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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Anarchist Woman, by Hutchins Hapgood
+
+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: An Anarchist Woman
+
+Author: Hutchins Hapgood
+
+Release Date: September 28, 2008 [EBook #26719]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ANARCHIST WOMAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  +------------------------------------------------------------+
+  | Transcriber's Note:                                        |
+  |                                                            |
+  | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in        |
+  | this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of   |
+  | this document.                                             |
+  +------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+_An_
+Anarchist Woman
+
+
+_By_
+HUTCHINS HAPGOOD
+
+_Author of "The Autobiography of a Thief,"
+"The Spirit of Labor"_
+
+
+_NEW YORK_
+DUFFIELD & COMPANY
+1909
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
+DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
+
+  _"The best government is that which
+  makes itself superfluous."_
+
+  GOETHE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                             PAGE
+
+      I. SCHOOL AND FACTORY                            1
+
+     II. DOMESTIC SERVICE                             12
+
+    III. DOMESTIC SERVICE (CONTINUED)                 26
+
+     IV. ADVENTURES IN SEX                            48
+
+      V. MARIE'S SALVATION                            65
+
+     VI. TERRY                                        73
+
+    VII. THE MEETING                                  94
+
+   VIII. THE ROGUES' GALLERY                         120
+
+     IX. THE SALON                                   147
+
+      X. MORE OF THE SALON                           186
+
+     XI. THE END OF THE SALON                        217
+
+    XII. MARIE'S ATTEMPT                             239
+
+   XIII. MARIE'S FAILURE                             261
+
+    XIV. MARIE'S REVOLT                              280
+
+     XV. TERRY'S FINISH                              299
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+It is possible that in fifty years people now called "anarchists" will
+have in America as respectable a place as they now occupy in France.
+When we are more accustomed to social thought, we shall not regard those
+who radically differ from us, as mad dogs or malevolent idiots. We may,
+indeed, still look on them as mistaken, but what now seems to us their
+insanity or peculiar atrociousness will vanish with our growing
+understanding and experience. When we become less crude in civilisation,
+they will seem less crude to us. When, with growing culture, we see
+things more nearly as they are, the things we see, including the
+anarchists, will seem more sympathetic.
+
+This book is not an attempt to justify any person or set of persons. It
+is not a political or economic pamphlet. It represents an effort to
+throw light on what may be called the temperament of revolt; by
+portraying the mental life of an individual, and incidentally of more
+than one individual, I have hoped to make more clear the natural
+history of the anarchist; to show under what conditions, in connection
+with what personal qualities, the anarchistic habit of mind arises, and
+to point out, suggestively, rather than explicitly, the nature, the
+value, and the tragic limitation of the social rebel.
+
+
+
+
+An Anarchist Woman
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_School and Factory_
+
+
+When I first met the heroine of this tale, Marie, she was twenty-three
+years old, yet had lived enough for a woman of more than twice her age;
+indeed, few women of any age ever acquire the amount of mental
+experience possessed by this factory hand and servant girl. She had more
+completely translated her life into terms of thought than any other
+woman of my acquaintance. She had been deeply helped to do this by a man
+of strange character, with whom she lived. She had also been deeply
+helped by vice and misery. The intensity of her nature showed in her
+anĉmic body and her large eyes, dark and glowing, but more than all in
+the way she had of making everything her own, no matter from what source
+it came. Everything she said, or wrote, or did, all fitted into her
+personality, had one note, her note. But perhaps the most intense
+quality of all was--and is--this never-failing though gracefully
+manifested energy, resulting in unity of character and temperament in
+expression. To keep everything in tone is a quality of art; it is also a
+sign of great, though not always obvious, energy.
+
+Marie was born in a Chicago slum in 1884. Her mother, half French and
+half German, was endowed with cruelty truly international. Her father
+was a drunken machinist of German extraction, generally out of a job.
+Both the parents beat the little girl, the mother because she was cruel,
+the father because he was a beast.
+
+Her earliest memories are connected with the smoky streets of the West
+Side. The smell of the Stock Yards suggests her youth to her, as the
+smell of walnuts brings back to the more fortunate country man the rich
+beauty of a natural childhood. The beatings she received from her
+parents and the joy of her escape to the street--these are the strongest
+impressions derived from her tender years. To her the street was
+paradise; her home, hell. She knew that when she returned to the house
+she would find a mother half crazy with poverty and unhappiness and a
+father half crazy with drink; and that, if for no other reason than for
+diversion and relief, they would beat her.
+
+The authorities finally succeeded in forcing the little girl's parents
+to send her to school, where she remained only two years. She was not
+quite ten years old at the time, and the memories she has of her school
+life are only a trifle less unpleasant than those of her home. The last
+day in school especially lives in her recollection; and she thus
+described it in a letter to me:
+
+"It was a warm morning toward the end of May, and room seven in the
+Pullman School was pervaded with an intense excitement. For soon
+examination day would come and the pupils were being prepared for the
+occasion. The children fidgeted uneasily in their seats and even the
+teacher became nervous and impatient, glancing often at the big clock
+which ticked so monotonously and slowly. Soon it would be twelve o'clock
+and teacher and pupils would have a respite for a few hours. If only
+those stupid children would solve those problems in arithmetic, the most
+difficult study, they would not have to stay after school. But it
+happened just as the teacher had feared: A dozen children, of whom two
+were boys, did not give correct answers. After the school was dismissed
+the stupids were ordered to go to the blackboard, and stay there until
+they saw the light.
+
+"Meanwhile the teacher sat at her desk with a despairing look on her
+face and the general air of a martyr, as she noticed the futile efforts
+of those stupid children. But she was evidently determined not to help
+them out of their difficulty. After a while, one of the boys solved the
+problem and was dismissed. The other children looked at his work and
+quickly copied it before the teacher could erase it from the blackboard.
+Not I, however, for I was at the other end of the room and my eyes were
+weak. I enviously watched the other children leaving the room, until I
+was alone with the teacher. I tried the terrible, senseless problem
+again and again and became so confused and nervous that I was on the
+verge of tears. All the little knowledge I had of mathematics left me
+completely. Finally the teacher lost her patience and showed me how to
+get the answer.
+
+"'You stupid girl!' she said, 'you will never pass the examination.'
+
+"But I did not care. I ran from the school-house, and on my way home
+kept saying to myself: 'I don't have to pass, for I'm going to work next
+week, and I'm so glad. Then I'll never, never have to study arithmetic
+any more. Oh, how I wish next week were here already.' I was not quite
+twelve years old and I would have been working even then if my
+prospective employers had not instructed my parents to secure a
+certificate showing that I was fourteen years old.
+
+"The next Monday morning, bright and early, with this new certificate,
+which was sworn to by my mother and duly attested by a notary, I
+presented myself at the office of Messrs. Hardwin & Co., in South Water
+Street. They were wholesale dealers in miscellaneous household supplies,
+from bird-seed and flavouring extracts to bluing and lye, the latter the
+principal article. Mr. Hardwin, a benevolent looking old gentleman with
+a white beard and a skull-cap, glanced at the certificate, and patting
+stupid me kindly on the head, hired me for two dollars a week, and sent
+me upstairs where I was put to work washing old cans collected from the
+ash barrels and alleys of the city. After being cleansed, they were
+filled with lye, and new covers sealed on them. Then they were covered
+with neat white labels, and packed in cases and delivered to all parts
+of the United States.
+
+"This sort of work was not what I had expected to do. But I was told by
+my mother that all people who worked for their living had to start in
+that way, and gradually work themselves upwards. So I waited patiently
+for the time when I might, perhaps, secure the position of labelling.
+Then, too, I thought that great place would bring an increase of salary,
+for I had already learned that the lighter the work, the heavier the
+pay.
+
+"About this time the firm received large orders for lye, and all hands
+were put to work filling the cans with this corrosive material, for
+which purpose rubber gloves were used. As I was the latest addition to
+the factory, and the greenest girl in the place, it was easy for the
+older and more experienced girls to secure the best gloves for the work.
+The old, worn out ones, which were full of holes, fell to me, who was
+too young and timid to rebel against these conditions. After a week of
+this work my hands were all eaten by the lye and it was torturing agony
+to move them in any way. At night my mother used to put salve and
+bandages on them, but this treatment was of little avail because the
+next day my hands would be covered with that horrible stuff which ate
+deeper and deeper, until the pain became unbearable.
+
+"So, one morning, I went to Mr. Hardwin and begged him, with tears in my
+eyes, to let me work at something else until my hands were healed. He
+looked at my swollen fingers and said: 'My poor girl, you certainly
+shall work at something else. I will give you a nice easy job making
+bird-seed boxes.'
+
+"I was immediately put at my new work, which seemed really delightful to
+me, but I was rather lonely, as I was the only girl on that floor. I
+made thousands and thousands of those boxes, which were stacked in heaps
+upon the shelves above my head. Directly behind me was a great belt,
+connected with the cutting machine up-stairs, which all day long cut out
+the round pieces of tin needed to cover the cans of lye after they were
+filled. This belt as it whirled round and round made a great noise. But
+I soon grew quite used to it. I became like a machine myself. All alone
+I sat there, day after day, while the great belt whirred out the same
+monotonous song. I kept time to its monotony by a few movements of the
+hands endlessly repeated, turning out boxes and boxes and boxes, all
+alike. I saw, heard, and felt almost nothing. My hands moved
+unconsciously and instinctively. At this time, I think, the first
+feeling of profound ennui came to me, that feeling which to shake off I
+would at a later time do anything, anything, no matter how violent and
+extreme it was. Only at noon time when the whistle shrieked did I seem
+alive, and then I was dazed and trembling.
+
+"The great belt then stopped whirring for half an hour and I sat and ate
+my frugal meal, listening eagerly to the talk going on about me.
+Sometimes the girls made me the butt of their jests, for they were
+envious of me, because of my easy job, and hinted that I was not getting
+this snap for nothing. All of this I did not in the least understand,
+for I was not much more than twelve years old.
+
+"One morning I was surprised and delighted to see Mr. Hardwin come in
+and ask me how my hands were, and if I still suffered much pain. I was
+so grateful that tears came to my eyes as I answered. That night I told
+my mother what an extremely kind and good man Mr. Hardwin was. He
+repeated these visits several mornings in succession, always asking me
+how I was getting along, and patting me on the head or shoulder as he
+went away. I had been working perhaps two months at this job, when one
+morning it happened that I was the first one of the employees to arrive
+at the factory. While I was in the dressing-room removing my wraps, a
+knock came on the door, and Mr. Hardwin entered. Quickly seizing me in
+his arms, he covered my face with kisses, and did not quit until he
+heard someone approaching. He left hastily, saying 'Don't tell!' the
+only words he uttered during the scene. I was so amazed that I did not
+even scream. Nor did I understand, but I did feel troubled and ashamed.
+All that morning I was uneasy and nervous, and the following day I
+waited outside until some of the girls came, so that I should not have
+to go into the factory alone. The day following I received an envelope
+with my pay, and was told that my services were no longer required.
+
+"I got a beating at home as a result of my discharge, but as I soon
+found another job, my parents became comparatively kind to me again.
+This new work was in a candy factory, where I was both startled and
+amazed at the way the beautiful, sweet candies were made. I remained
+there about six months, when I was discharged because I had been late
+several times in one week. The next job was in a brewery, where I
+labelled beer bottles. This was the cleanest and most wholesome place I
+ever worked in. We had a whole hour for dinner, and the boys and girls
+were all so jolly. Nearly every day after lunch we played on mouth
+organs and danced on the smooth floor until the whistle blew for work
+again. Oh, there, it was good to work! Three times a day each employee
+received a bottle of nice cold beer, which, after several hours of hard
+work, tasted lovely. The people there seemed to think it was not evil to
+be happy, and I naturally agreed with them against the good people
+outside. But one ill-fated day my parents heard that a brewery was an
+immoral place for a young girl to work in, and that if I remained there
+I might lose my character and reputation. So I was taken away and put to
+work in another place and then in another, but I am sure that I never
+again found a place that I liked half as well as the dear old bottled
+beer shop."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_Domestic Service_
+
+
+When Marie was about fifteen years old, her mother took her away from
+the factories and put her into domestic service. Factory work was
+telling on the girl's health, and the night freedom it involved did not
+please her mother. The young woman for some time had felt the charms of
+associating with many boys and girls unchaperoned and untrammelled. She
+liked the streets at night better than her home.
+
+"When I got into the street," said Marie, "I felt like a dog let loose."
+Of course, she hated to go into domestic service, where the evenings
+would no longer be all her own, but her mother was still strong enough
+to have her way.
+
+"At that time," Marie wrote me, "I was a poor, awkward girl, somewhat
+stupid, perhaps, but who would not be at my age and in the same
+environment? I had received most of my education in the factories and
+stores down-town, which was perhaps beneficial to everybody but me.
+Even my mother, who in some ways was stupid and hard, noticed that this
+sort of education was likely to have what is called a demoralizing
+effect on me. So she induced a kind-hearted, philanthropic woman, Mrs.
+Belshow, to take me as servant girl. Mrs. Belshow was high in affairs of
+the Hull House Settlement Workers, and generously paid my mother one
+dollar and a half a week for my services.
+
+"Mrs. Belshow had a beautiful house. At first these fine surroundings,
+to which I was entirely unused, made me more awkward than ever. But soon
+I got accustomed to the place and became very serviceable to my
+employer. I was lady's maid as well as general housekeeper, and my fine
+lady duly appreciated my work, for she never asked me to do service
+after half-past nine at night or before half-past five in the morning.
+Besides, she allowed me Sunday afternoon free, but only to go to church
+or Sunday School. For the honourable lady told me very kindly that she
+did not wish to interfere with my religion in any way whatever. This
+advice I accepted meekly, as I was greatly in awe of her, though I
+should have much preferred to spend my half holiday in my home locality
+and to dance there with other stupid boys and girls in Lammer's Hall,
+where the entrancing strains of the concertina were to be heard every
+Sunday afternoon. The young folks out that way were not strong on
+religion; or, if they were, they would receive all the soul's medicine
+necessary by attending church in the morning, no doubt thereby feeling
+more vigorous and fit for enjoying the dance afterwards.
+
+"But I, poor stupid, had learned from my mistress that dance-halls were
+vile and abominable. Of course, I believed all that Mrs. Belshow told
+me. I had not the slightest idea that she did not know everything. Why,
+she belonged to Hull House, that big place in Halsted Street, which had
+flowers and lace curtains in all the windows, and big looking-glasses
+and carpets and silver things on the inside; and many beautiful ladies
+who wore grand silk dresses and big hats with feathers came to see my
+mistress nearly every day, and they all talked a great deal about the
+evils of dance-halls and saloons and theatres. I had always stupidly
+thought that those places were very nice, especially the dance-halls,
+because I always enjoyed myself there better than anywhere else. I had
+never been in a theatre, but I had often been in the saloons to rush the
+can for my father, and I had noticed that people seemed to enjoy
+themselves there. There were long green tables in the saloons on which
+men played pool, and there were books scattered about in which were
+jokes and funny pictures. And the men played cards and told stories and
+danced and sang and did about anything they wanted to. This seemed to me
+good, and I felt sure at the time that if I were a man I should like to
+be there, too.
+
+"But now I learned that these were terrible places, dens of vice and
+crime. What vice was, I did not know, but crime meant murdering somebody
+or doing something else dreadful. I thought about what I heard the fine
+ladies say until my poor little head became quite muddled. Left to
+myself, I could not see anything so terrible about these places, but if
+these finely dressed ladies said they were terrible, why they must be
+so. They knew better than I did. But I wondered dreamily if all terrible
+places were as nice as dance-halls.
+
+"After the novelty of the situation wore away, life became rather
+wearisome to me, and I sometimes wished I were again working in the old
+factory. I thought of the evenings, when my day's work in the factory
+was done and I was walking in the streets with my chums, telling them,
+perhaps, of the small girls who worked with me in the factory, and of
+the guys who waited for them on Saturday nights and took them to the
+show. And one of the girl's guys always used to give her a whole box of
+the swellest candy you ever tasted.
+
+"Dreaming thus one day of all the happy times I had known, I loitered
+over my work, as I fear I often did, and was sharply reprimanded by my
+mistress, the honourable lady, who wanted to speak to me as soon as
+possible on a matter of grave importance. I finished making the bed in a
+hurry and went into the presence of Mrs. Belshow, who said to me:
+
+"'My dear child, how old are you?'
+
+"'Past fifteen, ma'am.'
+
+"'Fifteen! H'm, you're quite a big girl for your age. I'm astonished
+that you have no more self-respect, or your mother for you! How is it
+that she allows you to go about with such short dresses? Why, it is
+shameful; I am surprised, for your mother seemed to me a sensible sort
+of a woman. I declare, I never would allow my daughter to expose herself
+in such a shameless manner, and I certainly will not allow anyone in my
+employ to do so. Only the other day my attention was called by some of
+my friends to your most careless condition. They said they could not
+help noticing it, it was so dreadful. It is this kind of thing which
+causes a great part of the vice and immorality with which we are
+surrounded. Unless a mother has common decency enough to clothe her
+child properly, it seems hopeless for us to accomplish anything. Now, my
+dear child, I want you to go home this very night and tell your mother
+you must positively have some long dresses, or no self-respecting person
+would care to associate with you. And you must try to have at least one
+respectable garment by Sunday, for I am ashamed to have you seen going
+out of my house in your present condition. Run along now and don't be
+home later than ten this evening.'
+
+"During this long harangue I stood gazing on the floor, blushing
+painfully. I wanted to tell my mistress why I had no longer dresses,
+but could only stammer 'yes, ma'am' and 'no, ma'am,' and was very glad
+to escape from the room as soon as my lady had finished.
+
+"When my mother heard about the affair, she was very indignant, and
+demanded why Mrs. Belshow did not buy the dresses for me. 'For my part,'
+she said, 'I have no money to waste on such trash. I'm sure, what you
+are wearing now is all right. It's not so short, either, nearly down to
+your shoe tops. But I suppose I must get you something, or she will fire
+you. I'll give you a dress that'll be long enough all right--one that
+goes right down to the floor, and if Mrs. Belshow doesn't like it,
+she'll have to lump it. I can't afford to get you new dresses every year
+and you not through growing yet. Gee, that Mrs. Belshow must think we're
+millionaires!'
+
+"When I made my appearance the next Sunday morning in a neat long skirt,
+the honourable lady praised me very highly, saying that now I looked
+like a respectable young woman. 'Why, you actually look pretty, my
+child,' she said. 'You must get a nice ribbon for your neck, and then
+you will be fine.' This remark made me very happy, for I had been
+secretly longing for a dress of this kind. Now, at last, I was a real
+grown-up lady. Perhaps I might soon have a fellow, who would take me to
+the show, just like the girls in the factory. I thrilled with joy. Later
+I looked into the mirror a long while, admiring myself and dreaming of
+the afternoon, when I would be free. I decided that I would go to the
+dance, and pictured to myself how surprised and envious the other girls
+would be, when they saw me looking so fine. I would certainly not miss
+one single dance the whole afternoon, for I was sure the boys would be
+fascinated and that the swellest among them would see me home in the
+evening.
+
+"These joys made the morning an unforgettable one; but soon it was time
+to get ready to go. I went to my room and curled my hair, and then was
+more pleased with myself than ever. I really looked pretty! Oh, the joy
+of it! I do not need to explain, even to a man. Briefly, I looked
+sweller than ever. The only thing needed to complete my toilet were some
+bright ribbons to fix in my hair and around my throat. I recollected
+having seen some very pretty ribbons in my mistress's scrap-bag which
+would do admirably. So I brought the scrap bag from the store room and
+dumped the contents on my bed, and soon found just what I wanted--two
+beautiful bits of silk. I hastily stitched them together, and was all
+ready to go. I could return the silk to the bag the next morning and my
+mistress would never know they had been gone. I thought regretfully what
+a shame it was to throw such beautiful things into a scrap-bag.
+
+"Poor, vain little me! I came home later than usual, that
+never-to-be-forgotten night!--very tired, but very happy. And I had been
+escorted all the way by the grandest young man I had ever known. I lay
+awake for a long time, reviewing everything that had happened. I had
+never dreamed it was possible to be so happy. It was because I was now a
+grown-up lady! I should never forget that all my happiness was due to my
+mistress, for it was through her that I had my long dress. I decided to
+be more serviceable than ever, not dream and dawdle over my work, and
+never to be angry when my mistress scolded me. I would disobey her only
+in one thing--about going to Sunday School. At least, I would not go
+every week, perhaps every other Sunday, so she would not notice. In the
+midst of these good and delightful thoughts I fell asleep, and slept so
+soundly that the alarm bell in the clock did not awaken me at the usual
+hour.
+
+"It did awaken Mrs. Belshow, however, who was just about to drop off to
+sleep again, when it occurred to her that she had not heard me moving
+about as usual, so she went to my room and aroused me in the midst of a
+beautiful dream about the handsomest boy you ever saw just as he was
+paying me the greatest attention!
+
+"Jumping out of bed, I was horrified to find it was six o'clock, fully
+half an hour late. I rushed about my work, dreading the moment, yet
+wishing it were over, when my mistress should summon me for the scolding
+I was sure would come, for if there was one thing Mrs. Belshow hated
+more than anything else, it was being late. All too soon came the
+dreaded moment. Breakfast was scarcely over, when I was requested to go
+to my room. That was rather surprising, for, as a rule, I received my
+scolding in the lady's room, while I was assisting her to pull on her
+stockings or comb her hair.
+
+"I had scarcely crossed the threshold of my room when my knees knocked
+together and I nearly fell over, for there, standing in the centre of
+the room, with a piece of silk in her hand and an ominous frown on her
+face, stood my mistress. She pointed an accusing finger at me and asked
+coldly, 'Where did you get this?' Receiving no answer, she continued,
+'Don't tell any lies, now, to add to your other crime.' I stood there,
+as if glued to the floor and could only gaze at her dumbly and
+appealingly. I tried to speak in vain; but even if I had been able to,
+she would not have given me a chance. She brought all her eloquence to
+bear upon the stupid girl before her; she wanted to make me see what a
+very evil act I had committed.
+
+"'Oh, how sorry I am!' she cried, 'that this thing has happened. But you
+are very fortunate that it has occurred in my house, rather than in
+somebody else's, for I know what measures to take to cure you of the
+propensity to crime which you have so clearly shown. I shall, of course,
+have to send you away immediately; for I could never again trust you in
+my home, for although it is only a trifle that you have stolen,--yes,
+deliberately stolen,--yet anyone who takes only a pin that belongs to
+another, will take more when the opportunity offers. So, in order to
+cure you of this tendency, I myself will conduct you to your mother and
+impress upon her the necessity of guarding and watching you carefully,
+as a possible young criminal. I never should have expected this of you,
+for you have quite an honest look. Now, dress yourself quickly and
+bundle up whatever belongs to you. I will remain in the room while you
+are packing. Are you sure you have taken nothing else which does not
+belong to you?'
+
+"This question loosened my tongue, which hitherto had clung tightly to
+the roof of my mouth. Dropping on my knees before my mistress, I
+fervently swore that I had taken nothing, that I had not meant to take
+anything. I had meant to wear the pieces of silk only once and then put
+them back where I had found them. With tears rolling down my face, I
+begged her not to tell my mother.
+
+"'I will work for you all my life without pay,' I cried, 'if you will
+only not tell my mother. Indeed, I did not mean to steal, so please
+don't tell my mother!'
+
+"This I urged so vehemently and with such floods of tears that finally
+my kind-hearted mistress said: 'My dear child, if you will promise me
+faithfully never to do anything like this again, I will not tell your
+mother. But let this be a lesson to you; never to take anything again,
+not even a pin, that does not belong to you. You can never again say,
+with perfect truthfulness, that you have not stolen. I am glad to see
+that you have such respect for your mother that you do not want her to
+know of this, and for your sake I will not tell her. I have a meeting at
+Hull House to attend in half an hour, and before I leave I wish you
+would scrub up the kitchen and your room and then you can go.'
+
+"So saying, the honourable lady left the room quite satisfied with
+herself for having (perhaps) rescued another human being from the paths
+of vice and crime. I went about my work with a heavy heart. Forgotten
+were all the joys of yesterday! Now, just as I was becoming used to my
+place, I must leave it. And I must tell my mother some reason for it.
+But I could not tell the truth. Ah! yes, I would say that my mistress
+was about to close up the house and go South for the winter. That would
+be a fine excuse. I had heard and read that many rich people go South
+for a time in the cold weather, so surely my mother would not doubt it.
+I went away, feeling easier in my mind, and never saw my honourable
+mistress again.
+
+"Many days have passed since then, and I have been serving several
+different ladies. I learned a lesson from each one of them; but I shall
+never forget what I learned from the kind-hearted, philanthropic Mrs.
+Belshow, a prominent settlement worker in a large city. It's a lesson
+that Mrs. Belshow will never learn, or could never understand. All of
+which shows, perhaps, that I was simple at the time rather than stupid;
+for I find that I am still receiving my education--not from books, but
+from the way people treat me, and from what I see as I pass through
+life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_Domestic Service (Continued)_
+
+
+"Nearly a year had passed," continued Marie, "since I had began to work
+at service, and my experiences had not been of the sort that makes one
+love one's fellow-creatures. For the most part I had worked for people
+who were trying to make a good showing in society and had not the means
+to do so. How often during those weary days of drudgery I looked back at
+the dear old days when I used to work in the factories! Then I could go
+to the dance! Now, it was very difficult, even if my mother had not been
+so strongly against it. I could not understand why my mother so sternly
+forbade me to go. When I asked her why she objected, the only answer I
+received was: 'It is improper for a girl of your age.' 'Why is it
+improper?' I asked myself, and could find no answer. So I disobeyed my
+mother and danced whenever I had the chance. Whenever I did succeed in
+going, my heart almost broke from sheer happiness. Oh, how supremely,
+wonderfully joyous I felt! How I forgot everything then--my mother, my
+drudgery, everything that made life disagreeable! Whenever the music
+started, I felt as if I were floating in the air, I could not feel my
+feet touching the floor. All the lights merged into one dazzling glow
+and my heart kept time to the rhythm of the music. When the music
+stopped, the glorious illumination seemed to go out and leave only a
+little straggling light from a few badly smelling kerosene lamps. The
+beautiful, fantastic music had been in reality only a harsh horn
+accompanied by a concertina or some other stupid instrument jangling
+vile music. The young boys and girls were all a common, stupid lot, and
+the odour of the stock yards permeated the room. But when the mystical
+music begins again, and the dance starts, presto! change, and I am again
+floating in rhythmic space and the faces and dim lights have changed
+into one glorious central flame.
+
+"I shall never forget one awful night, when my mother, who had heard
+that I was at the dance, came into the hall, and there before all the
+boys and girls dragged me out and away to our home. I was so ashamed
+that I did not show myself in that dance-hall again for months. I
+cannot help thinking my mother was wrong, for I needed some outlet to my
+energy. Like many a poor working girl, I had developed into womanhood
+early and consequently was full of life. The dance satisfied this life
+instinct, which, when that outlet was made difficult, sought some other
+way.
+
+"At that time I had a position as nurse-maid, my duties being to take
+care of two beautiful, but spoiled children, who had never received
+proper care, because their mother a wealthy woman, was too indolent, to
+make any effort in that direction, spending most of her time lying in
+bed with some novel in her hand. The house was filled with sensational,
+sentimental books. They were to be found in every room, stacked away in
+all the corners.
+
+"At first I attempted to do what I thought was my duty, that is, to keep
+the children neat and clean and try to train them to be more gentle and
+obedient, but I soon saw that what their mother wanted was for me to
+keep them out of her way. My ambition about them faded away, and I
+sought only to fulfil my mistress's wishes. I used to take the two
+children up into the store-room, in which were all sorts of
+miscellaneous things, including stacks and stacks of paper-covered
+novels, lock the door, and allow the children absolute liberty, while I
+sat down comfortably and examined the books.
+
+"Here a new life opened before me. I read these novels constantly every
+day and half the night, and could hardly wait for the children to have
+their breakfast, so eager was I to get at my wonderful stories again.
+Even when it was necessary to take the children out for an airing, a
+novel was always hidden in my clothes, which I would eagerly devour as
+soon as I was out of sight of the house. During the four weeks spent at
+this place I read more than forty novels. Even on Sunday, when I was
+free, I sprawled out on the bed and read these sensational books. I
+thought no more of my beloved dances, for I was living in a new world.
+Here I was in a beautiful house, where I did almost nothing but loll in
+the easiest chairs and feed my soul on stories about beautiful, innocent
+maidens, who were wooed, and after almost insurmountable difficulties,
+won by gallant, devoted heroes.
+
+"But soon I became so absorbed that even the few duties I had, became
+very irksome to me, for they interfered somewhat with my reading. Every
+morning I had to bathe and dress the little ones, who, not seeing the
+necessity for these operations, struggled and screamed and bit and
+kicked. I had accepted this daily scene as a matter of course, but every
+now and then it rather irritated me. One morning the hubbub was
+unusually long and loud, so much so that the noise disturbed the mother,
+who was breakfasting and reading in bed. She came to the room in a stew
+and asked me what was the matter. When I told her, she angrily said:
+'When I engage a nurse girl for my children, I do not expect to hear
+them squealing every morning. Remember that, and do not let me hear them
+again.'
+
+"The little boy, who was precocious for his age, heard what his mother
+had said, and seeing that he had not been scolded for his ill behaviour,
+began to scream and struggle more than ever, and his little sister
+imitated him, in a dutiful, feminine way. I then lost my patience,
+seized the little boy, dragged him to his mother and said: 'Here's your
+boy. Tend to him yourself; I cannot.'
+
+"I was, of course, told to bundle up my belongings at once and go. I
+did not forget to pack away among my things some of the novels, feeling
+that since they had all been read by Madame, they were only in the way.
+When I said 'good-bye' to the children, Madame came to me and said very
+kindly, 'Marie, I'm really sorry this has occurred, for you are one of
+the best nurse girls I have ever had, and the children seemed to get
+along so nicely with you, too!' I was so surprised at this speech that I
+could make no answer and so I lost my chance of remaining, for it is
+quite certain she wanted me to stay. But it was fated to be otherwise,
+and once more I returned to the home of my parents.
+
+"My mother was not overjoyed to see me. It was a mystery to her why I
+did not keep my jobs longer. I promised to get another place as soon as
+possible and begged her to allow me to stay at home the rest of the
+week. To this she consented rather grudgingly, and I flew to my beloved
+books and read till supper time. I was beginning at it again in the
+evening when my mother rudely snatched the book from me saying, that it
+was not good for young girls to read such stuff. I begged earnestly to
+be allowed to finish just that one story and she finally said that
+perhaps I might read it the next day. In the morning I could hardly curb
+my impatience; it seemed as though my mother were inventing all sorts of
+useless things for me to do, just to keep me from the book. But at last
+I was free and, hastening to my room, was soon absorbed in another
+world. I was suddenly recalled to this earth by a sharp blow on my head,
+and the book was again snatched from me and thrown into the fire and
+burned. It seemed that mother had been calling me and that I had been
+too much absorbed to hear; that she had finally lost her temper and
+decided to punish me.
+
+"'Don't ever again read such trash as this,' she cried in a rage. 'Have
+you any more of them?'
+
+"'No,' I said, fearing to tell the truth, lest the rest of the books
+meet the same fate.
+
+"She then sent me on an errand. As I left the house I felt uneasy,
+thinking that my lie might be discovered. The moment I returned, I saw
+by the expression on my mother's face that my fears had been realised.
+The storm broke at once.
+
+"'Oh, what an unfortunate woman I am!' she cried, 'to be treated thus by
+my own flesh and blood, by the child that I brought into the world with
+so much pain and suffering. O, God, what have I done to deserve this? O
+God, what have I done to be cursed with such a child?--so young, yet so
+full of lies. What will become of her? Have I not always done my duty by
+her and tried to raise her the best I knew how? Why did she not die when
+a baby? I like a fool, toiled and moiled for her night and day and this
+is my reward.'
+
+"I had heard these expressions often, for my mother was a hysterical
+woman in whom the slightest thing would cause the most violent emotions
+which demanded relief in such lamentations. And yet, frequent as they
+were, they never failed to arouse in me feelings of shame and
+rage--shame that I had caused my mother suffering, and rage that she
+reproached herself for having brought me into the world. That expression
+of hers never failed to make me wish that I had never been born--born
+into this miserable world where I had to toil as a child, and could not
+go to dances or even read without receiving a torrent of abuse and an
+avalanche of blows. What harm had I done by my reading? True, I had not
+heard my mother calling, but how often had I spoken to her without
+being heard, when she was engrossed in some newspaper or book!
+
+"So I remained quiet, when my mother railed at me for my lie, too
+ashamed and bitter to make defense or reply. This silence, as usual,
+made my mother still more angry and she shouted: 'You ungrateful wretch,
+I'll tell your father, and he'll fix you so you won't feel like lying to
+your mother for some time to come.'
+
+"That threat nearly paralysed me with dread, for my father was to me a
+strange man whom I had always feared; my mother, when she wanted to
+subdue me, only needed to say: 'I'll tell your father.' I remembered the
+last time my father had whipped me. I was a big girl at the time, more
+than fourteen years old, and working down town. I had to rise very early
+in the morning, and it often happened that I would fall asleep again
+after my mother had called me. On that particular morning mother had
+more difficulty than usual in arousing me, scolding me severely, and I
+replied rather impudently, I suppose. She waited till I had got out of
+bed and was standing in my bare arms and shoulders over the wash bowl,
+and then she told father, who came with a long leather strap, which I
+knew well, as it was kept only for one purpose, and beat me so severely
+that I carried the marks for a long time. The strap was about two inches
+broad, and with this in one hand, whilst he held me firmly with the
+other, he belaboured me in such a way that the end of the strap curled
+cunningly around my neck and under my arms and about my little breast,
+making big welts which swelled at once to about a fourth of an inch in
+diameter and were for a few days a most beautiful vivid scarlet in
+colour. Then they toned down and new and milder tints came, and finally
+there was only a dull sort of green and blue effect. Finally even these
+disappeared from my body, but not from me.
+
+"Now, when I thought of the possible consequences of the lie I had told,
+I could feel those marks on my shoulders and arms. And, at my mother's
+threat, the thought that I might be beaten again made me flush with
+shame. A feeling of rebellion, of vivid revolt, came over me. Why not
+resist, why not defend myself? I remembered what a factory girl had once
+told me--how she had defended herself against her brother by striking
+him with a chair.
+
+"That is what I will do, I said to myself, trembling with excitement, if
+my father tries to beat me again. I am too old to be whipped any more. I
+don't care if he kills me, I will do it. Perhaps when I die, and they
+see my grave, they'll be sorry.
+
+"When father came home in the evening, he seemed to sense trouble at
+once, for suddenly coming down on the table with his fist, he demanded:
+'What in hell is the matter? Here you both are going around with faces
+as if you were at a funeral. I'm working hard all day, and when I come
+home at night, by God, I don't want to see such faces around me. What in
+hell is it, now tell me!'
+
+"Mother told him, and he said: 'Very well, just wait till I've had
+supper, for I'm damned hungry, then we'll have a little understanding
+with my lady, who's so mighty high-toned since she worked for those
+swells. I'll soon show her, though, she is no better than we are.'
+
+"When the important task of supper was over he called me to him. I was
+trembling in every limb, for I knew that my father was a man of few
+words and that he would without delay proceed to action. I managed to
+get a chair between him and me. He went to work deliberately, as if he
+were a prize-fighter. First, he spat on his hands, and was about to give
+me a knock-out-blow, when I, with the courage of desperation, raised the
+chair above my head, crying out, 'Father, if you strike me, I'll hit you
+with this chair.' He was so astonished at my audacity that his arms fell
+to his sides and he gazed at me as if he had lost his senses. I took
+advantage of this pause to make for the door, but before I could escape,
+he seized me by the arm and hurled me back into the room, and then with
+blood-shot eyes and bull-like voice he cursed and cursed. My mother,
+fearing the effect of his terrible rage, tried to intercede, but he
+pushed her aside, shouting, 'Oh, she's the daughter of her mother all
+right, and she'll turn out to be a damned ---- just like you!'
+
+"He then came up to me, where I was standing really expecting my death,
+and to my surprise only pressed his fist gently against my head saying:
+'See how easily I could crush you. The next time I hear anything about
+you, I will.' Cursing me and mother, he left the house and he took him
+to a nearby saloon where he drank himself insensible. Toward morning he
+was brought home. Poor man, he just couldn't bear to see long faces
+about him, especially after a hard day's work!
+
+"In a few days I secured another place, this time in a middle-class
+family. I remained there nearly a year and was considered by my mistress
+a model of willingness, patience, endurance, gentleness, and all the
+other slavish virtues. I never spoke except when spoken to and then I
+answered so respectfully! The children might kick and abuse me in any
+way they chose without any show of resentment from me. This my mistress
+noticed and duly commended. 'Those dear children,' she said. 'You know
+they do not realise what they are about, and so one ought not to be
+harsh to the dear pets.'
+
+"I gave up reading books and even newspapers; partly I suppose because I
+had for the time satiated myself, especially with sentimental and trashy
+novels, and had not yet learned to know real literature, and partly
+because, in my state of humility, I listened to my mistress when she
+said reading took too much time, that it was better to sew, dust, and
+the like, when I was not busy with the children. Everything I do, I must
+do passionately, it seems, even to being a slave. I gave up dances, too,
+and on my days out dutifully visited my parents. I had no friends or
+companions and was in all respects what one calls a perfect servant--so
+perfect that the friends of my mistress quite envied her the possession
+of so useful a slave.
+
+"I got pleasure out of doing the thing so thoroughly; but yet it would
+not have been so interesting to me if it had not been painful, too. I
+was enough of a sport to want as much depth of experience, while it
+lasted, in that direction as in any other--in spite of, perhaps partly
+because of, the pain. And what pain it was, at times! Who knows of the
+bitter hatred surging in my heart, of the long nights spent in tears, of
+the terrible mental tortures I endured! Sometimes it was as if an iron
+hand were squeezing my heart so that I almost died; sometimes as if a
+great lump of stone lay on my chest. And my mistress seemed each day
+somehow to make the iron hand squeeze tighter and tighter and the stone
+weigh heavier and heavier. If she had only known what a deadly hatred I
+bore her--a hatred that would not have been so severe if I had not been
+so good a servant--had given myself rope, had satisfied my emotions! If
+she had understood that my calm, modest bearing was only a mask which
+hid a passionate soul keenly alive to the suffering inflicted on me, she
+would have hesitated, I think, before she entrusted her precious
+darlings to my care.
+
+"This period of virtuous serving was the severest strain to which my
+nature, physical and moral, was ever put. I finally became very ill, and
+had to be removed to my mother's house, as completely broken in body as
+I had apparently been in spirit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I sat near the window gazing vacantly at the scene below. All the
+morning I had sat there with that empty feeling in my soul. From time to
+time my mother spoke to me, but I answered without turning my head.
+Since my illness I seemed to have lost all interest in life, and this,
+although everybody was kind to me. My mother gave me novels to read and
+money to go to the dances. The books I scarcely glanced at, and what I
+did read seemed so silly to me! And the dances had lost their charm. I
+went once or twice, but the music did not awaken any emotion in me, and
+I sat dully in a corner watching, without any desire to join in. And
+this, when I was hardly past sixteen years of age!
+
+"The day before, I had been down town looking for a job in the stores,
+for my mother had told me that I might work in the shops or factories
+again, if I wished. Although even this assurance failed to interest me,
+I had obediently tried to find a position, but oh! how weary I was and
+how I longed for some quiet corner where I might sit for ever and ever
+and ever without moving. This morning I was wearier than ever, my feet
+seemed weighted, and I could hardly drag them across the room. My mother
+asked me anxiously, if I were ill. 'No, no,' I said. 'Then my child,'
+she replied, 'you must positively find work. You father is getting old
+and it would be a shame to have him support a big girl like you--big
+enough to make her own living. Don't you want to go back to your last
+place? She would be very glad to have you, I am sure.'
+
+"This last remark aroused me, and I replied that I would never go back,
+even if I had to starve. 'Don't worry, mother,' I said, 'I'll go now,
+and if I don't find a place, I won't come back.' 'Oh, what a torture it
+is to have children,' moaned my mother. 'Don't you know your father
+would kill me if you did not return?'
+
+"Her words fell on heedless ears, for I was already half way down the
+stairs. I bought a paper and in it read this advertisement, 'Wanted: a
+neat girl to do second work in suburb near Chicago. Apply to No. --
+Wabash Avenue.' Within an hour I presented myself at Mr. Eaton's office,
+was engaged by him, received a railroad ticket and instructions how to
+go to Kenilworth the following evening. On my way home I made up my mind
+to tell nobody where I was going. I packed my few belongings and told my
+mother that I had secured a place with a certain Mrs. So-and-so who
+lived in Such-and-such a street. I lied to the best of my ability and
+satisfied my mother thoroughly.
+
+"The next morning I went away, and was soon speeding to Kenilworth,
+where I was met at the station by my future mistress and her mother, two
+extremely aristocratic women, who received me kindly and walked with me
+to my new home, instructing me on the way in regard to my duties in the
+household. These consisted mainly in being scrupulously neat, answering
+the door-bell and waiting on the table. I began at once to work very
+willingly and obligingly, and also helped the other girl working in the
+household, and everybody was kind to me in return. I did not, however,
+take this kindness to heart as I would have done a year or two earlier,
+for I had learned to my cost that kindness of this kind was generally
+only on the surface.
+
+"But my new mistress soon proved to be a true gentlewoman, who treated
+her servants like human beings. To work for a mistress who did not try
+to interfere with my private life or regulate my religion or my morals
+was an unusual and pleasing experience for me. This lady was as tolerant
+and broad-minded toward her servants as she was toward herself, rather
+more so, I think, for cares and age had removed from her desires and
+temptations for which she still had sympathy when showing themselves in
+younger people. I soon saw, to my astonishment, that things which my
+mother and my other employers had told me were evil, and which I had
+learned almost to think were so, did not seem evil to this sweet lady.
+I remember how kindly and sadly she said to me once, when I had spent
+half the night out with a young man: 'Little Marie, it is a sad thing in
+life that what seems to us the sweetest and the best, and what indeed is
+the sweetest and the best, often leads to our harm and the harm of
+others. It would be foolish of me to pretend to know which of your
+actions is good and which is bad; but remember that life is very
+difficult and hard to lead right, and that you must be careful and
+always thoughtful of what is good and what is evil. I myself have never
+learned to know for sure what is good or evil, but as I grow older I am
+certain that we act always for the one or for the other.'
+
+"Under these conditions, in the home of such a sweet and tolerant woman,
+all the throbbing joy of life and youth awoke again within me. Cut off
+from the old scenes and companions, I entered upon a new existence. I
+made many friends with the young people in the neighbourhood, and for
+the first time felt free and without the opposition of anybody. I had
+not written my mother or in any way let her know where I was, and no
+disturbing word came from my past. I sang all day at my work, and in
+the evening I joined my new companions and together we roamed and
+frolicked to our hearts' content. I had many young men friends and could
+satisfy my desire to be in their society, talk to, dance with them,
+without arousing evil thoughts in others or, consequently, in ourselves.
+
+"Under these happy influences I grew healthier and more wholesome in
+every way. People began to say I was pretty, and indeed I did grow to be
+very good-looking. My figure had reached its fullest development and the
+rosy bloom of youth and of health was in my cheeks. I was strong and
+vigorous, self-reliant and independent, and very happy. I became quite a
+favourite and the recognised leader in the mischievous frolics of the
+young people. Hardly an evening passed that did not bring a scene of
+gaiety. It seemed to me that I had never lived before and that I was
+making up for all the pleasures I had not known. There was, indeed,
+something heartless and cruel in my happiness, for I never once wrote to
+my mother, selfishly fearing to have my present joy disturbed.
+
+"My fears had good reason, too, it seems, for I had lived in those
+pleasant surroundings only a few months when one evening, while I was
+enjoying myself at a moon-light picnic, I was approached by a sober,
+stern-looking man who drew me away from my friends and asked me my name.
+When I had told him, he showed me a newspaper clipping of an article
+with the head-lines, 'Mysterious Disappearance of a Young Girl.' For
+some moments I stood as if turned to stone, gazing stupidly at the
+paper. Then troubled thoughts took possession of me. 'What shall I do?
+What will become of me?' I remembered my mother so often saying that if
+I ran away I would be put in the House of Correction. At this thought I
+shuddered and exclaimed aloud, 'No, no.' The man had been watching me
+closely and he asked: 'Is it true,' pointing to the article. I stared at
+him, for a moment too absorbed in my inner terror to be very conscious
+of him. When he repeated the question, I looked at him with a more
+intelligent expression in my eyes, and he, seeing my condition, spoke to
+me kindly and persuasively.
+
+"'Tell me the truth,' he said, 'And I will help and advise you.' So I
+told him the whole story, and he reassured me, saying, 'Don't be
+afraid, little girl, I have no doubt your mother will forgive you if you
+explain to her in the way you have to me. It is hard for children to
+understand their parents. I know, for I have children of my own, and
+sometimes they think me unkind when I am trying to do my best for them.'
+He was kind, but he was firm, too, and said that if I did not write my
+mother, he should do so himself. So I at last consented, and as a result
+went back to the city: for my mother, my unfortunate, cruel mother,
+wanted me for some strange reason, to be near her."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_Adventures In Sex_
+
+
+When Marie returned to her home, she found that her father had died. It
+made little difference, practical or otherwise, to her or to her mother,
+except to make her stay in the house less dangerous, though quite as
+irksome, as formerly. Her mother had, of course, reproached her bitterly
+for her conduct in running away, and had kept up her complaint so
+constantly that Marie could hardly endure her home even for the night
+and early morning. So for that reason, as well as for the need of making
+her living, Marie went again into service, going quickly from one job to
+another in the city.
+
+And now there came for her a period of wildness, in the ordinary sense
+of the word. It was not the simple joys of her Kenilworth experience.
+She had returned to her mother's home in a kind of despair. It seemed
+to her as if the innocent pleasures of life were not for her. She had
+been torn away from her happiness and had been compelled to go back
+to conditions she hated. Her passions were strong and her
+seventeen-year-old senses were highly developed by premature work and
+an irritating and ungenial home. So, in a kind of gloomy intensity,
+she let herself go in the ordinary way of unguarded young girlhood.
+She gave herself to a young fellow she met in the street one evening,
+without joy but with deep seriousness. She did not even explain to him
+that it was her first experience. She wanted nothing from him but the
+passionate illusion of sex. And she parted from him without tenderness
+and without explanations, to take up with other men and boys in the
+same spirit of serious recklessness. She had for the time lost hope,
+and therefore, of course, care for herself, and her intense and
+passionate nature strove to live itself out to the limit: an instinct
+for life and at the same time for destruction.
+
+From this period of her life comes a story which she wrote for me, and
+which I quote as being typical of her attitude and as throwing light on
+her personality.
+
+"The Southwest corner of State and Madison Streets is the regular
+rendezvous of all sorts of men. They can be seen standing there every
+afternoon and evening, gazing at the surging crowd which passes by. One
+sees day after day the same faces, and one wonders why they are there,
+for what they are looking. Some of these men have brutal, sensual faces;
+others are cynical-looking and sneer. These, it seems, nothing can move
+or surprise. They have a look which says: 'Oh, I know you, I have met
+your kind before. You do not move me, nothing can. I have tried
+everything, there is nothing new for me.' And yet they cannot tear
+themselves away from this corner, coming day after day and night after
+night, hoping against hope for some new adventure.
+
+"Others stand there like owls, stupidly staring at the rushing tide of
+faces. They see nothing, and yet are seemingly hypnotised by the
+panorama of life. Here, too, pass the girls with the blond hair and the
+painted faces; they ogle the men, and as they cross the street raise
+their silken skirts a trifle, showing a bit of gay stocking. Here, too,
+is the secret meeting-place of lovers, who clasp hands furtively,
+glancing around with stealth. All this is seen by the sensual men, who
+glance enviously at the lovers, and by the cynical men whose cold smiles
+seem to say: 'Bah! how tiresome! wait, and your silly meetings will not
+be so charming!'
+
+"On my evenings off I had sometimes stopped to gaze at this, to me,
+strangely moving sight. I saw in it then what I could not have seen a
+few months before; but not as much as I can see now. Then it excited me
+with the sense of a possible adventure. Strange, but I never went there
+when I was happy, only when I was uncommonly depressed.
+
+"On a chilly Sunday evening in October I was waiting on this corner to
+take a car to the furnished room of a factory girl, named Alice, whom I
+knew was out of town. As I was out of a job and did not want to go home,
+I had availed myself of her place for a few days. As I was waiting on
+this corner, I saw a face in the crowd that attracted me. It was, as I
+afterward learned, the face of a club man, who had, on this Sunday
+evening, drifted with the crowd and landed at this spot. He, too, had
+stopped and gazed around him, idly. Several times he started as if to
+move on, but he apparently thought this place as good as any other, and
+so remained. He seemed not to know what to do, to be tired of himself.
+His face was quite the ordinary American type, clean-cut features,
+rather thin and cold, with honest grey eyes, but, in his case, a mouth
+rather sensuous and a general air of curiosity and life which interested
+me.
+
+"I was sufficiently interested to allow several cars to pass by, while I
+watched him. I noticed by the way he looked at the women who passed that
+he was familiar with their kind. Several gay girls tried to attract his
+attention, but he turned away, bored. Finally I began to walk away, and
+then for the first time his face lighted up with interest. I was
+apparently something new. I wore a straw hat, and a thin coat buttoned
+tightly about my chest. My thin little face was almost ghastly with
+pallor, and it made a strange contrast with my full red lips, which were
+almost scarlet, and my big glowing black eyes. He probably saw that I
+was poor, dressed as I was at that season. Why is it that for many rich
+men a working girl half fed and badly dressed is so much more attractive
+than a fine woman of the town or a nice lady?
+
+"As I passed him, he said, 'Good evening,' in a low and timid tone, as
+if he thought I surely would not answer. I think it surprised him when I
+looked him full in the face and replied, 'Good evening!' He still
+hesitated, until he saw in my face what I knew to be almost an appealing
+look. I knew that in the depths of my eyes a smile was lurking, and I
+wanted to bring it forth! A moment later, I smiled indeed, when he
+stepped forward, lifted his hat, and asked with assurance: 'May I walk
+with you? Are you going anywhere?'
+
+"'Yes, I am going somewhere,' I said, smiling. 'To a meeting place in
+Adams Street to hear a lecture.'
+
+"'Oh, I say, girlie,' he cried, 'You're jollying. That must be a very
+dull thing for you, a lecture.'
+
+"'Sometimes it's funny,' I said. But I did not say much about it, as I
+had never yet been to a lecture. I made up for that later in my life! I
+of course had no intention of going to this.
+
+"'Come,' he urged, 'let's go in somewhere and have something to eat and
+drink.'
+
+"'Yes, I will have something, not to eat, though, but let us go where
+there are lots of people and lights and all that sort of thing,' I
+finished, vaguely.
+
+"Charley tucked my arm in his and we walked along State Street until we
+came to a brilliantly lighted café. The place was crowded with
+well-dressed men and beautiful women, eating and drinking, chatting and
+laughing. Waiters were hastening to and fro. An orchestra was playing
+gay music, as we wound our way through the crowd to a table. I was
+painfully conscious that my shabby coat and straw hat attracted
+attention. Some of the women stared at me with a look of conscious
+superiority in their eyes, others with a look of still more galling
+pity. Charley, too, I thought, seemed nervous. Perhaps he did not relish
+being seen by some possible acquaintance with so dilapidated-looking a
+person!
+
+"But soon I lost consciousness of these things and gave myself up to the
+scene and the music. My sense of pleasure seemed to communicate itself
+to my companion, who ordered some drinks; I don't know what they were,
+but they tasted good--some kind of cordial. I took longer and longer
+sips: it was a new and very pleasant flavour. He ordered more of the
+same kind and watched me with interest as I drank and looked about me.
+
+"'Oh,' I said, 'what beautiful women, and how happy they are! look at
+that one with the blond hair. Isn't she beautiful, a real dream?'
+
+"Charley replied in a tone of contempt: 'Yes, she's beautiful, but I
+would not envy her, if I were you--neither her happiness nor her good
+looks. She needs those looks in her business. Nearly all the women here
+belong to her class.'
+
+"Charles looked at me intently as he said this. Perhaps he thought I
+would be angry because he had brought me to such a place. But I watched
+the girls with even greater interest and said: 'Ah, but they must be
+happy!'
+
+"Charles shrugged his shoulders and said, with contempt and some pity in
+his eyes, 'A queer sort of happiness!'
+
+"I looked at him rather angrily. He did not seem just to me.
+
+"'You don't like them,' I said, 'you think they are vile and low. But
+you men seem to need them, just the same. Oh! I think they are brave
+girls!'
+
+"Charles looked at me in apparent astonishment. But then a thought
+seemed to strike him. He was thinking that I might be one of that class,
+for he asked me questions which showed me plainly enough what he was
+worrying about. He encouraged me to drink again, and said with a
+self-confident laugh, 'you're a cute one but you cannot fool me with any
+such tricks.'
+
+"I paid no attention to his remarks, and did not answer any of his
+personal questions. He could find out nothing about me. I would only
+smile and say, 'I don't want to know anything about you, why can't you
+treat me the same way?'
+
+"I could see that the less he knew, the more interested he became. He
+plied me with drinks, perhaps thinking that the sweet liquor would
+loosen my tongue. Soon I began to feel a little queer and the room began
+to go round, taking with it the faces of the men and women. After this
+dizziness passed, I felt very happy indeed, and smiled at everybody in
+the room; and wanted to go and tell them all how much I liked them. But
+I did not dare trust my legs, they felt so heavy. I thought I would
+like to stay there always, listening to the music and watching the
+people.
+
+"I suppose my happiness heightened my colour, for Charles said, 'what a
+beautiful mouth you have, what red lips. One would almost believe they
+were painted. How your upper lip lifts when you smile, Marie! Don't you
+want to go out now?'
+
+"'Yes, yes,' I replied, hastily, 'I must go home now.'
+
+"I sprang from my chair, I made for the door, but he, quickly seizing
+his hat, followed me and took my arm. I went very slowly for my feet
+seemed weighted. They were inclined to go one way, while I went another.
+So when Charles led me I was quite thankful. As we went out into the
+street he asked me where I was living, what I did, and if I were
+married, all in one breath. This made me laugh merrily, as I assured him
+I was not married. I told him I lived away out on the West Side and that
+he could see me home, if he wanted; but not to, if it was out of his
+way, for I was used to going alone. He eagerly accepted, and we took a
+car.
+
+"I fell dreaming on the way, of all nice things. The days in Kenilworth
+came back to me and I smiled to myself and wistfully hoped my present
+happiness would last. My companion eagerly devoured me with his eyes,
+and asked me many pressing questions. I answered only very vaguely, for
+my mind was full of other things. So finally Charles, too, was silent,
+and merely watched me.
+
+"Suddenly I woke to the fact that I was at Alice's room, so I hastily
+arose and signalled to the car to stop. Turning to Charles I extended my
+hand in a good-bye and said: 'This is where I live.' But he quickly got
+off with me saying he would see me to the house. 'I don't like to leave
+you alone this time of night,' he said. As we stopped in front of the
+dilapidated-looking frame building where I was staying for a few days,
+he seemed much embarrassed and not to know what to say. Pointing
+upwards, I said, 'that's where I live.' 'Do you live alone?' he asked.
+'Yes, now, not always. Good night--Charles,' I answered, mischievously,
+but with a real and disturbing feeling taking possession of me.
+
+"But he seized me by the hand: 'Don't leave me yet, girlie,' he pleaded.
+'Think how lonesome I'll be when you are gone!' He drew me to him in
+the darkness, and I did not object, why should I? My lips seemed to
+prepare themselves and after one long kiss that sad intensity seized me;
+and I sighed or sobbed, I don't know which, as we went up the stairs
+together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"An hour later, as he was about to descend the stairs, I said: 'Charles,
+when will you come again?'
+
+"'Oh, I can't tell,' he replied 'but it will be soon.'
+
+"'Well,' I said, 'remember I shall be here only a few days. Alice will
+be back within the week. Come Wednesday evening.'
+
+"But he left with the remark that it might not be possible! I did not
+care for him deeply, of course, it was only an adventure, but this stung
+me deeply. The light way he took what he wanted and then seemed to want
+to have no tie remaining! I felt as he did, too, really, but I did not
+want him to feel so! I imagined in what a self-satisfied mood he must
+be, how he walked off, with his lighted cigar! He probably wondered what
+sort of a girl this was who had given herself so easily? Partly, too,
+no doubt, he laid it to his charm and masculine virtue: though he knew
+women were weak creatures, he also knew that men were strong! Ah! I
+could almost hear him muse aloud, in my imagination. His reveries,
+perhaps, would run about like this:
+
+"'I was rather lucky to happen along this evening! She was certainly
+worth while, though pretty weak, I must say. She had fine eyes and, by
+jove, what a mouth! She said, "Wednesday." I think I will go, though it
+is never good policy to let girls be too sure of you. Besides, how do I
+know she isn't playing me some game?'
+
+"I didn't know as much then as I do now about man's nature, but now I
+make no doubt that as the time passed between then and Wednesday
+Charles's desire grew: it began with indifference, but ended, I am sure,
+with intensity: for men are like that! Their fancy works in the absence,
+not in the presence, of the girl. I am sure the girl with the red lips
+and the deep dark eyes haunted him more and more as time went on!
+
+"At the time, I didn't know just why, but I did know that I wanted
+nothing more of Charley. He had never been anything but a man to me--he
+was a moment in my life, that was all. But I decided to meet him, for
+only in that way could I really finish the affair. Otherwise, if I
+merely broke the engagement, he could imagine whatever he wanted to
+account for it. No, he must be under no illusion. He must know that I
+did not want him!
+
+"I waited for him in front of the house, and on the appointed hour he
+arrived, looking very happy and eager. He greeted me with much warmth,
+to which I responded coldly. He suggested going inside, but I said: 'No,
+I am going away. I have been waiting here to tell you so, in case you
+came to-night.'
+
+"'But,' he exclaimed in an aggrieved tone, 'Did not you ask me to come,
+and now you say you are going away. Is that fair to me?'
+
+"I shrugged my shoulders and said, 'I don't know, but I'm going.
+Good-bye,' and I turned from him and started to walk away. His tone
+changed to anger, as he said: 'Now, see here, Marie, I won't stand for
+any nonsense of this kind. You can't treat me like this, you know. What
+right have you to act in this lying way?'
+
+"I had been walking away and he following, and as he stopped talking, he
+took my arm, which I jerked away and impatiently said: 'Well, to be
+frank, I don't want you to-night. Whether I have a right to act so, I
+don't know or care. Why I asked you to come I don't know, unless it was
+because I felt different from what I do now.'
+
+"Charles adopted a more conciliating tone and asked me when he might
+come. His interest in me seemed to grow with my resistance.
+
+"'I guess you'd better not come at all,' I said, coolly.
+
+"'But I want to,' he said. 'Do name the night, any night you say.'
+
+"Then I turned to him with angry eyes, and cried out, 'Oh, how stupid
+you are! Don't you understand that I don't want you at all?'
+
+"I again started to walk away, but he seized my arm and shouted angrily:
+'You cannot leave me like this without explaining some things to me. In
+the first place, why did you pull me on last Saturday night, and who are
+you to turn me down like this?' I answered, with flashing eyes, 'I owe
+you no explanation, but I will answer your questions. As to who the girl
+is who can dare to turn you down, you know very well she is not what you
+think, or you wouldn't so much object to being turned down, as you call
+it. As to pulling you on, you were the first to speak or, at any rate,
+it was mutual, so you need not demand any explanation. What you really
+want to know is why I don't want you now. If I were a man like you, I
+suppose I should never even think of explaining to anyone why I happened
+to change in feeling toward some persons, but as I'm a woman, it's
+different. I must explain!'
+
+"This speech I have no doubt made him angry, but his pride came to the
+rescue and he said with a show of indifference: 'I was angry, it is
+true, but only for a moment. It was irritating to me to have a girl like
+you show the nerve to throw me down; for I'm not accustomed to associate
+with your sort.'
+
+"At this insolence my face flushed hotly and I opened my mouth to make
+some indignant reply, but I thought better of it and only walked away,
+laughing softly to myself. As I went away, I heard him mutter, 'What a
+cat.'
+
+"But, I imagine, he didn't forget me so easily. I have no doubt that the
+girl with the red lips and deep dark eyes haunted him for a long time.
+Who was this girl who had given herself to him once and only once? It is
+this kind of a mystery that makes a man dream and dream and curse
+himself.
+
+"Probably for some time, as he joined the crowd at State and Madison
+Streets, he hoped to see me as I passed, but all things come to an end
+and his passion for me did, no doubt, too. But, in the routine course of
+his club life, moments came, perhaps, when he thought of little Marie,
+her red lips, deep eyes, and pale, pale face. I doubt if he ever told
+this story to any of his boon companions."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_Marie's Salvation_
+
+
+On account of the irregularity of her life, Marie lost job after job.
+Her relations with her mother, never good, grew worse and worse. Her
+profound need of experience, in which the demand of the senses and the
+curiosity of the mind were equally represented, impelled her to act
+after act of recklessness and abandon. But, as in almost all, perhaps
+all, human beings, there was in her soul a need of justification--of
+social justification, no matter how few persons constituted the
+approving group.
+
+The feeling that everybody was against her, that she was on the road to
+being what the world calls an outcast, gave to her life an element of
+sullenness and of despair. Perhaps this added depth to her dissipation,
+but it took away from it all quality of joy as well as of peace. If her
+sensuality and her despair had been all there was in her, or if these
+had constituted her main characteristics, this story would never have
+been written. Perhaps another tale might have been told, but it would
+have been the story of a submerged class, not prostitutes, white slaves;
+and then it would have been the story of a submerged class, not of an
+individual temperament.
+
+What was it that kept Marie in all really essential ways out of this
+class of social victims? It was because, in the first place, of the fact
+that her nature demanded something better than what the life of the
+prostitute afforded. And it was natural that the greater quality of
+personality that she possessed should attract the kind of love and
+social support needed essentially to justify to herself her instincts.
+When she was very young Marie secured the genuine love of two strong and
+remarkable personalities; and at a later time, there gathered about
+these three, other people who enlarged the group, which gave to each
+member of it the social support needed to remove essential despair and
+desperate self-disapproval.
+
+One of these two persons so necessary to Marie's larger life was a woman
+whom she had met several years previous to this point in the story.
+
+This woman was a cook, Katie by name. She was born in Germany, and her
+young girlhood was spent in the old country. She had only a rudimentary
+education, and even now speaks broken English. But she was endowed with
+a healthy, independent nature, a spontaneous wit, and a strong demand to
+take care of something and to love.
+
+As natural as a young dog, she never thought of resisting a normal
+impulse. Her life as a girl in Germany was as free and untrammelled as a
+happy breeze. She lived in a little garrison town in the South, and the
+German soldiers did no essential harm to her and the other young girls
+of the place. These things were deemed laws of nature in her community.
+What would have been dreadful harm to a young American girl was only an
+occasional moment of anxiety to her. It never occurred to her that it
+was possible to resist a man. "I had to," she said, very simply, and did
+not seem to regret it any more than that she was compelled to eat. She
+is also very fond of her food.
+
+She came to America and worked as cook in private families. She was
+capable and strong and was never out of a job. She never took any
+"sass" from her mistress; in this respect she was quite up to date among
+American "help."
+
+At the time she first met Marie she had been working for a family
+several years, and had reduced her employer to a state of wholesome awe.
+She remained, like a queen, in the kitchen, whence she banished all
+objectionable intruders. Her mistress had a married daughter, also
+living in the house, who at first was wont to give orders to Katie, and
+to interfere with her generally. One day Katie drove her out of the
+kitchen with a volley of broken English. The daughter complained to the
+mother, who took Katie's side. "You don't belong in the kitchen," she
+said to her indignant daughter.
+
+This episode filled Katie with contempt for her mistress.
+
+"She ought to have taken her daughter's side against me," she said, "you
+bet I would have, if I had been in her place."
+
+The daughter had two young children. It was to take care of them that
+Marie came into the household. Marie's mistress liked to stay in bed and
+read novels, and this experience is the one described by Marie in an
+earlier chapter, how she locked herself and the children in the
+store-room and read her mistress's books.
+
+Katie fell in love with Marie almost at once. She was fifteen years
+older than the young girl and as she had never had any children, all the
+instinctive love of an unusually instinctive nature seemed to be given
+to Marie. She saw that Marie was not practical or energetic, and this
+probably intensified the interest felt by the more active and capable
+woman. She took the young girl under her wing, and has been, and is, as
+entirely devoted to her as mothers sometimes are to their children.
+
+The German cook was about thirty years old at that time and had never
+loved a man, though she had had plenty of temporary and merely
+instinctive relations with the other sex. So it was her entire capacity
+for love, maternal and other, that she gave to Marie.
+
+Almost at once Katie began to treat Marie as her ward. She took her side
+against her mistress, when the latter scolded the girl on account of her
+indolence or slowness. "Marie is so young," she would say, "almost a
+child; and we ought to go easy on her." She also looked after Marie's
+morals and tried to prevent her being out late at night. This kind of
+care had its amusing side, as Katie herself was none too strict about
+herself in this regard.
+
+For instance, Katie fancied the butcher's boy who used to come to the
+kitchen every day with meat. He was only sixteen, and quite
+inexperienced in the ways of the world.
+
+"I did him no harm," said Katie. "But I taught him everything there was
+to know. My life was so monotonous and I worked so hard then that I had
+to have him. I absolutely had to, but I think I did him no harm and he
+was certainly my salvation. But I didn't let Marie know anything about
+it. She was too young. When she found out, years afterwards, she was
+quite cross with me about it."
+
+This kind of relation existed between Katie and Marie for several years.
+About the time the girl went to Kenilworth and had her idyllic
+experience, Katie married. Nick was a good sort of a man, easy and
+happy, and a sober and constant labourer. Katie had saved some money, in
+her careful German way, had even a bank-account of several hundred
+dollars. It was not an exciting marriage; neither of them was very young
+or very much in love, at least Katie was not, but it was a good
+marriage of convenience, so to speak, and it might have lasted if it
+had not been, as we shall see, for Marie, and Katie's affection for her.
+
+When Marie started in on her career of wildness, Katie and Nick, her
+husband, had a little home together. Into this home Marie was always
+welcomed by Katie, but Nick was not so cordial. They knew about the
+girl's looseness, and in their tolerant Southern German way, they did
+not so much mind that, and Katie was distinctly sympathetic: Marie was
+old enough now, she thought. But Nick did not like the hold the girl had
+on Katie's affection.
+
+"You'll leave me for her, sometime," he would say to his wife,
+ominously. Katie would laugh and call him an old fool. She couldn't
+foresee the circumstances that would one day realise her husband's
+fears.
+
+It was about this time that Marie met the man who has influenced her
+more deeply than anyone else or anything else in her life, who gave her
+a social philosophy, though to be sure what would seem to most people a
+thoroughly perverse and subversive social philosophy; but by means of
+which she had a social background, and a saving justification--was
+saved from being a mere outcast.
+
+Terry, at the time he and Marie met, was about thirty-five years old and
+an accomplished and confirmed social rebel. He had worked for many years
+at his trade, and was an expert tanner. But, deeply sensitive to the
+injustice of organised society, he had quit work and had become what he
+called an anarchist. His character was at that time quite formed, while
+the young girl's was not. It was he who was to be the most important
+factor in the conscious part of her education. But to explain his
+influence on Marie, it is necessary to explain him,--his character, and
+a part of his previous history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_Terry_
+
+
+Terry is a perfect type of the idealist. We shall see how, in the midst
+of what the world calls immorality and sordidness, this quality in him
+was ever present; even when it led to harshness to persons or facts. Not
+fitting into the world, his attitude toward it, his actions in it, and
+his judgment of it, are keen and impassioned, but, not fitting the
+actual facts, sometimes unjust and cruel. Tender and sensitive as a
+child, his indignation is so uncompromising that it often involves
+injustice and wrong. But the beauty in him is often startlingly pure,
+and reveals itself in unexpected conditions and environment. I cannot do
+better in an attempt to present him and his history than to quote
+voluminously from his letters to me, adding only what is necessary for
+the sake of clearness. He wrote for me the following poetic outline of
+his life:[1]
+
+"The fate of the immigrant, sprung from peasant stock, is to grow up in
+the slums and tenements of the great city. Such a fate was mine. To
+exchange the rack-rented but limitless fields of Irish landlordism for
+the rickety and equally rack-rented tenements, with the checkerboard
+streets, where all must keep moving, is only adding sordidness to spare
+sadness. Surely, the birthday's injury is felt in a deep sense by the
+poor. But the patient fatalism of the peasant (so fatal to himself) is
+equal to every calamity.
+
+"I came from an exceptionally well-to-do family of tenement-farmers, but
+a few generations of prolific birth rate, with the help of successive
+famines and successful landlordism, reduced us to the point of eviction.
+Enough was saved from the wreck to pay for our passage in a sailing
+vessel to America. After being successfully landed, or stranded, on New
+York, my father, with the true instinct of the peasant, became a
+squatter on the prairies of Goose Island. Here we put up, in the year
+1864, a frame shanty of one room, in which the nine of us tried to live.
+My father, the only bread-winner, made from seven to eight dollars a
+week. Absolute communism in the deepest and most harmonious faithfulness
+prevailed. Truly, as Burns says:
+
+    'We had nae wish, save to be glad,
+     Nor want but when we thirsted;
+     We hated naught but to be sad.'
+
+"I rejoice to say that I never got over this first blessed lesson in
+communism; even though it was on a small scale, the family contained the
+unity of a Greek tragedy. The heart that throbs with little things may
+finally throb for the world. And I learned nothing in these days except
+the lessons of the heart. The only necessary thing of which we had
+almost enough was bread. The struggle for existence, began on one
+continent, has continued on the other, with the surviving members of the
+family standing shoulder to shoulder for lack of room.
+
+"Armed with a throbbing faith in everything but myself, I boldly and
+voluntarily entered the arena of commercial activity at the pliable age
+of eight. My first job away from home was in a mattress factory. Ah,
+that first job! I was a triumphant Archimedes who had found his fulcrum.
+I helped move the world, for twelve hours a day and for two dollars a
+week.
+
+"Then and later, I, like all people who possess nothing, found that my
+best visions have come to me while at work on something in which I had
+wistful faith; and when I lost faith I blindly followed the economists
+and philosophers who can never know the mystic power of work over the
+worker. And it may be that herein lies the secret of the philosopher's
+ignorance and the worker's slavery. A man stands to his job because of
+the visions that come to him only when at work.
+
+"Though I helped move the world, I was not an Atlas, and at last, I grew
+tired, for I found the world moved me out of all proportion to my
+capacity. Even at an early age, I found that I had not the heart for the
+fray. Stamped on my narrow forehead, on my whole being, perhaps, so
+clearly that every unsympathetic boss could understand at once, was the
+mark of the visionary. My pitiable willingness to work was truly tragic.
+
+"We were an eccentric family, especially in our peculiar aloofness from
+others. We clung desperately to one another long after the necessity was
+past. Neither eviction nor commerce could disband us. Only marriage or
+death could separate us. Though we were Catholics on the surface, we
+were pagans at bottom. I had fed my fill on the fairy tales of Ireland.
+Fortunately, these fairy tales were told to me, not read, and told in
+such a way that they led me to seek no individual foothold in a world at
+war with my heart: they helped to take away what the world calls
+personal ambition. They strengthened my natural quality as a dreamer, my
+tendency to care only for the welfare of the soul. If I could bring
+about no change in this world, it should effect no alteration in me.
+This, as I grew older, became a conscious passion with me: not to allow
+myself to be affected by the world, or its ideals. Such was, at an early
+age, my romantic resolution. Now, as the colour in my hair begins to
+match the grey in my eyes, and I look back over the changes of almost
+half a century, I detect in the wreck of my life almost a harmony, and
+something rises above the ruins.
+
+"On that frail foundation from fairy land my trembling imagination
+rested, even amid the sordid developments of my experience. How often
+did I take my youthful oath that the day should never come when I would
+out-grow my feeling for all the world! I have been put to the test,
+and, I hope, not found wanting.
+
+"The end of my first ten years of life found me regretfully divesting
+myself, one by one, of my beloved folk-lore tales, and reverently
+folding them away, in preparation for the fray. I worked, during my
+second ten years, as a journeyman tanner and currier; knocked by fate
+and the boss from shop to shop and from town to town. I naturally sought
+solidarity with my fellows. Class feeling awoke in me, and voluntarily
+and enthusiastically I joined the union of my craft. Though I strained
+at its narrow confines, I was at one with my class. During the '70's and
+'80's the eight hour movement laid me off on several strikes, long and
+short. This enforced leisure was not idleness for me, for in these
+periods the world of science, art and philosophy shot their stray gleams
+into my startled mind, and I found time to ponder on what leisure might
+do for the mob. What did it not do for me, and what has it not done for
+me since? And I in the very ecstasy of my being was one of this mob.
+
+"Whole hours, whole nights, I stole from my needed rest to read and
+ponder on our human fate. Sundays! Things after a day's labour
+incomprehensible to my stunned brain were easily grasped on a glorious
+morning of religious leisure. The apathy of my fellows--how well I
+understood it when, with nerves unstrung and muscles relaxed, after a
+tense twelve hours of toil, I fell asleep over my beloved books! And how
+well, too, I understood their amusement--the appeal of the poor man's
+club!--when in gay carousal we tried to forget what we were. Even in the
+saloon and dance-hall we told tales of the shop! Oh, the irony of it!
+Was there no escape from the madness of the mart, no surcease from the
+frenzy of the factory or the shibboleth of the shop!
+
+"Yes! How well I recall the gay transformation in my shop-mates when the
+whistle blew on Saturday night. The dullest and most morose showed
+intelligence then. The prospect of rest, be it ever so remote--even in
+the hereafter--roused them from their lethargy. How alert and cheerful
+we were on holidays, even the prolonged holiday of a strike brought its
+pinched joys. Quite a number of my ancient comrades of industry looked
+forward to the Poor House with a hopefulness born of thwarted toil. The
+luckiest ones out of the thousands whom I knew were those few who,
+overcome at last, could find some sheltering fireside and keep out of
+the way until nature laid them off for good; the living envied the dead.
+
+"I took part in the famous bread riots of '77, when I had to fly from
+the shop, before an infuriated mob armed with sticks, stones, pikes, and
+pitchforks. In the same year I saw from a distance the great battle of
+the viaduct, when the mob, armed as in the bread riots, faced the
+federal troops and were shot down and dispersed. It was about this time,
+too, that I stood by as the 'Lehr und Wehr Verein' in their blue blouses
+of toil and shouldered rifles strode ominously onward. These men were
+the first fruits in America of Bakunin's ideals and work in Europe.
+They, too, were put down, by an act of legislature.
+
+"These proletarian protagonists whipped me into a fury. My father, too,
+had his rifle, and when drunk he invoked it, as it hung on the wall,
+thus: 'Come down, my sweet rifle, how brightly you shine! What tyrant
+dare stifle that sweet voice of thine.' But my father was only a Fenian
+revolutionist; and as it was only a step for me from Ireland to
+Internationalism, I was soon beyond his creed.
+
+"We had come to America during war times, with the spirit of revolt
+already germinating within us; and although we were against slavery, our
+sympathies were with the South. We were natural as well as political
+democrats, and even when the mob was in the wrong, I always became one
+of it. How finely elemental, how responsive to the best and the worst,
+is the mob when the crisis comes!
+
+"Although my thoughts were forming through my readings and the larger
+events about me, the everyday life in the shop was perhaps the deepest
+cause of my growing revolt. The atmosphere of the frenzied factory is
+well calculated to produce a spirit of sullen and smouldering rebellion
+in the minds of its less hardened inmates. From the domineering boss
+down to the smallest understrapper, the spirit of the jailer and turnkey
+is dominant. Much worse than solitary confinement is it to be sentenced
+to ten hours of silence and drudgery. The temptation to speak to the man
+at your side is well nigh irresistible. But to speak means to be
+marked, to have hurled at you a humiliating reprimand, or, as a last
+resort, to be discharged.
+
+"No lunching between meals is allowed, although it is a well-known fact
+that few workers have the appetite at dawn to eat sufficient food to
+last them till their cold lunch at noon. From this comes the terrible
+habit, among the older toilers, of the eye-opener, a gulp of rot-gut
+whiskey, taken to arouse the sleeping stomach and force sufficient food
+on it to last till noon. As a convalescent victim of this proletarian
+practice I am well aware of its ravages on body and mind. It is the
+will-of-the-wisp of false whiskey followed by false hope, leading into
+the fogs and bogs of the bourgeois and the quicksands of the capitalist.
+
+"To be a moment late, means to be docked and to have it rubbed in by an
+insult. To take a day off, well--death is taken as an excuse. There is
+no such thing in a shop as social equality between boss and men. In my
+last position as foreman I had charge of three hundred men. Many of them
+were faithful comrades in many a brave strike, where starvation pressed
+hard, whence they had emerged with hollow cheeks and undaunted hearts.
+I soon came to know them all, personally, intimately, and liked them
+all, though I felt most strangely drawn to those who worked for one
+dollar a day. They all did their work faithfully, and there was no
+complaint from the front office. One day, however, the owner charged me
+with treating the hands as if they were my equals. I tried to make him
+see the human justification of it, but he would have none of it. He was
+a typical boss and also a millionaire banker.
+
+"It was about this time that I discovered the deepest tonic my nerves
+have ever known. The explosion of the Haymarket bomb found a responsive
+chord, the vibrations of which will never cease in me, I hope. The
+unconscious in me was at last released, and I held my mad balance on the
+crater's edge and gazed into it. Hereafter, I was to live on dangerous
+ground, at least in thought. No more doubt, no more shuffling now. I
+must try the chords of my heart, the sympathy of my soul, in open
+rebellion. The iniquities of civilisation had ruined a fine barbarian in
+me, and almost made of me a maudlin miscreant, willing to hang upon the
+skirts of a false society. The Haymarket bomb made me strip again and
+for a nobler fray.
+
+"Of what avail was it, I reflected, to raise one's voice in the
+wilderness of theories? How do any good by a social enthusiasm merely
+expressed in theory? Such thin cerebral structures are shattered to
+pieces in the ordeal of life. Ah, but this anonymous Avatar, this man
+with the bomb! His instinct was right, but how far short it fell, and
+must always fall. He had settled the strife within him and become
+definite to himself: that was all he had done. I too must settle the
+strife within me. I was plunged into prolonged dreams from which I was
+aroused by hunger, hunger of many kinds, and driven into my former
+haunt, the shop.
+
+"But now, when I stripped for work in the factory and donned my
+vestments of toil, I stood forth without falsehood. I knew, if not what
+I was, at least what I wanted, rather what I did not want. I did not
+want this, this society!
+
+"Each morning as I took my place in the shop I had the feeling of my
+boyhood--as if I were celebrating a High Mass before the sacrifice of
+another day. There was much of the Pontifical in me, for I was a rapt
+radical. Each morning on my way to Commercial Calvary I saw another
+sacrifice; I overtook small shrivelled forms, children they were, by the
+dim dawn. How their immature coughings racked my heart and gave me that
+strange tightening of the chest! I could not keep my eyes from the
+ground whence came the sound of small telltale splashes, after each
+cough. Many times I stopped to hold a child who was vomiting.
+
+"Here was a woe too deep for tears; and I must look with dry eyes or I
+should fail to see. Have you ever noticed the searching dry gaze of the
+poor? It is like the seeing, wistful look of a child--which few can bear
+without flinching. I had no need to read Dante's imaginary 'Inferno.' I
+was living in a real one which made all imagination seem trivial. 'The
+short and simple annals of the poor' seems like poetry, but only
+superficially, for it is not truth, but a fiction. It is false, for the
+annals of the aristocracy are not so long, neither are they so complex.
+
+"I am not trying to plead for anything. I am trying merely to express.
+Prepared for everything, I have forgiven everything, even myself.
+Everything that could happen has happened to me, perhaps the worst that
+happened did not come from without, but from within. My family came off
+safely enough from the fray of the factory. Only two of us were maimed
+for life and five claimed for death--out of a family of eleven. That
+left half a dozen for the statistician to figure on."
+
+Terry, a transcendental poet, who worked in the shop for many years, had
+quit it some time before he met Marie. The above letter shows, in a
+general way, the mood which finally brought about his social self-exile,
+so to speak. The letter which follows gives a specific instance of the
+kind of experience which disgusted the idealist with the imperfect
+world. He had been living against society, had foregathered with
+outcasts and had thrown down the gauntlet generally to organised
+society, for some years, but he still from time to time worked at some
+job or other. An incident happening some years after the meeting with
+Marie, which is still to be described, is sufficiently typical of what
+finally threw him entirely out from society to be truthfully
+illustrative at this point.
+
+"I was keeping open house for all comers, regardless of law or order,
+morality or money. I wished to hurl myself and my theories to the test,
+and gauntlet my defiance to a withered world. It was a happy time,
+looked back on now as a dream, in which, however, there was an undertone
+of nightmare. We had three little rooms up many mild flights of
+unbalustered stairs. Our main furniture consisted of mattresses which,
+like morning clouds, were rolled away when the sun arose.
+
+"For the shocking salary of six dollars a week I was collector for the
+Prudential Insurance company. One rent day I lacked the necessary four
+dollars and a half. I telegraphed my other ego, my dear brother Jim, in
+Pittsburg. The same day brought from him a telegraph money-order for
+twenty-five dollars, and soon afterward a letter asking me to go to
+Pittsburg and help him out. I had always been deemed an expert in the
+leather line, especially in locating anything wrong in the various
+processes. My brother was a member of a new millionaire leather firm,
+which was losing thousands of dollars every week because they were
+unable to locate the weakness in the process. Jim wanted me to find the
+flaw.
+
+"It was with the utmost repugnance that I quit my happy slum life, but I
+loved Jim, and it was the call of the ancient clan in my blood. When I
+arrived in Pittsburg, without a trunk, and with other marks of the
+proletarian on me, Mr. Kirkman, the millionaire tanner, showered me with
+every luxury--every luxury except that of thought and true emotion.
+Never before did I realise so intensely my indifference to what money
+can buy. My private office in the shop was stocked with wines and
+imported cigarettes: but I was not so well off as in my happy slum.
+
+"I toiled like a sleepless sisyphus, and one day, in a flash of
+intuition, I located and showed the flaw in an obscure process; I was
+completely successful.
+
+"I had put no price on my services. For Jim's sake, I had worked like a
+Trojan, physically and mentally, for a month. With unlimited money at my
+disposal, I had drawn only twenty dollars altogether, and this I sent to
+Marie, to keep the wolf away from the Rogues' Gallery, our flat.
+
+"When the factory was running smoothly, I told Mr. Kirkman that I would
+break in a man for my place. He made me a tempting offer to take full
+charge of the shop. I told him I would not be a participant in
+exploiting his 'hands,' who were getting only $7 to $8 a week.
+Furthermore, I said I would not stand for the discharge of any man for
+incompetency. I had never in the shop met any man I could not teach and
+learn something from in return; I had never discharged a man, and never
+would. The millionaire boss nevertheless continued to urge me to take
+the position, and my brother Jim offered me two thousand dollars' worth
+of stock at par and a large yearly salary. Well, I suppose, there's no
+use of anybody's trying to move me when Jim has failed.
+
+"I quit Pittsburg with nothing but the price of a ticket to Chicago,
+though my brother told me the firm would send me a check for $500 or
+$1,000 for my services as an expert. When, with a beating heart, I
+returned to my dear Rogues' Gallery, all was change and dispersion. No
+more happy times in our little balcony of fellowship, which had
+overlooked in its irresponsibility the jarring sects and insects of this
+world: the most delightful place in this world to me is a home without a
+boss, and this home was for the time gone. The possibility of being
+unfair to Marie makes me draw a veil over the cause of the breaking-up
+of the Rogues' Gallery.
+
+"Poor Jim found that the firm would not pay me a cent for my really
+brilliant month's work, for the reason that I had refused to be a
+conventional boss and had no written or verbal contract or agreement.
+Jim therefore resigned, forfeiting fifty dollars of weekly salary and
+twenty-five thousand dollars in stock, ten thousand of which he had
+offered me to stay. Mr. Kirkman thought all the world of Jim and could
+not run the shop without him. Nor could he recover from the blow, for he
+loved my brother, as everybody did. Mr. Kirkman died a few weeks
+afterward, and after a year or two the firm went into the hands of a
+receiver. All this happened because of a few paltry dollars, which I did
+not ask for, for which I did not care a damn--and this is business! I
+heartily rejoice, if not in Mr. Kirkman's death, at least in the
+dispersion of his family and their being forced into our ranks, where
+there is some hope for them.
+
+"My brother Jim was one of the maimed ones in my family. Twenty years
+ago, defective machinery and a surgeon's malpractice made one arm
+useless. The Pittsburg affair broke up his beautiful home. He and his
+whole-souled wife and charming children, into whose eyes it was an
+entrancing rapture for me to look, were a family without a boss; they
+needed none, for they loved one another perfectly. Jim is dead now, and
+the best I can do is to send you his last letter; it has the brevity of
+grief:
+
+"'I have no explanation to offer for my silence, more than a feeling
+which possessed me shortly after my arrival here--a desire to be
+considered a dead one, and am doing all but the one thing that will make
+my wish a reality. I am long tired of the game, and only continue to
+play because of the hardships my taking off would cause those who at
+present are not able to care for themselves. A way out of it would be to
+take them along, but I think if the matter were put before them, they
+would decline my proffered service; and take a chance as half-orphans.
+You calling up our boyhood days in "Little Hell" makes me question still
+further if I have any right to deny those dear to me the delights that
+only the young can feel and enjoy. I made a great mistake in coming to
+this Ohio town. The chase for dollars which I am performing here seven
+days every week is very disgusting to me, and every day only adds to the
+pangs. I am out all day selling goods, pleading for trade and collecting
+for former weeks' business; and in the evening I must do the necessary
+office work. Every day is the same, except Sunday, when I make up the
+book-keeping for the whole week and prepare statements and the like, to
+begin the usual round on Monday morning. It is a hell of a life and I
+wish it were done. I have some consolation in being able to call up at
+will those that I love. I have many a waking dream, while tramping the
+hills, about the comrades that have added to the joys of my former
+existence. Let me hear from you occasionally, because a letter from you
+seems to revive some of the old feeling that formerly made life
+passable.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I suppose I shall recover in time from Jim's death. I wish I could have
+been with him when he died. During his last half-unconscious moments the
+nurse proposed to send for a priest. Jim's soul must have made a last
+effort, for raising himself erect, he flung these words: 'I hire no
+spiritual nurse,' and then asked his daughter of fourteen to bring him
+a volume of Emerson and read to him. When she returned with the book, he
+was gone.
+
+"Of course, the doctor and all the wise ones have diagnosed Jim's case.
+But I think he sized up his case in that letter I sent you. He died of
+that great loneliness of soul which made of his wasted body a battered
+barricade against the stupidity which finally engulphed him. The soul of
+social and individual honour and commercial integrity, he had the
+misfortune to find few like himself. He yearned for the ideal; and I am
+sure he went down with that hope for humanity. Let us trust that there
+is an ever increasing number of human beings who have Jim's
+malady--'seekers after something in this world, that is there in no
+satisfying measure, or not at all.' If this letter seems boisterously
+blue, remember it is only the sullen marching of the black sap preceding
+the unfurling of the emerald banners of spring, when all things break
+into a 'shrill green.'"
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Terry's letter, like Marie's, I give verbatim.--H. H.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_The Meeting_
+
+
+The mood of rebellious idealism sometimes expresses itself in actual
+anti-social conduct and life. So it was with Terry. He is the most
+consistent anarchist I have known, in the sense that he more nearly
+rejects, practically, all social institutions and forms of conduct and
+morality. He is very sweet, and very gentle, loves children and is
+tender to every felt relation. There is a wistful look always in his
+eyes. He is tall, thin, and gaunt, his hair is turning grey; but there
+is nothing of the let-down of middle age in his nature, always tense,
+intense; scrupulously, deeply rebellious.
+
+Even before his meeting with Marie, his open acts of sympathy with what
+is rejected by society had put him more and more in the position of an
+outcast. Some of the members of his family had become fairly successful
+in the ways of the world. Terry might easily have taken his place in
+comfortable bourgeois society. But his temperament and his idealism led
+him to the disturbed life of the radical rejector. And he was rejected,
+in turn, by all, even by his family.
+
+Between him and his mother there was perhaps an uncommon bond, but even
+she in the end cast him out. He wrote of her:
+
+"She taught me that I did not belong in this world; she did not know how
+deeply she was right. When she crossed my arms over my childish breast
+at night and bade me be prepared, she gave me the motive of my life. She
+told me I would weep salt tears in this world, and they have run into my
+mouth. She loved me, as I never have been loved before or since, even up
+to the hour of my social crucifixion: then she basely deserted me. But I
+rallied, and the motive she implanted in me remains. Though a child
+without any childhood, I had my reason for existence, just the same.
+Everything is meaningless and transitory, except to be prepared. And I
+finally became prepared for anything and everything. My life was and is
+a preparation--for what? For social crucifixion, I suppose, for I belong
+to those baffled beings who are compelled to unfold within because there
+is no place for them without. I am a remaining product of the slums,
+consciously desiring to be there. I know its few heights and many
+depths. There have I seen unsurpassed devotion and unbelievable
+atrocities, which I would not dare, even if I could, make known. The
+truth, how can we stand it, or stand for it? I think a sudden revelation
+has wofully unbalanced many a fine mind. Hamlet, revealing himself to
+Ophelia, drives distraught one of the sweetest of souls. Fortunately we
+never know the whole truth, which may account for man being gregarious.
+One cannot help noticing that they who have a hopeless passion for truth
+are left largely alone--when nothing worse can be inflicted upon them."
+
+Terry's experience in the slums was no other than many another's, but
+the effect it made upon his great sensibility was far from ordinary. In
+another letter, speaking of what he calls his "crucifixion," he wrote:
+
+"Only great sorrow keeps us close, and that is why, the first night
+after one of my deepest quarrels with my mother, I picked out a
+five-cent lodging-house, overlooking my home, to pass the night of my
+damnation in sight of the lost paradise. I never had any reason, or I
+would have lost it. Let me hope that I am guided by something deeper
+than that. All my life I have felt the undertone of society; it has
+swept me to the depths, which I touched lovingly and fearfully with my
+lips.
+
+"Whenever and wherever I have touched the depths, and it has been
+frequent and prolonged, and have seen the proletarian face to face,
+naked spiritually and physically, the appeal in his eyes is irresistible
+and irrefutable. I must do something for him or else I am lost to
+myself. If I should ever let an occasion go by I am sure I never could
+recover from the feeling that something irreparable had happened to me.
+I should not mind failure, but to fail here and in my own eyes is to be
+forever lost and eternally damned. This looks like the religion of my
+youth under another guise, but I must find imperishable harmony
+somewhere. The apathy of the mass oppresses me into a hopeless
+helplessness which may account for my stagnation, my ineffectiveness, my
+impotence, my stupidity, my crudeness, and my despair. I have always
+felt lop-sided, physically, especially in youth. My awkwardness became,
+too, a state of mind at the mercy of any spark of suggestion. My
+subjectively big head I tried to compress into a little hat, my
+objectively large hands concealed themselves in subjective pockets, my
+poor generous feet went the way of the author of _Pilgrim's Progress_.
+The result is a lop-sided mind, developed monstrously in certain
+sensitive directions, otherwise not at all. A born stumbler in this
+world, I naturally lurched up against society--but, as often happens I
+have lost the thread of my thought: my thoughts, at the critical moment,
+frequently desert me, as my family did; they seem to carry on an
+alluring flirtation, and when I think them near they suddenly wave me
+from the distance. But, like a lover, I will follow on--follow on to
+platonic intercourse with my real mistress, the proletarian. And soul
+there is there. I have met as fathomless spirits among the workers as
+one will meet with anywhere. Art never has fathomed them, and may never
+be able to do so. Often have I stood dumbfounded before some simple
+day-labourer with whom I worked. Art does not affect me, as this kind of
+grand simplicity in life does. I keep muttering to myself: there must be
+a meaning to our lives somewhere, or else we must sunder this social
+fabrication and create a meaning; and so my incantations go on
+endlessly.
+
+"The proletarian is that modern sphinx whose thundering interrogative
+society will be called upon to answer. You and I know too well that
+society hitherto has answered only with belching cannon and vain
+vapourings of law, religion, and duty. But the toiling sphinx, who has
+time only to ask terrible questions, will some day formulate an
+articulate reply to its own question, and then once more we shall see
+that our foundations are of sand--sand that will be washed away, by
+blood, if need be. Some there are who will weep tears over the sand: the
+pleasures and the joy may die, for to me they are cold and false. My joy
+cannot find place within the four walls which shut out the misery and
+brutality of the world.
+
+"How be a mouthpiece for the poor? How can art master the
+master-problem? They who have nothing much to say, often say it well and
+in a popular form; they are unhampered by weighty matters. It takes an
+eagle to soar with a heavy weight in its grasp. The human being, rocking
+to and fro with his little grief, must give way in depth of meaning to
+him who is rocked with the grief of generations past, present, and to
+come. It is then that love might rise, love so close to agony that agony
+cannot last: the love that will search ceaselessly, in the slums, in the
+dives, throughout all life, for the inevitable, and will accept no
+alternative and no compromise."
+
+This was the man who met Marie at a critical time of her life. He was
+about thirty-five years old, had experienced much, had become formed,
+had rejected society, but not the ideal. Rather, as he dropped the one,
+he embraced more fervently the other. He had consorted with thieves,
+prostitutes, with all low human types; and for their failures and their
+weaknesses, their ideas and their instincts, he felt deep sympathy and
+even an ĉsthetic appreciation.
+
+Marie, as we have seen, was only seventeen, unformed and wild, full of
+youthful passion and social despair, on the verge of what we call
+prostitution; reckless, hopeless, with a deep touch of sullenness and
+hatred. She was working at the time in the house of one of Terry's
+brothers. Katie, too, was employed there; although she lived with Nick,
+her husband, she still occupied herself at times with her old
+occupation; and, as ever, she watched Marie with a careful eye, rather
+vainly so just then, for this girl was as wild as a girl well could be.
+
+One day Terry paid one of his infrequent visits to his brother's home,
+and saw the plump and pretty Marie hanging clothes in the yard. He was
+at once attracted to her, and entered into conversation. He was deeply
+pleased; so was the girl; and they made an appointment. He soon saw what
+her character was, and this was to him an added attraction.
+
+"I had been looking for a girl like Marie," he said, "for several years.
+I had made one or two trials, and they always got me into trouble with
+my family. But the other girls did not make good. They were too weak and
+conventional and could not stand the pace of life with me. I had early
+formed a contempt for the matrimonial relation. Five years I had nursed
+my rebellion and waited for a chance to use it. As soon as I met Marie I
+felt I had met one of my own kind. It was partly the fierce charm of a
+social experiment, the love for the proletarian and the outcast; for I
+felt Marie was essentially that. This element of my interest in her
+Marie never understood--this unconscious propaganda, as it were. She
+thought it was all sex and wanted it so."
+
+Katie saw that Terry was making up to her beloved Marie, and tried to
+prevent their meetings; but in vain; the attraction was too strong.
+Katie blackguarded Terry on every occasion, until she finally saw it was
+hopeless, and then invited him into her house to meet the girl. There he
+began to go frequently and the intimacy grew. Nick warned Terry against
+the girl on account of her loose character. "I have often found her," he
+said, "misconducting herself with some fellow or other. Why, she does so
+with everybody. Only this evening I found her on the front door-step
+with young Bladen. She is not the kind for you to be serious about.
+Everybody knows how common she is."
+
+Nick did not understand that an argument of that kind tended only to
+confirm Terry in his interest in Marie. Terry answered him laconically:
+"That's all right, Nick. When you don't want her, just send her to me."
+
+Nick, as we have seen, was jealous of Marie, because of Katie's love for
+her; so he fomented trouble between the two women. Katie, too, was at
+this time more exasperated with the girl's conduct than she had ever
+been before; and they had frequent quarrels. As the result of one of
+them, Marie went off with Terry to his family flat, where he was living
+alone at the time--to "have a fish dinner," telling the relenting Katie
+that she would return in the evening. But she stayed there with Terry
+all that night, for the first time. In the morning Katie turned up
+bright and early, burst into the flat, and reproached Terry so bitterly
+that they almost came to blows. But when Marie took Terry's side, Katie,
+terribly disappointed and hurt, yet made up her mind that it was
+inevitable; and Terry and Marie began to live together.
+
+How did Marie feel about all this? What was her condition at the time,
+and her attitude toward this strange man, so different from every other
+she had met? In a long letter to me she has given an account of it all.
+
+"I wrote you about my adventure with the club man. Well that was only a
+single instance of what finally became frequent with me. I had grown so
+fearfully tired of the life I was leading in domestic service that the
+only problem for me was how to get away from it all. For a time, I had
+thought I could get away only by marriage. I was ready to marry anybody
+who offered me food and shelter, and I had even thought of prostitution
+as a means of escape from domestic drudgery. I had not the slightest
+idea of what prostitution in its accepted sense meant. I knew in a vague
+way that women sold their bodies to men for money, that they lived
+luxurious lives, went to theatres and balls, wore beautiful gowns and
+seemed to be gay and happy. I was willing to marry any man who offered
+me a home, without the least suspicion that in that way, too, I should
+prostitute myself. But no one at that time offered me this means of
+escape, so I was quite ready to take the only other way, as I thought,
+left to me.
+
+"About this time I met an old girl-friend whom I had not seen for
+several years; she was a domestic servant, too, but was in advance of me
+in her recklessness. When I met her again she was in the mood to lose
+all the little virtue left to her. She was quite willing to sell
+herself: she had done enough for love, she said, marriage was now an
+impossibility, and she might as well realise on her commercial value. To
+these ideas I agreed, and we arranged to meet in two weeks from that day
+and try an experiment. Meanwhile she was to go back to her home, get her
+belongings, and tell her parents she had secured a place as a
+servant-girl in Chicago.
+
+"I left my position, and finding things too disagreeable at home where I
+continually quarrelled with my mother, I went to visit Kate, until my
+friend should return.
+
+"How my ideas and ideals had changed! When I first began to dislike the
+work I was forced to do, I dreamed that some charming fairy would come
+and release me: I had been taught such a view of life from the novels of
+Bertha M. Clay and E. D. E. N. Southworth. Some rich man, young and
+charming, possibly the owner of the factory I was working in, would fall
+passionately in love with me, marry me and carry me away to his palace!
+Gradually, my ideas came down. I should have been glad to marry a
+foreman, then some good mechanic, and finally, some workman, however
+humble, whom I would love dearly. And now I was deliberately preparing
+for a life of prostitution!
+
+"It was then, while living with my dear friend Kate, whom I sometimes
+helped in the work she did out, that I met my first, my last, my truest
+lover and friend, Terry. We met just at the right moment. I was filled
+with rebellion at the powers that were crushing me, breaking me, without
+realising why, or how, or what I might make of myself, when he came
+along and taught me in his own quiet and gentle convincing way how cruel
+and unjust is this scheme of things, and pointed out to me the cruelty
+and tyranny of my parents and of all society. He showed me that marriage
+such as I had contemplated was a bad form of prostitution, and he told
+me why. Of course, I did not grasp all the things he told me at once,
+but I listened and felt comforted; I began to feel that perhaps I might
+amount to something, might have some life of my own, and that my
+rebellion was perhaps justifiable. I began to understand why work was so
+objectionable to me and why I rebelled against the authority of my
+parents. My conceptions of freedom were crude, but I began to feel that
+my revolt was just, and was based upon the terrible injustice whereby
+the many must toil so that the few may live in splendour. I will not
+weary you with all the details of the things I learned at that time from
+Terry. To you it might seem very raw and crude, and you no doubt have
+read some of the pamphlets written by socialists and anarchists dealing
+with the labour question in all of its aspects. But to me these ideas
+were quite new and they seemed grand and noble.
+
+"And Terry revealed to me, too, almost at once, the great inspiring fact
+that there is such a thing as beauty of thought--that there is poetry
+and art and literature. This, too, of course, came little by little, but
+do you wonder I loved a man who showed me a new world and who taught me
+I was not bad? He put good books into my hands, and to my grateful joy I
+found I liked these books better than the trash I had hitherto read.
+
+"I felt so much better, after seeing so much of Terry, that I decided to
+go to work again. Terry was against this. 'Try it,' he said, 'But I
+assure you you don't need to work. I have tried doing without work for
+many years, it is much easier than it seems.' Nevertheless I got a job
+in a bicycle factory, but I only stayed a few days. It seemed like a
+stale existence to me! And besides, I was in love and wanted to be with
+Terry all the time. 'By God,' I said to him that night, 'you are right!
+I'll never work again.'
+
+"My friend Gertrude, the girl with whom I had intended to go in the last
+reckless experiment, came to Terry's flat to see me, and get me to go
+with her. I had thought, after I gave up work, that Terry might offer me
+marriage, but he told me quite frankly that it was against his
+principles to marry anybody. I was a little hurt and astonished at this,
+but as I was very much in love and was already beginning to imbibe his
+ideas, it did not matter so very much to me.
+
+"So, when Gertrude came, I led her to Terry and asked him what he
+thought about her plan. He said to us: 'The kind of prostitution you
+contemplate is no worse than the kind often called marriage. Selling
+your body for a lifetime is perhaps worse than selling it for an hour or
+for a day. But the immediate result of this kind of prostitution which
+you plan is very terrible practically. It generally leads to frightful
+diseases which will waste your bodies and perhaps injure your minds. The
+girls you envy are not always as happy, gay, and careless as they seem.
+It is part of their business to seem so, but they are not, or only so
+for a very short time. Perhaps you will be better off so than in
+domestic drudgery. It is a choice of evils, but if you are very brave
+and courageous you may perhaps get along without either. But if forced
+to one or the other, I recommend prostitution. It may be worse for you
+but, as a protest, it is better for society, in the long run.'
+
+"He pictured to us as truly as he could the life of the street-walker;
+he did not seem to think that morally it was worse than any other life
+under our social organisation, but he did not make it seem attractive;
+nor did he make the life of the domestic servant or factory-girl seem
+attractive. He seemed to feel that one might look on prostitution as,
+under the circumstances, a grim duty--but it was certainly grim.
+
+"We were rather incredulous at the picture Terry had drawn of the life
+we had resolved to lead. Gertrude turned up her pretty little nose and
+said it would not be like that with her. We talked about it all that
+day and night; and Gertrude decided to have a try at it, while I was
+undecided. I was somewhat piqued at Terry's attitude. I had expected him
+to oppose my plan, to do all in his power to prevent it. But I did not
+understand him. He knew that if I were determined, nothing would prevent
+me, and all he could do was to give us a faithful picture of what such a
+life would be.
+
+"Things were happening of which we were ignorant for a time, but which
+helped to settle our immediate problem. I had often been seen going into
+Terry's flat, and this was food for gossip. It was said that Terry had
+started a bad house, and had done so in the flat belonging to his
+family, who were in the country at the time. These stories reached my
+mother's ears, and also were told to Terry's mother and sisters, and the
+mischief began. I was forbidden ever to cross my mother's threshold
+again, and he was requested to leave the home of his virtuous sisters
+which he had polluted and contaminated by his debaucheries with that
+immoral person, myself."
+
+Marie omitted, in the above letter, the details of the split with the
+two families. It seems that Terry had, on hearing about the "rumours,"
+gone to his family, then near Chicago, and presented to them his
+philosophy of life; also his determination not to give up Marie, and not
+to marry her. It was then that the last rung was put in the ladder of
+his family crucifixion, as he would call it. It was then that his mother
+"basely deserted him;" and Terry left for good, rejecting the money
+offered him.
+
+"I passed them up," he said, scornfully, "and after spending the night
+in the lodging-house, I beat my way back to Chicago. I had been gone
+several days, and when I got back to the flat, where I went only to get
+Marie and clear out for God knows where, I found her gone, and no
+apparent way of finding her address. I went to see her mother, and had
+an awful scene with her. The violent woman was in hysterics and, after a
+long dispute, implored me to find her daughter. 'I'll find her,' I
+replied, 'for myself,' and left.
+
+"Marie afterwards told me that she and Gertrude had gone to see her
+mother, when I was in the country with my family, and that her mother
+had driven them away. Perhaps, the mother realised the change in the
+girl. Perhaps, too, she realised what must happen, if she drove her
+away. Yet she did drive her daughter away. From her own point of view,
+it was diabolical to do so. Her anger, her exasperation and her outraged
+desire to rule drove her to doing what she must have felt was the worst
+thing she could do. And she did it in the name of virtue! Perhaps it was
+for the best: I believe it was, but she did not and I cannot see where
+her spiritual salvation comes in."
+
+Terry finally found Marie--found her in the midst of a short experiment,
+in company with Gertrude, "in one of the social extremes,"--to be plain,
+leading the life of a prostitute.
+
+I ask the reader to pause here and reflect. Pause, before you conclude
+that this book is an indecent and immoral book. Reflect before you
+conclude that this woman is an immoral woman. I am engaged in telling a
+plain tale in such a way that certain social conditions and certain
+social considerations and individual truths may be illustrated thereby.
+Consequently, I shall not pause, though I ask the reader to do so, in
+order to point a moral in any extended way. In return for the readers'
+courtesy and tolerance, I will here reassuringly assert that there will
+be found in these pages no detailed description of Marie's life during
+her few months of prostitution; and nothing whatever, from cover to
+cover, of anything that in my judgment is either immoral or indecent.
+
+Well, Terry found her, and Terry did not try to "reform" her. But he
+stood by her, and was more interested, more in love with her than ever.
+In addition to his personal interest, he felt an even stronger social
+interest in her. To live with a girl like that was unconscious
+propaganda. This passion, as he calls it, was now more deeply stirred
+than when he first met her. This deeply aroused his imagination and his
+keen desire to see what the naked constitution of the soul is, after it
+is stripped of all social prestige.
+
+If Marie had been simply a low, commercial grafter, Terry, the idealist,
+would not have been interested. But Terry knew that Marie cared nothing
+whatever for money. He regarded her as a social victim and in addition a
+vigorous and life-loving personality, an excellent companion for a
+life-long protest against things as they are. He saw she had the
+capacity for deep and excited interest in truth, an emotional love for
+ideated experience. These two human beings were wonderfully fitted to
+each other: no wonder they loved!
+
+Terry, telling me about the girl's experience during the two weeks or so
+before he found her, dwelt especially upon how well she was treated.
+
+"She has a way of getting the interest, almost the deference, of many
+people. She and Gertrude were often reduced to the proverbial thirty
+cents, but they had little difficulty in getting along. For instance,
+one day, almost broke, they went to a restaurant and ordered two cups of
+coffee. The negro waiter knew what they were, and offered them a nice
+steak, at his expense. Nor did he try to 'ring in,' to make their
+acquaintance. He treated them with great respect. They went there
+several times afterward, and always found the negro waiter beaming with
+the desire to help them for quite disinterested reasons, and he never
+tried to meet them outside. Marie always appreciated a thing like that.
+She took a delight in thinking about the fine qualities in human
+nature."
+
+Marie is a frank woman, but it is natural that she could never bring
+herself to talk about this period of her life with entire openness. She
+has, however, written me a letter in which she tells the essential
+truth, although clothing it with a certain pathetic attempt to conceal
+the one episode in her life about which, to me, she was perhaps
+unreasonably reticent. She did not say that she and Gertrude were
+separated from Terry for a time, but she wanted to convey the impression
+that she and Terry, from the start, struggled along together, which was
+essentially, though not literally, true. Continuing her account, from
+the time the two families cast her and Terry out, she wrote:
+
+"So there we were, thrown out into the harsh world, shelterless and
+almost moneyless. But we all three put our little capital together,
+amounting to about eleven dollars, went down town, and hired a furnished
+room. We managed to live a week on this capital, and then Terry pawned
+his watch, which gave us five dollars. Gertrude soon disappeared with an
+old rouê and went out of our lives. Terry and I kept along as best we
+could. Kate helped us as much as we would allow her to, and sometimes
+paid for our room, and I would sometimes eat at her house.
+
+"During this period I was in a curious state of mind and body. Living in
+the midst of so-called vice, I was at first both attracted and repelled.
+Yet my strongest feeling was a hatred of the life I had formerly led,
+and I was determined not to go back to it, happen what might. I should
+probably have gone much farther than I did, had it not been for my love
+for Terry, which made me feel that I did not want to throw myself
+entirely away. So I did not know whether to go into the game entirely or
+keep out of it. Terry did not try to influence me, but seemed to watch
+me, to make me feel that he would stand by me in any event.
+
+"For a time we were both of us dazed and stunned by our sudden change in
+life. The change was much greater for Terry than for me. I don't know
+what his thoughts and feelings at that time were. They must have been
+terrible. For years he had lived, for the most part with his family, a
+quiet, studious life, the life of contemplation; and now he was
+suddenly plunged into the roar and din, with an ignorant and
+disreputable girl on his hands whom he would not desert. We were
+certainly on the verge of destruction. The inevitable would have
+happened, for no other choice was left me, and I should have drifted
+with the current and Terry would do and could do nothing.
+
+"Just at the crucial moment, Terry met an old friend who offered him a
+political job, organising republican workingmen's clubs, and Terry
+accepted it. No one can understand how bitter this was to Terry. To work
+for a political organisation was to him great degradation. He did it for
+my sake, for the thirty-five dollars a week, so that I could be free to
+live as I wanted. I did not realise at the time how much his sensitive
+nature suffered, and I took poor advantage of the freedom his money and
+character gave me. What an intolerable burden I must have been to him,
+and yet he never even intimated a desire to leave me!
+
+"I had an opportunity now to satisfy my desire for pleasure. Terry put
+no obstacles in my way. Yet the cup already tasted bitter. I tried to
+deny to myself that this life of pleasure was an illusion, and so I
+plunged into the most reckless debaucheries: I really would be ashamed
+to tell you of the things I did. I had affairs with all sorts of men,
+many of whom I did not know whether I liked or hated--seeking always
+excitement, oblivion. I frequented cafés where the women and men of the
+town were to be found, and made many acquaintances. Two or three of them
+proposed marriage to me. They no doubt wanted to 'save' me, and thought
+I was a prostitute. I did not care to disabuse them on the subject: in
+fact I don't know whether I was what they called me or not.
+
+"This life lasted only two or three months, but it seems like so many
+years to me. At the end of that time Terry's work was over, and we left
+down town and roomed with a respectable radical family. My health had
+broken down. I weighed only a hundred pounds, although three months
+earlier I had weighed one hundred and forty. My beautiful, healthy body
+had wasted away. Ah! how proud I used to be of this body of mine! how I
+used to glory in the vigorous, shapely limbs, the well-moulded breasts
+and throat. But all this passed away before my youth had passed away."
+
+Marie here pathetically omits to state the immediate cause of her ill
+health--a long and terrible experience in the hospital, the result of
+her excesses, during which time Terry was the only one to care for her,
+from which place she came broken in health, thin and pale, with large,
+dark, sad eyes, looking as she did when I first met her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+_The Rogues' Gallery_
+
+
+"My terrible experiences during these months," continued Marie, "had at
+least the advantage of bringing me nearer to him who was and is the
+inspirer of whatever is worthy or good in me. It helped me to appreciate
+him, and surely everything I suffered, everything I may still suffer, is
+not too much to pay for that. He has made for me an ideal, and, without
+that, life is but a sorry, sorry thing. During those wild months I, of
+course, thought little of those things, those wonderful new things which
+I had heard of from him, but now, when we were living quietly with our
+anarchist friends, and the surroundings were in harmony with the mood
+for thought, my interest awakened. I read a great deal and listened
+attentively to the talk of the people around me, and slowly my ideas
+became more and more clear.
+
+"It took a long time for me to learn, to really understand what the
+others were interested in. I did not dare to ask Terry too many
+questions, especially there, where everybody admired him and looked up
+to him so. A new shyness came over me when I began to see him in the
+light of a philosopher and a poet. He seemed so far above me and I felt
+myself so small and unworthy. But it was not long before I really began
+to feel a strong interest in all that was said, in all these social
+theories, in these ideas about the proletaire, about art and literature;
+and I began to read books in a far different spirit from what I used--I
+began to see in them truth about life, and to love this truth, whatever
+it was. And I loved the freedom of the talk, and, above all, I loved the
+feeling that from the highest point of view I was not an outcast, and
+that the people who seemed to me the best did not so regard me. It
+helped to give me the self-respect which every human being needs, I
+think.
+
+"I thought for a long time that I was very lucky indeed to get admitted
+into this atmosphere. And, indeed, I know I _was_ lucky, but there came
+a time when, for a while, I was very unhappy, not in the society of the
+radicals--I always loved that--but among these particular people,
+because they could not, after all, rid themselves of some conservative
+prejudices. After a while I began to see that even those enlightened
+people really had contempt for what I had been, or for my ignorance,
+perhaps for both.
+
+"This family, with whom we were staying, was supposed to have broad and
+liberal ideas, and its members prided themselves on the fact that they
+really put their theories into practice. Their home was run on a sort of
+communistic basis, and the men and women who lived there were not tied
+to each other by any legal bonds, for they believed in freedom of love.
+They never made much noise about their ideas, or rather their practice,
+and were what you might call refined or cultured anarchists.
+
+"Terry and I had nothing in a worldly way, and we lived there on
+'charity,' so to speak, though that word was, of course, never used. We
+did, however, what work there was to be done in the household, trying in
+this way to give some compensation in return for a bed to sleep on and
+the simple food necessary to keep our bodies alive.
+
+"Now, after a while, I began to feel crushed, oppressed in this home,
+among these cold, cold, refined people, although they were anarchists.
+They could not help showing me their contempt: they made me feel
+inferior. They never said one word that indicated such a feeling, but I
+could feel it by their attitude, by the attitude even of the little
+child in the house. They looked upon me much in the same way as my
+former mistress used, when I was the servant in the house, except that
+they were bound by their theories to give me a nominal respect and to
+try charitably to improve my mind and make of me a philosophical
+anarchist.
+
+"It was painful to me to see these people, who were so humane, who could
+not bear to see the lowly oppressed, who could not bear to have
+injustice done, to see these people pass me by in insulting silence,
+look at me with cold, unsympathetic eyes! How it hurt me, not to receive
+the word of encouragement from the kind look of people I looked up to!
+So I crawled into my shell and did not go about much with the others. I
+think I was forgotten by nearly everybody for days at a time. Terry
+shared the room with me, and brought me food, as I grew more and more
+unable to eat with the cold superior ones. He brought me tobacco, too,
+and here it was, sitting all day alone, that I began the cigarette
+habit: if it had not been for that, I think I should have gone mad.
+
+"I never ceased to love Terry, but I had a bitter feeling against him,
+too. He was always kind and good to me, but he spent most of his time
+with his intellectual friends, and I began to feel that even he was
+being 'charitable' to me. So after much misery and despair, I accepted a
+proposal of marriage from a friend of my wild days and fled with him to
+St. Louis. He took me to the home of his sisters and parents, where I
+lived in peace and quiet for three weeks, recovered some of my health
+and strength, and was able to review my past and think of my future; and
+reflect on my coming marriage.
+
+"The people I was with now were kind and sympathetic. They did not know
+about my past life--only my prospective husband knew--he, of course,
+knew all. The others thought I was a poor shop-girl, tired and
+overworked. They were refined people, fairly well-to-do, rather
+bourgeois, but with good hearts, and so innocent that they believed
+everything their son told them, and received me as a daughter and
+sister.
+
+"Perhaps my nature is perverse, I don't know; but as soon as I got a
+little rest and peace, I began to think of what I had left and
+especially of Terry. It was not only my love for him that called, but
+what my life with him had been and would be if I returned--a life that
+was not a commonplace life, a life of intelligence and freedom. Already
+I was bored by the quiet goodness of the people I was with, and I wanted
+'something doing'!
+
+"I saw Terry again as I had seen him first, with the glamour of ardent
+love, the love that overleaps all barriers and, if only for an instant,
+stands face to face with love, unhesitating, tumultuous, and triumphant.
+The memory of even one perfect moment can never leave us, even if life
+be ever so dark and harsh and bitter, there will always be that single
+ray of light to illumine the darkness, and keep our steps from utter and
+complete stumbling.
+
+"I thought of Terry day and night, and grew so melancholy that my new
+found friends were alarmed and suggested hastening the marriage, in
+order to let me go South with my husband. This alarmed me terribly and
+I begged that no such step should be taken. With much inward trembling,
+I proposed that the marriage should be postponed and that I return to
+Chicago. They would not listen to this, and I could see in their honest
+faces the deepest amazement and a kind of suspicion. So I took refuge in
+tears, pleading ill-health and offering no more suggestions.
+
+"That same day I wrote Terry a long letter, in which I told him that I
+still loved him, could not forget him, but had taken this step in
+desperation because I could no longer endure living among these people
+in Chicago, his friends, but not mine; that here in St. Louis I had
+found a certain measure of peace and quiet which had lately been
+disturbed by the realisation that soon I must decide to take a step
+which would perhaps separate us two irrevocably, that I longed more than
+words could tell to see him, to look into his face. I could never go
+back, I wrote, to that life I had been living, because what I had
+learned from him of what life is and what makes it worth living, had
+made that thing impossible for me. So, I wrote, I could not go back,
+and how, without him, could I go forward? So here I was, weak,
+perplexed, and I begged him to write me, to advise me what to do.
+
+"Very soon his reply came--the truest, kindest reply that I could have
+received. He too had suffered since I left him, and comprehended only
+too well why I had done as I did. Our suffering would help us to gain a
+more comprehensive knowledge of life and of each other. And if I still
+loved him, I should follow the inclination of my heart and return to
+him. We two might start out again, wiser and surer for what had passed.
+He assured me of his love, but warned me not to expect too much from
+him, that our material comforts would be few, for he was as poor as I,
+and however much he might wish to provide better, he knew that, for one
+reason or another, he could not. But if I would be content to share his
+crust and his love, much happiness and joy might be in store for us. He
+finished his letter with a quotation from Browning's 'Lost Leader':
+
+    'Just for a handful of silver he left us,
+     Just for a ribbon to tie in his coat.'
+
+"My hesitation disappeared at once, although it hurt me greatly to
+carry out my resolution to return to Chicago. It cost me many a pang to
+shock and hurt the dear good people, to seem so ungrateful for all their
+love and kindness. But it had to be. I could not do otherwise. I
+returned to Chicago two days after receiving the letter, and my lover
+and I met and clasped hands and gazed into one another's eyes. We were
+reunited, or rather united truly, for the first time, with better
+understanding on both sides.
+
+"Since that day, now six years ago, we have travelled the rough road
+together, assisting one another as best we could, often stumbling and
+misunderstanding and hurting one another, for we continually tried to
+get deeper and deeper into real knowledge, real life, and it is hard to
+reconcile all things. Generally to gain much, one must compromise, but
+Terry and I did not wish to compromise. His and mine has been a
+difficult and dangerous relation, but an interesting one. Very soon
+after my return to Chicago, I felt much more at ease, no longer a
+stumbling-block in his way; and I gained confidence, strength, and
+knowledge. I met many people of the true communistic spirit, and by
+social intercourse with them developed in every way. I continued to read
+good books and attended lectures on the social problems of the day. So
+after a time I became what is called an anarchist, just as Terry was.
+
+"The reasons my books and companions brought forward for the
+justification of anarchism were like meat and drink to me. I was filled
+with enthusiasm for the ideas of a freedom which I now think is perhaps
+impossible in our society. But I thought that the 'downtrodden,' the
+'working classes,' held the fate of the world in their hands, if they
+could but realise it. As time passed, my enthusiasm waned, for I began
+to see many difficulties in the way of this beautiful idealism. At
+times, I even doubted if the 'mob' were worthy of liberty at all. Such
+thoughts, however, passed away whenever I saw the crowds of workers
+streaming from the factories and stores, and looked upon their loutish,
+brutal faces, wherein there was never a gleam of pride, of the joy of
+creation, of intelligent effort. Then I would think, surely, surely,
+humankind is not meant to be thus. Why, even the little birds, the tiny
+little ants, what intelligence they display in their work; little
+kittens and dogs playing in the streets, what unrestrained joy is
+theirs! Work ought to be a pleasure and a blessing: and it would be so
+if we could only choose our labour, if we could create, do those things
+for which we are fitted, voluntarily, because of the need within us, for
+the outward expression of our life, our hope and joy. So, work would
+cease to be the curse it is to-day.
+
+"And surely if we were free men and women, we would find our place in
+the scheme of things, surely each one of us would seek the place suited
+to his individual nature, and so perhaps at last everything would be a
+part of the harmonious whole.
+
+"When I think of things as they are and as they might be, I grow dizzy
+and sick at heart, that mankind can be so blind, so hopelessly ignorant,
+so unspeakably cruel, so weak and cowardly. I am only a novice, I know,
+and there is so much for me to know, to learn, to strive for--much that
+I, and hundreds and thousands of others, will never reach, for we are
+burdened with heavy chains which we cannot break. Yet, there must be
+somewhere on this big earth, some little place fitted for me, some
+small corner where I must be of some value to myself.
+
+"To you, no doubt, my sufferings and struggles will seem petty and my
+ideas crude and commonplace; but, if so, the pity is all the greater.
+After the agony I went through, freedom seemed to me the noblest thing
+in the world, and I thought it the solution of everything. Since then my
+ideas, perhaps, have become somewhat less 'crude,' but I have never for
+a moment lost faith in the thought that freedom is the most essential,
+the most necessary condition for us, if we are to endure life."
+
+It is certainly what Marie calls "crude" to talk of liberty without
+careful definition. Absolute freedom is inconceivable. But I am not
+interested in presenting an argument: I am interested in the description
+of a state of mind, of a section of society, of a certain emotional view
+of things. The value, however, of these general ideas is undoubted, in
+the spiritual improvement and moral comfort of thousands of people. I
+think that Marie and Terry and the other characters that will appear in
+this book are decidedly better off for the ideas they hold: that about
+these ideas, or rather ideals, perhaps, they have grouped a society in
+which they are not outcasts, in which their lives seem from some points
+of view justified. And even in my opinion, though I live in different
+circumstances, and see greater difficulties in the way of the
+realisation of any social ideal than they do, yet I feel that their way
+of looking at things is useful to the larger society of men, ultimately.
+And, I, like other people, have deep respect for a consistent and
+courageous life, based upon a principle or principles which I may not
+hold myself.
+
+The next scene in the life of Marie and Terry took place in what they
+called "The Rogues' Gallery." This was during the time that Terry held a
+position in the Prudential Insurance Company, whose employ he left, as
+we have seen, in order to go to Pittsburg, to find the flaw in the
+tannery process, at his brother Jim's request. He hired three little
+rooms, and up to the time he went to Pittsburg, he welcomed to his home
+everybody who was "against" things. Later on, he became more particular
+in his associates--that is to say, he demanded of them something more
+than mere disreputability, to use the conventional word. But at that
+time he loved everything that the world hated or cast out. That was his
+principle of action, his norm of judgment. Seeking the truth with
+undivided passion, he rid himself at a later time, at least partially,
+of this prejudice, and became quite able to "pass up," as he calls it,
+that is reject, a human being even though he might be a thief, a
+practical anarchist, a prostitute, or a souteneur. But at the time of
+the existence of the Rogues' Gallery he loved everything rejected by
+society, without making too nice a use of his natural taste.
+
+There, in those three little slum rooms, gathered a strange society--a
+society held together on the basis of its utter rejection of the larger
+society of men. To be an acceptable member of this society, the
+individual must in some way be a social rebel--either practically or
+theoretically, or both. When Terry saw in some being rejected by society
+a spark of thought or of feeling, he was excited and happy. It was
+obvious to him, as to all persons who think and have practical contact
+with many different kinds of people, that there are in life no heroes
+and no villains; it was obvious that in the lowest thief or prostitute
+there was that possibility of light and spiritual grace which all true
+souls desire. Terry's function was to make them conscious of this; to
+organise, so to speak, the outcasts upon a philosophic and ĉsthetic
+basis and so save them to themselves, at least.
+
+This was his great experiment with Marie, about which a large part of
+this book is to be concerned. But this interest, this effort, extended
+itself to many other individuals, and whenever Terry could feel himself
+in contact with what he felt was essentially human, and, at the same
+time, to his sense beautiful, he was filled, as I have said, with that
+deep excitement of pleasure, which was both intellectual and moral. I
+remember, one day, he said to me: "How often, during the lifetime of the
+Rogues' Gallery, did I saunter down State Street with the pleasing
+knowledge that I would find some 'low' person, girl or man, whom I knew
+I could get at, who would strip himself or herself bare to me in a
+spiritual sense, and would be revealed disinterestedly, would have no
+axe to grind and no contemptible small ends to gain, and no tradesman's
+commercial morality and no grafting conventionality, no moral cant based
+on self-interest--some being so near the 'limit' that he was
+intellectually and morally fearless and did not need to pose, from whom
+some truth could be derived, whose sincerity and power of
+straight-seeing was not warped and concealed by any bourgeois ambitions,
+by any respectability."
+
+From time to time Terry would take one of these beings home with him--to
+his Rogues' Gallery and to Marie and to the other intimates, mainly more
+or less self-conscious anarchists, all or nearly all derelicts of the
+labouring class. There they could stay as long as they ĉsthetically
+fitted, could share the communal cigarette, beds, beer, and food. And
+Terry and Marie and their friends would talk and read aloud--Terry the
+teacher, giving transcendental light into the nature of the good, the
+beautiful, and the true. Many an outcast here came first to a pleasing
+sense that from some points of view he was not altogether bad, nay, that
+he had unexpectedly good points. Many of them to some philosophic
+intensity; conversation became a joy, strangely unknown hitherto. The
+educational character of this meeting place was marked, but, as I have
+said, Terry's indiscriminating passion for the outcasts of the
+proletaire limited the intellectual development of his little society.
+At a later time, a much more developed society grew around Terry and
+Marie, as we shall see, when we get to the Anarchist salon, or the
+intellectual drawing room of the Anarchist Proletaire.
+
+Terry's main effort was, at this time, and for years afterwards,
+naturally directed toward Marie's spiritual education. Hitherto Marie
+has revealed herself to the reader as a rather commonplace, very
+physical, rather lazy, and quite egoistic person, one of many, with no
+distinguished characteristics. But she was unusually endowed in some
+ways. Eminently plastic, up to a certain point she rapidly assumed forms
+suggested by Terry's spiritual touch. She derived from him her interest
+in all high things, in philosophy, art and literature, but there always
+remained an interesting distinction in the way she reacted to her
+education. Terry remained always the rather transcendental philosopher,
+with a predominant ethical sense. Marie, as she developed, showed a
+deeper and subtler feeling for expression and a surer sensing of human
+character, a juster psychology. Her nature is essentially less
+beautiful, by far, than that of Terry, but more real, in a way, more
+robust, and so constituted that in a long spiritual conflict she would
+wear out the finer qualities of her lover. But this is anticipating,
+except in so far as it is true that from the start Marie's psychological
+vividness showed itself, often, of course, with base and physical
+concomitants. In this connection I will quote a letter which well
+illustrates this side of her character, and which also shows a contrast
+to some of her loftier but more conventional and less true qualities.
+She had been attending an anarchists' ball and she wrote:
+
+"I danced a great deal and felt very happy, without the aid of any
+stimulant either. I did not have any feeling of irritation or even
+indifference toward anybody, not even toward Rose. I am fascinated by
+Rose, and I sometimes think I hate her. I always like to be near her
+when there is no one else around. She reveals herself to me then; in
+fact quite throws off the mask which all women wear. In order to
+encourage her to do this, I apparently throw down my own mask. Oh, how I
+gloat over her then, when she shows me a side of her life and betrays
+secret thoughts and feelings to me half unconsciously! Sometimes I
+succeed in having her do this when there is a third person present, and
+the look of hatred which passes across her face when she perceives she
+has made a mistake, is a most interesting thing to see. But she
+immediately comes to my side and we kiss each other and call each other
+'angel girls' and 'darlings.' Thus we play with each other, and it is a
+stand-off which is cleverest. She is quite puzzled sometimes by my
+frankness about some things, for instance, about her looks. I notice she
+compliments me on my looks whenever I am decidedly off colour, when I
+wear a green ribbon, or a dowdy dress, or big shoes. But I am honest
+with her in these things, and I like to see her look well. The game is
+more interesting then.
+
+"Well, at this ball, I wanted to dance with a certain man, but I did not
+wish to ask him myself. So I requested Rose to do so, and she consented,
+and I was soon whirling around in his arms. I had felt curious about him
+for a long time: I did not know just what the state of my feeling toward
+him was. I did not know whether I liked or disliked him, but I had
+often experienced a sort of thrilling sensation when he happened to pass
+by or touch me, or even when he mentioned my name, which had occurred
+only once since I knew him. 'Good evening, Marie,' was all he said. But
+the name and the way he said it seemed new, and it kept recurring to me
+at unexpected times and always troubled me. When I fancy I hear that
+name in his voice I feel sad and lonely, and my heart aches. I see him
+often, mostly at our Sunday evening lectures. We are very distant, and I
+am often rude to him, not answering when he speaks to me.
+
+"So when I danced with him the other night, I was agreeably surprised to
+find that I did not experience any unusual sensation at all. And I was
+relieved, too, for I had a sort of instinctive feeling that he was not
+worthy of any strong interest. After the dance was over, we went
+down-stairs together and he kissed me. You know, the radicals all kiss
+one another freely and it does not mean anything special, as a rule:
+often it is done without any feeling at all, just a common habit. But
+this time I was astonished to find that the moment he touched me I had
+the same thrilling sensation, only more intense, as when I heard him
+speak my name. I resisted however, and just then I heard Rose's voice
+ring out exultantly, 'Oh, if you knew how crazy Marie is about you, how
+she raved when she first met you and so on.' You can imagine how I felt
+then. I managed to get away and drank and smoked and danced all the
+evening and never looked at him again. When we all went away Rose and I
+kissed each other and called each other 'darling girl.'
+
+"In some moods I would like to be a big, beautiful, heartless woman like
+one or two I know. In such moods, how I would make men suffer! I was
+talking about this to little Sadie the other day, and she assured me
+solemnly that she would do that when she was thirty, but not merely to
+make men suffer, but to develop them."
+
+As Terry continued to read aloud and talk in his Rogues' Gallery, Marie
+grew to reflect more and more the results of the reading of good things,
+and of the thinking and talking about these things. It shows how some
+temperaments are able to connect literature and philosophy with life,
+and thereby see their real meaning, quite independently of any merely
+conventional culture or education. One of the greatest prejudices of our
+time (and of all times) is the belief that intellectual culture, which
+is merely the perception in detail of how life and thought is expressed
+in form, is peculiarly dependent upon academic or conventional
+education. And yet, of course, somewhere or other, the nature capable of
+understanding form must come in contact with it, before the meaning of
+the whole thing is incorporated into its daily habit. Terry was Marie's
+point of contact with form, in its deep relation to life. Marie felt
+this and loved him and was grateful, to the depths of her nature, so
+different from his, so animal, so unideal, in comparison! She wrote:
+
+"Terry gave me a new way to express myself, and that, after all, is the
+only thing worth living for. And he gave me this new way without trying
+to make me give up any other way of self expression, my sensuality, for
+example. This sensuality I have sometimes regretted, but not directly
+through Terry's influence, except that he has shown me the beauty of
+something else. He is a winged thing in comparison with me, but he is
+so wonderfully tolerant that he can see beauty in even the baser part
+of my nature. Why should I regret what I am, anyway? I believe that the
+only purity that means anything is that which results from working one's
+nature out harmoniously, not suppressing it. Terry must be a wonderful
+man, to have been able to encourage me in many new directions, and to
+take away the maiming sting of regret for what I inevitably was and
+could not help being.
+
+"I do not think an ordinary person could have made me see the beauty of
+anarchism. I know that the anarchistic ideas are rather shocking, even
+at their best, and of course they naturally appeal most to the man with
+the hoe, inciting him to rebel, while the man behind the idea is usually
+endowed with so much sensitiveness that he shrinks from the rebellion
+part of the programme himself; he is not a man of action, only a man of
+ideas. It is shameful, some think, to disturb the blissful ignorance of
+the man with the hoe, for when the gleam of intelligence shines in his
+eye and he is aroused to the knowledge of his degrading position, he is
+likely to rebel in the most healthy but brutal manner, so much so that
+the ĉsthetic reformer shrinks back from the consequences of the
+propagation of his own ideas. Of course, the brutality of the
+proletariat is not nearly so subtle as that of the aristocracy, and it
+takes some cleverness to discover that the latter is brutality at all.
+It requires time and patience to drive into the thick heads of the
+workers that they are downtrodden, and that their oppressors are
+worthless parasites. When they finally do awaken to this idea and rebel,
+how terribly shocked the world is because these brutes have not the
+cleverness or delicacy to be more subtle in their brutalities.
+
+"In your last letter you wrote of the crudeness of most propagandists of
+anarchism, naming Anatole France as one of the rare anarchists who
+express themselves otherwise than crudely. He rarely or never, you say,
+ever mentions the word 'anarchism,' although much of his writing is
+calculated to destroy belief in the value of organised society as it now
+exists. Don't you think you are perhaps prejudiced too much against
+certain words because of their associations? I know that many words are
+objectionable to refined, cultured people because they have been so
+long associated with the coarse and brutal mob, the working class, as
+the socialists would say. But you must remember that anarchism is
+intended to appeal to this 'mob' especially; that its doctrines might
+not be needed by refined people who ought to have enough sensibility not
+to enjoy 'freedom' unless it is shared by the coarse and brutal workers.
+Believe me, there is nothing so degrading as poverty. It makes the slave
+more slavish and the brute more brutal. It acts like a goad, spurring
+people on to do things which make them seem to themselves and others
+lower and lower, until they are truly no longer human beings but
+animals.
+
+"Therefore it is that the propaganda of anarchism is generally crude. It
+is true that much good literature is permeated with the ideals of
+anarchism, for instance, Shelley, Whitman, Thoreau, and Emerson. Such
+reading is excellent as a means of humanising and making anarchists of
+refined people, but how could you appeal to the rebellious workers with
+such books as these? For instance, my father, do you think he could read
+Ibsen or any of the others? Indeed not; but let him go to a meeting
+where he can hear Emma Goldman speak, or let him read Jean Grave, or
+Bakunin, or some other writer of 'crude' pamphlets, and he might become
+interested, he might be able to understand. But since it seems that
+truly refined people cannot enjoy the pleasures of freedom without
+being, at any rate at times, worried because of the condition of the
+'mass,' what is to be done? This objectionable crudity must remain until
+there is a demand for something more subtle on the part of the workers
+for whom is intended all propaganda. The rich and cultured presumably
+have brains which they can use to solve the problems for themselves or
+to digest the things written by Anatole France and others. But how do
+you suppose that I, for instance, could a few years ago have relished
+Anatole France? Wouldn't you think it idiotic for anyone to have given
+me such books, at that time, with any expectation of my appreciating
+their refined and evanescent anarchism?"
+
+It must have been a strange sight that of Terry sitting on his
+dilapidated bed in the Rogues' Gallery, with his eternal cigarette in
+his mouth, talking to Marie and perhaps to some prostitute or
+pickpocket! We begin already to see the result on Marie's education:
+that will appear complex and manifold, but it is likely that on many a
+half-formed creature who afterward passed out of Terry's life, his words
+yet made an impression which perhaps in some later darkness revived an
+idea which explained and justified his miserable existence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_The Salon_
+
+
+The Rogues' Gallery went the way of all good things: it ceased to exist
+when the creative spirit was gone. Terry went to Pittsburg, as we have
+seen, to find the flaw in the tanning process, and while he was away
+Marie attempted to conduct the academy of anarchism. But she was too
+much interested in what is called "life" to make a sustained mental or
+moral effort without the inspiring presence of a man whose central
+passionate ideas never changed. The personal jealousies which Terry's
+philosophic attitude and idealism tended to dissipate became, during his
+absence, too strong for the bond uniting the "rogues," and when Terry
+returned he found that his little colony had dispersed and that Marie,
+unable any longer to pay the rent, was living with her old friend Katie.
+
+This was, to our idealist, a deep disappointment. On the heels of his
+final break in Pittsburg with society came this sign of woman's
+weakness. Terry might easily have expected it, but one of the
+limitations of an idealist is an insufficient knowledge of realities. To
+men of his temperament there is always a distinct shock envolved in
+coming face to face with an actuality. Truth is the element of the
+idealist, but an abstract truth into which concrete realities seldom
+fit. Terry did not, or tried not to, mind, at this time, this continued
+sexual freedom, or rather vagaries, of Marie's life; for that fitted
+into his scheme of personal freedom: he zealously strove to respect the
+private inclinations of every human being. But the least sign, in any of
+his acquaintances, of a compromise with the integrity of the soul, of
+any essential weakness, met with no tolerance from him. "He passed him
+up," on the spot, with a scornful wafture of his hand. That Marie had
+yielded to the stress of circumstances, had been unable to hold out in
+the Rogues' Gallery, galled the relatively uncompromising, exigent
+idealist. If she had resorted to temporary prostitution to hold the
+society together he would have admired her. But, instead, she weakly
+sought, like any merely conservative woman, the shelter of Katie's roof.
+The first seed of the essential discord which finally resulted, at a
+much later time, in their relations was planted thus in this deep
+irritation of Terry's soul; it did not, however, affect seriously his
+love for Marie as a person or his interest in her as a social
+experiment. But it tended to make him feel more lonely and to render him
+more hopeless of any realisation of the ideal, as he saw it.
+
+When Terry returned, without a job, and with no intention of trying for
+one, and found Marie living with Katie, he had a long talk with the two
+women. Katie was still with her husband, Nick, but she was willing to
+quit him in order to live with and take care of, her darling Marie. She
+proposed to Marie and Terry to hire some rooms and all live together.
+She would work as cook in a restaurant and thus support the three of
+them.
+
+To this eager desire of Katie's Terry refused to consent; but he also
+refused to work. What was to be done? He was too proud willingly to live
+on Katie, and he was principled against labour. Katie wanted the luxury
+of her proposed arrangement. She quarrelled with Terry, but he
+interested her. Already she began to look on these two as her superior
+cultivated ones, aristocrats, with whom it was a joy to live and for
+whom it was a pleasure to work. To work for them, especially for Marie,
+she would drop her old Nick, good dull man, in a moment.
+
+An event which happened just at the right moment to decide things,
+finally brought about the union of the three. One night Terry was
+drinking in a saloon, talking philosophy, and quoting literature. Some
+rapid lines from Swinburne had just left his lips when an elderly man,
+who had been listening to Terry's talk approached him and said: "You are
+the man I'm looking for, won't you have a drink?"
+
+As he spoke, he flashed a fifty dollar bill over the bar and repeatedly
+treated the crowd, all in Terry's honour.
+
+"Before we separated that night," said Terry, telling me the story, "I
+learned that the old guy had fifty thousand dollars and that he would
+soon go down and out, for he had all sorts of bad diseases. He knew it
+himself, but he was an old sport and he wanted his fling before he died.
+He liked me and wanted me to be bar-tender in a saloon he owned. He
+lived above the saloon and wanted a housekeeper to take care of the
+rooms. So I told Kate here was her chance. The next day Marie, Katie,
+and I moved into the rooms, where the old man lived, too, and I began my
+work as a bar-tender.
+
+"I did not regard this job as work: it was really graft, for I had
+decided that my old friend, not long for this world, did not need all of
+his money and that I might as well turn part of it toward Katie, to help
+maintain a common house for us all. So, every night, after the day's
+work, I turned the roll that I received behind the bar over to Katie,
+who tucked it away in the bank. I don't know whether the old guy knew
+about it or not, if he did, he did not care. He died after two or three
+months, but Katie had increased her bank account by three or four
+hundred dollars."
+
+Terry is strenuous about this story. He is evidently anxious lest it be
+thought that he later became a mere parasite on Katie. He prides himself
+on having taught her to steal from an unkind world, but he does not like
+the idea that she has slaved for him without any help in return. Katie
+did not prove to be a good pupil. She was not naturally "wise," in the
+slang sense, but gained what she gained by hard labour. Even while she
+was housekeeper for the old guy she felt she earned all the money she
+tucked away.
+
+"I worked hard for the old man," she said, "and I only got about one
+hundred and thirty dollars for all my work. I thought I made that much."
+
+There is a slight difference in the amount received, in Terry's account
+and in Katie's, but it is clear that it was not very much. It is
+interesting and characteristic that Terry wants it to appear to have
+been "graft," while Katie looks upon the money as honest wages, received
+in an unconventional way.
+
+Nick was definitely deserted, and the new "salon" formed, with Terry and
+Marie as the bright particular stars and Katie as the happy means of
+living, if not in luxury at least in independence. They lived on her
+eight or nine dollars a week with the comfortable feeling that there
+were several hundred dollars tucked away in the bank, the result of
+Katie's savings and Terry's ideas.
+
+The salon was of a more select and higher order intellectually than had
+been the Rogues' Gallery. The people who frequented the three little
+slummy rooms on the West Side where Terry, Marie, and Katie lived were
+mainly anarchists in theory, and occasionally one or another of them was
+so in practice. They mainly consisted of rebellious labourers who had
+educated themselves in the philosophy of anarchism.[2] They had ideas
+about politics and government and the relation between the sexes. They
+were indeed all "free lovers," and quite naturally so; the rebellious
+temperament instinctively takes as its object of attack the strongest
+convention in society. Anarchism in Europe is mainly political; in
+America it is mainly sexual; for the reason that there is less freedom
+of expression about sex in America than in Europe: so there is a
+stronger protest here against the conventions in this field--as the yoke
+is more severely felt. While I was in Italy and France I met a number of
+anarchists who on the sex side were not ostentatiously rebellious. They
+were like the free sort of conservative people everywhere. But in
+political ideas they were more logical, sophisticated, and deeply
+revolutionary than is the case with the American anarchists, who, on the
+other hand both in their lives and their opinions, are extreme rebels
+against sex conventions. It is only another instance of how unreason in
+one extreme tends to bring about unreason in the other. Our prudishness,
+hypocrisy and stupid conventionality in all sex matters is responsible
+for the unbalanced license of many a protesting spirit.
+
+So there was many an "orgie" in the salon--sexual and alcoholic: and
+many wild words were spoken and many wild things done. But these same
+extreme people were gentle and sensitive, too, and emotionally
+interested in ideas. They went to lectures on all sorts of social
+subjects, they read good books of literature and crude books on
+politics, they grouped together and enjoyed to a certain extent their
+communistic ideas. They published their anarchistic newspapers and they
+welcomed into their ranks people who otherwise could have attained to no
+consolatory philosophy--who would have had no society and no hope. And
+they did not do it for the sake of charity--hollow word!--but from a
+feeling of fellowship and love. You, reader, who may think ill of
+thieves and prostitutes--too ill of them, perhaps: if you can come to
+see that social differences are of slight value in comparison with the
+great primal things and the universal qualities of human nature, you
+will perhaps be better if not more "virtuous" than before, and may be
+kinder, less self-righteous, and do far more good, no matter how
+"charitable" you are now inclined to be. You have never been able to
+arouse the real interest of the proletariat, for the simple reason that
+you have never been really interested in them. But you do arouse their
+hatred and their contempt. They ought not, of course, to hate and
+despise anything, especially anything that means as well as you do. But
+they, though they are anarchists, are human, all too human, sometimes,
+like the rest of us. Here are some of the ideas of the salon about you,
+about us, let me say, as voiced by Terry and Marie. To begin with,
+Terry: about our "culture" he writes:
+
+"There is not much doubt about the sapping influence of culture. It
+seems that narrowness of range means intensity of emotion. This is seen
+in the savage, the child, and uncultivated men as well as other animals.
+I might even go farther and say we see it in such titans as Balzac and
+Wagner, who seek to compress all the arts into their own particular art.
+The mind that finds many outlets generally overflows in dissipation of
+energy instead of digging a deep single channel of its own. And yet to
+focus our feelings to one point may be a dangerous accomplishment. For
+instance, the fulminating fire of Swinburne's radium rhymes, while
+harmless to himself, may become dangerous through me or some other
+'conductor.' Unfortunately, the inability to foretell the ultimate
+effect of any given idea produces that form of inhibition called
+conservatism, and to this vice people of so-called culture are
+especially prone. It takes recklessness to be a social experimentalist
+or really to get in touch with humanity. Our careful humanitarians, our
+charitable ones, never do, for they stick to their conservatism. How we
+do fashion our own fetters, from chains to corsets, and from gods to
+governments. Oh, how I wish I were a fine lean satirist!--with a great
+black-snake whip of sarcasm to scourge the smug and genial ones, the
+self-righteous, charitable, and respectable ones! How I would lay the
+lash on corpulent content and fat faith with folds in its belly; chin
+and hands[3]; those who try to beat their breast-bone through layers of
+fat! Oh, this rotund reverence of morality! 'Meagre minds,' mutters
+George Moore, and my gorge rises in stuttering rage to get action on
+them. Verily such morality as your ordinary conservative person
+professes has an organic basis: it has its seat in those vestiges of
+muscles that would still wag our abortive tails, and often do wag our
+abortive tongues.
+
+"To arouse such fat ones to any onward flight it may take the tremendous
+impact of a revolution. It may take many upheavals of the seismic soul
+of man before the hobgoblins of authority are finally laid in the
+valley.
+
+"How many free spirits have been caught and hampered in the quagmire of
+conservatism. Yet they have the homing instinct of all winged things:
+they return to the soul and seek to throw off the fat and heavy flesh of
+social stupidity. Many great free spirits there have been who possess
+this orientation of the race and have brought us tidings of the
+promised land. How many thundering spirits have commanded us to march by
+the tongued and livid lightning of their prophetic souls, but how few of
+us have done so! Why, to me, this world is a halting hell of
+hitching-posts and of truculent troughs for belching swineherds. The
+universe has no goal that we know of unless Eternity be the aim; let us
+then have the modesty of the Cosmos, and no other modesty, and be
+content to know our course, and be sure to run it.
+
+"I have tried for freedom, indeed, everywhere, but I find the 'good
+ones' always in my way. How well I know the cost of my attempt! My heavy
+heart and my parched and choking throat, they know! I may indeed beat my
+breast alone in the darkness in a silent prayer for freedom and hear no
+response from the haunting hollows of the night. Such hungry freedom I
+had and have; and I could share it only with the outcasts of the world:
+the fat and rotund charitable ones would none of it. This freedom is
+possessed only by him who is afflicted over much with himself because he
+has been crazed by others and made mad by his escape from them. I
+suppose I am mad, for to believe myself perfectly sane in a greatly mad
+world is surely a subtle species of lunacy. And yet I am compelled to
+act towards others as if they were more sane than I. To feel as if one
+were eternally in a court-room trial, with lean lunatics for lawyers and
+fat philistines for judges, this is life.
+
+"I am only one of the human victims who studies his own malady because
+he likes universal history. The world has thrown me back upon myself and
+made me at times what is called mad. After being down-hearted for some
+time, I grow superstitious and imagine that some strange and fatal spell
+is hanging over us all. Even my own acts and thoughts take on the
+futility of nightmare, and Nirvana is very welcome, if I could be sure
+of it, but I had rather stay what I am than start life all over again in
+some other shape, with a possible creeping recollection of my former
+existence. I have at times startled intimations that I lived in vain in
+some former unhappy time; so I shall try to postpone the eternal
+recurrence as best I may."
+
+Thus Terry tries not only to reject the laws of "fat" society, but at
+times he strives against what he imagines to be the deep laws of the
+universe: he tries to stem the tide of fate, and this in the name of
+Truth! It shows how far remote from reality is the truth of the
+idealist; and yet such an attitude is often forced upon a sensitive
+spirit by rough contact with imperfect society. Although Terry is the
+most perfect specimen of the anarchists I have known, yet they all have
+more or less the quality of idealism so marked in him.
+
+Marie's letters teem with the spirit of revolt, which of course was the
+atmosphere of the salon. With her it is always less ideal, more
+personal, more egotistic than with Terry. In one of her letters she told
+"how she was led to try to get a job again, in order to buy some pretty
+things." A few days' search, however, disgusted her and brought her back
+completely to the mood of the salon, and led her deeply to appreciate
+_Hedda Gabler_, and to condemn American morality and the "good" people.
+Of Hedda she wrote:
+
+"Her character always did appeal to me, but last night I was in the mood
+especially to understand and sympathise with Hedda, to be Hedda, in
+fact. For a few hours I was as brave and wonderful in thought and
+feeling as she. It was the reaction from my stupid days in hunting a
+job. Her disgust with everything, her search for something new and
+different, the fascination she felt for saying and doing dangerous and
+reckless things--this I could understand so thoroughly! I was in a very
+reckless and discontented mood, but I was able to get away from myself
+and become Hedda for awhile; and this made me think of what a wonderful
+thing it is, what a power Ibsen has, to produce such emotions by merely
+stringing a few words together. Why, the very name Hedda, Hedda Gabler!
+When Eilert says it, what does it not convey! Terry and I had a long
+talk about it, and about literature in general, so the result was that I
+became calm, quiet, and reflective--as I love to be, but which I can be
+only very seldom. I have an almost continuous craving for something new
+and strange, like Hedda. But somehow reading and thinking about her
+calmed me. I can find new emotions in books, and this satisfies me for a
+time, but they are never vital enough to last me long. It is only
+sterile emotions we derive from literature, and so I turn again
+restlessly to life.
+
+"But when I turn to life I find for the most part people who are
+unwilling to give themselves up to life, who will not follow out their
+moods, or have none. When I am no longer capable of abandoning myself,
+why continue? Most people seem to me to be dried up. They look as if
+they never felt anything, so expressionless, so automatic are they, as
+if they had been wound up to walk and talk, and eat and sleep in
+precisely the same way for a certain number of years. This seems to be
+the American type. I suppose you have read of the Caruso affair--how he
+kissed a woman in Central Park, or wanted to, and the howl it made? The
+way they all jumped on him, in the name of morality! And you remember
+what happened to Gorky, when he was here? Why, these American stiffs,
+what do they mean by morality? Since they are much too cold-blooded for
+immortality, what do they know about it? This country is composed of
+pie-eating, ice-water drinking, sour-faced business people. If one with
+emotions comes to this country, he is of course immoral. If there were
+no foreigners here, this country would resemble the North Pole.
+
+"I'm glad I am not an American in blood, for then I would not be as
+interesting to myself as I am now. Sometimes I stand before my mirror
+and look at myself for a long, long time; it always surprises me that I
+look so commonplace. Surely, something of what I have in me ought to
+show in my face. But I know it's there, anyway. I know I'm altogether
+different from anyone else, I know it with a kind of fierce joy; not
+better, of course, but different.
+
+"For instance, this regularity and system they talk about! You wrote me
+to be more regular and the like of that, if I wanted to sleep better.
+You, too, are a typical American! Just imagine me drinking milk to make
+me sleep or grow fat! The thought of such a thing makes me shudder. Your
+remark about amorous sport being a soporific if performed regularly and
+without excitement made me double up with laughter. But I am quite sure
+that the performance of such a 'duty' would not induce sleep. I am only
+moved to such things by new lovers, and then I desire not sleep but
+wakefulness. And then, too, usually such desires come to me at noon, not
+at night, and who ever heard of sleeping at noon!
+
+"As for the other physical exercises that you recommend, I do walk along
+muddy, prosaic streets and work in our household until I grow weary and
+ask the gods what sins I have committed. My beloved cigarettes, which
+are as dear to me as sleep itself, my solace when sleep flies, my
+comfort, you would take these away from me! What would I do without
+them? I am without them sometimes, when Terry takes some of my tobacco,
+and then I am angry at him! The only plan I have is to have enough
+tobacco. Otherwise, I have nothing arranged, no plan. You think there is
+something fine in having logical arrangements for all things. I have
+never felt that way. I am only a poor creature of an hour, of a moment,
+and have never had plans. I would love to be where you are now, in
+Paris, that home of the planless, the free and joyous and emotional
+people."
+
+What most people think is good, is worth while, is in good taste, the
+salon rejected; partly, of course, in the spirit of mere rejection, of
+revolt, but based nevertheless on a higher ideal of human love than
+obtains in our society. These anarchists are not historians or practical
+people and they are not as much interested in what society must be as
+in what society ought to be; and because they see that society is not
+what it ought to be, because they as unfortunate members of the
+labouring class feel that the origin of our society is the root of
+injustice, they rebel totally against that society, rejecting the good
+with the evil. They passionately believe that the real and radical evil
+in our social world is partly kept there by our very justice, by our
+very morality, our very religion--kept there not so much by what is
+called evil in our society as by what is called good. They see that much
+large kindness is prevented by the morality which is expressed in the
+idea of private property, that much large virtue is denied by the
+institution of marriage, that psychological truth and Christian kindness
+at once are not considered by the social court, which looks only to the
+law--to the complex, historical law, so often meaningless and unjust to
+human feeling, so often based upon special "interests" and ancient
+prejudices.
+
+Their situation, as proletarian interpreters of the working class,
+enables them to see whatever is true in this view with peculiar
+vividness. For, of course, it is to their interest to see this truth;
+for truth is only an impassioned statement of our fundamental needs.
+
+The salon was composed of the poor and the criminal, and what kept it
+together was the human desire to form a society, the norms of judgment
+of which should give value to the individual members--the deep need of
+justification.
+
+There were fakirs in the salon, unkind people, unjust people, vicious
+people; there were mere "climbers," persons who saw their only chance
+for recognition and livelihood in the espousal of anarchistic ideas. But
+there were also kind people, relatively just people, and moderate ones,
+honest and strenuous with themselves. There were none perfect, as there
+are none perfect in any society. We shall see how Terry became disgusted
+finally with the anarchists themselves, preferring even insanity and
+probable death to them.
+
+And Marie's letters are full of satire of her companions, of the
+perception of their weaknesses and inconsistencies. She never embraces
+or rejects them so completely as Terry does, for she sees them more
+clearly; therefore she sees them more humorously, understands them
+better. Her letters teem with "psychological gossip," so to speak, in
+which some of her companions seem portrayed with relative truth. One she
+wrote me, while I was seeing something in London, of an anarchist named
+Nicoll, who was a friend of William Morris and still edits Morris's old
+paper, is full of both appreciation and satire of a number of
+"radicals":
+
+"An old friend of Nicoll's used to talk to me by the hour about him. He,
+the friend, an ordinary, rather stupid fellow, once helped poor Nicoll,
+got a room for him and gave him money, after he was released from
+prison. He felt proud to think that a man like Nicoll would accept
+hospitality 'from a poor bloke like me,' as he put it. His friendship
+with Nicoll has been the great event of his life. Whenever anything
+occurs in the radical movement which recalls ever so slightly the affair
+of which Nicoll was the scapegoat, his old friend will say, in his funny
+Jewish Cockney, 'That's always the wey, like Nicoll's kise, for
+example.' Then he launches forth into eloquent streams of denunciation,
+for he does not regard Nicoll as at all insane, but on the contrary,
+'the finest man ever downed' by aristocrats like Turner and Kropotkin.
+
+"This affair has made our friend pessimistic about anarchism, at times,
+and inclined to join the socialist party. His life is made miserable by
+the ceaseless debate of his mind and soul over which of these two
+philosophies is the best one for the race. He, suspiciously, is always
+looking for another case like Nicoll's, and is doubtful about all
+movements, not only anarchism and socialism, but all which preach
+liberty, justice, and the like, such as Theosophy, Single Tax, Sun
+Worshippers, Spirit Fruiters, Holy Rollers, Upton Sinclair's Helicot
+Colony, and Parker Sercombe's Spencer-Whitman Centre. All these he has
+tested and found more or less wanting. Life grows daily more melancholy
+for him, as he continues, on account of 'Nicoll's Kise,' to probe
+beneath the surface of all the cults and movements which profess
+boundless love for humanity, truth, justice and freedom.
+
+"P. R., whom you have also met in London, has got himself into trouble
+by making inflammatory speeches in Germany. When they talked of
+arresting him, he immediately claimed American citizenship. But if he
+ever turned up in America again they would clap him in jail so quick it
+would make his head swim. He, together with McQueen, was arrested here
+some years ago for helping start the New Jersey riots, but he skipped
+his bonds, to the great disgust of the bondsmen, who were comrades in
+the movement. The movement in the whole United States, Canada, Europe,
+and Asia was divided into factions over this affair, and very nearly
+went to pieces. But it was ridiculous to arrest him in the first place,
+for he could not incite a feather to riot. He is one of those flamboyant
+wind-bags, with a terrific command of high-sounding phrases, eloquent
+gestures, and fine eyes--the kind sixteen-year-old girls admire--to
+think I once loved him, or thought I did! He is a big little physical
+coward and prides himself on being the realisation of Nietzsche's
+Uebermensch.
+
+"The movement in Chicago is about to resume its usual winter activity by
+the opening of the Social Science League this Sunday evening. There are
+many cultured people in this city who think the Social Science League is
+too crude and vulgar to grace with their presence, therefore it has been
+resolved to establish another society of a more exclusive order, in
+which may be discussed important questions in a more subdued, rational,
+and artistic way. It is especially desired that only the 'artistic'
+anarchist be admitted to this new society. The crude element of
+anarchism is to be excluded as much as possible, but what cannot be
+excluded is to be subdued. If this is impossible, it shall be expelled.
+All illustrious lights will speak there. Terry has been invited, but has
+refused on democratic grounds, and sticks to that 'bum' society, the S.
+S. League.
+
+"One of the girls who has gone over to the 'swells' is Mary. She is a
+factory girl and an important little person, who prides herself on the
+amount of culture she possesses, and the famous people she has met and
+talked with. I introduced her once to a literary man, but she did not
+know he was so, at the time, and only nodded coldly. But when she found
+he was the famous Mr. F---- she was angry at me for not putting her
+'next' and was much distressed, for here was another famous man whom she
+had nearly talked with.
+
+"Another girl whom I know has done a wonderful thing with a certain man.
+He is a great, strong German, who guzzles beer and bullies the other
+fellow in his arguments about anarchism. When I first knew him, several
+years ago, he was married to a nice non-resistant sort of a girl, whom
+he treated awfully bad--without intending to. For he is really generous
+and good-hearted, but is firmly imbued with the idea, which he thought
+was the beginning of anarchism, that one must be firm and have one's own
+way and do all that one wants to do, without allowing any scruple of
+conscience or morals or delicacy to interfere; that to be a man and an
+anarchist one must never allow a petticoat to come between you and your
+desire. So he did what he wanted, regardless of anybody. He was a sort
+of brutal Overman; one could not help admiring the kind of barbaric
+splendour there was about him. And his poor wife idolised him and would
+stand everything from him.
+
+"Now he is here with another girl. Talk about a change! He has turned
+from a lion to a mouse. She is a little bit of a thing, only nineteen,
+rather silly and not very attractive. She is pretty in an outward way,
+but her features are unlit by any glimmer of feeling or thought, or even
+good nature--a slothful, empty sort of prettiness. She makes him walk a
+chalk-line, and it is contemptible and ridiculous and pitiful to see
+that big man cringe before this poor, pretty, empty little thing. Once
+in a while he tears himself away, and a glimmer of his old self returns;
+for an hour or two he plays his old rôle again, but if she finds out
+about it, it is very unpleasant for him. It is strange how weak women
+can subdue at times these big, husky creatures. But the more they
+succeed, the more dissatisfied they grow, until at last they feel
+contempt for the man they have subdued. The girl in this case feels that
+way about this big, powerful man. If he would assert himself, she would
+love him, as she did when she saw how he bullied his wife and all
+others. But at bottom we women are pleased, for it is a triumph for our
+sex, though we feel a little jealous because not one of us could have
+been the lion-tamer, instead of this weak little creature. Terry is wild
+about it, and tries to lead the enslaved Hercules into evil ways and
+keep him out at night, but all these things have lost their charm for
+the big man, who now would rather stay at home with the little girl.
+She, however, finds things very tedious, particularly in the day time,
+when her big man is at the factory, for she has nothing to do. So she
+passes her time at Esther's house.
+
+"I would go crazy were I in Esther's place. Poor Esther, she doesn't
+know what to do, either, for she cannot be always ill. She takes
+pleasure in being an invalid, but she can't use this plea for sympathy
+all the time, people get tired of it. But Esther is fortunate in having
+somebody to whom she can tell all her aches and pains and their history.
+She has found a unique occupation, in scrubbing. She starts Monday
+mornings and finishes Saturday afternoons, and then on Monday starts
+again. I was with her a week, and that's the way she spent the days.
+Perhaps she is like Mary Maclain and finds a peculiar inspiration in
+this fascinating task. If you were a woman I would write more about
+Esther's scrubbing, which is very wonderful, but you probably would not
+understand. Jay, her lover, comes home from work every evening, and,
+after eating the chaste evening meal of rice and beans, lights his
+corncob pipe, settles himself comfortably in his chair and listens
+carefully to the description of the aches and pains which have afflicted
+Esther that day. These pains continue in spite of all the beautiful
+scrubbing. He suggests different remedies until his pipe is finished,
+then he calmly retires to his library and reviews a book and reads
+several pamphlets, writes an article for '_The Demonstrator_' or '_The
+Appeal to Reason_' or some other radical paper and attends to his
+voluminous correspondence with the leading radicals of the day. Then he
+retires for the night, also Esther, after the farewell scrub of the
+dishes, table, and the rest, and the kids, too, go to roost. When I was
+there, I also went to bed, though it was only about half past eight.
+
+"About half past five in the morning a most infernal alarm clock emits a
+most hellish noise. Jay and Esther tumble from their couch, light the
+lamp, and resume their occupations. After a very chaste breakfast Esther
+continues her scrubbing and Jay finishes his correspondence and puts in
+the rest of the time until seven o'clock, when his work in the factory
+begins, in studying the new language, Esperanto. Oh, I spent a most
+charming and delightful week there; I could hardly tear myself away."
+
+One of Marie's amorous episodes led her to Detroit, with a "fake"
+anarchist, of whom there are many. After a week or two of dissipation
+and disillusionment, Marie returned, very ill, to the "Salon," where
+Terry received her with his usual stoicism, and acted as trained nurse.
+Repentant and disgusted, Marie wrote me from her convalescent bed:
+
+"I am still far from well, but am much better. My illness was caused by
+too much dissipation, which I plunged into for relaxation. For some
+weeks previously I had got a particularly large dose of my environment.
+Terry and I live in surroundings which would kill an ordinary person.
+Our little home is not as bad in the summer time. We can have the
+windows and doors open, but now in this cold winter we must all live in
+one room, a very small room, where there is a stove. The dampness
+penetrates right through the walls and the wind comes through the holes
+in the window panes. Sundays are the hardest days for me. Then Kate,
+queen of the kitchen, is here, and she delights in cooking all sorts of
+things on that day, so for the remaining six days our home smells of her
+culinary operations--most abominable, this odour of stale cookery! And
+what a mess our rooms are in on Monday morning! You wouldn't
+comprehend, even if I told you. I have to clean up all this, and I wish
+I could fly away every Sunday. At times I get so tired of this way of
+living. I hope some day I may find a large barn with a hay loft: I would
+immediately abolish Kate and her cookery and would be comfortable for
+once in my life.
+
+"So I ran away, for a time, partly for relief, partly because I was
+rather taken with a Detroit anarchist who was visiting us. Though he was
+a comrade, he was really a Philistine, which I did not see till
+afterwards. I saw only that he was young and lusty and wanted a lark, as
+I did, so I went with him on an awful tear, and returned terribly done
+up, as you know.
+
+"I have been lying here in this little room for three weeks. I thought
+surely I should die, and I was neither glad nor sorry. It was curious,
+this sensation of approaching death. All these days Terry sat opposite
+me at a table reading or writing. I could see him distinctly at times,
+at other times everything was misty or completely dark, only his voice
+reached me from such a long, long distance. He sat there like an
+implacable fate, with calm, cold eyes, gazing above and beyond me.
+Between two slow heart beats I felt it was almost a duty to call him
+and bid him farewell, but some strange sense of shyness held me back. I
+tried so hard to think of what I might do, and the most grotesque and
+comical things suggested themselves. At one lucid moment I had the
+brilliant idea of becoming a jockey!
+
+"Other ways of passing my life revolved ceaselessly in my brain, and now
+at last perhaps I have found it. Now that I am better I am reading
+Swinburne aloud, in bed. The sound of my voice carried along with the
+music of his matchless rhythms is to me a delight and a wonder. I have
+discovered that the Garden of Proserpine should be read only when one is
+in a reclining position. Then one's voice conveys more perfectly the
+weariness of all things mortal and the sweet delight of rest. I find I
+must practice breathing more deeply, if I wish to render the voluptuous,
+sinuous lines. Don't you think this is a great ambition, to read
+Swinburne well? I am so glad to find something to do, something I love
+to do. Perhaps I may escape from all by this.
+
+"It is now five days since I started to write to you, but I still lie on
+my back and dream and have not found my place, and never shall.
+Swinburne's never-ceasing, monotonous rhymes have palled upon me. Even
+this is sordid, and then, if so, what is the rest?--the daily life
+filled with brutish and shallow men and women? When I can no longer
+endure poetry and daily life--it is then that I rush into brutal
+dissipation, from which I awake sick in mind and body, without hope or
+desire for anything but sleep: and then, once more, the Garden of
+Proserpine reveals itself to me, or some other thing of beauty. It is an
+eternal round.
+
+"I often think that the only way for me to be in harmony with the scheme
+of things would be to go down into the gutter. Some years ago during my
+brief period of--prostitution, I suppose--I felt a strange importance.
+It was death to me, but something real, too. I was fulfilling a need of
+society, a horrible need, but a need. And then, too, all my men friends
+often go to these houses. All the nice, intellectual men are to be met
+there--men from all ranks of life--men a girl like me could never meet
+in any other way. During that brief time, at moments between a sleep and
+a drink, I used to have this fancy, which sometimes makes me shudder
+now, as I think of it, and yet somehow seems such a fine satisfying
+protest--a feeling that some day I would be seen waddling about the
+streets of Chicago, known to all the denizens of the under world as
+Drunken Mary! I saw myself fat and repulsive, begging nickels from the
+passers-by and perhaps strangled at the end by some passing hobo for the
+few nickels in my stocking. And am I essentially worse than you, or my
+lady, or anyone whom Society protects and honours? To me poet and pimp,
+politician, reformer, thief, aristocrat, prostitute are one. Caste and
+class distinctions are too subtle for my poor brain and too outrageous
+for my heart, which still tries to beat with and for humanity."
+
+Terry refers only in a line or two, characteristically, to this
+adventure and illness of Marie.
+
+"She is seriously ill, the result of a mad adventure. As I exist for
+others when they are in pain, I am her trained nurse. She is now
+recovering from the drugs, the debauching, and the raving madness of
+sleepless nights. I will give you an account sometime of a strange piece
+of magic charlatanism, practiced under the guise of beautiful art!...
+
+"I think her growing recovery is largely due to the inability to secure
+a doctor to christen her disease. I feel rather worn with domestic
+drudgery, cooking, laundering, wrestling with disease without and demons
+within. Still, as a trained nurse who can go sleepless for three weeks,
+I do not look upon myself as a failure."
+
+Marie's health improved slowly, due in part to the unsanitary conditions
+of her home. She wrote:
+
+"The roof of this miserable shack leaks all the time. The other day the
+owner came around in his automobile. I was speechless. It made me mad to
+think of that hound, riding in his car which we had paid for. Oh, the
+miserable people who live in these two houses: old, decrepit women who
+earn their living by washing clothes for others. It would make your
+blood boil to see them. And then to see that fat dog in his auto,
+accepting money from them and not ever giving them a whole roof in
+return. When I saw him I wanted to say so much. I could only choke. Oh,
+when you hear of the brutality of the mob, don't believe it. The mob may
+indeed, under the impulse of the moment, burn and destroy; but think of
+the cold brutality of a judge sitting on his bench and calmly condemning
+some poor wretch to be killed, and this with no emotion. How can this
+be? The revolutionists in France were the kindest beings, in comparison.
+They had personal injuries to avenge, and all they did was to strike off
+an enemy's head and that was the end. There was even a chance of being
+saved, if the doomed one could find the right expression, some little
+sentence that would affect the brutal (?) people. But this could not
+happen before a judge!
+
+"The trouble with the poor is, they have not enough imagination. They
+are not refined in their cruelties. They could never invent the Bull
+Pen, but would only quickly destroy. It is raining to-day, and I have
+been moving about trying to find a dry spot where I can continue writing
+without having a large splash come down on my nose. But I guess I'll
+have to give it up. Oh, that cursed landlord! I'd like to do something
+to him, not so much for myself as for those poor old things, they are
+all rheumatic and stiff, but continue to live here because, poor souls,
+they think the rent is low. Ye gods, the place is not fit for dogs to
+live in, and yet he charges all the way from five dollars up for these
+filthy, worm-eaten, rotten holes. And yet the old decrepit inhabitants
+of this rich man's house unbend their stiff knees in profound salaams
+whenever he appears."
+
+But in these leaky rooms of Kate's there was often much jollity and
+gaiety, when the "Salon" had its sessions, and proletarians of the pale
+cast of thought sat and smoked their cigarettes, drank their beer,
+kissed their girls, and talked of philosophy and literature and social
+evil and possible regeneration. Then they were always happy, whatever
+the subject of their talk. Marie wrote me to my villa in Italy:
+
+"You write of your beautiful gardens and seem quite happy. We too are
+well and happy in our little old joint; you are the only one missing to
+make our circle complete. But perhaps sometime you can be with us, with
+a can on the table and good talk going round, and then I'm sure you will
+not miss your Italian garden. Emma Goldman and Berkman have been
+visiting Chicago, and we had some jolly good times while they were here.
+She is a good fellow, when she is alone with a few choice friends. Then
+she lets herself out. The other day we gave a social for these two
+celebrated ones. Positively, no police, reporters, or strangers were
+admitted. Next day there was a hue and cry in all the papers, dark
+conspiracy, and so on! But all we did was to have a great time:
+everybody was drunk before morning, and everybody felt kindly toward the
+whole world, and would not have cursed even the greatest 'exploiter.' We
+finished the evening or rather the morning by an orgy of kissing. It was
+quite interesting and innocent. Smith has at last begun to return my
+affection. I think he likes me a little now. At least, he calls here
+frequently, and he told me once he would like to tear me limb from limb!
+This remark made me shudder, not unpleasantly. It must be good to be
+torn in that way by such a nice man.
+
+"The rose-leaves you sent from Italy retained some of their sweet smell.
+The rose is my favourite flower, and I like to imagine that perhaps some
+day my dust will be soil for roses. Last summer I found a poor little
+stillborn thing which had been hastily thrown aside, near a place where
+Terry and I were camping. Some poor little 'fleur de mal' which I
+covered from sight, in the sand, and marked the place with some stones
+and flowers. The next year I found some wild white daisies growing
+there. This made a deep impression on me and strengthened my hope that
+I, too, might become soil for roses, flowers of love.
+
+"Henry is a rose, too, in his way. He is getting more picturesque every
+day. At the Emma Goldman social he was ornamented with a new straw hat,
+which had a very high crown and narrow brim with little black ribbons
+for the side. Also, an enormous tie, the ends of which fluttered gaily
+and coquettishly in the wind. His curling black locks nearly reached his
+shoulders, and he has vowed never again to cut his hair, as a protest
+against the conventions of society. I left the social with him, and as
+we walked down the street in the morning he was a target for all eyes.
+He was talking philosophy and love to me, but this changed to fury. He
+flung his arms about, and shouted to the crowd: 'Oh, you monkeys, sheep,
+dogs,' and several other kinds of quadrupeds and birds. Henry is a
+peculiar man, but he is as sincere as anybody living and is a friend of
+that wonderful man, Kropotkin. When Kropotkin was in Chicago some years
+ago a reception was given him at Hull House. Poor Henry eagerly hastened
+there to see his friend--dressed in unbecoming and informal attire. He
+had not seen Kropotkin for years, and so anxious was he to meet him
+again that he forgot his raggedness. But the dear, sympathetic
+settlement workers were decidedly polite in showing Henry the door. But,
+at the psychological moment, Kropotkin appeared, threw his arms around
+Henry, kissed him, and carried on like an emigrant who runs across an
+exile."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] See "The Spirit of Labour," Chapter 4, called "An Anarchist Salon,"
+for a description of some of the principal members of this society.--H.
+H.
+
+[3] This is worthy of some of the mythological-Christian paintings of
+Mantegna, where the vices are being scourged by the indignant
+virtues.--H. H.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+_More of the Salon_
+
+
+"I have been imagining you in Paris," wrote Marie, "having a delightful,
+bohemian time. My ideas of Paris are all derived from reading Balzac,
+who has certainly created the most delightful, gay and mysterious, sad,
+mystic, sordid, everything one could wish in a city of dreams and
+realities.
+
+"When Terry brought me 'Evelyn Innes,' by George Moore, the other day, I
+dug into it with zeal and delight, and was surprised and pleased with
+his subtle psychology, during the first part of the story; but
+psychology can be carried to the point where it becomes
+incomprehensible, stupefying and monotonous. I finally grew
+indescribably weary of the problems of Evelyn's soul, but I kept on to
+the end, and then sank back on my pillow exhausted. I think I shall stop
+reading for a while, lest I have literary indigestion. I'll try to be
+satisfied for the time with Swinburne and Shelley. Our anarchistic poet
+lectured on Shelley, the Poet of Revolution, the other night, and I was
+disappointed. He did not do justice to Shelley either as a revolutionary
+poet or as a poet of beauty. I think Shelley should be spoken of with a
+delicate passion, which our anarchist poet lacks. He tried hard to speak
+with fervour, but there is no fire in him, and what is a poet without
+fire? Perhaps it was as well, for what's the use in casting pearls
+before swine? For the critics in the audience arose and condemned
+Shelley because he was a socialist, or because he was not one. Some of
+these critics seized upon the word libidinous. Oh! there was their clue!
+The lecturer arose like an outraged moralist to repudiate the scandalous
+charge of libidinousness. I was so disgusted I vowed I would never go to
+another meeting.
+
+"I have indeed been going to so many 'humanity lectures,' and clubs,
+such as the Shelley Club, where the divine anarchist B----misinterprets
+the great bard every week to his flock of female admirers, and had been
+reading so much Swinburne and other sublime things that recently I have
+had a reaction, and there is nothing now at the Salon except Nietzsche.
+He is a relief, although I feel that if I were to keep on with him I
+should go mad. When I feel my brain begin to turn, I start scrubbing or
+some other stupid thing.
+
+"Though Nietzsche says some very bitter things about women, who have no
+place whatever in his scheme of things, except perhaps for the
+relaxation of the warriors, yet there is something dignified in his very
+denunciation. His attitude toward our sex is so different from that of
+Schopenhauer, and many other philosophers. They usually take the 'rag
+and a bone and a hank of hair' attitude, and are disgusting. But
+Nietzsche warns men that women are dangerous, and danger, in Nietzsche's
+philosophy, is a sublime thing. Also, we must become the mothers of his
+Overmen.
+
+"Terry, too, is much interested just now in Nietzsche; quite naturally,
+for Terry is one of those 'men of resolute indolence' who will not work
+without delight in his labour. He talks a great deal just now of a plan
+to seek some cave and there try to become an 'Overman.' I pointed out to
+him that that was difficult, for to become an Overman he must of course
+'keep holy his highest thought,' without being disturbed by the struggle
+for existence, and that, like Zarathustra, he must have an eagle and a
+serpent to minister to his wants. And I suggested that I might be his
+eagle, for Zarathustra says that woman is still either a cat or a bird
+or at best a cow. I prefer to believe that I am a bird, and as such
+could minister to my sweet Overman. But Terry wouldn't have it so, and
+replied that of course I was a bird, in a way, but he would rather have
+me as a pussy, or as a combination of cat, bird, and cow. I thought that
+too cruel, so now I am determined to be none of them, but to become an
+Overwoman, and so be a fitting relaxation for my warrior, my Overman.
+'Tis but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and I think, in this
+letter, I have made that step."
+
+Marie's moods are many, and in her next letter she wrote in quite a
+different vein:
+
+"I almost wept when reading your letter about the baby. Perhaps it was
+because of the line, 'A little daughter was born to me.' It recalled to
+me this Christmas time many years ago when I was a little child and I
+heard the story of the little Jesus. 'And unto us a child was born.' How
+those words ring in my ears! So vividly come back to me the pity I felt
+when I heard the story of the poor little infant born to be crucified.
+It always made me cry--out of pity, the pity of it all! And I wonder if
+we are not all, all of us, born to be crucified.
+
+"But I suppose I must congratulate you on assuming the responsibility of
+fatherhood for the third time. You might long ago have studied pre-natal
+influences and the rights of the unborn. I hope you have not neglected
+these sacred duties. It surprised me that you wished for a girl, for not
+long ago you expressed the opinion that women were soulless creatures
+without memory! Suppose your daughter should not be an exception, how
+would you feel then?... You have been very active. As for me, I fear my
+only activity will be that of a dreamer. I differ from the dreaming
+class only in one respect and that is, in making confidences, which
+dreamers never do. They shrivel up into themselves. They usually create
+their own sorrows, which have no remedy except the joys they also
+invent. They are natural only when alone, and talk well only to
+themselves."
+
+In the same letter she plunges into the gossip of the Salon:
+
+"I don't blame Scott for his carelessness. The poor fellow has been
+suffering terribly because of his wife, who has left him and gone off
+with a new love to a new home. Scott has been quite heroic about it, but
+he suffers. You know how in our radical society men and women try to
+deny that they are jealous, try to give freedom to each other. But
+whatever our ideas may be, we cannot control our fundamental instincts,
+and poor Scott is now a wounded thing, I can assure you. But he speaks
+beautifully of his wife--even packed up her things for her and escorted
+her to the new place.
+
+"Scott came here the other night with your friend the journalist, Fiske,
+who has become quite a part of our little society. I am sorry to say
+that he is quite sad, too, but for a different reason. The poor fellow
+seems to be suffering from lack of literary inspirations. He has a habit
+of asking people what shall he write about. He asks Terry, and even me,
+and in pity I am trying to write up the old women in our tenement for
+him....
+
+"I see a good deal of Thompson and his wife Minna. Now that Thompson,
+who was a famous radical, is more prosperous, he is growing careful and
+conservative. The glory of her husband is reflected in Minna. I don't
+call at their home so much as I did, because I made what they call a
+break there the other day. I thoughtlessly introduced myself as _Miss
+L----_ to someone of his relatives or relatives' friends, after she had
+already introduced me as _Mrs. C----_. And Thompson informed me next day
+that it was inconvenient to explain such things to conservative people,
+and that I ought to be more careful in dealing with the unenlightened
+ones. I suppose I ought to think more of the reputation of my friends."
+
+Marie likes the Jews of the Salon, many of them, very much, but there
+are some she doesn't, as the following shows:
+
+"Things are rather dead in the 'movement,' just now. But there is
+something doing among the Jewish radicals, who, you know, are very
+important in any radical movement here in Chicago. No wonder things are
+lively when the Jews have such a leader as Mr. Kohen, whom one might
+believe to be the long wanted Messiah, destined to lead his race into
+the promised land, which is evidently Chicago. There was a hot time
+about three weeks ago in the Masonic Temple meeting when this modern
+prophet demonstrated to us who were not Jews that they (he and his
+friends) were the chosen people who would not only liberate themselves
+but also us from the yoke of capitalist oppression; and contrary to all
+previous rules, they would do this without any consideration of moneys;
+all that Mr. Kohen expected in return was due appreciation. I suppose I
+ought to be grateful to Mr. Kohen, but somehow I am not. I ought, too,
+to be grateful to our Jewish Madonna, Esther, but there again I am not.
+Poor girl! she is really the Madonna of the Chicago movement. All the
+sorrows and troubles of the Salon rest upon her poor shoulders, and she
+silently suffers, sacrifices and redeems. Then there is little Sara,
+another chosen one. It is she who is chosen to make men miserable for
+the good of their souls. She has been very pensive since the great poet
+B---- left, for now she has no one to worry about. I suggested to her
+that she might worry about Terry, if she liked, and she said she would
+try, with a weary little sigh. It was she who one day explained to me at
+great length that all love except sensual love was of a transient
+character. If, she said, man swears he loves you, but does not show any
+physical interest in you, you can bet that his passion is of that
+intangible sort that has the radiant tints but also the evanescence of
+dew!...
+
+"I am going to a ball next Sunday night. It's on the Jewish holiday in
+memory of the time when poor Moses led the Jews from Egypt and they had
+to eat unleavened bread. All the orthodox Jews will spend the day
+praying in the synagogue, without tasting food or drink. They make up
+for it the next day, though, you bet. The ball is given every year by
+the radical Jews, usually right in the Ghetto, and nearly always the
+followers of holy Moses jump on those who no longer follow, and there's
+a hot time. Last year the radical Jews, mostly anarchists, had to have
+police protection! The police are good for something, after all! What
+should we do without them? We would exterminate each other without
+delay!"
+
+Perhaps Marie's temporary "grouch" against the Jews was partly due to
+the irruption into her Society of three new and attractive Israelites of
+her own sex--an event happening about that time. In one of these
+newcomers, Terry, it appears, was somewhat interested, and Marie has
+often admitted that her philosophy of freedom is powerless to overcome
+her "fundamental emotions." Writing of Miss B---- she said: "She is a
+regular little Becky Sharp, very demure and quiet, and proper and
+distinguished. All the women hate her, and the men flock about her, for
+she is pretty and a free lover, of course. She comes once or twice a
+week to our salon, and then Terry is always present, and they get along
+famously. She talks of 'the realm of physics,' or 'of biology,' and I
+admit it bores me, her voice is so monotonous. She takes evident
+pleasure in Terry's society. Perhaps I am a little jealous, but it does
+not make me feel any different toward him, and that is the main thing,
+the only thing I really care about....
+
+"I must admit that I grow tired at times of the 'movement.' Kate says
+she has cut it out altogether, and Terry goes to the meetings very
+seldom. I dutifully attend the lectures, where they talk about the same
+old things in the same old way, and also the socials and visit the
+comrades once in a while. But they do get on my nerves sometimes. I
+prefer to stay at home, in the inner circle of the salon, reading and
+sucking at my cigarette when I have one. I scrub the floor once in a
+while, just because of sheer weariness from not doing anything.
+
+"Terry has been writing an article on 'the general strike,' but did not
+finish it. He is like me in lacking energy enough to carry out any plan
+or purpose unless great pressure is brought to bear upon him either from
+within or without. I am sure that if he continued to feel strongly about
+the general strike he would go on to finish it. But he has a great
+distrust, really, of the 'labour' movement and of labour leaders. He
+believes that all social improvement must come from the workers, but how
+many difficulties there are! One of the greatest is the lack of good
+leaders. I myself have not much hope for the workers as long as they
+remain sheep who are lost without leaders, are dependent and led either
+by honest men who know not clearly how, where, or why, or by intelligent
+men, whose intelligence usually takes the form of trickery and
+self-interest. The intelligent honest ones seem not to be cut out to be
+leaders, or successful in any way. Sheep are led or driven most easily
+by those who can make the most noise, and they follow as readily over
+the precipice as over the road. The slightest thing serves to frighten
+and scatter them in all directions, in outward confusion and
+helplessness, unless the burly insistent watchers are for ever at their
+heels. Leaders of such a herd must often be unscrupulous to have any
+success, must use their intelligence for all sorts of devices, often
+cruel and unjust, to keep their flocks from wandering: any means
+justifies the end, which is the good of the cause.
+
+"Perhaps it is a good sign that people from the higher walks of life are
+beginning to take notice of the workingman's problem, and maybe the
+ideal leader will come from above, but even so I doubt if that will help
+much. I have a feeling that all movements dependent on leaders must
+necessarily fail. Of course, I know that the people of the 'higher life'
+fear the stupidity and brutality of the mass of workers, and argue that
+leaders are necessary to guide and restrain them. This is only partly
+true; there is hardly any doubt about the stupidity of the mob, but they
+are not at all so brutal. True, during times of strike they will throw
+stones and slug strike-breakers, but they are not nearly as brutal as
+the 'scabs,' who are incited, aided, and protected by the employers and
+police, and who lack the emotional exaltation which often inspires the
+workers to this violence.
+
+"During the teamsters' strike I witnessed a scene where the strikers
+hustled the scabs, overturned several huge wagons loaded with beef, in
+the centre of one of the poorest districts of Chicago, where the people
+were suffering from want of meat, but the wretches did not even have
+sense enough to help themselves from this plentiful store which was left
+on the street guarded only by one or two policemen. And there would have
+been no danger of arrest, for the policemen could easily have been swept
+aside by the rest of the mob. It made me mad. I felt like shouting at
+them, 'you fools, why don't you help yourselves?' How differently a
+hungry bunch of kids would have acted!"
+
+Terry, in his very different way, wrote on the same subject:
+
+"I never knew a sincere, not to say honest, labour leader, from business
+agent up. Poor proletaire! forever crucified between two sets of
+thieves--one rioting on his rights, the other carousing on his wrongs.
+Labour plods while plunder plays, thus runs the world away. But if he
+should take it into his thick head to be his own walking delegate some
+day!"
+
+This strange master of the "salon," this poetic interpreter of the
+philosophy of the man who has nothing, has, in spite of his pessimisms,
+a profound mystic hope. He wrote:
+
+"That toiling humanity--the labour movement--to me is a thing so vast,
+that whatever other movements try to exclude themselves from it, they
+must be swallowed up in it. All other things are but the shadows cast
+behind or before the ever-marching phalanx of the unconquerable, the
+imperishable proletaire. This is the hope which sends its thrill through
+us when nothing else can. At the bottom of my heart I know I am living
+but for one thing, and my life has been nothing but a preparation for
+this. Of and for myself I have accomplished nothing: for to be ever
+ready and alert is not accomplishment.... I see a profound hope in the
+proletaire, for to him is granted that intense, wistful awareness of his
+common lot and life with his fellows. His very crowding in factories
+and tenements, salons, unions, and brothels, brings it home to him. Yes,
+this very lack of space must remorselessly rub it in, even by dumb,
+physical close contact. The friction resulting from ten living in one
+room must make one of them phosphorescent--and capable of giving light
+to humanity. The tenement houses are harmless boxes of lucifers as long
+as none is ignited. The inhabitants are wofully benighted, but they
+possess wonderfully the quality of brotherhood, of oneness, hence arises
+their wonderful psychology and their ĉsthetics, so full and overflowing
+with pathos, so piercing, it carries one to that borderland where comic
+and tragic make marriage.
+
+"This strange crowding in our consciousness of things that do not seem
+to come from us and yet are of us--this clamouring consciousness is what
+drives me to despair and makes me feel I have not the form or shadow of
+things, though I may have the substance. Yet I am determined to strain
+my self-consciousness even to the breaking point; for though I know
+madness lies that way, there stands my Ideal, beckoning. I must grasp
+this great common thing which comes from all of us, from us crowded
+proletarians, and yet is not in any one of us. Together we enjoy and
+suffer more than any one of us alone. There is, I believe, something
+deeper than the deepest woe: our racial consciousness is there and we
+must find it. At moments of great insight we are suddenly made aware of
+this, the mysterious unity of the Race, but it is flashed and gone and
+we must await another crisis. It is only in moments of sublime sorrow
+that the depths of the racial consciousness is heaved up to us. Joy
+cannot do this, for joy is narrow and wants us to do away with sorrow;
+but sorrow never wants us to do away with joy. Keats always beheld joy
+in an external attitude of farewell and this is profoundly and perfectly
+mystical and real: joy is swallowed up in something deeper, away down in
+the common racial consciousness. We must all strive to be men beyond
+essential harm; else, standing blindly before the meaning and destiny of
+the race, we should go mad. Most of us try to think, intellectuals; fear
+to abandon ourselves to alarming states of feeling where reason is
+crowded to the wall. And yet I feel that by abandoning ourselves
+completely to mere feeling lies our only hope to find the logic of the
+race that no individual reason can master.
+
+"Let me tell you of something that recently happened to me which shows
+how strong this race feeling is, as opposed to merely individual or
+family feeling. I heard that my mother was dying. I had become
+reconciled long ago, had seen many things more clearly; for if joy is of
+the heart, sorrow is of the soul, by which we see. I wonder if woman has
+a 'lake' in her heart. I used to think my mother had, and when I called
+to see her once more, the old love-longing caught me by the throat. My
+presence seemed to help her some, but, though moved, I had passed beyond
+the family boundary-line, and was engaged in stripping myself of
+everything not belonging to the soul. If I wish to be something more
+than myself, I must be prepared to lose all, even myself. And what is my
+family and my mother?"
+
+Terry does not like to use the word "religion." But he certainly belongs
+to the type of the religious man. One of the most marked characteristics
+of the religious temperament is this abandonment of personal and family
+ties, this indifference and often hostility to social law, "this
+emotional devotion to something intangible." All the anarchists and
+social rebels I have known have, more or less, the religious
+temperament, although a large part of their activity is employed in
+scoffing at and reviling religion--as they think the God of theology has
+been largely responsible for the organisation of social and political
+injustice. But the deeply religious spirits have often been hostile to
+theology, as well as to all other complicated forms of society. Here are
+some religious words:
+
+"There must be some meaning," wrote Terry, "for all this ancient agony.
+Oh, that I might expand my written words into an Epic of the Slums, into
+an Iliad of the Proletaire! If an oyster can turn its pain into a pearl,
+then, verily, when we have suffered enough, something must arise out of
+our torture--else the world has no meaning. On this theory, all my pangs
+are still to come. I too will arise out of my sacrificial self and look
+back on my former bondage in amaze, even as I now look down on the dizzy
+slums where I am and yet am not! It cannot be that I came up out of the
+depths for nothing. If I could pierce my heart and write red lines, I
+might perhaps tell the truth. But only a High Silence meets me, and I do
+not understand. In letting myself down to the bottomless, I discovered I
+could not stand it long enough. I am dumbly dissatisfied. I feel like a
+diver who has nigh strangled himself to bring up a handful of seaweed,
+and so feels he must down again--and again--until he attains somewhere
+the holy meaning of Life."
+
+Terry feels that somehow deep in his life he has been crucified, that
+society has nailed him to the cross:
+
+"I was alone on the cross and with bloodshot, beseeching eyes beheld
+the world objectively. Yet I was aware of a harmony beyond me, though
+not in me or around me."
+
+It is this "harmony beyond," this religious sense of "something far more
+deeply interfused" which, ever conscious in the idealist's mind, makes
+the concrete vision of everyday fact so ugly, leads to anarchism of
+feeling profound and constant.
+
+But in this world, which as a whole the heart rejects--"my heart," said
+Terry, "is the last analysis of all things"--the idealist sees things of
+beauty which constitute for him the elements of perfection, elements
+which in some future state he dreams may be fully realised in a social
+whole.
+
+"I saw a fine thing from the window to-day," Terry wrote, "a thing of
+sheer delight, the complete transfiguration of a human being. An Italian
+street labourer came into the yard and sprawled on the grass to eat his
+own lunch. He was bandy-legged from being coaxed to stand alone too
+soon. But he had a most wonderful face; all the mobility which toil had
+banished from his form must have sought refuge in his eyes and his
+caressing countenance. Catching sight of some children playing 'house,'
+he jumped up and in a most charming way offered them all of his cakes
+and went back to his luncheon. The children instinctively brought him
+back some of the cakes, which he not only refused, but offered them the
+rest of his food. They gathered in a semicircle while he spoke to them.
+There came something in his face and attitude which I have seen many
+'cultured' people vainly attempt. He absolutely was one of them; the
+children stood spell-bound, dazed at the sudden transformation of a man
+into a child. The imagination that can become one with its object is a
+high form of unconscious art and rests upon the heart and the mass
+feeling of the race. The ancient folk-lore and ballads must have arisen
+from some such fusion as this. How unfair, at least unwise, it is to
+judge the individual action of the proletaire, when he is made for
+action in the mass."
+
+This vague philosophy and transcendental ethics pass naturally enough,
+at times, into the feeling of violent revolution, where bomb-throwing,
+if not advocated, is emotionally sympathetic.
+
+"Just now," wrote Terry, "there is strong predisposition among the
+'reds' to resort to Russian methods. It needs only the occasion, which
+must be waited for, and cannot be created. When the 'error' is great
+enough, the 'Terror' will surely rise to the occasion. Were it not for
+my faith in this, I should be glad to see Humanity lapse back to whence
+it came."
+
+In the idealist there is a growing impatience with the world; in his
+attempt to react even against Nature and some of the necessary qualities
+of men there is such inevitable failure that no moral revolutionist or
+anarchist can indefinitely endure the struggle. He is destroyed by his
+fundamental opposition to the world which he seeks to destroy.
+Therefore, impatiently, weakly, he sometimes breaks out--with a
+bomb--even against his philosophy and his temperament.
+
+He is led into contradictions. One of them touches upon his feeling of
+"class consciousness." Terry at times, as a transcendental moralist,
+rises above this feeling, but his special instinct as a "labour" man
+often asserts itself against and in contradiction to his passion for the
+oneness of the race. In my intimate association with him I sometimes saw
+that, much as he liked me, he felt that I was of another "class." In the
+work which resulted in my book, _The Spirit of Labour_, I frequently
+came in discouraging contact with this "class" distrust of me--in him
+and in others. Marie alone seemed free of it, in her relation to me, and
+yet she wrote:
+
+"I think we have a peculiar sympathy for each other, and yet I realise
+that in some subtle way there is not that perfect understanding there
+ought to be. Just think of what extremes we two come from--how different
+our social environment! I know you understand as nearly as is possible
+for one of your class, and yet I doubt if you can really sympathise
+with the ideas of anarchism which springs naturally from only one
+class--the labour class. Do you not hesitate sometimes and doubt that
+all men are worthy of the better things of life, the coalheaver as well
+as the banker and artist? Even I hesitate sometimes, when I see the
+coarseness and ignorance of these poor plodders of earth, and when I
+think of all the really great things that slavery has accomplished. But
+who knows how much greater things might be, if done freely by free men?
+When I remember that these poor plodders have never had a chance, I
+relent and feel so sorry and so hopeless. How often Terry and I have
+walked along the boulevards, admiring the beautiful homes of the rich.
+Oh, it used to make me wild! I felt that I belonged to humanity, and yet
+I could only enter these beautiful homes as a servant, an object of
+contempt--an object of contempt supposed, moreover, to have morals, and
+religion, too!"
+
+Of "class consciousness," Terry wrote: "Class feeling has always been a
+deep problem to me: it emanates from profound depths. This reflection
+concerns you. Many of your 'labour' friends here seem to regret that
+there were many things they could not tell you; not that they had any
+conscious lack of faith in you as an individual; indeed, they had great
+faith in you as a person. Their distrust of you was a class distrust;
+they dreaded to betray the interests of their class. They felt a
+fundamental antagonism, not to you as an individual, but to you as a
+member of your class. From their Social Sinai they enunciate the
+eleventh commandment, 'Thou shalt not be a Scab!', and the other ten
+commandments do not seem to them so important. But you, they think,
+cannot feel this commandment as they do, so passionately, so fully. To
+them, it is the keynote of solidarity; to you, partly at least, a
+principle of division, of separation.
+
+"No wonder our class--the thinkers among them--rejects the morality of
+your class--property morality, and the rest meant only to make property
+morality as strong as a law of God. I made at one time the fatal mistake
+of the many simple labourers who are organically honest. I spent most of
+my best life in seeking a solution of our hard lot from those above me.
+After a loss of many feathers and some brave plumage, but no down, I
+must in all humility beat my way back to the traditional lost ideals of
+our organically incorporated class.... Perhaps the most conscienceless
+class who seek to solve the insoluble is the 'cultured' class. But most
+of them seem to me like artistic undertakers officiating at the 'wake'
+of Life. With their platitudes, their prudery, and their chastity, they
+make for death. These languid ones desire to have life served up to them
+in many courses. Greed lies at the bottom of their being, and so they
+preach content to the masses, though for the workers they have nothing
+in their shallow souls but contempt. This cultured leisure class has had
+the time and cunning to perpetrate one great and tragic trick. They have
+made social falsehoods so complicated that they themselves neither
+understand nor wish to understand.... Why is it that in all the great
+authors I detect an air of condescension, marking their contempt for
+those who make and keep them what they are? With what fine contempt the
+'rube' is surveyed by the faker who has plucked him! Must I put these
+classic souls of art in the same category? The art for art's sake
+people--these make me sick. It is at best an argumentative confusion
+springing from the fact that in the perfect work of art there is such a
+fusion of form and substance as to resist dissociation and defy
+analysis. Perhaps this fact accounts for Tolstoi's contempt for some of
+the classic art. It seems to me that most classic art is one of two
+things: either it smacks of smug content and over-fed geniality or it is
+permeated with a profound pessimism. The philosophers are worse than the
+artists; they are the ringleaders of the betrayers of humanity. Art at
+least makes the atonement of beauty for its mistakes, but this cannot be
+said of philosophy.
+
+"Herbert Spencer, for instance, who represents the high-water mark of a
+philosophy that will not hold water, pours out the vials of his
+bottled-up wrath on the poor unfortunates of London who are compelled
+'to make a living' by tips in opening the carriage doors or holding the
+horses of the wealthy. He had nothing but loathing for the pregnant girl
+who tries to break her 'fall' by taking advantage of the 'poor laws.'
+For the workingman, who sincerely tries, at least, to settle the
+'affairs of State' in the pot-house over a mug of ale, Spencer had
+nothing but contempt; but to the parliamentary people who settle the
+same 'affairs' over champagne and prostitutes, he played the
+lick-spittle.... The recantation of his 'Social Statics' is the worst
+case of intellectual cowardice on record.... He went down with final
+contempt for the workers who served him, gave him his daily bread, made
+his ink, pen, and paper and bound the twenty volumes of his philosophy
+of falsehood! May his 'works' rest in oblivion!...
+
+"In dismissing Spencer, it is worthy of note that the very thing which
+made him pause in the righting of social wrongs is the thing which will
+cause the Revolution, namely, the complicated nature of social
+falsehoods. In recanting his published truth on the land question, he
+admitted that, although the legal title to land was obtained by murder
+and dispossession of original occupants, the matter was now too
+complicated to be dealt with. If this be so, if justice cannot be done
+because of the difficulties in the way, then all hail to the simplicity
+and elemental justice of a Red Revolution!...
+
+"Yes, sometimes I feel like the crudest of the revolutionists, although
+I call myself a philosophical anarchist. Sometimes the jails seem to
+yearn for my reception, and I question my right to be at large. Nothing
+but a decreasing cowardice leaves me at liberty. And if I could not do
+more for my soul behind the bars than I have done in front of them, then
+I am fit only for durance vile. I, who have out-fasted the very flies
+till they fled my room, dread but one thing in the life of a
+prison--that I should have no time for reflection and repose! but out of
+a born anarchist it would make of me a compulsory Socialist, condemned
+to work for the State--a veritable dungeon of disgrace.
+
+"It is not so much that I love life, though as a rule the poor, who are
+so close to life, worship it in a way that puts all other things to
+scorn. I know nothing that reaches farther up or deeper down than this.
+It is only in the gutter that life is truly worshipped. And that is why
+I search for my last faith there--in the gutter, whence all faith really
+springs.
+
+"And yet to have faith even in the gutter is an act of deep imagination.
+In the rotting rooms beneath me lives a worker with a family of six
+girls and one boy. Capitalism has crucified his carcass for fifty years
+and now 'laid him off.' He has been looking for work for the last month.
+I watch the insanity in his restless, aimless movements, and I feel
+desperate enough to try to get him a job. Unfortunately, he does not
+drink; so his pipe, ever in his mouth, is the only obstacle between him
+and the mad-house, or the poor-house. Every morning at six o'clock, his
+sandwich dinner concealed in his pocket, he makes a brave show of
+walking away briskly in his hopeless search for work; for there are too
+many younger men. His assumed activity is only put on till he turns the
+first corner, for he tries to conceal his lameness and decrepitude,
+especially from his wife, who strains her gaze after him. Just before
+starting off he takes the superfluous precaution to put some
+shoe-blacking on his hair which shows white about the temples. He comes
+back after a six hours' search, about noon, his neglected dinner still
+in his pocket. He has tramped ten or twelve miles with no open shop for
+him. He does not blame anyone, but regards it all as an accident that
+has happened to him in some unfortunate way. He broods over this till I
+can see it in his eyes; but I don't dare say anything to him. He is too
+old, and I might only make his trouble worse. If I were a sculptor I
+would put him before the world in a material almost as hard and I hope
+more enduring than itself. His arms never hang down by his side, but
+seem to be set in the position required by his last job, shovelling. It
+reminds me of the time, thirty years ago, when I was laid off, and the
+madness first got in and crouched behind my eyes....
+
+"Yes, I suppose I am mad. It is true that if I cannot have the
+intellectual red that heralds the approach of Dawn, then I want the red
+light of Terror that ushers in the Night. My feelings have been
+clamouring for many years against my cowardly better judgment. I believe
+some day they will break loose and throw me, as from a catapult, even up
+against the stone wall of atrocity we call Society."
+
+Thus the idealist becomes frenzied at times at the incredible
+difficulties in the way of a total revolt against society, even against
+nature. We shall see how the absolute nature of his anarchism led Terry
+further and further along the path of rejection, "passing up" one thing
+after another, even letting anarchism as a social enthusiasm go by the
+board and making his continued relation with a human being, even with
+Marie, a practical impossibility.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_The End of the Salon_
+
+
+Terry's love for Marie was partly due, as we have seen, to his passion
+for social propaganda: that she represented the "social limit" was a
+strong charm to him. She, woman-like, always insisted on the personal
+relation, and for a long time his interest in her personality as such,
+combined with his social enthusiasm, was strong enough to keep the bond
+intact. When, however, his social enthusiasm paled, and his merely
+individualistic anarchism became stronger, his interest in Marie
+weakened. The times grew more frequent with him when he doubted the
+social side of anarchism itself--when this social propaganda seemed as
+hollow and as unlovely as society itself; and when he saw the weaknesses
+and vanities of his associates, how far they were from realising any
+ideal. Then, more and more, he was thrown back upon himself, for as his
+hope in the new society weakened, his hope in Marie as an embodiment of
+it weakened also.
+
+Marie's sex interests, always freely and boldly expressed, played, at
+first, no part in the growing irritability of their relations. Marie's
+occasional "affairs" with other men, sometimes taking her away from the
+salon for a time, were taken by Terry in silence. Even when he came face
+to face with the fact of Marie's absence of restraint in this respect,
+lack of delicacy and feeling for him, he did not complain. To do so was
+against his principles of personal freedom; and the fling in the face of
+society envolved in Marie's conduct pleased him rather than otherwise;
+also there was in him a subtle feeling of superiority over other men, in
+the fact that he was without physiological jealousy, or if not, that he
+could at least control it.
+
+Even Marie's jealousy of him, whenever he was in the society of another
+woman, he took with a patient shrug. Terry's interest in other women was
+not a passionate one: in it was always an element of the pale cast of
+thought, and Marie had no real cause for jealousy. But Terry tolerantly
+took it as a feminine weakness and tried to shield Marie from this
+unreasonable unhappiness. On her account he gave up many a desire to
+talk intimately with some female comrade. But Marie had no such
+tolerance for him. Not only was she quite free with other men and to the
+limit, but she often went into a real tantrum of jealousy. One day she
+followed Terry all over town, fearing that he had an appointment with a
+well-known radical woman. Marie often acknowledged to me her
+inconsistency. "But, you know," she would say, "our principles and ideas
+do not count much when our fundamental emotions are concerned."
+
+This was a true remark of Marie's, and I have often had occasion to
+perceive the great degree of it throughout the radical world. Men and
+women often try in that society to be tolerant; they give one another
+free rein sometimes for years, but generally in the end, the resistance
+of one or the other weakens; human nature or prejudice, whichever it is,
+asserts itself, and tragedy results. This I had occasion to see over and
+over again: how nature triumphed over the most resolute idealism and
+brought about in the end either ugly passion or pathetic unhappiness.
+
+As Terry began to doubt his deepest hope, as he began to turn away from
+the ideas about which his salon was formed, he saw and felt more
+clearly the limitations of Marie's personal character; and her acts
+began to hurt him. Perhaps he began to lose faith in both--Marie and the
+Salon--at the same time.
+
+"I am afraid," he wrote, "that the days of the salon are numbered. I am
+of the opinion that most of our latter-day radicals are on a par with
+our latter-day Christians. They have grown weary, or wary, of their
+original purpose. They seem to think Liberty a beautiful goddess who
+will never come: they willingly believe in her as long as there is no
+danger of or in her 'coming.' How frantically most of the radicals
+signal back the 'waiting' reply: the track is not clear for the coming
+of Liberty!--and they do not want to have it cleared!...
+
+"You will be surprised to know that I have dropped the radicals, with
+the exception of Thomson, and I fear he too must walk the plank and go
+by the board. I am becoming quite implacable toward these intelligent
+people, and the salon will soon be void of my presence. The spirit of it
+has gone already and cannot be revived. That is why I left my mother's
+home--because the spirit of home had gone--and why I must leave the
+salon. I cannot submit to being a discordant spirit; therefore I must be
+a wandering one.
+
+"So I must leave Katie and Marie. If I could make a living I would work
+for it, as I did when I thought so. But I shall never work--or toil
+rather--for sheer subsistence except behind the bars. I am driven to be
+a parasite, for honest living there is none. The time is up, and I must
+leave. Several years ago I ruined whatever robustness I had by tending
+bar so that Katie might knock down some three hundred dollars. At one
+meal a day and a place to try to sleep, I think that she and I are about
+even; she also thinks so, though she never says so, to me. She is
+willing and able to take care of Marie, for she has five hundred dollars
+in the bank and a great love for the girl."
+
+Terry, sometimes terribly frank, is extremely reticent about Marie; and
+the account of their misunderstanding comes mainly from her letters:
+
+"I have had such a bad misunderstanding with Terry, or he with me, I
+don't know which it is. My God, but women can be brutal, though! You
+ought to read Jack London's 'The Call of the Wild.' You might
+substitute women for dogs. Some years ago I was a feast for the dogs
+(women), and now I see much of this same fierce brutality in myself, and
+poor Terry is feeling it. I have been away with a man, and Terry somehow
+feels it much more keenly than ever before.
+
+"And yet I love Terry: surely if I ever knew what love means, I love him
+and have loved him always. Though I am the most brutal person on earth,
+I am so without intention, without knowing it even, at times. And I am
+so tired that sometimes I have no feeling for anything, not even for
+Terry, and he does not understand that. I feel out of harmony with every
+one just now. It is hardly indifference, rather a terrible weariness.
+Perhaps my recent reading of Nietzsche has helped to give me a feeling
+of weary hopelessness. And then, too, the spirit of our salon is gone; I
+don't know exactly why. Even Terry has changed very much in his feelings
+and ideas. He is not much interested in the things he used to be
+absorbed in. He is more cynical, especially of social science, and yet
+he seems to me to be making a very science of looking at things
+unscientifically. He seems to be holding his emotions in check, is less
+impulsive than ever, and is losing much of that delicacy of feeling and
+expression which was so admirable in him.
+
+"I too am growing cynical, and I hate to do so. I should like to accept
+people at their apparent value and not always look for motives, as I am
+getting more and more to do. I should like to approach everything and
+everybody with a perfectly open heart, as a child does, but I find that
+I no longer do that, that I am always prejudiced. I am sure that this is
+due to Terry's influence, for he more and more excludes everything:
+nothing is good enough for him. He passes up one person after another
+and he has no joy in life. His personality is so much stronger than mine
+that I am like a little thin shadow, weaker than water, and he can
+always bring me around to see his way of looking at people and things."
+
+This note in Marie--protest against Terry's tendency to cut out the
+simple joy of life--grew very strong at a later time; now, however, it
+was only suggested, and played no important part.
+
+Indeed, the idea of his leaving her was to her an intolerable thought;
+and yet there is many a letter which suggests the approaching
+dissolution of the salon and of their relation. They were both, at
+times, terribly tired of life: with no strenuous occupation, the word of
+Nietzsche and of world pessimism, of excessive individuality, tortured
+their nerves and made everything seem of no avail.
+
+Work takes one away from life, is a buffer between sensitive nerves and
+intensest experience. Strong natures who for some reason are dislocated
+and therefore do not work, or work only fragmentarily, come too much in
+contact with life and often cannot bear it; it burns and palls at once.
+So it was with Terry and Marie. Without either work or children, they
+were forced into strenuous personal relations with one another and into
+a feverish relation with "life."
+
+"I feel so depressed," she wrote; "so many things have happened this
+last year which seemed trivial at the time, but have had big results,
+while other things which seemed events have turned out to be only
+incidents, and very small ones. Thus, a careless remark of mine
+resulted in a quarrel between Terry and me which did not lessen with
+time, but grew larger and larger, until now the relations of us two
+idyllic lovers are anything but pleasant. And a very serious attack of
+love from which I suffered last summer has passed as quickly and lightly
+as a breath of wind, while another light love of mine, which came to me
+last February, has assumed large proportions simply because I have been
+abused for it by Terry, whom no one could ever displace in my heart. I
+was bound to defend my lover from the attacks of Terry, whom I had
+always regarded as above such a common display of irritation in such
+matters. So this other man became a sort of ideal lover in my mind, and
+all because of Terry's opposition. This man had wooed me in a great,
+glorious, godless fashion. He was a big man in the labour world, and he
+flattered me immensely, but I should never have cared for him, if
+Terry's nature had not suddenly seemed to weaken....
+
+"I have been so uneasy about Terry lately. He has been talking so much
+about joining the criminal class. He seems to be losing his interest in
+our movement and to be looking for some other way of escape, as he
+calls it. He says his liberty is only a figment of his mind, that he has
+now reached the time for which he had all along been unconsciously
+preparing himself. I am, of course, used to this kind of talk from
+Terry. He has been in the depths of despondency often enough, but
+nothing ever came of it except a saloon brawl. He would usually seek
+Harris; they would break a mirror or a few glasses in some saloon, and
+the next day Terry would have a headache, after which he was usually
+content to browse around his philosophy in that mild and subtle way of
+his, for a week or so.
+
+"But now Harris is gone, and Terry does not know any other person quite
+so strenuous in the fine art of breaking glasses and barroom fixtures in
+general, so, finding no vent for his accumulated despondency, he may
+possibly do real things. I feel so sadly for him and wish I could help
+him. The Lord knows I would be willing to break any amount of glassware
+with him, but he has not much confidence in my aim, I guess; women never
+can throw straight. In fact, he has little confidence in me in any way
+lately, for he never tells me the details of his schemes, but only
+throws out dark and terrible hints....
+
+"Truly, something may indeed happen this time. He is so anti-social. He
+positively won't go out anywhere to meet people, won't go to our picnics
+or socials, and in manner is very strange, distant, cold, and polite to
+Katie and me. One would think he had been introduced to us just five
+minutes before. Perhaps he thinks that Katie and I want him to go to
+work--common, vulgar work, I mean, for Katie has lost her job and we are
+living in the most economical way, for we don't know when another
+desirable job can be found. Now, Terry really ought to know that I
+shouldn't have him work for anything in the world. I know that Katie has
+not said the least word to him, but he is so terribly sensitive that
+perhaps he suspects what she may be thinking.
+
+"Katie is despondent, too, and nearly makes me crazy talking of her
+life, past, present, and future, in the most doleful way. Last night,
+after talking to me for two hours about the misery of life, she made the
+startling proposal that she and I commit suicide. 'For,' said she, 'I
+cannot see anything ahead of me but work, work, like a cart-horse, until
+I am dead. I'd rather die now and be done with everything, and you had
+better come with me, for you haven't anything, and if I went alone, what
+would become of you, such a poor helpless creature; see how thin you
+are, I can almost look through your bones! Who would take care of you?'
+
+"After talking in this strain for what seemed to me hours and hours,
+Katie went to bed and to sleep, and then came Terry from his solitary
+walk--he usually goes for a walk if there are any indications that Katie
+will do any talking--and entertained me by carelessly, carefully hinting
+at one of his dark, mysterious plots. Then he, too, went to bed, and I,
+too, had forty winks and seventy thousand nightmares."
+
+But Marie, even in this growing strain, never failed in her love and
+admiration for the strange man with whom she lived. On the heels of the
+above came the following:
+
+"Terry is one of those characters who has not lost any of his distinct
+individuality. His is a nature which will never become confounded or
+obliterated in one's memory. The instantaneous impression of large
+soul, sincerity, and truthfulness he made upon me at our first meeting
+has never left me. This impression must have been very strong, for
+generally these impressions grow weaker, if people live together so
+closely as poor people must. All his faults, as well as perhaps his
+virtues, come from the fact that he is not at all practical. In spite of
+his experience, he does not know the world, and is a dreamer of dreams.
+His wild outbursts are the result, I think, of his sedentary life.
+Sometimes we two remain at our home for weeks without venturing out,
+without hardly speaking to each other, and then suddenly we burst out
+into the wildest extravagances of speech!"
+
+A few days later there was a wilder burst than ever, and Terry left the
+salon. Marie wrote:
+
+"Last week we all had a row, and Terry has not been seen or heard of
+since. The last words he uttered were that he should return for his
+belongings in a few days. I am dreadfully sorry about it, especially
+that we could not have parted good friends. I realise and always shall
+be sensible of the great good I had from him and shall always think of
+him with the best feeling and greatest respect. The parting has not
+been a great surprise to me, for it really has been taking place for a
+long time, ever since he withdrew his confidence from me, now months
+past, and I have been acting with other men without his knowledge.
+Nothing mattered in our relation but mutual confidence, but when that
+went, it was, I suppose, only a question of time. And, at the same time
+that he withdrew spiritually from me, he seemed to lose his interest in
+the movement, and grew more and more solitary and hopeless.
+
+"I don't know what Terry is doing, or where he has gone, and I am
+uneasy. I would not fancy this beautiful bohemian life alone with Katie,
+and I don't know what to do."
+
+"Terry is still away," she wrote a few days later, "and my horizon looks
+bleak and lonely. I want to be alone where I can collect my thoughts,
+but, even when Katie is out, I cannot think, but sit by the window
+staring at the old women hanging up the clothes which everlastingly flap
+on the lines tied between the poor old gnarled willow trees. Poor old
+trees, their fate has been very like that of the old women. They bear
+their burden uncomplainingly, groan dolefully in the wind, and shake
+their old palsied heads. Even the sparrows, true hoboes of the air,
+disdain to seek shelter in their twisted arms. They will die as they
+have lived, withering away.
+
+"I try to interest myself in household affairs, but that is so stale and
+unprofitable. Neither can I read: my thoughts wander away and Terry
+intrudes himself constantly on my mind. I may get so desperate that I
+will seek a job as a possible remedy: perhaps in that way I could get
+tired enough to sleep....
+
+"I have been trying to meet Terry, but he is as elusive as any vagrant
+sunbeam. I feel it would do me a world of good to have a long
+heart-to-heart talk with him. If I could only see him once a week and
+have him sympathise with me in a brotherly fashion and hear him say, in
+his old way: 'Cheer up, Marie, the worst is yet to come,' I should be
+comparatively happy and satisfied."
+
+Several more days passed, and with the lapse of time Marie's mood grew
+blacker. Her next letter to me had a deep note of sorrow and regret and
+remorse:
+
+"Terry has been away since August thirteenth. He came, while I was out,
+for his things. I fear it is his farewell visit; for he has not shown
+the slightest disposition to meet me and talk things over. I have tried
+in every way to see him again, but he has thus far ignored my existence.
+I had an idea that we two were made for each other, but I have been an
+awful fool. Last February, as you know, I had an affair, if it may be
+dignified by even that name, and just for the fun of the thing I went
+with this light love to Detroit, and came home ill, as you already know.
+I returned to Terry full of love and regret and most properly chastened
+by my illness and disappointment; for other men almost always disappoint
+me. But I found him positively beastly. The way he abused that poor man
+was terrible, and I had to defend him, for I know that Terry was unjust
+to him. I begged him to blame me, not the other man, for it was all my
+doing, but that only made matters worse.
+
+"I know that some people can conceal their obnoxious qualities and show
+only the sweet and lovely side of themselves. I sometimes like to see
+the reverse side of the medal, and I expected Terry, as a student of
+humanity and an anarchist, to welcome any phase of character which might
+enable him to understand me more completely.
+
+"I must hesitate in attributing Terry's attitude to jealousy, for I have
+had some affairs before, and he never seemed to care about them in the
+least; indeed, I often felt piqued, and thought he did not mind because
+he did not care about me enough. The following two weeks were, I can
+truly say, the most infernal and awful that ever happened to me, and I
+wished thousands of times that I might die, and I did come very close to
+it. I cannot describe that hellish time or give you any idea of Terry's
+conduct during those weeks. He was no longer the calm, philosophical
+Terry that you know, but the most terribly cruel thing the mind of man
+can conceive.
+
+"Now, I know these are strong words, and I don't know if you can imagine
+Terry that way, or if you can believe me when I say it is so. I have
+thought of it so many times, and I have come to the conclusion that
+perhaps while I was away, he and Harris had a great debauch together and
+that Terry must have taken some dope which unbalanced him for a while."
+
+I do not think it needs "dope" to explain Terry's conduct. Marie,
+perhaps, could not understand the possible cruelty of a disappointed
+idealist. When Terry began to see that neither the anarchists nor Marie
+would ultimately fit into his scheme of things, when his idealistic hope
+began to break against the hard rocks of reality, he was capable, in his
+despair, of any hard, desperate, and cruel act.
+
+Marie continued:
+
+"During this awful time I did not blame Terry, dope or no dope. I
+considered it all coming to me, and even wished it would keep on coming
+until it killed. But I made up my mind right then and there that if it
+was fated that I should keep in the game, there should be no more
+'affairs' for me. And so help me God I have not had any from that
+time--six months ago--till the day Terry left me. And that other man's
+name has not once passed my lips in Terry's presence, and when it was
+mentioned by others when he and I were there, I grew dizzy and sick.
+
+"In time, these dreadful things were thought of as little as might be,
+and Terry and I became excellent, though platonic friends, a novel and
+fascinating relation, wherein sex had no part. Night after night have we
+sat around this table, discussing books and people, trying to penetrate
+the mystery of things strange and new to us. I should rather say that he
+talked, and I was his eager listener. Often, after tossing restlessly on
+our pillows, when no sleep would come 'to weight our eyelids down,' the
+rest of the night would be spent in reciting poetry, the inevitable
+cigarette in one hand, the other gesticulating in the most fanciful and
+fervid manner. He would recite in passionate whispers--so as not to
+awaken Katie--for hours at a time, poems from Shakespeare to Shelley,
+and Verlaine to Whitman, poems tender and sweet, bitter and ironical and
+revolutionary, just as the mood suited him. His feeling for poetry and
+nature seemed to grow as his hope for human society grew less.
+
+"So our relations were ideally platonic--the kind you read about in
+books. Nevertheless, some of the old bitterness remained in Terry's
+heart, for at times he became depressed and melancholy and so sensitive
+about the least little thing that I was nervous and in hot water all
+the time for fear I might inadvertently say or do something to hurt him
+or make him angry. I admit I am not as placid as I look, and Katie, too,
+is very inflammable, so you can understand how tense the atmosphere was
+at times.
+
+"Not very long ago, at the breakfast table one Sunday morning, I urged
+Terry to come to a meeting of the 'radicals,' adding that he was
+becoming a regular hermit and that it would do him good to have more
+social pleasure. He turned on me savagely, called me a hypocrite, and a
+contemptible one at that, and made a few more remarks of the kind. After
+a few days of strained politeness on both sides I made bold to ask him
+for some explanation--and I have got it coming yet!
+
+"These are just the facts. I don't go into all the little details of our
+many little vulgar rows, about the most trivial things. I am sure, if
+Terry writes you about this, that his innate delicacy would never permit
+him to go into these sordid details, too many of which I have perhaps
+told you. But I am made of rougher stuff than he. I am never quite as
+unreasonable as he can be at times, but I am commoner."
+
+Terry did, indeed, express himself in a much more laconic way about the
+quarrel, than Marie. On the day he left, August thirteenth, he wrote me
+the following note:
+
+"The premonition in my last letter is fulfilled: the salon knows me no
+more."
+
+A later talk I had with both Katie and Terry throws light upon the
+precipitating cause of Terry's departure on the thirteenth of August. It
+was due to Terry's sensitiveness about his money relationship to Katie.
+On that morning Terry was asleep on the couch, when Katie got up, made
+breakfast, and she and Marie asked Terry to join them.
+
+"Not me," said he.
+
+"I think you have been eating on me long enough," rejoined Katie. "It's
+time you got out."
+
+Katie had never allowed herself a remark of this kind before. But she
+had not found another job and the three had been on edge for some time.
+
+The remark brought about the climax so long preparing.
+
+"I'll go," he replied, "as soon as I have finished this cigarette."
+
+"In the wordy war that followed," said Terry, "we all three went the
+limit in throwing things up to each other. I told Katie that if it had
+not been for me and Marie she would not have had anybody to steal for;
+that I was eating on her stealings and mine, too. And then I left."
+
+Although, as we shall see, this was not the end of the relation between
+Terry and Marie, it was in reality the sordid end of the idealistic
+Salon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+_Marie's Attempt_
+
+
+While Marie was trying to find some trace of Terry, the latter was
+wandering about the country.
+
+"I have been tramping about the country," he wrote me, "living most of
+the time in the parks. This life, where you 'travel by hand,' crowds out
+consecutive meditation, but I like it because I can go away at the first
+shadow of uneasiness betrayed on either side. My existence now is so
+responsive and irresponsible that it comes very close to my heart. I am
+living a life of contrasts: one week I spent with a rare friend who has
+many good books and admires me for the thing for which all others
+condemn me. Strange, is it not, that the one thing which redeems me in
+his far-seeing eyes is what places me beyond redemption in the minds of
+others. I have spent some sleepless nights in his fine home, kept awake
+by the seductions of social life tugging at my heart-strings. So one
+night I stole away from this seduction and slept with some drunken
+hoboes in the tall soft grass, where I could have no doubt about being
+welcome. I might as well doubt the grass as those pals, who without
+question hailed me as an equal. I, having the only swell 'front,'
+tackled a mansion, and the Irish servant-girl, to whom I told the truth,
+gave me a whole hand-out in a basket, enough for all of us. My brother
+hoboes swore I should be the travelling agent of the gang. But a copper
+gave me the 'hot foot,' while I was 'pounding my ear' in the woods with
+the other 'boes, so I straightened and hiked to the stock yards, where I
+feel more at home with the Hibernians.
+
+"Never have I seen Life more triumphant and rampant, more brimming over
+with hope and defiant of all conditions, hygienic and otherwise. I am
+rooming with an Irish family whose floor space is limited, so we all
+have shake-downs, and in the morning can clear the decks for action with
+no bedsteads in the way. I am very 'crummy,' badly flea-bitten, overrun
+with bed bugs, somewhat fly-blown, but, redemption of it all, I am free
+and always drunk. Still, I am really getting tired of playing the
+knock-about comedian and shall soon 'hit the road.'
+
+"I am willing to do anything for Marie I can, except to love her as I
+once did, but never shall again. Even spirits die, and the spirit of the
+salon is so dead that it is beyond resurrection."
+
+Marie, however, would not believe that the spirit of the salon, or at
+any rate, as much of that spirit as depended on the relation between her
+and Terry, was dead; she was more conscious than Terry of the ups and
+downs of the human nerves and heart and the ever-present possibility of
+change, and she went to work in a wilful attempt to get back her lover.
+Her next letter was a triumphant one:
+
+"I am a very happy girl to-day, and I must write to tell you so before
+the mood vanishes, for I have learned that good moods are very
+fleeting.... The cause of my happiness is, of course, that I have at
+last met Terry and we have had a long, delightful talk together, and I
+hope our misunderstanding is all cleared up. Only, now I am afraid I
+shall begin to pine and fret because we cannot be together always,
+though reason and philosophy and logic all tell me that the new relation
+between us two is the very best, noblest, most ideal--or at least they
+try to tell me so. It very nearly approaches the anarchistic standard,
+too.
+
+"There is something fascinating in this new state of affairs. It is just
+like falling in love all over again: the clandestine meetings, with the
+one little tremulous caress at parting--which is all we are bold enough
+to exchange--thrill me; it is the mysterious charm of the first
+love-affair! It makes my blood sing and dance. I lie awake the whole
+night thinking of our meetings and trying to bring them vividly back to
+me.
+
+"And, do you know, what makes me supremely glad is the feeling that
+Terry is going to love me again, that I am going to win him back. He
+thinks that love is an enslaving thing and harmful to the soul, but my
+dear lovely idealist and dreamer has loved me once and he must love me
+again. I am so in love with love and almost as fanatical about it as the
+ecstatic artist is about art: love for love's sake, art for art's sake.
+I never did--and hope I never shall--get over that feeling of awe at the
+mystery and beauty and elusiveness of that great force in life--love.
+And I have always felt so sorry for people, sincere people, who told me
+honestly that they have felt that wonder-in-spring sensation only once
+in all their lives. It made me think that I had at least one thing to be
+very thankful for, that I was different from them, that I could
+experience the divine flame, and experience it continually. If you knew
+how often I have fallen in love with Terry!
+
+"Poor Terry, I feel so sorry for him, too; he has no place to stay,
+though he could stay indefinitely at three or four houses that I know
+of, where his friends would feel only too glad to have him. But he says
+he does not want again to attach himself to any person, place, or cause,
+because the time would come when he should have to break away, and then
+he should have to experience death again. So he intends to move about
+whenever and wherever the whim suits. But I am sure this life will not
+satisfy Terry for long, for there is really very much of the hermit in
+him....
+
+"I am going to see him again in a few days, so I have the pleasantest
+things to dream of. If I am to win Terry back, I must be extremely
+careful: one false move would be likely to queer the whole thing. Oh, I
+am tremendously happy, for I am sure I shall win my dear Terry back
+again!"
+
+The next letter, written about a month later, has a note of
+discouragement, and also a slight suggestion of an effort to steel
+herself against possible developments in the future:
+
+"When I go among the comrades and friends, I must keep such careful
+watch over myself. I don't want to show them how I feel about our
+separation. The movement had the strongest conviction that I was so
+wrapped up in Terry--I was always so frantically jealous of him, you
+know--that I would surely die, or go crazy, if I were ever separated
+from him. So they are all guessing at present, and don't know just what
+to think of me. Apparently I am just the same, in fact some better, for
+I laugh and talk more, much more than I ever did.
+
+"Terry and I have met several times since I wrote you, and I am almost
+discouraged, and think at times it would be better for me not to see him
+at all. I have to be so careful, and it is awfully hard to control my
+impulses to tell him what I feel! But I dare not do that or he would
+never see me again, and I hardly think I could stand that. He is so
+very cold and friendly; of course, he does kiss me when we meet and at
+parting, but in such an indifferent way, and if I allow my lips to
+linger or cling to his for just the least part of a second, you ought to
+see how abruptly, almost roughly, he turns away. And I must not even
+notice it, and it hurts terribly. I don't understand how anyone can be
+so dreadfully cold. It makes me thrill all over when I see him bend his
+head toward me for the customary kiss, and I close my eyes so that I may
+enjoy more intensely that blissful eternity which I expect, and alas!
+only one short, perfunctory little peck, and it is all over--before my
+eyes are hardly closed.
+
+"However, hope has not entirely left me. After being so intimate with
+Terry for seven years I ought surely to know something of his moods and
+disposition; and I do hope and expect that he will in time grow weary of
+roaming about and living the way he does now and that he will begin to
+yearn for feminine influences and caprices and tyrannies, and I hope,
+for mine in particular!...
+
+"I should be much happier if I did not care for him so much, and I hope
+that in time I may have only a strong friendly interest in him. At
+times I envy him: he is so care-free, without the slightest
+responsibility toward anything or anybody; he can break from old
+associations and habits so easily and light-heartedly. I never could
+have done that....
+
+"I am awfully absent-minded these days; you would laugh at some of the
+funny things I do. I ride on the cars miles past my street, and wander
+about and forget where I am going. Sometimes I think of things and then
+forget I was thinking."
+
+In another six weeks' time came still more gloomy news:
+
+"Our meetings are as uncertain, unpremeditated, and unarranged as his
+wanderings about the city are. It happened that I was all alone for the
+whole of last week, eight precious days of freedom, especially from
+Katie and her woes. I love her, as you know, but she does get on my
+nerves, at times. So I wrote Terry, asking him to come and visit with me
+for several days. It must have been my Jonah day, for the letter reached
+him, and he came and stayed here with me for the whole seven days.
+During this time we talked a great deal of our life together and of our
+life since we have not been together, and with his most calm and
+philosophical air he spoke of our circumstances, past and present. It
+seemed so pleasant and homelike, so much like the old days, to have dear
+Terry here with me, and I felt such lazy content to see and hear him,
+that at times I awoke with a start, for I could not keep myself from the
+idea that our separation was only a horrid dream.
+
+"So, when he said things that ought to have hurt me dreadfully, I
+positively couldn't feel hurt. Somehow, the sound of his voice was so
+pleasing that I missed the sting of some of his pessimistic reflections
+about our love; it seemed to me that he spoke of others, surely not of
+our two selves! But now, since he has gone, and I have been forced to
+think of the things he said, many of the easily accepted but only half
+understood reflections on our love have come back to me with all their
+sting. And I must now believe that I have passed out from Terry's life
+utterly, and that there is no return, nor hope of return. The most I
+could possibly hope for is an indifferent friendship, for so he has
+willed it, or perhaps fate, rather, has so willed it. 'Dead love can
+never return,' he said. And I am now only one of the people he knows! It
+is so terrible that I must avoid the blow, must seek an independence of
+my own.
+
+"And I had such high hopes, such dreams of pillowing his dear head on my
+bosom, and, alas! he would consider that intolerable. And, upon
+reflection, his head would, in fact, rest very uneasily on my scrawny
+breast!
+
+"So I am trying to resign myself and to readjust what is left of my
+life. It seems pitiful, though, that my life has been so commonplace all
+through. Not one single exception, not one thing that ever happened to
+me, or that I ever did, has been different from the experiences of all
+the world. My life with Terry, which I surely expected would be
+different, would be an exception to the commonplace love affairs of all
+people, has now ended the same way as everyone else's.
+
+"Well, I have had seven years of life, that is perhaps a little more
+than some people have, and I ought to be satisfied with that. The
+biggest chapter of my life is over and done and closed for ever and I
+will try not to look back or think of it too much. And I shall tell you
+the same as if I were making some solemn vow, that I will not try any
+more to regain the love I have lost."
+
+This resolution of Marie's seemed to have helped her considerably, for
+her later letters are not quite so exclusively concerned with the
+unhappy aspect of her relations with Terry. The strong vitality of mind
+and temperament which enabled this factory girl and prostitute to adjust
+herself to a relatively intellectual and distinguished existence still
+stood her in good stead, and enabled her to meet the present deeply
+tragic situation step by step and not go under: her youth and vitality
+and her love of life triumphed, as we shall see, over even this terrible
+rupture; the consolatory philosophy of anarchism, which had educated
+her, largely fell away, with the love of the man who had created it for
+her. But the work of the social propagandist has been done on Marie: the
+woman is a thoroughly self-conscious individual, as capable of leading
+her life as only are very few really distinguished personalities. Her
+next letter shows again a more general interest, though still largely
+concerned with Terry:
+
+"The other night Terry spoke for the Social Science League on 'The
+Lesson of the Haymarket'--referring, as you know, to the hanging of the
+anarchists in 1886. _The Saturday Evening Post_ had quite a lengthy
+notice about it the day before the lecture, and nearly all the morning
+papers spoke of it the day after. The lecture hall was well filled with
+people who do not usually attend the S. S. League. And I think these
+people, who were not radical, were much shocked and disappointed, for
+Terry was not a bit gentle and well-mannered, nor as philosophical as he
+nearly always is. I thought his lecture good, though there was something
+forced about it. Perhaps because he no longer has so much faith was the
+cause of his greater violence. It was as if he was trying to remember
+what he had once felt; and that made the expression rougher than if it
+had been more spontaneous. I really do not believe that he is, at
+bottom, at all violent. But he tried to be so in this lecture. He
+advocated assassination and regicide and other most violent and
+blood-curdling things. His voice and manner, however, in saying these
+terrible things were not at all convincing. When replying to the
+critics, he was most violent, and was hissed and shamed, over half of
+the audience leaving the hall, very angry and indignant. I thought, for
+a while, that a regular free fist-fight would follow, and it very nearly
+did, but Terry had a few friends with him, among them a German
+hen-pecked anarchist I must write you about, and your friend Jimmy, both
+of whom were ready to stand by Terry.
+
+"Needless to say, Terry was gloriously drunk, and utterly reckless, and
+after the meeting was over quite a bunch of us became as drunk as he,
+though not quite so gloriously. He was quite helpless toward the small
+hours, when our party broke up, and I took Terry home with me, as Katie
+was not there, and on the way I had the pleasure of acting as a referee
+when he and a stranger, who Terry fancied had insulted him, did really
+have a fist-fight; I gathered up their hats and neck-ties and kept out
+of the way, ready to call assistance if need be, which fortunately was
+not necessary, for they only rolled around in the dirt a little, and
+Terry only had his chin smashed slightly by the fall.
+
+"Drunk as he was, he did not strike the other man, though being stronger
+he could have pounded the life out of him; he only tripped him up and
+rolled him on the ground. Terry is certainly instinctively and
+naturally gentle and chivalrous, and I loved him as much as ever as I
+took him home and put him to bed.
+
+"I am beginning to think I am a genius in taking care of drunken men,
+for I have managed in some way to take home and care for quite a number
+of them, for instance, Harris, who is the most unmanageable and perverse
+creature when drunk. I had an experience taking him home which I would
+not dare write you; and I can hardly realise to this day how I even
+succeeded in half carrying and half dragging him to our home from away
+down town. He certainly was the limit.
+
+"On Monday the papers were all shrieking for Terry's head--wanted him
+deported or persecuted or prosecuted. But Terry has a good many friends
+and too much of a reputation as a philosopher; and his friends and his
+reputation prevented his becoming a martyr. Two friends, both newspaper
+men, managed to eliminate the most objectionable parts of Terry's
+terroristic utterances from their respective papers, and Terry's sister,
+the lawyer, one sergeant of police, and the ferocious but humane Tim
+Quinn did the rest. For the present, therefore, Terry's desire to be
+acquainted with the inside of a prison, or otherwise to suffer for the
+cause which he still half-heartedly believes in, is frustrated.
+
+"To me the most important aspect of the lecture was that he prepared it
+in our home. So, for another week, we enjoyed one another's company; and
+after the lecture he not only went home with me, as I have said, but he
+has remained ever since. I am trying not to build up any more hopes on
+this, because I know that Terry has been in a particularly reckless
+mood, and does not care much where he is. I am sorry that he could not
+find a better outlet for his mood than lecturing for the Social Science
+League, but that perhaps is a better and more harmless way than getting
+in with the criminals, as he has wanted to do so often of late. You may
+be sure, however, that his talk on the platform will not be forgotten,
+and should anything happen, in any way like the McKinley affair, for
+instance, I am sure things would be made very unpleasant for him. So I
+hope nothing will happen.
+
+"Terry is really harmless. He expends all of his energy in desiring and
+thinking and talking, and has nothing left over for action. Whenever he
+had any scheme in mind I did not like, I used to encourage him to talk
+about it, knowing that he thus would be satisfied, without acting. He
+lives almost altogether in the head and in the imagination, and is
+really a teacher, in his own peculiar way, rather than an actor or
+practical man. That is why he takes offence at what seems to me such
+little things: they are not little to him, in his scheme of things,
+which is not the scheme of the world, and, alas! not even mine, I fear.
+He is so terribly alone, and growing more so, and I feel so awfully
+sorry for him.
+
+"Especially since our rupture I have been compelled to be so careful not
+to hurt his feelings or trespass on his ideas of right and wrong; for he
+imagines he can feel what I am thinking and feeling, even if no words
+are said. He says words only conceal thought and do not express it. At
+times I feel so oppressed and depressed that I should experience the
+keenest ecstasy if I could hurt him in some physical way, use my muscles
+on him until I were exhausted. In imagination I sometimes know the
+fierce delight and exaltation of my flesh and spirit in hurting this
+man whom I love, in hurting him morally and physically--and I feel the
+lightness of my heart as the accumulated burden of my repression rolls
+away in the wildest, freest sensations.
+
+"Of course, I have only felt this way at times; and at those times I
+know I was very passionate and unreasonable. I had regular fits of
+jealousy and anger, but at other times I had a boundless pity for him,
+there was something so pathetic about his gestures and his voice when he
+told me he knows just how I feel about him, that I could have cried out
+with the ache of my heart. It was so terrible to see how he suffered in
+his heroic attempt to suffice unto himself, to defy the world. He tries
+to think and feel deeper and higher than anyone else, but this is a
+terrible, terrible strain. It is all fearfully sad, and sometimes I wish
+I had never known him."
+
+About his speech, Terry wrote:
+
+"I am one of the by-products that do not pay just now, until some
+process comes along and sets the seal of its approval on me. Just now I
+am deemed worse than useless, and since my speech on 'The Lesson of the
+Haymarket Riot' the authorities are looking for a law that will deport
+me. This will suit me, as I will swear that I am a citizen of no man's
+land. What I really need is not deportation, but solitary confinement,
+for the sake of my meditations. For even with my scant companionship I
+feel as if I were a circus animal. I still clutch convulsively to the
+idea that thought is the only reality and all expression of it merely a
+grading down of what was most high. If I am shut up I must cease talking
+and may think about real things, that is, ideal things. That would help
+me to put up with the world, which cannot put up with me unless I am in
+cold storage. There is a mental peace which passeth all understanding,
+and perhaps I might find that peace in prison. I have been insidiously
+poisoning my own mind for some time, and unless I can stop this I had
+better cease from talking, which does not seem to purge me of my
+unconscious pose, and retire to solitude behind the prison bars. There,
+undisturbed, I can meditate and often remember peacefully the beautiful
+things I have known in literature and nature. Beauty is like rain to the
+desert, it is rare, but it vanishes only from the surface of things, and
+deep down who knows what secret springs it feeds? As my sands run out,
+the remembrance of the brief beauty I have known will break over me like
+the pleasant noise of far-off Niagara waters on the stony desert of my
+life.
+
+"I once thought that I could help the mob to organise its own freedom.
+But now I see that we are all the mob, that all human beings are alike,
+and that all I or anyone can do is to save his own soul, to win his own
+freedom, and perhaps to teach others to do the same, not so much through
+social propaganda as by digging down to a deeper personal culture.
+Though I sometimes think that just now the prison would help me, yet I
+also long at times to talk to the crowd. I wish to tell the smug ones
+that we waste our lives in holding on to things that in our hearts we
+hold contemptible. I wish to tell the mob just why there are thirty
+thousand steady men out of work in this city: to do this I may take to
+the curbstone."
+
+After his speech Terry returned to the home of Katie and Marie, as has
+been described by Marie, but on no basis of permanence. He thus speaks
+of it:
+
+"You may think that I, too, have 'cashed in' my ideals; for I am back at
+the Salon--for how long nobody knows--by special proxy request of
+Katie. I will spare myself and you any moralising on my relapse."
+
+Katie, explaining Terry's return, said: "When he went away, Marie was
+sad all the time. She could not eat nor sleep and was looking for her
+lover every day. After weeks had passed I said to her: 'When you see
+Terry at the Social Science League, bring him home.' 'Do you mean it,
+Katie?' asked Marie, her eyes sparkling. She did so, and Terry went
+quietly into his room, and the next morning I made coffee as usual and
+Terry came out, and it was all right; it might have been all right for
+good, if this damned Nietzsche business had not come up." But that is
+anticipating.
+
+It was after Terry's return that the famous miner Haywood, just after
+his acquittal from the charge of murder in connection with the Idaho
+labour troubles, visited Chicago, and spent most of his time at the
+Salon with Terry and Marie and several of their friends. The Salon was
+temporarily revived, like the flash in the pan, under Haywood's
+stimulating influence. Terry wrote of him:
+
+"Haywood has the stern pioneer pride of the West. There is a mighty
+simplicity about him. He is Walt Whitman's works bound in flesh and
+blood. He is a man of few words, and of instinctive psychic force, and
+is the big blond beast of Nietzsche. He knows just what he is doing and
+why, and has a great influence on the crowd: the mob went wild at his
+mere presence, and after his brief speech he came absolutely to be one
+of them. The swaying mass becomes, at his touch, in close contact with
+their instinctive leader. He is too much in touch with the people to
+agree with narrow trades-union policies. At a secret meeting in this
+city with Mitchell and Gompers he hinted that the Western Federation of
+Miners would amalgamate with the American Federation of Labour on the
+ground of no trade agreements and the open shop, and warned them that no
+man and no organisation was strong enough to stand in the way of this
+development. The Socialist party made him a big offer, but he replied
+that the Labour movement was big enough for him."
+
+Of Haywood, Marie wrote: "He is a giant in size, but as gentle as the
+most delicate woman. He has only one eye, but that a very good one which
+does not miss things. He has been made into a regular hero by the
+people here, but he is the most modest man I have ever met. He is
+sincere and unassuming, so calm, with no heroic bluster about him. His
+voice is quiet and gentle. We had a blow-out for him, and all those
+present were very discreet. We all forgot our years and our troubles and
+we showed him a good time. I hardly think that even you, with all your
+democracy, could have stood for all the things that happened. Haywood is
+a big, good-natured boy, but quite sentimental, too. I think he liked me
+pretty well. I am sure he could have won many much more attractive girls
+than I, but somehow he took to me right from the start. I was introduced
+to him along with a whole bunch of girls, all good-lookers, too, but I
+sat back quietly and was the only one who did not say nice things to the
+hero."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+_Marie's Failure_
+
+
+Though Terry was back in what was formerly the Salon, and though the old
+spirit seemed at times to be still alive, yet it was more in appearance
+than in reality. It is difficult to regain an emotional atmosphere once
+lost; and it is especially difficult to live by the gospel of freedom,
+when once the eloquence of that gospel is no longer deeply felt. Then
+there is nothing left to take its place--no prosaic sense of duty, no
+steady habit, no enduring interest in work. As these two human beings
+drifted further and further apart from their common love and their
+common interest, the idealistic man became more self-centred, more
+unsocial, more fiercely individual, and the emotional and sensual woman
+became more self-indulgent, more hostile to any philosophy--anarchism
+such as Terry's, with its blighting idealism--which limited her simple
+joy in life and in mere existence.
+
+So their quarrels became more brutal, more abrupt. Both intensely
+nervous, both highly individualised, their characters conflicted with
+the intensity of two real and opposing forces. A tragic aspect of it all
+was that it was due to Terry's teaching that Marie attained to the
+highly individualised character which was destined to rebel against the
+finally sterilising influence of her master. Even physical violence
+became part of their life, and words that were worse than blows. The
+strong bond which still lingered held them for a time together,
+notwithstanding what was becoming the brutality of their relations. One
+day Marie called Terry to his coffee and he refused. A quarrel followed,
+in the course of which she hit Terry on the head with a pitcher, and the
+resulting blood was smeared over them both. When calm came again she
+said to him:
+
+"Terry, how can we live together?"
+
+"Ain't we living together? Doesn't this prove it?" he replied, grimly.
+
+And this man would use violence in return--and this was the delicate
+idealist, the idealist whose love for Marie had at one time been part
+and parcel of his high dreams for humanity and perfection, a part of his
+propaganda, a part of his hope: during which period he had been
+scrupulous not to use force of any kind, spiritual or physical, on the
+girl whom he doubly loved--the girl whom he held in his arms every night
+for years with a passionate tenderness due to his feeling of her
+physical fragility and her social unhappiness, rather than to any other
+instinct.
+
+"Marie," he said, "did not fully understand the character of my love for
+her. She loved me intellectually and sensually, but not with the soul.
+She wanted my ideas, and sex, and more sex, but not the invisible
+reality, the harmony of our spirits. From the day that I fully
+understood this, my confidence in her and in all things seemed to go.
+She felt that I had withdrawn something from her, and it made her
+harder. She began cruelly to fling the amours that I had tolerated as
+long as I hoped for the spiritual best in my face. It was a kind of
+revenge on her part."
+
+Practical troubles, too, lent their disturbing element to the little
+remaining harmony of the three.
+
+"We shall probably be forced to leave our rooms in a short time," wrote
+Marie. "Our landlord has asked us to leave, without giving any other
+reasons than that he wanted a smaller family in these most desirable
+rooms! Terry is indignant, for we have been quiet and orderly, and Katie
+has always paid the rent in advance. We shall certainly stay until the
+police come and carry us out and our household goods with us.
+
+"It is true that we have had unusual difficulty in paying the rent and
+in getting enough to eat and smoke; and this has not added to our
+good-nature. You have no doubt read about the 'money stringency' in this
+country. Times are indeed very hard, thousands of men are out of a job,
+and the so-called criminals are very much in evidence. For a long time
+Katie could not find work to do and could not get any of her money from
+the bank, so that things looked very 'bohemian' around here for a while.
+She could not get anything to do in her own line, and finally had to go
+out to 'service.' But this she could not stand more than a week, for
+Katie has fine qualities and is used to a certain amount of freedom, so
+she couldn't stand the slavishness of the servant life, though she had
+good wages and nice things to eat, which Katie likes very much.
+
+"When Katie started in on this venture she had the proverbial thirty
+cents, which she divided up with me--Terry had not returned from his
+wanderings at that time--and I recklessly squandered ten cents of this
+going to and returning from the Social Science League. In a day or two
+there was nothing edible in our house but salt, so I squandered my
+remaining nickel for bread. I made that loaf last me nearly four days: I
+ate only when I was ravenously hungry, so that it would taste good, for
+I hate rye bread. I slept a good deal of the time. I suffered terribly,
+though, when my tobacco gave out, and I spent most of my time and energy
+hunting old stumps, and I found several very good ones in the unswept
+corners and under the beds. I even picked some out of the ashcan. These
+I carefully collected, picked out the tobacco and rolled it in fresh
+papers, as carefully as any professional hobo."
+
+When Katie was temporarily hard up, that naturally put Terry and Marie
+"on the bum." But they remained "true blue" and did not go to work,
+Marie being willing to put up with all sorts of discomfort rather than
+try for a job. She continued:
+
+"It is a strange thing that nobody came to our house during these six
+days. But on the sixth day, Terry came, and then I had a good square
+meal, and he even left me carfare and some of the horrible stuff he
+calls tobacco. Two more days elapsed before Katie returned. Until then I
+lived on that square meal. I had ten cents from Terry, but I was sick of
+rye bread. On the day that Katie returned, in fact only a few hours
+before, I was foolish enough to visit an anarchist friend, Marna. I was
+awfully lonely and thought a little change would do me good. So I went
+to Marna, but got there a little too late for supper. I must admit I was
+hungry. I hinted to Marna that I was, said I'd been in town all day, and
+things like that, but she did not catch on and I was stubborn and
+wouldn't ask. Stephen was there, and for a moment I thought I might eat.
+He had not had his supper, and he said that if Marna was not too tired
+to cook, he would go and buy a steak. I tell you, the thought of that
+steak was awfully nice and I had to put my handkerchief to my mouth to
+keep the water from flowing over. I offered to cook it for him, but he
+passed it up. I made one more desperate bluff and asked him if he would
+get some beer for us! And I reached for my purse, and for one wild
+moment I thought sure he had called my bluff and would really take my
+only nickel, my carfare home. I nearly fell over with suspense, but in
+the nick of time he went out, refusing my money. And I even taunted him,
+asked him if he thought it was tainted!
+
+"When the beer came, I drank most of it. Beer is a great filler, but of
+course it went straight to my head and feet--that is, my head got light
+and my feet heavy. But I managed to navigate to the street car and so on
+home, where I found Katie, a cheerful fire and a delicious smell of
+cookery and coffee.
+
+"Now, I must make you a confession. During these six days I had some
+thoughts of working, the only thing I could think of being a job as a
+waitress. But when a vision of ham and pert females and more impertinent
+males came to me my courage oozed away, and I did not even try. I don't
+think I'll ever work again. Did you ever read Yeats' story 'Where There
+is Nothing?'
+
+"I love Marna, as you know, but when she talks to me about 'work,'
+'health,' and the like, I feel like becoming even more solitary than I
+am. She says I am not ambitious! Ye gods, I think I am ever so much more
+ambitious than she! I am more ambitious to live in these little squalid
+rooms than in the mansions of the rich. My kind of happiness--I mean
+ideally--is not Marna's kind; and I am sure now that if I ever find it,
+it will be in the slums. Here I can sit and muse, undisturbed by the
+ambition of the world. Blake comes to me as an indulgent father to his
+tired and fretful child and sings to me his sunflower song. If I were in
+a castle I don't think even Blake could soothe my restless spirit.
+
+"But, unfortunately, even in the slums one needs to eat. Without warning
+I tumble from my air castles because some horrible monster gnaws at me,
+and will not let me be, however much I try to ignore him. That mean,
+sneaking thing is hunger. And because I am only mortal, and because the
+will to live is stronger than I, I must eat my bread. I often cry when I
+think of this contemptible weakness. I have often tried to overcome this
+annoying healthiness of my body. How can people be gourmands? Even
+Shelley and Keats had to eat. What a repulsive word 'eat' is! I would I
+could eat my heart and drink my tears. The world is what it is because
+we must eat. See the whole universe eating and eating itself, over and
+over! If it were not for this fearful necessity, Terry and I should
+not, perhaps, have failed in our high attempt!
+
+"'The chief thing,' said Oscar Wilde, 'that makes life a failure, from
+the artistic point of view, is the thing which lends to life its sordid
+security.'
+
+"But alas! to this sordid security, or to the care for it, we are driven
+by our need of bread. If Terry and Katie and I had never had this need,
+we might have become angels of virtue and insight. But on account of
+this we never could really attain freedom; that embittered our souls and
+turned us at times viciously against each other."
+
+Terry's growing jealousy, which seemed to surprise Marie, was a sign of
+the weakening of his philosophy, as far as it was social and not purely
+individual. It may seem strange that after his real love for her
+appeared to pass, his jealousy increased; but this was due to several
+causes: if his social interest in her--his propagandist interest--had
+continued, her sexual license would have continued to feed his passion
+for social protest. But when Marie had ceased to interest him as a
+"case," or a "type," or a "victim," the only bond remaining must be that
+of the pure individual soul or of the body. Terry's lack of
+sensuality--his predominating spiritual and mental character--precluded
+any strong tie of the physical kind. So there remained, as a possible
+tie, only a close spiritual relation between two individuals, a soul
+bond--and this Marie's character and conduct tended to prevent. Terry,
+if they were to be together, saw that the deeper personal relation must
+exist, now that there was no other--and so he was jealous of any conduct
+which showed in Marie a lack of sensibility for the deeper spiritual
+life; hence the physiological jealousy, which he had not felt, or had
+controlled at one time, showed itself. No doubt his increasing
+nervousness was an added reason--nervousness due to the long strain,
+physical and mental, which his life and social experiment had involved.
+
+During these last weeks Marie had another lover, and was especially
+careless in not concealing any of its manifestations. She, too, on her
+side, was subject to greater and greater strain. Terry's growing
+loneliness and austerity, his melancholy and unsociability, his negative
+philosophy, all this tended more and more to inhibit her natural young
+joy in life and to give it violent expression. The philosophy of
+anarchism had increased her natural leaning to the free expression of
+her moods and passions, and now, with weakened nervous resources, she
+hardly cared to make any effort to restrain what she called her
+temperament.
+
+"Yes, he became my lover," she wrote, "and we disappeared for a few
+days. Did you ever read George Moore's Leaves From My Lost Life? In it
+is a story called 'The Lovers of Orelay.' My lover and I spent our few
+days together in much the same way as did the lovers in the story. We
+had our nice secluded cool rooms and beautiful flowers. I threw my
+petticoats over the chairs and scattered ribbons and things on the
+dressing table just like the girl in the story. And we had nice things
+to drink and good cigarettes, and had all our breakfasts and suppers
+served in our rooms. The little adventure turned out better than such
+things usually do; nothing awkward happened to mar our pleasure in any
+way, and I'm glad it happened--and is over and done with.
+
+"You may think me a very light-headed and heartless and altogether
+frivolous person from my actions. But I felt so humiliated and so sorry
+and so desperate about Terry that I was ready to embrace any excitement,
+just to forget that our great relation had gone. This time it was to get
+away from myself, not in the old physically joyous mood--and to get away
+from Terry's poisonous philosophy of life.
+
+"This lover of mine was so joyous, so healthy, so vigorous, so full of
+life! He was very different from Terry, and I really needed him as a
+kind of tonic. And yet, of course, I did not care for him deeply at all.
+In fact, I want never again to have a deep relation to anybody, if this
+between Terry and me must go.
+
+"This profound failure has made me reckless; Terry is sensitive now, and
+knows from my manner and face and the way I express myself just how I am
+feeling toward any other man. The other day an old lover of mine turned
+up in Chicago, and this brought about a scene with Terry.
+
+"To explain this episode I must go back several years. I once knew a
+Swiss boy, a typical Tyrolean. The day I met him in Chicago he had just
+arrived from his native land, and seemed so forlorn and lonely and
+miserable that my heart went right out to him. He was such a big,
+handsome child, too, about twenty years old. He could not understand a
+word of English, and no one talked to him, but me, who, as you know, had
+parents who spoke German. He was delighted and told me his whole life
+story, how he became emancipated and one of the Comrades. His eyes
+sparkled so and his cute little blond curls jumped all over his head
+with the enthusiasm and joy of having found some one to talk to, that I
+was quite content to sit and watch and listen. And he thought me the
+most sympathetic person in the world.
+
+"Had I only known the result of my impulse to say a few words to a
+lonely boy! For he did fall in love with me, and in such sturdy
+mountaineer fashion that I very nearly had nervous prostration--and he
+too--in trying to get away from his strenuous wooing. For he started out
+to win me in the same style that he would have used toward one of the
+cow-girls in his native Alps. He waylaid me and followed me around
+everywhere, just camped on my trail; wanted to carry me away to some
+place out West, where there were mountains. The more I discouraged him,
+the more lovesick and forlorn he became, until finally he became the
+laughing-stock of the 'movement,' and I was chaffed about it
+unmercifully. He knew I had a lover, but that was no obstacle; and he
+told me several times with fine enthusiasm that he would not object to
+sharing his love with another man! He had read something about free
+love, and thought he should like to be an Overman and superior to petty
+jealousies.
+
+"Strange to say, my curly-headed Swiss lover did not 'insult' me, as
+they call it, though I naturally enough supposed that he wanted to, but
+didn't have enough courage. But I was wrong, as I discovered later, when
+I grossly insulted him! Perhaps a girl is loved only once in a lifetime
+in just that way, perhaps not at all, and I often think I made a mistake
+in being so cruel to my boy lover. I might in time have learned to love
+him in the right way, but I couldn't at that time, perhaps because I was
+so much occupied with Terry, my own lover, and with the movement, which
+was new to me and very charming, for I had just discovered it.
+
+"At times I had an immense pity for the poor boy and would have done
+anything to help him feel better. I had not the slightest physical
+feeling for him, but I should have been quite willing to indulge him, if
+he had asked me. That was part of our philosophy and my kindness. But he
+did not ask me, though he often had the opportunity. He was quite
+content to be with me and kiss my hands, and beg me to love him a
+little. When he saw I did not like to have him kiss me so much, he would
+grow so sad and forlorn and tiresome. One day he was at the Salon with
+others and annoyed me by hanging about me all the time, until I couldn't
+stand it any longer. I called him into another room and told him bluntly
+that I would indulge him, if that would help him, only he must for
+heaven's sake leave me alone!
+
+"Now, this was a most indelicate thing for me to do, and I blush as I
+write of it, but I was so desperate and possibly a little under the
+influence of whiskey--a most convenient and universal excuse--and had
+tried all other means of ridding myself of this annoyance, even to
+slapping his face and forbidding him to come to the house! When I
+slapped him, he simply kissed the hand that smote him, and when I
+forbade him to return to the house, he followed me about the streets.
+If I told you all the silly and ridiculous things the youth did or all
+the mean, brutal things I did to cure him, you would scarcely believe
+me.
+
+"Now when I made that abrupt proposal to him, he blushed to the tip of
+his ears, and then grew very angry, and called me an animal and a beast
+and said he had loved me because he thought I was different from that;
+that he did not want that kind of love from me. After a while his
+vehemence and anger turned to tears, and he kissed my hands and sobbed
+out his intention of going away. I was repentant and very sweet and kind
+to him while he stayed, but soon he did go West and I did not see him
+again till a few weeks ago, when, one Saturday night, I found him
+waiting for me at our rooms. I was astonished and not too glad to see
+him, especially now that Terry is so sensitive.
+
+"When Terry came home, he looked suspiciously at me and at the poor
+Swiss, but though I was quite innocent, I could not turn the poor fellow
+away, after he had come so far to see me. But I did not feel at all
+friendly to him, and I did not speak to him the next day, especially as
+Terry went away for several days, to give me a chance, as he put it, to
+enjoy my love. Then I told the Swiss with heat that I never wanted to
+see him again, and he went away for good."
+
+Marie, however, seemed about this time to have lost any sensibility
+about Terry's emotion that she may have possessed. Perhaps it was
+because, as I have said, she felt that the relation of mutual confidence
+was really broken and nothing very much mattered. Anyway, she went so
+far in her carelessness that Terry could not help coming in disagreeable
+contact with what was growing painful to him, though he would be far
+from admitting it.
+
+Katie, describing these last weeks, said that Terry grew more and more
+jealous and inclined to violence. He was very imaginative, and saw in
+Marie's eyes "something wrong," as Katie put it. Marie could not be
+expressive to Terry after an "affair," and Katie saw that Terry
+understood the meaning of this inexpressiveness. Also, when Terry went
+away for a day or two, without an explanation, Marie was equally
+"imaginative." Both were intensely proud, both intensely interested in
+their "individuality." One day Terry went away, without an explanation,
+and returned, after a few days, "pleasantly piped," as he put it, sat
+down and began to undress. It was dark, and he had no idea that somebody
+else was there. But Marie called out harshly, "You can't sleep here."
+
+"I understood," said Terry. But Katie replied, "That's all right," and
+she slept on the couch.
+
+"This kind of thing," said Katie, "put them further and further apart.
+Terry couldn't help feeling the sting there was in it. Marie had done
+the same before, but it was in a different spirit. One of the last
+scenes was when H---- was visiting us. He and Marie were having coffee
+in her room, and Terry was in the other room. Marie and H---- called
+Katie to come and have coffee with them. Terry was not invited and this
+later brought about a terrible quarrel.
+
+"But," said Katie, "it was not really jealousy, though that was part of
+it, that brought about the last break. They calmed down, but then began
+to read Nietzsche again, and I think went daffy over him. Terry tried
+the Overman theory on me and Marie. Americans cannot understand German
+philosophy."
+
+Nietzsche's doctrine of the distinguished individual being "beyond good
+and evil," a man superior to the morality of society, his hatred of
+Christian civilisation and Christian ethics, his love of the big
+forcible blonde who takes his right by his strength only, all this was
+congenial to Terry's character, and especially so after the weakening of
+his social philosophy. The aloofness of the Overman, the individualistic
+teachings of Zarathustra, appealed to the anti-social Terry, to the man
+who more and more went back to his egotistic personality, to whom more
+and more the "communist" Christian anarchists made little appeal, who
+more and more became what is called an individualist anarchist, with
+whom there is little possibility of relationship, who is essentially
+anti-social, whose philosophy is really that of social destruction. This
+indeed is the anarchist who lives in the public mind--a destroyer. But
+what the public mind does not see is that this destructive anarchist is
+the result of a lost hope in anarchistic communism, a lost hope of
+radical extension of social love, in absolute solidarity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+_Marie's Revolt_
+
+
+"The winners fall by the wayside," wrote Terry, "while the losers must
+ever on--hearkening to some high request, hastening toward a nameless
+goal. I am loser, for my motives are large and my actions small. In my
+desire to embrace the universe I may neglect a comrade. I can be as hard
+as my life and as cruel as its finish. I have only an ideal, and
+whenever anything or anybody gets in the way of it I am ruthless in
+feeling. I must not give up all that I have--what is in my imagination:
+I have nothing else."
+
+Yes, Terry is hard. He "passes up" remorselessly not only the
+individual, but all society; but it is the hardness of the idealist, of
+the man who is still religious in the sense that he sees a beyond-world
+with which to compare this world and find it totally lacking. So, more
+and more he "passed up" Marie, found her more and more lacking, more and
+more human. The fact of her being a social outcast no longer had its
+strong appeal. He became hard and cruel to her through idealism, just as
+she had been hard and cruel to him through sensuality and false
+philosophy. But her hardness never equalled his fine scorn.
+
+For a year or two preceding this point in the situation I had been
+living in Europe, and had met a good many men and women who had given a
+larger part of their lives to the making of a social experiment. Some of
+them, discouraged, had returned to a "bourgeois" manner of life, some
+even to a "bourgeois" philosophy. Almost all of the anarchists I have
+known lost their philosophy and enthusiasm with middle age, and
+experience with the actual constitution of things, combined with
+disillusion regarding the ideal. Most of them had been hurt or broken by
+their attempt, but they all retained a certain something, a certain
+remaining dignity of having struggled against the inevitable, and had
+acquired insight into some of the deeper things in life, though having
+lost some of the childlike simplicity which is a characteristic of the
+social rebel.
+
+I saw a great deal of an old Frenchman, who had known Bakunin, and had
+been astute in the dangerous work of the "International" in England and
+Germany. An associate of William Morris and the other English anarchists
+who at that time called themselves socialists, my friend came in contact
+with much that was distinguished in mind and energy; he afterward
+carried the propaganda of revolutionary socialism to Germany, where he
+was arrested and imprisoned for five years. He is now a handsome,
+white-haired, well-preserved old man, with fine simple manners and joy
+in simple things, love of children and of long conversations with
+friends, good will and peace. He has retained a certain mild contempt
+for the "bourgeois," for people who prefer an easy time in this world to
+an attempt, even a foolish one, for radical improvement. But he knows
+the world now, and I fancy many of his illusions are gone.
+
+Another of my radical friends is now only thirty-six years old; but
+already he is tired and discouraged, socially speaking. He is a
+Frenchman, too, with all the easy mental grace and intellectual culture
+of his race. Soon after his student days at the Sorbonne, the social
+fever of our day, which burns in the blood of all who are sensitive,
+took possession of him. Like Terry, he was drawn emotionally to an
+interest in the social outcast; like Terry, a girl in that class
+interested him, and he took up the cause of the girls, and led an attack
+against the _policiers des moeurs_, the special police who attempt to
+regulate prostitution in Paris. He spent all the money he had in the
+attempt, lost his respectable friends, and, after several years of
+fruitless effort, hope left him. When I met him he was living quietly,
+in bohemian fashion, drawing a very small salary and devoting himself to
+abstract philosophy, to science, and to pessimistic memories of the days
+of his social enthusiasm, or what he now calls his social illusions.
+
+One of the most pathetic social experiments I have known was made by a
+young girl, whom I also knew at Paris. She generously determined that
+she would have no sex prejudices; and for several years she strove
+against the terribly strong social feeling in that regard. Not only
+theoretically but practically she persisted in thinking and acting in a
+way which the world calls immoral. She wanted to show that a girl could
+be good and yet not what the world calls chaste. She did not believe
+that sex-relations had anything to do with real morality. In one way,
+she has been successful. She is as good now--better--as when she began
+her experiment. She is broader and finer and bigger; but she has
+suffered. She has been disappointed in her idealism, disappointed in the
+way men have met her frank generosity, she has been injured in a worldly
+way. Her strongest desires are those of all good women--she deeply wants
+the necessary shelter for children and social quiet and pleasure, and
+these essentials are denied her because of her idealism. She half feels
+this now and is tired and discouraged.
+
+Another woman who has paid heavily for her "social" interests is in
+quite a different position. She is married to a man who is also a social
+idealist. He is so emotionally occupied with "society" that nature and
+life in its more eternal and necessary aspects touch him lightly. He
+hardly realises their existence. She tries to follow him in this
+direction; strains her woman's nature, which is a large one, to the
+uttermost. It is probable that the loss of his child was due to this
+idealistic contempt for old wisdom. Not a moment must be lost, not a
+thought devoted to anything but the revolution; this necessitated
+social activity, and that exclusively. Where was the opportunity for
+the quiet development and care of an infant? The children of the
+"radicals" are few, and as a rule do not grow up in the best conditions.
+This certainly is a terrible sacrifice entailed upon the social
+idealist.
+
+Writers in France and in Europe generally are much more interested in
+radical ideas of society and politics than they are in this country. The
+most distinguished among them are from the American point of view
+radical, at least. There is hardly a play of note produced in France or
+Germany that does not in some way trench upon modern social problems.
+Anatole France is a philosophical anarchist, and so is Octave Misbeau.
+It is not a disreputable thing to be so in France. An Emma Goldman there
+would be an object of respect. The prime minister of France was
+generally regarded as an anarchist before he went into office. A man of
+the type of Hervê would be deemed a madman here. Even a man as little
+radical as Jaurès would be considered a terrible social danger in
+America and could not conceivably have the power he exerts in France,
+where they have a respect for ideas as such.
+
+But, combined with this interest in social things and this willingness
+to entertain the most radical ideas, there is a note of pessimism and
+disillusionment. Anatole France's work shows this double tendency well.
+He reflects the social revolt and lack of respect for the old society in
+a most subtle way, but also he mirrors the failing hope of the social
+enthusiast. He has a deep sympathy for the social idealist, but nearly
+every book suggests the inevitable wreckage of enthusiasm on the rocks
+of actuality.
+
+When, after an absence of several years, I returned from Europe and went
+again to Chicago, I found Terry alone, disheartened, and different from
+the Terry I had known. Soon I saw that in him had taken place a process
+not unlike that which had happened to my friends abroad and which was
+reflected in European literature. His letters and Marie's had already
+indicated, as we have seen, his social disappointment. But I found him
+more bitter even than I had expected; cut off even from the anarchists,
+nourishing almost insanely his individuality, full of Nietzsche's
+philosophy of egotism, rejecting everything passionately, turning from
+his friends, turning from himself. Old society had long been dead for
+him and now he had no hope for the new!
+
+Besides, Marie was not with him: she had revolted and run away. I had
+expected to see her in Chicago; she had written me that she would be
+there, but when I arrived I learned from Terry and Katie that she had
+gone away. During the few weeks preceding my return to Chicago, the
+quarrels between the three had grown in poignancy. Terry, unlike some of
+the disappointed anarchists I have known, could not settle back into an
+easy acceptance of life. With him it was all or nothing. More and more
+fiercely he rejected all society, even, as we have seen anarchist
+society. Of course, Marie came more and more in the way of this general
+anathema. She was young and pleasure-loving, and at last her nature
+could no longer stand this general rejection, the absence of the simple
+pleasures of life. It was not their quarrels, even when they came to
+blows, that determined her action. It was a revolt from the radical
+sterility of Terry's philosophy. Katie furnished her with the necessary
+money, and she went away to California. There this tired creature, this
+civilised product of the slums, this thoughtful prostitute, this
+striving human being full of the desire for life and as eager for
+excellence as is the moth for the star, went into camp, and there, in
+the bosom of nature, her terrible fatigue was well expressed in the
+great sense of relief that resulted: a new birth, as it were, a
+refreshing reaction from slum life and overstrained mental intensity.
+This new birth and this reaction from Terry's philosophy are well
+expressed in her letters to Terry and to me. To me she wrote:
+
+"I have not dared to write you before for fear of your anger toward me
+for my abrupt dismissal of our plans of meeting, but I could not help
+it. The life instinct in me would not be doomed, but was insistent in
+its demands and made me flee from insanity and death. So here I am, far
+away from civilisation, from the madding crowd, away up in the
+mountains, making a last effort to live the straight free life of
+Nature's children, a suckling at the breasts of Mother Earth. And truly
+her milk is passing sweet and goes to the head like wine, for I feel
+intoxicated with the beauty and joy of all things here in this new,
+wonderful world. I did not know that such beauty existed, and my
+appreciation of it is so intense that it produces sensations of physical
+pain. I live much as the birds do, or at least try to--no thought of the
+morrow, or of the past, except when I receive a letter from dear old
+Katie or from Terry. Katie asks me if I have found a job yet, and Terry
+has some sweet reflections about death or dead things. But I recover in
+an amazingly short time from these blows, climb to the mountain-top,
+extend my arms to the heavens, and embrace passionately the great,
+grand, throbbing stillness.
+
+"I have been here now a whole month and have not yet wearied of it for a
+moment. Each day brings a new, wonderful experience; and each day I feel
+a real part of the great wonderful scheme of things. Indeed, I am
+becoming a part of nature. I have grown so straight and tall, and so
+beautifully thin and supple that I can dart in and out of the stream
+without bumping myself against the rocks, can climb steep hills, and let
+the winds blow me where they will. I should not be at all surprised to
+awaken some morning and find that I had become one of the tall reeds
+that sway to and fro along the banks of our mountain stream.
+
+"In one of my brief periods of returning civilisation, just after
+receiving a terrible letter from Terry, I had myself weighed at the
+store and post-office of the town not far away from our camp; my weight
+was exactly eighty pounds! It seemed to me that I was fading away into
+something wild and strange. But I have never felt such physical and
+mental well-being since I can remember. I hardly need to eat, but our
+camp cook actually forces me to swallow something. He is a German
+'radical' of the old school. Frightfully tired of the radical bunch as I
+am, I like this simple old man. He is like a part of Nature, has lived
+on her bosom all his life, and loves her and no other. We have visitors
+at our camp occasionally, and they bring things to eat and drink. When
+they are gone, the cook and I live on what is left and get along as best
+we may. There are lots of wild fruits and nuts growing about here and
+they are delicious. Neither of us has any money nor care for the morrow.
+
+"After I arrived here, all the bitterness of life vanished. I thought
+and felt very beautifully of Terry, and always shall, for I have made an
+ideal of him, and his grand, noble head, like a blazing tiger-lily
+perched upon a delicate and slender stem, will always be for me the
+greatest, most wonderful recollection of all the years. But I have no
+longer any desire to be with him, yet I do love and adore him, my own
+wonderful, sweet, great Terry!"
+
+To Terry she wrote: "I am intoxicated by all this beauty and love the
+very air and earth. I feel the ecstasy of the ĉsthetic fanatic. Were I
+not disturbed by thoughts of you, I would indeed become another Eve
+before the fall, though I have strange desires and my blood beats as in
+the veins of married women. But no lovers can quench my fever. All the
+tiresome males are far away and I feel new-born and free. The air is
+scented with balsam and bey, and a pure crystal stream flows through
+this valley between two hills covered with giant redwood trees, and rare
+orchids of the most curious shape and colour toss wantonly in the breeze
+on the tree and hilltops. Birds and fishes and reptiles disport
+themselves in the sunshine, and giant butterflies of the most marvellous
+colours flutter so bravely among the ferns and flowers. There are no
+tents here in our camp, but we are covered with the fragrant branches of
+the spicy pines and nutmeg trees. It is a Paradise, and I think of you
+always when I am in the midst of beauty.
+
+"My trip here included an eighteen-mile walk--in one day--think of that!
+I am getting as thin and strong as a greyhound. I don't wear clothes at
+all, but when I do, it is the old man's overalls, which I put on to go
+to town to get groceries or call for the mail. At night, our old cook
+builds a huge fire of redwood logs, and then his tongue loosens and he
+quotes poetry by the column or talks of his experience as a preacher,
+actor, village schoolmaster, and vagabond. Without a cent he travels all
+over California, as strong and rugged as any redwood tree that grows in
+this wonderful valley.
+
+"It is so secluded here that no one would suspect campers were about.
+The trail leads down a steep descent. How stately it is between the huge
+stems of the trees, along our beautiful creek, cool and clear as
+crystal, and filled with trout and other fishes. There I sit in the sun
+and allow the water to pour over my shoulders."
+
+In another letter to Terry she writes:
+
+"Our sylvan retreat has been somewhat disturbed by the advent of Mrs.
+Johns, her children and her dog. Annie is also here, but they will not
+remain long, it is too quiet, too lonely, and the nights are too
+mysterious and uncanny, strange noises to disturb the slumbers of the
+timid. And besides there is nothing to do, no hurry or bustle or
+activity. The spirit of repose, of rest, of sweet laziness broods over
+this spot, inviting us to dream away the hours among the spicy pine
+trees. And for two such active ladies it is very dull here. Even when
+they go to town they return disgusted and weary in spirit because of the
+slowness of the natives, who are half Spanish, half Mexican. Even the
+beautiful trail winding in and out among the mountains does not
+compensate them for the dreadful slowness of the natives. I, however,
+love this slowness and converse amicably with the natives. And when I am
+a little active I go fishing, or climb about, or take a lesson in
+Spanish from my old philosopher-cook. I am now learning a little peasant
+song, the refrain being, 'Hula, tula, Palomita,' and it does sound so
+beautiful that I repeat it over and over. It means, 'Fly, fly, little
+dove!'
+
+"The fishing I do not care for much. It is exciting for a time, but
+soon grows a bit too strenuous for my lazy temper. The little stream is
+filled with trout; one has flies for bait which have to be kept on the
+move continually. Walking and jerking the lines out of the water
+continually soon makes my arms and legs tired. I like best of all to lie
+in a bed of fragrant leaves, my head in the shade and the rest of me in
+the sun, the murmur of the brook in my ears, the skies mirrored in my
+eyes, fantastic dreams in my mind--in these you are seldom absent. At
+night I sleep as I have never slept--a deep, dreamless slumber. I awake
+to a cold plunge in the stream. Oh, it just suits me! I am tired of
+people, tired of tears and laughter, of men that 'laugh and weep,' and
+'of what may come hereafter, for men that sow to reap.'"
+
+A letter from Terry came like a dart into her solitude and for a moment
+disturbed her mood--her deeply hygienic, fruitful mood. She wrote to
+him:
+
+"Your letter was a dreadful, an overwhelming shock. It aroused passions
+in me which I thought were laid to rest. But, after getting very drunk,
+I had sense enough to sleep over it, so that this morning I am almost
+my new self again. Last night I felt like cursing you with all the
+wrath of the earth and heaven. The last three weeks I have been camping
+here, caught in the spell of the wonder and beauty of nature. I have
+written you the half crazy rhapsodies of a girl intoxicated with the joy
+of life and health. Now I do indeed think that life is beautiful and
+worth the living. No, I do not worry about you. I am as happy and
+care-free as the birds, and live in and for the moment. Everything in
+the past is dead. Only when your letter came, these old things of my old
+self raised their heads for a little time, but they too shall die
+speedily, if I mistake not. Life is too wonderful, too beautiful to be
+marred thus by the ends of frayed and worn-out passions, by memories or
+regrets of you. I have become happy, healthy, and free, free without
+hardness, and in my freedom and joy I have found my love, my beautiful
+Terry, whom I may love passionately, tenderly and for ever, the dear
+ideal one. Is it not wonderful? I crown myself with flowers and go forth
+to meet him every day. I kneel at his feet and caress his dear hands.
+For I love him dearly, this very new Terry. Yet, my dear, if you should
+come near me, I mean, you, my old poisonous Terry, I would flee from you
+as from a pest. I would loath myself and the sun and flowers and all the
+other beautiful things of earth. I do not think of you at all, my old
+Terry, but I think of you and love and adore you, my new, wonderful
+Terry, and I make myself beautiful for you. So, my dear old Terry, I
+will leave you to 'lice and liberty,' to your 'hard free life,' and I
+will now lave myself with the pure crystal waters and make myself clean
+again, and then look on the sun once more and dream again of my own
+adorable Terry."
+
+In this letter, Marie said, by implication, a deep truth about social
+revolt. She could never have lived her life without him, this strange,
+poetic man. He awoke in this outcast, rather vicious girl, a keen
+longing for the excellent, for the pleasures of the intelligence and the
+temperament; he gave her an assured sense of her own essential dignity
+and worth; defended her against the society that rejected her. This was
+a truly Christ-like thing to do, and this she could never forget or do
+without. So, in her wilderness, she holds fast to her ideal Terry. But
+with this idealist she could not live, practically. The growing
+irritation felt by him because of his radical mal-adjustment to this
+world rendered him step by step more impossible to live with. Harshness,
+injustice, became forced upon him as qualities of his acts. How could he
+be fair when he had no understanding of the nature of actuality? It is
+probable that no woman can ever get so far away from actuality as a few
+rare idealists of the male sex. Marie's relative good sense, her
+vitality and love of life, finally rebelled against an idealism so
+exquisite that it became cruelty and almost madness. And this is the way
+with the world. The world cannot, in the end, endure the idealist,
+though it has great need of him. The world can endure a certain amount
+of irritation, a certain amount of fundamental revolt, but when that
+revolt reaches the point of absolute rejection, the world rebels, the
+worm turns. Marie represents the world and the worm.
+
+Plato said there should be no poets in his Republic. Poets are too
+disturbing, they fit into no social organisation, for the truth they see
+is larger and often other than the truth of mankind's housekeeping, of
+human society. So they are against society. They are for nature, both
+God's nature and man's nature, but man's organisation arouses their
+passionate hostility. Therefore, said Plato, let us have no poets in our
+Republic. But Plato was a poet, and he probably knew that poets, though
+inimical to the actual working of any actual society, yet are necessary
+to keep alive the deeper ideals of humankind, to arouse perpetually the
+instinct for something better than what we have, something deeply
+better, something radically better, not the mere improvements,
+palliatives, of the practical man and the conservative, bourgeois
+reformer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+_Terry's Finish_
+
+
+Terry had given Marie life, and she had finally used this vitality to
+free herself from him and his too exigent idealism. The result of his
+relation to her seems from this point of view pathetically ironical; but
+it is only a symbol of the ironical pathos of his relation to society in
+general; he and his kind act as a stimulant and a tonic to the society
+which rejects and crushes them. The anarchist is in a double sense the
+victim of society. He is, in the first place, generally a "labour"
+victim, is generally the maimed result of our factory system; and, in
+the second place, his philosophy, needed by society, reacts against
+himself and turns the world against him. So he is a double victim, a
+reiterated social sacrifice.
+
+When I went to Chicago this last time I found Terry, as I have said,
+despondent and disillusioned; and intensely savage in his rejection, not
+only of capitalistic society, but apparently of all society. In a way,
+he had left his old moorings, the "proletariat" no longer appealed to
+him. This mood was not a part of his philosophy: it was an expression of
+his disappointment, of his disillusionment. He talked about his own life
+and Marie's with an almost brutal frankness. He seemed to take a sad
+pleasure in stripping the illusion of human worth and beauty to the bare
+bones. In spite of his words, in spite of his previous letters, it
+seemed clear to me that Marie had not lost her hold on him entirely, and
+that he deeply felt her defection. Through her he had failed socially
+and personally. Around her much of his life, intellectual and personal,
+had been wound. Lingeringly he talked of her, of her qualities; he
+seemed to try to steel himself against all need of human relation;
+incidentally he rejected me and other friends, finding us wanting.
+Marie, too, was not perfect, and must be "passed up"; but his mind
+rested, in spite of himself, on this woman and his life with her. Some
+of the things he said and wrote to me about this time indicate his
+present mood toward me, Marie, the anarchists, proletariat, and the
+world in general.
+
+A year or two ago he wrote me: "No one, very close to me geographically,
+can ever get much out of me. This is a family trait and is too deep for
+me. So don't be downcast if we should ever meet again and you should
+find me as stoical as some crustacean of the past. Some such
+antediluvian feeling animates me to take advantage of your distance and
+clamour up out of the depths."
+
+He did, indeed, "clamour up out of the depths" very eloquently, but when
+I saw him in Chicago I found that I had somehow "lost touch," like the
+rest of the world, with him. He felt it and wrote me:
+
+"While you were in Italy, I sent you a letter in which I represented
+myself as one clamouring up out of the depths of his being to you who
+might understand. Now I sincerely and deeply regret having made this
+attempt with you. In the same letter I predicted that your return might
+find me back in the depths of my being, where I belong. I regret I did
+not stay there when you came along. This feeling is due to no fault of
+yours or mine; but points to the fact that I must become still more
+exclusive and circumspect."
+
+Of Marie he wrote: "This attachment between two human beings is in all
+circumstances very terrible. The bond between Marie and myself was as
+strong as death, and partly so because of our great and essential
+differences. The first night we spent together struck one of the deep
+things in our discord. I was too nervous and sensitive to touch her that
+night, and in the morning she bitterly reproached me. The first book
+that really aroused her to the meaning of life was '_Mademoiselle de
+Maupin_.' Deeper than this difference was her galling interference in my
+affairs which never prompted me to meddle in hers. And her failure to
+appreciate or reciprocate my respect for the integrity of her
+personality is the hardest blow she can ever give to me. I have the same
+fatal charge to make against almost all men; the exceptions are so few
+and doubtful that I doubt whether I can ever gain from another that
+intense receptive attitude which I am willing to bestow. Fortunately for
+me, this illusion that there are such intense perceivers re-creates
+itself out of the veriest dust and dross of humanity. Like Shelley's
+'Cloud,' my illusion may change, but it cannot die. Now I am in a state
+of mind when I am willing to let everything go by default--everything
+except my last illusion, that I can never let myself out to anyone. To
+Marie--and to you--and one or two others--I have been sorely tempted to
+lay myself out--but not even the moon can seduce me to reveal myself. My
+dead and buried self is my first and last seduction. This is crazy, of
+course, but I am heartily sick of all the 'sense' I know or can know. I
+believe, however, that I have lived so close to the 'truth' that its
+shadow has been cast over all my life. If, in the last analysis, all is
+illusion, I shall stick to the most powerful one--myself. My feeling for
+Marie arises largely from the fact that she is an expression of the
+irreparable part of my life--of its deepest essence.
+
+"A year ago to-day, on the thirteenth of August," he wrote, "occurred my
+first, last, and only breakaway from the best pal I have ever hoped to
+have, Marie. Now that it has passed, I see it in its proper proportions,
+just as if it had happened to someone else, but to one as near and dear
+to me as myself. I have broken away from the Mob, too. My sympathy for
+what is called the People has been worn down to a mere thread that might
+easily be broken and turn me against them. When one has been stoned
+long enough, one may easily turn into something as hard as stone itself.
+I am like the knight of old, turned inside out. I am developing a
+coating of internal mail, as so many of the attacks come from within.
+But worse than attacks from within or without is the sordid security and
+mental inertia of all the people about me: they are strangling me just
+as surely as if they put a rope around my neck. By day they hurry on
+like ghosts about their business, and by night they gather in the little
+tombs of many rooms they call their homes.
+
+"You may call it madness, this my cutting off of all things. I know that
+I have kept off madness a long while now. I have shrunk from 'business'
+to social anarchy and pure beings, from these again I have shrunk to
+books and poetry, from these again into the solitude of myself where
+only I am really at home. Though I have lost my general bearings, I
+still stand at the helm of myself. I am going to pieces on the rocks of
+the world, but I still inhabit the realm of the soul.
+
+"When I could no longer see my ideals rise out of my work, I quit that
+work; for then the work was no longer an expression of myself. This is
+the origin of all modern problems. A man stands to his job because of
+the visions that come to him only when at work. He sees in imagery his
+own possibilities arise out of the thing on which he is at work, and
+easily links himself to his fellows. Thus does the worker make of his
+eternal cerebral rehearsals an endless chain of imaged solidarity
+binding him in a maze from which he can never think his way out. The
+fixed gaze of those who try to grasp the abstract is proof of this.
+
+"When I could no longer see my ideals arise out of human solidarity, I
+quit my fanatical belief in the possibility of a Utopia. So that now I
+am not even an anarchist. I am ready to pass it all up."
+
+When I saw Terry for the last time, and found him in this almost crazy
+crisis of extreme individualism, where he hopelessly "passed up"
+everything--human society, love and friendship, all the things his warm
+and loving Irish heart really desired, I felt that here indeed was a
+complete expression of the spirit of revolt. It was so extreme that I
+and no one else could follow him in it. It had passed beyond the point
+where social rebellion may be useful or stimulating or suggestive
+poetically and had reached the sad absurdity of all extreme attitudes.
+One lesson Terry's proud and strenuous soul has never learned: that the
+deeper and simpler things in social growth we must take on faith. We
+cannot demand an ideal reason or justification for all social
+organisation, for the ways that human beings have of living together.
+The elementary social forms at least must be instinctively and blindly
+accepted. To go beyond in one's rejection the anarchism of the social
+communist into what is called individualistic anarchism is mere
+egotistic madness and has as its only value the possible poetry of a
+unified personal expression. Into this it was that Terry fell, and of
+course he could find no support for it except in his own soul, which
+could not bear the strain. No soul could, for, struggle as we may, we
+are largely social and cannot stand alone. Terry's life well shows the
+sympathetic source of social rebellion and its justification, but it
+also shows the ultimate sterility of its extreme expression.
+
+The latest word I have about Marie is that she is at work "keeping
+house for a respectable family" in San Francisco. Her experience in
+camping-out seems to have rendered her normal to, for her, an extreme
+degree. Going to work certainly represented as radical a reaction from
+Terry and his philosophy as well could be imagined. A friend of mine in
+San Francisco writes of her: "She is now to all appearances a good,
+respectable girl. She wants to live a new life, is working hard, and is
+trying to break away from smoking. Sometimes she feels the restraint
+severely, and comes to our house where she knows she can smoke and
+express herself. She is in better health, and I think now is in close
+enough touch with nature not to want to go back for nourishment to ideas
+and the slum."
+
+The latest word I have from Terry shows him faithful to the
+end--faithful to his character and his mood:
+
+"There is a rumour that Marie has got a job at general housework. This
+gave me the blues--after all our life together, this the end! I'd rather
+have her do general prostitution, with the chance of having an
+occasional rest in the hospital. But perhaps her drudgery will kill her
+enthusiasm for 'vita nuova!'
+
+"I should have answered your letter had I not been suffering from an old
+malady of mine which is accompanied by such mental depression that I
+could not answer the communication of even a lost soul. I had to seek
+surcease in my old remedy of hasheesh and chloroform, which was a change
+from suffering to stupidity. But I shall not swell the cosmic chorus of
+woe by raising my cracked voice against impending fate. I am more and
+more alone, more and more conscious of a growing something that is
+keeping me apart from all whom I can possibly avoid."
+
+Terry is nearing his logical end, while Marie is still struggling for
+life, life given her in the beginning by this strange man, whose
+influence was then to take it away from her; and from this, like the
+world, she rebelled. "Anarchism" she embraced as long as it enhanced her
+being; as long as this deeply emotional philosophy added to the fulness
+of her life, she saw its meaning and its use; when it finally tended to
+sterilise her new existence, its "pragmatic" value was nothing.
+
+This is the test of all social theory: How It Works Out. In Marie's
+case, as in the case of many proletarians, it worked out well, as a
+general civilising and consoling philosophy, for a time, but when
+carried to an "idealistic" extreme, it tended rapidly towards general
+death--from which all live things react. So it was with Marie: she left
+her "poisonous" Terry and sought for another vitalising experience.
+Goethe said that the best government is that which makes itself
+superfluous. Terry's spiritual influence on Marie, important for her in
+the beginning as rendering her self-respecting and mentally ambitious,
+had become superfluous. But it had been of great value to the girl. So,
+too, with our society. The extreme rebellious attitude educates
+us--sometimes to the point where rebellion is superfluous.
+
+THE END
+
+
+_The_
+Autobiography _of a_ Thief
+
+A true story of the life of a criminal
+taken down and edited by Mr. Hapgood.
+
+_Cloth. 349 pp. $1.25 postpaid._
+
+COMMENTS OF THE CRITICS
+
+     "The book as a whole impresses the reader as an accurate
+     presentation of the thief's personal point of view, a vivid
+     picture of the society in which he lived and robbed and of
+     the influences, moral and political, by which he was
+     surrounded. The story indeed has something of the quality of
+     Defoe's 'Colonel Jacque'; it is filled with convincing
+     details."--_New York Evening Post._
+
+     "To one reader at least--one weary reader of many books
+     which seem for the most part 'flat, stale and
+     unprofitable'--this is a book that seems eminently 'worth
+     while.' Indeed, every word of the book, from cover to cover,
+     is supremely, vitally interesting. Most novels are tame
+     beside it, and few recent books of any kind are so rich in
+     suggestiveness."--_Interior._
+
+     "What is the value of such an autobiography of a thief as
+     Mr. Hapgood has given us? It is this. Professional crime is
+     one of the overprosperous branches of industry in our large
+     cities. As a nation we are casting around for means to check
+     it, or, in other words, to divert the activities of the
+     professional criminals into some other industry in which
+     these men can satisfy their peculiar talents and at the same
+     time get a living with less inconvenience to the mass of
+     citizens. The criminal, being as much a human being as the
+     rest of us, must be known as he is before we can either
+     influence him personally or legislate for him effectually.
+     If we treat him as we would the little girl who stole her
+     brother's candy mice or as the man who under great stress of
+     temptation yields to the impulse to steal against his
+     struggling will, we will fail, for we overlook the very
+     essence of the matter--his professionalism. It is safe to
+     say that perusal of Mr. Hapgood's book will help many a
+     student of criminology to find his way through the current
+     tangle of statistics, reform plans, analyses of 'graft' and
+     what not, by the very light of humanity that is in
+     it."--_Chicago Record-Herald._
+
+     "The manner and style of 'The Autobiography of a Thief' is
+     that which attracts even the fastidious lovers of
+     literature. It is the life-story of a real thief
+     unmistakably impressive in its force and truth. As a matter
+     of course, the book is on the hinge of a novel, but it
+     contains the gem and sparkle of genuineness and its
+     complication has the flavor of accuracy."--_New Orleans
+     Item._
+
+     "It is not only a powerful plea for the reform of abuses in
+     our penitentiaries, but it is an extraordinary revelation of
+     the life of a criminal from his birth up, and an explanation
+     of the conditions which impelled him first to crime and
+     later to attempted reformation."--_New York Herald._
+
+     "The truth found in 'The Autobiography of a Thief' is not
+     only stranger but far more interesting than much of the
+     present day fiction. The autobiography of 'Light-fingered
+     Jim' is absorbing, in many pages startling, in its
+     graphicness.... In spite of its naturalness, daring and
+     directness, the work has a marked literary style--a finish
+     that could not have been given by an unexperienced hand. But
+     this adds to rather than detracts from the charm of the
+     book."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger._
+
+     "No more realistic book has been written for a long time
+     than Hutchins Hapgood's 'The Autobiography of a Thief.' No
+     books on criminology and no statistics regarding penal
+     institutions can carry the weight of truth and conviction
+     which this autobiography conveys."--_Chicago Chronicle._
+
+     "As a study in sociology it is splendid; as a human story it
+     will hold attention, every page of it."--_Nashville
+     American._
+
+     "It is a clear and graphic insight into the lives of the
+     lower world and is written with impressive force. It is a
+     remarkable addition to the literature of the
+     season."--_Grand Rapids Herald._
+
+     "An illuminating and truly instructive book, and one of
+     terrible fascination."--_Christian Endeavor World._
+
+     "As a contribution to the study of sociology as illustrated
+     from life and not from mere text-books, the story recorded
+     by Mr. Hapgood will be welcomed by all philanthropic
+     people."--_New York Observer._
+
+     "It is an absorbing story of the making of a criminal, and
+     is rightly classed by the publishers as a 'human document.'
+     It is absorbing alike to the reader who reads for the
+     diversion of reading and to those who are really thoughtful
+     students of the forces which are working in the life round
+     about them."--_Brooklyn Life._
+
+     "Those in whom the sense of human oneness and social
+     responsibility is strong will be intensely interested in
+     these genuine experiences and in the naïve, if perverted,
+     viewpoint of a pick-pocket, thief and burglar who has served
+     three terms in State's prison."--_Booklovers' Library._
+
+     "It may be that 'Jim' puts things strongly sometimes, but
+     the spirit of truth at least is plain in every chapter of
+     the book. That, in general, it is the real thing is the
+     feeling the reader has after he has finished with 'The
+     Autobiography of a Thief.' It is not a pleasant book; it is
+     anything but a book such as the young person should receive
+     as a birthday gift. It is a book however which the man
+     anxious to keep track of life in this country should read
+     and ponder over."--JOSIAH FLYNT, _in the Bookman_.
+
+DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
+
+36 EAST 21ST ST. NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_The_ Spirit _of_ Labor"
+
+_$1.25 Net_
+
+     "A straightforward narrative which has the tremendous
+     advantage of disclosing more things about the greater life
+     of Chicago--and more which are not generally known to the
+     more sheltered classes--than any book of its size ever
+     written. Those who wish to be written down as loving their
+     fellow-men should read this volume with care. It is a real
+     book, and worth anybody's while."--_The Interior, Chicago._
+
+     "Much of the story is set down in this man's own words, and
+     the whole is made vividly interesting and really meaningful
+     by the author's broad understanding and sincerity of
+     purpose."--_Life, New York._
+
+     "Mr. Hapgood's portrayal of the American workingman is a
+     'moving picture' in two senses of this equivocal phrase. It
+     is kinetoscopic, first of all, in its lifelikeness and the
+     convincing reality of the actions it pictures. Then, again,
+     it is emotionally moving; for the character of Anton, the
+     big, honest, alert and energetic Chicago laborer, can hardly
+     fail to arouse in the reader intense admiration, lively
+     sympathy and not a little amusement free from all cynicism
+     and class feeling. In 'The Spirit of Labor' we are brought
+     into living contact with the men and women we meet on the
+     streets, the great American public with whom every business
+     man, every pastor and every politician has daily to reckon.
+     Teamsters, masons, unionists, saloonkeepers, policemen,
+     wash-women, newsboys, walking delegates, waitresses, ward
+     heelers, local bosses, anarchists--the procession seems
+     endless and the medley beyond all hope of disentanglement.
+     But it is real life and no parade of puppets."--_New York
+     Tribune._
+
+     "We cannot doubt, however, that Anton is a true type and
+     represents a large portion of the men of this land with whom
+     workers and students in social matters must meet. The book
+     deals intimately with the questions arising between labor
+     and capital, and is especially interesting in its analysis
+     of the Chicago spirit as it relates to these matters."--_The
+     Christian Advocate, New York._
+
+     "The story of Anton and his socialistic, anarchistic, and
+     trade union comrades is a faithful and photographic picture
+     of aspects of the urban activity of vast multitudes of
+     industrials combining to assist each one in his fellow in
+     the struggle for existence and fullness of life. The forces
+     revealed are full of danger, the temper is ugly, the manners
+     are always urbane, the judgment not always well informed,
+     the range of knowledge often limited; but there is wondrous
+     power, vigor, and the chaotic promise of a better and larger
+     morality than anything the churches yet have taught, or the
+     mere book students have ever dreamed. Miss Jane Addams has
+     discovered this larger morality in seeming coarseness and
+     evil, and Mr. Hapgood has given us glimpses of it in the
+     biography of his man of toil and rebellion. The Philistine
+     needs the Anarchist to wake him, as Hume did Kant, from his
+     dogmatic slumbers, and the Philistine may (let us hope
+     rarely) wear cap and gown."--_The Dial, Chicago._
+
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+  | Transcriber's Notes:                                         |
+  |                                                              |
+  | Page 54: woman amended to women                              |
+  | Page 97: acount amended to account                           |
+  | Page 102: interst amended to interest                        |
+  | Page 145: pamplets amended to pamphlets                      |
+  | Page 148: envolved _sic_                                     |
+  | Page 154: senstive amended to sensitive                      |
+  | Page 166: inconsistences amended to inconsistencies          |
+  | Page 172: beause amended to because                          |
+  | Page 241: concious amended to conscious                      |
+  |                                                              |
+  | Punctuation has been standardised.                           |
+  |                                                              |
+  | Where a word is hyphenated and unhyphenated an equal number  |
+  | of times, both versions have been retained: pickpocket/      |
+  | pick-pocket; upstairs/up-stairs.                             |
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An Anarchist Woman, by Hutchins Hapgood
+
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