave rise to a +subsequent practical joke at Paul's expense. "I'll bet," observed some +one, "that if a strange man were to rush in here with a revolver and +say, 'Where's the man that seduced my wife?' Paul would be the first to +duck. He wouldn't wait to find out whether he was the one meant or not." + +Much laughter followed, and some thought. The subject of this banter +was, of course, not present at the time. There was one actor who hung +about there who was decidedly skillful in make-up. On more than one +occasion he had disguised himself there in the office for our benefit. +Cooperating with us, he disguised himself now as a very severe and even +savage-looking person of about thirty-five--side-burns, mustachios and +goatee. Then, with our aid, timing his arrival to an hour when Paul was +certain to be at his desk, he entered briskly and vigorously and, +looking about with a savage air, demanded, "Where is Paul Dresser?" + +The latter turned almost apprehensively, I thought, and at once seemed +by no means captivated by the man's looks. + +"That's Mr. Dresser there," explained one of the confederates most +willingly. + +The stranger turned and glared at him. "So you're the scoundrel that's +been running around with my wife, are you?" he demanded, approaching him +and placing one hand on his right hip. + +Paul made no effort to explain. It did not occur to him to deny the +allegation, although he had never seen the man before. With a rising +and backward movement he fell against the rail behind him, lifting both +hands in fright and exclaiming, "Why--why--Don't shoot!" His expression +was one of guilt, astonishment, perplexity. As some one afterwards said, +"As puzzled as if he was trying to discover which injured husband it +might be." The shout that went up--for it was agreed beforehand that the +joke must not be carried far--convinced him that a hoax had been +perpetrated, and the removal by the actor of his hat, sideburns and +mustache revealed the true character of the injured husband. At first +inclined to be angry and sulky, later on he saw the humor of his own +indefinite position in the matter and laughed as heartily as any. But I +fancy it developed a strain of uncertainty in him also in regard to +injured husbands, for he was never afterwards inclined to interest +himself in the much-married, and gave such wives a wide berth. + +But his great forte was of course his song-writing, and of this, before +I speak of anything else, I wish to have my say. It was a gift, quite a +compelling one, out of which, before he died, he had made thousands, all +spent in the manner described. Never having the least power to interpret +anything in a fine musical way, still he was always full of music of a +tender, sometimes sad, sometimes gay, kind--that of the ballad-maker of +a nation. He was constantly attempting to work them out of himself, not +quickly but slowly, brooding as it were over the piano wherever he might +find one and could have a little solitude, at times on the organ (his +favorite instrument), improvising various sad or wistful strains, some +of which he jotted down, others of which, having mastered, he strove to +fit words to. At such times he preferred to be alone or with some one +whose temperament in no way clashed but rather harmonized with his own. +Living with one of my sisters for a period of years, he had a room +specially fitted up for his composing work, a very small room for so +very large a man, within which he would shut himself and thrum a melody +by the hour, especially toward evening or at night. He seemed to have a +peculiar fondness for the twilight hour, and at this time might thrum +over one strain and another until over some particular one, a new song +usually, he would be in tears! + +And what pale little things they were really, mere bits and scraps of +sentiment and melodrama in story form, most asinine sighings over home +and mother and lost sweethearts and dead heroes such as never were in +real life, and yet with something about them, in the music at least, +which always appealed to me intensely and must have appealed to others, +since they attained so wide a circulation. They bespoke, as I always +felt, a wistful, seeking, uncertain temperament, tender and illusioned, +with no practical knowledge of any side of life, but full of a true +poetic feeling for the mystery and pathos of life and death, the wonder +of the waters, the stars, the flowers, accidents of life, success, +failure. Beginning with a song called "Wide Wings" (published by a small +retail music-house in Evansville, Indiana), and followed by such +national successes as "The Letter That Never Came," "I Believe It, For +My Mother Told Me So" (!), "The Convict and the Bird," "The Pardon Came +Too Late," "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," "The Blue and the Grey," +"On the Bowery," "On the Banks of the Wabash," and a number of others, +he was never content to rest and never really happy, I think, save when +composing. During this time, however, he was at different periods all +the things I have described--a black-face monologue artist, an end- and +at times a middle-man, a publisher, and so on. + +I recall being with him at the time he composed two of his most famous +successes: "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," and "On the Banks of the +Wabash," and noting his peculiar mood, almost amounting to a deep +depression which ended a little later in marked elation or satisfaction, +once he had succeeded in evoking something which really pleased him. + +The first of these songs must have followed an actual encounter with +some woman or girl whose life had seemingly if not actually gone to +wreck on the shore of love or passion. At any rate he came into the +office of his publishing house one gray November Sunday afternoon--it +was our custom to go there occasionally, a dozen or more congenial +souls, about as one might go to a club--and going into a small room +which was fitted up with a piano as a "try-out" room (professionals +desiring a song were frequently taught it in the office), he began +improvising, or rather repeating over and over, a certain strain which +was evidently in his mind. A little while later he came out and said, +"Listen to this, will you, Thee?" + +He played and sang the first verse and chorus. In the middle of the +latter, so moved was he by the sentiment of it, his voice broke and he +had to stop. Tears stood in his eyes and he wiped them away. A moment or +two later he was able to go through it without wavering and I thought it +charming for the type of thing it was intended to be. Later on (the +following spring) I was literally astonished to see how, after those +various efforts usually made by popular music publishers to make a song +"go"--advertising it in the _Clipper_ and _Mirror_, getting various +vaudeville singers to sing it, and so forth--it suddenly began to sell, +thousands upon thousands of copies being wrapped in great bundles under +my very eyes and shipped express or freight to various parts of the +country. Letters and telegrams, even, from all parts of the nation began +to pour in--"Forward express today ---- copies of Dresser's 'Tell Them +That You Saw Me.'" The firm was at once as busy as a bee-hive, on "easy +street" again, as the expression went, "in clover." Just before this +there had been a slight slump in its business and in my brother's +finances, but now once more he was his most engaging self. Every one in +that layer of life which understands or takes an interest in popular +songs and their creators knew of him and his song, his latest success. +He was, as it were, a revivified figure on Broadway. His barbers, +barkeepers, hotel clerks, theatrical box-office clerks, hotel managers +and the stars and singers of the street knew of it and him. Some +enterprising button firm got out a button on which the phrase was +printed. Comedians on the stage, newspaper paragraphers, his bank teller +or his tailor, even staid business men wishing to appear "up-to-date," +used it as a parting salute. The hand-organs, the bands and the theater +orchestras everywhere were using it. One could scarcely turn a corner or +go into a cheap music hall or variety house without hearing a parody of +it. It was wonderful, the enormous furore that it seemed to create, and +of course my dear brother was privileged to walk about smiling and +secure, his bank account large, his friends numerous, in the pink of +health, and gloating over the fact that he was a success, well known, a +genuine creator of popular songs. + +It was the same with "On the Banks of the Wabash," possibly an even +greater success, for it came eventually to be adopted by his native +State as its State song, and in that region streets and a town were +named after him. In an almost unintentional and unthinking way I had a +hand in that, and it has always cheered me to think that I had, although +I have never had the least talent for musical composition or song +versification. It was one of those delightful summer Sunday mornings +(1896, I believe), when I was still connected with his firm as editor of +the little monthly they were issuing, and he and myself, living with my +sister E----, that we had gone over to this office to do a little work. +I had a number of current magazines I wished to examine; he was always +wishing to compose something, to express that ebullient and emotional +soul of his in some way. + +"What do you suppose would make a good song these days?" he asked in an +idle, meditative mood, sitting at the piano and thrumming while I at a +nearby table was looking over my papers. "Why don't you give me an idea +for one once in a while, sport? You ought to be able to suggest +something." + +"Me?" I queried, almost contemptuously, I suppose. I could be very lofty +at times in regard to his work, much as I admired him--vain and yet more +or less dependent snip that I was. "I can't write those things. Why +don't you write something about a State or a river? Look at 'My Old +Kentucky Home,' 'Dixie,' 'Old Black Joe'--why don't you do something +like that, something that suggests a part of America? People like that. +Take Indiana--what's the matter with it--the Wabash River? It's as good +as any other river, and you were 'raised' beside it." + +I have to smile even now as I recall the apparent zest or feeling with +which all at once he seized on this. It seemed to appeal to him +immensely. "That's not a bad idea," he agreed, "but how would you go +about it? Why don't you write the words and let me put the music to +them? We'll do it together!" + +"But I can't," I replied. "I don't know how to do those things. You +write it. I'll help--maybe." + +After a little urging--I think the fineness of the morning had as much +to do with it as anything--I took a piece of paper and after meditating +a while scribbled in the most tentative manner imaginable the first +verse and chorus of that song almost as it was published. I think one or +two lines were too long or didn't rhyme, but eventually either he or I +hammered them into shape, but before that I rather shamefacedly turned +them over to him, for somehow I was convinced that this work was not for +me and that I was rather loftily and cynically attempting what my good +brother would do in all faith and feeling. + +He read it, insisted that it was fine and that I should do a second +verse, something with a story in it, a girl perhaps--a task which I +solemnly rejected. + +"No, you put it in. It's yours. I'm through." + +Some time later, disagreeing with the firm as to the conduct of the +magazine, I left--really was forced out--which raised a little feeling +on my part; not on his, I am sure, for I was very difficult to deal +with. + +Time passed and I heard nothing. I had been able to succeed in a +somewhat different realm, that of the magazine contributor, and although +I thought a great deal of my brother I paid very little attention to him +or his affairs, being much more concerned with my own. One spring night, +however, the following year, as I was lying in my bed trying to sleep, I +heard a quartette of boys in the distance approaching along the street +in which I had my room. I could not make out the words at first but the +melody at once attracted my attention. It was plaintive and compelling. +I listened, attracted, satisfied that it was some new popular success +that had "caught on." As they drew near my window I heard the words "On +the Banks of the Wabash" most mellifluously harmonized. + +I jumped up. They were my words! It was Paul's song! He had another +"hit" then--"On the Banks of the Wabash," and they were singing it in +the streets already! I leaned out of the window and listened as they +approached and passed on, their arms about each other's shoulders, the +whole song being sung in the still street, as it were, for my benefit. +The night was so warm, delicious. A full moon was overhead. I was young, +lonely, wistful. It brought back so much of my already spent youth that +I was ready to cry--for joy principally. In three more months it was +everywhere, in the papers, on the stage, on the street-organs, played by +orchestras, bands, whistled and sung in the streets. One day on Broadway +near the Marlborough I met my brother, gold-headed cane, silk shirt, a +smart summer suit, a gay straw hat. + +"Ah," I said, rather sarcastically, for I still felt peeved that he had +shown so little interest in my affairs at the time I was leaving. "On +the banks, I see." + +"On the banks," he replied cordially. "You turned the trick for me, +Thee, that time. What are you doing now? Why don't you ever come and see +me? I'm still your brother, you know. A part of that is really yours." + +"Cut that!" I replied most savagely. "I couldn't write a song like that +in a million years. You know I couldn't. The words are nothing." + +"Oh, all right. It's true, though, you know. Where do you keep yourself? +Why don't you come and see me? Why be down on me? I live here, you +know." He looked up at the then brisk and successful hotel. + +"Well, maybe I will some time," I said distantly, but with no particular +desire to mend matters, and we parted. + +There was, however, several years later, a sequel to all this and one so +characteristic of him that it has always remained in my mind as one of +the really beautiful things of life, and I might as well tell it here +and now. About five years later I had become so disappointed in +connection with my work and the unfriendly pressure of life that I had +suffered what subsequently appeared to have been a purely psychic +breakdown or relapse, not physical, but one which left me in no mood or +condition to go on with my work, or any work indeed in any form. Hope +had disappeared in a sad haze. I could apparently succeed in nothing, do +nothing mentally that was worth while. At the same time I had all but +retired from the world, living on less and less until finally I had +descended into those depths where I was in the grip of actual want, with +no place to which my pride would let me turn. I had always been too vain +and self-centered. Apparently there was but one door, and I was very +close to it. To match my purse I had retired to a still sorrier +neighborhood in B----, one of the poorest. I desired most of all to be +let alone, to be to myself. Still I could not be, for occasionally I +met people, and certain prospects and necessities drove me to various +publishing houses. One day as I was walking in some street near Broadway +(not on it) in New York, I ran into my brother quite by accident, he as +prosperous and comfortable as ever. I think I resented him more than +ever. He was of course astonished, shocked, as I could plainly see, by +my appearance and desire not to be seen. He demanded to know where I was +living, wanted me to come then and there and stay with him, wanted me to +tell him what the trouble was--all of which I rather stubbornly refused +to do and finally got away--not however without giving him my address, +though with the caution that I wanted nothing. + +The next morning he was there bright and early in a cab. He was the most +vehement, the most tender, the most disturbed creature I have ever seen. +He was like a distrait mother with a sick child more than anything else. + +"For God's sake," he commented when he saw me, "living in a place like +this--and at this number, too!" (130 it was, and he was superstitious as +to the thirteen.) "I knew there'd be a damned thirteen in it!" he +ejaculated. "And me over in New York! Jesus Christ! And you sick and run +down this way! I might have known. It's just like you. I haven't heard a +thing about you in I don't know when. Well, I'm not going back without +you, that's all. You've got to come with me now, see? Get your clothes, +that's all. The cabby'll take your trunk. I know just the place for you, +and you're going there tomorrow or next day or next week, but you're +coming with me now. My God, I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself, +and me feeling the way I do about you!" His eyes all but brimmed. + +I was so morose and despondent that, grateful as I felt, I could +scarcely take his mood at its value. I resented it, resented myself, my +state, life. + +"I can't," I said finally, or so I thought. "I won't. I don't need your +help. You don't owe me anything. You've done enough already." + +"Owe, hell!" he retorted. "Who's talking about 'owe'? And you my +brother--my own flesh and blood! Why, Thee, for that matter, I owe you +half of 'On the Banks,' and you know it. You can't go on living like +this. You're sick and discouraged. You can't fool me. Why, Thee, you're +a big man. You've just got to come out of this! Damn it--don't you +see--don't make me"--and he took out his handkerchief and wiped his +eyes. "You can't help yourself now, but you can later, don't you see? +Come on. Get your things. I'd never forgive myself if I didn't. You've +got to come, that's all. I won't go without you," and he began looking +about for my bag and trunk. + +I still protested weakly, but in vain. His affection was so overwhelming +and tender that it made me weak. I allowed him to help me get my things +together. Then he paid the bill, a small one, and on the way to the +hotel insisted on forcing a roll of bills on me, all that he had with +him. I was compelled at once, that same day or the next, to indulge in a +suit, hat, shoes, underwear, all that I needed. A bedroom adjoining his +suite at the hotel was taken, and for two days I lived there, later +accompanying him in his car to a famous sanitarium in Westchester, one +in charge of an old friend of his, a well-known ex-wrestler whose fame +for this sort of work was great. Here I was booked for six weeks, all +expenses paid, until I should "be on my feet again," as he expressed it. +Then he left, only to visit and revisit me until I returned to the city, +fairly well restored in nerves if not in health. + +But could one ever forget the mingled sadness and fervor of his original +appeal, the actual distress written in his face, the unlimited generosity +of his mood and deed as well as his unmerited self-denunciation? One +pictures such tenderness and concern as existing between parents and +children, but rarely between brothers. Here he was evincing the same +thing, as soft as love itself, and he a man of years and some affairs +and I an irritable, distrait and peevish soul. + +Take note, ye men of satire and spleen. All men are not selfish or hard. + +The final phase of course related to his untimely end. He was not quite +fifty-five when he died, and with a slightly more rugged quality of mind +he might have lasted to seventy. It was due really to the failure of his +firm (internal dissensions and rivalries, in no way due to him, however, +as I have been told) and what he foolishly deemed to be the end of his +financial and social glory. His was one of those simple, confiding, +non-hardy dispositions, warm and colorful but intensely sensitive, +easily and even fatally chilled by the icy blasts of human difficulty, +however slight. You have no doubt seen some animals, cats, dogs, birds, +of an especially affectionate nature, which when translated to a strange +or unfriendly climate soon droop and die. They have no spiritual +resources wherewith to contemplate what they do not understand or know. +Now his friends would leave him. Now that bright world of which he had +been a part would know him no more. It was pathetic, really. He emanated +a kind of fear. Depression and even despair seemed to hang about him +like a cloak. He could not shake it off. And yet, literally, in his case +there was nothing to fear, if he had only known. + +And yet two years before he did die, I knew he would. Fantastic as it +may seem, to be shut out from that bright world of which he deemed +himself an essential figure was all but unendurable. He had no ready +money now--not the same amount anyhow. He could not greet his old-time +friends so gayly, entertain so freely. Meeting him on Broadway shortly +after the failure and asking after his affairs, he talked of going into +business for himself as a publisher, but I realized that he could not. +He had neither the ability nor the talent for that, nor the heart. He +was not a business man but a song-writer and actor, had never been +anything but that. He tried in this new situation to write songs, but he +could not. They were too morbid. What he needed was some one to buoy him +up, a manager, a strong confidant of some kind, some one who would have +taken his affairs in hand and shown him what to do. As it was he had no +one. His friends, like winter-frightened birds, had already departed. +Personally, I was in no position to do anything at the time, being more +or less depressed myself and but slowly emerging from difficulties which +had held me for a number of years. + +About a year or so after he failed my sister E---- announced that Paul +had been there and that he was coming to live with her. He could not pay +so much then, being involved with all sorts of examinations of one kind +and another, but neither did he have to. Her memory was not short; she +gave him the fullness of her home. A few months later he was ostensibly +connected with another publishing house, but by then he was feeling so +poorly physically and was finding consolation probably in some drinking +and the caresses of those feminine friends who have, alas, only caresses +to offer. A little later I met a doctor who said, "Paul cannot live. He +has pernicious anaemia. He is breaking down inside and doesn't know it. +He can't last long. He's too depressed." I knew it was so and what the +remedy was--money and success once more, the petty pettings and flattery +of that little world of which he had been a part but which now was no +more for him. Of all those who had been so lavish in their greetings and +companionship earlier in his life, scarcely one, so far as I could make +out, found him in that retired world to which he was forced. One or two +pegged-out actors sought him and borrowed a little of the little that he +had; a few others came when he had nothing at all. His partners, +quarreling among themselves and feeling that they had done him an +injustice, remained religiously away. He found, as he often told my +sister, broken horse-shoes (a "bad sign"), met cross-eyed women, another +"bad sign," was pursued apparently by the inimical number thirteen--and +all these little straws depressed him horribly. Finally, being no longer +strong enough to be about, he took to his bed and remained there days at +a time, feeling well while in bed but weak when up. For a little while +he would go "downtown" to see this, that and the other person, but would +soon return. One day on coming back home he found one of his hats lying +on his bed, accidentally put there by one of the children, and according +to my sister, who was present at the time, he was all but petrified by +the sight of it. To him it was the death-sign. Some one had told him so +not long before!!! + +Then, not incuriously, seeing the affectional tie that had always held +us, he wanted to see me every day. He had a desire to talk to me about +his early life, the romance of it--maybe I could write a story some +time, tell something about him! (Best of brothers, here it is, a thin +little flower to lay at your feet!) To please him I made notes, although +I knew most of it. On these occasions he was always his old self, full +of ridiculous stories, quips and slight _mots_, all in his old and best +vein. He would soon be himself, he now insisted. + +Then one evening in late November, before I had time to call upon him +(I lived about a mile away), a hurry-call came from E----. He had +suddenly died at five in the afternoon; a blood-vessel had burst in the +head. When I arrived he was already cold in death, his soft hands folded +over his chest, his face turned to one side on the pillow, that +indescribable sweetness of expression about the eyes and mouth--the +empty shell of the beetle. There were tears, a band of reporters from +the papers, the next day obituary news articles, and after that a host +of friends and flowers, flowers, flowers. It is amazing what +satisfaction the average mind takes in standardized floral forms--broken +columns and gates ajar! + +Being ostensibly a Catholic, a Catholic sister-in-law and other +relatives insistently arranged for a solemn high requiem mass at the +church of one of his favorite rectors. All Broadway was there, more +flowers, his latest song read from the altar. Then there was a carriage +procession to a distant Catholic graveyard somewhere, his friend, the +rector of the church, officiating at the grave. It was so cold and +dreary there, horrible. Later on he was removed to Chicago. + +But still I think of him as not there or anywhere in the realm of space, +but on Broadway between Twenty-ninth and Forty-second Streets, the +spring and summer time at hand, the doors of the grills and bars of the +hotels open, the rout of actors and actresses ambling to and fro, his +own delicious presence dressed in his best, his "funny" stories, his +songs being ground out by the hand organs, his friends extending their +hands, clapping him on the shoulder, cackling over the latest idle yarn. + +Ah, Broadway! Broadway! And you, my good brother! Here is the story that +you wanted me to write, this little testimony to your memory, a pale, +pale symbol of all I think and feel. Where are the thousand yarns I have +laughed over, the music, the lights, the song? + +Peace, peace. So shall it soon be with all of us. It was a dream. It is. +I am. You are. And shall we grieve over or hark back to dreams? + + + + +_The County Doctor_ + + +How well I remember him--the tall, grave, slightly bent figure, the head +like Plato's or that of Diogenes, the mild, kindly, brown-gray eyes +peering, all too kindly, into the faces of dishonest men. In addition, +he wore long, full, brown-gray whiskers, a long gray overcoat (soiled +and patched toward the last) in winter, a soft black hat that hung +darkeningly over his eyes. But what a doctor! And how simple and often +non-drug-storey were so many of his remedies! + +"My son, your father is very sick. Now, I'll tell you what you can do +for me. You go out here along the Cheevertown road about a mile or two +and ask any farmer this side of the creek to let you have a good big +handful of peach sprigs--about so many, see? Say that Doctor Gridley +said he was to give them to you for him. Then, Mrs. ----, when he brings +them, you take a few, not more than seven or eight, and break them up +and steep them in hot water until you have an amber-colored tea. Give +Mr. ---- about three or four tea-spoonfuls of that every three or four +hours, and I hope we'll find he'll do better. This kidney case is +severe, I know, but he'll come around all right." + +And he did. My father had been very ill with gall stones, so weak at +last that we thought he was sure to die. The house was so somber at the +time. Over it hung an atmosphere of depression and fear, with pity for +the sufferer, and groans of distress on his part. And then there were +the solemn visits of the doctor, made pleasant by his wise, kindly humor +and his hopeful predictions and ending in this seemingly mild +prescription, which resulted, in this case, in a cure. He was seemingly +so remote at times, in reality so near, and wholly thoughtful. + +On this occasion I went out along the long, cold, country road of a +March evening. I was full of thoughts of his importance as a doctor. He +seemed so necessary to us, as he did to everybody. I knew nothing about +medicine, or how lives were saved, but I felt sure that he did and that +he would save my father in spite of his always conservative, +speculative, doubtful manner. What a wonderful man he must be to know +all these things--that peach sprouts, for instance, were an antidote to +the agony of gall stones! + +As I walked along, the simplicity of country life and its needs and +deprivations were impressed upon me, even though I was so young. So few +here could afford to pay for expensive prescriptions--ourselves +especially--and Dr. Gridley knew that and took it into consideration, so +rarely did he order anything from a drug-store. Most often, what he +prescribed he took out of a case, compounded, as it were, in our +presence. + +A brisk wind had fluttered snow in the morning, and now the ground was +white, with a sinking red sun shining across it, a sense of spring in +the air. Being unknown to these farmers, I wondered if any one of them +would really cut me a double handful of fresh young peach sprigs or +suckers from their young trees, as the doctor had said. Did they really +know him? Some one along the road--a home-driving farmer--told me of an +old Mr. Mills who had a five-acre orchard farther on. In a little while +I came to his door and was confronted by a thin, gaunt, bespectacled +woman, who called back to a man inside: + +"Henry, here's a little boy says Dr. Gridley said you were to cut him a +double handful of peach sprigs." + +Henry now came forward--a tall, bony farmer in high boots and an old +wool-lined leather coat, and a cap of wool. + +"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he?" he observed, eyeing me most critically. + +"Yes, sir." + +"What's the matter? What does he want with 'em? Do ya know?" + +"Yes, sir. My father's sick with kidney trouble, and Dr. Gridley said I +was to come out here." + +"Oh, all right. Wait'll I git my big knife," and back he went, returning +later with a large horn-handled knife, which he opened. He preceded me +out through the barn lot and into the orchard beyond. + +"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he, huh?" he asked as he went. "Well, I guess +we all have ter comply with whatever the doctor orders. We're all apt +ter git sick now an' ag'in," and talking trivialities of a like +character, he cut me an armful, saying: "I might as well give ya too +many as too few. Peach sprigs! Now, I never heered o' them bein' good +fer anythin', but I reckon the doctor knows what he's talkin' about. He +usually does--or that's what we think around here, anyhow." + +In the dusk I trudged home with my armful, my fingers cold. The next +morning, the tea having been brewed and taken, my father was better. In +a week or two he was up and around, as well as ever, and during this +time he commented on the efficacy of this tea, which was something new +to him, a strange remedy, and which caused the whole incident to be +impressed upon my mind. The doctor had told him that at any time in the +future if he was so troubled and could get fresh young peach sprigs for +a tea, he would find that it would help him. And the drug expense was +exactly nothing. + +In later years I came to know him better--this thoughtful, crusty, +kindly soul, always so ready to come at all hours when his cases +permitted, so anxious to see that his patients were not taxed beyond +their financial resources. + +I remember once, one of my sisters being very ill, so ill that we were +beginning to fear death, one and another of us had to take turn sitting +up with her at night to help and to give her her medicine regularly. +During one of the nights when I was sitting up, dozing, reading and +listening to the wind in the pines outside, she seemed persistently to +get worse. Her fever rose, and she complained of such aches and pains +that finally I had to go and call my mother. A consultation with her +finally resulted in my being sent for Dr. Gridley--no telephones in +those days--to tell him, although she hesitated so to do, how sister was +and ask him if he would not come. + +I was only fourteen. The street along which I had to go was quite dark, +the town lights being put out at two a.m., for reasons of thrift +perhaps. There was a high wind that cried in the trees. My shoes on the +board walks, here and there, sounded like the thuds of a giant. I recall +progressing in a shivery ghost-like sort of way, expecting at any step +to encounter goblins of the most approved form, until finally the +well-known outlines of the house of the doctor on the main +street--yellow, many-roomed, a wide porch in front--came, because of a +very small lamp in a very large glass case to one side of the door, into +view. + +Here I knocked, and then knocked more. No reply. I then made a still +more forceful effort. Finally, through one of the red glass panels which +graced either side of the door I saw the lengthy figure of the doctor, +arrayed in a long white nightshirt, and carrying a small glass +hand-lamp, come into view at the head of the stairs. His feet were in +gray flannel slippers, and his whiskers stuck out most grotesquely. + +"Wait! Wait!" I heard him call. "I'll be there! I'm coming! Don't make +such a fuss! It seems as though I never get a real good night's rest any +more." + +He came on, opened the door, and looked out. + +"Well," he demanded, a little fussily for him, "what's the matter now?" + +"Doctor," I began, and proceeded to explain all my sister's aches and +pains, winding up by saying that my mother said "wouldn't he please come +at once?" + +"Your mother!" he grumbled. "What can I do if I do come down? Not a +thing. Feel her pulse and tell her she's all right! That's every bit I +can do. Your mother knows that as well as I do. That disease has to run +its course." He looked at me as though I were to blame, then added, +"Calling me up this way at three in the morning!" + +"But she's in such pain, Doctor," I complained. + +"All right--everybody has to have a little pain! You can't be sick +without it." + +"I know," I replied disconsolately, believing sincerely that my sister +might die, "but she's in such awful pain, Doctor." + +"Well, go on," he replied, turning up the light. "I know it's all +foolishness, but I'll come. You go back and tell your mother that I'll +be there in a little bit, but it's all nonsense, nonsense. She isn't a +bit sicker than I am right this minute, not a bit--" and he closed the +door and went upstairs. + +To me this seemed just the least bit harsh for the doctor, although, as +I reasoned afterwards, he was probably half-asleep and tired--dragged +out of his bed, possibly, once or twice before in the same night. As I +returned home I felt even more fearful, for once, as I was passing a +woodshed which I could not see, a rooster suddenly flapped his wings and +crowed--a sound which caused me to leap all of nineteen feet Fahrenheit, +sidewise. Then, as I walked along a fence which later by day I saw had +a comfortable resting board on top, two lambent golden eyes surveyed me +out of inky darkness! Great Hamlet's father, how my heart sank! Once +more I leaped to the cloddy roadway and seizing a cobblestone or hunk of +mud hurled it with all my might, and quite involuntarily. Then I ran +until I fell into a crossing ditch. It was an amazing--almost a +tragic--experience, then. + +In due time the doctor came--and I never quite forgave him for not +making me wait and go back with him. He was too sleepy, though, I am +sure. The seizure was apparently nothing which could not have waited +until morning. However, he left some new cure, possibly clear water in a +bottle, and left again. But the night trials of doctors and their +patients, especially in the country, was fixed in my mind then. + +One of the next interesting impressions I gained of the doctor was that +of seeing him hobbling about our town on crutches, his medicine case +held in one hand along with a crutch, visiting his patients, when he +himself appeared to be so ill as to require medical attention. He was +suffering from some severe form of rheumatism at the time, but this, +apparently, was not sufficient to keep him from those who in his +judgment probably needed his services more than he did his rest. + +One of the truly interesting things about Dr. Gridley, as I early began +to note, was his profound indifference to what might be called his +material welfare. Why, I have often asked myself, should a man of so +much genuine ability choose to ignore the gauds and plaudits and +pleasures of the gayer, smarter world outside, in which he might readily +have shone, to thus devote himself and all his talents to a simple rural +community? That he was an extremely able physician there was not the +slightest doubt. Other physicians from other towns about, and even so +far away as Chicago, were repeatedly calling him into consultation. That +he knew life--much of it--as only a priest or a doctor of true wisdom +can know it, was evident from many incidents, of which I subsequently +learned, and yet here he was, hidden away in this simple rural world, +surrounded probably by his Rabelais, his Burton, his Frazer, and his +Montaigne, and dreaming what dreams--thinking what thoughts? + +"Say," an old patient, friend and neighbor of his once remarked to me +years later, when we had both moved to another city, "one of the +sweetest recollections of my life is to picture old Dr. Gridley, Ed +Boulder who used to run the hotel over at Sleichertown, Congressman +Barr, and Judge Morgan, sitting out in front of Boulder's hotel over +there of a summer's evening and haw-hawing over the funny stories which +Boulder was always telling while they were waiting for the Pierceton +bus. Dr. Gridley's laugh, so soft to begin with, but growing in force +and volume until it was a jolly shout. And the green fields all around. +And Mrs. Calder's drove of geese over the way honking, too, as geese +will whenever people begin to talk or laugh. It was delicious." + +One of the most significant traits of his character, as may be inferred, +was his absolute indifference to actual money, the very cash, one would +think, with which he needed to buy his own supplies. During his life, +his wife, who was a thrifty, hard-working woman, used frequently, as I +learned after, to comment on this, but to no result. He could not be +made to charge where he did not need to, nor collect where he knew that +the people were poor. + +"Once he became angry at my uncle," his daughter once told me, "because +he offered to collect for him for three per cent, dunning his patients +for their debts, and another time he dissolved a partnership with a +local physician who insisted that he ought to be more careful to charge +and collect." + +This generosity on his part frequently led to some very interesting +results. On one occasion, for instance, when he was sitting out on his +front lawn in Warsaw, smoking, his chair tilted back against a tree and +his legs crossed in the fashion known as "jack-knife," a poorly dressed +farmer without a coat came up and after saluting the doctor began to +explain that his wife was sick and that he had come to get the doctor's +advice. He seemed quite disturbed, and every now and then wiped his +brow, while the doctor listened with an occasional question or gently +accented "uh-huh, uh-huh," until the story was all told and the advice +ready to be received. When this was given in a low, reassuring tone, he +took from his pocket his little book of blanks and wrote out a +prescription, which he gave to the man and began talking again. The +latter took out a silver dollar and handed it to the doctor, who turned +it idly between his fingers for a few seconds, then searched in his +pocket for a mate to it, and playing with them a while as he talked, +finally handed back the dollar to the farmer. + +"You take that," he said pleasantly, "and go down to the drug-store and +have the prescription filled. I think your wife will be all right." + +When he had gone the doctor sat there a long time, meditatively puffing +the smoke from his cob pipe, and turning his own dollar in his hand. +After a time he looked up at his daughter, who was present, and said: + +"I was just thinking what a short time it took me to write that +prescription, and what a long time it took him to earn that dollar. I +guess he needs the dollar more than I do." + +In the same spirit of this generosity he was once sitting in his yard of +a summer day, sunning himself and smoking, a favorite pleasure of his, +when two men rode up to his gate from opposite directions and +simultaneously hailed him. He arose and went out to meet them. His wife, +who was sewing just inside the hall as she usually was when her husband +was outside, leaned forward in her chair to see through the door, and +took note of who they were. Both were men in whose families the doctor +had practiced for years. One was a prosperous farmer who always paid his +"doctor's bills," and the other was a miller, a "ne'er-do-well," with a +delicate wife and a family of sickly children, who never asked for a +statement and never had one sent him, and who only occasionally and at +great intervals handed the doctor a dollar in payment for his many +services. Both men talked to him a little while and then rode away, +after which he returned to the house, calling to Enoch, his old negro +servant, to bring his horse, and then went into his study to prepare his +medicine case. Mrs. Gridley, who was naturally interested in his +financial welfare, and who at times had to plead with him not to let his +generosity stand wholly in the way of his judgment, inquired of him as +he came out: + +"Now, Doctor, which of those two men are you going with?" + +"Why, Miss Susan," he replied--a favorite manner of addressing his wife, +of whom he was very fond--the note of apology in his voice showing that +he knew very well what she was thinking about, "I'm going with W----." + +"I don't think that is right," she replied with mild emphasis. "Mr. +N---- is as good a friend of yours as W----, and he always pays you." + +"Now, Miss Susan," he returned coaxingly, "N---- can go to Pierceton and +get Doctor Bodine, and W---- can't get any one but me. You surely +wouldn't have him left without any one?" + +What the effect of such an attitude was may be judged when it is related +that there was scarcely a man, woman or child in the entire county who +had not at some time or other been directly or indirectly benefited by +the kindly wisdom of this Samaritan. He was nearly everybody's doctor, +in the last extremity, either as consultant or otherwise. Everywhere he +went, by every lane and hollow that he fared, he was constantly being +called into service by some one--the well-to-do as well as by those who +had nothing; and in both cases he was equally keen to give the same +degree of painstaking skill, finding something in the very poor--a +humanness possibly--which detained and fascinated him and made him a +little more prone to linger at their bedsides than anywhere else. + +"He was always doing it," said his daughter, "and my mother used to +worry over it. She declared that of all things earthly, papa loved an +unfortunate person; the greater the misfortune, the greater his care." + +In illustration of his easy and practically controlling attitude toward +the very well-to-do, who were his patients also, let me narrate this: + +In our town was an old and very distinguished colonel, comparatively +rich and very crotchety, who had won considerable honors for himself +during the Civil War. He was a figure, and very much looked up to by +all. People were, in the main, overawed by and highly respectful of him. +A remote, stern soul, yet to Dr. Gridley he was little more than a child +or schoolboy--one to be bossed on occasion and made to behave. Plainly, +the doctor had the conviction that all of us, great and small, were very +much in need of sympathy and care, and that he, the doctor, was the one +to provide it. At any rate, he had known the colonel long and well, and +in a public place--at the principal street corner, for instance, or in +the postoffice where we school children were wont to congregate--it was +not at all surprising to hear him take the old colonel, who was quite +frail now, to task for not taking better care of himself--coming out, +for instance, without his rubbers, or his overcoat, in wet or chilly +weather, and in other ways misbehaving himself. + +"There you go again!" I once heard him call to the colonel, as the +latter was leaving the postoffice and he was entering (there was no +rural free delivery in those days) "--walking around without your +rubbers, and no overcoat! You want to get me up in the night again, do +you?" + +"It didn't seem so damp when I started out, Doctor." + +"And of course it was too much trouble to go back! You wouldn't feel +that way if you couldn't come out at all, perhaps!" + +"I'll put 'em on! I'll put 'em on! Only, please don't fuss, Doctor. I'll +go back to the house and put 'em on." + +The doctor merely stared after him quizzically, like an old +schoolmaster, as the rather stately colonel marched off to his home. + +Another of his patients was an old Mr. Pegram, a large, kind, +big-hearted man, who was very fond of the doctor, but who had an +exceedingly irascible temper. He was the victim of some obscure malady +which medicine apparently failed at times to relieve. This seemed to +increase his irritability a great deal, so much so that the doctor had +at last discovered that if he could get Mr. Pegram angry enough the +malady would occasionally disappear. This seemed at times as good a +remedy as any, and in consequence he was occasionally inclined to try +it. + +Among other things, this old gentleman was the possessor of a handsome +buffalo robe, which, according to a story that long went the rounds +locally, he once promised to leave to the doctor when he died. At the +same time all reference to death both pained and irritated him +greatly--a fact which the doctor knew. Finding the old gentleman in a +most complaining and hopeless mood one night, not to be dealt with, +indeed, in any reasoning way, the doctor returned to his home, and early +the next day, without any other word, sent old Enoch, his negro +servant, around to get, as he said, the buffalo robe--a request which +would indicate, of course that the doctor had concluded that old Mr. +Pegram had died, or was about to--a hopeless case. When ushered into the +latter's presence, Enoch began innocently enough: + +"De doctah say dat now dat Mr. Peg'am hab subspired, he was to hab dat +ba--ba--buffalo robe." + +"What!" shouted the old irascible, rising and clambering out of his bed. +"What's that? Buffalo robe! By God! You go back and tell old Doc Gridley +that I ain't dead yet by a damned sight! No, sir!" and forthwith he +dressed himself and was out and around the same day. + +Persons who met the doctor, as I heard years later from his daughter and +from others who had known him, were frequently asking him, just in a +social way, what to do for certain ailments, and he would as often reply +in a humorous and half-vagrom manner that if he were in their place he +would do or take so-and-so, not meaning really that they should do so +but merely to get rid of them, and indicating of course any one of a +hundred harmless things--never one that could really have proved +injurious to any one. Once, according to his daughter, as he was driving +into town from somewhere, he met a man on a lumber wagon whom he +scarcely knew but who knew him well enough, who stopped and showed him a +sore on the upper tip of his ear, asking him what he would do for it. + +"Oh," said the doctor, idly and jestingly, "I think I'd cut it off." + +"Yes," said the man, very much pleased with this free advice, "with +what, Doctor?" + +"Oh, I think I'd use a pair of scissors," he replied amusedly, scarcely +assuming that his jesting would be taken seriously. + +The driver jogged on and the doctor did not see or hear of him again +until some two months later when, meeting him in the street, the driver +smilingly approached him and enthusiastically exclaimed: + +"Well, Doc, you see I cut 'er off, and she got well!" + +"Yes," replied the doctor solemnly, not remembering anything about the +case but willing to appear interested, "--what was it you cut off?" + +"Why, that sore on my ear up here, you know. You told me to cut it off, +and I did." + +"Yes," said the doctor, becoming curious and a little amazed, "with +what?" + +"Why, with a pair of scissors, Doc, just like you said." + +The doctor stared at him, the whole thing coming gradually back to him. + +"But didn't you have some trouble in cutting it off?" he inquired, in +disturbed astonishment. + +"No, no," said the driver, "I made 'em sharp, all right. I spent two +days whettin' 'em up, and Bob Hart cut 'er off fer me. They cut, all +right, but I tell you she hurt when she went through the gristle." + +He smiled in pleased remembrance of his surgical operation, and the +doctor smiled also, but, according to his daughter, he decided to give +no more idle advice of that kind. + +In the school which I attended for a period were two of his sons, Fred +and Walter. Both were very fond of birds, and kept a number of one kind +or another about their home--not in cages, as some might, but inveigled +and trained as pets, and living in the various open bird-houses fixed +about the yard on poles. The doctor himself was intensely fond of these +and all other birds, and, according to his daughter and his sons, always +anticipated the spring return of many of diem--black-birds, blue jays, +wrens and robins--with a hopeful, "Well, now, they'll soon be here +again." During the summer, according to her, he was always an interested +spectator of their gyrations in the air, and when evening would come was +never so happy as when standing and staring at them gathering from all +directions to their roosts in the trees or the birdhouses. Similarly, +when the fall approached and they would begin their long flight +Southward, he would sometimes stand and scan the sky and trees in vain +for a final glimpse of his feathered friends, and when in the gathering +darkness they were no longer to be seen would turn away toward the +house, saying sadly to his daughter: + +"Well, Dollie, the blackbirds are all gone. I am sorry. I like to see +them, and I am always sorry to lose them, and sorry to know that winter +is coming." + +"Usually about the 25th or 26th of December," his daughter once +quaintly added to me, "he would note that the days were beginning to get +longer, and cheer up, as spring was certain to follow soon and bring +them all back again." + +One of the most interesting of his bird friendships was that which +existed between him and a pair of crows he and his sons had raised, +"Jim" and "Zip" by name. These crows came to know him well, and were +finally so humanly attached to him that, according to his family, they +would often fly two or three miles out of town to meet him and would +then accompany him, lighting on fences and trees by the way, and cawing +to him as he drove along! Both of them were great thieves, and would +steal anything from a bit of thread up to a sewing machine, if they +could have carried it. They were always walking about the house, +cheerfully looking for what they might devour, and on one occasion +carried off a set of spoons, which they hid about the eaves of the +house. On another occasion they stole a half dozen tin-handled pocket +knives, which the doctor had bought for the children and which the crows +seemed to like for the brightness of the metal. They were recovered once +by the children, stolen again by the crows, recovered once more, and so +on, until at last it was a question as to which were the rightful +owners. + +The doctor was sitting in front of a store one day in the business-heart +of town, where also he liked to linger in fair weather, when suddenly he +saw one of his crows flying high overhead and bearing something in its +beak, which it dropped into the road scarcely a hundred feet away. +Interested to see what it was the bird had been carrying, he went to the +spot where he saw it fall and found one of the tin-handled knives, which +the crow had been carrying to a safe hiding-place. He picked it up and +when he returned home that night asked one of his boys if he could lend +him a knife. + +"No," said his son. "Our knives are all lost. The crows took them." + +"I knew that," said the doctor sweetly, "and so, when I met Zip uptown +just now, I asked her to lend me one, and she did. Here it is." + +He pulled out the knife and handed it to the boy and, when the latter +expressed doubt and wonder, insisted that the crow had loaned it to him; +a joke which ended in his always asking one of the children to run and +ask Zip if she would lend him a knife, whenever he chanced to need one. + +Although a sad man at times, as I understood, the doctor was not a +pessimist, and in many ways, both by practical jokes and the humoring of +odd characters, sought relief from the intense emotional strain which +the large practice of his profession put upon him. One of his greatest +reliefs was the carrying out of these little practical jokes, and he had +been known to go to much trouble at times to work up a good laugh. + +One of the, to him, richest jokes, and one which he always enjoyed +telling, related to a country singing school which was located in the +neighborhood of Pierceton, in which reading (the alphabet, at least), +spelling, geography, arithmetic, rules of grammar, and so forth, were +still taught by a process of singing. The method adopted in this form of +education was to have the scholar memorize all knowledge by singing it. +Thus in the case of geography the students would sing the name of the +country, then its mountains, then the highest peaks, cities, rivers, +principal points of interest, and so on, until all information about +that particular country had been duly memorized in song or rhyme. +Occasionally they would have a school-day on which the local dignitaries +would be invited, and on a number of these occasions the doctor was, for +amusement's sake merely, a grave and reverent listener. On one occasion, +however, he was merely passing the school, when hearing "Africa-a, +Africa-a, mountains of the moo-oo-oon" drawled out of the windows, he +decided to stop in and listen a while. Having tethered his horse outside +he knocked at the door and was received by the little English singing +teacher who, after showing him to a seat, immediately called upon the +class for an exhibition of their finest wisdom. When they had finished +this the teacher turned to him and inquired if there was anything he +would especially like them to sing. + +"No," said the doctor gravely, and no doubt with an amused twinkle in +his eye, "I had thought of asking you to sing the Rocky Mountains, but +as the mountains are so high, and the amount of time I have so limited, +I have decided that perhaps it will be asking too much." + +"Oh, not at all, not at all" airily replied the teacher, and turning to +his class, he exclaimed with a very superior smile: "Now, ladies and +gentlemen, 'ere is a scientific gentleman who thinks it is 'arder to +sing of _'igh_ mountings than it is to sing of _low_ mountings," and +forthwith the class began to demonstrate that in respect to vocalization +there was no difference at all. + +Only those, however, who knew Dr. Gridley in the sickroom, and knew him +well, ever discovered the really finest trait of his character: a keen, +unshielded sensibility to and sympathy for all human suffering, that +could not bear to inflict the slightest additional pain. He was really, +in the main, a man of soft tones and unctuous laughter, of gentle touch +and gentle step, and a devotion to duty that carried him far beyond his +interests or his personal well-being. One of his chiefest oppositions, +according to his daughter, was to telling the friends or relatives of +any stricken person that there was no hope. Instead, he would use every +delicate shade of phrasing and tone in imparting the fateful words, in +order if possible to give less pain. "I remember in the case of my +father," said one of his friends, "when the last day came. Knowing the +end was near, he was compelled to make some preliminary discouraging +remark, and I bent over with my ear against my father's chest and said, +'Doctor Gridley, the disease is under control, I think. I can hear the +respiration to the bottom of the lungs.' + +"'Yes, yes,' he answered me sadly, but now with an implication which +could by no means be misunderstood, 'it is nearly always so. The failure +is in the recuperative energy. Vitality runs too low.' It meant from the +first, 'Your father will not live.'" + +In the case of a little child with meningitis, the same person was sent +to him to ask what of the child--better or worse. His answer was: "He is +passing as free from pain as ever I knew a case of this kind." + +In yet another case of a dying woman, one of her relatives inquired: +"Doctor, is this case dangerous?" "Not in the nature of the malady, +madam," was his sad and sympathetic reply, "but fatal in the condition +it meets. Hope is broken. There is nothing to resist the damage." + +One of his patients was a farmer who lived in an old-time log house a +few miles out from Silver Lake, who while working about his barn met +with a very serious accident which involved a possible injury to the +gall bladder. The main accident was not in itself fatal, but the +possible injury to the gall bladder was, and this, if it existed, would +show as a yellow tint in the eyeball on the tenth day. Fearing the +danger of this, he communicated the possibility to the relatives, saying +that he could do little after that time but that he would come just the +same and make the patient as comfortable as possible. For nine days he +came, sitting by the bedside and whiling away many a weary hour for the +sufferer, until the tenth morning. On this day, according to his +daughter, who had it from the sick man's relatives, his face but ill +concealed the anxiety he felt. Coming up to the door, he entered just +far enough to pretend to reach for a water bucket. With this in his hand +he turned and gave one long keen look in the eye of the sick man, then +walked down the yard to a chair under a tree some distance from the +house, where he sat, drooping and apparently grieved, the certainty of +the death of the patient affecting him as much as if he were his own +child. + +"There was no need for words," said one of them. "Every curve and droop +of his figure, as he walked slowly and with bent head, told all of us +who saw him that hope was gone and that death had won the victory." + +One of his perpetual charges, as I learned later, was a poor old +unfortunate by the name of Id Logan, who had a little cabin and an acre +of ground a half dozen miles west of Warsaw, and who existed from year +to year heaven only knows how. + +Id never had any money, friends or relatives, and was always troubled +with illness or hunger in some form or other, and yet the doctor always +spoke of him sympathetically as "Poor old Id Logan" and would often call +out there on his rounds to see how he was getting along. One snowy +winter's evening as he was traveling homeward after a long day's ride, +he chanced to recollect the fact that he was in the neighborhood of his +worthless old charge, and fancying that he might be in need of something +turned his horse into the lane which led up to the door. When he reached +the house he noticed that no smoke was coming from the chimney and that +the windows were slightly rimmed with frost, as if there were no heat +within. Rapping at the door and receiving no response, he opened it and +went in. There he found his old charge, sick and wandering in his mind, +lying upon a broken-down bed and moaning in pain. There was no fire in +the fireplace. The coverings with which the bed was fitted were but two +or three old worn and faded quilts, and the snow was sifting in badly +through the cracks where the chinking had fallen out between the logs, +and under the doors and windows. + +Going up to the sufferer and finding that some one of his old, and to +the doctor well-known, maladies had at last secured a fatal grip upon +him, he first administered a tonic which he knew would give him as much +strength as possible, and then went out into the yard, where, after +putting up his horse, he gathered chips and wood from under the snow and +built a roaring fire. Having done this, he put on the kettle, trimmed +the lamp, and after preparing such stimulants as the patient could +stand, took his place at the bedside, where he remained the whole night +long, keeping the fire going and the patient as comfortable as possible. +Toward morning the sufferer died and when the sun was well up he finally +returned to his family, who anxiously solicited him as to his +whereabouts. + +"I was with Id Logan," he said. + +"What's ailing him now?" his daughter inquired. + +"Nothing now," he returned. "It was only last night," and for years +afterward he commented on the death of "poor old Id," saying always at +the conclusion of his remarks that it must be a dreadful thing to be +sick and die without friends. + +His love for his old friends and familiar objects was striking, and he +could no more bear to see an old friend move away than he could to lose +one of his patients. One of his oldest friends was a fine old Christian +lady by the name of Weeks, who lived down in Louter Creek bottoms and in +whose household he had practiced for nearly fifty years. During the +latter part of his life, however, this family began to break up, and +finally when there was no one left but the mother she decided to move +over into Whitley County, where she could stay with her daughter. Just +before going, however, she expressed a wish to see Doctor Gridley, and +he called in upon her. A little dinner had been prepared in honor of +his coming. After it was over and the old times were fully discussed he +was about to take his leave when Mrs. Weeks disappeared from the room +and then returned, bearing upon her arm a beautiful yarn spread which +she held out before her and, in her nervous, feeble way getting the +attention of the little audience, said: + +"Doctor, I am going up to Whitley now to live with my daughter, and I +don't suppose I will get to see you very often any more. Like myself, +you are getting old, and it will be too far for you to come. But I want +to give you this spread that I have woven with my own hands since I have +been sixty years of age. It isn't very much, but it is meant for a token +of the love and esteem I bear you, and in remembrance of all that you +have done for me and mine." + +Her eyes were wet and her voice quivering as she brought it forward. The +doctor, who had been wholly taken by surprise by this kindly +manifestation of regard, had arisen during her impromptu address and now +stood before her, dignified and emotionally grave, his own eyes wet with +tears of appreciation. + +Balancing the homely gift upon his extended hands, he waited until the +force of his own sentiment had slightly subsided, when he replied: + +"Madam, I appreciate this gift with which you have chosen to remember me +as much as I honor the sentiment which has produced it. There are, I +know, threads of feeling woven into it stronger than any cords of wool, +and more enduring than all the fabrics of this world. I have been your +physician now for fifty years, and have been a witness of your joys and +sorrows. But, as much as I esteem you, and as highly as I prize this +token of your regard, I can accept it but upon one condition, and that +is, Mrs. Weeks, that you promise me that no matter how dark the night, +how stormy the sky, or how deep the waters that intervene, you will not +fail to send for me in your hour of need. It is both my privilege and my +pleasure, and I should not rest content unless I knew it were so." + +When the old lady had promised, he took his spread and going out to his +horse, rode away to his own home, where he related this incident, and +ended with, "Now I want this put on my bed." + +His daughter, who lovingly humored his every whim, immediately complied +with his wish, and from that day to the hour of his death the spread was +never out of his service. + +One of the most pleasing incidents to me was one which related to his +last illness and death. Always, during his later years, when he felt the +least bit ill, he refused to prescribe for himself, saying that a +doctor, if he knew anything at all, was never such a fool as to take any +of his own medicine. Instead, and in sequence to this humorous attitude, +he would always send for one of the younger men of the vicinity who were +beginning to practice here, one, for instance, who having other merits +needed some assurance and a bit of superior recognition occasionally to +help him along. On this occasion he called in a very sober young doctor, +one who was greatly admired but had very little practice as yet, and +saying, "Doctor, I'm sick today," lay back on his bed and waited for +further developments. + +The latter, owing to Dr. Gridley's great repute and knowledge, was very +much flustered, so much so that he scarcely knew what to do. + +"Well, Doctor," he finally said, after looking at his tongue, taking his +pulse and feeling his forehead, "you're really a better judge of your +own condition than I am, I'm sure. What do you think I ought to give +you?" + +"Now, Doctor," replied Gridley sweetly, "I'm your patient, and you're my +doctor. I wouldn't prescribe for myself for anything in the world, and +I'm going to take whatever you give me. That's why I called you in. Now, +you just give me what you think my condition requires, and I'll take +it." + +The young doctor, meditating on all that was new or faddistic, decided +at last that just for variation's sake he would give the doctor +something of which he had only recently heard, a sample of which he had +with him and which had been acclaimed in the medical papers as very +effective. Without asking the doctor whether he had ever heard of it, or +what he thought, he merely prescribed it. + +"Well, now, I like that," commented Gridley solemnly. "I never heard of +that before in my life, but it sounds plausible. I'll take it, and we'll +see. What's more, I like a young doctor like yourself who thinks up ways +of his own--" and, according to his daughter, he did take it, and was +helped, saying always that what young doctors needed to do was to keep +abreast of the latest medical developments, that medicine was changing, +and perhaps it was just as well that old doctors died! He was so old and +feeble, however, that he did not long survive, and when the time came +was really glad to go. + +One of the sweetest and most interesting of all his mental phases was, +as I have reason to know, his attitude toward the problem of suffering +and death, an attitude so full of the human qualities of wonder, +sympathy, tenderness, and trust, that he could scarcely view them +without exhibiting the emotion he felt. He was a constant student of the +phenomena of dissolution, and in one instance calmly declared it as his +belief that when a man was dead he was dead and that was the end of him, +consciously. At other times he modified his view to one of an almost +prayerful hope, and in reading Emily Bronte's somewhat morbid story of +"Wuthering Heights," his copy of which I long had in my possession, I +noted that he had annotated numerous passages relative to death and a +future life with interesting comments of his own. To one of these +passages, which reads: + + "I don't know if it be a peculiarity with me, but I am seldom + otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, + provided no frenzied or despairing mourner shares the duty with + me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I + feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the + eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its + duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness," + +he had added on the margin: + + "How often I have felt this very emotion. How natural I know it to + be. And what a consolation in the thought!" + +Writing a final prescription for a young clergyman who was dying, and +for whom he had been most tenderly solicitous, he added to the list of +drugs he had written in Latin, the lines: + + "In life's closing hour, when the trembling soul flies + And death stills the heart's last emotion, + Oh, then may the angel of mercy arise + Like a star on eternity's ocean!" + +When he himself was upon his death-bed he greeted his old friend Colonel +Dyer--he of the absent overcoat and over-shoes--with: + +"Dyer, I'm almost gone. I am in the shadow of death. I am standing upon +the very brink. I cannot see clearly, I cannot speak coherently, the +film of death obstructs my sight. I know what this means. It is the end, +but all is well with me. I have no fear. I have said and done things +that would have been better left unsaid and undone, but I have never +willfully wronged a man in my life. I have no concern for myself. I am +concerned only for those I leave behind. I never saved money, and I die +as poor as when I was born. We do not know what there is in the future +now shut out from our view by a very thin veil. It seems to me there is +a hand somewhere that will lead us safely across, but I cannot tell. No +one can tell." + +This interesting speech, made scarcely a day before he closed his eyes +in death, was typical of his whole generous, trustful, philosophical +point of view. + +"If there be green fields and placid waters beyond the river that he so +calmly crossed," so ran an editorial in the local county paper edited by +one of his most ardent admirers, "reserved for those who believe in and +practice upon the principle of 'Do unto others as you would have them do +unto you,' then this Samaritan of the medical profession is safe from +all harm. If there be no consciousness, but only a mingling of that +which was gentleness and tenderness here with the earth and the waters, +then the greenness of the one and the sparkling limpidity of the other +are richer for that he lived, and wrought, and returned unto them so +trustingly again." + + + + +_Culhane, the Solid Man_ + + +I met him in connection with a psychic depression which only partially +reflected itself in my physical condition. I might almost say that I was +sick spiritually. At the same time I was rather strongly imbued with a +contempt for him and his cure. I had heard of him for years. To begin +with, he was a wrestler of repute, or rather ex-wrestler, retired +undefeated champion of the world. As a boy I had known that he had +toured America with Modjeska as Charles, the wrestler, in "As You Like +It." Before or after that he had trained John L. Sullivan, the world's +champion prize fighter of his day, for one of his most successful +fights, and that at a time when Sullivan was unfitted to fight any one. +Before that, in succession, from youth up, he had been a peasant +farmer's son in Ireland, a scullion in a ship's kitchen earning his way +to America, a "beef slinger" for a packing company, a cooks' assistant +and waiter in a Bowery restaurant, a bouncer in a saloon, a rubber down +at prize fights, a policeman, a private in the army during the Civil +War, a ticket-taker, exhibition wrestler, "short-change man" with a +minstrel company, later a circus, until having attained his greatest +fame as champion wrestler of the world, and as trainer of John L. +Sullivan, he finally opened a sporting sanitarium in some county in +upper New York State which later evolved into the great and now +decidedly fashionable institution in Westchester, near New York. + +It has always been interesting to me to see in what awe men of this type +or profession are held by many in the more intellectual walks of life as +well as by those whose respectful worship is less surprising,--those who +revere strength, agility, physical courage, so-called, brute or +otherwise. There is a kind of retiring worshipfulness, especially in men +and children of the lower walks, for this type, which must be flattering +in the extreme. + +However, in so far as Culhane was concerned at this time, the case was +different. Whatever he had been in his youth he was not that now, or at +least his earlier rawness had long since been glazed over by other +experiences. Self-education, an acquired politeness among strangers and +a knowledge of the manners and customs of the better-to-do, permitted +him to associate with them and to accept if not copy their manners and +to a certain extent their customs in his relations with them. Literally, +he owned hundreds of the best acres of the land about him, in one of the +most fashionable residence sections of the East. He had already given +away to some Sisters of Mercy a great estate in northern New York. His +stables contained every type of fashionable vehicle and stalled and fed +sixty or seventy of the worst horses, purposely so chosen, for the use +of his "guests." Men of all professions visited his place, paid him +gladly the six hundred dollars in advance which he asked for the course +of six weeks' training, and brought, or attempted to, their own cars and +retinues, which they lodged in the vicinity but could not use. I myself +was introduced or rather foisted upon him by my dear brother, whose +friend if not crony--if such a thing could have been said to exist in +his life--he was. I was taken to him in a very somber and depressed mood +and left; he rarely if ever received guests in person or at once. On the +way, and before I had been introduced, I was instructed by my good +brother as to his moods, methods, airs and tricks, supposed or rumored +to be so beneficial in so many cases. They were very rough--purposely +so. + +The day I arrived, and before I saw him, I was very much impressed with +the simplicity yet distinction of the inn or sanitarium or "repair +shop," as subsequently I learned he was accustomed to refer to it, +perched upon a rise of ground and commanding a quite wonderful panorama. +It was spring and quite warm and bright. The cropped enclosure which +surrounded it, a great square of green fenced with high, well-trimmed +privet, was good to look upon, level and smooth. The house, standing in +the center of this, was large and oblong and gray, with very simple +French windows reaching to the floor and great wide balustraded +balconies reaching out from the second floor, shaded with awnings and +set with rockers. The land on which this inn stood sloped very gradually +to the Sound, miles away to the southeast, and the spires of churches +and the gables of villages rising in between, as well as various +toy-like sails upon the water, were no small portion of its charm. To +the west for a score of miles the green-covered earth rose and fell in +undulating beauty, and here again the roofs and spires of nearby +villages might in fair weather be seen nestling peacefully among the +trees. Due south there was a suggestion of water and some peculiar +configuration, which by day seemed to have no significance other than +that which attached to the vague outlines of a distant landscape. By +night, however, the soft glow emanating from myriads of lights +identified it as the body and length of the merry, night-reveling New +York. Northward the green waves repeated themselves unendingly until +they passed into a dim green-blue haze. + +Interiorly, as I learned later, this place was most cleverly and +sensibly arranged for the purpose for which it was intended. It was airy +and well-appointed, with, on the ground floor, a great gymnasium +containing, outside of an alcove at one end where hung four or five +punching bags, only medicine balls. At the other end was an office or +receiving-room, baggage or store-room, and locker and dining-room. To +the east at the center extended a wing containing a number of +shower-baths, a lounging room and sun parlor. On the second floor, on +either side of a wide airy hall which ran from an immense library, +billiard and smoking-room at one end to Culhane's private suite at the +other, were two rows of bedrooms, perhaps a hundred all told, which gave +in turn, each one, upon either side, on to the balconies previously +mentioned. These rooms were arranged somewhat like the rooms of a +passenger steamer, with its center aisle and its outer decks and doors +opening upon it. In another wing on the ground floor were kitchens, +servants' quarters, and what not else! Across the immense lawn or campus +to the east, four-square to the sanitarium, stood a rather grandiose +stable, almost as impressive as the main building. About the place, and +always more or less in evidence, were servants, ostlers, waiting-maids +and always a decidedly large company of men of practically all +professions, ages, and one might almost say nationalities. That is as +nationalities are represented in America, by first and second +generations. + +The day I arrived I did not see my prospective host or manager or +trainer for an hour or two after I came, being allowed to wait about +until the very peculiar temperament which he possessed would permit him +to come and see me. When he did show up, a more savage and yet +gentlemanly-looking animal in clothes _de rigueur_ I have never seen. He +was really very princely in build and manner, shapely and grand, like +those portraits that have come down to us of Richelieu and the Duc de +Guise--fawn-colored riding trousers, bright red waistcoat, +black-and-white check riding coat, brown leather riding boots and +leggings with the essential spurs, and a riding quirt. And yet really, +at that moment he reminded me not so much of a man, in his supremely +well-tailored riding costume, as of a tiger or a very ferocious and yet +at times purring cat, beautifully dressed, as in our children's +storybooks, a kind of tiger in collar and boots. He was so lithe, +silent, cat-like in his tread. In his hard, clear, gray animal eyes was +that swift, incisive, restless, searching glance which sometimes +troubles us in the presence of animals. It was hard to believe that he +was all of sixty, as I had been told. He looked the very well-preserved +man of fifty or less. The short trimmed mustache and goatee which he +wore were gray and added to his grand air. His hair, cut a close +pompadour, the ends of his heavy eyebrow hairs turned upward, gave him a +still more distinguished air. He looked very virile, very intelligent, +very indifferent, intolerant and even threatening. + +"Well," he exclaimed on sight, "you wish to see me?" + +I gave him my name. + +"Yes, that's so. Your brother spoke to me about you. Well, take a seat. +You will be looked after." + +He walked off, and after an hour or so I was still waiting, for what I +scarcely knew--a room, something to eat possibly, some one to speak a +friendly word to me, but no one did. + +While I was waiting in this rather nondescript antechamber, hung with +hats, caps, riding whips and gauntlets, I had an opportunity to study +some of the men with whom presumably I was to live for a number of +weeks. It was between two and three in the afternoon, and many of them +were idling about in pairs or threes, talking, reading, all in rather +commonplace athletic costumes--soft woolen shirts, knee trousers, +stockings and running or walking shoes. They were in the main evidently +of the so-called learned professions or the arts--doctors, lawyers, +preachers, actors, writers, with a goodly sprinkling of merchants, +manufacturers and young and middle-aged society men, as well as +politicians and monied idlers, generally a little the worse for their +pleasures or weaknesses. A distinguished judge of one of the superior +courts of New York and an actor known everywhere in the English-speaking +world were instantly recognized by me. Others, as I was subsequently +informed, were related by birth or achievement to some one fact or +another of public significance. The reason for the presence of so many +people rather above than under the average in intellect lay, as I came +to believe later, in their ability or that of some one connected with +them to sincerely appreciate or to at least be amused and benefited by +the somewhat different theory of physical repair which the lord of the +manor had invented, or for which at least he had become famous. + +I have remarked that I was not inclined to be impressed. Sanitariums +with their isms and theories did not appeal to me. However, as I was +waiting here an incident occurred which stuck in my mind. A smart +conveyance drove up, occupied by a singularly lean and haughty-looking +individual, who, after looking about him, expecting some one to come out +to him no doubt, clambered cautiously out, and after seeing that his +various grips and one trunk were properly deposited on the gravel square +outside, paid and feed his driver, then walked in and remarked: + +"Ah--where is Mr. Culhane?" + +"I don't know, sir," I replied, being the only one present. "He was +here, but he's gone. I presume some one will show up presently." + +He walked up and down a little while, and then added: "Um--rather +peculiar method of receiving one, isn't it? I wired him I'd be here." He +walked restlessly and almost waspishly to and fro, looking out of the +window at times, at others commenting on the rather casual character of +it all. I agreed. + +Thus, some fifteen minutes having gone by without any one approaching +us, and occasional servants or "guests" passing through the room or +being seen in the offing without even so much as vouchsafing a word or +appearing to be interested in us, the new arrival grew excited. + +"This is very unusual," he fumed, walking up and down. "I wired him +only three hours ago. I've been here now fully three-quarters of an +hour! A most unheard-of method of doing business, I should say!" + +Presently our stern, steely-eyed host returned. He seemed to be going +somewhere, to be nowise interested in us. Yet into our presence, +probably into the consciousness of this new "guest," he carried that air +of savage strength and indifference, eyeing the stranger quite sharply +and making no effort to apologize for our long wait. + +"You wish to see me?" he inquired brusquely once more. + +Like a wasp, the stranger was vibrant with rage. Plainly he felt himself +insulted or terribly underrated. + +"Are you Mr. Culhane?" he asked crisply. + +"Yes." + +"I am Mr. Squiers," he exclaimed. "I wired you from Buffalo and ordered +a room," this last with an irritated wave of the hand. + +"Oh, no, you didn't order any room," replied the host sourly and with an +obvious desire to show his indifference and contempt even. "You wired to +know if you _could engage_ a room." + +He paused. The temperature seemed to drop perceptibly. The prospective +guest seemed to realize that he had made a mistake somewhere, had been +misinformed as to conditions here. + +"Oh! Um--ah! Yes! Well, have you a room?" + +"I don't know. I doubt it. We don't take every one." His eyes seemed to +bore into the interior of his would-be guest. + +"Well, but I was told--my friend, Mr. X----," the stranger began a +rapid, semi-irritated, semi-apologetic explanation of how he came to be +here. + +"I don't know anything about your friend or what he told you. If he told +you you could order a room by telegraph, he's mistaken. Anyhow, you're +not dealing with him, but with me. Now that you're here, though, if you +want to sit down and rest yourself a little I'll see what I can do for +you. I can't decide now whether I can let you stay. You'll have to wait +a while." He turned and walked off. + +The other stared. "Well," he commented to me after a time, walking and +twisting, "if a man wants to come here I suppose he has to put up with +such things, but it's certainly unusual, isn't it?" He sat down, wilted, +and waited. + +Later a clerk in charge of the registry book took us in hand, and then I +heard him explaining that his lungs were not in good shape. He had come +a long way--Denver, I believe. He had heard that all one needed to do +was to wire, especially one in his circumstances. + +"Some people think that way," solemnly commented the clerk, "but they +don't know Mr. Culhane. He does about as he pleases in these matters. He +doesn't do this any more to make money but rather to amuse himself, I +think. He always has more applicants than he accepts." + +I began to see a light. Perhaps there was something to this place after +all. I did not even partially sense the drift of the situation, though, +until bedtime when, after having been served a very frugal meal and +shown to my very simple room, a kind of cell, promptly at nine o'clock +lights were turned off. I lit a small candle and was looking over some +things which I had placed in a grip, when I heard a voice in the hall +outside: "Candles out, please! Candles out! All guests in bed!" Then it +came to me that a very rigorous regime was being enforced here. + +The next morning as I was still soundly sleeping at five-thirty a loud +rap sounded at my door. The night before I had noticed above my bed a +framed sign which read: "Guests must be dressed in running trunks, shoes +and sweater, and appear in the gymnasium by six sharp." "Gymnasium at +six! Gymnasium at six!" a voice echoed down the hall. I bounced out of +bed. Something about the very air of the place made me feel that it was +dangerous to attempt to trifle with the routine here. The tiger-like +eyes of my host did not appeal to me as retaining any softer ray in them +for me than for others. I had paid my six hundred ... I had better earn +it. I was down in the great room in my trunks, sweater, dressing-gown, +running shoes in less than five minutes. + +And that room! By that time as odd a company of people as I have ever +seen in a gymnasium had already begun to assemble. The leanness! the +osseosity! the grandiloquent whiskers parted in the middle! the +mustachios! the goatees! the fat, Hoti-like stomachs! the protuberant +knees! the thin arms! the bald or semi-bald pates! the spectacles or +horn glasses or pince-nezes!--laid aside a few moments later, as the +exercises began. Youth and strength in the pink of condition, when clad +only in trunks, a sweater and running shoes, are none too +acceptable--but middle age! And out in the world, I reflected rather +sadly, they all wore the best of clothes, had their cars, servants, city +and country houses perhaps, their factories, employees, institutions. +Ridiculous! Pitiful! As lymphatic and flabby as oysters without their +shells, myself included. It was really painful. + +Even as I meditated, however, I was advised, by many who saw that I was +a stranger, to choose a partner, any partner, for medicine ball +practice, for it might save me being taken or called by _him_. I +hastened so to do. Even as we were assembling or beginning to practice, +keeping two or three light medicine balls going between each pair, our +host entered--that iron man, that mount of brawn. In his cowled +dressing-gown he looked more like some great monk or fighting abbot of +the medieval years than a trainer. He walked to the center, hung up his +cowl and revealed himself lithe and lion-like and costumed like +ourselves. But how much more attractive as he strode about, his legs +lean and sturdy, his chest full, his arms powerful and graceful! At once +he seized a large leather-covered medicine ball, as had all the others, +and calling a name to which responded a lean whiskerando with a +semi-bald pate, thin legs and arms, and very much caricatured, I +presume, by the wearing of trunks and sweater. Taking his place opposite +the host, he was immediately made the recipient of a volley of balls and +brow-beating epithets. + +"Hurry up now! Faster! Ah, come on! Put the ball back to me! Put the +ball back! Do you want to keep it all day? Great God! What are you +standing there for? What are you standing there for? What do you think +you're doing--drinking tea? Come on! I haven't all morning for you +alone. Move! Move, you ham! You call yourself an editor! Why, you +couldn't edit a handbill! You can't even throw a ball straight! Throw it +straight! Throw it straight! For Christ's sake where do you think I +am--out in the office? Throw it straight! Hell!" and all the time one +and another ball, grabbed from anywhere, for the floor was always +littered with them, would be thrown in the victim's direction, and +before he could well appreciate what was happening to him he was being +struck, once in the neck and again on the chest by the rapidly delivered +six ounce air-filled balls, two of which at least he and the host were +supposed to keep in constant motion between them. Later, a ball striking +him in the stomach, he emitted a weak "Ooph!" and laying his hands over +the affected part ceased all effort. At this the master of the situation +only smirked on him leoninely and holding up a ball as if to throw it +continued, "What's the matter with you now? Come on! What do you want to +stop for? What do you want to stand there for? You're not hurt. How do +you expect to get anywhere if you can't keep two silly little balls like +these going between us?" (There had probably been six or eight.) "Here I +am sixty and you're forty, and you can't even keep up with me. And you +pretend to give the general public advice on life! Well, go on; God pity +the public, is all I say," and he dismissed him, calling out another +name. + +Now came a fat, bald soul, with dewlaps and a protruding stomach, who +later I learned was a manufacturer of clothing--six hundred employees +under him--down in health and nerves, really all "shot to pieces" +physically. Plainly nervous at the sound of his name, he puffed quickly +into position, grabbing wildly after the purposely eccentric throws +which his host made and which kept him running to left and right in an +all but panicky mood. + +"Move! Move!" insisted our host as before, and, if anything, more +irritably. "Say, you work like a crab! What a motion! If you had more +head and less guts you could do this better. A fine specimen you are! +This is what comes of riding about in taxis and eating midnight suppers +instead of exercising. Wake up! Wake up! A belt would have kept your +stomach in long ago. A little less food and less sleep, and you wouldn't +have any fat cheeks. Even your hair might stay on! Wake up! Wake up! +What do you want to do--die?" and as he talked he pitched the balls so +quickly that his victim looked at times as though he were about to weep. +His physical deficiencies were all too plain in every way. He was +generally obese and looked as though he might drop, his face a flaming +red, his hands trembling and missing, when a "Well, go on," sounded and +a third victim was called. This time it was a well-known actor who +responded, a star, rather spry and well set up, but still nervous, for +he realized quite well what was before him. He had been here for weeks +and was in pretty fair trim, but still he was plainly on edge. He ran +and began receiving and tossing as swiftly as he could, but as with the +others so it was his turn now to be given such a grilling and +tongue-lashing as falls to few of us in this world, let alone among the +successful in the realm of the footlights. "Say, you're not an +actor--you're a woman! You're a stewed onion! Move! Move! Come on! Come +on! Look at those motions now, will you? Look at that one arm up! Where +do you suppose the ball is? On the ceiling? It's not a lamp! Come on! +Come on! It's a wonder when you're killed as Hamlet that you don't stay +dead. You are. You're really dead now, you know. Move! Move!" and so it +would go until finally the poor thespian, no match for his master and +beset by flying balls, landing upon his neck, ear, stomach, finally gave +up and cried: + +"Well, I can't go any faster than I can, can I? I can't do any more than +I can!" + +"Ah, go on! Go back into the chorus!" called his host, who now abandoned +him. "Get somebody from the baby class to play marbles with you," and he +called another. + +By now, as may well be imagined, I was fairly stirred up as to the +probabilities of the situation. He might call me! The man who was +playing opposite me--a small, decayed person who chose me, I think, +because he knew I was new, innocuous and probably awkward--seemed to +realize my thoughts as well as his own. By lively exercise with me he +was doing his utmost to create an impression of great and valuable +effort here. "Come on, let's play fast so he won't notice us," he said +most pathetically at one point. You would have thought I had known him +all my life. + +But he didn't call us--not this morning at any rate. Whether owing to +our efforts or the fact that I at least was too insignificant, too +obscure, we escaped. He did reach me, however, on the fourth or fifth +day, and no spindling failure could have done worse. I was struck and +tripped and pounded until I all but fell prone upon the floor, half +convinced that I was being killed, but I was not. I was merely sent +stumbling and drooping back to the sidelines to recover while he +tortured some one else. But the names he called me! The comments on my +none too smoothly articulated bones--and my alleged mind! As in my +schooldays when, a laggard in the fierce and seemingly malevolent +atmosphere in which I was taught my ABC's, I crept shamefacedly and +beaten from the scene. + +It was in the adjoining bathroom, where the host daily personally +superintended the ablutions of his guests, that even more of his +remarkable method was revealed. Here a goodly portion of the force of +his method was his skill in removing any sense of ability, agility, +authority or worth from those with whom he dealt. Apparently to him, in +his strength and energy, they were all children, weaklings, failures, +numbskulls, no matter what they might be in the world outside. They had +no understanding of the most important of their possessions, their +bodies. And here again, even more than in the gymnasium, they were at +the disadvantage of feeling themselves spectacles, for here they were +naked. However grand an osseous, leathery lawyer or judge or doctor or +politician or society man may look out in the world addressing a jury or +a crowd or walking in some favorite place, glistening in his raiment, +here, whiskered, thin of legs, arms and neck, with bulging brow and +stripped not only of his gown but everything else this side of his +skin--well, draw your own conclusion. For after performing certain +additional exercises--one hundred times up on your toes, one hundred +times (if you could) squatting to your knees, one hundred times throwing +your arms out straight before you from your chest or up from your +shoulders or out at right angles, right and left from your body and back +to your hips until your fingers touched and the sweat once more ran--you +were then ready to be told (for once in your life) how to swiftly and +agilely take a bath. + +"Well, now, you're ready, are you?" this to a noble jurist who, like +myself perhaps, had arrived only the day before. "Come on, now. Now you +have just ten seconds in which to jump under the water and get yourself +wet all over, twenty seconds in which to jump out and soap yourself +thoroughly, ten seconds in which to get back in again and rinse off all +the soap, and twenty seconds in which to rub and dry your skin +thoroughly--now start!" + +The distinguished jurist began, but instead of following the advice +given him for rapid action huddled himself in a shivering position under +the water and stood all but inert despite the previous explanation of +the host that the sole method of escaping the weakening influence of +cold water was by counteracting it with activity, when it would prove +beneficial. + +He was such a noble, stalky, bony affair, his gold eyeglasses laid aside +for the time being, his tweeds and carefully laundered linen all +dispensed with during his stay here. As he came, meticulously and +gingerly and quite undone by his efforts, from under the water, where he +had been most roughly urged by Culhane, I hoped that he and not I would +continue to be seized upon by this savage who seemed to take infinite +delight in disturbing the social and intellectual poise of us all. + +"Soap yourself!" exclaimed the latter most harshly now that the bather +was out in the room once more. "Soap your chest! Soap your stomach! Soap +your arms, damn it! Soap your arms! And don't rub them all day either! +Now soap your legs, damn it! Soap your legs! Don't you know how to soap +your legs! Don't stand there all day! Soap your legs! Now turn round and +soap your back--soap your back! For Christ's sake, soap your back! Do it +quick--quick! Now come back under the water again and see if you can get +it off. Don't act as though you were cold molasses! Move! Move! Lord, +you act as though you had all day--as though you had never taken a bath +in your life! I never saw such an old poke. You come up here and expect +me to do some things for you, and then you stand around as though you +were made of bone! Quick now, move!" + +The noble jurist did as demanded--that is, as quickly as he could--only +the mental inadequacy and feebleness which he displayed before all the +others, of course, was the worst of his cruel treatment here, and in +this as in many instances it cut deep. So often it was the shock to +one's dignity more than anything else which hurt so, to be called an old +poke when one was perhaps a grave and reverent senior, or to be told +that one was made of bone when one was a famous doctor or merchant. +Once under the water this particular specimen had begun by nervously +rubbing his hands and face in order to get the soap off, and when +shouted at and abused for that had then turned his attention to one +other spot--the back of his left forearm. + +Mine host seemed enraged. "Well, well!" he exclaimed irascibly, watching +him as might a hawk. "Are you going to spend all day rubbing that one +spot? For God's sake, don't you know enough to rub your whole body and +get out from under the water? Move! Move! Rub your chest! Rub your +belly! Hell, rub your back! Rub your toes and get out!" + +When routed from the ludicrous effort of vigorously rubbing one spot he +was continually being driven on to some other, as though his body were +some vast complex machine which he had never rightly understood before. +He was very much flustered of course and seemed wholly unable to grasp +how it was done, let alone please his exacting host. + +"Come on!" insisted the latter finally and wearily. "Get out from under +the water. A lot you know about washing yourself! For a man who has been +on the bench for fifteen years you're the dullest person I ever met. If +you bathe like that at home, how do you keep clean? Come on out and dry +yourself!" + +The distinguished victim, drying himself rather ruefully on an +exceedingly rough towel, looked a little weary and disgusted. "Such +language!" some one afterwards said he said to some one else. "He's not +used to dealing with gentlemen, that's plain. The man talks like a +blackguard. And to think we pay for such things! Well, well! I'll not +stand it, I'm afraid. I've had about enough. It's positively revolting, +positively revolting!" But he stayed on, just the same--second thoughts, +a good breakfast, his own physical needs. At any rate weeks later he was +still there and in much better shape physically if not mentally. + +About the second or third day I witnessed another such spectacle, which +made me laugh--only not in my host's presence--nay, verily! For into +this same chamber had come another distinguished personage, a lawyer or +society man, I couldn't tell which, who was washing himself rather +leisurely, as was _not_ the prescribed way, when suddenly he was spied +by mine host, who was invariably instructing some one in this swift +one-minute or less system. Now he eyed the operation narrowly for a few +seconds, then came over and exclaimed: + +"Wash your toes, can't you? Wash your toes! Can't you wash your toes?" + +The skilled gentleman, realizing that he was now living under very +different conditions from those to which presumably he was accustomed, +reached down and began to rub the tops of his toes but without any +desire apparently to widen the operation. + +"Here!" called the host, this time much more sharply, "I said wash your +toes, not the outside of them! Soap them! Don't you know how to wash +your toes yet? You're old enough, God knows! Wash between 'em! Wash +under 'em!" + +"Certainly I know how to wash my toes," replied the other irritably and +straightening up, "and what's more, I'd like you to know that I am a +gentleman." + +"Well, then, if you're a gentleman," retorted the other, "you ought to +know how to wash your toes. Wash 'em--and don't talk back!" + +"Pah!" exclaimed the bather now, looking twice as ridiculous as before. +"I'm not used to having such language addressed to me." + +"I can't help that," said Culhane. "If you knew how to wash your toes +perhaps you wouldn't have to have such language addressed to you." + +"Oh, hell!" fumed the other. "This is positively outrageous! I'll leave +the place, by George!" + +"Very well," rejoined the other, "only before you go you'll have to wash +your toes!" + +And he did, the host standing by and calmly watching the performance +until it was finally completed. + +It was just this atmosphere which made the place the most astonishing in +which I have ever been. It seemed to be drawing the celebrated and the +successful as a magnet might iron, and yet it offered conditions which +one might presume they would be most opposed to. No one here was really +any one, however much he might be outside. Our host was all. He had a +great blazing personality which dominated everybody, and he did not +hesitate to show before one and all that he did so do. + +Breakfast here consisted of a cereal, a chop and coffee--plentiful but +very plain, I thought. After breakfast, between eight-thirty and eleven, +we were free to do as we chose: write letters, pack our bags if we were +leaving, do up our laundry to be sent out, read, or merely sit about. At +eleven, or ten-thirty, according to the nature of the exercise, one had +to join a group, either one that was to do the long or short block, as +they were known here, or one that was to ride horseback, all exercises +being so timed that by proper execution one would arrive at the bathroom +door in time to bathe, dress and take ten minutes' rest before luncheon. +These exercises were simple enough in themselves, consisting, as they +did in the case of the long and the short blocks (the long block seven, +the short four miles in length), of our walking, or walking and running +betimes, about or over courses laid up hill and down dale, over or +through unpaved mudroads in many instances, along dry or wet beds of +brooks or streams, and across stony or weedy fields, often still damp +with dew or the spring rains. But in most cases, when people had not +taken any regular exercise for a long time, this was by no means easy. +The first day I thought I should never make it, and I was by no means a +poor walker. Others, the new ones especially, often gave out and had to +be sent for, or came in an hour late to be most severely and +irritatingly ragged by the host. He seemed to all but despise weakness +and had apparently a thousand disagreeable ways of showing it. + +"If you want to see what poor bags of mush some people can become," he +once said in regard to some poor specimen who had seemingly had great +difficulty in doing the short block, "look at this. Here comes a man +sent out to do four measly country miles in fifty minutes, and look at +him. You'd think he was going to die. He probably thinks so himself. In +New York he'd do seventeen miles in a night running from barroom to +barroom or one lobster palace to another--that's a good name for them, +by the way--and never say a word. But out here in the country, with +plenty of fresh air and a night's rest and a good breakfast, he can't +even do four miles in fifty minutes! Think of it! And he probably +thinks of himself as a man--boasts before his friends, or his wife, +anyhow. Lord!" + +A day or two later there arrived here a certain major of the United +States Army, a large, broad-chested, rather pompous person of about +forty-eight or -nine, who from taking his ease in one sinecure and +another had finally reached the place where he was unable to endure +certain tests (or he thought so) which were about to be made with a view +to retiring certain officers grown fat in the service. As he explained +to Culhane, and the latter was always open and ribald afterward in his +comments on those who offered explanations of any kind, his plan was to +take the course here in order to be able to make the difficult tests +later. + +Culhane resented this, I think. He resented people using him or his +methods to get anywhere, do anything more in life than he could do, and +yet he received them. He felt, and I think in the main that he was +right, that they looked down on him because of his lowly birth and +purely material and mechanical career, and yet having attained some +distinction by it he could not forego this work which raised him, in a +way, to a position of dominance over these people. Now the sight of +presumably so efficient a person in need of aid or exercise, to be built +up, was all that was required to spur him on to the most waspish or +wolfish attitude imaginable. In part at least he argued, I think (for in +the last analysis he was really too wise and experienced to take any +such petty view, although there is a subconscious "past-lack" motivating +impulse in all our views), that here he was, an ex-policeman, +ex-wrestler, ex-prize fighter, ex-private, ex-waiter, beef-carrier, +bouncer, trainer; and here was this grand major, trained at West Point, +who actually didn't know any more about life or how to take care of his +body than to be compelled to come here, broken down at forty-eight, +whereas he, because of his stamina and Spartan energy, had been able to +survive in perfect condition until sixty and was now in a position to +rebuild all these men and wastrels and to control this great +institution. And to a certain extent he was right, although he seemed to +forget or not to know that he was not the creator of his own great +strength, by any means, impulses and tendencies over which he had no +control having arranged for that. + +However that may be, here was the major a suppliant for his services, +and here was he, Culhane, and although the major was paying well for his +minute room and his probably greatly decreased diet, still Culhane could +not resist the temptation to make a show of him, to picture him as the +more or less pathetic example that he was, in order perhaps that he, +Culhane, might shine by contrast. Thus on the first day, having sent him +around the short block with the others, it was found at twelve, when the +"joggers" were expected to return, and again at twelve-thirty when they +were supposed to take their places at the luncheon table, that the heavy +major had not arrived. He had been seen and passed by all, of course. +After the first mile or two probably he had given out and was making his +way as best he might up hill and down dale, or along some more direct +road, to the "shop," or maybe he had dropped out entirely, as some did, +via a kindly truck or farmer's wagon, and was on his way to the nearest +railway station. + +At any rate, as Culhane sat down at his very small private table, which +stood in the center of the dining-room and far apart from the others (a +vantage point, as it were), he looked about and, not seeing the new +guest, inquired, "Has any one seen that alleged army officer who arrived +here this morning?" + +No one could say anything more than that they had left him two or three +miles back. + +"I thought so," he said tersely. "There you have a fine example of the +desk general and major--we had 'em in the army--men who sit in a swivel +chair all day, wear a braided uniform and issue orders to other people. +You'd think a man like that who had been trained at West Point and seen +service in the Philippines would have sense enough to keep himself in +condition. Not at all. As soon as they get a little way up in their +profession they want to sit around hotel grills or society ballrooms and +show off, tell how wonderful they are. Here's a man, an army officer, in +such rotten shape that if I sent a good horse after him now it's ten to +one he couldn't get on him. I'll have to send a truck or some such +thing." + +He subsided. About an hour later the major did appear, much the worse +for wear. A groom with a horse had been sent out after him, and, as the +latter confided to some one afterward, he "had to help the major on." +From that time on, on the short block and the long, as well as on those +horseback tours which every second or third morning we were supposed to +take, the major was his especial target. He loved to pick on him, to +tell him that he was "nearly all guts"--a phrase which literally +sickened me at that time--to ask him how he expected to stay in the army +if he couldn't do this or that, what good was he to the army, how could +any soldier respect a thing like him, and so on _ad infinitum_ until, +while at first I pitied the major, later on I admired his pluck. Culhane +foisted upon him his sorriest and boniest nag, the meanest animal he +could find, yet he never complained; and although he forced on him all +the foods he knew the major could not like, still there was no +complaint; he insisted that he should be out and around of an afternoon +when most of us lay about, allowed him no drinks whatever, although he +was accustomed to them. The major, as I learned afterwards, stayed not +six but twelve weeks and passed the tests which permitted him to remain +in the army. + +But to return to Culhane himself. The latter's method always contained +this element of nag and pester which, along with his brazen reliance on +and pride in his brute strength at sixty, made all these others look so +puny and ineffectual. They might have brains and skill but here they +were in his institution, more or less undone nervously and physically, +and here he was, cold, contemptuous, not caring much whether they came, +stayed or went, and laughing at them even as they raged. Now and then it +was rumored that he found some single individual in whom he would take +an interest, but not often. In the main I think he despised them one and +all for the puny machines they were. He even despised life and the +pleasures and dissipations or swinish indolence which, in his judgment, +characterized most men. I recall once, for instance, his telling us how +as a private in the United States Army when the division of which he was +a unit was shut up in winter quarters, huddled about stoves, smoking (as +he characterized them) "filthy pipes" or chewing tobacco and spitting, +actually lousy, and never changing their clothes for weeks on end--how +he, revolting at all this and the disease and fevers ensuing, had kept +out of doors as much as possible, even in the coldest weather, and +finding no other way of keeping clean the single shift of underwear and +the one uniform he possessed he had, every other day or so, washed all, +uniform and underwear, with or without soap as conditions might compel, +in a nearby stream, often breaking the ice to get to the water, and +dancing about naked in the cold, running and jumping, while they dried +on bushes or the branch of a tree. + +"Those poor rats," he added most contemptuously, "used to sit inside and +wonder at me or laugh and jeer, hovering over their stoves, but a lot of +them died that very winter, and here I am today." + +And well we knew it. I used to study the faces of many of the puffy, +gelatinous souls, so long confined to their comfortable offices, +restaurants and homes that two hours on horseback all but wore them out, +and wonder how this appealed to them. I think that in the main they took +it as an illustration of either one of two things: insanity, or giant +and therefore not-to-be-imitated strength. + +But in regard to them Culhane was by no means so tolerant. One day, as I +recall, there arrived at the sanitarium a stout and mushy-looking +Hebrew, with a semi-bald pate, protruding paunch and fat arms and legs, +who applied to Culhane for admission. And, as much to irritate his other +guests, I think, as to torture this particular specimen into some +semblance of vitality, he admitted him. And thereafter, from the hour he +entered until he left about the time I did, Culhane seemed to follow him +with a wolfish and savage idea. He gave him a most damnable and savage +horse, one that kicked and bit, and at mounting time would place Mr. +Itzky (I think his name was) up near the front of the procession where +he could watch him. Always at mount-time, when we were permitted to +ride, there was inside the great stable a kind of preliminary military +inspection of all our accouterments, seeing that we had to saddle and +bridle and bring forth our own steeds. This particular person could not +saddle a horse very well nor put on his bit and bridle. The animal was +inclined to rear and plunge when he came near, to fix him with an evil +eye and bite at him. + +And above all things Culhane seemed to value strain of this kind. If he +could just make his guests feel the pressure of necessity in connection +with their work he was happy. To this end he would employ the most +contemptuous and grilling comment. Thus to Mr. Itzky he was most unkind. +He would look over all most cynically, examining the saddles and +bridles, and then say, "Oh, I see you haven't learned how to tighten a +belly-band yet," or "I do believe you have your saddle hind-side to. You +would if you could, that's one thing sure. How do you expect a horse to +be sensible or quiet when he knows that he isn't saddled right? Any +horse knows that much, and whether he has an ass for a rider. I'd kick +and bite too if I were some of these horses, having a lot of damned +fools and wasters to pack all over the country. Loosen that belt and +fasten it right" (there might be nothing wrong with it) "and move your +saddle up. Do you want to sit over the horse's rump?" + +Then would come the fateful moment of mounting. There was of course the +accepted and perfect way--his way: left foot in stirrup, an easy +balanced spring and light descent into the seat. One should be able to +slip the right foot into the right stirrup with the same motion of +mounting. But imagine fifty, sixty, seventy men, all sizes, weights and +differing conditions of health and mood. A number of these people had +never ridden a horse before coming here and were as nervous and +frightened as children. Such mounts! Such fumbling around, once they +were in their saddles, for the right stirrup! And all the while Culhane +would be sitting out front like an army captain on the only decent steed +in the place, eyeing us with a look of infinite and weary contempt that +served to increase our troubles a thousandfold. + +"Well, you're all on, are you? You all do it so gracefully I like to sit +here and admire you. Hulbert there throws his leg over his horse's back +so artistically that he almost kicks his teeth out. And Effingham does +his best to fall off on the other side. And where's Itzky? I don't even +see him. Oh, yes, there he is. Well" (this to Itzky, frantically +endeavoring to get one fat foot in a stirrup and pull himself up), "what +about you? Can't you get your leg that high? Here's a man who for +twenty-five years has been running a cloak-and-suit business and +employing five hundred people, but he can't get on a horse! Imagine! +Five hundred people dependent on that for their living!" (At this point, +say, Itzky succeeds in mounting.) "Well, he's actually on! Now see if +you can stick while we ride a block or two. You'll find the right +stirrup, Itzky, just a little forward of your horse's belly on the right +side--see? A fine bunch this is to lead out through a gentleman's +country! Hell, no wonder I've got a bad reputation throughout this +section! Well, forward, and see if you can keep from falling off." + +Then we were out through the stable-door and the privet gate at a smart +trot, only to burst into a headlong gallop a little farther on down the +road. To the seasoned riders it was all well enough, but to beginners, +those nervous about horses, fearful about themselves! The first day, not +having ridden in years and being uncertain as to my skill, I could +scarcely stay on. Several days later, I by then having become a +reasonably seasoned rider, it was Mr. Itzky who appeared on the scene, +and after him various others. On this particular trip I am thinking of, +Mr. Itzky fell or rolled off and could not again mount. He was miles +from the repair shop and Culhane, discovering his plight, was by no +means sympathetic. We had a short ride back to where he sat lamely by +the roadside viewing disconsolately the cavalcade and the country in +general. + +"Well, what's the matter with you now?" It was Culhane, eyeing him most +severely. + +"I hef hurt my foot. I kent stay on." + +"You mean you'd rather walk, do you, and lead your horse?" + +"Vell, I kent ride." + +"All right, then, you lead your horse back to the stable if you want any +lunch, and hereafter you run with the baby-class on the short block +until you think you can ride without falling off. What's the good of my +keeping a stable of first-class horses at the service of a lot of +mush-heads who don't even know how to use 'em? All they do is ruin 'em. +In a week or two, after a good horse is put in the stable, he's not fit +for a gentleman to ride. They pull and haul and kick and beat, when as +a matter of fact the horse has a damned sight more sense than they +have." + +We rode off, leaving Itzky alone. The men on either side of me--we were +riding three abreast--scoffed under their breath at the statement that +we were furnished decent horses. "The nerve! This nag!" "This bag of +bones!" "To think a thing like this should be called a horse!" But there +were no outward murmurs and no particular sympathy for Mr. Itzky. He was +a fat stuff, a sweat-shop manufacturer, they would bet; let him walk and +sweat. + +So much for sympathy in this gay realm where all were seeking to restore +their own little bodies, whatever happened. + +So many of these men varied so greatly in their looks, capacities and +troubles that they were always amusing. Thus I recall one lean iron +manufacturer, the millionaire president of a great "frog and switch" +company, who had come on from Kansas City, troubled with anaemia, +neurasthenia, "nervous derangement of the heart" and various other +things. He was over fifty, very much concerned about himself, his +family, his business, his friends; anxious to obtain the benefits of +this celebrated course of which he had heard so much. Walking or running +near me on his first day, he took occasion to make inquiries in regard +to Culhane, the life here, and later on confidences as to his own +condition. It appeared that his chief trouble was his heart, a kind of +phantom disturbance which made him fear that he was about to drop dead +and which came and went, leaving him uncertain as to whether he had it +or not. On entering he had confided to Culhane the mysteries of his +case, and the latter had examined him, pronouncing him ("Rather +roughly," as he explained to me), quite fit to do "all the silly work he +would have to do here." + +Nevertheless while we were out on the short block his heart was hurting +him. At the same time it had been made rather clear to him that if he +wished to stay here he would have to fulfill all the obligations +imposed. After a mile or two or three of quick walking and jogging he +was saying to me, "You know, I'm not really sure that I can do this. +It's very severe, more so than I thought. My heart is not doing very +well. It feels very fluttery." + +"But," I said, "if he told you you could stand it, you can, I'm sure. +It's not very likely he'd say you could if you couldn't. He examined +you, didn't he? I don't believe he'd deliberately put a strain on any +one who couldn't stand it." + +"Yes," he admitted doubtfully, "that's true perhaps." + +Still he continued to complain and complain and to grow more and more +worried, until finally he slowed up and was lost in the background. + +Reaching the gymnasium at the proper time I bathed and dressed myself +quickly and waited on the balcony over the bathroom to see what would +happen in this case. As a rule Culhane stood in or near the door at this +time, having just returned from some route or "block" himself, to see +how the others were faring. And he was there when the iron manufacturer +came limping up, fifteen minutes late, one hand over his heart, the +other to his mouth, and exclaiming as he drew near, "I do believe, Mr. +Culhane, that I can't stand this. I'm afraid there is something the +matter with my heart. It's fluttering so." + +"To hell with your heart! Didn't I tell you there was nothing the matter +with it? Get into the bath!" + +The troubled manufacturer, overawed or reassured as the case might be, +entered the bath and ten minutes later might have been seen entering the +dining-room, as comfortable apparently as any one. Afterwards he +confessed to me on one of our jogs that there was something about +Culhane which _gave him confidence_ and made him believe that there +wasn't anything wrong with his heart--which there wasn't, I presume. + +The intensely interesting thing about Culhane was this different, very +original and forthright if at times brutal point of view. It was a +blazing material world of which he was the center, the sun, and yet +always I had the sense of very great life. With no knowledge of or +interest in the superior mental sciences or arts or philosophies, still +he seemed to suggest and even live them. He was in his way an +exemplification of that ancient Greek regimen and stark thought which +brought back the ten thousand from Cunaxa. He seemed even to suggest in +his rough way historical perspective and balance. He knew men, and +apparently he sensed how at best and at bottom life was to be lived, +with not too much emotional or appetitive swaying in any one direction, +and not too little either. + +Yet in "trapseing" about this particular realm each day with ministers, +lawyers, doctors, actors, manufacturers, papa's or mamma's young +hopefuls and petted heirs, young scapegraces and so-called "society men" +of the extreme "upper crust," stuffed and plethoric with money and as +innocent of sound knowledge or necessary energy in some instances as any +one might well be, one could not help speculating as to how it was that +such a man, as indifferent and all but discourteous as this one, could +attract them (and so many) to him. They came from all parts of +America--the Pacific, the Gulf, the Atlantic and Canada--and yet, +although they did not relish, him or his treatment of them, once here +they stayed. Walking or running or idling about with them one could +always hear from one or another that Culhane was too harsh, a "bounder," +an "upstart," a "cheap pugilist" or "wrestler" at best (I myself thought +so at times when I was angry), yet here they were, and here I was, and +staying. He was low, vulgar--yet here we were. And yet, meditating on +him, I began to think that he was really one of the most remarkable men +I had ever known, for these people he dealt with were of all the most +difficult to deal with. In the main they were of that order or condition +of mind which springs from (1), too much wealth too easily acquired or +inherited; or (2), from a blazing material success, the cause of which +was their own savage self-interested viewpoint. Hence a colder and in +some respects a more critical group of men I have never known. Most of +them had already seen so much of life in a libertine way that there was +little left to enjoy. They sniffed at almost everything, Culhane +included, and yet they were obviously drawn to him. I tried to explain +this to myself on the ground that there is some iron power in some +people which literally compels this, whether one will or no; or that +they were in the main so tired of life and so truly selfish and +egotistic that it required some such different iron or caviar mood plus +such a threatening regimen to make them really take an interest. Sick as +they were, he was about the only thing left on which they could sharpen +their teeth with any result. + +As I have said, a part of Culhane's general scheme was to arrange the +starting time for the walks and jogs about the long and short blocks so +that if one moved along briskly he reached the sanitarium at +twelve-thirty and had a few minutes in which to bathe and cool off and +change his clothes before entering the dining-room, where, if not at the +bathroom door beforehand, Culhane would be waiting, seated at his little +table, ready to keep watch on the time and condition of all those due. +Thus one day, a group of us having done the long block in less time than +we should have devoted to it, came in panting and rejoicing that we had +cut the record by seven minutes. We did not know that he was around. But +in the dining-room as we entered he scoffed at our achievement. + +"You think you're smart, don't you?" he said sourly and without any +preliminary statement as to how he knew we had done it in less time. +"You come out here and pay me one hundred a week and then you want to be +cute and play tricks with your own money and health. I want you to +remember just one thing: my reputation is just as much involved with the +results here as your money. I don't need anybody's money, and I do need +my orders obeyed. Now you all have watches. You just time yourselves and +do that block in the time required. If you can't do it, that's one +thing; I can forgive a man too weak or sick to do it. But I haven't any +use for a mere smart aleck, and I don't want any more of it, see?" + +That luncheon was very sad. + +Another thing in connection with these luncheons and dinners, which were +sharply timed to the minute, were these crisp table speeches, often made +_in re_ some particular offender or his offense, at other times mere +sarcastic comments on life in general and the innate cussedness of human +nature, which amused at the same time that they were certain to irritate +some. For who is it that is not interested in hearing the peccadilloes +of his neighbor aired? + +Thus while I was there, there was a New York society man by the name of +Blake, who unfortunately was given to severe periods of alcoholism, the +results of which were, after a time, nervous disorders which sent him +here. In many ways he was as amiable and courteous and considerate a +soul as one could meet anywhere. He had that smooth, gracious something +about him--good nature, for one thing, a kind of understanding and +sympathy for various forms of life--which left him highly noncensorious, +if genially examining at times. But his love of drink, or rather his +mild attempts here to arrange some method by which in this droughty +world he could obtain a little, aroused in Culhane not so much +opposition as an amused contempt, for at bottom I think he really liked +the man. Blake was so orderly, so sincere in his attempts to fulfill +conditions, only about once every week or so he would suggest that he be +allowed to go to White Plains or Rye, or even New York, on some errand +or other--most of which requests were promptly and nearly always +publicly refused. For although Culhane had his private suite at one end +of the great building, where one might suppose one might go to make a +private plea, still one could never find him there. He refused to +receive complaints or requests or visits of any kind there. If you +wanted to speak to him you had to do it when he was with the group in +its entirety--a commonsense enough policy. But just the same there were +those who had reasonable requests or complaints, and these, by a fine +intuition as to who was who in this institution and what might be +expected of each one, he managed to hear very softly, withdrawing slowly +as they talked or inviting them into the office. In the main however the +requests were very much like those of Blake--men who wanted to get off +somewhere for a day or two, feeling, as they did after a week or two or +three, especially fit and beginning to think no doubt of the various +comforts and pleasures which the city offered. + +But to all these he was more or less adamant. By hook or by crook, by +special arrangements with friends or agents in nearby towns and the +principal showy resorts of New York, he managed to know, providing they +did leave the grounds, either with or without his consent, about where +they were and what they had done, and in case any of his rules or their +agreements were broken their privileges were thereafter cut off or they +were promptly ejected, their trunks being set out on the roadway in +front of the estate and they being left to make their way to shelter +elsewhere as best they might. + +On one occasion, however, Blake had been allowed to go to New York over +Saturday and Sunday to attend to some urgent business, as he said, he on +his honor having promised to avoid the white lights. Nevertheless he did +not manage so to do but instead, in some comfortable section of that +region, was seen drinking enough to last him until perhaps he should +have another opportunity to return to the city. + +On his return to the "shop" on Monday morning or late Sunday night, +Culhane pretended not to see him until noonday lunch, when, his jog over +the long block done with and his bath taken, he came dapperly into the +dining-room, wishing to look as innocent and fit as possible. But +Culhane was there before him at his little table in the center of the +room, and patting the head of one of the two pure-blooded collies that +always followed him about on the grounds or in the house, began as +follows: + +"A dog," he said very distinctly and in his most cynical tone and +apparently apropos of nothing, which usually augured that the lightning +of his criticism was about to strike somewhere, "is so much better than +the average man that it's an insult to the dog to compare them. The +dog's really decent. He has no sloppy vices. You set a plate of food +before a regularly-fed, blooded dog, and he won't think of gorging +himself sick or silly. He eats what he needs, and then stops. So does a +cat" (which is of course by no means true, but still--). "A dog doesn't +get a red nose from drinking too much." By now all eyes were turning in +the direction of Blake, whose nose was faintly tinged. "He doesn't get +gonorrhea or syphilis." The united glances veered in the direction of +three or four young scapegraces of wealth, all of whom were suspected of +these diseases. "He doesn't hang around hotel bars and swill and get his +tongue thick and talk about how rich he is or how old his family is." +(This augured that Blake did such things, which I doubt, but once more +all eyes were shifted to him.) "He doesn't break his word. Within the +limits of his poor little brain he's faithful. He does what he thinks +he's called upon to do. + +"But you take a man--more especially a gentleman--one of these fellows +who is always very pointed in emphasizing that he is a gentleman" (which +Blake never did). "Let him inherit eight or ten millions, give him a +college education, let him be socially well connected, and what does he +do? Not a damned thing if he can help it except contract vices--run from +one saloon to another, one gambling house to another, one girl to +another, one meal to another. He doesn't need to know anything +necessarily. He may be the lowest dog physically and in every other way, +and still he's a gentleman--because he has money, wears spats and a high +hat. Why I've seen fifty poor boob prize fighters in my time who could +put it all over most of the so-called gentlemen I have ever seen. They +kept their word. They tried to be physically fit. They tried to stand up +in the world and earn their own living and be somebody." (He was +probably thinking of himself.) "But a gentleman wants to boast of his +past and his family, to tell you that he must go to the city on +business--his lawyers or some directors want to see him. Then he swills +around at hotel bars, stays with some of his lady whores, and then comes +back here and expects me to pull him into shape again, to make his nose +a little less red. He thinks he can use my place to fall back on when he +can't go any longer, to fix him up to do some more swilling later on. + +"Well, I want to serve notice on all so-called gentlemen here, and _one +gentleman_ in particular" (and he heavily and sardonically emphasized +the words), "that it won't do. This isn't a hospital attached to a +whorehouse or a saloon. And as for the trashy little six hundred paid +here, I don't need it. I've turned away more men who have been here once +or twice and have shown me that they were just using this place and me +as something to help them go on with their lousy drinking and carousing, +than would fill this building. Sensible men know it. They don't try to +use me. It's only the wastrels, or their mothers or fathers who bring +their boys and husbands and cry, who try to use me, and I take 'em once +or twice, but not oftener. When a man goes out of here cured, I know he +is cured. I never want to see him again. I want him to go out in the +world and stand up. I don't want him to come back here in six months +sniveling to be put in shape again. He disgusts me. He makes me sick. I +feel like ordering him off the place, and I do, and that's the end of +him. Let him go and bamboozle somebody else. I've shown him all I know. +There's no mystery. He can do as much for himself, once he's been here, +as I can. If he won't, well and good. And I'm saying one thing more: +There's one man here to whom this particularly applies today. This is +his last call. He's been here twice. When he goes out this time he can't +come back. Now see if some of you can remember some of the things I've +been telling you." + +He subsided and opened his little pint of wine. + +Another day while I was there he began as follows: + +"If there's one class of men that needs to be improved in this country, +it's lawyers. I don't know why it is, but there's something in the very +nature of the work of a lawyer which appears to make him cynical and to +want to wear a know-it-all look. Most lawyers are little more than +sharper crooks than the crooks they have to deal with. They're always +trying to get in on some case or other where they have to outwit the +law, save some one from getting what he justly deserves, and then they +are supposed to be honest and high-minded! Think of it! To judge by some +of the specimens I get up here," and then some lawyer in the place would +turn a shrewd inquiring glance in his direction or steadfastly gaze at +his plate or out the window, while the others stared at him, "you would +think they were the salt of the earth or that they were following a +really noble profession or that they were above or better than other men +in their abilities. Well, if being conniving and tricky are fine traits, +I suppose they are, but personally I can't see it. Generally speaking, +they're physically the poorest fish I get here. They're slow and +meditative and sallow, mostly because they get too little exercise, I +presume. And they're never direct and enthusiastic in an argument. A +lawyer always wants to stick in an 'if' or a 'but,' to get around you in +some way. He's never willing to answer you quickly or directly. I've +watched 'em now for nearly fifteen years, and they're all more or less +alike. They think they're very individual and different, but they're +not. Most of them don't know nearly as much about life as a good, +all-around business or society man," this in the absence of any desire +to discuss these two breeds for the time being. "For the life of me I +could never see why a really attractive woman would ever want to marry a +lawyer"--and so he would talk on, revealing one little unsatisfactory +trait after another in connection with the tribe, sand-papering their +raw places as it were, until you would about conclude, supposing you had +never heard him talk concerning any other profession, that lawyers were +the most ignoble, the pettiest, the most inefficient physically and +mentally, of all the men he had ever encountered; and in his noble +savage state there would not be one to disagree with him, for he had +such an animal, tiger-like mien that you had the feeling that instead of +an argument you would get a physical rip which would leave you bleeding +for days. + +The next day, or a day or two or four or six later--according to his +mood--it would be doctors or merchants or society men or politicians he +would discourse about--and, kind heaven, what a drubbing they would get! +He seemed always to be meditating on the vulnerable points of his +victims, anxious (and yet presumably not) to show them what poor, +fallible, shabby, petty and all but drooling creatures they were. Thus +in regard to merchants: + +"The average man who has a little business of some kind, a factory or a +wholesale or brokerage house or a hotel or a restaurant, usually has a +distinctly middle-class mind." At this all the merchants and +manufacturers were likely to give a very sharp ear. "As a rule, you'll +find that they know just the one little line with which they're +connected, and nothing more. One man knows all about cloaks and suits" +(this may have been a slap at poor Itzky) "or he knows a little +something about leather goods or shoes or lamps or furniture, and that's +all he knows. If he's an American he'll buckle down to that little +business and work night and day, sweat blood and make every one else +connected with him sweat it, underpay his employees, swindle his +friends, half-starve himself and his family, in order to get a few +thousand dollars and seem as good as some one else who has a few +thousand. And yet he doesn't want to be different from--he wants to be +just like--the other fellow. If some one in his line has a house up on +the Hudson or on Riverside Drive, when he gets his money he wants to go +there and live. If the fellow in his line, or some other that he knows +something about, belongs to a certain club, he has to belong to it even +if the club doesn't want him or he wouldn't look well in it. He wants to +have the same tailor, the same grocer, smoke the same brand of cigars +and go to the same summer resort as the other fellow. They even want to +look alike. God! And then when they're just like every one else, they +think they're somebody. They haven't a single idea outside their line, +and yet because they've made money they want to tell other people how +to live and think. Imagine a rich butcher or cloak-maker, or any one +else, presuming to tell me how to think or live!" + +He stared about him as though he saw many exemplifications of his +picture present. And it was always interesting to see how those whom his +description really did fit look as though he could not possibly be +referring to them. + +Of all types or professions that came here, I think he disliked doctors +most. The reason was of course that the work they did or were about to +do in the world bordered on that which he was trying to accomplish, and +the chances were that they sniffed at or at least critically examined +what he was doing with an eye to finding its weak spots. In many cases +no doubt he fancied that they were there to study and copy his methods +and ideas, without having the decency later on to attribute their +knowledge to him. It was short shrift for any one of them with ideas or +"notions" unfriendly to him advanced in his presence. For a little while +during my stay there was a smooth-faced, rather solid physically and +decidedly self-opinionated mentally, doctor who ate at the same small +table as I and who was never tired of airing his views, medical and +otherwise. He confided to me rather loftily that there was, to be sure, +something to Culhane's views and methods but that they were +"over-emphasized here, over-emphasized." Still, one could over-emphasize +the value of drugs too. As for himself he had decided to achieve a happy +medium if possible, and for this reason (for one) he had come here to +study Culhane. + +As for Culhane, in spite of the young doctor's condescension and +understanding, or perhaps better yet because of it, he thoroughly +disliked, barely tolerated, him, and was never tired of commenting on +little dancing medics with their "pill cases" and easily acquired book +knowledge, boasting of their supposed learning "which somebody else had +paid for," as he once said--their fathers, of course. And when they were +sick, some of them at least, they had to come out here to him, or they +came to steal his theory and start a shabby grafting sanitarium of their +own. He knew them. + +One noon we were at lunch. Occasionally before seating himself at his +small central table he would walk or glance about and, having good eyes, +would spy some little defect or delinquency somewhere and of course +immediately act upon it. One of the rules of the repair shop was that +you were to eat what was put before you, especially when it differed +from what your table companion received. Thus a fat man at a table with +a lean one might receive a small portion of lean meat, no potatoes and +no bread or one little roll, whereas his lean acquaintance opposite +would be receiving a large portion of fat meat, a baked or boiled +potato, plenty of bread and butter, and possibly a side dish of some +kind. Now it might well be, as indeed was often the case, that each +would be dissatisfied with his apportionment and would attempt to change +plates. + +But this was the one thing that Culhane would not endure. So upon one +occasion, passing near the table at which sat myself and the +above-mentioned doctor, table-mates for the time being, he noticed that +he was not eating his carrots, a dish which had been especially prepared +for him, I imagine--for if one unconsciously ignored certain things the +first day or two of his stay, those very things would be all but rammed +down his throat during the remainder of his stay; a thing concerning +which one guest and another occasionally cautioned newcomers. However +this may have been in this particular case, he noticed the uneaten +carrots and, pausing a moment, observed: + +"What's the matter? Aren't you eating your carrots?" We had almost +finished eating. + +"Who, me?" replied the medic, looking up. "Oh, no, I never eat carrots, +you know. I don't like them." + +"Oh, don't you?" said Culhane sweetly. "You don't like them, and so you +don't eat them! Well, suppose you eat them here. They may do you a +little good just as a change." + +"But I never eat carrots," retorted the medic tersely and with a slight +show of resentment or opposition, scenting perhaps a new order. + +"No, not outside perhaps, but here you do. You eat carrots here, see?" + +"Yes, but why should I eat them if I don't like them? They don't agree +with me. Must I eat something that doesn't agree with me just because +it's a rule or to please you?" + +"To please me, or the carrots, or any damned thing you please--but eat +'em." + +The doctor subsided. For a day or two he went about commenting on what a +farce the whole thing was, how ridiculous to make any one eat what was +not suited to him, but just the same while he was there he ate them. + +As for myself, I was very fond of large boiled potatoes and substantial +orders of fat and lean meat, and in consequence, having been so foolish +as to show this preference, I received but the weakest, most +contemptible and puling little spuds and pale orders of meat--with, it +is true, plenty of other "side dishes"; whereas a later table-mate of +mine, a distressed and neurasthenic society man, was receiving--I soon +learned he especially abhorred them--potatoes as big as my two fists. + +"Now look at that! Now look at that!" he often said peevishly and with a +kind of sickly whine in his voice when he saw one being put before him. +"He knows I don't like potatoes, and see what I get! And look at the +little bit of a thing he gives you! It's a shame, the way he nags +people, especially over this food question. I don't think there's a +thing to it. I don't think eating a big potato does me a bit of good, or +you the little one, and yet I have to eat the blank-blank things or get +out. And I need to get on my feet just now." + +"Well, cheer up," I said sympathetically and with an eye on the large +potato perhaps. "He isn't always looking, and we can fix it. You mash up +your big potato and put butter and salt on it, and I'll do the same with +my little one. Then when he's not looking we'll shift." + +"Oh, that's all right," he commented, "but we'd better look out. If he +sees us he'll be as sore as the devil." + +This system worked well enough for a time, and for days I was getting +all the potato I wanted and congratulating myself on my skill, when one +day as I was slyly forking potatoes out of his dish, moved helpfully in +my direction, I saw Culhane approaching and feared that our trick had +been discovered. It had. Perhaps some snaky waitress has told on us, or +he had seen us, even from his table. + +"Now I know what's going on here at this table," he growled savagely, +"and I want you two to cut it out. This big boob here" (he was referring +to my esteemed self) "who hasn't strength of will or character enough to +keep himself in good health and has to be brought up here by his +brother, hasn't brains enough to see that when I plan a thing for his +benefit it is for his benefit, and not mine. Like most of the other +damned fools that come up here and waste their money and my time, he +thinks I'm playing some cute game with him--tag or something that will +let him show how much cuter he is than I am. And he's supposed to be a +writer and have a little horse-sense! His brother claims it, anyhow. And +as for this other simp here," and now he was addressing the assembled +diners while nodding toward my friend, "it hasn't been three weeks since +he was begging to know what I could do for him. And now look at +him--entering into a petty little game of potato-cheating! + +"I swear," he went on savagely, talking to the room in general, +"sometimes I don't know what to do with such damned fools. The right +thing would be to set these two, and about fifty others in this place, +out on the main road with their trunks and let them go to hell. They +don't deserve the attention of a conscientious man. I prohibit +gambling--what happens? A lot of nincompoops and mental lightweights +with more money than brains sneak off into a field of an afternoon on +the excuse that they are going for a walk, and then sit down and lose or +win a bucket of money just to show off what hells of fellows they are, +what sports, what big 'I ams.' I prohibit cigarette-smoking, not because +I think it's literally going to kill anybody but because I think it +looks bad here, sets a bad example to a lot of young wasters who come +here and who ought to be broken of the vice, and besides, because I +don't like cigarette-smoking here--don't want it and won't have it. What +happens? A lot of sissies and mamma's boys and pet heirs, whose fathers +haven't got enough brains to cut 'em off and make 'em get out and work, +come up here, sneak in cigarettes or get the servants to, and then hide +out behind the barn or a tree down in the lot and sneak and smoke like +a lot of cheap schoolboys. God, it makes me sick! What's the use of a +man working out a fact during a lifetime and letting other people have +the benefit of it--not because he needs their money, but that they need +his help--if all the time he is going to have such cattle to deal with? +Not one out of twenty or forty men that come here really wants me to +help him or to help himself. What he wants is to have some one drive him +in the way he ought to go, kick him into it, instead of his buckling +down and helping himself. What's the good of bothering with such damned +fools? A man ought to take the whole pack and run 'em off the place with +a dog-whip." He waved his hand in the air. "It's sickening. It's +impossible. + +"As for you two," he added, turning to us, but suddenly stopped. "Hell, +what's the use! Why should I bother with you? Do as you damned well +please, and stay sick or die!" + +He turned on his heel and walked out of the dining-room, leaving us to +sit there. I was so dumbfounded by the harangue our pseudo-cleverness +had released that I could scarcely speak. My appetite was gone and I +felt wretched. To think of having been the cause of this unnecessary +tongue-lashing to the others! And I felt that we were, and justly, the +target for their rather censorious eyes. + +"My God!" moaned my companion most dolefully. "That's always the way +with me. Nothing that I ever do comes out right. All my life I've been +unlucky. My mother died when I was seven, and my father's never had any +use for me. I started in three or four businesses four or five years +ago, but none of them ever came out right. My yacht burned last summer, +and I've had neurasthenia for two years." He catalogued a list of ills +that would have done honor to Job himself, and he was worth nine +millions, so I heard! + +Two or three additional and amusing incidents, and I am done. + +One of the most outre things in connection with our rides about the +countryside was Culhane's attitude toward life and the natives and +passing strangers as representing life. Thus one day, as I recall very +well, we were riding along a backwoods country road, very shadowy and +branch-covered, a great company of us four abreast, when suddenly and +after his very military fashion there came a "Halt! Right by fours! +Right dress! Face!" and presently we were all lined up in a row facing a +greensward which had suddenly been revealed to the left and on which, +and before a small plumber's stove standing outside some gentleman's +stable, was stretched a plumber and his helper. The former, a man of +perhaps thirty-five, the latter a lad of, say, fourteen or fifteen, were +both very grimy and dirty, but taking their ease in the morning sun, a +little pot of lead on the stove being waited for, I presume, that it +might boil. + +Culhane, leaving his place at the head of the column, returned to the +center nearest the plumber and his helper and pointing at them and +addressing us in a very clear voice, said: + +"There you have it. There's American labor for you, at its best--union +labor, the poor, downtrodden workingman. Look at him." We all looked. +"This poor hard-working plumber here," and at that the latter stirred +and sat up, scarcely even now grasping what it was all about, so +suddenly had we descended upon him, "earns or demands sixty cents an +hour, and this poor sweating little helper here has to have forty. +They're working now. They're waiting for that little bit of lead to +boil, at a dollar an hour between them. They can't do a thing, either of +'em, until it does, and lead has to be well done, you know, before it +can be used. + +"Well, now, these two here," he continued, suddenly shifting his tone +from one of light sarcasm to a kind of savage contempt, "imagine they +are getting along, making life a lot better for themselves, when they +lie about this way and swindle another man out of his honest due in +connection with the work he is paying for. He can't help himself. He +can't know everything. If he did he'd probably find what's wrong in +there and fix it himself in three minutes. But if he did that and the +union heard of it they'd boycott him. They'd come around and blackmail +him, blow up his barn, or make him pay for the work he did himself. I +know 'em. I have to deal with 'em. They fix my pipes in the same way +that these two are fixing his--lying on the grass at a dollar an hour. +And they want five dollars a pound for every bit of lead they use. If +they forget anything and have to go back to town for it, you pay for +it, at a dollar an hour. They get on the job at nine and quit at four, +in the country. If you say anything, they quit altogether--they're +_union_ laborers--and they won't let any one else do it, either. Once +they're on the job they have to rest every few minutes, like these two. +Something has to boil, or they have to wait for something. Isn't it +wonderful! Isn't it beautiful! And all of us of course are made free and +equal! They're just as good as we are! If you work and make money and +have any plumbing to do you have to support 'em--Right by fours! Guide +right! Forward!" and off we trotted, breaking into a headlong gallop a +little farther on as if he wished to outrun the mood which was holding +him at the moment. + +The plumber and his assistant, fully awake now to the import of what had +occurred, stared after us. The journeyman plumber, who was short and +fat, sat and blinked. At last he recovered his wits sufficiently to cry, +"Aw, go to hell, you ---- ---- ----!" but by that time we were well along +the road and I am not sure that Culhane even heard. + +Another day as we were riding along a road which led into a nearby city +of, say, twenty thousand, we encountered a beer truck of great size and +on its seat so large and ruddy and obese a German as one might go a long +way and still not see. It was very hot. The German was drowsy and taking +his time in the matter of driving. As we drew near, Culhane suddenly +called a halt and, lining us up as was his rule, called to the horses of +the brewery wagon, who also obeyed his lusty "Whoa!" The driver, from +his high perch above, stared down on us with mingled curiosity and +wonder. + +"Now, here's an illustration of what I mean," Culhane began, apropos of +nothing at all, "when I say that the word man ought to be modified or +changed in some way so that when we use it we would mean something more +definite than we mean now. That thing you see sitting up on that +wagon-seat there--call that a man? And then call me one? Or a man like +Charles A. Dana? Or a man like General Grant? Hell! Look at him! Look at +his shape! Look at that stomach! You think a thing like that--call it a +man if you want to--has any brains or that he's really any better than a +pig in a sty? If you turn a horse out to shift for himself he'll eat +just enough to keep in condition; same way with a dog, a cat or a bird. +But let one of these things, that some people call a _man_, come along, +give him a job and enough money or a chance to stuff himself, and see +what happens. A thing like that connects himself with one end of a beer +hose and then he thinks he's all right. He gets enough guts to start a +sausage factory, and then he blows up, I suppose, or rots. Think of it! +And we call him a man--or some do!" + +During this amazing and wholly unexpected harangue (I never saw him stop +any one before), the heavy driver, who did not understand English very +well, first gazed and then strained with his eyebrows, not being able +quite to make out what it was all about. From the chuckling and laughter +that finally set up in one place and another he began dimly to +comprehend that he was being made fun of, used as an unsatisfactory jest +of some kind. Finally his face clouded for a storm and his eyes blazed, +the while his fat red cheeks grew redder. "_Donnervetter!_" he began +gutturally to roar. "_Schweine hunde! Hunds knoche! Nach der polizei +soll man reufen!_" + +I for one pulled my horse cautiously back, as he cracked a great whip, +and, charging savagely through us, drove on. Culhane, having made his +unkind comments, gave orders for our orderly formation once more and +calmly led us away. + +Perhaps the most amusing phase of him was his opposition to and contempt +for inefficiency of any kind. If he asked you to do anything, no matter +what, and you didn't at once leap to the task ready and willing and able +so to do, he scarcely had words enough with which to express himself. On +one occasion, as I recall all too well, he took us for a drive in his +tally-ho--one or two or three that he possessed--a great lumbering, +highly lacquered, yellow-wheeled vehicle, to which he attached seven or +eight or nine horses, I forget which. This tally-ho ride was a regular +Sunday morning or afternoon affair unless it was raining, a call +suddenly sounding from about the grounds somewhere at eleven or at two +in the afternoon, "Tally-ho at eleven-thirty" (or two-thirty, as the +case might be). "All aboard!" Gathering all the reins in his hands and +perching himself in the high seat above, with perhaps one of his guests +beside him, all the rest crowded willy-nilly on the seats within and on +top, he would carry us off, careening about the countryside most madly, +several of his hostlers acting as liveried footmen or outriders and one +of them perched up behind on the little seat, the technical name of +which I have forgotten, waving and blowing the long silver trumpet, the +regulation blasts on which had to be exactly as made and provided for +such occasions. Often, having been given no warning as to just when it +was to be, there would be a mad scramble to get into our _de rigueur_ +Sunday clothes, for Culhane would not endure any flaws in our +appearance, and if we were not ready and waiting when one of his +stablemen swung the vehicle up to the door at the appointed time he was +absolutely furious. + +On the particular occasion I have in mind we all clambered on in good +time, all spick and span and in our very best, shaved, powdered, hands +appropriately gloved, our whiskers curled and parted, our shoes shined, +our hats brushed; and up in front was Culhane, gentleman de luxe for the +occasion, his long-tailed whip looped exactly as it should be, no doubt, +ready to be flicked out over the farthest horse's head, and up behind +was the trumpeter--high hat, yellow-topped boots, a uniform of some +grand color, I forget which. + +But, as it turned out on this occasion, there had been a hitch at the +last minute. The regular hostler or stableman who acted as footman +extraordinary and trumpeter plenipotentiary, the one who could truly and +ably blow this magnificent horn, was sick or his mother was dead. At any +rate, there he wasn't. And in order not to irritate Culhane, a second +hostler had been dressed and given his seat and horn--only he couldn't +blow it. As we began to clamber in I heard him asking, "Can any of you +gentleman blow the trumpet? Do any of you gentleman know the regular +trumpet call?" + +No one responded, although there was much discussion in a low key. Some +could, or thought they could, but hesitated to assume so frightful a +risk. At the same time Culhane, hearing the fuss and knowing perhaps +that his substitute could not trumpet, turned grimly around and said, +"Say, do you mean to say there isn't any one back there who knows how to +blow that thing? What's the matter with you, Caswell?" he called to +one, and getting only mumbled explanations from that quarter, called to +another, "How about you, Drewberry? Or you, Crashaw?" + +All three apologized briskly. They were terrified by the mere thought of +trying. Indeed no one seemed eager to assume the responsibility, until +finally he became so threatening and assured us so volubly that unless +some immediate and cheerful response were made he would never again +waste one blank minute on a lot of blank-blank this and thats, that one +youth, a rash young society somebody from Rochester, volunteered more or +less feebly that he "thought" that "maybe he could manage it." He took a +seat directly under the pompously placed trumpeter, and we were off. + +"Heigh-ho!" Out the gate and down the road and up a nearby slope at a +smart clip, all of us gazing cheerfully and possibly vainly about, for +it was a bright day and a gay country. Now the trumpeter, as is provided +for on all such occasions, lifted the trumpet to his lips and began on +the grandiose "ta-ra-ta-ta," but to our grief and pain, although he got +through fairly successfully on his first attempt, there was one place +where there was a slight hitch, a "false crack," as some one rowdyishly +remarked. Culhane, although tucking up his lines and stiffening his back +irritably at this flaw, said nothing. For after all a poor trumpeter was +better than none at all. A little later, however, the trumpeter having +hesitated to begin again, he called back, "Well, what about the horn? +What about the horn? Can't you do something with it? Have you quit for +the day?" + +Up went the horn once more, and a most noble and encouraging +"Ta-ra-ta-ta" was begun, but just at the critical point, and when we +were all most prayerfully hoping against hope, as it were, that this +time he would round the dangerous curves of it gracefully and come to a +grand finish, there was a most disconcerting and disheartening squeak. +It was pathetic, ghastly. As one man we wilted. What would Culhane say +to that? We were not long in doubt. "Great Christ!" he shouted, looking +back and showing a countenance so black that it was positively +terrifying. "Who did that? Throw him off! What do you think--that I want +the whole country to know I'm airing a lot of lunatics? Somebody who +can blow that thing, take it and blow it, for God's sake! I'm not going +to drive around here without a trumpeter!" + +For a few moments there was more or less painful gabbling in all the +rows, pathetic whisperings and "go ons" or eager urgings of one and +another to sacrifice himself upon the altar of necessity, insistences by +the ex-trumpeter that he had blown trumpets in his day as good as any +one--what the deuce had got into him anyhow? It must be the horn! + +"Well," shouted Culhane finally, as a stop-gap to all this, "isn't any +one going to blow that thing? Do you mean to tell me that I'm hauling +all of you around, with not a man among you able to blow a dinky little +horn? What's the use of my keeping a lot of fancy vehicles in my barn +when all I have to deal with is a lot of shoe salesmen and floorwalkers? +Hell! Any child can blow it. It's as easy as a fish-horn. If I hadn't +these horses to attend to I'd blow it myself. Come on--come on! +Kerrigan, what's the matter with you blowing it?" + +"The truth is, Mr. Culhane," explained Mr. Kerrigan, the very dapper and +polite heir of a Philadelphia starch millionaire, "I haven't had any +chance to practice with one of those for several years. I'll try it if +you want me to, but I can't guarantee--" + +"Try!" insisted Culhane violently. "You can't do any worse than that +other mutt, if you blow for a million years. Blow it! Blow it!" + +Mr. Kerrigan turned back and being very cheerfully tendered the horn by +the last failure, wetted and adjusted his lips, lifted it upward and +backward--and-- + +It was pathetic. It was positively dreadful, the wheezing, grinding +sounds that were emitted. + +"God!" shouted Culhane, pulling up the coach to a dead stop. "Stop that! +Whoa! Whoa!!! Do you mean to say that that's the best you can do? Well, +this finishes me! Whoa! What kind of a bunch of cattle have I got up +here, anyhow? Whoa! And out in this country too where I'm known and +where they know all about such things! God! Whoa! Here I spend thousands +of dollars to get together an equipment that will make a pleasant +afternoon for a crowd of gentlemen, and this is what I draw--hams! A lot +of barflies who never saw a tally-ho! Well, I'm done! I'm through! I'll +split the damned thing up for firewood before I ever take it out again! +Get down! Get out, all of you! I'll not haul one of you back a step! +Walk back or anywhere you please--to hell, for all I care! I'm through! +Get out! I'm going to turn around and get back to the barn as quick as I +can--up some alley if I can find one. To think of having such a bunch of +hacks to deal with!" + +Humbly and wearily we climbed down and, while he drove savagely on to +some turning-place, stood about first in small groups, then by twos and +threes began making our way--rather gingerly, I must confess, in our +fine clothes--along the winding road back to the place on the hill. But +such swearing! Such un-Sabbath-like comments! The number of times his +sturdy Irish soul was wished into innermost and almost sacrosanct +portions of Sheol! He was cursed from more angles and in more +artistically and architecturally nobly constructed phrases and even +paragraphs than any human being that I have ever heard of before or +since, phrases so livid and glistening that they smoked. + +Talk about the carved ivories of speech! The mosaics of verbal precious +stones! + +You should have heard us on our way back! + +And still we stayed. + + * * * * * + +Some two years later I was passing this place in company with some +friends, when I asked my host, who also knew of the place, to turn in. +During my stay it had been the privilege and custom among those who knew +much of this institution to drive through the grounds and past the very +doors of the "repair shop," even to stop if Culhane chanced to be +visible and talking to or at least greeting him, in some cases. A custom +of Culhane's was, in the summer time, to have erected on the lawn a +large green-and-white striped marquee tent, a very handsome thing +indeed, in which was placed a field-officer's table and several camp +chairs, and some books and papers. Here of a hot day, when he was not +busy with us, he would sit and read. And when he was in here or +somewhere about, a little pennant was run up, possibly as guide to +visiting guests or friends. At any rate, it was the presence of this +pennant which caused me to know that he was about and to wish that I +might have a look at him once more, great lion that he was. As "guests," +none of us were ever allowed to come within more than ten feet of it, +let alone in it. As passing visitors, however, we might, and many did, +stop, remind him that we had once been his humble slaves, and ask leave +to congratulate him on his health and sturdy years. At such times, if +the visitors looked interesting enough, or he remembered them well, he +would deign to come to the tent-fly and, standing there a la Napoleon at +Lodi or Grant in the Wilderness, be for the first time in his relations +with them a bit civil. + +Anyway, on this occasion, urged on by curiosity to see my liege once +more and also to learn whether he would remember me at all, I had my +present host roll his car up to the tent door, where Culhane was +reading. Feeling that by this venturesome deed I had "let myself in for +it" and had to "make a showing," I climbed briskly out and, approaching, +recalled myself to him. With a semi-wry expression, half smile, half +contemptuous curl of the corners of his mouth, he recalled me and took +my extended hand; then seeing that possibly my friends if not myself +looked interesting, he arose and came to the door. I introduced +them--one a naval officer of distinction, the other the owner of a great +estate some miles farther on. For the first time in my relations with +him I had an opportunity to note how grandly gracious he could be. He +accepted my friends' congratulations as to the view with a princely nod +and suggested that on other days it was even better. He was soon to be +busy now or he would have some one show my friends through the shop. +Some Saturday afternoon, if they would telephone or stop in passing, he +would oblige. + +I noted at once that he had not aged in the least. He was sixty-two +or -three now and as vigorous and trim as ever. And now he treated me as +courteously and formally as though he had never browbeaten me in the +least. "Good heavens," I said, "how much better to be a visitor than a +guest!" After a moment or two we offered many thanks and sped on, but +not without many a backward glance on my part, for the place fascinated +me. That simply furnished institution! That severe regimen! This +latter-day Stoic and Spartan in his tent! And, above all things, and the +most astounding to me, so little could one know him, the book he had +been reading and which he had laid upon his little table as I entered--I +could not help noting the title for he laid it back up, open face +down--was Lecky's "History of European Morals"! + +Now! + +Well! + + +IN RETROSPECT + +Two years after this visit, in a serious attempt to set down what I +really did think of him, I arranged the following thoughts with which I +closed my sketch then and which I now append for what they may be worth. +They represented my best thought concerning him then: + +"Thomas Culhane belongs to that class of society which the preachers and +the world's army of conventional merchants, lawyers, judges and +reputable citizens generally are presumably, if one may judge by the +moral and religious literature of the day, trying to reach and reform. +Yet here at his sanitarium are gathered representatives of those same +orders, the so-called better element. And here we see them suddenly +dominated, mind and soul, by this being whom they, theoretically at +least, look upon as a brand to be snatched from the burning. + +"As the Church and society view Culhane, so they view all life outside +their own immediate circles. Culhane is in fact a conspicuous figure +among the semi-taboo. He has been referred to in many an argument and +platform and pulpit and in the press as a type of man whose influence is +supposed to be vitiating. Now a minister enters the sanitarium, broken +down by his habits of life, and this same Culhane is able to penetrate +him, to see that his dogmatic and dictatorial mental habits are the +cause of his ailment, and he has the moral courage to shock him, to drag +him by apparently brutal processes out of his rut. He reads the man +accurately, he knows him better than he knows himself, and he effects a +cure. + +"This astonishing condition is certainly a new light for those seeking +to labor among men. Those who are successful gamblers, pugilists, +pickpockets, saloon-keepers, book-makers, jockeys and the like are so +by reason of their intelligence, their innate mental acumen and +perception. It is a fact that in the sporting world and among the +unconventional men-about-town you will often find as good if not better +judges of human nature than elsewhere. Contact with a rough and ready +and all-too-revealing world teaches them much. The world's customary +pretensions and delusions are in the main ripped away. They are bruised +by rough facts. Often the men gathered in some such cafe and whom +preachers and moralists are most ready to condemn have a clearer +perception of preachers, church organizations and reformers and their +relative importance in the multitudinous life of the world than the +preachers, church congregations and reformers have of those in the cafe +or the world outside to which they belong. + +"This is why, in my humble judgment, the Church and those associated +with its aims make no more progress than they do. While they are +consciously eager to better the world, they are so wrapped up in +themselves and their theories, so hampered by their arbitrary and +limited conceptions of good and evil, that the great majority of men +move about them unseen, except in a far-away and superficial manner. Men +are not influenced at arm's length. It would be interesting to know if +some day a preacher or judge, who, offended by Mr. Culhane's profanity +and brutality, will be able to reach the gladiator and convert him to +his views as readily as the gladiator is able to rid him of his +ailment." + +In justice to the preachers, moralists, et cetera, I should now like to +add that it is probably not any of the virtues or perfections +represented by a man like Culhane with which they are quarreling, but +the vices of many who are in no wise like him and do not stand for the +things he stands for. At the same time, the so-called "sports" might +well reply that it is not with any of the really admirable qualities of +the "unco guid" that they quarrel, but their too narrow interpretations +of virtue and duty and their groundless generalization as to types and +classes. + +Be it so. + +Here is meat for a thousand controversies. + + + + +_A True Patriarch_ + + +In the streets of a certain moderate-sized county seat in Missouri not +many years ago might have been seen a true patriarch. Tall, +white-haired, stout in body and mind, he roamed among his neighbors, +dispensing sympathy and a curiously genial human interest through the +leisure of his day. One might have taken him to be Walt Whitman, of whom +he was the living counterpart; or, in the clear eye, high forehead and +thick, appealing white hair, have seen a marked similarity to Bryant as +he appeared in his later years. Already at this time he had seen man's +allotted term on earth, and yet he was still strong in the councils of +his people and rich in the accumulated interests of a lifetime. + +At the particular time in question he was most interesting for the +eccentricities which years of stalwart independence had developed, but +these were lovable peculiarities and only severed from remarkable +actions by the compelling power of time and his increasing infirmities. +The loud, though pleasant, voice, and strong, often fiery, declamatory +manner, were remnants of the days when his fellow-citizens were wholly +swayed by the magnificence of his orations. Charmingly simple in manner, +he still represented with it that old courtesy which made every stranger +his guest. When moved by righteous indignation, there cropped out the +daring and domineering insistence of one who had always followed what he +considered to be the right, and who knew its power. + +Even then, old as he was, if there were any topic worthy of discussion, +and his fellow-citizens were in danger of going wrong, he became an +haranguing prophet, as it were, a local Isaiah or Jeremiah. Every gate +heard him, for he stopped on his rounds in front of each, and calling +out the inhabitant poured forth such a volume of fact and argument as +tended to remove all doubt of what he, at least, considered right. All +of this he invariably accompanied by a magnificence of gesture worthy of +a great orator. + +At such times his mind, apparently, was almost wholly engrossed with +these matters, and I have it from one of his daughters, who, besides +being his daughter, was a sincere admirer of his, that often he might +have been seen coming down his private lawn, and even the public streets +when there was no one near to hear him, shaking his head, gesticulating, +sometimes sweeping upward with his arms, as if addressing his +fellow-citizens in assemblage. + +"He used to push his big hat well back upon his forehead," she said on +one occasion, "and often in winter, forgetful of the bitter cold, would +take off his overcoat and carry it on his arm. Occasionally he would +stop quite still, as if he were addressing a companion, and with +sweeping gestures illustrate some idea or other, although, of course, +there was no one present. Then, planting his big cane forcibly with each +step, as though still emphasizing his recently stated ideas, he would +come forward and enter the house." + +The same suggestion of mental concentration might have been seen in +everything that he did, and I personally have seen him leading a pet +Jersey cow home for milking with the same dignity of bearing and +forcefulness of manner that characterized him when he stood before his +fellow-citizens at a public meeting addressing them on some important +topic. He never appeared to have a sense of difference from or +superiority over his fellowmen, but only the keenest sympathy with all +things human. Every man was his brother, every human being honest. A cow +or a horse was as much to be treated with sympathy and charity as a man +or a woman. If a purse was lost, forty-nine out of every fifty men would +return it without thought of reward, if you were to believe him. + +In the little town where he had lived so many years, and where he +finally died, he knew every living creature from cattle upwards, and +could call each by name. The sick, the poor, the widows, the orphans, +the insane, and dependents of all kinds, were his especial care. Every +Sunday afternoon for years, it was his custom to go the rounds of the +indigent, frequently carrying a basket of his good wife's dinner. This +he distributed, along with consolation and advice. Occasionally he would +return home of a winter's day very much engrossed with the discovery of +some condition of distress hitherto unseen. + +"Mother," he would say to his wife in that same oratorical manner +previously noted, as he entered the house, "I've found such a poor +family. They have moved into the old saloon below Solmson's. You know +how open that is." This was delivered in the most dramatic style after +he had indicated something important by throwing his overcoat on the bed +and standing his cane in the corner. "There's a man and several children +there. The mother is dead. They were on their way to Kansas, but it got +so cold they've had to stop here until the winter is broken. They're +without food; almost no clothing. Can't we find something for them?" + +"On these occasions," said his daughter to me once, "he would, as he +nearly always did, talk to himself on the way, as if he were discussing +politics. But you could never tell what he was coming for." + +Then with his own labor he would help his wife seek out the odds and +ends that could be spared, and so armed, would return, arguing by the +way as if an errand of mercy were the last thing he contemplated. Nearly +always the subject of these orations was some public wrong or error +which should receive, although in all likelihood it did not, immediate +attention. + +Always of a reverent, although not exactly religious, turn of mind, he +took considerable interest in religious ministration, though he steadily +and persistently refused, in his later years, to go to church. He had +St. James's formula to quote in self-defense, which insists that "Pure +religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, To visit the +fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted +from the world." Often, when pressed too close, he would deliver this +with kindly violence. One of the most touching anecdotes representative +of this was related to me by his daughter, who said: + +"Mr. Kent, a poor man of our town, was sick for months previous to his +death, and my father used to go often, sometimes daily, to visit him. He +would spend perhaps a few minutes, perhaps an hour, with him, singing, +praying, and ministering to his spiritual wants. The pastor of the +church living so far away and coming only once a month, this duty +devolved upon some one, and my father did his share, and always felt +more than repaid for the time spent by the gratitude shown by the many +poor people he aided in this way. + +"Mr. Kent's favorite song, for instance, was 'On Jordan's Stormy Banks +I Stand.' This he would have my father sing, and his clear voice could +often be heard in the latter's small house, and seemed to impart +strength to the sick man. + +"Upon one occasion, I remember, Mr. Kent expressed a desire to hear a +certain song. My father was not very familiar with it but, anxious to +grant his request, came home and asked me if I would get a friend of +mine and go and sing the song for him. + +"We entered the sick-room, he leading us by the hand, for we were +children at the time. Mr. Kent's face at once brightened, and father +said to him: + +"'Mr. Kent, I told you this morning that I couldn't sing the song you +asked for, but these girls know it, and have come to sing it for you.' + +"Then, waving his hand gently toward us, he said: + +"'Sing, children.' + +"We did so, and when we had finished he knelt and offered a prayer, not +for the poor man's recovery but that he might put his trust in the Lord +and meet death without fear. I have never been more deeply impressed nor +felt more confident in the presence of death, for the man died soon +after, soothed into perfect peace." + +On another occasion he was sitting with some friends in front of the +courthouse in his town, talking and sunning himself, when a neighbor +came running up in great excitement, calling: + +"Mr. White, Mr. White, come, right quick. Mrs. Sadler wants you." + +He explained that the woman in question was dying, and, being afraid she +would strangle in her last moments, had asked the bystanders to run for +him, her old acquaintance, in the efficacy of whose prayers she had +great faith. The old patriarch was without a coat at the time, but, +unmindful of that, hastened after. + +"Mr. White," exclaimed the sick woman excitedly upon seeing him, "I want +you to pray that I won't strangle. I'm not afraid to die, but I don't +want to die that way. I want you to offer a prayer for me that I may be +saved from that. I'm so afraid." + +Seeing by the woman's manner that she was very much overwrought, he +used all his art to soothe her. + +"Have no fear, Mrs. Sadler, now," he exclaimed solemnly. "You won't +strangle. I will ask the Lord for you, and this evil will not come upon +you. You need not have any fear." + +"Kneel down, you," he commanded, turning upon the assembled neighbors +and relatives who had followed or had been there before him, while he +pushed back his white hair from his forehead. "Let us now pray that this +good woman here be allowed to pass away in peace." And even with the +rustle of kneeling that accompanied his words he lifted up his coatless +arms and began to pray. + +Through his magnificent phraseology, no doubt, as well as his profound +faith, he succeeded in inducing a feeling of peace and quiet in all his +hearers, the sick woman included, who, listening, sank into a restful +stupor, from which all agony of mind had apparently disappeared. Then +when the physical atmosphere of the room had been thus reorganized, he +ceased and retired to the yard in front of the house, where on a bench +under a shade tree he seated himself to wipe his moist brow and recover +his composure. In a few moments a slight commotion in the sick-room +denoted that the end had come. Several neighbors came out, and one said, +"Well, it is all over, Mr. White. She is dead." + +"Yes," he replied with great assurance. "She didn't strangle, did she?" + +"No," said the other, "the Lord granted her request." + +"I knew He would," he replied in his customary loud and confident tone. +"Prayer is always answered." + +Then, after viewing the dead woman and making additional comments, he +was off, as placid as though nothing had occurred. + +I happened to hear of this some time after, and one day, while sitting +with him on his front porch, said, "Mr. White, do you really believe +that the Lord directly answered your prayer in that instance?" + +"Answered!" he almost shouted defiantly and yet with a kind of human +tenderness that one could never mistake. "Of course He answered! Why +wouldn't He--a faithful old servant like that? To be sure, He answered." + +"Might it not have been merely the change of atmosphere which your +voice and strength introduced? The quality of your own thoughts goes for +something in such matters. Mind acts on mind." + +"Certainly," he said, in a manner as agreeable as if it had always been +a doctrine with him. "I know that. But, after all, what is _that_--my +mind, your mind, the sound of voices? It's all the Lord anyhow, whatever +you think." + +How could one gainsay such a religionist as that? + +The poor, the blind, the insane, and sufferers of all sorts, as I have +said before, were always objects of his keenest sympathies. Evidence of +it flashed out at the most unexpected moments--loud, rough exclamations, +which, however, always contained a note so tender and suggestive as to +defy translation. Thus, while we were sitting on his front porch one day +and hotly discussing politics to while away a dull afternoon, there came +down the street, past his home, a queer, ragged, half-demented +individual, who gazed about in an aimless sort of way, peering queerly +over fences, looking idly down the road, staring strangely overhead into +the blue. It was apparent, in a moment, that the man was crazy, some +demented creature, harmless enough, however, to be allowed abroad and so +save the county the expense of caring for him. The old man broke a +sentence short in order to point and shake his head emotionally. + +"Look at that," he said to me, with a pathetic sweep of the arm, "now +just look at that! There's a poor, demented soul, with no one to look +after him. His brother is a hard-working saddler. His sister is dead. No +money to speak of, any of them." He paused a moment, and then added, "I +don't know what we're to do in such cases. The state and the county +don't always do their duty. Most people here are too poor to help, there +are so many to be taken care of. It seems almost at times as if you +can't do anything but leave them to the mercy of God, and yet you can't +do that either, quite," and he once more shook his head sadly. + +I was for denouncing the county, but he explained very charitably that +it was already very heavily taxed by such cases. He did not seem to know +exactly what should be done at the time, but he was very sorry, very, +and for the time being the warm argument in which he had been indulging +was completely forgotten. Now he lapsed into silence and all +communication was suspended, while he rocked silently in his great chair +and thought. + +One day in passing the local poor-farm (and this is of my own +knowledge), he came upon a man beating a poor idiot with a whip. The +latter was incapable of reasoning and therefore of understanding why it +was that he was being beaten. The two were beside a wood-pile and the +demented one was crying. In a moment the old patriarch had jumped out of +his conveyance, leaped over the fence, and confronted the amazed +attendant with an uplifted arm. + +"Not another lick!" he fairly shouted. "What do you mean by striking an +idiot?" + +"Why," explained the attendant, "I want him to carry in the wood, and he +won't do it." + +"It is not his place to bring in the wood. He isn't put here for that, +and in the next place he can't understand what you mean. He's put here +to be taken care of. Don't you dare strike him again. I'll see about +this, and you." + +Knowing his interrupter well, his position and power in the community, +the man endeavored to explain that some work must be done by the +inmates, and that this one was refractory. The only way he had of making +him understand was by whipping him. + +"Not another word," the old man blustered, overawing the county +hireling. "You've done a wrong, and you know it. I'll see to this," and +off he bustled to the county courthouse, leaving the transgressor so +badly frightened that whips thereafter were carefully concealed, in this +institution at least. The court, which was held in his home town, was +not in session at the time, and only the clerk was present when he came +tramping down the aisle and stood before the latter with his right hand +uplifted in the position of one about to make oath. + +"Swear me," he called solemnly, and without further explanation, as the +latter stared at him. "I want you to take this testimony under oath." + +The clerk knew well enough the remarkable characteristics of his guest, +whose actions were only too often inexplicable from the ground point of +policy and convention. Without ado, after swearing him, he got out ink +and paper, and the patriarch began. + +"I saw," he said, "in the yard of the county farm of this county, not +over an hour ago, a poor helpless idiot, too weak-minded to understand +what was required of him, and put in that institution by the people of +this county to be cared for, being beaten with a cowhide by Mark +Sheffels, who is an attendant there, because the idiot did not +understand enough to carry in wood, which the people have hired Mark +Sheffels to carry in. Think of it," he added, quite forgetting the +nature of his testimony and that he was now speaking for dictation and +not for an audience to hear, and going off into a most scorching and +brilliant arraignment of the entire system in which such brutality could +occur, "a poor helpless idiot, unable to frame in his own disordered +mind a single clear sentence, being beaten by a sensible, healthy brute +too lazy and trifling to perform the duties for which he was hired and +which he personally is supposed to perform." + +There was more to the effect, for instance, that the American people and +the people of this county should be ashamed to think that such crimes +should be permitted and go unpunished, and that this was a fair sample. +The clerk, realizing the importance of Mr. White in the community, and +the likelihood of his following up his charges very vigorously, quietly +followed his address in a very deferential way, jotting down such +salient features as he had time to write. When he was through, however, +he ventured to lift his voice in protest. + +"You know, Mr. White," he said, "Sheffels is a member of our party, and +was appointed by us. Of course, now, it's too bad that this thing should +have happened, and he ought to be dropped, but if you are going to make +a public matter of it in this way it may hurt us in the election next +month." + +The old patriarch threw back his head and gazed at him in the most +blazing way, almost without comprehension, apparently, of so petty a +view. + +"What!" he exclaimed. "What's that got to do with it? Do you want the +Democratic Party to starve the poor and beat the insane?" + +The opposition was rather flattened by the reply, and left the old +gentleman to storm out. For once, at least, in this particular instance, +anyhow, he had purified the political atmosphere, as if by lightning, +and within the month following the offending attendant was dropped. + +Politics, however, had long known his influence in a similar way. There +was a time when he was the chief political figure in the county, and +possessed the gift of oratory, apparently, beyond that of any of his +fellow-citizens. Men came miles to hear him, and he took occasion to +voice his views on every important issue. It was his custom in those +days, for instance, when he had anything of special importance to say, +to have printed at his own expense a few placards announcing his coming, +which he would then carry to the town selected for his address and +personally nail up. When the hour came, a crowd, as I am told, was never +wanting. Citizens and farmers of both parties for miles about usually +came to hear him. + +Personally I never knew how towering his figure had been in the past, or +how truly he had been admired, until one day I drifted in upon a lone +bachelor who occupied a hut some fifteen miles from the patriarch's home +and who was rather noted in the community at the time that I was there +for his love of seclusion and indifference to current events. He had not +visited the nearest neighboring village in something like five years, +and had not been to the moderate-sized county seat in ten. Naturally he +treasured memories of his younger days and more varied activity. + +"I don't know," he said to me one day, in discussing modern statesmen +and political fame in general, "but getting up in politics is a queer +game. I can't understand it. Men that you'd think ought to get up don't +seem to. It doesn't seem to be real greatness that helps 'em along." + +"What makes you say that?" I asked. + +"Well, there used to be a man over here at Danville that I always +thought would get up, and yet he didn't. He was the finest orator I ever +heard." + +"Who was he?" I asked. + +"Arch White," he said quietly. "He was really a great man. He was a good +man. Why, many's the time I've driven fifteen miles to hear him. I used +to like to go into Danville just for that reason. He used to be around +there, and sometimes he'd talk a little. He could stir a fellow up." + +"Oratory alone won't make a statesman," I ventured, more to draw him out +than to object. + +"Oh, I know," he answered, "but White was a good man. The +plainest-spoken fellow I ever heard. He seemed to be able to tell us +just what was the matter with us, or at least I thought so. He always +seemed a wonderful speaker to me. I've seen as many as two thousand +people up at High Hill hollerin' over what he was saying until you could +hear them for miles." + +"Why didn't he get up, then, do you suppose?" I now asked on my part. + +"I dunno," he answered. "Guess he was too honest, maybe. It's sometimes +that way in politics, you know. He was a mighty determined man, and one +that would talk out in convention, whatever happened. Whenever they got +to twisting things too much and doing what wasn't just honest, I suppose +he'd kick out. Anyhow, he didn't get up, and I've always wondered at +it." + +In Danville one might hear other stories wholly bearing out this latter +opinion, and always interesting--delightful, really. Thus, a long, +enduring political quarrel was once generated by an incident of no great +importance, save that it revealed an odd streak in the old patriarch's +character and his interpretation of charity and duty. + +A certain young man, well known to the people of this county and to the +patriarch, came to Danville one day and either drank up or gambled away +a certain sum of money intrusted to him by his aunt for disposition in +an entirely different manner. When the day was all over, however, he was +not too drunk to realize that he was in a rather serious predicament, +and so, riding out of town, traveled a little way and then tearing his +clothes and marking his skin, returned, complaining that he had been set +upon by the wayside, beaten, and finally robbed. His clothes were in a +fine state of dilapidation after his efforts, and even his body bore +marks which amply seconded his protestation. In the slush and rain of +the dark village street he was finally picked up by the county treasurer +seemingly in a wretched state, and the latter, knowing the generosity +of White and the fact that his door was always open to those in +distress, took the young man by the arm and led him to the patriarch's +door, where he personally applied for him. The old patriarch, holding a +lamp over his head, finally appeared and peered outward into the +darkness. + +"Yes," he exclaimed, as he always did, eyeing the victim; "what is it +you want of me?" + +"Mr. White," said the treasurer, "it's me. I've got young Squiers here, +who needs your sympathy and aid tonight. He's been beaten and robbed out +here on the road while he was on his way to his mother's home." + +"Who?" inquired the patriarch, stepping out on the porch and eyeing the +newcomer, the while he held the lamp down so as to get a good look. +"Billy Squiers!" he exclaimed when he saw who it was. "Mr. Morton, I'll +not take this man into my house. I know him. He's a drunkard and a liar. +No man has robbed him. This is all a pretense, and I want you to take +him away from here. Put him in the hotel. I'll pay his expenses for the +night, but he can't come into my home," and he retired, closing the door +after him. + +The treasurer fell back amazed at this onslaught, but recovered +sufficiently to knock at the door once more and declare to his friend +that he deemed him no Christian in taking such a stand and that true +religion commanded otherwise, even though he suspected the worst. The +man was injured and penniless. He even went so far as to quote the +parable of the good Samaritan who passed down by way of Jericho and +rescued him who had fallen among thieves. The argument had long +continued into the night and rain before the old patriarch finally waved +them both away. + +"Don't you quote Scripture to me," he finally shouted defiantly, still +holding the light and flourishing it in an oratorical sweep. "I know my +Bible. There's nothing in it requiring me to shield liars and drunkards, +not a bit of it," and once more he went in and closed the door. + +Nevertheless the youth was housed and fed at his expense and no charge +of any kind made against him, although many believed, as did Mr. White, +that he was guilty of theft, whereas others of the opposing political +camp believed not. However, considerable opposition, based on old Mr. +White's lack of humanity in this instance, was generated by this +argument, and for years he was taunted with it although he always +maintained that he was justified and that the Lord did not require any +such service of him. + +The crowning quality of nearly all of his mercies, as one may easily +see, was their humor. Even he was not unaware, in retrospect, of the +figure he made at times, and would smilingly tell, under provocation, of +his peculiar attitude on one occasion or another. Partially from +himself, from those who saw it, and the judge presiding in the case, was +the following characteristic anecdote gathered. + +In the same community with him at one time lived a certain man by the +name of Moore, who in his day had been an expert tobacco picker, but who +later had come by an injury to his hand and so turned cobbler, and a +rather helpless, although not hopeless, one at that. Mr. White had known +this man from boyhood up, and had been a witness at various times to the +many changes in his fortunes, from the time, for instance, when he had +earned as much as several dollars a day--good pay in that region--to the +hour when he took a cobbler's kit upon his back and began to eke out a +bare livelihood for his old age by traveling about the countryside +mending shoes. At the time under consideration, this ex-tobacco picker +had degenerated into so humble a thing as Uncle Bobby Moore, a poor, +half-remembered cobbler, whose earlier state but few knew, and who at +this time had only a few charitably inclined friends, with some of whom +he spent the more pleasant portion of the year from spring to fall. +Thus, it was his custom to begin his annual pilgrimage with a visit of +ten days to Mr. White, where he would sit and cobble shoes for all the +members of the household. From here he would go to another acquaintance +some ten miles farther on, where he could enjoy the early fruit which +was then ripening in delicious quantity. Then he would visit a friendly +farmer whose home was upon the Missouri River still farther away, where +he did his annual fishing, and so on by slow degrees, until at last he +would reach a neighborhood rich in cider presses, where he would wind up +the fall, and so end his travel for the winter, beginning his peculiar +round once more the following spring at the home of Mr. White. +Naturally the old patriarch knew him and liked him passing well. + +As he grew older, however, Uncle Bobby reached the place where even by +this method and his best efforts he could scarcely make enough to +sustain him in comfort during the winter season, which was one of nearly +six months, free as his food and lodging occasionally were. He was too +feeble. Not desiring to put himself upon any friend for more than a +short visit, he finally applied to the patriarch. + +"I come to you, Mr. White," he said, "because I don't think I can do for +myself any longer in the winter season. My hand hurts a good deal and I +get tired so easily. I want to know if you'd won't help me to get into +the county farm during the winter months, anyhow. In summer I can still +look out for myself, I think." + +In short, he made it clear that in summer he preferred to be out so that +he might visit his friends and still enjoy his declining years. + +The old patriarch was visibly moved by this appeal, and seizing him by +the arm and leading off toward the courthouse where the judge governing +such cases was then sitting he exclaimed, "Come right down here, Uncle +Bobby. I'll see what can be done about this. Your old age shouldn't be +troubled in this fashion--not after all the efforts you have made to +maintain yourself," and bursting in on the court a few moments later, +where a trial was holding at the time, he deliberately led his charge +down the aisle, disturbing the court proceedings by so doing, and +calling as he came: + +"Your Honor, I want you to hear this case especially. It's a very +important and a very sad case, indeed." + +Agape, the spectators paused to listen. The judge, an old and +appreciative friend of his, turned a solemn eye upon this latest +evidence of eccentricity. + +"What is it, Mr. White?" he inquired. + +"Your Honor," returned the latter in his most earnest and oratorical +manner, "this man here, as you may or may not know, is an old and +honorable citizen of this county. He has been here nearly all the days +of his life, and every day of that time he has earned an honest living. +These people here," he said, gazing about upon the interested +spectators, "can witness whether or not he was one of the best tobacco +pickers this county ever saw. Mayhew," he interrupted himself to call to +a spectator on one of the benches, "you know whether Uncle Bobby always +earned an honest living. Speak up. Tell the Court, did he?" + +"Yes, Mr. White," said Mayhew quickly, "he did." + +"Morrison," he called, turning in another direction, where an aged +farmer sat, "what do you know of this man?" + +Mr. Morrison was about to reply, when the Court interfered. + +"The Court knows, Mr. White, that he is an honest man. Now what would +you have it do?" + +"Well, your Honor," resumed the speaker, indifferently following his own +oratorical bent, the while the company surveyed him, amused and smiling, +"this man has always earned an honest living until he injured his hand +here in some way a number of years ago, and since then it has been +difficult for him to make his way and he has been cobbling for a living. +However, he is getting so old now that he can't even earn much at that, +except in the spring and summer, and so I brought him here to have him +assigned a place in the county infirmary. I want you to make out an +order admitting him to that institution, so that I can take it and go +with him and see that he is comfortably placed." + +"All right, Mr. White," replied the judge, surveying the two figures in +mid-aisle, "I so order." + +"But, your Honor," he went on, "there's an exception I want made in this +case. Mr. Moore has a few friends that he likes to visit in the summer, +and who like to have him visit them. I want him to have the privilege of +coming out in the summer to see these people and to see me." + +"All right, Mr. White," said the judge, "he shall have that privilege. +Now, what else?" + +Satisfied in these particulars, the aged citizen led his charge away, +and then went with him to the infirmary, where he presented the order of +the Court and then left him. + +Things went very well with his humble client for a certain time, and +Uncle Bobby was thought to be well disposed of, when one day he came to +his friend again. It appeared that only recently he had been changed +about in his quarters at the infirmary and put into a room with a +slightly demented individual, whose nocturnal wanderings greatly +disturbed his very necessary sleep. + +"I want to know if you won't have them put me by myself, Mr. White," he +concluded. "I need my sleep. But they say they can't do it without an +order." + +Once more the old patriarch led his charge before the Court, then +sitting, as it happened, and breaking in upon the general proceedings as +before, began: + +"Your Honor, this man here, Mr. Moore, whom I brought before you some +time ago, has been comfortably housed by your order, and he's deeply +grateful for it, as he will tell you, and as I can, but he's an old man, +your Honor, and, above all things, needs his rest. Now, of late they've +been quartering him with a poor, demented sufferer down there who walks +a good deal in his sleep, and it wears upon him. I've come here with him +to ask you to allow him to have a room by himself, where he will be +alone and rest undisturbed." + +"Very well, Mr. White," said the Court, "it shall be as you request." + +Without replying, the old gentleman turned and led the supplicant away. + +Everything went peacefully now for a number of years, until finally +Uncle Bobby, having grown so feeble with age that he feared he was soon +to die, came to his friend and asked him to promise him one thing. + +"What is it?" asked the latter. + +By way of replying, the supplicant described an old oak tree which grew +in the yard of the Baptist Church some miles from Danville, and said: + +"I want you to promise that when I am dead, wherever I happen to be at +the time, that you will see that I am buried under that tree." He gave +no particular reason save that he had always liked the tree and the view +it commanded, but made his request a very secret matter and begged to be +assured that Mr. White would come and get his body and carry it to the +old oak. + +The latter, always a respecter of the peculiarities and crotchets of his +friends, promised. After a few years went by, suddenly one day he +learned that Uncle Bobby was not only dead but buried, a thing which +astonished him greatly. No one locally being supposed to know that he +was to have had any special form of burial, the old patriarch at once +recalled his promise. + +"Where is his body?" he asked. + +"Why, they buried it under the old white oak over at Mt. Horeb Church," +was the answer. + +"What!" he exclaimed, too astonished to think of anything save his lost +privilege of mercy, "who told them to bury him there?" + +"Why, _he_ did," said the friend. "It was his last wish, I believe." + +"The confounded villain," he shouted, amusingly enough. "He led me to +believe that I was the only one he told. I alone was to have looked +after his burial, and now look at him--going and having himself buried +without a word. The scoundrel! Would you believe that an old friend like +Uncle Bobby would do anything like that? However," he added after a +time, "I think I know how it was. He got so old and feeble here of late +that he must have lost his mind--otherwise he would never have done +anything like that to me." + +And with this he was satisfied to rest and let bygones be bygones. + + + + +_De Maupassant, Junior_ + + +He dawned on me in the spring of 1906, a stocky, sturdy, penetrative +temperament of not more than twenty-four or -five years of age, steady of +eye, rather aloof and yet pervasive and bristling; a devouring type. +Without saying much, and seeming to take anything I had to say with a +grain of salt, he managed to impress himself on me at once. Frankly, I +liked him very much, although I could see at a glance that he was not so +very much impressed with me. I was an older man than he by, say, ten +years, an editor of an unimportant magazine, newly brought in (which he +did not know) to turn it into something better. In order to earn a few +dollars he had undertaken to prepare for the previous editor a most +ridiculous article, some silly thing about newspaper writing as a career +for women. It had been ordered or encouraged, and I felt that it was but +just that it should be paid for. + +"Why do you waste your time on a thing like that?" I inquired, smiling +and trying to criticize and yet encourage him at one and the same time, +for I had been annoyed by many similar assignments given out by the old +management which could not now be used. "You look to me to have too much +force and sense for that. Why not undertake something worth your time?" + +"My time, hell!" he bristled, like a fighting sledge-dog, of which by +the way he reminded me. "You show me a magazine in this town that would +buy anything that I thought worthy of my time! You're like all the rest +of them: you talk big, but you really don't want anything very +important. You want little things probably, written to a theory or down +to 'our policy.' I know. Give me the stuff. You don't have to take it. +It was ordered, but I'll throw it in the waste basket." + +"Not so fast! Not so fast!" I replied, admiring his courage and moved by +his contempt of the editorial and book publishing conditions in America. +He was so young and raw and savage in his way, quite animal, and yet how +interesting! There was something as fresh and clean about him as a newly +plowed field or the virgin prairies. He typified for me all the young +unsophisticated strength of my country, but with more "punch" than it +usually manifests, in matters intellectual at least. "Now, don't get +excited, and don't snarl," I cooed. "I know what you say is true. They +don't really want much of what you have to offer. I don't. Working for +some one else, as most of us do, for the dear circulation department, +it's not possible for us to get very far above crowd needs and tastes. +I've been in your position exactly. I am now. Where do you come from?" + +He told me--Missouri--and some very few years before from its state +university. + +"And what is it you want to do?" + +"What's that to you?" he replied irritatingly, with an ingrowing and +obvious self-conviction of superiority and withdrawing as though he +highly resented my question as condescending and intrusive. "You +probably wouldn't understand if I told you. Just now I want to write +enough magazine stuff to make a living, that's all." + +"Dear, dear!" I said, laughing at the slap. "What a bravo we are! +Really, you're interesting. But suppose now you and I get down to brass +tacks. You want to do something interesting, if you can, and get paid +for it. I rather like you, and anyhow you look to me as though you might +do the things I want, or some of them. Now, you want to do the least +silly thing you can--something better than this. I want the least silly +stuff I can get away with in this magazine--genuine color out of the +life of New York, if such a thing can be published in an ordinary +magazine. Roughly, here's the kind of thing I want," and I outlined to +him the probable policy of the magazine under my direction. I had taken +an anaemic "white-light" monthly known as _The Broadway_ (!) and was +attempting to recast it into a national or international metropolitan +picture. He thawed slightly. + +"Well, maybe with that sort of idea behind it, it might come to +something. I don't know. It's _possible_ that you may be the one to do +it." He emphasized the "possible." "At any rate, it's worth trying. +Judging by the snide editors and publications in this town, no one in +America wants anything decent." His lip curled. "I have ambitions of my +own, but I don't expect to work them out through the magazines of this +town; maybe not of this country. I didn't know that any change was +under way here." + +"Well, it is," I said. "Still, you can't expect much from this either, +remember. After all, it seeks to be a popular magazine. We'll see how +far we can go with really interesting material. And now if you know of +any others like yourself, bring them in here. I need them. I'll pay you +for that article, only I'll include it in a better price I'll give you +for something else later, see?" + +I smiled and he smiled. His was a warmth which was infectious when he +chose to yield, but it was always a repressed warmth, cynical, a bit +hard; heat chained to a purpose, I thought. He went away and I saw him +no more until about a week later when he brought me his first attempt to +give me what I wanted. + +In the meantime I was busy organizing a staff which should if possible, +I decided after seeing him, include him. I could probably use him as a +salaried "special" writer, provided he could be trained to write +"specials." He looked so intelligent and ambitious that he promised +much. Besides, the little article which he had left when he came again, +while not well organized or arranged as to its ideas or best points, was +exceedingly well written from the point of mere expression. + +And the next thing I had given him to attempt was even better. It was, +if I recall correctly, a stirring picture of the East Side, intended to +appeal to readers elsewhere than in the city, but while in the matter of +color and definiteness of expression as well as choice of words it was +exceptional, it was lacking in, quite as the first one had been, the +arrangement of its best points. This I explained to him, and also made +it clear to him that I could show him how if he would let me. He seemed +willing enough, quite anxious, although always with an air of reserve, +as if he were accommodating himself to me in this much but no more. He +grasped the idea of order swiftly, and in a little while, having worked +at a table in an outer room, brought me the rearranged material, almost +if not quite satisfactory. During a number of weeks and months +thereafter, working on one "special" and another in this way with me, he +seemed finally to grasp the theory I had, or at least to develop a +method of his own which was quite as satisfactory to me, and I was very +much pleased. A little later I employed him at a regular salary. + +It was pathetic, as I look at it now, the things we were trying to do +and the conditions under which we were trying to do them--the raw +commercial force and theory which underlay the whole thing, the +necessity of explaining and fighting for so much that one should not, as +I saw it then, have to argue over at all. We were in new rooms, in a new +building, filled with lumber not yet placed and awaiting the completion +of partitions which, as some one remarked, "would divide us up." Our +publisher and owner was a small, energetic, vibrant and colorful soul, +all egotism and middle-class conviction as to the need of "push," +ambition, "closeness to life," "punch," and what not else, American to +the core, and descending on us, or me rather, hourly as it were, +demanding the "hows" and the "whyfors" of the dream which the little +group I was swiftly gathering about me was seeking to make real. + +It was essential to me, therefore, that something different should be +done, some new fresh note concerning metropolitan life and action be +struck; the old, slow and somewhat grandiose methods of reporting and +describing things dispensed with, at least in this instance, and here +was a youth who seemed able to help me do it. He was so vigorous, so +avid of life, so anxious to picture the very atmosphere which this +magazine was now seeking to portray. I felt stronger, better for having +him around. The growth of the city, the character and atmosphere of a +given neighborhood, the facts concerning some great social fortune, +event, condition, crime interested him intensely; on the other hand he +was so very easy to teach, quick to sense what was wanted and the order +in which it must be presented. A few brief technical explanations from +me, and he had the art of writing a "special" at his fingertips, and +thereafter gave me no real difficulty. + +But what was more interesting to me than his success in grasping my +theory of "special" writing was his own character, as it was revealed to +me from day to day in intimate working contact with him under these +conditions. Here, as I soon learned, and was glad to learn, was no +namby-pamby scribbler of the old happy-ending, pretty-nothing school of +literary composition. On the contrary he sounded, for the first time in +my dealings with literary aspirants of every kind, that sure, sane, +penetrating, non-sentimental note so common to the best writers of the +Continent, a note entirely free from mush, bravado and cant. He had a +style as clear as water, as simple as rain; color, romance, humor; and +if a little too much of vanity and self-importance, still one could +forgive him for they were rather well-based. Already used to dealing +with literary and artistic aspirants of different kinds in connection +with the publications of which I had been a part, this one appealed to +me as being the best of them all and a very refreshing change. + +One day, only a few weeks after I had met him, seeing that I was alert +for fiction, poetry and short essays or prose phantasies, all +illustrative of the spirit of New York, he brought me a little poem +entitled "Neuvain," which interested me greatly. It was so brief and +forceful and yet so delicate, a double triolet of the old French order, +but with the modernity and flavor of the streets outside, the conduit +cars, hand-organs and dancing children of the pavements. The title +seemed affected, seeing that the English word "Spring" would have done +as well, but it was typical of his mood at the time, his literary +adorations. He was in leash to the French school of which de Maupassant +was the outstanding luminary, only I did not know it at the time. + +"Charming," I exclaimed quite enthusiastically. "I like this. Let me see +anything else you have. Do you write short stories?" + +For answer he merely stared at me for a little while in the most +examining and arrogant and contemptuous way, as much as to say, "Let me +see if you are really worth my time and trouble in this matter," or +"This sad specimen of alleged mentality is just beginning to suspect +that I might write a short story." Seeing that I merely smiled most +genially in return, he finally deigned to say, "Sure, I write short +stories. What do you think I'm in the writing game for?" + +"But you might be interested in novels only or plays, or poetry." + +"No," he returned after a pause and with that same air of unrelieved +condescension, "the short story is what I want to specialize in." + +"Well," I said to myself, "here is a young cub who certainly has talent, +is crowded with it, and yet owing to the kind of thing he is starting +out to do and the fact that life will give him slaps and to spare before +he is many years older, he needs to be encouraged. I was like that +myself not so long ago. And besides, if I do not encourage this type of +work financially (which is the best way of all), who will?" + +About a week later I was given another and still more gratifying +surprise, for one day, in his usual condescending manner, he brought to +me two short pieces of fiction and laid them most gingerly on my desk +with scarcely a word--"Here was something I might read if I chose," I +believe. The reading of these two stories gave me as much of a start as +though I had discovered a fully developed genius. They were so truly new +or different in their point of view, so very clear, incisive, brief, +with so much point in them (_The Second Motive_; _The Right Man_). For +by then having been struggling with the short-story problem in other +magazine offices before this, I had become not a little pessimistic as +to the trend of American short fiction, as well as long--the +impossibility of finding any, even supposing it publishable once we had +it. My own experience with "Sister Carrie" as well as the fierce +opposition or chilling indifference which, as I saw, overtook all those +who attempted anything even partially serious in America, was enough to +make me believe that the world took anything even slightly approximating +the truth as one of the rankest and most criminal offenses possible. One +dared not "talk out loud," one dared not report life as it was, as one +lived it. And one of the primary warnings I had received from the +president of this very organization--a most eager and ambitious and +distressing example of that American pseudo-morality which combines a +pirate-like acquisitiveness with an inward and absolute conviction of +righteousness--was that while he wanted something new in fiction, +something more virile and life-like than that "mush," as he +characterized it, to be found in the current magazines, still (1), it +must have a strong appeal for the general reader (!); and (2), be very +compelling in fact and _clean_, as the dear general reader would of +course understand that word--a solid little pair of millstones which +would unquestionably end in macerating everything vital out of any good +story. + +Still I did not despair; something might be done. And though I sighed, I +hoped to be able to make my superior stretch a point in favor of the +exceptional thing, or, as the slang phrase went, "slip a few over on +him," but that of course meant nothing or something, as you choose. My +dream was really to find one or many like this youth, or a pungent kind +of realism that would be true and yet within such limits as would make +it usable. Imagine, then, my satisfaction in finding these two things, +tales that I could not only admire genuinely but that I could publish, +things that ought to have an interest for all who knew even a little +about life. True, they were ironic, cruel, but still with humor and +color, so deftly and cleanly told that they were smile-provoking. I +called him and said as much, or nearly so--a mistake, as I sometimes +think now, for art should be long--and bought them forthwith, hoping, +almost against hope, to find many more such like them. + +By this time, by the way, and as I should have said before, I had still +further enlarged my staff by one art director of the most flamboyant and +erratic character, a genius of sorts, volatile, restless, emotional, +colorful, a veritable Verlaine-Baudelaire-Rops soul, who, not content to +arrange and decorate the magazine each month, must needs wish to write, +paint, compose verse and music and stage plays, as well as move in an +upper social world, _entree_ to which was his by birth. Again, there was +by now an Irish-Catholic makeup editor, a graduate of some distinguished +sectarian school, who was more interested in St. Jerome and his +_Vulgate_, as an embodiment of classic Latin, than he was in getting out +the magazine. Still he had the advantage of being interesting--"and I +learned about Horace from him." Again, there was a most interesting and +youthful and pretty, if severe, example of the Wellesley-Mt. +Holyoke-Bryn Mawr school of literary art and criticism, a most +engagingly interesting intellectual maiden, who functioned as assistant +editor and reader in an adjoining room, along with the art-director, the +makeup editor and an office boy. This very valuable and in some +respects remarkable young woman, who while holding me in proper +contempt, I fear, for my rather loose and unliterary ways, was still, as +I had suspected before employing her, as keen for something new and +vital in fiction and every other phase of the scriptic art as any one +well could be. She was ever for culling, sorting, eliminating--repression +carried to the N-th power. At first L---- cordially hated her, calling +her a "simp," a "bluff," a "la-de-da," and what not. In addition to +these there was a constantly swelling band of writers, artists, poets, +critics, dreamers of reforms social, and I know not what else, who, +holding the hope of achieving their ends or aims through some really +forceful magazine, were by now beginning to make our place a center. It +fairly swarmed for a time with aspirants; an amusing, vivid, strident +world. + +As for L----, all this being new to him, he was as interested, +fascinated even, as any one well might be. He responded to it almost +gayly at times, wondering whether something wonderful, international, +enduring might not be made to come of it. He rapidly developed into one +of the most pertinacious and even disconcerting youths I have ever met. +At times he seemed to have a positive genius for saying and doing +irritable and disagreeable things, not only to me but to others. Never +having heard of me before he met me here, he was convinced, I think, +that I was a mere nothing, with some slight possibilities as an editor +maybe, certainly with none as a writer or as one who could even suggest +anything to writers. I had helped him, but that was as it should be. As +for my art-director, he was at first a fool, later a genius; ditto my +makeup man. + +As for Miss E----, the Wellesley-Bryn Mawr-Mt. Holyoke assistant, who +from the first had agreed with me that here indeed was a writer of +promise, a genius really, he, as I have said, at first despised her. +Later, by dint of exulting in his force, sincerity of purpose, his keen +insight and all but braggart strength, she managed, probably on account +of her looks and physical graces, to install herself in his confidence +and to convince him that she was not only an honest admirer of his skill +but one who had taste and judgment of no mean caliber. Thereafter he +was about as agreeable as a semi-caged wild animal would be about any +office. + +But above all he was affronted by M----, the publisher of the paper, +concerning whom he could find no words equal to his contemptuous +thoughts of him. The publisher, as L---- made quite bold to say to me, +was little more than a "dodging, rat-like financial ferret," a +"financial stool-pigeon for some trust or other," a "shrewd, material +little shopkeeper." This because M---- was accustomed to enter and force +a conversation here and there, anxious of course to gather the full +import of all these various energies and enthusiasms. One of the things +which L---- most resented in him at the time was his air of supreme +material well-being, his obvious attempt and wish not to convey it, his +carefully-cut clothes, his car, his numerous assistants and secretaries +following him here and there from various other organizations with which +he was connected. + +M----'s idea, as he always said, was to spend and to live, only it +wasn't. He merely induced others so to do. One of his customs (and it +must have impressed L---- very much, innocent newcomer that he was) was +to have one or another of his hirelings announce his passing from one +"important" meeting to another, within or without his own building, +telephone messages being "thrown in" on his line or barred out, wherever +he happened to be at the moment and when, presumably, he was deep in one +of those literary conferences or confidences with one employee or +another or with a group, for which he rapidly developed a passion. +Another of his vanities was to have his automobile announced and he be +almost forced into it by impetuous secretaries, who, because of orders +previously given, insisted that he must be made to keep certain +important engagements. Or he would send for one of his hirelings, +wherever he chanced to be--club, restaurant, his home--midnight if +necessary, to confer with him on some subject of great moment, and the +hireling was supposed to call a taxi and come post haste in order that +he might not be kept waiting. + +"God!" L---- once remarked in my presence. "To think that a thinking +being has to be beholden to a thing like that for his weekly income! +Somebody ought to tap him with a feather-duster and kill him!" + +But the manner in which L---- developed in this atmosphere! It was +interesting. At first, before the magazine became so significant or +well-organized, it was a great pleasure for me to associate with him +outside office hours, and a curious and vivid companion he made. He was +so intensely avid of life, so intolerant of the old, of anything +different to that which he personally desired or saw, that at times it +was most difficult to say anything at all for fear of meeting a rebuff +or at least a caustic objection. As I was very pleased to note, he had a +passion for seeing, as all youth should have when it first comes to the +great city--the great bridges, the new tunnels just then being completed +or dug, the harbor and bay, Coney Island, the two new and great railway +terminals, then under construction. Most, though, he reveled in +different and even depressing neighborhoods--Eighth Avenue, for +instance, about which he later wrote a story, and a very good one ("A +Quiet Duet"); Hell's Kitchen, that neighborhood that lies (or did), on +the West Side of Manhattan, between Eighth and Tenth Avenues, +Thirty-sixth and Forty-first Streets; Little Italy, the region below +Delancey and north of Worth Street on the East Side; Chinatown; +Washington Street (Syria in America); the Greeks in Twenty-seventh and +-eighth Streets, West Side. All these and many more phases of New York's +multiplex life took his full and restless attention. Once he said to me +quite excitedly, walking up Eighth Avenue at two in the morning--I was +showing him some rear tenement slums in the summertime--"God, how I hate +to go to bed in this town! I'm afraid something will happen while I'm +asleep and I won't see it!" That was exactly how he felt all the time, I +am sure. + +And in those days he was most simple, a very Spartan of a boy. He hadn't +the least taste for drink, lived in a small hall-bedroom +somewhere--Eighth Avenue, I believe--and took his meals in those shabby +little quick-lunch rooms where the characters were more important to him +than the food. (My hat--my hat is in my hand!) Intellectually he was so +stern and ambitious that I all but stood in awe of and reverence before +him. Here, I said to myself, is one who will really do; let him be as +savage as he pleases. In America he probably needs to be. + +And during this short time, what scraps of his early life he revealed! +By degrees I picked up bits of his early deprivations and difficulties, +if such they might be called. He had been a newspaper reporter, or had +tried to be, in Kansas City, had worked in the college restaurant and +laundry of the middle-West State university from which he had graduated, +to help pay his way. Afterward he had assisted the janitor of some great +skyscraper somewhere--Kansas City, I believe--and, what was most +pleasing to me, he in nowise emphasized these as youthful difficulties +or made any comment as to their being "hard." Neither did he try to +boastingly minimize them as nothing at all--another wretched pose. From +him I learned that throughout his youth he had been carried here and +there by the iron woman who was his mother and whom he seemed to adore +in some grim contentious way, smothering his comments as though he +disliked to say anything at all, and yet describing her at times as +coarse and vulgar, but a mother to him "all right," someone who had made +marked sacrifices for him. + +She had once "run" a restaurant in a Western mining camp, had then or +later carried him as a puling baby under her shawl or cloak across the +Mojave Desert, on foot a part of the way. Apparently he did not know who +his father was, and he was not very much concerned to know whether she +did or not. His father had died, he said, when he was a baby. Later his +mother, then a cook in some railroad hotel in Texas, had sent him to +school there. Later still she had been a "bawler out," if you know what +that means, an employee of a loan shark and used by him to compel +delinquent, albeit petty and pathetic, creditors to pay their dues or +then and there, before all their fellow-workers, be screamed at for +their delinquency about the shop in which they worked! Later she became +a private detective! an insurance agent--God knows what--a kind of rough +man-woman, as she turned out to be, but all the while clinging to this +boy, her pet, no doubt her dream of perfection. She had by turns sent +him to common and high school and to college, remitting him such sums of +money as she might to pay his way. Later still (at that very time in +fact) she was seeking to come to New York to keep house for him, only +he would not have that, perhaps sensing the need of greater freedom. But +he wrote her regularly, as he confessed to me, and in later years I +believe sent her a part of his earnings, which were to be saved by her +for him against a rainy day. Among his posthumous writings later I found +a very lovely story ("His Mother"), describing her and himself in +unsparing and yet loving terms, a compound of the tender and the brutal +in his own soul. + +The thing that always made me hope for the best was that at that time he +was not at all concerned with the petty little _moralic_ and economic +definitions and distinctions which were floating about his American +world in one form and another. Indeed he seemed to be entirely free of +and even alien to them. What he had heard about the indwelling and +abiding perfections of the human soul had gone, and rightly so, in one +ear and out the other. He respected the virtues, but he knew of and +reckoned with die antipathetic vices which gave them their reason for +being. To him the thief was almost as important as the saint, the reason +for the saint's being. And, better still, he had not the least interest +in American politics or society--a wonderful sign. The American dream of +"getting ahead" financially and socially was not part of him--another +mark royal. All life was fascinating, acceptable, to be interpreted if +one had the skill; it was a great distinction to have the skill--worth +endless pains to acquire it. + +But how unwilling would the average American of his day have been, +stuffed as he was and still is with book and picture drivel about +artists and art, to accept L---- as anything more than a raw, callow +yokel, presuming to assail the outer portals of the temple with his +muddy feet! A romping, stamping, irritable soul, with more the air of a +young railroad brakeman or "hand," than an artist, and with so much +coarse language at times and such brutality of thought as to bar him +completely, one might say, from having anything to do with great +fiction, great artistic conceptions, or the temple of art. What, sit +with the mighty!--that coarse youth, with darkish-brown hair parted at +one side and combed over one ear, in the manner of a grandiose barber; +with those thick-soled and none too shapely brown shoes, that none too +well-made store suit of clothes, that little round brown hat, more +often a cap, pulled rather savagely and vulgarly, even insultingly, over +one eye; that coarse frieze overcoat, still worn on cold spring days, +its "corners" back and front turned up by the damp and from being +indifferently sat on; that brash corn-cob pipe and bag of cheap tobacco, +extracted and lit at odd moments; what, that youth with the aggressive, +irritating vibrant manner--almost the young tough with a chip on his +shoulder looking for one to even so much as indicate that he is not all +he should be! Positively, there was something brutal and yet cosmic (not +comic) about him, his intellectual and art pretensions considered. At +times his waspishness and bravado palled even on me. He was too +aggressive, too forceful, too intolerant, I said. He should be softer. +At other times I felt that he needed to be all that and more to "get +by," as he would have said. I wanted to modify him a little--and yet I +didn't--and I remained drawn to him in spite of many irritating little +circumstances, all but infuriating at times, and actually calculated, it +seemed, with a kind of savage skill to reduce what he conceived to be my +lofty superiority. At times I thought he ought to be killed--like a +father meditating on an unruly son--but the mood soon passed and his +literary ability made amends for everything. + +In so far as the magazine was concerned, once it began to grow and +attract attention he was for me its most important asset; not that he +did so much directly as that he provided a definite standard toward +which we all had to work. Not incuriously, he was swiftly recognized for +what he was by all who came in touch with the magazine. In the first +place, interested in his progress, I had seen to it that he was properly +introduced wherever that was possible and of benefit to him, and later +on, by sheer force of his mental capacity and integrity, his dreams and +his critical skill, he managed to center about him an entire band of +seeking young writers, artists, poets, playwrights, aspiring musicians; +an amusing and as interesting a group as I have ever seen. Their points +of rendezvous appeared to be those same shabby quick-lunches in back +streets or even on the principal thoroughfares about Times Square, or +they met in each other's rooms or my office at night after I had gone, +giving me as an excuse that they had work to do. And during all this +time the air fairly hummed with rumors of new singers, dancers, plays, +stories being begun or under way, articles and essays contemplated; +avid, if none too well financed frolics or bohemian midnight suppers +here and there. Money was by no means plentiful, and in consequence +there was endless borrowing and "paying up" among them. Among the most +enthusiastic members of this circle, as I had begun to note, and finally +rather nervously, were my art-director, a valiant knight in Bohemia if +ever there was one, and she of Bryn Mawr-Wellesley standards. My makeup +editor, as well as various contributors who had since become more or +less closely identified with the magazine, were also following him up +all the time. + +If not directly profitable it was enlivening, and I was fairly well +convinced by now that from the point of view of being "aware," "in touch +with," "in sympathy with" many of the principal tendencies and +undercurrents which make for a magazine's success and precedence, this +group was as valuable to me as any might well be. It constituted a +"kitchen cabinet" of sorts and brought hundreds of interesting ideas to +the surface, and from all directions. Now it would be a new and hitherto +unheard-of tenor who was to be brought from abroad and introduced with +great noise to repute-loving Americans; a new sculptor or painter who +had never been heard of in America; a great actor, perhaps, or poet or +writer. I listened to any quantity of gossip in regard to new movements +that were ready to burst upon the world, in sculpture, painting, the +scriptic art. About the whole group there was much that was exceedingly +warm, youthful, full of dreams. They were intensely informative and full +of hope, and I used to look at them and wonder which one, if any, was +destined to have his dreams realized. + +Of L---- however I never had the least doubt. He began, it is true, to +adopt rather more liberal tendencies, to wish always to be part and +parcel of this gayety, this rushing here and there; and he drank at +times--due principally, as I thought, to my wildling art-director, who +had no sense or reserve in matters material or artistic and who was all +for a bacchanalian career, cost what it might. On more than one occasion +I heard L---- declaring roundly, apropos of some group scheme of +pilgrimage, "No, no! I will not. I am going _home_ now!" He had a story +he wanted to work on, an article to finish. At the same time he would +often agree that if by a certain time, when he was through, they were +still at a certain place, or a second or third, he would look them up. +Never, apparently, did his work suffer in the least. + +And it was about this time that I began to gather the true source and +import of his literary predisposition. He was literally obsessed, as I +now discovered, with Continental and more especially the French +conception of art in writing. He had studied the works as well as the +temperaments and experiences (more especially the latter, I fear) of +such writers as de Maupassant, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Balzac, de Musset, +Sand, Daudet, Dumas junior, and Zola, as well as a number of the more +recent writers: Hervieu, Bourget, Louys and their contemporaries. Most +of all, though, he was impressed, and deeply, by the life and art of de +Maupassant, his method of approach, his unbiased outlook on life, his +freedom from moral and religious and even sentimental predisposition. In +the beginning of his literary career I really believe he slaved to +imitate him exactly, although he could not very well escape the American +temperament and rearing by which he was hopelessly conditioned. A +certain Western critic and editor, to whom he had first addressed his +hopes and scribblings before coming to me, writing me after L----'s +death in reference to a period antedating that in which I had known him, +observed, "He was crazy about the _fin de siecle_ stuff that then held +the boards and from which (I hope the recording angel will put it to my +credit) I steered him clear." I think so; but he was still very much +interested in it. He admired Aubrey Beardsley, the poster artists of +France, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rops, the Yellow Book, even Oscar Wilde, +although his was a far more substantial and plebeian and even radical +point of view. + +Unfortunately for L----, I have always thought, there now thrust himself +forward the publisher and owner of the magazine, who from previously +having been content to see that the mercantile affairs of the magazine +were in good order, had decided that since it was attracting attention +he should be allowed to share in its literary and artistic prestige, +should indeed be closely identified with it and recognized as its true +source and inspiration--a thing which in no fashion had been +contemplated by me when I went there. From having agreed very distinctly +with me that no such interference would at any time be indulged in, he +now came forward with a plan for an advisory council which was to +consist of himself and the very members of the staff which I had +created. + +I could not object and it did not disturb me so much personally. For +some time I had been sensing that the thing was for me no end in itself, +but an incident. This same I felt to be true for L----, who had been +taking more and more interest in the magazine's technical composition. +At the same time I saw no immediate way of arranging my affairs and +departing, which left me, for a very little while, more or less of a +spectator. During this time I had the dissatisfaction of noting the +growth of an influence with L---- which could, as I saw, prove only +harmful. M---- was no suitable guide for him. He was a brilliant but +superficial and very material type who was convinced that in the having +and holding of many things material--houses, lands, corporation stocks, +a place in the clubs and circles of those who were materially +prosperous--was really to achieve all that was significant in the now or +the hereafter. Knowing comparatively nothing of either art or letters, +or that subtle thing which makes for personality and atmosphere in a +magazine or in writing (and especially the latter), that grateful +something which attracts and detains one, he was nevertheless convinced +that he did. And what was more, he was determined not only to make +friends with and hold all those whom I might have attracted, providing +they could prove useful to him, but also a number of a much more +successful group in these fields, those who had already achieved repute +in a more commonplace and popular way and were therefore presumably +possessed of a following and with the power to exact a high return for +their product, and for the magazine, regardless of intrinsic merit. His +constant talk was of money, its power to attract and buy, the +significance of all things material. He now wanted the magazine to be +representative of this glowing element, and at the same time, +paradoxical as it might seem, the best that might be in literary and +artistic thought. + +Naturally the thing was impossible, but he had a facile and specious +method of arguing, a most gay and in some respects magnetic personality, +far from stodgy or gross, which for a time attracted many to him. Very +briskly then indeed he proceeded to make friends with all those with +whom I had surrounded myself, to enter into long and even private +discussions with them as to the proper conduct of the magazine, to hint +quite broadly at a glorious future in which all, each one particularly +to whom he talked, was to share. Curiously, this new and (as I would +have thought) inimical personality of M---- seemed to appeal to L---- +very much. + +I do not claim that the result was fatal. It may even, or at least +might, have had value, combined with an older or slightly more balanced +temperament. But it seemed to me that it offered too quickly what should +have come, if at all, as the result of much effort. For in regard to the +very things L---- should have most guarded against--show and the shallow +pleasures of social and night and material life in New York--M---- was +most specious. I never knew a more intriguing and fascinating man in +this respect nor one who cared less for those he used to obtain his +unimportant ends. He had positive genius for making the gaudy and the +unworthy seem worthy and even perfect. During his earlier days there, +L---- had more than once "cursed him out" (in his absence, of course), +to use his own expressive phrase, for his middle-West trade views, as he +described them, his shabby social and material ideals, and yet, as I +could plainly see, even at that time the virus of his theories was +working. For it must be remembered that L---- was very new to New York, +very young, and never having had much of anything he was no doubt +slightly envious of the man's material facility, the sense of +all-sufficiency, exclusiveness and even a kind of petty trade grandeur +with which he tried to surround himself. + +Well, that might not have proved fatal either, only L---- needed some one +to keep him true to himself, his individual capabilities, to constantly +caution and if possible sober him to his very severe taste, and as it +was he was all but surrounded by acolytes and servitors. + +A little later, having left M----'s and assumed another editorial +position, and being compelled to follow the various current magazines +more or less professionally, I was disturbed to note that there began to +appear in various publications--especially M----'s, which was +flourishing greatly for the moment--stories which while exhibiting much +of the deftness and repression as well as an avidity for the true color +of things, still showed what I had at first feared they might: a decided +compromise. That curse of all American fiction, the necessarily happy +ending, had been impressed on him--by whom? To my sincere +dissatisfaction, he began writing stories, some at least, which +concerned (1), a young woman who successfully abandoned art dreams for +advertising; (2), a middle-aged charmer, female, who attempted +_libertinage_ and was defeated, American style; (3), a Christmas picture +with sweetness and light reigning on every hand (Dickens at his +sentimentalest could have done no worse); (4), a Broadway press agent +who, attempting to bring patronage to a great hotel via chic vice, +accidentally and unintentionally mates an all-too-good young society man +turned hotel manager to a grand heiress. And so on and so on, not ad +infinitum but for a period at least--the ten years in which he managed +to live and work. + +And, what was more, during this new period I heard and occasionally saw +discouraging things in connection with him from time to time. True to +his great promise, for I sincerely think M---- had a genuine fondness +for his young protege, as much of a fondness as he could well have for +anything, he guaranteed him perhaps as much as three thousand a year; +sent him to Stockholm at the age of twenty-four or -five to meet and +greet the famous false pole discoverer, Doctor Cook; allowed him to go +to Paris in connection with various articles; to Rome; sent him into the +middle and far West; to Broadway for dramatic and social studies. Well +and good, only he wanted always in what was done for him the "uplift" +note, the happy ending--or at least one not vulgar or low--whereas my +idea in connection with L----, gifted as he was, was that he should +confine himself to fiction as an art and without any regard to theories +or types of ending, believing, as I did, that he would definitely +establish himself in that way in the long run. I had no objection of +course to experiences of various kinds, his taking up with any line of +work which might seem at the moment far removed from realistic writing, +providing always that the star of his ideal was in sight. Whenever he +wrote, be it early or late, it must be in the clear, incisive, +uncompromising vein of these first stories and with that passion for +revelation which characterized him at first, that same unbiased and +unfettered non-moral viewpoint. + +But after meeting with and working for M---- under this new arrangement +and being apparently fascinated for the moment by his personality, he +seemed to me to gradually lose sight of his ideal, to be actually taken +in by the plausible arguments which the latter could spin with the ease +that a spider spins gossamer. In that respect I insist that M---- was a +bad influence. Under his tutelage L---- gradually became, for instance, +an habitue of a well-known and pseudo-bohemian chop-house, a most +mawkish and naively imitative affair, intended frankly to be a copy or +even the original, forsooth, of an old English inn, done, in so far as +its woodwork was concerned, in smoked or dark-stained oak to represent +an old English interior, its walls covered with long-stemmed pipes and +pictures of English hunting and drinking scenes, its black-stained but +unvarnished tables littered with riding, driving and country-life +society papers, to give it that air of _sans ceremonie_ with an upper +world of which its habitues probably possessed no least inkling but most +eagerly craved. Here, along with a goodly group of his latter-day +friends, far different from those by whom he had first been +surrounded--a pretentious society poet of no great merit but +considerable self-emphasis, a Wall Street broker, posing as a club man, +_raconteur_, "first-nighter" and what not, and several young and +ambitious playwrights, all seeking the heaven of a Broadway success--he +began to pose as one of the intimates of the great city, its bosom child +as it were, the cynosure and favorite of its most glittering +precincts--a most M-----like proceeding. His clothes by now, for I saw +him on occasion, had taken on a more lustrous if less convincing aspect +than those he had worn when I first knew him. The small round hat or +rakish cap, typical of his Western dreams, had now given way to a most +pretentious square-topped derby, beloved, I believe, of undertakers and +a certain severe type of banker as well as some clergymen, only it was a +light brown. His suit and waistcoat were of a bright English tweed, +reddish-brown or herring-bone gray by turns, his shoes box-toed +perfections of the button type. He carried a heavy cane, often a bright +leather manuscript case, and seemed intensely absorbed in the great and +dramatic business of living and writing. "One must," so I read him at +this time, "take the pleasures as well as the labors of this world with +the utmost severity." Here, with a grand manner, he patronized the +manager and the waiters, sent word to his friend the cook, who probably +did not know him at all, that his chop or steak was to be done just so. +These friends of his, or at least one of them (the poet) he met every +day at five for an all-essential game of chess, after which an evening +paper was read and the chop ordered. Ale--not beer--in a pewter mug was +_comme il faut_, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy of +the name, to drink. + +I am sorry to write so, for after all youth must have its fling. Still, +I had expected better of L----, and I was a little disappointed to see +that earlier dream of simplicity and privation giving way to an +absolutely worthless show. Besides, twenty or thirty such stories as +"The Right Man," "Sweet Dreams," "The Man With the Broken Fingers," "The +Second Motive," would outweigh a thousand of the things he was getting +published and the profits of which permitted him these airs. + +Again, during the early days of his success with M----, he had +married--a young nurse who had previously been a clerk in a store, a +serious, earnest and from one point of view helpful person, seeing that +she could keep his domestic affairs in order and bear him children, +which she did, but she had no understanding of, or flair for, the type +of thing he was called upon to do. She had no instinct for literature or +the arts, and aside from her domestic capacities little skill or taste +for "socializing." And, naturally, he was neglecting her. His head was +probably surging with great ideas of art and hence a social supremacy +which might well carry him anywhere. He had bought a farm some distance +from New York, where in a community supposedly inhabited by successful +and superior men of letters he posed as a farmer at times, mowing and +cocking hay as became a Western plow-boy; and also, as the mood moved +him, and as became a great and secluded writer, working in a den +entirely surrounded by books in fine leather bindings (!) and being +visited by those odd satellites of the scriptic art who see in genius of +this type the _summum bonum_ of life. It was the thing to do at that +time, for a writer to own a farm and work it. Horace had. One individual +in particular, a man of genuine literary and critical ability and great +taste in the matter of all the arts but with no least interest in or +tolerance for the simplicities of effort, came here occasionally, as I +heard, to help him pile hay, and this in a silk shirt and a monocle; a +second--and a most fascinating intellectual _flaneur_, who, however, had +no vision or the gift of dreams--came to eat, drink, talk of many things +to be done, to steal a few ideas, borrow a little money perhaps or +consume a little morphine, and depart; a third came to spout of his +success in connection with plays, or his proposed successes; a fourth to +paint a picture, urged on by L----; a fifth to compose rural verse; a +sixth, a broker or race-track tout or city bar-tender (for color, this +last), to marvel that one of L----'s sense, or any one indeed, should +live in the country at all. There were drinking bouts, absolute +drunkenness, in which, according to the Johnsonian tradition and that of +Messieurs Rabelais and Moliere, the weary intellect and one's guiding +genius were immersed in a comforting Lethe of rye. + +Such things cost money, however. In addition, my young friend, due to a +desire no doubt to share in the material splendors of his age (a +doctrine M---- was ever fond of spouting--and as a duty, if you please), +had saddled himself, for a time at least, with an apartment in an +exclusive square on the East Side, the rent of which was a severe drain. +Before this there had been, and after it were still, others, obligations +too much for him to bear financially, all in the main taken for show, +that he might be considered a literary success. Now and again (so I was +told by several of his intimates), confronted by a sudden exhaustion of +his bank balance, he would leave some excellent apartment house or +neighborhood, where for a few months he had been living in grand style, +extracting his furniture as best he might, or leaving it and various +debts beside, and would take refuge in some shabby tenement, or rear +rooms even, and where, touched by remorse or encouraged by the great +literary and art traditions (Balzac, Baudelaire, Johnson, Goldsmith, +Verlaine) he would toil unendingly at definite money-yielding +manuscripts, the results of which carried to some well-paying +_successful magazine_ would yield him sufficient to return to the white +lights--often even to take a better apartment than that which last had +been his. By now, however, one of the two children he eventually left +behind him had been born. His domestic cares were multiplying, the +marriage idea dull. Still he did not hesitate to continue those dinners +given to his friends, the above-mentioned group or its spiritual kin, +either in his apartment or in a bohemian restaurant of great show in New +York. In short, he was a fairly successful short-story writer and critic +in whom still persisted a feeling that he would yet triumph in the +adjacent if somewhat more difficult field of popular fiction. + +It was during this period, if I may interpolate an incident, that I was +waiting one night in a Broadway theater lobby for a friend to appear, +when who should arrive on the scene but L----, most outlandishly dressed +in what I took to be a _reductio ad absurdum_ of his first pose, as I +now half-feared it to be: that of the uncouth and rugged young American, +disclaiming style in dress at least, and content to be a clod in looks +so long as he was a Shelley in brains. His suit was of that coarse +ill-fitting character described as Store, and shelf-worn; his shoes all +but dusty brogans, his headgear a long-visored yellowish-and-brown +cross-barred cap. He had on a short, badly-cut frieze overcoat, his +hands stuck defiantly in his trousers pockets, forcing its lapels wide +open. And he appeared to be partially if not entirely drunk, and very +insolent. I had the idea that the drunkenness and the dress were a pose, +or else that he had been in some neighborhood in search of copy which +required such an outfit. Charitably let us accept the last. He was +accompanied by two satellic souls who were doing their best to restrain +him. + +"Come, now! Don't make a scene. We'll see the show all right!" + +"Sure we'll see the show!" he returned contentiously. "Where's the +manager?" + +A smug mannikin whose uniform was a dress suit, the business manager +himself, eyed him in no friendly spirit from a nearby corner. + +"This is Mr. L----," one of the satellites now approached and explained +to the manager. "He's connected with M----'s Magazine. He does short +stories and dramatics occasionally." + +The manager bowed. After all, M----'s Magazine had come to have some +significance on Broadway. It was as well to be civil. Courtesy was +extended for three, and they went in. + +As for myself, I resented the mood and the change. It was in no way my +affair--his life was his own--and still I resented it. I did not believe +that he was as bad as he seemed. He had too much genuine sense. It was +just boyish swagger and show, and still it was time that he was getting +over that and settling down. I really hoped that time would modify all +this. + +One thing that made me hope for the best was that very shortly after +this M----'s Magazine blew completely up, leaving him without that +semi-financial protection which I felt was doing him so much harm. The +next favorable sign that I observed was that a small volume of short +stories, some sixteen in number, and containing the cream of his work up +to that time, was brought to a publishing house with which I was +financially identified at the time, and although no word was said to me +(I really think he took great care not to see me), still it was left and +on my advice eventually published (it sold, I believe, a little under +five hundred copies). But the thing that cheered me was that it +contained not one story which could be looked upon as a compromise with +his first views. And better, it had been brought to the concern with +which I was connected--intentionally, I am sure. I was glad to have had +a hand in its publication. "At least," I said, "he has not lost sight of +his first ideal. He may go on now." + +And thereafter, in one magazine and another, excellent enough to have +but a small circulation, I saw something of his which had genuine merit. +A Western critical journal began to publish a series of essays by him, +for which I am sure he received nothing at all. Again, three or four +years later, a second volume of stories, almost if not quite as good as +his first, was issued by this same Western paper. He was trying to do +serious work; but he still sought and apparently craved those grand +scenes on the farm or in some New York restaurant or an expensive +apartment, and when he could no longer afford it. He still wrote +happy-ending, or compromise, stories for any such magazine as would +receive him, and was apparently building up a reasonably secure market +for them. In the meantime the moving-picture scenario market had +developed, and he wrote for it. His eyes were also turning toward the +stage, as one completed manuscript and several "starts" turned over to +me after his death proved. One day some one who knew him and me quite +well assured me that L----, having sent out many excellent stories only +to have them returned, had one day cried and then raged, cursing America +for its attitude toward serious letters--an excellent sign, I thought, +good medicine for one who must eventually forsake his hope of material +grandeur and find himself. "In time, in time," I said, "he will eat +through the husks of these other things, the 'M---- complex,' and do +something splendid. He can't help it. But this fantastic dream of +grandeur, of being a popular success, will have to be lived down." + +For a time now I heard but little more save once that he was connected +with a moving-picture concern, suggesting plots and making some money. +Then I saw a second series of essays in the same Western critical +paper--that of the editor who had published his book--and some of them +were excellent, very searching and sincere. I felt that he was moving +along the right line, although they earned him nothing. Then one week, +very much to my surprise, there was a very glowing and extended +commentary on myself, concerning which for the time being I decided to +make no comment; and a little later, perhaps three weeks, a telephone +call. Did I recall him? (!) Could he come and see me? (!) I invited him +to dinner, and he came, carrying, of all things--and for him, the +ex-railroad boy--a great armful of red roses. This touched me. + +"What's the idea?" I inquired jovially, laughing at him. + +He blushed like a girl, a little irritably too, I thought, for he found +me (as perhaps he had hoped not to) examining and critical, and he may +have felt that I was laughing at him, which I wasn't. "I wished to give +them to you, and I brought 'em. Why shouldn't I?" + +"You know you should bring them if you want me to have them, and I'm +only too glad to get them, anyway. Don't think I'm criticizing." + +He smiled and began at once on the "old days," as he now called them, a +sad commentary on our drifting days. Indeed he seemed able to talk of +little else or fast enough or with too much enthusiasm. He went over +many things and people--M----; K----, the wonderful art-director, now +insane and a wreck; the group of which he and I had once been a part; +his youthful and unsophisticated viewpoint at the time. "You know," he +confessed quite frankly finally, "my mother always told me then and +afterwards that I made a mistake in leaving you. You were the better +influence for me. She was right. I know it now. Still, a life's a life, +and we have to work through it and ourselves somehow." + +I agreed heartily. + +He told me of his wife, children, farm, his health and his difficulties. +It appeared that he was making a bare living at times, at others doing +very well. His great bane was the popular magazine, the difficulty of +selling a good thing. It was true, I said, and at midnight he left, +promising to come again, inviting me to come to his place in the country +at my convenience. I promised. + +But one thing and another interfered. I went South. One day six months +later, after I had returned, he called up once more, saying he wished to +see me. Of course I asked him down and he came and spoke of his health. +Some doctor, an old college pal of his, was assuring him that he had +Bright's disease and that he might die at any time. He wanted to know, +in case anything happened to him, would I look after his many mss., most +of which, the most serious efforts at least, had never been published. I +agreed. Then he went away and I never saw him again. A year later I was +one day informed that he had died three days before of kidney trouble. +He had been West to see a moving-picture director; on his way East he +had been taken ill and had stopped off with friends somewhere to be +treated, or operated upon. A few weeks later he had returned to New +York, but refusing to rest and believing that he could not die, so soon, +had kept out of doors and in the city, until suddenly he did collapse. +Or, rather, he met his favorite doctor, an intellectual savage like +himself, who with some weird desire to appear forceful, definite, +unsentimental perhaps--a mental condition L---- most fancied--had told +him to go home and to bed, for he would be dead in forty-eight hours!--a +fine bit of assurance which perhaps as much as anything else assisted +L---- to die. At any rate and in spite of the ministrations of his wife, +who wished to defy the doctor and who in her hope for herself and her +children as well as him strove to contend against this gloom, he did so +go to bed and did die. On the last day, realizing no doubt how utterly +indifferent his life had been, how his main aspirations or great dreams +had been in the main nullified by passions, necessities, crass chance +(how well he was fitted to understand that!) he broke down and cried for +hours. Then he died. + +A friend who had known much of this last period, said to me rather +satirically, "He was dealing with death in the shape of a medic. Have +you ever seen him?" The doctor, he meant. "He looks like an +advertisement for an undertaker. I do believe he was trying to discover +whether he could kill somebody by the power of suggestion, and he met +L---- in the nick of time. You know how really sensitive he was. Well, +that medic killed him, the same as you would kill a bird with a bullet. +He said 'You're already dead,' and he was." + +And--oh yes--M----, his former patron. At the time of L----'s sickness +and death he was still owing him $1100 for services rendered during the +last days of that unfortunate magazine. He had never been called upon to +pay his debts, for he had sunk through one easy trapdoor of bankruptcy +only to rise out of another, smiling and with the means to continue. +Yes, he was rich again, rated A No. 1, the president of a great +corporation, and with L----'s $1100 still unpaid and now not legally +"collectible." His bank balance, established by a friend at the time, +was exactly one hundred thousand. + +But Mrs. L----, anxious to find some way out of her difficulty since her +husband was lying cold, and knowing of no one else to whom to turn, had +written to him. There was no food in the house, no medicine, no way to +feed the children at the moment. That matter of $1100 now--could he +spare a little? L---- had thought-- + +A letter in answer was not long in arriving, and a most moving M----y +document it was. M---- had been stunned by the dreadful news, stunned. +Could it really be? Could it? His young brilliant friend? Impossible! At +the dread, pathetic news he had cried--yes he had--cried--and cried--and +cried--and then he had even cried some more. Life was so sad, so grim. +As for him, his own affairs were never in so wretched a condition. It +was unfortunate. Debts there were on every hand. They haunted him, +robbed him of his sleep. He himself scarcely knew which way to turn. +They stood in serried ranks, his debts. A slight push on the part of any +one, and he would be crushed--crushed--go down in ruin. And so, as much +as he was torn, and as much as he cried, even now, he could do nothing, +nothing, nothing. He was agonized, beaten to earth, but still--. Then, +having signed it, there was a P.S. or an N.B. This stated that in +looking over his affairs he had just discovered that by stinting himself +in another direction he _could_ manage to scrape together twenty-five +dollars, and this he was enclosing. Would that God had designed that he +should be better placed at this sad hour! + + * * * * * + +However that may be, I at once sent for the mss. and they came, a +jumbled mass in two suitcases and a portfolio; and a third suitcase, so +I was informed, containing all of a hundred mss., mostly stories, had +been lost somewhere! There had been much financial trouble of late and +more than one enforced move. Mrs. L---- had been compelled--but I will +not tell all. Suffice it to say that he had such an end as his own +realistic pen might have satirically craved. + +The mss., finally sorted, tabulated and read, yielded two small volumes +of excellent tales, all unpublished, the published material being all +but uniformly worthless. There was also the attempt at a popular comedy, +previously mentioned, a sad affair, and a volume of essays, as well as a +very, very slender but charming volume of verse, in case a publisher +could ever be found for them--a most agreeable little group, showing a +pleasing sense of form and color and emotion. I arranged them as best I +could and finally-- + +But they are still unpublished. + + * * * * * + +P.S. As for the sum total of the work left by L----, its very best, it +might be said that although he was not a great psychologist, still, +owing to a certain pretentiousness of assertion at times, one might +unthinkingly suppose he was. Neither had he, as yet, any fixed theories +of art or definite style of his own, imitating as he was now de +Maupassant, now O. Henry, now Poe; but also it must be said that slowly +and surely he was approximating one, original and forceful and +water-clear in expression and naturalness. At times he veered to a +rather showy technique, at others to a cold and even harsh simplicity. +Yet always in the main he had color, beauty, emotion, poignance when +necessary. Like his idol, de Maupassant, he had no moral or strong +social prejudices, no really great or disturbing imagination, no wealth +of perplexing ideas. He saw America and life as something to be painted +as all masters see life and paint it. Gifted with a true vein of satire, +he had not, at the time of his death, quite mastered its possibilities. +He still retained prejudice of one type or another, which he permitted +to interfere with the very smooth arrangement of his colors. At the same +time, had he not been disturbed by so many of the things which in +America, as elsewhere, ordinarily assail an ambitious and earnest +writer--the prejudice against naturalness and sincerity in matters of +the intellect and the facts of life, and the consequent difficulty of +any one so gifted in obtaining funds at any time--he might have done +much better sooner. He was certain to come into his own eventually had +he lived. His very accurate and sensitive powers of observation, his +literary taste, his energy and pride in his work, were destined to carry +him there. It could not have been otherwise. Ten years more, judging by +the rate at which he worked, his annual product and that which he did +leave, one might say that in the pantheon of American letters it is +certain that he would have proved a durable if not one of its great +figures, and he might well have been that. As it stands, it is not +impossible that he will be so recognized, if for no more than the sure +promise of his genius. + + + + +_The Village Feudists_ + + +In a certain Connecticut fishing-town sometime since, where, besides +lobstering, a shipyard and some sail-boat-building there existed the +several shops and stores which catered to the wants of those who labored +in those lines, there dwelt a groceryman by the name of Elihu Burridge, +whose life and methods strongly point the moral and social successes and +failures of the rural man. + +Sixty years of age, with the vanities and desires of the average man's +life behind rather than before him, he was at the time not unlike the +conventional drawings of Parson Thirdly, which graced the humorous +papers of that day. Two moon-shaped eyes, a long upper lip, a mouth like +the sickle moon turned downward, prominent ears, a rather long face and +a mutton-chop-shaped whisker on either cheek, served to give him that +clerical appearance which the humorous artists so religiously seek to +depict. Add to this that he was middle-sized, clerically spare in form, +reserved and quiet in demeanor, and one can see how he might very +readily give the impression of being a minister. His clothes, however, +were old, his trousers torn but neatly mended, his little blue gingham +jumper which he wore about the store greasy and aged. Everything about +him and his store was so still and dark that one might have been +inclined on first sight to consider him crusty and morose. + +Even more remarkable than himself, however, was his store. I have seen +many in my time that were striking because of their neatness; I never +saw one before that struck me as more remarkable for its disorder. In +the first place it was filled neck-deep with barrels and boxes in the +utmost confusion. Dark, greasy, provision-lined alleys led off into +dingy sections which the eye could not penetrate. Old signs hung about, +advertising things which had long since ceased to sell and were +forgotten by the public. There were pictures in once gilt but now +time-blackened frames, wherein queerly depicted children and +pompous-looking grocers offered one commodity and another, all now +almost obliterated by fly-specks. Shelves were marked on the walls by +signs now nearly illegible. Cobwebs hung thickly from corners and +pillars. There were oil, lard, and a dust-laden scum of some sort on +three of the numerous scales with which he occasionally weighed things +and on many exteriors of once salable articles. Pork, lard, molasses, +and nails were packed in different corners of the place in barrels. +Lying about were household utensils, ship-rigging, furniture and a +hundred other things which had nothing to do with the grocery business. + +As I entered the store the first afternoon I noticed a Bible open at +Judges and a number of slips of paper on which questions had been +written. On my second visit for oil and vinegar, two strangers from off +a vagrant yacht which had entered the little harbor nudged one another +and demanded to know whether either had ever seen anything like it. On +the third, my companion protested that it was not clean, and seeing that +there were other stores we decided to buy our things elsewhere. This was +not so easily accomplished. + +"Where can I get a flatiron?" I inquired at the Postoffice when I first +entered the village. + +"Most likely at Burridge's," was the reply. + +"Do you know where I can get a pair of row-locks?" I asked of a boy who +was lounging about the town dock. + +"At Burridge's," he replied. + +When we wanted oars, pickles of a certain variety, golden syrup, and a +dozen other things which were essential at times, we were compelled to +go to Burridge's, so that at last he obtained a very fair portion of our +trade despite the condition of his store. + +During all these earlier dealings there cropped up something curt and +dry in his conversation. One day we lost a fruit jar which he had +loaned, and I took one very much like it back in its place. When I began +to apologize he interrupted me with, "A jar's a jar, isn't it?" + +Another time, when I remarked in a conciliatory tone that he owed me +eight cents for a can of potted ham which had proved stale, he +exclaimed, "Well, I won't owe you long," and forthwith pulled the money +out of the loose jacket of his jumper and paid me. + +I inquired one day if a certain thing were good. "If it isn't," he +replied, with a peculiar elevation of the eyebrows, "your money is. You +can have that back." + +"That's the way you do business, is it?" + +"Yes, sir," he replied, and his long upper lip thinned out along the +line of the lower one like a vise. + +I was in search of a rocking-chair one day and was directed to +Burridge's as the only place likely to have any! + +"Do you keep furniture?" I inquired. + +"Some," he said. + +"Have you a rocking-chair?" + +"No, sir." + +A day or two later I was in search of a table and on going to Burridge's +found that he had gone to a neighboring city. + +"Have you got a table?" I inquired of the clerk. + +"I don't know," he replied. "There's some furniture in the back room, +but I don't know as I dare to sell any of it while he's away." + +"Why?" + +"Well, he don't like me to sell any of it. He's kind of queer that way. +I dunno what he intends to do with it. Gar!" he added in a strangely +electric way, "he's a queer man! He's got a lot of things back +there--chairs and tables and everything. He's got a lot more in a loft +up the street here. He never seems to want to sell any of 'em. Heard him +tell people he didn't have any." + +I shook my head in puzzled desperation. + +"Come on, let's go back and look anyway. There's no harm in seeing if he +has one." + +We went back and there amid pork and molasses barrels, old papers, boxes +and signs, was furniture in considerable quantity--tables, +rocking-chairs, washstands, bureaus--all cornered and tumbled about. + +"Why, here are rocking-chairs, lots of them," I exclaimed. "Just the +kind I want! He said he didn't have any." + +"Gar! I dunno," replied the clerk. "Here's a table, but I wouldn't dare +sell it to you." + +"Why should he say he didn't have a rocking-chair?" + +"Gar! I dunno. He's goin' out of the furniture business. He don't want +to sell any. I don't know what he intends to do with it." + +"Well," I said in despair, "what about the table? You can sell that, +can't you?" + +"I couldn't--not till he comes back. I don't know what he'd want to do +about it." + +"What's the price of it?" + +"I dunno. He could tell you." + +I went out of the thick-aired stuffy backroom with its unwashed windows, +and when I got opposite the Bible near the door I said: + +"What's the matter with him anyhow? Why doesn't he straighten things out +here?" + +Again the clerk awoke. "Huh!" he exclaimed. "Straighten it out! Gar! I'd +like to see anybody try it." + +"It could be," I said encouragingly. + +"Gar!" he chuckled. "One man did try to straighten it out once when Mr. +Burridge was away. Got about a third of it cleaned up when he come back. +Gar! You oughta seen him! Gar!" + +"What did he do?" + +"What did he do! What didn't he do! Gar! Just took things an' threw them +about again. Said he couldn't find anything." + +"You don't say!" + +"Gar! I should say so! Man come in an' asked for a hammer. Said he +couldn't find any hammer, things was so mixed up. Did it with screws, +water-buckets an' everything just the same. Took 'em right off the +shelves, where they was all in groups, an' scattered 'em all over the +room. Gar! 'Now I guess I can find something when I want it,' he said." +The clerk paused to squint and add, "There ain't anybody tried any +straightenin' out around here since then, you bet. Gar!" + +"How long ago has that been?" + +"About fourteen years now." + +Surprised by this sharp variation from the ordinary standards of trade, +I began thinking of possible conditions which had produced it, when one +evening I happened in on the local barber. He was a lean, inquisitive +individual with a shock of sandy hair and a conspicuous desire to appear +a well-rounded social factor. + +"What sort of person is this Burridge over here? He keeps such a +peculiar store." + +"Elihu is a bit peculiar," he replied, his smile betraying a desire to +appear conservative. "The fault with Elihu, if he has one, is that he's +terribly strong on religion. Can't seem to agree with anybody around +here." + +"What's the trouble?" I asked. + +"It's more'n I could ever make out, what is the matter with him. They're +all a little bit cracked on the subject around here. Nothing but +revivals and meetin's, year in and year out. They're stronger on it +winters than they are in summer." + +"How do you mean?" + +"Well, they'll be more against yachtin' and Sunday pleasures when they +can't go than when they can." + +"What about Elihu?" I asked. + +"Well, he can't seem to get along, somehow. He used to belong to the +Baptist Church, but he got out o' that. Then he went to a church up in +Graylock, but he had a fallin' out up there. Then he went to Northfield +and Eustis. He's been all around, even over on Long Island. He goes to +church up at Amherst now, I believe." + +"What seems to be the trouble?" + +"Oh, he's just strong-headed, I guess." He paused, and ideas lagged +until finally I observed: + +"It's a very interesting store he keeps." + +"It's just as Billy Drumgold told him once: 'Burridge,' he says, 'you've +got everything in this store that belongs to a full-rigged ship 'cept +one thing.' 'What's that?' Burridge asks. 'A second-hand pulpit.' 'Got +that too,' he answered, and takes him upstairs, and there he had one +sure enough." + +"Well," I said, "what was he doing with it?" + +"Danged if I know. He had it all right. Has it yet, so they say." + +Days passed and as the summer waned the evidences of a peculiar life +accumulated. Noank, apparently, was at outs with Burridge on the subject +of religion, and he with it. There were instances of genuine hard +feeling against him. + +Writing a letter in the Postoffice one day I ventured to take up this +matter with the postmaster. + +"You know Mr. Burridge, don't you--the grocer?" + +"Well, I should guess I did," he replied with a flare. + +"Anything wrong with him?" + +"Oh, about everything that's just plain cussed--the most wrangling man +alive. I never saw such a man. He don't get his mail here no more +because he's mad at me, I guess. Took it away because I had Mr. Palmer's +help in my fight, I suppose. Wrote me that I should send all his mail up +to Mystic, and he goes there three or four miles out of his way every +day, just to spite me. It's against the law. I hadn't ought to be doing +it, re-addressing his envelopes three or four times a day, but I do do +it. He's a strong-headed man, that's the trouble with Elihu." + +I had no time to follow this up then, but a little later, sitting in the +shop of the principal sailboat maker, which was situated in the quiet +little lane which follows the line of the village, I was one day +surprised by the sudden warm feeling which the name of Elihu generated. +Something had brought up the subject of religion, and I said that +Burridge seemed rather religious. + +"Yes," said the sailboat maker quickly, "he's religious, all right, only +he reads the Bible for others, not for himself." + +"What do you mean by that?" + +"Why, he wants to run things, that's what. As long as you agree with +Elihu, why, everything's all right. When you don't, the Bible's against +you. That's the way he is." + +"Did he ever disagree with you?" I asked, suspecting some personal +animus in the matter. + +"Me and Elihu was always good friends as long as I agreed with him," he +went on bitterly. "We've been raised together, man and boy, for pretty +near sixty years. We never had a word of any kind but what was friendly, +as long as I agreed with him, but just as soon as I didn't he took a set +against me, and we ain't never spoke a word since." + +"What was the trouble?" I inquired sweetly, anxious to come at the +kernel of this queer situation. + +"Well," he said, dropping his work and looking up to impress me, "I'm a +man that'll sometimes say what I don't believe; that is, I'll agree with +what I hadn't ought to, just to be friendly like. I did that way a lot +o' times with Elihu till one day he came to me with something about +particular salvation. I'm a little more liberal myself. I believe in +universal redemption by faith alone. Well, Elihu came to me and began +telling me what he believed. Finally he asked me something about +particular salvation and wanted to know whether I didn't agree with him. +I didn't, and told him so. From that day on he took a set against me, +and he ain't never spoke a word to me since." + +I was unaware that there was anything besides a religious disagreement +in this local situation until one day I happened to come into a second +friendly contact with the postmaster. We were speaking of the +characteristics of certain individuals, and I mentioned Burridge. + +"He's all right when you take him the way he wants to be taken. When you +don't you'll find him quite a different man." + +"He seems to be straightforward and honest," I said. + +"There ain't anything you can tell me about Elihu Burridge that I don't +know," he replied feelingly. "Not a thing. I've lived with him, as you +might say, all my life. Been raised right here in town with him, and we +went to school together. Man and boy, there ain't ever been a thing that +Elihu has agreed with, without he could have the running of it. You +can't tell me anything about him that I don't know." + +I could not help smiling at the warmth of feeling, although something +about the man's manner bespoke a touch of heart-ache, as if he were +privately grieving. + +"What was the trouble between you two?" I asked. + +"It's more'n I could ever find out," he replied in a voice that was +really mournful, so difficult and non-understandable was the subject to +him. "Before I started to work for this office there wasn't a day that I +didn't meet and speak friendly with Elihu. He used to have a good many +deeds and papers to sign, and he never failed to call me in when I was +passing. When I started to work for this office I noticed he took on a +cold manner toward me, and I tried to think of something I might have +done, but I couldn't. Finally I wrote and asked him if there was +anything between us if he wouldn't set a time and place so's we might +talk it over and come to an understanding." He paused and then added, "I +wish you could see the letter he wrote me. Comin' from a Christian +man--from him to me--I wish you could see it." + +"Why don't you show it to me?" I asked inquisitively. + +He went back into the office and returned with an ancient-looking +document, four years old it proved to be, which he had been treasuring. +He handed me the thumbed and already yellowed page, and I read: + + "MATTHEW HOLCOMB, ESQUIRE, + + "DEAR SIR:--In reply to your letter asking me to set a time and + place in which we might talk over the trouble between us, would + say that the time be Eternity and the place where God shall call + us to judgment. + + "Very truly, + "ELIHU BURRIDGE." + +His eyes rested on me while I read, and the moment I finished he began +with: + +"I never said one word against that man, not one word. I never did a +thing he could take offense at, not one thing. I don't know how a man +can justify himself writing like that." + +"Perhaps it's political," I said. "You don't belong to the same party, +do you?" + +"Yes, we do," he said. "Sometimes I've thought that maybe it was because +I had the support of the shipyard when I first tried to get this office, +but then that wasn't anything between him and me," and he looked away as +if the mystery were inexplicable. + +This shipyard was conducted by a most forceful man but one as narrow and +religionistic as this region in which it had had its rise. Old Mr. +Palmer, the aged founder of it, had long been a notable figure in the +streets and private chambers of the village. The principal grocery +store, coal-yard, sail-loft, hotel and other institutions were conducted +in its interests. His opinion was always foremost in the decision of the +local authorities. He was still, reticent, unobtrusive. Once I saw him +most considerately helping a cripple up the lane to the local Baptist +Church. + +"What's the trouble between Burridge and Palmer?" I asked of the +sail-maker finally, coming to think that here, if anywhere, lay the +solution of the difficulty. + +"Two big fish in too small a basket," he responded laconically. + +"Can't agree, eh?" + +"They both want to lead, or did," he said. "Elihu's a beaten man, +though, now." He paused and then added, "I'm sorry for Elihu. He's a +good man at heart, one of the kindest men you ever saw, when you let him +follow his natural way. He's good to the poor, and he's carried more +slow-pay people than any man in this country, I do believe. He won't +collect an old debt by law. Don't believe in it. No, sir. Just a +kind-hearted man, but he loves to rule." + +"How about Palmer?" I inquired. + +"Just the same way exactly. He loves to rule, too. Got a good heart, +too, but he's got a lot more money than Elihu and so people pay more +attention to him, that's all. When Elihu was getting the attention he +was just the finest man you ever saw, kind, generous, good-natured. +People love to be petted, at least some people do--you know they do. +When you don't pet 'em they get kind o' sour and crabbed like. Now +that's all that's the matter with Elihu, every bit of it. He's sour, +now, and a little lonely, I expect. He's drove away every one from him, +or nearly all, 'cept his wife and some of his kin. Anybody can do a good +grocery business here, with the strangers off the boats"--the harbor was +a lively one--"all you have to do is carry a good stock. That's why he +gets along so well. But he's drove nearly all the local folks away from +him." + +I listened to this comfortable sail-loft sage, and going back to the +grocery store one afternoon took another look at the long, grim-faced +silent figure. He was sitting in the shadow of one of his moldy corners, +and if there had ever been any light of merriment in his face it was not +there now. He looked as fixed and solemn as an ancient puritan, and yet +there was something so melancholy in the man's eye, so sad and +disappointed, that it seemed anything but hard. Two or three little +children were playing about the door and when he came forward to wait on +me one of them sidled forward and put her chubby hand in his. + +"Your children?" I asked, by way of reaching some friendly +understanding. + +"No," he replied, looking fondly down, "she belongs to a French lady up +the street here. She often comes down to see me, don't you?" and he +reached over and took the fat little cheek between his thumb and +forefinger. + +The little one rubbed her face against his worn baggy trousers' leg and +put her arm about his knee. Quietly he stood there in a simple way until +she loosened her hold upon him, when he went about his labor. + +I was sitting one day in the loft of the comfortable sail-maker, who, by +the way, was brother-in-law to Burridge, when I said to him: + +"I wish you'd tell me the details about Elihu. How did he come to be +what he is? You ought to know; you've lived here all your life." + +"So I do know," he replied genially. "What do you want me to tell you?" + +"The whole story of the trouble between him and Palmer; how he comes to +be at outs with all these people." + +"Well," he began, and here followed with many interruptions and side +elucidations, which for want of space have been eliminated, the +following details: + +Twenty-five years before Elihu had been the leading citizen of Noank. +From operating a small grocery at the close of the Civil War he branched +out until he sold everything from ship-rigging to hardware. Noank was +then in the height of its career as a fishing town and as a port from +which expeditions of all sorts were wont to sail. Whaling was still in +force, and vessels for whaling expeditions were equipped here. Wealthy +sea-captains frequently loaded fine three-masted schooners here for +various trading expeditions to all parts of the world; the fishers for +mackerel, cod and herring were making three hundred and fifty dollars a +day in season, and thousands of dollars' worth of supplies were annually +purchased here. + +Burridge was then the only tradesman of any importance and, being of a +liberal, strong-minded and yet religious turn, attracted the majority of +this business to him. He had houses and lands, was a deacon in the local +Baptist Church and a counselor in matters political, social and +religious, whose advice was seldom rejected. Every Fourth of July during +these years it was his custom to collect all the children of the town in +front of his store and treat them to ice-cream. Every Christmas Eve he +traveled about the streets in a wagon, which carried half a dozen +barrels of candy and nuts, which he would ladle out to the merry +shouting throng of pursuing youngsters, until all were satisfied. For +the skating season he prepared a pond, spending several thousand dollars +damming up a small stream, in order that the children might have a place +to skate. He created a library where all might obtain suitable reading, +particularly the young. + +On New Year's morning it was his custom to visit all the poor and +bereaved and lonely in Noank, taking a great dray full of presents and +leaving a little something with his greetings and a pleasant handshake +at every door. The lonely rich as well as the lonely poor were included, +for he was certain, as he frequently declared, that the rich could be +lonely too. + +He once told his brother-in-law that one New Year's Day a voice called +to him in church: "Elihu Burridge, how about the lonely rich and poor of +Noank?" "Up I got," he concluded, "and from that day to this I have +never neglected them." + +When any one died who had a little estate to be looked after for the +benefit of widows or orphans, Burridge was the one to take charge of it. +People on their deathbeds sent for him, and he always responded, taking +energetic charge of everything and refusing to take a penny for his +services. After a number of years the old judge to whom he always +repaired with these matters of probate, knowing his generosity in this +respect, also refused to accept any fee. When he saw him coming he would +exclaim: + +"Well, Elihu, what is it this time? Another widow or orphan that we've +got to look after?" + +After Elihu had explained what it was, he would add: + +"Well, Elihu, I do hope that some day some rich man will call you to +straighten out his affairs. I'd like to see _you_ get a little +something, so that _I_ might get a little something. Eh, Elihu?" Then he +would jocularly poke his companion in charity in the ribs. + +These general benefactions were continuous and coeval with his local +prosperity and dominance, and their modification as well as the man's +general decline the result of the rise of this other individual--Robert +Palmer,--"operating" to take the color of power and preeminence from +him. + +Palmer was the owner of a small shipyard here at the time, a thing which +was not much at first but which grew swiftly. He was born in Noank +also, a few years before Burridge, and as a builder of vessels had been +slowly forging his way to a moderate competence when Elihu was already +successful. He was a keen, fine-featured, energetic individual, with +excellent commercial and strong religious instincts, and by dint of hard +labor and a saving disposition he obtained, soon after the Civil War, a +powerful foothold. Many vessels were ordered here from other cities. +Eventually he began to build barges in large numbers for a great +railroad company. + +Early becoming a larger employer of labor than any one else in the +vicinity he soon began to branch out, possessed himself of the allied +industries of ship-rigging, chandlering, and finally established a +grocery store for his employees, and opened a hotel. Now the local +citizens began to look upon him as their leading citizen. They were +always talking of his rise, frequently in the presence of Burridge. He +said nothing at first, pretending to believe that his quondam leadership +was unimpaired. Again, there were those who, having followed the various +branches of labor which Palmer eventually consolidated, viewed this +growth with sullen and angry eyes. They still sided with Burridge, or +pretended still to believe that he was the more important citizen of the +two. In the course of time, however--a period of thirty years or +more--some of them failed; others died; still others were driven away +for want of a livelihood. Only Burridge's position and business +remained, but in a sadly weakened state. He was no longer a man of any +great importance. + +Not unnaturally, this question of local supremacy was first tested in +the one place in which local supremacy is usually tested--the church +where they both worshiped. Although only one of five trustees, Burridge +had been the will of the body. Always, whatever he thought, the others +had almost immediately agreed to it. But now that Palmer had become a +power, many of those ardent in the church and beholden to him for profit +became his humble followers. They elected him trustee and did what he +wished, or what they thought he wished. To Burridge this made them +sycophants, slaves. + +Now followed the kind of trivialities by which most human feuds are +furthered. The first test of strength came when a vagrant evangelist +from Alabama arrived and desired to use the church for a series of +evening lectures. The question had to be decided at once. Palmer was +absent at the time. + +"Here is a request for the use of the church," said one of the trustees, +explaining its nature. + +"Well," said Burridge, "you'd better let him have it." + +"Do you think we ought to do anything about it," the trustee replied, +"until Mr. Palmer returns?" + +Although Burridge saw no reason for waiting, the other trustees did, and +upon that the board rested. Burridge was furious. By one fell stroke he +was put in second place, a man who had to await the return of +Palmer--and that in his own church, so to speak. + +"Why," he told some one, "the rest of us are nothing. This man is a +king." + +From that time on differences of opinion within the church and elsewhere +were common. Although no personal animosity was ever admitted, local +issues almost invariably found these two men opposed to each other. +There was the question of whether the village should be made into a +borough--a most trivial matter; another, that of creating public works +for the manufacture of gas and distribution of water; a third, that of +naming a State representative. Naturally, while these things might be to +the advantage of Palmer or not, they were of no great import to +Burridge, but yet he managed to see in them an attempt or attempts to +saddle a large public debt upon widows and orphans, those who could not +afford or did not need these things, and he proceeded to so express +himself at various public meetings. Slowly the breach widened. Burridge +became little more than a malcontent in many people's eyes. He was a +"knocker," a man who wanted to hold the community back. + +Although defeated in many instances he won in others, and this did not +help matters any. At this point, among other things the decay of the +fishing industry helped to fix definitely the position of the two men as +that of victor and vanquished. Whaling died out, then mackerel and cod +were caught only at farther and farther distances from the town, and +finally three- and even two-masted schooners ceased entirely to buy their +outfits here, and Burridge was left dependent upon local patronage or +smaller harbor trade for his support. Coextensively, he had the +dissatisfaction of seeing Palmer's industries grow until eventually +three hundred and fifty men were upon his payrolls and even his foremen +and superintendents were considered influential townspeople. Palmer's +son and two daughters grew up and married, branched out and became +owners of industries which had formerly belonged to men who had traded +with Burridge. He saw his grocery trade dwindle and sink, while with age +his religiosity grew, and he began to be little more than a petty +disputant, one constantly arguing as to whether the interpretation of +the Bible as handed down from the pulpit of what he now considered _his_ +recalcitrant church was sound or not. When those who years before had +followed him obediently now pricked him with theological pins and +ventured to disagree with him, he was quick and sometimes foolish in his +replies. Thus, once a former friend and fellow-church-member who had +gone over to the opposition came into his store one morning and said: + +"Elihu, for a man that's as strong on religion as you are, I see you do +one thing that can't quite be justified by the Book." + +"What's that?" inquired Burridge, looking up. + +"I see you sell tobacco." + +"I see you chew it," returned the host grimly. + +"I know I do," returned his visitor, "but I'll tell you what I'll do, +Elihu. If you'll quit selling, I'll quit chewing it," and he looked as +if he had set a fancy trap for his straw-balancing brother, as he held +him to be. + +"It's a bargain," said Burridge on the instant. "It's a bargain!" + +And from that day on tobacco was not offered for sale in that store, +although there was a large local demand for it. + +Again, in the pride of his original leadership, he had accepted the +conduct of the local cemetery, a thing which was more a burden than a +source of profit. With his customary liberality in all things reflecting +credit upon himself he had spent his own money in improving it, much +more than ever the wardens of the church would have thought of returning +to him. In one instance, when a new receiving vault was desired, he had +added seven hundred dollars of his own to three hundred gathered by the +church trustees for the purpose, and the vault was immediately +constructed. Frequently also, in his pride of place, he had been given +to asserting he was tired of conducting the cemetery and wished he could +resign. + +In these later evil days, therefore, the trustees, following the star of +the newer power, saw fit to intimate that perhaps some one else would be +glad to look after it if he was tired of it. Instantly the fact that he +could no longer boast as formerly came home to him. He was not essential +any longer in anything. The church did not want him to have a hand in +any of its affairs! The thought of this so weighed on him that +eventually he resigned from this particular task, but thereafter also +every man who had concurred in accepting his resignation was his bitter +enemy. He spoke acidly of the seven hundred he had spent, and jibed at +the decisions of the trustees in other matters. Soon he became a +disturbing element in the church, taking a solemn vow never to enter the +graveyard again, and not long after resigned all his other official +duties--passing the plate, et cetera--although he still attended +services there. + +Decoration Day rolled around, the G.A.R. Post of which he was an ardent +member prepared for the annual memorial services over the graves of its +dead comrades. Early on the morning of the thirtieth of May they +gathered before their lodge hall, Burridge among them, and after +arranging the details marched conspicuously to the cemetery where the +placing of the wreaths and the firing of the salute were to take place. +No one thought of Burridge until the gate was reached, when, gun over +shoulder and uniform in perfect trim, he fell conspicuously out of line +and marched away home alone. It was the cemetery he had vowed not to +enter, his old pet and protege. + +Men now looked askance at him. He was becoming queer, no doubt of it, +not really sensible--or was he? Up in Northfield, a nearby town, dwelt a +colonel of the Civil War who had led the very regiment of which Burridge +was a member but who during the war had come into serious difficulty +through a tangle of orders, and had been dishonorably discharged. +Although wounded in one of the engagements in which the regiment had +distinguished itself, he had been allowed to languish almost forgotten +for years and finally, failing to get a pension, had died in poverty. +On his deathbed he had sent for Burridge, and reminding him of the +battle in which he had led him asked that after he was gone, for the +sake of his family, he would take up the matter of a pension and if +possible have his record purged of the stigma and the pension awarded. + +Burridge agreed most enthusiastically. Going to the local congressman, +he at once began a campaign, but because of the feeling against him two +years passed without anything being done. Later he took up the matter in +his own G.A.R. Post, but there also failing to find the measure of his +own enthusiasm, he went finally direct to one of the senators of the +State and laying the matter before him had the records examined by +Congress and the dead colonel honorably discharged. + +One day thereafter in the local G.A.R. he commented unfavorably upon the +indifference which he deemed had been shown. + +"There wouldn't have been half so much delay if the man hadn't been a +deserter," said one of his enemies--one who was a foreman in Palmer's +shipyard. + +Instantly Burridge was upon his feet, his eyes aflame with feeling. +Always an orator, with a strangely declamatory style he launched into a +detailed account of the late colonel's life and services, his wounds, +his long sufferings and final death in poverty, winding up with a vivid +word picture of a battle (Antietam), in which the colonel had gallantly +captured a rebel flag and come by his injury. + +When he was through there was great excitement in the Post and much +feeling in his favor, but he rather weakened the effect by at once +demanding that the traitorous words be withdrawn, and failing to compel +this, preferred charges against the man who had uttered them and +attempted to have him court-martialed. + +So great was the bitterness engendered by this that the Post was now +practically divided, and being unable to compel what he considered +justice he finally resigned. Subsequently he took issue with his former +fellow-soldiers in various ways, commenting satirically on their church +regularity and professed Christianity, as opposed to their indifference +to the late colonel, and denouncing in various public conversations the +double-mindedness and sharp dealings of the "little gods," as he termed +those who ran the G.A.R. Post, the church, and the shipyards. + +Not long after his religious affairs reached a climax when the minister, +once a good friend of his, following the lead of the dominant star, Mr. +Palmer, publicly denounced him from the pulpit one Sunday as an enemy of +the church and of true Christianity! + +"There is a man in this congregation," he exclaimed in a burst of +impassioned oratory, "who poses as a Christian and a Baptist, who is in +his heart's depth the church's worst enemy. Hell and all its devils +could have no worse feelings of evil against the faith than he, and he +doesn't sell tobacco, either!" + +The last reference at once fixed the identity of the person, and caused +Burridge to get up and leave the church. He pondered over this for a +time, severed his connections with the body, and having visited Graylock +one Sunday drove there every Sabbath thereafter, each time going to a +different church. After enduring this for six months he generated a +longing for a more convenient meeting-place, and finally allied himself +with the Baptist Church of Eustis. Here his anchor might possibly have +remained fast had it not been that subtle broodings over his wrongs, a +calm faith in the righteousness of his own attitude, and disgust with +those whom he saw calmly expatiating upon the doctrines and dogmas of +religion in his own town finally caused him to suspect a universal +misreading of the Bible. This doubt, together with his own desire for +justification according to the Word, finally put the idea in his mind to +make a study of the Bible himself. He would read it, he said. He would +study Hebrew and Greek, and refer all questionable readings of words and +passages back to the original tongue in which it had been written. + +With this end in view he began a study of these languages, the +importance of the subject so growing upon him that he neglected his +business. Day after day he labored, putting a Bible and a Concordance +upon a pile of soap-boxes near the door of his store and poring over +them between customers, the store meantime taking care of itself. He +finally mastered Greek and Hebrew after a fashion, and finding the word +"repent" frequently used, and that God had made man in the image of +Himself, with a full knowledge of right and wrong, he gravitated toward +the belief that therefore his traducers in Noank knew what they were +doing, and that before he needed to forgive them--though his love might +cover all--they must repent. + +He read the Bible from beginning to end with this one feeling +subconsciously dominant, and all its loving commands about loving one +another, forgiving your brother seventy times seven, loving those that +hate you, returning good for evil, selling all that you have and giving +it to the poor, were made to wait upon the duty of others to repent. He +began to give this interpretation at Eustis, where he was allowed to +have a Sunday-school, until the minister came and told him once, "to his +face," as the local report ran: "We don't want you here." + +Meekly he went forth and, joining a church across the Sound on Long +Island, sailed over every Sunday and there advanced the same views until +he was personally snubbed by the minister and attacked by the local +papers. Leaving there he went to Amherst, always announcing now that he +held distinctive views about some things in the Bible and asking the +privilege of explaining. In this congregation he was still comfortably +at rest when I knew him. + +"All sensitiveness," the sail-maker had concluded after his long +account. "There ain't anything the matter with Elihu, except that he's +piqued and grieved. He wanted to be the big man, and he wasn't." + +I was thinking of this and of his tender relationship with children as I +had noticed it, and of his service to the late colonel when one day +being in the store, I said: + +"Do you stand on the Bible completely, Mr. Burridge?" + +"Yes, sir," he replied, "I do." + +"Believe every word of it to be true?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"If your brother has offended you, how many times must you forgive him?" + +"Seventy times seven." + +"Do you forgive your brothers?" + +"Yes, sir--if they repent." + +"If they repent?" + +"Yes, sir, if they repent. That's the interpretation. In Matthew you +will find, 'If he repent, forgive him.'" + +"But if you don't forgive them, even before they repent," I said, +"aren't you harboring enmity?" + +"No, sir, I'm not treasuring up enmity. I only refuse to forgive them." + +I looked at the man, a little astonished, but he looked so sincere and +earnest that I could not help smiling. + +"How do you reconcile that with the command, 'Love one another?' You +surely can't love and refuse to forgive them at the same time?" + +"I don't refuse to forgive them," he repeated. "If John there," +indicating an old man in a sun-tanned coat who happened to be passing +through the store at the time, "should do me a wrong--I don't care what +it was, how great or how vile--if he should come to me and say, +'Burridge, I'm sorry,'" he executed a flashing oratorical move in +emphasis, and throwing back his head, exclaimed: "It's gone! It's gone! +There ain't any more of it! All gone!" + +I stood there quite dumbfounded by his virility, as the air vibrated +with his force and feeling. So manifestly was his reading of the Bible +colored by the grief of his own heart that it was almost painful to +tangle him with it. Goodness and mercy colored all his ideas, except in +relation to his one-time followers, those who had formerly been his +friends and now left him to himself. + +"Do you still visit the poor and the afflicted, as you once did?" I +asked him once. + +"I'd rather not say anything about that," he replied sternly. + +"But do you?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Still make your annual New Year round?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Well, you'll get your reward for that, whatever you believe." + +"I've had my reward," he said slowly. + +"Had it?" + +"Yes, sir, had it. Every hand that's been lifted to receive the little +I had to offer has been my reward." + +He smiled, and then said in seemingly the most untimely way: + +"I remember once going to a lonely woman here on New Year's Day and +taking her a little something--basket of grapes or fruit of some kind it +was. I was stopping a minute--never stay long, you know; just run in and +say 'Happy New Year!' leave what I have and get out--and so said, 'Good +morning, Aunt Mary!' + +"'Good morning, Elihu,' says she. + +"'Can't stay long, Aunt Mary,' I said. 'Just want to leave you these. +Happy New Year!' + +"Well, sir, you know I was just turning around and starting when she +caught hold of my sleeve and says: + +"'Elihu Burridge,' she says, 'give me that hand!' and do you know, +before I knew what she was about she took it up to her lips and kissed +it! Yes, she did--kissed my hand! + +"Now," he said, drawing himself up, with eyes bright with intense +feeling, "you know whether I've had my reward or not, don't you?" + + + + +_"Vanity, Vanity," Saith the Preacher_ + + +Sometimes a single life will clearly and effectively illustrate a +period. Hence, to me, the importance of this one. + +I first met X---- at a time when American financial methods and American +finances were at their apex of daring and splendor, and when the world +was in a more or less tolerant mood toward their grandiose manners and +achievements. It was the golden day of Mr. Morgan, Senior, Mr. Belmont, +Mr. Harriman, Mr. Sage, Mr. Gates, Mr. Brady, and many, many others who +were still extant and ruling distinctly and drastically, as was proved +by the panic of 1907. In opposition to them and yet imitating their +methods, now an old story to those who have read "Frenzied Finance," +"Lawless Wealth," and other such exposures of the methods which produced +our enormous American fortunes, were such younger men as Charles W. +Morse (the victim of the 1907 panic), F. Augustus Heinze (another if +less conspicuous victim of the same "panic"), E.R. Thomas, an ambitious +young millionaire, himself born to money, David A. Sullivan, and X----. +I refuse to mention his name because he is still alive although no +longer conspicuous, and anxious perhaps to avoid the uncomfortable glare +of publicity when all the honors and comforts which made it endurable in +the first place are absent. + +The person who made X---- essentially interesting to me long before I +met him was one Lucien de Shay, a ne'er-do-well pianist and voice +culturist, who was also a connoisseur in the matters of rugs, hangings, +paintings and furniture, things in which X---- was just then most +intensely interested, erecting, as he was, a great house on Long Island +and but newly blossoming into the world of art or fashion or culture or +show--those various things which the American multi-millionaire always +wants to blossom or bloom into and which he does not always succeed in +doing. De Shay was one of those odd natures so common to the +metropolis--half artist and half man of fashion who attach themselves so +readily to men of strength and wealth, often as advisors and counselors +in all matters of taste, social form and social progress. How this +particular person was rewarded I never quite knew, whether in cash or +something else. He was also a semi-confidant of mine, furnishing me +"tips" and material of one sort and another in connection with the +various publications I was then managing. As it turned out later, X---- +was not exactly a multi-millionaire as yet, merely a fledgling, although +the possibilities were there and his aims and ambitions were fast +nearing a practical triumph the end of which of course was to be, as in +the case of nearly all American multi-millionaires of the newer and +quicker order, bohemian or exotic and fleshly rather than cultural or +aesthetic pleasure, although the latter were never really exactly +ignored. + +But even so. He was a typical multi-millionaire in the showy and even +gaudy sense of the time. For if the staid and conservative and socially +well-placed rich have the great houses and the ease and the luxury of +paraphernalia, the bohemian rich of the X---- type have the flare, +recklessness and imagination which lend to their spendings and +flutterings a sparkle and a shine which the others can never hope to +match. + +Said this friend of mine to me one day: "Listen, I want you to meet this +man X----. You will like him. He is fine. You haven't any idea what a +fascinating person he really is. He looks like a Russian Grand Duke. He +has the manners and the tastes of a Medici or a Borgia. He is building a +great house down on Long Island that once it is done will have cost him +five or six hundred thousand. It's worth seeing already. His studio here +in the C---- studio building is a dream. It's thick with the loveliest +kinds of things. I've helped buy them myself. And he isn't dull. He +wrote a book at twenty, 'Icarus,' which is not bad either and which he +says is something like himself. He has read your book ("Sister Carrie") +and he sympathizes with that man Hurstwood. Says parts of it remind him +of his own struggles. That's why he wants to meet you. He once worked on +the newspapers too. God knows how he is making his money, but I know how +he is spending it. He's decided to live, and he's doing it splendidly. +It's wonderful." + +I took notice, although I had never even heard of the man. There were so +very, very many rich men in America. Later I heard much more concerning +him from this same de Shay. Once he had been so far down in the scale +that he had to shine shoes for a living. Once he had walked the streets +of New York in the snow, his shoes cracked and broken, no overcoat, not +even a warm suit. He had come here a penniless emigrant from Russia. Now +he controlled four banks, one trust company, an insurance company, a +fire insurance company, a great real estate venture somewhere, and what +not. Naturally all of this interested me greatly. When are we +indifferent to a rise from nothing to something? + +At de Shay's invitation I journeyed up to X----'s studio one Wednesday +afternoon at four, my friend having telephoned me that if I could I must +come at once, that there was an especially interesting crowd already +assembled in the rooms, that I would meet a long list of celebrities. +Two or three opera singers of repute were already there, among them an +Italian singer and sorceress of great beauty, a veritable queen of the +genus adventuress, who was setting the town by the ears not only by her +loveliness but her voice. Her beauty was so remarkable that the Sunday +papers were giving full pages to her face and torso alone. There were to +be several light opera and stage beauties there also, a basso profundo +to sing, writers, artists, poets. + +I went. The place and the crowd literally enthralled me. It was so gay, +colorful, thrillful. The host and the guests were really interesting--to +me. Not that it was so marvelous as a studio or that it was so +gorgeously decorated and furnished--it was impressive enough in that +way--but that it was so gracefully and interestingly representative of a +kind of comfort disguised as elegance. The man had everything, or nearly +so--friends, advisors, servants, followers. A somewhat savage and +sybaritic nature, as I saw at once, was here disporting itself in +velvets and silks. The iron hand of power, if it was power, was being +most gracefully and agreeably disguised as the more or less flaccid one +of pleasure and friendship. + +My host was not visible at first, but I met a score of people whom I +knew by reputation, and listened to clatter and chatter of the most +approved metropolitan bohemian character. The Italian sorceress was +there, her gorgeous chain earrings tinkling mellifluously as she nodded +and gesticulated. De Shay at once whispered in my ear that she was +X----'s very latest flame and an expensive one too. "You should see what +he buys her!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "God!" Actresses and society +women floated here and there in dreams of afternoon dresses. The +automobiles outside were making a perfect uproar. The poets and writers +fascinated me with their praises of the host's munificence and taste. At +a glance it was plain to me that he had managed to gather about him the +very element it would be most interesting to gather, supposing one +desired to be idle, carefree and socially and intellectually gay. If +America ever presented a smarter drawing-room I never saw it. + +My friend de Shay, being the fidus Achates of the host, had the power to +reveal the inner mysteries of this place to me, and on one or two +occasions when there were not so many present and while the others were +chattering in the various rooms--music-, dining-, ball-, library and so +forth--I was being shown the kitchen, pantry, wine cellar, and also +various secret doors and passages whereby mine host by pressing a flower +on a wall or a spring behind a picture could cause a door to fly open or +close which gave entrance to or from a room or passage in no way +connected with the others save by another secret door and leading always +to a private exit. I wondered at once at the character of the person who +could need, desire or value this. A secret bedroom, for instance; a +lounging-room! In one of these was a rather severe if handsome desk and +a steel safe and two chairs--no more; a very bare room. I wondered at +this silent and rather commercial sanctum in the center of this +frou-frou of gayety, no trace of the sound of which seemed to penetrate +here. What I also gained was a sense of an exotic, sybaritic and purely +pagan mind, one which knew little of the conventions of the world and +cared less. + +On my first visit, as I was leaving, I was introduced to the host just +within his picture gallery, hung with many fine examples of the Dutch +and Spanish schools. I found him to be as described: picturesque and +handsome, even though somewhat plump, phlegmatic and lethargic--yet +active enough. He was above the average in height, well built, florid, +with a huge, round handsome head, curly black hair, keen black eyes, +heavy overhanging eyebrows, full red lips, a marked chin ornamented by a +goatee. In any costume ball he would have made an excellent Bacchus or +Pan. He appeared to have the free, easy and gracious manner of those who +have known much of life and have achieved, in part at least, their +desires. He smiled, wished to know if I had met all the guests, hoped +that the sideboard had not escaped me, that I had enjoyed the singing. +Would I come some evening when there was no crowd--or, better yet, dine +with him and my friend de Shay, whose personality appeared to be about +as agreeable to him as his own. He was sorry he could not give me more +attention now. + +Interestingly enough, and from the first, I was impressed with this man; +not because of his wealth (I knew richer men) but because of a something +about him which suggested dreams, romance, a kind of sense or love of +splendor and grandeur which one does not often encounter among the +really wealthy. Those cracked shoes were in my mind, I suppose. He +seemed to live among great things, but in no niggardly, parsimonious or +care-taking way. Here was ease, largess, a kind of lavishness which was +not ostentation but which seemed rather to say, "What are the minute +expenses of living and pleasuring as contrasted with the profits of +skill in the world outside?" He suggested the huge and Aladdin-like +adventures with which so many of the great financiers of the day, the +true tigers of Wall Street, were connected. + +It was not long thereafter that I was once more invited, this time to a +much more lavish affair and something much more sybaritic in its tone, +although I was really not conscious of what it was to be like when I +went there. It began at twelve midnight, and to this day it glitters in +my mind as among the few really barbaric and exotic things that I have +ever witnessed. Not that the trappings or hangings or setting were so +outre or amazing as that the atmosphere of the thing itself was relaxed, +bubbling, pagan. There were so many daring and seeking people there. The +thing sang and was talked of for months after--in whispers! The gayety! +The abandon! The sheer intoxication, mental and physical! I never saw +more daring costumes, so many really beautiful women (glitteringly so) +in one place at one time, wonderful specimens of exotic and in the main +fleshy or sensuous femininity. There was, among other things, as I +recall, a large nickeled ice-tray on wheels packed with unopened bottles +of champagne, and you had but to lift a hand or wink an eye to have +another opened for you alone, ever over and over. And the tray was +always full. One wall of the dining-room farther on was laden with +delicate novelties in the way of food. A string quartette played for the +dancers in the music-room. There were a dozen corners in different rooms +screened with banks of flowers and concealing divans. The dancing and +singing were superb, individual, often abandoned in character, as was +the conversation. As the morning wore on (for it did not begin until +after midnight) the moods of all were either so mellowed or inflamed as +to make intentions, hopes, dreams, the most secret and sybaritic, the +order of expression. One was permitted to see human nature stripped of +much of its repression and daylight reserve or cant. At about four in +the morning came the engaged dancers, quite the piece de +resistance--with wreaths about heads, waists and arms for clothing and +well, really nothing more beyond their beautiful figures--scattering +rose leaves or favors. These dancers the company itself finally joined, +single file at first, pellmell afterwards--artists, writers, +poets--dancing from room to room in crude Bacchic imitation of their +leaders--the women too--until all were singing, parading, swaying and +dancing in and out of the dozen rooms. And finally, liquor and food +affecting them, I suppose, many fell flat, unable to do anything +thereafter but lie upon divans or in corners until friends assisted them +elsewhere--to taxis finally. But mine host, as I recall him, was always +present, serene, sober, smiling, unaffected, bland and gracious and +untiring in his attention. He was there to keep order where otherwise +there would have been none. + +I mention this merely to indicate the character of a long series of such +events which covered the years 19-- to 19--. During that time, for the +reason that I have first given (his curious pleasure in my company), I +was part and parcel of a dozen such more or less vivid affairs and +pleasurings, which stamped on my mind not only X---- but life itself, +the possibilities and resources of luxury where taste and appetite are +involved, the dreams of grandeur and happiness which float in some +men's minds and which work out to a wild fruition--dreams so outre and +so splendid that only the tyrant of an obedient empire, with all the +resources of an enslaved and obedient people, could indulge with safety. +Thus once, I remember, that a dozen of us--writers and artists--being +assembled in his studio in New York one Friday afternoon for the mere +purpose of idling and drinking, he seeming to have nothing better to do +for the time being, he suddenly suggested, and as though it had but now +occurred to him, that we all adjourn to his country house on Long +Island, which was not yet quite finished (or, rather, furnished), but +which was in a sufficient state of completion to permit of appropriate +entertainment providing the necessaries were carried out there with us. + +As I came to think of this afterward, I decided that after all it was +not perhaps so unpremeditated as it seemed and that unconsciously we +served a very useful purpose. There was work to do, suggestions to be +obtained, an overseer, decorator and landscape gardener with whom +consultations were absolutely necessary; and nothing that X---- ever did +was without its element of calculation. Why not make a gala affair of a +rather dreary November task-- + +Hence-- + +At any rate the majority of us forthwith agreed, since plainly it meant +an outing of the most lavish and pleasing nature. At once four +automobiles were pressed into service, three from his own garage and one +specially engaged elsewhere. There was some telephoning _in re_ culinary +supplies to a chef in charge of the famous restaurant below who was _en +rapport_ with our host, and soon some baskets of food were produced and +subsequently the four cars made their appearance at the entryway below. +At dusk of a gray, cold, smoky day we were all bundled into +these--poets, playwrights, novelists, editors (he professed a great +contempt for actors), and forthwith we were off, to do forty-five miles +between five-thirty and seven p.m. + +I often think of that ride, the atmosphere of it, and what it told of +our host's point of view. He was always so grave, serene, watchful yet +pleasant and decidedly agreeable, gay even, without seeming so to be. +There was something so amazingly warm and exotic about him and his, and +yet at the same time something so cold and calculated, as if after all +he were saying to himself, "I am the master of all this, am +stage-managing it for my own pleasure." I felt that he looked upon us +all not so much as intimates or friends as rather fine birds or +specimens of one kind and another, well qualified to help him with art +and social ideas if nothing more--hence his interest in us. Also, in his +estimation no doubt, we reflected some slight color or light into his +life, which he craved. We had done things too. Nevertheless, in his own +estimation, he was the master, the Can Grande. He could at will, "take +us up or leave us out," or so he thought. We were mere toys, fine +feathers, cap-and-bell artists. It was nice to, "take us around," have +us with him. Smothered in a great richly braided fur coat and fur cap, +he looked as much the Grand Duke as one might wish. + +But I liked him, truly. And what a delicious evening and holiday, all +told, he made of it for us. By leaving a trail of frightened horses, men +and women, and tearing through the gloom as though streets were his +private race-track--I myself as much frightened as any at the roaring +speed of the cars and the possibilities of the road--we arrived at +seven, and by eight were seated to a course dinner of the most +gratifying character. There was no heat in the house as yet, but from +somewhere great logs had been obtained and now blazed in the large +fireplaces. There was no electricity as yet--a private plant was being +installed--but candles and lamps blazed in lovely groups, casting a soft +glow over the great rooms. One room lacked a door, but an immense rug +took its place. There were rugs, hangings and paintings in profusion, +many of them as yet unhung. Some of the most interesting importations of +furniture and statuary were still in the cases in which they had +arrived, with marks of ships and the names of foreign cities upon the +cases. Scattered about the great living-room, dining-room, music-room +and library were enough rugs, divans and chairs as well as musical +instruments--a piano among others--to give the place an air of +completeness and luxury. The walls and ceilings had already been +decorated--in a most florid manner, I must say. Outside were great +balconies and verandahs commanding, as the following morning proved, a +very splendid view of a very bleak sea. The sand dunes! The distant +floor of the sea! The ships! Upstairs were nine suites of one- and +two-rooms and bath. The basement was an intricate world of kitchen, +pantry, engine-room, furnace, wine cellars and what not. Outside was a +tawny waste of sand held together in places in the form of hummocks and +even concealing hills by sand-binding grasses. + +That night, because it was windy and dull and bleak, we stayed inside, I +for one going outside only long enough to discover that there were great +wide verandahs of concrete about the house, fit for great entertainments +in themselves, and near at hand, hummocks of sand. Inside all was warm +and flaring enough. The wine cellar seemed to contain all that one might +reasonably desire. Our host once out here was most gay in his mood. He +was most pleasantly interested in the progress of his new home, although +not intensely so. He seemed to have lived a great deal and to be making +the best of everything as though it were something to go through with. +With much talking on the part of us all, the evening passed swiftly +enough. Some of the men could play and sing. One poet recited enchanting +bits of verse. For our inspection certain pieces of furniture and +statuary were unpacked and displayed--a bronze faun some three feet in +height, for one thing. All the time I was sensible of being in contact +with some one who was really in touch with life in a very large way, +financially and otherwise. His mind seemed to be busy with all sorts of +things. There were two Syrians in Paris, he said, who owned a large +collection of rugs suitable for an exhibition. He had an agent who was +trying to secure the best of them for his new home. De Shay had recently +introduced him to a certain Italian count who had a great house in Italy +but could not afford its upkeep. He was going to take over a portion of +its furnishings, after due verification, of course. Did I know the +paintings of Monticelli and Mancini? He had just secured excellent +examples of both. Some time when his new home was further along I must +come out. Then the pictures would be hung, the statuary and furniture in +place. He would get up a week-end party for a select group. + +The talk drifted to music and the stage. At once I saw that because of +his taste, wealth and skill, women formed a large and yet rather +toy-like portion of his life, holding about as much relation to his +inner life as do the concubines of an Asiatic sultan. Madame of the +earrings, as I learned from De Shay, was a source of great expense to +him, but at that she was elusive, not easily to be come at. The stage +and Broadway were full of many beauties in various walks of life, many +of whom he knew or to whom he could obtain access. Did I know thus, and +so--such-and-such, and one? + +"I'll tell you," he said after a time and when the wine glasses had been +refilled a number of times, "we must give a party out here some time, +something extraordinary, a real one. De Shay and Bielow" (naming another +artist) "and myself must think it out. I know three different +dancers"--and he began to enumerate their qualities. I saw plainly that +even though women played a minor part in his life, they were the fringe +and embroidery to his success and power. At one a.m. we went to our +rooms, having touched upon most of the themes dear to metropolitan +lovers of life and art. + +The next morning was wonderful--glittering, if windy. The sea sparkled +beyond the waste of sand. I noted anew the richness of the furnishings, +the greatness of the house. Set down in so much sand and facing the +great sea, it was wonderful. There was no order for breakfast; we came +down as we chose. A samovar and a coffee urn were alight on the table. +Rolls, chops, anything, were brought on order. Possibly because I was +one of the first about, my host singled me out--he was up and dressed +when I came down--and we strolled over the estate to see what we should +see. + +Curiously, although I had seen many country homes of pretension and even +luxury, I never saw one that appealed to me more on the ground of +promise and, after a fashion, of partial fulfillment. It was so +unpretentiously pretentious, so really grand in a limited and yet poetic +way. Exteriorly its placement, on a rise of ground commanding that vast +sweep of sea and sand, its verandahs, so very wide--great smooth floors +of red concrete--bordered with stone boxes for flowers and handsomely +designed stone benches, its long walks and drives but newly begun, its +stretch of beach, say a half mile away and possibly a mile and a half +long, to be left, as he remarked, "au naturel," driftwood, stones and +all, struck me most favorably. Only one long pier for visiting yachts +was to be built, and a certain stretch of beach, not over three hundred +feet, cleared for bath houses and a smooth beach. On one spot of land, a +high hummock reaching out into the sea, had already been erected a small +vantage tower, open at the bottom for shade and rest, benches turning in +a circle upon a concrete floor, above it, a top looking more like a +small bleak lighthouse than anything else. In this upper portion was a +room reached by small spiral concrete stairs! + +I could not help noting the reserve and _savoir faire_ with which my +host took all this. He was so healthy, assured, interested and, I am +glad to say, not exactly self-satisfied; at least he did not impress me +in that way--a most irritating condition. Plainly he was building a very +splendid thing. His life was nearing its apex. He must not only have had +millions, but great taste to have undertaken, let alone accomplished, as +much as was already visible here. Pointing to a bleak waste of sand +between the house and the sea--and it looked like a huge red and yellow +bird perched upon a waste of sand--he observed, "When you come again in +the spring, that will contain a garden of 40,000 roses. The wind is +nearly always off the sea here. I want the perfume to blow over the +verandahs. I can rotate the roses so that a big percentage of them will +always be in bloom." + +We visited the stables, the garage, an artesian well newly driven, a +drive that was to skirt the sea, a sunken garden some distance from the +house and away from the sea. + +Next spring I came once more--several times, in fact. The rose garden +was then in bloom, the drives finished, the pictures hung. Although this +was not a world in which society as yet deigned to move, it was entirely +conceivable that at a later period it might, and betimes it was crowded +with people smart enough and more agreeable in the main than the hardy, +strident members of the so-called really inner circles. There were +artists, writers, playwrights, singers, actresses, and some nondescript +figures of the ultra-social world--young men principally who seemed to +come here in connection with beautiful young women, models and other +girls whose beauty was their only recommendation to consideration. + +The scene was not without brilliance. A butler and numerous flunkeys +fluttered to and fro. Guests were received at the door by a footman. A +housekeeper and various severe-looking maids governed in the matter of +cleaning. One could play golf, tennis, bridge, motor, fish, swim, drink +in a free and even disconcerting manner or read quietly in one angle or +another of the grounds. There were affairs, much flirting and giggling, +suspicious wanderings to and fro at night--no questions asked as to who +came or whether one was married, so long as a reasonable amount of +decorum was maintained. It was the same on other occasions, only the +house and grounds were full to overflowing with guests and passing +friends, whose machines barked in the drives. I saw as many gay and +fascinating costumes and heard as much clever and at times informative +talk here as anywhere I have been. + +During this fall and winter I was engaged in work which kept me very +much to myself. During the period I read much of X----, banks he was +combining, new ventures he was undertaking. Yet all at once one winter's +day, and out of a clear sky, the papers were full of an enormous +financial crash of which he was the center. According to the newspapers, +the first and foremost of a chain of banks of which he was the head, to +say nothing of a bonding and realty company and some street-railway +project on Long Island, were all involved in the crash. Curiously, +although no derogatory mention had previously been made of him, the +articles and editorials were now most vituperative. Their venom was +especially noticeable. He was a get-rich-quick villain of the vilest +stripe; he had been juggling a bank, a trust company, an insurance +company and a land and street-railway speculative scheme as one would +glass balls. The money wherewith he gambled was not his. He had robbed +the poor, deceived them. Yet among all this and in the huge articles +which appeared the very first day, I noted one paragraph which stuck in +my mind, for I was naturally interested in all this and in him. It read: + + "Wall Street heard yesterday that Superintendent H---- got his + first information concerning the state in which X----'s affairs + were from quarters where resentment may have been cherished + because of his activity in the Long Island Traction field. This is + one of the Street's 'clover patches' and the success which the + newcomer seemed to be meeting did not provoke great pleasure." + +Another item read: + + "A hitch in a deal that was to have transferred the South Shore to + the New York and Queens County System, owned by the Long Island + Railroad, at a profit of almost $2,000,000 to X----, was the cause + of all the trouble. Very active displeasure on the part of certain + powers in Wall Street blocked, it is said, the closing of the deal + for the railroad. They did not want him in this field, and were + powerful enough to prevent it. At the same time pressure from + other directions was brought to bear on him. The clearing-house + refused to clear for his banks. X---- was in need of cash, but + still insisting on a high rate of remuneration for the road which + he had developed to an important point. Their sinister influences + entered and blocked the transfer until it was no longer possible + for him to hold out." + +Along with these two items was a vast mass of data, really pages, +showing how, when, where he had done thus and so, "juggled accounts" +between one bank and another, all of which he controlled however, and +most of which he owned, drew out large sums and put in their place +mortgages on, or securities in, new companies which he was +organizing--tricks which were the ordinary routine of Wall Street and +hence rather ridiculous as the sub-stone of so vast a hue and cry. + +I was puzzled and, more than that, moved by the drama of the man's +sudden end, for I understood a little of finance and its ways, also of +what place and power had plainly come to mean to him. It must be +dreadful. Yet how could it be, I asked myself, if he really owned +fifty-one per cent or more in so many companies that he could be such a +dark villain? After all, ownership is ownership, and control, control. +On the face of the reports themselves his schemes did not look so black. +I read everything in connection with him with care. + +As the days passed various other things happened. For one thing, he +tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window of his studio in New +York; for another, he tried to take poison. Now of a sudden a bachelor +sister, of whom I had never heard in all the time I had known him, put +in an appearance as his nearest of kin--a woman whose name was not his +own but a variation of it, an "-ovitch" having suddenly been tacked onto +it. She took him to a sanitarium, from which he was eventually turned +out as a criminal, then to a hospital, until finally he surrendered +himself to the police. The names of great lawyers and other bankers +began to enter the case. Alienists of repute, those fine chameleons of +the legal world, were employed who swore first that he was insane, then +that he was not. His sister, who was a physician and scientist of +repute, asked the transfer of all his property to her on the ground that +he was incompetent and that she was his next of kin. To this she swore, +giving as her reasons for believing him insane that he had "illusions of +grandeur" and that he believed himself "persecuted by eminent +financiers," things which smacked more of sanity than anything else to +me. At the same time he and she, as time rather indicated, had arranged +this in part in the hope of saving something out of the great wreck. +There were other curious features: Certain eminent men in politics and +finance who from revelations made by the books of the various banks were +in close financial if not personal relations with X---- denied this +completely. Curiously, the great cry on the part of these was that he +was insane, must be, and that he was all alone in his schemes. His life +on Broadway, on Long Island, in his studio in New York, were ransacked +for details. Enough could not be made of his gay, shameful, spendthrift +life. No one else, of course, had ever been either gay or shameful +before--especially not the eminent and hounding financiers. + +Then from somewhere appeared a new element. In a staggeringly low +tenement region in Brooklyn was discovered somehow or other a very old +man and woman, most unsatisfactory as relatives of such imposing people, +who insisted that they were his parents, that years before because he +and his sister were exceedingly restless and ambitious, they had left +them and had only returned occasionally to borrow money, finally ceasing +to come at all. In proof of this, letters, witnesses, old photos, were +produced. It really did appear as if he and his sister, although they +had long vigorously denied it, really were the son and daughter of the +two who had been petty bakers in Brooklyn, laying up a little +competence of their own. I never knew who "dug" them up, but the reason +why was plain enough. The sister was laying claim to the property as the +next of kin. If this could be offset, even though X---- were insane, the +property would at once be thrown into the hands of the various creditors +and sold under a forced sale, of course--in other words, for a song--for +their benefit. Naturally it was of interest to those who wished to have +his affairs wound up to have the old people produced. But the great +financier had been spreading the report all along that he was from +Russia, that his parents, or pseudo-parents, were still there, but that +really he was the illegitimate son of the Czar of Russia, boarded out +originally with a poor family. Now, however, the old people were brought +from Brooklyn and compelled to confront him. It was never really proved +that he and his sister had neglected them utterly or had done anything +to seriously injure them, but rather that as they had grown in place and +station they had become more or less estranged and so ignored them, +having changed their names and soared in a world little dreamed of by +their parents. Also a perjury charge was made against the sister which +effectually prevented her from controlling his estate, a lease long +enough to give the financiers time for their work. Naturally there was a +great hue and cry over her, the scandal, the shame, that they should +thus publicly refuse to recognize their parents as they did or had when +confronted by them. Horrible! There were most heavily illustrated and +tearful Sunday articles, all blazoned forth with pictures of his house +and studio, his banks, cars, yacht, groups of guests, while the motives +of those who produced the parents were overlooked. The pictures of the +parents confronting X---- and his sister portrayed very old and feeble +people, and were rather moving. They insisted that they were his parents +and wept brokenly in their hands. But why? And he denying it! His +sister, who resented all this bitterly and who stood by him valiantly, +repudiated, for his sake of course, his and her so-called parents and +friends. + +I never saw such a running to cover of "friends" in all my life. Of all +those I had seen about his place and in his company, scores on scores of +people reasonably well known in the arts, the stage, the worlds of +finance and music, all eating his dinners, riding in his cars, drinking +his wines, there was scarcely any one now who knew him anything more +than "casually" or "slightly"--oh, so slightly! When rumors as to the +midnight suppers, the Bacchic dancing, the automobile parties to his +great country place and the spirited frolics which occurred there began +to get abroad, there was no one whom I knew who had ever been there or +knew anything about him or them. For instance, of all the people who had +been close or closest and might therefore have been expected to be +friendly and deeply concerned was de Shay, his fidus Achates and +literally his pensioner--yet de Shay was almost the loudest in his +denunciation or at least deprecation of X----, his habits and methods! +Although it was he who had told me of Mme. ---- and her relation to +X----, who urged me to come here, there and the other place, especially +where X---- was the host, always assuring me that it would be so +wonderful and that X---- was really such a great man, so generous, so +worth-while, he was now really the loudest or at least the most +stand-offish in his comments, pretending never to have been very close +to X----, and lifting his eyebrows in astonishment as though he had not +even guessed what he had actually engineered. His "Did-you-hears," +"Did-you-knows" and "Wouldn't-have-dreamed" would have done credit to a +tea-party. He was so shocked, especially at X----'s robbing poor +children and orphans, although in so far as my reading of the papers +went I could find nothing that went to prove that he had any intention +of robbing anybody--that is, directly. In the usual Wall Street high +finance style he was robbing Peter to pay Paul, that is, he was using +the monies of one corporation which he controlled to bolster up any of +the others which he controlled, and was "washing one hand with the +other," a proceeding so common in finance that to really radically and +truly oppose it, or do away with it, would mean to bring down the whole +fabric of finance in one grand crash. + +Be that as it may. In swift succession there now followed the so-called +"legal" seizure and confiscation of all his properties. In the first +place, by alienists representing the District Attorney and the State +banking department, he was declared sane and placed on trial for +embezzlement. Secondly, his sister's plea that his property be put into +her hands as trustee or administrator was thrown out of court and she +herself arrested and confined for perjury on the ground that she had +perjured herself in swearing that she was his next of kin when in +reality his real parents, or so they swore, were alive and in America. +Next, his banks, trust companies and various concerns, including his +great country estate, were swiftly thrown into the hands of receivers +(what an appropriate name!) and wound up "for the benefit of creditors." +All the while X---- was in prison, protesting that he was really not +guilty, that he was solvent, or had been until he was attacked by the +State bank examiner or the department back of him, and that he was the +victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy which was using the State banking +department and other means to drive him out of financial life, and that +solely because of his desire to grow and because by chance he had been +impinging upon one of the choicest and most closely guarded fields of +the ultra-rich of Wall Street--the street railway area in New York and +Brooklyn. + +One day, so he publicly swore to the grand jury, by which he was being +examined, as he was sitting in his great offices, in one of the great +sky-scrapers of New York, which occupied an entire floor and commanded +vast panoramas in every direction (another evidence of the man's insane +"delusion of grandeur," I presume), he was called to answer the +telephone. One Mr. Y----, so his assistant said, one of the eminent +financiers of Wall Street and America, was on the wire. Without any +preliminary and merely asking was this Mr. X---- on the wire, the latter +proceeded, "This is Mr. Y----. Listen closely to what I am going to say. +I want you to get out of the street railway business in New York or +something is going to happen to you. I am giving you a reasonable +warning. Take it." Then the phone clicked most savagely and ominously +and superiorly at the other end. + +"I knew at the time," went on X----, addressing the grand jury, "that I +was really listening to the man who was most powerful in such affairs in +New York and elsewhere and that he meant what he said. At the same time +I was in no position to get out without closing up the one deal which +stood to net me two million dollars clear if I closed it. At the same +time I wanted to enter this field and didn't see why I shouldn't. If I +didn't it spelled not ruin by any means but a considerable loss, a very +great loss, to me, in more ways than one. Oddly enough, just at this +time I was being pressed by those with whom I was associated to wind up +this particular venture and turn my attention to other things. I have +often wondered, in the light of their subsequent actions, why they +should have become so pressing just at this time. At the same time, +perhaps I was a little vain and self-sufficient. I had once got the +better of some agents of another great financier in a Western Power +deal, and I felt that I could put this thing through too. Hence I +refused to heed the warning. However, I found that all those who were +previously interested to buy or at least develop the property were now +suddenly grown cold, and a little later when, having entered on several +other matters, I needed considerable cash, the State banking department +descended on me and, crying fraud and insolvency, closed all my banks. + +"You know how it is when they do this to you. Cry 'Fire!' and you can +nearly wreck a perfectly good theater building. Depositors withdraw, +securities tumble, investigation and legal expenses begin, your +financial associates get frightened or ashamed and desert you. Nothing +is so squeamish or so retiring and nervous as money. Time will show that +I was not insolvent at the time. The books will show a few technically +illegal things, but so would the books or the affairs of any great bank, +especially at this time, if quickly examined. I was doing no more than +all were doing, but they wanted to get me out--and they did." + +Regardless of proceedings of various kinds--legal, technical and the +like--X---- was finally sent to the penitentiary, and spent some time +there. At the same time his confession finally wrecked about nine other +eminent men, financiers all. A dispassionate examination of all the +evidence eight years later caused me to conclude without hesitation that +the man had been a victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy, the object of +which was to oust him from opportunities and to forestall him in methods +which would certainly have led to enormous wealth. He was apparently in +a position and with the brains to do many of the things which the ablest +and coldest financiers of his day had been and were doing, and they did +not want to be bothered with, would not brook, in short, his +approaching rivalry. Like the various usurpers of regal powers in +ancient days, they thought it best to kill a possible claimant to the +throne in his infancy. + +But that youth of his! The long and devious path by which he had come! +Among the papers relating to the case and to a time when he could not +have been more than eighteen, and when he was beginning his career as a +book agent, was a letter written to his mother (August, 1892), which +read: + + "MY DEAR PARENTS: Please answer me at once if I can have anything + of you, or something of you or nothing. Remember this is the first + and the last time in my life that I beg of you anything. You have + given to the other child not $15 but hundreds, and now when I, the + very youngest, ask of you, my parents, $15, are you going to be so + hard-hearted as to refuse me? Without these $15 it is left to me + to be without income for two or three weeks. + + "For God's sake, remember what I ask of you, and send me at once + so that I should cease thinking of it. Leon, as I have told you, + will give me $10, $15 he has already paid for the contract, and + your $15 will make $25. Out of this I need $10 for a ticket and + $15 for two or three weeks' board and lodging. + + "Please answer at once. Don't wait for a minute, and send me the + money or write me one word 'not.' Remember this only that if you + refuse me I will have nothing in common with you. + + "Your son, + "----" + +There was another bit of testimony on the part of one Henry Dom, a +baker, who for some strange reason came forward to identify him as some +one he had known years before in Williamsburgh, which read: + + "I easily recognize them" (X---- and his sister) "from their + pictures in the newspapers. I worked for X----'s father, who was a + baker in Williamsburgh, and frequently addressed letters that were + written by X---- Senior and his wife to Dr. Louise X---- who was + then studying medicine in Philadelphia. X---- was then a boy going + to school, but working in his father's bakery mornings and + evenings. He did not want to do that, moaned a great deal, and his + parents humored him in his attitude. He was very vain, liked to + appear intellectual. They kept saying to their friends that he + should have a fine future. Five years later, after I had left them + once, I met the mother and she told me that X---- was studying + banking and getting along fine." + +Some seven years after the failure and trial by which he had so +summarily been disposed of and after he had been released from prison, I +was standing at a certain unimportant street corner in New York waiting +for a car when I saw him. He was passing in the opposite direction, not +very briskly, and, as I saw, plainly meditatively. He was not so well +dressed. The clothes he wore while good were somehow different, lacking +in that exquisite something which had characterized him years before. +His hat--well, it was a hat, not a Romanoff shako nor a handsome panama +such as he had affected in the old days. He looked tired, a little worn +and dusty, I thought. + +My first impulse was of course to hail him, my second not, since he had +not seen me. It might have been embarrassing, and at any rate he might +not have even remembered me. But as he walked I thought of the great +house by the sea, the studio, the cars, the 40,000 roses, the crowds at +his summer place, the receptions in town and out, Madame of the earrings +(afterward married to a French nobleman), and then of the letter to his +mother as a boy, the broken shoes in the winter time, his denial of his +parents, the telephone message from the financial tiger. "Vanity, +vanity," saith the preacher. The shores of our social seas are strewn +with pathetic wrecks, the whitening bone of half-sand-buried ships. + +At the next corner he paused, a little uncertain apparently as to which +way to go, then turned to the left and was lost. I have never seen nor +heard of him since. + + + + +_The Mighty Rourke_ + + +When I first met him he was laying the foundation for a small dynamo in +the engine-room of the repair shop at Spike, and he was most unusually +loud in his protestations and demands. He had with him a dozen Italians, +all short, swarthy fellows of from twenty-five to fifty years of age, +who were busy bringing material from a car that had been pushed in on +the side-track next to the building. This was loaded with crushed stone, +cement, old boards, wheelbarrows, tools, and the like, all of which were +to be used in the labor that he was about to undertake. He himself was +standing in the doorway of the shop where the work was to be conducted, +coat off, sleeves rolled up, and shouting with true Irish insistence, +"Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Get the shovels, now! Get the picks! Bring +some sand here! Bring some stone! Where's the cement, now? Where's the +cement? Jasus Christ! I must have some cement! What arre ye all doin'? +What do ye think ye're up here fer? Hurry, now, hurry! Bring the +cement!" and then, having concluded this amazing fanfare, calmly turning +to gaze about as if he were the only one in the world who had the right +to stand still. + +More or less oppressed with life myself at the time, I was against all +bosses, and particularly against so seemingly a vicious one as this. +"What a slave driver!" I thought. "What a brute!" And yet I remember +thinking that he was not exactly unpleasant to look at, either--quite +the contrary. He was medium in height, thick of body and neck, with +short gray hair and mustache, and bright, clear, twinkling Irish gray +eyes, and he carried himself with an air of unquestionable authority. It +was much as if he had said, "I am the boss here"; and, indeed, he was. +Is it this that sends the Irish to rule as captains of hundreds the +world over? + +The job he was bossing was not very intricate or important, but it was +interesting. It consisted of digging a trench ten by twelve feet, and +shaping it up with boards into a "form," after which concrete was to be +mixed and poured in, and some iron rods set to fasten the engine to--an +engine bed, no less. It was not so urgent but that it might have been +conducted with far less excitement, but what are you to do when you are +naturally excitable, love to make a great noise, and feel that things +are going forward whether they are or not? Plainly this particular +individual loved noise and a great stir. So eager was he to have done +with it, no matter what it was or where, that he was constantly trotting +to and fro, shouting, "Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Hurry, now, bring the +shovels! Bring the picks!" and occasionally bursting forth with a +perfect avalanche of orders. "Up with it! Down with it! Front with it! +Back with it! In with it! Out with it!" all coupled with his favorite +expletive, "Jasus Christ," which was as innocent of evil, I subsequently +came to know, as a prayer. In short, he was simply wild Irish, and that +was all there was to him--a delightful specimen, like Namgay Doola. + +But, as I say, at the time he seemed positively appalling to me, a +virulent specimen, and I thought, "The Irish brute! To think of human +beings having to work for a brute like that! To think of his driving men +like that!" However, I soon began to discover that he was not so bad as +he seemed, and then I began to like him. + +The thing that brought about this swift change of feeling in me was the +attitude of his men toward him. Although he was so insistent with his +commands, they did not seem to mind nor to strain themselves working. +They were not killing themselves, by any means. He would stand over +them, crying, "Up with it! Up with it! Up with it! Up with it!" or "Down +with it! Down with it! Down with it!" until you would have imagined +their nerves would be worn to a frazzle. As it was, however, they did +not seem to care any more than you would for the ticking of a clock; +rather, they appeared to take it as a matter of course, something that +had to be, and that one was prepared for. Their steps were in the main +as leisurely as those of idlers on Fifth Avenue or Broadway. They +carried boards or stone as one would objects of great value. One could +not help smiling at the incongruity of it; it was farcical. Finally +gathering the full import of it all, I ventured to laugh, and he turned +on me with a sharp and yet not unkindly retort. + +"Ha! ha! ha!" he mocked. "If ye had to work as hard as these min, ye +wouldn't laugh." + +I wanted to say, "Hard work, indeed!" but instead I replied, "Is that +so? Well, I don't see that they're killing themselves, or you either. +You're not as fierce as you sound." + +Then I explained that I was not laughing at them but at him, and he took +it all in good part. Since I was only a nominal laborer here, not a real +one--permitted to work for my health, for twelve cents an hour--we fell +to conversing upon railroad matters, and in this way our period of +friendship began. + +As I learned that morning, Rourke was the foreman-mason for minor tasks +for all that part of the railroad that lay between New York and fifty +miles out, on three divisions. He had a dozen or so men under him and +was in possession of one car, which was shunted back and forth between +the places in which he happened to be working. He was a builder of +concrete platforms, culverts, coal-bins, sidewalks, bridge and building +piers, and, in fact, anything that could be made out of crushed stone +and cement, or bricks and stone, and he was sent here and there, as +necessity required. As he explained to me at the time, he sometimes rose +as early as four a.m. in order to get to his place of labor by seven. +The great railroad company for which he toiled was no gentle master, and +did not look upon his ease, or that of his men, as important. At the +same time, as he himself confessed, he did not mind hard work--liked it, +in short. He had been working now for the company for all of twenty-two +years, "rain or shine." Darkness or storm made no difference to him. +"Shewer, I have to be there," he observed once with his quizzical, +elusive Irish grin. "They're not payin' me wages fer lyin' in bed. If ye +was to get up that way yerself every day fer a year, me b'y," he added, +eyeing my spare and none too well articulated frame, "it'd make a man av +ye." + +"Yes?" I said tolerantly. "And how much do you get, Rourke?" + +"Two an' a half a day." + +"You don't say!" I replied, pretending admiration. + +The munificence of the corporation that paid him two and a half dollars +a day for ten hours' work, as well as for superintending and +constructing things of such importance, struck me forcibly. Perhaps, as +we say in America, he "had a right" to be happy, only I could not see +it. At the same time, I could not help thinking that he was better +situated than myself at the time. I had been ill, and was now earning +only twelve cents an hour for ten hours' work, and the sight of the +foreman for whom I was working was a torture to my soul. He was such a +loud-mouthed, blustering, red-headed ignoramus, and I wanted to get out +from under him. At the same time, I was not without sufficient influence +so to do, providing I could find a foreman who could make use of me. The +great thing was to do this, and the more I eyed this particular specimen +of foreman the better I liked him. He was genial, really kindly, +amazingly simple and sincere. I decided to appeal to him to take me on +his staff. + +"How would you like to take me, Mr. Rourke, and let me work for you?" I +asked hopefully, after explaining to him why I was here. + +"Shewer," he replied. "Ye'd do fine." + +"Would I have to work with the Italians?" I asked, wondering how I would +make out with a pick and shovel. My frame was so spare at the time that +the question must have amused him, considering the type of physique +required for day labor. + +"There'll be plenty av work fer ye to do without ever yer layin' a hand +to a pick er shovel," he replied comfortingly. "Shewer, that's no work +fer white min. Let the nagurs do it. Look at their backs an' arrms, an' +then look at yers." + +I was ready to blush for shame. These poor Italians whom I was so ready +to contemn were immeasurably my physical superiors. + +"But why do you call them negroes, Rourke?" I asked after a time. +"They're not black." + +"Well, bedad, they're not white, that's waan thing shewer," he added. +"Aany man can tell that be lookin' at thim." + +I had to smile. It was so dogmatic and unreasoning. + +"Very well, then, they're black," I said, and we left the matter. + +Not long after I put in a plea to be transferred to him, at his request, +and it was granted. The day that I joined his flock, or gang, as he +called it, he was at Williamsbridge, a little station north on the +Harlem, building a concrete coal-bin. It was a pretty place, surrounded +by trees and a grass-plot, a vast improvement upon a dark indoor shop, +and seemed to me a veritable haven of rest. Ah, the smiling morning sun, +the green leaves, the gentle fresh winds of heaven! + +Rourke was down in an earthen excavation under the depot platform when I +arrived, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, and +when I looked in on him hopefully he looked up and smiled. + +"So here ye arre at last," he said with a grin. + +"Yes," I laughed. + +"Well, ye're jist in time; I waant ye to go down to the ahffice." + +"Certainly," I replied, but before I could say more he climbed out of +his hole, his white jeans odorous of the new-turned earth, and fished in +the pocket of an old gray coat which lay beside him for a soiled and +crumpled letter, which he finally unfolded with his thick, clumsy +fingers. Then he held it up and looked at it defiantly. + +"I waant ye to go to Woodlawn," he continued, "an' look after some bolts +that arre up there--there's a keg av thim--an' sign the bill fer thim, +an' ship thim down to me. An' thin I waant ye to go down to the ahffice +an' take thim this o.k." Here again he fished around and produced +another crumpled slip, this time of a yellow color (how well I came to +know them!), which I soon learned was an o.k. blank, a form which had to +be filled in and signed for everything received, if no more than a stick +of wood or a nail or a bolt. The company demanded these of all foremen, +in order to keep its records straight. Its accounting department was +useless without them. At the same time, Rourke kept talking of the +"nonsinse av it," and the "onraisonableness" of demanding o.k.s for +everything. "Ye'd think some one was goin' to sthale thim from thim," he +declared irritably and defiantly. + +I saw at once that some infraction of the railroad rules had occurred +and that he had been "called down," or "jacked up" about it, as the +railroad men expressed it. He was in a high state of dudgeon, and as +defiant and pugnacious as his royal Irish temper would allow. At the +same time he was pleased to think that I or some one had arrived who +would relieve him of this damnable "nonsinse," or so he hoped. He was +not so inexperienced as not to imagine that I could help him with all +this. In fact, as time proved, this was my sole reason for being here. + +He flung a parting shot at his superior as I departed. + +"Tell him that I'll sign fer thim when I get thim, an' not before," he +declared. + +I went on my way, knowing full well that no such message was for +delivery, and that he did not intend that it should be. It was just the +Irish of it. I went off to Woodlawn and secured the bolts, after which I +went down to the "ahffice" and reported. There I found the chief clerk, +a mere slip of a dancing master in a high collar and attractive office +suit, who was also in a high state of dudgeon because Rourke, as he now +explained, had failed to render an o.k. for this and other things, and +did not seem to understand that he, the chief clerk, must have them to +make up his reports. Sometimes o.k.s did not come in for a month or +more, the goods lying around somewhere until Rourke could use them. He +wanted to know what explanation Rourke had to offer, and when I +suggested that the latter thought, apparently, that he could leave all +consignments of goods in one station or another until such time as he +needed them before he o.k.ed for them, he fairly foamed. + +"Say," he almost shouted, at the same time shoving his hands +distractedly through his hair, "what does he think I am? How does he +think I'm going to make up my books? He'll leave them there until he +needs them, will he? Well, he's a damned fool, and you go back and tell +him I said so. He's been long enough on the road to know better. You go +back and tell him I said that I want a signed form for everything +consigned to him the moment he learns that it's waiting for him, and I +want it right away, without fail, whether it's a single nut or a car of +sand. I want it. He's got to come to time about this now, or something's +going to drop. I'm not going to stand it any longer. How does he think +I'm going to make up my books? I wish he'd let you attend to these +matters while you're up there. It will save an awful lot of trouble in +this office and it may save him his job. There's one thing sure: he's +got to come to time from now on, or either he quits or I do." + +These same o.k.s plus about twenty-five long-drawn-out reports or +calculations, retroactive and prospective, covering every possible +detail of his work from the acknowledgment of all material received up +to and including the expenditure of even so much as one mill's worth of +paper, were the bane of my good foreman's life. As I learned afterward, +he had nearly his whole family, at least a boy and two girls, assisting +him nights on this part of the work. In addition, while they were +absolutely of no import in so far as the actual work of construction was +concerned--and that was really all that interested Rourke--they were an +essential part of the system which made it possible for him to do the +work at all--a point which he did not seem to be able to get clear. At +the same time, there was an unsatisfactory side to this office +technicalia, and it was this: If a man could only sit down and reel off +a graphic account of all that he was doing, accompanied by facts and +figures, he was in excellent standing with his superiors, no matter what +his mechanical defects might be; whereas, if his reports were not clear, +or were insufficient, the efficiency of his work might well be +overlooked. In a vague way, Rourke sensed this and resented it. He knew +that his work was as good as could be done, and yet here were these +constant reports and o.k.s to irritate and delay him. Apparently they +aided actual construction no whit--but, of course, they did. Although he +was a better foreman than most, still, because of his lack of skill in +this matter of accounting, he was looked upon as more or less a failure, +especially by the chief clerk. Naturally, I explained that I would do my +best, and came away. + +When I returned, however, I decided to be politic. I could not very well +work with a pick and shovel, and this was about all that was left +outside of that. I therefore explained as best I could the sad plight of +the chief clerk, who stood in danger of losing his job unless these +things came in promptly. + +"You see how it is, Rourke, don't you?" I pleaded. + +He seemed to see, but he was still angry. + +"An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!" he echoed contentiously, but in a +somewhat more conciliatory spirit. "He wants an o.k. blank, does he? +Well, I expect ye might as well give thim to him, thin. I think the man +lives on thim things, the way he's aalways caallin' fer thim. Ye'd think +I was a bookkeeper an' foreman at the same time; it's somethin' aaful. +An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!" and he sputtered to silence. + +A little while later he humorously explained that he had "clane forgot +thim, anyhow." + +The ensuing month was a busy one for us. We had a platform to lay at +Morrisania, a chimney to build at Tarrytown, a sidewalk to lay at White +Plains, and a large cistern to dig and wall in at Tuckahoe. Besides +these, there were platforms to build at Van Cortlandt and Mount Kisco, +water-towers at Highbridge and Ardsley, a sidewalk and drain at Caryl, a +culvert and an ash-pit at Bronx Park, and some forty concrete piers for +a building at Melrose--all of which required any amount of running and +figuring, to say nothing of the actual work of superintending and +constructing, which Rourke alone could look after. It seemed ridiculous +to me at the time that any one doing all this hard practical labor +should not be provided with a clerk or an accountant to take at least +some of this endless figuring off his hands. At the same time, if he had +been the least bit clever, he could have provided himself with one +permanently by turning one of his so-called laborers into a +clerk--carrying a clerk as a laborer--but plainly it had never occurred +to him. He depended on his family. The preliminary labor alone of +ordering and seeing that the material was duly shipped and unloaded was +one man's work; and yet Rourke was expected to do it all. + +In spite of all this, however, he displayed himself a masterful worker. +I have never seen a better. He preferred to superintend, of course, to +get down into the pit or up on the wall, and measure and direct. At the +same time, when necessary to expedite a difficult task, he would toil +for hours at a stretch with his trowel and his line and his level and +his plumb-bob, getting the work into shape, and you would never hear a +personal complaint from him concerning the weariness of labor. On the +contrary, he would whistle and sing until something went wrong, when +suddenly you would hear the most terrific uproar of words: "Come out av +that! Come out, now! Jasus Christ, man, have ye no sinse at aall? Put it +down! Put it down! What arre ye doin'? What did I tell ye? Have ye no +raison in ye, no sinse, ye h'athen nagur?" + +"Great heavens!" I used to think, "what has happened now?" + +You would have imagined the most terrible calamity; and yet, all told, +it might be nothing of any great import--a little error of some kind, +more threatening than real, and soon adjusted. It might last for a few +moments, during which time the Italians would be seen hurrying excitedly +to and fro; and then there would come a lull, and Rourke would be heard +to raise his voice in tuneful melody, singing or humming or whistling +some old-fashioned Irish "Come-all-ye." + +But the thing in Rourke that would have pleased any one was his ready +grasp for the actualities of life--his full-fledged knowledge that work +is the thing, not argument, or reports, or plans, but the direct +accomplishment of something tangible, the thing itself. Thus, while I +was working with him, at least nothing that might concern the clerical +end of the labor could disturb him, but, if the sky fell, and eight +thousand chief clerks threatened to march upon him in a body demanding +reports and o.k.s, he would imperturbably make you wait until the work +was done. Once, when I interrupted him to question him concerning some +of these same wretched, pestering aftermaths of labor, concerning which +he alone could answer, he shut me off with: "The reports! The reports! +What good arre the reports! Ye make me sick. What have the reports to do +with the work? If it wasn't fer the work, where would the reports be?" +And I heartily echoed "Where?" + +Another thing was his charming attitude toward his men, kindly and sweet +for all his storming, that innate sense of something intimate and +fatherly. He had a way of saying kindly things in a joking manner which +touched them. When he arrived in the morning, for instance, it was +always in the cheeriest way that he began. "Come, now, b'ys, ye have a +good day's work before ye today. Get the shovels, Jimmie. Bring the +line, Matt!" and then he would go below himself, if below it was, and +there would be joy and peace until some obstacle to progress interfered. +I might say in passing that Matt and Jimmie, his faithful henchmen, were +each between forty and fifty, if they were a day--poor, gnarled, dusty, +storm-tossed Italians who had come from heaven knows where, had endured +God knows what, and were now rounding out a work-a-day existence under +the sheltering wing of this same Rourke, a great and protecting power to +them. + +This same Matt was a funny little Italian, soft of voice and gentle of +manner, whom Rourke liked very much, but with whom he loved to quarrel. +He would go down in any hole where the latter was working, and almost +invariably shortly after you would hear the most amazing uproar issuing +therefrom, shouts of: "Put it here, I say! Put it here! Down with it! +Here! Here! Jasus Christ, have ye no sinse at aall?"--coupled, of +course, with occasional guttural growls from Matt, who was by no means +in awe of his master and who feared no personal blows. The latter had +been with Rourke for so long that he was not in the least overawed by +his yelling and could afford to take such liberties. Occasionally, not +always, Rourke would come climbing out of the hole, his face and neck +fairly scarlet with heat, raging and shouting, "I'll get shut av ye! +I'll have no more thruck with ye, ye blitherin', crazy loon! What good +arre ye? What work can ye do? Naathin'! Naathin'! I'll be shut av ye +now, an' thin maybe I'll have a little p'ace." Then he would dance +around and threaten and growl until something else would take his +attention, when he would quiet down and be as peaceful as ever. Somehow, +I always felt that in spite of all the difficulties involved, he enjoyed +these rows--must fight, in short, to be happy. Sometimes he would go +home without saying a word to Matt, a conclusion which at first I +imagined portended the end of the latter, but soon I came to know +better. For the next morning Matt would reappear as unconcernedly as +though nothing had happened, and Rourke would appear not to notice or +remember. + +Once, anent all this, I said to him, "Rourke, how many times have you +threatened to discharge Matt in the last three years?" + +"Shewer," he replied, with his ingratiating grin, "a man don't mane aall +he says aall the time." + +The most humorous of all his collection of workingmen, however, was the +aforementioned Jimmie, a dark, mild-eyed, soft-spoken Calabrian, who had +the shrewdness of a Machiavelli and the pertness of a crow. He lived in +the same neighborhood as Rourke, far out in one of those small towns on +the Harlem, sheltering so many Italians, for, like a hen with a brood +of chicks, Rourke kept all his Italians gathered close about him. +Jimmie, curiously, was the one who was always selected to run his family +errands for him, a kind of valet to Rourke, as it were--selected for +some merit I could never discover, certainly not one of speed. He was +nevertheless constantly running here and there like an errand boy, his +worn, dusty, baggy clothes making him look like a dilapidated bandit +fresh from a sewer. On the job, however, no matter what it might be, +Jimmie could never be induced to do real, hard work. He was always above +it, or busy with something else. But as he was an expert cement-mixer +and knew just how to load and unload the tool-car, two sinecures of +sorts, nothing was ever said to him. If any one dared to reprove him, +myself for instance (a mere interloper to Jimmie), he would reply: "Yeh! +Yeh! I know-a my biz. I been now with Misha Rook fifteen year. I know-a +my biz." If you made any complaint to Rourke, he would merely grin and +say, "Ha! Jimmie's the sharp one," or perhaps, "I'll get ye yet, ye +fox," but more than that nothing was ever done. + +One day, however, Jimmie failed to comply with an extraordinary order of +Rourke's, which, while it resulted in no real damage, produced a most +laughable and yet characteristic scene. A strict rule of the company was +that no opening of any kind into which a person might possibly step or +fall should be left uncovered at any station during the approach, stay, +or departure of any train scheduled to stop at that station. Rourke was +well aware of this rule. He had a copy of it on file in his collection +of circulars. In addition, he had especially delegated Jimmie to attend +to this matter, a task which just suited the Italian as it gave him +ample time to idle about and pretend to be watching. This it was which +made the crime all the greater. + +On this particular occasion Jimmie had failed to attend to this matter. +We had been working on the platform at Williamsbridge, digging a pit for +a coal-bin, when a train bearing the general foreman came along. The +latter got off at the station especially to examine the work that had +been done so far. When the train arrived there was the hole wide open +with Rourke below shouting and gesticulating about something, and +totally unconscious, of course, that his order had been neglected. The +general foreman, who was, by the way, I believe, an admirer of Rourke, +came forward, looked down, and said quietly: "This won't do, Rourke. +You'll have to keep the work covered when a train is approaching. I've +told you that before, you know." + +Rourke looked up, so astonished and ashamed that he should have been put +in such a position before his superior that he hardly knew what to say. +I doubt if any one ever had a greater capacity for respecting his +superiors, anyhow. Instead of trying to answer, he merely choked and +began to shout for Jimmie, who came running, crying, as he always did, +"What's da mat'? What's da mat'?" + +"What's da mat'? What's da mat'?" mocked Rourke, fairly seething with a +marvelous Irish fury. "What the devil do ye suppose is the mat'? What do +ye mane be waalkin' away an' l'avin' the hole uncovered? Didn't I tell +ye niver to l'ave a hole when a train's comin'? Didn't I tell ye to +attind to that an' naathin' else? An' now what have ye been doin'? Be +all the powers, what d'ye mane be l'avin' it? What else arre ye good +fer? What d'ye mane be lettin' a thing like that happen, an' Mr. Wilson +comin' along here, an' the hole open?" + +He was as red as a beet, purple almost, perspiring, apoplectic. During +all this tirade Mr. Wilson, a sad, dark, anaemic-looking person, troubled +with acute indigestion, I fancy, stood by with an amused, kindly, and +yet mock severe expression on his face. I am sure he did not wish to be +severe. + +Jimmie, dumbfounded, scarcely knew what to say. In the face of Rourke's +rage and the foreman's presence, he did his best to remedy his error by +covering the hole, at the same time stuttering something about going for +a trowel. + +"A trowel!" cried Rourke, glaring at him. "A trowel, ye h'athen ginny! +What'd ye be doin' lookin' fer a trowel, an' a train comin' that close +on ye it could 'a' knocked ye off the thrack? An' the hole open, an' Mr. +Wilson right here! Is that what I told ye? Is that what I pay ye fer? Be +all the saints! A trowel, is it? I'll trowel ye! I'll break yer h'athen +Eyetalian skull, I will. Get thim boards on, an' don't let me ketch ye +l'avin' such a place as that open again. I'll get shut av ye, ye +blitherin' lunatic." + +When it was all over and the train bearing the general foreman had +gone, Rourke quieted down, but not without many fulgurous flashes that +kept the poor Italian on tenterhooks. + +About an hour later, however, another train arrived, and, by reason of +some intervening necessity and the idle, wandering mood of the Italian, +the hole was open again. Jimmie was away behind the depot somewhere, +smoking perhaps, and Rourke was, as usual, down in the hole. This time +misfortune trebled itself, however, by bringing, not the general +foreman, but the supervisor himself, a grave, quiet man, of whom Rourke +stood in the greatest awe. He was so solid, so profound, so severe. I +don't believe I ever saw him smile. He walked up to the hole, and +looking reproachfully down, said: "Is this the way you leave your +excavations, Rourke, when a train is coming? Don't you know better than +to do a thing like that?" + +"Jimmie!" shouted Rourke, leaping to the surface of the earth with a +bound, "Jimmie! Now, be Jasus, where is that bla'guard Eyetalian? Didn't +I tell him not to l'ave this place open!" and he began shoving the +planks into place himself. + +Jimmie, suddenly made aware of this new catastrophe, came running as +fast as his short legs would carry him, scared almost out of his wits. +He was as pale as a very dark and dirty Italian could be, and so wrought +up that his facial expression changed involuntarily from moment to +moment. Rourke was in a fairly murderous mood, only he was so excited +and ashamed that he could not speak. Here was the supervisor, and here +was himself, and conditions--necessity for order, etc.--would not permit +him to kill the Italian in the former's presence. He could only choke +and wait. To think that he should be made a mark of like this, and that +in the face of his great supervisor! His face and neck were a beet-red, +and his eyes flashed with anger. He merely glared at his recalcitrant +henchman, as much as to say, "Wait!" When this train had departed and +the dignified supervisor had been carried safely out of hearing he +turned on Jimmie with all the fury of a masterful and excitable temper. + +"So ye'll naht cover the hole, after me tellin' ye naht fifteen minutes +ago, will ye?" he shouted. "Ye'll naht cover the hole! An' what'll ye be +tellin' me ye was doin' now?" + +"I carry da waut (water) for da concrete," pleaded Jimmie weakly. + +"Waut fer the concrete," almost moaned Rourke, so great was his fury, +his angry face shoved close to the Italian's own. "Waut fer the +concrete, is it? It's a pity ye didn't fall into yer waut fer the +concrete, ye damned nagur, an' drown! Waut fer the concrete, is it, an' +me here, an' Mr. Mills steppin' off an' lookin' in on me, ye +black-hearted son of a Eyetalian, ye! I'll waut fer the concrete ye! +I'll crack yer blitherin' Eyetalian skull with a pick, I will! I'll +chuck ye in yer waut fer the concrete till ye choke, ye flat-footed, +leather-headed lunatic! I'll tache ye to waalk aaf an' l'ave the hole +open, an' me in it. Now, be Jasus, get yer coat an' get out av this. +Get--I'm tellin' ye! I'll have no more thruck with ye! I'll throuble no +more with ye. Ye're no damned good. Out with ye! An' niver show me yer +face again!" And he made a motion as if he would grab him and rend him +limb from limb. + +Jimmie, well aware of his dire position, was too clever, however, to let +Rourke seize him. During all this conversation he had been slowly +backing away, always safely beyond Rourke's reach, and now ran--an +amazing feat for him. He had evidently been through many such scenes +before. He retreated first behind the depot, and then when Rourke had +gone to work once more down in his hole, came back and took a safe +position on guard over the hitherto sadly neglected opening. When the +next train came he was there to shove the boards over before it neared +the station, and nothing more was said about the matter. Rourke did not +appear to notice him. He did not even seem to see that he was there. The +next morning, however, when the latter came to work as usual, it was, +"Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie!" just as if nothing had happened. I was never +more astonished in my life. + +An incident, even more ridiculous, but illustrative of the atmosphere in +which Rourke dwelt, occurred at Highbridge one frosty October Sunday +morning, where because of seepage from a hill which threatened to +undermine some tracks, Rourke was ordered to hurry and build a drain--a +thing which, because the order came on Saturday afternoon, required +Sunday labor, a most unusual thing in his case. But in spite of the +order, Rourke, who was a good Catholic, felt impelled before coming to +go to at least early mass, and in addition--a regular Sunday practice +with him, I presume--to put on a long-skirted Prince Albert coat, which +I had never seen before and which lent to his stocky figure some amusing +lines. It was really too tight, having been worn, I presume, every +Sunday regularly since his wedding day. In addition, he had donned a +brown derby hat which, to me at least, gave him a most unfamiliar look. + +I, being curious more than anything else and wishing to be out of doors +as much as possible, also went up, arriving on the scene about nine. +Rourke did not arrive until ten. In the meantime, I proceeded to build +myself a fire on the dock, for we were alongside the Harlem River and a +brisk wind was blowing. Then Rourke came, fresh from church, smiling and +genial, in the most cheerful Sunday-go-to-meeting frame of mind, but +plainly a little conscious of his grand garb. + +"My," I said, surveying him, "you look fine. I never saw you dressed up +before." + +"L'ave aaf with yer taalk," he replied. "I know well enough how I +look--good enough." + +Then he bestirred himself about the task of examining what had been done +so far. But I could see, in spite of all the busy assurance with which +he worked, that he was still highly conscious of his clothes and a +little disturbed by what I or others might think. His every-day garb +plainly suited his mood much better. + +Everything went smoothly until noon, not a cloud in the sky, when, +looking across the tracks at that hour, I beheld coming toward us with +more or less uncertain step another individual, stocky of figure and +evidently bent on seeing Rourke--an Irishman as large as Rourke, +younger, and, if anything, considerably coarser in fiber. He was very +red-faced, smooth shaven, with a black derby hat pulled down over his +eyes and wearing a somewhat faded tight-fitting brown suit. He was +drunk, or nearly so, that was plain from the first. From the moment +Rourke beheld him he seemed beside himself with anger or irritation. His +expression changed completely and he began to swell, as was customary +with him when he was angry, as though suffering from an internal +eruption of some kind. + +"The bla'guard!" I heard him mutter. "Now, be gob, what'll that felly +be waantin'?" and then as the stranger drew nearer, "Who was it tould +him I was here? Maybe some waan at the ahffice." + +Regardless of his speculations on this score, the stranger picked his +way across the tracks and came directly to him, his face and manner +indicating no particularly friendly frame of mind. + +"Maybe ye'll be lettin' me have that money now," he began instanter, and +when Rourke made no reply, merely staring at him, he added, "I'll be +waantin' to know now, when it is ye're goin' to give me the rest av me +time fer that Scarborough job. I've been waitin' long enough." + +Rourke stirred irritably and aggressively before he spoke. He seemed +greatly put out, shamed, to think that the man should come here so, +especially on this peaceful Sabbath morning. + +"I've tould ye before," he replied defiantly after a time, "that ye've +had aall ye earned, an' more. Ye left me without finishin' yer work, an' +ye'll get no more time from me. If ye waant more, go down to the ahffice +an' see if they'll give it to ye. I have no money fer ye here," and he +resumed a comfortable position before the fire, his hands behind his +back. + +"It's siven dollars ye still owe me," returned the other, ignoring +Rourke's reply, "an' I waant it now." + +"Well, ye'll naht get it," replied my boss. "I've naathin' fer ye, I'm +tellin' ye. I owe ye naathin'." + +"Is that so?" returned the other. "Well, we'll see about that. Ye'll be +after givin' it to me, er I'll get it out of ye somehow. It's naht goin' +to be ch'ated out av me money I am." + +"I'm owin' ye naathin'," insisted Rourke. "Ye may as well go away from +here. Ye'll get naathin'. If ye waant anything more, go an' see the +ahffice," and now he strode away to where the Italians were, ignoring +the stranger completely and muttering something about his being drunk. +The latter followed him, however, over to where he stood, and continued +the dispute. Rourke ignored him as much as possible, only exclaiming +once, "L'ave me be, man. Ye're drunk." + +"I'm naht drunk," returned the other. "Once an' fer all now, I'm askin' +ye, arre ye goin' to give me that money?" + +"No," replied Rourke, "I'm naht." + +"Belave me," said the stranger, "I'll get it out av ye somehow," but for +the moment he made no move, merely hanging about in an uncertain way. He +seemed to have no definite plan for collecting the money, or if he had +he had by now abandoned it. + +Without paying any more attention to him, Rourke, still very irritated +and defiant, returned to the fire. He tried to appear calm and +indifferent, but the ex-workman, a non-union mason, I judged, followed +after, standing before him and staring in the defiant, irritating way a +drunken man will, not quite able to make up his mind what else to do. +Presently Rourke, more to relieve the tedium of an embarrassing +situation than anything else (a number of accusatory remarks having been +passed), turned and began poking at the blaze, finally bending over to +lay on a stick of wood. On the instant, and as if seized by sudden +inspiration, whether because the tails of Rourke's long coat hung out in +a most provoking fashion and suggested the thing that followed or not, I +don't know, but now the red-faced intruder jumped forward, and seizing +them in a most nimble and yet vigorous clutch, gave an amazing yank, +which severed them straight up the back, from seat to nape, at the same +time exclaiming: + +"Ye'll naht pay me, will ye? Ye'll naht, will ye?" + +On the instant a tremendous change came over the scene. It was as swift +as stage play. Instantly Rourke was upright and faced about, shouting, +"Now, be gob, ye've torn me coat, have ye! Now I'll tache ye! Now I'll +show ye! Wait! Get ready, now. Now I'll fix ye, ye drunken, thavin' +loafer," and at the same time he began to move upon the enemy in a kind +of rhythmic, cryptic circle (some law governing anger and emotion, I +presume), the while his hands opened and shut and his eyes looked as +though they would be veiled completely by his narrowing lids. At the +same time the stranger, apparently seeing his danger, began backing and +circling in the same way around Rourke, as well as around the fire, +until it looked as though they were performing a war dance. Round and +round they went like two Hopi bucks or Zulu warriors, their faces +displaying the most murderous cunning and intention to slay--only, +instead of feathers and beads, they had on their negligible best. All +the while Rourke was calling, "Come on, now! Get ready, now! I'll show +ye, now! I'll fix ye, now! It's me coat ye'll rip, is it? Come on, now! +Get ready! Make yerself ready! I'm goin' to give ye the lickin' av yer +life! Come on, now! Come on, now! Come on, now!" + +It was as though each had been secreted from the other and had to be +sought out in some mysterious manner and in a circle. In spite of the +feeling of distress that an impending struggle of this kind gives one, I +could not help noting the comic condition of Rourke's back--the long +coat beautifully ripped straight up the back, its ends fluttering in the +wind like fans, and exposing his waistcoat and Sunday boiled white +shirt--and laying up a laugh for the future. It was too ridiculous. The +stranger had a most impressive and yet absurd air of drunken sternness +written in his face, a do-or-die look. + +Whether anything serious would really have happened I was never +permitted to learn, for now, in addition to myself and the Italians, all +of them excited and ready to defend their lord and master, some +passengers from the nearby station and the street above as well as a +foreman of a section gang helping at this same task, a great hulking +brute of a man who looked quite able to handle both Rourke and his +opponent at one and the same time, came forward and joined in this +excited circle. Considerable effort was made on the part of the latter +to learn just what the trouble was, after which the big foreman +interposed with: + +"What's the trouble here? Come, now! What's all this row, Rourke? Ye +wouldn't fight here, would ye? Have him arristed, er go to his home--ye +say ye know him--but don't be fightin' here. Supposin' waan av the +bosses should be comin' along now?" and at the same time he interposed +his great bulk between the two. + +Rourke, quieted some by this interruption but still sputtering with rage +and disgrace, shouted, "Lookit me coat! Lookit what he done to me coat! +See what he done to me coat! Man alive, d'ye think I'm goin' to stand +fer the likes av that? It's naht me that can be waalked on by a loafer +like that--an' me payin' him more than ever he was worth, an' him +waalkin' aaf an' l'avin' the job half done. I'll fix him this time. I'll +show him. I'll tache him to be comin' around an' disturbin' a man when +he's at his work. I'll fix him now," and once more he began to move. But +the great foreman was not so easily to be disposed of. + +"Well then, let's caall the police," he argued in a highly conciliatory +mood. "Ye can't be fightin' him here. Sure, ye don't waant to do that. +What'll the chafe think? What is it ye'll think av yerself?" + +At the same time he turned to find the intruder and demand to know what +he meant by it, but the latter had already decamped. Seeing the crowd +that had and was gathering, and that he was likely to encounter more +forms of trouble than he had anticipated, he had started down the track +toward Mott Haven. + +"I'll fix ye!" Rourke shouted when he saw him going. "Ye'll pay fer +this. I'll have ye arristed. Wait! Ye'll naht get aaf so aisy this +time." + +But just the same the storm was over for the present, anyhow, the man +gone, and in a little while Rourke left for his home at Mount Vernon to +repair his tattered condition. I never saw a man so crestfallen, nor one +more determined to "have the laa on him" in my life. Afterwards, when I +inquired very cautiously what he had done about it--this was a week or +two later--he replied, "Shewer, what can ye do with a loafer like that? +He has no money, an' lockin' him up won't help his wife an' children +any." + +Thus ended a perfect scene out of Kilkenny. + +It was not so very long after I arrived that Rourke began to tell me of +a building which the company was going to erect in Mott Haven Yard, one +of its great switching centers. It was to be an important affair, +according to him, sixty by two hundred feet in breadth and length, of +brick and stone, and was to be built under a time limit of three months, +an arrangement by which the company hoped to find out how satisfactorily +it could do work for itself rather than by outside contract, which it +was always hoping to avoid. From his manner and conversation, I judged +that Rourke was eager to get this job, for he had been a contractor of +some ability in his day before he ever went to work for the company, and +felt, I am sure, that fate had done him an injustice in not allowing him +to remain one. In addition, he felt a little above the odds and ends of +masonry that he was now called on to do, where formerly he had done so +much more important work. He was eager to be a real foreman once more, a +big one, and to show the company that he could erect this building and +thus make a little place for himself in the latter's good graces, +although to what end I could not quite make out. He would never have +made a suitable general foreman. At the same time, he was a little +afraid of the clerical details, those terrible nightmares of reports, +o.k.s and the like. + +"How arre ye feelin', Teddy, b'y?" he often inquired of me during this +period, with a greater show of interest in my troublesome health than +ever before. I talked of leaving, I suppose, from time to time because +sheer financial necessity was about to compel it. + +"Fine, Rourke," I would say, "never better. I'm feeling better every +day." + +"That's good. Ye're the right man in the right place now. If ye was to +sthay a year er two at this work it would be the makin' av ye. Ye're too +thin. Ye need more chist," and he would tap my bony chest in a kindly +manner. "I niver have a sick day, meself." + +"That's right, Rourke," I replied pleasantly, feeling keenly the need of +staying by so wonderful a lamp of health. "I intend to stick at it as +long as I can." + +"Ye ought to; it'll do ye good. If we get the new buildin' to build, +it'll be better yet for ye. Ye'll have plenty to do there to relave yer +mind." + +"Relieve, indeed!" I thought, but I did not say so. On the contrary I +felt so much sympathy for this lusty Irishman and his reasonable +ambitions that I desired to help him, and urged him to get it. I +suggested indirectly that I would see him through, which touched him +greatly. He was a grateful creature in his way, but so excitable and so +helplessly self-reliant that there was no way of aiding him without +doing it in a secret or rather self-effacing manner. He would have much +preferred to struggle along alone and fail, though I doubt whether real +failure could have come to Rourke so essentially capable was he. + +In another three weeks the work was really given him to do, and then +began one of the finest exhibitions of Irish domination and +self-sufficiency that I have ever witnessed. We moved to Mott Haven +Yard, a great network of tracks and buildings, in the center of which +this new building was to be erected. Rourke was given a large force of +men, whom he fairly gloried in bossing. He had as many as forty +Italians, to say nothing of a number of pseudo-carpenters and masons +(not those shrewd hawks clever enough to belong to the union, but +wasters and failures of another type) who did the preliminary work of +digging for the foundation, etc. Handling these, Rourke was in his +element. He loved to see so much brisk work going on. He would trot to +and fro about the place, beaming in the most angelic fashion, and +shouting orders that could be heard all over the neighborhood. It was +delicious to watch him. At times he would stand by the long trenches +where the men were digging for the foundation, a great line of them, +their backs bent over their work, and rub his hands in pleasingly human +satisfaction, saying, "We're goin' along fine, Teddy. I can jist see me +way to the top av the buildin'," and then he would proceed to harass and +annoy his men out of pure exuberance of spirits. + +"Ye waant to dig it so, man," or, "Ye don't handle yer pick right; can't +ye see that? Hold it this way." Sometimes he would get down in the +trench and demonstrate just how it was to be done, a thing which greatly +amused some of the workmen. Frequently he would exhibit to me little +tricks or knacks of his trade, such as throwing a trowel ten feet so +that it would stick in a piece of wood; turning a shovel over with a +lump of dirt on it and not dropping the lump, and similar simple acts, +always adding, "Ye'll niver be a mason till ye can do that." + +When he was tired of fussing with the men outside he would come around +to the little wooden shed, where I was keeping the mass of orders and +reports in shape and getting his material ready for him, and look over +the papers in the most knowing manner. When he had satisfied himself +that everything was going right, he would exclaim, "Ye're jist the b'y +fer the place, Teddy. Ye'd made a good bookkeeper. If ever I get to be +Prisident, I'll make ye me Sicretary av State." + +But the thing which really interested and enthralled Rourke was the +coming of the masons--those hardy buccaneers of the laboring world who +come and go as they please, asking no favors and brooking no +interference. Plainly he envied them their reckless independence at the +same time that he desired to control their labor in his favor--a task +worthy of the shrewdest diplomat. Never in my life have I seen such a +gay, ruthless, inconsiderate point of view as these same union masons +represented, a most astounding lot. They were--are, I suppose I should +say--our modern buccaneers and Captain Kidds of the laboring world, +demanding, if you please, their six a day, starting and stopping almost +when they please, doing just as little as they dare and yet face their +own decaying conscience, dropping any task at the most critical and +dangerous point, and in other ways rejoicing in and disporting +themselves in such a way as to annoy the representatives of any +corporation great or small that suffered the sad compulsion of employing +them. Seriously, I am not against union laborers. I like them. They +spell rude, blazing life. But when you have to deal with them! + +Plainly, Rourke anticipated endless rows. Their coming promised him the +opportunity he inmostly desired, I suppose, of once more fussing and +fuming with real, strong, determined and pugnacious men like himself, +who would not take his onslaughts tamely but would fight him back, as he +wished strong men to do. He was never weary of talking of them. + +"Wait till we have thirty er forty av thim on the line," he once +observed to me in connection with them, "every man layin' his six +hundred bricks a day, er takin' aaf his apron! Thim's the times ye'll +see what excitement manes, me b'y. Thim's the times." + +"What'll I see, Rourke?" I asked interestedly. + +"Throuble enough. Shewer, they're no crapin' Eyetalians, that'll let ye +taalk to thim as ye pl'ase. Indade not. Ye'll have to fight with them +fellies." + +"Well, that's a queer state of affairs," I remarked, and then added, "Do +you think you can handle them, Rourke?" + +"Handle thim!" he exclaimed, his glorious wrath kindling in anticipation +of a possible conflict. "Handle thim, an' the likes av a thousand av +thim! I know them aall, every waan av thim, an' their thricks. It's naht +foolin' me they'll be. But, me b'y," he added instructively, "it's a +fine job ye'll have runnin' down to the ahffice gettin' their time." +(This is the railroad man's expression for money due, or wages.) "Ye'll +have plenty av that to do, I'm tellin' ye." + +"You don't mean to say that you're going to discharge them, Rourke, do +you?" I asked. + +"Shewer!" he exclaimed authoritatively. "Why shouldn't I? They're jist +the same as other min. Why shouldn't I?" Then he added, after a pause, +"But it's thim that'll be comin' to me askin' fer their time instid av +me givin' it to thim, niver fear. They're not the kind that'll let ye +taalk back to thim. If their work don't suit ye, it's 'give me me time.' +Wait till they'll be comin' round half drunk in the mornin', an' not +feelin' just right. Thim's the times ye'll find out what masons arre +made av, me b'y." + +I confess this probability did not seem as brilliant to me as it did to +him, but it had its humor. I expressed wonder that he would hire them if +they were such a bad lot. + +"Where else will ye get min?" he demanded to know. "The unions have the +best, an' the most av thim. Thim outside fellies don't amount to much. +They're aall pore, crapin' creatures. If it wasn't fer the railroad +bein' against the union I wouldn't have thim at aall, and besides," he +added thoughtfully, and with a keen show of feeling for their point of +view, "they have a right to do as they pl'ase. Shewer, it's no common +workmen they arre. They can lay their eight hundred bricks a day, if +they will, an' no advice from any waan. If ye was in their place ye'd do +the same. There's no sinse in allowin' another man to waalk on ye whin +ye can get another job. I don't blame thim. I was a mason wanst meself." + +"You don't mean to say that you acted as you say these men are going to +act?" + +"Shewer!" + +"Well, I shouldn't think you'd be very proud of it." + +"I have me rights," he declared, flaring up. "What kind av a man is it +that'll let himself be waalked on? There's no sinse in it. It's naht +natchral. It's naht intinded that it should be so." + +"Very well," I said, smoothing the whole thing over, and so that ended. + +Well, the masons came, and a fine lot of pirates they surely were. Such +independence! Such defiance! Such feverish punctilio in regard to their +rights and what forms and procedures they were entitled to! I stared in +amazement. For the most part they were hale, healthy, industrious +looking creatures, but so obstreperously conscious of their own rights, +and so proud of their skill as masons, that there was no living with +them. Really, they would have tried the patience of a saint, let alone a +healthy, contentious Irish foreman-mason. "First off," as the railroad +men used to say, they wanted to know whether there were any non-union +men on the job, and if so, would they be discharged instanter?--if not, +no work--a situation which gave Rourke several splendid opportunities +for altercations, which he hastened to improve, although the non-union +men _went_, of course. Then they wanted to know when, where, and how +they were to get their money, whether on demand at any time they chose, +and this led to more trouble, since the railroad paid only once a month. +However, this was adjusted by a special arrangement being made whereby +the building department stood ready to pay them instantly on demand, +only I had to run down to the division office each time and get their +pay for them at any time that they came to ask for it! Then came an +argument (or many of them) as to the number of bricks they were to lay +an hour; the number of men they were to carry on one line, or wall; the +length of time they were supposed to work, or had worked, or would +work--all of which was pure food and drink to Rourke. He was in his +element at last, shouting, gesticulating, demanding that they leave or +go to ----. After all these things had been adjusted, however, they +finally consented to go to work, and then of course the work flew. It +was a grand scene, really inspiring--forty or fifty masons on the line, +perhaps half as many helpers or mixers, the Italians carrying bricks, +and a score of carpenters now arriving under another foreman to set the +beams and lay the joists as the walls rose upward. + +Rourke was about all the time now, arguing and gesticulating with this +man or that, fighting with this one or the other, and calling always to +some mason or other to "come down" and get his "time." "Come down! Come +down!" I would hear, and then would see him rushing for the office, a +defiant and even threatening mason at his heels; Rourke demanding that +I make out a time-check at once for the latter and go down to the +"ahffice" and get the money, the while the mason hung about attempting +to seduce other men to a similar point of view. Once in a while, but +only on rare occasions, Rourke would patch up a truce with a man. As a +rule, the mason was only too eager to leave and spend the money thus far +earned, while Rourke was curiously indifferent as to whether he went or +stayed. "'Tis to drink he waants," he would declare amusedly. To me it +was all like a scene out of comic opera. + +Toward the last, however, a natural calm set in, the result no doubt of +weariness and a sense of surfeit, which sent the building forward apace. +During this time Rourke was to be seen walking defiantly up and down the +upper scaffolding of the steadily rising walls, or down below on the +ground in front of his men, his hands behind his back, his face screwed +into a quizzical expression, his whole body bearing a look of bristling +content and pugnacity which was too delicious for words. Since things +were going especially well he could not say much, but still he could +look his contentiousness, and did. Even now he would occasionally manage +to pick a quarrel with some lusty mason or other, which resulted in the +customary descent to the office, but not often. + +But one cold December day, about three weeks later, when I was just +about to announce that I could no longer delay my departure, seeing that +my health was now as good, or nearly so, as my purse was lean, and that, +whether I would or no, I must arrange to make more money, that a most +dreadful accident occurred. It appeared that Rourke and a number of +Italians, including Matt and Jimmie, were down in the main room of the +building, now fast nearing completion, when the boiler of the hoisting +engine, which had been placed inside the building and just at the +juncture of three walls, blew up and knocked out this wall and the +joists of the second and third floors loose, thus precipitating all of +fifteen thousand bricks, which had been placed on the third floor, into +this room below. For a few moments there had been a veritable hurricane +of bricks and falling timber; and then, when it was over, it was found +that the mighty Rourke and five Italians were embedded in or under them, +and all but Jimmie more or less seriously injured or killed. Two +Italians were killed outright. A third died later. Rourke, in +particular, was unfortunately placed and terribly injured. His body from +the waist down was completely buried by a pile of bricks, and across his +shoulder lay a great joist pressing where it had struck him, and cutting +his neck and ear. He was a pathetic sight when we entered, bleeding and +pain-wrenched yet grim and undaunted, as one might have expected. + +"I'm tight fast, me lad," he said when he could speak. "It's me legs +that's caught, not me body. But give a hand to the min, there. The +Eyetalians are underneath." + +Disregarding his suggestion, however, we began working about him, every +man throwing away bricks like a machine; but he would not have it. + +"'Tind to the min!" he insisted with all of his old firmness. "The +Eyetalians are under there--Matt an' Jimmie. Can't ye see that I'll be +all right till ye get thim out? Come, look after the min!" + +We fell to this end of the work, although by now others had arrived, and +soon there was a great crowd assisting--men coming from the yard and the +machine shop. Although embedded in this mass of material and most +severely injured, there was no gainsaying him, and he still insisted on +directing us as best he could. But now he was so picturesque, so much +nobler, really, than he had been in his healthier, uninjured days. A +fabled giant, he seemed to me, half-god, half-man, composed in part of +flesh, in part of brick and stone, gazing down on our earthly efforts +with the eye of a demi-god. + +"Come, now--get the j'ists from aaf the end, there. Take the bricks away +from that man. Can't ye see? There's where his head is--there. There! +Jasus Christ--theyer!" + +You would have thought we were Italians ourselves, poor wisps of +nothing, not his rescuers, but slaves, compelled to do his lordly +bidding. + +After a time, however, we managed to release him and all his five +helpers--two dead, as I say, and Matt badly cut about the head and +seriously injured, while Jimmie, the imperturbable, was but little the +worse for a brick mark on one shoulder. He was more or less frightened, +of course, and comic to look at, even in this dread situation. "Big-a +smash," he exclaimed when he recovered himself. "Like-a da worl' fall. +Misha Rook! Misha Rook! Where Misha Rook?" + +"Here I am, ye Eyetalian scalawag," exclaimed the unyielding Rourke +genially, who was still partially embedded when Jimmie was released. +There was, however, a touch of sorrow in his voice as he added weakly, +"Arre ye hurted much?" + +"No, Misha Rook. Help Misha Rook," replied Jimmie, grabbing at bricks +himself, and so the rescue work of "Rook" went on. + +Finally he was released, although not without deprecating our efforts +the while (this wonderful and exceptional fuss over him), and exclaiming +at one point as we tugged at joists and beams rather frantically, "Take +yer time. Take yer time. I'm naht so bad fixed as aall that. Take yer +time. Get that board out o' the way there, Jimmie." + +But he was badly "fixed," and "hurted" unto death also, as we now found, +and as he insisted he was not. His hip was severely crushed by the +timbers and his legs broken, as well as his internal organs disarranged, +although we did not know how badly at the time. Only after we had +removed all the weight did he collapse and perhaps personally realize +how serious was his plight. He was laid on a canvas tarpaulin brought by +the yard-master and spread on the chip-strewn ground, while the doctors +from two ambulances worked over him. While they were examining his +wounds he took a critical and quizzical interest in what they were +doing, and offered one or two humorous suggestions. Finally, when they +were ready to move him he asked how he was, and on being told that he +was all right, looked curiously about until he caught my eye. I could +see that he realized how critical it was with him. + +"I'd like to see a priest, Teddy," he whispered, "and, if ye don't mind, +I'd like ye to go up to Mount Vernon an' tell me wife. They'll be after +telegraphin' her if ye don't. Break it aisy, if ye will. Don't let 'er +think there's anything serious. There's no need av it. I'm naht hurted +so bad as aall that." + +I promised, and the next moment one of the doctors shot a spray of +cocaine into his hip to relieve what he knew must be his dreadful pain. +A few moments later he lost consciousness, after which I left him to the +care of the hospital authorities and hurried away to send the priest and +to tell his wife. + +For a week thereafter he lingered in a very serious condition and +finally died, blood-poisoning having set in. I saw him at the hospital a +day or two before, and, trying to sympathize with his condition, I +frequently spoke of what I deemed the dreadful uncertainty of life and +the seeming carelessness of the engineer in charge of the hoisting +engine. He, however, had no complaint to make. + +"Ye must expect thim things," was his only comment. "Ye can't aalways +expect to go unhurted. I niver lost a man before, nor had one come to +haarm. 'Tis the way av things, ye see." + +Mighty Rourke! You would have thought the whole Italian population of +Mount Vernon knew and loved him, the way they turned out at his funeral. +It was a state affair for most of them, and they came in scores, packing +the little brick church at which he was accustomed to worship full to +overflowing. Matt was there, bandaged and sore, but sorrowful; and +Jimmie, artful and scheming in the past, but now thoroughly subdued. He +was all sorrow, and sniveled and blubbered and wept hot, blinding tears +through the dark, leathery fingers of his hands. + +"Misha Rook! Misha Rook!" I heard him say, as they bore the body in; and +when they carried it out of the church, he followed, head down. As they +lowered it to the grave he was inconsolable. + +"Misha Rook! Misha Rook! I work-a for him fifteen year!" + + + + +_A Mayor and His People_ + + +Here is the story of an individual whose political and social example, +if such things are ever worth anything (the moralists to the contrary +notwithstanding), should have been, at the time, of the greatest +importance to every citizen of the United States. Only it was not. Or +was it? Who really knows? Anyway, he and his career are entirely +forgotten by now, and have been these many years. + +He was the mayor of one of those dreary New England mill towns in +northern Massachusetts--a bleak, pleasureless realm of about forty +thousand, where, from the time he was born until he finally left at the +age of thirty-six to seek his fortune elsewhere, he had resided without +change. During that time he had worked in various of the local mills, +which in one way and another involved nearly all of the population. He +was a mill shoe-maker by trade, or, in other words, a factory shoe-hand, +knowing only a part of all the processes necessary to make a shoe in +that fashion. Still, he was a fair workman, and earned as much as +fifteen or eighteen dollars a week at times--rather good pay for that +region. By temperament a humanitarian, or possibly because of his own +humble state one who was compelled to take cognizance of the +difficulties of others, he finally expressed his mental unrest by +organizing a club for the study and propagation of socialism, and later, +when it became powerful enough to have a candidate and look for +political expression of some kind, he was its first, and thereafter for +a number of years, its regular candidate for mayor. For a long time, or +until its membership became sufficient to attract some slight political +attention, its members (following our regular American, unintellectual +custom) were looked upon by the rest of the people as a body of harmless +kickers, filled with fool notions about a man's duty to his fellowman, +some silly dream about an honest and economical administration of public +affairs--their city's affairs, to be exact. We are so wise in America, +so interested in our fellowman, so regardful of his welfare. They were +so small in number, however, that they were little more than an object +of pleasant jest, useful for that purpose alone. + +This club, however, continued to put up its candidate until about 1895, +when suddenly it succeeded in polling the very modest number of +fifty-four votes--double the number it had succeeded in polling any +previous year. A year later one hundred and thirty-six were registered, +and the next year six hundred. Then suddenly the mayor who won that +year's battle died, and a special election was called. Here the club +polled six hundred and one, a total and astonishing gain of one. In 1898 +the perennial candidate was again nominated and received fifteen +hundred, and in 1899, when he ran again, twenty-three hundred votes, +which elected him. + +If this fact be registered casually here, it was not so regarded in that +typically New England mill town. Ever study New England--its Puritan, +self-defensive, but unintellectual and selfish psychology? Although this +poor little snip of a mayor was only elected for one year, men paused +astounded, those who had not voted for him, and several of the older +conventional political and religious order, wedded to their church and +all the routine of the average puritanic mill town, actually cried. No +one knew, of course, who the new mayor was, or what he stood for. There +were open assertions that the club behind him was anarchistic--that +ever-ready charge against anything new in America--and that the courts +should be called upon to prevent his being seated. And this from people +who were as poorly "off" commercially and socially as any might well be. +It was stated, as proving the worst, that he was, or had been, a mill +worker!--and, before that a grocery clerk--both at twelve a week, or +less!! Immediate division of property, the forcing of all employers to +pay as much as five a day to every laborer (an unheard-of sum in New +England), and general constraint and subversion of individual rights +(things then unknown in America, of course), loomed in the minds of +these conventional Americans as the natural and immediate result of so +modest a victory. The old-time politicians and corporations who +understood much better what the point was, the significance of this +straw, were more or less disgruntled, but satisfied that it could be +undone later. + +An actual conversation which occurred on one of the outlying street +corners one evening about dusk will best illustrate the entire +situation. + +"Who is the man, anyway?" asked one citizen of a total stranger whom he +had chanced to meet. + +"Oh, no one in particular, I think. A grocery clerk, they say." + +"Astonishing, isn't it? Why, I never thought those people would get +anything. Why, they didn't even figure last year." + +"Seems to be considerable doubt as to just what he'll do." + +"That's what I've been wondering. I don't take much stock in all their +talk about anarchy. A man hasn't so very much power as mayor." + +"No," said the other. + +"We ought to give him a trial, anyway. He's won a big fight. I should +like to see him, see what he looks like." + +"Oh, nothing startling. I know him." + +"Rather young, ain't he?" + +"Yes." + +"Where did he come from?" + +"Oh, right around here." + +"Was he a mill-hand?" + +"Yes." + +The stranger made inquiry as to other facts and then turned off at a +corner. + +"Well," he observed at parting, "I don't know. I'm inclined to believe +in the man. I should like to see him myself. Good-night." + +"Good-night," said the other, waving his hand. "When you see me again +you will know that you are looking at the mayor." + +The inquirer stared after him and saw a six-foot citizen, of otherwise +medium proportions, whose long, youthful face and mild gray eyes, with +just a suggestion of washed-out blue in them, were hardly what was to be +expected of a notorious and otherwise astounding political figure. + +"He is too young," was the earliest comments, when the public once +became aware of his personality. + +"Why, he is nothing but a grocery clerk," was another, the skeptical and +condemnatory possibilities of which need not be dilated upon here. + +And he was, in his way--nothing much of a genius, as such things go in +politics, but an interesting figure. Without much taste (or its +cultivated shadow) or great vision of any kind, he was still a man who +sensed the evils of great and often unnecessary social inequalities and +the need of reorganizing influences, which would tend to narrow the vast +gulf between the unorganized and ignorant poor, and the huge +beneficiaries of unearned (yes, and not even understood) increment. For +what does the economic wisdom of the average capitalist amount to, after +all: the narrow, gourmandizing hunger of the average multi-millionaire? + +At any rate, people watched him as he went to and fro between his office +and his home, and reached the general conclusion after the first +excitement had died down that he did not amount to much. + +When introduced into his office in the small but pleasant city hall, he +came into contact with a "ring," and a fixed condition, which nobody +imagined a lone young mayor could change. Old-time politicians sat there +giving out contracts for street-cleaning, lighting, improvements and +supplies of all kinds, and a bond of mutual profit bound them closely +together. + +"I don't think he can do much to hurt us," these individuals said one to +another. "He don't amount to much." + +The mayor was not of a talkative or confiding turn. Neither was he cold +or wanting in good and natural manners. He was, however, of a +preoccupied turn of mind, "up in the air," some called it, and smoked a +good many cigars. + +"I think we ought to get together and have some sort of a conference +about the letting of contracts," said the president of the city council +to him one morning shortly after he had been installed. "You will find +these gentlemen ready to meet you half-way in these matters." + +"I'm very glad to hear that," he replied. "I've something to say in my +message to the council, which I'll send over in the morning." + +The old-time politician eyed him curiously, and he eyed the old-time +politician in turn, not aggressively, but as if they might come to a +very pleasant understanding if they wanted to, and then went back to his +office. + +The next day his message was made public, and this was its key-note: + +"All contract work for the city should be let with a proviso, that the +workmen employed receive not less than two dollars a day." + +The dissatisfied roar that followed was not long in making itself heard +all over the city. + +"Stuff and nonsense," yelled the office jobbers in a chorus. +"Socialism!" "Anarchy!" "This thing must be put down!" "The city would +be bankrupt in a year." "No contractor could afford to pay his ordinary +day laborers two a day. The city could not afford to pay any contractor +enough to do it." + +"The prosperity of the city is not greater than the prosperity of the +largest number of its component individuals," replied the mayor, in a +somewhat altruistic and economically abstruse argument on the floor of +the council hall. "We must find contractors." + +"We'll see about that," said the members of the opposition. "Why, the +man's crazy. If he thinks he can run this town on a goody-good basis and +make everybody rich and happy, he's going to get badly fooled, that's +all there is to that." + +Fortunately for him three of the eight council members were fellows of +the mayor's own economic beliefs, individuals elected on the same ticket +with him. These men could not carry a resolution, but they could stop +one from being carried over the mayor's veto. Hence it was found that if +the contracts could not be given to men satisfactory to the mayor they +could not be given at all, and he stood in a fair way to win. + +"What the hell's the use of us sitting here day after day!" were the +actual words of the leading members of the opposition in the council +some weeks later, when the fight became wearisome. "We can't pass the +contracts over his veto. I say let 'em go." + +So the proviso was tacked on, that two a day was the minimum wage to be +allowed, and the contracts passed. + +The mayor's followers were exceedingly jubilant at this, more so than +he, who was of a more cautious and less hopeful temperament. + +"Not out of the woods yet, gentlemen," he remarked to a group of his +adherents at the reform club. "We have to do a great many things +sensibly if we expect to keep the people's confidence and 'win again.'" + +Under the old system of letting contracts, whenever there was a wage +rate stipulated, men were paid little or nothing, and the work was not +done. There was no pretense of doing it. Garbage and ashes accumulated, +and papers littered the streets. The old contractor who had pocketed the +appropriated sum thought to do so again. + +"I hear the citizens are complaining as much as ever," said the mayor to +this individual one morning. "You will have to keep the streets clean." + +The contractor, a robust, thick-necked, heavy-jawed Irishman, of just so +much refinement as the sudden acquisition of a comfortable fortune would +allow, looked him quizzically over, wondering whether he was "out" for a +portion of the appropriation or whether he was really serious. + +"We can fix that between us," he said. + +"There's nothing to fix," replied the mayor. "All I want you to do is to +clean the streets." + +The contractor went away and for a few days after the streets were +really clean, but it was only for a few days. + +In his walks about the city the mayor himself found garbage and paper +uncollected, and then called upon his new acquaintance again. + +"I'm mentioning this for the last time, Mr. M----," he said. "You will +have to fulfill your contract, or resign in favor of some one who will." + +"Oh, I'll clean them, well enough," said this individual, after five +minutes of rapid fire explanation. "Two dollars a day for men is high, +but I'll see that they're clean." + +Again he went away, and again the mayor sauntered about, and then one +morning sought out the contractor in his own office. + +"This is the end," he said, removing a cigar from his mouth and holding +it before him with his elbow at right angles. "You are discharged from +this work. I'll notify you officially to-morrow." + +"It can't be done the way you want it," the contractor exclaimed with an +oath. "There's no money in it at two dollars. Hell, anybody can see +that." + +"Very well," said the mayor in a kindly well-modulated tone. "Let +another man try, then." + +The next day he appointed a new contractor, and with a schedule before +him showing how many men should be employed and how much profit he might +expect, the latter succeeded. The garbage was daily removed, and the +streets carefully cleaned. + +Then there was a new manual training school about to be added to the +public school system at this time, and the contract for building was to +be let, when the mayor threw a bomb into the midst of the old-time +jobbers at the city council. A contractor had already been chosen by +them and the members were figuring out their profits, when at one of the +public discussions of the subject the mayor said: + +"Why shouldn't the city build it, gentlemen?" + +"How can it?" exclaimed the councilmen. "The city isn't an individual; +it can't watch carefully." + +"It can hire its own architect, as well as any contractor. Let's try +it." + +There were sullen tempers in the council chamber after this, but the +mayor was insistent. He called an architect who made a ridiculously low +estimate. Never had a public building been estimated so cheaply before. + +"See here," said one of the councilmen when the plans were presented to +the chamber--"This isn't doing this city right, and the gentlemen of the +council ought to put their feet down on any such venture as this. You're +going to waste the city's money on some cheap thing in order to catch +votes." + +"I'll publish the cost of the goods as delivered," said the mayor. "Then +the people can look at the building when it's built. We'll see how cheap +it looks then." + +To head off political trickery on the part of the enemy he secured bills +for material as delivered, and publicly compared them with prices paid +for similar amounts of the same material used in other buildings. So the +public was kept aware of what was going on and the cry of cheapness for +political purposes set at naught. It was the first public structure +erected by the city, and by all means the cheapest and best of all the +city's buildings. + +Excellent as these services were in their way, the mayor realized later +that a powerful opposition was being generated and that if he were to +retain the interest of his constituents he would have to set about +something which would endear him and his cause to the public. + +"I may be honest," he told one of his friends, "but honesty will play a +lone hand with these people. The public isn't interested in its own +welfare very much. It can't be bothered or hasn't the time. What I need +is something that will impress it and still be worth while. I can't be +reelected on promises, or on my looks, either." + +When he looked about him, however, he found the possibility of +independent municipal action pretty well hampered by mandatory +legislation. He had promised, for instance, to do all he could to lower +the exorbitant gas rate and to abolish grade crossings, but the law said +that no municipality could do either of these things without first +voting to do so three years in succession--a little precaution taken by +the corporation representing such things long before he came into power. +Each vote must be for such contemplated action, or it could not become a +law. + +"I know well enough that promises are all right," he said to one of his +friends, "and that these laws are good enough excuses, but the public +won't take excuses from me for three years. If I want to be mayor again +I want to be doing something, and doing it quick." + +In the city was a gas corporation, originally capitalized at $45,000, +and subsequently increased to $75,000, which was earning that year the +actual sum of $58,000 over and above all expenses. It was getting ready +to inflate the capitalization, as usual, and water its stock to the +extent of $500,000, when it occurred to the mayor that if the +corporation was making such enormous profits out of a $75,000 investment +as to be able to offer to pay six per cent on $500,000 to investors, and +put the money it would get for such stocks into its pocket, perhaps it +could reduce the price of gas from one dollar and nineteen cents to a +more reasonable figure. There was the three years' voting law, however, +behind which, as behind an entrenchment, the very luxurious corporation +lay comfortable and indifferent. + +The mayor sent for his corporation counsel, and studied gas law for +awhile. He found that at the State capital there was a State board, or +commission, which had been created to look after gas companies in +general, and to hear the complaints of municipalities which considered +themselves unjustly treated. + +"This is the thing for me," he said. + +Lacking the municipal authority himself, he decided to present the facts +in the case and appeal to this commission for a reduction of the gas +rate. + +When he came to talk about it he found that the opposition he would +generate would be something much more than local. Back of the local +reduction idea was the whole system of extortionate gas rates of the +State and of the nation; hundreds of fat, luxurious gas corporations +whose dividends would be threatened by any agitation on this question. + +"You mean to proceed with this scheme of yours?" asked a prominent +member of the local bar who called one morning to interview him. "I +represent the gentlemen who are interested in our local gas company." + +"I certainly do," replied the mayor. + +"Well," replied the uncredentialed representative of private interests, +after expostulating a long time and offering various "reasons" why it +would be more profitable and politically advantageous for the new mayor +not to proceed, "I've said all I can say. Now I want to tell you that +you are going up against a combination that will be your ruin. You're +not dealing with this town now; you're dealing with the State, the whole +nation. These corporations can't afford to let you win, and they won't. +You're not the one to do it; you're not big enough." + +The mayor smiled and replied that of course he could not say as to that. + +The lawyer went away, and that next day the mayor had his legal counsel +look up the annual reports of the company for the consecutive years of +its existence, as well as a bulletin issued by a firm of brokers, into +whose hands the matter of selling a vast amount of watered stock it +proposed to issue had been placed. He also sent for a gas expert and set +him to figuring out a case for the people. + +It was found by this gentleman that since the company was first +organized it had paid dividends on its capital stock at the rate of ten +per cent per annum, for the first thirty years; had made vast +improvements in the last ten, and notwithstanding this fact, had paid +twenty per cent, and even twenty-five per cent per annum in dividends. +All the details of cost and expenditure were figured out, and then the +mayor with his counsel took the train for the State capitol. + +Never was there more excitement in political circles than when this +young representative of no important political organization whatsoever +arrived at the State capitol and walked, at the appointed time, into the +private audience room of the commission. Every gas company, as well as +every newspaper and every other representative of the people, had +curiously enough become interested in the fight he was making, and there +was a band of reporters at the hotel where he was stopping, as well as +in the commission chambers in the State capitol where the hearing was to +be. They wanted to know about him--why he was doing this, whether it +wasn't a "strike" or the work of some rival corporation. The fact that +he might foolishly be sincere was hard to believe. + +"Gentlemen," said the mayor, as he took his stand in front of an august +array of legal talent which was waiting to pick his argument to pieces +in the commission chambers at the capitol, "I miscalculated but one +thing in this case which I am about to lay before you, and that is the +extent of public interest. I came here prepared to make a private +argument, but now I want to ask the privilege of making it public. I see +the public itself is interested, or should be. I will ask leave to +postpone my argument until the day after tomorrow." + +There was considerable hemming and hawing over this, since from the +point of view of the corporation it was most undesirable, but the +commission was practically powerless to do aught but grant his request. +And meanwhile the interest created by the newspapers added power to his +cause. Hunting up the several representatives and senators from his +district, he compelled them to take cognizance of the cause for which he +was battling, and when the morning of the public hearing arrived a large +audience was assembled in the chamber of representatives. + +When the final moment arrived the young mayor came forward, and after +making a very simple statement of the cause which led him to request a +public hearing and the local condition which he considered unfair begged +leave to introduce an expert, a national examiner of gas plants and +lighting facilities, for whom he had sent, and whose twenty years of +experience in this line had enabled him to prepare a paper on the +condition of the gas-payers in the mayor's city. + +The commission was not a little surprised by this, but signified its +willingness to hear the expert as counsel for the city, and as his +statement was read a very clear light was thrown upon the situation. + +Counsel for the various gas corporations interrupted freely. The mayor +himself was constantly drawn into the argument, but his replies were so +simple and convincing that there was not much satisfaction to be had in +stirring him. Instead, the various counsel took refuge in long-winded +discussions about the methods of conducting gas plants in other cities, +the cost of machinery, labor and the like, which took days and days, and +threatened to extend into weeks. The astounding facts concerning large +profits and the present intentions of not only this but every other +company in the State could not be dismissed. In fact the revelation of +huge corporation profits everywhere became so disturbing that after the +committee had considered and re-considered, it finally, when threatened +with political extermination, voted to reduce the price of gas to eighty +cents. + +It is needless to suggest the local influence of this decision. When the +mayor came home he received an ovation, and that at the hands of many of +the people who had once been so fearful of him, but he knew that this +enthusiasm would not last long. Many disgruntled elements were warring +against him, and others were being more and more stirred up. His home +life was looked into as well as his past, his least childish or private +actions. It was a case of finding other opportunities for public +usefulness, or falling into the innocuous peace which would result in +his defeat. + +In the platform on which he had been elected was a plank which declared +that it was the intention of this party, if elected, to abolish local +grade crossings, the maintenance of which had been the cause of numerous +accidents and much public complaint. With this plank he now proposed to +deal. + +In this of course he was hampered by the law before mentioned, which +declared that no city could abolish its grade crossings without having +first submitted the matter to the people during three successive years +and obtained their approval each time. Behind this law was not now, +however, as in the case of the gas company, a small $500,000 +corporation, but all the railroads which controlled New England, and to +which brains and legislators, courts and juries, were mere adjuncts. +Furthermore, the question would have to be voted on at the same time as +his candidacy, and this would have deterred many another more ambitious +politician. The mayor was not to be deterred, however. He began his +agitation, and the enemy began theirs, but in the midst of what seemed +to be a fair battle the great railway company endeavored to steal a +march. There was suddenly and secretly introduced into the lower house +of the State legislature a bill which in deceptive phraseology declared +that the law which allowed all cities, by three successive votes, to +abolish grade crossings in three years, was, in the case of a particular +city mentioned, hereby abrogated for a term of four years. The question +might not even be discussed politically. + +When the news of this attempt reached the mayor, he took the first train +for the State capitol and arrived there just in time to come upon the +floor of the house when the bill was being taken up for discussion. He +asked leave to make a statement. Great excitement was aroused by his +timely arrival. Those who secretly favored the bill endeavored to have +the matter referred to a committee, but this was not to be. One member +moved to go on with the consideration of the bill, and after a close +vote the motion carried. + +The mayor was then introduced. + +After a few moments, in which the silent self-communing with which he +introduced himself impressed everyone with his sincerity, he said: + +"I am accused of objecting to this measure because its enactment will +remove, as a political issue, the one cause upon which I base my hope +for reelection. If there are no elevated crossings to vote for, there +will be no excuse for voting for me. Gentlemen, you mistake the temper +and the intellect of the people of our city. It is you who see political +significance in this thing, but let me assure you that it is of a far +different kind from that which you conceive. If the passing of this +measure had any significance to me other than the apparent wrong of it, +I would get down on my knees and urge its immediate acceptance. Nothing +could elect me quicker. Nothing could bury the opposition further from +view. If you wish above all things to accomplish my triumph you will +only need to interfere with the rights of our city in this arbitrary +manner, and you will have the thing done. I could absolutely ask nothing +more." + +The gentlemen who had this measure in charge weighed well these +assertions and trifled for weeks with the matter, trying to make up +their minds. + +Meanwhile election time approached, and amid the growing interest of +politics it was thought unwise to deal with it. A great fight was +arranged for locally, in which every conceivable element of opposition +was beautifully harmonized by forces and conceptions which it is almost +impossible to explain. Democrats, republicans, prohibitionists, saloon +men and religious circles, all were gathered into one harmonious body +and inspired with a single idea, that of defeating the mayor. From some +quarter, not exactly identified, was issued a call for a civic committee +of fifty, which should take into its hands the duty of rescuing the city +from what was termed a "throttling policy of commercial oppression and +anarchy." Democrats, republicans, liquor and anti-liquorites, were +invited to the same central meeting place, and came. Money was not +lacking, nor able minds, to prepare campaign literature. It was openly +charged that a blank check was handed in to the chairman of this body by +the railway whose crossings were in danger, to be filled out for any +amount necessary to the destruction of the official upstart who was +seeking to revolutionize old methods and conditions. + +As may be expected, this opposition did not lack daring in making +assertions contrary to facts. Charges were now made that the mayor was +in league with the railroad to foist upon the city a great burden of +expense, because the law under which cities could compel railroads to +elevate their tracks declared that one-fifth of the burden of expense +must be borne by the city and the remaining four-fifths by the railroad. +It would saddle a debt of $250,000 upon the taxpayers, they said, and +give them little in return. All the advantage would be with the +railroad. "Postpone this action until the railroad can be forced to bear +the entire expense, as it justly should," declared handbill writers, +whose services were readily rendered to those who could afford to pay +for them. + +The mayor and his committee, although poor, answered with handbills and +street corner speeches, in which he showed that even with the +extravagantly estimated debt of $250,000, the city's tax-rate would not +be increased by quite six cents to the individual. The cry that each man +would have to pay five dollars more each year for ten years was thus +wholesomely disposed of, and the campaign proceeded. + +Now came every conceivable sort of charge. If he were not defeated, all +reputable merchants would surely leave the city. Capital was certainly +being scared off. There would be idle factories and empty stomachs. Look +out for hard times. No one but a fool would invest in a city thus +hampered. + +In reply the mayor preached a fair return by corporations for benefits +received. He, or rather his organization, took a door-to-door census of +his following, and discovered a very considerable increase in the number +of those intending to vote for him. The closest calculations of the +enemy were discovered, the actual number they had fixed upon as +sufficient to defeat him. This proved to the mayor that he must have +three hundred more votes if he wished to be absolutely sure. These he +hunted out from among the enemy, and had them pledged before the +eventual morning came. + +The night preceding election ended the campaign, for the enemy at least, +in a blaze of glory, so to speak. Dozens of speakers for both causes +were about the street corners and in the city meeting room. + +Oratory poured forth in streams, and gasoline-lighted band-wagons +rattled from street to street, emitting song and invective. Even a great +parade was arranged by the anti-mayoral forces, in which horses and men +to the number of hundreds were brought in from nearby cities and palmed +off as enthusiastic citizens. + +"Horses don't vote," a watchword handed out by the mayor, took the edge +off the extreme ardor of this invading throng, and set to laughing the +hundreds of his partisans, who needed such encouragement. + +Next day came the vote, and then for once, anyhow, he was justified. +Not only was a much larger vote cast than ever, but he thrashed the +enemy with a tail of two hundred votes to spare. It was an inspiring +victory from one point of view, but rather doleful for the enemy. The +latter had imported a carload of fireworks, which now stood sadly unused +upon the very tracks which, apparently, must in the future be raised. +The crowning insult was offered when the successful forces offered to +take them off their hands at half price. + +For a year thereafter (a mayor was elected yearly there), less was heard +of the commercial destruction of the city. Gas stood, as decided, at +eighty cents a thousand. A new manual training school, built at a very +nominal cost, a monument to municipal honesty, was also in evidence. The +public waterworks had also been enlarged and the rates reduced. The +streets were clean. + +Then the mayor made another innovation. During his first term of office +there had been a weekly meeting of the reform club, at which he appeared +and talked freely of his plans and difficulties. These meetings he now +proposed to make public. + +Every Wednesday evening for a year thereafter a spectacle of municipal +self-consciousness was witnessed, which those who saw it felt sure would +redound to the greater strength and popularity of the mayor. In a large +hall, devoted to public gatherings, a municipal meeting was held. Every +one was invited. The mayor was both host and guest, an individual who +chose to explain his conduct and his difficulties and to ask advice. +There his constituents gathered, not only to hear but to offer counsel. + +"Gentlemen," so ran the gist of his remarks on various of these +occasions, "the present week has proved a most trying one. I am +confronted by a number of difficult problems, which I will now try to +explain to you. In the first place, you know my limitations as to power +in the council. But three members now vote for me, and it is only by +mutual concessions that we move forward at all." + +Then would follow a detailed statement of the difficulties, and a +general discussion. The commonest laborer was free to offer his advice. +Every question was answered in the broadest spirit of fellowship. An +inquiry as to "what to do" frequently brought the most helpful advice. +Weak and impossible solutions were met as such, and shown to be what +they were. Radicals were assuaged, conservatives urged forward. The +whole political situation was so detailed and explained that no +intelligent person could leave, it was thought, with a false impression +of the mayor's position or intent. + +With five thousand or more such associated citizens abroad each day +explaining, defending, approving the official conduct of the mayor, +because they understood it, no misleading conceptions, it was thought, +could arise. Men said that his purpose and current leaning in any matter +was always clear. He was thought to be closer to his constituency than +any other official within the whole range of the Americas and that there +could be nothing but unreasoning partisan opposition to his rule. + +After one year of such service a presidential campaign drew near, and +the mayor's campaign for reelection had to be contested at the same +time. No gas monopoly evil was now a subject of contention. Streets were +clean, contracts fairly executed; the general municipal interests as +satisfactorily attended to as could be expected. Only the grade crossing +war remained as an issue, and that would require still another vote +after this. His record was the only available campaign argument. + +On the other side, however, were the two organizations of the locally +defeated great parties, and the railroad. The latter, insistent in its +bitterness, now organized these two bodies into a powerful opposition. +Newspapers were subsidized; the national significance of the campaign +magnified; a large number of railroad-hands colonized. When the final +weeks of the campaign arrived a bitter contest was waged, and money +triumphed. Five thousand four hundred votes were cast for the mayor. +Five thousand four hundred and fifty for the opposing candidate, who was +of the same party as the successful presidential nominee. + +It was a bitter blow, but still one easily borne by the mayor, who was +considerable of a philosopher. With simple, undisturbed grace he +retired, and three days later applied to one of the principal shoe +factories for work at his trade. + +"What? You're not looking for a job, are you?" exclaimed the astonished +foreman. + +"I am," said the mayor. + +"You can go to work, all right, but I should think you could get into +something better now." + +"I suppose I can later," he replied, "when I complete my law studies. +Just now I want to do this for a change, to see how things are with the +rank and file." And donning the apron he had brought with him he went to +work. + +It was not long, however, before he was discharged, largely because of +partisan influence anxious to drive him out of that region. It was said +that this move of seeking a job in so simple a way was a bit of "grand +standing"--insincere--that he didn't need to do it, and that he was +trying to pile up political capital against the future. A little later a +local grocery man of his social faith offered him a position as clerk, +and for some odd reason--humanitarian and sectarian, possibly--he +accepted this. At any rate, here he labored for a little while. Again +many said he was attempting to make political capital out of this simple +life in order to further his political interests later, and this +possibly, even probably, was true. All men have methods of fighting for +that which they believe. So here he worked for a time, while a large +number of agencies pro and con continued to denounce or praise him, to +ridicule or extol his so-called Jeffersonian simplicity. It was at this +time that I encountered him--a tall, spare, capable and interesting +individual, who willingly took me into his confidence and explained all +that had hitherto befallen him. He was most interesting, really, a +figure to commemorate in this fashion. + +In one of the rooms of his very humble home--a kind of office or den, in +a small house such as any clerk or working-man might occupy--was a +collection of clippings, laudatory, inquiring, and abusive, which would +have done credit to a candidate for the highest office in the land. One +would have judged by the scrap-books and envelopes stuffed to +overflowing with long newspaper articles and editorials that had been +cut from papers all over the country from Florida to Oregon, that his +every movement at this time and earlier was all-essential to the people. +Plainly, he had been watched, spied upon, and ignored by one class, +while being hailed, praised and invited by another. Magazine editors had +called upon him for contributions, journalists from the large cities had +sought him out to obtain his actual views, citizens' leagues in various +parts of the nation had invited him to come and speak, and yet he was +still a very young man in years, not over-intelligent politically or +philosophically, the ex-mayor of a small city, and the representative of +no great organization of any sort. + +In his retirement he was now comforted, if one can be so comforted, by +these memories, still fresh in his mind and by the hope possibly for his +own future, as well as by a droll humor with which he was wont to select +the sharpest and most willful slur upon his unimpeachable conduct as an +offering to public curiosity. + +"Do you really want to know what people think of me?" he said to me on +one occasion. "Well, here's something. Read this." And then he would +hand me a bunch of the bitterest attacks possible, attacks which +pictured him as a sly and treacherous enemy of the people--or worse yet +a bounding anarchistic ignoramus. Personally I could not help admiring +his stoic mood. It was superior to that of his detractors. Apparent +falsehoods did not anger him. Evident misunderstandings could not, +seemingly, disturb him. + +"What do you expect?" he once said to me, after I had made a very +careful study of his career for a current magazine, which, curiously, +was never published. I was trying to get him to admit that he believed +that his example might be fruitful of results agreeable to him in the +future. I could not conclude that he really agreed with me. "People do +not remember; they forget. They remember so long as you are directly +before them with something that interests them. That may be a lower +gas-rate, or a band that plays good music. People like strong people, +and only strong people, characters of that sort--good, bad or +indifferent--I've found that out. If a man or a corporation is stronger +than I am, comes along and denounces me, or spends more money than I do +(or can), buys more beers, makes larger promises, it is 'all day' for +me. What has happened in my case is that, for the present, anyhow, I +have come up against a strong corporation, stronger than I am. What I +now need to do is to go out somewhere and get some more strength in some +way, it doesn't matter much how. People are not so much interested in me +or you, or your or my ideals in their behalf, as they are in strength, +an interesting spectacle. And they are easily deceived. These big +fighting corporations with their attorneys and politicians and +newspapers make me look weak--puny. So the people forget me. If I could +get out, raise one million or five hundred thousand dollars and give the +corporations a good drubbing, they would adore me--for awhile. Then I +would have to go out and get another five hundred thousand somewhere, or +do something else." + +"Quite so," I replied. "Yet _Vox populi, vox dei_." + +Sitting upon his own doorstep one evening, in a very modest quarter of +the city, I said: + +"Were you very much depressed by your defeat the last time?" + +"Not at all," he replied. "Action, reaction, that's the law. All these +things right themselves in time, I suppose, or, anyhow, they ought to. +Maybe they don't. Some man who can hand the people what they really need +or ought to have will triumph, I suppose, some time. I don't know, I'm +sure. I hope so. I think the world is moving on, all right." + +In his serene and youthful face, the pale blue, philosophical eyes, was +no evidence of dissatisfaction with the strange experiences through +which he had passed. + +"You're entirely philosophical, are you?" + +"As much as any one can be, I suppose. They seem to think that all my +work was an evidence of my worthlessness," he said. "Well, maybe it was. +Self-interest may be the true law, and the best force. I haven't quite +made up my mind yet. My sympathies of course are all the other way. 'He +ought to be sewing shoes in the penitentiary,' one paper once said of +me. Another advised me to try something that was not above my +intelligence, such as breaking rock or shoveling dirt. Most of them +agreed, however," he added with a humorous twitch of his large, +expressive mouth, "that I'll do very well if I will only stay where I +am, or, better yet, get out of here. They want me to leave. That's the +best solution for them." + +He seemed to repress a smile that was hovering on his lips. + +"The voice of the enemy," I commented. + +"Yes, sir, the voice of the enemy," he added. "But don't think that I +think I'm done for. Not at all. I have just returned to my old ways in +order to think this thing out. In a year or two I'll have solved my +problem, I hope. I may have to leave here, and I may not. Anyhow, I'll +turn up somewhere, with something." + +He did have to leave, however, public opinion never being allowed to +revert to him again, and five years later, in a fairly comfortable +managerial position in New York, he died. He had made a fight, well +enough, but the time, the place, the stars, perhaps, were not quite +right. He had no guiding genius, possibly, to pull him through. +Adherents did not flock to him and save him. Possibly he wasn't magnetic +enough--that pagan, non-moral, non-propagandistic quality, anyhow. The +fates did not fight for him as they do for some, those fates that ignore +the billions and billions of others who fail. Yet are not all lives more +or less failures, however successful they may appear to be at one time +or another, contrasted, let us say, with what they hoped for? We +compromise so much with everything--our dreams and all. + +As for his reforms, they may be coming fast enough, or they may not. _In +medias res._ + +But as for him...? + + + + +_W.L.S._ + + +Life's little ironies are not always manifest. We hear distant rumbling +sounds of its tragedies, but rarely are we permitted to witness the +reality. Therefore the real incidents which I am about to relate may +have some value. + +I first called upon W.L. S----, Jr., in the winter of 1895. I had known +of him before only by reputation, or, what is nearer the truth, by +seeing his name in one of the great Sunday papers attached to several +drawings of the most lively interest. These drawings depicted night +scenes of the city of New York, and appeared as colored supplements, +eleven by eighteen inches. They represented the spectacular scenes which +the citizen and the stranger most delight in--Madison Square in a +drizzle; the Bowery lighted by a thousand lamps and crowded with "L" and +surface cars; Sixth Avenue looking north from Fourteenth Street. + +I was a youthful editor at the time and on the lookout for interesting +illustrations of this sort, and when a little later I was in need of a +colored supplement for the Christmas number I decided to call upon +S----. I knew absolutely nothing about the world of art save what I had +gathered from books and current literary comment of all sorts, and was, +therefore, in a mood to behold something exceedingly bizarre in the +atmosphere with which I should find my illustrator surrounded. + +I was not disappointed. It was at the time when artists--I mean American +artists principally--went in very strongly for that sort of thing. Only +a few years before they had all been going to Paris, not so much to +paint as to find out and imitate how artists _do_ and live. I was +greeted by a small, wiry, lean-looking individual arrayed in a bicycle +suit, whose countenance could be best described as wearing a perpetual +look of astonishment. He had one eye which fixed you with a strange, +unmoving solemnity, owing to the fact that it was glass. His skin was +anything but fair, and might be termed sallow. He wore a close, +sharp-pointed Vandyke beard, and his gold-bridge glasses sat at almost +right angles upon his nose. His forehead was high, his good eye alert, +his hair sandy-colored and tousled, and his whole manner indicated +thought, feeling, remarkable nervous energy, and, above all, a rasping +and jovial sort of egotism which pleased me rather than otherwise. + +I noticed no more than this on my first visit, owing to the fact that I +was very much overawed and greatly concerned about the price which he +would charge me, not knowing what rate he might wish to exact, and being +desirous of coming away at least unabashed by his magnificence and +independence. + +"What's it for?" he asked, when I suggested a drawing. + +I informed him. + +"You say you want it for a double-page center?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, I'll do it for three hundred dollars." + +I was taken considerably aback, as I had not contemplated paying more +than one hundred. + +"I get that from all the magazines," he added, seeing my hesitation, +"wherever a supplement is intended." + +"I don't think I could pay more than one hundred," I said, after a few +moments' consideration. + +"You couldn't?" he said, sharply, as if about to reprove me. + +I shook my head. + +"Well," he said, "let's see a copy of your publication." + +The chief value of this conversation was that it taught me that the +man's manner was no indication of his mood. I had thought he was +impatient and indifferent, but I saw now that he was not so, rather +brusque merely. He was simply excitable, somewhat like the French, and +meant only to be businesslike. The upshot of it all was that he agreed +to do it for one hundred and fifty, and asked me very solemnly to say +nothing about it. + +I may say here that I came upon S---- in the full blush of his fancies +and ambitions, and just when he was verging upon their realization. He +was not yet successful. A hundred and fifty dollars was a very fair +price indeed. His powers, however, had reached that stage where they +would soon command their full value. + +I could see at once that he was very ambitious. He was bubbling over +with the enthusiasm of youth and an intense desire for recognition. He +knew he had talent. The knowledge of it gave him an air and an +independence of manner which might have been irritating to some. +Besides, he was slightly affected, argue to the contrary as he would, +and was altogether full of his own hopes and ambitions. + +The matter of painting this picture necessitated my presence on several +occasions, and during this time I got better acquainted with him. +Certain ideas and desires which we held in common drew us toward each +other, and I soon began to see that he was much above the average in +insight and skill. He talked with the greatest ease upon a score of +subjects--literature, art, politics, music, the drama, and history. He +seemed to have read the latest novels; to have seen many of the current +plays; to have talked with important people. Theodore Roosevelt, +previously Police Commissioner but then Governor, often came to his +studio to talk and play chess with him. A very able architect was his +friend. He had artist associates galore, many of whom had studios in the +same building or the immediate vicinity. And there were literary and +business men as well, all of whom seemed to enjoy his company, and who +were very fond of calling and spending an hour in his studio. + +I had only called the second time, and was going away, when he showed me +a steamship he had constructed with his own hands--a fair-sized model, +complete in every detail, even to the imitation stokers in the +boiler-room, and which would run by the hour if supplied with oil and +water. I soon learned that his skill in mechanical construction was +great. He was a member of several engineering societies, and devoted +some part of his carefully organized days to studying and keeping up +with problems in mechanics. + +"Oh, that's nothing," he observed, when I marveled at the size and +perfection of the model. "I'll show you something else, if you have time +some day, which may amuse you." + +He then explained that he had constructed several model warships, and +that it was his pleasure to take them out and fight them on a pond +somewhere out on Long Island. + +"We'll go out some day," he said when I showed appropriate interest, +"and have them fight each other. You'll see how it's done!" + +I waited some time for this outing, and finally mentioned it. + +"We'll go tomorrow," he said. "Can you be around here by ten o'clock?" + +Ten the next morning saw me promptly at the studio, and five minutes +later we were off. + +When we arrived at Long Island City we went to the first convenient arm +of the sea and undid the precious fighters, in which he much delighted. + +After studying the contour of the little inlet for a few moments he took +some measurements with a tape-line, stuck up two twigs in two places for +guide posts, and proceeded to fire and get up steam in his war-ships. +Afterwards he set the rudders, and then took them to the water-side and +floated them at the points where he had placed the twigs. + +These few details accomplished, he again studied the situation +carefully, headed the vessels to the fraction of an inch toward a +certain point of the opposite shore, and began testing the steam. + +"When I say ready, you push this lever here," he said, indicating a +little brass handle fastened to the stern-post. "Don't let her move an +inch until you do that. You'll see some tall firing." + +He hastened to the other side where his own boat was anchored, and began +an excited examination. He was like a school-boy with a fine toy. + +At a word, I moved the lever as requested, and the two vessels began +steaming out toward one another. Their weight and speed were such that +the light wind blowing affected them not in the least, and their prows +struck with an audible crack. This threw them side by side, steaming +head on together. At the same time it operated to set in motion their +guns, which fired broadsides in such rapid succession as to give a +suggestion of rapid revolver practice. Quite a smoke rose, and when it +rolled away one of the vessels was already nearly under water and the +other was keeling with the inflow of water from the port side. S---- lost +no time, but throwing off his coat, jumped in and swam to the rescue. + +Throughout this entire incident his manner was that of an enthusiastic +boy who had something exceedingly novel. He did not laugh. In all our +acquaintance I never once heard him give a sound, hearty laugh. Instead +he cackled. His delight apparently could only express itself in that +way. In the main it showed itself in an excess of sharp movements, short +verbal expressions, gleams of the eye. + +I saw from this the man's delight in the science of engineering, and +humored him in it. He was thereafter at the greatest pains to show all +that he had under way in the mechanical line, and schemes he had for +enjoying himself in this work in the future. It seemed rather a +recreation for him than anything else. Like him, I could not help +delighting in the perfect toys which he created, but the intricate +details and slow process of manufacture were brain-racking. For not only +would he draw the engine in all its parts, but he would buy the raw +material and cast and drill and polish each separate part. + +Upon my second visit I was deeply impressed by the sight of a fine +passenger engine, a duplicate of the great 999 of the New York Central, +of those days. It stood on brass rails laid along an old library shelf +that had probably belonged to the previous occupant of the studio. This +engine was a splendid object to look upon, strong, heavy, +silent-running, with the fineness and grace of a perfect sewing-machine. +It was duly trimmed with brass and nickel, after the manner of the great +"flyers," and seemed so sturdy and powerful that one could not restrain +the desire to see it run. + +"How do you like that?" S---- exclaimed when he saw me looking at it. + +"It's splendid," I said. + +"See how she runs," he exclaimed, moving it up and down. "No noise about +that." + +He fairly caressed the mechanism with his hand, and went off into a most +careful analysis of its qualities. + +"I could build that engine," he exclaimed at last, enthusiastically, "if +I were down in the Baldwin Company's place. I could make her break the +record." + +"I haven't the slightest doubt in the world," I answered. + +This engine was a source of great expense to him, as well as the chief +point in a fine scheme. He had made brass rails for it--sufficient to +extend about the four sides of the studio--something like seventy feet. +He had made most handsome passenger-cars with full equipment of brakes, +vestibules, Pintsch gas, and so on, and had painted on their sides "The +Great Pullman Line." One day, when we were quite friendly, he brought +from his home all the rails, in a carpet-bag, and gave an exhibition of +his engine's speed, attaching the cars and getting up sufficient steam +to cause the engine to race about the room at a rate which was actually +exciting. He had an arrangement by which it would pick up water and stop +automatically. It was on this occasion that he confided what he called +his great biograph scheme, the then forerunner of the latter day moving +pictures. It was all so new then, almost a rumor, like that of the +flying machine before it was invented. + +"I propose to let the people see the photographic representation of an +actual wreck--engine, cars, people, all tumbled down together after a +collision, and no imitation, either--the actual thing." + +"How do you propose to do it?" I asked. + +"Well, that's the thing," he said, banteringly. "Now, how do you suppose +I'd do it?" + +"Hire a railroad to have a wreck and kill a few people," I suggested. + +"Well, I've got a better thing than that. A railroad couldn't plan +anything more real than mine will be." + +I was intensely curious because of the novelty of the thing at that +time. The "Biograph" was in its infancy. + +"This is it," he exclaimed suddenly. "You see how realistic this engine +is, don't you?" + +I acknowledged that I did. + +"Well," he confided, "I'm building another just like it. It's costing me +three hundred dollars, and the passenger-cars will cost as much more. +Now, I'm going to fix up some scenery on my roof--a gorge, a line of +woods, a river, and a bridge. I'm going to make the water tumble over +big rocks just above the bridge and run underneath it. Then I'm going to +lay this track around these rocks, through the woods, across the bridge +and off into the woods again. + +"I'm going to put on the two trains and time them so they'll meet on the +bridge. Just when they come into view where they can see each other, a +post on the side of the track will strike the cabs in such a way as to +throw the firemen out on the steps just as if they were going to jump. +When the engines take the bridge they'll explode caps that will set fire +to oil and powder under the cars and burn them up." + +"Then what?" I asked. + +"Well, I've got it planned automatically so that you will see people +jumping out of the cars and tumbling down on the rocks, the flames +springing up and taking to the cars, and all that. Don't you believe +it?" he added, as I smiled at the idea. "Look here," and he produced a +model of one of the occupants of the cars. He labored for an hour to +show all the intricate details, until I was compelled to admit the +practicability and novelty of the idea. Then he explained that +instantaneous photography, as it was then called, was to be applied at +such close range that the picture would appear life size. The actuality +of the occurrence would do the rest. + +Skepticism still lingered with me for a time, but when I saw the second +train growing, the figures and apparatus gradually being modeled, and +the correspondence and conferences going on between the artist and +several companies which wished to gain control of the result, I was +perfectly sure that his idea would some day be realized. + +As I have said, when I first met S---- he had not realized any of his +dreams. It was just at that moment that the tide was about to turn. He +surprised me by the assurance, born of his wonderful virility, with +which he went about all things. + +"I've got an order from the _Ladies' Home Journal_," he said to me one +day. "They came to me." + +"Good," I said. "What is it?" + +"Somebody's writing up the terminal facilities of New York." + +He had before him an Academy board, on which was sketched, in wash, a +midnight express striking out across the Jersey meadows with sparks +blazing from the smoke stacks and dim lights burning in the sleepers. It +was a vivid thing, strong with all the strength of an engine, and rich +in the go and enthusiasm which adhere to such mechanisms. + +"I want to make a good thing of this," he said. "It may do me some +good." + +A little later he received his first order from Harper's. He could not +disguise that he was pleased, much as he tried to carry it off with an +air. It was just before the Spanish war broke out, and the sketches he +was to do related to the navy. + +He labored at this order with the most tireless enthusiasm. Marine +construction was his delight anyhow, and he spent hours and days making +studies about the great vessels, getting not only the atmosphere but the +mechanical detail. When he made the pictures they represented all that +he felt. + +"You know those drawings?" he said the day after he delivered them. + +"Yes." + +"I set a good stiff price on them and demanded my drawings back when +they were through." + +"Did you get them?" + +"Yep. It will give them more respect for what I'm trying to do," he +said. + +Not long after he illustrated one of Kipling's stories. + +He was in high feather at this, but grim and repressed withal. One could +see by the nervous movements of his wiry body that he was delighted over +it. + +At this time Kipling came to his studio. It was by special arrangement, +but S---- received him as if he were--well, as artists usually receive +authors. They talked over the galley proofs, and the author went away. + +"It's coming my way now," he said, when he could no longer conceal his +feelings. "I want to do something good on this." + +Through all this rise from obscurity to recognition he lived close to +his friends--a crowd of them, apparently, always in his studio jesting, +boxing, fencing--and interested himself in the mechanics I have +described. His drawing, his engine-building, his literary studies and +recreations were all mixed, jumbled, plunging him pell-mell, as it were, +on to distinction. In the first six months of his studio life he had +learned to fence, and often dropped his brush to put on the mask and +assume the foils with one of his companions. + +As our friendship increased I found how many were the man's +accomplishments and how wide his range of sympathies. He was an expert +bicyclist, as well as a trick rider, and used a camera in a way to make +an amateur envious. He could sing, having a fine tenor voice, which I +heard the very day I learned that he could sing. It so happened that it +was my turn to buy the theater tickets, and I invited him to come with +me that especial evening. + +"Can't do it," he replied. + +"All right," I said. + +"I'm part of an entertainment tonight, or I would," he added +apologetically. + +"What do you do?" I inquired. + +"Sing." + +"Get out!" I said. + +"So be it," he answered. "Come up this evening." + +To this I finally agreed, and was surprised to observe the ease with +which he rendered his solo. He had an exquisitely clear and powerful +voice and received a long round of applause, which he refused to +acknowledge by singing again. + +The influence of success is easily observable in a man of so volatile a +nature. It seems to me that I could have told by his manner, day by day, +the inwash of the separate ripples of the inrolling tide of success. He +was all alive, full of plans, and the tale of his coming conquests was +told in his eye. Sometime in the second year of our acquaintance I +called at his studio in response to a card which he had stuck under my +office door. It was his habit to draw an outline head of himself, +something almost bordering upon a caricature, writing underneath it "I +called," together with any word he might have to say. This day he was in +his usual good spirits, and rallied me upon having an office which was +only a blind. He had a roundabout way of getting me to talk about his +personal affairs with him, and I soon saw that he had something very +interesting, to himself, to communicate. At last he said,-- + +"I'm going to Europe next summer." + +"Is that so?" I replied. "For pleasure?" + +"Well, partly." + +"What's up outside of that?" I asked. + +"I'm going to represent the American Architectural League at the +international convention." + +"I didn't know you were an architect," I said. + +"Well, I'm not," he answered, "professionally. I've studied it pretty +thoroughly." + +"Well, you seem to be coming up, Louis," I remarked. + +"I'm doing all right," he answered. + +He went on working at his easel as if his fate depended upon what he was +doing. He had the fortunate quality of being able to work and converse +most entertainingly at the same time. He seemed to enjoy company under +such circumstances. + +"You didn't know I was a baron, did you?" he finally observed. + +"No," I answered, thinking he was exercising his fancy for the moment. +"Where do you keep your baronial lands, my lord?" + +"In Germany, kind sir," he replied, banteringly. + +Then in his customary excitable mood he dropped his brushes and stood +up. + +"You don't believe me, do you?" he exclaimed, looking over his drooping +glasses. + +"Why, certainly I believe you, if you are serious. Are you truly a +baron?" + +"It was this way," he said. "My grandfather was a baron. My father was +the younger of two brothers. His brother got the title and what was left +of the estate. That he managed to go through with, and then he died. +Now, no one has bothered about the title--" + +"And you're going back to claim it?" + +"Exactly." + +I took it all lightly at first, but in time I began to perceive that it +was a serious ambition. He truly wanted to be Baron S---- and add to +himself the luster of his ancestors. + +With all this, the man was really not so much an aristocrat in his mood +as a seeker after life and new experiences. Being a baron was merely a +new experience, or promised to be. He had the liveliest sympathies for +republican theories and institutions--only he considered his life a +thing apart. He had a fine mind, philosophically and logically poised. +He could reason upon all things, from the latest mathematical theorem to +Christian Science. Naturally, being so much of an individualist, he was +not drifting toward any belief in the latter, but was never weary of +discussing the power of mind--a universal mind even--its wondrous +ramifications and influences. Also he was a student of the English +school of philosophy, and loved to get up mathematical and mechanical +demonstrations of certain philosophic truths. Thus he worked out by +means of a polygon, whose sides were of unequal lengths, a theory of +friendship which is too intricate to explain here. + +From now on I watched his career with the liveliest interest. He was a +charming and a warm friend, and never neglected for a moment the +obligations which such a relationship demands. + +I heard from him frequently in many and various ways, dined with him +regularly every second or third week, and rejoiced with him in his +triumphs, now more and more frequent. One spring he went to Europe and +spent the summer in tracing down his baronial claims, looking up various +artists and scientists and attending several scientific meetings here +and there at the same time. He did the illustrations for one of +Kipling's fast express stories which one of the magazines published, and +came back flushed and ready to try hard for a membership in the American +Water-Color Society. + +I shall never forget his anxiety to get into that mildly interesting +body. He worked hard and long on several pictures which should not only +be hung on the line but enlist sufficient interest among the artists to +gain him a vote of admission. He mentioned it frequently and fixed me +with his eyes to see what I thought of him. + +"Go ahead," I said; "you have more right to membership perhaps than many +another I know. Try hard." + +He painted not one, but four, pictures, and sent them all. They were +very interesting after their kind. Two were scenes from the great +railroad terminal yards; the others, landscapes in mist or rain. Three +of these pictures were passed and two of them hung on the line. The +third was _skyed_, but he was admitted to membership. + +I was delighted for his sake, for I could see, when he gave me the +intelligence, that it was a matter which had keyed up his whole nervous +system. + +Not long after this we were walking on Broadway, one drizzly autumn +evening, on our way to the theater. Life, ambition, and our future were +the _small_ subjects under discussion. The street, as usual, was +crowded. On every hand blazed the fire signs. The yellow lights were +beautifully reflected in the wet sidewalks and gray wet cobblestones +glistening with water. + +When we reached Greeley Square (at that time a brilliant and almost +sputtering spectacle of light and merriment), S---- took me by the arm. + +"Come over here," he said. "I want you to look at it from here." + +He took me to a point where, by the intersection of the lines of the +converging streets, one could not only see Greeley Square but a large +part of Herald Square, with its then huge theatrical sign of fire and +its measure of store lights and lamps of vehicles. It was a +kaleidoscopic and inspiring scene. The broad, converging walks were +alive with people. A perfect jam of vehicles marked the spot where the +horse and cable cars intersected. Overhead was the elevated station, its +lights augmented every few minutes by long trains of brightly lighted +cars filled with changing metropolitan crowds--crowds like shadows +moving in a dream. + +"Do you see the quality of that? Look at the blend of the lights and +shadows in there under the L." + +I looked and gazed in silent admiration. + +"See, right here before us--that pool of water there--do you get that? +Now, that isn't silver-colored, as it's usually represented. It's a +prism. Don't you see the hundred points of light?" + +I acknowledged the variety of color, which I had scarcely observed +before. + +"You may think one would skip that in viewing a great scene, but the +artist mustn't. He must get all, whether you notice it or not. It gives +feeling, even when you don't see it." + +I acknowledged the value of this ideal. + +"It's a great spectacle," he said. "It's got more flesh and blood in it +than people usually think. It's easy to make it too mechanical and +commonplace." + +"Why don't you paint it?" I asked. + +He turned on me as if he had been waiting for the suggestion. + +"That's something I want to tell you," he said. "I am. I've sketched it +a half-dozen times already. I haven't got it yet. But I'm going to." + +I heard more of these dreams, intensifying all the while, until the +Spanish-American war broke out. Then he was off in a great rush of war +work. I scarcely saw him for six weeks, owing to some travels of my own, +but I saw his name. One day in Broadway I stopped to see why a large +crowd was gathered about a window in the Hoffman House. It was one of +S----'s drawings of our harbor defenses, done as if the artist had been +sitting at the bottom of the sea. The fishes, the green water, the hull +of a massive war-ship--all were there--and about, the grim torpedoes. +This put it into my head to go and see him. He was as tense and +strenuous as ever. The glittering treasure at the end of the rainbow was +more than ever in his eye. His body was almost sore from traveling. + +"I am in now," he said, referring to the war movement. "I am going to +Tampa." + +"Be gone long?" I asked. + +"Not this first time. I'll only be down there three weeks." + +"I'll see you then." + +"Supposing we make it certain," he said. "What do you say to dining +together this coming Sunday three weeks?" + +I went away, wishing him a fine trip and feeling that his dreams must +now soon begin to come true. He was growing in reputation. Some war +pictures, such as he could do, would set people talking. Then he would +paint his prize pictures, finish his wreck scheme, become a baron, and +be a great man. + +Three weeks later I knocked at his studio door. It was a fine springlike +day, though it was in February. I expected confidently to hear his quick +aggressive step inside. Not a sound in reply. I knocked harder, but +still received no answer. Then I went to the other doors about. He might +be with his friends, but they were not in. I went away thinking that his +war duties had interfered, that he had not returned. + +Nevertheless there was something depressing about that portion of the +building in which his studio was located. I felt as if it should not be, +and decided to call again. Monday it was the same, and Tuesday. + +That same evening I was sitting in the library of the Salmagundi Club, +when a well-known artist addressed me. + +"You knew S----, didn't you?" he said. + +"Yes; what of it?" + +"You knew he was dead, didn't you?" + +"What!" I said. + +"Yes, he died of fever, this morning." + +I looked at him without speaking for a moment. + +"Too bad," he said. "A clever boy, Louis. Awfully clever. I feel sorry +for his father." + +It did not take long to verify his statement. His name was in the +perfunctory death lists of the papers the next morning. No other notice +of any sort. Only a half-dozen seemed to know that he had ever lived. + +And yet it seemed _to me_ that a great tragedy had happened--he was so +ambitious, so full of plans. His dreams were so near fulfillment. + +I saw the little grave afterward and the empty studio. His desks +revealed several inventions and many plans of useful things, but these +came to nothing. There was no one to continue the work. + +My feeling at the time was as if I had been looking at a beautiful lamp, +lighted, warm and irradiating a charming scene, and then suddenly that +it had been puffed out before my eyes, as if a hundred bubbles of +iridescent hues had been shattered by a breath. We toil so much, we +dream so richly, we hasten so fast, and, lo! the green door is opened. +We are through it, and its grassy surface has sealed us forever from all +which apparently we so much crave--even as, breathlessly, we are still +running. + +[Transcriber's Note: Typos have been corrected in this document, but +spelling and punctuation inconsistencies have been retained.] + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Twelve Men, by Theodore Dreiser + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWELVE MEN *** + +***** This file should be named 14717.txt or 14717.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/7/1/14717/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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