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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/29932-8.txt b/29932-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dec3e1c --- /dev/null +++ b/29932-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14063 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Harbor, by Ernest Poole + +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: The Harbor + +Author: Ernest Poole + +Release Date: September 9, 2009 [EBook #29932] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HARBOR *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Woodie4 and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced +from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American +Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + THE HARBOR + + + + + THE HARBOR + + BY + + ERNEST POOLE + + [Illustration: Publishers mark] + + NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS + + Published by Arrangement with The Macmillan Company. + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1915, + + BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + + Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1915 Reprinted February, + 1915 Twice. March, 1915 Three Times. April, 1915 Twice May, 1915. Twice + June, 1915. Twice July, 1915. August, 1915. September, October, + November, December, 1915. January, 1916. March, 1916 + + + _TO M. A._ + + + + +THE HARBOR + + + + +BOOK I + +CHAPTER I + + +"You chump," I thought contemptuously. I was seven years old at the +time, and the gentleman to whom I referred was Henry Ward Beecher. What +it was that aroused my contempt for the man will be more fully +understood if I tell first of the grudge that I bore him. + +I was sitting in my mother's pew in the old church in Brooklyn. I was +altogether too small for the pew, it was much too wide for the bend at +my knees; and my legs, which were very short and fat, stuck straight out +before me. I was not allowed to move, I was most uncomfortable, and for +this Sabbath torture I laid all the blame on the preacher. For my mother +had once told me that I was brought to church so small in order that +when I grew up I could say I had heard the great man preach before he +died. Hence the deep grudge that I bore him. Sitting here this morning, +it seemed to me for hours and hours, I had been meditating upon my hard +lot. From time to time, as was my habit when thinking or feeling deeply, +one hand would unconsciously go to my head and slowly stroke my bang. My +hair was short and had no curls, its only glory was this bang, which was +deliciously soft to my hand and shone like a mirror from much reflective +stroking. Presently my mother would notice and with a smile she would +put down my hand, but a few moments later up it would come and would +continue its stroking. For I felt both abused and puzzled. What was +there in the talk of the large white-haired old man in the pulpit to +make my mother's eyes so queer, to make her sit so stiff and still? What +good would it do me when I grew up to say that I had heard him? + +"I don't believe I will ever say it," I reasoned doggedly to myself. +"And even if I do, I don't believe any other man will care whether I say +it to him or not." I felt sure my father wouldn't. He never even came to +church. + +At the thought of my strange silent father, my mind leaped to his +warehouse, his dock, the ships and the harbor. Like him, they were all +so strange. And my hands grew a little cold and moist as I thought of +the terribly risky thing I had planned to do all by myself that very +afternoon. I thought about it for a long time with my eyes tight shut. +Then the voice of the minister brought me back, I found myself sitting +here in church and went on with this less shivery thinking. + +"I wouldn't care myself," I decided. "If I were a man and another man +met me on the street and said, 'Look here. When I was a boy I heard +Henry Ward Beecher before he died,' I guess I would just say to him, +'You mind your business and I'll mind mine.'" This phrase I had heard +from the corner grocer, and I liked the sound of it. I repeated it now +with an added zest. + +Again I opened my eyes and again I found myself here in church. Still +here. I heaved a weary sigh. + +"If you were dead already," I thought as I looked up at the preacher, +"my mother wouldn't bring me here." I found this an exceedingly cheering +thought. I had once overheard our cook Anny describe how her old father +had dropped dead. I eyed the old minister hopefully. + +But what was this he was saying! Something about "the harbor of life." +The harbor! In an instant I was listening hard, for this was something I +knew about. + +"Safe into the harbor," I heard him say. "Home to the harbor at last to +rest." And then, while he passed on to something else, something I +_didn't_ know about, I settled disgustedly back in the pew. + +"You chump," I thought contemptuously. To hear him talk you would have +thought the harbor was a place to feel quite safe in, a place to snuggle +down in, a nice little place to come home to at night. "I guess he has +never seen it much," I snorted. + +For I had. From our narrow brownstone house on the Heights, ever since I +could remember (and let me tell you that seems a long time when you are +seven years old), I had looked down from our back windows upon a harbor +that to me was strange and terrible. + +I was glad that our house was up so high. Its front was on a sedate old +street, and within it everything felt safe. My mother was here, and Sue, +my little sister, and old Belle, our nurse, our nursery, my games, my +animals, my fairy books, the small red table where I ate my supper, and +the warm fur rug by my bed, where I knelt for "Now I lay me." + +But from the porch at the back of our house you went three steps down to +a long narrow garden--at least the garden seemed long to me--and if you +walked to the end of the garden and peered through the ivy-covered bars +of the fence, as I had done when I was so little that I could barely +walk alone, you had the first mighty thrill of your life. For you found +that through a hole in the ivy you could see a shivery distance straight +down through the air to a street below. You found that the two iron +posts, one at either end of the fence, were warm when you touched them, +had holes in the top, had smoke coming out--were chimneys! And slowly it +dawned upon your mind that this garden of yours was nothing at all but +the roof of a gray old building--which your nurse told you vaguely had +been a "warehouse" long ago when the waters of the harbor had come 'way +in to the street below. The old "wharves" had been down there, she said. +What was a "wharf?" It was a "dock," she told me. And she said that a +family of "dockers" lived in the building under our garden. They were +all that was left in it now but "old junk." Who was Old Junk, a man or a +woman? And what in the world were Dockers? + +Pursuing my adventurous ways, I found at one place in the garden, hidden +by flowers near a side wall, a large heavy lid which was painted brown +and felt like tin. But how much heavier than tin. Tug as I might, I +could not budge it. Then I found it had an iron hook and was hooked down +tight to the garden. Yes, it was true, our whole garden was a roof! I +put my ear down to the lid and listened scowling, both eyes shut. I +heard nothing then, but I came back and tried it many times, until once +I jumped up and ran like mad. For faintly from somewhere deep down under +the flower beds I had heard a baby crying! What was this baby, a Junk or +a Docker? And who were these people who lived under flowers? To me they +sounded suspiciously like the goblins in my goblin book. Once when I was +sick in bed, Sue came shrieking into the house and said that a giant had +heaved up that great lid from below. Up had come his shaggy head, his +dirty face, his rolling eyes, and he had laughed and laughed at the +flowers. He was a drunken man, our old nurse Belle had told her, but Sue +was sure he was a giant. + +"You are wrong," I said with dignity. "He is either a Junk or a Docker." + +The lid was spiked down after that, and our visitor never appeared +again. But I saw him vividly in my mind's eye--his shaggy wild head +rising up among our flowers. Vaguely I felt that he came from the +harbor. + +As the exciting weeks of my life went on I discovered three good holes +in that ivy-covered fence of ours. These all became my secret holes, and +through them I watched the street below, a bleak bare chasm of a street +which when the trucks came by echoed till it thundered. Across the +street rose the high gray front of my father's warehouse. It was part +of a solid line of similar gray brick buildings, and it was like my +father, it was grim and silent, you could not see inside. Over its five +tiers of windows black iron shutters were fastened tight. From time to +time a pair of these shutters would fly open, disclosing a dark cave +behind, out of which men brought barrels and crates and let them down by +ropes into the trucks on the street below. How they spun round and round +as they came! But most of the trucks drove rumbling into a tunnel which +led through the warehouse out to my father's dock, out to the ships and +the harbor. And from that mysterious region long lines of men came +through the tunnel at noontime, some nearly naked, some only in shirts, +men with the hairiest faces. They sat on the street with their backs to +the warehouse wall, eating their dinners out of pails, and from other +pails they took long drinks of a curious stuff all white on top. Some of +them were always crossing the street and disappearing from my view into +a little store directly underneath me. Belle spoke of this store as a +"vile saloon" and of these men as "dockers." So I knew what Dockers were +at last! In place of the one who lived under our garden and had burst up +among the flowers, I saw now that there were hundreds and thousands of +men like him down there on the docks. And all belonged to the harbor. + +Their work I learned was to load the ships whose masts and spars peeped +up at me over the warehouse roofs. From my nursery window above I could +see them better. Sometimes they had large white sails and then they +moved off somewhere. I could see them go, these tall ships, with their +sails making low, mysterious sounds, flappings, spankings and deep +boomings. The men on them sang the weirdest songs as they pulled all +together at the ropes. Some of these songs brought a lump in your +throat. Where were they going? "To heathen lands," Belle told me. What +did she mean? I was just going to ask her. But then I stopped--I did not +dare! From up the river, under the sweeping arch of that Great Bridge +which seemed high as the clouds, came more tall ships, and low +"steamers" belching smoke and "tugs" and "barges" and "ferry boats." The +names of all these I learned from Belle and Anny the cook and my mother. +And all were going "to heathen lands." What in the world did Belle mean +by that? + +Once I thought I had it. I saw that some of these smaller boats were +just going across the river and stopping at the land over there, a land +so crowded with buildings you could barely see into it at all. "Is that +a heathen land?" I asked her. "Yes!" said Belle. And she laughed. She +was Scotch and very religious. But later I heard her call it "New York" +and say she was going there herself to buy herself some corsets. And so +I was even more puzzled than ever. For some deep instinct told me you +could buy no corsets in "heathen land"--least of all Belle's corsets. + +She often spoke of "the ocean," too, another place where the tall ships +went. But what was the ocean? "It's like a lake, but mightier," Belle +had said. But what was a lake? It was all so vague and confusing. Always +it came back to this, that I had no more seen the "ocean" than I had +seen a "heathen land," and so I did not know them. + +But I knew the harbor by day and by night, on bright sunny days and in +fogs and rains, in storms of wind, in whirling snow, and under the +restful stars at night that twinkled down from so far above, while the +shadowy region below twinkled back with stars of its own, restless, +many-colored stars, yellow, green and red and blue, moving, dancing, +flaring, dying. And all these stars had voices, too. By night in my bed +I could hear them--hoots and shrieks from ferries and tugs, hoarse +coughs from engines along the docks, the whine of wheels, the clang of +bells, deep blasts and bellows from steamers. And closer still, from +that "vile saloon" directly under the garden, I could hear wild shouts +and songs and roars of laughter that came, I learned, not only from +dockers, but from "stokers" and "drunken sailors," men who lived right +inside the ships and would soon be starting for heathen lands! + +"I wonder how I'd feel," I would think, "if I were out in the garden +now--out in the dark all by myself--right above that vile saloon!" + +This would always scare me so that I would bury my head in the covers +and shake. But I often did this, for I liked to be scared. It was a game +I had all by myself with the harbor. + + * * * * * + +And yet this old man in the pulpit called it a place where you went to +rest! + +Twenty-five years have gone since then, and all that I can remember now +of anything Henry Ward Beecher said was this--that once, just once, I +heard him speak of something that I knew about, and that when he did he +was wrong. + +And though all the years since then have been for me one long story of a +harbor, restless, heaving, changing, always changing--it has never +changed for me in this--it has never seemed a haven where ships come to +dock, but always a place from which ships start out--into the storms and +the fogs of the seas, over the "ocean" to "heathen lands." For so I saw +it when I was a child, the threshold of adventures. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +As I walked home from church with my mother that day the streets seemed +as quiet and safe as her eyes. How suddenly tempting it seemed to me, +this quiet and this safety, compared to the place where I was going. For +I had decided to run away from my home and my mother that afternoon, +down to the harbor to see the world. What would become of me 'way down +there? What would she do if I never came back? A lump rose in my throat +at the thought of her tears. It was terrible. + +"All the same I am going to do it," I kept thinking doggedly. And yet +suddenly, as we reached our front steps, how near I came to telling her. +But no, she would only spoil it all. She wanted me always up in the +garden, she wanted me never to have any thrills. + +My mother knew me so well. She had seen that when she read stories of +fairies, witches and goblins out of my books to Sue and me, while Sue, +though two years younger, would sit there like a little dark imp, her +black eyes snapping over the fights, I would creep softly out of the +room, ashamed and shaken, and would wait in the hall outside till the +happy ending was in plain view. So my mother had gradually toned down +all the fights and the killings, the witches and the monsters, and much +to my disappointment had wholly shut out the gory pirates who were for +me the most frightfully fascinating of all. Sometimes I felt vaguely +that for this she had her own reason, too--that my mother hated +everything that had to do with the ocean, especially my father's dock +that made him so gloomy and silent. But of this I could never be quite +sure. I would often watch her intently, with a sudden sharp anxiety, +for I loved my mother with all my soul and I could not bear to see her +unhappy. + +"Never on any account," I heard her say to Belle, "are the children to +go down the street toward the docks." + +"Yes, ma'am," said Belle. "I'll see to it." + +At once I wanted to go there. The street in front of our house sloped +abruptly down at the next corner two blocks through poorer and smaller +houses to a cobblestone space below, over which trucks clattered, +plainly on their way to the docks. So I could go down and around by that +way. How tempting it all looked down there. Above the roofs of the +houses, the elevated railroad made a sharp bend on its way to the +Bridge, trains roared by, high over all the Great Bridge swept across +the sky. And below all this and more thrilling than all, I caught +glimpses of strange, ragged boys. "Micks," Belle sometimes called them, +and sometimes, "Finian Mickies." Up here I had no playmates. + +From now on, our garden lost its charms. Up the narrow courtway which +ran along the side of the house I would slip stealthily to the front +gate and often get a good look down the street before Belle sharply +called me back. The longest looks, I found, were always on Sunday +afternoons, when Belle would sit back there in the garden, close to the +bed of red tulips which encircled a small fountain made of two white +angels. Belle, who was bony, tall and grim, would sit by the little +angels reading her shabby Bible. Her face was wrinkled and almost brown, +her eyes now kind, now gloomy. She had a song she would sing now and +then. "For beneath the Union Jack we will drive the Finians back"--is +all I can remember. She told me of witches in the Scotch hills. At her +touch horrible monsters rose in the most surprising places. In the +bathtub, for example, when I stayed in the bath too long she would jerk +out the stopper, and as from the hole there came a loud gurgle--"It's +the Were-shark," Belle would mutter. And I would leap out trembling. + +This old "Were-shark" had his home in the very middle of the ocean. In +one gulp he could swallow a boy of my size, and this he did three times +each day. The boys were brought to him by the "Condor," a perfectly +hideous bird as large as a cow and as fierce as a tiger. If ever I dared +go down that street and disobey my mother, the Condor would "swoop" down +over the roofs, snatch me up in his long yellow beak with the blood of +the last boy on it, and with thunder and lightning would carry me off +far over the clouds and drop me into the Were-shark's mouth. + +Then Belle would sit down to her Bible. + +Sunday after Sunday passed, and still in fascinated dread I would steal +quietly out to the gate and watch this street forbidden. Pointing to it +one day, Belle had declared in awful tones, "Broad is the way that +leadeth to destruction." But it was not broad. In that at least she was +all wrong. It was in fact so narrow that a Condor as big as a cow might +easily bump himself when he "swooped." Besides, there were good strong +lamp-posts where a little boy could cling and scream, and almost always +somewhere in sight was a policeman so fat and heavy that even two +Condors could hardly lift him from the ground. This policeman would come +running. My mother had said I must never be scared by policemen, because +they were really good kind men. In fact, she said, it was foolish to be +scared by anything ever. She never knew of Belle's methods with me. + + * * * * * + +So at last I had decided to risk it, and now the fearful day had come. I +could barely eat my dinner. My courage was fast ebbing away. In the +dining-room the sunlight was for a time wiped out by clouds, and I grew +suddenly happy. It might rain and then I could not go. But it did not +rain nor did anything I hoped for happen to prevent my plan. Belle sat +down by the angels and was soon so deep in her Bible that it was plain I +could easily slip up the path. Sue never looked up from her sand-pile +to say, "Stop Billy! He's running away from home!" With a gulp I passed +my mother's window. She did not happen to look out. Now I had reached +the very gate. "I can't go! I can't open the gate!" But the old gate +opened with one push. "I can't go! There is no policeman!" But yes, +there he was on my side of the street slowly walking toward me. My heart +thumped, I could hardly breathe. In a moment with a frantic rush I had +reached the nearest lamp-post and was clinging breathless. I could not +scream, I shut my eyes in sickening fear and waited for the rushing of +enormous wings. + +But there came no Condor swooping. + +Another rush--another post--another and another! + +"What's the matter with you, little feller?" + +I looked up at the big safe policeman and laughed. + +"I'm playing a game," I almost shouted, and ran without touching another +post two blocks to the cobblestone space below. I ran blindly around it +several times, I bumped into a man who said, "Heigh there! Look out!" +After that I strutted proudly, then turned and ran back with all my +might up the street, and into our house and up to my room. And there on +my bed to my great surprise I found myself sobbing and sobbing. It was a +long time before I could stop. I had had my first adventure. + + * * * * * + +I made many Sunday trips after that, and on no one of them was I caught. +For delighted and proud at what I had done I kept asking Belle to talk +of the Condor, gloomily she piled on the terrors, and seeing the awed +look in my eyes (awe at my own courage in defying such a bird), she felt +so sure of my safety that often she would barely look up from her Bible +the whole afternoon. Even on workdays over her sewing she would forget. +And so I went "to destruction." + +At first I stayed but a little while and never left the cobblestone +space, only peering up into the steep little streets that led to the +fearsome homes of the "Micks." But then I made the acquaintance of Sam. +It happened through a small toy boat which I had taken down there with +the purpose of starting it off for "heathen lands." As I headed across +the railroad tracks that led to the docks, suddenly Sam and his gang +appeared from around a freight car. I stood stock-still. They were +certainly "Micks"--ragged and dirty, with holes in their shoes and soot +on their faces. Sam was smoking a cigarette. + +"Heigh, fellers," he said, "look at Willy's boat." + +I clutched my boat tighter and turned to run. But the next moment Sam +had me by the arm. + +"Look here, young feller," he growled. "You've got the wrong man to do +business with this time." + +"I don't want to do any business," I gasped. + +"Smash him, Sam--smash in his nut for him," piped the smallest Micky +cheerfully. And this Sam promptly proceeded to do. It was a wild and +painful time. But though Sam was two years older, he was barely any +larger than I, and when he and his gang had gone off with my boat, as I +stood there breathing hard, I was filled with a grim satisfaction. For +once when he tried to wrench the boat from me I had hit him with it +right on the face, and I had had a glimpse of a thick red mark across +his cheek. I tasted something new in my mouth and spit it out. It was +blood. I did this several times, slowly and impressively, till it made a +good big spot on the railroad tie at my feet. Then I walked with dignity +back across the tracks and up "the way of destruction" home. I walked +slowly, planning as I went. At the gate I climbed up on it and swung. +Then with a sudden loud cry I fell off and ran back into the garden +crying, "I fell off the gate! I fell on my face!" So my cut and swollen +lip was explained, and my trips were not discovered. + +I felt myself growing older fast. For I knew that I could both fight and +tell lies, besides defying the Condor. + +In the next years, for weeks at a time my life was centered on Sam and +his gang. How we became friends, how often we met, by just what means I +evaded my nurse, all these details are vague to me now. I am not even +sure I was never caught. But it seems to me that I was not. For as I +grew to be eight years old, Belle turned her attention more and more to +that impish little sister of mine who was always up to some mischief or +other. There was the corner grocer, too, with whom I pretended to be +staunch friends. "I'm going to see the grocer," I would say, when I +heard Sam's cautious whistle in front of the house--and so presently I +would join the gang. I followed Sam with a doglike devotion, giving up +my weekly twenty-five cents instead of saving it for Christmas, and in +return receiving from him all the world-old wisdom stored in that +bullet-shaped head of his which sat so tight on his round little +shoulders. + +And though I did not realize it then, in my tense crowded childhood, +through Sam and his companions I learned something else that was to +stand me in good stead years later on. I learned how to make friends +with "the slums." I discovered that by making friends with "Micks" and +"Dockers" and the like, you find they are no fearful goblins, giants +bursting savagely up among the flowers of your life, but people as human +as yourself, or rather, much more human, because they live so close to +the harbor, close to the deep rough tides of life. + +Into these tides I was now drawn down--and it did me some good and a +great deal of harm. For I was too little those days for the harbor. + +Sam had the most wonderful life in the world. He could go wherever he +liked and at any hour day or night. Once, he said, when a "feller" was +drowned, he had stayed out on the docks all night. His mother always let +him alone. An enormous woman with heavy eyes, I was in awe of her from +the first. The place that she kept with Sam's father was called "The +Sailor's Harbor." It stood on a corner down by the docks, a long, low +wooden building painted white, with twelve tight-shuttered, mysterious +windows along the second story, and below them a "Ladies' Entrance." In +front was a small blackboard with words in white which Sam could read. +"Ten Cent Dinners" stood at the top. Below came, "Coffee and rolls." +Next, "Ham and eggs." Then "Bacon and eggs." And then, "To-day"--with a +space underneath where Sam's fat father wrote down every morning still +more delicious eatables. You got whiffs of these things and they made +your mouth water, they made your stomach fairly turn against your +nursery supper. + +But most of our time we spent on the docks. All were roofed, and +exploring the long dock sheds and climbing down into the dark holds of +the square-rigged ships called "clippers," we found logs of curious +mottled wood, huge baskets of sugar, odorous spices, indigo, camphor, +tea, coffee, jute and endless other things. Sam knew their names and the +names of the wonder-places they came from--Manila, Calcutta, Bombay, +Ceylon. He knew besides such words as "hawser," "bulkhead" and +"ebb-tide." And Sam knew how to swear. He swore with a fascinating ease +such words as made me shiver and stare. And then he would look at me and +chuckle. + +"You think I'll go to hell for this, don't you," he asked me once. And +my face grew hot with embarrassment, for I thought that he assuredly +would. + +I asked him what were heathen lands, and he said they were countries +where heathen lived. And what were heathen? Cannibals. And what were +they? + +"Fellers that eat fellers," he said. + +"Alive?" I inquired. He turned to the gang: + +"Listen to the kid! He wants to know if they eat 'em alive!" Sam spat +disgustedly. "Naw," he said. "First they roast 'em like any meat. They +roast 'em," he added reflectively, "until their skin gets brown and +bubbles out and busts." + +One afternoon a carriage brought three travelers for one of the ships, a +man, his wife and a little girl with shining yellow pig-tails. "To be +et," Sam whispered as we stood close beside them. And then, pointing to +some of the half-naked brown men that made the crew of the ship near +by--"cannibals," he muttered. For a long time I stared at these eaters, +especially at their lean brown stomachs. + +"We're safe enough," Sam told me. "They ain't allowed to come ashore." I +found this very comforting. + +But what a frightful fate lay in store for the little girl with +pig-tails. As I watched her I felt worse and worse. Why couldn't +somebody warn her in time? At last I decided to do it myself. Procuring +a scrap of paper I retired behind a pile of crates and wrote in my +large, clumsy hand, "You look out--you are going to be et." Watching my +chance, I slipped this into her satchel and hoped that she would read it +soon. Then I promptly forgot all about her and ran off into a warehouse +where the gang had gone to slide. + +These warehouses had cavernous rooms, so dark you could not see to the +ends, and there from between the wooden columns the things from the +ships loomed out of the dark like so many ghosts. There were strange +sweet smells. And from a hole in the ceiling there was a twisting chute +of steel down which you could slide with terrific speed. We used to +slide by the hour. + +Outside were freight cars in long lines, some motionless, some suddenly +lurching forward or back, with a grinding and screeching of wheels and a +puffing and coughing from engines ahead. Sam taught me how to climb on +the cars and how to swing off while they were going. He had learned from +watching the brakemen that dangerous backward left-hand swing that lands +you stock-still in your tracks. It is a splendid feeling. Only once +Sam's left hand caught, I heard a low cry, and after I jumped I found +him standing there with a white face. His left hand hung straight down +from the wrist and blood was dripping from it. + +"Shut up, you damn fool!" he said fiercely. + +"I wasn't saying nothing," I gasped. + +"Yes, you was--you was startin' to cry! Holy Christ!" He sat down +suddenly, then rolled over and lay still. Some one ran for his mother, +and after a time he was carried away. I did not see him again for some +weeks. + +We did things that were bad for a boy of my size, and I saw things that +I shouldn't have seen--a docker crushed upon one of the docks and +brought out on a stretcher dead, a stoker as drunk as though he were +dead being wheeled on a wheelbarrow to a ship by the man called a +"crimp," who sold this drunken body for an advance on its future pay. +Sam told me in detail of these things. There came a strike, and once in +the darkness of a cold November twilight I saw some dockers rush on a +"scab," I heard the dull sickening thumps as they beat him. + +And one day Sam took me to the door of his father's saloon and pointed +out a man in there who had an admiring circle around him. + +"He's going to jump from the Bridge on a bet," Sam whispered. I saw the +man go. For what seemed to me hours I watched the Great Bridge up there +in the sky, with its crawling processions of trolleys and wagons, its +whole moving armies of little black men. Suddenly one of these tiny +specks shot out and down, I saw it fall below the roofs, I felt Sam's +hand like ice in mine. And this was not good for a boy of ten. + +But the sight that ended it all for me was not a man, but a woman. It +happened one chilly March afternoon when I fell from a dock into water +covered with grease and foam, came up spluttering and terrified, was +quickly hauled to the dock by a man and then hustled by Sam and the gang +to his home, to have my clothes dried and so not get caught by my +mother. Scolded by Sam's mother and given something fiery hot to drink, +stripped naked and wrapped in an old flannel nightgown and told to sit +by the stove in the kitchen--I was then left alone with Sam. And then +Sam with a curious light in his eyes took me to a door which he opened +just a crack. Through the crack he showed me a small back room full of +round iron tables. And at one of these a man, stoker or sailor I don't +know which, his face flushed red under dirt and hair, held in his lap a +big fat girl half dressed, giggling and queer, quite drunk. And then +while Sam whispered on and on about the shuttered rooms upstairs, I felt +a rush of such sickening fear and loathing that I wanted to scream--but +I turned too faint. + +I remember awakening on the floor, Sam's mother furiously slapping Sam, +then dressing me quickly, gripping me tight by both my arms and saying, + +"You tell a word of this to your pa and we'll come up and kill you!" + +That night at home I did not sleep. I lay in my bed and shivered and +burned. My first long exciting adventure was over. Ended were all the +thrills, the wild fun. It was a spree I had had with the harbor, from +the time I was seven until I was ten. It had taken me at seven, a plump +sturdy little boy, and at ten it had left me wiry, thin, with quick, +nervous movements and often dark shadows under my eyes. And it left a +deep scar on my early life. For over all the adventures and over my +whole childhood loomed this last thing I had seen, hideous, disgusting. +For years after that, when I saw or even thought of the harbor, I felt +the taste of foul, greasy water in my mouth and in my soul. + +So ended the first lesson. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +The next morning as I started for school, suddenly in the hallway I +thought of what my mother had told me--always when I was frightened to +shut my eyes and speak to Jesus and he would be sure to make everything +right. I had not spoken to Jesus of late except to say "Holy Christ!" +like Sam. But now, so sickened by Sam and his docks, my head throbbing +from the sleepless night, on the impulse I kneeled quickly with my face +on a chair right there in the hall. But I found I was too ashamed to +begin. + +"If he would only ask me," I thought. Why didn't he ask me, "What's the +matter, little son?" or say, "Now, you must tell me and then you'll feel +better"--as my mother always did. But Jesus did not help me out. I could +not even feel him near me. "I will never tell anyone," I thought. And I +felt myself horribly alone. + +Help came from a quite different source. + +"There he is! Look!" + +I heard Sue's eager whisper. Jumping quickly to my feet, I saw in the +library doorway Sue's dark little figure and her mocking, dancing eyes +as she pointed me out to our father, her chum, whose face wore a smile +of amusement. In a moment I had rushed out of doors and was running +angrily to school, furious at myself for praying, furious at Sue for +spying and at my father for that smile. My terror was forgotten. No more +telling Jesus things! I retreated deep inside of myself and worked out +of my troubles as best I could. + +From that day the harbor became for me a big grim place to be let +alone--like my father. A place immeasurably stronger than I--like my +father--and like him harsh and indifferent, not caring whether when I +fell into it I was pulled up to safety or drawn far down into grease and +slime. It made no difference. I was nothing to it one way or the other. +And I was nothing to my father. + +Of course this was by no means true. As I look back now I know that +often he must have tried to be kind, that in the jar and worry of his +own absorbing troubled life he must have often turned to me and tried to +make himself my friend. But children pass hard judgments. And if my +father was friendly at times it did no good. For he was a man--big and +strong--and I was a small boy craving his love. + +Why couldn't he really love me? Why couldn't he ask me how I felt or +pull my ear and say "Hello, Puss?" He was always saying these things to +Sue, and caring about her very hard and trying to understand her, +although she was nothing but a girl, two years younger and smaller than +I and far less interesting. And yet with her he was kind and tender, +curious and smiling, he watched her with wholly different eyes. My +father was a short, powerful man, and though he was nearly fifty years +old his hair was black and thick and coarse. At night he would rub his +unshaven cheek on Sue's small cheek and tickle her. She would chuckle +and wriggle as though it were fun. I used to watch this hungrily, and +once I awkwardly drew close and offered my cheek to be tickled. My +father at once grew as awkward as I, and he gave me a rub so rough it +stung. And this wasn't fair--I had hoped for a cuddle. Besides, he was +always praising Sue when I knew she didn't deserve it. He called her +brave. Once when he took us duck shooting together a squall came up and +he rowed hard, and Sue sat with her eyes on his, smiling and quite +unafraid. At home that night I heard him tell my mother how wonderfully +brave she had been, and of how I, on the other hand, had gripped the +boat and turned white with fear, while little Sue just sat and smiled. + +"We'll see how brave she is," I thought, and the next day I hit her in +Sam's best style, fairly "knocked her nut off," in fact, with one quick +blow. "There," I said to myself while she screamed. "I guess that shows +how brave you are. I didn't scream when Sam hit me." + +He said she was quicker than I at her lessons. And this rankled the +deeper because it was true. But I would never admit it. + +"Of course she's quick, when he's always helping her. Why doesn't he +ever come and help me?" I would burst into tears of vexation. My father +was unfair! + +More than that, it was he and his dock and his warehouse, in the years +that followed my thrills with Sam, that stripped all these thrills away. +A great ship with her spreading, booming white sails might move up the +river from heathen lands as wonderful and strange as you please. But the +moment she reached my father's dock she became a dirty, spotted thing, +just a common every-day part of his business. + +He himself was nothing but business. His business was with ships and the +sea, and yet he had never once in his life taken a long sea voyage. "Why +doesn't he? Why does he like only tiresome things?" I argued secretly to +myself. "Why does he always come ashore?" He always did. In my memories +of ships sailing I see him always there on deck talking to the captain, +scowling, wrinkling his eyes over the smoke of his cigar, but always +coming down the gang-plank at the end, unconcernedly turning his back on +all the excitement and going back to his warehouse. + +He could get excited about ships, but only in the queerest way that had +something to do with his business. Late one night from my bed I heard +his voice downstairs, cutting and snarling through other voices. I got +out of bed and stole downstairs and along the half-lit hall to the +library door, and there from behind the curtain I watched what was going +on inside. The library was full of men, grave, courteous-looking +gentlemen, some of them angry, some merely amused. My father was leaning +over his table talking of ships, of mysterious things that he said must +be done with battleships and tariffs. + +"And mark me, gentlemen," he cried. "If we don't do these things in time +American sails will be swept from the seas!" + +Listening, I got a picture of an immense broom reaching out of the +clouds and sweeping American ships off the ocean. But I could make +nothing of this at the time. I only watched his face and eyes and his +fist that came down with a crash on the table. And I was afraid of my +father. + +When ships lay at his dock the captains often came up to dinner. But +even these marvelous creatures lost in my father's presence all that Sam +had given them in my eyes. They did not like my mother, they ate in +uneasy silence, or spoke gruffly of their dull affairs. Once or twice I +heard talk of mutinies, of sailors shot down or put in irons, but all in +a matter-of-fact sort of way. Mere grunts came from my father. Steadily +drearier grew the ocean, flatter all the heathen lands. + +One stout, red-faced captain, jovial even in spite of my mother, would +annoy me frightfully by joking about my going to sea. He was always +asking me when I meant to run away and be "a bloody pirate." He took it +for granted I liked the sea, was thrilled by the sea, when the truth of +it was that I hated the sea! It was business now, only business! + +My father's warehouse, too, lost its mystery as I grew older. For +exploring into its darkness I found that of course it did have walls +like any common building. The things in it, too, lost their wonder. It +was as though my father had packed all the rich and romantic Far East +into common barrels and crates and then nailed down the covers. And he +himself became for me as common as his warehouse. For in his case, too, +I could see the walls. + +"I know you now," I thought to myself. He could sit through supper +night after night and not utter a word in his gloom. But the mystery in +him was gone. Business, nothing but business. A man and a place to be +let alone. + + * * * * * + +But it was my mother more than anyone else who drew me away from the +harbor. All through those early years she was the one who never changed, +the strong sure friend I could always come back to. My mother was as +safe as our house. + +She was a small, slender woman grown bodily stronger year by year by the +sheer force of her spirit. I remember her smoothly parted hair, brown +but showing gray at forty, the strong, lined face and the kindly eyes +which I saw so often lighted by that loving smile of hers for me. If my +father didn't care for me, I was always sure she did. I could feel her +always watching, trying to understand what I was thinking and feeling. +As when I was very small she toned down the stories she read, so she did +in everything else for me, even in her religion. Though she was a strong +church woman, I heard little from her of the terrors of hell. But I +heard much of heaven and more still of a heaven on earth. "Thy will be +done on earth as it is in heaven." I can never forget how she spoke +those words as I knelt and repeated them after her--not so much in the +tone of a prayer to a higher being as in one of quiet resolve to +herself. To do her share, through church and hospital and charity work +and the bringing up of her children, her share in the establishment of a +heaven upon the earth, this was her religion. + +And this heaven on earth of my mother's was made up of all that was +"fine" in humanity past and present. "Fine, fine!" she would say of some +kind deed, of some new plan for bettering life, or of some book she was +reading, some music she had heard, or of a photograph of some great +painting over in Europe. All her life she had wanted to go abroad. + +My mother was one of those first American women who went to college, and +one of that army sent out from college as school teachers all over the +land. She had taught school in frontier hamlets far out West, homesick +she had looked back on the old college town in New England, and those +ten years of her life out West had been bare and hard, an exile. At last +she had secured a position in an expensive girls' school in New York, +and from there a few years later she had married my father. I think they +had been happy at first, I think that his work with the ships had seemed +to her a gateway leading out to Europe, to all the very "finest" things. +But later, as he set his whole mind upon his warehouse worries, upon his +fight for Yankee ships, a navy, subsidies, tariffs, and shut out all +thought of travel, culture, friends, all but the bare, ugly business of +life--my mother had rebelled against this, had come to hate his harbor, +and had determinedly set herself to help me get what she had missed. + +I don't mean that she babied me. She was too good a teacher for that. I +mean she steered me through hard work away from what she saw in the +harbor up toward what she felt was fine. She began when I was very +little giving me daily lessons at home in the brief time she had to +spare from her house and charity work. She made me study and she studied +me. My mother, sooner or later, seemed to find out all I did or felt. + +Often I would hold stubbornly back. While I was going with Sam to the +docks I never once gave her a hint of my rovings. It was not until two +years after that drunken woman disaster that I suddenly told my mother +about it. I remember then she did not chide. Instead she caught the +chance to draw out of me all I had learned from the harbor. I talked to +her long that night, but she said little in reply. I can vividly +remember, though, how she came to me a few days later and placed a "book +for young men" in my hands. + +"You are only twelve," she said. "It's a pity. But after what you have +seen, my son, it is better that you know." + +She did this twenty years ago. It was far in advance of what most +parents did then or are doing even now for their children. And it threw +a flood of light into the darkest place in my mind, swept away endless +forebodings, secret broodings over what until then had seemed to me the +ugliest, the dirtiest, the most frightening thing I had found in life. + +"When you meet anything ugly or bad," she told me, "I don't want you to +turn away at once, I want you to face it and see what it is. Understand +it and then leave it, and then it won't follow you in the dark." + +"Keep clean," she said. And understanding me as she did, I think she +added to herself, "And I must keep you quiet." She once told me she +hoped that when I grew up I might become a professor in one of those +college towns she loved, where I might work all my life in peace. + +Although she never said anything to me against the harbor, I knew that +my mother put all the ugliest things in life down there. And the things +that were fine were all up here. + +"I always like the front door of a house," she used to say, "to be wide +and low with only a step or two leading up. I like it to look +hospitable, as though always waiting for friends to come in." + +Our front door was like that, and the neighborhood it waited for was one +of the quietest, the cleanest and the finest, according to her view, of +any in the country. The narrow little street had wide, leisurely +sidewalks and old-fashioned houses on either side, a few of red brick, +but more of brown stone with spotless white-sashed windows which were +tall and narrow and rounded at the top. There were no trees, but there +were many smooth, orderly vines. Almost all the houses had wide, +inviting doorways like ours, but the people they invited in were only +those who lived quietly here, shutting out New York and all the toots +and rumblings of the ships and warehouses and docks below, of which they +themselves were the owners. + +These people in their leisurely way talked of literature and music, of +sculpture and painting and travel abroad, as their fathers and even +grandfathers had done--in times when the rest of the country, like one +colossal harbor, changing, heaving, seething, had had time for only the +crudest things, for railroads, mining camps, belching mills, vast herds +of cattle and droves of sheep, for the frontier towns my mother had +loathed, for a Civil War, for a Tweed Ring, for the Knights of Labor, a +Haymarket riot, for the astounding growth of cities, slums, corporations +and trusts, in this deep turbulent onward rush, this peopling of a +continent. + +And because my father, crude and self-made and come out of the West, was +of this present country, he was an intruder politely avoided by these +people of the past. The men would come sometimes at night, but they came +only on business. They went straight through to the library, whence I +could hear my father's voice, loud, impatient, angry, talking of what +must be done soon, or Germany and England would drive the American flag +from the ocean and make us beggars on the seas, humbly asking the ships +of our rivals to give us a share in the trade of the world. To such +disturbing meetings these grave and courteous gentlemen came less and +less as the years went by. + +And so that hospitable front door of ours waited long for neighbors. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +But if my father was an intruder, a disturber of the peace of these +contented gentlemen, my mother was more and more liked by their wives. +As time wore on they came to our house in the afternoons, upon hospital +and church affairs. And first in the church and then in a private school +near by I grew to be friends with their children. + +Across the street from us at the corner there stood a huge, square +brownstone house with a garden and a wide yard around it. Two boys and a +little girl lived here, and about them our small circle centered. Here +we played hockey in winter, part of the yard being flooded for our use; +and in Spring and Autumn, ball, tag, I spy, prisoner's base and other +games. They were all well enough as far as they went, but all were so +very young and tame compared to my former adventures with Sam. +Adventures, that was the difference. These were only games. + +I felt poor beside these boys, in this ample yard by their grandfather's +house. I often saw his great carriage roll out of the stable behind the +yard. "Coach," they called it. It had rich silver trimmings and a red +thing called a "crest," and a footman and coachman in top boots. Inside +the house was a butler who was still more imposing, and a lofty room +with spacious windows called the picture gallery. But by far the most +awesome of all was the white-headed grandfather of these boys, who had +been to Europe twenty-eight times and could read and speak "every +language on earth," as I was told in whispers while we peeped in through +his library door. There he sat with all his books, a man so rich he +never even went to his office, a man who had owned not only warehouses +but hundreds of ships and had sent them to every land in the world! +While, as for me, my grandfather was not even alive. I felt poor and +small, and I did not like it. + +Besides, these unadventurous boys all put me down as "a queer kid." I +was middling good at most of their games and would get sudden spurts +when I would become almost a leader. But at other times, often right in +the middle of a game, I would suddenly forget where I was and would +think of Sam, of the cannibals that I had seen, of the man who had +jumped from the Great Bridge, or of that drunken woman. They would catch +me at it and call me queer. And I would grow hot and feel ashamed. + +On the other hand, poor and queer as I felt at times, at others I would +swell with my wisdom and importance. For what did they know, these +respectable boys, about the docks and the gangs of "Micks" deep down +there below us all as we played about in our nice little gardens. When +they called me queer, sometimes I would retort with dark hints, all +games would stop, they would gather close, and then I would tell these +intense eager boys the things I had learned from the harbor. And I had +the more pleasure in the telling from the feeling of relief that now I +was safe away from it all. + +"That's the real thing, that is," I would declare impressively. But how +good it felt to me to be free of such reality. + + * * * * * + +At such times we made "the Chips" stay over on their side of the yard. +"The Chips" were three small admiring girls. One was my young sister +Sue, who was then about nine years old, long-legged, skinny and quick as +a flash, her black hair always flying. The second, a plump freckled +girl, was the younger sister of the boys who lived here. And the third +was a quiet little thing who lived around the corner. We called them +"Chips" to annoy them. We got the term from the stout coachman in the +barn who used it with a fine sweeping contempt that included all his +lady friends. We ourselves had the most profound contempt for these +girls who kept poking into our games. At times we would stop everything +and take the utmost pains to explain to them that they were nothing +whatever but girls. And this would make Sue furious. She would screw up +her snapping black eyes and viciously stick out her tongue and stamp her +foot and say "darn!" to show she could swear like a regular kid. And +still they hung around us. + +But as time wore on we grew more indulgent, we included them more and +more. And this was largely due to me. For I took a vague curious +interest in the one who lived around the corner. + +Her name was Eleanore Dillon and her age was eight, and she had +attractions that slowly grew. To begin with, as I became gradually +aware, she was much the prettiest of the three. She had light curly hair +tied up in red ribbons, always _fresh_ red ribbons. Everything about her +was always fresh and clean. She had the most serious blue eyes, which at +times would grow intent on what a tall chap of twelve like myself +condescended to tell her, and at other times wondrously confiding. + +Eleanore first attracted me by making me a hero. It was a warm May +afternoon and she was sitting on the grass with her doll and her two +companions. Sue had stolen some matches and was using them as +Jackstraws. Suddenly I heard a scream, then I saw Sue racing like mad +toward the garden hose, and I saw that the white skirt of Eleanore's +dress had caught fire. As yet there was only a little flame. She was +sitting still motionless on the grass, hugging her doll, with scared +round eyes. I got to her first and with my cap I beat out the flame. I +was suddenly panting, my hands were cold. But a few moments later, when +Sue and two of the boys came tugging the hose, it as suddenly flashed +upon me that I had done a heroic thing. + +"Get out!" I shouted scornfully, as they started to play the hose on +her. "Can't you see the whole fire is out?" + +And then while the plump freckled girl came screeching out of the +kitchen with half the servants behind her, and presently these servants +all called me "a little heero"--the one whom I had rescued looked up at +me very gratefully and said, + +"Thank you, Boy, for not letting them squirt water on my dolly's clean +dress." + +"Aw, what do I care for a doll?" I retorted ungraciously. + +But I liked her from that day. She was not at all like Sue. She was +quiet and knew her place. She knew that she was only a girl, how +thoroughly well she knew it. And yet, although so feminine, so +deliberate and sedate, she had "a pile of ginger" deep down inside of +her. In our games, whenever allowed to play, with a dogged resolution +she would come pegging along in the rear, she was a sticker, she never +gave up. In winter when they flooded the yard she was the poorest skater +of all, but patiently plodding along on the ice, each time she fell down +she would pick herself up with such determination that at last with a +jerk at her arm I said, + +"Here, Chip, come on and I'll teach you." + +She came on. I can still feel her soft determined clutch on my elbow. +When I said, "That's enough," she said, "Thank you, Boy," and went +quietly on alone. + +After that I taught her many times. One afternoon when there was a thaw, +I said, + +"Gee, but this ice is rotten." And then Eleanore asked me placidly, + +"Do you like my pretty new shoes?" + +"What's that got to do with it?" I demanded indignantly. + +"Nothing, I guess," she said meekly. + +This girl was full of mysteries. One great point in her favor was that +she had a mother "at death's door." This appealed to me tremendously. +It was so unusual. + +"How's your mother?" I would ask her often, just for the pleasure of +hearing her answer softly, + +"She's at death's door, thank you." + +She soon learned to skate much better, and I remember quite vividly +still the January afternoon when as the darkness deepened a silvery moon +appeared overhead. I had not skated with her for a week, but now we'd +been skating for nearly an hour. One by one the others went home, and +the plump girl turned at the kitchen door to call back to Eleanore +tauntingly, + +"You'll catch it, going home so late!" + +"Never mind," said a gentle voice at my side, and round and round we +skated. The moon grew steadily brighter. Still that soft steady clutch +on my arm. + +"Now you'd better go home," I said gruffly at last. + +"What time is it?" she asked me. I looked at my watch. + +"Gee! It's nearly seven o'clock!" + +"What a pretty watch that is," she said in a pleased, quiet voice, but I +was not to be diverted. + +"Go on home, I tell you. Sit down and I'll take off your skates." She +sighed regretfully but obeyed. + +"What'll they do to you?" I asked her when we stopped in front of her +house. + +"They'll try to punish me," she answered. I looked down at her +anxiously. + +"Hard?" I inquired. She smiled at me. + +"What time is it now?" she asked. + +"Ten minutes after seven." + +"Then they won't punish me," she said. "My father always comes home at +seven." And she went placidly into the house. + +"A mighty smart Chip," I said to myself. + +I had told her a little about the docks, and one day she asked me to +take her there. I promptly refused, but patiently from time to time she +repeated her request. She wanted me to take her "just for a little +walk" down there, or she would run if I preferred. She wanted to come +out after supper into her garden, which was only the third from ours, +and then she would sing and I would whistle. Then I would come around by +the street and she would meet me at her front gate. I don't know how she +ever persuaded me, but she did, and the plan worked splendidly. At the +gate without a word I took her hand and ran down the street. Soon we +were flying. Down to the open space we came, and around across the +railroad tracks. In and out among grimy freight cars we sped. I would +not stop. + +"Christ!" I thought in terror. "Suppose Sam and the gang come around +this way!" I had not seen them now for years. What might not they do to +her? + +But she made me stop by my father's dock. She was gasping and her face +was red, but with her hand like a little vise on mine she stood there +staring at the ship. + +"Where are the heathen?" she asked at last, in a queer choking voice. + +"There." I pointed to a small brown man with a white skull-cap on his +head. "There's one. See him? Now come home!" + +"Wait a minute, please," she begged very softly. A moment longer she +stared at him. "All right, now we'll go," she said. + +When I got her safe inside my gate I was in a cold sweat. This +adventure, to my surprise, had been one of the most thrilling of all. +And who'd have thought _her_ an adventurer? + +Her mother died that summer while we were up in the mountains, and when +we came back we found the house empty. Her father had taken her out +West. + +I remember being distinctly relieved when I heard that she had gone +away. For now there was something uncanny about her. It was one thing to +have a mother "at death's door." That had been quite exciting. But to +have one dead! There was something too awful about it. I would not have +known what to say to the girl. And, besides, the thought suddenly +entered my mind--suppose my own mother were to die! + + * * * * * + +We had been splendid chums, my mother and I, that long delightful summer +up in the White Mountains. The mountains, we had decided together, were +our favorite place to live in. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the +hills," was the part of the Bible which she liked best. She loved these +hills for their quiet, I loved them for the exciting adventures I had +with Sue and "Stouty," the son of the farmer with whom we stayed. But +these adventures were of a kind that my mother warmly approved of for +me. They were not like those on the harbor. + +An adventure to climb with Stouty and Sue up through the resinous +branches of an enormous pine on the mountainside to the hawk's nest in +the bare top branches, snatch the eggs and smash them, while Stouty with +a big thick stick would beat off the mother hawk. An adventure to +clamber half the day up a bouldery path through firs and birches, +looking into black caves, peeping over steep cliffs, and at last +reaching the wind-swept summit to look off through miles of emptiness. +An adventure, coming home from a picnic as evening was falling, to sit +snug in that creaking capacious wagon which belonged to Stouty's father, +and to watch the lights and shadows that darted in and out of the pines +as the lantern swung beneath our wheels. + +But even up here in the mountains the harbor reached with its cold +embrace. For at night it was an adventure hurriedly to undress and bury +myself in the covers in time to hear the first low rumble of "the night +freight" that went by some five miles distant. It made me think of the +trains on the docks, whose voices I had heard at night, and of the +things I had done with Sam. I would hear the mountain engine come +panting impatiently up the grade. As it reached the top I would rise +from my bed and soar off into space, in one swift rushing flight through +the darkness I would be there in the nick of time, I would swing on to a +freight car in the way Sam had shown me, climb to the top and crouching +there I would watch the dark roadway open ahead through the silent +forest. Lower would sink the voice of the engine until it became a faint +confused mutter. And the rest was dreamland. + +This was one of those secret games I never told my mother about--until, +to my own surprise, in one of those long talks at night when she seemed +drawing me to her right out through my eyes, I blurted this out. My +mother wanted to know all about it. Did my hands get cold? Yes, colder +and colder, as listening here in bed I heard the first muttering of the +train and knew that in a few moments more I would take that five-mile +flight, right through the window and over the trees to the distant +track, to be there just ahead of the on-puffing engine. My voice +quivered excitedly as I spoke. + +"I see--I see," she said soothingly. "And when you are riding on top of +a car--aren't you ever frightened?" + +"No--because all the time I know that I am back there at home in my bed. +I can see myself back there behind me." + +"Do you fall asleep in bed--or are you still on the top of the car the +last thing you can remember?" + +"Most always on the top of the car." + +"And when you sleep--do you always dream?" + +"Yes--that's the finest part of it." + +"Do you ever dream of Sam?" + +"Yes." + +"And all those things you did on the harbor?" + +"Yes--all." + +For some moments she sat by my bedside quietly stroking one of my hands. + +"Billy." + +"Yes, mother." I was growing impatient, I wished she would go, for now +it was nearly time for the train. + +"Have you ever played other games like that? I mean where you leave +yourself and look back--and see your own body behind you." + +"Yes--in bed in Brooklyn when I was quite little." + +"Where did you go from your bed?" + +"I went to the end of the garden. I heard drunken sailors and dockers +shouting in that vile saloon below." This was not true. What I had +really done was to lie in bed and whisper, "_Suppose_ I were out +there"--which is very different. I was too young then to have learned +the real trick. But now I was so proud of it that I honestly thought I +had always known how. "It was a game I had with the harbor," I said. + +"With the harbor." I felt her hand slowly tighten on mine. Then all at +once as we heard the first low grumble of the freight train coming, my +mother's hold grew tighter and tighter. "Open your eyes." I opened them +quickly, for her voice was sharp and stern. She held me until the sound +was gone. + +"Do you hear it any longer?" she asked quietly at last. + +"No," I whispered. My breath still came fast. + +"Neither do I." There was another silence. "Let's go and sit by the +window," she said. + +And there she talked to me of the stars. How great they were and how +very quiet. She said that the greatest men in the world were almost +always quiet like that. They never let their hands get cold. + +Often after that in the evenings just before I went to bed we had these +talks about the stars. And not only in the mountains. On sparkling +frosty winter nights we watched them over the harbor. And the things she +said about them were so utterly absorbing that I would never think to +look down, would barely hear the toots and the puffings and grinding of +wheels from that infernal region below. For always when she spoke of +the stars my mother spoke of great men too, the men who had done the +"finest" things--a few in the clash and jar of life like Washington and +Lincoln, but most of them more quietly, by preaching, writing, painting, +composing, sermons, books, pictures and music so "fine" that all the +best people on earth had known about them and loved them. + +As I grew older she read to me more and more about these men. And +sometimes I would feel deeply content as though I had found what I +wanted. But more often I would feel myself swell up big inside of me, +restless, worrying, groping for something. I didn't know what I wanted +then, but I do know now as I look back, and I think there are thousands +of children like me, the kind who are called "queer kids" by their +playmates, who are all groping for much the same thing. + +"Where is the Golden Age to-day?" they are asking. "We hear of all this +from our mothers. We hear of brave knights and warriors, of God and +Christ as they walked around on earth like regular people, of saints and +preachers, writers and painters. But where are the great men living now? +Not in our house nor on our street, nor in school nor in our church on +the corner. There is nothing there that thrills us. Why isn't there? +What is the matter? We are no longer babies, we are becoming big boys +and girls. What will we do when we are grown up? Has everything fine +already been done? Is there no chance for us to be great and to do +them?" + +It was to questionings like these that my mother had led me up from the +harbor. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +And to such questionings I believe that for many children of my kind +there is often some familiar place--a schoolroom or a commonplace +street, or a dreary farm in winter, a grimy row of factories or the ugly +mouth of a mine--that mutely answers, + +"No. There are no more great men for you, nor any fine things left to be +done. There is nothing else left in the world but me. And you'd better +stop trying to find it." + +In my case this message came from the harbor, that one part of the +modern world which looked up at me steadily day after day. Vaguely +struggle as I would to build up fine things in the present from all that +my mother brought out of the past, the harbor would not let me. For what +I clothed it soon stripped naked, what I built it soon tore down. + +"When you were little," it seemed to say, "for you I was filled with +thrilling idols--cannibals and condors, Sam, strange wonder-ships and +sailors adventuring to heathen lands. But then I dragged these idols +down and made you see me as I am. And as I showed myself to you, so I'll +show up all other wonderful places or men that your mother would have +you believe in." + +It did this, as I remember it, in the easiest most trivial ways, like +some huge beast that flicks off a fly and then lumbers unconcernedly on. + +My mother by years of patient work had built up my religion, filling it +with the grand figures of God and Christ and his followers down to the +present time, ending with Henry Ward Beecher. When this man died I felt +awe at her silent grief. All at once the idea popped into my head that I +too might become a great preacher. And still greater, I soon learned, I +might become a preacher who went far off to heathen lands, braving +cannibals and death and giving to thousands of heathen eternal happiness +and life. Our church was sending out such a man. I heard him described +as a hero of God, and I thought of pictures I had seen of saints and +martyrs with soft haloes around their heads. + +But this hero of God came down to the harbor. He was to sail for China +from my father's dock. He wore, I remember, a brown derby hat and a +little top coat. He was thin, with stooping shoulders, he was flustered +in the excitement of leaving, nervously laughing as he shook hands with +admiring women and talking fast in his high jerky voice. Two big dockers +trundled his trunks. I saw them grin at the little man and spit tobacco +juice his way. My father came by, shot one contemptuous glance, and then +went on board to his business. I looked back at the hero. Off fell the +halo from his head. + +"No," I said gloomily to myself, "I never want to be like you." And +drearily I looked around. What heaps and heaps of business here. What an +immense gray harbor. I found no more thrills in church after that. + +And as with religion, so with love. In reading of men of the Golden Age +I came upon stories of high romance that made me strangely happy. But I +saw no love of this kind in our house. I saw my mother and father living +sharply separate lives, and I saw few kisses between them. I saw my +father absorbed in his business, with little time for my mother. And I +blamed this on the harbor. Long ago the same grim place had taught me +something else about this many-sided passion between men and women, and +one day it rose suddenly up in my mind: + +I must have been about fifteen when my little friend Eleanore Dillon +came back. Soon she and Sue were intimate chums, they went to school +together. My mother invited her up to the mountains, and there I was +with her a good deal. She was now nearly twelve years old, and the life +in the West with her father had left her sturdy as you please. And yet +somehow she still seemed to me the same feminine little creature, and as +she told me stories of the life out West, where her father, who was an +engineer, had built bridges, planned out harbors and new cities, I would +wonder vaguely about her. What a fresh, clean little person to be +talking of such places. + +She was talking to me in this way one drowsy August afternoon. We had +been fishing down on the river, and now on our way home up the long hot +slope of the meadow we had stopped to cool ourselves in the shadow of a +haystack. It was fragrant there. Presently, from the top of the stack +close over our heads, a bird poured forth a ravishing song. And Eleanore +with a deep "Oh-h" of delight threw both her hands behind her head, sank +back in the hay and lay there close beside me. Her eyes were shut and +she was smiling to herself. Then as the song of the bird bubbled on, I +felt suddenly a little shock, a new disturbing feeling. Breathlessly I +watched her face. The song stopped and Eleanore opened her eyes, met +mine, and closed them quickly. I saw a slight tightening of her +features. I grew anxious at once and awkward. I wanted to get away. + +But as I made a first uneasy movement, a bit of bright color caught my +eye. It was one of her red garters which had slipped down from beneath +her skirt. And all at once out of my memory rose a picture of years ago, +a picture from the harbor, of that fat drunken girl I had seen. She too +had worn red garters--in fact, little else! With disgusting vividness up +she came! And I jumped trembling to my feet. + +"I'm going home," I said roughly, and left my small companion. + +I kept away from her after that. And even the following winter, when +she came over often to our house to spend the night with Sue, I did my +best to avoid her. I avoided all Sue's friends. I did not keep girls +quite out of my thoughts, I had spells now and then when I would read +about them in novels, papers and magazines, anything I could lay hands +on. I would read hungrily, at times almost wistfully. But all the +stories that I read, however romantic, could never quite overbalance for +me that giggling woman I had seen. + +"This is what love can be these days, foul as two pigs in a sty," said +the harbor. + +The same thing happened again with war and the great idea of giving +one's life for one's country. + +By countless eager questionings I had forced my mother to include among +our heroes men like Napoleon, Nelson and Grant, and after I gave up +hopes of the church these men for a time became greatest of all. You +needed no mother to help you here. It was the easiest thing in the world +to picture yourself leading charges or standing high up on a hill like +Grant, quietly smoking a black cigar and sending your orderlies on the +mad gallop out to all corners of the field. My hill grew very real to +me. It had three wind-swept trees on top and I stood just in front of +them. + +When the war with Spain broke out I was still in my 'teens, still rather +thin and by no means tall, but I made up my mind to try to enlist. Even +now I can shut my eyes and see again that long night on the docks when I +watched two regiments embark on ships which were to sail at dawn. With +the uniforms, the crash of bands, the flags, the cheers, the women +laughing and crying, the harbor seemed all on my side that night. + +"This is certainly what I want!" I thought. + +But my father forbade my going. He was not only stern, he was savage. +For once he came out of himself and talked. And his talk was not only +against this war but against all wars. The Civil War was the worst of +all. This was the more a surprise to me because I knew that he himself +had been with the Boys of Sixty One, I had often boasted about it. But +now I learned he had not fought at all, he had been a mere commissary +clerk moving rations and blankets on freight trains! + +"The business side of war," he said. "And when you've seen that side of +it you know how rotten a big war is! Men in the North made millions by +sending such rotten meat to the front that we had to live on the people +down South, we had to go into their farms and plantations and plunder +defenseless women and children of all they had to eat! That's war! And +war is filthy stinking camps where men die of fever and scurvy like +flies--and war is field hospitals so rotten in their management that you +see the wounded in long lines--packed together like bloody +sardines--bleeding to death for the lack of care! When they're dead you +dig big trenches and you pile 'em in like dogs! In time of war remember +peace--and then you'll be ashamed you're there!" + +For a moment I was struck dumb with surprise. What was this strange fire +deep down within my father's soul that could give out such a flash? +Confusedly I wondered. A sudden idea crossed my mind. + +"But if that's how you feel," I retorted, "why are you always talking +about the battleships we need? You want a big navy----" + +"Yes," he snapped, "to keep this country _out_ of war! If you live long +enough you'll see what I mean--remember then what I'm telling you! This +country needs a navy so big she can trade wherever she likes and make +other nations leave her alone! But she doesn't want war! Sixty One was +enough! Some day when you get a man's eyes in your head you'll see what +that did to this harbor!" + +I had it now, the cause of all his curious wrath! War had hurt his +harbor! How or why I did not care. Could this harbor of his stand +nothing heroic? Patriotism, religion, love--must they all be shoved +aside to make way for his dull business? + + * * * * * + +About a year later I was torn for months between two careers. Should I +become a great musician or a famous writer? The idea of writing came to +me first, I got it from "Pendennis," and for a time it took hold so hard +I thought I was nicely settled for life. But then my mother read aloud +"The Lives of Great Musicians," and within a few weeks the piano lessons +which for years I had thought so dull became an absorbing passion. My +mother bought me a photograph of one of the Beethoven portraits, and +around it over my desk I tacked up pictures of famous pianists that I +cut from magazines. I went to concerts in New York. Better still, my +teacher secured me admittance to some orchestra rehearsals, where like a +real professional, all mere amateurs shut out, I could sit in the dark +and listen, and shut my eyes and hold my head between my hands. I was +composing! After a month or two of this feverish life I remember the +pride with which I wrote "Opus 38" over my last composition. My rapidity +was astounding! + +But one day my teacher, a kind tactful German, told me that Beethoven, +when he was composing, had not always shut himself up in a room and +scowled with both hands to his head, as in the portrait of him I had, +but had rather gone out into the world. + +"The Master found his music," he said, "by listening to the life close +around him." + +"He did?" I became uneasy at once, for again I felt myself being pushed +toward that eternal harbor. + +"If I were you," my relentless monitor went on, "and desired to become +in music the great voice of my country"--I looked at him quickly but saw +no smile--"I should watch the great ships down there below, I should +listen to them with an artist's ears. They are here from all over the +world, these ships, they are manned by men of all nations. I should +listen to the songs of these men. I have heard," he added reflectively, +"that some of their songs are centuries old. Beethoven gathered only the +folk songs of his country. But you in your city of all nations might +gather the folk songs of all the seas." + +I turned quickly. I had been walking the room. + +"I have heard the sailors sing," I said, "ever since I was a little kid +out there in the garden." I scowled in the effort to search my soul, my +artist's soul. "Yes," I added triumphantly, "and sometimes it brought a +lump in my throat!" + +"Ah! Now you are a musician!" + +"I will see what I can do," I said. + +So again I tackled the harbor. By day it was quite impossible, all toots +and blares, the most frightful discords--but at night its vulgar +loudness was toned down sufficiently so that a fellow with artist's ears +could really stand listening to its life, especially if I did not go too +close but listened from my window. Here with uglier sounds subdued I +could catch low voices, snatches of song and now and then a chorus. "The +folk songs of the Seven Seas!" How that phrase took hold of me! + +I went for information to an old dock watchman who had been a sailor. + +"Songs? Why sure!" he answered. "It must be the chanties ye mean." + +"Chanties?" + +"That's it. I've been told the word's French." + +"Oh! Chanter!" + +"No--chanty. An' the man that sings the verses, he's called the +chantyman. He sings while the crew heaves on the ropes an' they all come +in on the chorus. If he's a real good chantyman he makes up new verses +every time, a kind of a yarn he spins while he sings." + +Soon after this, toward the end of a warm, windy April night, I awoke +and heard them singing. I jumped up and went to my window. From the dock +next to my father's, over the line of warehouse roofs, I could see the +immense white sails already slowly rising into the starlit night. +Quickly I threw on some clothes and hurried down to the docks. The +waterfront was empty, swept clean of all that I disliked. Only overhead +a few billowy clouds, the soft rush of the wind, a slight flush in the +east, it was almost dawn. Here and there gleamed a light, red, green or +yellow, with a phantom tug or barge around it, moving over the black of +the water. Not silence but something richer was here--the confused +mysterious murmuring, the creaking and the breathing of the sleeping +port. And out of this those voices singing. + +I drew nearer slowly. Hungrily I tried to take in the details of color +and sound. And I felt suddenly such a deep delight as I had never +dreamed of. To look around and listen and gather it into me and +remember. This was great, no doubt about it--it fitted into all that was +fine! + +"This is really what I want to do--I'd like to learn to do it well--I'd +like to do it all my life!" + +Slower, more fearfully, I drew near. Would anything happen to spoil it +all? There she lay, the long white ship, laden deep, settled low in the +water. I could see the lines of little dark men heaving together at the +ropes. Each time they hove they sang the refrain, which, no doubt, was +centuries old, a song of the winds, the big bullies of the ocean, +calling to each other as in some wild storm at sea they buffeted the +tiny men who clung to the masts and spars of ships: + + "Blow the man down, bullies, + Blow him right down! + Hey! Hey! Blow the man down! + Give us the time to blow the man down!" + +But what were the verses? I could hear the plaintive tenor voice of the +chantyman who sang them--now low and almost mournful, now passionate, +thrilling up into the night, as though yearning for all that was hid in +the heavens. Could a man like that feel things like that? But what were +the words he was singing, this yarn he was spinning in his song? + +I came around by the foot of the slip and walked rapidly up the dockshed +toward one of its wide hatchways. The singing had stopped, but as I drew +close a rough voice broke the silence: + +"Sing it again, Paddy!" + +I looked out. Close by on the deck, in the hard blue glare of an +arc-light, were some twenty men, dirty, greasy, ragged, sweating, all +gripping the ropes and waiting for Paddy, who rolled his quid in his +mouth, spat twice, and then began: + + "As I went awalking down Paradise Street + A pretty young maiden I chanced for to meet." + +A heave on the ropes and a deafening roar: + + "Blow the man down, bullies, + Blow him right down! + Hey! Hey! Blow the man down!" + +Again the solo voice, plaintiff and tender: + + "By her build I took her for Dutch. + She was square in the stuns'l and bluff in the bow." + +The rest was a detailed account of the night spent with the maiden. Roar +on roar rose the boisterous chorus: "Blow the man down, bullies, blow +him right down!" The big patched, dirty sails went jerking and flapping +up toward the stars, which from here were so faint they could barely be +seen. And the ship moved out on the harbor. + +"There go the folk songs of the seas," I thought disgustedly, looking +out on the water now showing itself grease-mottled in the first raw +light of day. + +I tried other songs with my artist's ears and found them all much like +the first, the music like the very stars, the words like the grease and +scum on the water. I was about giving up my search when I met my old +friend, the watchman. + +"Well, did ye find the chanties?" he asked. + +"Yes," I said. "They can't be printed." His old eyes twinkled merrily: + +"Of course they can't. An' _most_ songs an' stories can't. But I'll give +ye a nice little song ye can print. It's the oldest chanty of 'em all. +I'll try to remember an' write it down." + +Here is the song he gave me: + +ROLLING HOME + + To Australia's fair-haired maidens + We will bid our last good-bye. + We are going home to England, + We may never more see you. + + Rolling home, rolling home, + Rolling home across the sea, + Rolling home to merry England, + Rolling home dear land to thee. + + We will leave you our best wishes + As we leave your rocky shores, + We are going home to England, + We may never see you more. + Rolling home.... + + Up aloft amidst her rigging + Spreading out her snow white sails, + Like a bird with outstretched pinions, + On we speed before the gale. + Rolling home.... + + And the wild waves, as we leave them, + Seem to murmur as they roll; + There are hands and hearts to greet thee + In that land to which you go. + Rolling home.... + + Cheer up, Jack, fond hearts await thee, + And kind welcomes everywhere; + There are hands and hearts to greet thee, + Kind caresses from the fair. + + Rolling home, rolling home, + Rolling home across the sea, + Rolling home to merry England, + Rolling home dear land to thee. + +"Do they ever sing those words?" I asked suspiciously. The old Irishman +looked steadily back. + +"Sure they sing 'em--sometimes," he said. "It's the same thing as them +other songs--only nicer put. Put to be printed," he added. + +He found me others "put to be printed." Soon I had quite a collection. +And with the help of my German teacher I wrote down the music. + +"There are not enough for a book," he said. "Why don't you write an +article, tell where you found them, put them in, and send it to a paper? +So you can give them to the world." + +This I at once set out to do. In the writing I found again that deep +delight I had had on the dock, just far enough off to miss the dirt, the +sweat and the words of the song. I showed the article to my mother, and +she was surprised and delighted. Working together, in less than a week +we had polished it off. I heard her read it aloud to my father, I +watched his face, and I saw the grim smile that came over it as he asked +me, + +"Are those the words you heard them sing?" + +"Not all of them are," I answered. And suddenly, somehow or other, I +felt guilty, as though I had done something wrong. But angrily I shook +it off. Why should I always give in to his harbor? This that I had +written was fine! This was Art! At last in spite of him and his docks I +had found something great that I could do! + +When the article was taken by a Sunday paper in New York and a check for +eight dollars was sent me with a brief but flattering letter, my pride +and hopes rose high. The eight dollars I spent on a pin for my mother, +as "Pendennis" or some other boy genius had done. When the article +appeared in the paper my mother bought fifty copies and gave them out to +our neighbors. There was nothing to shock such neighbors here, and they +praised me highly for what they called my "real descriptive power." + +"That boy will go far," I heard one cultured old gentleman say. And I +lost no time in starting out. No musical career for me, down came +Beethoven from my wall, for I was now a writer. And not of mere +articles, either. Inside of six months I had written a dozen short +stories, and when each of these in turn was rejected I began to plan out +a five-act play. But here my mother stopped me. + +"You're trying to go too fast," she said. "Think of it, you are barely +nineteen. You must give up everything else just now and spend all your +time getting ready for college. For if you are going to be a strong +writer, as I hope, you need to learn so many things first. And you will +find them all in college--as I did once when I was young," she added a +little wistfully. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +The first thing I needed in college was a good thorough dressing down. +And this I got without any delay. In the first few weeks my artist's +ears and eyes and soul were hazed to a frazzle. From "that boy who will +go far" I became "you damn young freshman." I was told to make love to a +horse's hind leg, I was made to perch on a gatepost and read the +tenderest passages of "Romeo and Juliet," replacing Romeo's name by my +own, and Juliet's by that of stout Mrs. Doogan, who scrubbed floors in a +dormitory close by. Refusals only made matters painful. Besides, I was +told by a freshman friend that I'd better fit in or I'd "queer" myself. + +This dread of "queering" myself at first did me a world of good. Dumped +in this community of over a thousand callow youths, three hundred in my +class alone and each one absorbed in getting acquainted, fitting in, +making friends and a place for himself, I was soon struggling for a +foothold as hard as the rest. Within a month the thing I wanted above +all else was to shed my genius and become "a good mixer" in the crowd. + +This drew me at first from books to athletics. Though still slight of +build I was wiry, high-strung and quick of movement. I had a snub nose +and sandy hair, and I was tough, with a hard-set jaw. And I now went +into the football world with a passion and a patience that landed me at +the end of the season--one of the substitute quarterbacks on the +freshman team. I did not get into a single game, I was only used on the +"scrub" in our practice. This made for a wholesome humility and a real +love of my college. + +The football season over, I tried for the daily paper. One of the +freshman candidates for the editorial Spring elections, I became a daily +reporter slave. Here at first I drew on my "queer" past, turning all my +"descriptive powers" to use. But a fat senior editor called "Pop" +inquired one day with a sneer, "For God's sake, Freshman, why these +flowers?" And the flowers forthwith dropped out of my style. At all +hours, day and night, to the almost entire neglect of studies, I went +about college digging up news--not the trivial news of the faculty's +dull, puny plans for the development of our minds, but the real vital +news of our college life, news of the things we were here for, the +things by which a man got on, news of all the athletic teams, of the +glee, mandolin and banjo clubs, of "proms," of class and fraternity +elections, mass meetings and parades. Ferreting my way into all nooks +and crannies of college life, ears keen for hints and rumors, alert to +"scoop" my eighteen reporter rivals--the more I learned the better I +loved. And when in the Spring I was one of the five freshman editors +chosen, the conquest was complete. No more artist's soul for me. I was +part and parcel of college life. + +Together with my companions I assumed a genial tolerance toward all +those poor dry devils known to us as "profs." I remember the weary sighs +of our old college president as he monotoned through his lectures on +ethics to the tune of the cracking of peanuts, which an old darky sold +to us at the entrance to the hall. It was a case of live and let live. +He let us eat and we let him talk. With the physics prof, who was known +as "Madge the Scientist," our indulgence went still further. We took no +disturbing peanuts there and we let him drone his hour away without an +interruption, except perhaps an occasional snore. We were so good to +him, I think, because of his sense of humor. He used to stop talking now +and then and with a quizzical hopeless smile he would look about the +hall. And we would all smile broadly back, enjoying to the full with +him the droll farce of our presence there. "Go to it, Madge," someone +would murmur. And the work of revealing the wonders of this material +universe would limp quietly along. In examinations Madge gave no marks, +at least not to the mass of us. If he had, over half of us would have +been dropped, so he "flunked" the worst twenty and let the rest through. + +The faculty, as a whole, appeared to me no less fatigued. Most of them +lectured as though getting tired, the others as though tired out. There +were a few lonely exceptions but they had to fight against heavy odds. + +The hottest fighter of all against this classic torpor was a tall, +joyous Frenchman who gestured not only with his hands but with his +eloquent knees as well. His subject was French literature, but from this +at a moment's notice he would dart off into every phase of French life. +There was nothing in life, according to him, that was not a part of +literature. In college he was considered quite mad. + +I met him not long ago in New York. We were both hanging to straps in +the subway and we had but a moment before he got off. + +"I have read you," he said, "in the magazines. And from what you write I +think you can tell me. What was the trouble with me at college?" I +looked into his black twinkling eyes. + +"Great Scott!" I said suddenly. "You were alive!" + +"Merci! Au revoir, monsieur!" + +What a desert of knowledge it was back there. Our placid tolerance of +the profs included the books they gave us. The history prof gave us ten +books of collateral reading. Each book, if we could pledge our honor as +gentlemen that we had read it, counted us five in examination. On the +night before the examination I happened to enter the room of one of our +football giants, and found him surrounded by five freshmen, all of whom +were reading aloud. One was reading a book on Russia, another the life +of Frederick the Great, a third was patiently droning forth Napoleon's +war on Europe, while over on the window-seat the other two were racing +through volumes one and two of Carlyle's French Revolution. The room was +a perfect babel of sound. But the big man sat and smoked his pipe, his +honor safe and the morrow secure. In later years, whatever might happen +across the sea would find this fellow fully prepared, a wise, +intelligent judge of the world, with a college education. + +"This reminds me," he said, "of last summer--when I did Europe in three +weeks with Dad." + +The main idea in all courses was to do what you had to but no more. One +day an English prof called upon me to define the difference between a +novel and a book of science. + +"About the same difference," I replied, "as between an artist's painting +and a mathematical drawing." + +"Bootlick, bootlick," I heard in murmurs all over the hall. I had +answered better than I had to. Hence I had licked the professor's boots. +I did not offend in this way again. + + * * * * * + +But early in my sophomore year, when the novelty had worn away, I began +to do some thinking. Was there nothing else here? My mother and I had +had talks at home, and she had told me plainly that unless I sent home +better reports I could not finish my four years' course. And after all, +she wasn't a fool, there was something in that idea of hers--that here +in this quiet old town, so remote from the harbor and business, a fellow +ought to be getting "fine" things, things that would help him all his +life. + +"But look what I've got!" I told myself. "When I came here what was I? A +little damn prig! And look at me now!" + +"All right, look ahead. I'm toughened up, I've had some good things +knocked into me and a lot of fool things knocked out of me. But that's +just it. Are all the fine things fool things? Don't I still want to +write? Sure I do. Well, what am I going to write about? What do I know +of the big things of life? I was always hunting for what was great. I'm +never hunting for it now, and unless I get something mighty quick my +father will make me go into his business. What am I going to do with my +life?" + +At first I honestly tried to "pole," to find whether, after all, I +couldn't break through the hard dry crust of books and lectures down +into what I called "the real stuff." But the deeper I dug the drier it +grew. Vaguely I felt that here was crust and only crust, and that for +some reason or other it was meant that this should be so, because in the +fresh bubbling springs and the deep blazing fires whose presence I could +feel below there was something irritating to profs and disturbing to +those who paid them. These profs, I thought confusedly, had about as +much to do with life as had that little "hero of God" who had cut such a +pitiful figure when he came close to the harbor. And more pitiful still +were the "polers," the chaps who were working for high marks. They +thought of marks and little else. They thrived on crust, these fellows, +cramming themselves with words and rules, with facts, dates, theorems +and figures, in order to become professors themselves and teach the same +stuff to other "polers." There was a story of one of them who stayed in +his room and crammed all through the big football game of the season, +and at night when told we had won remarked blithely, + +"Oh, that's splendid! I think I'll go out and have a pretzel!" + +God, what a life, I thought to myself! None of that for me! And so I +left the "polers." + +But now in my restless groping around for realities in life that would +thrill me, things that I could write about, I began trying to test +things out by talking about them with my friends. What did a fellow want +most in life--what to do, what to get and to be? What was there really +in business beside the making of money? In medicine, law and the other +professions, in art, in getting married, in this idea of God and a +heaven, or in the idea I vaguely felt now filtering through the nation, +that a man owed his life to his country in time of peace as in time of +war. The harbor with rough heavy jolts had long ago started me thinking +about questions of this kind. Now I tackled them again and tried to talk +about them. + +And at once I found I was "queering" myself. For these genial companions +of mine had laid a most decided taboo upon all topics of this kind. They +did so because to discuss them meant to openly think and feel, and to +think or feel intensely, about anything but athletics and other things +prescribed by the crowd, was bad form to say the least. + +Bad form to talk in any such fashion of what we were going to make of +our lives. Nobody cared to warm up on the subject. Many had nothing at +all in sight and put off the whole idea as a bore. Others were already +fixed, they had positions waiting in law and business offices, in +factories, mines, mills and banks, and they took these positions as +settled and sure. + +"Why?" I would argue impatiently. "How do you know it's what you want +most?" + +"Oh, I guess it'll do as well as another." + +"But damn it all, why not have a look? We can have a big look now, we've +got a chance to broaden out before we jump into our little jobs--to see +all the jobs and size 'em up and look at 'em as a part of the world!" + +"Oh, biff." I got little or no response. The greater part of these +decent likable fellows could not warm up to anything big, they simply +hadn't it in them. + +"Why in hell do you want me to get all hot?" drawled one fat sluggard of +a friend. "I'll keep alive when the time comes." And he and his kind set +the standard for all. Sometimes a chap who could warm up, who had the +real stuff in him, would "loosen up" about his life on some long tramp +with me alone. But back in college his lips were sealed. It was not +exactly that he was ashamed, it was simply that with his college friends +such talk seemed utterly out of place. + +"Look out, Bill," said one affectionately. "You'll queer yourself if you +keep on." + +The same held true of religion. An upper classman, if he felt he had to, +might safely become a leader of freshmen in the Y. M. C. A. But when one +Sunday evening I disturbed a peaceful pipe-smoking crowd by wondering +why it was that we were all so bored in chapel, there fell an +embarrassing silence--until someone growled good-humoredly, "Don't bite +off more'n you can chew." Nobody wanted to drop his religion, he simply +wanted to let it alone. I remember one Sunday in chapel, in the midst of +a long sermon, how our sarcastic old president woke us up with a start. + +"I was asked," he said, "if we had any free thinkers here. 'No,' I +replied. 'We have not yet advanced that far. For it takes half as much +thinking to be a free thinker as it does to believe in God.'" + +And I remember the night in our sophomore club when the news came like a +thunderclap that one of our members had been killed pole-vaulting at a +track meet in New York. It was our habit, in our new-found manliness, to +eat with our hats on, shout and sing, and speak of our food as +"tapeworm," "hemorrhage," and the like. I remember how we sat that +night, silent, not a word from the crowd--one starting to eat, then +seeing it wasn't the thing to do, and staring blankly like the rest. +They were terrible, those stares into reality. That clutching pain of +grief was real, so real it blotted everything out. Later some of us in +my room began to talk in low voices of what a good fellow he had been. +Then some chap from the Y. M. C. A. proposed timidly to lead us in +prayer. What a glare he got from all over the room! "Damn fool," I heard +someone mutter. Bad form! + +Politics also were tabooed. Here again there were exceptions. A still +fiery son of the South could rail about niggers, rapes and lynchings and +the need for disenfranchising the blacks. It was good fun to hear him. +Moreover, a fellow who was a good speaker, and needed the money, might +stump the state for either political party, and his accounts were often +amusing. But to sit down and talk about the trusts, graft, trade unions, +strikes, or the tariff or the navy, the Philippines, "the open door," or +any other of the big questions that even then, ten years ago, were +beginning to shake the country, and that we would all be voting on soon? +No. The little Bryan club was a joke. And one day when a socialist +speaker struck town the whole college turned out in parade, waving red +sweaters and firing "bombs" and roaring a wordless Marseillaise! We +wanted no solemn problems here! + +Finally, it was distinctly bad form to talk about sex. Not to tell +"smutty stories," they were welcomed by the average crowd. But to look +at it squarely, as I tried to do, and get some light upon what would be +doubtless the most vital part of our future lives--this simply wasn't +done. What did women mean to us, I asked. What did prostitutes mean at +present? What would wives mean later on? And all this talk about +mistresses and this business of free love, and easy divorces and +marriage itself--what did they all amount to? Was love really what it +was cracked up to be, or had the novelists handed us guff? When I came +out with questions like these, the chaps called "clean" looked rather +pained; the ones who weren't, distinctly bored. + +For this whole intricate subject was kept in the cellars of our minds, +cellars often large but dark. Because "sex" was wholly rotten. It had +nothing to do, apparently, with the girls who came chaperoned to the +"proms," it had to do only with certain women in a little town close by. +Plenty of chaps went there at times, and now and then women from over +there would come to us on the quiet at night. But one afternoon I saw a +big crowd on the front campus. It grew every moment, became a mob, +shoving and surging, shouting and jeering. I climbed some steps to look +into the center, and saw two painted terrified girls, hysterical, +sobbing, swearing and shrieking. So they were shoved, a hidden +spectacle, to the station and put on the train. Nothing like that on our +front campus! Nothing like "sex" in the front rooms of our minds. The +crowd returned chuckling. Immoral? Hell, no. Simply bad form. + + * * * * * + +"What am I going to write about?" + +"Games," said the college. "Only games. Don't go adventuring down into +life." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +Then I found Joe Kramer. + +He had "queered" himself at the beginning in college. I had barely known +him. He belonged to no fraternity, and except on the athletic field he +kept out of all our genial life. And this life of ours, for all its +thoughtlessness, was so rich in genuine friendships, so filled and +bubbling over with the joy of being young, that we could not understand +how any decent sort of chap could deliberately keep out of it. We put +Joe Kramer down as a "grouch." + +But now that I too was "queering" myself, our queerness drew us +together, or rather, Joe's drew mine. In the ten years that have gone +since then I have never met any man who drew me harder than he did, than +he is drawing me even still--and this often in spite of my efforts to +shake him off, and later of his quite evident wish to be rid of me. For +Joe had what is so hard to find among us comfortable mortals, a +sincerity so real and deep that it absolutely ruled his life, that it +kept him exploring into things, kept him adventuring always. + +In long tramps over the neighboring hills, on our backs in the grass +staring up at the clouds, or in winter hugging a bonfire in the shelter +of a boulder, or back in college over our beer or over countless pipes +in our rooms, together we adventured through books and long hungry talks +down into life--and of the paths we discovered I see even now no end. + +Joe was tall and lean, with heavy shoulders stooping slightly. He was +sallow, he never took care of himself. He ate his meals at all hours at +a small cheap restaurant, where he bought a bunch of meal tickets each +week. His face was obstinate, honest, kindly, his features were as blunt +as his talk. He was the first to understand what I was so vaguely +looking for, and to say, "All right, Kid, you come right along." And as +he was farther along than I, he pulled me after him on the hunt after +what he called "the genuine article" in this bewildering modern life. + +His own life, to begin with, was a tie with this real modern world that +had forced itself on me long ago through the harbor. For Joe had been +"up against it" hard. Though blunt and frank about most things he talked +little about himself, but I got his story bit by bit. "Graft" had come +into it at the start. In a town of the Middle West his father had been a +physician with a good practice, until when Joe was eleven years old a +case of smallpox was discovered. Joe's father vaccinated about a score +of children that week. The "dope" he used was mailed to him by a drug +firm in Chicago. It was "rotten." Over half the children were +desperately ill and seven of them died. Joe's father, his mother and +both older sisters did duty as nurses day and night. After that they +left town, moved from town to town, that story always following, and +finally both parents died. Since then Joe had been a teamster, a clerk +in a hardware store, a brakeman, a telegrapher, and last, the assistant +editor of a paper in a small town. He had scraped and slaved and studied +throughout with the idea of coming East to college. He had come at +twenty-two, beating his way on freight trains. On the top of a car one +night he had fallen asleep and been knocked on the head by a steel beam +jutting down under a bridge. Then, after two weeks on a hospital bed, he +had arrived at college. + +Here he had earned a meager way by writing football and baseball news +for a string of western papers. Here he had looked for an education, and +here "a bunch of dead ones" had handed him "news from the graveyard" +instead. + +I can still see him in classroom, head cocked to one side, grimly +watching the prof. And once during a Bible course lecture I heard his +voice blandly ironic behind me: + +"Will somebody ask Mister Charley Darwin to be so good as to step this +way?" + +"We've been cheated, Bill," he told me. "We've been cheated right along. +Take history, for instance, the kind of stuff we were handed in school. +I got onto it first when I was fourteen. It was a rainy Saturday and my +mother told me to go and clean out an old closet up in the attic. Well, +I found my German grandfather's diary there, written when he was in +college in Leipsic, in 1848. The way those kids jumped into things! The +way they got themselves mixed up in the Revolution of Forty Eight! To +hear my young grandfather talk, that year was one of the biggest times +in European history. Our school history gave it five pages and then +druled on about courts and kings. 'I'll go to college,' I made up my +mind. 'College will put me next to the truth.' So I saved my little +nickels and came. But college," he added moodily, "ain't advanced as far +as it was in my young grandfather's time." + +"Do you know who's to blame for this stuff?" he said. "It's not the +profs, I've nothing against them, all they need is to be kicked out. No, +it's us, because we stand for their line of drule. If we got right up on +our honkeys and howled, all of us, for a real education, we'd get it by +next Saturday night. But we don't care a damn. Why don't we? Are we all +of us dubs? No we're not. Go down to the football field and see. There's +as much brains in figuring out those plays as there is in mathematics. +Would we stand for coaches like our profs? But that's just it. It's the +thing to be alive in athletics and a dub in everything else. And because +it's the thing, every fellow fits in. On the whole," he added +reflectively, "I think it's this 'dear old college' feeling that's to +blame for it all." + +"My God, Joe!" This was high treason! + +"Sure it is," he retorted. "It _is_ your god and the god of us all. This +dear old college feeling. It's got us all stuck together so close that +nobody dares to be himself and buck against its standards." + +This from Joe Kramer! How often, in a football game, have I seen him on +the reporter's bench, his sallow face now all a-scowl, now beaming +satisfaction as he pounded his neighbor on the back. + +In pursuit of "a real education" we got into the habit of spending +almost every evening in the college library, where except at examination +times there was nobody but a few silent "polers." + +I grew to love this place. It was so huge and shadowy, with only shaded +lights here and there. It had such tempting crannies. I loved its deep +quiet, so pleasantly broken now and then by a step, a whisper, the sound +of a book being moved from its shelf where perhaps it had stood unread +for years, or occasional voices passing outside or snatches of song from +the campus. And here I thought I was finding myself. That French prof +had introduced me to Voltaire, Hugo, Balzac, Maupassant and others who +were becoming my new idols. This was art, this was beauty and truth, +this was getting at life in a way that thrilled. + +But now and then looking up from my book I would see Joe prowling about +the place, taking down a book, then shoving it back and scowling as he +ran his eyes along whole rows of titles. + +"This darned library shut its doors," he would growl to himself, "just +as the real dope was coming along. But there's been such a flood of it +ever since that some leaked in in spite of 'em." + +Joe would search and search until he found "it" on back shelves or stuck +away in corners. Angrily he would blow off the dust and then settle +himself with a sigh to read. There was always something wistful to me in +the way Joe opened each new book. But what a joy when he found +"it"--Darwin, Nietzsche, Henry George, Walt Whitman, Zola, Samuel +Butler. What a sudden sort of glee the night he discovered Bernard Shaw! + +When the library closed we adjourned for beer and a smoke, and often we +would argue long about what we had been reading. Joe had little use for +the stuff I liked. Beauty and form were nothing to him, it was "the +meat" he was after. My mother's idols he laid low. + +"The first part was big," he said one night of a recent English novel. +"But the last part was the kind of thing that poor old Thackeray might +have done." + +In an instant I was up in arms, for to my mother and me the author of +"Pendennis" had been like a great lovable patron saint, a refuge from +all we abhorred in the harbor. To slight him was a sacrilege. But +reverence to Joe Kramer was a thing unknown. "Show me," he said, in +reply to my outburst, "a single thing he ever wrote that wasn't +sentimental bosh!" And we went at it hammer and tongs. + +It was so in all our talks. Nothing was too sacred. Joe always insisted +on "being shown." + +He had a keen liking but little respect for the nation built by our +fathers. From his own father's tragedy, caused by graft, his own hard +struggles in the West and the Populist doctrines he had imbibed, he had +come East with a deep conviction that "things in this country are one +big mess with the Constitution sitting on top." And when the term +"muckraker" came into use, I remember his deep satisfaction. "Now I know +my name," he said. + +He was equally hard on the church. How he kicked against our compulsory +chapel. "Broad, isn't it, scientific," he growled, "to yank a man out of +bed every morning, throw him into his seat in chapel and tell him, +'Here. This is what you believe. Be good now, take your little dose and +then you can go to breakfast.'" + +"I'm no atheist," he remarked. "I'm only a poor young fellah who asks, +'Say, Mister, if you _are_ up there why is it that no big scientist has +brains enough to see you?'" + +"Look here, J. K., that isn't so!" + +"Isn't it? Show me!" And we would start in. I had a deep repugnance for +his whole materialistic view. But I liked the way he jarred me. + +"What I want to do," he said, "is to bust every hold that any creed ever +had on me. I don't mean only creeds in churches, I mean creeds in +politics, business and everywhere else. I want to get 'em all out of my +eyes so I can see what's really here--because I'm so sure there's an +awful lot here and an awful lot more that's coming. If I make a noise +like a knocker at times you don't want to put me down as any +Schopenhauer fan. None of that pessimistic dope for little Joey Kramer. +I never open a new book without hoping I'll find the real stuff I want, +and I never open a paper without hoping that some more of it will be +right here in the news of the day. Kid," he ended intensely, "you can +take it from me there are going to be big doings soon in this little old +world, big doings and great big ideas, as big as what caused the Civil +War and a damn sight more scientific. And the thing for you and me to do +is to get ourselves in some kind of shape so we can shake hands with 'em +when they arrive, and say, 'Hello, fellahs, come right in. You're just +what we've been waiting for.'" + +When Joe gave up college at the end of the junior year, he left a small +group of us behind. "The Ishmaelites," we called ourselves. For though +most of us "couldn't quite go Joe," we had all "queered" ourselves in +college through the influence on us he had had. + +There are thousands of Joe Kramers now in colleges scattered all over +the land. Each year their numbers grow, each year more deep their vague +conviction that somehow they've been cheated, more harsh and insistent +every year their questioning of all "news from the graveyard," whether +it comes from old fogey professors or from parents or preachers, eminent +lawyers or business men, great politicians or writers of books. Arrogant +and sweeping, sparing nothing sacred--young. Ignorant, confused and +groping, almost wistful--new. They are becoming no insignificant part in +this swiftly changing national life. + +Joe Kramer was one of the pioneers. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +It was with an unpleasant shock of surprise that I found Joe liked the +harbor. + +When I took him home for Christmas he spent half his time down there on +the docks. He explored the whole region for miles around, in a week he +spoke in familiar terms of slips and bays and rivers that to me were +still nothing but names. Moreover, he liked my father. And my father, +opening up by degrees, showed an unmistakable relish for Joe. + +They had long talks in the study at night, where I could hear them +arguing about the decline of our shipping, the growth of our trusts and +railroads, graft and high finance and strikes, the swift piling up of +our troubles at home--and about the great chance we were losing abroad, +the blind weak part we were playing in this eager ocean world where +every nation that was alive was rushing in to get a place. As their +voices rose loud and excited, even my young sister Sue, who was just out +of high school now and doing some groping about of her own, would go +into the study to listen at times. But I kept out. For already I was +tired again of all these harbor problems, I wanted to get at life +through Art! And I felt besides that if I entered into long talks with +my father, sooner or later he would be sure to bring up the dreaded +question of my going into his business. And this I was firmly resolved +not to do. For my dislike of all his work, his deepening worries, his +dogged absorption in his tiresome hobby of ships, was even sharper than +before. + +"That dad of yours," Joe told me, "is a mighty interesting old boy. He +has had a big life with a big idea." + +"Has he?" said I. "Then he's lost it." + +"He hasn't! That's just the trouble. He thinks he's a comer when he's a +goer--he can't see his idea is out of date. It's a pity," he added +sadly. "When a man can spend his days and nights hating the trusts and +the railroads as he does, it's a pity he's so darned old in his views of +what ought to be done about it. Your father believes that if only we'd +get a strong navy and a large mercantile marine----" + +"Oh, cut it, J. K.," I said pettishly. "I tell you I don't care what he +believes! The next thing you'll be telling me is that I ought to take a +job in his warehouse!" + +"You might do worse," said Joe. + +"What?" I demanded indignantly. + +"That's just what I said. If you'd go on a paper and learn to write like +a regular man I'd be tickled to death. But if all you want to be in life +is a young Guy de Maupassant and turn out little gems for the girls, +then I say you'd be a lot better off if you went into your father's +warehouse and began telling Wall Street to get off the roof!" + +"Thank you," I said stiffly. + +From that talk Joe and I began drifting apart. I never brought him home +again, I saw less of him at college. And at the end of the college year +he went to New York, where he found a job on a paper. + +And so all through my senior year I was left undisturbed to "queer" +myself in my own sweet way, which was to slave for hours over Guy de +Maupassant and other foreign authors, write stories and sketches by the +score, and with two other "Ishmaelites" plan for a year's work in Paris. +The French prof was delighted and spurred us on with glowing accounts of +life in "the Quarter." One of us wanted to be a painter. No place for +that like Paris! Another an architect--Paris! Myself a writer--Paris! +For what could American writers to-day, with their sentimental little +yarns covering with a laugh or a tear all the big deep facts of life, +show to compare to the unflinching powerful work of the best writers +over in France? In Paris they were training men to write of life as it +really is! How that prof did drum it in. Better still, how he talked it +up to my mother--the last time she came to college. + +I soon found she was on my side. If only she could bring father around. + +I still remember vividly that exciting night in June when the three of +us, back there at home, sat on the terrace and fought it out. I remember +the beauty of the night, I mean of the night up there in the garden +under the stars, my mother's garden and her stars, and of the hideous +showing put up by my father's harbor below. + +Of course he opposed my going abroad. His old indifference to me had +vanished, I saw he regarded me now as worth while, grown up, a business +asset worth fighting for. And my father fought. He spoke abruptly, +passionately of the great chance on the docks down there. I remember +being surprised at his talk, at the bigness and the intensity of this +hunger of his for ships. But of what he said I remembered nothing, I did +not hear, for I was eyeing my mother. + +I saw she was watching him pityingly. Why? What argument had she still +to use? I waited in increasing suspense. + +"So that's all there is to it," I heard him end. "You might as well get +it right out of your head. You're not going over to Europe to fool away +any more of your time. You're going to buckle down right here." + +"Billy, leave us alone," said my mother. + +What in the name of all the miracles did she do to him that night--my +mother so frail (she had grown so of late), my father so strong? The +next day she told me he had consented. + +I saw little of him in the next two weeks. He left me alone with her +every evening. But when I watched him he looked changed--beaten and +broken, older. In spite of myself I pitied him now, and a confused +uneasiness, almost remorse, came over me at the way I had opposed him. +"What's come over Dad?" I wondered. Once I saw him look at my mother, +and his look was frightened, crushed. What was it she had told him? + +Those evenings I read "Pendennis" aloud for the third time to my mother. +It had been our favorite book, and I took anxious pains to show her how +I loved it still. But once chancing to look quickly up, I caught my +mother watching me with a hungriness and an utter despair such as I'd +never seen before. It struck me cold, I looked away--and suddenly I +realized what a selfish little beast I was, beside this woman who loved +me so and whom I was now leaving. My throat contracted sharply. But when +I looked back the look was gone, and in its place was a quiet smile. + +"Oh, my boy, you must do fine work," she said. "I want it so much more +than anything else in my whole life. In my whole life," she repeated. I +came over to her chair, bent over her and kissed her hard. + +"I'm sorry I'm going! I'm sorry!" I whispered. "But mammy! It's only for +a year!" + +Why did that make her cling to me so? If only she had told me. + +But what young egotists we sons are. It was only a few days later that +with my two college chums, from the deck of an ocean liner, I said +good-by to the harbor. + +"Thank God I'm through with you at last." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +I was in Paris for two years. + +In those first weeks of deep delight I called it, "The Beautiful City of +Grays." For this town was certainly mellowed down. No jar of an ugly +present here, no loud disturbing harbor. But on the other hand, no +dullness of a fossilized past. What college had been supposed to do this +city did, it took the past and made it alive, richly, thrillingly alive, +and wove it in with the present. In the first Sorbonne lectures, even +with my meager French, I felt this at once, I wanted to feel it. These +profs were brilliant, sparkling, gay. They talked as though Rousseau and +Voltaire, Hugo, Balzac and Flaubert, Maupassant and all the rest were +still vital dazzling news to the world, because these men were still +molding the world. And from here exploring out over the town, I was +smilingly greeted everywhere by such affable gracious old places, that +seemed to say: + +"We've been written about for a thousand years, and now you also wish to +write. How charming of you. Please sit down. Garçon, un bock." + +And I sat down. Scenes from the books of my great idols rose around +every corner, or if they didn't I made them rise. There was pride in the +process. To go to the Place de la République, take a seat before some +cheap, jolly café, squint out at the Place with an artist's eye, +reconstruct the Bastille, the Great Revolution, dream back of that to +Rousseau and Voltaire and the way they shook the world by their +writings--and then wake up and find that I had been at it for three +mortal hours! What a chap I was for dreams. I must be quite a genius. +There were hours with Hugo in Notre Dame in one of its most shadowy +corners; with Zola on top of a 'bus at night as it lumbered up into the +Belleville slums; with Balzac in an old garden I found; with Guy de +Maupassant everywhere, in the gay hum and lights of those endless cafés, +from bridges at sunset over the Seine, or far up the long rich dusk of +the Champs Élysées, lights twinkling out, and _his_ women laughing, +chattering by. + +Nothing left in this rich old world but the harbor? Nothing beautiful, +fine or great for an eager, hungry, happy young man? I could laugh! I +knew now that the harbor had lied! For into this radiant city not only +the past but the whole present of the earth appeared to me to be pouring +in. Painters, sculptors, writers and builders were here from all +nations, with even some Hindus and Japs thrown in, young, bringing all +their dreams and ambitions, their gaiety, their vigor and zest. + +"Young men are lucky. They will see great things." + +Voltaire had said that about thirty years before the French Revolution. +It had been true then, true ever since, it was true to-day and +here--though _our_ great things I felt very sure were not to come in +violence--the world had gone beyond all that. No, these immense +surprises that were lurking just before us, these astounding miracles +that were to rise before our eyes, would come in the unfolding of the +powers in men's minds, working free and ranging wide, with a deep +resistless onward rush--in the stirring times of peace! + +And we were not only to see great things but we were all to do them! +That was the very keynote of the place. Here a fellow could certainly +write if only he had it in him. Impatiently I slaved at my French. Five +hours sleep was plenty. + +In the small apartment we had taken just on the edge of the Luxembourg +Gardens, on the nights when we were working at home, one of us at his +easel, another at his drafting board, myself at my desk, we would knock +off at about eleven o'clock and come down for beer and a long smoke in +front of the café below. A homely little place it was, with two rows of +small iron tables in front, and at one of these we would seat ourselves. +Behind us in the window was a long glass tank of gold fish, into which +from time to time a huge cat would reach an omnivorous paw. Often from +within the café we would hear Russian folk songs played on balalaikas by +a group of Russian students there. And between the songs a low hubbub +rose, in French and many other tongues, for here were French and +Germans, English and Bohemians, Russians and Italians, all gathered here +while they were young. + +How serene the old city seemed those nights. The street outside was +quiet. The motor 'bus, that pest of Paris, had not yet appeared. Only an +occasional cab would come tinkling on its way. Our street was absurdly +short. At one end was a gay cluster of lights from the crowded cafés of +the "Boul' Mich'," at the other were the low lighted arches at the back +of the Odéon, from which when the play was over fluffy feminine figures +would emerge from the stage entrance; we would hear their low musical +voices as they came merrily by us in cabs. Other figures would pass. +Across the street before us rose the trees and the lofty iron fence of +the Gardens, with a rich gloom of shrubs behind, and against this +background figures in groups and alone and in couples would come +strolling by with their happiness or hurrying eagerly toward it. Or to +what else were they hurrying? From what were they coming so slowly away? + +These strangers in this setting thrilled me. Comedy, tragedy, character, +plot--there seemed nothing in life but the writing of tales--watching, +listening, dreaming, finding, then becoming deeply excited, feeling them +grow inside of you, planning them out and writing them off, then working +them over and over and over, little by little building them up. What a +rich absorbing life for a fellow, and for me it still lay all ahead. I +had used but twenty-two years of my life, there were fifty left to write +in, and what couldn't you write in fifty years! + +Often, sitting here at night, I would get an idea and begin to work, and +I would keep on until at last the enormous old woman who kept the +café--we called her "The Blessed Damozel"--would come lumbering out and +good humoredly growl, + +"Couches-toi donc. Une heure vient de sonner." + + * * * * * + +There came a brief interruption. Into our street's procession one +evening, over its round cobblestones on a bicycle that wearily wobbled, +there came a lean dusty figure with something distinctly familiar in the +stoop of the big shoulders. + +"Hello, boys," said a deep gruff voice. + +"J. K.!" + +It was. Joe Kramer arriving in Paris at midnight on a punctured tire, +and cursing the cobblestone pavements over which he had hunted us out. + +A hot supper, a bottle of wine, a genial beam on all three of us, and +Joe told his story. After leaving college, from New York he had gone to +Kansas City, and by the "livest paper" there he had been sent abroad +with a bike to do a series of "Sunday specials." He had come over +steerage and written an exposé of his passage. He had two weeks for +Paris and then was off to Berlin and Vienna. + +"I'm just breaking ground this time, boys," he said. "I want to get the +hang of the countries and a start in their infernal languages." + +The next day he began to break ground in our city. Early the next +morning I found Joe propped up in bed scowling into _Le Matin_ as he +tried to butt his way through the language into the news events of the +day. What I tried to tell him of the Paris I had found made no appeal +whatever. + +"All right, Kid," he said indulgently. "If I had a dozen lifetimes I +might be a poet. But I haven't, so I'll just be a reporter." + +And he and his bike plunged into the town. He found its "newspaper row" +that day and a Frenchman to whom he had a letter. With this man Joe went +to the Bourse and that night to the Chamber of Deputies. He got "Sunday +specials" out of them both, and then went on to the Bourse de Travail. +And in the few spare moments he had, Joe told us of the things he had +seen. Rumors of war and high finance, trade unions, strikes and sabotage +burst on my startled artist's ears. It made me think of the harbor! +_This_ was not my Paris! + +"It is," said J. K. stoutly. "There's no place like a newspaper office +to put you right next to the heart of a town." + +He would not hear to our seeing him off. I remember him that last night +after supper strapping his bag onto his bike and starting off down our +quiet old street on his way to the station. + +"To-morrow," he said, "I'll stop off in Leipsic. I want to have a look +at the college that stirred my young grandfather up for life. I've got +his diary with me." + +Again, in spite of the gruffness, I felt that wistful quality in him. +J. K. was hunting for something too. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +But what a relief to see him go, to forget his loud disturbing Paris and +again drink deep of mine, the city of great writers. + +"I'll never really know them," I thought, "until I can not only talk but +think and feel in their language." + +So I drudged for hours a day in my room. I inflicted my French on my +chums at meals, on defenseless drivers of 'buses who could not rise and +go away, and on the Blessed Damozel, who said: + +"Va donc, cherches-toi une fille. C'est la seule manière d'apprendre le +Français." + +I was vaguely thrilled by this idea, the more because so far in my life +I had had no experience of the kind. On the streets, in cabs, and in +cafés I began watching women with different eyes, more eagerly selecting +eyes that picked out of the throng the one _her_ of the moment so that +for me she was quite alone. She was alone for a thousand reasons, +different ones in every case. She was of many ages, rich and poor, now +gorgeous and now simply dressed, now a ravishing creature that took your +breath and again just funny and very French with a saucy way of wearing +her clothes. Her fascinations were always new. I watched her twinkling +earrings, her trick of using her lips when she smiled, her hands, her +silk clad ankles, her swelling young bust, the small coquettish hat she +wore, her shoulders, their expressive shrugs, her quick vivacious +movements--and I watched her eyes. Her eyes would meet mine now and +then, often with only a challenging smile but again in an intimate +dazzling way that gave me a deep swift shock of delight and left me +confused and excited. + +"In a little while," I thought. I decided to wait till I knew more +French. "She'll be strange enough, God knows," I thought half +apprehensively, "even when I can talk her language." And with a feeling +almost of relief I would plunge back into my work and forget her. For me +she was only an incident in this teeming radiant life. + +I must learn French! I strained my ears at lectures, at plays from the +top gallery, I hired a tutor to hurry it on. Years later in New York I +met a Russian revolutionist come to raise money for his cause. "Three +weeks have I been in this country," he said in utter exasperation. "And +not yet do I speak fluently the English!" That was how I felt about +French. What a delight to begin to feel easy, to catch the fine +shadings, the music and color of words and of phrases. How much more +pliant and smooth and brilliant than English. How remote from the +harbor. + +I could study my models now, not only their construction but their small +character touches as well. De Maupassant was still first for me. So +simple and sure, with so few strokes but each stroke counting to the +full, one suggestive sentence making you imagine the rest, everything +else in the world shut out, your mind gripped suddenly and held, +focussed on this man and this woman who a moment before had been nothing +to you but were now more real than life itself. Especially this woman, +what an absorbing creature he made her--and the big human ideas he +injected into these petites histoires. + +I wrote short stories by the score. Each one had a perfectly huge idea +but each seemed worse than the one before. I took to myself the advice +of Flaubert, and from a table before a café I would watch the people +around me and jot down the minutest details, I filled whole pages with +my strokes. But which to choose to make this person or this scene like +no other in the world? There came the rub. How had De Maupassant done +it? The answer came to me one night: + +"Not only by watching people. He talked to 'em, lived with 'em, knew +their lives!" + +The very thing my music teacher had said about Beethoven. How uneasy I +had been then, how absurdly young and priggish then in the gingerly way +I had gone at the harbor. Thank heaven there was no harbor here. I could +enter this life with a wholehearted zest. + +I began with one of my roommates. He was to be an architect. A +hard-working little chap, his days were filled with sharp suspense. The +Beaux Arts entrance examinations were close ahead. If he did not pass, +he told me, his parents in Ohio were too poor to give him another +chance. + +"If I have to go back to Ohio now," he said in that soft reflective +voice of his, "I'll put up cowsheds--later on, barns--and maybe when I'm +fifty, a moving picture theater. If I stay here and go back a Beaux Arts +man, I can go to New York or Chicago and get right into the center of +the big things being done." + +With a wet towel bound around his head he used to sit at his work half +the night. I watched the lines tighten about his thin lips and between +his gray eyes, grew to know the long weariness in them over some +problem, the sudden grim joy when the problem worked out. One day he +came home early. + +"Queer," he said simply. "I can see one side of your face, one side of +your body, one leg and one arm. But the other side don't seem to be +there." I looked up at him a moment. + +"Let's go out for a walk," I suggested. We went for a stroll in the +Gardens. And here I was surprised and just a bit ashamed to find that +while I had a real sympathy for him I had just as real curiosity. For +here was a living illustration of the horror of going blind. I could see +his jaws set like a vise, I could hear his low voice talking steadily on +as though to keep from thinking. What was he thinking? What was he +feeling? We talked of the most commonplace things. But moment by moment, +through his voice and his grip on my arm, those sudden waves now of +sickening fear, now of keen suspense, now of angry groping around for a +foothold, seemed pouring from him right into me, became part of +me--while the other part of me stood off and listened. + +"By God, this is life!" said one part of me. "No, it isn't; it's hell," +growled the other part. "This thing has got to be settled!" + +I took him to an oculist, and there I had another close view, this time +of intense relief. + +"Blind? Why, no, you're not going blind," said the oculist kindly. "All +you need is"--I heard nothing more. I had never had any idea before of +how swift and deep relief could be. On the street outside I heard it not +only in his unsteady laugh but in my own as well. We celebrated long +that night, and very late he took me to his favorite place down on the +lower quay of the river, where with the lights and the sounds of the +city far off it felt like some old dungeon. But just over our heads hung +the heavy black arch of a stone bridge, and looking up through this arch +as a frame we could see close above a gray, luminous mass rising and +rising in great sweeping lines till it filled half the sky--silent, +tremendous, Notre Dame. From down here the old edifice seemed alive. And +though my friend talked little here, I felt him again coming into me. +And this time it was his religion that came, his curious passion for +building. + +When at last we went home he could see my whole body, and I felt as +though I had seen his whole soul. + +Then I carefully wrote this down on paper. I put in every touch that I +could remember. I rewrote it to make it big, and I made it so big I +spoiled it all. I tore this up and began again. For about two weeks I +wrote nothing else. But at last I tore up everything. After all, he was +a friend of mine. + +"But where's the harm," I argued, "so long as I always tear it up? This +is real stuff. I'll get somewhere this way if I keep on." + +And I did keep on. Shamelessly I wormed my way into friends by the +dozen. I found it such an absorbing pursuit I could hardly wait to +finish up one before I went on to another. There were such a bewildering +lot of them, now that I had pried open my eyes. Would-be painters, +sculptors, poets, dramatists, novelists, rich and poor, tragic ones and +comic ones, with the meanest pettiest jealousies, the most bumptious +self-conceits, the blindest worship of masters, the most profound +humility, ambition so savage it made men inhuman. Many were starving +themselves to death. + +There was a little Hungarian Jew, an ardent follower of Matisse. + +"Technique?" he cried. "It is nothing! To grip your soul in your two +hands and press it on your canvas--that is art, that is Matisse!" + +He took me night after night through old buildings up in Montparnasse, +immense and dismal rookeries crowded with Poles, Bohemians and God knows +what other races, all feverish post-impressionists. Often we would find +three together close around one candle, scowling and squinting at their +easels, gaunt, silent, eager. Matisse--Matisse! + +"Most of them," said my guide, "are just mad. They cannot paint. All +think they are going to do great things, but all they are going to do is +to die." + +It was through this little Hungarian that I made my first study of +female life. + +Why delay any longer? I had been in Paris over six months, and I had +qualms almost of guilt at the thought of this chastity of mine. At first +I said, "Art is a jealous mistress." And this did splendidly for a time. +But then a stout German youth came along and laid it down as an absolute +law that no writer could do a woman right until he had lived with a +dozen. Hence that scented little cat with whom he had lived for the past +year. She was the first of the dozen, eh? Damn the fellow, how much was +there in it? De Maupassant certainly hadn't held off. In fact there were +few of my idols who had. Why not be brave and take the plunge? It need +not be such a terrific plunge; no doubt if I went at it right I could +find a safe, easy kind of a _her_, friendly and confiding, a thoroughly +good fellow with none of these wild ups and downs. The less temperament +the better; she must have a good quiet head on her shoulders; no doubt +we would need it. And she must not be too young. Let her have had +affairs enough to know that ours was only one more and would probably be +as brief as the rest--the briefer the better. + +So tamely I pictured my first love. And the gay old city of Paris +smiled, and in that bantering way of hers she brought to me in a café +one night a perfect young tigress of a girl, a lithe, dusky beauty with +smouldering eyes, and said: + +"Without doubt this one is better for you. Regard what loveliness, what +fire! Oh, my son, why not be brave?" + +I was not brave, I barely spoke, and my friend the little Hungarian Jew +who had brought her to my table was forced to do the talking. For she, +too, was silent. But how different was her silence from the quiet I had +pictured. Presently, however, I became a little easier, and by degrees +we began to talk. She told me she was a painter. An Armenian by birth, +she had run away from home at eighteen, and here for two years in +Julien's she had tried to paint till she felt she'd go mad. She talked +in abrupt, eager sentences, breaking off to watch people around us. How +her big eyes fastened upon them. "To watch faces until you are sure--and +then paint! There is nothing else in the world!" she said. And I found +this reassuring. + +After that I saw her many nights. And from time to time breaking that +silence of hers, she became so fiercely confiding, not only about her +painting, but about what she called her innermost soul, that soon I +could look my De Maupassant square in the face, man to man, for I was +learning a lot about women. As yet we were friends and nothing more, but +I could feel both of us changing fast. "In a little while," I thought. + +But alas. One night she took me up to her room and showed me her +paintings. They were bad. They were fearfully bad, and my face must have +shown the impression they made. + +"You consider them frightful!" she exclaimed. I stoutly denied it, but +things only went from bad to worse. Here was that temperament I had +dreaded. Now she was clutching both my arms. + +"Mon dieu! Why not say it? Why cannot you say it?" + +"No," I replied. "You have done some extremely powerful work!" Anything +to quiet her nerves. "Especially this one--look--over here!" And I +pointed to one of her pictures. + +"I will show you how I shall look at it!" she cried in a perfect frenzy +of tears. She snatched up a knife that lay on her table, a very old, +curved, Armenian knife, and went at the painting and slashed it to +shreds, and then scattered the shreds all over the room. + +And watching this little festival, I thought to myself excitedly, + +"I know enough about this girl!" + +My retreat was so precipitate as to appear almost a flight. + +"Yes," I said to myself, outside, "De Maupassant knew women. And he went +insane at forty-five." + +And so my next case was a chap from Detroit, whose aim, he told me, was +no less than to make himself "by the sheer force of my will a perfect, +all-round, modern man." + +It was over his case that I lost what was left of my sense of honor. For +I not only wrote him down, I kept what I had written. "Ten years from +now," I said in excuse, "I won't believe him unless he's on paper." But +having kept this, I began keeping others, until my locked drawer was +filled with the dreams and ambitions and even the loves of my confiding, +innocent friends. At last I was a writer. + +What a relief when my mother wrote that my father had consented to a +second year abroad for me. In my gratitude I even grew just a trifle +homesick. + +"Hadn't I better come home for the summer?" I wrote her. + +"No," she replied, "we cannot afford it. I want you to keep right on +with your work. I feel so sure you are working hard and will do things I +shall be proud of." + +I was not only working, but living, feeling, listening hard, under the +stimulus day and night of the tense, rich life around me. About this +time I made a friend of a gaunt, bearded Russian chap, whose dream for +years had been, like mine, to become a writer of fiction. His god had +been Turgenief. And a year ago, leaving his home, a little town near +Moscow, with forty roubles in his purse he had set out on foot with a +pack on his back to tramp the long and winding road that stretched away +two thousand miles to the distant city of Paris, the place where his +idol had lived and studied and written for so many years. Through this +young Russian pilgrim I came to know the books of some of his +countrymen, and through him I caught glimpses down into the vast, +mysterious soul of that people in the North. + +Through other chaps I met those days, other deep, tremendous vistas +opened up as backgrounds for these Paris friends of mine. Half the +night, in that café endeared to so many youths of all nations under its +name of "The Dirty Spoon," I heard talk about all things under the sun, +talk that was a merry war of words, ideas and points of view as wide +apart as that of a Jap and a German. For every land upon the earth had +sent its army of ideas, and they all charged together here, and the +walls of the Dirty Spoon resounded with the battle--with roars of +laughter and applause. For we were of free, tolerant minds. We were gay, +young dogs of war who had left our tails behind us--our tails of +prejudice, distrust--and our emancipated souls had only scorn for +hatreds born of race or creed. Like J. K., we had rid ourselves of all +creeds past and present--but J. K. had always been free with a scowl, +his feet set grimly on the ground--we here were free with a verve and a +dash that took us careering up into the stars to laugh at the very +heavens. + +There was breadth in our very manner of speech. For here were we from +all over the earth, all speaking one tongue, the language in which half +the things that had moved the world had been said by men before us. And +what sparkling things there were still to be said, what dazzling things +we would see and do, in this prodigious onward march of the armies of +peace, out of all dark ages into a glad new world for men, where our +great smiling goddess of all the arts would reign supreme, where we +would dream mighty visions of life and all these visions would come +true. + +So we saw the world those days in the radiant city on the Seine. + +And meanwhile far up in the North, the Russian Czar, having started with +loud ostentation the movement for a world-wide peace, was swiftly +completing his preparations to strike with his armies at Japan. And the +other nations of Europe, jealous and suspicious of each other's every +secret plan--they, too, were making ready for what the future years +might bring. + +"Young men are lucky. They will see great things." + +And these young men have seen great things. But they have not been +lucky. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +It was about a year after this that again Joe Kramer broke in on my +dreams. + +He arrived early on a raw, wet morning in the following winter. His +all-night ride from Cherbourg had left him disheveled, unshaven and +hungry. + +"Well, boys," he asked when our greetings were over, "what do you think +of the news?" + +"What news?" + +Joe gave us a grim, fatherly smile. + +"Say. Do I have to come all the way from Chicago to tell you what's +happening down the street? Well, you young beauty boosters, there's a +panic on the Bourse this week that's got your fair city flat on her +back. And the cause of the said panic is that France is in deep on +Russian bonds, which are now worth about a cent to the dollar. Because +the Russian people--already dead sick of the war with Japan--have risen +in a howling mob against their government. See?" + +"I did hear of that," said the painter among us. "A Polish chap in the +studio said something about it yesterday." + +"Now, did he?" said the ironical Joe. "Just kind of murmured it, I +suppose, while bending reverently over his art." He rose. "Well, boys, +I'm sorry for you, but I've only got a day in this town, I'm off for +Russia on the night train. Bill, I wish you'd help me here. I've got an +awful lot to do and my French is still a little weak." + +It was not at all weak, it was strong and loud. I can hear it still, Joe +Kramer's French, and it is a fitting memory of that devastating day. + +The day began so splendidly, so big with promise of great ideas. I grew +quite excited about it. Here was Joe on his way to a real revolution. +Sent out by his Chicago paper, he was going to Russia to see a whole +people fight to be free--a struggle prophesied long ago by Turgenief, +Tolstoy and other big Russians whose work I admired. And now it was +actually coming off--and Joe, the lucky devil, was going to be right on +hand! From some mysterious source in New York he had secured a letter to +a Russian revolutionist leader who for many years had been an exile here +in Paris. Joe was anxious to see him at once. + +"All right," I said eagerly. "Give me his address." + +"Hold on," J. K. retorted. "It's not so easy as all that. I want to get +into Russia. This man's house in Paris is watched day and night by the +Russian secret police, and nobody who's seen with him has a chance of +crossing the frontier. We've got to go slow." + +"What'll we do?" + +"I want you to steer me first to a Frenchman. He's an anarchist. Here's +his address." + +The anarchist was a bit disappointing. A mild little man, we found him +in an attic room receiving a vigorous scolding from the huge blonde with +whom he lived. But after reading Joe's letter, he, too, took on a +mysterious air. He came with us in our cab, and off we went over Paris +until I thought we should never end. Again and again the cab would stop +and our guide would darkly disappear. But from one of these trips he +returned triumphant. + +"I have found his wife," he announced. "But she says she must have a +look at you first." The cab rattled off, and the next stop was in front +of a public library. + +"Now," said our guide, "go in and sit down at a table and pretend you +are reading." + +We went in and did as he said. Soon a middle-aged woman in black sat +down at the other side of the table. She stared at us gloomily a +moment; then with a yawn she opened a book and calmly started making +notes. Presently, scowling over her work, she began muttering to +herself. + +"You must not look up," I heard in French. "A Russian spy sits over +there. You wish to see my husband. Come to-night at nine o'clock to the +second floor of the Café Voltaire. He will be at the top of the stairs. +Good-by." And she yawned again over her writing. + +"Now, this," I thought, "is a revolution!" I thoroughly approved of +this. The Café Voltaire was an excellent choice, an almost perfect +mise-en-scène. It had long been one of my favorite haunts. A tall white +wooden building, so toned down, so tumbled down, so heavy laden with +memories of poets, dramatists, pamphleteers and fiery young orators, who +had sat here and conspired and schemed and exhorted over human rights. +It had well lived up to its glorious name. What great ideas had started +from here! Here French history had been made! + +But alas! Into this hallowed spot that night, at nine o'clock on his way +to his train, came Joe in a yellow mackintosh with a brand-new suitcase +in his hand--and showed me history in the making. It was made in a +small, stuffy room upstairs. On the one side J. K. with a million +American readers behind him, on the other this revolutionist whose name +that week had been in newspapers all over the world. So far, so good. +But look at him, look at this history maker. Tall, sallow and dyspeptic, +a professor of economics. Romance, liberty, history, thrill? Not at all. +They talked of factories, wages, strikes, of railroads, peasants' taxes, +of plows and wheat and corn and hay! They got quite excited over hay. + +And all this had to come through their defenseless interpreter--me. My +head ached, one foot fell asleep. The Social Democratic Party, the +Social Revolutionist Party, the Constitutional Democrats, in and out of +my head they trooped. If this be revolution, then God save the king! +Crushed to earth, as we left at last, my head still buzzing with +economics, I looked dismally back on my poor café, on liberty, justice +and human rights. There was something as bad as the harbor in Joe; he +was always spoiling everything. + +"Why don't you take Carlyle's French Revolution along?" I suggested +forlornly. "You might read it on the train." + +"Because, you poor kid, he's way out of date." + +It took me days to get into my work. + + * * * * * + +About two months later, back he came. From one of our front windows he +looked down into the old Gardens, into all the loveliness the April +twilight was bringing there, and, + +"Where can I get a typewriter?" he asked. "I've got such an awful lot of +stuff that I want to dictate it right off the bat." + +This was _literature_ in the making. For hours in Joe's room that week I +sat and heard him make it. In one corner lay a heap of dirty shirts and +collars, in another a stack of papers and books. An English stenographer +sat at the window, J. K. strode up and down and talked. It was real +enough, this narrative. Facts and figures, he had them down cold, to +back up with a crushing force the points he was making against the Czar. +Poverty, tyranny, bloody oppression, wholesale slaughter of a people in +a half-mad monarch's war--Joe pounded them in with sledgehammer blows. +He not only made you sure they were true, he made you sure that these +things must be stopped and that you as a decent American certainly +wanted to help with your money. And as for the revolution itself, he +left no doubt in your mind about that. It was there all right, Joe had +seen people give up their lives, he had seen men and women clubbed and +shot down, he had been so near he had seen the blood. (But he made human +blood so darned commonplace, curse him!) And in Petersburg for two long +nights he had gone about a city in darkness, every street light put out +by the strikers, the streets filled with surging black masses of +figures. Yes, Joe had certainly seen big things. + +Then what was the matter with me, I thought, that all this did not +thrill me? "Young men are lucky. They will see great things." All right, +here was one of _my_ great things, a whole nation rising to throw off +its chains, to show the world that wars must cease--and to me it didn't +seem great at all, it seemed only big, and there was a world of +difference. Big? It was enormous, not only what Joe had seen up there, +but what he was doing right here in this room. He was talking to a +million people, damn him, and doubtless this was just the kind of +writing that would appeal to them. Thousands of his commonplace readers +would send their dollars to Russia, where dyspeptic professors of +economics would use the money to hire halls, into which millions of +commonplace Russians would crowd to hear about strikes, wages, taxes and +hay! And then some more commonplace blood would be shed, the dyspeptic +professors would be put in office--and this was a modern revolution! + +Was everything modern only big? Must I always have that feeling the +harbor used to give me? + +"No!" I decided angrily. The fault didn't lie in me nor in Russia, but +in J. K. and the way he was writing. As I followed that blunt narrative +of his journey through cities and factory towns, into deep forests, +across snowy plains and through little hamlets half buried in snow and +filled with the starving families of the men who had gone to the war, I +tried to picture it all to myself--not as he described it, confound him, +but with all the beauty which must have been there. Ye Gods of the Road, +what a journey! What tremendous canvases teeming with life, such +strange, dramatic significant life! What a chance for a writer! + +One night on a train whose fifth-class cars, cattle cars and nothing +more, were packed with wounded men from the front, out of one of those +traveling hells Joe had pulled a peasant boy half drunk, and by the +display of a bottle of vodka had enticed him into his own compartment in +a second-class car ahead. The boy's right arm was a loathsome sight, +festering from a neglected wound. Amputation was plainly a matter of +days. But it was not to forget that grim event that the boy had jumped +off at each little station to spend his few kopecks on vodka. No, he was +stolidly getting drunk because, as he confided to Joe, at dawn he would +come to his home town and there he knew he was going to tell twenty-six +wives that their men had been killed. He laboriously counted them off on +his fingers--each wife and each husband by their long, homely Russian +names. Then he burst into half-drunken sobs and pounded the window ledge +with his fist. It was the fist of his right arm, and the kid gave a +queer, sharp scream of pain. + +If Voltaire had been there he would have come back and described that +peasant boy he'd seen in a way that would have gripped men's souls and +sent a great shudder over the world at war and what it meant to +mankind--while Joe was simply slapping it down like some hustling, keen +reporter. + +"Look here, Joe; you make me sick!" I exploded at last. "You ought to +stick right here for months and work on this wonderful stuff you've got +till there's nothing left you can possibly do!" + +"Be an artist, eh, a poet, a great writer." He gave me one of those +fatherly smiles. "I've got some things to say to _you_, Kid. I don't +like the life you're leading." + +"Don't you? Why don't you?" I rejoined. And so began a fight that lasted +as long as he was in Paris. + +Nothing that I had been doing here made any appeal whatever to Joe. I +showed him my sketch of Notre Dame from under that old bridge at night. + +"Yes," he said, "this is fine writing, awful fine. But it has about as +much meaning to me as a woman's left ear. What's the use of sitting down +under a bridge and looking up at an ancient church and trying to feel +like a two-spot? For God's sake, Bill, get it out of your system, quit +getting reverent over the past. You're sitting here at the feet of the +Masters, fellahs who were all right in their day, but are now every one +of 'em out of date. And you're so infernally busy copying their +technique and style and trying to learn just how to write, that you're +getting nothing to write about. Why can't you go to life for your +stuff?" + +"Go to life?" I said indignantly. "I've done nothing else for over a +year!" + +"Show me." + +"Here!" + +He read more of my sketches. + +"But damn it, Bill, these people aren't alive. They're only a bunch of +artist kids as reverent over the past as yourself, they have about as +much connection with anything live and vital to-day as so many mediæval +monks. You fellahs think you're free of creeds. You're the creediest +kids I ever saw, your religion is style, technique and form. For God's +sake lose it and use your own eyes, forget you're an artist and be a +reporter, come out in the world and have a try. You'll find so much +stuff you won't need any plots, you'll simply report events as they +happen. And you won't have any time for technique, the next event will +be tuning up before you've got to the end of the last. With a big daily +paper behind him a good reporter can follow the front page around the +world. Russia's on the front page now. All right, you can go to Russia. +By June it may be Hindustan, or Pittsburgh, Turkey or China. Believe me, +Bill, the nations of this planet are working themselves into a state +where they're ready to do things you never dreamed of. I'm not talking +of kings and governments, I'm talking of the people themselves, the +people in such excited crowds that nobody knows who's who or what's +next. + +"I saw my first crowd in Petersburg the very day I got off the train. +They filled a street from wall to wall and as far as you could see. They +weren't saying a word or singing a song, and there wasn't even a drum to +keep time. But they moved along with their wives and kids as though +they'd left home, job and church, and were looking for something else so +hard they didn't care for bullets. I saw 'em shot down like so many +sheep. But bullets won't stop what I saw in their eyes. God knows I +don't want a religion. I'm no socialist nor anarchist. But if there's +one thing I want to hang on to it's my belief in the common crowd. +They've had a raw deal since the world began. They can have the whole +earth whenever they want it. And they're beginning to want it hard! + +"Forget your own name and jump into the crowd, write and don't stop to +remember you're writing! The place _you_ need is the U. S. A.--and the +work you need is a job on a paper!" + +"Are you through?" I snapped. + +"I am!" + +"All right," said I. "I'm going to stay just where I am! I'm not going +to be yanked by you all over the earth, to write news articles on the +run! I'm going to stick in one place--right here--and take my time and +learn my job. I don't want to write news, I want to write books. I'd +rather write one good novel than all the headline stuff in the world. +It's books that make the headlines." + +"_Books?_" Joe's look was funny. + +"Sure they do. Take Russia. What started this whole revolution! Books. +It didn't start with your common crowds--they were all eating fried +onions. It started with a few writers of novels!" + +"Who left their little mahogany desks," said Joe, "got into peasant +clothes and went to live with the peasants!" + +"Oh no they didn't. Only a few. Turgenief didn't. Tchernichefsky didn't. +Dostoiefsky----" + +"Say. Are they Russians? I never heard their names up there." + +I looked at J. K. thoughtfully. + +"No," I said. "You wouldn't. As yet they're not quite crowdy enough. But +they are Russians and their ideas made most of the first revolutionists. +The whole revolution was started by books." + +"It wasn't," snapped Joe. "It was taxes. Their taxes were doubled +because of the war, and----" + +"Oh, damn your war taxes, and damn your plows and your corn and hay! +You've got a hay mind, that's the trouble with you! You've got so you +think that hay and bread and pork and beans are all men live and die +for! They don't, Mister Reporter, they die for ideals--freedom, +democracy, human rights--which are in 'em so deep that when a big writer +sees 'em there and brings 'em out and holds 'em up and says, 'Here! This +is you, this is what you want, this is what you believe in!'--your crowd +says, 'Sure! Why didn't we see it long ago?' And then they do things that +go into headlines! But to be able to write like that a man can't go +chasing all over the earth, he's got to quit sneering at art and +technique, he's got to learn how to make characters real and build plots +that make readers sit up all night to see what becomes of the people +he's made! If believing that is a creed, then I'm creedy! I'm willing to +throw over everything else, but I'll hang on to this one thing all my +life--the fact that big art means working like hell!" + +"Gee," said J. K. "What an artist." + +These fights of ours left me weak and sore, as though I'd been back on +the terrace at home, listening to my father talk and looking at his +harbor. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +When Joe left me in peace at last, just for the sake of the rest and +change I turned my attention to music, or, rather, to a musical friend, +a young Bohemian composer who lived wholly in a world of his own. I +explored this musical world of his, by his side in dark top galleries, +in the Café Rouge on concert nights, in his room at his piano. How +deliciously far away from hay was this chap's feeling for Mozart. With +him I could feel sure of myself, of the way I was living for my art, of +what my mother way back at the start had called the "fine things" in +humanity. + +I remember the night we heard "Bohème" from the gallery of the Opéra +Comique. I remember the talk we had late that night, and my walk by the +edge of the Gardens home--and the letter and the cable that I found +waiting on my desk. The letter was from my father and told me that my +mother was dying. The cable told me she was dead. + +I remember learning that letter by heart on that long ocean voyage home. +This was no sudden illness, I learned, my mother had known of it while I +was home, known that she had it and that it was fatal. That was the news +she had told my father alone that night on the terrace! That was why she +had been so eager to get me away to Paris; that was why she had kept me +abroad! + +"She did not want you to see how she looked," my father wrote. "She +wanted you to remember her always as she was when you saw her last." + +I remembered her now. What a young beast I had been to forget her, to +drop her so utterly out of my thoughts in that selfish happy Paris life, +when it was she who had sent me there, when it was she who had set me +free for a time from the harbor which was now dragging me back, when it +was she from the very start who had fostered this passion for "all that +is fine." I remembered her now--remembered and remembered--until her +dear image filled me. + +My father's letter went on to tell how she had fought for her life. +Three operations, all three of them failures, but still she had held +bravely on in hopes of some new discovery which science might make and +so bring her a cure. A thought suddenly gripped me and struck me cold. +It had all depended on science, on men working calmly and coldly along +in laboratories all over the world, while my mother had held to her +thread of life and hoped that these laboratory gods would hurry, hurry +while yet there was time! How many thousands like her every day, every +hour all over the world were watching those gods with that awful +suspense. For they were the only gods that were left, and a comfortless +set of gods they were! They were like J. K., they had hay minds! They +were businesslike, relentless, cold, they belonged to the world of the +harbor! My mother's kind god was a myth and a joke, with no power here +one way or the other. I _felt_ that now, I had _thought_ it before, only +thought it, with that gay freedom of thought we had aired back there in +Paris. But I knew now that deep underneath I had believed all along in +this god of hers, as I had in my beautiful goddess of art and in all the +things that were fine. It had taken this news from the harbor to bring +him tottering, crashing down. For no god like hers would have let her +die! And I felt fear now, the fear of Death, whom I'd never really +noticed before and who now seemed to say to me, + +"She is nothing--has gone nowhere--she is only dead!" + +And fiercely in a bewildered way I rebelled against this emptiness. I +rebelled against this world of hay that was so abruptly dragging me back +to a sense of its almighty grip on my life. When my ship came up the +Bay, the world looked harsh and gray to me, though there was a bright +and sunny glare on the muddy waves of the harbor. + + + + +BOOK II + +CHAPTER I + + +My mother had been buried several days before I reached home. + +I found Sue waiting on the dock, and I saw with a little shock of +surprise that my young sister was grown up. I had never noticed her much +before. Sue and I had never got on from the start. She had been my +father's chum and I had been my mother's. I had always felt her mocking +smile toward me and all my solemn thoughts. And after that small +catastrophe which I had had with Eleanore, I had more than ever avoided +Sue and her girl friends. Then I had gone to college, and each time that +I came home she had seemed to me all arms and legs, fool secrets and +fool giggles--a most uninteresting kid. I remember being distinctly +surprised when I brought Joe home for Christmas to find that he thought +her quite a girl. But now she was all different. She had grown tall and +graceful, lithe, and in her suit of mourning she looked so much older, +her face thin and worn, subdued and softened by all she'd been through. +For the weight of all those weary weeks had been upon her shoulders. +There was something pitiful about her. I came up and kissed her +awkwardly, then found myself suddenly holding her close. She clung to me +and trembled a little. I found it hard to speak. + +"I wish I'd been here, too," I said gruffly. + +"I wish you had, Billy--it's been a long time." + +All at once Sue and I had become close friends. + +We had a long talk, at home that day, and she told me how our parents +had drawn together in the last years, of how my poor mother had wanted +my father close by her side and of how he had responded, neglecting his +business and spending his last dollar on doctors, consultations and +trips to sanitariums, anything to keep up her strength. He had even read +"Pendennis" aloud. How changed he must have been to do that. I knew why +she had wanted to hear it again. It had been our favorite book. I +remembered how I had read it to her just before I went abroad, and how I +had caught her watching me with that hungry despairing look in her eyes. +What a young brute I had been to go!... For a time Sue's voice seemed +far away. Then I heard her telling how over that story of a young author +my mother had talked to my father of me. + +"He's going to try to know you, Billy, and help you," said Sue. "He +promised her that before she died. And I hope you're going to help him, +too. He needs you very badly. You never understood father, you know. I +don't believe you have any idea of what he has gone through in his +business." + +"What do you mean? Have things gone wrong?" + +"I don't understand it very well. He hardly ever speaks of it. I think +he'd better tell you himself." + + * * * * * + +That evening in his library, from my seat by the table, I furtively +watched my father's face. He sat in a huge chair against the wall, with +a smaller chair in front for his feet, his vest unbuttoned, his short +heavy body settled low as he grimly kept his eyes on his book. The +strong overhead light which shone on his face showed me the deeper +lines, all the wrinkles, the broad loose pouch of skin on the throat, +the gray color, the pain, the weakness and the age in his motionless +eyes. What was going on in there? Sometimes it would seem an hour before +he turned another page. All afternoon he had been at her grave. + +He had given her no happy life. Was it of that he was thinking? I felt +ashamed to be wondering, for he seemed so weak and old in his grief. Two +years ago his hair had been gray, but he had still looked strong and +hale. I could hardly feel now that he was the same man. I felt drawn to +him now, I wished he would put down his book and talk and tell me +everything about her. + +But what an embarrassing job it is to get acquainted with one's father. +When Sue had left us after dinner, there had been a few brief remarks +and then this long tense silence. I, too, pretended to be reading. + +"Your mother thought a lot of you, boy." He spoke at last so abruptly +that I looked up at him with a start, and saw him watching me anxiously. + +"Yes, sir." I looked quickly down, and our eyes did not meet again after +that. + +"It was her pluck that kept you in Paris--while she was dying." + +I choked: + +"I know." + +"You don't know--not how she wanted you back--you'll never know. I +wanted to write you to come home." + +"I wish you had!" + +"She wouldn't hear of it!" + +"I see." Another silence. Why couldn't I think of something to say? + +"She kept every letter you wrote her. They're up there in her bureau +drawer. She was always reading 'em--over and over. She thought a lot of +your writing, boy--of what you would do when--when she was dead." The +last came out almost fiercely. I waited a moment, got hold of myself. + +"Yes, sir," I brought out at last. + +"I hope you'll make it all worth while." + +"I will. I'll try. I'll do my best." I did not look up, for I could +still feel his anxious eyes upon my face. + +"Do you want to go back to Paris?" + +"No, sir! I want to stay right here!" What was the matter with my fool +voice? + +"Have you got any plans for your writing here? How are you going about +it to start?" + +"Well, sir, to begin with--I've got some stuff I did abroad." + +"Stories?" + +"Not exactly----" + +"Poems?" My father's look was tragic. + +"No." + +And I tried to explain what I had been doing. But my attempts to tell +him of my work in Paris were as forced and as pathetic as his efforts to +attend. More and more halting grew our talk, and it ended in a silence +that seemed to have no end. Then I went to the fireplace, knocked the +ashes out of my pipe, refilled it and relit it. When I returned he was +reading his book, and with deep relief I took up mine. That much of it +was over. + +But again I found myself watching him. What was in my father's mind? Why +this anxious almost humble tone? It made me wince, it made me ashamed. I +sat there all evening pretending to read and feeling that he was doing +the same. + +"Good night, dad--I think I'll go to bed." Even this little came +clumsily. I had never called him "dad" before. + +"Good night, my boy. See you at breakfast." + +"Yes, sir." + +I glanced back as I turned down the hall and saw him staring after me. + +What was it he was thinking? + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +"I'm closing out my business, son," he told me the next morning. Here +was another sharp surprise. I did not look at him as I asked: + +"Why are you doing that, sir?" + +"It's a long story. Times have changed and I'm getting old." + +Again I felt suddenly drawn to him. He was old and no mistake. Why had I +never known him till now? + +"Look here--Dad." The last word still came awkwardly. "Can't I possibly +be any help down there?" He shot an anxious look at me: + +"Why, yes. Glad to have you. I still have a young clerk, but I'd rather +have you." + +Only one clerk! What had gone wrong with his business? + +But that day in his warehouse, which was empty now and silent, the mere +ghost of what it had been, he seemed in no hurry to show me. On the +contrary, he went back to the ledgers of his earliest years in business, +on the flimsy pretext of looking up certain figures and dates. He did +not need me here, the work he gave me was absurd, I was simply taking +the musty books from their piles in the closet and arranging them by +years on the floor. "To save time," he said. But he himself was still on +that first ledger, stopping to talk, to ramble off from the pages before +him. What did it mean? As the days wore on and he still delayed and at +night that strange humility crept again into his eyes, with a slowly +deepening suspense I came to feel that instead of saving time my father +was trying to make it, to go far back into his vigorous past for +strength to meet his present--because he dreaded what we would find at +the end of our work on these dusty books, the last grim figure in +dollars and cents that would stand there as the result of his life, as +the stepping-stone for Sue's and mine. And that was why he wanted me +here, this was his way of telling me the story of his business +life--before I saw what lay at the end. And as in our work that story +unfolded, though at times it cast its spell on me hard, revealing what a +man he had been, there were other times when from somewhere deep inside +of me a small selfish voice would ask: + +"What is left? How much has he saved from the wreck? What is this going +to mean to my life?" + +In the ledgers his story was still alive. Yellow and dusty as they were, +for me day by day they revivified that still odorous old warehouse until +I saw it as it had been, a huge dim caravansary for the curious products +of all the earth. And that trick of feeling a man, which I had learned +in Paris, made me keenly sensitive now to this lonely old stranger by my +side with whom I was becoming acquainted. I could feel the pull of these +books upon him, pulling him out of his cramped old age back to his glad +boundless youth. How suddenly spacious they became as he slowly turned +the pages. Palm oil from Africa, cotton from Bombay, coffee from Arabia, +pepper from Sumatra. Turn the page. Ivory from Zanzibar, salt from Cadiz +and wines from Bordeaux. Turn the page. Whale oil from the Arctic, iron +from the Baltic, tortoise shell from the Fiji Islands. Turn the page! +India silks and rugs and shawls, indigo, spices! Turn the page! + +I began to see the sails speed out along those starlit ocean roads. I +began to feel the forces that had shaped my father's life. And little by +little I saw in those days what not even my mother had understood, that +in my father's business life there had been more than dollars, that what +to us had seemed only a hobby, a dull obstinate fixed idea, had been for +him a glorious vision--the white sails of American clippers dotting all +the seven seas. + +So they were in the late Fifties, when leaving the farm in Illinois he +came at sixteen to New York and found a job as time clerk in one of the +ship yards along the East River. They are all gone now, but then they +were humming and teeming with work. And my young father was deeply +excited. He told me of his first day here, when he stood on the deck of +a ferry and watched three great clippers go out with the tide, bound for +Calcutta. There were pictures of these vessels on the walls of his +office, stately East Indiamen bearing such names as _Star of Empire_, +_Daniel Webster_, _Ocean Monarch_, _Flying Cloud_--ships known in every +port of the world for their speed. He told how a British vessel, her +topsails reefed in a gale of wind, would see a white tower of swelling +canvas come out of the spray behind her, come booming, staggering, +plunging by--a Yankee clipper under royals. Press of sail? No other +nation knew what it meant! Our owners took big chances, it was no trade +for nervous men! + +He found a harbor that welcomed young men, where cabin boys rose to be +captains, and clerks became owners of hundreds of ships. To work! To +rise! To own yards like these, build ships like these and send them +rushing on their courses out to all parts of the ocean world! This had +been his vision, at the time when it was bright and clear. And as now he +made me feel it, the crude vital force that had been in his dream poured +into me deep, made me feel how shut in and one-sided had been my own +vision and standards of life, gave me that profound surprise which many +sons, I suppose, never have: + +"My father was once young like me--wiry, straight and tough like me, and +as full of dreams of the things he would do." + +But then had come the Civil War. Although only nineteen when the war +broke out, he was already the head clerk in his office. "But like every +other young fool those days," he said, "I was caught by the noise of a +brass band!" Down South as a commissary clerk he found himself a tiny +pawn in that gigantic game of graft which made fat fortunes in the North +and cost tens of thousands of soldiers their lives. He himself took +typhoid, and when the war was over he returned to New York, weak, +penniless, to find his old work gone. + +"For the war," he said, "had busted American shipping sky high. Even +before it began it had made the South so bitter that just for the sake +of attacking the North the Solid South in congress had joined the damn +fool Farmer West and attacked our mail subventions. 'No more of the +nation's money,' they said, 'for ship subsidies for New York and New +England!' And so all government protection of our shipping was +withdrawn. And when the war ended, with forty per cent of our ships +grabbed, sunk or sold, it was ruination to build any more, for the +British and German governments were pouring millions of dollars a year +into the Cunard and the North German Lloyd, and we couldn't compete +against them. + +"Still a few of the ship yards kept on, and in one of these at last I +got a job at eight dollars a week. 'The war is over,' we told ourselves, +'and the government can't stay blind forever. They'll see what they've +done, and within a few months they'll go back to the old policy.' +Months? I stuck to that job and waited five years--and still no news +from Washington. 'My boy,' said a doddering Brooklynite, 'the nation has +turned her face westward.'" + +Then he left the ship yards and went into a warehouse, where the work +lay mainly in handling cargoes of foreign ships. And starting life all +over again he tried to make up for lost time. The first year he was a +shipping clerk; the second, a bookkeeper; the third, he kept two sets of +books for two different docks, one by day and the other at night. And by +forty he had become a part owner in the old warehouse in which he now +sat grimly reading the record of his life--of a long stubborn losing +fight, for he stuck to his dream of Yankee sails. + +He married my mother when he was still strong and full of hope. He must +have been so much kindlier then and brighter, more human to live with. +They bought that pleasant house of ours with its hospitable front door. +My father's doddering Brooklynites seemed wonderful neighbors to his +young wife. And so that front door waited for friends. As the years +dragged on and they did not come, she blamed it all on the harbor. She +saw what it was making him, jealous of every dollar and every hour spent +at home. He worked all day and half the night. It took him into +politics, on countless trips to Washington, and she knew he spent +thousands of dollars there in ways that were by no means "fine." It made +him morose and gloomy, a man of one idea, to be shunned. + +And she no more saw behind all this than I did when I was a boy. For his +vision was neither of pirates nor of bringing the heathen to Christ, but +of imports and of exports. He dreamed in terms of battleships and of a +mercantile marine. Each year he watched the chances grow, vast +continents opening up to commerce with hints of such riches as staggered +the mind. He saw the ocean world an arena into which rushed all nations +but ours. + +"Everyone but us," he said, "had learned the big lesson--that you can +get nothing on land or sea unless you're ready to fight for it hard!" + +He saw other nations get ready to fight. He watched them build huge +navies and grant heavy subsidies to their fast growing merchant fleets, +send vessels by thousands over the seas. He saw their shipowners draw +swiftly together in great corporations. Here was an age for immense +adventures in this growing trade of the world. To wait, to hold on +grimly, to keep up the fight at Washington for that miracle, Protection, +which would start the boom. To see the shipping yards teeming again with +the building of ships by the hundreds and thousands, to see them go out +again over the seas with our flag at the mast and our sailors below. To +feel the new call go over the nation--"Young men, come east and west, +come out! The first place on the oceans can still be yours!" This was my +father's great idea. + +Ship subsidies and battleships, discriminating tariffs. What a religion. +But it was his. Of the miracles these things would work my father was +more sure than of a god in heaven. For he had thought very little about +a god, and all his life he had thought about this. For this he had spent +at least half his wealth on the congressmen that he despised. Bribery? +Yes. But for a religion. + +"Go all around South America and to the Far East," he told me. "And +you'll see the flags at sea of England, Germany, Austria, France, of +Russia, Norway, Spain, Japan. But if you see the American flag you'll +see it waved by a little girl from the deck of a British liner. This +means that we are losing in marine freights and foreign trade billions +of dollars every year. And it means more and worse than that. For it's +ship building and ship sailing that take a nation's men out of their +ruts, whip up their minds and imaginations, make 'em broad as the seven +seas. And we've lost all that, we've thrown it away, to breed a race of +farmers--of factory hands and miners and anarchists in slums. We've +built a nation of high finance--and graft--and a rising angry mob. But +sooner or later, boy, this country will wake up to what it has done. And +with our grip on both oceans and the blood we've still got in our veins, +we'll reach out and take what is ours--as soon as we're ready to fight +for it hard--the mastery of the ocean world!" + +For this idea he had lived his life. For this he had neglected his +business, for this he had lost favor with the usurping foreign +ships--until his dock and his warehouse were often idle for weeks at a +time. + +And the very bigness of things, the era of big companies which at forty +had thrilled him by the first signs of its coming, now crushed down +upon his old age. Vaguely he knew that the harbor had changed and that +he was too old to change with it. An era no longer of human adventures +for young men but of financial adventures for mammoth corporations, +great foreign shipping companies combining in agreements with the +American railroads to freeze out all the little men and take to +themselves the whole port of New York. My father was one of these little +men. The huge company to which he was selling owned the docks and +warehouses for over two miles, and this was only a part of their +holdings. + +"Nothing without fighting." That had been his motto. And he had fought +and he had lost. And so in this new harbor of big companies my father +was now closing out. Too late for any business here, too late for life +up there in his home. He had kept my mother waiting too long, he was +ready at last but she was dead. Too late. He had been born too late, had +dreamed his dream of sails too late, and now he was too late in dying. +There was nothing left to live for. How much better for him to be dead. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +I have tried to tell his story as my father felt it, at the times when +it took him out of himself and made him forget himself and me. But there +were other times when he remembered himself and me, and those were the +times that hurt the most. For in that new humility in his eyes and in +his voice I could feel him then preparing us both--me to see why it was +that he could not do for me what _she_ had wished; himself to hold on +grimly, to find a new job for his old age, to keep from becoming a +burden--on me. + +At last we were coming to the end--to that last figure in dollars and +cents. I caught his suspense and we talked little now. I knew the price +at which he was selling, and toward that figure I watched the debts +creep slowly up. I saw them creep over, and knew that we had not a +dollar left to live on. And still the debts kept mounting. How small +they were, these last ones, a coil of rope, two kegs of paint--the irony +of it compared to the bigness of his life. Still these little figures +climbed. At last he handed me his balance. He was in debt four thousand, +one hundred and forty-six dollars and seventeen cents. + +He had risen from his old office chair: + +"Well, son, I guess that ends our work." + +"Yes, sir." + +He went out of the office. + +I sat there dully for some time. Then I remember there came a harsh +scream from a freight engine close outside. And I looked out of the +window. + +The harbor of big companies, uglier than I had ever seen it, no longer +dotted with white sails, but clouded with the smoke and soot of an age +of steam, and iron, lay sprawled out there like a thing alive. Always +changing, always growing, it had crushed the life out of my father and +mother, and now it was ready for Sue and me. + +"I've got to stay here and make money." + +Good-by to the Beautiful City of Grays. A clock in an outer room struck +five. In Paris it was ten o'clock, and those friends of mine from all +countries were crowding into "The Dirty Spoon." I could see them +sauntering one by one on that summer's night down the gay old Boulevard +Saint Michel and dropping into their seats at the table in the corner. + +"How am I to make money? By writing?" + +I thought of De Maupassant and the rest, and the two years I had spent +in trying to make vivid and real the life I had seen. In these last +anxious weeks I had sent some of my Paris sketches to magazine offices +in New York. They had all been returned with printed slips of rejection, +except in one case where the editor wrote, "This is a good piece of +writing, but the subject is too remote. Why not try something nearer +home?" + +"All right," I thought, "what's near me here? Let's see. There's a cloud +of yellow smoke I can do, with a brand-new tug below it dragging a +string of good big barges. What are they loaded with? Standard Oil. Wait +till they get closer and I can even describe the smell! No," I concluded +savagely. "Let's keep my writing clean out of this hole and get the +money some other way!" + +Then suddenly I forgot myself and thought of my stern brave old dad. +What under the sun was he going to do? + +That week he mortgaged our house on the Heights for five thousand +dollars. With this he paid off all his debts and put the balance in the +bank. Then from the big dock company he got a job in his own warehouse +at a hundred dollars a month. + +"Kind of 'em," he said gruffly. He was sixty-five years old. They were +even kind enough to add to that a job for me. I sat at the desk next to +his and I was paid ten dollars a week. + +Sue let the servants go, hired one green German girl and said she knew +she could run the house on a hundred and twenty dollars a month. But the +August bills went over that, so we drew money out of the bank. My father +had bronchitis that week. We managed to keep him in bed for three days, +but then he struggled up and dressed and went back to his desk in the +warehouse. + +"Keep your eye on him down there," said Sue. "He's so terribly feeble." + +"This can't go on," I told her. + +I must make more than ten dollars a week. Again I sent out some of my +sketches, again the magazines sent them back. I went to a newspaper +office, but there an ironical office boy, with the aid of the city +editor, made me feel that reporting was not in my line. What other work +could I find to do? How much time did I have? How long was my father +going to last? I watched his face and our bank account. I studied the +"want ads" in the press. But the more I studied the smaller I felt, for +this was one of the years of depression. "Two Hundred Thousand In New +York Idle," I read in a headline. Here was literature that gripped! + +"I guess I'll stay right where I am. It's safer," I thought anxiously. +"Perhaps if I work hard enough they'll give me a raise at Christmas. +When Dad was my age he kept two sets of books, one by day and the other +at night. How can I make my evenings pay?" + +I took long walks in Brooklyn and picked up night work here and there. +It was monotonous clerical work, and being slow at figures I was often +at it till midnight. Very late one evening, while making out bills in a +hardware store, I suddenly came to a customer whose initials were J. K. +It started me thinking of Joe Kramer and our last long talk--about hay. + +"So this is hay," I told myself. "How long will it take me to get a hay +mind, back here by this damned harbor?" + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Then Sue began to take me in hand. From the subdued and weary girl that +I had found when I came home, in the last few weeks she had blossomed +out. The color had come into her cheeks, a new animation into her voice, +a resolute brightness into her eyes. + +"This thing has got to stop, Billy," she said determinedly. "This house +has been like a tomb for months, you and Dad are so gloomy and tired +you're sights. He needs a change, and so do you. You're getting into a +little rut and throwing away your chance to write. You need friends who +are writers, you need a lot of fresh ideas to tone you up. There's +plenty of money in writing. And I need a change myself. I can't stand +this house any longer. After all, I've got my own life to live. I'm +going to get a job before long. In the meantime I'm going to see my +friends. And what's more, I'm going to have them here to the house--- +just as often as they'll come! Let's brighten things up a little!" + +I looked at her with interest. Here was _another_ sister of mine--risen +out of her sorrow and eager to live, and talking of running our lives as +well, of curing us both by large, firm doses of "fresh ideas," while she +herself looked around for a job that would help her to "live her own +life." + +"Look here, Sue," I argued vaguely. "You don't want to take a job----" + +"I certainly do----" + +"But you can't! Dad wouldn't hear to it!" + +"He'll have to--when I've found it. No poor feeble old man supporting +me, thank you--quite probably no man at all--ever! But you needn't +worry. I won't take any old job that comes along. And I won't bother +Dad till I've found just what I really want--something I can grow in." + +"That's right, take it easy," I said. + +"Where have you been!" I thought as I watched her. It came over me as a +distinct surprise that Sue had been in all sorts of places and had been +making all sorts of friends, had been having ambitions and dreams of her +own--all the time I had been having mine. Most older brothers, I +suppose, at some time or another have felt this same bewilderment. "Look +here, Sis," they wonder gravely, "where in thunder have you been?" + +I took a keen interest in her now. In the evenings when I wasn't out +working we had long talks about our lives, which to my satisfaction +became almost entirely talks about _her_ life, her needs, her growth. +Her delight in herself, her intensity over plans for herself, her +enthusiasm for all the new "movements," reforms and ideas that she had +heard of God-knows-where and felt she must gather into herself to expand +herself--it was wonderful! She was like that chap from Detroit, that +would-be perfect all-round man. But Sue was so much less solemn about +it, one minute in art and the next in social settlements, so little +hampered by ever putting through what she planned. + +"In short, a woman," I thought sagely. + +I felt I knew a lot about women, although I had had no more intimate +talks since that affair in Paris. I had felt that would last me for +quite a while. But here was something perfectly safe. A sister, decent +but far from dull, well stocked with all the feminine points and only +too glad to be confidential. She wanted to study for the stage! Of +course that was the kind of thing that Dad and I would stop darned +quick. Still--I could see Sue on the stage. She was not at all like me. +I was middling small, with a square jaw, snub nose and sandy hair. Sue +was tall and easy moving, with an abundance of soft brown hair worn low +over large and irregular features. She had fascinating eyes. She could +sprawl on a rug or a sofa as lazy and indolent as you please--all but +her eyes, they were always doing something or other, letting this out or +keeping that back, practicing on me! + +"Oh, yes, she'll marry soon enough," I thought. "This talk of a job for +life is a joke." + +Some nights I would listen to her for hours. It was so good to come back +to life, to feel younger than my worries, to forget for a little while +that stark heavy certainty that poor old Dad would soon be a burden in +spite of himself, and that with a family on my hands I'd have to spend +the best years of my life slaving for a little hay. + +I took the same delight in her friends. + +Starting with her classmates in a Brooklyn high school, most of whom +were working over in New York, Sue had followed in their trail, and at +settlements, in studios and in girl bachelor flats she had picked up an +amazing assortment of friends. "Radicals," they called themselves. +Nothing was too wild or new for these friends of Sue's to jump into--and +what was more, to tie themselves to by a regular job in some queer +irregular office. "Votes for Women" was just starting up, and one of +this group, a stenographer in a suffragette office, had been in the +first small parade. Another, a stout florid youth who wrote poems for +magazines, had paraded bravely in her wake. Here were two girls who +lived in a tenement, did their own cooking and pushed East Side +investigations that they said would soon "shake up the town." There were +several rising muckrakers, too, some of whom did free work on the side +for socialist papers. There was one real socialist, a painter, who had a +red membership card in his pocket to prove that he belonged to "the +Party." Others were spreading music and art and dramatics through the +tenements--new music, new art and new dramatics. One young husband and +wife, intensely in love with one another, were working together night +and day for easier divorces which would put an end to the old-fashioned +home. + +These people seemed to me to be laughing at a different old thing every +time. But when they weren't laughing they were scowling, over some new +attack upon life--and when they did that they were laughable. At least +so they were to me. Not that I minded attacking things, I had done +plenty of that myself in Paris. But how different we had been back +there. We, too, had thrown old creeds to the winds, but with how much +more finesse and art. And there had been a large remoteness about it. +Each one had tossed his far-away country into the cosmopolitan pot, our +talk had been on a world-wide scale. But this crude crowd, except for +occasional mental flights, kept all its attention, its laughs and its +jeers, its attacks and exposures centered on this one mammoth town, +against which as a background they seemed the merest pigmies. Three +little muckrakers loomed against Wall Street, one small, scoffing +suffragette against a hundred and eighty thousand solid stolid Brooklyn +wives. They had posed themselves so absurdly close to the world of +things as they are. + +And they were in such a rush about their work. Over there in Paris, with +all our smashing of idols, we had at least held fast to our one great +goddess of art, we had slaved like dogs at the hard daily labor of +honestly learning our various crafts. But here they stopped for nothing +at all. The magazine writers were "tearing off copy," the painters were +simply "slapping it down." One of them told me he "painted the real +stuff right out of life"--dashed it off with one hand, so to speak, +while he shook his fist at the town with the other. Everyone wanted to +see something done--and done damn quick--about this, that or the other. + +My artist's eyes surveyed this group and twinkled with amused surprise. +But I could sit by the hour and listen to their talk. I found it mighty +refreshing, after those bills in the hardware shop, that monotonous +martyr feeling of mine and those worries down by the harbor. + +But I felt the harbor always there, slowly closing in on my father, who +looked older day by day, slowly bringing things to a crisis. In the +garden behind our house on warm September evenings when these pigmies +gathered to chatter reforms, the harbor hooted at their little plans as +it had hooted at my own. One evening, I remember, when the talk had +waxed hot and loud in favor of labor unions and strikes, Sue left the +group and with a friend strolled to the lower end of the garden. There I +saw them peer over the edge and listen to the drunken stokers singing in +the barrooms deep under all these flower beds and all this adventurous +chatter of ours. I thought of the years I had spent with Sam--and Sue, +too, seemed to me to be having a spree. Poor kid, what a jolt she would +get some day. She called me "our dreamer imported from France." But I +was far from dreaming. + +Presently the harbor just opened one of its big eyes and sent up by a +messenger a little grim reality. + +A Russian revolutionist had appeared among us with a letter to Sue from +Joe Kramer. Joe, I found to my surprise, had seen quite a little of Sue +over here while I had been in Paris--and from the various ships and +hotels that had been his "home" of late, he had written her now and +then. Through him Sue had joined a society known as "The Friends of +Russian Freedom," and Joe wrote now from Moscow urging her to "stir up +the crowd and lick this fellow into shape to talk at big meetings and +raise some cash. He has the real goods," Joe added. "All he needs is the +English language and a few points about making it yellow. If handled +right he'll be a scream." + +He was handled right and he was a scream. Three months later he finished +a tour that had netted over ten thousand dollars. Now to buy guns and +ship them to Russia--where in the awful poverty bequeathed to them by +the war with Japan, a bitter people was still fighting hard to make an +end of autocracy. + +"I think I can help you, Puss," said Dad. + +I looked at him with interest. I knew he had been as tickled as I by +these astonishing friends of hers. "Revolooters," he called them. He was +a great favorite with the girls. + +"I once knew a man in a business way who dealt in guns," he explained to +Sue. "He shipped some to Bolivia from my dock. I'll have him up to meet +your friend." + +So this messenger from the harbor, a keen lean man of business, gave one +hour of his time to the problem in which the Russian dreamer had been +absorbed for fifteen years. And the hour made the fifteen years look +decidedly dreamy. + +"Guns for Russia, eh?" he said. "How'll you get 'em into your country? +Where's your frontier weakest? You don't know? Then I'll tell you." And +the man of business did. "Now what kind of guns do you want? You hadn't +thought? Well, my friend, you want Mausers. They happen to be cheap just +now in Vienna. You should have looked into that before you traipsed way +over here. You can get 'em there for three twenty apiece--they dropped +three cents last Tuesday." + +The dreamer dreamed hard and fast for a moment. + +"Then," he cried triumphantly, "wit' ten t'ousand dollairs I can buy +over t'ree t'ousand guns!" + +The gunman's look was patient. + +"Don't you want to shoot 'em off?" he inquired. "Because if you do +you'll need ammunition. You ought to have a thousand rounds, which will +come to a little over three times the actual cost of the guns +themselves. You see when you shoot off a gun at an army you want to have +plenty of cartridges or else be ready to run like hell. + +"On second thought," he added, "I advise you to give up the Mausers and +go in for Springfields over here--old ones--you can get 'em cheap. +They're no good at over a mile, but for the first few months your +fellahs will be lucky if they hit a man at a hundred yards. And there's +one good point about Springfields, they make a devil of a noise--and +that's all you need for a starter, noise enough to break into headlines +all over the world as a 'Brave Little Rebel Army.' If you can do that, +and the word goes around on the quiet that you're using American +rifles--well, there's a kind of a sentiment in our trade--you'll find us +all behind you. We'll even _lose_ money. We're a queer bunch." + +"But wait!" cried the Russian. "Dere ees a trouble! Your tr-reaty wit' +Russia! Have you not a tr-reaty which makes it forbidden to sell to me +guns?" + +Again that look of patience: + +"Yes, General, we have a tr-reaty. But we'll ship your guns as grand +pianos to Naples, from there by slow boat down to Brazil and then up to +the Baltic, where they'll arrive with their pedigrees lost. Our agent +will be there ahead, he'll have found a customhouse man he can fix, +he'll cable us where--and when those fifty pianos are landed the said +official will open the box marked twenty-two. It'll take him over an +hour to do it, the boards will be nailed so cussedly tight. And he'll +find a real piano inside. Then he'll look at the other forty-nine crates +and say, 'Oh, Hell!' in Russian. Then they'll go on to wherever you want +'em--and you'll revolute. But don't forget that what you need most is +the livest press agent you can find. I've got to go now. Think it over. +And if you want to do business with me come to my office to-morrow at +ten." + +The man of business left us. And while the dreamer talked like mad and +finally decided that as Mausers were "shoot farther guns" he had better +go to Vienna, I watched the twinkle in Dad's gray eyes and thought of +the cool contempt in his friend's. And from being amused I became rather +sore. For, after all, this little Russian cuss had risked his life for +fifteen years and expected to lose it shortly. (As a matter of fact, he +was stood up against a wall and shot the following April.) Why make him +look so small? + +Was there nothing under the heavens that this infernal harbor didn't +know all about, and "do business with" so thoroughly that it could +always smile? + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +As I drudged on down there in the warehouse, my bitterness became an +obsession. I even talked about it to Sue. + +"Oh, Billy, you make me tired," she said. "Here I've taken the trouble +to bring to the house every magazine writer I know. And they're all +ready to help you break in--but you won't write, you won't even try!" + +"How do you know I haven't tried?" I retorted hotly. "But I'm working +all day as it is--and four nights a week besides. And the other three +nights, when I try to think of the kind of thing that I could sell to +the magazines--well, I simply can't do it, that's all--it's not my way +of writing!" + +"Then your way is just plain morbid," she said, "and it's about time you +dropped it." She seemed to get a sudden idea. "I know the person _you_ +ought to meet----" + +"Do you? What's his name?" I inquired. + +"Eleanore Dillon," she answered. I looked up at her with a start. + +"Eleanore Dillon? Is she still around?" + +I hadn't thought of that girl in years. + +"She is--and she's just what you need," said Sue, with that know-it-all +smile of hers. Her head was now cocked a bit to one side. "Your little +friend of long ago," she added sympathetically. I eyed Sue for a moment. +I did not care at all for her tone. + +"What do I need _her_ for?" I asked. + +"To talk to you of the harbor, of course--that's her especial line these +days." + +"The harbor?" I demanded. "That girl?" + +"Yes--the harbor, that girl." Sue seemed to be having quite a good time. +My jaw set tight. + +"What does she do down there?" I asked. + +"She worships her father. Don't you remember? An engineer. He's doing a +big piece of work on the harbor and Eleanore is wrapped up in his work, +she's a beautiful case of how a fond parent can literally swallow up his +child. There used to be nothing whatever that Eleanore Dillon wasn't +going to do in life. Don't you remember, when she was small, that little +determined air she had in the way she went at every game? Well, she grew +even more like that. From school she went to college and worked herself +to a frazzle. Then she broke down and had to drop out, and now that +she's strong again she's changed. She used to go in for everything. Now +she goes in for nothing at all except her father and his work. She +thinks we're all a lot of young fools." + +"Oh, now, Sue," I put in derisively. "You people fools? How could she?" + +"You'll see," my sister sweetly replied, "for she'll probably think +you're another. She detests morbid people, they're not her kind. But if +she'll give you a talking to it may do you a lot of good." + + * * * * * + +She did give me a talking to and it did do me a lot of good, although +when I came to think of it I found she had barely talked at all. + +She wasn't the sort who liked to talk, she was just as quiet as before. +When she arrived rather late one evening and Sue brought her out on the +verandah into a group of those radical friends who were a committee for +something or other, after the general greetings were over she settled +back in a corner with the air of one who likes just to listen to people, +no matter whether they're fools or not. But as I watched her I decided +she did not consider these people fools. That quiet smile that came on +her face showed a comfortable curiosity and now and then a gleam of +amusement, but no contempt whatever. She seemed a girl so well pleased +with her life that she could be pleased with the world besides and keep +her eyes open for all there was in it. Although she was still rather +small and still demurely feminine, with the same grave sweetness in her +eyes, that same enchanting freshness about everything she wore, she +struck me at once as having changed, as having grown tremendously, as +having somehow filled herself deep with a quiet abundant vitality. +"Where have _you_ been," I wondered. + +There came a loud blast from the harbor. At once I saw her turn in her +chair and look down to the point below where a river boat was just +leaving her slip, sweeping silently out of the darkness into the moonlit +water. My curiosity deepened. Where _had_ she been, and what was she +doing, what queer kind of a girl was this? I took a seat beside her. + +"Don't you remember me?" I asked. She turned her head with a quiet +smile. + +"Of course I do," she answered. Her low voice had a frankly intimate +tone. "I did the moment I saw you. Besides, Sue told me about you." + +"She's been telling me quite a lot about _you_." + +"Has she? What?" + +"That you know all about the harbor these days." + +"Sue's wonderful," Eleanore murmured. "She's so sure her friends know +everything." + +"Let's stick to the harbor." + +"All right, let's. I know enough about it to like it. Sue says you know +enough to hate it. I wonder which of us knows more." + +"I do." + +"How do you know you do?" + +"Because I've been here longer," I said. "I've hated it for twenty odd +years." + +She looked at me with interest. Her eyes were not at all like Sue's. +Sue's eyes were always wrapped up in herself; Eleanore's in somebody +else. They were as intimate as her voice. + +"Don't you remember the evening when you took me down to the docks?" she +asked. + +"I do--very well," I said. + +"And do you mean to tell me you didn't like the harbor then?" + +"I do--I hated the harbor then. I was scared to death that Sam and his +gang would appear around the end of a car." + +"Who was Sam?" she asked me. "He sounds like a very dreadful small boy." + +Soon she had me telling her of Sam and his gang and the harbor of +thrills, from the time of old Belle and the Condor. + +"I was a toy piano," I said. "And the harbor was a giant who played on +me till I rattled inside. We had a big spree together." + +"Not a very healthy spree, was it?" she said quietly, turning her +gray-blue eyes on mine. For some reason we suddenly smiled at each +other. "You're a good deal like your father--aren't you?" she said. "The +same nice twinkle in your eyes. Please go on. What did the harbor do to +you next?" + +I thought all at once of the August day when she had lain, a girl of +twelve, in the fragrant meadow beside me. And as then, so now, the +drunken woman's image rose for an instant in my mind. + +"It wiped the thrills all out," I said abruptly. I told how the place +grew harsh and bare, how I could always feel it there stripping +everything naked like itself, and how finally when later in Paris I felt +I had shaken it off for life, it had now suddenly jerked me back, let me +see what my father had really been, and had then repeated its same old +trick, closing in on his great idea and making it look like an old man's +hobby, crowding him out and handing us grimly two dull little jobs--one +to live on and one to die on. + +"It's getting monotonous," I ended. + +While I talked she had been watching it, now a bustling ferry crossing, +now a tug with a string of barges working up against the tide. + +"How do you know it's so bad for you to be brought back from Paris?" she +asked me, without looking around. + +"Have you ever been in Paris?" + +"Yes--and I want to go again. But I don't believe it will ever feel as +real to me as this place does. And I shouldn't think it would to you. +Because you were born here, weren't you--and you've been so close to it +most of the time that you're all mixed into it, aren't you? I mean +you've got your roots here. Why don't you write about _them_ for a +while?" + +"What?" + +"Your roots." + +She turned and again her eyes met mine, and again for some reason or +other we smiled. + +"All right," I assented gravely, "I'll buy a hoe and start right in." + +"That's it, hoe yourself all up. Get as far down as you can remember. +Dig up Belle and Sam, and Sue and your mother and father. Then take a +hoe to Paris and find out why you loved it so, and why you hate the +harbor. Be sure you get all the hate there is, it makes such interesting +reading. Besides, it may be just what you need--it may take the hate all +out of your system." + +"Who'll print it?" I demanded. + +"Oh, some magazine," she said. + +"Do you think this kind of thing would interest their readers?" + +"It would interest _me_----" + +"Thank you. I'll tell the editors that." + +"You'll do no such thing," she said severely. "You'll tell the magazine +editors, please, that I'm only one of thousands of girls who are +getting sick and tired of the happy, cheery little tales they print for +our special benefit. It's just about time they got over the habit of +thinking of us as sweet, young things and gave us some roots we can grow +on." + +Another modern girl, I thought. + +"Do you, too, want to vote?" I asked her, with a fine, indulgent irony. + +"Some day I do," she answered. And then she added with placid scorn, +"When I've learned all the political wisdom that _you_ have to teach +me." And as if that were a good place to stop, she rose from her seat. + +"The others seem to have left us," she said. "I think I'd better be +going home." + +"Wait a minute, please," I cried. "When am I going to hear about +you--and your side of this dismal body of water?" + +She looked back at me serenely. + +"Wait till you've got yours all written down," she replied. "You see +mine might only mix you up. Mine is so much pleasanter. Good night," she +added softly. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +Until late that night, and again the next day at my desk down in the +warehouse, my thoughts kept drifting back to our talk. With a glow of +surprise I found I remembered not only every word she had said, but the +tones of her voice as she said it, the changing expressions on her face +and in her smiling gray-blue eyes. Her picture rose so vividly at times +it was uncanny. + +"What do you think of her?" asked Sue. + +"Mighty little," I replied. I did not care to discuss her with Sue, for +I had not liked Sue's tone at all. + +But how little I'd learned about Eleanor's life. Where did she live? I +didn't know. When I had hinted at coming to see her she had smilingly +put me off. What was this pleasant harbor of hers? "Wait till you've got +yours all written down," she had said, and had told me nothing whatever. +Yes, I thought disgustedly, I was quite a smart young man. Here I had +spent two years in Paris learning how to draw people out. What had she +let me draw out of her? What hadn't I let her draw out of me? I wondered +how much I had told that girl. + +For some reason, in the next few days, my thoughts drifted about with +astonishing ease and made prodigious journeys. I roved far back to my +childhood, and there the most tempting incidents rose, and solemn little +thoughts and terrors, hopes and plans, some I was proud of, some mighty +ashamed of. Roots, roots, up they came, as though they'd just been +waiting, down there deep inside of me, for that girl and her hoeing. + +Presently, just to get rid of them all, I began writing some of them +down. And again I was surprised to find that I was in fine writing +trim. The words seemed to come of themselves from my pen and line +themselves up triumphantly into scenes of amazing vividness. At least so +they looked to me. How good it felt to be at it again. Often up in my +room at night I kept on working till nearly dawn. I was getting on +famously now. + + * * * * * + +And so now, as was his habit, Joe Kramer came crashing into my life and +as usual put a stop to my work. + +Having just landed from Russia, he had "breezed over" to our house, had +had a talk with Sue downstairs and had then come up to my room to +surprise me--just as I had a good firm grip on one of my most entrancing +roots. + +"Hello, Bill," he cried. "What are you up to?" + +"Hello, J. K. How are you?" + +I knew that I ought to be genial, and for a few moments I did my best. I +went through all the motions. I grabbed his hand, I smiled, I talked, I +told him I was tickled to death, I even tried pounding him on the back. +But it was quite useless. + +"Kid," he said with that grin of his, "you're up to something idealistic +and don't want to be disturbed. But I'm here and it can't be helped. So +out with it--what have you gone and done?" + +And he jerked my story out of me. + +"All right," he declared, "this has got to stop!" + +"I knew it," I said. I had known it the minute he came in the room. + +"You've got to throw up your ten-dollar job, quit working all night on +stuff that won't sell, and come on a paper and make some real money." + +"I can't do it," I snapped. + +"You can," said J. K. + +"But I tell you I tried! I went to a paper----" + +"You'll go to a dozen before I get through!" + +"J. K.--I won't do it" + +"Kid--you will!" + +And he kept at me night after night. He was working for a New York paper +now as a special correspondent. He had a talk with his editor and got me +a chance to go on as a "cub" and write about weddings, describing the +costume of the bride. At least it was a starter, he said, and would lead +to divorces later on, and from there I might be promoted to graft. He +talked to Sue and my father about it, persuading them both to take his +side. Day by day the pressure increased. I set my young jaw doggedly and +kept on writing about my roots. + +"Look here," said Joe one evening. "Your sister tells me you're sore on +the harbor. Then have a look at this." And he showed me a newspaper +clipping headed, "Padrone System Under the Dumps." + +"Well, what about it?" I asked him. + +"What about it? My God! Here's a chance to show up the harbor on one of +its ugliest, rottenest ideas! A dump is a pier that sticks out in the +river. We'll go there at night, get down underneath it and look at the +kids--Dago child-slaves working like hell. You say that weddings are not +in your line--all right, here's just the opposite--stuff that'll make +your women readers sit right up and sob out aloud! I don't care for +tear-jerkers myself," he added. "But even tear-jerkers are better than +Art." + +"All right," I muttered savagely, "let's go and get a tear-jerker to +write!" + +If I must write of this modern harbor, at least it was some satisfaction +to write about one of its ugliest sides. + +We went the next night. + +Joe had chosen a dump which jutted out from the Manhattan side of the +river just about opposite our house. A huge, long, shadowy pile of city +refuse of all kinds, we caught the sour breath of it as we drew near in +the darkness. There was not a sound nor a light. We climbed down onto a +greenish beam that ran along by the side underneath, about a foot from +the water, and cautiously working our way outward for a hundred yards +or more, we stopped abruptly and drew back. + +For just before us under the dump was a cave with walls of papers and +rags. A lantern hung from overhead, swung gently in the raw salt breeze, +and by its light we could see a half dozen swarthy small boys. Five were +intent on a game of dice, whispering fiercely while they played. Their +boss lay asleep in a corner. The sixth, the smallest of them all, sat +smoking in the mouth of the cave, his knees drawn up and his big dilated +black eyes roving hungrily out over the water. All at once around the +end of the pier, a dark, tall shadow like a spook swept silently out +before him. He sprang back and fervently crossed himself, then grinned +and drew on his cigarette hard. For the shadow was only a scow with a +derrick. The imp continued his watching. + +"Now," said J. K. a few minutes later back on shore, "you want to get +their hours and wages. You want to look up the fire law about lighted +cigarettes and a lantern----" + +"Oh, damn your fire law," I growled. "I want to know where that kid with +the cigarette was born, and what he thinks of the harbor!" Joe gave me +one of his cheerful grins. + +"You might get his views on the tariff," he said. + +"Look here, J. K.," I implored him; "go home. Go on home and leave me +alone. It's all right, I'm glad you brought me here--darned good of you, +and I'll get a story. Only for God's sake leave me alone!" + +"Sure," said Joe. "Only don't try to talk to those little Guineys. Their +boss wouldn't let 'em say a word and you'd lose your chance of watching +'em. Make it a kind of a mystery story." + +And a mystery story I made it. + +Where had he been a year ago, this imp who had fervently crossed +himself? In Naples, Rome or Venice, or poking his toes into the dust of +a street in some dull little town in the hills? What great condor of +to-day had picked him up and dropped him here? How did it look to him? +What did he feel? + +I came back to the dump night after night, and writing blindly in the +dark I tried to jot down what he saw--gigantic shapes and shadows, some +motionless, some rushing by with their dim spectral little lights, and +over all the great arch of the Bridge rearing over half the sky. The +lantern in the cave behind threw a patch of light on the water below, +and across that patch from under the pier where the water was slapping, +slapping, there came an endless bobbing procession--a whisky bottle, a +broken toy horse, a bit of a letter, a pink satin slipper, a dirty white +glove--things tossed out of people's lives. On and on they came. And I +knew there were miles of black water like this all covered with tiny +processions like this moving slowly out with the ebb tide, out from the +turbulent city toward the silent ocean. One night the watchman on the +dump showed me a heavy paper bag with what would have been a baby +inside. Where had it come from? He didn't know. Tossed out of some +woman's life, in a day it would be far out on the ocean, bobbing, +bobbing with the rest. Water from here to Naples, water from here to +heathen lands. Just here a patch of light from a lantern. That imp from +Italy looking down--into something immense and dark and unknown. + +He was having a spree with the harbor, as I had had when as small as he. +I saw him watch the older boys and listen thrilled to their wonderful +talk--as once I, too, had been thrilled by Sam. I watched him over a +game of dice, quarreling, scowling, grabbing at pennies, slapped by some +one, whimpering, then eagerly getting back to the game. It was "craps," +I had played it with Sam and the gang. One night he dropped a cigarette +still lighted into the rags and was given a blow by his boss that +knocked him into a corner. But presently he crawled cautiously forth, +and again with both hands hugging his knees he sat and watched the +harbor. What a big spree for a little boy. + +I put my own childhood into this imp, into him my first feelings toward +this place. And so I came again to my roots. How the memories rose up +now--the fascinations and terrors that I, too, had felt before something +immense and dark and unknown. + +Thank heaven J. K. had given me up and gone to Colorado--so I was left +to work in peace. I called my sketch "A Patch of Light," and sent it to +a magazine. It came back with a note explaining that, while this was a +fine little thing in its way, its way wasn't theirs, it was neither an +article full of facts nor a story full of romance. In short, I told +myself savagely, it was neither hay nor tears! Again it went forth and +again back it came. Then Sue gave it to one of her writer friends who +said he knew just the place for it. + +"No, you don't," I thought drearily. "Nobody knows--in this whole +damnable desolate land." + +But Sue's friend sold my story--for twenty-two dollars and fifty cents! +And he said that the editor wanted some more! + +It was curious, from my window that night, what a different harbor I saw +below. Ugly still? Of course it was. But what a _rich mine_ of ugliness +for the pen of a rising young author like me! + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +Now for something bigger. I would have a whack at the place by day. No +mystery now, just ugliness. I would show it up in broad daylight, +bringing out every detail in the glare. I would do this by comparing it +to the harbor of long ago, and the snowy white sails of my father's +youth. + +His youth was gone. A thick-set and gray-headed old figure, he bent over +his desk by my side, putting up a fierce, silent fight for his strength, +and now slowly getting enough of it back to keep him at his job as a +clerk in what had been his warehouse. Only once, coming suddenly into +the room, I found him settled deep down in his chair, heavy, inert, his +cigar gone out, staring vacantly out of the window. + +The sails were gone. Down there at his dock, where even in days that I +could remember the tall clippers had lain for weeks, I saw now a German +whaleback. She had slipped in but three days before and was already +snorting to get away. She was black and she wallowed deep, and she had +an enormous bulging belly into which I descended one day and explored +its metallic compartments that echoed to the deafening din of some +riveters at work on her sides. Though short and stout, she was nine +thousand tons. Hideous, she was practical, as practical as a factory. In +her the romance of the sea was buried and choked in smoke and steam, in +grime, dirt, noise and a regular haste. One morning as her din increased +and the black, sooty breath of her came drifting in through our window, +my father rose abruptly and slammed the window down. + +"The damn sea hog!" he muttered. + +Gone, too, were the American sailors. All races of men on the earth but +ours seemed gathered around this hog of the sea. From barges filled with +her cargo, the stuff was being heaved up on the dock by a lot of Irish +bargemen. Italian dockers rolled it across to this German ship, and on +deck a Jap under-officer was bossing a Coolie crew. These Coolies were +dwarfs with big white teeth and stooping, round little shoulders. They +had strange, nervous faces, long and narrow with high cheek bones and no +foreheads at all to speak of. Their black eyes gleamed. Back and forth +they scurried to the sound of that guttural Japanese voice. + +"The cheapest sea labor there is," growled Dad. "Good-by to Yankee +sailors." + +The Old East with its riches was no longer here. For what were these +Coolies doing? Handling silks and spices? Oh, no. They were hoisting and +letting down into the hold an automobile from Dayton, Ohio, bound for +New South Wales. Gone were the figs and almonds, the indigo, ivory, +tortoise shells. Into the brand-new ledgers over which my father worked, +he was entering such items as barbed wire, boilers, car wheels and gas +engines, baby carriages, kegs of paint. I reveled in the commonplace +stuff, contrasting it vividly in my mind with the starlit ocean roads it +would travel, the picturesque places it would help spoil. + +I filled in the scene with all its details, the more accurate, glaring +and real the better--the brand-new towering skyline risen of late on +Manhattan, the new steel bridge, an ugly one this, and all the modern +steam craft, tugs, river boats, Sound steamers, each one of them panting +and spewing up smoke. I sat there like a stenographer and took down the +harbor's dictation, noting the rasping tones of its voice, recording +eagerly all its smells. And all this and more that I gathered, I +focussed on the sea hog. + +And then toward the end of a winter's day we looked out of our window +and saw her "sail." She sailed in a nervous, worrying haste to the +grunts and shrieks of a lot of steam winches. Up rattled her anchor, out +she waddled, tugs puffing their smoke and steam in her face. She didn't +depart. Who ever heard of a hog departing? She just went. There were no +songs, no last good-byes--except from a man in his shirt sleeves who +called from the deck to a man on the pier, "So long, Mac, see you next +Spring," and then went into the factory. + +When the work of the day was over, I went down into the dock shed. My +father's old place was at peace for a time, the desecration done with. +She was empty, dark and silent. In her long, inward-sloping walls the +eight wide sliding doors were closed. Only through the dusty skylights +here and there fell great masses of soft light. Big bunches of canvas +hung from above, ropes dangled out of the shadows. And there were huge +rhythmic creakings that made you feel the ocean still here, an old ocean +under an old, old dock. The place grew creepy with its past. + +"Faint, spicy odors," I jotted down, as I stood there in the dimness, +"ghosts of long ago--low echoes of old chanties sung by Yankee +sailors--romance--mystery----" + +I broke off writing and drew back behind a crate. My father had entered +the dock shed and was coming slowly up the dock. Presently I saw him +stop and look into the shadows around him. I saw a frown come on his +face, I saw his features tighten. So he stood for some moments. Then he +turned and walked quickly out. A lump had risen in my throat, for I +thought I knew what he had seen. + +"The Phantom Ship" became my title. A fine contrast to the sea hog, I +thought. I asked Dad endless questions at night about the old days not +only here, but all up along the coast of New England, and hungrily I +listened while he glorified the rich life and color of those seaport +towns now gray, those wharves now rotting and covered with moss. He +glorified the spacious homes of the men who had ordered their captains +to search the Far East for the rugs and the curtains, the chairs and the +tables, the dishes, the vase, the silks and the laces, the silver and +gold and precious stones with which those audacious old houses were +stored. He glorified the ships themselves. From the quarter decks of our +clippers, those marvels of cleanliness and speed, he told how those +miraculous captains had issued their orders to Yankee sailors, brawny, +deep-chested, keen-eyed and strong-limbed. He told what perils they had +faced far out on the Atlantic--"the Roaring Forties" those waters were +called! + +"Yes, boy, in those days ships had men!" + +In my room I eagerly wrote it all down and added what I myself could +remember. Here from my bedroom window I tried to see what I had seen as +a boy, the immaculate white of the tall sails, the fresh blue and green +of the dancing waves. Oh, I was romancing finely those nights! And there +came no Blessed Damozel to say to me gruffly, "Couches-toi. Il est +tard." + +When the sketch was completed at last I gave it to my father to read and +then went out for a long walk. It was nearly midnight when I returned, +but he was still reading. He cleared his throat. + +"Son," he said very huskily, "this is a strong piece of work!" His eyes +were moist as they moved rapidly down the page. He looked up with a +jerk. "Who'll print it?" he asked. + +"I wish I knew, Dad----" + +I mailed it that night to a magazine. In the next two weeks my father's +suspense was even deeper than my own, though he tried hard to joke about +it, calling me "Pendennis." One day in his office chair he wheeled with +a nervous sharpness, and I could feel his eyes fixed on the envelope +which the postman had just thrown on my desk. God help me, it was heavy +and long, it had my manuscript inside. Dismally I searched for a letter. +Still I could feel those anxious eyes. + +"Hold on!" I cried. "They've taken it! All they want me to do is to cut +it down!" + +"Then do it!" My radiant father snarled. "It ought to be cut to half its +length! That's the way with beginners, a mass of details! Some day maybe +you'll learn to write!" + +I smiled happily back. He came suddenly over and gripped my hand. + +"My boy, I'm glad, I'm very glad! I'm"--he cleared his throat and went +back to his desk and tried to scowl over what he was doing. + +"Dad." + +"Huh?" + +"They say they'll give me a hundred dollars. Pretty good for one month's +work." + +"Huh." + +"And they want me to do some more on the harbor. They say it's a new +field. Never been touched." + +"Then touch it," he said gruffly. "Leave me alone. I'm busy." + +But coming in late after luncheon that day, I found him reading the +editor's letter. + +"Boy," he said that evening, "you ought to read Thackeray for style, and +Washington Irving, and see what a whippersnapper you are. Work--work! If +your mother were only alive she could help you!" + +And just before bedtime, taking a bottle of beer with my pipe, I caught +his disapproving eye. + +"Worst thing you can put in your stomach," he growled. He said this +regularly each night, and added, "Why can't you keep up your health for +your work?" + +His own health had improved astonishingly. + +"It's the winter air that has done it," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +My work, as my father saw it now, was to write "strong, practical +articles" presenting the respective merits of free ships, ship subsidies +and discriminating tariffs to build up our mercantile marine. + +But I was growing tired these days of my father's idea, his miracle and +his endless talk of the past. On walks along the waterfront he would +treat it all like a graveyard. But while he pointed out the tombs I felt +the swift approach of Spring. It was March, and in a crude way of its +own the harbor was expressing the season--in warm, salty breezes, the +odor of fish and the smell of tar on the bottoms of boats being +overhauled for the Summer. Our Italian dockers sang at their work, and +one day the dock was a bright-hued mass of strawberries and early Spring +flowers landed by a boat from the South. Everywhere things seemed +starting--starting like myself. + +I had given up my warehouse job, and free at last from that tedious desk +to which I once thought I was tied for years, with two sketches sold and +ideas for others, so many others, rising daily in my mind, I went about +watching the life of the port. Poor Dad. He was old. Could I help being +young? + +Without exactly meaning to, I drew away from my father to Sue. We felt +ourselves vividly young in that house. We quarreled intensely over her +friends and were pleased with ourselves in the process. We had long +talks about ourselves. Sue let me talk to her by the hour about my work +and my ideas, while she sat and thought about her own. + +"If you're planning to write up the harbor," she said sleepily late one +night, "you ought to cruise around a bit in Eleanore Dillon's motor +boat." + +I looked at her in astonishment. + +"Does that girl run a motor boat?" + +"Her father's." Sue yawned and gave me a curious smile. "I'll see if I +can't arrange it," she said. And about a week later she told me, +"Eleanore's coming to take us out to-night." + +Some of Sue's friends came to supper that evening and later we all went +down to the dock. There was no moon but the stars were out and the night +was still, the slip was dark and empty. Suddenly with a rush and a swirl +a motor boat rounded the end of the pier, turned sharply in and came +shooting toward us. A boiling of water, she seemed to rear back, then +drifted unconcernedly in to the bottom of the ladder. + +In the small circle of light down there I saw Eleanore Dillon smiling +up. She sat at her wheel, a trim figure in white--a white Jersey, +something red at her throat and a soft white hat crushed a bit to one +side. Beneath it the breeze played tricks with her hair. + +We scrambled down into the cock-pit. It was a deep, cozy little place, +with the wide open doors of a cabin in front, in which I caught a +glimpse of two bunks, a table, a tiny electric cooking stove and a +shaded reading light over the one small easy chair. There were impudent +curtains of blue at the port holes. There was a shelf of books and +another of blue and white cups and saucers and dishes. And what was +that? A monkey crouching under the table, paws clutching the two +enormous brass buttons on the gay blue jacket he wore, eyes watching us +angrily as he chattered. + +"Buttons," commanded his mistress, "come out here this minute and stop +your noise. There's nothing for you to be peevish about, the water's +like glass. When it's rough," she explained, "he gets fearfully seasick. +Come here now, pass the cigarettes." And this her Buttons proceeded to +do--very grumpily. + +Then as a small, quiet hand pulled a lever, I felt a leap of power +beneath me, the boat careened as she turned, then righted, there was a +second pull on the lever, another surging leap of speed, and as we +rushed out on the river now up rose her bow higher and higher, a huge +white wave on either side. The spray dashed in our faces. Everyone began +talking excitedly. Only the Buttons kept his monkey eyes fixed anxiously +on his captain's face while he clasped the pit of his stomach. + +"Oh, Buttons, don't be such a coward," she said. "I tell you it's smooth +and you won't be sick! Go out there and stop being silly!" + +Slowly and with elaborate caution the monkey crept forward over the +cabin. For a moment up at the bow he paused, a ridiculous little +dark-jacketed figure between the two white crests of our waves. Then +with a spring he was up to his place on the top of the light, and there +with gay gesticulations he greeted every vessel we passed. + +I had taken a seat by Eleanore's side. She was driving her boat with +eyes straight ahead. Now and then she would close them, draw in a deep +breath of the rough salt air, and smile contentedly to herself. After a +time I heard her voice, low and intimate as before: + +"Finished up that hideous harbor of yours?" + +"No," I answered hungrily, "I think I've just begun." I caught a gleam +in her eyes. + +"You'll be out of your rut in a moment," she said. + +"What do you mean, my rut?" I demanded. + +"The East River, Stupid--wait and see." + +From the little East River corner I'd lived in, we sped far out on the +Upper Bay, a rushing black speck on a dim expanse, with dark, empty +fields of water around us, long, luminous paths stretching off to the +shores, where the lights twinkled low for miles and miles and there were +sudden bursts of flame from distant blast furnace fires. + +"Tell me what you've been writing about this hideous place," she said. + +"Who said it was hideous at night? Of course if you wrap it all up in +the dark, so that you can see none of its sea hogs----" + +"What's a sea hog?" + +"A sea hog is a wallowing boat with a long, black, heavy snout." And +mustering all that was left of my hatred I plunged into my picture. "The +whole place is like that," I ended. "Full of smoke and dirt and +disorder, everything rushing and jamming together. That's how it looks +to me in the daytime!" + +"Are you sure it does--still?" + +"I am," I answered firmly. "And I'm going to write it just as it looks." + +"Then look back of you," she suggested. + +Behind us, at the tip of Manhattan, the tall buildings had all melted +together into one tremendous mass, with only a pin point of light here +and there, a place of shadowy turrets and walls, like some mediæval +fortress. Out of it, in contrast to its dimness, rose a garish tower of +lights that seemed to be keeping a vigilant watch over all the dark +waters, the ships and the docks. The harbor of big companies. + +"My father works up in that tower," she said. "He can see the whole +harbor spread out below. But he keeps coming down to see it all close, +and I've steered him up close to everything in it. You've no idea how +much there is." She threw me a glance of pitying scorn. "There are over +seven hundred miles of waterfront in this small port, and I'm not going +to have you trudging around and getting lost and tired and cross and +working off your grudge in your writing. You come with me some afternoon +and I'll do what I can to open your eyes." + +"Please do it," I said quickly. + + * * * * * + +She took me down, to the sea gate at the end of a warm, still, foggy +day. There in the deepening twilight we drifted without a sign of a +world around us--till in from the ocean there came a deep billow, then +another and another, and as our small craft darted off to one side a +gigantic gray shadow loomed through the fog with four black towers of +smoke overhead, lights gleaming from a thousand eyes. + +"Another sea hog," murmured a voice. + +"I said in the daytime," I replied. + +We went out on another afternoon to watch the fisherman fleets at their +work or scudding before a strong wind home with a great, round, radiant +sun behind. She showed me fishers in the air, lonely fish hawks one by +one flying in the late afternoon back to their nests on the Atlantic +Highlands. And far out on the Lower Bay she knew where to stir up whole +armies of gulls, till there seemed to be thousands wheeling in air with +the bright sunshine on all the wings. The sunshine, too, with the help +of the breeze, stole glinting deep into her hair. She watched me out of +half-closed eyes. + +"Is this daylight enough?" she demanded. + +"This is simply absurd," I answered. "You know very well that this +harbor is ugly in places----" + +"Only in places. That's better," she said. + +"In a great _many_ places," I rejoined. "Please take me to Bayonne some +day--at two p. m.," I added. + +It seemed a good, safe, unmysterious hour, and as we neared the place +next day my hopes mounted high, for there was a leaden sky overhead and +loathsome blotches and streaks of oil on the gray water around us--while +ahead on the Jersey shore, from two chimneys that rose halfway to the +clouds, poured two foul, sluggish columns of smoke. + +"Still New York harbor, I believe?" I inquired maliciously. But Eleanore +was smiling. "What's the joke?" I demanded. + +"The southwest wind," she softly replied. I could feel it coming as she +spoke. As I watched I saw it take that sky and tear jagged rifts in it +for the sun, and then as those two columns of smoke began twisting and +writhing like monster snakes they took on purple and greenish hues and +threw ghostly reflections of themselves down on the oily water around +us, filled with blue and gold shimmerings now. + +"What a strange, wonderful purple," murmured a quiet voice by my side. + +Stubbornly I resisted conversion. I wanted more afternoons in that boat. + +"Now it's blowing that oily odor our way," I declared in sudden +annoyance. "I no sooner get to enjoying myself when along comes one of +the smells of this place. And where's the beauty in _them_? Can you show +me? Here's a place that should be a great storehouse of pure fresh air +for the city to breathe, and----" + +"Oh, hush up!" said Eleanore. + +But I doggedly found other blemishes here--swamps, railroad yards and +sooty tracks that filled the waterfront for miles where there should +have been parks and boulevards. At the same time I assumed the tone of +one who tries to be fair and patient. Whenever she showed me some new +beauty in water or sky I took great pains to look at it well. When an +angry little squall of wind came ruffling over the sunny waves in +sweeping bands of deep, soft blues, I gazed and gazed at its wonder as +though I could never have enough. And so gazing I spied floating there a +sodden old mattress, a fleet of tin cans. And I said that it seemed an +unhealthy thing to dump all our refuse so close to the city. + +"They don't!" she retorted indignantly. "They take it out miles beyond +the Hook!" + +In short, I considered myself mighty clever. Day by day I prolonged my +conversion, holding obstinately back--while Eleanore revealed to me the +miracles worked by the sunset here, and by the clouds, the winds, the +tides, the very smoke and the ships themselves, all playing weird +tricks on each other. Slowly the crude glory of it stole upon me +unawares--until to my own intense surprise the harbor now became for me +a breathing, heaving, gleaming thing filled deep with the rush and the +vigor of life. A thing no longer sinister, crushing down on a man's old +age--but strangely deeply stirring. + +"Look out, my friend," I warned myself. "This is no harbor you're +falling in love with." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +Although at such lucid moments I would sometimes go a-soaring up into +the most dazzling dreams, more often I would plunge in gloom. For +Eleanore's dreams and all her thoughts seemed centered on her father. +From each corner of that watery world, no matter how far we wandered, +the high tower from which he looked down on it all would suddenly loom +above the horizon. Over the dreariest marshes it peeped and into all our +talk he came. A marsh was a place that he was to transform, oily odors +were things he would sweep away. For every abuse that I could discover +her father was working out some cure. With a whole corps of engineers +drafting his dreams into practicable plans, there was no end to the +things he could do. + +"Here is a girl," I told myself, "so selfishly wrapped up in her father +she hasn't a thought for anyone else. She's using me to boom his work, +as she has doubtless used writers before me and will use dozens more +when I'm gone. No doubt she would like to have _dozens of me_ sitting +right here beside her now! It's not at all a romantic thought, but think +how she could use me then!" And I would glower at her. + +But it is a lonely desolate job to sit and glower at a girl who appears +so placidly unaware of the fact that you are glowering. And slowly +emerging from my gloom I would wonder about this love that was in her. +At times when she talked she made me feel small. My own love for my +mother, how utterly selfish it had been. Here was a passion so deep and +real it made her almost forget I was there, asking questions, hungrily +watching her, trying to learn about her life. + +"While I was in school," she said, in that low deliberate voice of hers, +"my father and I went abroad every summer. We tramped in the Alps for +weeks at a time, keeping way off the beaten paths to watch the work of +the Swiss engineers. One of them was a woman. We saw the bridge she'd +built over a gorge, and I became deeply excited. Until then I had never +had any idea that I could go into my father's work. But now I wondered +if I could. That winter in school I really worked. I was dreadfully dull +at mathematics, but I wouldn't see it. I made up my mind to go to +Cornell for the course on engineering. I worked like a slave for two +years to get ready and just succeeded in getting in. + +"Then toward the middle of Freshman year I realized that I was becoming +a quite absurdly solemn young grind. There were over a hundred girls in +college but I had made barely any friends. And so I firmly resolved to +be gay. I made a regular business of it and worked my way into clubs and +dances, hunting for the girls I liked and scheming to make them like me +too. By May I was way behind in my work. I tried to make up, I began +cramming every night until one or two in the morning. And I passed my +examinations--but that summer I broke down. My father had to drop his +work and take me abroad for an operation, and by the time we got back he +had lost nearly six months of his time. I decided that as an engineer I +was a dismal failure. I'd much better give my father a chance. + +"So when he took up this work in New York I spent all my time on our new +apartment. I loved fussing with it, I shopped like a bee, and this kept +me busy all Autumn. Besides I was going about with Sue. She had managed +me long ago at school and I was glad to let her now, for I was hunting +for new ideas. But Sue put me on so many committees that by Spring my +nerves were in shreds, and again for weeks I was flat on my back. + +"One evening then--when my father came home and sat down by my +bedside--it came over me all of a sudden--the wonderful quiet strength +in his hand, in the look of his eyes. + +"'Where have you been?' I asked him. + +"'Down on the harbor,' he told me. Since eight in the morning he'd been +in a launch exploring it all. I shut my eyes--my wretched eyelids +quivering--and I made him describe the whole day's trip while I tried to +see it all in my mind. Soon I was feeling deliciously quiet. 'I'm going +down there too,' I thought. + +"By the next evening I had the idea for this boat. When I told him he +was delighted, and we both grew excited over the plans--which he drew by +my bed, I made him draw dozens. At last it was built and lay at its +dock, and I packed all I needed into a trunk and we came down in a taxi. +It was a lovely May afternoon and we had a beautiful ride up the Hudson. +And from then on through the Summer I hardly went ashore at all, I knew +if I did it would spoil it all. + +"Every night we slept on board in those two cozy little bunks. I learned +to cook here. Soon I was able to run the boat and even to help my father +a little. I knew just enough about his work to go places for him and +save his time. I'd forgotten I ever had any nerves, for I felt I +belonged to something now that got way down to the roots of things. Do +you see what I mean? This harbor isn't like a hotel, or an evening gown +or Weber and Fields. I love pretty gowns, and my father and I wouldn't +miss Weber and Fields for worlds. But they're all on top, this is down +at the bottom, it's one of those deep places that seem to make the world +go 'round. It's right where the ocean bumps into the land. You can get +your roots here, you can feel you are real. + +"You see what my father is doing is to take this whole harbor and study +it hard--not just the water, the shipping and docks, for when he says +'the port of New York' he means all the railroads too--and he's +studying how they all come in and why it is that everything has become +so frightfully snarled. A lot of big shipping men are behind him, and +he's to draw up a plan for it all which they're going to give to the +city to use, to make this port what it's got to be, the very first in +the ocean world. It's one of those slow tremendous pieces of work, it +will take years to carry it out and hundreds of millions of dollars. My +father thinks there's hardly a chance that he'll ever live to see it all +done. I know he will, I'm sure he will, he's the kind of a man who keeps +himself young. But whether he really sees it or not, or gets any credit, +he doesn't care. + +"That's the kind of a person my father is," Eleanore added softly. + + * * * * * + +"My father wants to meet you," she told me toward the end of June, at +one of those times when she let the boat drift while we had long +absorbing talks. "He has read that thing you wrote about the German sea +hog, and he thinks it's awfully well done." + +"That's good of him," I said gruffly. + +Somehow or other it always makes me uncomfortable when people talk about +my work. When they criticize I am annoyed and when they praise I am +uneasy. What do they know about it? They spent an hour reading what it +took me weeks to write. They don't know what I _tried_ to do, nor do +they care, they haven't time. I never feel so cut off from people, so +utterly alone in the world, as when some benevolent person says, "I +liked that little story of yours." Instantly I shut up like a clam. + +"I liked it too," said Eleanore. + +"Did you?" I asked delightedly. Far from retiring into my shell, I +wanted at once to open up and make her feel how much I had missed in +that crude effort. Soon she had me talking about it. And while I talked +on eagerly, I tried to guess from her questions whether she'd read it +more than once. Finally I guessed she had. And, glancing at her now and +then, I wondered how much she could ever know about me or I about +her--really know. And the intimacy I saw ahead loomed radiant and +boundless. I strained every nerve to show her myself, to show her the +very best of myself. + +But then I heard her ask me, + +"Wouldn't you like to talk to my father?" + +Here was a fine end to it all. + +"I don't know," I answered gloomily. I could see already those engineer +eyes moving amusedly down my pages. I could see her watching his face +and getting to feel as he did about me. "What good would it do?" I +added. + +"What good would it do?" Her sharply offended tone brought me back with +a jerk to try to explain. + +"Don't you see what I mean!" I asked eagerly. "Why should a man as busy +as he is waste his time on a kid like me? After all that you've told me +about him, I feel sometimes as though all the writers on earth don't +count any more, because all the really big things are being done by men +like your father." + +"That's much better," said Eleanore. "Only of course it isn't true. If +you poor little writers want to get big and really count," she went on +serenely, "all you have to do is to write about my father." + +"I'll begin the minute you say so," I told her. + +"Then it's arranged," said my companion, with an exceedingly comfortable +sigh. "We've taken a cottage up on the Sound for the summer," she +continued. "And we're moving up to-morrow. Suppose you come up over +Sunday." + +"Thanks. I'd love to," I replied. + +"So she's to be away for months," I added dismally to myself. "No more +of these long afternoons." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +On the following Saturday, when I met her boat at an East River dock, at +once I felt a difference. We were waiting for her father. The moments +dragged and I grew glum, try as I would to be pleasant. + +"Here he is," she said at last. + +Tall, rather lank and loosely clothed, Dillon was coming down the pier +in easy leisurely fashion, talking to a man by his side. His face +lighted up when he saw us. + +"Just a minute," he said. + +His voice was low but it had a peculiar carrying quality. His rugged +face was deeply lined, and I noticed a little gray in his hair. He was +smiling straight down into the eyes of his companion, a much younger +man, thin and poorly dressed, whose face looked drawn and tired. + +"When I was your age," I heard Dillon remark, "I got into just the same +kind of a snarl." And he began telling about it. A frightfully technical +story it was, full of engineer slang that was Greek to me, but I saw the +younger man listen absorbed, his thin lips parting in a smile. I saw him +come out from under his worries, I saw his chief watching him, pulling +him out. + +"All right, Jim," he ended. "See what you can do." + +"Say, Chief, just you forget this, will you?" the other said intensely. +"Don't give it a thought. It's go'n' to be done!" + +"It's forgotten." + +Another easy smile at his man, and then Eleanore's father turned to us. +I could feel him casually take me in. + +"The thing I liked most in that sketch of yours," he was saying a few +minutes later, when our boat was on her course, "was the way you listed +that Dutchman's cargo. 'One baby carriage--to Lahore.' A very large +picture in five little words. I can see that Hindu baby now--being +wheeled in its carriage to Crocodile Park and wondering where the devil +this queer new wagon came from. I've been nosing around these docks for +years, but I missed that part of 'em right along--that human part--till +you came along with your neat writer's trick. 'One baby carriage--to +Lahore.' You ought to be proud, young man, at your age to have written +one sentence so long that it goes half way around the world." + +As he talked in that half bantering tone I tried to feel cross, but it +wouldn't do. That low voice and those gray eyes were not making fun of +me, they were making friends with me, they were so kindly, curious, so +open and sincere. Soon he had lighted a cigar and was telling Eleanore +gravely just how she ought to run her boat. + +"Why be so busy about it?" he asked. + +"Oh, you be quiet!" she replied, as she sharply spun her wheel. Like an +automobile in a crowded street our craft was lurching its way in short +dashes in and out of the rush hour traffic. The narrow East River was +black with boats. Ferries, tugs and steamers seemed to be coming at us +from every side. Now with a leap we would be off, then abruptly churning +the water behind us we would hold back drifting, watching our chance for +another rush. Eleanore's face was glowing now, her hat was off, her neck +was tense--and her blue-gray eyes, wide open, fixed on the chaos ahead, +were shining with excitement. Now and then a long curling wisp of her +hair would get in her eyes and savagely she would blow it back. And her +lank quiet father puffed his cigar, with his gray eyes restfully on her. +"The serenity of her," he murmured to me. + +"Oh, now, my dear," he said gently, as we careened to starboard, "_that_ +was a slip. I can't say I would have done it like that." + +"Have you ever run a boat in your life?" came back the fierce rejoinder. + +"No," said Dillon calmly, "I can't exactly say I have. Still"--he +relapsed and enjoyed his cigar. + +Just a short time after this, we had the only ugly moment that I had +been through in all our rides. A huge Sound steamer was ahead. Dashing +close along under her port, we came suddenly out before her and met a +tug whose fool of a captain had made a rush to cross her bow. It was one +of those sickening instants when you see nothing at all to do. But +Eleanore saw. A quick jerk on her lever, a swift spinning of her wheel, +and with a leap we were right under the steamer's bow. It missed our +stern by a foot as it passed and then we were safe on the other side. +She made a low sound, in a moment her face went deathly white, her eyes +shut and she nearly let go the wheel. But then, her slight form +tightening, slowly opening her eyes she turned toward her father. + +"Now?" he asked very softly. And there passed a look between them. + +"All right," she breathed, and turned back to her wheel. And for some +time very little was said. + +But I understood her love for him now. These two were such companions as +I had never seen before. And though I myself felt quite out of it all, +this did not bother me in the least. For watching her father and feeling +the abounding reserve of force deep under his quiet, I told myself that +here was a big man, the first really big one I'd ever come close to. And +I was so eager to know him and see just what he was like inside, that I +had no room for myself or his daughter--because I wanted to write him +up. What a weird, curious feeling it is, this passion for writing up +people you meet. + +On the remainder of the ride, and at supper that night on the porch of +their cottage, a little house perched on a rocky point directly +overlooking the water, I did my best to draw him out, and Eleanore +seemed quite ready to help me. And later, when he went inside to do +some work, I went on with the same eagerness, obliterating my own small +self, exploring this feeling of hers for him and his dream of a future +harbor. + +Soon she was doing all the talking, her voice growing lower and more +intense as she tried to make me feel all he meant when he said, "It's +going to be the first port in the world." She told how up in his tower +he made you see the commerce of this whole mighty world of peace +converging slowly on this port. She told of the night two years before +when he had come home "all shaken and queer" and had said to her +huskily, "Eleanore, child, at last it's sure. There's to be a Panama +Canal." Of other nights when he didn't come home and at last she went +down to his office to fetch him and found him at midnight there with his +men, "all working like mad and gay as larks!" + +"When it comes to millions of dollars for his work," she said, "he's so +very keen that he makes you feel like a little child. But when it's +merely a question of dollars for himself to live on, he's a perfect +baby. He won't look at a bill, he always turns them over to me. He won't +enter a shop, he won't go to a tailor. One ready-made clothing store has +his measure and twice a year I order his clothes and then have a fight +to get him to wear them. He never knows what he eats except steak. One +night when we had been having steak six evenings in succession I tried +chicken for a change. At first he didn't know what was wrong. Every now +and then he would seem to notice something. 'What's the matter with me?' +I could see he was asking. Then all at once he had it. 'My dear,' he +said, very coaxingly, 'could we have a nice juicy porterhouse steak for +supper to-morrow evening?'" + +From these and many other details slowly I got the feel of my man. +Closer, more intimate he grew. All the work I had done in Paris, +questioning, drawing out my friends until I could feel their inner +selves coming out of them into me, was counting now. I had never done so +well before, I was sliding my questions in just right, very cautiously +turning her memory this way and that on her father's life, watching her +grow more and more unaware of my presence beside her, although now I had +her bending toward me, eagerly, close. + +"And she thinks she's doing it all by herself," I thought exultingly. + +But as there came a pause in our talk, she turned slightly in her seat +and glanced in through the window into the lighted room behind. And +instantly her expression changed. A swift look of surprise, a puzzled +frown and a moment of hard thinking--and then with a murmured excuse she +rose and went away quickly into the house. In the meantime I had +followed her look. Sitting close by the lamp, in the room inside, Dillon +was staring straight at this spot where I was invisible in the dark. And +he looked old--and rigid, as though he'd been staring like that for some +time. I caught just a glimpse. Then he heard her step and turned hastily +back to his work. I looked at my watch. It was after twelve. + +"And he never knew it was all about him," I said to myself disgustedly. +"I hope this doesn't spoil it all." + + * * * * * + +But that is precisely what it did. The next morning she was coolly +polite and Dillon determinedly genial. I could feel a silent struggle +between them as to what should be done with me. She wanted to get rid of +me, he wanted to keep us together. Gone was all his quiet strength, in +its place was an anxious friendliness. He made me tell him what I was +writing. He said he was glad that his press agent daughter had taken me +'round and opened my eyes. And as soon as she got through with me he +himself would do all he could. + +"I'm through with him," said Eleanore cheerfully. "I've shown him all I +possibly can. What you need now," she added, turning to me in her old +easy manner, "is to watch the harbor all by yourself and get your own +feelings about it. You might begin at the North River docks." + +I spent a wretched afternoon. All my plans for my work and my life +assumed the most gray and desolate hues. Eleanore was taking a nap. At +last she came down and gave me some tea. + +"May I come out and see you now and then?" I asked her very humbly. "It +would help me so much to talk over my work." + +"No," she answered kindly, "I think you'd better not." + +"Why not?" I blurted. "What have I done?" + +She hesitated, then looked at me squarely. + +"You've made my absurd young father," she said, "think that he is no +longer young." + +I lost just a moment in admiration. There wasn't one girl in a hundred +who would have come out with it like that. Then I seized my chance. + +"Why, it's perfectly idiotic," I cried. "Here's a man so big he's a +giant beside me, so full of some queer magnetic force that on the way up +here in the boat he made me forget that I was there. I forgot that _you_ +were there," I threw in, and I caught just the sign of a gleam in her +eyes. "No longer young?" I continued. "That man will be young when you +and I are blinking in our dull old age! He's the biggest man I ever met! +And I want to know him, I want to know how he thinks and feels, I want +that more than anything else! And now you come between us!" + +"Are you real?" asked Eleanore. I looked back unflinchingly. + +"Just you try me," I retorted. + +"No," she replied with a quiet smile. + +She said good-by to me that night. + + * * * * * + +The next morning at seven o'clock I met her father down at the boat. We +had a quick swim together and then climbed on board. And the next +minute, with a sober old seaman called "Captain Arty" at the wheel, the +boat was speeding for New York while we dressed and cooked and +breakfasted. + +"This was Eleanore's idea," Dillon said. "It gets me to town by nine +o'clock and takes me back each day at five. So I hardly miss a night at +home.... Did she ever tell you," he went on, "about the first week she +spent in this boat?" + +"She said it was a wonderful time." + +"It was a nightmare," Dillon said. I looked at him quickly: + +"What do you mean?" + +"Her fight for her strength. She looked like a ghost--with a stiff upper +lip. She fainted twice. But she wouldn't give up. She said she knew she +could do it if I'd only let her stick it out. She has quite a will, that +daughter of mine," he added quietly. + +"You know," he went on, "that idea of hers that you tackle the North +River piers isn't bad. Why don't you put in the whole Summer there, +watching the big liners? I won't ask you to come to my office now, for +our work is still in that early stage where we don't want any +publicity." I could feel his casual glance, and I wondered whether he +noticed my sharp disappointment. "When we are ready," he resumed, "we're +sure to be flooded with writers. I hope there'll be one man in the lot +who'll stick to the work for a year or more, a man with a kind of a +passion in him for the thing we're trying to do. There's nothing we +wouldn't do for that man. I hope he's going to be you." + +At once a vision opened of work with Eleanore's father, of long talks +with Eleanore. + +"I'll try to get ready for it," I said. + +"You've made a fine start," he continued, "and I think you're going to +make good. But first let's see what you'll do by yourself. Get your own +view of this place as it is to-day before we talk about plans for +to-morrow. And don't hurry. Take your time." + +As he said this quietly, I suddenly awoke to the fact that we were +tearing down the river at a perfectly gorgeous speed. The river was +crowding with traffic ahead, all was a rushing chaos of life and we were +rushing worst of all. And yet we did not seem to hurry. Old Captain Arty +sat at the wheel with the most resigned patient look in his eyes. And +drawing lazily on his cigar Dillon was watching a new line of wharves. + +"You know I've found," he was saying, "the only way to live in this age +and get any pleasure out of life is to always take more time than you +need for every job you tackle. I'm taking at least seven years to this +job. I might possibly do it as well in five, but I'd miss half the fun +of it all, I'd be glaring at separate parts of it, each one as it came +along, and I'd never have time to see it full size and let it carry me +'round the world--to that baby carriage, for instance, over in Lahore." + +We were rounding the Battery now. And in that sparkling morning light, +with billowy waves of sea green all around us, sudden snowy clouds of +spray, we watched for a moment the skyscraper group, the homes of the +Big Companies. The sunshine was reflected from thousands of dazzling +window eyes, little streamers of steam were flung out gaily overhead, +streets suddenly opened to our view, narrow cuts revealing the depths +below. And there came to our ears a deep humming. + +"That's the brains of it all," said Dillon. "In all you'll see while +exploring the wharves you'll find some string that leads back here. And +you don't want to let that worry you. Let the muckrakers worry and plan +all they please for a sea-gate and a nation that's to run with its +brains removed. You want to remember it can't be done. You want to look +harder and harder--until you find out for yourself that there are men up +there on Wall Street without whose brains no big thing can be done in +this country. I'm working under their orders and some day I hope you'll +be doing the same. For they don't need _less_ publicity but _more_." + +He left me at the Battery, and as I stood looking after him I found +myself feeling somewhat dazed. A question flashed into my mind. What +would Joe Kramer say to this? I remembered what he had said to me once: +"Tell Wall Street to get off the roof." Well, that was _his_ view. Here +was another. And this man was certainly just as sincere and decidedly +more wise and sane, altogether a larger size. + +Besides, I was in love with his daughter. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +On the Manhattan side of the North River, from Twenty-third Street down +for a mile there stretches a deafening region of cobblestones and +asphalt over which trucks by thousands go clattering each day. There are +long lines of freight cars here and snorting locomotives. Along the +shore side are many saloons, a few cheap decent little hotels and some +that are far from decent. And along the water side is a solid line of +docksheds. Their front is one unbroken wall of sheet iron and concrete. + +I came up against this wall. Over the top I could see here and there the +great round funnels of the ships, but at every passenger doorway and at +every wide freight entrance I found a sign, "No Visitors Admitted," and +under the sign a watchman who would ungraciously take a cigar and then +go right on being a watchman. There seemed no way to get inside. The +old-fashioned mystery of the sea was replaced by the inscrutability of +what some muckrakers called "The Pool." + +"Don't hurry," Eleanore's father had said. All very well, but I needed +money. While I had been making with Eleanore those long and delightful +explorations of the harbor and ourselves, at home my father's bank +account had been steadily dwindling, and all that I had been able to +make had gone into expenses. + +"I don't know what to do," said Sue, alone with me that evening. "The +butcher says he won't wait any longer. He has simply got to be paid this +week." + +"I'll see what I can do," I said. + +I came back to my new hunting ground and all night long I prowled +about. I sipped large schooners of beer at bars, listening to the burly +dockers crowded close around me. I watched the waterfront, empty and +still, with acres of spectral wagons and trucks and here and there a +lantern. I had a long talk with a broken old bum who lay on his back in +an empty truck looking up at the stars and spun me yarns of his life as +a cook on ships all up and down the world. Now and again in the small +wee hours I met hurrying groups of men, women and children poorly clad, +and following them to one of the piers I heard the sleepy watchman +growl, "Steerage passengers over there." I saw the dawn break slowly and +everything around me grow bluish and unreal. I watched the teamsters +come tramping along leading horses, and harness them to the trucks. I +heard the first clatter of the day. I saw the figures of dockers appear, +more and more, I saw some of them drift to the docks. Soon there were +crowds of thousands, and as stevedores there began bawling out names, +gang after gang of men stepped forward, until at last the chosen throngs +went marching in past the timekeepers. Hungrily I peered after them up +the long cavernous docksheds. "No Visitors Admitted." + +Then I went into a lunchroom for ham and eggs and a huge cup of coffee. +I ate an enormous breakfast. On the floor beside me a cross and weary +looking old woman was scrubbing the dirty oil cloth there. But I myself +felt no weariness. While all was still vivid and fresh in my mind, +sitting there I wrote down what I had seen. A magazine editor said it +would do. And so we paid the butcher. + +The same editor gave me a sweeping letter of introduction to all ocean +liners. This I showed to a dock watchman, who directed me upstairs. In +the office above I showed it to a clerk, who directed me to the dock +superintendent, who read it and told me to go downtown. I recalled what +Dillon had said about strings. Here was string number one, I reflected, +and I followed it down Manhattan into the tall buildings, only to be +asked down there just what it was I wanted to know. + +"I don't want to know anything," I replied. "I just want permission to +watch the work." + +"We can't allow that," was the answer of this harbor of big companies. + +At every pier that I approached I received about the same reply. At home +Sue spoke of other bills. And now that I was in trouble, hard pressed +for money and groping my way about alone, I found myself missing +Eleanore to a most desperate degree. Her face, her smiling blue-gray +eyes, kept rising in my mind, sometimes with memories and hopes that +permeated my whole view both of the harbor and my work with a warm glad +expectant glow, but more often with no feeling at all but one of +sickening emptiness. She was not here. The only way to get back to her +was to make good with her father. And so I would not ask his aid or even +go to him for advice. Testing me, was he? All right, I would show him. + +And I returned to my editor, whom my intensity rather amused. + +"The joke of it is," he said, "that they think down there you're a +muckraker." + +"I'll be one soon if this keeps on." + +"But it won't," he replied. "As soon as you've once broken in, and they +see it's a glory story you want, you can't imagine how nice they'll be." + +"I haven't broken in," I said. + +"You will to-morrow," he told me, "because Abner Bell will be with you. +He's our star photographer. Wait till you see little Ab go to work. The +place he can't get into hasn't been invented. Besides," the editor +added, "Abner is just the sort of chap to take hold of an author from +Paris and turn him into a writer." + +And this Abner Bell proceeded to do. He was a cheerful, rotund little +man with round simple eyes and a smile that went all over his face. + +"You see," he said, when I met him the next day down at the docks, "you +can't ask a harbor to hold up her chin and look into your camera while +you count. She's such a big fat noisy slob she wouldn't even hear you. +You've got to run right at her and bark." + +"Look here, old man," he was asking a watchman a few moments later. +"What's the name of the superintendent on the next pier down the line!" + +"Captain Townes." + +"Townes, Townes? Is that Bill Townes?" + +"No, it's Ed." + +"I wonder what's become of Bill. All right, brother, much obliged. See +you again." And he went on. + +"Say," he asked the next watchman. "Is Eddy--I mean Captain--Townes +upstairs?" + +"Sure he is. Go right up." + +"Thank you." Up we went to the office. "Captain Townes? Good-morning." + +"Well, sir, what can I do for you?" The captain was an Englishman with a +voice as heavy and deep as his eyes. + +"Why, Captain, I'm sent here by the firm that's putting Peevey's Paris +Perfume on the market out in the Middle West. They're going in heavy on +ads this Fall and I've got an order to hang around here until I can get +a photo of one of your biggest liners. The idea is to run it as an ad, +with a caption under it something like this: '_The Kaiser Wilhelm_ +reaching New York with twenty thousand bottles of Peevey's Best, direct +from Paris.'" + +"_The Kaiser Wilhelm_," said the captain ponderously, "is a German boat. +She docks in Hoboken, my friend." + +"Of course she does," said Abner. "And I can lug this heavy camera way +over there if you say so, and hand ten thousand dollars worth of free +ads to a German line, stick up pictures of their boat in little +drugstore windows all up and down the Middle West. Do you know how to +tell me to go away?" + +Captain Townes smiled heavily. + +"No," he said, "I guess I don't. Here's a pass that'll give you the run +of the dock." + +"Make it two," said Abner, "and fix it so my friend and I can stick +around for quite a while." + +"You're a pretty good liar," I told him as we went downstairs. + +"Oh, hell," he answered modestly. "Let's go out on the porch and get +cool." + +We went out on the open end of the pier and sat down on a wooden beam +which Abner called a bulkhead. + +"If we don't begin calling things names," he remarked, "we'll never get +to feeling we're here. Let's just sit and feel for a while." + +"I've begun," I replied. + +We sat in the shade of two wooden piles with the glare of a midsummer +sun all around us. The East River had been like a crowded creek compared +to this wide expanse of water slapping and gleaming out there in the sun +with smoke shadows chasing over it all. There was the rough odor of +smoke in the air from craft of all kinds as they skurried about. The +high black bow of a Cunarder loomed at the end of the dock next ours. +Far across the river the stout German liners lay at their berths--and +they did not look like sea hogs. What a change had come over the harbor +since I had met that motorboat. How all the hogs had waddled away, and +the very smoke and the oil on the waves had taken on deep, vivid +hues--as I had seen through Eleanore's eyes. "What a strange wonderful +purple," her low voice seemed to murmur at my side. + +"She's going away from here," said Ab. I started: + +"Who is?" + +"That Cunarder. Look at the smoke pour out of her stacks. Got a +cigarette about you?" + +"No," I answered gruffly. + +"Damn." + +In the slip on our other side a large freight boat was loading, and a +herd of scows and barges were pressing close around her. These clumsy +craft had cabins, and in some whole families lived. "Harbor Gypsies." A +good title. I had paid the butcher, but the grocer was still waiting. So +I dismissed my motorboat and grimly turned to scows instead. Children by +the dozen were making friends from barge to barge. Dogs were all about +us and they too were busy visiting. High up on the roof of a coal +lighter's cabin an impudent little skye-terrier kept barking at the +sooty men who were shoveling down below. One of these from time to time +would lift his black face and good-humoredly call, "Oh, you go to +hell"--which would drive the small dog into frenzies. Most of the barges +had derrick masts, and all these masts were moving. They rose between me +and the sky, bobbing, tossing and criss-crossing, filling the place with +the feeling of life, the unending, restless life of the sea. + +An ear-shattering roar broke in on it all. Our Cunarder was starting. +Smoke belching black from her funnels, the monster was beginning to +move. + +But what was this woman doing close by us? Out of the cabin of a barge +she had dragged a little rocking chair, and now she had brought out a +baby, all dressed up in its Sunday best, and was rocking expectantly, +watching the ship. Thundering to the harbor, the Cunarder now moved +slowly out. As she swept into the river the end of the pier was revealed +to our eyes all black with people waving. They waved until she was out +in midstream. Then, as they began to turn away, one plump +motherly-looking woman happened to glance toward us. + +"Why, the cute little baby," we heard her exclaim. And the next minute +hundreds of people were looking. The barge mother rocked serenely. + +Abner grabbed his camera and jumped nimbly down on the barge, where he +took the baby's picture, with the amused crowd for a background. + +"The kid's name," he remarked on his return, "is Violetta Rosy. She was +born at two a. m. at Pier Forty-nine." He was silent for a moment and +then went on sententiously, "Think what it'll mean to her, through all +the storm and stress of life, to be able to look fondly back upon the +dear old homestead. There's a punch to Violetta. Better run her in." + +"I will," I said. + +"And that little thing of mine," he queried modestly, "about the dear +old homestead." + +"I've got it," I replied. + +"I hand quite a few little things to writers," Ab continued cheerfully. +"If you'll just give me some idea of what it is you're looking for----" + +"I'm looking for the punch," I answered promptly. + +"Then we'll get on fine," he said. "The editor got me worried some. He +said you'd trained in Paris." + +"Oh, that was only a starter," I told him. + +Presently he went into the dockshed on his unending quest of "the +punch." And left to myself I got thinking. What did Paris know about us? +De Maupassant's methods wouldn't do here. I noticed two painters in +overalls at work on that large freighter. With long brooms that they +held in both hands they were slapping a band of crude yellow paint along +her scarred and rusted side. That was what I needed, the broom! All at +once the harbor took hold of me hard. And exulting in its bigness, the +bold raw splattering bigness of my native Yankee land, "Now for some +glory stories," I said. + +I went into the dockshed, and there I stayed right through until night, +till my mind was limp and battered from the rush of new impressions. For +in this long sea station, under the blue arc-lights, in boxes, barrels, +crates and bags, tumbling, banging, crashing, came the products of this +modern land. You could feel the pulse of a continent here. From the +factories, the mines and mills, the prairies and the forests, the +plantations and the vineyards, there flowed a mighty tide of +things--endlessly, both day and night--you could shut your eyes and see +the long brown lines of cars crawl eastward from all over the land, you +could see the stuff converging here to be gathered into coarse rope nets +and swept up to the liners. The pulse beat fast and furious. In gangs at +every hatchway you saw men heaving, sweating, you heard them swearing, +panting. That day they worked straight through the night. For the pulse +kept beating, beating, and the ship must sail on time! + +And now I too worked day and night. In the weeks that followed, Abner +Bell came and went many times, but for me it was my entire life. Though +small of build I was tough and hard, I had not been sick for a day in +years, and now I easily stood the strain. Day by day my story grew, my +glory story of world trade. Watching, questioning, listening here, +making notes, writing hasty sketches to help keep us going at +home--slowly I could feel this place yielding up its inner self, its +punch and bigness, endless rush, its feeling of a nation young and +piling up prodigious wealth. From the customhouse came fabulous tales of +millionaires ransacking the world. Rare old furniture, rugs and +tapestries, paintings, jewels, gorgeous gowns poured in a dazzling +torrent all that summer through the docks. One day on a Mediterranean +ship, in their immaculate "stalls de luxe," came two black Arab horses, +glistening, quivering creatures, valued by the customhouse at twenty +thousand dollars each. And into the same ship that week, as though in +payment for these two, in dust and heavy smell of sweat I saw a thousand +cattle driven, bellowing and lowing. + +I exulted in these symptoms of our crude and lusty youth. I watched my +countrymen going abroad. Not only through the Summer but straight on +into the Fall they came by tens of thousands out of the West, people who +had made some money and were going to blow it in, to buy things and to +see things, to learn things and to eat things. One day at noon, on the +end of a dock, when the ship was already far out in midstream and all +the crashing music and cheers had died away, a meek old lady wiped her +eyes and murmured very tearfully, "I suppose they'll be eating their +luncheon soon." And then the loud voice of her daughter replied: + +"Eat? Why, ma, God bless their hearts, they'll sit on that boat and eat +all day!" + +And I echoed her wish with a keen delight. God bless their hearts and +stomachs. Oh, hungry vigorous Yankee land, so mightily young--eat on, +eat on! + +And the land ate on. + + * * * * * + +My work here rose to a climax a week or two before Christmas, when the +newest liner of them all pulled off a new world's record for speed. With +the company's publicity man, who had become a friend of mine, I went on +the health officer's tug down the Bay to meet her, on the coldest, +darkest night I've ever known on water. Shortly after nine o'clock the +big boat's light gleamed off the Hook and she bore down upon us. She +came close, slowed down and towered by our side, weird as a ghost with +snow and ice in glimmering sheets on her steel sides. She did not stop. +We caught a rope ladder and scrambled up, and at once we felt her +speeding on. + +And she was indeed a story that night. Bellowing hoarsely now in warning +to all small craft to get out of her way, she was rushing into the +harbor. Suddenly she slowed again, and three dark mail tugs ranged +alongside, and through canvas chutes four thousand sacks of Christmas +mail began to pour down while the ship moved on. Up her other side came +climbing gangs of men who began to make ready her winches and open up +her hatches. Now we were moving in close to the pier, with a whole fleet +of tugs around us. Faint shouts rose in the zero night, toots and sharp +whistles. One of the gang-planks was down at last and two hundred +dockers came up on the run. Off went the passengers and the luggage, +reporters skurrying through the crowds. But the ship did not rest. For +she was to sail again the next night. This was to be a world's record +for speed! + +All night long the work went on, and I watched it from a deck above, +going in now and then for food and hot drinks. On her dock side, +forward, Christmas boxes, bales and packages were being whipped up out +of her hold to the rattle of her winches. One sharp whistle and up they +shot into the air till they swung some seventy feet above. Another +whistle and down they whirled into the dockshed far below from which a +blaze of light poured up. At the same time she was coaling. Along the +black wall of her other side, as I peered over the rail above, I saw far +below a row of barges crowded with Italians. Powerful lights swung over +their heads in the freezing wind, swung above black coal heaps and the +lapping water. It was an inferno of shifting lights and long leaping +shadows. + +I watched till daylight blotted out the yellow glare of the lanterns. +Then I went home to get some sleep. And late that night when I came back +I found her almost ready to sail. + +Out of taxis and automobiles chugging down in front of the pier, the +passengers were pouring in. Many were in evening clothes, some just come +from dinners and others from box parties. The theaters had just let out. +The rich warm hues of the women's cloaks, the gay head dresses here and +there and the sparkling earrings, immaculate gloves and dainty wanton +slippered feet, kept giving flashes of color to this dark freezing ocean +place. Most of these people went hurrying up into the warm, gorgeous +café of the ship, which was run from a hotel in Paris. What had all this +to do with the sea? + +"Come on," said the genial press agent. "You're the company's +guest-to-night." + +And while we ate and drank and smoked, and the tables around us filled +with people whose ripples and bursts of laughter rose over the +orchestra's festive throb, and corks kept popping everywhere, he told me +where they were going, these gay revellers, for their Christmas Day--to +London, Brussels, Berlin and Vienna, Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo, Algiers. + +"Now come with me," he said at last, and he took me along warm +passageways to the row of cabins de luxe. + +First we looked into the Bridal Suite, to which one of the Pittsburgh +makers of steel, having just divorced a homely old wife, was presently +to bring his new bride, a ravishing young creature of musical comedy +fame. They had been married that afternoon. A French maid was unpacking +dainty shimmering little gowns, soft furry things and other things of +silk and lace, and hanging them up in closets. It was a large room, and +there were other rooms adjoining and two big luxurious baths. The cost +of it all was four thousand dollars for the five days. There were tall +mirrors and dressing tables, there were capacious easy chairs. Low +subdued lights were here and there, and a thick rug was on the floor. +Over in one corner was a huge double bed of cream colored wood with rich +soft quilts upon it. Beside the bed in a pink satin cradle there lay a +tiny Pekinese dog. + +"Next," he whispered. We peeped into the next stateroom, and there +divided from her neighbors by only one thin partition, a sober, wrinkled +little old lady in black velvet sat quietly reading her Bible. Soon she +would be saying her prayers. + +"Next," he whispered. And in the cabin on her other side we caught a +glimpse of two jovial men playing cards in gay pajamas with a bottle of +Scotch between them. + +"Next." And as we went on down the row he gave me the names of an +English earl, a Jewish clothing merchant, a Minnesota ranchman, a +banker's widow from Boston, a Tammany politician, a Catholic bishop from +Baltimore, a millionaire cheese maker from Troy and a mining king from +Montana. + +"How about that," he asked at the end, "for an American row de luxe?" + +"My God, it's great," I whispered. + +"There's only one big question here," he added. "Your long respectable +pedigrees and your nice little Puritanical codes can all go to +blazes--this big boat will throw 'em all overboard for you--if you can +answer, 'I've got the price.'" + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +Meanwhile, in the late Autumn, Eleanore had come back to town. I had a +note from her one day. + +"Come and tell me what you are writing," she said. + +I went to see her that afternoon, and I was deeply excited. I had often +felt her by my side when I was watching the harbor life and as often +behind me while I wrote. We had had long talks together, absorbing talks +about ourselves. And though now in her easy welcome and through all her +cheerful questions there was not a suggestion that we two had been or +ever would be anything but genial friends, this did not discourage me in +the least. No fellow, I thought, could be happy as I and have nothing +better than friendship ahead. The Fates could never be so hard, for +certainly now they were smiling. + +Here was her apartment, just the place I had felt it would be, only +infinitely more attractive. High up above the Manhattan jungle, it was +quiet and sunny and charming here. From the low, wide living-room +windows you could see miles out over the harbor where my work was going +so splendidly, and all around the room itself I saw what I was working +for. Eleanore's touch was everywhere. An intimate, lovable feminine home +with man-sized views from its windows--just like Eleanore herself, from +whom I found it difficult to keep my hungry eyes away. To that soft +bewildering hair of hers she had done something different--I couldn't +tell what, but I loved it. I loved the changing tones of her voice--I +hate monotonous voices. I watched the smiling lights in her eyes. She +was at her small tea table now. Her motorboat, thank Heaven, was laid +up for the winter, and I had her right here in a room, with nothing to +do with her eyes but pay a decent amount of attention to me. Then by +some chance remark I learned that she had been reading what I wrote, +almost all of it, in fact. And at the slight exclamation I made I saw +her color slightly and bite her lip as though she were angry with +herself for having let that secret out. + +"What do you want to write," she asked, "when you get through with the +harbor?" + +"Fiction," I said. "I want it so hard sometimes that it seems like a +long way ahead. It seems sometimes," I added, "like a girl I'd fallen in +love with--but I couldn't even ask her--because I'm so infernally +poor." + +Over the tea cup at her lips Eleanore looked thoughtfully straight into +and through and behind my eyes. + +"Fiction is such a broad field," she remarked. "What kind do you think +you're going to try?" + +"I don't know," I answered. "It still seems so far ahead. You see, I +have no name at all, and this harbor at least is a good safe start. I'm +afraid I'm rather a cautious sort. When I find what I want--and want so +hard that it's the deepest part of me--I like to go slow. I'm afraid to +risk losing it all--deciding my life one way or the other--by taking a +chance." I made a restless movement. "I wasn't speaking of my work just +then," I added gruffly. + +I suddenly caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror back of Eleanore's +chair. And I glared at myself for the fool that I was to have said all +that. I hadn't meant to--not in the least! What a paltry looking cuss I +was--small, tough and wiry, hair sandy, eyes of no color at all, snub +nose and a jaw shut tight as in pain. + +"You're a queer person," said a voice. + +"I am," I agreed forlornly. "I'm the queerest fellow I ever met." I +caught a grim twinkle in my eyes. Thank God for a sense of humor. + +"Sometimes," she went on, reflectively, "you seem to me as old as the +hills--and again so young and obvious. I'm so sorry to hear you say that +you weren't talking of your work. I like to hear men talk of their +work." + +"I know you do," I said hungrily. "And that's one of the reasons why +you're going to mean so much some day--to somebody's work--and to his +whole life." + +Why couldn't I stop? Had I gone insane? I rose and moved about the room. +A low rippling laugh brought me back to my senses. + +"But how about _me_ and _my_ life?" she asked. "That ought to be thought +of a little, you know." + +I came close beside her: + +"Let me say this. Won't you? I'll promise never to say it again. Your +life is going to be all right. It's going to be quite wonderful--you'll +be tremendously happy. I'm sure of that. It's not only the way you +always--look--it's the way you always think and feel. It's everything +about you." + +She had looked down at her hands for a moment. Now she looked up +suddenly. + +"Thank you," she said smiling, in a way that told me to smile too. I +obeyed. + +"I did that rather badly, didn't I," I said. + +"No, you did that rather well. Especially the first part--I think I +liked that best of all--the part where you promised so solemnly that +you'd never do it again." + +I went indignantly back to my chair. + +"Do you know," I said, "I feel sometimes when I'm with you as though I +were being managed! Absolutely managed!" + +"I should think you wouldn't like that," she replied. Her hands were +peacefully folded now and she looked at me serenely: "I should think +you'd rather manage yourself." + +I took the hint. From, that day on, each time I came to see her, I +managed myself severely. And this apparently pleased her so much that +she seemed no longer the least afraid to let me know her as well as I +liked. Her father, too, when I met him now and then in the evenings, was +most kindly in his welcome. And as winter wore on, my hopes rose high. + +But one evening, after Dillon had read my story about the Christmas +Boat, he gave me a bitter disappointment. + +"I like it," he said, as he handed it back. "It's a fine dramatic piece +of work. But it's only a starter here. To get any idea of our problem +you'll have to go all over the harbor. When you've done that for a few +months more, and I get back from my trip abroad, I'll be glad to help +you." + +"You're going abroad?" I asked abruptly. + +"Next month," he said, "with Eleanore. She seems to think I need a +rest." + +Back came the old feeling of emptiness. And gloomily at home that night +I wondered if it was because she knew she was leaving so soon that she +had been so intimate lately. How outrageous women are. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +They sailed the middle of March. + +It is easy to look back now and smile at my small desolate self as I was +in the months that followed. But at the time it was no smiling matter. I +was intensely wretched and I had a right to be, for I could see nothing +whatever ahead but the most dire uncertainties. Did Eleanore really care +for me? I didn't know. When could I ask her? I didn't know. For when +would I be earning enough to ask any girl to marry me? At present nearly +all I earned was swallowed up by expenses at home, and I knew that in +all likelihood this drain would soon grow heavier. + +For we could not count much longer on my father's salary. Already I had +done my best to make him give up his position. He stubbornly resisted. + +"I'm strong as I ever was," he declared, and he took great pains to +prove it. He would sit down to dinner, his face heavy and gray with +fatigue, but by a hard visible effort slowly he would throw it off, +keenly questioning me about my work, more often quizzing me about it, or +Sue about her "revolooters." He had a stock of these dry remarks and he +used them over and over. When the same jokes came night after night we +knew he was very tired. After dinner on such evenings, when I went with +him into his study to smoke, he would invariably settle back in his +chair with the same loud "Ah!" of comfort, and he would follow this up +as he lit his cigar with the most obvious grunts expressive of health to +prove to me how strong he was. He was always grimly delighted when I +spent these evenings with him, but always before his cigar was out his +head would sink slowly over his book and soon he would be sound asleep. +Then as I sat at my writing I would glance over from time to time. I +could tell when he was waking, and at once I would grow absorbed in my +work. Soon I would hear a slight snort of surprise, I would hear him +stealthily feel for his book, and then presently out of the silence---- + +"This is a devilish good piece of writing, boy," he would announce +abruptly. "When _you_ learn to hold your reader like this I'll begin to +think you're a writer." + +Yes, my father was aging fast, I would soon be the only breadwinner +here. Sue fought hard against this idea, she was still set on finding +work for herself, but each time she proposed it Dad would rise so +indignantly, with such evident pain in his glaring old eyes, that she +would be forced to give up her plan. In such talks I supported him, and +in return when we two were alone Sue would revenge herself on me by the +most cutting comments on "this inane habit of looking at girls as fit +for nothing better than marriage." + +These comments, I was well aware, were aimed at my feeling for Eleanore, +for whom Sue had no longer any good word but only a smiling derision. +Her remarks were straight out of Bernard Shaw's most ribald works, and +they left me miserably wondering whether any man had ever loved in any +way that wasn't the curse or the joke of his life. Sue dwelt on this +glorious age of deep radical changes going on, she spoke of Joe Kramer, +with whom she still corresponded, and enlarged on the wonderful freedom +he had to go anywhere at any time. Thank a merciful heaven _he_ wasn't +tied down! And if Joe would only keep his head and not marry, not get a +huge family on his hands---- + +Sue made me perfectly wretched. + + * * * * * + +In this frame of mind I again tackled the harbor. Dillon had told me to +cover it all, and this I now set out to do. On warm muggy April days I +tramped what appeared to me hundreds of miles. But the regions that from +Eleanore's boat had somehow had a feeling of being one great living +thing, now on these dreary trudging days fell apart into remote bays and +slips and rivers, hours of weary travel apart and each without any +connection with any other that I could see. Railroad tracks wound in and +out with no apparent purpose, dirty freight boats crawled helter-skelter +this way and that. All seemed a meaningless chaos and jam. + +And still worse, as I wrestled with this confusion I found it was +growing stale to me. In those Spring days I was fagged and dull, my +imagination would not work. And this gave me a scare. I must _not_ grow +stale, I must keep right on making money to meet the bills that were +still piling up at home. And so for a Sunday paper I undertook a series +on "The Harbor from a Police Boat." This sounded rather exciting and I +hoped that it might restore the lost thrill. The harbor that it showed +me made fine Sunday reading. Out of its grim waters dead bodies bobbed, +dead faces leered, the sodden ends of mysteries. I wrote them and got +paid for them. And I felt no thrill but only disgust. I made some more +money out of rats--rats in countless ravenous hordes that had a harbor +world of their own. This world extended for hundreds of miles in the +dark chill places under the wharves. And the rats kept gnawing, gnawing, +and slowly with the help of the waves they wore away to splinters and +pulp the millions of beams and planks and piles. I found that entire +mountains were denuded each year of their forests to supply food for the +rats and the ocean here. I was almost a muckraker now. + +Meanwhile I had gone in June to the South Brooklyn waterfront and had +taken a room in a tenement near the end of a dock peninsula which jutted +out into the bay. For I wanted to live in the very heart of the big +port's confusion, to grapple alone with the chaos out of which Dillon's +engineers were striving to bring order. Here I lived for weeks by +myself, taking my meals in a barroom below. + +There were no stately liners here. The North River piers with their rich +life had been like a show room. I had come down into the factory now. I +could see them still, those liners, but only in the distance steaming +through the Narrows. Eleanore had gone that way. Here close around me +were grimy yards with heaps of coal, enormous sheds, and inland one of +the two narrow mouths of the crowded Erie Basin, out of which slid ugly +freighters through the dirty water. + +Like the Ancient Mariner I sat there dully on the pier watching the life +of the ocean go past, and I would try to jot it down. But soon I would +stop. "All right--who cares?" The punch was gone. It grew hot and the +water smelt. And I was as blue a reporter of life as ever chewed his +pencil. + +But life has a way of punching up even a stale young writer. In the +rooms above mine lived a man and wife who quarreled half way through the +night. Night after night they railed at each other, until one horrible +night of screams, in the middle of which I heard the man come running +downstairs. He banged at my door. + +"Come in," I cried morosely. A big figure entered the dark room. + +"Look here," said a rough frightened voice. "Get up and get dressed and +run for a doctor. Will you, son? I'm in a hell of a hole!" + +"What's the matter!" + +"My woman is havin' a baby, that's what," he answered fiercely. "We +wasn't expectin' it so soon! An' there ain't a single doctor in miles! +But there's a night watchman with a 'phone down there in the dockshed!" + +"All right, old man, I'll do my best." + +"Say!" he shouted after me, as I hurried down the stairs. "If you know a +damn thing about this business come back here the minute you've +'phoned! I'm in a hole, brother, a hell of a hole!" + +I came back soon, and within a few minutes after I came I saw a baby +born. + +I did not sleep that night. My mind was curiously clear. I had had the +jolt that I needed from life--its agony and bloody sweat, its mystery. +It was not dull, it was not stale. The only trouble lay in me. I must +find a new angle from which to write. + +Why not try becoming one of the workers? The man upstairs was a tug +captain, and grateful to me for what help I had given; he now agreed to +take me on his tug, where there was plenty of simple work which I did +for a dollar a day and my board. And at once I felt a difference. The +light work steadied my overwrought nerves and unlocked my mind which had +set tight. And now at last I began to see my way out of the jungle. + +For the tug belonged to a row of piers about a mile to the southward. +Brand new gigantic piers they were, with solid rows of factory buildings +on the shore behind them, all owned by one great company, which rented +floors or parts of floors to hundreds of manufacturers here. The raw +materials they required were landed from barges or ships at the piers +and delivered to their doors at once, and their finished products were +conveyed in the same way to all parts of the world. Here was a key to +the future port of ordered combination that Eleanore's father was +working toward. Here was the place I must write up before he came back +from abroad, to show him that I had found it. + +And the very certainty of this increased my exasperation. For even still +I could not write. Doggedly I worked at night up there in my room in the +tenement, but I wrote the most tedious dismal stuff which I would tear +up savagely. Inanely I would pound my head as though to put punch into +it. + +But another miracle happened to me. + +On one of those enormous piers, roofed over, dim and cool inside, I +stood one day looking out on the deck of an East Indian freighter, where +two half-naked Malays were polishing the brasswork. One of them was a +boy of ten. His small face was uncouth and primitive almost as some +little ape's, but I saw him look up again and again with a sudden +gleaming expectancy. I grew curious and waited. Now the looks came +oftener, his every move was restless. And after a time another boy, a +little New York "newsie," with a pack of evening papers, came loitering +along the pier. Unconcernedly up the gang-plank he went, while the Malay +crouched in his corner, rigid and tense, his black eyes fixed. The white +boy took no notice. Climbing up a ladder he sold a couple of papers to +some officers on a deck above, and then he went down again to the dock. +Presently one of the officers yawned and threw his paper over the rail, +and as it fell to the lower deck in an instant the Malay boy was upon +it, devouring its headlines and its pictures with his animal eyes, with +one of his small bare brown feet upon the jeweled bosom of the latest +Fifth Avenue divorcee. + +"Where does that kid sleep?" I asked an officer. I was shown his bunk +below, and there I found I had guessed right. For the side and the top +and both ends of his bunk were lined with red headlines and newspaper +pictures all carefully cut and pasted on. Five of the New York "Giants" +were there. + +And as though the fresh fierce hungriness had passed from that small +heathen's soul into my own, that day I again became a reporter of things +to be seen in the port of New York. + +Back into the dockshed I went, and all up and down and in and out among +piles of strange and odorous stuffs. And once more I felt the wonder of +this modern ocean world. I followed this raw produce of Mother Earth's +four corners back into those factory buildings ashore. I saw it made +into chewing-gum, toys, sofas, glue, curled hair and wall-paper. I saw +it made into ladles' hats, corks, carpets, dynamos, stuffed dates. I saw +it made into dirt-proof collars and shirt bosoms, salad dressing, +blackboards, corsets and the like. Again I fairly reveled in lists of +things and the places they came from and the places to which they were +going. I saw chewing-gum start for Rio and Quaker Oats for Shanghai, +patent medicine for Nabat, curled hair for Yokohama, "movy" theater +seats for Sydney, tomato soup for Cape Town and corsets for Rangoon. + +"From Everywhere to Anywhere" was the title of my article. It took only +a week to write, and was ready when the Dillons came home. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +They landed toward the end of July and I went to the dock to meet them. + +Elated over my finished story, which I had in my pocket, and made +absurdly happy by the sight of Eleanore smiling down at me over the +rail, I was surprised at the greeting she gave me. + +"Why, you poor boy. How terribly hard you've been working," she said. +And she looked at me as though I were sick and worn to the bone. The end +of it was that I accepted delightedly an invitation to spend a week up +at their cottage on the Sound. + +Those were seven vivid glowing days. I could not relax, I was too +intensely happy, I had too much to tell her, not only about my work but +about a host of other things that without rhyme or reason popped into my +mind and had to be said. The range of our talk was tremendous, and the +wider we ranged the closer we drew. For she too was telling things, and +her things were as unexpected as mine and infinitely more absorbing. Her +manner toward me had quite changed. It was that of a nurse with an +invalid, she frankly ordered me about. + +"Why can't you lie back on those cushions?" she asked one morning when +we were out in her boat. "You ought to be dozing half the day--and +instead you're as wide awake as an owl." + +"I am," I admitted happily. "I'm trying to see everything." The chic +little hat and the blouse she wore were adorably fresh from Paris, and +as I watched her run her boat I could feel flowing into my body and soul +a perfectly boundless store of new life. + +"I've been thinking you over," she said. + +"Have you?" I asked delightedly. I had often wondered if she had. "What +do you think?" I inquired. + +Eleanore frowned perplexedly. + +"You're such a queer combination," she said. "You have such ridiculous +ups and downs. To-day you're way up, aren't you." + +"I am," I said very earnestly. She looked off placidly over the Sound. + +"You're so very sensitive," she went on. "You let things take hold of +you so hard. And yet on the other hand you seem to be so very----" she +hesitated for a word. + +"Tough," I suggested cheerfully. + +"No--hungry," Eleanore said. "You're always reaching out for things--you +jump right into them so hard. And even when they hurt you--and you're +hurt quite easily--you hang on and won't let go. Look at the way you've +gone at the harbor right from the start. And you're doing it +still--you've done it all summer until it has made you look like a +ghost. And I guess you'll keep on all your life. There are harbors +everywhere, you know--in a way the whole world is a harbor--and unless +you change a lot you're going to be hurt a good deal." + +"My mother agreed with you," I said. "She wanted me to be a professor in +a quiet college town." + +"Please stop twinkling your eyes," Eleanore commanded. "Your mother knew +you very well. You might have done that--and settled down--with some +nice quiet college girl--if you had done it years ago. As it is, of +course you're hopeless." + +"I am not hopeless," I declared indignantly. "If I can only get what I +want I'll be the happiest fellow alive!" + +"I know," she answered thoughtfully. "You told me that before. You want +fiction, don't you." + +"Yes, fiction," I said wrathfully. "I want that more than anything +else. But I don't want any quiet kind, and I don't want any quiet town," +I went on, leaning forward intensely. "I want the harbor and the city--I +want it thick and heavy, and just as fast as it will come. I want all +the life there is in the world--all the beauty--all the happiness! And I +can't wait--I want it soon!" + +From under the brim of her soft white hat her blue-gray eyes were fixed +intently on the shore, which was miles away. But watching her I saw she +knew that all the time I was saying desperately, "I want you." + +I knew she did not want me to say anything like that out loud, and I +felt myself that I had no right--not until I had done so much more in my +writing. But I kept circling around it. Half the time on purpose and as +often quite unconsciously, in all we talked about those days I kept +eagerly filling in the picture of the life we two might lead. When in +one of her cool hostile moods--moods which came over her suddenly--she +told me almost jealously how happy she'd been with her father abroad and +how together they had planned to go to India, China, Japan in the years +to come, I brought her back to my subject by saying: "I mean to travel a +lot myself." + +"That's one advantage I have as a writer," I continued earnestly. "I'll +never be tied down to one place. All my life--whenever I choose--I can +pick up my work and go anywhere." + +She looked straight back into my eyes. + +"I wish my father could," she said. + +"Look here," I said indignantly. "Your father has been four months +abroad while I have been in Brooklyn! Isn't it only fair and square to +let _me_ travel this afternoon?" She looked at me reluctantly. + +"Yes," she agreed. "I suppose it is." + +"Come along," I urged, and off we went. While our boat drifted idly that +long, lazy afternoon, we went careering all over the world and I kept +doggedly by her side. Every now and then I would make her stop while we +had a good look at each other, exploring deep into the old questions, +"What are you and what do you want?" + +"You can't run a motorboat all your life," I reminded her. "What are you +going to tackle next?" + +"Our living-room," she answered. "I'm going to have it done over next +month." + +That took us into house furnishings, and I gave her ideas by the score. +I had never thought about this before, but now I thought hard and +eagerly--until she brought me up with a jerk, by pityingly murmuring: + +"What perfectly frightful taste you have. It's funny--because you're an +artist--you really write quite beautiful things." + +"I don't care," I answered grimly. "I can see that living-room----" + +"So can I," she said cheerfully. "But so long as you like it, that's all +there is to be said. You're the one who has to live in it, you know. Now +my father likes a room----" + +And while I looked gloomily over the water she told me what her father +liked. + + * * * * * + +He came out from the city each evening by train. He refused to use the +boat these days, he said he was so infernally busy that he could not +spare the time. He brought out stacks of papers and plans which had +piled up while he was abroad, and with these he busied himself at night. +And though Eleanore from the veranda glanced in at him frequently, she +never again caught him looking old. And when she went in to make him +stop working he smilingly told her to leave him alone. He smoked many +cigars with apparent enjoyment, his lean face wrinkling over the smoke +as he turned over plan after plan for the harbor. His manner to me was +if anything even kindlier than before. He began calling me "Billy" now. + +On the last night of my stay he said: + +"I think you're the man I've been looking for. I've just read your story +and you've done exactly what I hoped. You've pictured one spot of +efficiency in a whole dreary desert of waste. Come up to my office +to-morrow at ten." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +So at last I went up to the tower. + +His office took up an entire floor near the tapering top of the +building, and as we walked slowly around the narrow steel balcony +outside, a tremendous panorama unrolled down there before our eyes. We +could see every part of the port below stretching away to the horizon, +and through Dillon's powerful field glass I saw pictures of all I had +seen before in my weary weeks of trudging down there in the haze and +dust. Down there I had felt like a little worm, up here I felt among the +gods. There all had been matter and chaos, here all was mind and a will +to find a way out of confusion. The glass gave me the pictures in swift +succession, in a moment I made a leap of ten miles, and as I listened on +and on to the quiet voice at my elbow, the pictures all came sweeping +together as parts of one colossal whole. The first social vision of my +life I had through Dillon's field glass. + +"To see any harbor or city or state as a whole," he said, "is what most +Americans cannot do. And it's what they've got to learn to do." + +And while I looked where he told me to, like a surgeon about to operate +he talked of his mighty patient, a giant struggling to breathe, with +swollen veins and arteries. He made me see the Hudson, the East River +and the railroad lines all pouring in their traffic, to be shifted and +reloaded onto the ocean vessels in a perfect fever of confusion and +delay. Far below us you could see long lines of tiny trucks and wagons +waiting hours for a chance to get into the docksheds. New York, he +said, in true Yankee style had developed its waterfront pell mell, each +railroad and each ship line grabbing sites for its own use, until the +port was now so clogged, so tangled and congested that it was able to +grow no more. + +"And it's got to grow," he said. The old helter-skelter method had +served well enough in years gone by, for this port had been like this +whole bountiful land, its natural advantages had been so prodigious it +could stand all our blind and hoggish mistakes. But now we were rapidly +nearing the time when every mistake we made would cost us tens of +millions of dollars. For within a few years the Big Ditch would open +across Panama, and the commerce of South America, together with that of +the Orient, would pour into the harbor here to meet the westbound +commerce of Europe. Ships of all nations would steam through the +Narrows, and we must be ready to welcome them all, with an ample +generous harbor worthy of the world's first port. + +"To get ready," he said, "what we've got to do is to organize this port +as a whole, like the big industrial plant it is." + +He began to show me some of the plans in blue-print maps and sketches. I +saw tens of thousands of freight cars gathered in great central yards at +a few main strategic points connected by long tunnels with all the minor +centers. I saw the port no longer as a mere body of water, but with a +whole region deep beneath of these long winding tunnels through which +flowed the traffic unseen and unheard. I saw along the waterfronts +continuous lines of docksheds where by huge cranes and other devices the +loading and unloading could be done with enormous saving of time. Along +the heavy roofs of steel of these continuous lines of buildings +stretched wide ocean boulevards with trees and shrubs and flowers to +shut out the clamorous life below. Warehouses and factory buildings rose +in solid rows behind. The city was to build them all, and the city as +the landlord was to invite the ships and railroads, and the +manufacturers too, to come in and get together, to stop their fighting +and grabbing and work with each other in one great plan. + +"That's what we mean nowadays by a port," he told me at the end of our +talk. "A complicated industrial organ, the heart of a country's +circulation, pumping in and out its millions of tons of traffic as +quickly and cheaply as possible. That's efficiency, scientific +management or just plain engineering, whatever you want to call it. But +it's got to be done for us all in a plan instead of each for himself in +a blind struggling chaos." + + * * * * * + +I came down from the tower with a dazed, excited feeling which lasted +all the rest of the day. That harbor of confusion had been for months my +entire world, it had baffled and beaten me till I was weak. And now this +man had swept together all its parts and showed me one immense design. + +He had promised me the first use of his plans. With this to go on I +drafted a scheme for a series of magazine articles on "The First Port of +the World," and I soon placed it in advance at four hundred dollars an +article. At last I was coming up in life, my first big story had begun! + +I went with Dillon each week-end up to the cottage on the Sound. Here he +talked in detail of his dreams, and Eleanore with her old passion and +pride delighted to draw him out for me. And not only her father--for to +help me in my work she invited out here in the evenings many of his +engineer friends. + +"It has always been awfully hard for me," she confided, "to understand +big questions by reading about them out of books. But I love to hear +about them from men who are living and working right in them. I love to +feel a little how it must be to be living their lives." + +She was a wonderful listener, for she had quietly studied each man until +now she had a kind of an instinct for drawing the very best of him out. +While he talked she would sit with her sewing, now and then putting in a +question to help. Often I would glance at her there and see in her +slightly frowning face how intently she was listening, thinking and +planning to help me. Sometimes she would meet my look. I would grow +tremendously happy. + +"In a little while," I thought. But then I would pull myself up with a +jerk: "Stop looking at her, you young fool, keep your mind on this +engineer. You've got the chance of your life right now to make good in +your work and be happy. Don't fall down! Get busy!" + +And I did. I threw myself into the lives of these men who were the +living embodiments of all that bigness, boldness, punch that had so +gripped and thrilled me. The harbor had drawn them around it out of the +hum and rush of the country, and here they were in its service, watching +it, studying, planning for its even more stupendous growth. One night I +heard them discuss the idea of moving the East River, making it flow +across Long Island, filling in its old water bed and making New York and +Brooklyn one. They talked of this scheme in a hard-headed Yankee way +that made me forget for the moment its boldness, until some cool remark +opened my eyes to the fact that this change would shift vast +populations, plant millions of people this way and that. + +But against these men of the tower, with their wide, deliberate views +ahead, embracing and binding together not only this port but the whole +western world depending upon it, I found in the city jungle innumerable +petty men, who could see only their own narrow interests of to-day, and +who fought blindly any change for a to-morrow--fellows in such mortal +fear of some possible benefit to their rivals that they could see none +for themselves. They were hopelessly used to fighting each other. And I +came to feel that all these men, though many were still young in years, +belonged to a generation gone by, to the age of individual strife that +my father had lived and worked in--and that like him they were all soon +to be swept to one side by the inexorable harbor of to-day, which had no +further use for them. + +It needed bigger men. It needed men like Dillon and behind him those +mysterious powers downtown, the men he had called the brains of the +nation, who read the signs of the new times, who saw that the West was +now fast filling up, that the eyes of the nation were once more turning +outward, and that untold resources of wealth were soon to be available +for mighty sea adventures, a vast fleet of Yankee ships that should +drive the surplus output of our teeming industries into all markets of +the world. And the men who saw these things coming were the only ones +who were big enough to prepare the country to meet them. My father's +dream was at last coming true--too late for him to play a part. He had +been but a prophet, a lonely pioneer. + +My view of the harbor was different now. I had seen it before as a vast +machine molding the lives of all people around it. But now behind the +machine itself I felt the minds of its molders. I saw its ponderous +masses of freight, its multitudes of people, all pushed and shifted this +way and that by these invisible powers. And by degrees I made for myself +a new god, and its name was Efficiency. + +Here at last was a god that I felt could stand! I had made so many in +years gone by, I had been making them all my life--from those first +fearful idols, the condors and the cannibals, to the kind old god of +goodness in my mother's church and the radiant goddess of beauty and art +over there in Paris. One by one I had raised them up, and one by one the +harbor had flowed in and dragged them down. But now in my full manhood +(for remember I was twenty-five!) I had found and taken to myself a god +that I felt sure of. No harbor could make it totter and fall. For it was +armed with Science, its feet stood firm on mechanical laws and in its +head were all the brains of all the strong men at the top. + +And all the multitudes below seemed mere pigmies to me now. I remember +one late twilight, coming back from a talk with an engineer, I boarded a +ferry at the rush hour and watched the people herd on like sheep. How +small they seemed, how petty their thoughts compared to mine, how blind +their views of the harbor. + +Here was a little Italian bride, just landed, by the looks of her. She +kept her face close to her lover's, smiling dazedly into his eyes. And +she saw no harbor. Here near by was a fat old gentleman with a highly +painted young lady who laughed and swore softly at him as I passed. I +sat down beside them a moment and listened. The old gentleman seemed +quite mad with desire. He was pleading eagerly, whining. And he saw no +harbor. Close by sat two tall serious men. One was deep in a socialist +book, the other in news of the Giants. Both seemed equally absorbed. And +they saw no harbor. I moved on to another spot, and sitting down by a +thin seedy-looking Irish girl I heard her talk to her husband about +having their baby's life insured according to a wonderful plan an agent +had described to her. As she spoke she was frowning anxiously--and she +saw no harbor. Not far away a plump flashy young creature was smiling +down on the bootblack who was busily shining her small patent leather +shoes. Her bright blue petticoat lifted high displayed the most enticing +charms, and as now she turned to look off toward the lights of the city +ahead, she smiled gaily to herself. And she saw no harbor. And alone up +at the windy bow I found a squat husky laborer with his dirty coat and +shirt thrown open wide, the wind on his bare hairy chest, hungrily +watching the dock ahead as though for his supper--seeing no harbor, no +world's first port, no plans for vast fleets or a great canal, none of +the big things shaping his life. + +But I saw. Orders had gone out from the tower east and west and south +and north to show me every courtesy. And with a miraculous youthful ease +I understood all that I saw and heard. The details all fitted right into +the whole, or if they didn't I made them fit. Here was a splendid end to +chaos and blind wrestling with life. And feeling stronger and more sure +than ever in my life before, I set out to build my series of glory +stories about it all, laying on the color thick to reach a million pigmy +readers, grip them, pull them out of their holes, make them sit up and +rub their eyes. + +For I was now a success in life! The exuberant joy of youth and success +filled the whole immense region for me. In those Fall days there was +nothing too hard to try, no queer hours too exhausting, no deep corner +too remote, in the search for my material. I saw the place from an old +fisherman's boat and from a revenue launch at night, with its +searchlight combing the waters far and wide for smugglers. I saw it from +big pilot boats that put far out to sea to meet the incoming liners. I +ate many good suppers and slept long nights on a stout jolly tug called +_The Happy_, where from my snug bunk at the stern through the open door +I could watch the stars. I went down into tunnels deep beneath the +waters. I went often to the Navy Yard. I dined many nights on +battleships, where the talk of the naval officers recalled my father's +picture of a fighting ocean world. They too talked of the Big Canal, but +in terms of war instead of peace. I went out to the coast defenses, and +with an army major I made a tour of the lights and buoys. + +And perhaps more often than anywhere else, I went to a rude log cabin on +the side of a wooded hill high up on Staten Island, where lived a +Norwegian engineer. He had a cozy den up there, with book-shelves set +into the logs, two deep bunks, a few bright rugs on the rough floor, +some soft, ponderous leather chairs and a crackling little stove on +which we cooked delicious suppers. Later out on the narrow porch we +would puff lazy smoke wreaths and watch the vast valley of lights below, +from the distant twinkling arch of the Bridge to the sparkling towers of +old Coney. Down there like swarms of fire-flies were countless darting +skurrying lights, red and blue and green and white. Far off to the south +flashed the light of the Hook, and still other signals gleamed low from +the ocean. + +Here I came often with Eleanore, for she had now come back to town. In +her boat we went to many new spots and back to all the old ones. We +found new beauties in them all. At home in the evenings we had long +talks. And all the time I could feel that we two both knew what was +coming, that steadily we were drawing together, that all my work and my +view of the harbor took its joy and its glory from this. + +"In a little while," I thought. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +I had been little at home those days, for the house in Brooklyn +disturbed me now. Poor old Dad. Since I had secured my contract he had +tried so hard to help me, to be eager, interested, alive, to talk it all +over with me at night. And this I did not like to do. A vague feeling of +guilt and disloyalty would creep into my now boundless zest for the +harbor that had crowded him out. And I think that he suspected this. One +night, when with this feeling I stupidly tried to talk as though I still +hated all its ugliness, its clamor, smoke and grime, I caught a twinkle +of pain in his eyes. + +"Boy," he broke in roughly, "I hope you'll always talk and write what +you believe and nothing else! I wouldn't give a picayune for any chap +who didn't!" + +I could feel him watching anxiously my affair with Eleanore. In the days +when she had come to the house he had grown very fond of her, and now by +frequent questions, slipped in with a studied indifference, he showed an +interest which in time became a deep suspense. + +"Out again this evening, son?" he called in one night from the bathroom +where he was washing his hands and face before going down to supper. In +my room adjoining I was dressing to go out. + +"Yes, Dad." + +"What for?" + +"Some work." + +"Be out for dinner too?" + +"Yes." + +"Who with?" + +"Oh, a pilot," I answered abstractedly. I was wondering if she would +wear her blue gown. She had asked quite a number of people that night. +Then I saw Dad in the doorway. Briskly rubbing his gray head with a +towel, he was eyeing my evening clothes. + +"Devilish polished chaps these days--pilots," he commented. I heard a +low snort of glee from his room. + +My sister, on the other hand, had no more patience than before with this +fast deepening love of mine, which had drawn me away from her radical +friends up to the men of the tower who worked for the big companies. By +the most vigorous ironies, the most industrious witty remarks, she made +me feel how thoroughly she disapproved of anything so deadening as +marriage, home and settling down, in this glorious age of new ideas. + +One morning at breakfast, when I remarked as I commonly did that I would +be out for dinner that night, + +"Where are you going?" she asked abruptly. + +"To Eleanore Dillon's," I replied. Our eyes met squarely for a moment. + +"Do you know what it means to go there so often, almost every night?" +she asked. + +"I do," I answered bluntly. I would finish this meddling once and for +all. But Sue did not look finished. + +"You'd better stay home to-night, Billy," she said. + +"Why?" + +"Joe Kramer is coming." + +"What?" + +"He telephoned me late last night. He's just come from Colorado and he +sails to-morrow for England. He's awfully anxious to see you." + +Of course he was, and I knew what about! I saw at once by the look on +her face that Sue had told him all about me and had begged him to see +what he could do. Why couldn't they leave a fellow alone, I said +wrathfully to myself. + +But my ire softened when I met Joe. In the year and a half since I had +seen him the lines in his face had deepened, the stoop of his big +shoulders had grown even more pronounced, and again I felt that wistful, +frowning, searching quality in him. Beneath his gruffness and his jeers +he was so honestly pushing on for what he could find most real in life. +A wave of the old affection came over me suddenly without warning. +Vaguely I wondered about it. Why did he always grip me so? + +My father too appeared at first delighted to see him. He had shown a +keen relish for J. K. from that first time in college when I had brought +him home for Christmas. Since then, whenever Joe had come, he and Dad +had always managed to retreat to the study together and smoke and have +long dogged arguments. But to-night it was not the same. For in his +growth as a radical, Joe had gone beyond all arguing now. Lines of deep +displeasure slowly tightened on Dad's face. All through dinner he kept +attempting to turn the talk from Joe's work to mine. But this I would +have none of, I wanted to be let alone. So I nervously kept the +conversation on what Joe was up to. And Sue seemed more than eager to +learn. + +J. K. was up to a good deal. + +"This muckraking game is played out," he said. "We all know how rotten +things are. All we want to know now is what's to be done." And he +himself had become absorbed in what the working class was doing. As a +reporter in the West he had been to strike after strike, ending with a +long ugly struggle in the Colorado mines. He talked about it intensely, +the greed of the mine owners, the brutality of the militia, the "bull +pens" into which strikers were thrown. Vaguely I felt he was giving us a +most distorted picture, and glancing now and then at my father I saw +that he thought it a pack of lies. Joe made all the strikers the most +heroic figures, and he spoke of their struggle as only a part of a great +labor war that was soon to sweep the entire land. + +Sue excitedly drew him out, and I felt it was all for my benefit. Joe +said that he was going abroad in order that he might write the truth +about the labor world over there. The American papers and magazines +would let you write the truth, he said, about labor over in Europe, +because it was at a safe distance. But they wouldn't allow it here. And +then Sue looked across at me as though to say, "It's only stuff like +_yours_ they allow." + +"Why don't you two go out for a walk?" she suggested sweetly after +dinner. And I consented gladly, for there are times when nothing on +earth can be worse than your own sister. + + * * * * * + +We went down to the old East River docks and walked for some time with +little said. Then Joe turned on me abruptly. + +"Well, Bill," he said, "I've read your stuff. It's damn well written." + +"Thanks," I replied. + +"If I've got any knocking to do," he went on with a visible effort, "I +know you'll give me credit for not knocking out of jealousy. I'm not +jealous, I'm honestly tickled to death. I was wrong about you in Paris. +You and me were different kinds. What you got over there was just what +you needed, it has put you already way out of my class, and it's going +to give you a lot of power as a spreader of ideas. That's why I hate so +like the devil to see you starting out like this, with what I'm so sure +are the wrong ideas." + +"How are they wrong?" + +"Think a minute. Why is your magazine pushing you so? The first story of +your series is only just out and they've already boomed you all over the +country. Why, Bill, I saw your picture in a trolley car in Denver--and +you're only twenty-five years old! It's damn fine writing, I'll say it +again, but that's not reason enough for this. You've got to go down +deeper and look into your magazine's policy--which is to strike a +balance for all kinds of middle-class readers and for their advertisers +too. They've run some radical stuff this year, and they're booming you +now to balance off, to show how 'safe and sane' they can be in the way +they look at life, at big business and at industry--as you do here in +the harbor. You're making gods out of the men at the top, you've seen +'em as they see themselves, and you've only seen what they see here. +You've missed all the millions of people here who depend on the place +for their jobs and their lives. They don't count for you----" + +"That's not true at all!" I interrupted hotly. "It's just for them and +their children that fellows like Dillon are on the job--to make a better +harbor!" + +"_For_ them, _for_ the people!" said Joe. "That's what I'm kicking at in +you, Bill--you treat us all like a mass of dubs that need gods above to +do everything _for_ us because we can't do it all by ourselves!" + +"I don't believe the people can," I retorted. "From what I've seen I +honestly don't believe they count. The fellows that count in a job like +this are the fellows with punch and grit enough to fight their way up +out of the ranks----" + +"I know, and be lieutenants and captains in a regular army of peace, +with your friend Dillon in command and Wall Street in command of him! +Isn't that your view?" + +"All right, it is! I don't see any harm in that. It's the only safe way +that I can see out of this mess of a harbor we've got. These men are the +efficient ones--they're the fellows that have the brains and that know +how to work--to use science, money, everything--to get a decent world +ahead. What's the matter with efficiency?" + +"Your latest god," sneered J. K. + +"Suppose it is! What's wrong with it? What's the matter with Dillon? Is +he a crook?" + +"No," said Joe, "that's just the worst of him. He's so damned honest, +he's such a hard worker. I've met men like him all over the country, +and they're the most dangerous men we've got. Because they're the real +strength of Wall Street--just as thousands of clean hard working priests +are the strength of the Catholic church! They keep their church going +and Dillon keeps his--he's a regular priest of big business! And he +takes hold of kids like you and molds your views like his for life. Look +at what he has done with you here. Does he say a word to you about +Graft? Does he talk of the North Atlantic Pool or any one of the other +pools and schemes by which they keep up rates? Does he make you think +about low wages and long hours and all the fellows hurt or killed on the +docks and in the stoke holes? Does he give you any feeling at all of +this harbor as a city of four million people, most of 'em getting a raw +deal and getting mad about it? That's more important to you and me than +all the efficiency gods on earth. You've got to decide which side you're +on. And that's what's got me talking now. I see so plain which way +you're letting yourself be pulled. I've seen so many pulled the same +way. It's so pleasant up there at the top, there's so much money and +brains up there and refinement--such women to get married to, such homes +to settle down in. Sometimes I wish every promising radical kid in the +country could get himself into some scandal that would cut him off for +life from any chance of being received by this damned respectable upper +class!" + +He stopped for a moment, and then with a gruff intensity: + +"We need you, Bill," he ended. "We need you bad. We don't want you to +marry a girl at the top. We don't want you anchored up there for life." + +We were standing still now, and I was looking out on the river. Through +the grip of his hand on my arm I could feel his body taut and quivering, +his whole spirit hot with revolt. The same old Joe, but tenser now, +strained almost to the breaking point. But I myself was different. In +college he had appealed to me because there I was groping and had found +nothing. But now I had found something sure. And so, though to my own +surprise a deep emotional part of me rose up in sudden response to Joe +and made me feel guilty to hold back, it was only for a moment, and then +my mind told me he was wrong. Poor old J. K. What a black distorted view +he had--grown out of a distorted life of traveling continually from one +center of trouble to another. How could he be any judge of life? + +"Look here, Joe," I said. "I'm a kid, as you say, and some day I may see +your side of this. But I don't now, I can't--for since I left Paris I've +been through enough to make me feel what a job living is, I mean really +living and growing. And I know what a difference Dillon has made. He has +been to my life what he is to this harbor. And I'm not old enough nor +strong enough to throw over a man as big as that and as honest and clean +in his thinking, and throw myself in with your millions of people, who +seem to me either mighty poor thinkers or fellows who don't think at +all. They're not in my line. I believe in men who can think clean, who +have trained their minds by years of hard work, who don't try to tear +down and bring things to a smash, but are always building, building! You +talk about this upper class. But they're my people, aren't they, that's +where I was born. And I'm going on with them. I believe they're right +and I know they're strong--I mean strong enough to handle all this--make +it better." + +"They'll make it worse," Joe answered. And then as he turned to me once +more he added very bitterly, "You'll see strength enough in the people +some day." + +A few moments later he left me. + +I looked at my watch and found it was not yet nine o'clock. I went to +Eleanore Dillon. And within an hour Joe and his world of crowds and +confusion were swept utterly out of my mind. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +I had often told Eleanore of Joe. She had asked me about him many times. +"It's queer," she had said, "what a hold he must have had on you. I feel +sure he's just the kind of a person I wouldn't like and who wouldn't +like me. I don't think he's really your kind either, and yet he has a +hold on you still. Yes, he has, I can feel he has." + +And to-night when I told her that I had been with him, + +"What did he want of you?" she asked. + +"He wants me to drop everything," I answered. And I tried to give her +some idea of what he had said. + +But as I talked, the thought came suddenly into my mind that here at +last was the very time to settle my life one way or the other, to ask +her if she would be my wife. I grew excited and confused, my voice +sounding unnatural to my ears. And as I talked on about Joe, my heart +pounding, I could barely keep the thoughts in line. + +"And I don't want what he wants," I ended desperately. "That nor +anything like it. I want just what I've been getting--just this kind of +work and life. And I want _you_--for life, I mean--if you can ever feel +like that." + +Eleanore said nothing. In an instant the world and everything in it had +narrowed to the two of us. The intensity was unbearable. I rose abruptly +and turned away. I felt suddenly far out of my depth. Confusedly and +furiously I felt that I had bungled things, that here was something in +life so strange I could do nothing with it. What a young fool I was to +have thought she could ever care for a fellow like me! I felt she must +be smiling. Despairingly I turned to see. + +And Eleanore was smiling--in a way that steadied me in a flash. For her +smile was so plainly a quick, strong effort to steady herself. + +"I'm glad you want me like that," she said, in a voice that did not +sound like hers. "I don't believe in hiding things.... I'm--very happy." +She looked down at her hands in her lap and they slowly locked together. +"But of course it means our whole lives, you see--and we mustn't hurry +or make a mistake. Now that we know--this much--we can talk about it +quite openly--about each other and what we want--what kinds of +lives--what we believe in--whether we'd be best for each other. It's +what we ought to talk about--a good many times--it may be weeks." + +"All right," I agreed. I was utterly changed. At her first words I had +felt a deep rush of relief, and seeing her tremendous pluck and the +effort she was making, I pitied, worshiped and loved her all in the same +moment. And as we talked on for a few minutes more in that grave and +unnaturally sensible way about the pros and cons of it all, these +feelings within me mounted so swiftly that all at once I again broke +off. + +"I don't believe there's any use in this," I declared. "It's perfectly +idiotic!" + +"Of course it is," she promptly agreed. + +And then after a rigid instant when each of us looked at the other as +though asking, "Quick! What are we going to do?"--she burst out laughing +excitedly. So did I, and that carried her into my arms and--I remember +nothing--until after a while she asked me to go, because she wanted to +be by herself. And I noticed how bright and wet were her eyes. + +I saw them still in the darkness down along the river front, where I +walked for half the rest of the night, stopping to draw a deep breath +of the sea and laugh excitedly and go on. + + * * * * * + +Life changed rapidly after that night. I grew so absorbed in Eleanore +and in all that was waiting just ahead, that it was hard not to shut out +everything else, most of all impersonal things. It was hard to write, +and for days I wrote nothing. I remember only intimate talks. Everyone I +talked to seemed to be deeply personal. + +I told my father about it the next evening before supper. I found him in +his old chair in the study buried deep in his paper. + +"Say, Dad--would you mind coming up to your room?" He smote his paper to +one side. + +"What the devil," he asked, "do I want to come up to my room for?" + +"I've--the fact is I've something you ought to know." I could hear Sue +in the other room. + +"All right, my boy," he said nervously. As he followed me he kept +clearing his throat. Sue must have guessed and prepared him. In his room +he fussed about, grunted hard over getting off his shoes and, finding +his slippers, then lay back on his sofa with his hands behind his head +and uttered an explosive sigh. + +"All right, son, now fire ahead," he said jocosely. I loved him at that +moment. + +"You know Eleanore Dillon," I began. + +"She turned you down!" + +"No! She took me!" + +"The devil you say!" He sat bolt upright, staring. "Well, my boy, I'm +very glad," he said thickly. His eyes were moist. "I'm glad--glad! She's +a fine girl--strong character--strong! I wish your poor mother were +alive--she'd be happy--this girl will make a good wife--you must bring +her right here to live with us!" + +And so he talked on, his voice trembling. Then out of his confusion rose +the money question, and at once his mind grew clear. And to my surprise +he urged me to lose no time in looking around for "some good, steady +position" in a magazine office. My writing I could do at night. + +"It's so uncertain at best," he said. "It's nothing you can count on. +And you've got to think of a wife and children. _Her_ father has no +money saved." + +I found he'd been looking Dillon up, and this jarred on me horribly. But +still worse was his lack of faith in my writing. I was making four +hundred dollars a month, and it was a most unpleasant jolt to have it +taken so lightly. + +I went down to Sue. As I came into the living room she met me suddenly +at the door. In a moment her arms were about my neck and she was saying +softly: + +"I know what it is, dear, and I'm glad--I'm awfully glad. If I've been +horrid about it ever, please forgive me. I'm sure now it's just the life +you want!" + +And that evening, while Dad slept in his chair, Sue and I had a long +affectionate talk. We drew closer than we had been for months. She was +eager to hear everything, she wanted to know all our plans. When I tried +at last to turn our talk to herself and our affairs at home, at first +she would not hear to it. + +"My dear boy," she said affectionately, "you've had these worries long +enough. You're to run along now and be happy and leave this house to Dad +and me." + +I slipped my arm around her: + +"Look here, Sis, let's see this right. You can't run here on what Dad +earns, and if you try to work yourself you'll only hurt him terribly. My +idea is to help as before, without letting him know that I'm doing it. +Make him think you've cut expenses." + +It took a long time to get her consent. + +The next night I went to Eleanore's father. He received me quietly, and +with a deep intensity under that steady smile of his, which reminded me +so much of hers, he spoke of all she had meant to him and of her brave +search for a big, happy life. He told how he had watched her with me +slowly making up her mind. + +"It took a long time, but it's made up now," he said. "And now that it +is, she's the kind that will go through anything for you that can ever +come up in your life." He looked at me squarely, still smiling a little, +frankly letting his new affection come into his eyes. "I wish I knew all +that's going to happen," he added, almost sadly. "I hope you'll get used +to telling me things--talking things over--anything--no matter +what--where I can be of the slightest help." + +Then he, too, spoke of money. He meant to keep up her allowance, he +said, and he had insured his life for her. Again, as with my father, I +felt that disturbing lack of faith in my work. I spoke of it to Eleanore +and she looked at me indignantly. + +"You must never think of it like that," she said. "I won't have you +writing for money. Dad has never worked that way and you're not to do it +on any account--least of all on account of me. Whatever you make we'll +live on, and that's all there is to be said--except that we'll live +splendidly," she added very gaily, "and we won't spend the finest part +of our lives saving up for rainy days. We'll take care of the rain when +it rains, and we'll have some wonderful times while we can." + +We decided at once on a trip abroad as soon as I had finished my work. +And I remember writing hard, and reading it aloud to her and rewriting +over and over again, for Eleanore could be severe. But I remember, too, +more trips in her boat to gather the last odds and ends. I remember how +the big harbor took on a new glory to our eyes, mingled with all the +deep personal joys and small troubles and crises we went through, the +puzzles and the questionings and the glad discoveries that made up the +swift growth of our love. + +And though I never once thought of Joe Kramer, he had prophesied +aright. I belonged wholly now to Dillon's world, a world of clean +vigorous order that seemed to welcome me the more as I wrote in praise +of its power. And happy over my success, and in love and starting life +anew with all the signs so bright--how could I have any doubts of my +harbor? + +We were married very quietly late one April afternoon. It rained, I +remember, all that day, but the next was bright and clear for our +sailing. In our small stateroom on the ship we found a note from the +company, a large, engraved impressive affair, presenting their best +wishes and asking us to accept for the voyage one of their most +luxurious cabins. + +"This is what comes," said Eleanore gaily, "of being the wife of a +writer." + +"Or the daughter," I said softly, "of a very wonderful engineer." + +"You darling boy!" + +We moved up to a large sunny cabin. I remember her swiftly reading the +telegrams and letters there as though to get them all out of the way. I +remember her unpacking and taking possession of our first home. + +"We're married, aren't we," said a voice. + +There was only one more good-by to be said. On the deck, as we went out +of the harbor, Eleanore stood by the rail. I felt her hand close tight +on mine and I saw her eyes glisten a little with tears. + +"What a splendid place it has been," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +We found every place splendid in those weeks as we let the wanderlust +carry us on. And as though emerging from some vivid dream, various +places and faces of people stand out in my memory now, as then they +loomed in upon our absorption. + +I remember the little old harbor of Cherbourg, gleaming in the +moonlight, where when we landed Eleanore said, "Let's stay here awhile." +So of course we did, and then went on to Paris. We took an apartment, +very French and absurdly small, from a former Beaux Arts friend of mine. +I remember the kindly face of the maid who took such beaming care of us, +the café in front of which late at night we sat and watched the huge +shadowy carts go by on their way to the market halls, the sunrise flower +market, where we filled our cab with moss roses and plants, Polin's +songs in the "Ambassadeurs," delicious petites allées in the Bois, our +favorite rides on the tops of the 'buses, that old religious place of +mine down under the bridge by Notre Dame. + +All these and more we saw in fragments, now and then, looking out with +vivid interest on all the life around us, only to return to each other, +_into_ each other I should say, for the exploring was quite different +now, there had been such hours between us that nothing intimate could be +held back. Nothing? Well, nothing that I thought of then. For somehow or +other, in those glad, eager afternoons and evenings, in those nights, +nothing disturbingly ugly in me so much as thought of showing its head. +Three years before in this stirring town I had felt guilty at being a +monk. But now I felt no guilt at all. For down the Champs Élysées our +cab rolled serenely now, and even our driver's white hat wore an air as +though it had a place in life. + +From Paris we started for Munich, but we did not stop there, we happened +to feel like going on. So we went through to Constantinople, whence we +took a boat to Batoum and went up into the Caucasus, which Eleanore had +heard about once from an engineer friend of her father's. I remember +Koutais, a little town by a mountain torrent with gray vine-covered +walls around it. Shops opened into the walls like stalls. There we would +buy things for our supper and then in a crazy vehicle we would drive +miles out on the broad mountainside to an orchard pink with blossoms, +where we would build a fire and cook, and an old man in a long yellow +robe and with a turban on his head would come out of his cabin and bring +us wine. And the stars would appear and the frogs tune up in the marshes +far down in the valley below, and the filmy mists would rise and the +mountains would tower overhead. And the effect of this place upon us was +to make us feel it was only one of innumerable such vacation places that +lay ahead, festival spots in long, radiant lives. We felt this vaguely, +silently. So often we talked silently. + +Then there would come the most serious times, when with the deepest +thoughtfulness we would survey the years ahead and very solemnly place +ourselves, our views and beliefs. Miraculous how agreed we were! We +believed, we found, in good workmanship, in honest building, in getting +things done. We believed in Eleanore's father and all those around and +above him that could help his kind of work. We were impatient of +soft-headedness in rich people who had nothing to do, and of heavy +muddle-headedness in the millions who had too much to do, and of +muckraking of every kind which only got in the way of the builders. For +the building of a new, clean vigorous world was our religion. And it did +not seem cold to us, because our lives were in it and because we were +in love. + +There was no end to the plans for ourselves, for my writing, our home, +the friends we wanted, the trips, the books and the music. And through +it all and from under it all there kept bursting up that feeling which +we knew was the most important of all, the exultant realization that we +two were just starting out. + + * * * * * + +When at last we came back home this feeling took a deeper turn. I +noticed a change in Eleanore. She had far less thought and time for me +now, she seemed to be strangely absorbed in herself. Nearly all her time +and strength were given to our small apartment, in the same building as +that of her father. By countless feminine touches she was making it look +like the home she had planned. She was getting all in order. And then +one night she told me why. Her arms were close around me and her voice +was so low I could barely hear: + +"There's going to be another soon--another one _of us_--do you hear?--a +very tiny blessed one." + +I held her slowly tighter. + +"Oh, my darling girl," I whispered. + +Suddenly I relaxed my hold, for I was afraid of hurting her now. In a +moment all was so utterly changed. And as in that brave, quiet way of +hers she looked smiling steadily into my eyes, my throat contracted +sharply. For into my mind leaped the memory of what the harbor had shown +to me on that sultry hideous summer night in the tenement over in +Brooklyn. And _that_ must happen to _my wife_! + +"Oh, my dear," she whispered, "if you only knew how much strength I +stored up way over there in the mountains." + +So she had been thinking of this even then, and yet had told me nothing! + +Here was the beginning of a long anxious period. Month after month I +watched her quietly preparing. Slowly we drew into ourselves, while her +father and mine and Sue and our friends came and went, but mattered +little. I wondered if Dillon ever felt this. As he came down to us in +the evenings from the apartment upstairs, where he and Eleanore had +meant so much to each other only a year before, he gave no sign that he +saw any change. But one night after he had gone, Eleanore happened to +pick up the evening paper which had dropped from his bulging overcoat +pocket. + +"Billy, come here," she said presently. + +"What is it?" + +"Look at this." + +The President of the United States had gone with Eleanore's father that +day in a revenue cutter over the harbor and had spoken of Dillon's great +dream in vigorous terms of approval. + +"And father was here this evening," said Eleanore very slowly, "and yet +he never told me a word. He saw that I'd heard nothing and he thought I +didn't care. Oh, Billy, I feel so ashamed." + +But she soon forgot the incident. + +My suspense grew sharp as the time drew near. I had a good doctor, I was +sure of that, and he told me he had an excellent nurse. But what good +were all these puny precautions? The tenement room in Brooklyn kept +rising in my mind. + +She sat by the window that last night, and looking down on the far-away +lights of the river we planned another trip abroad. + +A few hours later I stood over her, holding her hand, and with her white +lips pressed close together and her eyes shut, she went through one of +those terrible spasms. Then she looked up in the moment's relief. And +suddenly here was that smile of hers. And she said low, between clenched +teeth, + +"Well, dearie, another starting out----" + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +The next morning, after the rush of relief at the news of Eleanore's +safety and the strange sight of our tiny son, I felt keyed gloriously +high, ready for anything under the sun. But there seemed to be nothing +whatever to do, I felt in the way each time that I moved, so I took to +my old refuge, work. And then into my small workroom came Eleanore's +father for a long talk. He too had been up all night, his lean face was +heavily marked from the strain, but their usual deep serenity had come +back into his quiet eyes. + +"Let's take a day off," he said, smiling. "We're both so tired we don't +know it." + +"Tired?" I demanded. + +"Yes," he said, "you're tired--more than you've ever been in your life. +You'll feel like a rag by to-morrow, and then I hope you'll take a good +rest. But to-day, while you are still way up, I want to talk about your +work. Do you mind?" + +"Mind? No," I replied, a bit anxiously. "It's just what I'm trying to +figure out." + +"I know you are. You've figured for months and you've worked yourself +thin. I don't mind that, I like it, because I know the reason. But I +don't think the result has been good. It seems to me you've been so +anxious to get on, because of this large family of yours, that you've +shut yourself up and written too fast, you've gotten rather away from +life. Shall I go right on?" + +"Yes," I said, watching intently. + +"Well," he continued, "you've been using what name you've already made +and writing short stories of harbor life." + +"That's what the editors want," I said. "When a man makes a hit in one +vein of writing they want that and nothing else." + +"At this rate you'll soon work out the vein," he said. "I'd like to see +you stop writing now, take time to find new ground--and dig." + +"There's not an awful lot of time," I remarked. + +"My plan won't stop your making money," he replied. "I want you to write +less, but get more pay." + +"That sounds attractive. How shall I do it?" + +"By writing about big men," he said. "I suggest that you try a series of +portraits of some of the big Americans and the America they know." + +I jumped up so suddenly he started. + +"What's the matter?" he asked with a glance at the door. "Did you hear +anything?" + +"Yes," I said excitedly. "I heard a stunning title! The America They +Know!" + +We discussed it all that morning and it appealed to me more and more. +Later on, with Eleanore's help (for she grew stronger fast those days), +I prevailed upon her father to let me practice upon himself as my first +subject. I worked fast, my material right at hand, and within a few +weeks I had written the story of those significant incidents out of +thirty years of work and wanderings east and west that showed the +America he had known, his widening view. I did his portrait, so to +speak, with his back to the reader, letting the reader see what he saw. +This story I sold promptly, and under the tonic of that success I went +into the work with zest and vim. + +It filled the next four years of my life. It took the view I had had of +the harbor and widened it to embrace the whole land, which I now saw +altogether through the eyes of the men at the top. + +The most central figure of them all, and by far the most difficult to +attack, was a powerful New York banker, one of those invisible gods +whose hand I had felt on the harbor. + +"The value of him to you," Dillon said, "is that if you can only make +him talk you'll find him a born storyteller. The secret scandal of his +life is that once in a short vacation he tried to write a play." + +It was weeks before he would see me, and I had my first interview at +last only by getting on a night train which he had taken for Cleveland. +There in his stateroom, cornered, he received me with a grim reluctance. +And with a humorous glint in his eyes, + +"How much do you know about banking?" he asked. + +"Nothing," I said frankly. And then I took a sudden chance. "What do you +know about writing?" I asked. + +"Nothing," he said placidly. + +"Is that true? I thought you once wrote a play." He sat up very quickly. +"If you did," I went on, "you've probably read some of Shakespeare's +stuff. It was strong stuff about strong men. If he were alive he'd write +about you, but I'm sure that he wouldn't know about banking. That's only +your job." + +"What do you want of me, young man?" he inquired. "Is it my soul?" + +"Not at all," I answered. "It's the America you know, expressed in such +simple human terms that even a young ignoramus like me will be able to +understand it. Out of this big country a good many thousands of men, I +suppose, have come to you for money. Which are the most significant +ones?" + +And I went on to explain my idea. Soon it began to take hold of him. We +talked until after midnight, and later we had other talks. It was hard +at first in the questioning to dodge the technical side of it all, the +widely intricate workings of that machine of credit of which he was +chief engineer. But as he saw how eager I was to feel his view and +become enthused, by degrees he humanized it all. And not only that, he +trusted me, he gave me the most intimate glimpses into this life of big +money, although when I dared to include such bits in the story that I +showed him he calmly scratched them out and said: + +"You're mistaken, young man. I didn't say that." + +As he talked I saw again that vision I had had on the North River docks. +For into this man's office had come the men of the mines, the factories +and the mills, the promoters of vast irrigations on prairies, builders +of railroads, real estate plungers, street traction promoters, +department store owners, newspaper proprietors, politicians--the +builders and boomers, the strong energetic men of the land. He showed me +their power and made me feel it was still but in its infancy. He made me +feel a dazzling future rushing upon us, a future of plenty still more +controlled by the keen minds and wide visions of the powerful men at the +top. + +Of all these men and the rushing world of power they lived in, I have +only a jumble of memories now. For my own life was a jumble--irregular, +crowded and intense. In their offices, clubs and homes, in their motors, +on yachts and trains, in Chicago and Pittsburgh and other cities, I +followed them, making my time suit theirs. Some had no use for me at +all, but I found others delighted to talk--like the great Dakota +ranchman who ordered twenty thousand copies of the issue in which his +story appeared and scattered them like seeds of fame over the various +counties of wheat, corn and alfalfa he owned. And in the main I had +little trouble. I met often that curious respect which so many men of +affairs seem to have, God knows why, for a successful writer. + +I got in where men with ten times my knowledge were barred. I remember +with a touch of shame the institute of scientific research where the +chief of the place took a whole afternoon to show me around, and while I +looked wise and tried to feel thrilled over glass tubes and jars and +microscopes through which I peered at microbes, a simple old country +doctor, one of the thousands of _common_ visitors, by my invitation +followed humbly in my wake, murmuring from time to time, + +"Miraculous, by George, astounding!" And gratefully pressing my hand at +the end, "This has been the chance of a lifetime," he said. + +Perhaps the principal reason why I got so warm a welcome was the name I +had already made as a writer of glory stories. I liked these men; I +liked to enthuse over all the big things they were doing. And still true +to my efficiency god, the immense importance of getting things done +loomed so high in my view of life as to overshadow everything else. My +sense of moral values changed. + +It was a strange unmoral world. + +In the institute of science these keen laboratory gods (who had seemed +so cold and comfortless to me but a few short years ago) were perfecting +a cure for syphilis. Strong men were removing the wages of sin! + +In Chicago I met the president of a huge industrial company who had +found it necessary at times to use money on politicians. For this he had +been sent to jail, but later his influence got him out. Promptly he was +made treasurer of another company. In one year, through his energy, now +more intense than ever, the business of that company increased some +thirty-five per cent., whereupon the directors of the original +corporation, after a stormy meeting in which two church deacon directors +fussed and fumed considerably, unanimously decided to ask him to come +back. He did. He told me the story quite frankly himself. I admired him +tremendously. + +The head of a mining company sat in his office one afternoon and talked +of the labor problem. There was no right or wrong involved, he said, it +was simply a matter of force. Once when a strike threatened he had +called in a "labor expert" who had used money wholesale and there had +been no strike. + +"Well?" he asked, smiling. "What do you think of it?" + +"I think I can't print it." He still smiled. + +"Naturally not. But what do you think? If you yourself were responsible +to several hundred stockholders, what would you do? Risk a strike that +might wipe out their dividends? Or would you resort to bribery"--his +smile slowly deepened--"which is a penal offense in this State?" + +I found such questions cropping up almost everywhere I went. In their +dealings with the public and still more with their rivals, there was a +ruthless vigor that swept old-fashioned maxims aside. And I liked this, +for it got things done! I was bored to find, as I often did, these men +in their homes quite old-fashioned again to suit sober old wives who +still went to church. I remember one such elderly lady and the shock I +unwittingly gave her. She had deplored the decline of churches; her own, +she said, was barely half full. And I then tried to cheer her by an +account of my last story, which was of an advertising man, a genius who +in the last two years had made churches his especial line and by his +up-to-date methods had packed church after church on a commission basis. +Her burst of disapproval almost drove me from the house. And there were +so many homes like that. Men who were perfect giants by day would become +the gentlest babies at night, allowing their wives to read to them such +sentimental drivel as would have been kicked from the office by day. + +"But God knows they need such vacuous homes," I reflected, "to rest in." + +I had never dreamed before how strenuous men's lives could be. One day +in the New York office of a big plunger in real estate I pointed to a +map on the wall. + +"What are all those lots marked 'vacant' for?" I asked him. "I never saw +many vacant lots in that part of town." He grinned cheerfully. + +"Anything under four stories is vacant to us," he answered, "because it +pays to buy it, tear it down and build something higher." + +That was the way they crowded their cities, and as with their cities, so +with their lives. One story that interested me most was of the weird +America which a renowned nerve specialist knew. To him came these men +broken down, some on the verge of insanity. He gave me stories of their +lives, of his glimpses into their straining minds, he described their +pathetic efforts to rest, their strenuous attempts to relax. He himself +had some mysterious ailment, his hands kept trembling while he talked. +His wife said he hadn't had a vacation of over a week in eleven years. + +From such men I would turn to exuberant lives, like that of the Tammany +leader now dead, who gave a ten-thousand-dollar banquet one night, in +the Ten Eyck in Albany, in honor of the newsboy who every morning for +twenty-two winters had brought morning papers to him in bed in his hotel +room. Or like that of the millionaire merchant who told me with the most +naïve pride of the eleven hundred electric lights in his new home on +Fifth Avenue, and of how the bathrooms of both his large daughters were +fitted in solid silver throughout. + +"Not plated, understand," he said. "I told the architect while he was at +it to put in the real solid stuff--and plenty of it!" + +Through this varied throng of successes, this rich abundance of types, I +ranged with an ever deepening zest. As a hunter of game I watched that +endless human procession on and off the front pages of papers, the men +who were for the moment news. Often small people too would be +there--like the telephone girl from a suburb, who for one day, as the +most important witness in a sensational case of graft, was suddenly +before the whole country and then as suddenly dropped out of sight. In +fact, that was now my view of the land, figures emerging from dark +obscure multitudes up into a bright circle of light. + +And I took this front-page view of New York. I saw it as a city where +big exceptional people were endlessly doing sensational things, both in +the making and spending of money. I saw it not only as a cluster of tall +buildings far downtown, but uptown as well a towering pile of rich +hotels and apartments, a region that sparkled gaily at night, lights +flashing from tens of thousands of rooms, in and out of which, I felt +delightedly, millions of people had passed through the years. I loved to +look up at these windows at night, at the sheer inscrutability of them. +For behind these twinkling masses I knew were all things tragic, +comic--people laughing, fighting, hating, scheming, dreaming, loving, +living. I thought of that row of cabins de luxe that I had seen on the +Christmas boat. Here was the same thing magnified, a monstrous +caravansary with but one question over its doors: "Have You Got the +Price?" + +Once I had seen a harbor. Then it had grown into a port. And now I saw a +metropolis, the hub of a successful land. + +And through this gay city of triumph I moved, myself a success, and my +view of the whole was colored by that. My life as an observer was +sprinkled with personal moments that made me see everything in high +lights. I would watch the life of a street full of people, and I myself +would be on my way to an interview with some noted man or coming away +from one who had given me stuff that I knew would write up big--I knew +just how! Or at a corner newsstand I would catch a glimpse of my name on +the cover of some magazine. Again I would be hurrying home, or into a +neighboring florist's or a theater ticket office, or diving into the +jolly whirl of the large Fifth Avenue toy shop in which I took an +unflagging delight. In my mind would be thoughts of a pillow fight or a +long evening with Eleanore, or we would be having friends to dine or +going out to dinner. + +For Eleanore had been swift to use my success to broaden both our lives. +Young and adorably happy, eagerly alive, she did for me what she had +done for her father, filling my life with other lives. She was an artist +in living. It was a joy to see her make out a list of people to be asked +to dine. Her father, once watching the process, remarked to me in low, +solemn tones: + +"She's a regular social chemist--who has never had an explosion." + +He was often on the list, and through him and his many friends and the +ones I made through my writing, by degrees our circle widened. We met +all kinds of people, for Eleanore hated "sets" and "cliques." We met not +only successful men but (God help us sometimes) we also met their wives. +We met successful writers, artists and musicians, and a few people of +the stage. We met visitors from the West and from half the big cities of +Europe. We furbished up our French and German, our knowledge of books +and pictures and plays--_successful_ books and pictures and plays. + +Through Eleanore's father and his work our minds were still held to the +past, to the harbor which had taken me, bruised and blind and petty, and +lifted me up and taught me to live, had given me my work, my home and my +new god. I was grateful, I was proud, I was in love and I felt strong. +And my view of the harbor in those days was of a glorious symbol of the +power of mind over matter, and of the mighty speeding up of a world of +civilization and peace, a successful world, strong, broad, tolerant, +sweeping on and bearing us with it. + +So we adventured gaily, not deeper down, but higher and higher up into +life. + + + + +BOOK III + +CHAPTER I + + +We had been married four years. + +At the end of a crisp November day I was just about starting home. I +remember how keenly alive I felt, how tingling with bodily health, and +above all how successful. + +I had had such a successful day. I had written hard all morning and my +work had been going splendidly. I had lunched downtown with the man +whose life I was writing that month, a man of astounding fertility, who +had started fifteen years ago with a small hotel in a western town, had +made money, had built a larger hotel, had made money, had moved to a +larger town and bought a still larger hotel, had made money, had moved +to Chicago, New York, had made money. And the America he knew was made +up of people who themselves had made their money so suddenly they had to +come to hotels to spend it. The stories that he told me, both scandalous +and otherwise, of these men and women who shot up rich and diamondy out +of this booming country of ours, had a range and a richness of color +that had held me delighted through many long talks. During luncheon he +had told some of his best, and had given me permission to print, with a +discreet twist or so to disguise them, certain intimate episodes in the +first fat years of men whose names were by-words now all over the land. +I could already see that story selling on the newsstands. + +From this man I had come uptown to a branch of the Y. M. C. A., where +after an hour of hand-ball and a plunge in the swimming tank I had gone +to a room downstairs, to which ambitious youngsters came for free advice +from an expert who told them how to get on in life. His room was a +confessional. He would cross-examine each suppliant hard, make a +diagnosis of each one and then give him advice as to what to do--whether +or not to throw over his job, what kind of work he was suited for best. +The America he knew was made up of these small human units, some +pitiably or absurdly small, but all anxiously straining upward. And they +too appealed to me. + +For I was so successful now that I was growing mellow. From certain big +men I had written about I had taken a spacious breadth of view that +included a deep indulgence for all these skurrying pigmies. Poor little +devils, give 'em a chance, especially those among them who had "bim" +enough to want a chance, to wonder why they were not getting on and want +to do something about it. And so I had formed the habit of dropping in +often at this room, hearing its confessions and now and then helping get +someone a job. As the swimming tank made my body tingle, so this place +affected my soul. It warmed me to do all I could for some fellow, some +decent kid who was down on his luck. Besides, some confessions were gems +of their kind, glimpses into human lives, hard struggles, wild +ambitions. I meant to write them up some day. In fact, I meant to write +everything up, I felt everything waiting for my pen. + +And as I went down to the coat-room, the thought I had had so often +lately came again into my mind. I too would soon throw over my job, +leave articles and write fiction--my old Paris dream. But what a wide +and varied experience of life I had gathered since those ingenuous Paris +days. Yes, I would do it real and big, out of the big life I had known. +And my heroes would no longer be watching at my elbow to point to the +choicest bits and say, "You're mistaken, young man, I never said that." +No, all those lifelike human touches would stay in. Stories kept coming +up in my mind, one especially of late. As I stood in line for my hat and +coat I thought of it now and grew so absorbed I forgot that I was +standing in a line of insignificant clerks--until the one ahead of me, +who had just come in from the street, asked the chap in front of him: + +"Say, Gus, did you see the suffragettes? Their parade's just going by." + +This brought me down from the clouds with a jerk. For I had meant to see +that parade. Sue was in it, in it hard. Suffrage was her latest fad. + +"Naw," growled Gus. "If I was the mayor and they came to me for a permit +to march I'd tell 'em to go and buy corsets. That's their complaint. +They can't get kissed so they want to vote." The other one chuckled: + +"I saw one who can have my vote--and all I'll ask is a better look. +Believe me, some silk stockings!" + +As they went away I glared after them. "Damn little muts," I thought. I +was rather in favor of suffrage, at least I felt indulgent about it. Why +shouldn't I be? The great thing was to keep your mind open and kindly, +to feel contempt for nothing whatever. And because I felt contempt for +no thing or person in all the world, I now glared with the most utter +contempt on these narrow-minded little clerks. + +Then I hurried out and over to Fifth Avenue, where the throb of the +drums was still to be heard. And there I found to my surprise that in a +very real sense this parade was different from anything that I had ever +seen before. I was more than indulgent, I was excited. And by what? Not +by the marching lines of figures, fluttering banners, booming bands, nor +just by the fact that these marchers were women, and women quite frankly +dressed for effect, so that the whole rhythmic mass had a feminine color +and dash that made it all gay and delightful. No, there was something +deeper. And that something, I finally made out, was this. These women +and girls were all deeply thrilled by the feeling that for the first +time in their lives they were doing something all together--for an idea +that each one of them had thought rather big and stirring before, but +now, as each felt herself a part of this moving, swinging multitude, she +felt the idea suddenly loom so infinitely larger and more compelling +than before that she herself was astounded. Here for the first time in +my life I felt the power of mass action. + +And as presently I started home and the intensity of it was gone, there +was an added pleasure to me in remembering how I had felt it. Another +proof of my breadth of mind. I hurried home to dinner. + +As I entered our apartment I gave a long, low mysterious whistle. And +after a moment another whistle, which tried hard to be mysterious, +answered mine from another room. Then there were stealthy footsteps +which ended in a sudden charge, and my wee son, "the Indian," hurled me +onto a sofa, where, to use his expression, we "rush-housed" each other. +We did this almost every night. + +When the big time was about over Eleanore appeared: + +"Come, Indian, it's time for bed." She led him off protesting and blew +me back a kiss from the door. + +She had developed wonderfully, this bewitching wife of mine, this quiet +able one in her work, this smiling humorous one in her life, this +watchful, joyous, intimate one in the hours that shut everything out. +Sue said I idolized my wife, that I saw her all perfection, "without one +redeeming vice." Not at all. I knew her vices well enough. I knew she +could get distinctly cross when a new gown came home all wrong. I knew +that she could lie to me, I had caught her at it several times when she +said she was feeling finely and then confessed to me the next day, "I +had a splitting headache last night." In fact, she had any number of +vices--queer, mysterious feminine moods when she quite shamelessly shut +me out. She didn't half take care of herself, she went places when she +should have stayed at home. And finally, she was slow at dressing. +Placidly seated in front of her mirror she could spend an entire hour in +doing her soft luxuriant hair. + +I went over all these vices now as I lay back on the sofa. Idolize her? +Not at all. I knew her. We were married, thank God. + +Then she came back into the room. She was smiling in rather a curious +way, an expectant way, and I noticed that her color was unusually high. +Eleanore always dressed so well, but to-night she had outdone herself. +From her trim blue satin slippers to the demure little band of blue at +her throat she was more enchantingly fresh than ever. Suffragettes and +that sort of thing were all very well on the Avenue. Give me Eleanore at +home. + +"Did you see the parade?" she inquired. + +"Yes." + +"Did you see me?" + +I fairly jumped! + +"You?" I demanded. "Were you in that march?" + +"I most certainly was," she said quietly. Having shot her bolt she was +regarding me gravely now, with the merest glint of amused delight +somewhere in her gray-blue eyes. "Why not?" she asked. "I believe in it, +I want the vote. Why shouldn't I march? I paraded," she added serenely, +"in the college section right up near the head of the line. That's why +I'm home so early. I'm afraid I was quite conspicuous, for you see I'm +rather small and I had to take long swinging strides to keep in step. +But I soon got used to it, and I thoroughly enjoyed the cheers. We waved +back at them with our flags." + +"But," I cried, "my darling wife! Why didn't you tell me about it +ahead?" + +"Because"--she came close up to me and said quite confidentially, "we +do these things all by ourselves. You don't mean to say that you mind +it, dear?" + +I lost about five seconds and then I did exactly right. I took her in my +arms and laughed and called my wife by many names and said she couldn't +worry me, that I didn't mind it in the least, was proud of her and so +on. In short, to use a slang expression, I distinctly got away with it. +Moreover, I soon felt what I said. I was honestly rather proud of my +wife for having had the nerve to march. It must have been quite a +struggle, for she was no born marcher. + +And I was glad that I was proud. Another proof of my tolerance--which +was the more grateful to me just now because a magazine man I admired +had genially hinted the other day that I was rather narrow. + +"Did you see Sue?" I inquired. + +"Only for a moment," she said. "Sue was one of the marshals and she was +all up and down the lines. She's coming to supper with many paraders." + +"A crowd of women here? I'm off!" + +"No you're not. She's bringing some men paraders too." + +Men paraders! Now I could smile. I had earned the right, I had been +broad. But after all, there are limits. I could see those chaps parading +with women. I knew them, I had seen them before, for Sue had often +brought them here. I enjoyed myself immensely--till Eleanore shot +another bolt. + +"Smile on, funny one," she said. "You'll be in line yourself in a year." + +"I will not be in line!" + +"I wonder." She looked at me in a curious way. The mirth went slowly out +of her eyes. "There are so many queer new ideas crowding in all around +us," she said. "And I know you, Billy, oh, so well--so much better than +you know yourself. I know that when you once feel a thing you're just +the kind to go into it hard. I'm not speaking of suffrage now--that's +only one nice little part. I mean this whole big radical movement--all +the kind of thing your friend Joe Kramer stood for." She put her arms +about my neck. "Don't get too radical, husband mine--you're so nice and +funny now, my love." + +I regarded her anxiously: + +"Has this parade gone to your head--or has Sue been talking to you +again?" + +"I lunched with Sue----" + +"I knew it! And now she's coming here to supper--bringing men paraders!" + +"And they'll all be rabidly hungry," said Eleanore with a sudden change. +She went quickly in to see the cook and left me to grim meditation. + +I a radical? I smiled. And my slight uneasiness passed away, as I +thought about my sister. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Poor old Sue. What queer friends she had, what a muddled life compared +to ours. What a vague confused development, jumping from one idea to +another, never seeing any job through, forever starting all over again +with the same feverish absorption in the next new radical fad. High-brow +dramatics, the settlement movement, the post-impressionists, socialism, +votes for women, one thing after the other pell mell. She would work +herself all up, live hard, talk, organize, think and feel till her +nerves went all to pieces, and then she would come to us for a rest and +laugh at us for our restfulness and at herself for the state she was in. +That was one thing at least she had learned--to laugh at herself--she +could be deliciously humorous. And Eleanore, meeting her on that ground, +would quiet her and steady her down. + +We had grown very fond of Sue. We knew her life was not easy at home. +Alone over there with poor old Dad and feeling herself anchored down, +she would still at intervals rebel--against his sticking to his dull +job, against her own dependence, against the small monthly allowance +which without my father's knowledge they still had from me. + +"Let me earn my own living!" she would exclaim. "Why shouldn't I? I'm +twenty-six--and I'm working hard enough as it is--the Lord knows! I'm +organizing every day and making speeches half my nights. Other girls +take pay for that. Now Father, please be sensible. I'm going to take a +good salaried job." + +But then Dad, whose mind was so old and rigid, so much less tolerant +than mine, would grow excited or, still worse, ashamed that he couldn't +make money enough to give her all she wanted. And that desperate hungry +love with which he clung to her these latter days would in the end make +her give in. For under all her radical talk Sue had the kindest heart in +the world. + +Eleanore did her best to help. She was always having Dad over to dinner, +and we had a room which she called his, where he would come and stay the +week-end. At six o'clock each Saturday night he would arrive with his +satchel. + +"Daughter-in-law," he would announce, "my other daughter's _agin_ the +law, she's gone off revolooting. Can you take a decent old gentleman in +out of the last century? Don't change any plans on my account. If you're +going out to dinner just tell the cook to give me a snack and a cup of +tea, and then I'll light a good cigar and read the works of my great +son. Go right ahead as if I wasn't here." + +If we had he would have been furious. Eleanore always made it his +night--and no quiet evening, either. When we didn't take him out to a +play she invited people to dinner--young people, for he liked them best. +And late on Sunday morning the "Indian" would wake him up, would watch +him shave and dress and breakfast, and then they would be off to the +Park. We had named our small son after Dad and they were the most +splendid chums. They had any number of secrets. + +Eleanore too had made Sue use our apartment. Sue called it her Manhattan +club and brought her friends here now and then--"to stir you people up," +she said. But this did not disturb me, I felt too secure in life. And +with a safe, amused and slightly curious attitude I found Sue quite a +tonic. I liked to hear her knock my big men in her cocksure superior +way. It was mighty good fun. And every now and then by mistake she would +hit on something that was true. + +I found something too in her ideas. This suffrage business, for +example. She had stuck to this hobby quite a while, and through it she +had reached the conviction that women would never get the vote until the +great mass of working girls were drawn into the movement. So she had +gone in for working girls' clubs, and from clubs into trade unions and +from trade unions into strikes. There had been a strike of laundry girls +which for a week was the talk of the town. Sue and some of her suffrage +friends had organized meetings every night, and in a borrowed automobile +she had rushed from meeting to meeting with two laundry women, meager +forlorn-looking creatures who stood up much embarrassed and awkwardly +told about their lives. One of them, a young widow, had gone home from +work one night at eleven and found that her small baby had died of +convulsions during her absence. It was grim, terrible stuff of its kind, +and Sue was so intensely wrought up you'd have thought there was nothing +else in the world. But the strike stopped as suddenly as it began, and +the two women whose names she had brought into headlines were refused +jobs wherever they went. Sue tried to help them for a while, until this +suffrage parade came along, when she went into this equally hard and +quite forgot their existence. + +And then Eleanore took them up. Quietly and as a matter of course, she +took their troubles on her hands, sent one to a hospital and got the +other work, looked into their wretched home affairs and had them come +often to see her. And this kind of thing was happening often, Sue taking +up and dropping what Eleanore then took up and put through. I compared +them with a glow of pride. + +Eleanore's way was so sane and sure. She looked upon society much as she +did upon our son, who had frequent little ailments but through them all +what a glorious growth, to watch it was a perpetual joy. I remember +once, when in his young stomach there were some fearful goings on, +Eleanore's remarking: + +"Now if Sue had a child with a stomach in trouble, I suppose her way +would be to quickly remove the entire stomach and put some new radical +thing in its place." + +And then she went to the medicine chest, and a vastly comforted Indian +was soon cheerfully sitting up in bed. + +Eleanore could help others, I felt, because she had first helped +herself, had tackled the mote in her own eye, from the time when she had +gone down to the harbor to get her roots, as she called it. She was a +wonderful manager, our budget was carefully worked out. And she had +herself so well in hand she could put herself behind herself and smile +clearly out on life. + +"When Eleanore takes up a charity case," said her father, "she turns it +into a person at once, and later into an intimate friend." + +He himself took a quiet interest in all her charity cases. They would +often talk them over at night, and in his easy careless way he would +turn over all his spare money to help in the work. Eleanore would +protest at times, and tell him how utterly foolish he was in not putting +money aside for himself. But soon, deep in another case of poignant +human misery, she would throw all caution to the winds and use her +father's money--every dollar he could spare. That was another vice she +had. + +How she hated all the red tape in that huge network of institutions by +which New York City provides "relief." She never dropped a case of hers +into that cumbrous relief machine and then let it slip out of her sight. +She did the hard thing, she followed it up. She had learned, as I had in +my work, to "get on the inside" of this secretive city, to go to the +gods behind it all and so have her cases shoved. One day when one of +them, a woman, was in a hospital so desperately ill that her very life +depended on being moved to a private room--"It can't be done," said the +superintendent. Eleanore took the subway downtown to the Wall Street +office of the man who was the hospital's principal backer. She found +his outer office crowded with men who were waiting to see him on +business. "He can't see you," she was told. Then she scribbled this on +her card: + +"I want none of your money, a little of your influence and one minute of +your time on behalf of a woman who is dying." + +About twenty minutes later that woman was in a private room. + +It is hard to stop talking about my wife. But to return to my sister: + + * * * * * + +Into my reverie that night Sue burst with a dozen radical friends. +Others kept arriving, and our small rooms were soon a riot of color and +chatter. Banners were stacked against the wall, bright yellow ribbons +were everywhere, faces were flushed and happily tired. Eleanore sat at +her coffee urn, cups and saucers and plates went around, and people +still too excited to rest stood about eating hungrily. The talking was +fast and furious now. I listened, watched their faces. + +These "radicals," it seemed to me, had talked straight on both day and +night ever since the evenings years ago when one of their earliest +coteries had gathered in our Brooklyn home. And talking they had +multiplied and ramified all over the town. There was nothing under +heaven their fingers did not itch to change. Here close by my side were +three of them, two would-be Ibsen actresses and one budding playwright +who had had two Broadway failures and one Berkeley Lyceum success. But +were they talking of plays? Not at all. They talked of the Russian +Revolution. It had died down in the last few years, and they wanted to +help stir it up again by throwing some more American money into the +smoldering embers. To do this they planned to whip into new life "The +Friends of Russian Freedom." + +That was it, I told myself, these people were all friends of +revolutions. Vaguely as I watched them now I felt I was seeing the +parlor side, the light and fluffy outer fringe, of something rather +dangerous. I thought again of that parade and my impression of mass +force. No danger in that, it was dressy and safe. But some of these +youngsters did not stop there, they went in for stirring up people in +rags, mass force of a very different kind. Here was a sculptor socialist +who openly bragged that he'd had a hand in filling Union Square one day +with a seething mass of unemployed, and then when some poor crazed +fanatic threw a bomb, our socialist friend, as he himself smilingly put +it, never once stopped running until he reached his studio. + +It was this kind of thing that got on my nerves. For I pitied the +unwieldy poor, the numberless muddle-headed crowds down there in the +tenements, and it seemed to me perfectly criminal that a lot of these +young high-brows should be allowed to stir them up. Their own thinking +was so muddled, their views of life so out of gear. + +I a radical? No chance! + +While they chattered on excitedly, I thought of my trip uptown on the +"El" that afternoon, a trip that I had made hundreds of times. Coming as +I usually was from some big man or other, whose busy office and whose +mind was a clean, brilliant illustration of what efficiency can be, I +would sit in the car and idly watch the upper story windows we passed, +with yellow gas jets flaring in the cave-like rooms behind them. There I +had glimpses of men and girls at long crowded tables making coats, +pants, vests, paper flowers, chewing-gum, five-cent cigars. I saw +countless tenement kitchens, dirty cooking, unmade beds. These glimpses +followed one on the other in such a dizzying torrent they merged into +one moving picture for me. And that picture was of crowds, crowds, +crowds--of people living frowzily. + +This was poverty. And it was like some prodigious swamp. What could you +do about it? You could pull out individuals here and there, as Eleanore +did. I considered that a mighty fine job--for a woman or a clergyman. +But to go at it and drain the swamp was a very different matter. You +couldn't do it by easy preaching of patent cure-alls, nor by stirring up +class hatred through rabid attacks upon big men. No, this was a job for +the big men themselves, men who would go at this human swamp as +Eleanore's father had gone at the harbor--quietly and slowly, with an +engineer's precision. He had been at it six solid years, but he still +remarked humbly, "We've only begun." + +Then from thinking of big men I thought of the one I had seen that day, +and of my story about him. It was just in the stage I liked, where I +could feel it all coming together. Incidents, bits of character and neat +little turns of speech rose temptingly before my mind. + +Presently, through the clamor around me, I heard "the Indian" crying. +All this chatter had waked him up. I saw Eleanore go in to him and soon +I heard the crying stop, and I knew she was telling him a story, a nice +sleepy one to quiet him down. + +What an infernal racket these people were making about the world. I went +on thinking about my work. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +"You two," said Sue, when at last her friends had gone away, "have built +up a wall of contentment around you a person couldn't break through with +an axe." + +"Have a little," I suggested. + +"Stay all night," said Eleanore. + +"No, thanks," said Sue. "I promised Dad that I'd be home." + +And then instead of going home she sprawled lazily on the sofa with her +head upon one elbow, and settled in for some more talk. But her talk was +different to-night. She usually talked about herself, but to-night she +talked of us instead, of our contemptible content. And presently through +her talk I felt that she had some surprise to spring. In a few moments +Eleanore felt it too, I could tell that by the vigilant way she kept +glancing up from her knitting. + +"I think," I was remarking, "we're a pretty liberal-minded pair." + +"That's it," said Sue. "You're liberals!" What utter disdain she threw +into the word. "And what's more you're citizens. In all these +movements," she went on, "you always find two classes--citizens and +criminals. You two are both born citizens." + +"What's the difference?" I inquired. + +"Citizens," said Sue impressively, "are ready to _vote_ for what they +believe in. Criminals are ready to get arrested and go to jail." + +Eleanore looked up at her. + +"Who gave you that?" she asked. Sue looked a little taken back, but only +for a moment. + +"One of the criminals," she said. Her voice was carefully casual now but +her eyes were a little excited. "He's a man who made up his mind that he +wanted to get way down to the bottom, and see how it feels to be down +there. So he took the very worst job he could find. For two years he was +a stoker--on ships of all kinds all over the world. And now that he +knows just how it feels, he has an office down on the docks where he's +getting the stokers and dockers together--getting them ready for a +strike--on your beloved harbor." + +"Joe Kramer," said Eleanore quietly. Sue gave a sudden, nervous start. + +"Eleanore," she severely rejoined, "sometimes you're simply uncanny--the +way you quietly jump at a thing!" + +Eleanore had gone on with her knitting. I rose and lit a cigarette. I +could feel Sue's eyes upon me. So _this_ was her infernal surprise! J. +K. banging into my life again! + +"How long has Joe been here?" I asked. + +"About five months," Sue answered. + +"He might have looked me up," I said. + +"He doesn't want to look anyone up, I've only seen him once myself. He +has simply buried himself down there. Why don't you go and see him, +Billy?" she added, with a quick glance at Eleanore. "He won't amuse you +the way we do. He's one of the real criminals now." + +Still Eleanore did not look up. + +"What's his address?" I asked gruffly. Sue gave it to me and +good-humoredly yawned and said she must be getting home. + +"Good-night, dear," said Eleanore. She had risen and come to the door. +"What a love of a hat you're wearing. It's a new one, isn't it? I caught +sight of it in the parade." + +But the smile which my tall sister threw back at us from the doorway +had nothing whatever to do with hats. It said as plainly as in words: + +"Now, you cozy liberals, go over and touch _that_ spot if you dare." + +When she had gone I took up a book and tried to read. But I soon +gloomily relapsed. Would J. K. never leave me alone? What was he doing +with my harbor? Why should I look him up, confound him--he hadn't +bothered his head about me. But I knew that I _would_ look him up and +would find him more disturbing than ever. How he did keep moving on. No, +not on, but down, down--until now he had bumped the bottom! + +"Are you going to see him?" + +Glancing sharply up, I saw Eleanore carefully watching my face. + +"Oh, I suppose so," I replied. She bent again to her knitting. + +"He must be a strange kind of a person," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +I slept little that night, and my work the next morning went badly. So, +after wasting an hour or two, I decided to stop. I would go and see Joe +and be done with it. + +What was he doing with my harbor? The address Sue had given me was down +on the North River, my old hunting ground. The weather had turned cold +over-night, and when I came to the waterfront I felt the big raw breath +of the sea. I had hardly been near the harbor in years. It had become +for me a deep invisible corner-stone upon which my vigorous world was +built. I had climbed up into the airy heights, I had been writing of +millionaires. And coming so abruptly now from my story of life in rich +hotels, the place I had once glorified looked bleak and naked, +elemental. Down to the roots of things again. + +I came to a bare wooden building, climbed some stairs and entered a +large, low-ceilinged room which was evidently a meeting hall. Chairs +were stacked along the walls and there was a low platform at one end. As +I lingered there a moment, by habit my eyes took in the details. The +local color was lurid enough. On the walls were foreign pictures, one of +the anarchist Ferrer being executed in Spain, and another of an Italian +mob shaking their fists and yelling like demons at a bloated hideous +priest. There were posters in which flaming torches, blood-red flags and +barricades and cannon belching clouds of smoke stood out in heavy blacks +and reds. And all this foreign violence was made grimly real in its +purpose here by the way these pictures centered around the largest +poster, which was of an ocean liner with all its different kinds of +workers gathered together in one mass and staring fixedly up at the +ship. + +Through a door in a board partition I went into a narrow room from which +two dirty windows looked out upon the docks below. This room was cramped +and crowded. Newspapers and pamphlets lay heaped on the floor, and in +the corners were four desks, at one of which three men, whom I learned +later to be an Italian, an Englishman and a Spaniard, were talking +together intensely. They took no notice of my entrance, for many other +visitors, burly, sooty creatures, were constantly straggling in and out. + +I saw Joe at a desk in one corner. Looking doubly tall and lean and +stooped, and with a tired frown on his face, he sat there with his +sleeves rolled up slowly pounding out a letter on the typewriter before +him. On top of his desk were huge ledgers, and over them upon hooks on +the wall hung bunches of letters from other ports. It all gave me a +heavy impression of dull daily drudgery. And in this Joe was so absorbed +that he took no notice of my presence, although I now stood close behind +him. When at last he did look up and I got a full view of his face, with +its large, familiar features, tight-set jaw and deep-set eyes, I was +startled at its gauntness. + +"Hello, Joe----" + +"Hello." A dullish red came into his face and then a slight frown. He +half rose from his seat. "Hello, Bill," he repeated. "What's brought you +here?" + +He appeared a little dazed at first, then anything but glad to see me. +The thought of our old college days flashed for a moment into my mind. +How far away they seemed just now. Through our first few awkward remarks +he lapsed back into such a tired, worn indifference that I was soon on +the point of leaving. But that bony gauntness in his face, and all it +showed me he had been through, gave him some right to his rudeness, I +thought. So I changed my mind and stuck to my purpose of having it all +out with Joe and learning what he was about. Persisting in my +friendliness my questions slowly drew him out. + +Since I had seen him five years ago he had continued his writing, but as +he had grown steadily more set on writing only what he called "the truth +about things," the newspapers had closed their doors. While I had gone +up he had gone down, until finally throwing up in disgust "this whole +fool game of putting words on paper," he had made up his mind to throw +in his life with the lives of the men at the bottom. So for two years he +had shoveled coal in the stokeholes of ships by day and by night, he had +mixed with stokers of every race, from English, French and Germans to +Russians and Italians, Spaniards, Hindus, Coolies, Greeks. He had worked +and eaten and slept in their holes, he had ranged the slums of all the +seas. And of all this he spoke in short, commonplace phrases, still in +that indifferent tone, as though personal stories were a bore. + +"But look here, Joe," I asked at the end, "what's the good of living +like this? What the devil can you do?" + +I still remember the look he gave me, the weary remoteness of it. But +all he said was, + +"Organize strikes." + +"Here?" + +"Everywhere." + +"Of stokers?" + +"No, of all industries." + +"For higher pay, eh, and shorter hours." + +Another brief look. + +"No, for revolution," he said. + +Briefly, in reply to my questions, he explained how he and his friends +had already induced some twelve thousand stokers and dockers to leave +their old trade unions and enroll themselves as members of this new +international body, which was to embrace not only one trade but all the +labor connected with ships--ships of all nations. He was here doing the +advance work. As soon as the ground was made ready, he said, some of the +bigger leaders would come. Then there would be mass meetings here and +presently a general strike. And as the years went on there would be +similar strikes in all trades and in all countries, until at some time +not many years off there would be such labor rebellions as would +paralyze the industrial world. And out of this catastrophe the workers +would emerge into power to build up a strange new world of their own. + +This was what Joe saw ahead. He seemed to be seeing it while he spoke, +with a hard, clear intensity that struck me rather cold. Here was no +mere parlor talk, here was a man who lived what he said. + +"You comfortable people," he said, "are so damn comfortable you're +blind. You see nothing ahead but peace on earth and a nice smooth +evolution--with a lot of steady little reforms. You've got so you +honestly can't believe there's any violence left in the world. You're as +blind as most folks were five years before the Civil War. But what's the +use talking?" he ended. "You can't understand all this." Again my +irritation rose. + +"No, I can't say I do," I replied. "To stir up millions of men of that +kind and then let 'em loose upon the world strikes me as absolutely +mad!" + +"I knew it would." + +"Look here, Joe, how are _you_ so sure about all this? Hasn't it ever +struck you that you're getting damnably narrow?" He smiled. + +"I don't care much if I'm narrow," he said. + +"You think it's good for you, being like this?" + +"I don't care if it's good for me." + +"Don't you want to see anything else?" + +"Not in your successful world." + +"Well, J. K., I'm sorry," I retorted hotly. "Because I'd like to see +your world, I honestly would! I'm not like you, I'm always ready to be +shown!" + +"All right, come and see it. Why don't you write up Jim Marsh?" He +smiled as he named the notorious leader of the whole organization. +"He'll be here soon, and in his line he has been a mighty successful +man. All up and down the U. S. A. Jim's name has been in headlines and +Jim himself has been in jail. A successful revolutionist. So why not add +him to your list? Write up the America _he_ knows." There was a +challenge in Joe's voice. + +"All right, perhaps I will," I said. At least I had him talking now. +"Come out to lunch and tell me some more." + +"I don't want any lunch." + +Something in the way he said that made me look at him quickly. He +appeared to me now not only thin but tense and rather feverish. His +nerves were plainly all on edge. He had smoked one cigarette after +another. + +"I've got a lot of work to-day," he added restlessly. "Not only these +damn letters to write--I've got to make up our paper besides--it goes to +the printer to-morrow. Here, take a copy with you." + +And he handed me the last week's issue. It was a crude and flimsy +affair, with its name, in scarehead letters, "WAR SURE." I glanced it +over in silence a moment. What a drop for Joe, from what he had been, to +this wretched violent little sheet, this muckraker of the ocean world. + +"Not like the harbor _you_ painted," he said. + +"No," I answered shortly. + +"Do you want another look at your harbor?" + +I eyed him for a moment: + +"All right--I'll look----" + +"Fine business." He had risen now, and a gleam of the old likable Joe +came for a moment into his eyes. + +"Meet me to-morrow at seven a. m. And let's look at some of its +failures," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +"Did you see him?" Eleanore asked that night. + +"Yes--I saw him----" + +I could feel her waiting, but I could not bring myself to talk. Eleanore +wouldn't like J. K. She wouldn't like what I had told him I'd do. I was +sorry now that I had, it was simply looking for trouble. I damned that +challenge in Joe's voice. Why did he always get hold of me so? + +"How did he look? Is he much changed?" Eleanore asked me quietly. + +"Yes. He looks half sick--and old. He's been through a good deal," I +answered. + +"Did he talk about that?" + +"Yes"--I hesitated--"and of what he wants to show me," I said. Eleanore +looked quickly up. + +"Are you going to see him soon again?" + +"Yes--to-morrow morning--to have a look at his stoker friends. I want to +have just one good look at the life that has made him what he is. That's +all--that's all it amounts to----" + +There was another silence. Then she came over behind my chair and I felt +the cool quiet of her hand as she slowly stroked my forehead. + +"You look tired, dear," she said. + + * * * * * + +Just before daylight the next morning I rose and dressed, swallowed some +coffee and set out. I took a surface car downtown. + +I had not been out at this hour in years. And as in my present mood, +troubled and expectant, I watched the streets in the raw half-light, +they looked as utterly changed to me as though they were streets of a +different world. The department store windows looked unreal. Their soft +rich lights had been put out, and in this cold hard light of dawn all +their blandishing ladies of wax appeared like so many buxom ghosts. Men +were washing the windows. Women and girls were hurrying by, and as some +of them stopped for a moment to peer in at these phantoms of fashion, +their own faces looked equally waxen to me. A long, luxurious motor +passed with a man and a woman in evening clothes half asleep in each +other's arms. An old man with a huge pack of rags turned slowly and +stared after them. The day's work was beginning. Peddlers trundled +push-carts along, newspaper vendors opened their stands, milk wagons and +trucks from the markets came by, some on the gallop. Our car had filled +with people now. Men and boys clung to the steps behind and women and +girls were packed inside, most of them hanging to the straps. How badly +and foolishly dressed were these girls. There must be thousands of them +out. Two kept tittering inanely. All the rest were silent. + +By the time that I reached the docksheds the day was breaking over their +roofs. It was freezing cold, and the chill was worse in the dock that I +entered. I buttoned my ulster tighter. The big place was dark and empty. +The dockers, I learned from the watchman, had quit work at three +o'clock, for a few tons of fruit was all the freight that remained to be +loaded. The ship was to sail at nine o'clock. + +The stokers had not yet gone aboard. I found about a hundred of them +huddled along the steel wall of the shed. Some of them had old leather +grips or canvas bags, but many had no luggage at all. A few wore seedy +overcoats, but the greater part had none, they stood with their hands in +their ragged pockets, shivering and stamping. Most of them were +undersized, some tough, some rather sickly. A dull-eyed, wretched, +sodden lot. I got the liquor on their breaths. A fat old Irish stoker +came drifting half-drunk up the pier with a serene and waggish smile. + +"Hello," said Joe at my elbow. + +He looked more fagged than the day before. I noticed that his lips were +blue and that his teeth were chattering. + +"Joe," I said abruptly, "you're not fit to be here. Let's get out of +this, you belong in bed." He glanced at me impatiently. + +"I'm fit enough," he muttered. "We'll stay right here and see this +show--unless you feel you want to quit----" + +"Did I say I did? I'm ready enough----" + +"All right, then wait a minute. They're about ready to go on board." + +But as we stood and watched them, I still felt the chattering teeth by +my side, and a wave of pity and anger and of disgust swept over me. Joe +wouldn't last long at this kind of thing! + +"What do you think of my friends?" he asked. + +"I think you're throwing your life away!" + +"Do you? How do you make it out?" + +"Because they're an utterly hopeless crowd! Look at 'em--poor +devils--they look like a lot of Bowery bums!" + +"Yes--they look like a lot of bums. And they feed all the fires at sea." + +"Are they all like these?" I demanded. + +"No better dressed," he answered. "A million lousy brothers of Christ." + +"And you think you can build a new world _with them_?" + +"No--I think they can do it themselves." + +"Do you know what I think they'll do themselves? If they ever do win in +any strike and get a raise in wages--they'll simply blow it in on +drink!" + +Joe looked at me a moment. + +"They'll do so much more than drink," he said. "Come on," he added. +"They're going aboard." + +They were forming in a long line now before the third-class gang-plank. +As they went up with their packs on their shoulders, a man at the top +gave each a shove and shouted out a number, which another official +checked off in a book. The latter I learned was the chief engineer. He +was a lean, powerful, ruddy-faced man with a plentiful store of +profanity which he poured out in a torrent: + +"Come on! For Christ's sake! Do you want to freeze solid, you ---- human +bunch of stiffs?" + +We came up the plank at the end of the line, and I showed him a letter +which I had procured admitting us to the engine rooms. He turned us over +promptly to one of his junior engineers, and we were soon climbing down +oily ladders through the intricate parts of the engines, all polished, +glistening, carefully cleaned. And then climbing down more ladders until +we were, as I was told, within ten feet of the keel of the ship, we came +into the stokers' quarters. + +And here nothing at all was carefully cleaned. The place was foul, its +painted steel walls and floor and ceiling were heavily encrusted with +dirt. The low chamber was crowded with rows of bunks, steel skeleton +bunks three tiers high, the top tier just under the ceiling. In each was +a thin, dirty mattress and blanket. In some of these men were already +asleep, breathing hard, snoring and wheezing. Others were crowded around +their bags intent on something I could not see. Many were smoking, the +air was blue. Some were almost naked, and the smells of their bodies +filled the place. It was already stifling. + +"Had enough?" asked our young guide, with a grin. + +"No," I said, with an answering superior smile. "We'll stay a while and +get it all." + +And after a little more talk he left us. + +"How do you like our home?" asked Joe. + +"I'm here now," I said grimly. "Go ahead and show me. And try to believe +that I want to be shown." + +"All right, here comes our breakfast." + +Two stokers were bringing in a huge boiler. They set it down on the +dirty floor. It was full of a greasy, watery soup with a thick, yellow +scum on the top, through which chunks of pork and potato bobbed up here +and there. + +"This is scouse," Joe told me. Men eagerly dipped tin cups in this and +gulped it down. The chunks of meat they ate with their hands. They ate +sitting on bunks or standing between them. Some were wedged in close +around a bunk in which lay a sleeper who looked utterly dead to the +world. His face was white. + +"He reminds me," said Joe, "of a fellow whose bunk was once next to +mine. He was shipped at Buenos Ayres, where the crimps still handle the +business. A crimp had carried this chap on board, dumped him, got his +ten dollars and left. The man was supposed to wake up at sea and shovel +coal. But this one didn't. The second day out some one leaned over and +touched him and yelled. The crimp had sold us a dead one." + +As Joe said this he stared down at the sleeper, a curious tensity in his +eyes. + +"Joe, how did you ever stand this life?" + +My own voice almost startled me, it sounded so suddenly tense and +strained. Joe turned and looked at me searchingly, with a trace of that +old affection of his. + +"I didn't, Kid," he said gruffly. "The two years almost got me. And +that's what happens to most of 'em here. Half of 'em," he added, "are +down-and-outers when they start. They're what the factories and mills +and all the rest of this lovely modern industrial world throw out as no +more wanted. So they drift down here and take a job that nobody else +will take, it's so rotten, and here they have one week of hell and +another week's good drunk in port. And when the barrooms and the women +and all the waterfront sharks have stripped 'em of their last red cent, +then the crimps collect an advance allotment from their future wages to +ship 'em off to sea again." + +"That's not true in _this_ port," I retorted, eagerly catching him up on +the one point that I knew was wrong. "They don't allow crimps in New +York any more." + +"No," Joe answered grimly. "The port of New York has got reformed, it's +become all for efficiency now. The big companies put up money for a kind +of a seamen's Y. M. C. A. where they try to keep men sober ashore, and +so get 'em back quick into holes like these, in the name of Christ. + +"But there's one thing they forget," he added bitterly. "The age of +steam has sent the old-style sailors ashore and shipped these fellows in +their places. And that makes all the difference. These chaps didn't grow +up on ships and get used to being kicked and cowed and shot for mutiny +if they struck. No, they're all grown up on land, in factories where +they've been in strikes, and they bring their factory views along into +these floating factories. And they don't like these stinking holes! They +don't like their jobs, with no day and no night, only steel walls and +electric light! You hear a shout at midnight and you jump down into the +stokehole and work like hell till four a. m., when you crawl up all +soaked in sweat and fall asleep till the next shout. And you do this, +not as the sailor did for a captain he knew and called 'the old man,' +but for a corporation so big it has rules and regulations for you like +what they have in the navy. You're nothing but a number. Look here." + +He took me to a bulletin that had just been put up on the wall. Around +it men were eagerly crowding. + +"Here's where you find by your number what shift you're to work in," he +said, "and what other number you have to replace if he goes down. Heart +failure is damn common here, and if your man gives out it means you +double up for the rest of the voyage. So you get his number and hunt for +him and size him up. You hope he'll last. I'll show you why." + +He crawled down a short ladder and through low passageways dripping wet +and so came into the stokehole. + +This was a long, narrow chamber with a row of glowing furnace doors. Wet +coal and coal-dust lay on the floor. At either end a small steel door +opened into bunkers that ran along the sides of the ship, deep down near +the bottom, containing thousands of tons of soft coal, which the men +called "trimmers" kept shoveling out to the stokers. As the voyage went +on, Joe told me, these trimmers had to go farther and farther back into +the long, black bunkers, full of stifling coal-dust, in which if the +ship were rolling the masses of coal kept crashing down. Hundreds of men +had been killed that way. In the stokehole the fires were not yet up, +but by the time the ship was at sea the furnace mouths would be white +hot and the men at work half naked. They not only shoveled coal into the +flames, they had to spread it out as well and at intervals rake out the +"clinkers" in fiery masses on the floor. On these a stream of water +played, filling the chamber with clouds of steam. In older ships, like +this one, a "lead stoker" stood at the head of the line and set the pace +for the others to follow. He was paid more to keep up the pace. But on +the fast new liners this pacer was replaced by a gong. + +"And at each stroke of the gong you shovel," said Joe. "You do this till +you forget your name. Every time the boat pitches, the floor heaves you +forward, the fire spurts at you out of the doors and the gong keeps on +like a sledgehammer coming down on top of your mind. And all you think +of is your bunk and the time when you're to tumble in." + +From the stokers' quarters presently there came a burst of singing. + +"Now let's go back," he ended, "and see how they're getting ready for +this." + +As we crawled back the noise increased, and it swelled to a roar as we +entered. The place was pandemonium now. Those groups I had noticed +around the bags had been getting out the liquor, and now at eight +o'clock in the morning half the crew were already well soused. Some +moved restlessly about. One huge bull of a creature with large, limpid, +shining eyes stopped suddenly with a puzzled stare, then leaned back on +a bunk and laughed uproariously. From there he lurched over the shoulder +of a thin, wiry, sober man who, sitting on the edge of a bunk, was +slowly spelling out the words of a newspaper aeroplane story. The big +man laughed again and spit, and the thin man jumped half up and snarled. + +Louder rose the singing. Half the crew was crowded close around a little +red-faced cockney. He was the modern "chanty man." With sweat pouring +down his cheeks and the muscles of his neck drawn taut, he was jerking +out verse after verse about women. He sang to an old "chanty" tune, one +that I remembered well. But he was not singing out under the stars, he +was screaming at steel walls down here in the bottom of the ship. And +although he kept speeding up his song the crowd were too drunk to wait +for the chorus, their voices kept tumbling in over his, and soon it was +only a frenzy of sound, a roar with yells rising out of it. The singers +kept pounding each other's backs or waving bottles over their heads. Two +bottles smashed together and brought a still higher burst of glee. + +"I'm tired!" Joe shouted. "Let's get out!" + +I caught a glimpse of his strained, frowning face. Again it came over me +in a flash, the years he had spent in holes like this, in this hideous, +rotten world of his, while I had lived joyously in mine. And as though +he had read the thought in my disturbed and troubled eyes, + +"Let's go up where _you_ belong," he said. + +I followed him up and away from his friends. As we climbed ladder after +ladder, fainter and fainter on our ears rose that yelling from below. +Suddenly we came out on deck and slammed an iron door behind us. + +And I was where I belonged. I was in dazzling sunshine and keen frosty +Autumn air. I was among gay throngs of people. Dainty women brushed me +by. I felt the softness of their furs, I breathed the fragrant scent of +them and of the flowers that they wore, I saw their fresh immaculate +clothes, I heard the joyous tumult of their talking and their laughing +to the regular crash of the band--all the life of the ship I had known +so well. + +And I walked through it all as though in a dream. On the dock I watched +it spellbound--until with handkerchiefs waving and voices calling down +good-bys, that throng of happy travelers moved slowly out into +midstream. + +And I knew that deep below all this, down in the bottom of the ship, the +stokers were still singing. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +That same day I had an appointment to lunch with the owner of rich +hotels whose story I was writing. And the interview dragged. For the +America he knew was like what I'd seen on the upper decks of the ship +that had sailed a few hours before. And I could not get back my old zest +for it all, I kept thinking of what I had seen underneath. The faces of +individual stokers, some fiery red, some sodden gray, kept bobbing up in +my memory. Angrily trying to keep them down, I went on with my +questions. But I caught the hotel millionaire throwing curious looks at +me now and then. + +I went home worried and depressed and shut myself up in my workroom. +This business had to be thought out. It wasn't only stokers; it was +something deep, world-wide. I had come up against the slums. What had I +to do with it all? + +I was in my room all afternoon. I heard "the Indian" at my door, but I +sat still and silent, and presently he went away. + +Late in the twilight Eleanore came. How beautiful she was to-night. She +was wearing a soft gown of silk, blue with something white at her throat +and a brooch that I had given her. As she bent over my shoulder I felt +her clean, fresh loveliness. + +"Don't you want to tell me, love, just what it was he showed you?" + +"I'd rather not, my dear one, it was something so terribly ugly," I +said. + +"I don't like being so far away from you, dear. Please tell me. Suppose +you begin at the start." + +It took a long time, for she would let me keep nothing back. + +"I wouldn't have thought it could hit me so hard," I said at the end. + +"I'm not surprised," said Eleanore. + +"I can't be simply angry at Joe," I went on. "He's so intensely and +gauntly sincere. It isn't just talk with him, you see, as it is with +Sue's parlor radical friends. Think of the life he's been leading, think +of it compared to mine. Joe and I were mighty close once"--I broke off +and got up restlessly. "I hate to think of him," I said. + +"It's funny," said Eleanore quietly. "I knew this was coming sooner or +later. Ever since we've been married I've known that Joe Kramer still +means more to you than any man you've ever met." + +"He doesn't," I said sharply. "Where on earth did you get that idea?" + +"From you, my love," she answered. "You can't dream how often you've +spoken about him." + +"I didn't know I had!" It is most disquieting at times, the things +Eleanore tells me about myself. + +"I know you don't," she continued, "you do it so unconsciously. That's +why I'm so sure he has a real place in the deep unconscious part of you. +He worries you. He gets you to think you've no right to be happy!" There +was a bitterness in her voice that I had never heard before. "I believe +in helping people--of course--whenever I get a chance," she said. "But I +don't believe in this--I hate it! It's simply an insane attempt to pull +every good thing down! It's too awful even to think of!" + +"We're not going to," I told her. "I'm sorry for Joe and I wish I could +help him out of his hole. But I can't--it's too infernally deep. He +won't listen to any talk from me--and as long as he won't I'll leave him +alone. It's hideous enough--God knows. But if I ever tackle poverty and +labor and that sort of thing it'll be along quite different lines." + +The door-bell rang. + +"Oh Billy," she said, "I forgot to tell you. Father's coming to dinner +to-night." I looked at her a moment: + +"Did you ask him here on my account?" Eleanore smiled frankly. + +"Yes--I thought I might need him," she said. + +I did not talk to her father of Joe--his plans for a strike were his +secret, not mine. But with Eleanore pushing me on, I described the hell +I had seen in the stokehole. + +"You're right, it's hell," her father agreed. "But in time we'll do away +with it." + +"I knew it," Eleanore put in. + +"How?" I asked. + +"By using oil instead of coal. Or if we can't get oil cheap enough by +automatic stokers--machines to do the work of men." + +I thought hard and fast for a moment, and suddenly I realized that I had +never given any real thought to matters of this kind before. + +"Then what will become of the stokers?" I asked him. + +"One thing at a time." I caught Dillon keenly watching me over his +cigar. "Don't give up your faith in efficiency, Bill. If they'll only +give us time enough we'll be able to do so much for men." + +There was something so big and sincere in his voice and in his clear and +kindly eyes. + +"I'm sure you will," I answered. "If you don't, there's nobody else who +can." + +In a week or two, by grinding steadily on at my work and by a few more +quiet talks with Eleanore and her father, I could feel myself safely +back on my ground. + + * * * * * + +But one morning Sue broke in on me. + +"I've just heard from a friend of Joe Kramer's," she said, "that he is +dangerously ill. And there's no one to look after him. Hadn't you better +go yourself?" + +"Of course," I assented gruffly. "I'll go down at once." + +It seemed as though the Fates and Sue were in league to keep Joe in my +life. + +I went to Joe's office and found the address of the room where he slept. +It was over a German saloon close by. It was a large, low-ceilinged +room, bare and cheaply furnished, with dirty curtains at the windows, +dirty collars and shirts on the floor. It was cold. In the high +old-fashioned fireplace the coal fire had gone out. Joe was lying +dressed on the bed. He jumped up as I entered and came to me with his +face flushed and his eyes dilated. He gripped my hand. + +"Why, hello, Kid," he cried. "Glad to see you!" And then with a quick +drop of his voice: "Hold on, we mustn't talk so loud, we've got to be +quiet here, you know." He turned away from me restlessly. "I've been +hunting for hours for that damn book. Their cataloguing system here is +rotten, Kid, it's rotten!" As he spoke he was slowly feeling his way +along the dirty white wall of his room. "They've cheated us, Bill, I'm +on to 'em now! That's what college is really for these days, to hide the +books we ought to read!" + +It came over me suddenly that Joe was back in college, on one of those +library evenings of ours. I felt a tightening at my throat. + +"Say, Joe." I drew him toward the bed. "The chapel bell has just struck +ten. Time for beer and pretzels." + +"Fine business! Gee, but I've got a thirst! But where's the door? God +damn it all--I can't find anything to-night!" He laughed unsteadily. + +"Right over here," I answered. "Steady, old man----" + +And so I got him to his bed. He fell down on it breathing hard and I +brought him a drink of water. He began to shiver violently. I covered +him up with dirty blankets, went down to the barroom and telephoned to +Eleanore. Too deeply disturbed to think very clearly, acting on an +impulse, I told her of Joe's condition and asked if I might bring him +home. + +"Why of course," came the answer, a little sharp. "Wait a moment. Let me +think." There was a pause, and then she added quietly, "Go back to his +room and keep him in bed. I'll see that an ambulance comes right down." + +Within an hour after that Joe was installed in our guest room with a +trained nurse to attend to him. The doctor pronounced it typhoid and he +was with us for nine weeks. + + * * * * * + +The effect upon our lives was sharp. In our small crowded apartment all +entertaining was suddenly stopped, and with the sole exception of Sue no +one came to see us. Even our little Indian learned to be quiet as a +mouse. Our whole home became intense. + +Through the thin wall of my workroom I could hear Joe in his delirium. +Now he was busily writing letters, now in a harsh excited voice he was +talking to a crowd of men, again he was furiously shoveling coal. All +this was incoherent, only mutterings most of the time. But when the +voice rose suddenly it was so full of a stern pain, so quivering with +revolt against life, and it poured out such a torrent of commonplace +minute details that showed this was Joe's daily life and the deepest +part of his being--that as I listened at my desk the ghost I thought I +had buried deep, that vague guilty feeling over my own happiness, came +stealing up in me again. And it was so poignant now, that struggle +angrily as I would to plunge again into my work, I found it impossible +to describe the life in those rich gay hotels with the zest and the dash +I needed to make my story a success. + +But it had to be a success, for we needed money badly, the expenses of +Joe's sickness were already rolling in. So I did finish it at last and +took it to my successful man, who read it with evident disappointment. +It was not the glory story that I had led him to expect. My magazine +editor said he would use it, but he, too, appeared surprised. + +"You weren't up to your usual form," was his comment. "What's the +matter?" + +"A sick friend." + +I started another story at once, one I had already planned, about a man +who was to build a string of gorgeous opera houses in the leading +American cities. This story, too, went slowly. Joe Kramer's voice kept +breaking in. From time to time as I struggled on I could feel Eleanore +watching me. + +"Don't try to hurry it," she said. "We can always borrow from father, +you know--and besides, I'm going to cut our expenses." + +She was as good as her word. She dismissed the nurse, and through the +last weeks of delirium and the first of returning consciousness she +placed herself in Joe's borderland as the one whose presence he vaguely +felt pulling him back into comfort and strength. + +"No, don't talk," I heard her say to him one evening. "I don't want to +hear you. All I want is to get you well. That's the only thing you and I +have to talk of." + +But having so thrown him off his guard, as his mind grew clearer she +began cautiously drawing him out, despite his awakening hostility to +this woman who had made me a success. From my room I heard snatches of +their talk. She surprised J. K. by the intimate bits of knowledge about +him that she had collected both from me and from his own sick ramblings. +She had just enough of his point of view to rouse him from his +indifference, to annoy him by her mistakes and her refusals to +understand. I remember one afternoon when I went in to sit with him, his +staring grimly up at my face and saying: + +"Bill, that wife of yours is such a born success she scares me. +Everything she touches, everything she brings me to drink, everything +she does to this bed, is one thundering success. And she won't listen to +anything _but_ success. Your case is absolutely hopeless." + +They became grim enemies, and both of them enjoyed it. She let our +small son come and sit by the bed. The Indian promptly worshiped Joe as +the "longest" man he had ever seen, and they became boon companions. + +"It's pathetic," Eleanore told me, "the little things that appeal to him +here. Poor boy, he has forgotten what a decent home is like." + +As he grew stronger she read the paper to him each morning, and they +quarreled with keen relish over the news events of the day. And as at +the start, so now, she kept giving him little shocks of surprise by her +intimate glimpses into his views. On one of these occasions, after she +had come out from his room and was sitting by me reading, + +"You're a wonder, Eleanore," I said. "I don't see how you've done it." + +"Done what, my love?" asked Eleanore. + +"Wormed all his views out of poor old Joe." + +"I haven't done anything of the sort. I've learned over half of it from +Sue. She comes here often nowadays and we have long talks about him. Sue +seems to know him rather well." + +This did not interest me much, so I switched our talk to something that +did. + +"What bothers me," I said with a scowl, "is this infernal work of mine. +What are you smiling at?" I asked. + +"Nothing," she murmured, beginning to read. "But if I were you I'd stick +at my work. You're good at that." + +"Not now I'm not," I retorted. "This story about the opera man isn't +coming on at all! The more I work the worse it gets!" + +"It will get better soon," she said. + +"I'm not so sure. Do you know what I think is the matter with me? I was +in to-day looking at Joe asleep, and watching the lines in that face of +his it came over me all of a sudden what a wretched coward I've been." +Eleanore looked up suddenly. "I know there's something in all his talk, +I've known it every time we've met. His view's so distorted it makes me +mad, but there's something in it you can't get away from. Poverty, +that's what it is, and I've always steered way clear of it as though I +were afraid to look. I've taken your father's point of view and left the +slums for him and his friends to tackle when they get the time. I was +only too glad to be left out. But that hour with J. K. and his stokers +gave me a jolt. I can feel it still. I can't seem to shake it off. And +I'm beginning to wonder now why I shouldn't get up the nerve to see for +myself, to have a good big look at it all--and write about it for a +while." + +"Don't!" said Eleanore. "Leave it alone!" Her voice was so sharp it +startled me. + +"Why?" I rejoined. "You've tackled poverty often enough. I guess I can +stand it if you can." + +"You're different," she answered. "You leave poverty alone and force +yourself to go on with your work. You've made a very wonderful start. +You'll be ready to take up fiction soon. When you have, and when you +have gone so far that you can feel sure of your name and yourself, then +you can look at whatever you like." + +"I wonder what Joe would say to that." + +"I know what he'll say--he'll agree with me. Why don't you ask him and +see for yourself? I'm beginning to like Joe Kramer," she added with a +quiet smile, "because now that I understand him I know that his life and +yours are so far apart you've hardly a point in common." + +And in the talks I had with Joe this soon proved to be the case. +Eleanore brought us together now and listened with deep satisfaction as +we clashed and jarred each other apart. + +His old indifferent manner was gone, he was softened, grateful for what +we had done--but he held to that view of his like a rock, and the view +entirely shut me out. Joe saw society wholly as "War Sure" between two +classes, and I was hopelessly on the wrong side. My work, my home and my +whole life were bound in with the upper class. And there could be no +middle ground. My boasted tolerance, breadth of mind, my readiness to +see both sides, my passion for showing up all men as human--this to Joe +was utter piffle. He had no use for such writing, or in fact for art of +any kind. "Propaganda" was all that he wanted, and that could be as +cheap as Nick Carter, as sentimental as Uncle Tom's Cabin, if only it +had the kind of "punch" that would reach to the mass of ignorant workers +and stir their minds and their passions into swift and bitter revolt. +Revolution! That was the thing. The world had come to a time, he said, +when talking and writing weren't going to count. We were entering into +an age of force--of "direct action"--strikes and the like--by prodigious +masses of men. All I could do was worthless. + +These talks made me so indignant and sore, so sure that Joe and all his +work were utterly wild and that only in Dillon and his kind lay any hope +of solving the dreary problems of the slums--that within a few days more +I was delving into my opera man with a most determined approval. He at +least was a builder, he didn't want to tear everything down! In his +every scheme for a huge success I took now an aggravated delight. All my +recent tolerance gone, I threw into my work an intensity that I had not +felt in months. + +And Eleanore smiled contentedly, as though she knew what she was about. +When at last the time came for Joe to leave, she was twice as friendly +to him as I. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +But on coming home one evening two or three weeks later, I found +Eleanore reading aloud to our son with a most preoccupied look on her +face. + +"Joe Kramer is coming to dinner," she said. "He called up this morning +and said he'd like to see us again. Sue is coming, too, as it happens. +She dropped in this afternoon." + +Sue arrived a few minutes later, and at once I thought to myself I had +never seen her look so well. For once she had taken time to dress. She +had done her dark hair in a different way. Her color, which had been +poor of late, to-night was most becomingly high, and those fascinating +eyes of hers were bright with a new animation. + +"She has found a fine new hobby," I thought. + +Her whole attitude to us was one of eager friendliness. She made much of +what we had done for Joe. + +"You've no idea," she told me, "how he feels about you both." She was +speaking of this when Joe came in. + +He, too, appeared to me different. Into his blunt manner had crept a +certain awkwardness, his gruff voice had an anxious note at times and +his eyes a hungry gleam. Poor old Joe, I thought. It must be hard, +despite all his talk, to see what he had missed in life, to feel what a +sacrifice he had made. He had thrown everything aside, love, marriage, +home, all personal ties--to tackle this bleak business of slums. The +more pity he had such a twisted view. And as presently, in reply to +Sue's questions, he talked about the approaching strike, my irritation +at his talk grew even sharper than before. + +"Your stokers and dock laborers," I interrupted hotly, "are about as +fit to build up a mew world as they are to build a Brooklyn Bridge! When +I compare them to Eleanore's father and his way of going to work"--I +broke off in exasperation. "Can't you see you're all just floundering in +a perfect swamp of ignorance?" + +"No," said Joe. "I don't see that----" + +"I'm mighty glad you don't," said Sue. Eleanore turned on her abruptly. + +"Why are _you_ glad, Sue?" she asked. + +"Because," Sue answered warmly, "he's where every one of us ought to be! +He's doing the work we all ought to be doing!" + +"Then why don't you do it?" said Joe. His voice was low but sharp as in +pain. The next instant he turned from Sue to me. "I mean all of you," he +added. I looked at him in astonishment. What had worked this change in +Joe? In our last talk he had shut me out so completely. He seemed to +feel this at once himself, for he hastened to explain his remark. He had +turned his back on Sue and was talking hard at me: + +"Of course I don't mean you can do it, Bill, unless you change your +whole view of life. But why shouldn't you change? You're young enough. +That look at a stokehole got hold of you hard. And if you're able to +feel like that why not do some thinking, too?" + +"I'm thinking," I said grimly. "I told you before that I wanted to help. +But you said----" + +"I say it still," J. K. cut in. "If you want to help the people you've +got to drop your efficiency gods. You've got to believe in the people +first--that all they need is waking up to handle this whole job +themselves. You've got to see that they're waking up fast--all over the +world--that they're getting tired of gods above 'em slowly planning out +their lives--that they don't want to wait till they're dead to be +happy--that they feel poverty every day like a million tons of brick on +their chests--it's got so they can't even breathe without thinking! And +you've got to see that what they're thinking is, 'Do it yourself and do +it quick!' The only thing that's keeping them back is that in these +times of peace men get out of the habit of violence! + +"But the minute you get this clear in your mind, then I say you can help +'em. Because what's needed is so big. It's not only more pay and shorter +hours and homes where they needn't die off like flies--they need more +than that--they need a change as much as you--in their whole way of +looking at things. They've got to learn that they are a crowd--and can't +get anywhere at all until all pull together. Ignorant? Of course they +are! But that's where you and me come in--we can help 'em get together +faster than they would if left to themselves! You can help that way a +lot--by writing to the tenements! _That's_ what I meant!" + +Joe stopped short. And after his passionate outburst, Eleanore spoke up +quietly. + +"This sounds funny from you," she said. "A few weeks ago you were just +as sure that Billy could do nothing. What has made you change so?" + +Joe reddened and looked down at his hands. + +"I suppose," he said gruffly after a moment, "it's because I'm still +weak from typhoid--weak enough to want to see some one but stokers get +into the job that's become my life. You see," he muttered, "I was raised +among people like you. It's a kind of a craving, I suppose--like +cigarettes." Again he stopped short and there was a pause. + +"Rather natural," Sue murmured. Again he turned sharply from her to me. + +"I say you can help by your writing," he said. "You call my friends an +ignorant mob. But thousands of 'em have read your stuff!" + +I looked up at Joe with a start. + +"Oh they don't like it," he went on. "It only makes 'em sore and mad. +But if you ever see things right, and get into their side of this fight +with that queer fountain-axe of yours, you'll be surprised at the +tenement friends who'll pop up all around you. The first thing you know +they'll be calling you 'Bill.' That's the kind they are--they don't want +to shut anyone out--all they want to know is whether he means business. +If he doesn't he's no use, because they know that sooner or later +they'll do it anyhow themselves. It's going to be the biggest fight +that's happened since the world began! No cause has ever been so fine, +so worth a man's giving his life to aid! And all you've got to decide is +this--whether you're to get in now, and help make it a little easier, +help make it come without violence--or wait till it all comes to a crash +and then be yanked in like a sack of meal!" + +Before I could speak, Sue drew a deep breath. + +"I don't see how there's any choice about that," she said. + +Eleanore turned to her again: + +"Do you mean for Billy?" + +"I mean for us all," Sue answered. "Even for a person like me!" Sue was +beautiful just then--her cheeks aglow, her features tense, a radiant +eagerness in her eyes. "I've felt it, oh so long," she said. "It's gone +all through my suffrage work--through every speech that I have +made--that the suffragists need the working girls and ought to help them +win their strikes!" + +"And what do _you_ think, Joe?" Eleanore persisted. "Were you speaking +of Billy alone just now or did you have Sue, too, in mind?" + +Joe looked back at her steadily. + +"I don't want to shut out the women," he said. "I've seen too many girls +jump in and make a big success of it. Not only working girls, but plenty +of college girls like you." He turned from Eleanore to Sue--and with a +gruff intensity, "You may think you can't do it, Sue," he said. "But I +know you can. I've seen it done, I tell you, all the way from here to +the Coast--girls like you as speakers, as regular organizers--forgetting +themselves and sinking themselves--ready for any job that comes." + +"That's the way I should want to do it," said Sue, her voice a little +breathless. + +"But how about wives?" asked Eleanore. "For some of these girls marry, I +suppose," she added thoughtfully. "At least I hope they do. I hope Sue +will." + +"I never said anything against that," Joe answered shortly. + +"But if they marry and have children," Eleanore continued, "aren't they +apt to get sick of it then, even bitter about it, this movement you +speak of that takes you in and sinks you down, swallows up every dollar +you have and all your thoughts and feelings?" + +"It needn't do as much as that," Joe muttered as though to himself. + +"Still--I'd like to see it work out," Eleanore persisted. "Do you happen +to know the wives of any labor leaders?" + +"I do," Joe answered quickly. "The wife of the biggest man we've got. +Jim Marsh arrived in town last night. His wife is with him. She always +is." + +"Now are you satisfied, dear?" Sue asked. But Eleanore smiled and shook +her head. + +"Is Mrs. Marsh a radical, too--I mean an agitator?" she asked. Joe's +face had clouded a little. + +"Not exactly," he replied. Eleanore's eyes were attentive now: + +"Do you know her well, Joe?" + +"I've met her----" + +"I'd like to meet her, too," she said. "And find out how she likes her +life." + +"I think I know what you'd find," said Sue, in her old cocksure, +superior manner. "I guess she likes it well enough----" + +"Still, dear," Eleanore murmured, "instead of taking things for granted +it would be interesting, I think, in all this talk to have one look at a +little real life." + +"Aren't you just a little afraid of real life, Eleanore?" Sue demanded, +in a quick challenging tone. + +"Am I?" asked Eleanore placidly. + + * * * * * + +Long after Joe had left us, Sue kept up that challenging tone. But she +did not speak to Eleanore now, her talk like Joe's was aimed at me. + +"Why not think it over, Billy?" she urged. "You're not happy now, I +never saw you so worried and blue." + +"I'm not in the least!" I said stoutly. But Sue did not seem to hear me. +She went on in an eager, absorbed sort of way: + +"Why not try it a little? You needn't go as far as Joe Kramer. He may +even learn to go slower himself--now that he has had typhoid----" + +"Do you think so?" Eleanore put in. + +"Why not?" cried Sue impatiently. "If he keeps on at this pace it will +kill him! Has he no right to some joy in life? Why should you two have +it all? Just think of it, Billy, you have a name, success and a lot of +power! Why not use it here? Suppose it is harder! Oh, I get so out of +patience with myself and all of us! Our easy, lazy, soft little lives! +Why can't we _give_ ourselves a little?" And she went back over all Joe +had said. "It's all so real. So tremendously real," she ended. + + * * * * * + +"I wonder what's going to happen," said Eleanore when we were alone. + +"God knows," I answered gloomily. That hammering from Joe and Sue had +stirred me up all over again. I had doggedly resisted, I had told Sue +almost angrily that I meant to keep right on as before. But now she was +gone, I was not so sure. "I still feel certain Joe's all wrong," I said +aloud. "But he and his kind are so dead in earnest--so ready for any +sacrifice to push their utterly wild ideas--that they may get a lot of +power. God help the country if they do." + +"I wasn't speaking of the country, my love," my wife informed me +cheerfully. "I was speaking of Sue and Joe Kramer." + +"Joe," I replied, "will slam right ahead. You can be sure of that, I've +got him down cold." + +"Have you?" she asked. "And how about Sue?" + +"Oh Sue," I replied indifferently, "has been enthused so many times." + +"Billy." + +I turned and saw my wife regarding her husband thoughtfully. + +"I wonder," she said, "how long it will be before you can write a love +story." + +"What?" + +"Sue and Joe Kramer, you idiot." + +I stared at her dumfounded. + +"Did you think all that talk was aimed at you?" my pitiless spouse +continued. "Did you think all that change in Joe's point of view was on +your account?" + +I watched her vigilantly for a while. + +"If there's anything in what you say," I remarked carefully at last, +"I'll bet at least that Joe doesn't know it. He doesn't even suspect +it." + +"There are so many things," said Eleanore, "that men don't even suspect +in themselves. I'm sorry," she added regretfully. "But that summer +vacation we'd planned is off." + +"What?" + +"Oh, yes, we'll stay right here in town. I see anything but a pleasant +summer." + +"Suppose," I said excitedly, "you tell me exactly what you _do_ see!" + +"I see something," Eleanore answered, "which unless we can stop it may +be a very tragic affair. Tragic for Sue because I feel sure that she'd +never stand Joe's impossible life. And even worse for your father. He's +not only old and excitable, and very weak and feeble, too, but he's so +conservative besides that if Sue married Joe Kramer he'd consider her +utterly damned." + +"But I tell you you're wrong, all wrong!" I broke in. "Joe isn't that +kind of an idiot!" + +"Joe," said my wife decidedly, "is like every man I've ever met. I found +that out when he was sick. He has the old natural longing for a wife and +a home of his own. His glimpse of it here may have started it rising. +I'm no more sure than you are that he admits it to himself. But it's +there all the same in the back of his mind, and in that same mysterious +region he's trying to reconcile marrying Sue to the work which he +believes in--even with this strike coming on. It's perfectly pathetic. + +"Isn't it funny," she added, "how sometimes everything comes all at +once? Do you know what this may mean to us? I don't, I haven't the least +idea. I only know that you yourself are horribly unsettled--and that now +through this affair of Sue's we'll have to see a good deal of Joe--and +not only Joe but his friends on the docks--and not even the quiet ones. +No, we're to see all the wild ones. We're to be drawn right into this +strike--into what Joe calls revolution." + +"You may be right," I said doggedly. "But I don't believe it." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +A few days later Joe called me up and asked me to come down to his +office. His reason for wanting to see me, he said, he'd rather not give +me over the 'phone. + +"You're right," I told Eleanore dismally. "He's going to talk to me +about Sue." + +I dreaded this talk, and I went to see Joe in no easy frame of mind. But +it was not about Sue. I saw that in my first glimpse of his face. He sat +half around in his office chair listening intensely to a man by his +side. + +"I want you to meet Jim Marsh," he said. + +I felt a little electric shock. So here was the great mob agitator, the +notorious leader of strikes. Eleanore's words came into my mind: "We're +to meet all the wild ones. We're to be drawn right into this +strike--into what Joe calls revolution." Well, here was the +arch-revolutionist, the prime mover of them all. Of middle size, about +forty years old, angular and wiry, there was a lithe easy force in his +limbs, but he barely moved as he spoke to me now. He just turned his +narrow bony face and gave me a glance with his keen gray eyes. + +"I've known your work for quite a while," he said in a low drawling +voice, "Joe says you're thinking of writing me up." + +So this was why Joe had sent for me. I had quite forgotten this idea, +but I took to it eagerly now. My work was going badly. Here was +something I could do, the life story of a man whose picture would soon +be on the front page of every paper in New York. It would interest my +magazine, it would give me a chance to get myself clear on this whole +ugly business of labor, poverty and strikes. I had evaded it long +enough, I would turn and face it squarely now. + +"Why yes, I'd like to try," I said. + +"He wants to do your picture with the America you know," said Joe. "He +says he's ready to be shown." + +Marsh glanced out at the harbor. + +"If he'll trail around with us for a while we may show him some of it +here," he drawled. And then quietly ignoring my presence he continued +his talk with Joe, as though taking it for granted that I was an +interested friend. I listened there all afternoon. + +The thing that struck me most at first was the cool effrontery of the +man in undertaking such a struggle. The old type of labor leader had at +least stuck to one industry, and had known by close experience what he +had to face. But here was a mere outsider, a visitor strolling into a +place and saying, "I guess I'll stop all this." Vaguely I knew what he +had to contend with. Sitting here in this cheap bare room, the thought +of other rooms rose in my mind, spacious, handsomely furnished rooms +where at one time or another I had interviewed heads of foreign ship +companies, railroad presidents, bankers and lawyers, newspaper editors, +men representing enormous wealth. All these rooms had been parts of my +harbor--a massed array of money and brains. He would have all this +against him. And to such a struggle I could see no end for him but jail. + +For against all this, on his side, was a chaotic army of ignorant men, +stokers, dockers, teamsters, scattered all over this immense region, +practically unorganized. What possible chance to bring them together? +How could he feel that he had a chance? How much did he already know? + +I asked him what he had seen of the harbor. For days, I learned, he had +told no one but Joe of his coming, he had wandered about the port by +himself. And as a veteran tramp will in some mysterious fashion get the +feel of a new town within a few short hours there, so Marsh had got the +feel of this place--of a harbor different from mine, for he felt it from +the point of view of its hundred thousand laborers. He felt it with its +human fringe, he saw its various tenement borders like so many camps and +bivouacs on the eve of a battle. + +He told a little incident of how the harbor learned he was here. About +nine o'clock one morning, as he was waiting his chance to get into one +of the North River docks, a teamster recognized him there from a picture +of him he had once seen. The news traveled swiftly along the docks, out +onto piers and into ships. And at noon, way over in Hoboken, Marsh had +overheard a German docker say to the man eating lunch beside him, + +"I hear dot tamn fool anarchist Marsh is raising hell ofer dere in New +York." + +"But I wasn't raising hell," he drawled. "I was over here studying +literature." And he drew out from his pocket a tattered copy of a +report, the result of a careful investigation of work on the docks, made +recently by a most conservative philanthropic organization. + +"'In all the fierce rush of American industry,'" he read, with a quiet +smile of derision, "'no work is so long, so irregular or more full of +danger. Seven a. m. until midnight is a common work day here, and in the +rush season of winter when ships are often delayed by storms and so must +make up time in port, the same men often work all day and night and even +on into the following day, with only hour and half-hour stops for +coffee, food or liquor. This strain makes for accidents. From police +reports and other sources we find that six thousand killed and injured +every year on the docks is a conservative estimate.'" + +Marsh glanced dryly up at me: + +"Here's the America I know." + +I said nothing. I was appalled. Six thousand killed and injured! I could +feel his sharp gray eyes boring down into my soul: + +"You wrote up this harbor once." + +"Yes," I said. + +"Did you write this?" + +"No. I would have said it was a lie." + +"Do you say so now? These people are a careful crowd." I took the +pamphlet from his hands. + +"Queer," I muttered vaguely. "I never saw this report before." + +"Not so queer," he answered. "I'm told that it wasn't _meant_ to be +seen--by you and the general public. That's the way this society works. +They spend half a dead old lady's cash investigating poverty and the +other half in keeping the public from learning what they've discovered. +But we're going to furnish publicity to this secluded work of art. + +"On Saturday afternoon," he continued, "I went along the North River +docks. I found long lines of dockers there--they were waiting for their +pay. At every pay window one of 'em stood with an empty cigar box in his +hands--and into that box every man as he passed dropped a part of his +pay--for the man who had been hurt that week--for him or for his widow. + +"And over across the way," he went on, "I saw something on the +waterfront that fitted right into the scenery. It was a poster on a high +fence, and it had a black border around it. On one side of it was a +picture of a tall gent in a swell frock suit. He was looking squarely at +the docks and pointing to the sign beside him, which said, '_Certainly_ +I'm talking to you! Money saved is money earned. Read what I will +furnish you for seventy-five dollars--cash. Black cloth or any color you +like--plush or imitation oak--casket with a good white or cream +lining--pillow--burial suit or brown habit--draping and embalming +room--chairs--hearse--three coaches--complete care and attendance--also +handsome candelabra and candles if requested.'" + +As Marsh read this grisly list from his notebook, it suddenly came into +my mind that in my explorations years ago I had seen this poster at many +points, all along the waterfront. It had made no impression on me then, +for it had not fitted into my harbor. But Marsh had caught its meaning +at once and had promptly jotted it down for use. For it fitted his +harbor exactly. + +Vaguely, in this and a dozen ways, I could feel him taking my harbor to +pieces, transforming each piece into something grim and so building a +harbor all his own. Disturbedly and angrily I struggled to find the +flaws in his building, eagerly I caught at distortions here and there, +twisted facts and wrong conclusions. But in all the terrible stuff which +he had so hastily gathered here, there was so much that I could not +deny. And he gave no chance for argument. Quickly jumping from point to +point he pictured a harbor of slaves overburdened, driven into fierce +revolt. It was hard to keep my footing. + +For his talk was not only of this harbor. It ranged out over an ocean +world which was all in a state of ferment and change. Men of every race +and creed, from English, Germans, Russians to Coolies, Japs and Lascars, +had crowded into the stokeholes, mixing bowls for all the world. And the +mixing process had begun. At Copenhagen, two years before, in a great +marine convention that followed the socialist congress there, Marsh had +seen the delegates from seventeen different countries representing +millions of seamen. And this crude world parliament, this international +brotherhood, had placed itself on record as against wars of every kind, +except the one deepening bitter war of labor against capital. To further +this they had proposed to paralyze by strikes the whole international +transport world. The first had followed promptly, breaking out in +England. The second was to take place here. + +"You don't see how it can happen," said Marsh, with one of those keen +sudden looks that showed he was aware of my presence. "You admit this +place is a watery hell, but you don't believe we can change it. You +don't see how ignorant mobs of men can rise up and take the whole game +in their hands. Do I get you right?" + +"You do," I said. + +"Look over there." + +I followed his glance to the doorway. It was filled with a group of big +ragged men. Some of the faces were black with soot, some were smiling +stolidly, some scowling in the effort to hear. All eyes were intent on +the face of the man who had never been known to lose a strike. + +"That's the beginning," Marsh told me. "You keep your eyes on their +faces--from now on right into the strike--and you may see something grow +there that'll give you a new religion." + +As the day wore into evening the crowd from outside pressed into the +room until they were packed all around us. + +"Let's get out of this," said Joe at last. We went to a neighboring +lunchroom and ate a hasty supper. But as here, too, the crowd pressed in +to get a look at Marsh, Joe asked us to come up to his room. + +"They _know_ your room," Marsh answered. His tone was grim, as though he +had been accustomed for years to this ceaselessly curious pressing mass, +pressing, pressing around him tight. "Suppose we go up to mine," he +said. "I want you fellows to meet my wife. She has never met any writers +before," he added to me, "and she's interested in that kind of thing. +She was a music teacher once." + +I was about to decline and start for home, but suddenly I recalled +Eleanore's saying that she would like to meet Mrs. Marsh. So I accepted +his invitation. And what I saw a few minutes later brought me down +abruptly from these world-wide schemes for labor. + +We entered a small, cheap hotel, climbed a flight of stairs and came +into the narrow bedroom which was for the moment this notorious +wanderer's home. A little girl about six years old lay asleep on a cot +in one corner, and under the one electric light a woman sat reading a +magazine. She had a strong rather clever face which would have been +appealing if it were not for the bitter impatient glance she gave us as +we entered. + +"Talk low, boys, our little girl's asleep," Marsh said. "Say, Sally," he +continued, with his faint, derisive smile, "here's a writer come to see +you." + +"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," she said, then relapsed into a stiff +silence. I tried to break through her awkwardness but entirely without +avail. I grew more and more sure of my first impression, that this woman +hated her husband's friends, his strikes, his "proletariate." She was +smart, pushing, ambitious, I thought, just the kind that would have got +on in any middle western town. Eleanore must meet her. + +Then presently I noticed that only Marsh was talking. I glanced at Joe +and was startled by the intensity in his eyes. + +For Joe was watching his leader's wife. And watching, he appeared to me +to be seeing her in a dreary succession of rooms like these, in cities, +towns and mining camps, wherever her husband was leading a strike--and +then trying to see his own home in such rooms, and Sue in his home, a +wife like this. The picture struck me suddenly cold. Sue pulled into +this for life! Again I remembered Eleanore's words--"Drawn into +revolution." + +"Say, Joe," drawled Marsh, with a sharp look at him. "Got any of that +typhoid left?" + +Joe laughed quickly, confusedly. + +Soon after that I left them. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +The next day I went to the editor for whom I was doing most of my work. +When I told him I wanted to try Jim Marsh, the editor looked at me +curiously. + +"Why?" he asked. + +I spoke of the impending strike. + +"Have you met Marsh?" he inquired. + +"Yes." + +"Do you like him?" + +"No." + +"But he struck you as big." + +"Yes--he did." + +"Are you getting interested in strikes?" + +"I want to see a big one close." + +"Why?" + +"Why not?" I retorted. "They're getting to be significant, aren't they? +I want to see what they're like inside." The editor smiled: + +"You'll find them rather hot inside. Don't get overheated." + +"Oh you needn't think I'll lose my head." + +"I hope not," he said quietly. "Go ahead with your story about Marsh. +I'll be interested to see what you do." + +I went out of the office in no easy frame of mind. The editor's +inquisitive tone had started me thinking of how J. K. had been shut out +by the papers because he wrote "the truth about things." + +"Oh that's all rot," I told myself. "Joe's case and mine are not the +same. The magazines aren't like the papers and I'm not like Joe. His +idea of the truth and mine will never be anywhere near alike." + +But what would Eleanore think of it? I went home and told her of my +plan. To my surprise she made no objection. + +"It's the best thing you can do," she said. "We're in this now--on +account of Sue--we can't keep out. And so long as we are, you might as +well write about it, too. You think so much better when you're at +work--more clearly--don't you--and that's what I want." She was looking +at me steadily out of those gray-blue eyes of hers. "I want you to think +yourself all out--as clearly as you possibly can--and then write just +what you think," she said. "I want you to feel that I'm never afraid of +anything you may ever write--so long as you're really sure it's true." + +I held her a moment in my arms and felt her tremble slightly. And then +she said with her old quiet smile: + +"Sue has asked us over to Brooklyn to-night--Joe Kramer is to be there, +too." + +"That affair is moving rather fast." + +"Oh yes, quite fast," she said cheerfully. + +"How will Dad look at it?" I asked. + +"As you did," said Eleanore dryly. "He'll look at it and see nothing at +all." + +"I've half a mind to tell him!" + +"Don't," she said. "If you did he would only get excited, become the +old-fashioned father and order Sue to leave Joe alone--which would be +all that is needed now to make Sue marry Joe in a week." + +"Sue is about as selfish," I said hotly, "about as wrapped up in her own +little self----" + +"As any girl is who thinks she's in love but isn't sure," said Eleanore. +"Sue isn't sure--poor thing--she's frightfully unsettled." + +"But why drag Joe way over there?" + +"Because she wants to look at him there. It's her home, you know, her +whole past life, all that she has been used to. It's the place where she +has breakfast. She wants to see how Joe fits in." + +"But they'd never live _there_ if they married!" + +"Nevertheless," said Eleanore, "that's one of the ways a girl makes up +her mind." She looked pityingly into my eyes. "Women are beyond +you--aren't they, dear?" she murmured. + +"J. K. isn't," I rejoined. "And I can't see him in _any_ home!" + +"Can't you! Then watch him a little closer the next time he comes to +ours." + +I went out for a walk along the docks and tried to picture the coming +strike. When I came home I found Joe there, he had come to go with us to +Brooklyn. He was sitting on the floor with our boy gravely intent on a +toy circus. Neither one was saying a word, but as Joe carefully poised +an elephant on the top of a tall red ladder, I recalled my wife's +injunction. By Jove, he did fit into a home, here certainly was a +different Joe. He did not see me at the door. Later I called to him from +our bedroom: + +"Say, Joe. Don't you want to come in and wash?" + +He came in, and presently watching him I noticed his glances about our +room. It was most decidedly Eleanore's room, from the flowered curtains +to the warm soft rug on the floor. It was gay, it was quiet and restful, +it was intimately personal. Here was her desk with a small heap of +letters and photographs of our son and of me, and here close by was her +dressing-table strewn with all its dainty equipment. A few invitations +were stuck in the mirror. Eleanore's hat and crumpled white gloves lay +on our bed. I had thrown my coat beside them. There were such things in +this small room as Joe had never dreamed of. + +"Oh Joe," said Eleanore from the hall. "Don't you want to come into the +nursery? Somebody wants a pillow fight." + +"Sure," said Joe, with a queer little start. + +"By the way," I heard her add outside. "Billy told me he saw Mrs. Marsh, +and I should so like to meet her, too. Couldn't you have us all down to +your room some evening?" + +"If you like," he answered gruffly. + +"I'm honestly curious," Eleanore said, "to see what kind of a person she +is. And I'm sure that Sue is, too. May we bring her with us?" + +"Of course you may--whenever you like." + +"Would Friday evening be too soon?" + +"I'll see if I can fix it." + +When Eleanore came in to me, her lips were set tight as though something +had hurt her. + +"That was pretty tough," I muttered. + +"Yes, wasn't it," she said quickly. "I don't care, I'm not going to have +him marrying Sue. I'm too fond of both of them. Besides, your father has +to be thought of. It would simply kill him!" + + * * * * * + +"Yes," I thought to myself that night. "No doubt about that, it would +kill him." + +How much older he looked, in the strong light of the huge old-fashioned +gas lamp that hung over the dining-room table. He was making a visible +effort to be young and genial. He had not seen Joe in several years, and +he evidently knew nothing whatever of what Joe was up to, except that he +had been ill at our home. Joe spoke of what we had done for him, and Sue +eagerly took up the cue, keeping the talk upon us and "the Indian," to +my father's deep satisfaction. From this she turned to our childhood and +the life in this old house. Dad pictured it all in such glowing colors I +recognized almost nothing as real. But watching Sue's face as she +listened, she seemed to me trying to feel again as she had felt here +long ago when she had been his only chum. Every few moments she would +break off to throw a quick, restless glance at Joe. + +When the time came for us to go, my father assured us warmly that he had +not felt so young in years. He said we had so stirred him up that he +must take a book and read or he wouldn't sleep a wink all night. Joe did +not come away with us. As we stood all together at the door, I saw +Eleanore glance into Dad's study where his heavy leather chair was +waiting, and then into the room across the hall where Sue had drawn up +two chairs to the fire. And I thought of the next hour or two. My father +already had under his arm a book on American shipping, which told about +the old despotic sea world of his day, in which there had been no +strikers but only mutineers. + + * * * * * + +"There's very little time to lose," said Eleanore on the way home. + +"Look here," I suggested. "Why don't you talk this out with Sue, and +tell her just what you think of it all?" + +"Because," said Eleanore, "what I think and what you think has nothing +whatever to do with the case. Sue would say it was none of our business. +And she'd be quite right. It isn't." + +"Aren't we making it our business?" My wife at times gets me so +confused. + +"I'm not _telling_ them anything," she rejoined. "I'm only trying to +_show_ them something and let the poor idiots see for themselves. If +they won't see, it's hopeless." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +On Friday evening Sue sent word that she would be late and that she +would meet us at Joe's room. So we went down without her. + +His room had changed since I'd seen it last, I took in at once his +pathetic attempts to fix it up for our coming. Gone were the dirty +curtains, the dirty collars and shirts, and the bed was concealed by an +old green screen borrowed from his landlady, the German saloon-keeper's +wife below. The same woman had scrubbed the floor and put down a faded +rag carpet in front of the old fireplace, in which now a coal fire was +burning. Poor Joe had turned up all the lights to make things bright and +cheerful, but it only showed things up as they were. The room was +glaringly forlorn. + +And now that Eleanore had come, her presence made him feel at once what +a wretchedly dreary place it was. Eleanore knew what she wanted to do +and she had dressed herself for the part. And as Joe took in the effect +of her smart little suit, and waited for Sue and Mrs. Marsh, he became +so anxious and gloomy that he could only speak with an effort. He kept +glancing uneasily at the door. + +"I don't like the idea," said Eleanore, "of Sue's coming down here alone +at night through this part of town." Joe looked around at her quickly. +"But I suppose," she added thoughtfully, "that she'd have to get used to +queer parts of towns if she ever took up the life you spoke of." + +"I don't think that would bother her," Joe answered gruffly. + +Presently there was a step on the stairs. He jumped up and went to the +door, and a moment later Sue entered the room. + +Immediately its whole atmosphere changed. Sue was plainly excited. She, +too, had dressed herself with care--or rather with a careful neglect. +She wore the oldest suit she had and a simple blouse with a gay red tie. +With one sharp glance at Eleanore, she took in the strained situation +and set about to ease it. + +"What a nice old fireplace," she exclaimed. "Let's turn down the lights +and draw 'round the fire. You need more chairs, Joe; go down and get +some." + +And soon with the lights turned low and the coals stirred into a ruddy +glow, we were sitting in quite a dramatic place, the scene was set for +"revolution." The curtainless windows were no longer bleak, for through +them from the now darkened room we looked out on the lights of the +harbor. Sue thought the view thrilling, and equally thrilling she found +the last issue of Joe's weekly paper, _War Sure_, which lay on the +table. It was called "Our Special Sabotage Number," and in it various +stokers and dockers, in response to an appeal from Joe, had crudely +written their ideas upon just how the engines of a ship or the hoisting +winches on a dock could be most effectively put out of order in time of +strike. "So that the scabs," wrote one contributor, "can see how they +like it." + +"Why not have blue-penciled some of this?" I asked, with a faint +premonition of trouble ahead. + +"Because Joe believes in free speech, I suppose," Sue answered for him +quickly. + +"I'm not much of a lawyer, Joe," I said. "But this stuff looks to me a +good deal like incitement to violence." + +"Possibly," J. K replied. + +"You don't look horribly frightened," laughed Sue. And she wanted to +hear all the latest strike news. The time was rapidly drawing near. It +was now close to the end of March and the strike was expected in April. + +When Marsh arrived about nine o'clock, there was an awkward moment. For +behind him came his wife and their small daughter, both of whom were +stiffly dressed, and with one glance at Eleanore they felt immediately +out of place. Mrs. Marsh was even more hostile and curt than when I had +seen her last. She was angry at having been dragged into this and took +little pains to hide it. + +"My husband would have me come," she said. "And I couldn't leave my +little girl, so I had to bring her along." And she stopped abruptly with +a look that asked us plainly, "Now that I'm here, what do you want?" + +"How old is your little girl?" Eleanore inquired. + +"Six last month." + +"Are you going to put her in school in New York?" + +And in spite of short suspicious replies she soon had Mrs. Marsh and her +child talking of kindergartens and parks and other parts of the town +they must see. Sue was now eagerly talking to Marsh, Joe was beside her +helping her out, and both seemed wholly to have forgotten the disturbing +woman behind them. But by the quick looks that Eleanore gave them now +and then, I could see she was only holding back until she should have +Mrs. Marsh in a mood where she could be brought into the talk and made +to tell about her life. + +"Don't you ever want to settle down?" she asked when there had come a +pause. Marsh turned abruptly to Eleanore. + +"Of course she does," he answered. "Did you ever know a woman who +didn't, the minute that she got a kid? But my wife can't, if she sticks +to me. She has had to make up her mind to live in any old place that +comes along, from a dollar room in a cheap hotel to a shanty in a mining +camp." And his look at Eleanore seemed to add, "That's the kind she is, +you little doll." + +Eleanore quickly made herself look as much like a doll as possible. She +placidly folded her dainty gloved hands. + +"I should think," she murmured in ladylike tones, "Mrs. Marsh would find +that rather difficult." + +"She does," said Marsh aggressively. "But my wife has nerve enough to +stand up to the rough side of life--as the wives of most workingmen +have to--in this rich and glorious land." + +"Won't you tell us about it?" asked Eleanore sweetly. "I should be so +interested to hear. It's so different, you see, from all I've been +accustomed to." + +"Yes," Marsh answered grimly, "I've no doubt it is. Go ahead, Sally, and +tell them about it." + +And Sally did. Gladly taking her husband's aggressive tone, she started +out almost with a sneer. Her remarks at first were disjointed and brief, +but I told her I was writing the story of her husband's life, that I +wanted her side of it from the start. I promised to show her what I +wrote and let her cut anything she had told me if she did not want it in +print. And so in scattered incidents, with bits thrown in now and then +by Marsh, the lives of these two began to come out. And we understood +her bitterness. + + * * * * * + +"Mr. Marsh was born," she said, "in one of the poorest little towns in +Southern Iowa. It was nothing but a hole of a place about six miles from +the county seat where my father was a lawyer. But even in that little +hole his family was the poorest there. I've been all over the States +since then, and I've seen poor people, the Lord knows--but I want to say +I've never seen people anywhere that were any worse off than my husband +was when he was a boy. And yet he got out of it all by himself. He +didn't need any strikes to help him." + +"But of course," Sue put in smoothly, "your husband was an exceptional +man." Mrs. Marsh threw her a bitter glance. + +"He might have been," she answered. + +"What was he like as a boy?" I asked. + +"A fighter," she said. For a moment her sharp voice grew proud. "His +father took diabetes and died, and they went into debt to bury him. Jim +helped his mother run the farm and missed half his schooling. But his +teacher loaned him text-books--and at home they had no candles, so he +used to work with his back to the fire--half the night. My father used +to call him a regular little Honest Abe. That's a surprise to you, isn't +it," she added with a hard little laugh. + +"But then the town had a sudden boom. A new branch of the railroad came +through that way and houses and stores went up over night. Jim was only +sixteen then, but he grabbed the chance to get into the building. In +less than a year he had earned enough money so he could quit and go to +school. He came over to high school in our town, walking his six miles +twice a day. And that's where I met him. + +"My father took a shine to him right off and promised to make him a +lawyer. He loaned him law books the first year, and the second Jim +worked in his office." She looked for a moment at the wall. "I expect +it's not a love story you're after--so I'll leave that part of it out. +Papa was mad when I broke the news--and I can't say I blame him. He was +the richest man in town, the railroad lawyer of the place--and he had +meant that I should go to a polishing school in St. Louis. + +"Well, I did go to St. Louis, but I was eloping at the time and I became +Jim's wife. We had a hard fight for a year or two, but we made up our +minds we'd make it go. Jim got a job on a skyscraper which was going up +at that time. I got him his breakfast at six every morning and he got +home about seven at night, and right after supper he went at his +Blackstone and dug into it all evening. As a rule he got to bed at one, +and five hours' sleep was all he had--with a few hours extra Sundays. + +"I knew a girl from home in St. Louis whose husband was making money +fast. But Jim was too proud to make use of my friends or go to her home +when we were invited. We missed three card parties on that account. But +she helped me get some pupils and I gave piano lessons. When my baby was +born I had to quit--but I thought we were out of the woods by then, for +Jim was made foreman of his gang and was raised to a hundred dollars a +month. We moved from our boarding house into a flat. I hired a young +Swedish girl and began to feel that I knew where I was. + +"But then the building workers struck. Jim had always been popular with +his men, and now he wanted his boss to give them half of what they asked +for. But his boss didn't see it that way at all, and he and Jim had +trouble. The next week Jim decided he wouldn't manage what he called +'scabs.' So he left his employment, went in with the men and made the +strike a great success. That left him leader of their union. The salary +they paid him was eighty dollars instead of a hundred--so I let our +Swedish girl go. + +"He said his new position would give him more time to study law. But it +didn't turn out quite that way. He got so wrapped up in his union +affairs that he had no time for his law books. One day I put them up on +a shelf and found he didn't notice it." + +Eleanore suddenly tightened at this, a quick sympathy came into her +eyes. Sue gave a restless little sigh. + +"He'd be out at meetings most every night," Mrs. Marsh continued. "At +the end of the year he was one of three leaders in a strike of all the +building trades in town. All work of that kind in the city was stopped +and things got very ugly. One night a man came to our flat and informed +me that my husband was in jail. I went to the jail the next morning and +saw him. We had quite a talk. And that afternoon I gave up our flat." + +"Why?" asked Eleanore softly. + +"I presumed the landlord wished it," said Mrs. Marsh without looking +around. "I took a room in a cheap hotel. Mr. Marsh came out of jail with +ideas that were all new to me. He had left his old trade union and gone +in with a new crowd of men who stood for out-and-out revolution--which I +couldn't understand. But we made the best of it. We went to the theater +that night and then he took the midnight train on one of his first +labor trips. At first these trips were only for a week or so, but as +time went on they grew longer. As a rule I never wrote him because I +never knew his address. On one trip he was away five weeks--and before +he got back there was time enough for my second baby, a little boy, to +be born and die of pneumonia." + +Eleanore flinched as though that had hurt. I saw her turn and look at +Sue, who seemed even more restless than before. + +"You decided to travel with him then--didn't you?" Eleanore murmured. + +"Yes," said the other gruffly. "We used to try to figure out what city +he would likely be in, or at least not far away from--and then my little +girl and I would find a place to board there. It has been like that for +the past four years. In that time we've lived in fourteen places all the +way between here and the Coast." + +"Have you lived all the time at hotels?" Eleanore inquired. + +"We have," said the woman curtly, "but hardly the kind you're accustomed +to. As a rule, as soon as we reach a town my husband's name appears in +the papers, and on that account the more refined houses wouldn't care to +keep us long." + +Eleanore leaned forward, her eyes troubled and intent. She seemed to +have forgotten Sue. + +"How do you know they wouldn't?" she asked. + +"I found out by trying--twice." + +I heard a sudden angry creak in the battered old chair in which Sue was +sitting. + +"So my little girl Lucy and I," the embittered voice went on, "go to +hotels that don't ask many questions. We pass the time going to parks or +museums--or now and then to a concert--where I try to give her a taste +for good music." + +"Do you find time to keep up your music?" I asked. + +"There's time enough," came the quick reply. "You see as a rule I'm just +waiting around. One night in Pittsburgh it was my birthday, and as the +Grand Opera was there for a week and I had never been to one, I got Mr. +Marsh to take me. We made it a regular celebration, with dinner in a +first-class restaurant just for once. But my husband is generally +watched, and the papers all took it up the next day. 'Marsh and wife +dine and see opera after his speech to starving strikers,' or similar +words to that effect." + +"Do you see anything of the strikers?" I asked. + +"Not much," she replied. "We used to be invited to go to parties at +their homes. But most of them, even the leaders, were Irish, Germans, +Italians or Jews whose wives could barely speak English. I found them +not very pleasant affairs. Some of the wives drank a good deal of beer +and most of them had very little to say. Strike dances were no better. +The wives as a rule sat with their children around the walls--while a +lot of young factory girls, Jewesses for the most part, danced turkey +trots around the hall." + +"There were speeches, I suppose?" Sue put in impatiently. + +"Yes--Mr. Marsh and others made speeches between dances. They weren't +the kind of affairs I'd been used to in our home town," said Mrs. Marsh. +"I've lost track of the folks at home. I never write and they don't +write me. Only once when my mother knew where I was she sent me a box at +Christmas. Lucy and I got quite excited over that box, it was all the +presents we'd had from outside in quite a line of Christmases. So we +thought we'd celebrate." + +"How did you celebrate Christmas?" Eleanore asked softly. + +"We went out and bought a tree and candles, some gold balls and popcorn +and all the other fixings. And we popped the corn over the gas that +night. The next day we bought things for each other's stockings. Lucy +was then only four years old, but I'd leave her at a counter and tell +the clerk to let her have all she wanted to buy for me up to a dollar. +That was how we worked it. The next night we had the tree in our room. I +got Mr. Marsh to help me trim it. At last we lit the candles and let +Lucy in from the hotel hall, where she'd nearly caught her death of +cold. Then we opened the box from home. There was a doll for Lucy and a +framed photograph of my mother for me--and for Mr. Marsh a Bible. He got +laughing over that and so did I. And that ended Christmas. + +"We had another Christmas last year," she said in a slow, intense sort +of way as though seeing the place as she spoke, "in a mining town in +Montana, where Jim had been in jail five days and the whole place was +under martial law. A major of the militia came to me on Christmas Eve. +He claimed that Jim had been seen by detectives traveling with another +woman and that I was not his wife. They locked me up for two hours that +night as an immoral woman." + +Sue was sitting rigid now, her lips pressed tight. And Joe with a +strained unnatural face was staring into the fire. + +"But of course," Mrs. Marsh concluded, "most of the time it isn't like +that. As a rule when we come to a city nothing especial happens at all. +We just take a room like the one we have now and wait till the strike is +over. I've got so I have a queer view of towns. I'm always there at the +time of a strike, when crowds of Italians and Poles and Jews fill the +streets on parade or jam into halls and talk about running the world by +themselves. And I guess they're going to do it some day--but I presume +not by to-morrow." + +For some time while she was speaking her eyes had been fixed steadily +upon Joe's only picture. It stood on the mantel, a big charcoal sketch +of a crowd of immigrants just leaving Ellis Island. They were of all +races. Uncouth, heavy, stolid, with that hungry hope in all their eyes +for more of the good things of the earth, they seemed like some barbaric +horde about to pour in over the land. With her eyes upon their faces in +deep, quiet hatred this woman from the Middle West had told the story of +her life. + + * * * * * + +"Well, Sally," said her husband, who had grown restive toward the end, +"I guess that'll do. Let's go on home." + +"I'm sure I'm ready," she quickly replied. Now that she had come out of +herself she seemed angry at having told so much. + +When they had left there was a silence, which Sue broke with a breath of +impatience. + +"What a frightful thing it must be for a man in this work," she +exclaimed, "to have a wife like that! A woman so hard and narrow, so +wrapped up in her own little life, with not a spark of sympathy for any +of his big ideals!" + +"I suppose it's the life that has done it," said Eleanore quietly, +looking at Sue. + +"I'd like to see some women," Sue retorted angrily, "who have been in +that life for years and years, and _have_ sympathy, have _everything_, +don't care for anything else in the world!" She turned suddenly to Joe. +"You said there were hundreds, didn't you?" + +Joe looked back at her a moment. There was a startled, groping, +searching expression in his eyes. + +"Yes," he said. "There are hundreds." + +"Are many of them married?" Eleanore inquired. + +"Some of them are," he answered. + +"When a woman who, as Sue has just said, throws herself into this heart +and soul, marries a man who is in it, too, how much of their time can +they spend together?" + +"That depends on the kind of work," he said. Eleanore held his eyes with +hers. + +"In some cases, I suppose," she went on, "like yours, for example, where +the man's work keeps him moving--if the woman's work wouldn't let her +go with him they would have to be half their time apart." + +"Yes." + +"As Mrs. Marsh and her husband were at the time when her second baby was +born." + +"Yes," said Joe, still watching her. + +"Aren't there a good many, too, who don't exactly marry--but marry just +a little--one woman here, another there, and so on?" + +"Yes," said Joe, "there are some who do that." + +"I should think," said Eleanore thoughtfully, "that in a movement of +this kind a man ought not to marry at all--or else marry a little a good +many times--so as always to be free for the Cause." + +"Unless," said Joe, quite steadily, "he finds a woman like some I've +known, whose feeling for a man, one man, seems to be planted in her for +life--who can easily stand not being with him because she herself is +deep in her own job, and her job is about the same as his--and because +the two of them have decided to see the whole job through to the end." + +His eyes went up to the charcoal sketch. + +"It's a job worth seeing through," he said. + +Sue was leaning forward now. + +"Where did you get that picture, Joe?" she asked. + +"It was an illustration," he said, "for a thing I once had in a +magazine." And then as though almost forgetting us all, his eyes still +upon those immigrant faces, he said with a slow, rough intensity: + +"I know every figure in it. I know just where they're strong and where +each one of 'em is weak. I've never made gods out of 'em. But I know +they do all the real work in the world. They're the ones who get all the +rotten deals, the ones who get shot down in wars and worked like dogs in +time of peace. They're the ones who are ready to go out on strike and +risk their lives to change all this. They're the people worth spending +your life with. But it's a job for your whole life--and before a man or +a woman jumps in they want to be sure they're ready." + +He did not look at Sue as he spoke. He seemed barely able to hold +himself in. His relief was plain when we took her away. + +Sue took a car to Brooklyn and we started homeward. Eleanore wanted to +walk for a while. She walked quickly, her face set. + +"What do you think of it?" I asked. + +"I wasn't thinking of Sue," she said. "I was thinking of Mrs. Marsh. +I've never tormented a woman like that and I never will again in my +life--not for Sue or anyone else--she can marry anybody she likes!" + +"Well, she won't marry Joe," I said. "Did you see his face--poor devil? +You've certainly settled that affair." + +"Have I?" she asked sharply. And then her curious feminine mind took a +long leap. "And what are _you_ going to be," she asked, "in a year from +now?" I smiled at her. + +"Not a second Marsh," I said. "But even if I were the man in the moon, +you'd make a success of being my wife." + +"I think I would," said Eleanore. "It must be so quiet up there in the +moon." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +"Come over here at once." My father's voice over the telephone, one +morning a few days later, sounded thick and unnatural. + +"What about?" I asked. + +"Your sister." + +When I reached the house in Brooklyn he came himself to let me in and +took me into the library. I was shocked by his face, it was terribly +worn, quite plainly he had been up all night. As he began speaking his +voice shook and he leaned forward, every inch of him tense. + +Sue had told him the night before that she was going to marry Joe +Kramer. In reply to his anxious questions she had given him some of the +facts about what Joe was doing. And Dad had stormed at her half the +night. + +"She wants to marry him, Billy," he cried. "She's got her mind set on a +man like that! What has he got to support her with? Not a cent, not even +a decent job! He's not writing now. Do you know what he's doing? +Stirring up strikes--of the ugliest kind--of the most ignorant class of +men--foreigners! I know such strikes--I've fought 'em myself and I know +how they're handled! That young man will land in jail! And it's where he +belongs! Do you know what he's up to right here on the docks?" + +"Yes, I know----" + +"Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let him come to the house?" + +"I was doing my best to stop it, Dad." + +"You were, eh--well, you'll stop it now! Understand me, Billy, he's +your friend--you brought him here--way back at the start. You've got to +put a stop to this----" + +"But how?" I asked, trying to steady my voice. "What do you think that I +can do?" + +"You can talk to her, can't you? God Almighty! Make her see this will +ruin her life!" + +"I can't do that." + +"Can't you?" He rose and bent over me gripping my arms, and I felt his +violent trembling. "If you don't, it's the end of me," he said. + +"Steady, Dad--now steady--this is coming out all right, you know----" I +got him back into his chair. "I'm going to do all I possibly can. I'm +going to see Joe Kramer now--he's the only one who can influence her. +I'm going to get him to come to Sue and help me make her feel what's +ahead--the hardest, ugliest parts of his life. Now promise you'll keep +out of it, promise you'll leave her alone while I'm gone." + +He agreed to this at last and I left him. But as I went into the hall +Sue came to me from the other room. Her face was white and strained. + +"Well, Billy?" she said. My throat tightened. She looked so pitifully +worn. + +"I'm sorry, Sue----" + +"Is that all you have to say to me?" she cut in with a quick catch of +her breath. + +"No, no." I took her in my arms. "Dear old Sue--don't you know how I +feel? I want to see you happy. I'm trying to see what on earth we can +do." + +"Why can't you all leave me alone?" she demanded, in low broken tones. +"That's all I want--I'm old enough! I love him! Isn't that enough? To be +treated like this--like a bad little child! If you'd been here and heard +him--Dad, I mean--I tell you he's half out of his mind! I'm afraid to be +left alone with him!" + +"Sue?" It was our father's voice. He had come out close behind us. + +"Leave me alone!" Sue started back, but he caught her arm: + +"You'll stay right here with me till he comes." + +"Till who comes?" + +"Kramer." + +"Who said he was coming?" + +"Your brother." + +"Billy!" + +"Now, Sis, I'm going to talk to Joe and try to persuade him to see you +and me together, that's all--quietly--over in our apartment." + +"No," said our father. "He'll see her right here!" + +"Now, Dad----" + +"Careful, son, don't get in my way. I'm standing about as much as I can. +Kramer is to come right here. If there's any seeing Sue to be done it's +to be in her home, where she belongs. I won't let her out of it--not for +an hour out of my sight!" + +"You'll lock me in here?" she panted. He turned on her. + +"You can call the police if you want to." He let go his hold and turned +to me. "I'm thinking of her mother. If she sees this man at all again +I'll see him too." + +"Can't you leave us?" I implored her. "Sue--please! Go up to your room!" + +When she'd gone I tried to quiet him. And now that Sue was out of the +way I partly succeeded. But he stuck to his purpose. Joe must come and +see Sue here. + +"I want to be on hand when she sees him," he insisted. "I don't want to +talk--I've done all that--I won't say a word--but I want to be here. You +think you know her better than I do because you're younger--but you +don't. We've lived right here together--she's been my chum for +twenty-five years, and I know things about her you don't know. She's +wilful, she's as wild as a hawk--but she can't hold out, she hasn't it +in her." + +"She will if you act as you did just now----" + +"But I won't," he said sharply. "That was a mistake--and I won't let it +happen again. When he comes you do the talking, boy--and if we're beaten +I won't try to keep her, she goes and it's ended, I promise you that. +But, son, don't make any mistake about this--I have an influence over +this girl that you haven't got and nobody has. I want her to feel me +beside her." + +He went over this again and again, and with this I had to leave him. + + * * * * * + +I found Joe in his office. He rose abruptly when I came in, and reached +for his hat. + +"Let's go out for a walk," he said. Down in the street he turned on me: +"Sue has just 'phoned me you were there. She thought you were going to +help her, Bill, she thought that you'd stand by her. She didn't get any +sleep last night--she's been through hell with that father of hers----" + +"Oh, I've been all through Sue's sufferings, Joe. Don't give me any more +of that." + +"You mean you think she's faking?" + +"No. But to be good and brutally frank about it, what she suffers just +now doesn't count with me. It's what her whole life may be with you." + +"That's not exactly your business, is it?" + +"It wouldn't be if I didn't know Sue." + +"What do you know?" + +"I know that in spite of all her talk and the way she acts and honestly +feels whenever she's with you," I replied, "Sue wants to hang on to her +home and us. She isn't the heroic kind. She can't just follow along with +you and leave all this she's used to." + +Joe's face clouded a little. + +"She'll get over that," he muttered. + +"Perhaps she will and perhaps she won't. How do you know? You want to +know, don't you? You want her to be happy?" + +"No, that's not what I want most. Being happy isn't the only thing----" + +"Then tell her so. That's all I ask. I'll tell you what I've come for, +Joe. You've always been more honest, more painfully blunt and open than +any man I've ever known. Be that way now with Sue. Give her the +plainest, hardest picture you can of the life you're getting her into." + +"I've tried to do that already." + +"You haven't! If you want to know what you've done I can tell you. +You've painted up this life of yours--and all these things you believe +in--with power enough and smash enough to knock holes through all I +believe in myself. And I'm stronger than Sue--you've done more to her. +What I ask of you now is to drop all the fire and punch of your dreams, +and line out the cold facts of your life on its personal side--what it's +going to be. I'll help draw it out by asking you questions." + +"What's the use of that? I know it won't change her!" + +"Maybe it won't. But if it won't, at least it'll make my father give up. +Can't you see? If you and I together--I asking and you answering--paint +your life the way it's to be, and she says, 'Good, that's what I +want'--he'll feel she's so far away from him then that he'll throw up +his hands and let her go. He can rest then, we can help him +then--Eleanore and I can--it may save the last years of his life. And +Sue will be free to come to you." + +"You mean the more ugly we make it the better." + +"Just that. Let's end this one way or the other." + +"All right. I agree to that." + + * * * * * + +When Joe and I came into the library my father rose slowly from his +chair and the two stood looking at one another. And by some curious +mental process two memories flashed into my mind. One was of the +towering sails that my father had told me he had seen on his first day +on the harbor, when coming here a crude boy from the inland he had +thrilled to the vision of owning such ships with crews to whom his word +should be law, and of sending them over the ocean world. Such was the +age he had lived in. The other was of the stokers down in the bottom of +the ship, and Joe's tired frowning face as he said, "Yes, they look like +a lot of bums--and they feed all the fires at sea." What was there in +common between these two? To each age a harbor of its own. + +"Well, young man, what have you to say to me?" + +"Nothing." + +Sue came into the room. Briefly I explained to her what our father had +agreed upon, that she was to do the deciding and that he would abide by +her decision. Then I began my questions to Joe. I felt awkward, +painfully the intruder into two other people's lives. And I felt as +though I were operating upon the silent old man close by. "The uglier +the better," I kept repeating to myself. + +"Let's take up first the money side, Joe. Have you any regular salary?" + +"No." + +"Such as it is, where does it come from?" + +"Out of the stokers." + +"How much do you get?" + +"One week twenty dollars and another ten or five," he said. "One week I +got three dollars and eighty-seven cents." + +"Is that likely to grow steadier?" + +"Possibly--more likely worse." + +"But can two of you live on pay like that--say an average of ten dollars +a week?" + +"I know several millions of people that have to. And most of them have +children too." + +"And you'd expect to live like that?" + +"No better," was his answer. My father turned to him slowly as though he +had not heard just right. + +"But as a matter of fact," I went on, "you wouldn't have to, would you? +You'd expect Sue to earn money as well as yourself." + +"I hope so--if she wants to--it's my idea of a woman's life." + +"And the work you hope she'll enter will be the kind you believe +in--organizing labor and taking an active part in strikes?" + +"Yes. She's a good speaker----" + +"I see. And if you were out of a job at times you'd be willing to let +her support you?" + +Sue angrily half rose from her chair, but Joe with a grim move of his +hand said softly, "Sit down and try to stand this. Let's get it over and +done with." Then he turned quietly back to me. + +"Why yes--I'd let her support me," he said. + +"You mean you don't care one way or the other. You'd both be working for +what you believe in, and how you lived wouldn't especially count?" + +"That's about it." + +"What do you believe in, Joe? Just briefly, what's your main idea in +stirring up millions of ignorant men?" + +"Mainly to pull down what's on top." + +"As for instance?" + +"All of it. Business, industry and finance as it's being run at +present." + +"A clean sweep. And in place of that?" + +"Everything run by the workers themselves." + +"For example?" I asked. "The ships by the stokers?" + +"Yes, the ships by the stokers," he said. And I felt Dad stiffen in his +chair. "As they will be when the time comes," Joe added. + +"How soon will that be?" + +"I'll see it," he said. + +"The working people in full control. No restraints whatever from above." + +"There won't be anyone left above. No more gods," he answered. + +"Not even one?" + +"Is there one?" he asked. + +"You're an atheist, aren't you," I said. + +"Yes, when I happen to think of it." + +"And Sue would likely be the same." + +"Isn't she now?" he inquired. I dropped the point and hurried on. + +"How about Sue's friends, Joe? In a life like that--always in +strikes--she'd have to give them up, wouldn't she?" + +"Probably. Some of 'em think they're radicals, but I doubt if they'd +come far out of the parlor." + +"So her new friends would be either strikers or the people who lead in +strikes. Her life would be practically sunk in the mass." + +"I hope so." + +"You may be in jail at times." + +"Quite probably." + +"Sue too?" + +"Possibly." + +I caught the look in my father's face and knew that I had but a few +moments more. + +"Do you want to marry her, Joe?" I asked. + +"Yes, I'll go down to City Hall--if a large fat Tammany alderman can +make our love any cleaner." + +"You mean you don't believe in marriage." + +"Not especially," he said. + +"And so if either gets sick of the other he just leaves without any +fuss." + +"Naturally." + +There was a pause. And then Joe spoke again. + +"You're a better interviewer than I thought you were," he said. "You've +made the picture quite complete--as far as you can see it. Of course +you've left all the real stuff out----" + +"What is the real stuff, as you call it, young man?" My father's voice +had a deadly ring. Joe turned and looked at him as before. + +"You couldn't understand," he said. + +"I think I understand enough." Dad rose abruptly and turned to Sue. +"Sue," he said. "Shall I ask your anarchist friend to go?" + +I could feel Sue gather herself. She was white. + +"I'll have to go with him," she managed to say. A slight spasm shot over +our father's face. For a moment there was silence. + +"You've heard all he said of this life of his?" + +"Yes." + +"And what he wants and expects you to do?" + +"I heard it." + +"And just how he wants you to live--with nothing you've been used +to--nothing? No money but what a few drunken stokers throw your way, no +decent ideals, no religion, no home?" + +Again a pause. + +"I want to go with him," she brought out at last. + +Dad turned sharply and left the room. + + * * * * * + +I heard a deep breath behind me. It came from Joe Kramer, whose face was +set in a frown of pain. + +"He's so damn old," Joe muttered. "You operated on him hard." + +Suddenly Sue threw herself on the lounge. She huddled there shaking and +motioned us off. + +"Leave me alone, can't you, go away!" we heard between her sobs. "It's +all right--I'm ready--I'll come to you, Joe--but not now--not just now! +Go away, both of you--leave me alone!" + +Joe left the house. Soon after that Eleanore arrived and I told her what +had happened. She went in to Sue, I left them together and went up to +my father's room. He lay on the bed breathing quickly. + +"You did splendidly, son," he said. "You slashed into her hard. It hurt +me to listen--but it's all right. Let her suffer--she had to. It hit +her, I tell you--she'll break down! If we can only keep her here! Get +Eleanore!" + +He stopped with a jerk, his hand went to his heart, and he panted and +scowled with pain. + +"I sent for her," I told him. "She's come and she's in Sue's room now. +Let's leave them alone. It's going to be all right, Dad." + +I sent for a doctor who was an old friend of my father's. He came and +spent a long time in the room, and I could hear them talking. At last he +came out. + +"It won't do," he said. "We can't have any more of this. We must keep +your sister out of his sight. She can't stay alone with him in this +house, and she can't go now to your anarchist friend. If she does it may +be the end of your father. Suppose you persuade her to come to you." + +But here Eleanore joined us. + +"I have a better plan," she said. "I've been talking to Sue and she has +agreed. She's to stay--and we'll move over here and try to keep Sue and +her father apart." + +"What about Joe?" I asked her. + +"Sue has promised me not to see Joe until the strike is over. It will +only be a matter of weeks--perhaps even days--it may break out +to-morrow. It's not much of a time for Joe to get married--besides, it's +the least she can do for her father--to wait that long. And she has +agreed. So that much is settled." + +She went home to pack up a few things for the night. When she came back +it was evening. She spent some time with Sue in her room, while I stayed +in with father. I gave him a powder the doctor had left and he was soon +sleeping heavily. + +At last in my old bedroom Eleanore and I were alone. It was a long time +before we could sleep. + +"Funny," said Eleanore presently, "how thoroughly selfish people can be. +Here's Sue and your father going through a perfectly ghastly crisis. But +I haven't been thinking of them--not at all. I've been thinking of +us--of you, I mean--of what this strike will do to you. You're getting +so terribly tense these days." + +I reached over and took her hand: + +"You don't want me to run away from it now?" + +"No," she said quickly. "I don't want that. I've told you that I'm not +afraid----" + +"Then we'll have to wait and see, won't we, dear? We can't help +ourselves now. I've got to keep on writing, you know--we depend on that +for our living. And I can't write what I did before--I don't seem to +have it in me. So I'm going into this strike as hard as I can--I'm going +to watch it as hard as I can and think it out as clearly. I know I'll +never be like Joe--but I do feel now I'm going to change. I've got +to--after what I've been shown. The harbor is so different now. Don't +you understand?" + +I felt her hand slowly tighten on mine. + +"Yes, dear," she said, "I understand----" + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +The events of that day dropped out of my mind in the turbulent weeks +that followed. For day by day I felt myself sink deeper and deeper into +the crowd, into surging multitudes of men--till something that I found +down there lifted me up and swept me on--into a strange new harbor. + +Of the strike I can give only one man's view, what I could see with my +one pair of eyes in that swiftly spreading confusion that soon embraced +the whole port of New York and other ports both here and abroad. War +correspondents, I suppose, must feel the same chaos around them, but in +my case it rose from within me as well. I was like a war correspondent +who is trying to make up his mind about war. What was good in this labor +rebellion? What was bad? Where was it taking me? + +From the beginning I could feel that it meant for me a breaking of ties +with the safe strong world that had been my life. I felt this first +before the strike, when I went to my magazine editor. He had taken my +story about Jim Marsh, but when I came to him now and told him that I +wanted to cover the strike, + +"Go ahead if you like," he answered, a weary indulgence in his tone, "I +don't want to interfere in your work. But I can't promise you now that +we'll buy it. If you feel you must write up this strike you'll have to +do it at your own risk." + +"Why?" I asked. For years my work had been ordered ahead. I thought of +that small apartment of ours, of my father sick at home--and I felt +myself suddenly insecure. + +"Because," he answered coolly, "I'm not quite sure that what you write +will be a fair unbiassed presentation of the facts. I've seen so many +good reporters utterly spoiled in strikes like this. They lose their +whole sense of proportion and never seem to get it quite back." + +This little talk left me deeply disturbed. But I was unwilling to give +up my plan, and so, after some anxious thinking, I decided to free-lance +it. After all, if this one story didn't sell I could borrow until I +wrote something that did. And I set to work with an angry vim. The very +thought that my old world was closing up behind me made my mind the more +ready now for the new world opening ahead. + +From the old house in Brooklyn I once more explored my harbor. All day +and the greater part of each night I went back over my old ground. Old +memories rose in sharp contrast to new views I was getting. From the top +I had come to the bottom. Crowds of sweating laborers rose everywhere +between me and my past. And as between me and my past, and between these +masses and their rulers, I felt the struggle drawing near, the whole +immense region took on for me the aspect of a battlefield, with puffs +and clouds and darting lines of smoke and steam from its ships and +trains and factories. Through it I moved confusedly, troubled and +absorbed. + +I saw the work of the harbor go now with an even mightier rush, because +of the impending strike. The rumor of its coming had spread far over the +country, and shippers were hurrying cargoes in. I saw boxes and barrels +by thousands marked "Rush." And they were rushed! On one dock I saw the +dockers begin at seven in the morning and when I came back late in the +evening the same men were there. At midnight I went home to sleep. When +I came back at daybreak the same men were there, and I watched them +straining through the last rush until the ship sailed that day at noon. +They had worked for twenty-nine hours. In that last hour I drew +close--so close that I could feel them heaving, sweating, panting, feel +their laboring hearts and lungs. Long ago I had watched them thus, but +then I had seen from a different world. I had felt the pulse of a nation +beating and I had gloried in its speed. But now I felt the pulse-beats +of exhausted straining men, I saw that undertaker's sign staring fixedly +from across the way. "_Certainly_ I'm talking to you!" Six thousand +killed and injured! + +I saw accidents that week. I saw a Polish docker knocked on the head by +the end of a heavy chain that broke. I saw a little Italian caught by +the foot in a rope net, swung yelling with terror into the air, then +dropped--his leg was broken. And toward the end of a long night's work I +saw a tired man slip and fall with a huge bag on his shoulders. The bag +came down on top of him, and he lay there white and still. Later I +learned that his spine had been broken, that he would be paralyzed for +life. + +But what I saw was only a part. From the policemen's books alone I found +a record for that week of six dockers killed and eighty-seven injured. I +traced about a score of these cases back into their tenement homes, and +there I found haggard, crippled men and silent, anxious women, the +mothers of small children. Curious and deeply thrilled, these children +looked at the man on the bed, between his groans of pain I heard their +eager questions, they kept getting in their mother's way. One thin +Italian mother, whose nerves were plainly all on edge, suddenly slapped +the child at her skirts, and then when it began to cry she herself burst +into tears. + +These tragic people gripped me hard. The stokers down in their foul hole +in the bottom of the ship had only disturbed and repelled me. But these +crippled dockers in their homes, with their women and their children, +their shattered lives, their agony, starvation looming up ahead--they +brought a tightening at my throat--nor was it all of pity. For these +labor victims were not dumb, I heard the word "strike!" spoken bitterly +here, and now I felt that they had a right to this bitter passion of +revolt. + +But still I felt their way was wrong. How could any real good, any sure +intelligent remedies for all this fearful misery, come out of the minds +of such people as these, who were rushing so blindly into revolt? I went +into saloons full of dockers and stokers, and out of the low harsh +hubbub there the word "strike!" came repeatedly to my ears, recklessly +from drunken tongues. Wherever I went I heard that word. I heard it +spoken in many languages, in many tones. Anxious old women said +"strike!" with fear. Little street urchins shouted it joyously. Even the +greenest foreigner understood its meaning. A little Greek, who had +broken his arm and was one of the cases I traced home, understood none +of my questions. "You speak no English?" He shook his head. "Strike!" I +ventured. Up he leaped. "Yo' bet!" he cried emphatically. + +What was it deep within me that leaped up then as though to meet that +burning passion in his eyes? + +"Keep your head," I warned myself. "To change all this means years of +work--thinking of the clearest kind. And what clear thinking can these +men do? The ships have got them down so low they've no minds left to get +out of their holes!" + +And yet--as now on every dock, that "strike feeling" in the air kept +growing tenser, tenser--its tensity crept into me. What was it that lay +just ahead? I felt like a man starting out on a journey--a journey from +which when he comes back he will find nothing quite the same. + +I had a talk about the strike one day with Eleanore's father. I can +still see the affectionate smile on his face, he looked as though he +were seeing me off. + +"My dear boy," he said, in his kind quiet voice, "don't forget for even +a minute that the men who stand behind my work are going to stamp out +this strike. This modern world is too complex to allow brute force and +violence to wreck all that civilization has done. I'm sorry you've gone +into this--but so long as you have, as Eleanore's father, I want you now +to promise you won't write a line until the strike is over and you have +had plenty of time to get clear. Don't let yourself get swamped in +this--remember that you have a wife and a small son to think of." + +My father had put it more sharply. He was out of bed now and he seemed +to take strength from the news reports that he eagerly read of the +struggle so fast approaching. + +"At sea," he said, "when stokers try to quit their jobs and force their +way on deck, they're either put in irons or shot down as mutineers. +You'll see your friend Kramer dead or in jail. No danger to your sister +now. Only see that _you_ keep out of it!" + +I did not tell him of my work, for I knew it would only excite him +again, and excitement would be dangerous. + +"Now you and Eleanore must go home," said Sue that night. "You'll have +enough to think of. I'll be all right with father--he knows there's +nothing to do but wait, and he's so kind to me now that it hurts. Poor +old Dad--how well he means. But he's the old and we're the new--and +that's the whole trouble between us." A sudden light came in her eyes. +"The new are bound to win!" she said. + +But I was not so sure of the new. To me it was still very vague and +chaotic. After we had moved back to New York, at the times when I came +home to sleep, Eleanore was silent or quietly casual in her remarks, but +I felt her always watching me. One night when I came in very late and +thought her asleep, being too tired to sleep myself, I went to our +bedroom window and stood looking off down, into the distant expanse of +the harbor. How quiet and cool it seemed down there. But presently out +of the darkness behind, Eleanore's arm came around me. + +"I wonder whether the harbor will ever let us alone," she said. "It was +so good to us at first--we were getting on so splendidly. But it's +taking hold of us now again--as though we had wandered too far away and +were living too smoothly and needed a jolt. Never mind, we're not +afraid. Only let's be very sure we know what we are doing." + +"We'll be very sure," I whispered, and I held her very close. + +"Let's try to be sure together," she said. "Don't leave me out--I want +to be in. I want to see as much as I can--and help in any way I can. If +you make any friends I want to know them. Remember that whatever comes, +thy people shall be mine, my dear." + + * * * * * + +The next day the strike began. + +Out of the docks at nine in the morning I saw dockers pour in crowds. +They moved on to other docks, merged themselves in other crowds, +scattered here and gathered there, until at last a black tide of men, +here straggling wide, here densely massed, moved slowly along the +waterfront. + +In and out of these surging throngs I moved, so close that in the quiver +of muscles, the excited movements of big limbs, the rough eagerness of +voices that spoke in a babel of many tongues, such a storm of emotions +beat in upon me that I felt I had suddenly dived into an ocean of human +beings, each one of whom was as human as I. I caught a glimpse of Joe +hurrying by. And I thought of Sue, and of Joe's appeal to her and to me +to throw in our lives with such strangers as these whose coarse heavy +faces were pressing so close. And I thought of Eleanore at home. "Thy +people shall be mine, my dear." + +Teamsters drove clattering trucks through the crowds. Some of them did +not unload, but others dumped piles of freight by the docks. The dam had +begun. All day long the freight piled up, and by evening the light of a +pale moon shone down upon acres of barrels and boxes. Then the teamsters +unharnessed their teams, left the empty trucks with poles in air, and +the teamsters and their horses and all the crowds of strikers scattered +by degrees up into the tenement regions. Bursts of laughter and singing +came now and then out of the saloons. + +Silence settled down over the docks. Walking now down the waterfront I +met only a figure here and there. A taxi came tearing and screeching by, +and later down the long empty space came a single wagon slowly. A smoky +lantern swung under its wheels, and its old white horse with his shaggy +head down came plodding wearily along. He alone had no strike feeling. + +Battered and worn from the day's impressions I wanted to be alone and to +think. I made my way in and out among trucks and around a dockshed out +to a slip. It was filled with barges, tugs and floats jammed in between +the two big vessels that loomed one at either pier. It was a dark jumble +of spars and masts, derricks, funnels and cabin roofs, all shadowy and +silent. A single light gleamed here and there from the long dark deck of +the Morgan coaster close to my right. She was heavily loaded still, for +she had come to dock too late. Smoke still drifted from her stout +funnel, steam puffed now and then from her side. Behind her, reaching a +mile to the North, were ships by the dozen, coasters and great ocean +liners, loaded and waiting to discharge or empty and waiting to reload. +And to the South were miles of railroad sheds already packed to +bursting. I thought of the trains from all over the land still rushing a +nation's produce here, and of the starlit ocean roads, of ships coming +from all over the world, the men in their fiery caverns below feeding +faster the fires to quicken their speed, all bringing cargoes to this +port. More barrels, boxes, crates and bags to be piled high up on the +waterfront. For the workers had gone away from their work, and the great +white ships were still. + +"What has all this to do with me?" + +There came into my mind the picture of a little man I had seen that day, +a suburban commuter by his looks, frowning from a ferryboat upon a +cheering crowd of strikers. I laughed to myself as I thought of him. He +had seemed so ludicrously small. + +"Yes, my friend," I thought, "you and I are a couple of two-spots here, +swallowed up in the scenery." + +I thought of what Joe had said that day: "When you see the crowd, in a +strike like this, loosen up and show all it could be if it had the +chance--that sight is so big it blots you out--you sink--you melt into +the crowd." + +Something like that happened to me. I had seen the multitudes "loosen +up," I had felt myself melt into the crowd. But I had not seen what they +could be nor did I see what they could do. Far to the south, high over +all the squalid tenement dwellings, rose that tower of lights I had +known so well, the airy place where Eleanore's father had dreamed and +planned his clean vigorous world. It was lighted to-night as usual, as +though nothing whatever had happened. I thought of the men I had seen +that day. How crassly ignorant they seemed. And yet in a few brief hours +they had paralyzed all that the tower had planned, reduced it all to +silence, nothing. Could it be that such upheavals as these meant an end +to the rule of the world from above, by the keen minds of the men at the +top? Was that great idol which had been mine for so many glad years, +that last of my gods, Efficiency, beginning to rock a little now upon +its deep foundations? + +What could these men ever put in its place? I recalled the words of an +old dock watchman with whom I had talked the evening before. From the +days of the Knights of Labor he had been through many strikes, and all +had failed, he told me. His dog sat there beside him, a solemn old red +spaniel, looking wistfully into his master's face. And with somewhat the +same expression, looking out on the moonlit Hudson, the old striker had +said slowly: + +"Before these labor leaders will do half of what they say--a pile of +water will have to go by." + +A sharp slight sound behind me jerked me suddenly out of my thoughts. I +jumped as though at a shot. How infernally tight my nerves were getting. +The sound had come from a mere piece of paper blown by the wind--a rough +salt wind which now blew in from the ocean as though impatient of all +this stillness. From below came a lapping and slapping of waves. Above +me a derrick mast growled and whined as it rocked. And now as I looked +about me all those densely crowded derricks moved to and fro against the +sky. I had never felt in this watery world such deep restlessness as +now. + +"I wonder if you'll ever stop heaving," I thought half angrily. "I +wonder what I'll be like when you finally get through with me. When will +you ever let me stand pat and get things settled for good and all? When +stop this endless starting out?" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +What could such men as these raise up in place of the mighty life they +had stilled? + +At first only chaos. + +As I went along the waterfront I felt a confused disappointment. Deep +under all my questioning there had been a vague subconscious hope that I +would see a miracle here. I had looked for an army. I saw only mobs of +angry men. They were "picketing" the docks, here making furious rushes +at men suspected of being "scabs," there clustering quickly around some +talker or some man who was reading a paper, again drifting up into the +streets of teeming foreign quarters, jamming into barrooms, voicing +wildest rumors, talking, shouting, pounding tables with huge fists. And +to me there was nothing inspiring but only something terrible here, an +appalling force turned loose, sightless and unguided. What a fool I had +been to hope. The harbor held no miracles. + +The strike leaders seemed to have little control. Headquarters were in +the wildest disorder. Into the big bare meeting hall and through the +rooms adjoining drifted multitudes of men. There were no inner private +rooms and Marsh saw everyone who came. He was constantly shaking hands +or drawling casual orders, more like suggestions than commands. I caught +sight of Joe Kramer's face at his desk, where he was signing and giving +out union cards to a changing throng that kept pressing around him. +Joe's face was set and haggard. He had been at that desk all night. + +"It's hopeless. They can do nothing," I thought. + +But when I came back the next morning I felt a sudden shock of +surprise. For in some mysterious fashion a crude order had appeared. The +striker throng had poured into the hall, filled all the seats and then +wedged in around the walls. They were silent and attentive now. On the +stage sat Marsh and his fellow leaders. Before them in the first three +rows of seats was the Central Committee, a rough parliament sprung up +over night. Each member, I found, had been elected the night before by +his "district committee." These district bodies had somehow formed in +the last two days and in them leaders had arisen. The leaders were here +to plan together, the mass was here to make sure they planned right. And +watching the deep rough eagerness on all those silent faces, that vague +hope stirred again in my breast. + +Presently I caught Joe's eye. At once he left his platform seat and came +to me in the rear of the hall. + +"Come on, Bill," he said. "We want you up here." And we made our way up +to the platform. There Marsh reached over and gripped my hand. + +"Hello, Bill, glad you're with us," he said. I tingled slightly at his +tone and at a thousand friendly eyes that met mine for an instant. Then +it was over. The work went on. + +What they did at first seemed haphazard enough. Reports from the +districts were being read with frequent interruptions, petty corrections +and useless discussions that strayed from the point and made me +impatient. And yet wide vistas opened here. Telegrams by the dozen were +read from labor unions all over the country, from groups of socialists +East and West, there were cables from England, Germany, France, from +Russia, Poland, Norway, from Italy, Spain and even Japan. "Greetings to +our comrades!" came pouring in from all over the earth. What measureless +army of labor was this? All at once the dense mass in the rear would +part to let a new body of men march through. These were new strikers to +swell the ranks, and at their coming all business would stop, there +would be wild cheers and stamping of feet, shrill whistles, pandemonium! + +Gradually I began to feel what was happening in this hall. That first +"strike feeling"--diffused, shifting and uncertain--was condensing as in +a storm cloud here, swelling, thickening, whirling, attracting swiftly +to itself all these floating forces. Here was the first awakening of +that mass thought and passion, which swelling later into full life was +to give me such flashes of insight into the deep buried resources of the +common herd of mankind, their resources and their power of vision when +they are joined and fused in a mass. Here in a few hours the great +spirit of the crowd was born. + +For now the crowd began to question, think and plan. Ideas were thrown +out pell mell. I found that every plan of action, everything felt and +thought and spoken, though it might start from a single man, was at once +transformed by the feeling of all, expressed in fragments of speech, in +applause, or in loud bursts of laughter, or again by a chilling silence +in which an unwelcome thought soon died. The crowd spoke its will +through many voices, through men who sprang up and talked hard a few +moments, then sat down and were lost to sight--some to rise later again +and again and grow in force of thought and expression, others not to be +seen again, they had simply been parts of the crowd, and the crowd had +made them rise and speak. + +On the first day of this labor parliament, up rose a stolid Pole. He was +no committeeman but simply a member of the throng. + +"Yo' sand a spickair to my dock," he said. "Pier feefty-two--East +Reever. I t'ink he make de boys come out." He sat down breathing +heavily. + +"You don't need any speaker, go yourself," an Irishman called from +across the hall. + +"I no spick," said the Pole emphatically. + +"You're spicking now, ain't you?" There was a burst of laughter, and +the big man's face grew red. "You don't need to talk," the voice went +on. "Just go into your dock and yell 'Strike!' You've got chest enough, +you Pollock." + +The big Pole made his way out of the hall. In the rear I saw him light +his pipe and puff and scowl in a puzzled way. Then he disappeared. The +next day, in the midst of some discussion, he rose from another part of +the hall. + +"I want to say I strike my dock," he shouted. Nobody seemed to hear him, +it had nothing whatever to do with the subject, but he sat down with a +glow of pride. + +A Norwegian had arisen and was speaking earnestly, but his English was +so wonderful that no one could understand. + +"Shut up, you big Swede, go and learn English," somebody said. + +"He don't have to shut up." The voice of Marsh cut in, and the mass +backed up his curt rebuke by a murmur of approval. He had risen and come +forward, and now waited till there was absolute silence. "Everyone gets +a hearing here," he said. "We've got nine nationalities, but each one +checks his race at the door. Every man is to have a fair show. What we +need is an interpreter. Where's someone who can help this Swede?" + +There was a quick stirring in the mass and then a man was shoved out of +it. He went over to the speaker, who at once began talking intensely. + +"The first thing he wants to say," said the interpreter at the end of +the torrent, "is that he'd rather be dead than a Swede. He says he's a +Norwegian. His second point is that all bad feeling between +nationalities ought to be stopped if the strike's to be won. He says +he's seen fights already between Irish and Eyetalians." + +Up leaped an enormous negro docker who sounded as though he preached +often on Sundays. + +"Yes, brothers," he boomed, "let us stop our fights. Let us desist--let +us refrain. We are men from all countries, black and white. The last +speaker came from Norway--he came from way up there in the North. My +father came from Africa----" + +"He must have come last Monday," said a dry, thin voice from the back of +the hall, and there was a laugh. + +"Brothers," cried the black man, "I come here from the colored race. At +my dock I got over sixty negroes to walk out. Is there no place for us +in this strike? If my father was a slave, is my color so against me?" + +"It ain't your color, it's your scabbing," a sharp voice interrupted. +"They broke the last strike with coons like you. They brought you up in +boats from the South. And you scabbed--you scabbed yourself! Didn't you? +You did! You ---- of a nigger!" + +A little Italian sprang up in reply. He did not look like a docker. He +was gaily dressed in a neat blue suit with a bright red tie: + +"Fellow workers--I am Italian man! You call me Guinney, Dago, Wop--you +call another man Coon, Nigger--you call another man a Sheeny! Stop +calling names--call men fellow workers! We are on strike--let us not +fight each other--let us have peace--let us have a good time! I know a +man who has a big boat--and he say now we can have it for nothing--to +take our wives and children and make excursions every day. On the boat +we will have a good time. I am a musician--I play the violin on a boat +till I strike--so now I will get you the music. And we shall run that +boat ourselves! We have our own dockers to start it from dock--we have +our own stokers, our own engineers--we have our own pilots--we have all! +And it will be easy to steer that boat--for we have made the harbor +empty--we shall have the whole place to ourselves! Some day maybe soon +we have all the boats in the world for ourselves--and we shall be free! +All battle boats we shall sink in the sea--we stop all wars! So now we +begin--we stop all our fighting--we take out this boat--all our +comrades on board! No coons, no niggers, no sheenies, no wops! Fellow +workers--I tell you the name of our boat! _The Internationale!_" + +The little man's speech was greeted with a sudden roar of applause. For +the crowd had seen at once this danger of race hatred and was eager to +put it down. _The Internationale_ made her first trip on the following +day, and after that her daily cruise became the gala event of the +strike. Both decks of the clumsy craft were packed with strikers, their +wives and their children, and all up and down the harbor she went. The +little Italian and his friends had had printed a red pamphlet, +"Revolutionary Songs of the Sea," the solos of which he sang on the boat +while the rest came in on the chorus. A new kind of a "chanty man" was +he, voicing the wrongs and the fierce revolt and the surging hopes and +longings of all the toilers on the sea--while this ship that was run by +the workers themselves plowed over a strange new harbor. I watched it +one day from the end of a pier. It approached with a swelling volume of +song. It drew so near I could see the flushed faces of those who were +singing, some with their eyes on their leader's face, others singing out +over the water as though they were spreading far and wide the exultant +prophecy of that song. It passed, the singing died away--and still I sat +there wondering. + +"We shall have all the boats in the world for ourselves--and we shall be +free! All battle boats we shall sink in the sea! We stop all wars! So +now we begin!" + +Was it indeed a beginning? Was this the opening measure of music that +would be heard round the world? My mind rejected the idea, I thought it +merest madness. But still that song rang in my ears. What deep +compelling force was here--this curious power of the crowd that had so +suddenly gripped hold of this simple Italian musician, this fiddler on +excursion boats, and in a few short days and nights had made him pour +into music the fire of its world-wide dreams? + +I saw it seize on others. One day a young girl rose up in the hall. A +stenographer on one of the docks, she was neatly, rather sprucely +dressed, but her face was white and scared. She had never made a speech +before. She was speaking now as though impelled by something she could +not control. + +"Comrades--fellow workers." Her voice trembled violently. She paused and +set her teeth, went on. "How about the women and babies?" she asked. "I +know of one who was born last night. And that's only one of a lot. We +have thousands of kids and old people--sick people too, and cripples and +drunks--all that these lovely jobs of ours have left on our backs. +They've got to be carried. Who's to take care of 'em, feed 'em, doctor +'em? If we're going to run the earth let's begin at home. What does +anyone know about that?" + +She sat down with a kind of a gasp of relief. Her seat was close to the +platform, and I could see her bright excited eyes as she listened to +what she had started here. For the crowd, as though it had only been +waiting for this girl to speak its thought, now seized upon her +question. Sharp voices were heard all over the hall. Some said they +could get doctors, others knew of empty stores that could be had for +nothing and used as free food stations. An assistant cook from an ocean +liner told where his chief bought wholesale supplies. And the girl who +had roused this discussion, her nervousness forgotten now, rose up again +and again with so many quick, eager suggestions, that when the first +relief station was opened that evening she was one of those placed in +charge. + +I saw her grow amazingly, for now I came to know her well. Her name was +Nora Ganey. At home that night when Eleanore said, "Remember, dear, I +want something to do that will let me see the strike for myself"--I +thought at once of this work of relief. Eleanore would be good at this, +she had trained herself in just such work. And it appealed to her at +once. She went down with me the next morning, and she and Nora Ganey, +though their lives had been so different, yet proved at once to be +kindred souls. Eleanore gave half her time to the work, and these two +became fast friends. + +Before the strike Nora had sat all day in an office pounding a +typewriter, several nights a week she had gone to dances in public +halls, and that had made her entire life. In the strike she was at her +food station all day, and each evening till late she visited homes, +looking into appeals for aid and if need be issuing tickets for food. +She heard the bitterest stories from wives of harbor victims, and she +began telling these stories in speeches. Soon she was sent out over the +city to speak at meetings and ask for aid. With Eleanore I went one +night to hear this young stenographer speak to twenty thousand in +Madison Square Garden. And the strike leader who made that speech was +not the girl of two weeks before. Her life had been as utterly changed +as though she had jumped to another world. + +Through Marsh and Joe, in those tense days, I was fast making striker +friends. With some I had long intimate talks, I ate many kitchen suppers +and spent many evenings in tenement homes. But though by degrees I felt +myself drawn to these men who called me "Bill," when alone with each one +I felt little or none of that passion born of the crowd as a whole. With +a sharp drop, a sudden reaction, I would feel this new world gone. Its +strength and its wide vision would seem like mere illusions now. What +could we little pigmies do with the world? Its guidance was for Dillon +and all the big men I had known. Often in those days of groping, knotty +problems all unsolved, with a sickening hunger I would think of those +men at the top, of their keen minds so thoroughly trained, their vast +experience in affairs. I would feel myself in a hopeless mob, a dense, +heavy jungle of ignorant minds. And groping for a foothold here I would +find only chaos. + +But back we would go into the crowd, and there in a twinkling we would +be changed. Once more we were members of the whole and took on its huge +personality. And again the vision came to me, the dream of a weary world +set free, a world where poverty and pain and all the bitterness they +bring might in the end be swept away by this awakening giant here--which +day by day assumed for me a personality of its own. Slowly I began to +feel what It wanted, what It hated, how It planned and how It acted. And +this to me was a miracle, the one great miracle of the strike. For years +I had labored to train myself to concentrate on one man at a time, to +shut out all else for weeks on end, to feel this man so vividly that his +self came into mine. Now with the same intensity I found myself striving +day and night to feel not one but thousands of men, a blurred +bewildering multitude. And slowly in my striving I felt them fuse +together into one great being, look at me with two great eyes, speak to +me with one deep voice, pour into me with one tremendous burning passion +for the freedom of mankind. + +Was this another god of mine? + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +The great voice of the crowd--incessant, demanding of me and of all +within hearing to throw in our lives, to join in this march to a new +free world regardless of all risk to ourselves--grew clear to me now. + +I felt myself drawn in with the rest. I was helping in the publicity +work, each day I met with the leaders to draw up statements for the +press. And these messages to the outside world that I wrote to the slow +and labored dictation of some burly docker comrade, or again by myself +at dawn to express the will of a meeting that had lasted half the +night--slowly became for me my own. Almost unawares I had taken the +habit of asking: + +"How much can _we_ do? How sane and vigilant can _we_ be to keep clear +of violence, bloodshed, mobs and a return to chaos? How long can we hold +together fast? How far can we march toward this promised land?" + +In order to see ourselves as a whole and feel our swiftly swelling +strength, having now burst the confines of our hall, we began to hold +meetings out on "the Farm." There are many "farms" on the waterfront, +for a "farm" is simply the open shore space in front of a dock. But +this, which was one of the widest of all, now came to be spoken of as +"the Farm," and took on an atmosphere all its own. For there were scenes +here which will long endure in the memories of thousands of people. For +them it will be a great bright spot in the times gone by--in one of +those times behind the times, as this strange world keeps rushing on. + +From the top of a pile of sand, where I stood with the speakers at the +end of a soft April day, I saw the whole Farm massed solid with people. +This mass rose in hummocks and hills of humanity over the piles of brick +and sand and of crates and barrels dumped by the trucks, and out over +the water they covered the barges and the tugs, and there were even +hundreds upon the roofs of docksheds. The yelp of a dog was heard now +and then and the faint cries of children. But the mass as a whole stood +motionless, without a sound. They had stood thus since two o'clock, and +now the sun was setting. To the west the harbor was empty, no smoke from +ships obscured the sun, and it shone with radiant clearness upon eleven +races of men, upon Italians, Germans, French, on English, Poles and +Russians, on Negroes and Norwegians, Lascars, Malays, Coolies, on +figures burly, figures puny, faces white and faces swarthy, yellow, +brown and black. The sun shone upon all alike--except where that Morgan +liner, still lying unloaded at her dock, threw a long dark creeping +shadow out across the throng. + +Thirty thousand people were here. Thirty thousand intensely alive. As I +eagerly watched their faces it was not their poverty now but their +boundless fresh vitality that took hold of me so hard. I had read many +radical books of late, in my groping for a foothold, and I had found +most of them dry affairs. But now the crowd through its leaders had laid +hold upon the thoughts in these books, had made them its own and so +given them life. In the process the thoughts had been twisted and bent, +some parts ignored and others brought out of all their nice proportions. +Exaggeration, sentiment, all kinds of crudity were here. But it was +crudity alive, a creed was here in action. Out of all the turmoil, the +take and give, the jar and clash back there in the meeting hall, had +come certain thoughts and passions, hopes and plans, that the multitude +had not ignored or hooted but had caught up and cheered into life. And +these ideas that they had cheered were now being pounded back into their +minds. Monotonous repetition, you say? Yes, monotonous repetition--slow +sledgehammer blows upon something red hot--pounding, pounding, +pounding--that when it cooled its shape might be changed. + +Nora Ganey was speaking. + +"Look at those ocean liners!" she cried. Her voice was sharp and +strident. "They're paralyzed now, and because they are they're costing +the big companies millions of dollars every day. That's what their time +is worth to their owners. But what are those ships worth to you? Ten +dollars a week and a broken arm--or a leg or a skull, you can take your +choice. Six thousand of you men were crippled or crushed to death last +year--and that, let me remind you, was only in the port of New York. Why +was it? Why did it have to be? And why will it always have to be until +you make these ships your own? Because, fellow workers, the time of the +ships is worth so much to their owners that the work has got to be +rushed day and night--and in that rush somebody's bound to get hurt--if +he isn't killed he's lucky! And as for the rest, when at last you're +through and dead tired--they point to the saloons and say, 'Now have a +few drinks! We won't need you again till next Tuesday'! Do you know what +all this means in your homes? It means drunks, cripples, sick and poor! +It means such sights as I'll never forget. I've seen 'em all--just +lately! + +"I never thought of such things before. I liked my office job on the +dock and all the jobs around me--and when sailing time drew near I liked +the last excitement. I liked the rich furs and dresses and the cute +little earrings and slippers and dogs that were attached to the women +who came. I liked to see them pile out of their motors and laugh and +make eyes at the men they belonged to. I liked to peep into the cabins +they had--get on to all the luxuries there. + +"But out of all this magnificence, friends, and this work that keeps it +going--I saw one day a man come on a stretcher. He was dead. And that +started me thinking. That's why I came out when the strike was called. +And in the strike I've gone into your homes. I've seen what those soft +expensive female dolls and all the work that makes them costs. And I've +got a thrill of another kind! It's a thrill that'll last for the rest of +my life! And in yours, too, fellow workers! For I believe that you'll go +right on--that you'll strike and strike and strike again--till you make +these tenements own these ships--and a life won't be thrown away for a +dollar!" + +She stopped sharply and stepped back, and there burst out a frenzy of +applause, which died down to be caught up and prolonged and deepened +into a steady roar, as Marsh came slowly forward. He stood there +bareheaded, impassive and quiet, listening to the great voice of the +mass. At last he turned to the chairman. The latter picked up a whistle, +and at that piercing call to order slowly the cheering began to subside. +Faces pressed eagerly closer. Marsh looked all around him. + +"Fellow workers," he began, "it's hard for a man to be understood when +he's talking to men from all over the world." He pointed down to a +cluster of Lascars with white turbans on their heads. "_You_ don't +understand me. But some of your comrades will give you my speech, for we +are all strike brothers here. On the ship there is no flag--on the ship +there is no nation--on the ship there is only work--on the ship there +are only the workers! + +"For a ship may be equipped with the most powerful engines to drive +her--she may have the best brains to direct her course--but the ship +can't sail until you go aboard! You're the men who make the ships of +use, you're the men who give value to the stock of all the big ship +companies! You are the ship industry--and to you the ship industry +should belong! + +"I want you now to think of a tombstone. Out in the Atlantic, two miles +down they tell me, a big ship is stuck with her bow in the ooze of the +ocean floor and her stern six hundred feet up in the water. In the cold +green light down there she looks like a tombstone--and she is packed +with dead people inside. She is there because where she should have had +lifeboats she had French cafés instead, and sun parlors for the ladies. +Some of these ladies went down with the ship, and we heard a lot about +their screams. But we haven't heard much of the cries for help of the +thousands of men who go down every year in rotten old ships upon the +seas! Nor have we heard of the millions more who are killed on land--on +the railroads, in the mines and mills and stinking slums of cities! + +"But now we've decided that cries like these are to be heard all over +the world. For we've only got one life apiece--we're not quite sure of +another. And because we do all the work that is done we want all the +life there is to be had! All the life there is to be had--that's what we +are striking for! That is our share of the life in this world! And until +we get our share this labor war will have no end! Other wars may come +and go--but under them all on land and sea this war of ours will go +steadily on--will swallow up all other wars--will swallow up in all your +minds all hatred of your brother men! For you they will be workers all! +With them you will rise--and the world will be free!" + + * * * * * + +When the long stormy din of cheers had little by little died away Joe +Kramer began the last speech of the day. He had eaten and slept little, +he had lived on coffee and cigarettes, and there was a strained look in +his deep eyes as he rose up lean and gaunt by my side. + +"I'm here to-day to speak to the men who work in stokeholes naked," he +said. "I'm here to talk of the lives you lead--the lives that millions +before you have led--for a few brief years--and then they have died. For +lives in stokeholes are not long. And before I begin I propose that we +stand for a moment with uncovered heads." He looked out over the +multitude as though seeing far beyond them, and his voice was as harsh +as the look in his eyes. "As a tribute to all the dead stokers," he +said. + +And in a breathless silence the multitude did what he had asked. Joe +broke this silence sharply. + +"Now for life and the living," he said. "Why was it that those men all +died? What has the change from sails to steam done to the lives of the +men at sea? + +"The old sailor at least had air to breathe. But what you breathe is red +hot gas--I know because I've been there. There is a gong upon the wall, +and when it clangs you heave in coal, and if when it clangs faster you +don't keep quite up to its pace, a white light flashes out of the wall, +and that light is the Chief Engineer's way of saying, 'God damn you, +keep up those fires down there! Time is money! Who are you?' + +"The old-time sailor lived on deck. He had the winds, the sun and the +stars. But you live down between steel walls--with only the glare of +electric lights in which you sleep and eat and sweat. You work at all +kinds of irregular hours, for you there is no day or night. You don't +know whether the millionaire and his last and loveliest wife are +drinking champagne before going to bed, in their cabin de luxe above +you, or taking their coffee the next day at noon. You don't know about +anything way up there--unless you go up as I've seen you do, half out of +your senses from the heat, and make a sudden jump for the rail. The cry +is heard--'Man overboard!'--then shrieks and a chorus of 'Oh-my-God's!' +And then somebody says, 'It's only a stoker.'" + +He stopped short, and at the sudden roar of the crowd I saw him frown +and quiver. He drew a deep, slow breath and went on: + +"They threw off all the good in the ship with sails--but they carefully +kept all that was bad. The old mutiny laws--they kept all that. +Undermanning of crews--they kept all that. The waterfront sharks--they +kept all that. But there was one thing they couldn't keep--the old +sailor's habit of standing all this! He had run away to sea as a boy, +he'd been kicked all his life by the bucko mate into a state where he +couldn't kick back. But with you men it is not so. Among all the +thousands standing here most were on shore a few years ago, and you took +your land views with you on board. You organized seamen's unions. The +one in this country was meek and mild. It did not strike, it went on its +knees to Congress instead, and here's part of the written petition it +made. 'We raise our manacled hands in humble supplication--and we pray +that the nations of the earth issue a decree for our emancipation--restore +us our rights as brother men.' But Congress had no ear for you then. +Sailors are men who have no votes. And so you failed in your pleading. + +"But in the labor movement there seems to be no such word as fail! You +have not given up your union--instead you have formed one of a kind more +dangerous to your masters! You have not made smaller your requests--no, +you are now demanding more! And instead of asking for merciful laws you +are saying, 'We are done with your laws, will have none of your laws, +will break your laws when they come in our way!' + +"And what do your masters answer? Here are thousands of deserters--every +man here has broken the law by leaving his ship! But have they tried to +arrest you? No! They're afraid to arrest twenty thousand men, they're +afraid of this strike, they're afraid of you! They're so almighty scared +downtown that though we've been only a week on strike they've already +sent their commands to their Congress to give us what merciful laws we +like. They're scared because we've thrown over their laws--because they +know that we now see our power--to stop all their ships and the trade of +their land and send their stock market into a panic! + +"And now do you know what I want you to do? I want you to look at their +ships, at their docks, at their harbor, men--and laugh--laugh! Don't you +see there's no need of violence? Laugh! In old times the people built +barricades. You don't need barricades nor any guns--all you've got to do +is to stand here and laugh! Look at all you have done to your +bosses--and laugh! To this town, to this nation--and laugh, laugh! +Look--and think--of what you _can_ do--all you--and you--and you--and +you--by just folding your arms! Think of all you _will_ do! And +laugh--laugh! Laugh! Laugh!" + +He broke off with both arms raised, and there followed one moment +without a sound. Then suddenly, quick and hard and clear, from a corner +of this human ocean, I heard a single peal of laughter. In an instant +scores joined in. Rising in outbursts here and there, deepening, rushing +out over the Farm, it gathered and rolled in wave on wave, rising, +always rising. And it swelled into such a laugh that I saw the police +feel for their clubs. Reporters scrambled for high places, turned their +kodaks on it all. Women snatched up their babies in terror and ran. +Marsh stepped forward, caught Joe by the arm and jerked him back to +where I was standing. I gripped Joe's hand, it was icy cold. + +Marsh shouted to the chairman, and the piercing whistle for order was +heard. But it took a long time for that laugh to die. Long after the +meeting had broken up I saw groups gather together, and presently they +would begin to laugh, and their laughter would take on again that same +convulsive tensity. I heard small clusters laughing, and dense throngs +in hot saloons where the low rooms would echo and double the roar. + +Late at night out on the waterfront, under the bow of that Morgan ship, +I found two strikers smoking their pipes, and I sat down and lighted +mine. One was a Lascar, the other a Pole. In the strike these wanderers +over the earth had met on the waterfront under a wagon where each had +come to sleep the night. Since then they had become good friends. Each +spoke a little English, each one had caught bits here and there from the +speeches made that afternoon--and they had been trying to pool what +they'd heard, trying to find why it was they had laughed. As now I tried +to give them the gist of what Joe Kramer had said, from time to time +they would glance up at the big ship they had paralyzed and chuckle +softly to themselves. + +Then I went on to Marsh's speech. And out there in the darkness I could +feel their rough faces, one white and one brown, grow deeply, eagerly +intent, as these strike brothers listened to the voice that had spoken +the dream of the crowd: + +"Other wars may come and go--but under them all on land and sea this war +of ours will go steadily on--will swallow up all other wars--will +swallow up in all your minds all hatred of your brother men. For you +they will be workers all. With them you will rise--and the world will be +free." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +To all this, from the buildings far downtown that loomed like tall grim +shadows, the big companies said nothing. + +But that same night, while I sat talking to those two men, we heard a +sharp excited cry. We saw a man behind us running along the line of +saloons. From these and from the tenements came pouring angry throngs of +men. And out of the hubbub I caught the words, + +"They're bringing in the scabs! By boat!" + +Past a watchman that I knew I ran into a dockshed and out to the open +end of the dock. And there I saw a weird ominous scene. Up the empty +harbor, under a dark and cloudy sky, came four barges, black with negro +laborers, and ahead and around and behind them came police boats +throwing their searchlights upon an angry swarm of union picket dories, +from which as they drew nearer I heard furious voices shouting, "Scab!" +One of the barges docked where I stood and the negroes quickly slunk +inside. I drew back from them as they passed, for to me too they were +"scabs" that night. Afraid to face the men outside, whose jobs they had +taken, these strike-breakers were to live on the dock, under cover of +police. Soon half of them lay snoring on long crowded rows of cots. Food +and hot coffee were served to the rest. Then I heard the harsh rattle of +winches, I saw these negroes trundling freight, the cargo went swooping +up into the ship--and with a deep dismay, a sharp foreboding of trouble +ahead, I felt the work of the harbor begun. + +I heard a quick voice at my elbow: + +"Say. What the hell are _you_ doing here!" I turned to the Pinkerton man +by my side: + +"I'm reporting this strike." + +"No you're not, you're in here to report what you see to the strikers. +Now don't let's have any words, my friend, we've seen you in their +meeting-hall and we've all got your number. Go on out where you belong!" + +So I went out where I belonged. + +I went out to the crowd--but I found it changed, split up into furious +swarms of men, I found the beginning of chaos here. And the world that I +had left behind, the old world of order and rule from above, which I had +all but forgotten of late, now sharply made its presence felt. For the +god I had once known so well was neither dead nor sleeping. Behind +closed doors, the doors that had flown open once to show me every +courtesy, it had been silently laying plans and sending forth orders or +"requests" to all those in its service. + +The next day the newspapers changed their tone. Until now they had given +us half the front page. Every statement I had written had been printed +word for word. The reporters had been free to dig columns of "human +interest stuff" out of the rich mine of color here, and they had gone at +it hungrily, many with real sympathy. You would have thought the entire +press was on the side of the strikers, at times it had almost seemed to +me as though the entire country had risen in revolt. But now all this +was suddenly stopped, and in its place the front pages were filled with +news of a very different kind. "Big Companies Move at Last," were the +headlines, "Work of Breaking Strike Begun." The first ship would sail +that evening, three more would be ready to start the next day, and +within a week the big companies hoped to resume the regular service. +They regretted the loss to shippers of all the perishable produce which +to the value of millions of dollars had been rotting away at the docks. +They deplored the inconvenience and ruin which had been brought on the +innocent public by these bodies of rough, irresponsible men who had +openly defied the law. With such men there could be no arbitration, and +in fact there was no need. The port would be open inside of a week. + +So the big companies spoke at last. And as I read the papers, at home +that day at breakfast, I remembered what Eleanore's father had said: +"Don't let yourself forget for one minute that the men behind me are +going to stamp out this strike." Not without a fight, I thought. But I +was anxious and depressed. Dillon had not come of late, he had felt that +we wanted to be alone. As now I glanced at Eleanore, whose eyes were +intent on the news of the day, I saw with a rush of pity and love how +alone she suddenly felt in all this. A moment later she looked up. + +"Pretty bad, isn't it, dear?" she said. + +"It doesn't look very fine just now." + +"Are you going down to the docks?" + +"Yes, they'll want me," I replied, "to write some answer to this stuff." + +"Can you wait a few moments?" Eleanore rose. "I'll get on my hat. I +promised Nora Ganey I'd run her relief station for her to-day." I took +her a moment in my arms: + +"You're no quitter, are you?" I said. + +"We're in this now," she answered, just a little breathlessly. "And so +of course we'll see it through." + +So we went down together. + +The waterfront looked different now. In front of the docks where work +had begun a large space had been roped off. Inside the rope was an +unbroken cordon of police. And without, but pressing close, the +multitude of people for whom in a day so much had been changed, moved +restlessly, no longer sure of its power, no longer sure of anything but +a fast rising hatred of the men who had taken their jobs. As at times +the police lines tightened and the negroes came out for more freight, +thousands of ominous eyes looked on. Standing here at one such time, I +saw a negro striker pass. His head was down and he walked quickly--for +race feeling had begun. + +The first ship sailed that evening. Tens of thousands watched her sail. +And a bitter voice beside me said, + +"Laughing ain't going to be enough." + +Among men on strike there are two kinds of attitudes toward those who +take their places. The first is the scorn of the man who is winning. +"You are a dirty scab," it says. "You're a Judas to the working class +and a thief who is trying to steal my job. But you won't get it, we're +bound to win, and you're barely worth kicking out of the way." The +second is quite a different feeling. In this is the fear of the man who +is losing--and fear, as an English writer has said, is the great mother +of violence. "You _may keep_ my job! And if you do I'll be left with +nothing to live on!" It is this second attitude which is dreaded by +strike leaders, for it leads to a loss of all control, to machine guns +and defeat. + +With a deepening uneasiness I saw this feeling now appear. Starting in +small groups of men, I saw it spread out over the mass with the speed of +a prairie fire. I felt it that afternoon on the Farm, changing with a +startling speed that sure and mighty giant, the crowd, into a blind +disordered throng, a mottled mass of groups of men angrily discussing +the news. Threats against "scabs" were shouted out, the word "scab" +arose on every side. Bitter things were said against "coons," not only +"scabs" but "all of 'em, God damn 'em!" There were hints of violence and +open threats of sabotage, things done to dock machinery. + +But presently, by slow degrees, as though by a deep instinct groping for +the giant spirit that had been its life and soul, I felt the crowd now +gather itself. Slowly the cries all died away and all eyes turned to the +leader. Facing them with arms upraised, Marsh stood on the speakers' +pile, his own face imperturbable, his own voice absolutely sure. + +"Boys," he said, when silence had come, "one lonesome ship has gone to +sea--so badly loaded, they tell me, that she ain't got even a chance in +a storm. She was loaded by scabs." + +A savage storm of "booh's" burst forth. He waited until it subsided and +then continued quietly: + +"We have no use for scabs, black or white. But we have use for strikers, +_both_ black and white--our negro brothers are with us still, and we'll +show them we know that they are our brothers. We're going to stand +together, we won't let the bosses split us apart. And when we read the +papers to-morrow we're going to ask if the news is all there--not the +little news in big headlines about a ship or two leaving port, but the +big news in a little paragraph, that you have so stopped this nation's +trade that now its Congress is demanding that your masters come to +terms! And as for this lonesome ship that has sailed, if you want to see +just how much that means, go down and look at Wall Street. They say down +there, 'We're all right now.' But their market prices say, 'We're all +wrong!'" + +Suddenly out of the multitude there came a high, clear voice: + +"You seem to know Wall Street, Brother Marsh. Have you been selling +short down there? Who's your private broker?" + +Instantly there was a rush toward the questioner, but a group of police +formed quickly around him and he was hurried out of the way. + +"Get after that, Jim, get after it quick!" said Joe by my side. And +Marsh lost not a moment. + +"Let that man go!" he shouted. "He was sent here to try to stir up a +riot. That lie was framed up 'way downtown! But it is a lie and you all +know it--you know how I live and how my wife lives--we don't exactly +roll in wealth! But even if I were a crook, or if I were dead, this +strike would go on exactly the same--for think a minute and you'll see +that whatever has been done in this struggle has been done each time by +you. It's you who have decided each point. It's you who have been called +here to-day to decide the one big question. Congress has said, +'Arbitrate.' It's for you all to decide on our answer. This is no +one-man union, there is no one man they can fix, nor even a small +committee. We're a committee of fifty thousand here to make our own laws +for ourselves. As you lift up your hands and vote, so it will be +decided. But before you do I want to say this. I care so little for Wall +Street and I am so sure we'll win this strike, that with all the +strength I have in me I beg you to answer, 'No arbitration, nothing half +way! All or nothing!' If this is your answer, hold up your hands!" + +Up went the hands by thousands, the crowd was all together now and again +it spoke in one great roar. And with a sudden rush of hope I told +myself, "It's still alive! This fight has only just begun!" + +"That is our answer to Congress," said Marsh, when again quiet had been +restored. "That is the law which we have enacted. This strike is to be +fought through to the end. We are not to be scared by Wall Street or +worked upon by their hired thugs and so resort to violence. I am not +afraid of violence," he continued sharply, "I am here to preach it. But +the only violence I preach is the violence of folded arms. You have +folded your arms and their ships are dead. No other kind is so deadly as +that. Only hold to this kind of violence, and though they may send out a +ship here and there, this great port of New York will stay +closed--bringing ruin all over the land--till the nation turns to Wall +Street and says, 'We cannot wait! You will have to give in!'" + +As he ended his speech, it seemed to me as though he were reaching far +out, gripping that throng and holding it in. But for how long could he +hold them? + +Every paper that they read had suddenly turned against them and +prophesied their swift defeat. Two more ships sailed that night. And as +Marsh had foretold, their sailing was played up in pictures and huge +headlines, while the statement that I wrote was cut to one small +paragraph and put upon the second page. + +That night, with the eager aid of strikers of five nationalities, I +wrote a message to the crowd, translated it into German and French, +Spanish, Italian and Polish. A socialist paper loaned us their press, +and by noon our message was scattered in leaflets all up and down the +waterfront. This message went out daily now. For the greater part of +each night I sat in strike headquarters and wrote direct to the +tenements. + + * * * * * + +The next day Marsh proposed a parade, and the Farm took it up with +prompt acclaim. He challenged the mayor of the city to stop it. To +friends who came to him later he said: + +"You tell the mayor that I'm doing my best to give these men something +peaceful to do. If he wants to help me, all well and good. If he don't, +let him try to stop this parade." + +And the mayor granted a permit. + +The next afternoon the Fifth Avenue shops all closed their doors, and +over the rich displays in their windows heavy steel shutters were rolled +down. The long procession of motors and cabs with their gaily dressed +shoppers had disappeared, and in their place was another procession, +men, women and children, old and young. All around me as I marched I +heard an unending torrent of voices speaking many languages, uniting in +strange cheers and songs brought from all over the ocean world. +Bright-colored turbans bobbed up here and there, for there was no +separation of races, all walked together in dense crowds, the whole +strike family was here. And listening and watching I felt myself a +member now. Behind me came a long line of trucks packed with sick or +crippled men. At their head was a black banner on which was painted, +"Our Wounded." Behind the wagons a small cheap band came blaring forth a +funeral dirge, and behind the band, upon men's shoulders, came eleven +coffins, in which were those dock victims who had died in the last few +days. This section had its banner too, and it was marked, "Our Dead." + +But at one point, late in the afternoon, some marcher just ahead of me +suddenly started to laugh. At first I thought he was simply in fun. But +he kept on. Those near him then caught the look on his face and they all +began to laugh with him. Each moment louder, uglier, it swept up the +Avenue. And as it swelled in volume, like the menace of some furious +beast, the uncontrollable passion I heard filled me again with a sharp +foreboding of violence in the crisis ahead. + +"Why are you here?" I asked myself. "You can't join in a laugh like +that--you're no real member of this crowd--their world is not where you +belong!" + +But from somewhere deep inside me a voice rose up in answer: + +"If the crowd is growing blind--is this the time to leave it? Wait." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +Five more vessels sailed that day. And in the evening Eleanore said: + +"The women who came to our station to-day kept asking, 'Why can't they +close up the saloons? They're just the places for trouble to start.'" + +"We'll try," I said, and that same night Marsh sent word through a +friend to the mayor asking him to close all barrooms on the waterfront +during the strike. The mayor sent back a refusal. He said he had no +power. + +Late that night I went down the line and found each barroom packed with +men who were talking of those ships that had sailed. And they talked of +"scabs." Speakers I had not heard before were now shouting and pounding +the bar with their fists. The papers the next morning ran lurid accounts +of these saloons and the open threats of violence there. They censured +the mayor for his weakness and called for the militia. Why wait for mobs +and bloodshed? + +To that challenge I heard the reply of the crowd, on the Farm that +afternoon, in their applause of the fiery speech of a swarthy little +Spaniard. Francesco Vasca was his name. + +"They are sending hired murderers who will come here to shoot us down! +But when they come," he shouted, "I want you to remember this! A jail +cell is no smaller than our holes in the bottoms of their ships, the +food is no worse than the scouse we shall eat if we give in and go back +to our jobs! And so we shall not be driven back! When the militia come +against us, armed with guns and bayonets, then let us go to meet them +armed----" + +He stopped short, and from one end to the other of that motionless mass +of men there fell a death-like silence. Then he grimly ended his speech: + +"Armed with patience, courage and a deep belief in our cause." + +In the sudden storm of cheers and "booh's" I leaned over to Joe at my +side: + +"Why did you let that man speak?" + +The frown tightened on Joe's face. + +"Because he's one of us," he said. + +Seven more ships had sailed by that night. + +In front of the docksheds, outside the double line of police, the throng +had grown denser day by day, and each time the "scabs" came out there +had been a burst of imprecations, a fierce pressing forward. The police +had repeatedly used their clubs. Now late in the afternoon a red +hospital ambulance came clanging down the waterfront. It was greeted by +triumphant shouts. "Some black bastard hurt at last!" There was a quick +gathering of police and a lane was formed reaching into the dock. +Through this lane drove the ambulance, and as presently it emerged it +was greeted by tumultuous cheers. + +The papers the next morning said that a raging, howling mob had tried to +reach the injured man. Cries of "Sabotage!" had been heard. Two men, +they said, had been injured and one killed on the docks the day before. +Was this Sabotage? Had the strikers fixed the winches with the purpose +of killing strike-breakers? Why not? Their leaders had openly preached +it. Not only the Spaniard but Marsh himself was quoted as favoring +violence, and from that special Sabotage Issue of Joe Kramer's paper +long extracts were reprinted. Were not these three leaders responsible +for the death of that innocent black man? And should leaders such as +these be allowed to go on preaching murder? Put them in jail! Quell this +insurrection while still there was time! So spoke the press. + +The rumor quickly spread about that Marsh and the Spaniard and Joe +Kramer were to be arrested that day. All three remained at strike +headquarters, and a dozen burly strikers kept the throng from pouring +in. "Go on home," I could hear them shouting. But far from going, the +throng increased until it filled the whole street outside. Suddenly we +heard their cries rise into a raging din. + +"Well, boys," said Marsh, "I guess they're here." He gave a few more +sharp directions to his aides and then went out into the hall. A dozen +Central Office police in plain clothes were just coming in at the door. + +"All right," said Marsh, "we're ready. But unless you men were sent here +with the idea of starting trouble, suppose you leave here now without +us. Each one of us will meet you at any place and time you say." + +"We can't take your orders, Mr. Marsh." + +"You mean you _were_ sent here for trouble?" + +"I mean I have warrants for the arrest of yourself, Joseph Kramer and +Francesco Vasca on a charge of incitement to murder." + +And in less than a minute I saw Marsh, the Spaniard and Joe Kramer each +handcuffed to two men, one on either side. As they left the hall I came +close behind with a score of eager reporters. + +The crowd, to my excited eyes, was like a crouching tiger now, glaring +out of countless eyes. Through the solid mass of men that packed the +street from wall to wall, the police had forced a narrow lane from the +patrol wagon to the door. On either side of this lane I saw a line of +faces, eyes. Some looked anxious, frightened, and were trying to press +back, but at the sight of their leaders now with a roar the multitude +swept in. In a moment the lane was gone, and some fifty police had +formed in a circle around the prisoners. Quickly their clubs rose and +fell, and men dropped all around them. But furious hundreds kept rushing +in from every side, women and children caught in the tide were swept +helplessly forward, came under the clubs and went down with the rest, +and still the mass poured over them. Now at last the circle of bluecoats +was broken, policemen alone and in small clusters were rushed and +whirled this way and that. Outnumbered twenty to one, they began to go +down in the scrimmage. + +Then I heard a quick shout: + +"Use your guns!" + +After that, two pistol shots. Then more in a sharp, steady crackle. The +mass began breaking, out on the edges I could see men starting to run. +But down the street came a troop of mounted police on the gallop, and +straight through the multitude they rode. I saw the three prisoners +seized and surrounded and thrown into the wagon. I saw it go rapidly +away. The police were now making wholesale arrests. That deep strident +roar of the crowd had died down and broken into panting voices, +everywhere were struggling forms. + +Just before me the throng opened and I saw a woman at my feet. Her face +was bleeding from a club. As I stooped to lift her, I felt a big hand +grip my arm and then a heavy, crushing weight press down upon my head. I +felt myself sink down and down into an empty darkness. + +When I came to, I was being half pushed and half thrown by police up +into one of their wagons. I remember a blurred glimpse of more fighting +forms around me. Then a gong clanged and our wagon was off. And in a few +moments we had emerged out of all this turbulence into the quiet +commonplace streets of a city of every-day business life. + +In the wagon a voice began singing. I looked up and saw our Italian +musician, the leader of those gay excursions on _The Internationale_. +Now he was singing the song of that name. And as all came in on the +chorus, I caught a glimpse of his face. One cheek was bleeding profusely +and with one hand he was keeping the blood from trickling down. With +the other hand he was beating time. And his black eyes were blazing. + +Soon after, we came to Jefferson Market and stopped at the entrance of +the jail. As we were hustled out of the wagon, and in the stronger light +our cuts and swelling bruises came suddenly in view, two young girls +among us began to laugh hysterically. In a moment we were inside the +jail and shoved into a striker group that had come in wagons ahead of +ours. A grim old sergeant at the desk was taking down names and +addresses and sending the prisoners to their cells. + +I found my cell a cool relief after all that fever of cries. With +surprise I noticed it was clean. I had thought all cells were filthy +holes. Still in a daze, I sat down on my cot and felt the big bruise on +my head. + +"Where am I? What has happened? What has all this to do with me? What is +it going to mean in my life?" + +I heard a nasal voice from somewhere say: + +"I know this pen. They're putting the girls with the prostitutes." + +I heard clanging gongs outside and soon the banging of steel doors as +more prisoners were put into cells. And little by little, through it +all, I made out a low, eager murmur. + +"Say," inquired a drunken old voice. "Who are all you damn fools? What +is this party, anyhow?" + +"It is a revolution!" a sharp little voice replied. And at that, from +all sides other voices broke out. Then from his cell our musical friend +again started up the singing, his strained tenor voice rising high over +all. The song rose in volume, grew more intense. + +"Heigh! Quit that noise!" a policeman shouted. + +"Aw, let 'em alone," said another. "They'll soon work it off." + +But we seemed to be only working it up. Up and up, song followed song, +and then short impassioned speeches came out of cells, and there was +applause. A voice asked each one of us to name his nationality, and we +found we were Americans, Irish, Scotch and Germans, Italians and +Norwegians, and three of us were Lascars and one of us was a Coolie. +Then there were cheers for the working class all over the world, and +after that a call for more singing. And now, as one of the songs died +away, we heard from the woman's part of the jail the young girls singing +in reply. + +And slowly as I listened to those songs that rose and swelled and beat +against those walls of steel, I felt once more the presence of that +great spirit of the crowd. + +"That spirit will go on," I thought. "No jail can stop the thing it +feels!" + +And at last with a deep, warm certainty I felt myself where I belonged. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +Early in the evening I was taken out to the visitor's room, and there I +found Eleanore's father. When he saw me, Dillon smiled. + +"Do you know where you are?" he asked. "You're not in the Bastille--or +even Libby Prison. You're in the Jefferson Market Jail." + +"It hasn't felt that way," I said. + +"Probably not. But it is that way, and there's Eleanore to be thought +of." + +"Eleanore will understand." + +I saw his features tighten. I noticed now that his face was drawn, as +though he, too, had been through a good deal. + +"Yes," he said, "she understands. But it's a bit tough on her, isn't it? +Jail is not quite in her line." + +I felt my throat contracting: + +"I know all that. I'm sorry enough--on her account----" + +"Then let's get out of this," he said. "I've brought you bail. No use +staying in here all night." + +"None at all," I agreed. "I want to get back to the waterfront. We're +going to issue an answer to this. They'll need me for the writing." + +Dillon watched me a moment. + +"You won't be allowed to do that," he said. "They're under martial law +down there." + +I looked up at him quickly: + +"The troops are here?" + +"Yes," he replied, and there was a pause. + +"These arrests, this riot," I said a little huskily. "Weren't they all +framed up ahead? They needed the riot to get in the troops." + +"The troops are here." + +"Rather damnable. Do you think the people on the docks will just sit +back and take it all?" + +"They'll have to," he said gently. "The world's work has been clogged up +a little. It's to go on again now." + +On the street outside he took my hand: + +"My boy, when this is over we'll get together, you and I." + +"All right--when it's over," I said. + + * * * * * + +The Farm that night again changed to my eyes. It was now an orderly +village of tents, two regiments of militia were here, and their sentries +reached for a mile to the north watching the big companies' docks. + +I walked up along the line and had talks with some of the sentries. I +remember one in particular, a thin, nervous little man, a shoe-clerk in +a department store. Every work-day for six years he had fitted shoes on +ladies' feet; he had been doing it all that morning. And now here he was +down on the waterfront with only the stars above him and great shadowy +spaces all around, out of which at any moment he expected rushes by +strikers. These strikers to him were not human, they were "foreigners," +for the moment gone mad, to be treated very much as mad dogs. And here +he was all by himself, his nerves on edge, with a gun in his hands. The +absurdity of that gun in his hands! And the serious danger. + +I went into many tenements, into homes I had come to know in the strike. +And they, too, were different now. Their principal leaders taken away +and their headquarters closed by the police, the disorganization was +complete. That spirit they had relied upon, that strange new spirit of +the mass which they had created by coming together, was now dead--and +each one felt the weakness of being alone, the weakness of his separate +self. Blindly they fought against their despair. I found them packing +tenement rooms, gathering instinctively in search of their great friend, +the crowd. + +But from such gatherings as these, the weaker, the more timid and the +wiser kept away. Rash spirits led these meetings, and here was the same +hot passion that I had felt back in the jail. These people did not want +to think, the time for thinking had gone by. They wanted to act, to do +something quick. Their minds were fiercely set on the "scabs," the +police and the militia. + +Their strike was not yet lost. Their friends and sympathizers were +working hard that very night to get their leaders out on bail. In +Washington a House committee was striving still to compel arbitration. +Everywhere the more moderate spirits were drawing together, trying to +work out something safe. + +But these people did not know this. They were in their tenements, they +were scattered far apart. They only knew how they had been clubbed, that +three had been killed and many more wounded, and that now the troops +were here. And the more fiery ones among them were feeling only one +thing now, that when you are hit you must hit back, you must show you're +not scared, you must show you're a man. + +And so on the next morning, no women and no children but huge, silent +throngs of men drifted out of the tenements down to the docks and moved +slowly along the sentry lines. + +The chance to show they were not afraid came late in the afternoon. The +clear, sweet call of a bugle came floating gaily on the air, then the +long, hard roll of drums, and from their camp on the Farm the troops +came on the double-quick up along the waterfront. Now thousands of +strikers were running that way. From the foot of a city street across +the wide open space to a pier the militia formed in two double lines, +each line facing outward. Then down that street came mounted police and +behind them a score of trucks loaded with freight. + +At first I had hopes that the mass would not move. But out of the +silence came angry shouts and those behind pushed forward. Those in +front were pressed close up to the sharp lines of bayonets, were prodded +savagely by the troops. Militia youngsters but half trained, in two thin +lines opposing what appeared to them a furious sea of faces, fists and +angry cries--no wonder they were nervous. Bricks came flying from all +sides and even heavy paving-stones, and then a few pistol shots out of +the mass. I saw a militia man drop on one knee and slowly topple over. I +saw an excited young officer shout at his men and wave his sword. I saw +long rows of guns make quick rhythmic movements, then level straight +out, and there were two long flashes of fire. + +Disordered throngs were running now. Only a few men here and there +turned to fire their pistols or to shout back frenzied, quivering oaths. +Behind them a few soldiers were still shooting without orders. Near the +sand-pile on which I stood I saw a young militia man enough like that +little shoe-clerk to have been his brother. His face was white and his +eyes wild, he was panting, pumping his lever and blindly firing shot +after shot. + +"God damn 'em, slaughter 'em, slaughter 'em!" + +An officer knocked up his gun. + + * * * * * + +That night the waterfront was still. Only the long, slow moving line of +the figures of sentries was to be seen. The troops were back in their +camp on the Farm. Bivouac fires were burning down there, but up here was +only a dark, empty space. + +Here scattered about on the pavement, after the firing had ceased, I had +seen the dark inert bodies of men. Most of them had begun to move, until +fully half were crawling about. They had been picked up and counted. +Thirty-nine wounded, fourteen dead. These, too, had all been taken away. + +From the high steel docksheds there came a deep, harsh murmur made up of +faint whistles, the rattle of winches, the shouts of the foremen, the +heavy jar and crash of crates. A tug puffed smoothly into a slip with +three barges in her wake. I walked slowly out that way. The tugmen and +the bargemen talked in quiet voices as they made fast their craft to the +pier. Below them the water was lapping and slapping. + +"The world's work has been clogged up a little. It's to go on again +now." + + * * * * * + +The next day three heavy battleships steamed sluggishly through the +Narrows and came to anchor in the bay. When interviewed by reporters, +their commanders were vastly amused. No, they said, the United States +Navy was not governed as to its movements by strikes. They simply +happened to be here through orders issued weeks ago. But their coming +was featured in headlines. + +I saw something else in the papers that night, a force greater than all +battleships. As a week before I had felt a whole country in revolt, I +felt now a country of law and order, a whole nation of angry tradesmen +impatiently demanding an end to all this "foreign anarchy." + +"We want no more of your strikes," it said. "None of your new crowd +spirit, none of your wild talk and dreams! We want no change in this +country of ours!" + +The authorities obeyed this will. Bail was denied to Marsh, Vasca and +Joe, and for them a speedy trial was urged. The press now held them +responsible not only for that first negro's death, but for all the +deaths since their arrest. Let them pay the full penalty! Let them be +made an example of! Let this business of anarchy be dealt with and +settled once and for all! + +The work of crushing the strike went on. More troops were brought to the +harbor. On the docks there were not only negroes now, thousands of +immigrant laborers were brought from Ellis Island and put to work at +double pay, and on every incoming vessel the stokers were all kept on +board. Among the strikers there was a break that swiftly spread and +became a stampede. And in the following week the work of the harbor went +on as before, with its regular commonplace weekly toll of a hundred +killed and injured. Peace had come again at last. + + * * * * * + +On Saturday morning of that week I stood on the deck of a ferryboat +packed with little commuters who waved and cheered a huge ocean liner +bound for Europe. Lying deep in the water, her hold laden heavy with the +products of this teeming land, her decks thronged with travelers with +money in their pockets, her band playing, her flags streaming out, and +over all on the captain's bridge the officers up there in command--she +was a mighty symbol of order and prosperity and of that Efficiency which +to me had been a religion for so many years. We all followed the great +ship with our eyes as, gathering headway, she steamed out past the +Statue of Liberty toward the battleships beyond. + +"Well," said an amused little man close by me, "I guess that'll be about +all from the strikers." + +"Oh my smiling little citizen--you've only seen the beginning," I +thought. + +What were the strikers thinking now, and what would they be thinking +soon? They had wanted easier lives, they had wanted to feel themselves +powers here. Caught up in the tide of democracy now sweeping all around +the earth, they had wanted to feel themselves running themselves in all +this work they were doing. So they had come out on strike and become a +crowd, and in the crowd they had suddenly found such strength as they +never dreamed could be theirs. And they would not easily forget. The +harbor was already seeing to that, for already its work had gone on with +a rush, and all its heavy labor was weighing down upon them--"like a +million tons of brick on their chests." I remembered what Joe Kramer had +said: "It's got so they can't even breathe without thinking." + +Was the defeat of this one strike the end? + +The grim battleships answered, "Yes, it is the end." + +But the restless harbor answered, "No." + +What change was coming in my life? I did not know. Of one thing only I +was sure. The last of my gods, Efficiency, whose feet had stood firm on +mechanical laws and in whose head were all the brains of all the big men +at the top, had now come tottering crashing down. And in its place a +huge new god, whose feet stood deep in poverty and in whose head were +all the dreams of all the toilers of the earth, had called to me with +one deep voice, with one tremendous burning passion for the freedom of +mankind. + + + + +BOOK IV + +CHAPTER I + + +Once I saw the harbor in a February storm. And in the wind and skurrying +snow I saw it all together like one whirling thing alive. But the next +morning the storm had died away, and a wind from the south had brought +banks of fog that moved sluggishly low down on the water dividing the +whole region into many separate parts. And from above, a dazzling sun +shone down upon three objects near me, a ferryboat, a puffing tug, and a +tramp which lay at anchor, shone so brightly on these three they seemed +alone, with nothing but mist all about them. + +So it was now for a time with me. The strike, which had so suddenly +drawn me into its whirling crowd-life, now as suddenly dropped away. And +personal troubles piled one on the other. In place of that mass of +thousands, I saw only a few people I loved, and I saw them so intensely +that for a time we were quite alone, with nothing but mist all around +us. + + * * * * * + +Sue sent for me one morning and I went over to our house. I was startled +by the change in her face. It looked not only tired, it looked so +disillusioned, done, so through with all the absorbing ideas and warm +enthusiasms that had given it abundant life. + +"I'm not going to marry Joe Kramer," she said. "And I want you to tell +him so." + +I stared at her blankly. + +"I'm sorry," I said. + +"Are you?" There was just a worn shadow of her old smile. + +"I don't know why I said that," I replied. "My head's rather dull this +morning. All right, Sis, I'll tell him." Still I watched her pityingly. +Poor old Sue. What a crash in her life. + +"I'd like you to tell him the whole truth," my sister went on sharply, +"just why I've decided as I have. Don't say it's because of father. When +I wanted Joe, Dad didn't count, he was nothing to me but a back number. +But I _don't_ want him now--Joe, I mean--I don't love him any more. If I +went to him to-day in his cell and said I'd stick by him no matter what +happened because he was the man I loved--I'd be lying--that wouldn't be +me. The real me is a much smaller person than that. I don't love Joe +because I've been scared--because he's in a common jail--waiting to be +tried for murder." Her face contracted slightly. "I suppose it's the way +I've been brought up." + +"But Sue----" + +"Don't stop me, Billy, let me talk!" And she talked on intensely, so +absorbed in this fierce impulsive confession that she seemed to forget I +was there. "I've been thinking what's to become of me. I've been +thinking about all the things I've been in, and none seem real any +longer--I wanted a thrill and I got it--that's all. Then I met Joe and I +got it again, I got a thrill out of all his life and the big things it +was made of. I got a _great_ thrill out of the strike. Don't you +remember how I talked three weeks ago when you were here? Dad was the +Old and I was the New. I saw everything beginning. I read Walt Whitman's +'Open Road' and I felt like Joe's 'camarado.' Well, and I kept on like +that. And like a little idiot I couldn't keep it to myself, I went and +told some of my friends. That's what's really the hardest now, what +hurts the most--I told my friends. I posed as a young Joan of Arc. I +was going to marry, give up everything, chuck myself into this fight for +the people, into revolution! Thrills, I tell you, thrills and thrills! + +"But then Joe got arrested. I knew he was in a cell in the Tombs, in +Murderers' Row. And that drove all the thrills away. That was real. Dad +made it worse. He talked about the coming trial, Sing Sing and the death +house there. One morning he tried to read to me an account of an +execution. I ran away, but I came back and read it myself, I read all +the hideous details right up to the iron chair. And just because there +was a chance of Joe's being like that, all at once I stopped loving him. +Not just because I was frightened, it wasn't so simple as a scare. It +was something inside of me shuddering, and saying 'how revolting!' I +tried to shake it out of me, I tried to keep on loving him! But I +couldn't shake it out of me! Joe had become--revolting, too! It's +because of the way I've been brought up and because of the way I've +always lived! I can't stand what's real--if it's ugly! That's me!" + +She broke off and looked down. I came and sat beside her, and took her +cold, quivering hands in mine: + +"I guess I _am_ sorry, Sue old girl----" + +"Don't be," she retorted. "I'm too sorry for myself as it is! That's +another part of me!" Again she broke off with a hard little laugh. +"Let's forget me for a minute. What has this sweet strike done to +_you_?" + +"I'm not sure yet," I answered. "Where is Dad?" + +"Up in his room." + +"Tell me about him," I said. Sue drew an anxious little breath: + +"Oh Billy, he has been getting so queer. It has all been such a strain +on his mind. Every day he kept reading the news of the strike--and some +days he would stamp and rage about till I was afraid to be with him. He +talked about that death cell until I thought that I'd go mad. Sometimes +when we were talking I thought that we had both gone mad." + +I went upstairs and found him in a chair by the window. With unnatural, +clumsy motions he rose and came to meet me. + +"I'm all right, my boy." His voice had a mumbling quality and I noticed +the strangeness in his eyes. "I'm all right. I'm glad to see you." Then +his face clouded and hardened a little, and he tried to speak to me +sternly: + +"I'm glad you're clean out of that strike and its notions--glad you've +come to your senses," he said. "You're lucky in having such a wife. +She's been over here often lately--and she's worth a dozen like you and +Sue. Have you seen Sue?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, _she's_ all right." + +I said nothing to this, and he shot a sidelong look at me: + +"I had quite a time, my boy--I had to keep right at her." Another quick +look. "I suppose she's told you how I went at her." + +"Never mind, Dad, it's over now." + +"I had to make her feel the noose, I mean the chair," he went on in +those thick, mumbling tones, "and that she'd have to choose between that +and a decent Christian home--like the home her mother had. She was a +wonderful woman, your mother," he wandered off abruptly. "If she'd only +understood me--seen what it was I was trying to do--for American +shipping--Yankee sails!" He sank down in his chair exhausted, and I +noticed he was breathing hard. "I'm all right, my boy, I'm quite all +right----" + +With a sudden rush of pity and of love and deep alarm, I bent gently +over him: + +"Of course you are--why Dad, old boy--just take it easy--quiet, you +know--we're going to pull right out of this----" + +The tears welled suddenly up in his eyes: + +"I'm lonely, boy--I'm glad you're here!" + +Presently I went down to Sue: + +"When is the doctor coming next?" + +"Not till this afternoon," she said. + +"I'll be home to-night for supper. Phone me what he says." + +"All right--where are you going now? To Joe?" + +"Yes, Sis," I said. + +She turned and went quickly out of the room. + + * * * * * + +In the Tombs, when Joe was brought out to me, I saw that he, too, had +been through a deep change. He had been quiet enough all through the +strike, except for that one big speech of his--but he had been _tensely_ +quiet. Now the tension appeared to be gone. He seemed wrapped up in +thoughts of his own. + +"Have you seen Sue?" he asked me at once. + +"Yes Joe, I've just been with her." + +"What did she say?" + +I began to tell him. + +"I knew it," he interrupted me. "I made up my mind to this the first +night I spent here in my cell. It couldn't have happened, it wouldn't +have worked. Tell her I understand all about it, tell her that I'm sure +she's right. Tell her--it's funny but it's true--tell her this infernal +pen has worked the same way on me as on her. I mean it has made me not +want her now. I feel sorry for her and that's all--deeply and infernally +sorry. I was a fool to have let her into it. My only excuse for being so +blind was that damned fever that left me so weak. At any other time I +would have seen what a farce it was. I wasn't booked for a life like +that. It doesn't fit in with this job of mine." He smiled a little +bitterly. "I used to say," he continued, "that if I had time I'd like to +do something yellow enough so that I'd be cut off for life from any +chance of church bells. And I guess I've done it this time--no danger +of getting respectable now." + +"How do you look at this, Joe?" I asked him. "What do you think they'll +do to you?" + +"I don't know." Again he smiled slightly and wearily. "And I can't say I +_care_ a damn. I feel like those fellows over in Russia, the +revolutionist chaps I met, who didn't know if they'd croak in a month +and didn't care one way or the other. But as a matter of fact," he +added, "I think this time it's mainly bluff. They wanted to get us away +from the crowd and keep us away while they broke the strike. Now that +it's over you'll probably find they'll let us all off with light +sentences. Of course the murder charge can't hold.... By the way," he +added, smiling, "I hear they got you, too." + +"Yes," I answered, smiling back. "The Judge fined me ten dollars and let +me go. He said he hoped this would be a lesson." + +Joe looked at me curiously: + +"How much of a lesson, Kid, do you think this strike has been to you?" + +"Quite a big one, Joe," I said. + +"What are you going to do about it?" + +"I haven't decided." + +"How is Eleanore taking it all?" + +"She's not saying much and neither am I. We're both doing some thinking +before we talk." + +"You're a quiet pair," J. K. remarked. "I shouldn't wonder if you'd nose +along quite a distance before you get through--I mean in our direction." + +"That's what we're thinking about," I replied. Again he turned to me +curiously: + +"You two can think together--without talking--can't you?" + +"Yes--sometimes we can." + +"I never got that far with Sue." All at once he came closer, his whole +manner changed: "Say, Bill--tell her all I've said--will you? I'm +sorry! Honest Injun! Make her feel how damnably sorry I am that I ever +let her in for this!" + +When I left him I went off for a walk, for I wanted to be alone awhile. +I wondered just how sure Joe felt about his fast approaching trial. It +seemed to me that he had a good chance of going where Sue had pictured +him. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +That evening I learned that my father was worse, and I spent the next +day by his bedside. He had had a stroke in the morning and was not +expected to live through the night. + +I found him mumbling fast to himself and making slight, restless efforts +to move. At last he grew quiet, and presently his half-open gnarled +right hand came groping out over the covers. I took it in mine, and at +once I felt it close on mine with a quick, convulsive strength. His hand +was moist, his eyes saw nothing. I sat there thus for a long time. Then +suddenly, + +"Good boy," he muttered thickly. "Good boy--good--always good to your +mother!" He kept repeating this over and over, with pauses between, then +again with an effort, fiercely, as though from a distance his mind were +set on getting this message over to me, over from an age that was dying +into an age that was coming to life, a last good-by to hold me back. + +Soon he was only mumbling figures, names of ships and distant ports, +freight consignments. Now and then his finger would go to his lips, as +he turned phantom pages in feverish haste. Again, in gasping whispers, +he would break out into arguments for the protection of Yankee sails. + +"Protection!" he would whisper. "Damn fools not to see it! +Discriminating tariffs! Subsidies! A Navy!... Don't forget the Navy! +Remember War of 1812!... Nothing without fighting!" + +"Nothing without fighting." He had been learning this all his life--and +after he had said it now, he stopped speaking and grew still. Little by +little his movements grew weaker. Finally he lay like a log, and the +doctor said he would be so until dead. + +I went up to my old bedroom and sat down by the open window. It was a +beautiful night. From the garden below, where long ago I had felt such +shivers over the ocean and heathen lands, a graceful poplar rose. Behind +it from the river the huge, dim funnel of a steamer rose over the roof +of the warehouse. Overhead to the right swept the Great Bridge of my +childhood. But behind it were other bridges now, and off across the +river the buildings of Manhattan loomed in loftier masses to their apex +in the tower of lights. How changed it all was since I was a boy. And +yet how like. On the harbor still the hurrying lights, yellow, blue and +green and red. The same deep, restless hum of labor. And from the +waterfront below the same puffs and coughs of engines, the same sharp +toots and treble pantings, the same raucous whine of wheels. + +There came a rough salt breeze from the sea, and it made me think of +billowy sails and the days of my father's boundless youth, and of the +harbor of long ago that had so gripped and molded him--as I felt mine +now molding me. And for what? I asked. To what were we both +adventuring--out of these little harbors of ours? + +Toward dawn a tramp came down the river. Dimly as she passed below I +could see how old she was, how worn and battered by the waves. A +desolate and lonely craft, the smoke draggled out of her funnel. I +watched her steam into the Upper Bay and pass around Governor's Island. +I watched till in the first raw light of day I could see only her smoke +through the Narrows. Then even this became but a blur, which crept away +in that strange dawn light out into the wide ocean. + +A few hours later my father died. + +One by one, from different parts of the port, the queerest old men came +into our house on the day of my father's funeral--men who still +believed in American ships, still thrilled to the dream of the Stars and +Stripes wherever there is an ocean breeze; men who still believed in +ships that had sails and moved along with the force of the winds; who +still believed that cabin boys could rise by the sheer force of their +wills to be powers in the ocean world; men who had for the common crowd +only the iron discipline, the old brute tyranny of the sea. These +strange old men stood with their white heads bowed, a little group, +looking down into my father's grave. + +"He was a magnificent fighter," I heard one of them say as we left. "He +wrecked his own business for what he believed in. How many of us would +go that far?" + + * * * * * + +From the grave Sue came to our apartment. Eleanore had packed her trunk. + +"Sue must keep out of that dreary old house," she told me. "Luckily she +has a friend out of town whom she's going to visit. When she comes back +we must have the house closed, and I hope she'll live with us for a +while." + +We talked of this that evening, for Sue seemed to want to talk. We +stayed up until late and planned and planned. Many different kinds of +work for Sue were taken up and discussed by us all. She surprised me by +the brave effort she made. + +"I've got to want something--that's sure," she said. "I can't just yet. +I've wanted so many things so hard, one after the other for nearly eight +years, that now I feel as though I'd used up all the wanting that I've +got. But of course I haven't. If I have I'm a back number--and I'd a +great deal rather be dead. So don't you people worry. Depend upon it, in +less than a year I'll be all wrapped up in something new. I'll be +tremendously enthused," she ended, smiling wearily. + +She agreed with me that the house be sold, and after she had left us I +made every effort to sell it at once. I found it was heavily mortgaged +now, but when at last I made a sale there was enough to clear off all +debts and leave about two thousand dollars for Sue. She would have at +least something to start on. + +As we set about to dismantle the house, various things thickly covered +with dust came out of closets, drawers and shelves. And these objects +brought near again to me my mother's life and that hunger of hers for +the things that were "fine," that hospitable door which had waited for +friends from the handsome old homes all around us. These homes all along +the street had now lost their quiet dignity. Some were empty and marked +for sale, others that had already been sold were cheerless boarding +houses. The most handsome home of all, with its ample yard where I used +to play, was gone, and in its place rose an apartment building which +made the old houses all seem dwarfs. + +Her world and his were both slipping away. Her life and his, her creed +and his, were little now but memories--memories which in Sue and in me +must take their chance with the warm, new feelings, the cravings, hopes, +loves, doubts and dreams of this absorbing world of our own. For the +harbor was still molding lives. + +How anxious Eleanore seemed to be through, I thought a little +bitterly. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +But Eleanore had good reason. When at last the house had been closed, +back at home one evening she told me what she had known for weeks but +had kept to herself until I should be free from other things. We were to +have another child. + +The news was a shock, it frightened me. "Where's the money to come +from?" flashed into my mind. In an instant it had passed and I was +holding her tight in my arms. But she must have caught that look in my +face, for I could feel her trembling. + +"The same funny old world, my dearest one," she whispered, "with its +same old trick of starting out. But oh my dear, in spite of it all--or +because of it all--how good it is to be alive! More than ever--a hundred +times!" + +"You darling girl," I whispered back, "you're the bravest one of all!" + + * * * * * + +Her father came to us the next night, and after Eleanore went to bed he +and I talked long together. He looked worn and tired, but the same quiet +affection was in his eyes. + +"Let's see where we are," he said, "and what we've got to go on. To +begin with, thank God, you and I are still friends. Then there's +Eleanore and your small son and the smaller one that's coming. We're +just starting in on a long, hot summer. She must of course be got out of +town. How much have you in the bank?" + +"Thirty-seven dollars," I said. + +He looked thoughtfully at his cigar. + +"You've never yet taken money from me," he continued, after a moment. +"Still, you'd do it if you had to--because this is _our_ affair. But +unluckily, just at present, I'm nearly as high and dry as yourself. The +men who have backed my harbor work have lost so heavily in the strike +that they feel now they must recoup. I've already proposed to them a +plan which they have as good as accepted. They'll provide enough money +to pay the rent of a smaller office. I can borrow enough to pay half my +men. The rest I'll have to let go for a time." + +"And _your_ salary?" I ventured. + +"Is left out," he answered. "I mean it is if I stay here. I want to stay +here, I want to put through this job if I can, you see it has taken six +years of my life. And besides," he added wistfully, "in a very few weeks +they'll finish the work at Panama--and the ships of the world will begin +to crowd into a harbor that isn't ready here--we haven't even completed +our plans. It's not a good time to stop our work. But of course if you +and Eleanore get into a hole that is serious--as I said before and +you'll agree, you'd have to let me help you--even if to do it I should +have to give up my work for a while and take up something that will +pay." + +"No sir!" + +"Yes sir," he replied. "Unless you can earn enough money yourself." + +We looked at each other a moment. + +"You know how to bring pressure, don't you?" I said. + +"Yes, I'm bringing pressure. I want to see you go on as before." + +"That won't be easy," I remarked. + +"Shall we talk it over a little?" + +"Yes." + +"All right," he said. "Since that talk we had together the day +Eleanore's first child was born, what a splendid start you made in your +writing. You were not only earning big pay, you were doing fine work, +work that was leading somewhere. I could see you learning to use your +tools, getting a broad, sane view of life--and of yourself--training +yourself and building yourself. You were right on the threshold of big +results. But then your friend Kramer came along. He had not built +himself, he had chucked himself over, neglected himself, his health +included. So he took typhoid and came to your home. His being there was +a drain on your pocket and a heavy strain on your nerves. He got you +unsettled. Then came the strike. And what has it done? It has taken your +time, health, money. It has left two good workmen stranded--you and me. +And I don't see that it's done the crowd any good. What has the strike +given you in return for all it has taken away?" + +"A deeper view of life," I said. "I saw something in that strike so much +bigger than Marsh or Joe or that crude organization of theirs--something +deep down in the people themselves that rises up out of each one of them +the minute they get together. And I believe that power has such +possibilities that when it comes into full life not all the police and +battleships and armies on earth can stop it." + +The look in Dillon's eyes was more anxious than impatient. + +"Billy," he said, "I've lived a good deal closer than you have to the +big jobs of this world. And I know those jobs are to get still bigger, +even more complex. They're to require even bigger men." I smiled a bit +impatiently. + +"Still the one man in a million," I said. + +"Yes," said Dillon, "his day isn't over, it has only just begun. He may +have his bad points--I'll admit he has--but compared to all the little +men his vision is wide and it goes deep. And if they'll only leave him +alone and give him a chance, he'll take me and the other engineers, and +the chemists and doctors and lawyers, and he'll make a world--he's doing +it now--where ignorance and poverty will in time be wiped completely +out." + +"They're not going to leave him alone," I said. "I'm sure of that now. +Whether he grafts or whether he's honest won't make any difference. The +crowd is going to pull him down. Because it's not democracy. The trouble +with all your big men at the top is that they're trying to do for the +crowd what the crowd wants to do for itself. And it may not do it half +so well--but all the time it will be learning--gathering closer every +year--and getting a spirit compared to which your whole clean clear +efficiency world is only cold and empty!" + +He must have caught the look in my eyes. + +"You're thinking that I'm getting old," he said softly. "I and all the +men like me who have been building up this country. You're thinking that +we're all following on after your father into the past." As I looked +back I felt suddenly humble. Dillon's voice grew appealing and kind. +"But you belong with us, Billy," he said. "It was under us you won your +start. And what I want now," he added, "is not only for Eleanore's sake, +but your own. I want you to try to write again about all the work we are +doing and see what it will do for you. Why not give it another chance? +You're not afraid of it, are you?" + +"No," I said, "I'm not afraid--and I'll give it another chance if you +like--I don't want to be narrow about it, God knows. But before I tackle +anything else I'll finish my story of the strike." + +"All right," he agreed. "That's all I ask. Now suppose you take Eleanore +up to the mountains and write your strike article up there. Let me loan +you a little just at the start." + +"How much money have _you_ in the bank?" + +"Enough to send Eleanore where she belongs." + +"Eleanore belongs right here," said a voice from the other room, and +presently Eleanore appeared. She surveyed us both with a scorn in her +eyes that made us quake a little. "I never heard," she went on calmly, +"of anything quite so idiotic. Go home, Dad, and go to bed, and please +drop this insane idea that I'm afraid of July in New York, or of August +or September. Do you know what you're going to do to-morrow, both of you +poor foolish boys? You're going sensibly to work and worry about nothing +at all. And to-morrow night we're all three of us going to forget how it +feels to work or think, and get on an open trolley and go down and hear +Harry Lauder. Thank Heaven he happens to be in town. To hear you talk +you'd think the whole American people had forgotten how to laugh. + +"Now Billy," she ended smoothly, "go to the icebox and get two bottles +of nice cool beer--and make me a tall glass of lemonade. And don't use +too much sugar." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +The next day and the next evening Eleanore's program was carried out. +But after that night the laughing stopped. For Joe Kramer was coming to +trial. + +I had not seen Joe for over two weeks, and I had taken his view of his +case, that there was no serious danger. But now I learned from a good +source that Joe and both his colleagues were to be brought to trial at +once, while the public feeling was still hot against them. As the time +of the trials drew near every paper in town took up the cry. Let these +men be settled once and for all, they demanded. Let them not be set free +for other strikes, for wholesale murder and pillage. Let them pay the +full penalty for their crimes! + +In the face of this storm, I found myself on Joe's defense committee, +the best part of my time each day and evening taken up with raising +money, helping to find witnesses and doing the press work for parades +and big mass meetings of labor. + +Through this work, in odd hours, I finished my story of the strike. It +all came back to me vividly now and I tried to tell what I had seen. I +took it to my editor. + +"Print that?" he said when he'd read it. "You're mad." + +"It's the truth," I remarked. + +"As you see it," he said. "And you've seen it only from one side. If +this story had been written and signed by Marsh or your friend Kramer, +we might have run it, with a reply from the companies. But I don't want +to see _you_ stand for this--in our magazine or anywhere else--it means +too much to you as a writer. Look out, my boy," he added, with a +return to the old brusque kindliness which he had always shown me in the +years I had worked under him. "We think a lot of you in this office. For +God's sake don't lose your head. Don't be one more good reporter +spoiled." + +I took my story of the strike to every editor I knew, and it was +rejected by each in turn. They thought it all on the side of the crowd, +an open plea for revolution. Then I took it to Joe in the Tombs. + +"Will you sign this, Joe?" I asked, when he had read it. + +"No," he replied. "It's too damn mild. You've given too much to the +other side. All these bouquets to efficiency and all this about the weak +points of the crowd. The average stoker reading this would think that +the revolution won't come till we are all white-haired." + +"I don't believe it will," I said. + +"I know you don't. That's why you're no good to us," he said. "We want +our stuff written by men who are sure that a big revolution is just +ahead, men who are certain that a strike, to take in half the civilized +world, is coming in the next ten years." + +"I don't believe that." + +"I know. You can't. You're still too soaked in the point of view of your +efficiency father-in-law." + +"So you don't feel you can sign this?" + +"No." + +That day I sent my story to a small magazine in New England, which from +the time of the Civil War had retained its traditions of breadth of +view. Within a week the editor wrote that he would be glad to publish +it. "Our modest honorarium will follow shortly," he said at the end. The +modest honorarium did. Meanwhile I had sent him a sketch of Nora Ganey +which I had written just after the strike. I received a letter equally +kind, and another honorarium. I began to see a future of modest +honoraria. + +In the meantime, to meet our expenses at home, I had borrowed money and +given my note. And the note would soon fall due. Those were far from +pleasant days. On the one side Joe in his cell waiting to be tried for +his life; on the other, Eleanore at home waiting for a new life to be +born. By a lucky chance for me, Joe's trial was again postponed, so I +could return to my own affairs. I had to have some money quick. I went +back to my magazine editor and asked for a job in his office. + +"I'm ready now to be sane," I said. + +"Glad to hear it," he replied. "I'll give you a steady routine job where +you can grind till you get yourself right." + +"Till I get back where I was, you mean?" + +"Yes, if you can," he answered. + +I went for a walk that afternoon to think over the proposition he'd +made. + +"I have seen three harbors," I said to myself. "My father's harbor which +is now dead, Dillon's harbor of big companies which is very much alive, +and Joe Kramer's harbor which is struggling to be born. It's an +interesting age to live in. I should like to write the truth as I see it +about each kind of harbor. But I need the money--my wife is going to +have a child. So I'll take that steady position and try to grind part of +the truth away." + + * * * * * + +"What have you been doing?" Eleanore asked when I came home. "You look +like a ghost." + +"Not at all," I replied. "I've been getting a job." + +"Tell me about it." + +I told her part. She went and got her sewing, and settled herself +comfortably for a quiet evening's work. Eleanore loved baby clothes. + +"Now begin again and tell me all," she ordered. And she persisted until +I did. + +"It won't do," she said, when I had finished. + +"It will do," I replied decidedly. "It's the best thing in sight. It +will see us through till the baby is born. After all, it's only for a +year." + +"It's a mighty important year for you, my love," said Eleanore. She +thoughtfully held up and surveyed a tiny infant's nightgown. "If you do +this you'll be giving up. It's not writing your best. It's giving up +what you think is the truth. And that's a bad habit to get into." + +"It's settled now. Please leave it alone." + +"Oh very well," she said placidly. "Let's talk of what I've been doing." + +"What _you've_ been doing?" + +"Precisely. I've taken a little apartment downtown, over by the river. +The rent is twenty-eight dollars a month. It's on the top floor and has +plenty of air, and there's a nice roof for hot summer evenings. You're +to carry two wicker chairs up there each night after supper." + +"I'll do nothing of the kind," I rejoined indignantly. "You're going to +pack up at once and go to the mountains! And when you come back you're +coming right here!" + +"Oh no I'm not," she answered. + +"Don't be an idiot, Eleanore! Think of moving out of here now! In your +condition!" + +"It's better than moving out of your work. Dad has kept right on with +his, even when they stopped his pay. Well, now they've stopped your pay, +that's all, and we've got to do the best we can. We've simply got to +live for a while on modest honorariums. Now don't talk, wait till I get +through. You've got to work harder than ever before but for much less +money. But with less money than before we're going to be happier than +we've ever been in all our lives. And you can't do a thing to stop it. +If you do take that office work and bring a lot of money home, do you +know what I'll do? I'll move to that little flat just the same, and all +the extra money you bring will go to Mrs. Bealey." + +"Who in God's name is Mrs. Bealey?" + +"One of my oldest charity cases. She was here this afternoon. The +trouble with you is, my dear," my wife continued smoothly, "that you've +been so wrapped up in your own little changes you haven't given a +thought to mine. Well, I've done some changing, too. Every time that Sue +or you have taken up a new idea I've taken up a Mrs. Bealey. I did the +same thing in the strike. I went with Nora Ganey into the very poorest +of all the tenements down by the docks. I saw the very worst of it +all--and I tried to do what I could to help. But I felt like a drop in +the ocean. And that's how I've changed. Things are so wrong in the +tenements that big reforms are needed. I don't know what they are and +I'm not sure anyone else does. But I'm sure that if any reforms worth +while are to be made, we've got to see just where we are. And that means +that quite a number of people--you for instance--have got to tell the +truth exactly as they see it. So I'd rather put our money in that and +let old Mrs. Bealey forget our address. That's another reason for +moving. + +"There's nothing noble about it at all," she said as she threaded her +needle. "I mean to be perfectly comfortable. I saw this coming long ago, +and since the strike was over I've spent weeks picking out a nice place +where we can get the most for our money. About thirty thousand babies, +I'm told, are to be born in the city this summer--and their mothers +aren't going first to the mountains or even for a walk in the Park. I +don't see why I shouldn't be one. As a matter of fact I won't be one, my +baby won't be born until Fall, and I'll have a clean, comfortable flat +with one maid instead of a dirty tenement with all the cooking and +washing to do. You'll probably find magazines who'll pay enough +honorariums to make a hundred dollars a month, which is just about three +times as much as Mrs. Bealey lives on. So that's settled and we move +this week." + +We moved that week. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +One night about a month later, when we had ensconced ourselves for the +evening out on the roof of our new home, where the summer's night was +cooled by a slight breeze from the river, our maid came up and told me +there was a strange gentleman below. I went down and brought him up, I +was deeply pleased and excited. For he was the English novelist whom I +most admired these days. He had come to me during the strike and had +been deeply interested in the great crowd spirit I had found. He was +going back to England now. + +"I'm curious," he told me, "to see how much your striker friends have +kept of what they got in the strike--what new ideas and points of view. +How much are they really changed? That, I should think, is by far the +most valuable part of it all." + +"It's just what I've been trying to find out for myself," I replied. + +"Really? Will you tell me?" + +I told him how on docks, on tugs and barges, in barrooms and in +tenements, I was having talks with various types of men who had been +strikers, how I was finding some dull and hopeless, others bitter, but +more who simply felt that they had bungled this first attempt and were +already looking forward to more and greater struggles. The socialists +among them were already hard at work, urging them to carry their strike +on into the political field, vote together in one solid mass and build +up a government all their own. Through this ceaseless ferment I had gone +in search of significant characters, incidents, new points of view. I +was writing brief sketches of it all. + +"How did you feel about all this," the Englishman asked, "before you +were drawn into the strike?" And turning from me to Eleanore, "And you?" +he added. + +Gradually he got the stories of our lives. I told how all my life I had +been raising up gods to worship, and how the harbor had flowed silently +in beneath, undermining each one and bringing it down. + +"It seems to have such a habit of changing," I ended, "that it won't let +a fellow stop." + +"Lucky people," he answered, smiling, "to have found that out so +soon--to have had all this modern life condensed so cozily into your +harbor before your eyes--and to have discovered, while you are still +young, that life is growth and growth is change. I believe the age we +live in is changing so much faster than any age before it, that a man if +he's to be vital at all must give up the idea of any fixed creed--in his +office, his church or his home--that if he does not, he will only wear +himself out butting his indignant head against what is stronger and +probably better than he. But if he does, if he holds himself open to +change and knows that change is his very life, then he can get a +serenity which is as much better than that of the monk as living is +better than dying." + +We talked of books being written in England and France, in Germany and +Russia, all dealing with deep changes in the views and beliefs and +desires of men. + +"Any man," he said, "who thinks that modern Europe will go smoothly, +quietly on, needs a dose of your harbor to open his eyes." + +He turned to me with a sudden thought. + +"Why don't you write a book," he asked, "about this harbor you have +known!" + +Eleanore made a quick move in her chair. + +"That's just what you ought to do!" she exclaimed. + +"I wonder if I could," I said. "It would be hard to see it now, as it +looked at all the different times." + +"You'll hardly be able to do that," the Englishman answered quietly. +"Because to each one of us, I suppose, not only his present but his past +is constantly changing to his view. But I wouldn't let that bother you. +What would interest me as a reader would be your view of your life as +you look back upon it to-day--in this present stage of your growth. + +"I was raised in the Alps myself," he went on. "So _my_ picture of life +is the mountain path. As I climb and turn now and then to look back, the +twisting little path below appears quite different each time. But still +I keep on writing--my changing view of the slope behind and of the +rising peaks ahead. And now and then by working my hardest I've felt the +great joy of writing the truth. As you know, it isn't easy. But year by +year I've felt my readers grow in number. I believe they are going to +grow and grow, not mine nor yours but the readers of all the chaps like +ourselves, the readers who pick up each new book with the hope that one +more fellow has done his best--not to please them but to please +himself--by telling of life as he has seen it--his changing life through +his changing eyes." + + * * * * * + +After he left us there was a long silence. Both of us were thinking +hard. And as Eleanore looked up to the stars I saw their brightness in +her eyes. + +"Yes," she said at last, "I'm sure. I'm sure you'd better take his +advice--and write as truthfully as you can the whole story as you see it +now--of this strange harbor you have known." + +We talked long and eagerly that night. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +I began my story of the harbor. Every hour that I could spare from the +stories and sketches of tenement life by which I made a scant living +those days, I spent in gathering memories of my long struggle with this +place, arranging and selecting and setting them in order for this record +of the great life I had seen. + + * * * * * + +But this wide world has many such lives, many heaving forces. And ever +since I had been born, while I had been building for myself one after +the other these gods of civilization and peace--all unheeded by my eyes +a black shadow had been silently creeping over the whole ocean world. +Now from across the water there came the first low grumble of war. +Within one short portentous week that grumble had become a roar, and +before all the startled peoples had time to realize what was here, vast +armies were being rushed over the lands, all Europe was in chaos--and +the world was on the eve of the most prodigious change of all. + +And like the mirror of the world that it had always been to me, the +harbor at once reflected this change. Only a little time before, I had +seen it almost empty, except for that crude boat of the crowd; the +_Internationale_, with its songs of brotherhood and of a world where +wars should cease. Now I saw it jammed with ships from whose masts flew +every flag on the seas, and from the men who came ashore I heard of how +they had been chased, some fired upon, by battleships--I heard of war +upon the seas. I felt my father's world reborn, an ocean world where +there was nothing without fighting, and where every nation fought. +Ours had already entered the lists, with a loud clamor for ships of our +own in which to seize this sudden chance for our share of the trade of +the world. The great canal was open at last, and Europe in her turmoil +had had not even a moment to look. The East and South lay open to +us--rush in and get our share at last! Make our nation strong at sea! + +And while in blind confusion I groped for some new footing here, strove +to see what it was going to mean to that fair world of brotherhood which +I had seen struggling to be born--suddenly as though in reply there came +a sharp voice out of the crowd. + +Joe Kramer came to trial for his life. Before his case went to the jury, +Joe rose up and addressed them. And he spoke of war and violence. He +spoke of how in times of peace this present system murders men--on ships +and docks and railroads, in the mills and down in the mines. And as +though these lives were not enough, the powers above in this scramble +for theirs for all the profits in the world, all the sweated labor they +could wring out of humankind, had now flown at each others' throats. And +the blood of the common people was pouring out upon the earth. + +"My comrades over the water," he said, "saw this coming years ago. They +worked day and night to gather the workers of Europe together against +this war that will blacken the world. For that they were called +anti-patriots, fiends, men without a country. And some were imprisoned +and others were shot. And over here--where in times of peace the number +of killed and wounded is over five hundred thousand a year--for +rebelling against this murder they have called me murderer--and have +placed me here on trial for my life. + +"And what I want to ask you now is that you take no halfway course. +Either send me out of this dock a free man or up the river to the chair. +For this is no year for compromise. Am I a murderer? Yes or no. Decide +with your eyes wide open. If you set me free I shall still rebel. I +shall join my comrades over the sea who already are going about in the +camps and saying to the rank and file--'You can stop this slaughter! You +can save this world gone mad! You can end this murder--both in time of +war and peace!'" + + * * * * * + +And the jury set Joe free. + +Early in the following week I went down to his room by the docks for a +last evening with him there. Joe was sailing that same night. Under a +name not his own he had taken passage in the steerage of the big fast +liner which was to sail at one o'clock. Into his room all evening poured +his revolutionist friends, and the chance of revolution abroad was +talked of in cool practical terms. Nothing could be done, they said, in +the first few months to stop this war. Years ago the man in France, who +had led the anti-war movement, had predicted that if war broke out every +government rushing in would force on its people the belief that this was +no war of aggression but one of defense of the fatherland from a fierce +onrushing foe. And so in truth it had come about, and against that +appeal to fight for their homes no voice of reason could stem the tide. + +The socialists had been swept on with the rest. By tens and hundreds of +thousands they had already gone to the front. But it was upon this very +fact that Joe and his friends now rested their hopes. For just so soon +as in the camps the first burst of enthusiasm had begun to die away, as +the millions in the armies began to grow sick of the sight of blood, the +groans and the shrieks of the wounded and dying, the stench of the +dead--and themselves weary of fighting, worn by privation and disease, +began to think of their distant homes, their wives and children starving +there--then these socialists in their midst, one at every bivouack fire, +would begin to ask them: + +"Why is it that we are at war? What good is all this blood to us? Is it +to make our toil any lighter, life any brighter in our homes--or were we +sent out by our rulers to die only in order that they in their scramble +might take more of the earth for themselves? And if this is true why not +rise like men and end this fearful carnage?" + +Already these thousands were in the camps. Into Joe's room that evening +came men to give him the names and regiments of those comrades he could +trust. Joe with a few hundred others was to make his dangerous way into +the camps and the barracks, wherever that was possible, of French and +Russians and Germans alike, to carry news from one to the other, to make +ready and to plan. + +Now and then, in the talk that night, I felt the thrilling presence of +that rising god, that giant spirit of the crowd, not dead but only +sleeping now to gain new strength for what it must do. And again in +gleams and flashes I saw the vision of the end--the world for all the +workers. For in this crowded tenement room, forgotten now by +governments, this rough earnest group of men seemed so sure of this +world of theirs, so sure that it was now soon to be born. + +One by one they went away, and Joe and I were left alone. Slowly he +refilled his pipe. I thought of the talks we had had in ten years. + +"Well Bill," he inquired at last, "what are you going to do with +yourself?" + +"Write what I see in the crowd," I said, "from my new point of +view--this year's point of view," I added. I went on to tell him what +the English writer had said. And I told of my book on the harbor. + +"Well," said Joe when I was through, "I guess it's about the best you +can do. You've got a wife to think of." + +"You don't know her," I rejoined, and I told him how she had changed our +home in order not to stop my work. + +"But don't you see what she's up to?" said Joe. + +"What the devil do you mean?" I asked indignantly. Joe blew a pitying +puff of smoke. + +"You poor blind dub of a husband," he said with his old affectionate +smile, "she's making you love her all the more. You're anchored worse +than ever. _You_ can't go over to Europe and take a chance at being +shot. Don't you see the hole you're in? You've got to care what happens +to you." + +"I'm not so sure of that, Joe," I said. "Things in this world are +changing so fast that it's hard for any man in it to tell where he'll be +in a year from now--or even a few short months from now. It's the year +that no man can see beyond." + +"You mean you're coming over?" he asked. + +"I'm not sure. Just now I'm going to finish this book. I'm going to see +Eleanore through till the baby is born. But after that--if over in +Europe the people rise against this war--I don't just see how I can keep +out." + +Joe looked at me queerly. And with a curious gruffness, + +"I hope you will keep out," he said. "There aren't many women like your +wife." + +He pulled an old grip from under his bed and began throwing in a few +books and clothes. From a drawer he swept a few colored shirts, some +underclothes and a small revolver. + +"J. K.," I said, "I've been thinking about us. And I think our youth is +gone." + +"What's youth?" asked Joe indifferently. + +"Youth," I replied, "is the time when you can think anything, feel +anything and go anywhere." + +"I'm still going anywhere," he remarked. + +"But you can't think anything," I rejoined. "You say I'm tied to a wife +and home. All right, I'm glad I am. But you're tied, too. You're tied to +a creed, Mister Syndicalist--a creed so stiff that you can't think of +anything else." + +"All right, I'm glad I am," he echoed. "I'm sorry youth lasted as long +as it did." + +He closed his grip and strapped it. Then he took up his hat and coat and +threw a last look about the room where he had lived for a year or more. + +"Breaking up home ties," he said with a grin. "Don't come to the boat," +he added downstairs. "She don't sail for an hour or two and I'll be +asleep in my bunk long before." + +"All right. Good-by, J. K.--remember we may meet over there----" + +Again that gruffness came into his voice: + +"If you do, you'll be taking a mighty big chance," he said. "Good-by, +Bill--it's just possible we may never meet again. Glad to have made your +acquaintance, Kid. Here's wishing you luck." + +He turned and went off down the Farm with that long swinging walk of +his, his big heavy shoulders bent rather more than before. And as I +stood looking after him I thought of the lonely winding road that he was +to travel day and night, into slums of cities and in and out among the +camps. + + * * * * * + +I walked slowly back through the tenements toward the new home among +them that Eleanore had made. + +In the summer's night the city streets were still alive with people. I +passed brightly lighted thoroughfares where I saw them in crowds, and I +knew that this tide of people flowed endlessly through the hundreds of +miles of streets that made up the port of New York. Hurrying, idling, +talking and laughing, quarreling, fighting, here stopping to look at +displays in shop windows, there pouring into "Movies"--and walking, +walking, walking on. Going up into their tenement homes to eat and +drink, love, breed and sleep, to wake up and come down to another day. + +So the crowd moved on and on, while the great harbor surrounding their +lives and shaping their lives, went on with its changes unheeded. + +I tried to think of this harbor as being run by this common crowd--of +the railroads, mines and factories, of the colleges, hospitals and all +institutions of research, and the theaters and concert halls, the +picture galleries, all the books--all in the power of the crowd. + +"It will be a long time," I thought. "Before it comes the crowd must +change. But they will change--and fast or slow, I belong with them while +they're changing." + +Something Joe had once said came into my mind: + +"They're the ones who get shot down in wars and worked like dogs in time +of peace." + +And I thought of the crowds across the sea--of men being rushed over +Europe on trains, or marching along starlit roads, or tramping across +meadows. And I thought of long lines of fire at dawn spurting from the +mouths of guns--from mountainsides, from out of woods, from trenches in +fast blackening fields--and of men in endless multitudes pitching on +their faces as the fire mowed them down. + +And with those men, it seemed to me, went all the great gods I had +known--gods of civilization and peace--the kind god in my mother's +church and the smiling goddess in Paris, the clear-eyed god of +efficiency and the awakening god of the crowd--all plunging into this +furnace of war with the men in whose spirits all gods dwell--to shrivel +and melt in seething flame and emerge at last in strange new forms. What +would come out of the furnace? + +I thought of Joe and his comrades going about in towns and camps, +speaking low and watching, waiting, hoping to bring a new dawn, a new +order, out of this chaotic night. + +And I heard them say to these governments: + +"Your civilization is crashing down. For a hundred years, in all our +strikes and risings, you preached against our violence--you talked of +your law and order, your clear deliberate thinking. In you lay the hope +of the world, you said. You were Civilization. You were Mind and +Science, in you was all Efficiency, in you was Art, Religion, and you +kept the Public Peace. But now you have broken all your vows. The +world's treasures of Art are as safe with you as they were in the Dark +Ages. Your Prince of Peace you have trampled down. And all your Science +you have turned to the efficient slaughter of men. In a week of your +boasted calmness you have plunged the world into a violence beside which +all the bloodshed in our strikes and revolutions seems like a pool +beside the sea. And so you have failed, you powers above, blindly and +stupidly you have failed. For you have let loose a violence where you +are weak and we are strong. We are these armies that you have called +out. And before we go back to our homes we shall make sure that these +homes of ours shall no more become ashes at your will. For we shall stop +this war of yours and in our minds we shall put away all hatred of our +brother men. For us they will be workers all. With them we shall rise +and rise again--until at last the world is free!" + +The voice had ceased--and again I was walking by myself along a crowded +tenement street. Immigrants from Europe, brothers, sons and fathers of +the men now in the camps, kept passing me along the way. As I looked +into their faces I saw no hope for Europe there. Such men could take and +hold no world. But then I remembered how in the strike, out of just such +men as these, I had seen a giant slowly born. Would that crowd spirit +rise again? Could it be that the time was near when this last and +mightiest of the gods would rise and take the world in his hands? + + * * * * * + +At home I found Eleanore asleep. For a time I sat at my desk and made +some notes for my writing. I read and smoked for a little, then +undressed and went to bed. But still I lay there wide awake--thinking of +this home of mine and of where I might be in a few months more, in this +year that no man can see beyond. For all the changes in the world seemed +gathering in a cyclone now. + +I was nearly asleep when I was roused by a thick voice from the harbor. +Low in the distance, deep but now rising blast on blast, its waves of +sound beat into the city--into millions of ears of sleepers and +watchers, the well, the sick and the dying, the dead, the lovers, the +schemers, the dreamers, the toilers, the spenders and wasters. I shut my +eyes and saw the huge liner on which Joe was sailing moving slowly out +of its slip. Down at its bottom men shoveling coal to the clang of its +gong. On the decks above them, hundreds of cabins and suites de +luxe--most of them dark and empty now. Bellowing impatiently as it swept +out into the stream, it seemed to be saying: + +"Make way for me. Make way, all you little men. Make way, all you habits +and all you institutions, all you little creeds and gods. For I am the +start of the voyage--over the ocean to heathen lands! And I am always +starting out and always bearing you along! For I am your molder, I am +strong--I am a surprise, I am a shock--I am a dazzling passion of +hope--I am a grim executioner! I am reality--I am life! I am the book +that has no end." + + * * * * * + + + + +JOHN FOX, JR'S. + +STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list. + + +THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE. + +Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. + +The "lonesome pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree +that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine +lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he +finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the +_foot-prints of a girl_. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and +the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder +chase than "the trail of the lonesome pine." + + +THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME + +Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. + +This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "Kingdom Come." It +is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest, from which often +springs the flower of civilization. + +"Chad," the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he +came--he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, +seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and +mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery--a charming waif, +by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else in the +mountains. + + +A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND. + +Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. + +The scenes are laid along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of +moonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the +heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two +impetuous young Southerners fall under the spell of "The Blight's" +charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the +love making of the mountaineers. + +Included in this volume is "Hell fer-Sartain" and other stories, some of +Mr. Fox's most entertaining Cumberland valley narratives. + + * * * * * + + + + +STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY GENE STRATTON-PORTER + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list + + +LADDIE. + +Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer. + +This is a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The story +is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it +is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs +of older members of the family. Chief among them is that of Laddie, the +older brother whom Little Sister adores, and the Princess, an English +girl who has come to live in the neighborhood and about whose family +there hangs a mystery. There is a wedding midway in the book and a +double wedding at the close. + + +THE HARVESTER. Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs. + +"The Harvester," David Langston, is a man of the woods and fields, who +draws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If the +book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man it would be +notable. But when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," and the +Harvester's whole being realizes that this is the highest point of life +which has come to him--there begins a romance of the rarest idyllic +quality. + + +FRECKLES, Decorations by E. Stetson Crawford. + +Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he +takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great +Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to +the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The +Angel" are full of real sentiment. + + +A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST. Illustrated by Wladyslaw T. Brenda. + +The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of +the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness +towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of +her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and +unpromising surroundings those rewards of high courage. + + +AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW. Illustrations in colors by Oliver Kemp. + +The scene of this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. The +story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love. +The novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting of nature, and +its pathos and tender sentiment will endear it to all. + + + + +MYRTLE REED'S NOVELS + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list + + +LAVENDER AND OLD LACE. + +A charming story of a quaint corner of New England where bygone romance +finds a modern parallel. The story centers round the coming of love to +the young people on the staff of a newspaper--and it is one of the +prettiest, sweetest and quaintest of old fashioned love stories, * * * a +rare book, exquisite in spirit and conception, full of delicate fancy, +of tenderness, of delightful humor and spontaneity. + + +A SPINNER IN THE SUN. + +Miss Myrtle Reed may always be depended upon to write a story in which +poetry, charm, tenderness and humor are combined into a clever and +entertaining book. Her characters are delightful and she always displays +a quaint humor of expression and a quiet feeling of pathos which give a +touch of active realism to all her writings. In "A Spinner in the Sun" +she tells an old-fashioned love story, of a veiled lady who lives in +solitude and whose features her neighbors have never seen. There is a +mystery at the heart of the book that throws over it the glamour of +romance. + + +THE MASTER'S VIOLIN. + +A love story in a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso +is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take +for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for +technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, +careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with +his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life +and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its +fulness. But a girl comes into his life--a beautiful bit of human +driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through +his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to +give--and his soul awakes. + +Founded on a fact that all artists realize. + + + + +GROSSET & DUNLAP'S DRAMATIZED NOVELS + +THE KIND THAT ARE MAKING THEATRICAL HISTORY + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list + + +WITHIN THE LAW. By Bayard Veiller & Marvin Dana. Illustrated by Wm. +Charles Cooke. + +This is a novelization of the immensely successful play which ran for +two years in New York and Chicago. + +The plot of this powerful novel is of a young woman's revenge directed +against her employer who allowed her to be sent to prison for three +years on a charge of theft, of which she was innocent. + + +WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY. By Robert Carlton Brown. Illustrated with scenes +from the play. + +This is a narrative of a young and innocent country girl who is suddenly +thrown into the very heart of New York, "the land of her dreams," where +she is exposed to all sorts of temptations and dangers. + +The story of Mary is being told in moving pictures and played in +theatres all over the world. + + +THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM. By David Belasco. Illustrated by John Rae. + +This is a novelization of the popular play in which David Warfield, as +Old Peter Grimm, scored such a remarkable success. + +The story is spectacular and extremely pathetic but withal, powerful, +both as a book and as a play. + + +THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. By Robert Hichens. + +This novel is an intense, glowing epic of the great desert, sunlit +barbaric, with its marvelous atmosphere of vastness and loneliness. + +It is a book of rapturous beauty, vivid in word painting. The play has +been staged with magnificent cast and gorgeous properties. + + +BEN HUR. A Tale of the Christ. By General Lew Wallace. + +The whole world has placed this famous Religious-Historical Romance on a +height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The +clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect +reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere +of the arena have kept their deep fascination. A tremendous dramatic +success. + + +BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. By George Broadhurst and Arthur Hornblow. +Illustrated with scenes from the play. + +A stupendous arraignment of modern marriage which has created an +interest on the stage that is almost unparalleled. The scenes are laid +in New York, and deal with conditions among both the rich and poor. + +The interest of the story turns on the day-by-day developments which +show the young wife the price she has paid. + + + + +GROSSET & DUNLAP'S DRAMATIZED NOVELS + +Original, sincere and courageous--often amusing--the kind that are +making theatrical history. + + +MADAME X. By Alexandre Bisson and J. W. McConaughy. Illustrated with +scenes from the play. + +A beautiful Parisienne became an outcast because her husband would not +forgive an error of her youth. Her love for her son is the great final +influence in her career. A tremendous dramatic success. + + +THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. By Robert Hichens. + +An unconventional English woman and an inscrutable stranger meet and +love in an oasis of the Sahara. Staged this season with magnificent cast +and gorgeous properties. + + +THE PRINCE OF INDIA. By Lew. Wallace. + +A glowing romance of the Byzantine Empire, presenting with extraordinary +power the siege of Constantinople, and lighting its tragedy with the +warm underglow of an Oriental romance. As a play it is a great dramatic +spectacle. + + +TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY. By Grace Miller White. Illust. by Howard +Chandler Christy. + +A girl from the dregs of society, loves a young Cornell University +student, and it works startling changes in her life and the lives of +those about her. The dramatic version is one of the sensations of the +season. + + +YOUNG WALLINGFORD. By George Randolph Chester. Illust. by F. R. Gruger +and Henry Raleigh. + +A series of clever swindles conducted by a cheerful young man, each of +which is just on the safe side of a State's prison offence. As +"Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford," it is probably the most amusing exposé of +money manipulation ever seen on the stage. + + +THE INTRUSION OF JIMMY. By P. G. Wodehouse. Illustrations by Will Grefe. + +Social and club life in London and New York, an amateur burglary +adventure and a love story. Dramatized under the title of "A Gentleman +of Leisure," it furnishes hours of laughter to the play-goers. + + + + +ZANE GREY'S NOVELS + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list + + +THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS + +Colored frontispiece by W. Herbert Dunton. + +Most of the action of this story takes place near the turbulent Mexican +border of the present day. A New York society girl buys a ranch which +becomes the center of frontier warfare. Her loyal cowboys defend her +property from bandits, and her superintendent rescues her when she is +captured by them. A surprising climax brings the story to a delightful +close. + + +DESERT GOLD + +Illustrated by Douglas Duer. + +Another fascinating story of the Mexican border. Two men, lost in the +desert, discover gold when, overcome by weakness, they can go no +farther. The rest of the story describes the recent uprising along the +border, and ends with the finding of the gold which the two prospectors +had willed to the girl who is the story's heroine. + + +RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE + +Illustrated by Douglas Duer. + +A picturesque romance of Utah of some forty years ago when Mormon +authority ruled. In the persecution of Jane Withersteen, a rich ranch +owner, we are permitted to see the methods employed by the invisible +hand of the Mormon Church to break her will. + + +THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN + +Illustrated with photograph reproductions. + +This is the record of a trip which the author took with Buffalo Jones, +known as the preserver of the American bison, across the Arizona desert +and of a hunt in "that wonderful country of yellow crags, deep canons +and giant pines." It is a fascinating story. + + +THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT + +Jacket in color. Frontispiece. + +This big human drama is played in the Painted Desert. A lovely girl, who +has been reared among Mormons, learns to love a young New Englander. The +Mormon religion, however, demands that the girl shall become the second +wife of one of the Mormons-- + +Well, that's the problem of this sensational, big selling story. + + +BETTY ZANE + +Illustrated by Louis F. Grant. + +This story tells of the bravery and heroism of Betty, the beautiful +young sister of old Colonel Zane, one of the bravest pioneers, life +along the frontier, attacks by Indians, Betty's heroic defense of the +beleaguered garrison at Wheeling, the burning of the Fort, and Betty's +final race for life, make up this never-to-be-forgotten story. + + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.As + +_Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_ + +GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Harbor, by Ernest Poole + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HARBOR *** + +***** This file should be named 29932-8.txt or 29932-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/9/3/29932/ + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Woodie4 and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced +from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American +Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Harbor + +Author: Ernest Poole + +Release Date: September 9, 2009 [EBook #29932] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HARBOR *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Woodie4 and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced +from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American +Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 505px;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="505" height="600" alt="" title="Cover" /> +</div> + +<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 361px;"> +<img src="images/003.png" width="361" height="600" alt="" title="Title Page-THE HARBOR" /> +</div> + +<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<h5><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1915,<br /><br /> + +<span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /><br /> + +Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1915 Reprinted February,<br /> +1915 Twice. March, 1915 Three Times. April, 1915 Twice May, 1915. Twice<br /> +June, 1915. Twice July, 1915. August, 1915. September, October,<br /> +November, December, 1915. January, 1916. March, 1916 +</h5> + +<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<h4><i>TO M. A</i>.</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> + +<h1>THE HARBOR</h1> + +<h2>BOOK I</h2> + +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<p>"You chump," I thought contemptuously. I was seven years old at the +time, and the gentleman to whom I referred was Henry Ward Beecher. What +it was that aroused my contempt for the man will be more fully +understood if I tell first of the grudge that I bore him.</p> + +<p>I was sitting in my mother's pew in the old church in Brooklyn. I was +altogether too small for the pew, it was much too wide for the bend at +my knees; and my legs, which were very short and fat, stuck straight out +before me. I was not allowed to move, I was most uncomfortable, and for +this Sabbath torture I laid all the blame on the preacher. For my mother +had once told me that I was brought to church so small in order that +when I grew up I could say I had heard the great man preach before he +died. Hence the deep grudge that I bore him. Sitting here this morning, +it seemed to me for hours and hours, I had been meditating upon my hard +lot. From time to time, as was my habit when thinking or feeling deeply, +one hand would unconsciously go to my head and slowly stroke my bang. My +hair was short and had no curls, its only glory was this bang, which was +deliciously soft to my hand and shone like a mirror from much reflective +stroking. Presently my mother would notice and with a smile she would +put down my hand, but a few moments later up it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> would come and would +continue its stroking. For I felt both abused and puzzled. What was +there in the talk of the large white-haired old man in the pulpit to +make my mother's eyes so queer, to make her sit so stiff and still? What +good would it do me when I grew up to say that I had heard him?</p> + +<p>"I don't believe I will ever say it," I reasoned doggedly to myself. +"And even if I do, I don't believe any other man will care whether I say +it to him or not." I felt sure my father wouldn't. He never even came to +church.</p> + +<p>At the thought of my strange silent father, my mind leaped to his +warehouse, his dock, the ships and the harbor. Like him, they were all +so strange. And my hands grew a little cold and moist as I thought of +the terribly risky thing I had planned to do all by myself that very +afternoon. I thought about it for a long time with my eyes tight shut. +Then the voice of the minister brought me back, I found myself sitting +here in church and went on with this less shivery thinking.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't care myself," I decided. "If I were a man and another man +met me on the street and said, 'Look here. When I was a boy I heard +Henry Ward Beecher before he died,' I guess I would just say to him, +'You mind your business and I'll mind mine.'" This phrase I had heard +from the corner grocer, and I liked the sound of it. I repeated it now +with an added zest.</p> + +<p>Again I opened my eyes and again I found myself here in church. Still +here. I heaved a weary sigh.</p> + +<p>"If you were dead already," I thought as I looked up at the preacher, +"my mother wouldn't bring me here." I found this an exceedingly cheering +thought. I had once overheard our cook Anny describe how her old father +had dropped dead. I eyed the old minister hopefully.</p> + +<p>But what was this he was saying! Something about "the harbor of life." +The harbor! In an instant I was listening hard, for this was something I +knew about.</p> + +<p>"Safe into the harbor," I heard him say. "Home to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> the harbor at last to +rest." And then, while he passed on to something else, something I +<i>didn't</i> know about, I settled disgustedly back in the pew.</p> + +<p>"You chump," I thought contemptuously. To hear him talk you would have +thought the harbor was a place to feel quite safe in, a place to snuggle +down in, a nice little place to come home to at night. "I guess he has +never seen it much," I snorted.</p> + +<p>For I had. From our narrow brownstone house on the Heights, ever since I +could remember (and let me tell you that seems a long time when you are +seven years old), I had looked down from our back windows upon a harbor +that to me was strange and terrible.</p> + +<p>I was glad that our house was up so high. Its front was on a sedate old +street, and within it everything felt safe. My mother was here, and Sue, +my little sister, and old Belle, our nurse, our nursery, my games, my +animals, my fairy books, the small red table where I ate my supper, and +the warm fur rug by my bed, where I knelt for "Now I lay me."</p> + +<p>But from the porch at the back of our house you went three steps down to +a long narrow garden—at least the garden seemed long to me—and if you +walked to the end of the garden and peered through the ivy-covered bars +of the fence, as I had done when I was so little that I could barely +walk alone, you had the first mighty thrill of your life. For you found +that through a hole in the ivy you could see a shivery distance straight +down through the air to a street below. You found that the two iron +posts, one at either end of the fence, were warm when you touched them, +had holes in the top, had smoke coming out—were chimneys! And slowly it +dawned upon your mind that this garden of yours was nothing at all but +the roof of a gray old building—which your nurse told you vaguely had +been a "warehouse" long ago when the waters of the harbor had come 'way +in to the street below. The old "wharves" had been down there, she said. +What was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> a "wharf"? It was a "dock", she told me. And she said that a +family of "dockers" lived in the building under our garden. They were +all that was left in it now but "old junk." Who was Old Junk, a man or a +woman? And what in the world were Dockers?</p> + +<p>Pursuing my adventurous ways, I found at one place in the garden, hidden +by flowers near a side wall, a large heavy lid which was painted brown +and felt like tin. But how much heavier than tin. Tug as I might, I +could not budge it. Then I found it had an iron hook and was hooked down +tight to the garden. Yes, it was true, our whole garden was a roof! I +put my ear down to the lid and listened scowling, both eyes shut. I +heard nothing then, but I came back and tried it many times, until once +I jumped up and ran like mad. For faintly from somewhere deep down under +the flower beds I had heard a baby crying! What was this baby, a Junk or +a Docker? And who were these people who lived under flowers? To me they +sounded suspiciously like the goblins in my goblin book. Once when I was +sick in bed, Sue came shrieking into the house and said that a giant had +heaved up that great lid from below. Up had come his shaggy head, his +dirty face, his rolling eyes, and he had laughed and laughed at the +flowers. He was a drunken man, our old nurse Belle had told her, but Sue +was sure he was a giant.</p> + +<p>"You are wrong," I said with dignity. "He is either a Junk or a Docker."</p> + +<p>The lid was spiked down after that, and our visitor never appeared +again. But I saw him vividly in my mind's eye—his shaggy wild head +rising up among our flowers. Vaguely I felt that he came from the +harbor.</p> + +<p>As the exciting weeks of my life went on I discovered three good holes +in that ivy-covered fence of ours. These all became my secret holes, and +through them I watched the street below, a bleak bare chasm of a street +which when the trucks came by echoed till it thundered. Across the +street rose the high gray front of my father's ware<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>house. It was part +of a solid line of similar gray brick buildings, and it was like my +father, it was grim and silent, you could not see inside. Over its five +tiers of windows black iron shutters were fastened tight. From time to +time a pair of these shutters would fly open, disclosing a dark cave +behind, out of which men brought barrels and crates and let them down by +ropes into the trucks on the street below. How they spun round and round +as they came! But most of the trucks drove rumbling into a tunnel which +led through the warehouse out to my father's dock, out to the ships and +the harbor. And from that mysterious region long lines of men came +through the tunnel at noontime, some nearly naked, some only in shirts, +men with the hairiest faces. They sat on the street with their backs to +the warehouse wall, eating their dinners out of pails, and from other +pails they took long drinks of a curious stuff all white on top. Some of +them were always crossing the street and disappearing from my view into +a little store directly underneath me. Belle spoke of this store as a +"vile saloon" and of these men as "dockers." So I knew what Dockers were +at last! In place of the one who lived under our garden and had burst up +among the flowers, I saw now that there were hundreds and thousands of +men like him down there on the docks. And all belonged to the harbor.</p> + +<p>Their work I learned was to load the ships whose masts and spars peeped +up at me over the warehouse roofs. From my nursery window above I could +see them better. Sometimes they had large white sails and then they +moved off somewhere. I could see them go, these tall ships, with their +sails making low, mysterious sounds, flappings, spankings and deep +boomings. The men on them sang the weirdest songs as they pulled all +together at the ropes. Some of these songs brought a lump in your +throat. Where were they going? "To heathen lands," Belle told me. What +did she mean? I was just going to ask her. But then I stopped—I did not +dare! From up the river, under<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> the sweeping arch of that Great Bridge +which seemed high as the clouds, came more tall ships, and low +"steamers" belching smoke and "tugs" and "barges" and "ferry boats." The +names of all these I learned from Belle and Anny the cook and my mother. +And all were going "to heathen lands." What in the world did Belle mean +by that?</p> + +<p>Once I thought I had it. I saw that some of these smaller boats were +just going across the river and stopping at the land over there, a land +so crowded with buildings you could barely see into it at all. "Is that +a heathen land?" I asked her. "Yes!" said Belle. And she laughed. S +was Scotch and very religious. But later I heard her call it "New York" +and say she was going there herself to buy herself some corsets. And so +I was even more puzzled than ever. For some deep instinct told me you +could buy no corsets in "heathen land"—least of all Belle's corsets.</p> + +<p>She often spoke of "the ocean," too, another place where the tall ships +went. But what was the ocean? "It's like a lake, but mightier," Belle +had said. But what was a lake? It was all so vague and confusing. Always +it came back to this, that I had no more seen the "ocean" than I had +seen a "heathen land," and so I did not know them.</p> + +<p>But I knew the harbor by day and by night, on bright sunny days and in +fogs and rains, in storms of wind, in whirling snow, and under the +restful stars at night that twinkled down from so far above, while the +shadowy region below twinkled back with stars of its own, restless, +many-colored stars, yellow, green and red and blue, moving, dancing, +flaring, dying. And all these stars had voices, too. By night in my bed +I could hear them—hoots and shrieks from ferries and tugs, hoarse +coughs from engines along the docks, the whine of wheels, the clang of +bells, deep blasts and bellows from steamers. And closer still, from +that "vile saloon" directly under the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> garden, I could hear wild shouts +and songs and roars of laughter that came, I learned, not only from +dockers, but from "stokers" and "drunken sailors," men who lived right +inside the ships and would soon be starting for heathen lands!</p> + +<p>"I wonder how I'd feel," I would think, "if I were out in the garden +now—out in the dark all by myself—right above that vile saloon!"</p> + +<p>This would always scare me so that I would bury my head in the covers +and shake. But I often did this, for I liked to be scared. It was a game +I had all by myself with the harbor.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>And yet this old man in the pulpit called it a place where you went to +rest!</p> + +<p>Twenty-five years have gone since then, and all that I can remember now +of anything Henry Ward Beecher said was this—that once, just once, I +heard him speak of something that I knew about, and that when he did he +was wrong.</p> + +<p>And though all the years since then have been for me one long story of a +harbor, restless, heaving, changing, always changing—it has never +changed for me in this—it has never seemed a haven where ships come to +dock, but always a place from which ships start out—into the storms and +the fogs of the seas, over the "ocean" to "heathen lands." For so I saw +it when I was a child, the threshold of adventures.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<p>As I walked home from church with my mother that day the streets seemed +as quiet and safe as her eyes. How suddenly tempting it seemed to me, +this quiet and this safety, compared to the place where I was going. For +I had decided to run away from my home and my mother that afternoon, +down to the harbor to see the world. What would become of me 'way down +there? What would she do if I never came back? A lump rose in my throat +at the thought of her tears. It was terrible.</p> + +<p>"All the same I am going to do it," I kept thinking doggedly. And yet +suddenly, as we reached our front steps, how near I came to telling her. +But no, she would only spoil it all. She wanted me always up in the +garden, she wanted me never to have any thrills.</p> + +<p>My mother knew me so well. She had seen that when she read stories of +fairies, witches and goblins out of my books to Sue and me, while Sue, +though two years younger, would sit there like a little dark imp, her +black eyes snapping over the fights, I would creep softly out of the +room, ashamed and shaken, and would wait in the hall outside till the +happy ending was in plain view. So my mother had gradually toned down +all the fights and the killings, the witches and the monsters, and much +to my disappointment had wholly shut out the gory pirates who were for +me the most frightfully fascinating of all. Sometimes I felt vaguely +that for this she had her own reason, too—that my mother hated +everything that had to do with the ocean, especially my father's dock +that made him so gloomy and silent. But of this I could never be quite +sure. I would often watch her intently, with a sud<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>den sharp anxiety, +for I loved my mother with all my soul and I could not bear to see her +unhappy.</p> + +<p>"Never on any account," I heard her say to Belle, "are the children to +go down the street toward the docks."</p> + +<p>"Yes, ma'am," said Belle. "I'll see to it."</p> + +<p>At once I wanted to go there. The street in front of our house sloped +abruptly down at the next corner two blocks through poorer and smaller +houses to a cobblestone space below, over which trucks clattered, +plainly on their way to the docks. So I could go down and around by that +way. How tempting it all looked down there. Above the roofs of the +houses, the elevated railroad made a sharp bend on its way to the +Bridge, trains roared by, high over all the Great Bridge swept across +the sky. And below all this and more thrilling than all, I caught +glimpses of strange, ragged boys. "Micks," Belle sometimes called them, +and sometimes, "Finian Mickies." Up here I had no playmates.</p> + +<p>From now on, our garden lost its charms. Up the narrow courtway which +ran along the side of the house I would slip stealthily to the front +gate and often get a good look down the street before Belle sharply +called me back. The longest looks, I found, were always on Sunday +afternoons, when Belle would sit back there in the garden, close to the +bed of red tulips which encircled a small fountain made of two white +angels. Belle, who was bony, tall and grim, would sit by the little +angels reading her shabby Bible. Her face was wrinkled and almost brown, +her eyes now kind, now gloomy. She had a song she would sing now and +then. "For beneath the Union Jack we will drive the Finians back"—is +all I can remember. She told me of witches in the Scotch hills. At her +touch horrible monsters rose in the most surprising places. In the +bathtub, for example, when I stayed in the bath too long she would jerk +out the stopper, and as from the hole there came a loud gurgle—"It's +the Were-shark," Belle would mutter. And I would leap out trembling.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p> + +<p>This old "Were-shark" had his home in the very middle of the ocean. In +one gulp he could swallow a boy of my size, and this he did three times +each day. The boys were brought to him by the "Condor," a perfectly +hideous bird as large as a cow and as fierce as a tiger. If ever I dared +go down that street and disobey my mother, the Condor would "swoop" down +over the roofs, snatch me up in his long yellow beak with the blood of +the last boy on it, and with thunder and lightning would carry me off +far over the clouds and drop me into the Were-shark's mouth.</p> + +<p>Then Belle would sit down to her Bible.</p> + +<p>Sunday after Sunday passed, and still in fascinated dread I would steal +quietly out to the gate and watch this street forbidden. Pointing to it +one day, Belle had declared in awful tones, "Broad is the way that +leadeth to destruction." But it was not broad. In that at least she was +all wrong. It was in fact so narrow that a Condor as big as a cow might +easily bump himself when he "swooped." Besides, there were good strong +lamp-posts where a little boy could cling and scream, and almost always +somewhere in sight was a policeman so fat and heavy that even two +Condors could hardly lift him from the ground. This policeman would come +running. My mother had said I must never be scared by policemen, because +they were really good kind men. In fact, she said, it was foolish to be +scared by anything ever. She never knew of Belle's methods with me.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>So at last I had decided to risk it, and now the fearful day had come. I +could barely eat my dinner. My courage was fast ebbing away. In the +dining-room the sunlight was for a time wiped out by clouds, and I grew +suddenly happy. It might rain and then I could not go. But it did not +rain nor did anything I hoped for happen to prevent my plan. Belle sat +down by the angels and was soon so deep in her Bible that it was plain I +could easily slip up the path. Sue never looked up from her sand-pile +to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> say, "Stop Billy! He's running away from home!" With a gulp I passed +my mother's window. She did not happen to look out. Now I had reached +the very gate. "I can't go! I can't open the gate!" But the old gate +opened with one push. "I can't go! There is no policeman!" But yes, +there he was on my side of the street slowly walking toward me. My heart +thumped, I could hardly breathe. In a moment with a frantic rush I had +reached the nearest lamp-post and was clinging breathless. I could not +scream, I shut my eyes in sickening fear and waited for the rushing of +enormous wings.</p> + +<p>But there came no Condor swooping.</p> + +<p>Another rush—another post—another and another!</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with you, little feller?"</p> + +<p>I looked up at the big safe policeman and laughed.</p> + +<p>"I'm playing a game," I almost shouted, and ran without touching another +post two blocks to the cobblestone space below. I ran blindly around it +several times, I bumped into a man who said, "Heigh there! Look out!" +After that I strutted proudly, then turned and ran back with all my +might up the street, and into our house and up to my room. And there on +my bed to my great surprise I found myself sobbing and sobbing. It was a +long time before I could stop. I had had my first adventure.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>I made many Sunday trips after that, and on no one of them was I caught. +For delighted and proud at what I had done I kept asking Belle to talk +of the Condor, gloomily she piled on the terrors, and seeing the awed +look in my eyes (awe at my own courage in defying such a bird), she felt +so sure of my safety that often she would barely look up from her Bible +the whole afternoon. Even on workdays over her sewing she would forget. +And so I went "to destruction."</p> + +<p>At first I stayed but a little while and never left the cobblestone +space, only peering up into the steep little streets that led to the +fearsome homes of the "Micks."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> But then I made the acquaintance of Sam. +It happened through a small toy boat which I had taken down there with +the purpose of starting it off for "heathen lands." As I headed across +the railroad tracks that led to the docks, suddenly Sam and his gang +appeared from around a freight car. I stood stock-still. They were +certainly "Micks"—ragged and dirty, with holes in their shoes and soot +on their faces. Sam was smoking a cigarette.</p> + +<p>"Heigh, fellers," he said, "look at Willy's boat."</p> + +<p>I clutched my boat tighter and turned to run. But the next moment Sam +had me by the arm.</p> + +<p>"Look here, young feller," he growled. "You've got the wrong man to do +business with this time."</p> + +<p>"I don't want to do any business," I gasped.</p> + +<p>"Smash him, Sam—smash in his nut for him," piped the smallest Micky +cheerfully. And this Sam promptly proceeded to do. It was a wild and +painful time. But though Sam was two years older, he was barely any +larger than I, and when he and his gang had gone off with my boat, as I +stood there breathing hard, I was filled with a grim satisfaction. For +once when he tried to wrench the boat from me I had hit him with it +right on the face, and I had had a glimpse of a thick red mark across +his cheek. I tasted something new in my mouth and spit it out. It was +blood. I did this several times, slowly and impressively, till it made a +good big spot on the railroad tie at my feet. Then I walked with dignity +back across the tracks and up "the way of destruction" home. I walked +slowly, planning as I went. At the gate I climbed up on it and swung. +Then with a sudden loud cry I fell off and ran back into the garden +crying, "I fell off the gate! I fell on my face!" So my cut and swollen +lip was explained, and my trips were not discovered.</p> + +<p>I felt myself growing older fast. For I knew that I could both fight and +tell lies, besides defying the Condor.</p> + +<p>In the next years, for weeks at a time my life was centered on Sam and +his gang. How we became friends, how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> often we met, by just what means I +evaded my nurse, all these details are vague to me now. I am not even +sure I was never caught. But it seems to me that I was not. For as I +grew to be eight years old, Belle turned her attention more and more to +that impish little sister of mine who was always up to some mischief or +other. There was the corner grocer, too, with whom I pretended to be +staunch friends. "I'm going to see the grocer," I would say, when I +heard Sam's cautious whistle in front of the house—and so presently I +would join the gang. I followed Sam with a doglike devotion, giving up +my weekly twenty-five cents instead of saving it for Christmas, and in +return receiving from him all the world-old wisdom stored in that +bullet-shaped head of his which sat so tight on his round little +shoulders.</p> + +<p>And though I did not realize it then, in my tense crowded childhood, +through Sam and his companions I learned something else that was to +stand me in good stead years later on. I learned how to make friends +with "the slums." I discovered that by making friends with "Micks" and +"Dockers" and the like, you find they are no fearful goblins, giants +bursting savagely up among the flowers of your life, but people as human +as yourself, or rather, much more human, because they live so close to +the harbor, close to the deep rough tides of life.</p> + +<p>Into these tides I was now drawn down—and it did me some good and a +great deal of harm. For I was too little those days for the harbor.</p> + +<p>Sam had the most wonderful life in the world. He could go wherever he +liked and at any hour day or night. Once, he said, when a "feller" was +drowned, he had stayed out on the docks all night. His mother always let +him alone. An enormous woman with heavy eyes, I was in awe of her from +the first. The place that she kept with Sam's father was called "The +Sailor's Harbor." It stood on a corner down by the docks, a long, low +wooden building painted white, with twelve tight-shuttered, mysterious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> +windows along the second story, and below them a "Ladies' Entrance." In +front was a small blackboard with words in white which Sam could read. +"Ten Cent Dinners" stood at the top. Below came, "Coffee and rolls." +Next, "Ham and eggs." Then "Bacon and eggs." And then, "To-day"—with a +space underneath where Sam's fat father wrote down every morning still +more delicious eatables. You got whiffs of these things and they made +your mouth water, they made your stomach fairly turn against your +nursery supper.</p> + +<p>But most of our time we spent on the docks. All were roofed, and +exploring the long dock sheds and climbing down into the dark holds of +the square-rigged ships called "clippers," we found logs of curious +mottled wood, huge baskets of sugar, odorous spices, indigo, camphor, +tea, coffee, jute and endless other things. Sam knew their names and the +names of the wonder-places they came from—Manila, Calcutta, Bombay, +Ceylon. He knew besides such words as "hawser," "bulkhead" and +"ebb-tide." And Sam knew how to swear. He swore with a fascinating ease +such words as made me shiver and stare. And then he would look at me and +chuckle.</p> + +<p>"You think I'll go to hell for this, don't you," he asked me once. And +my face grew hot with embarrassment, for I thought that he assuredly +would.</p> + +<p>I asked him what were heathen lands, and he said they were countries +where heathen lived. And what were heathen? Cannibals. And what were +they?</p> + +<p>"Fellers that eat fellers," he said.</p> + +<p>"Alive?" I inquired. He turned to the gang:</p> + +<p>"Listen to the kid! He wants to know if they eat 'em alive!" Sam spat +disgustedly. "Naw," he said. "First they roast 'em like any meat. They +roast 'em," he added reflectively, "until their skin gets brown and +bubbles out and busts."</p> + +<p>One afternoon a carriage brought three travelers for one of the ships, a +man, his wife and a little girl with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> shining yellow pig-tails. "To be +et," Sam whispered as we stood close beside them. And then, pointing to +some of the half-naked brown men that made the crew of the ship near +by—"cannibals," he muttered. For a long time I stared at these eaters, +especially at their lean brown stomachs.</p> + +<p>"We're safe enough," Sam told me. "They ain't allowed to come ashore." I +found this very comforting.</p> + +<p>But what a frightful fate lay in store for the little girl with +pig-tails. As I watched her I felt worse and worse. Why couldn't +somebody warn her in time? At last I decided to do it myself. Procuring +a scrap of paper I retired behind a pile of crates and wrote in my +large, clumsy hand, "You look out—you are going to be et." Watching my +chance, I slipped this into her satchel and hoped that she would read it +soon. Then I promptly forgot all about her and ran off into a warehouse +where the gang had gone to slide.</p> + +<p>These warehouses had cavernous rooms, so dark you could not see to the +ends, and there from between the wooden columns the things from the +ships loomed out of the dark like so many ghosts. There were strange +sweet smells. And from a hole in the ceiling there was a twisting chute +of steel down which you could slide with terrific speed. We used to +slide by the hour.</p> + +<p>Outside were freight cars in long lines, some motionless, some suddenly +lurching forward or back, with a grinding and screeching of wheels and a +puffing and coughing from engines ahead. Sam taught me how to climb on +the cars and how to swing off while they were going. He had learned from +watching the brakemen that dangerous backward left-hand swing that lands +you stock-still in your tracks. It is a splendid feeling. Only once +Sam's left hand caught, I heard a low cry, and after I jumped I found +him standing there with a white face. His left hand hung straight down +from the wrist and blood was dripping from it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Shut up, you damn fool!" he said fiercely.</p> + +<p>"I wasn't saying nothing," I gasped.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you was—you was startin' to cry! Holy Christ!" He sat down +suddenly, then rolled over and lay still. Some one ran for his mother, +and after a time he was carried away. I did not see him again for some +weeks.</p> + +<p>We did things that were bad for a boy of my size, and I saw things that +I shouldn't have seen—a docker crushed upon one of the docks and +brought out on a stretcher dead, a stoker as drunk as though he were +dead being wheeled on a wheelbarrow to a ship by the man called a +"crimp," who sold this drunken body for an advance on its future pay. +Sam told me in detail of these things. There came a strike, and once in +the darkness of a cold November twilight I saw some dockers rush on a +"scab," I heard the dull sickening thumps as they beat him.</p> + +<p>And one day Sam took me to the door of his father's saloon and pointed +out a man in there who had an admiring circle around him.</p> + +<p>"He's going to jump from the Bridge on a bet," Sam whispered. I saw the +man go. For what seemed to me hours I watched the Great Bridge up there +in the sky, with its crawling processions of trolleys and wagons, its +whole moving armies of little black men. Suddenly one of these tiny +specks shot out and down, I saw it fall below the roofs, I felt Sam's +hand like ice in mine. And this was not good for a boy of ten.</p> + +<p>But the sight that ended it all for me was not a man, but a woman. It +happened one chilly March afternoon when I fell from a dock into water +covered with grease and foam, came up spluttering and terrified, was +quickly hauled to the dock by a man and then hustled by Sam and the gang +to his home, to have my clothes dried and so not get caught by my +mother. Scolded by Sam's mother and given something fiery hot to drink, +stripped naked and wrapped in an old flannel nightgown and told to sit +by the stove in the kitchen—I was then left alone with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> Sam. And then +Sam with a curious light in his eyes took me to a door which he opened +just a crack. Through the crack he showed me a small back room full of +round iron tables. And at one of these a man, stoker or sailor I don't +know which, his face flushed red under dirt and hair, held in his lap a +big fat girl half dressed, giggling and queer, quite drunk. And then +while Sam whispered on and on about the shuttered rooms upstairs, I felt +a rush of such sickening fear and loathing that I wanted to scream—but +I turned too faint.</p> + +<p>I remember awakening on the floor, Sam's mother furiously slapping Sam, +then dressing me quickly, gripping me tight by both my arms and saying,</p> + +<p>"You tell a word of this to your pa and we'll come up and kill you!"</p> + +<p>That night at home I did not sleep. I lay in my bed and shivered and +burned. My first long exciting adventure was over. Ended were all the +thrills, the wild fun. It was a spree I had had with the harbor, from +the time I was seven until I was ten. It had taken me at seven, a plump +sturdy little boy, and at ten it had left me wiry, thin, with quick, +nervous movements and often dark shadows under my eyes. And it left a +deep scar on my early life. For over all the adventures and over my +whole childhood loomed this last thing I had seen, hideous, disgusting. +For years after that, when I saw or even thought of the harbor, I felt +the taste of foul, greasy water in my mouth and in my soul.</p> + +<p>So ended the first lesson.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<p>The next morning as I started for school, suddenly in the hallway I +thought of what my mother had told me—always when I was frightened to +shut my eyes and speak to Jesus and he would be sure to make everything +right. I had not spoken to Jesus of late except to say "Holy Christ!" +like Sam. But now, so sickened by Sam and his docks, my head throbbing +from the sleepless night, on the impulse I kneeled quickly with my face +on a chair right there in the hall. But I found I was too ashamed to +begin.</p> + +<p>"If he would only ask me," I thought. Why didn't he ask me, "What's the +matter, little son?" or say, "Now, you must tell me and then you'll feel +better"—as my mother always did. But Jesus did not help me out. I could +not even feel him near me. "I will never tell anyone," I thought. And I +felt myself horribly alone.</p> + +<p>Help came from a quite different source.</p> + +<p>"There he is! Look!"</p> + +<p>I heard Sue's eager whisper. Jumping quickly to my feet, I saw in the +library doorway Sue's dark little figure and her mocking, dancing eyes +as she pointed me out to our father, her chum, whose face wore a smile +of amusement. In a moment I had rushed out of doors and was running +angrily to school, furious at myself for praying, furious at Sue for +spying and at my father for that smile. My terror was forgotten. No more +telling Jesus things! I retreated deep inside of myself and worked out +of my troubles as best I could.</p> + +<p>From that day the harbor became for me a big grim place to be let +alone—like my father. A place immeasura<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>bly stronger than I—like my +father—and like him harsh and indifferent, not caring whether when I +fell into it I was pulled up to safety or drawn far down into grease and +slime. It made no difference. I was nothing to it one way or the other. +And I was nothing to my father.</p> + +<p>Of course this was by no means true. As I look back now I know that +often he must have tried to be kind, that in the jar and worry of his +own absorbing troubled life he must have often turned to me and tried to +make himself my friend. But children pass hard judgments. And if my +father was friendly at times it did no good. For he was a man—big and +strong—and I was a small boy craving his love.</p> + +<p>Why couldn't he really love me? Why couldn't he ask me how I felt or +pull my ear and say "Hello, Puss?" He was always saying these things to +Sue, and caring about her very hard and trying to understand her, +although she was nothing but a girl, two years younger and smaller than +I and far less interesting. And yet with her he was kind and tender, +curious and smiling, he watched her with wholly different eyes. My +father was a short, powerful man, and though he was nearly fifty years +old his hair was black and thick and coarse. At night he would rub his +unshaven cheek on Sue's small cheek and tickle her. She would chuckle +and wriggle as though it were fun. I used to watch this hungrily, and +once I awkwardly drew close and offered my cheek to be tickled. My +father at once grew as awkward as I, and he gave me a rub so rough it +stung. And this wasn't fair—I had hoped for a cuddle. Besides, he was +always praising Sue when I knew she didn't deserve it. He called her +brave. Once when he took us duck shooting together a squall came up and +he rowed hard, and Sue sat with her eyes on his, smiling and quite +unafraid. At home that night I heard him tell my mother how wonderfully +brave she had been, and of how I, on the other hand, had gripped the +boat and turned white with fear, while little Sue just sat and smiled.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p> + +<p>"We'll see how brave she is," I thought, and the next day I hit her in +Sam's best style, fairly "knocked her nut off," in fact, with one quick +blow. "There," I said to myself while she screamed. "I guess that shows +how brave you are. I didn't scream when Sam hit me."</p> + +<p>He said she was quicker than I at her lessons. And this rankled the +deeper because it was true. But I would never admit it.</p> + +<p>"Of course she's quick, when he's always helping her. Why doesn't he +ever come and help me?" I would burst into tears of vexation. My father +was unfair!</p> + +<p>More than that, it was he and his dock and his warehouse, in the years +that followed my thrills with Sam, that stripped all these thrills away. +A great ship with her spreading, booming white sails might move up the +river from heathen lands as wonderful and strange as you please. But the +moment she reached my father's dock she became a dirty, spotted thing, +just a common every-day part of his business.</p> + +<p>He himself was nothing but business. His business was with ships and the +sea, and yet he had never once in his life taken a long sea voyage. "Why +doesn't he? Why does he like only tiresome things?" I argued secretly to +myself. "Why does he always come ashore?" He always did. In my memories +of ships sailing I see him always there on deck talking to the captain, +scowling, wrinkling his eyes over the smoke of his cigar, but always +coming down the gang-plank at the end, unconcernedly turning his back on +all the excitement and going back to his warehouse.</p> + +<p>He could get excited about ships, but only in the queerest way that had +something to do with his business. Late one night from my bed I heard +his voice downstairs, cutting and snarling through other voices. I got +out of bed and stole downstairs and along the half-lit hall to the +library door, and there from behind the curtain I watched what was going +on inside. The library was full of men,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> grave, courteous-looking +gentlemen, some of them angry, some merely amused. My father was leaning +over his table talking of ships, of mysterious things that he said must +be done with battleships and tariffs.</p> + +<p>"And mark me, gentlemen," he cried. "If we don't do these things in time +American sails will be swept from the seas!"</p> + +<p>Listening, I got a picture of an immense broom reaching out of the +clouds and sweeping American ships off the ocean. But I could make +nothing of this at the time. I only watched his face and eyes and his +fist that came down with a crash on the table. And I was afraid of my +father.</p> + +<p>When ships lay at his dock the captains often came up to dinner. But +even these marvelous creatures lost in my father's presence all that Sam +had given them in my eyes. They did not like my mother, they ate in +uneasy silence, or spoke gruffly of their dull affairs. Once or twice I +heard talk of mutinies, of sailors shot down or put in irons, but all in +a matter-of-fact sort of way. Mere grunts came from my father. Steadily +drearier grew the ocean, flatter all the heathen lands.</p> + +<p>One stout, red-faced captain, jovial even in spite of my mother, would +annoy me frightfully by joking about my going to sea. He was always +asking me when I meant to run away and be "a bloody pirate." He took it +for granted I liked the sea, was thrilled by the sea, when the truth of +it was that I hated the sea! It was business now, only business!</p> + +<p>My father's warehouse, too, lost its mystery as I grew older. For +exploring into its darkness I found that of course it did have walls +like any common building. The things in it, too, lost their wonder. It +was as though my father had packed all the rich and romantic Far East +into common barrels and crates and then nailed down the covers. And he +himself became for me as common as his warehouse. For in his case, too, +I could see the walls.</p> + +<p>"I know you now," I thought to myself. He could sit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> through supper +night after night and not utter a word in his gloom. But the mystery in +him was gone. Business, nothing but business. A man and a place to be +let alone.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>But it was my mother more than anyone else who drew me away from the +harbor. All through those early years she was the one who never changed, +the strong sure friend I could always come back to. My mother was as +safe as our house.</p> + +<p>She was a small, slender woman grown bodily stronger year by year by the +sheer force of her spirit. I remember her smoothly parted hair, brown +but showing gray at forty, the strong, lined face and the kindly eyes +which I saw so often lighted by that loving smile of hers for me. If my +father didn't care for me, I was always sure she did. I could feel her +always watching, trying to understand what I was thinking and feeling. +As when I was very small she toned down the stories she read, so she did +in everything else for me, even in her religion. Though she was a strong +church woman, I heard little from her of the terrors of hell. But I +heard much of heaven and more still of a heaven on earth. "Thy will be +done on earth as it is in heaven." I can never forget how she spoke +those words as I knelt and repeated them after her—not so much in the +tone of a prayer to a higher being as in one of quiet resolve to +herself. To do her share, through church and hospital and charity work +and the bringing up of her children, her share in the establishment of a +heaven upon the earth, this was her religion.</p> + +<p>And this heaven on earth of my mother's was made up of all that was +"fine" in humanity past and present. "Fine, fine!" she would say of some +kind deed, of some new plan for bettering life, or of some book she was +reading, some music she had heard, or of a photograph of some great +painting over in Europe. All her life she had wanted to go abroad.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p> + +<p>My mother was one of those first American women who went to college, and +one of that army sent out from college as school teachers all over the +land. She had taught school in frontier hamlets far out West, homesick +she had looked back on the old college town in New England, and those +ten years of her life out West had been bare and hard, an exile. At last +she had secured a position in an expensive girls' school in New York, +and from there a few years later she had married my father. I think they +had been happy at first, I think that his work with the ships had seemed +to her a gateway leading out to Europe, to all the very "finest" things. +But later, as he set his whole mind upon his warehouse worries, upon his +fight for Yankee ships, a navy, subsidies, tariffs, and shut out all +thought of travel, culture, friends, all but the bare, ugly business of +life—my mother had rebelled against this, had come to hate his harbor, +and had determinedly set herself to help me get what she had missed.</p> + +<p>I don't mean that she babied me. She was too good a teacher for that. I +mean she steered me through hard work away from what she saw in the +harbor up toward what she felt was fine. She began when I was very +little giving me daily lessons at home in the brief time she had to +spare from her house and charity work. She made me study and she studied +me. My mother, sooner or later, seemed to find out all I did or felt.</p> + +<p>Often I would hold stubbornly back. While I was going with Sam to the +docks I never once gave her a hint of my rovings. It was not until two +years after that drunken woman disaster that I suddenly told my mother +about it. I remember then she did not chide. Instead she caught the +chance to draw out of me all I had learned from the harbor. I talked to +her long that night, but she said little in reply. I can vividly +remember, though, how she came to me a few days later and placed a "book +for young men" in my hands.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You are only twelve," she said. "It's a pity. But after what you have +seen, my son, it is better that you know."</p> + +<p>She did this twenty years ago. It was far in advance of what most +parents did then or are doing even now for their children. And it threw +a flood of light into the darkest place in my mind, swept away endless +forebodings, secret broodings over what until then had seemed to me the +ugliest, the dirtiest, the most frightening thing I had found in life.</p> + +<p>"When you meet anything ugly or bad," she told me, "I don't want you to +turn away at once, I want you to face it and see what it is. Understand +it and then leave it, and then it won't follow you in the dark."</p> + +<p>"Keep clean," she said. And understanding me as she did, I think she +added to herself, "And I must keep you quiet." She once told me she +hoped that when I grew up I might become a professor in one of those +college towns she loved, where I might work all my life in peace.</p> + +<p>Although she never said anything to me against the harbor, I knew that +my mother put all the ugliest things in life down there. And the things +that were fine were all up here.</p> + +<p>"I always like the front door of a house," she used to say, "to be wide +and low with only a step or two leading up. I like it to look +hospitable, as though always waiting for friends to come in."</p> + +<p>Our front door was like that, and the neighborhood it waited for was one +of the quietest, the cleanest and the finest, according to her view, of +any in the country. The narrow little street had wide, leisurely +sidewalks and old-fashioned houses on either side, a few of red brick, +but more of brown stone with spotless white-sashed windows which were +tall and narrow and rounded at the top. There were no trees, but there +were many smooth, orderly vines. Almost all the houses had wide, +inviting doorways like ours, but the people they invited in were only +those who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> lived quietly here, shutting out New York and all the toots +and rumblings of the ships and warehouses and docks below, of which they +themselves were the owners.</p> + +<p>These people in their leisurely way talked of literature and music, of +sculpture and painting and travel abroad, as their fathers and even +grandfathers had done—in times when the rest of the country, like one +colossal harbor, changing, heaving, seething, had had time for only the +crudest things, for railroads, mining camps, belching mills, vast herds +of cattle and droves of sheep, for the frontier towns my mother had +loathed, for a Civil War, for a Tweed Ring, for the Knights of Labor, a +Haymarket riot, for the astounding growth of cities, slums, corporations +and trusts, in this deep turbulent onward rush, this peopling of a +continent.</p> + +<p>And because my father, crude and self-made and come out of the West, was +of this present country, he was an intruder politely avoided by these +people of the past. The men would come sometimes at night, but they came +only on business. They went straight through to the library, whence I +could hear my father's voice, loud, impatient, angry, talking of what +must be done soon, or Germany and England would drive the American flag +from the ocean and make us beggars on the seas, humbly asking the ships +of our rivals to give us a share in the trade of the world. To such +disturbing meetings these grave and courteous gentlemen came less and +less as the years went by.</p> + +<p>And so that hospitable front door of ours waited long for neighbors.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<p>But if my father was an intruder, a disturber of the peace of these +contented gentlemen, my mother was more and more liked by their wives. +As time wore on they came to our house in the afternoons, upon hospital +and church affairs. And first in the church and then in a private school +near by I grew to be friends with their children.</p> + +<p>Across the street from us at the corner there stood a huge, square +brownstone house with a garden and a wide yard around it. Two boys and a +little girl lived here, and about them our small circle centered. Here +we played hockey in winter, part of the yard being flooded for our use; +and in Spring and Autumn, ball, tag, I spy, prisoner's base and other +games. They were all well enough as far as they went, but all were so +very young and tame compared to my former adventures with Sam. +Adventures, that was the difference. These were only games.</p> + +<p>I felt poor beside these boys, in this ample yard by their grandfather's +house. I often saw his great carriage roll out of the stable behind the +yard. "Coach," they called it. It had rich silver trimmings and a red +thing called a "crest," and a footman and coachman in top boots. Inside +the house was a butler who was still more imposing, and a lofty room +with spacious windows called the picture gallery. But by far the most +awesome of all was the white-headed grandfather of these boys, who had +been to Europe twenty-eight times and could read and speak "every +language on earth," as I was told in whispers while we peeped in through +his library door. There he sat with all his books, a man so rich he +never even went<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> to his office, a man who had owned not only warehouses +but hundreds of ships and had sent them to every land in the world! +While, as for me, my grandfather was not even alive. I felt poor and +small, and I did not like it.</p> + +<p>Besides, these unadventurous boys all put me down as "a queer kid." I +was middling good at most of their games and would get sudden spurts +when I would become almost a leader. But at other times, often right in +the middle of a game, I would suddenly forget where I was and would +think of Sam, of the cannibals that I had seen, of the man who had +jumped from the Great Bridge, or of that drunken woman. They would catch +me at it and call me queer. And I would grow hot and feel ashamed.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, poor and queer as I felt at times, at others I would +swell with my wisdom and importance. For what did they know, these +respectable boys, about the docks and the gangs of "Micks" deep down +there below us all as we played about in our nice little gardens. When +they called me queer, sometimes I would retort with dark hints, all +games would stop, they would gather close, and then I would tell these +intense eager boys the things I had learned from the harbor. And I had +the more pleasure in the telling from the feeling of relief that now I +was safe away from it all.</p> + +<p>"That's the real thing, that is," I would declare impressively. But how +good it felt to me to be free of such reality.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>At such times we made "the Chips" stay over on their side of the yard. +"The Chips" were three small admiring girls. One was my young sister +Sue, who was then about nine years old, long-legged, skinny and quick as +a flash, her black hair always flying. The second, a plump freckled +girl, was the younger sister of the boys who lived here. And the third +was a quiet little thing who lived around the corner. We called them +"Chips" to annoy them. We got the term from the stout coachman in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> +barn who used it with a fine sweeping contempt that included all his +lady friends. We ourselves had the most profound contempt for these +girls who kept poking into our games. At times we would stop everything +and take the utmost pains to explain to them that they were nothing +whatever but girls. And this would make Sue furious. She would screw up +her snapping black eyes and viciously stick out her tongue and stamp her +foot and say "darn!" to show she could swear like a regular kid. And +still they hung around us.</p> + +<p>But as time wore on we grew more indulgent, we included them more and +more. And this was largely due to me. For I took a vague curious +interest in the one who lived around the corner.</p> + +<p>Her name was Eleanore Dillon and her age was eight, and she had +attractions that slowly grew. To begin with, as I became gradually +aware, she was much the prettiest of the three. She had light curly hair +tied up in red ribbons, always <i>fresh</i> red ribbons. Everything about her +was always fresh and clean. She had the most serious blue eyes, which at +times would grow intent on what a tall chap of twelve like myself +condescended to tell her, and at other times wondrously confiding.</p> + +<p>Eleanore first attracted me by making me a hero. It was a warm May +afternoon and she was sitting on the grass with her doll and her two +companions. Sue had stolen some matches and was using them as +Jackstraws. Suddenly I heard a scream, then I saw Sue racing like mad +toward the garden hose, and I saw that the white skirt of Eleanore's +dress had caught fire. As yet there was only a little flame. She was +sitting still motionless on the grass, hugging her doll, with scared +round eyes. I got to her first and with my cap I beat out the flame. I +was suddenly panting, my hands were cold. But a few moments later, when +Sue and two of the boys came tugging the hose, it as suddenly flashed +upon me that I had done a heroic thing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Get out!" I shouted scornfully, as they started to play the hose on +her. "Can't you see the whole fire is out?"</p> + +<p>And then while the plump freckled girl came screeching out of the +kitchen with half the servants behind her, and presently these servants +all called me "a little heero"—the one whom I had rescued looked up at +me very gratefully and said,</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Boy, for not letting them squirt water on my dolly's clean +dress."</p> + +<p>"Aw, what do I care for a doll?" I retorted ungraciously.</p> + +<p>But I liked her from that day. She was not at all like Sue. She was +quiet and knew her place. She knew that she was only a girl, how +thoroughly well she knew it. And yet, although so feminine, so +deliberate and sedate, she had "a pile of ginger" deep down inside of +her. In our games, whenever allowed to play, with a dogged resolution +she would come pegging along in the rear, she was a sticker, she never +gave up. In winter when they flooded the yard she was the poorest skater +of all, but patiently plodding along on the ice, each time she fell down +she would pick herself up with such determination that at last with a +jerk at her arm I said,</p> + +<p>"Here, Chip, come on and I'll teach you."</p> + +<p>She came on. I can still feel her soft determined clutch on my elbow. +When I said, "That's enough," she said, "Thank you, Boy," and went +quietly on alone.</p> + +<p>After that I taught her many times. One afternoon when there was a thaw, +I said,</p> + +<p>"Gee, but this ice is rotten." And then Eleanore asked me placidly,</p> + +<p>"Do you like my pretty new shoes?"</p> + +<p>"What's that got to do with it?" I demanded indignantly.</p> + +<p>"Nothing, I guess," she said meekly.</p> + +<p>This girl was full of mysteries. One great point in her favor was that +she had a mother "at death's door."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> This appealed to me tremendously. +It was so unusual.</p> + +<p>"How's your mother?" I would ask her often, just for the pleasure of +hearing her answer softly,</p> + +<p>"She's at death's door, thank you."</p> + +<p>She soon learned to skate much better, and I remember quite vividly +still the January afternoon when as the darkness deepened a silvery moon +appeared overhead. I had not skated with her for a week, but now we'd +been skating for nearly an hour. One by one the others went home, and +the plump girl turned at the kitchen door to call back to Eleanore +tauntingly,</p> + +<p>"You'll catch it, going home so late!"</p> + +<p>"Never mind," said a gentle voice at my side, and round and round we +skated. The moon grew steadily brighter. Still that soft steady clutch +on my arm.</p> + +<p>"Now you'd better go home," I said gruffly at last.</p> + +<p>"What time is it?" she asked me. I looked at my watch.</p> + +<p>"Gee! It's nearly seven o'clock!"</p> + +<p>"What a pretty watch that is," she said in a pleased, quiet voice, but I +was not to be diverted.</p> + +<p>"Go on home, I tell you. Sit down and I'll take off your skates." She +sighed regretfully but obeyed.</p> + +<p>"What'll they do to you?" I asked her when we stopped in front of her +house.</p> + +<p>"They'll try to punish me," she answered. I looked down at her +anxiously.</p> + +<p>"Hard?" I inquired. She smiled at me.</p> + +<p>"What time is it now?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Ten minutes after seven."</p> + +<p>"Then they won't punish me," she said. "My father always comes home at +seven." And she went placidly into the house.</p> + +<p>"A mighty smart Chip," I said to myself.</p> + +<p>I had told her a little about the docks, and one day she asked me to +take her there. I promptly refused, but patiently from time to time she +repeated her request. She<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> wanted me to take her "just for a little +walk" down there, or she would run if I preferred. She wanted to come +out after supper into her garden, which was only the third from ours, +and then she would sing and I would whistle. Then I would come around by +the street and she would meet me at her front gate. I don't know how she +ever persuaded me, but she did, and the plan worked splendidly. At the +gate without a word I took her hand and ran down the street. Soon we +were flying. Down to the open space we came, and around across the +railroad tracks. In and out among grimy freight cars we sped. I would +not stop.</p> + +<p>"Christ!" I thought in terror. "Suppose Sam and the gang come around +this way!" I had not seen them now for years. What might not they do to +her?</p> + +<p>But she made me stop by my father's dock. She was gasping and her face +was red, but with her hand like a little vise on mine she stood there +staring at the ship.</p> + +<p>"Where are the heathen?" she asked at last, in a queer choking voice.</p> + +<p>"There." I pointed to a small brown man with a white skull-cap on his +head. "There's one. See him? Now come home!"</p> + +<p>"Wait a minute, please," she begged very softly. A moment longer she +stared at him. "All right, now we'll go," she said.</p> + +<p>When I got her safe inside my gate I was in a cold sweat. This +adventure, to my surprise, had been one of the most thrilling of all. +And who'd have thought <i>her</i> an adventurer?</p> + +<p>Her mother died that summer while we were up in the mountains, and when +we came back we found the house empty. Her father had taken her out +West.</p> + +<p>I remember being distinctly relieved when I heard that she had gone +away. For now there was something uncanny about her. It was one thing to +have a mother "at death's door." That had been quite exciting. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> to +have one dead! There was something too awful about it. I would not have +known what to say to the girl. And, besides, the thought suddenly +entered my mind—suppose my own mother were to die!</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>We had been splendid chums, my mother and I, that long delightful summer +up in the White Mountains. The mountains, we had decided together, were +our favorite place to live in. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the +hills," was the part of the Bible which she liked best. She loved these +hills for their quiet, I loved them for the exciting adventures I had +with Sue and "Stouty," the son of the farmer with whom we stayed. But +these adventures were of a kind that my mother warmly approved of for +me. They were not like those on the harbor.</p> + +<p>An adventure to climb with Stouty and Sue up through the resinous +branches of an enormous pine on the mountainside to the hawk's nest in +the bare top branches, snatch the eggs and smash them, while Stouty with +a big thick stick would beat off the mother hawk. An adventure to +clamber half the day up a bouldery path through firs and birches, +looking into black caves, peeping over steep cliffs, and at last +reaching the wind-swept summit to look off through miles of emptiness. +An adventure, coming home from a picnic as evening was falling, to sit +snug in that creaking capacious wagon which belonged to Stouty's father, +and to watch the lights and shadows that darted in and out of the pines +as the lantern swung beneath our wheels.</p> + +<p>But even up here in the mountains the harbor reached with its cold +embrace. For at night it was an adventure hurriedly to undress and bury +myself in the covers in time to hear the first low rumble of "the night +freight" that went by some five miles distant. It made me think of the +trains on the docks, whose voices I had heard at night, and of the +things I had done with Sam. I would hear the mountain engine come +panting impatiently up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> the grade. As it reached the top I would rise +from my bed and soar off into space, in one swift rushing flight through +the darkness I would be there in the nick of time, I would swing on to a +freight car in the way Sam had shown me, climb to the top and crouching +there I would watch the dark roadway open ahead through the silent +forest. Lower would sink the voice of the engine until it became a faint +confused mutter. And the rest was dreamland.</p> + +<p>This was one of those secret games I never told my mother about—until, +to my own surprise, in one of those long talks at night when she seemed +drawing me to her right out through my eyes, I blurted this out. My +mother wanted to know all about it. Did my hands get cold? Yes, colder +and colder, as listening here in bed I heard the first muttering of the +train and knew that in a few moments more I would take that five-mile +flight, right through the window and over the trees to the distant +track, to be there just ahead of the on-puffing engine. My voice +quivered excitedly as I spoke.</p> + +<p>"I see—I see," she said soothingly. "And when you are riding on top of +a car—aren't you ever frightened?"</p> + +<p>"No—because all the time I know that I am back there at home in my bed. +I can see myself back there behind me."</p> + +<p>"Do you fall asleep in bed—or are you still on the top of the car the +last thing you can remember?"</p> + +<p>"Most always on the top of the car."</p> + +<p>"And when you sleep—do you always dream?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—that's the finest part of it."</p> + +<p>"Do you ever dream of Sam?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"And all those things you did on the harbor?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—all."</p> + +<p>For some moments she sat by my bedside quietly stroking one of my hands.</p> + +<p>"Billy."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Yes, mother." I was growing impatient, I wished she would go, for now +it was nearly time for the train.</p> + +<p>"Have you ever played other games like that? I mean where you leave +yourself and look back—and see your own body behind you."</p> + +<p>"Yes—in bed in Brooklyn when I was quite little."</p> + +<p>"Where did you go from your bed?"</p> + +<p>"I went to the end of the garden. I heard drunken sailors and dockers +shouting in that vile saloon below." This was not true. What I had +really done was to lie in bed and whisper, "<i>Suppose</i> I were out +there"—which is very different. I was too young then to have learned +the real trick. But now I was so proud of it that I honestly thought I +had always known how. "It was a game I had with the harbor," I said.</p> + +<p>"With the harbor." I felt her hand slowly tighten on mine. Then all at +once as we heard the first low grumble of the freight train coming, my +mother's hold grew tighter and tighter. "Open your eyes." I opened them +quickly, for her voice was sharp and stern. She held me until the sound +was gone.</p> + +<p>"Do you hear it any longer?" she asked quietly at last.</p> + +<p>"No," I whispered. My breath still came fast.</p> + +<p>"Neither do I." There was another silence. "Let's go and sit by the +window," she said.</p> + +<p>And there she talked to me of the stars. How great they were and how +very quiet. She said that the greatest men in the world were almost +always quiet like that. They never let their hands get cold.</p> + +<p>Often after that in the evenings just before I went to bed we had these +talks about the stars. And not only in the mountains. On sparkling +frosty winter nights we watched them over the harbor. And the things she +said about them were so utterly absorbing that I would never think to +look down, would barely hear the toots and the puffings and grinding of +wheels from that infernal region<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> below. For always when she spoke of +the stars my mother spoke of great men too, the men who had done the +"finest" things—a few in the clash and jar of life like Washington and +Lincoln, but most of them more quietly, by preaching, writing, painting, +composing, sermons, books, pictures and music so "fine" that all the +best people on earth had known about them and loved them.</p> + +<p>As I grew older she read to me more and more about these men. And +sometimes I would feel deeply content as though I had found what I +wanted. But more often I would feel myself swell up big inside of me, +restless, worrying, groping for something. I didn't know what I wanted +then, but I do know now as I look back, and I think there are thousands +of children like me, the kind who are called "queer kids" by their +playmates, who are all groping for much the same thing.</p> + +<p>"Where is the Golden Age to-day?" they are asking. "We hear of all this +from our mothers. We hear of brave knights and warriors, of God and +Christ as they walked around on earth like regular people, of saints and +preachers, writers and painters. But where are the great men living now? +Not in our house nor on our street, nor in school nor in our church on +the corner. There is nothing there that thrills us. Why isn't there? +What is the matter? We are no longer babies, we are becoming big boys +and girls. What will we do when we are grown up? Has everything fine +already been done? Is there no chance for us to be great and to do +them?"</p> + +<p>It was to questionings like these that my mother had led me up from the +harbor.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<p>And to such questionings I believe that for many children of my kind +there is often some familiar place—a schoolroom or a commonplace +street, or a dreary farm in winter, a grimy row of factories or the ugly +mouth of a mine—that mutely answers,</p> + +<p>"No. There are no more great men for you, nor any fine things left to be +done. There is nothing else left in the world but me. And you'd better +stop trying to find it."</p> + +<p>In my case this message came from the harbor, that one part of the +modern world which looked up at me steadily day after day. Vaguely +struggle as I would to build up fine things in the present from all that +my mother brought out of the past, the harbor would not let me. For what +I clothed it soon stripped naked, what I built it soon tore down.</p> + +<p>"When you were little," it seemed to say, "for you I was filled with +thrilling idols—cannibals and condors, Sam, strange wonder-ships and +sailors adventuring to heathen lands. But then I dragged these idols +down and made you see me as I am. And as I showed myself to you, so I'll +show up all other wonderful places or men that your mother would have +you believe in."</p> + +<p>It did this, as I remember it, in the easiest most trivial ways, like +some huge beast that flicks off a fly and then lumbers unconcernedly on.</p> + +<p>My mother by years of patient work had built up my religion, filling it +with the grand figures of God and Christ and his followers down to the +present time, ending with Henry Ward Beecher. When this man died I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> felt +awe at her silent grief. All at once the idea popped into my head that I +too might become a great preacher. And still greater, I soon learned, I +might become a preacher who went far off to heathen lands, braving +cannibals and death and giving to thousands of heathen eternal happiness +and life. Our church was sending out such a man. I heard him described +as a hero of God, and I thought of pictures I had seen of saints and +martyrs with soft haloes around their heads.</p> + +<p>But this hero of God came down to the harbor. He was to sail for China +from my father's dock. He wore, I remember, a brown derby hat and a +little top coat. He was thin, with stooping shoulders, he was flustered +in the excitement of leaving, nervously laughing as he shook hands with +admiring women and talking fast in his high jerky voice. Two big dockers +trundled his trunks. I saw them grin at the little man and spit tobacco +juice his way. My father came by, shot one contemptuous glance, and then +went on board to his business. I looked back at the hero. Off fell the +halo from his head.</p> + +<p>"No," I said gloomily to myself, "I never want to be like you." And +drearily I looked around. What heaps and heaps of business here. What an +immense gray harbor. I found no more thrills in church after that.</p> + +<p>And as with religion, so with love. In reading of men of the Golden Age +I came upon stories of high romance that made me strangely happy. But I +saw no love of this kind in our house. I saw my mother and father living +sharply separate lives, and I saw few kisses between them. I saw my +father absorbed in his business, with little time for my mother. And I +blamed this on the harbor. Long ago the same grim place had taught me +something else about this many-sided passion between men and women, and +one day it rose suddenly up in my mind:</p> + +<p>I must have been about fifteen when my little friend Eleanore Dillon +came back. Soon she and Sue were in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>timate chums, they went to school +together. My mother invited her up to the mountains, and there I was +with her a good deal. She was now nearly twelve years old, and the life +in the West with her father had left her sturdy as you please. And yet +somehow she still seemed to me the same feminine little creature, and as +she told me stories of the life out West, where her father, who was an +engineer, had built bridges, planned out harbors and new cities, I would +wonder vaguely about her. What a fresh, clean little person to be +talking of such places.</p> + +<p>She was talking to me in this way one drowsy August afternoon. We had +been fishing down on the river, and now on our way home up the long hot +slope of the meadow we had stopped to cool ourselves in the shadow of a +haystack. It was fragrant there. Presently, from the top of the stack +close over our heads, a bird poured forth a ravishing song. And Eleanore +with a deep "Oh-h" of delight threw both her hands behind her head, sank +back in the hay and lay there close beside me. Her eyes were shut and +she was smiling to herself. Then as the song of the bird bubbled on, I +felt suddenly a little shock, a new disturbing feeling. Breathlessly I +watched her face. The song stopped and Eleanore opened her eyes, met +mine, and closed them quickly. I saw a slight tightening of her +features. I grew anxious at once and awkward. I wanted to get away.</p> + +<p>But as I made a first uneasy movement, a bit of bright color caught my +eye. It was one of her red garters which had slipped down from beneath +her skirt. And all at once out of my memory rose a picture of years ago, +a picture from the harbor, of that fat drunken girl I had seen. She too +had worn red garters—in fact, little else! With disgusting vividness up +she came! And I jumped trembling to my feet.</p> + +<p>"I'm going home," I said roughly, and left my small companion.</p> + +<p>I kept away from her after that. And even the fol<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>lowing winter, when +she came over often to our house to spend the night with Sue, I did my +best to avoid her. I avoided all Sue's friends. I did not keep girls +quite out of my thoughts, I had spells now and then when I would read +about them in novels, papers and magazines, anything I could lay hands +on. I would read hungrily, at times almost wistfully. But all the +stories that I read, however romantic, could never quite overbalance for +me that giggling woman I had seen.</p> + +<p>"This is what love can be these days, foul as two pigs in a sty," said +the harbor.</p> + +<p>The same thing happened again with war and the great idea of giving +one's life for one's country.</p> + +<p>By countless eager questionings I had forced my mother to include among +our heroes men like Napoleon, Nelson and Grant, and after I gave up +hopes of the church these men for a time became greatest of all. You +needed no mother to help you here. It was the easiest thing in the world +to picture yourself leading charges or standing high up on a hill like +Grant, quietly smoking a black cigar and sending your orderlies on the +mad gallop out to all corners of the field. My hill grew very real to +me. It had three wind-swept trees on top and I stood just in front of +them.</p> + +<p>When the war with Spain broke out I was still in my 'teens, still rather +thin and by no means tall, but I made up my mind to try to enlist. Even +now I can shut my eyes and see again that long night on the docks when I +watched two regiments embark on ships which were to sail at dawn. With +the uniforms, the crash of bands, the flags, the cheers, the women +laughing and crying, the harbor seemed all on my side that night.</p> + +<p>"This is certainly what I want!" I thought.</p> + +<p>But my father forbade my going. He was not only stern, he was savage. +For once he came out of himself and talked. And his talk was not only +against this war but against all wars. The Civil War was the worst of +all.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> This was the more a surprise to me because I knew that he himself +had been with the Boys of Sixty One, I had often boasted about it. But +now I learned he had not fought at all, he had been a mere commissary +clerk moving rations and blankets on freight trains!</p> + +<p>"The business side of war," he said. "And when you've seen that side of +it you know how rotten a big war is! Men in the North made millions by +sending such rotten meat to the front that we had to live on the people +down South, we had to go into their farms and plantations and plunder +defenseless women and children of all they had to eat! That's war! And +war is filthy stinking camps where men die of fever and scurvy like +flies—and war is field hospitals so rotten in their management that you +see the wounded in long lines—packed together like bloody +sardines—bleeding to death for the lack of care! When they're dead you +dig big trenches and you pile 'em in like dogs! In time of war remember +peace—and then you'll be ashamed you're there!"</p> + +<p>For a moment I was struck dumb with surprise. What was this strange fire +deep down within my father's soul that could give out such a flash? +Confusedly I wondered. A sudden idea crossed my mind.</p> + +<p>"But if that's how you feel," I retorted, "why are you always talking +about the battleships we need? You want a big navy——"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he snapped, "to keep this country <i>out</i> of war! If you live long +enough you'll see what I mean—remember then what I'm telling you! This +country needs a navy so big she can trade wherever she likes and make +other nations leave her alone! But she doesn't want war! Sixty One was +enough! Some day when you get a man's eyes in your head you'll see what +that did to this harbor!"</p> + +<p>I had it now, the cause of all his curious wrath! War had hurt his +harbor! How or why I did not care. Could this harbor of his stand +nothing heroic? Patriotism, re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>ligion, love—must they all be shoved +aside to make way for his dull business?</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>About a year later I was torn for months between two careers. Should I +become a great musician or a famous writer? The idea of writing came to +me first, I got it from "Pendennis," and for a time it took hold so hard +I thought I was nicely settled for life. But then my mother read aloud +"The Lives of Great Musicians," and within a few weeks the piano lessons +which for years I had thought so dull became an absorbing passion. My +mother bought me a photograph of one of the Beethoven portraits, and +around it over my desk I tacked up pictures of famous pianists that I +cut from magazines. I went to concerts in New York. Better still, my +teacher secured me admittance to some orchestra rehearsals, where like a +real professional, all mere amateurs shut out, I could sit in the dark +and listen, and shut my eyes and hold my head between my hands. I was +composing! After a month or two of this feverish life I remember the +pride with which I wrote "Opus 38" over my last composition. My rapidity +was astounding!</p> + +<p>But one day my teacher, a kind tactful German, told me that Beethoven, +when he was composing, had not always shut himself up in a room and +scowled with both hands to his head, as in the portrait of him I had, +but had rather gone out into the world.</p> + +<p>"The Master found his music," he said, "by listening to the life close +around him."</p> + +<p>"He did?" I became uneasy at once, for again I felt myself being pushed +toward that eternal harbor.</p> + +<p>"If I were you," my relentless monitor went on, "and desired to become +in music the great voice of my country"—I looked at him quickly but saw +no smile—"I should watch the great ships down there below, I should +listen to them with an artist's ears. They are here from all over the +world, these ships, they are manned by men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> of all nations. I should +listen to the songs of these men. I have heard," he added reflectively, +"that some of their songs are centuries old. Beethoven gathered only the +folk songs of his country. But you in your city of all nations might +gather the folk songs of all the seas."</p> + +<p>I turned quickly. I had been walking the room.</p> + +<p>"I have heard the sailors sing," I said, "ever since I was a little kid +out there in the garden." I scowled in the effort to search my soul, my +artist's soul. "Yes," I added triumphantly, "and sometimes it brought a +lump in my throat!"</p> + +<p>"Ah! Now you are a musician!"</p> + +<p>"I will see what I can do," I said.</p> + +<p>So again I tackled the harbor. By day it was quite impossible, all toots +and blares, the most frightful discords—but at night its vulgar +loudness was toned down sufficiently so that a fellow with artist's ears +could really stand listening to its life, especially if I did not go too +close but listened from my window. Here with uglier sounds subdued I +could catch low voices, snatches of song and now and then a chorus. "The +folk songs of the Seven Seas!" How that phrase took hold of me!</p> + +<p>I went for information to an old dock watchman who had been a sailor.</p> + +<p>"Songs? Why sure!" he answered. "It must be the chanties ye mean."</p> + +<p>"Chanties?"</p> + +<p>"That's it. I've been told the word's French."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Chanter!"</p> + +<p>"No—chanty. An' the man that sings the verses, he's called the +chantyman. He sings while the crew heaves on the ropes an' they all come +in on the chorus. If he's a real good chantyman he makes up new verses +every time, a kind of a yarn he spins while he sings."</p> + +<p>Soon after this, toward the end of a warm, windy April night, I awoke +and heard them singing. I jumped up and went to my window. From the dock +next to my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> father's, over the line of warehouse roofs, I could see the +immense white sails already slowly rising into the starlit night. +Quickly I threw on some clothes and hurried down to the docks. The +waterfront was empty, swept clean of all that I disliked. Only overhead +a few billowy clouds, the soft rush of the wind, a slight flush in the +east, it was almost dawn. Here and there gleamed a light, red, green or +yellow, with a phantom tug or barge around it, moving over the black of +the water. Not silence but something richer was here—the confused +mysterious murmuring, the creaking and the breathing of the sleeping +port. And out of this those voices singing.</p> + +<p>I drew nearer slowly. Hungrily I tried to take in the details of color +and sound. And I felt suddenly such a deep delight as I had never +dreamed of. To look around and listen and gather it into me and +remember. This was great, no doubt about it—it fitted into all that was +fine!</p> + +<p>"This is really what I want to do—I'd like to learn to do it well—I'd +like to do it all my life!"</p> + +<p>Slower, more fearfully, I drew near. Would anything happen to spoil it +all? There she lay, the long white ship, laden deep, settled low in the +water. I could see the lines of little dark men heaving together at the +ropes. Each time they hove they sang the refrain, which, no doubt, was +centuries old, a song of the winds, the big bullies of the ocean, +calling to each other as in some wild storm at sea they buffeted the +tiny men who clung to the masts and spars of ships:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Blow the man down, bullies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blow him right down!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hey! Hey! Blow the man down!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Give us the time to blow the man down!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But what were the verses? I could hear the plaintive tenor voice of the +chantyman who sang them—now low and almost mournful, now passionate, +thrilling up into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> the night, as though yearning for all that was hid in +the heavens. Could a man like that feel things like that? But what were +the words he was singing, this yarn he was spinning in his song?</p> + +<p>I came around by the foot of the slip and walked rapidly up the dockshed +toward one of its wide hatchways. The singing had stopped, but as I drew +close a rough voice broke the silence:</p> + +<p>"Sing it again, Paddy!"</p> + +<p>I looked out. Close by on the deck, in the hard blue glare of an +arc-light, were some twenty men, dirty, greasy, ragged, sweating, all +gripping the ropes and waiting for Paddy, who rolled his quid in his +mouth, spat twice, and then began:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"As I went awalking down Paradise Street<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A pretty young maiden I chanced for to meet."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A heave on the ropes and a deafening roar:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Blow the man down, bullies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blow him right down!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hey! Hey! Blow the man down!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Again the solo voice, plaintiff and tender:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"By her build I took her for Dutch.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She was square in the stuns'l and bluff in the bow."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The rest was a detailed account of the night spent with the maiden. Roar +on roar rose the boisterous chorus: "Blow the man down, bullies, blow +him right down!" The big patched, dirty sails went jerking and flapping +up toward the stars, which from here were so faint they could barely be +seen. And the ship moved out on the harbor.</p> + +<p>"There go the folk songs of the seas," I thought disgustedly, looking +out on the water now showing itself grease-mottled in the first raw +light of day.</p> + +<p>I tried other songs with my artist's ears and found<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> them all much like +the first, the music like the very stars, the words like the grease and +scum on the water. I was about giving up my search when I met my old +friend, the watchman.</p> + +<p>"Well, did ye find the chanties?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said. "They can't be printed." His old eyes twinkled merrily:</p> + +<p>"Of course they can't. An' <i>most</i> songs an' stories can't. But I'll give +ye a nice little song ye can print. It's the oldest chanty of 'em all. +I'll try to remember an' write it down."</p> + +<p>Here is the song he gave me:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">ROLLING HOME<br /></span> +</div></div> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To Australia's fair-haired maidens<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We will bid our last good-bye.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We are going home to England,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We may never more see you.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Rolling home, rolling home,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Rolling home across the sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Rolling home to merry England,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Rolling home dear land to thee.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">We will leave you our best wishes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As we leave your rocky shores,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We are going home to England,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We may never see you more.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Rolling home....<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Up aloft amidst her rigging<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Spreading out her snow white sails,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like a bird with outstretched pinions,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On we speed before the gale.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Rolling home....<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And the wild waves, as we leave them,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Seem to murmur as they roll;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There are hands and hearts to greet thee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In that land to which you go.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Rolling home....<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Cheer up, Jack, fond hearts await thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And kind welcomes everywhere;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There are hands and hearts to greet thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Kind caresses from the fair.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Rolling home, rolling home,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Rolling home across the sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Rolling home to merry England,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Rolling home dear land to thee.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Do they ever sing those words?" I asked suspiciously. The old Irishman +looked steadily back.</p> + +<p>"Sure they sing 'em—sometimes," he said. "It's the same thing as them +other songs—only nicer put. Put to be printed," he added.</p> + +<p>He found me others "put to be printed." Soon I had quite a collection. +And with the help of my German teacher I wrote down the music.</p> + +<p>"There are not enough for a book," he said. "Why don't you write an +article, tell where you found them, put them in, and send it to a paper? +So you can give them to the world."</p> + +<p>This I at once set out to do. In the writing I found again that deep +delight I had had on the dock, just far enough off to miss the dirt, the +sweat and the words of the song. I showed the article to my mother, and +she was surprised and delighted. Working together, in less than a week +we had polished it off. I heard her read it aloud to my father, I +watched his face, and I saw the grim smile that came over it as he asked +me,</p> + +<p>"Are those the words you heard them sing?"</p> + +<p>"Not all of them are," I answered. And suddenly, somehow or other, I +felt guilty, as though I had done something wrong. But angrily I shook +it off. Why should I always give in to his harbor? This that I had +written was fine! This was Art! At last in spite of him and his docks I +had found something great that I could do!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p> + +<p>When the article was taken by a Sunday paper in New York and a check for +eight dollars was sent me with a brief but flattering letter, my pride +and hopes rose high. The eight dollars I spent on a pin for my mother, +as "Pendennis" or some other boy genius had done. When the article +appeared in the paper my mother bought fifty copies and gave them out to +our neighbors. There was nothing to shock such neighbors here, and they +praised me highly for what they called my "real descriptive power."</p> + +<p>"That boy will go far," I heard one cultured old gentleman say. And I +lost no time in starting out. No musical career for me, down came +Beethoven from my wall, for I was now a writer. And not of mere +articles, either. Inside of six months I had written a dozen short +stories, and when each of these in turn was rejected I began to plan out +a five-act play. But here my mother stopped me.</p> + +<p>"You're trying to go too fast," she said. "Think of it, you are barely +nineteen. You must give up everything else just now and spend all your +time getting ready for college. For if you are going to be a strong +writer, as I hope, you need to learn so many things first. And you will +find them all in college—as I did once when I was young," she added a +little wistfully.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<p>The first thing I needed in college was a good thorough dressing down. +And this I got without any delay. In the first few weeks my artist's +ears and eyes and soul were hazed to a frazzle. From "that boy who will +go far" I became "you damn young freshman." I was told to make love to a +horse's hind leg, I was made to perch on a gatepost and read the +tenderest passages of "Romeo and Juliet," replacing Romeo's name by my +own, and Juliet's by that of stout Mrs. Doogan, who scrubbed floors in a +dormitory close by. Refusals only made matters painful. Besides, I was +told by a freshman friend that I'd better fit in or I'd "queer" myself.</p> + +<p>This dread of "queering" myself at first did me a world of good. Dumped +in this community of over a thousand callow youths, three hundred in my +class alone and each one absorbed in getting acquainted, fitting in, +making friends and a place for himself, I was soon struggling for a +foothold as hard as the rest. Within a month the thing I wanted above +all else was to shed my genius and become "a good mixer" in the crowd.</p> + +<p>This drew me at first from books to athletics. Though still slight of +build I was wiry, high-strung and quick of movement. I had a snub nose +and sandy hair, and I was tough, with a hard-set jaw. And I now went +into the football world with a passion and a patience that landed me at +the end of the season—one of the substitute quarterbacks on the +freshman team. I did not get into a single game, I was only used on the +"scrub" in our practice. This made for a wholesome humility and a real +love of my college.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p> + +<p>The football season over, I tried for the daily paper. One of the +freshman candidates for the editorial Spring elections, I became a daily +reporter slave. Here at first I drew on my "queer" past, turning all my +"descriptive powers" to use. But a fat senior editor called "Pop" +inquired one day with a sneer, "For God's sake, Freshman, why these +flowers?" And the flowers forthwith dropped out of my style. At all +hours, day and night, to the almost entire neglect of studies, I went +about college digging up news—not the trivial news of the faculty's +dull, puny plans for the development of our minds, but the real vital +news of our college life, news of the things we were here for, the +things by which a man got on, news of all the athletic teams, of the +glee, mandolin and banjo clubs, of "proms," of class and fraternity +elections, mass meetings and parades. Ferreting my way into all nooks +and crannies of college life, ears keen for hints and rumors, alert to +"scoop" my eighteen reporter rivals—the more I learned the better I +loved. And when in the Spring I was one of the five freshman editors +chosen, the conquest was complete. No more artist's soul for me. I was +part and parcel of college life.</p> + +<p>Together with my companions I assumed a genial tolerance toward all +those poor dry devils known to us as "profs." I remember the weary sighs +of our old college president as he monotoned through his lectures on +ethics to the tune of the cracking of peanuts, which an old darky sold +to us at the entrance to the hall. It was a case of live and let live. +He let us eat and we let him talk. With the physics prof, who was known +as "Madge the Scientist," our indulgence went still further. We took no +disturbing peanuts there and we let him drone his hour away without an +interruption, except perhaps an occasional snore. We were so good to +him, I think, because of his sense of humor. He used to stop talking now +and then and with a quizzical hopeless smile he would look about the +hall. And we would all smile broadly back, enjoying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> to the full with +him the droll farce of our presence there. "Go to it, Madge," someone +would murmur. And the work of revealing the wonders of this material +universe would limp quietly along. In examinations Madge gave no marks, +at least not to the mass of us. If he had, over half of us would have +been dropped, so he "flunked" the worst twenty and let the rest through.</p> + +<p>The faculty, as a whole, appeared to me no less fatigued. Most of them +lectured as though getting tired, the others as though tired out. There +were a few lonely exceptions but they had to fight against heavy odds.</p> + +<p>The hottest fighter of all against this classic torpor was a tall, +joyous Frenchman who gestured not only with his hands but with his +eloquent knees as well. His subject was French literature, but from this +at a moment's notice he would dart off into every phase of French life. +There was nothing in life, according to him, that was not a part of +literature. In college he was considered quite mad.</p> + +<p>I met him not long ago in New York. We were both hanging to straps in +the subway and we had but a moment before he got off.</p> + +<p>"I have read you," he said, "in the magazines. And from what you write I +think you can tell me. What was the trouble with me at college?" I +looked into his black twinkling eyes.</p> + +<p>"Great Scott!" I said suddenly. "You were alive!"</p> + +<p>"Merci! Au revoir, monsieur!"</p> + +<p>What a desert of knowledge it was back there. Our placid tolerance of +the profs included the books they gave us. The history prof gave us ten +books of collateral reading. Each book, if we could pledge our honor as +gentlemen that we had read it, counted us five in examination. On the +night before the examination I happened to enter the room of one of our +football giants, and found him surrounded by five freshmen, all of whom +were reading aloud. One was reading a book on Russia, another the life +of Frederick the Great, a third was patiently droning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> forth Napoleon's +war on Europe, while over on the window-seat the other two were racing +through volumes one and two of Carlyle's French Revolution. The room was +a perfect babel of sound. But the big man sat and smoked his pipe, his +honor safe and the morrow secure. In later years, whatever might happen +across the sea would find this fellow fully prepared, a wise, +intelligent judge of the world, with a college education.</p> + +<p>"This reminds me," he said, "of last summer—when I did Europe in three +weeks with Dad."</p> + +<p>The main idea in all courses was to do what you had to but no more. One +day an English prof called upon me to define the difference between a +novel and a book of science.</p> + +<p>"About the same difference," I replied, "as between an artist's painting +and a mathematical drawing."</p> + +<p>"Bootlick, bootlick," I heard in murmurs all over the hall. I had +answered better than I had to. Hence I had licked the professor's boots. +I did not offend in this way again.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>But early in my sophomore year, when the novelty had worn away, I began +to do some thinking. Was there nothing else here? My mother and I had +had talks at home, and she had told me plainly that unless I sent home +better reports I could not finish my four years' course. And after all, +she wasn't a fool, there was something in that idea of hers—that here +in this quiet old town, so remote from the harbor and business, a fellow +ought to be getting "fine" things, things that would help him all his +life.</p> + +<p>"But look what I've got!" I told myself. "When I came here what was I? A +little damn prig! And look at me now!"</p> + +<p>"All right, look ahead. I'm toughened up, I've had some good things +knocked into me and a lot of fool things knocked out of me. But that's +just it. Are all the fine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> things fool things? Don't I still want to +write? Sure I do. Well, what am I going to write about? What do I know +of the big things of life? I was always hunting for what was great. I'm +never hunting for it now, and unless I get something mighty quick my +father will make me go into his business. What am I going to do with my +life?"</p> + +<p>At first I honestly tried to "pole," to find whether, after all, I +couldn't break through the hard dry crust of books and lectures down +into what I called "the real stuff." But the deeper I dug the drier it +grew. Vaguely I felt that here was crust and only crust, and that for +some reason or other it was meant that this should be so, because in the +fresh bubbling springs and the deep blazing fires whose presence I could +feel below there was something irritating to profs and disturbing to +those who paid them. These profs, I thought confusedly, had about as +much to do with life as had that little "hero of God" who had cut such a +pitiful figure when he came close to the harbor. And more pitiful still +were the "polers," the chaps who were working for high marks. They +thought of marks and little else. They thrived on crust, these fellows, +cramming themselves with words and rules, with facts, dates, theorems +and figures, in order to become professors themselves and teach the same +stuff to other "polers." There was a story of one of them who stayed in +his room and crammed all through the big football game of the season, +and at night when told we had won remarked blithely,</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's splendid! I think I'll go out and have a pretzel!"</p> + +<p>God, what a life, I thought to myself! None of that for me! And so I +left the "polers."</p> + +<p>But now in my restless groping around for realities in life that would +thrill me, things that I could write about, I began trying to test +things out by talking about them with my friends. What did a fellow want +most in life—what to do, what to get and to be? What was there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> really +in business beside the making of money? In medicine, law and the other +professions, in art, in getting married, in this idea of God and a +heaven, or in the idea I vaguely felt now filtering through the nation, +that a man owed his life to his country in time of peace as in time of +war. The harbor with rough heavy jolts had long ago started me thinking +about questions of this kind. Now I tackled them again and tried to talk +about them.</p> + +<p>And at once I found I was "queering" myself. For these genial companions +of mine had laid a most decided taboo upon all topics of this kind. They +did so because to discuss them meant to openly think and feel, and to +think or feel intensely, about anything but athletics and other things +prescribed by the crowd, was bad form to say the least.</p> + +<p>Bad form to talk in any such fashion of what we were going to make of +our lives. Nobody cared to warm up on the subject. Many had nothing at +all in sight and put off the whole idea as a bore. Others were already +fixed, they had positions waiting in law and business offices, in +factories, mines, mills and banks, and they took these positions as +settled and sure.</p> + +<p>"Why?" I would argue impatiently. "How do you know it's what you want +most?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I guess it'll do as well as another."</p> + +<p>"But damn it all, why not have a look? We can have a big look now, we've +got a chance to broaden out before we jump into our little jobs—to see +all the jobs and size 'em up and look at 'em as a part of the world!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, biff." I got little or no response. The greater part of these +decent likable fellows could not warm up to anything big, they simply +hadn't it in them.</p> + +<p>"Why in hell do you want me to get all hot?" drawled one fat sluggard of +a friend. "I'll keep alive when the time comes." And he and his kind set +the standard for all. Sometimes a chap who could warm up, who had the +real stuff in him, would "loosen up" about his life on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> some long tramp +with me alone. But back in college his lips were sealed. It was not +exactly that he was ashamed, it was simply that with his college friends +such talk seemed utterly out of place.</p> + +<p>"Look out, Bill," said one affectionately. "You'll queer yourself if you +keep on."</p> + +<p>The same held true of religion. An upper classman, if he felt he had to, +might safely become a leader of freshmen in the Y. M. C. A. But when one +Sunday evening I disturbed a peaceful pipe-smoking crowd by wondering +why it was that we were all so bored in chapel, there fell an +embarrassing silence—until someone growled good-humoredly, "Don't bite +off more'n you can chew." Nobody wanted to drop his religion, he simply +wanted to let it alone. I remember one Sunday in chapel, in the midst of +a long sermon, how our sarcastic old president woke us up with a start.</p> + +<p>"I was asked," he said, "if we had any free thinkers here. 'No,' I +replied. 'We have not yet advanced that far. For it takes half as much +thinking to be a free thinker as it does to believe in God.'"</p> + +<p>And I remember the night in our sophomore club when the news came like a +thunderclap that one of our members had been killed pole-vaulting at a +track meet in New York. It was our habit, in our new-found manliness, to +eat with our hats on, shout and sing, and speak of our food as +"tapeworm," "hemorrhage," and the like. I remember how we sat that +night, silent, not a word from the crowd—one starting to eat, then +seeing it wasn't the thing to do, and staring blankly like the rest. +They were terrible, those stares into reality. That clutching pain of +grief was real, so real it blotted everything out. Later some of us in +my room began to talk in low voices of what a good fellow he had been. +Then some chap from the Y. M. C. A. proposed timidly to lead us in +prayer. What a glare he got from all over the room! "Damn fool," I heard +someone mutter. Bad form!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p> + +<p>Politics also were tabooed. Here again there were exceptions. A still +fiery son of the South could rail about niggers, rapes and lynchings and +the need for disenfranchising the blacks. It was good fun to hear him. +Moreover, a fellow who was a good speaker, and needed the money, might +stump the state for either political party, and his accounts were often +amusing. But to sit down and talk about the trusts, graft, trade unions, +strikes, or the tariff or the navy, the Philippines, "the open door," or +any other of the big questions that even then, ten years ago, were +beginning to shake the country, and that we would all be voting on soon? +No. The little Bryan club was a joke. And one day when a socialist +speaker struck town the whole college turned out in parade, waving red +sweaters and firing "bombs" and roaring a wordless Marseillaise! We +wanted no solemn problems here!</p> + +<p>Finally, it was distinctly bad form to talk about sex. Not to tell +"smutty stories," they were welcomed by the average crowd. But to look +at it squarely, as I tried to do, and get some light upon what would be +doubtless the most vital part of our future lives—this simply wasn't +done. What did women mean to us, I asked. What did prostitutes mean at +present? What would wives mean later on? And all this talk about +mistresses and this business of free love, and easy divorces and +marriage itself—what did they all amount to? Was love really what it +was cracked up to be, or had the novelists handed us guff? When I came +out with questions like these, the chaps called "clean" looked rather +pained; the ones who weren't, distinctly bored.</p> + +<p>For this whole intricate subject was kept in the cellars of our minds, +cellars often large but dark. Because "sex" was wholly rotten. It had +nothing to do, apparently, with the girls who came chaperoned to the +"proms," it had to do only with certain women in a little town close by. +Plenty of chaps went there at times, and now and then women from over +there would come to us on the quiet at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> night. But one afternoon I saw a +big crowd on the front campus. It grew every moment, became a mob, +shoving and surging, shouting and jeering. I climbed some steps to look +into the center, and saw two painted terrified girls, hysterical, +sobbing, swearing and shrieking. So they were shoved, a hidden +spectacle, to the station and put on the train. Nothing like that on our +front campus! Nothing like "sex" in the front rooms of our minds. The +crowd returned chuckling. Immoral? Hell, no. Simply bad form.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>"What am I going to write about?"</p> + +<p>"Games," said the college. "Only games. Don't go adventuring down into +life."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<p>Then I found Joe Kramer.</p> + +<p>He had "queered" himself at the beginning in college. I had barely known +him. He belonged to no fraternity, and except on the athletic field he +kept out of all our genial life. And this life of ours, for all its +thoughtlessness, was so rich in genuine friendships, so filled and +bubbling over with the joy of being young, that we could not understand +how any decent sort of chap could deliberately keep out of it. We put +Joe Kramer down as a "grouch."</p> + +<p>But now that I too was "queering" myself, our queerness drew us +together, or rather, Joe's drew mine. In the ten years that have gone +since then I have never met any man who drew me harder than he did, than +he is drawing me even still—and this often in spite of my efforts to +shake him off, and later of his quite evident wish to be rid of me. For +Joe had what is so hard to find among us comfortable mortals, a +sincerity so real and deep that it absolutely ruled his life, that it +kept him exploring into things, kept him adventuring always.</p> + +<p>In long tramps over the neighboring hills, on our backs in the grass +staring up at the clouds, or in winter hugging a bonfire in the shelter +of a boulder, or back in college over our beer or over countless pipes +in our rooms, together we adventured through books and long hungry talks +down into life—and of the paths we discovered I see even now no end.</p> + +<p>Joe was tall and lean, with heavy shoulders stooping slightly. He was +sallow, he never took care of himself.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> He ate his meals at all hours at +a small cheap restaurant, where he bought a bunch of meal tickets each +week. His face was obstinate, honest, kindly, his features were as blunt +as his talk. He was the first to understand what I was so vaguely +looking for, and to say, "All right, Kid, you come right along." And as +he was farther along than I, he pulled me after him on the hunt after +what he called "the genuine article" in this bewildering modern life.</p> + +<p>His own life, to begin with, was a tie with this real modern world that +had forced itself on me long ago through the harbor. For Joe had been +"up against it" hard. Though blunt and frank about most things he talked +little about himself, but I got his story bit by bit. "Graft" had come +into it at the start. In a town of the Middle West his father had been a +physician with a good practice, until when Joe was eleven years old a +case of smallpox was discovered. Joe's father vaccinated about a score +of children that week. The "dope" he used was mailed to him by a drug +firm in Chicago. It was "rotten." Over half the children were +desperately ill and seven of them died. Joe's father, his mother and +both older sisters did duty as nurses day and night. After that they +left town, moved from town to town, that story always following, and +finally both parents died. Since then Joe had been a teamster, a clerk +in a hardware store, a brakeman, a telegrapher, and last, the assistant +editor of a paper in a small town. He had scraped and slaved and studied +throughout with the idea of coming East to college. He had come at +twenty-two, beating his way on freight trains. On the top of a car one +night he had fallen asleep and been knocked on the head by a steel beam +jutting down under a bridge. Then, after two weeks on a hospital bed, he +had arrived at college.</p> + +<p>Here he had earned a meager way by writing football and baseball news +for a string of western papers. Here he had looked for an education, and +here "a bunch of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> dead ones" had handed him "news from the graveyard" +instead.</p> + +<p>I can still see him in classroom, head cocked to one side, grimly +watching the prof. And once during a Bible course lecture I heard his +voice blandly ironic behind me:</p> + +<p>"Will somebody ask Mister Charley Darwin to be so good as to step this +way?"</p> + +<p>"We've been cheated, Bill," he told me. "We've been cheated right along. +Take history, for instance, the kind of stuff we were handed in school. +I got onto it first when I was fourteen. It was a rainy Saturday and my +mother told me to go and clean out an old closet up in the attic. Well, +I found my German grandfather's diary there, written when he was in +college in Leipsic, in 1848. The way those kids jumped into things! The +way they got themselves mixed up in the Revolution of Forty Eight! To +hear my young grandfather talk, that year was one of the biggest times +in European history. Our school history gave it five pages and then +druled on about courts and kings. 'I'll go to college,' I made up my +mind. 'College will put me next to the truth.' So I saved my little +nickels and came. But college," he added moodily, "ain't advanced as far +as it was in my young grandfather's time."</p> + +<p>"Do you know who's to blame for this stuff?" he said. "It's not the +profs, I've nothing against them, all they need is to be kicked out. No, +it's us, because we stand for their line of drule. If we got right up on +our honkeys and howled, all of us, for a real education, we'd get it by +next Saturday night. But we don't care a damn. Why don't we? Are we all +of us dubs? No we're not. Go down to the football field and see. There's +as much brains in figuring out those plays as there is in mathematics. +Would we stand for coaches like our profs? But that's just it. It's the +thing to be alive in athletics and a dub in everything else. And because +it's the thing, every fellow fits in. On the whole," he added +reflectively, "I think<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> it's this 'dear old college' feeling that's to +blame for it all."</p> + +<p>"My God, Joe!" This was high treason!</p> + +<p>"Sure it is," he retorted. "It <i>is</i> your god and the god of us all. This +dear old college feeling. It's got us all stuck together so close that +nobody dares to be himself and buck against its standards."</p> + +<p>This from Joe Kramer! How often, in a football game, have I seen him on +the reporter's bench, his sallow face now all a-scowl, now beaming +satisfaction as he pounded his neighbor on the back.</p> + +<p>In pursuit of "a real education" we got into the habit of spending +almost every evening in the college library, where except at examination +times there was nobody but a few silent "polers."</p> + +<p>I grew to love this place. It was so huge and shadowy, with only shaded +lights here and there. It had such tempting crannies. I loved its deep +quiet, so pleasantly broken now and then by a step, a whisper, the sound +of a book being moved from its shelf where perhaps it had stood unread +for years, or occasional voices passing outside or snatches of song from +the campus. And here I thought I was finding myself. That French prof +had introduced me to Voltaire, Hugo, Balzac, Maupassant and others who +were becoming my new idols. This was art, this was beauty and truth, +this was getting at life in a way that thrilled.</p> + +<p>But now and then looking up from my book I would see Joe prowling about +the place, taking down a book, then shoving it back and scowling as he +ran his eyes along whole rows of titles.</p> + +<p>"This darned library shut its doors," he would growl to himself, "just +as the real dope was coming along. But there's been such a flood of it +ever since that some leaked in in spite of 'em."</p> + +<p>Joe would search and search until he found "it" on back shelves or stuck +away in corners. Angrily he would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> blow off the dust and then settle +himself with a sigh to read. There was always something wistful to me in +the way Joe opened each new book. But what a joy when he found +"it"—Darwin, Nietzsche, Henry George, Walt Whitman, Zola, Samuel +Butler. What a sudden sort of glee the night he discovered Bernard Shaw!</p> + +<p>When the library closed we adjourned for beer and a smoke, and often we +would argue long about what we had been reading. Joe had little use for +the stuff I liked. Beauty and form were nothing to him, it was "the +meat" he was after. My mother's idols he laid low.</p> + +<p>"The first part was big," he said one night of a recent English novel. +"But the last part was the kind of thing that poor old Thackeray might +have done."</p> + +<p>In an instant I was up in arms, for to my mother and me the author of +"Pendennis" had been like a great lovable patron saint, a refuge from +all we abhorred in the harbor. To slight him was a sacrilege. But +reverence to Joe Kramer was a thing unknown. "Show me," he said, in +reply to my outburst, "a single thing he ever wrote that wasn't +sentimental bosh!" And we went at it hammer and tongs.</p> + +<p>It was so in all our talks. Nothing was too sacred. Joe always insisted +on "being shown."</p> + +<p>He had a keen liking but little respect for the nation built by our +fathers. From his own father's tragedy, caused by graft, his own hard +struggles in the West and the Populist doctrines he had imbibed, he had +come East with a deep conviction that "things in this country are one +big mess with the Constitution sitting on top." And when the term +"muckraker" came into use, I remember his deep satisfaction. "Now I know +my name," he said.</p> + +<p>He was equally hard on the church. How he kicked against our compulsory +chapel. "Broad, isn't it, scientific," he growled, "to yank a man out of +bed every morning, throw him into his seat in chapel and tell him, +'Here.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> This is what you believe. Be good now, take your little dose and +then you can go to breakfast.'"</p> + +<p>"I'm no atheist," he remarked. "I'm only a poor young fellah who asks, +'Say, Mister, if you <i>are</i> up there why is it that no big scientist has +brains enough to see you?'"</p> + +<p>"Look here, J. K., that isn't so!"</p> + +<p>"Isn't it? Show me!" And we would start in. I had a deep repugnance for +his whole materialistic view. But I liked the way he jarred me.</p> + +<p>"What I want to do," he said, "is to bust every hold that any creed ever +had on me. I don't mean only creeds in churches, I mean creeds in +politics, business and everywhere else. I want to get 'em all out of my +eyes so I can see what's really here—because I'm so sure there's an +awful lot here and an awful lot more that's coming. If I make a noise +like a knocker at times you don't want to put me down as any +Schopenhauer fan. None of that pessimistic dope for little Joey Kramer. +I never open a new book without hoping I'll find the real stuff I want, +and I never open a paper without hoping that some more of it will be +right here in the news of the day. Kid," he ended intensely, "you can +take it from me there are going to be big doings soon in this little old +world, big doings and great big ideas, as big as what caused the Civil +War and a damn sight more scientific. And the thing for you and me to do +is to get ourselves in some kind of shape so we can shake hands with 'em +when they arrive, and say, 'Hello, fellahs, come right in. You're just +what we've been waiting for.'"</p> + +<p>When Joe gave up college at the end of the junior year, he left a small +group of us behind. "The Ishmaelites," we called ourselves. For though +most of us "couldn't quite go Joe," we had all "queered" ourselves in +college through the influence on us he had had.</p> + +<p>There are thousands of Joe Kramers now in colleges scattered all over +the land. Each year their numbers grow, each year more deep their vague +conviction that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> somehow they've been cheated, more harsh and insistent +every year their questioning of all "news from the graveyard," whether +it comes from old fogey professors or from parents or preachers, eminent +lawyers or business men, great politicians or writers of books. Arrogant +and sweeping, sparing nothing sacred—young. Ignorant, confused and +groping, almost wistful—new. They are becoming no insignificant part in +this swiftly changing national life.</p> + +<p>Joe Kramer was one of the pioneers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<p>It was with an unpleasant shock of surprise that I found Joe liked the +harbor.</p> + +<p>When I took him home for Christmas he spent half his time down there on +the docks. He explored the whole region for miles around, in a week he +spoke in familiar terms of slips and bays and rivers that to me were +still nothing but names. Moreover, he liked my father. And my father, +opening up by degrees, showed an unmistakable relish for Joe.</p> + +<p>They had long talks in the study at night, where I could hear them +arguing about the decline of our shipping, the growth of our trusts and +railroads, graft and high finance and strikes, the swift piling up of +our troubles at home—and about the great chance we were losing abroad, +the blind weak part we were playing in this eager ocean world where +every nation that was alive was rushing in to get a place. As their +voices rose loud and excited, even my young sister Sue, who was just out +of high school now and doing some groping about of her own, would go +into the study to listen at times. But I kept out. For already I was +tired again of all these harbor problems, I wanted to get at life +through Art! And I felt besides that if I entered into long talks with +my father, sooner or later he would be sure to bring up the dreaded +question of my going into his business. And this I was firmly resolved +not to do. For my dislike of all his work, his deepening worries, his +dogged absorption in his tiresome hobby of ships, was even sharper than +before.</p> + +<p>"That dad of yours," Joe told me, "is a mighty in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>teresting old boy. He +has had a big life with a big idea."</p> + +<p>"Has he?" said I. "Then he's lost it."</p> + +<p>"He hasn't! That's just the trouble. He thinks he's a comer when he's a +goer—he can't see his idea is out of date. It's a pity," he added +sadly. "When a man can spend his days and nights hating the trusts and +the railroads as he does, it's a pity he's so darned old in his views of +what ought to be done about it. Your father believes that if only we'd +get a strong navy and a large mercantile marine——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, cut it, J. K.," I said pettishly. "I tell you I don't care what he +believes! The next thing you'll be telling me is that I ought to take a +job in his warehouse!"</p> + +<p>"You might do worse," said Joe.</p> + +<p>"What?" I demanded indignantly.</p> + +<p>"That's just what I said. If you'd go on a paper and learn to write like +a regular man I'd be tickled to death. But if all you want to be in life +is a young Guy de Maupassant and turn out little gems for the girls, +then I say you'd be a lot better off if you went into your father's +warehouse and began telling Wall Street to get off the roof!"</p> + +<p>"Thank you," I said stiffly.</p> + +<p>From that talk Joe and I began drifting apart. I never brought him home +again, I saw less of him at college. And at the end of the college year +he went to New York, where he found a job on a paper.</p> + +<p>And so all through my senior year I was left undisturbed to "queer" +myself in my own sweet way, which was to slave for hours over Guy de +Maupassant and other foreign authors, write stories and sketches by the +score, and with two other "Ishmaelites" plan for a year's work in Paris. +The French prof was delighted and spurred us on with glowing accounts of +life in "the Quarter." One of us wanted to be a painter. No place for +that like Paris! Another an architect—Paris! Myself a writer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>—Paris! +For what could American writers to-day, with their sentimental little +yarns covering with a laugh or a tear all the big deep facts of life, +show to compare to the unflinching powerful work of the best writers +over in France? In Paris they were training men to write of life as it +really is! How that prof did drum it in. Better still, how he talked it +up to my mother—the last time she came to college.</p> + +<p>I soon found she was on my side. If only she could bring father around.</p> + +<p>I still remember vividly that exciting night in June when the three of +us, back there at home, sat on the terrace and fought it out. I remember +the beauty of the night, I mean of the night up there in the garden +under the stars, my mother's garden and her stars, and of the hideous +showing put up by my father's harbor below.</p> + +<p>Of course he opposed my going abroad. His old indifference to me had +vanished, I saw he regarded me now as worth while, grown up, a business +asset worth fighting for. And my father fought. He spoke abruptly, +passionately of the great chance on the docks down there. I remember +being surprised at his talk, at the bigness and the intensity of this +hunger of his for ships. But of what he said I remembered nothing, I did +not hear, for I was eyeing my mother.</p> + +<p>I saw she was watching him pityingly. Why? What argument had she still +to use? I waited in increasing suspense.</p> + +<p>"So that's all there is to it," I heard him end. "You might as well get +it right out of your head. You're not going over to Europe to fool away +any more of your time. You're going to buckle down right here."</p> + +<p>"Billy, leave us alone," said my mother.</p> + +<p>What in the name of all the miracles did she do to him that night—my +mother so frail (she had grown so of late), my father so strong? The +next day she told me he had consented.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p> + +<p>I saw little of him in the next two weeks. He left me alone with her +every evening. But when I watched him he looked changed—beaten and +broken, older. In spite of myself I pitied him now, and a confused +uneasiness, almost remorse, came over me at the way I had opposed him. +"What's come over Dad?" I wondered. Once I saw him look at my mother, +and his look was frightened, crushed. What was it she had told him?</p> + +<p>Those evenings I read "Pendennis" aloud for the third time to my mother. +It had been our favorite book, and I took anxious pains to show her how +I loved it still. But once chancing to look quickly up, I caught my +mother watching me with a hungriness and an utter despair such as I'd +never seen before. It struck me cold, I looked away—and suddenly I +realized what a selfish little beast I was, beside this woman who loved +me so and whom I was now leaving. My throat contracted sharply. But when +I looked back the look was gone, and in its place was a quiet smile.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my boy, you must do fine work," she said. "I want it so much more +than anything else in my whole life. In my whole life," she repeated. I +came over to her chair, bent over her and kissed her hard.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry I'm going! I'm sorry!" I whispered. "But mammy! It's only for +a year!"</p> + +<p>Why did that make her cling to me so? If only she had told me.</p> + +<p>But what young egotists we sons are. It was only a few days later that +with my two college chums, from the deck of an ocean liner, I said +good-by to the harbor.</p> + +<p>"Thank God I'm through with you at last."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<p>I was in Paris for two years.</p> + +<p>In those first weeks of deep delight I called it, "The Beautiful City of +Grays." For this town was certainly mellowed down. No jar of an ugly +present here, no loud disturbing harbor. But on the other hand, no +dullness of a fossilized past. What college had been supposed to do this +city did, it took the past and made it alive, richly, thrillingly alive, +and wove it in with the present. In the first Sorbonne lectures, even +with my meager French, I felt this at once, I wanted to feel it. These +profs were brilliant, sparkling, gay. They talked as though Rousseau and +Voltaire, Hugo, Balzac and Flaubert, Maupassant and all the rest were +still vital dazzling news to the world, because these men were still +molding the world. And from here exploring out over the town, I was +smilingly greeted everywhere by such affable gracious old places, that +seemed to say:</p> + +<p>"We've been written about for a thousand years, and now you also wish to +write. How charming of you. Please sit down. Garçon, un bock."</p> + +<p>And I sat down. Scenes from the books of my great idols rose around +every corner, or if they didn't I made them rise. There was pride in the +process. To go to the Place de la République, take a seat before some +cheap, jolly café, squint out at the Place with an artist's eye, +reconstruct the Bastille, the Great Revolution, dream back of that to +Rousseau and Voltaire and the way they shook the world by their +writings—and then wake up and find that I had been at it for three +mortal hours! What a chap I was for dreams. I must be quite a genius. +There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> were hours with Hugo in Notre Dame in one of its most shadowy +corners; with Zola on top of a 'bus at night as it lumbered up into the +Belleville slums; with Balzac in an old garden I found; with Guy de +Maupassant everywhere, in the gay hum and lights of those endless cafés, +from bridges at sunset over the Seine, or far up the long rich dusk of +the Champs Élysées, lights twinkling out, and <i>his</i> women laughing, +chattering by.</p> + +<p>Nothing left in this rich old world but the harbor? Nothing beautiful, +fine or great for an eager, hungry, happy young man? I could laugh! I +knew now that the harbor had lied! For into this radiant city not only +the past but the whole present of the earth appeared to me to be pouring +in. Painters, sculptors, writers and builders were here from all +nations, with even some Hindus and Japs thrown in, young, bringing all +their dreams and ambitions, their gaiety, their vigor and zest.</p> + +<p>"Young men are lucky. They will see great things."</p> + +<p>Voltaire had said that about thirty years before the French Revolution. +It had been true then, true ever since, it was true to-day and +here—though <i>our</i> great things I felt very sure were not to come in +violence—the world had gone beyond all that. No, these immense +surprises that were lurking just before us, these astounding miracles +that were to rise before our eyes, would come in the unfolding of the +powers in men's minds, working free and ranging wide, with a deep +resistless onward rush—in the stirring times of peace!</p> + +<p>And we were not only to see great things but we were all to do them! +That was the very keynote of the place. Here a fellow could certainly +write if only he had it in him. Impatiently I slaved at my French. Five +hours sleep was plenty.</p> + +<p>In the small apartment we had taken just on the edge of the Luxembourg +Gardens, on the nights when we were working at home, one of us at his +easel, another at his drafting board, myself at my desk, we would knock +off at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> about eleven o'clock and come down for beer and a long smoke in +front of the café below. A homely little place it was, with two rows of +small iron tables in front, and at one of these we would seat ourselves. +Behind us in the window was a long glass tank of gold fish, into which +from time to time a huge cat would reach an omnivorous paw. Often from +within the café we would hear Russian folk songs played on balalaikas by +a group of Russian students there. And between the songs a low hubbub +rose, in French and many other tongues, for here were French and +Germans, English and Bohemians, Russians and Italians, all gathered here +while they were young.</p> + +<p>How serene the old city seemed those nights. The street outside was +quiet. The motor 'bus, that pest of Paris, had not yet appeared. Only an +occasional cab would come tinkling on its way. Our street was absurdly +short. At one end was a gay cluster of lights from the crowded cafés of +the "Boul' Mich'," at the other were the low lighted arches at the back +of the Odéon, from which when the play was over fluffy feminine figures +would emerge from the stage entrance; we would hear their low musical +voices as they came merrily by us in cabs. Other figures would pass. +Across the street before us rose the trees and the lofty iron fence of +the Gardens, with a rich gloom of shrubs behind, and against this +background figures in groups and alone and in couples would come +strolling by with their happiness or hurrying eagerly toward it. Or to +what else were they hurrying? From what were they coming so slowly away?</p> + +<p>These strangers in this setting thrilled me. Comedy, tragedy, character, +plot—there seemed nothing in life but the writing of tales—watching, +listening, dreaming, finding, then becoming deeply excited, feeling them +grow inside of you, planning them out and writing them off, then working +them over and over and over, little by little building them up. What a +rich absorbing life for a fel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>low, and for me it still lay all ahead. I +had used but twenty-two years of my life, there were fifty left to write +in, and what couldn't you write in fifty years!</p> + +<p>Often, sitting here at night, I would get an idea and begin to work, and +I would keep on until at last the enormous old woman who kept the +café—we called her "The Blessed Damozel"—would come lumbering out and +good humoredly growl,</p> + +<p> +"Couches-toi donc. Une heure vient de sonner."<br /> +</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>There came a brief interruption. Into our street's procession one +evening, over its round cobblestones on a bicycle that wearily wobbled, +there came a lean dusty figure with something distinctly familiar in the +stoop of the big shoulders.</p> + +<p>"Hello, boys," said a deep gruff voice.</p> + +<p>"J. K.!"</p> + +<p>It was. Joe Kramer arriving in Paris at midnight on a punctured tire, +and cursing the cobblestone pavements over which he had hunted us out.</p> + +<p>A hot supper, a bottle of wine, a genial beam on all three of us, and +Joe told his story. After leaving college, from New York he had gone to +Kansas City, and by the "livest paper" there he had been sent abroad +with a bike to do a series of "Sunday specials." He had come over +steerage and written an exposé of his passage. He had two weeks for +Paris and then was off to Berlin and Vienna.</p> + +<p>"I'm just breaking ground this time, boys," he said. "I want to get the +hang of the countries and a start in their infernal languages."</p> + +<p>The next day he began to break ground in our city. Early the next +morning I found Joe propped up in bed scowling into <i>Le Matin</i> as he +tried to butt his way through the language into the news events of the +day.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> What I tried to tell him of the Paris I had found made no appeal +whatever.</p> + +<p>"All right, Kid," he said indulgently. "If I had a dozen lifetimes I +might be a poet. But I haven't, so I'll just be a reporter."</p> + +<p>And he and his bike plunged into the town. He found its "newspaper row" +that day and a Frenchman to whom he had a letter. With this man Joe went +to the Bourse and that night to the Chamber of Deputies. He got "Sunday +specials" out of them both, and then went on to the Bourse de Travail. +And in the few spare moments he had, Joe told us of the things he had +seen. Rumors of war and high finance, trade unions, strikes and sabotage +burst on my startled artist's ears. It made me think of the harbor! +<i>This</i> was not my Paris!</p> + +<p>"It is," said J. K. stoutly. "There's no place like a newspaper office +to put you right next to the heart of a town."</p> + +<p>He would not hear to our seeing him off. I remember him that last night +after supper strapping his bag onto his bike and starting off down our +quiet old street on his way to the station.</p> + +<p>"To-morrow," he said, "I'll stop off in Leipsic. I want to have a look +at the college that stirred my young grandfather up for life. I've got +his diary with me."</p> + +<p>Again, in spite of the gruffness, I felt that wistful quality in him. +J. K. was hunting for something too.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<p>But what a relief to see him go, to forget his loud disturbing Paris and +again drink deep of mine, the city of great writers.</p> + +<p>"I'll never really know them," I thought, "until I can not only talk but +think and feel in their language."</p> + +<p>So I drudged for hours a day in my room. I inflicted my French on my +chums at meals, on defenseless drivers of 'buses who could not rise and +go away, and on the Blessed Damozel, who said:</p> + +<p>"Va donc, cherches-toi une fille. C'est la seule manière d'apprendre le +Français."</p> + +<p>I was vaguely thrilled by this idea, the more because so far in my life +I had had no experience of the kind. On the streets, in cabs, and in +cafés I began watching women with different eyes, more eagerly selecting +eyes that picked out of the throng the one <i>her</i> of the moment so that +for me she was quite alone. She was alone for a thousand reasons, +different ones in every case. She was of many ages, rich and poor, now +gorgeous and now simply dressed, now a ravishing creature that took your +breath and again just funny and very French with a saucy way of wearing +her clothes. Her fascinations were always new. I watched her twinkling +earrings, her trick of using her lips when she smiled, her hands, her +silk clad ankles, her swelling young bust, the small coquettish hat she +wore, her shoulders, their expressive shrugs, her quick vivacious +movements—and I watched her eyes. Her eyes would meet mine now and +then, often with only a challenging smile but again in an intimate +dazzling way<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> that gave me a deep swift shock of delight and left me +confused and excited.</p> + +<p>"In a little while," I thought. I decided to wait till I knew more +French. "She'll be strange enough, God knows," I thought half +apprehensively, "even when I can talk her language." And with a feeling +almost of relief I would plunge back into my work and forget her. For me +she was only an incident in this teeming radiant life.</p> + +<p>I must learn French! I strained my ears at lectures, at plays from the +top gallery, I hired a tutor to hurry it on. Years later in New York I +met a Russian revolutionist come to raise money for his cause. "Three +weeks have I been in this country," he said in utter exasperation. "And +not yet do I speak fluently the English!" That was how I felt about +French. What a delight to begin to feel easy, to catch the fine +shadings, the music and color of words and of phrases. How much more +pliant and smooth and brilliant than English. How remote from the +harbor.</p> + +<p>I could study my models now, not only their construction but their small +character touches as well. De Maupassant was still first for me. So +simple and sure, with so few strokes but each stroke counting to the +full, one suggestive sentence making you imagine the rest, everything +else in the world shut out, your mind gripped suddenly and held, +focussed on this man and this woman who a moment before had been nothing +to you but were now more real than life itself. Especially this woman, +what an absorbing creature he made her—and the big human ideas he +injected into these petites histoires.</p> + +<p>I wrote short stories by the score. Each one had a perfectly huge idea +but each seemed worse than the one before. I took to myself the advice +of Flaubert, and from a table before a café I would watch the people +around me and jot down the minutest details, I filled whole pages with +my strokes. But which to choose to make this person or this scene like +no other in the world?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> There came the rub. How had De Maupassant done +it? The answer came to me one night:</p> + +<p>"Not only by watching people. He talked to 'em, lived with 'em, knew +their lives!"</p> + +<p>The very thing my music teacher had said about Beethoven. How uneasy I +had been then, how absurdly young and priggish then in the gingerly way +I had gone at the harbor. Thank heaven there was no harbor here. I could +enter this life with a wholehearted zest.</p> + +<p>I began with one of my roommates. He was to be an architect. A +hard-working little chap, his days were filled with sharp suspense. The +Beaux Arts entrance examinations were close ahead. If he did not pass, +he told me, his parents in Ohio were too poor to give him another +chance.</p> + +<p>"If I have to go back to Ohio now," he said in that soft reflective +voice of his, "I'll put up cowsheds—later on, barns—and maybe when I'm +fifty, a moving picture theater. If I stay here and go back a Beaux Arts +man, I can go to New York or Chicago and get right into the center of +the big things being done."</p> + +<p>With a wet towel bound around his head he used to sit at his work half +the night. I watched the lines tighten about his thin lips and between +his gray eyes, grew to know the long weariness in them over some +problem, the sudden grim joy when the problem worked out. One day he +came home early.</p> + +<p>"Queer," he said simply. "I can see one side of your face, one side of +your body, one leg and one arm. But the other side don't seem to be +there." I looked up at him a moment.</p> + +<p>"Let's go out for a walk," I suggested. We went for a stroll in the +Gardens. And here I was surprised and just a bit ashamed to find that +while I had a real sympathy for him I had just as real curiosity. For +here was a living illustration of the horror of going blind. I could see +his jaws set like a vise, I could hear his low voice talking steadily on +as though to keep from thinking. What was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> he thinking? What was he +feeling? We talked of the most commonplace things. But moment by moment, +through his voice and his grip on my arm, those sudden waves now of +sickening fear, now of keen suspense, now of angry groping around for a +foothold, seemed pouring from him right into me, became part of +me—while the other part of me stood off and listened.</p> + +<p>"By God, this is life!" said one part of me. "No, it isn't; it's hell," +growled the other part. "This thing has got to be settled!"</p> + +<p>I took him to an oculist, and there I had another close view, this time +of intense relief.</p> + +<p>"Blind? Why, no, you're not going blind," said the oculist kindly. "All +you need is"—I heard nothing more. I had never had any idea before of +how swift and deep relief could be. On the street outside I heard it not +only in his unsteady laugh but in my own as well. We celebrated long +that night, and very late he took me to his favorite place down on the +lower quay of the river, where with the lights and the sounds of the +city far off it felt like some old dungeon. But just over our heads hung +the heavy black arch of a stone bridge, and looking up through this arch +as a frame we could see close above a gray, luminous mass rising and +rising in great sweeping lines till it filled half the sky—silent, +tremendous, Notre Dame. From down here the old edifice seemed alive. And +though my friend talked little here, I felt him again coming into me. +And this time it was his religion that came, his curious passion for +building.</p> + +<p>When at last we went home he could see my whole body, and I felt as +though I had seen his whole soul.</p> + +<p>Then I carefully wrote this down on paper. I put in every touch that I +could remember. I rewrote it to make it big, and I made it so big I +spoiled it all. I tore this up and began again. For about two weeks I +wrote nothing else. But at last I tore up everything. After all, he was +a friend of mine.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But where's the harm," I argued, "so long as I always tear it up? This +is real stuff. I'll get somewhere this way if I keep on."</p> + +<p>And I did keep on. Shamelessly I wormed my way into friends by the +dozen. I found it such an absorbing pursuit I could hardly wait to +finish up one before I went on to another. There were such a bewildering +lot of them, now that I had pried open my eyes. Would-be painters, +sculptors, poets, dramatists, novelists, rich and poor, tragic ones and +comic ones, with the meanest pettiest jealousies, the most bumptious +self-conceits, the blindest worship of masters, the most profound +humility, ambition so savage it made men inhuman. Many were starving +themselves to death.</p> + +<p>There was a little Hungarian Jew, an ardent follower of Matisse.</p> + +<p>"Technique?" he cried. "It is nothing! To grip your soul in your two +hands and press it on your canvas—that is art, that is Matisse!"</p> + +<p>He took me night after night through old buildings up in Montparnasse, +immense and dismal rookeries crowded with Poles, Bohemians and God knows +what other races, all feverish post-impressionists. Often we would find +three together close around one candle, scowling and squinting at their +easels, gaunt, silent, eager. Matisse—Matisse!</p> + +<p>"Most of them," said my guide, "are just mad. They cannot paint. All +think they are going to do great things, but all they are going to do is +to die."</p> + +<p>It was through this little Hungarian that I made my first study of +female life.</p> + +<p>Why delay any longer? I had been in Paris over six months, and I had +qualms almost of guilt at the thought of this chastity of mine. At first +I said, "Art is a jealous mistress." And this did splendidly for a time. +But then a stout German youth came along and laid it down as an absolute +law that no writer could do a woman right until<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> he had lived with a +dozen. Hence that scented little cat with whom he had lived for the past +year. She was the first of the dozen, eh? Damn the fellow, how much was +there in it? De Maupassant certainly hadn't held off. In fact there were +few of my idols who had. Why not be brave and take the plunge? It need +not be such a terrific plunge; no doubt if I went at it right I could +find a safe, easy kind of a <i>her</i>, friendly and confiding, a thoroughly +good fellow with none of these wild ups and downs. The less temperament +the better; she must have a good quiet head on her shoulders; no doubt +we would need it. And she must not be too young. Let her have had +affairs enough to know that ours was only one more and would probably be +as brief as the rest—the briefer the better.</p> + +<p>So tamely I pictured my first love. And the gay old city of Paris +smiled, and in that bantering way of hers she brought to me in a café +one night a perfect young tigress of a girl, a lithe, dusky beauty with +smouldering eyes, and said:</p> + +<p>"Without doubt this one is better for you. Regard what loveliness, what +fire! Oh, my son, why not be brave?"</p> + +<p>I was not brave, I barely spoke, and my friend the little Hungarian Jew +who had brought her to my table was forced to do the talking. For she, +too, was silent. But how different was her silence from the quiet I had +pictured. Presently, however, I became a little easier, and by degrees +we began to talk. She told me she was a painter. An Armenian by birth, +she had run away from home at eighteen, and here for two years in +Julien's she had tried to paint till she felt she'd go mad. She talked +in abrupt, eager sentences, breaking off to watch people around us. How +her big eyes fastened upon them. "To watch faces until you are sure—and +then paint! There is nothing else in the world!" she said. And I found +this reassuring.</p> + +<p>After that I saw her many nights. And from time to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> time breaking that +silence of hers, she became so fiercely confiding, not only about her +painting, but about what she called her innermost soul, that soon I +could look my De Maupassant square in the face, man to man, for I was +learning a lot about women. As yet we were friends and nothing more, but +I could feel both of us changing fast. "In a little while," I thought.</p> + +<p>But alas. One night she took me up to her room and showed me her +paintings. They were bad. They were fearfully bad, and my face must have +shown the impression they made.</p> + +<p>"You consider them frightful!" she exclaimed. I stoutly denied it, but +things only went from bad to worse. Here was that temperament I had +dreaded. Now she was clutching both my arms.</p> + +<p>"Mon dieu! Why not say it? Why cannot you say it?"</p> + +<p>"No," I replied. "You have done some extremely powerful work!" Anything +to quiet her nerves. "Especially this one—look—over here!" And I +pointed to one of her pictures.</p> + +<p>"I will show you how I shall look at it!" she cried in a perfect frenzy +of tears. She snatched up a knife that lay on her table, a very old, +curved, Armenian knife, and went at the painting and slashed it to +shreds, and then scattered the shreds all over the room.</p> + +<p>And watching this little festival, I thought to myself excitedly,</p> + +<p>"I know enough about this girl!"</p> + +<p>My retreat was so precipitate as to appear almost a flight.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said to myself, outside, "De Maupassant knew women. And he went +insane at forty-five."</p> + +<p>And so my next case was a chap from Detroit, whose aim, he told me, was +no less than to make himself "by the sheer force of my will a perfect, +all-round, modern man."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p> + +<p>It was over his case that I lost what was left of my sense of honor. For +I not only wrote him down, I kept what I had written. "Ten years from +now," I said in excuse, "I won't believe him unless he's on paper." But +having kept this, I began keeping others, until my locked drawer was +filled with the dreams and ambitions and even the loves of my confiding, +innocent friends. At last I was a writer.</p> + +<p>What a relief when my mother wrote that my father had consented to a +second year abroad for me. In my gratitude I even grew just a trifle +homesick.</p> + +<p>"Hadn't I better come home for the summer?" I wrote her.</p> + +<p>"No," she replied, "we cannot afford it. I want you to keep right on +with your work. I feel so sure you are working hard and will do things I +shall be proud of."</p> + +<p>I was not only working, but living, feeling, listening hard, under the +stimulus day and night of the tense, rich life around me. About this +time I made a friend of a gaunt, bearded Russian chap, whose dream for +years had been, like mine, to become a writer of fiction. His god had +been Turgenief. And a year ago, leaving his home, a little town near +Moscow, with forty roubles in his purse he had set out on foot with a +pack on his back to tramp the long and winding road that stretched away +two thousand miles to the distant city of Paris, the place where his +idol had lived and studied and written for so many years. Through this +young Russian pilgrim I came to know the books of some of his +countrymen, and through him I caught glimpses down into the vast, +mysterious soul of that people in the North.</p> + +<p>Through other chaps I met those days, other deep, tremendous vistas +opened up as backgrounds for these Paris friends of mine. Half the +night, in that café endeared to so many youths of all nations under its +name of "The Dirty Spoon," I heard talk about all things under the sun, +talk that was a merry war of words, ideas and points<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> of view as wide +apart as that of a Jap and a German. For every land upon the earth had +sent its army of ideas, and they all charged together here, and the +walls of the Dirty Spoon resounded with the battle—with roars of +laughter and applause. For we were of free, tolerant minds. We were gay, +young dogs of war who had left our tails behind us—our tails of +prejudice, distrust—and our emancipated souls had only scorn for +hatreds born of race or creed. Like J. K., we had rid ourselves of all +creeds past and present—but J. K. had always been free with a scowl, +his feet set grimly on the ground—we here were free with a verve and a +dash that took us careering up into the stars to laugh at the very +heavens.</p> + +<p>There was breadth in our very manner of speech. For here were we from +all over the earth, all speaking one tongue, the language in which half +the things that had moved the world had been said by men before us. And +what sparkling things there were still to be said, what dazzling things +we would see and do, in this prodigious onward march of the armies of +peace, out of all dark ages into a glad new world for men, where our +great smiling goddess of all the arts would reign supreme, where we +would dream mighty visions of life and all these visions would come +true.</p> + +<p>So we saw the world those days in the radiant city on the Seine.</p> + +<p>And meanwhile far up in the North, the Russian Czar, having started with +loud ostentation the movement for a world-wide peace, was swiftly +completing his preparations to strike with his armies at Japan. And the +other nations of Europe, jealous and suspicious of each other's every +secret plan—they, too, were making ready for what the future years +might bring.</p> + +<p>"Young men are lucky. They will see great things."</p> + +<p>And these young men have seen great things. But they have not been +lucky.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<p>It was about a year after this that again Joe Kramer broke in on my +dreams.</p> + +<p>He arrived early on a raw, wet morning in the following winter. His +all-night ride from Cherbourg had left him disheveled, unshaven and +hungry.</p> + +<p>"Well, boys," he asked when our greetings were over, "what do you think +of the news?"</p> + +<p>"What news?"</p> + +<p>Joe gave us a grim, fatherly smile.</p> + +<p>"Say. Do I have to come all the way from Chicago to tell you what's +happening down the street? Well, you young beauty boosters, there's a +panic on the Bourse this week that's got your fair city flat on her +back. And the cause of the said panic is that France is in deep on +Russian bonds, which are now worth about a cent to the dollar. Because +the Russian people—already dead sick of the war with Japan—have risen +in a howling mob against their government. See?"</p> + +<p>"I did hear of that," said the painter among us. "A Polish chap in the +studio said something about it yesterday."</p> + +<p>"Now, did he?" said the ironical Joe. "Just kind of murmured it, I +suppose, while bending reverently over his art." He rose. "Well, boys, +I'm sorry for you, but I've only got a day in this town, I'm off for +Russia on the night train. Bill, I wish you'd help me here. I've got an +awful lot to do and my French is still a little weak."</p> + +<p>It was not at all weak, it was strong and loud. I can hear it still, Joe +Kramer's French, and it is a fitting memory of that devastating day.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p> + +<p>The day began so splendidly, so big with promise of great ideas. I grew +quite excited about it. Here was Joe on his way to a real revolution. +Sent out by his Chicago paper, he was going to Russia to see a whole +people fight to be free—a struggle prophesied long ago by Turgenief, +Tolstoy and other big Russians whose work I admired. And now it was +actually coming off—and Joe, the lucky devil, was going to be right on +hand! From some mysterious source in New York he had secured a letter to +a Russian revolutionist leader who for many years had been an exile here +in Paris. Joe was anxious to see him at once.</p> + +<p>"All right," I said eagerly. "Give me his address."</p> + +<p>"Hold on," J. K. retorted. "It's not so easy as all that. I want to get +into Russia. This man's house in Paris is watched day and night by the +Russian secret police, and nobody who's seen with him has a chance of +crossing the frontier. We've got to go slow."</p> + +<p>"What'll we do?"</p> + +<p>"I want you to steer me first to a Frenchman. He's an anarchist. Here's +his address."</p> + +<p>The anarchist was a bit disappointing. A mild little man, we found him +in an attic room receiving a vigorous scolding from the huge blonde with +whom he lived. But after reading Joe's letter, he, too, took on a +mysterious air. He came with us in our cab, and off we went over Paris +until I thought we should never end. Again and again the cab would stop +and our guide would darkly disappear. But from one of these trips he +returned triumphant.</p> + +<p>"I have found his wife," he announced. "But she says she must have a +look at you first." The cab rattled off, and the next stop was in front +of a public library.</p> + +<p>"Now," said our guide, "go in and sit down at a table and pretend you +are reading."</p> + +<p>We went in and did as he said. Soon a middle-aged woman in black sat +down at the other side of the table.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> She stared at us gloomily a +moment; then with a yawn she opened a book and calmly started making +notes. Presently, scowling over her work, she began muttering to +herself.</p> + +<p>"You must not look up," I heard in French. "A Russian spy sits over +there. You wish to see my husband. Come to-night at nine o'clock to the +second floor of the Café Voltaire. He will be at the top of the stairs. +Good-by." And she yawned again over her writing.</p> + +<p>"Now, this," I thought, "is a revolution!" I thoroughly approved of +this. The Café Voltaire was an excellent choice, an almost perfect +mise-en-scène. It had long been one of my favorite haunts. A tall white +wooden building, so toned down, so tumbled down, so heavy laden with +memories of poets, dramatists, pamphleteers and fiery young orators, who +had sat here and conspired and schemed and exhorted over human rights. +It had well lived up to its glorious name. What great ideas had started +from here! Here French history had been made!</p> + +<p>But alas! Into this hallowed spot that night, at nine o'clock on his way +to his train, came Joe in a yellow mackintosh with a brand-new suitcase +in his hand—and showed me history in the making. It was made in a +small, stuffy room upstairs. On the one side J. K. with a million +American readers behind him, on the other this revolutionist whose name +that week had been in newspapers all over the world. So far, so good. +But look at him, look at this history maker. Tall, sallow and dyspeptic, +a professor of economics. Romance, liberty, history, thrill? Not at all. +They talked of factories, wages, strikes, of railroads, peasants' taxes, +of plows and wheat and corn and hay! They got quite excited over hay.</p> + +<p>And all this had to come through their defenseless interpreter—me. My +head ached, one foot fell asleep. The Social Democratic Party, the +Social Revolutionist Party, the Constitutional Democrats, in and out of +my head they trooped. If this be revolution, then God save the king!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> +Crushed to earth, as we left at last, my head still buzzing with +economics, I looked dismally back on my poor café, on liberty, justice +and human rights. There was something as bad as the harbor in Joe; he +was always spoiling everything.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you take Carlyle's French Revolution along?" I suggested +forlornly. "You might read it on the train."</p> + +<p>"Because, you poor kid, he's way out of date."</p> + +<p>It took me days to get into my work.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>About two months later, back he came. From one of our front windows he +looked down into the old Gardens, into all the loveliness the April +twilight was bringing there, and,</p> + +<p>"Where can I get a typewriter?" he asked. "I've got such an awful lot of +stuff that I want to dictate it right off the bat."</p> + +<p>This was <i>literature</i> in the making. For hours in Joe's room that week I +sat and heard him make it. In one corner lay a heap of dirty shirts and +collars, in another a stack of papers and books. An English stenographer +sat at the window, J. K. strode up and down and talked. It was real +enough, this narrative. Facts and figures, he had them down cold, to +back up with a crushing force the points he was making against the Czar. +Poverty, tyranny, bloody oppression, wholesale slaughter of a people in +a half-mad monarch's war—Joe pounded them in with sledgehammer blows. +He not only made you sure they were true, he made you sure that these +things must be stopped and that you as a decent American certainly +wanted to help with your money. And as for the revolution itself, he +left no doubt in your mind about that. It was there all right, Joe had +seen people give up their lives, he had seen men and women clubbed and +shot down, he had been so near he had seen the blood. (But he made human +blood so darned commonplace, curse him!) And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> in Petersburg for two long +nights he had gone about a city in darkness, every street light put out +by the strikers, the streets filled with surging black masses of +figures. Yes, Joe had certainly seen big things.</p> + +<p>Then what was the matter with me, I thought, that all this did not +thrill me? "Young men are lucky. They will see great things." All right, +here was one of <i>my</i> great things, a whole nation rising to throw off +its chains, to show the world that wars must cease—and to me it didn't +seem great at all, it seemed only big, and there was a world of +difference. Big? It was enormous, not only what Joe had seen up there, +but what he was doing right here in this room. He was talking to a +million people, damn him, and doubtless this was just the kind of +writing that would appeal to them. Thousands of his commonplace readers +would send their dollars to Russia, where dyspeptic professors of +economics would use the money to hire halls, into which millions of +commonplace Russians would crowd to hear about strikes, wages, taxes and +hay! And then some more commonplace blood would be shed, the dyspeptic +professors would be put in office—and this was a modern revolution!</p> + +<p>Was everything modern only big? Must I always have that feeling the +harbor used to give me?</p> + +<p>"No!" I decided angrily. The fault didn't lie in me nor in Russia, but +in J. K. and the way he was writing. As I followed that blunt narrative +of his journey through cities and factory towns, into deep forests, +across snowy plains and through little hamlets half buried in snow and +filled with the starving families of the men who had gone to the war, I +tried to picture it all to myself—not as he described it, confound him, +but with all the beauty which must have been there. Ye Gods of the Road, +what a journey! What tremendous canvases teeming with life, such +strange, dramatic significant life! What a chance for a writer!</p> + +<p>One night on a train whose fifth-class cars, cattle cars<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> and nothing +more, were packed with wounded men from the front, out of one of those +traveling hells Joe had pulled a peasant boy half drunk, and by the +display of a bottle of vodka had enticed him into his own compartment in +a second-class car ahead. The boy's right arm was a loathsome sight, +festering from a neglected wound. Amputation was plainly a matter of +days. But it was not to forget that grim event that the boy had jumped +off at each little station to spend his few kopecks on vodka. No, he was +stolidly getting drunk because, as he confided to Joe, at dawn he would +come to his home town and there he knew he was going to tell twenty-six +wives that their men had been killed. He laboriously counted them off on +his fingers—each wife and each husband by their long, homely Russian +names. Then he burst into half-drunken sobs and pounded the window ledge +with his fist. It was the fist of his right arm, and the kid gave a +queer, sharp scream of pain.</p> + +<p>If Voltaire had been there he would have come back and described that +peasant boy he'd seen in a way that would have gripped men's souls and +sent a great shudder over the world at war and what it meant to +mankind—while Joe was simply slapping it down like some hustling, keen +reporter.</p> + +<p>"Look here, Joe; you make me sick!" I exploded at last. "You ought to +stick right here for months and work on this wonderful stuff you've got +till there's nothing left you can possibly do!"</p> + +<p>"Be an artist, eh, a poet, a great writer." He gave me one of those +fatherly smiles. "I've got some things to say to <i>you</i>, Kid. I don't +like the life you're leading."</p> + +<p>"Don't you? Why don't you?" I rejoined. And so began a fight that lasted +as long as he was in Paris.</p> + +<p>Nothing that I had been doing here made any appeal whatever to Joe. I +showed him my sketch of Notre Dame from under that old bridge at night.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "this is fine writing, awful fine. But it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> has about as +much meaning to me as a woman's left ear. What's the use of sitting down +under a bridge and looking up at an ancient church and trying to feel +like a two-spot? For God's sake, Bill, get it out of your system, quit +getting reverent over the past. You're sitting here at the feet of the +Masters, fellahs who were all right in their day, but are now every one +of 'em out of date. And you're so infernally busy copying their +technique and style and trying to learn just how to write, that you're +getting nothing to write about. Why can't you go to life for your +stuff?"</p> + +<p>"Go to life?" I said indignantly. "I've done nothing else for over a +year!"</p> + +<p>"Show me."</p> + +<p>"Here!"</p> + +<p>He read more of my sketches.</p> + +<p>"But damn it, Bill, these people aren't alive. They're only a bunch of +artist kids as reverent over the past as yourself, they have about as +much connection with anything live and vital to-day as so many mediæval +monks. You fellahs think you're free of creeds. You're the creediest +kids I ever saw, your religion is style, technique and form. For God's +sake lose it and use your own eyes, forget you're an artist and be a +reporter, come out in the world and have a try. You'll find so much +stuff you won't need any plots, you'll simply report events as they +happen. And you won't have any time for technique, the next event will +be tuning up before you've got to the end of the last. With a big daily +paper behind him a good reporter can follow the front page around the +world. Russia's on the front page now. All right, you can go to Russia. +By June it may be Hindustan, or Pittsburgh, Turkey or China. Believe me, +Bill, the nations of this planet are working themselves into a state +where they're ready to do things you never dreamed of. I'm not talking +of kings and governments, I'm talking of the people themselves, the +people in such excited crowds that nobody knows who's who or what's +next.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I saw my first crowd in Petersburg the very day I got off the train. +They filled a street from wall to wall and as far as you could see. They +weren't saying a word or singing a song, and there wasn't even a drum to +keep time. But they moved along with their wives and kids as though +they'd left home, job and church, and were looking for something else so +hard they didn't care for bullets. I saw 'em shot down like so many +sheep. But bullets won't stop what I saw in their eyes. God knows I +don't want a religion. I'm no socialist nor anarchist. But if there's +one thing I want to hang on to it's my belief in the common crowd. +They've had a raw deal since the world began. They can have the whole +earth whenever they want it. And they're beginning to want it hard!</p> + +<p>"Forget your own name and jump into the crowd, write and don't stop to +remember you're writing! The place <i>you</i> need is the U. S. A.—and the +work you need is a job on a paper!"</p> + +<p>"Are you through?" I snapped.</p> + +<p>"I am!"</p> + +<p>"All right," said I. "I'm going to stay just where I am! I'm not going +to be yanked by you all over the earth, to write news articles on the +run! I'm going to stick in one place—right here—and take my time and +learn my job. I don't want to write news, I want to write books. I'd +rather write one good novel than all the headline stuff in the world. +It's books that make the headlines."</p> + +<p>"<i>Books</i>?" Joe's look was funny.</p> + +<p>"Sure they do. Take Russia. What started this whole revolution! Books. +It didn't start with your common crowds—they were all eating fried +onions. It started with a few writers of novels!"</p> + +<p>"Who left their little mahogany desks," said Joe, "got into peasant +clothes and went to live with the peasants!"</p> + +<p>"Oh no they didn't. Only a few. Turgenief didn't. Tchernichefsky didn't. +Dostoiefsky——"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Say. Are they Russians? I never heard their names up there."</p> + +<p>I looked at J. K. thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"No," I said. "You wouldn't. As yet they're not quite crowdy enough. But +they are Russians and their ideas made most of the first revolutionists. +The whole revolution was started by books."</p> + +<p>"It wasn't," snapped Joe. "It was taxes. Their taxes were doubled +because of the war, and——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, damn your war taxes, and damn your plows and your corn and hay! +You've got a hay mind, that's the trouble with you! You've got so you +think that hay and bread and pork and beans are all men live and die +for! They don't, Mister Reporter, they die for ideals—freedom, +democracy, human rights—which are in 'em so deep that when a big writer +sees 'em there and brings 'em out and holds 'em up and says, 'Here! This +is you, this is what you want, this is what you believe in!'—your crowd +says, 'Sure! Why didn't we see it long ago?' And then they do things that +go into headlines! But to be able to write like that a man can't go +chasing all over the earth, he's got to quit sneering at art and +technique, he's got to learn how to make characters real and build plots +that make readers sit up all night to see what becomes of the people +he's made! If believing that is a creed, then I'm creedy! I'm willing to +throw over everything else, but I'll hang on to this one thing all my +life—the fact that big art means working like hell!"</p> + +<p>"Gee," said J. K. "What an artist."</p> + +<p>These fights of ours left me weak and sore, as though I'd been back on +the terrace at home, listening to my father talk and looking at his +harbor.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<p>When Joe left me in peace at last, just for the sake of the rest and +change I turned my attention to music, or, rather, to a musical friend, +a young Bohemian composer who lived wholly in a world of his own. I +explored this musical world of his, by his side in dark top galleries, +in the Café Rouge on concert nights, in his room at his piano. How +deliciously far away from hay was this chap's feeling for Mozart. With +him I could feel sure of myself, of the way I was living for my art, of +what my mother way back at the start had called the "fine things" in +humanity.</p> + +<p>I remember the night we heard "Bohème" from the gallery of the Opéra +Comique. I remember the talk we had late that night, and my walk by the +edge of the Gardens home—and the letter and the cable that I found +waiting on my desk. The letter was from my father and told me that my +mother was dying. The cable told me she was dead.</p> + +<p>I remember learning that letter by heart on that long ocean voyage home. +This was no sudden illness, I learned, my mother had known of it while I +was home, known that she had it and that it was fatal. That was the news +she had told my father alone that night on the terrace! That was why she +had been so eager to get me away to Paris; that was why she had kept me +abroad!</p> + +<p>"She did not want you to see how she looked," my father wrote. "She +wanted you to remember her always as she was when you saw her last."</p> + +<p>I remembered her now. What a young beast I had been to forget her, to +drop her so utterly out of my thoughts in that selfish happy Paris life, +when it was she who had sent me there, when it was she who had set me +free for a time from the harbor which was now dragging me back,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> when it +was she from the very start who had fostered this passion for "all that +is fine." I remembered her now—remembered and remembered—until her +dear image filled me.</p> + +<p>My father's letter went on to tell how she had fought for her life. +Three operations, all three of them failures, but still she had held +bravely on in hopes of some new discovery which science might make and +so bring her a cure. A thought suddenly gripped me and struck me cold. +It had all depended on science, on men working calmly and coldly along +in laboratories all over the world, while my mother had held to her +thread of life and hoped that these laboratory gods would hurry, hurry +while yet there was time! How many thousands like her every day, every +hour all over the world were watching those gods with that awful +suspense. For they were the only gods that were left, and a comfortless +set of gods they were! They were like J. K., they had hay minds! They +were businesslike, relentless, cold, they belonged to the world of the +harbor! My mother's kind god was a myth and a joke, with no power here +one way or the other. I <i>felt</i> that now, I had <i>thought</i> it before, only +thought it, with that gay freedom of thought we had aired back there in +Paris. But I knew now that deep underneath I had believed all along in +this god of hers, as I had in my beautiful goddess of art and in all the +things that were fine. It had taken this news from the harbor to bring +him tottering, crashing down. For no god like hers would have let her +die! And I felt fear now, the fear of Death, whom I'd never really +noticed before and who now seemed to say to me,</p> + +<p>"She is nothing—has gone nowhere—she is only dead!"</p> + +<p>And fiercely in a bewildered way I rebelled against this emptiness. I +rebelled against this world of hay that was so abruptly dragging me back +to a sense of its almighty grip on my life. When my ship came up the +Bay, the world looked harsh and gray to me, though there was a bright +and sunny glare on the muddy waves of the harbor.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p> + +<h2>BOOK II</h2> + +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<p>My mother had been buried several days before I reached home.</p> + +<p>I found Sue waiting on the dock, and I saw with a little shock of +surprise that my young sister was grown up. I had never noticed her much +before. Sue and I had never got on from the start. She had been my +father's chum and I had been my mother's. I had always felt her mocking +smile toward me and all my solemn thoughts. And after that small +catastrophe which I had had with Eleanore, I had more than ever avoided +Sue and her girl friends. Then I had gone to college, and each time that +I came home she had seemed to me all arms and legs, fool secrets and +fool giggles—a most uninteresting kid. I remember being distinctly +surprised when I brought Joe home for Christmas to find that he thought +her quite a girl. But now she was all different. She had grown tall and +graceful, lithe, and in her suit of mourning she looked so much older, +her face thin and worn, subdued and softened by all she'd been through. +For the weight of all those weary weeks had been upon her shoulders. +There was something pitiful about her. I came up and kissed her +awkwardly, then found myself suddenly holding her close. She clung to me +and trembled a little. I found it hard to speak.</p> + +<p>"I wish I'd been here, too," I said gruffly.</p> + +<p>"I wish you had, Billy—it's been a long time."</p> + +<p>All at once Sue and I had become close friends.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p> + +<p>We had a long talk, at home that day, and she told me how our parents +had drawn together in the last years, of how my poor mother had wanted +my father close by her side and of how he had responded, neglecting his +business and spending his last dollar on doctors, consultations and +trips to sanitariums, anything to keep up her strength. He had even read +"Pendennis" aloud. How changed he must have been to do that. I knew why +she had wanted to hear it again. It had been our favorite book. I +remembered how I had read it to her just before I went abroad, and how I +had caught her watching me with that hungry despairing look in her eyes. +What a young brute I had been to go!... For a time Sue's voice seemed +far away. Then I heard her telling how over that story of a young author +my mother had talked to my father of me.</p> + +<p>"He's going to try to know you, Billy, and help you," said Sue. "He +promised her that before she died. And I hope you're going to help him, +too. He needs you very badly. You never understood father, you know. I +don't believe you have any idea of what he has gone through in his +business."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean? Have things gone wrong?"</p> + +<p>"I don't understand it very well. He hardly ever speaks of it. I think +he'd better tell you himself."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>That evening in his library, from my seat by the table, I furtively +watched my father's face. He sat in a huge chair against the wall, with +a smaller chair in front for his feet, his vest unbuttoned, his short +heavy body settled low as he grimly kept his eyes on his book. The +strong overhead light which shone on his face showed me the deeper +lines, all the wrinkles, the broad loose pouch of skin on the throat, +the gray color, the pain, the weakness and the age in his motionless +eyes. What was going on in there? Sometimes it would seem an hour before +he turned another page. All afternoon he had been at her grave.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p> + +<p>He had given her no happy life. Was it of that he was thinking? I felt +ashamed to be wondering, for he seemed so weak and old in his grief. Two +years ago his hair had been gray, but he had still looked strong and +hale. I could hardly feel now that he was the same man. I felt drawn to +him now, I wished he would put down his book and talk and tell me +everything about her.</p> + +<p>But what an embarrassing job it is to get acquainted with one's father. +When Sue had left us after dinner, there had been a few brief remarks +and then this long tense silence. I, too, pretended to be reading.</p> + +<p>"Your mother thought a lot of you, boy." He spoke at last so abruptly +that I looked up at him with a start, and saw him watching me anxiously.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir." I looked quickly down, and our eyes did not meet again after +that.</p> + +<p>"It was her pluck that kept you in Paris—while she was dying."</p> + +<p>I choked:</p> + +<p>"I know."</p> + +<p>"You don't know—not how she wanted you back—you'll never know. I +wanted to write you to come home."</p> + +<p>"I wish you had!"</p> + +<p>"She wouldn't hear of it!"</p> + +<p>"I see." Another silence. Why couldn't I think of something to say?</p> + +<p>"She kept every letter you wrote her. They're up there in her bureau +drawer. She was always reading 'em—over and over. She thought a lot of +your writing, boy—of what you would do when—when she was dead." The +last came out almost fiercely. I waited a moment, got hold of myself.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," I brought out at last.</p> + +<p>"I hope you'll make it all worth while."</p> + +<p>"I will. I'll try. I'll do my best." I did not look up, for I could +still feel his anxious eyes upon my face.</p> + +<p>"Do you want to go back to Paris?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p> + +<p>"No, sir! I want to stay right here!" What was the matter with my fool +voice?</p> + +<p>"Have you got any plans for your writing here? How are you going about +it to start?"</p> + +<p>"Well, sir, to begin with—I've got some stuff I did abroad."</p> + +<p>"Stories?"</p> + +<p>"Not exactly——"</p> + +<p>"Poems?" My father's look was tragic.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>And I tried to explain what I had been doing. But my attempts to tell +him of my work in Paris were as forced and as pathetic as his efforts to +attend. More and more halting grew our talk, and it ended in a silence +that seemed to have no end. Then I went to the fireplace, knocked the +ashes out of my pipe, refilled it and relit it. When I returned he was +reading his book, and with deep relief I took up mine. That much of it +was over.</p> + +<p>But again I found myself watching him. What was in my father's mind? Why +this anxious almost humble tone? It made me wince, it made me ashamed. I +sat there all evening pretending to read and feeling that he was doing +the same.</p> + +<p>"Good night, dad—I think I'll go to bed." Even this little came +clumsily. I had never called him "dad" before.</p> + +<p>"Good night, my boy. See you at breakfast."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>I glanced back as I turned down the hall and saw him staring after me.</p> + +<p>What was it he was thinking?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<p>"I'm closing out my business, son," he told me the next morning. Here +was another sharp surprise. I did not look at him as I asked:</p> + +<p>"Why are you doing that, sir?"</p> + +<p>"It's a long story. Times have changed and I'm getting old."</p> + +<p>Again I felt suddenly drawn to him. He was old and no mistake. Why had I +never known him till now?</p> + +<p>"Look here—Dad." The last word still came awkwardly. "Can't I possibly +be any help down there?" He shot an anxious look at me:</p> + +<p>"Why, yes. Glad to have you. I still have a young clerk, but I'd rather +have you."</p> + +<p>Only one clerk! What had gone wrong with his business?</p> + +<p>But that day in his warehouse, which was empty now and silent, the mere +ghost of what it had been, he seemed in no hurry to show me. On the +contrary, he went back to the ledgers of his earliest years in business, +on the flimsy pretext of looking up certain figures and dates. He did +not need me here, the work he gave me was absurd, I was simply taking +the musty books from their piles in the closet and arranging them by +years on the floor. "To save time," he said. But he himself was still on +that first ledger, stopping to talk, to ramble off from the pages before +him. What did it mean? As the days wore on and he still delayed and at +night that strange humility crept again into his eyes, with a slowly +deepening suspense I came to feel that instead of saving time my father +was trying to make it, to go far back into his vigorous past<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> for +strength to meet his present—because he dreaded what we would find at +the end of our work on these dusty books, the last grim figure in +dollars and cents that would stand there as the result of his life, as +the stepping-stone for Sue's and mine. And that was why he wanted me +here, this was his way of telling me the story of his business +life—before I saw what lay at the end. And as in our work that story +unfolded, though at times it cast its spell on me hard, revealing what a +man he had been, there were other times when from somewhere deep inside +of me a small selfish voice would ask:</p> + +<p>"What is left? How much has he saved from the wreck? What is this going +to mean to my life?"</p> + +<p>In the ledgers his story was still alive. Yellow and dusty as they were, +for me day by day they revivified that still odorous old warehouse until +I saw it as it had been, a huge dim caravansary for the curious products +of all the earth. And that trick of feeling a man, which I had learned +in Paris, made me keenly sensitive now to this lonely old stranger by my +side with whom I was becoming acquainted. I could feel the pull of these +books upon him, pulling him out of his cramped old age back to his glad +boundless youth. How suddenly spacious they became as he slowly turned +the pages. Palm oil from Africa, cotton from Bombay, coffee from Arabia, +pepper from Sumatra. Turn the page. Ivory from Zanzibar, salt from Cadiz +and wines from Bordeaux. Turn the page. Whale oil from the Arctic, iron +from the Baltic, tortoise shell from the Fiji Islands. Turn the page! +India silks and rugs and shawls, indigo, spices! Turn the page!</p> + +<p>I began to see the sails speed out along those starlit ocean roads. I +began to feel the forces that had shaped my father's life. And little by +little I saw in those days what not even my mother had understood, that +in my father's business life there had been more than dollars, that what +to us had seemed only a hobby, a dull obstinate fixed idea, had been for +him a glorious vision<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>—the white sails of American clippers dotting all +the seven seas.</p> + +<p>So they were in the late Fifties, when leaving the farm in Illinois he +came at sixteen to New York and found a job as time clerk in one of the +ship yards along the East River. They are all gone now, but then they +were humming and teeming with work. And my young father was deeply +excited. He told me of his first day here, when he stood on the deck of +a ferry and watched three great clippers go out with the tide, bound for +Calcutta. There were pictures of these vessels on the walls of his +office, stately East Indiamen bearing such names as <i>Star of Empire</i>, +<i>Daniel Webster</i>, <i>Ocean Monarch</i>, <i>Flying Cloud</i>—ships known in every +port of the world for their speed. He told how a British vessel, her +topsails reefed in a gale of wind, would see a white tower of swelling +canvas come out of the spray behind her, come booming, staggering, +plunging by—a Yankee clipper under royals. Press of sail? No other +nation knew what it meant! Our owners took big chances, it was no trade +for nervous men!</p> + +<p>He found a harbor that welcomed young men, where cabin boys rose to be +captains, and clerks became owners of hundreds of ships. To work! To +rise! To own yards like these, build ships like these and send them +rushing on their courses out to all parts of the ocean world! This had +been his vision, at the time when it was bright and clear. And as now he +made me feel it, the crude vital force that had been in his dream poured +into me deep, made me feel how shut in and one-sided had been my own +vision and standards of life, gave me that profound surprise which many +sons, I suppose, never have:</p> + +<p>"My father was once young like me—wiry, straight and tough like me, and +as full of dreams of the things he would do."</p> + +<p>But then had come the Civil War. Although only nineteen when the war +broke out, he was already the head clerk in his office. "But like every +other young fool those days,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> he said, "I was caught by the noise of a +brass band!" Down South as a commissary clerk he found himself a tiny +pawn in that gigantic game of graft which made fat fortunes in the North +and cost tens of thousands of soldiers their lives. He himself took +typhoid, and when the war was over he returned to New York, weak, +penniless, to find his old work gone.</p> + +<p>"For the war," he said, "had busted American shipping sky high. Even +before it began it had made the South so bitter that just for the sake +of attacking the North the Solid South in congress had joined the damn +fool Farmer West and attacked our mail subventions. 'No more of the +nation's money,' they said, 'for ship subsidies for New York and New +England!' And so all government protection of our shipping was +withdrawn. And when the war ended, with forty per cent of our ships +grabbed, sunk or sold, it was ruination to build any more, for the +British and German governments were pouring millions of dollars a year +into the Cunard and the North German Lloyd, and we couldn't compete +against them.</p> + +<p>"Still a few of the ship yards kept on, and in one of these at last I +got a job at eight dollars a week. 'The war is over,' we told ourselves, +'and the government can't stay blind forever. They'll see what they've +done, and within a few months they'll go back to the old policy.' +Months? I stuck to that job and waited five years—and still no news +from Washington. 'My boy,' said a doddering Brooklynite, 'the nation has +turned her face westward.'"</p> + +<p>Then he left the ship yards and went into a warehouse, where the work +lay mainly in handling cargoes of foreign ships. And starting life all +over again he tried to make up for lost time. The first year he was a +shipping clerk; the second, a bookkeeper; the third, he kept two sets of +books for two different docks, one by day and the other at night. And by +forty he had become a part owner in the old warehouse in which he now +sat grimly reading the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> record of his life—of a long stubborn losing +fight, for he stuck to his dream of Yankee sails.</p> + +<p>He married my mother when he was still strong and full of hope. He must +have been so much kindlier then and brighter, more human to live with. +They bought that pleasant house of ours with its hospitable front door. +My father's doddering Brooklynites seemed wonderful neighbors to his +young wife. And so that front door waited for friends. As the years +dragged on and they did not come, she blamed it all on the harbor. She +saw what it was making him, jealous of every dollar and every hour spent +at home. He worked all day and half the night. It took him into +politics, on countless trips to Washington, and she knew he spent +thousands of dollars there in ways that were by no means "fine." It made +him morose and gloomy, a man of one idea, to be shunned.</p> + +<p>And she no more saw behind all this than I did when I was a boy. For his +vision was neither of pirates nor of bringing the heathen to Christ, but +of imports and of exports. He dreamed in terms of battleships and of a +mercantile marine. Each year he watched the chances grow, vast +continents opening up to commerce with hints of such riches as staggered +the mind. He saw the ocean world an arena into which rushed all nations +but ours.</p> + +<p>"Everyone but us," he said, "had learned the big lesson—that you can +get nothing on land or sea unless you're ready to fight for it hard!"</p> + +<p>He saw other nations get ready to fight. He watched them build huge +navies and grant heavy subsidies to their fast growing merchant fleets, +send vessels by thousands over the seas. He saw their shipowners draw +swiftly together in great corporations. Here was an age for immense +adventures in this growing trade of the world. To wait, to hold on +grimly, to keep up the fight at Washington for that miracle, Protection, +which would start the boom. To see the shipping yards teeming again with +the building of ships by the hundreds and thousands, to see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> them go out +again over the seas with our flag at the mast and our sailors below. To +feel the new call go over the nation—"Young men, come east and west, +come out! The first place on the oceans can still be yours!" This was my +father's great idea.</p> + +<p>Ship subsidies and battleships, discriminating tariffs. What a religion. +But it was his. Of the miracles these things would work my father was +more sure than of a god in heaven. For he had thought very little about +a god, and all his life he had thought about this. For this he had spent +at least half his wealth on the congressmen that he despised. Bribery? +Yes. But for a religion.</p> + +<p>"Go all around South America and to the Far East," he told me. "And +you'll see the flags at sea of England, Germany, Austria, France, of +Russia, Norway, Spain, Japan. But if you see the American flag you'll +see it waved by a little girl from the deck of a British liner. This +means that we are losing in marine freights and foreign trade billions +of dollars every year. And it means more and worse than that. For it's +ship building and ship sailing that take a nation's men out of their +ruts, whip up their minds and imaginations, make 'em broad as the seven +seas. And we've lost all that, we've thrown it away, to breed a race of +farmers—of factory hands and miners and anarchists in slums. We've +built a nation of high finance—and graft—and a rising angry mob. But +sooner or later, boy, this country will wake up to what it has done. And +with our grip on both oceans and the blood we've still got in our veins, +we'll reach out and take what is ours—as soon as we're ready to fight +for it hard—the mastery of the ocean world!"</p> + +<p>For this idea he had lived his life. For this he had neglected his +business, for this he had lost favor with the usurping foreign +ships—until his dock and his warehouse were often idle for weeks at a +time.</p> + +<p>And the very bigness of things, the era of big companies which at forty +had thrilled him by the first signs of its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> coming, now crushed down +upon his old age. Vaguely he knew that the harbor had changed and that +he was too old to change with it. An era no longer of human adventures +for young men but of financial adventures for mammoth corporations, +great foreign shipping companies combining in agreements with the +American railroads to freeze out all the little men and take to +themselves the whole port of New York. My father was one of these little +men. The huge company to which he was selling owned the docks and +warehouses for over two miles, and this was only a part of their +holdings.</p> + +<p>"Nothing without fighting." That had been his motto. And he had fought +and he had lost. And so in this new harbor of big companies my father +was now closing out. Too late for any business here, too late for life +up there in his home. He had kept my mother waiting too long, he was +ready at last but she was dead. Too late. He had been born too late, had +dreamed his dream of sails too late, and now he was too late in dying. +There was nothing left to live for. How much better for him to be dead.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<p>I have tried to tell his story as my father felt it, at the times when +it took him out of himself and made him forget himself and me. But there +were other times when he remembered himself and me, and those were the +times that hurt the most. For in that new humility in his eyes and in +his voice I could feel him then preparing us both—me to see why it was +that he could not do for me what <i>she</i> had wished; himself to hold on +grimly, to find a new job for his old age, to keep from becoming a +burden—on me.</p> + +<p>At last we were coming to the end—to that last figure in dollars and +cents. I caught his suspense and we talked little now. I knew the price +at which he was selling, and toward that figure I watched the debts +creep slowly up. I saw them creep over, and knew that we had not a +dollar left to live on. And still the debts kept mounting. How small +they were, these last ones, a coil of rope, two kegs of paint—the irony +of it compared to the bigness of his life. Still these little figures +climbed. At last he handed me his balance. He was in debt four thousand, +one hundred and forty-six dollars and seventeen cents.</p> + +<p>He had risen from his old office chair:</p> + +<p>"Well, son, I guess that ends our work."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>He went out of the office.</p> + +<p>I sat there dully for some time. Then I remember there came a harsh +scream from a freight engine close outside. And I looked out of the +window.</p> + +<p>The harbor of big companies, uglier than I had ever seen it, no longer +dotted with white sails, but clouded with the smoke and soot of an age +of steam, and iron, lay sprawled out there like a thing alive. Always +changing,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> always growing, it had crushed the life out of my father and +mother, and now it was ready for Sue and me.</p> + +<p>"I've got to stay here and make money."</p> + +<p>Good-by to the Beautiful City of Grays. A clock in an outer room struck +five. In Paris it was ten o'clock, and those friends of mine from all +countries were crowding into "The Dirty Spoon." I could see them +sauntering one by one on that summer's night down the gay old Boulevard +Saint Michel and dropping into their seats at the table in the corner.</p> + +<p>"How am I to make money? By writing?"</p> + +<p>I thought of De Maupassant and the rest, and the two years I had spent +in trying to make vivid and real the life I had seen. In these last +anxious weeks I had sent some of my Paris sketches to magazine offices +in New York. They had all been returned with printed slips of rejection, +except in one case where the editor wrote, "This is a good piece of +writing, but the subject is too remote. Why not try something nearer +home?"</p> + +<p>"All right," I thought, "what's near me here? Let's see. There's a cloud +of yellow smoke I can do, with a brand-new tug below it dragging a +string of good big barges. What are they loaded with? Standard Oil. Wait +till they get closer and I can even describe the smell! No," I concluded +savagely. "Let's keep my writing clean out of this hole and get the +money some other way!"</p> + +<p>Then suddenly I forgot myself and thought of my stern brave old dad. +What under the sun was he going to do?</p> + +<p>That week he mortgaged our house on the Heights for five thousand +dollars. With this he paid off all his debts and put the balance in the +bank. Then from the big dock company he got a job in his own warehouse +at a hundred dollars a month.</p> + +<p>"Kind of 'em," he said gruffly. He was sixty-five years old. They were +even kind enough to add to that a job for me. I sat at the desk next to +his and I was paid ten dollars a week.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p> + +<p>Sue let the servants go, hired one green German girl and said she knew +she could run the house on a hundred and twenty dollars a month. But the +August bills went over that, so we drew money out of the bank. My father +had bronchitis that week. We managed to keep him in bed for three days, +but then he struggled up and dressed and went back to his desk in the +warehouse.</p> + +<p>"Keep your eye on him down there," said Sue. "He's so terribly feeble."</p> + +<p>"This can't go on," I told her.</p> + +<p>I must make more than ten dollars a week. Again I sent out some of my +sketches, again the magazines sent them back. I went to a newspaper +office, but there an ironical office boy, with the aid of the city +editor, made me feel that reporting was not in my line. What other work +could I find to do? How much time did I have? How long was my father +going to last? I watched his face and our bank account. I studied the +"want ads" in the press. But the more I studied the smaller I felt, for +this was one of the years of depression. "Two Hundred Thousand In New +York Idle," I read in a headline. Here was literature that gripped!</p> + +<p>"I guess I'll stay right where I am. It's safer," I thought anxiously. +"Perhaps if I work hard enough they'll give me a raise at Christmas. +When Dad was my age he kept two sets of books, one by day and the other +at night. How can I make my evenings pay?"</p> + +<p>I took long walks in Brooklyn and picked up night work here and there. +It was monotonous clerical work, and being slow at figures I was often +at it till midnight. Very late one evening, while making out bills in a +hardware store, I suddenly came to a customer whose initials were J. K. +It started me thinking of Joe Kramer and our last long talk—about hay.</p> + +<p>"So this is hay," I told myself. "How long will it take me to get a hay +mind, back here by this damned harbor?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<p>Then Sue began to take me in hand. From the subdued and weary girl that +I had found when I came home, in the last few weeks she had blossomed +out. The color had come into her cheeks, a new animation into her voice, +a resolute brightness into her eyes.</p> + +<p>"This thing has got to stop, Billy," she said determinedly. "This house +has been like a tomb for months, you and Dad are so gloomy and tired +you're sights. He needs a change, and so do you. You're getting into a +little rut and throwing away your chance to write. You need friends who +are writers, you need a lot of fresh ideas to tone you up. There's +plenty of money in writing. And I need a change myself. I can't stand +this house any longer. After all, I've got my own life to live. I'm +going to get a job before long. In the meantime I'm going to see my +friends. And what's more, I'm going to have them here to the house—- +just as often as they'll come! Let's brighten things up a little!"</p> + +<p>I looked at her with interest. Here was <i>another</i> sister of mine—risen +out of her sorrow and eager to live, and talking of running our lives as +well, of curing us both by large, firm doses of "fresh ideas," while she +herself looked around for a job that would help her to "live her own +life."</p> + +<p>"Look here, Sue," I argued vaguely. "You don't want to take a job——"</p> + +<p>"I certainly do——"</p> + +<p>"But you can't! Dad wouldn't hear to it!"</p> + +<p>"He'll have to—when I've found it. No poor feeble old man supporting +me, thank you—quite probably no man at all—ever! But you needn't +worry. I won't take any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> old job that comes along. And I won't bother +Dad till I've found just what I really want—something I can grow in."</p> + +<p>"That's right, take it easy," I said.</p> + +<p>"Where have you been!" I thought as I watched her. It came over me as a +distinct surprise that Sue had been in all sorts of places and had been +making all sorts of friends, had been having ambitions and dreams of her +own—all the time I had been having mine. Most older brothers, I +suppose, at some time or another have felt this same bewilderment. "Look +here, Sis," they wonder gravely, "where in thunder have you been?"</p> + +<p>I took a keen interest in her now. In the evenings when I wasn't out +working we had long talks about our lives, which to my satisfaction +became almost entirely talks about <i>her</i> life, her needs, her growth. +Her delight in herself, her intensity over plans for herself, her +enthusiasm for all the new "movements," reforms and ideas that she had +heard of God-knows-where and felt she must gather into herself to expand +herself—it was wonderful! She was like that chap from Detroit, that +would-be perfect all-round man. But Sue was so much less solemn about +it, one minute in art and the next in social settlements, so little +hampered by ever putting through what she planned.</p> + +<p>"In short, a woman," I thought sagely.</p> + +<p>I felt I knew a lot about women, although I had had no more intimate +talks since that affair in Paris. I had felt that would last me for +quite a while. But here was something perfectly safe. A sister, decent +but far from dull, well stocked with all the feminine points and only +too glad to be confidential. She wanted to study for the stage! Of +course that was the kind of thing that Dad and I would stop darned +quick. Still—I could see Sue on the stage. She was not at all like me. +I was middling small, with a square jaw, snub nose and sandy hair. Sue +was tall and easy moving, with an abundance of soft brown hair worn low +over large and irregular features. She had fascinating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> eyes. She could +sprawl on a rug or a sofa as lazy and indolent as you please—all but +her eyes, they were always doing something or other, letting this out or +keeping that back, practicing on me!</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, she'll marry soon enough," I thought. "This talk of a job for +life is a joke."</p> + +<p>Some nights I would listen to her for hours. It was so good to come back +to life, to feel younger than my worries, to forget for a little while +that stark heavy certainty that poor old Dad would soon be a burden in +spite of himself, and that with a family on my hands I'd have to spend +the best years of my life slaving for a little hay.</p> + +<p>I took the same delight in her friends.</p> + +<p>Starting with her classmates in a Brooklyn high school, most of whom +were working over in New York, Sue had followed in their trail, and at +settlements, in studios and in girl bachelor flats she had picked up an +amazing assortment of friends. "Radicals," they called themselves. +Nothing was too wild or new for these friends of Sue's to jump into—and +what was more, to tie themselves to by a regular job in some queer +irregular office. "Votes for Women" was just starting up, and one of +this group, a stenographer in a suffragette office, had been in the +first small parade. Another, a stout florid youth who wrote poems for +magazines, had paraded bravely in her wake. Here were two girls who +lived in a tenement, did their own cooking and pushed East Side +investigations that they said would soon "shake up the town." There were +several rising muckrakers, too, some of whom did free work on the side +for socialist papers. There was one real socialist, a painter, who had a +red membership card in his pocket to prove that he belonged to "the +Party." Others were spreading music and art and dramatics through the +tenements—new music, new art and new dramatics. One young husband and +wife, intensely in love with one another, were working together night +and day for easier divorces which would put an end to the old-fashioned +home.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p> + +<p>These people seemed to me to be laughing at a different old thing every +time. But when they weren't laughing they were scowling, over some new +attack upon life—and when they did that they were laughable. At least +so they were to me. Not that I minded attacking things, I had done +plenty of that myself in Paris. But how different we had been back +there. We, too, had thrown old creeds to the winds, but with how much +more finesse and art. And there had been a large remoteness about it. +Each one had tossed his far-away country into the cosmopolitan pot, our +talk had been on a world-wide scale. But this crude crowd, except for +occasional mental flights, kept all its attention, its laughs and its +jeers, its attacks and exposures centered on this one mammoth town, +against which as a background they seemed the merest pigmies. Three +little muckrakers loomed against Wall Street, one small, scoffing +suffragette against a hundred and eighty thousand solid stolid Brooklyn +wives. They had posed themselves so absurdly close to the world of +things as they are.</p> + +<p>And they were in such a rush about their work. Over there in Paris, with +all our smashing of idols, we had at least held fast to our one great +goddess of art, we had slaved like dogs at the hard daily labor of +honestly learning our various crafts. But here they stopped for nothing +at all. The magazine writers were "tearing off copy," the painters were +simply "slapping it down." One of them told me he "painted the real +stuff right out of life"—dashed it off with one hand, so to speak, +while he shook his fist at the town with the other. Everyone wanted to +see something done—and done damn quick—about this, that or the other.</p> + +<p>My artist's eyes surveyed this group and twinkled with amused surprise. +But I could sit by the hour and listen to their talk. I found it mighty +refreshing, after those bills in the hardware shop, that monotonous +martyr feeling of mine and those worries down by the harbor.</p> + +<p>But I felt the harbor always there, slowly closing in on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> my father, who +looked older day by day, slowly bringing things to a crisis. In the +garden behind our house on warm September evenings when these pigmies +gathered to chatter reforms, the harbor hooted at their little plans as +it had hooted at my own. One evening, I remember, when the talk had +waxed hot and loud in favor of labor unions and strikes, Sue left the +group and with a friend strolled to the lower end of the garden. There I +saw them peer over the edge and listen to the drunken stokers singing in +the barrooms deep under all these flower beds and all this adventurous +chatter of ours. I thought of the years I had spent with Sam—and Sue, +too, seemed to me to be having a spree. Poor kid, what a jolt she would +get some day. She called me "our dreamer imported from France." But I +was far from dreaming.</p> + +<p>Presently the harbor just opened one of its big eyes and sent up by a +messenger a little grim reality.</p> + +<p>A Russian revolutionist had appeared among us with a letter to Sue from +Joe Kramer. Joe, I found to my surprise, had seen quite a little of Sue +over here while I had been in Paris—and from the various ships and +hotels that had been his "home" of late, he had written her now and +then. Through him Sue had joined a society known as "The Friends of +Russian Freedom," and Joe wrote now from Moscow urging her to "stir up +the crowd and lick this fellow into shape to talk at big meetings and +raise some cash. He has the real goods," Joe added. "All he needs is the +English language and a few points about making it yellow. If handled +right he'll be a scream."</p> + +<p>He was handled right and he was a scream. Three months later he finished +a tour that had netted over ten thousand dollars. Now to buy guns and +ship them to Russia—where in the awful poverty bequeathed to them by +the war with Japan, a bitter people was still fighting hard to make an +end of autocracy.</p> + +<p>"I think I can help you, Puss," said Dad.</p> + +<p>I looked at him with interest. I knew he had been as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> tickled as I by +these astonishing friends of hers. "Revolooters," he called them. He was +a great favorite with the girls.</p> + +<p>"I once knew a man in a business way who dealt in guns," he explained to +Sue. "He shipped some to Bolivia from my dock. I'll have him up to meet +your friend."</p> + +<p>So this messenger from the harbor, a keen lean man of business, gave one +hour of his time to the problem in which the Russian dreamer had been +absorbed for fifteen years. And the hour made the fifteen years look +decidedly dreamy.</p> + +<p>"Guns for Russia, eh?" he said. "How'll you get 'em into your country? +Where's your frontier weakest? You don't know? Then I'll tell you." And +the man of business did. "Now what kind of guns do you want? You hadn't +thought? Well, my friend, you want Mausers. They happen to be cheap just +now in Vienna. You should have looked into that before you traipsed way +over here. You can get 'em there for three twenty apiece—they dropped +three cents last Tuesday."</p> + +<p>The dreamer dreamed hard and fast for a moment.</p> + +<p>"Then," he cried triumphantly, "wit' ten t'ousand dollairs I can buy +over t'ree t'ousand guns!"</p> + +<p>The gunman's look was patient.</p> + +<p>"Don't you want to shoot 'em off?" he inquired. "Because if you do +you'll need ammunition. You ought to have a thousand rounds, which will +come to a little over three times the actual cost of the guns +themselves. You see when you shoot off a gun at an army you want to have +plenty of cartridges or else be ready to run like hell.</p> + +<p>"On second thought," he added, "I advise you to give up the Mausers and +go in for Springfields over here—old ones—you can get 'em cheap. +They're no good at over a mile, but for the first few months your +fellahs will be lucky if they hit a man at a hundred yards. And there's +one good point about Springfields, they make a devil of a noise—and +that's all you need for a starter, noise enough to break<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> into headlines +all over the world as a 'Brave Little Rebel Army.' If you can do that, +and the word goes around on the quiet that you're using American +rifles—well, there's a kind of a sentiment in our trade—you'll find us +all behind you. We'll even <i>lose</i> money. We're a queer bunch."</p> + +<p>"But wait!" cried the Russian. "Dere ees a trouble! Your tr-reaty wit' +Russia! Have you not a tr-reaty which makes it forbidden to sell to me +guns?"</p> + +<p>Again that look of patience:</p> + +<p>"Yes, General, we have a tr-reaty. But we'll ship your guns as grand +pianos to Naples, from there by slow boat down to Brazil and then up to +the Baltic, where they'll arrive with their pedigrees lost. Our agent +will be there ahead, he'll have found a customhouse man he can fix, +he'll cable us where—and when those fifty pianos are landed the said +official will open the box marked twenty-two. It'll take him over an +hour to do it, the boards will be nailed so cussedly tight. And he'll +find a real piano inside. Then he'll look at the other forty-nine crates +and say, 'Oh, Hell!' in Russian. Then they'll go on to wherever you want +'em—and you'll revolute. But don't forget that what you need most is +the livest press agent you can find. I've got to go now. Think it over. +And if you want to do business with me come to my office to-morrow at +ten."</p> + +<p>The man of business left us. And while the dreamer talked like mad and +finally decided that as Mausers were "shoot farther guns" he had better +go to Vienna, I watched the twinkle in Dad's gray eyes and thought of +the cool contempt in his friend's. And from being amused I became rather +sore. For, after all, this little Russian cuss had risked his life for +fifteen years and expected to lose it shortly. (As a matter of fact, he +was stood up against a wall and shot the following April.) Why make him +look so small?</p> + +<p>Was there nothing under the heavens that this infernal harbor didn't +know all about, and "do business with" so thoroughly that it could +always smile?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<p>As I drudged on down there in the warehouse, my bitterness became an +obsession. I even talked about it to Sue.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Billy, you make me tired," she said. "Here I've taken the trouble +to bring to the house every magazine writer I know. And they're all +ready to help you break in—but you won't write, you won't even try!"</p> + +<p>"How do you know I haven't tried?" I retorted hotly. "But I'm working +all day as it is—and four nights a week besides. And the other three +nights, when I try to think of the kind of thing that I could sell to +the magazines—well, I simply can't do it, that's all—it's not my way +of writing!"</p> + +<p>"Then your way is just plain morbid," she said, "and it's about time you +dropped it." She seemed to get a sudden idea. "I know the person <i>you</i> +ought to meet——"</p> + +<p>"Do you? What's his name?" I inquired.</p> + +<p>"Eleanore Dillon," she answered. I looked up at her with a start.</p> + +<p>"Eleanore Dillon? Is she still around?"</p> + +<p>I hadn't thought of that girl in years.</p> + +<p>"She is—and she's just what you need," said Sue, with that know-it-all +smile of hers. Her head was now cocked a bit to one side. "Your little +friend of long ago," she added sympathetically. I eyed Sue for a moment. +I did not care at all for her tone.</p> + +<p>"What do I need <i>her</i> for?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"To talk to you of the harbor, of course—that's her especial line these +days."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p> + +<p>"The harbor?" I demanded. "That girl?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—the harbor, that girl." Sue seemed to be having quite a good time. +My jaw set tight.</p> + +<p>"What does she do down there?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"She worships her father. Don't you remember? An engineer. He's doing a +big piece of work on the harbor and Eleanore is wrapped up in his work, +she's a beautiful case of how a fond parent can literally swallow up his +child. There used to be nothing whatever that Eleanore Dillon wasn't +going to do in life. Don't you remember, when she was small, that little +determined air she had in the way she went at every game? Well, she grew +even more like that. From school she went to college and worked herself +to a frazzle. Then she broke down and had to drop out, and now that +she's strong again she's changed. She used to go in for everything. Now +she goes in for nothing at all except her father and his work. She +thinks we're all a lot of young fools."</p> + +<p>"Oh, now, Sue," I put in derisively. "You people fools? How could she?"</p> + +<p>"You'll see," my sister sweetly replied, "for she'll probably think +you're another. She detests morbid people, they're not her kind. But if +she'll give you a talking to it may do you a lot of good."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>She did give me a talking to and it did do me a lot of good, although +when I came to think of it I found she had barely talked at all.</p> + +<p>She wasn't the sort who liked to talk, she was just as quiet as before. +When she arrived rather late one evening and Sue brought her out on the +verandah into a group of those radical friends who were a committee for +something or other, after the general greetings were over she settled +back in a corner with the air of one who likes just to listen to people, +no matter whether they're fools or not. But as I watched her I decided +she did not consider these people fools. That quiet smile that came on +her face<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> showed a comfortable curiosity and now and then a gleam of +amusement, but no contempt whatever. She seemed a girl so well pleased +with her life that she could be pleased with the world besides and keep +her eyes open for all there was in it. Although she was still rather +small and still demurely feminine, with the same grave sweetness in her +eyes, that same enchanting freshness about everything she wore, she +struck me at once as having changed, as having grown tremendously, as +having somehow filled herself deep with a quiet abundant vitality. +"Where have <i>you</i> been," I wondered.</p> + +<p>There came a loud blast from the harbor. At once I saw her turn in her +chair and look down to the point below where a river boat was just +leaving her slip, sweeping silently out of the darkness into the moonlit +water. My curiosity deepened. Where <i>had</i> she been, and what was she +doing, what queer kind of a girl was this? I took a seat beside her.</p> + +<p>"Don't you remember me?" I asked. She turned her head with a quiet +smile.</p> + +<p>"Of course I do," she answered. Her low voice had a frankly intimate +tone. "I did the moment I saw you. Besides, Sue told me about you."</p> + +<p>"She's been telling me quite a lot about <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>"Has she? What?"</p> + +<p>"That you know all about the harbor these days."</p> + +<p>"Sue's wonderful," Eleanore murmured. "She's so sure her friends know +everything."</p> + +<p>"Let's stick to the harbor."</p> + +<p>"All right, let's. I know enough about it to like it. Sue says you know +enough to hate it. I wonder which of us knows more."</p> + +<p>"I do."</p> + +<p>"How do you know you do?"</p> + +<p>"Because I've been here longer," I said. "I've hated it for twenty odd +years."</p> + +<p>She looked at me with interest. Her eyes were not at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> all like Sue's. +Sue's eyes were always wrapped up in herself; Eleanore's in somebody +else. They were as intimate as her voice.</p> + +<p>"Don't you remember the evening when you took me down to the docks?" she +asked.</p> + +<p>"I do—very well," I said.</p> + +<p>"And do you mean to tell me you didn't like the harbor then?"</p> + +<p>"I do—I hated the harbor then. I was scared to death that Sam and his +gang would appear around the end of a car."</p> + +<p>"Who was Sam?" she asked me. "He sounds like a very dreadful small boy."</p> + +<p>Soon she had me telling her of Sam and his gang and the harbor of +thrills, from the time of old Belle and the Condor.</p> + +<p>"I was a toy piano," I said. "And the harbor was a giant who played on +me till I rattled inside. We had a big spree together."</p> + +<p>"Not a very healthy spree, was it?" she said quietly, turning her +gray-blue eyes on mine. For some reason we suddenly smiled at each +other. "You're a good deal like your father—aren't you?" she said. "The +same nice twinkle in your eyes. Please go on. What did the harbor do to +you next?"</p> + +<p>I thought all at once of the August day when she had lain, a girl of +twelve, in the fragrant meadow beside me. And as then, so now, the +drunken woman's image rose for an instant in my mind.</p> + +<p>"It wiped the thrills all out," I said abruptly. I told how the place +grew harsh and bare, how I could always feel it there stripping +everything naked like itself, and how finally when later in Paris I felt +I had shaken it off for life, it had now suddenly jerked me back, let me +see what my father had really been, and had then repeated its same old +trick, closing in on his great idea and making it look like an old man's +hobby, crowding him out and hand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>ing us grimly two dull little jobs—one +to live on and one to die on.</p> + +<p>"It's getting monotonous," I ended.</p> + +<p>While I talked she had been watching it, now a bustling ferry crossing, +now a tug with a string of barges working up against the tide.</p> + +<p>"How do you know it's so bad for you to be brought back from Paris?" she +asked me, without looking around.</p> + +<p>"Have you ever been in Paris?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—and I want to go again. But I don't believe it will ever feel as +real to me as this place does. And I shouldn't think it would to you. +Because you were born here, weren't you—and you've been so close to it +most of the time that you're all mixed into it, aren't you? I mean +you've got your roots here. Why don't you write about <i>them</i> for a +while?"</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"Your roots."</p> + +<p>She turned and again her eyes met mine, and again for some reason or +other we smiled.</p> + +<p>"All right," I assented gravely, "I'll buy a hoe and start right in."</p> + +<p>"That's it, hoe yourself all up. Get as far down as you can remember. +Dig up Belle and Sam, and Sue and your mother and father. Then take a +hoe to Paris and find out why you loved it so, and why you hate the +harbor. Be sure you get all the hate there is, it makes such interesting +reading. Besides, it may be just what you need—it may take the hate all +out of your system."</p> + +<p>"Who'll print it?" I demanded.</p> + +<p>"Oh, some magazine," she said.</p> + +<p>"Do you think this kind of thing would interest their readers?"</p> + +<p>"It would interest <i>me</i>——"</p> + +<p>"Thank you. I'll tell the editors that."</p> + +<p>"You'll do no such thing," she said severely. "You'll tell the magazine +editors, please, that I'm only one of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> thousands of girls who are +getting sick and tired of the happy, cheery little tales they print for +our special benefit. It's just about time they got over the habit of +thinking of us as sweet, young things and gave us some roots we can grow +on."</p> + +<p>Another modern girl, I thought.</p> + +<p>"Do you, too, want to vote?" I asked her, with a fine, indulgent irony.</p> + +<p>"Some day I do," she answered. And then she added with placid scorn, +"When I've learned all the political wisdom that <i>you</i> have to teach +me." And as if that were a good place to stop, she rose from her seat.</p> + +<p>"The others seem to have left us," she said. "I think I'd better be +going home."</p> + +<p>"Wait a minute, please," I cried. "When am I going to hear about +you—and your side of this dismal body of water?"</p> + +<p>She looked back at me serenely.</p> + +<p>"Wait till you've got yours all written down," she replied. "You see +mine might only mix you up. Mine is so much pleasanter. Good night," she +added softly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<p>Until late that night, and again the next day at my desk down in the +warehouse, my thoughts kept drifting back to our talk. With a glow of +surprise I found I remembered not only every word she had said, but the +tones of her voice as she said it, the changing expressions on her face +and in her smiling gray-blue eyes. Her picture rose so vividly at times +it was uncanny.</p> + +<p>"What do you think of her?" asked Sue.</p> + +<p>"Mighty little," I replied. I did not care to discuss her with Sue, for +I had not liked Sue's tone at all.</p> + +<p>But how little I'd learned about Eleanor's life. Where did she live? I +didn't know. When I had hinted at coming to see her she had smilingly +put me off. What was this pleasant harbor of hers? "Wait till you've got +yours all written down," she had said, and had told me nothing whatever. +Yes, I thought disgustedly, I was quite a smart young man. Here I had +spent two years in Paris learning how to draw people out. What had she +let me draw out of her? What hadn't I let her draw out of me? I wondered +how much I had told that girl.</p> + +<p>For some reason, in the next few days, my thoughts drifted about with +astonishing ease and made prodigious journeys. I roved far back to my +childhood, and there the most tempting incidents rose, and solemn little +thoughts and terrors, hopes and plans, some I was proud of, some mighty +ashamed of. Roots, roots, up they came, as though they'd just been +waiting, down there deep inside of me, for that girl and her hoeing.</p> + +<p>Presently, just to get rid of them all, I began writing some of them +down. And again I was surprised to find<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> that I was in fine writing +trim. The words seemed to come of themselves from my pen and line +themselves up triumphantly into scenes of amazing vividness. At least so +they looked to me. How good it felt to be at it again. Often up in my +room at night I kept on working till nearly dawn. I was getting on +famously now.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>And so now, as was his habit, Joe Kramer came crashing into my life and +as usual put a stop to my work.</p> + +<p>Having just landed from Russia, he had "breezed over" to our house, had +had a talk with Sue downstairs and had then come up to my room to +surprise me—just as I had a good firm grip on one of my most entrancing +roots.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Bill," he cried. "What are you up to?"</p> + +<p>"Hello, J. K. How are you?"</p> + +<p>I knew that I ought to be genial, and for a few moments I did my best. I +went through all the motions. I grabbed his hand, I smiled, I talked, I +told him I was tickled to death, I even tried pounding him on the back. +But it was quite useless.</p> + +<p>"Kid," he said with that grin of his, "you're up to something idealistic +and don't want to be disturbed. But I'm here and it can't be helped. So +out with it—what have you gone and done?"</p> + +<p>And he jerked my story out of me.</p> + +<p>"All right," he declared, "this has got to stop!"</p> + +<p>"I knew it," I said. I had known it the minute he came in the room.</p> + +<p>"You've got to throw up your ten-dollar job, quit working all night on +stuff that won't sell, and come on a paper and make some real money."</p> + +<p>"I can't do it," I snapped.</p> + +<p>"You can," said J. K.</p> + +<p>"But I tell you I tried! I went to a paper——"</p> + +<p>"You'll go to a dozen before I get through!"</p> + +<p>"J. K.—I won't do it"</p> + +<p>"Kid—you will!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> + +<p>And he kept at me night after night. He was working for a New York paper +now as a special correspondent. He had a talk with his editor and got me +a chance to go on as a "cub" and write about weddings, describing the +costume of the bride. At least it was a starter, he said, and would lead +to divorces later on, and from there I might be promoted to graft. He +talked to Sue and my father about it, persuading them both to take his +side. Day by day the pressure increased. I set my young jaw doggedly and +kept on writing about my roots.</p> + +<p>"Look here," said Joe one evening. "Your sister tells me you're sore on +the harbor. Then have a look at this." And he showed me a newspaper +clipping headed, "Padrone System Under the Dumps."</p> + +<p>"Well, what about it?" I asked him.</p> + +<p>"What about it? My God! Here's a chance to show up the harbor on one of +its ugliest, rottenest ideas! A dump is a pier that sticks out in the +river. We'll go there at night, get down underneath it and look at the +kids—Dago child-slaves working like hell. You say that weddings are not +in your line—all right, here's just the opposite—stuff that'll make +your women readers sit right up and sob out aloud! I don't care for +tear-jerkers myself," he added. "But even tear-jerkers are better than +Art."</p> + +<p>"All right," I muttered savagely, "let's go and get a tear-jerker to +write!"</p> + +<p>If I must write of this modern harbor, at least it was some satisfaction +to write about one of its ugliest sides.</p> + +<p>We went the next night.</p> + +<p>Joe had chosen a dump which jutted out from the Manhattan side of the +river just about opposite our house. A huge, long, shadowy pile of city +refuse of all kinds, we caught the sour breath of it as we drew near in +the darkness. There was not a sound nor a light. We climbed down onto a +greenish beam that ran along by the side underneath, about a foot from +the water, and cautiously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> working our way outward for a hundred yards +or more, we stopped abruptly and drew back.</p> + +<p>For just before us under the dump was a cave with walls of papers and +rags. A lantern hung from overhead, swung gently in the raw salt breeze, +and by its light we could see a half dozen swarthy small boys. Five were +intent on a game of dice, whispering fiercely while they played. Their +boss lay asleep in a corner. The sixth, the smallest of them all, sat +smoking in the mouth of the cave, his knees drawn up and his big dilated +black eyes roving hungrily out over the water. All at once around the +end of the pier, a dark, tall shadow like a spook swept silently out +before him. He sprang back and fervently crossed himself, then grinned +and drew on his cigarette hard. For the shadow was only a scow with a +derrick. The imp continued his watching.</p> + +<p>"Now," said J. K. a few minutes later back on shore, "you want to get +their hours and wages. You want to look up the fire law about lighted +cigarettes and a lantern——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, damn your fire law," I growled. "I want to know where that kid with +the cigarette was born, and what he thinks of the harbor!" Joe gave me +one of his cheerful grins.</p> + +<p>"You might get his views on the tariff," he said.</p> + +<p>"Look here, J. K.," I implored him; "go home. Go on home and leave me +alone. It's all right, I'm glad you brought me here—darned good of you, +and I'll get a story. Only for God's sake leave me alone!"</p> + +<p>"Sure," said Joe. "Only don't try to talk to those little Guineys. Their +boss wouldn't let 'em say a word and you'd lose your chance of watching +'em. Make it a kind of a mystery story."</p> + +<p>And a mystery story I made it.</p> + +<p>Where had he been a year ago, this imp who had fervently crossed +himself? In Naples, Rome or Venice, or poking his toes into the dust of +a street in some dull little town in the hills? What great condor of +to-day had picked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> him up and dropped him here? How did it look to him? +What did he feel?</p> + +<p>I came back to the dump night after night, and writing blindly in the +dark I tried to jot down what he saw—gigantic shapes and shadows, some +motionless, some rushing by with their dim spectral little lights, and +over all the great arch of the Bridge rearing over half the sky. The +lantern in the cave behind threw a patch of light on the water below, +and across that patch from under the pier where the water was slapping, +slapping, there came an endless bobbing procession—a whisky bottle, a +broken toy horse, a bit of a letter, a pink satin slipper, a dirty white +glove—things tossed out of people's lives. On and on they came. And I +knew there were miles of black water like this all covered with tiny +processions like this moving slowly out with the ebb tide, out from the +turbulent city toward the silent ocean. One night the watchman on the +dump showed me a heavy paper bag with what would have been a baby +inside. Where had it come from? He didn't know. Tossed out of some +woman's life, in a day it would be far out on the ocean, bobbing, +bobbing with the rest. Water from here to Naples, water from here to +heathen lands. Just here a patch of light from a lantern. That imp from +Italy looking down—into something immense and dark and unknown.</p> + +<p>He was having a spree with the harbor, as I had had when as small as he. +I saw him watch the older boys and listen thrilled to their wonderful +talk—as once I, too, had been thrilled by Sam. I watched him over a +game of dice, quarreling, scowling, grabbing at pennies, slapped by some +one, whimpering, then eagerly getting back to the game. It was "craps," +I had played it with Sam and the gang. One night he dropped a cigarette +still lighted into the rags and was given a blow by his boss that +knocked him into a corner. But presently he crawled cautiously forth, +and again with both hands hugging his knees he sat and watched the +harbor. What a big spree for a little boy.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p> + +<p>I put my own childhood into this imp, into him my first feelings toward +this place. And so I came again to my roots. How the memories rose up +now—the fascinations and terrors that I, too, had felt before something +immense and dark and unknown.</p> + +<p>Thank heaven J. K. had given me up and gone to Colorado—so I was left +to work in peace. I called my sketch "A Patch of Light," and sent it to +a magazine. It came back with a note explaining that, while this was a +fine little thing in its way, its way wasn't theirs, it was neither an +article full of facts nor a story full of romance. In short, I told +myself savagely, it was neither hay nor tears! Again it went forth and +again back it came. Then Sue gave it to one of her writer friends who +said he knew just the place for it.</p> + +<p>"No, you don't," I thought drearily. "Nobody knows—in this whole +damnable desolate land."</p> + +<p>But Sue's friend sold my story—for twenty-two dollars and fifty cents! +And he said that the editor wanted some more!</p> + +<p>It was curious, from my window that night, what a different harbor I saw +below. Ugly still? Of course it was. But what a <i>rich mine</i> of ugliness +for the pen of a rising young author like me!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<p>Now for something bigger. I would have a whack at the place by day. No +mystery now, just ugliness. I would show it up in broad daylight, +bringing out every detail in the glare. I would do this by comparing it +to the harbor of long ago, and the snowy white sails of my father's +youth.</p> + +<p>His youth was gone. A thick-set and gray-headed old figure, he bent over +his desk by my side, putting up a fierce, silent fight for his strength, +and now slowly getting enough of it back to keep him at his job as a +clerk in what had been his warehouse. Only once, coming suddenly into +the room, I found him settled deep down in his chair, heavy, inert, his +cigar gone out, staring vacantly out of the window.</p> + +<p>The sails were gone. Down there at his dock, where even in days that I +could remember the tall clippers had lain for weeks, I saw now a German +whaleback. She had slipped in but three days before and was already +snorting to get away. She was black and she wallowed deep, and she had +an enormous bulging belly into which I descended one day and explored +its metallic compartments that echoed to the deafening din of some +riveters at work on her sides. Though short and stout, she was nine +thousand tons. Hideous, she was practical, as practical as a factory. In +her the romance of the sea was buried and choked in smoke and steam, in +grime, dirt, noise and a regular haste. One morning as her din increased +and the black, sooty breath of her came drifting in through our window, +my father rose abruptly and slammed the window down.</p> + +<p>"The damn sea hog!" he muttered.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p> + +<p>Gone, too, were the American sailors. All races of men on the earth but +ours seemed gathered around this hog of the sea. From barges filled with +her cargo, the stuff was being heaved up on the dock by a lot of Irish +bargemen. Italian dockers rolled it across to this German ship, and on +deck a Jap under-officer was bossing a Coolie crew. These Coolies were +dwarfs with big white teeth and stooping, round little shoulders. They +had strange, nervous faces, long and narrow with high cheek bones and no +foreheads at all to speak of. Their black eyes gleamed. Back and forth +they scurried to the sound of that guttural Japanese voice.</p> + +<p>"The cheapest sea labor there is," growled Dad. "Good-by to Yankee +sailors."</p> + +<p>The Old East with its riches was no longer here. For what were these +Coolies doing? Handling silks and spices? Oh, no. They were hoisting and +letting down into the hold an automobile from Dayton, Ohio, bound for +New South Wales. Gone were the figs and almonds, the indigo, ivory, +tortoise shells. Into the brand-new ledgers over which my father worked, +he was entering such items as barbed wire, boilers, car wheels and gas +engines, baby carriages, kegs of paint. I reveled in the commonplace +stuff, contrasting it vividly in my mind with the starlit ocean roads it +would travel, the picturesque places it would help spoil.</p> + +<p>I filled in the scene with all its details, the more accurate, glaring +and real the better—the brand-new towering skyline risen of late on +Manhattan, the new steel bridge, an ugly one this, and all the modern +steam craft, tugs, river boats, Sound steamers, each one of them panting +and spewing up smoke. I sat there like a stenographer and took down the +harbor's dictation, noting the rasping tones of its voice, recording +eagerly all its smells. And all this and more that I gathered, I +focussed on the sea hog.</p> + +<p>And then toward the end of a winter's day we looked out of our window +and saw her "sail." She sailed in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> nervous, worrying haste to the +grunts and shrieks of a lot of steam winches. Up rattled her anchor, out +she waddled, tugs puffing their smoke and steam in her face. She didn't +depart. Who ever heard of a hog departing? She just went. There were no +songs, no last good-byes—except from a man in his shirt sleeves who +called from the deck to a man on the pier, "So long, Mac, see you next +Spring," and then went into the factory.</p> + +<p>When the work of the day was over, I went down into the dock shed. My +father's old place was at peace for a time, the desecration done with. +She was empty, dark and silent. In her long, inward-sloping walls the +eight wide sliding doors were closed. Only through the dusty skylights +here and there fell great masses of soft light. Big bunches of canvas +hung from above, ropes dangled out of the shadows. And there were huge +rhythmic creakings that made you feel the ocean still here, an old ocean +under an old, old dock. The place grew creepy with its past.</p> + +<p>"Faint, spicy odors," I jotted down, as I stood there in the dimness, +"ghosts of long ago—low echoes of old chanties sung by Yankee +sailors—romance—mystery——"</p> + +<p>I broke off writing and drew back behind a crate. My father had entered +the dock shed and was coming slowly up the dock. Presently I saw him +stop and look into the shadows around him. I saw a frown come on his +face, I saw his features tighten. So he stood for some moments. Then he +turned and walked quickly out. A lump had risen in my throat, for I +thought I knew what he had seen.</p> + +<p>"The Phantom Ship" became my title. A fine contrast to the sea hog, I +thought. I asked Dad endless questions at night about the old days not +only here, but all up along the coast of New England, and hungrily I +listened while he glorified the rich life and color of those seaport +towns now gray, those wharves now rotting and covered with moss. He +glorified the spacious homes of the men who had ordered their captains +to search the Far East for the rugs and the curtains, the chairs and the +tables, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> dishes, the vase, the silks and the laces, the silver and +gold and precious stones with which those audacious old houses were +stored. He glorified the ships themselves. From the quarter decks of our +clippers, those marvels of cleanliness and speed, he told how those +miraculous captains had issued their orders to Yankee sailors, brawny, +deep-chested, keen-eyed and strong-limbed. He told what perils they had +faced far out on the Atlantic—"the Roaring Forties" those waters were +called!</p> + +<p>"Yes, boy, in those days ships had men!"</p> + +<p>In my room I eagerly wrote it all down and added what I myself could +remember. Here from my bedroom window I tried to see what I had seen as +a boy, the immaculate white of the tall sails, the fresh blue and green +of the dancing waves. Oh, I was romancing finely those nights! And there +came no Blessed Damozel to say to me gruffly, "Couches-toi. Il est +tard."</p> + +<p>When the sketch was completed at last I gave it to my father to read and +then went out for a long walk. It was nearly midnight when I returned, +but he was still reading. He cleared his throat.</p> + +<p>"Son," he said very huskily, "this is a strong piece of work!" His eyes +were moist as they moved rapidly down the page. He looked up with a +jerk. "Who'll print it?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I wish I knew, Dad——"</p> + +<p>I mailed it that night to a magazine. In the next two weeks my father's +suspense was even deeper than my own, though he tried hard to joke about +it, calling me "Pendennis." One day in his office chair he wheeled with +a nervous sharpness, and I could feel his eyes fixed on the envelope +which the postman had just thrown on my desk. God help me, it was heavy +and long, it had my manuscript inside. Dismally I searched for a letter. +Still I could feel those anxious eyes.</p> + +<p>"Hold on!" I cried. "They've taken it! All they want me to do is to cut +it down!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Then do it!" My radiant father snarled. "It ought to be cut to half its +length! That's the way with beginners, a mass of details! Some day maybe +you'll learn to write!"</p> + +<p>I smiled happily back. He came suddenly over and gripped my hand.</p> + +<p>"My boy, I'm glad, I'm very glad! I'm"—he cleared his throat and went +back to his desk and tried to scowl over what he was doing.</p> + +<p>"Dad."</p> + +<p>"Huh?"</p> + +<p>"They say they'll give me a hundred dollars. Pretty good for one month's +work."</p> + +<p>"Huh."</p> + +<p>"And they want me to do some more on the harbor. They say it's a new +field. Never been touched."</p> + +<p>"Then touch it," he said gruffly. "Leave me alone. I'm busy."</p> + +<p>But coming in late after luncheon that day, I found him reading the +editor's letter.</p> + +<p>"Boy," he said that evening, "you ought to read Thackeray for style, and +Washington Irving, and see what a whippersnapper you are. Work—work! If +your mother were only alive she could help you!"</p> + +<p>And just before bedtime, taking a bottle of beer with my pipe, I caught +his disapproving eye.</p> + +<p>"Worst thing you can put in your stomach," he growled. He said this +regularly each night, and added, "Why can't you keep up your health for +your work?"</p> + +<p>His own health had improved astonishingly.</p> + +<p>"It's the winter air that has done it," he said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<p>My work, as my father saw it now, was to write "strong, practical +articles" presenting the respective merits of free ships, ship subsidies +and discriminating tariffs to build up our mercantile marine.</p> + +<p>But I was growing tired these days of my father's idea, his miracle and +his endless talk of the past. On walks along the waterfront he would +treat it all like a graveyard. But while he pointed out the tombs I felt +the swift approach of Spring. It was March, and in a crude way of its +own the harbor was expressing the season—in warm, salty breezes, the +odor of fish and the smell of tar on the bottoms of boats being +overhauled for the Summer. Our Italian dockers sang at their work, and +one day the dock was a bright-hued mass of strawberries and early Spring +flowers landed by a boat from the South. Everywhere things seemed +starting—starting like myself.</p> + +<p>I had given up my warehouse job, and free at last from that tedious desk +to which I once thought I was tied for years, with two sketches sold and +ideas for others, so many others, rising daily in my mind, I went about +watching the life of the port. Poor Dad. He was old. Could I help being +young?</p> + +<p>Without exactly meaning to, I drew away from my father to Sue. We felt +ourselves vividly young in that house. We quarreled intensely over her +friends and were pleased with ourselves in the process. We had long +talks about ourselves. Sue let me talk to her by the hour about my work +and my ideas, while she sat and thought about her own.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p> + +<p>"If you're planning to write up the harbor," she said sleepily late one +night, "you ought to cruise around a bit in Eleanore Dillon's motor +boat."</p> + +<p>I looked at her in astonishment.</p> + +<p>"Does that girl run a motor boat?"</p> + +<p>"Her father's." Sue yawned and gave me a curious smile. "I'll see if I +can't arrange it," she said. And about a week later she told me, +"Eleanore's coming to take us out to-night."</p> + +<p>Some of Sue's friends came to supper that evening and later we all went +down to the dock. There was no moon but the stars were out and the night +was still, the slip was dark and empty. Suddenly with a rush and a swirl +a motor boat rounded the end of the pier, turned sharply in and came +shooting toward us. A boiling of water, she seemed to rear back, then +drifted unconcernedly in to the bottom of the ladder.</p> + +<p>In the small circle of light down there I saw Eleanore Dillon smiling +up. She sat at her wheel, a trim figure in white—a white Jersey, +something red at her throat and a soft white hat crushed a bit to one +side. Beneath it the breeze played tricks with her hair.</p> + +<p>We scrambled down into the cock-pit. It was a deep, cozy little place, +with the wide open doors of a cabin in front, in which I caught a +glimpse of two bunks, a table, a tiny electric cooking stove and a +shaded reading light over the one small easy chair. There were impudent +curtains of blue at the port holes. There was a shelf of books and +another of blue and white cups and saucers and dishes. And what was +that? A monkey crouching under the table, paws clutching the two +enormous brass buttons on the gay blue jacket he wore, eyes watching us +angrily as he chattered.</p> + +<p>"Buttons," commanded his mistress, "come out here this minute and stop +your noise. There's nothing for you to be peevish about, the water's +like glass. When it's rough," she explained, "he gets fearfully seasick. +Come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> here now, pass the cigarettes." And this her Buttons proceeded to +do—very grumpily.</p> + +<p>Then as a small, quiet hand pulled a lever, I felt a leap of power +beneath me, the boat careened as she turned, then righted, there was a +second pull on the lever, another surging leap of speed, and as we +rushed out on the river now up rose her bow higher and higher, a huge +white wave on either side. The spray dashed in our faces. Everyone began +talking excitedly. Only the Buttons kept his monkey eyes fixed anxiously +on his captain's face while he clasped the pit of his stomach.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Buttons, don't be such a coward," she said. "I tell you it's smooth +and you won't be sick! Go out there and stop being silly!"</p> + +<p>Slowly and with elaborate caution the monkey crept forward over the +cabin. For a moment up at the bow he paused, a ridiculous little +dark-jacketed figure between the two white crests of our waves. Then +with a spring he was up to his place on the top of the light, and there +with gay gesticulations he greeted every vessel we passed.</p> + +<p>I had taken a seat by Eleanore's side. She was driving her boat with +eyes straight ahead. Now and then she would close them, draw in a deep +breath of the rough salt air, and smile contentedly to herself. After a +time I heard her voice, low and intimate as before:</p> + +<p>"Finished up that hideous harbor of yours?"</p> + +<p>"No," I answered hungrily, "I think I've just begun." I caught a gleam +in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"You'll be out of your rut in a moment," she said.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean, my rut?" I demanded.</p> + +<p>"The East River, Stupid—wait and see."</p> + +<p>From the little East River corner I'd lived in, we sped far out on the +Upper Bay, a rushing black speck on a dim expanse, with dark, empty +fields of water around us, long, luminous paths stretching off to the +shores, where the lights twinkled low for miles and miles and there were +sudden bursts of flame from distant blast furnace fires.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Tell me what you've been writing about this hideous place," she said.</p> + +<p>"Who said it was hideous at night? Of course if you wrap it all up in +the dark, so that you can see none of its sea hogs——"</p> + +<p>"What's a sea hog?"</p> + +<p>"A sea hog is a wallowing boat with a long, black, heavy snout." And +mustering all that was left of my hatred I plunged into my picture. "The +whole place is like that," I ended. "Full of smoke and dirt and +disorder, everything rushing and jamming together. That's how it looks +to me in the daytime!"</p> + +<p>"Are you sure it does—still?"</p> + +<p>"I am," I answered firmly. "And I'm going to write it just as it looks."</p> + +<p>"Then look back of you," she suggested.</p> + +<p>Behind us, at the tip of Manhattan, the tall buildings had all melted +together into one tremendous mass, with only a pin point of light here +and there, a place of shadowy turrets and walls, like some mediæval +fortress. Out of it, in contrast to its dimness, rose a garish tower of +lights that seemed to be keeping a vigilant watch over all the dark +waters, the ships and the docks. The harbor of big companies.</p> + +<p>"My father works up in that tower," she said. "He can see the whole +harbor spread out below. But he keeps coming down to see it all close, +and I've steered him up close to everything in it. You've no idea how +much there is." She threw me a glance of pitying scorn. "There are over +seven hundred miles of waterfront in this small port, and I'm not going +to have you trudging around and getting lost and tired and cross and +working off your grudge in your writing. You come with me some afternoon +and I'll do what I can to open your eyes."</p> + +<p>"Please do it," I said quickly.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>She took me down, to the sea gate at the end of a warm,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> still, foggy +day. There in the deepening twilight we drifted without a sign of a +world around us—till in from the ocean there came a deep billow, then +another and another, and as our small craft darted off to one side a +gigantic gray shadow loomed through the fog with four black towers of +smoke overhead, lights gleaming from a thousand eyes.</p> + +<p>"Another sea hog," murmured a voice.</p> + +<p>"I said in the daytime," I replied.</p> + +<p>We went out on another afternoon to watch the fisherman fleets at their +work or scudding before a strong wind home with a great, round, radiant +sun behind. She showed me fishers in the air, lonely fish hawks one by +one flying in the late afternoon back to their nests on the Atlantic +Highlands. And far out on the Lower Bay she knew where to stir up whole +armies of gulls, till there seemed to be thousands wheeling in air with +the bright sunshine on all the wings. The sunshine, too, with the help +of the breeze, stole glinting deep into her hair. She watched me out of +half-closed eyes.</p> + +<p>"Is this daylight enough?" she demanded.</p> + +<p>"This is simply absurd," I answered. "You know very well that this +harbor is ugly in places——"</p> + +<p>"Only in places. That's better," she said.</p> + +<p>"In a great <i>many</i> places," I rejoined. "Please take me to Bayonne some +day—at two p. m.," I added.</p> + +<p>It seemed a good, safe, unmysterious hour, and as we neared the place +next day my hopes mounted high, for there was a leaden sky overhead and +loathsome blotches and streaks of oil on the gray water around us—while +ahead on the Jersey shore, from two chimneys that rose halfway to the +clouds, poured two foul, sluggish columns of smoke.</p> + +<p>"Still New York harbor, I believe?" I inquired maliciously. But Eleanore +was smiling. "What's the joke?" I demanded.</p> + +<p>"The southwest wind," she softly replied. I could feel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> it coming as she +spoke. As I watched I saw it take that sky and tear jagged rifts in it +for the sun, and then as those two columns of smoke began twisting and +writhing like monster snakes they took on purple and greenish hues and +threw ghostly reflections of themselves down on the oily water around +us, filled with blue and gold shimmerings now.</p> + +<p>"What a strange, wonderful purple," murmured a quiet voice by my side.</p> + +<p>Stubbornly I resisted conversion. I wanted more afternoons in that boat.</p> + +<p>"Now it's blowing that oily odor our way," I declared in sudden +annoyance. "I no sooner get to enjoying myself when along comes one of +the smells of this place. And where's the beauty in <i>them</i>? Can you show +me? Here's a place that should be a great storehouse of pure fresh air +for the city to breathe, and——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, hush up!" said Eleanore.</p> + +<p>But I doggedly found other blemishes here—swamps, railroad yards and +sooty tracks that filled the waterfront for miles where there should +have been parks and boulevards. At the same time I assumed the tone of +one who tries to be fair and patient. Whenever she showed me some new +beauty in water or sky I took great pains to look at it well. When an +angry little squall of wind came ruffling over the sunny waves in +sweeping bands of deep, soft blues, I gazed and gazed at its wonder as +though I could never have enough. And so gazing I spied floating there a +sodden old mattress, a fleet of tin cans. And I said that it seemed an +unhealthy thing to dump all our refuse so close to the city.</p> + +<p>"They don't!" she retorted indignantly. "They take it out miles beyond +the Hook!"</p> + +<p>In short, I considered myself mighty clever. Day by day I prolonged my +conversion, holding obstinately back—while Eleanore revealed to me the +miracles worked by the sunset here, and by the clouds, the winds, the +tides, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> very smoke and the ships themselves, all playing weird +tricks on each other. Slowly the crude glory of it stole upon me +unawares—until to my own intense surprise the harbor now became for me +a breathing, heaving, gleaming thing filled deep with the rush and the +vigor of life. A thing no longer sinister, crushing down on a man's old +age—but strangely deeply stirring.</p> + +<p>"Look out, my friend," I warned myself. "This is no harbor you're +falling in love with."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<p>Although at such lucid moments I would sometimes go a-soaring up into +the most dazzling dreams, more often I would plunge in gloom. For +Eleanore's dreams and all her thoughts seemed centered on her father. +From each corner of that watery world, no matter how far we wandered, +the high tower from which he looked down on it all would suddenly loom +above the horizon. Over the dreariest marshes it peeped and into all our +talk he came. A marsh was a place that he was to transform, oily odors +were things he would sweep away. For every abuse that I could discover +her father was working out some cure. With a whole corps of engineers +drafting his dreams into practicable plans, there was no end to the +things he could do.</p> + +<p>"Here is a girl," I told myself, "so selfishly wrapped up in her father +she hasn't a thought for anyone else. She's using me to boom his work, +as she has doubtless used writers before me and will use dozens more +when I'm gone. No doubt she would like to have <i>dozens of me</i> sitting +right here beside her now! It's not at all a romantic thought, but think +how she could use me then!" And I would glower at her.</p> + +<p>But it is a lonely desolate job to sit and glower at a girl who appears +so placidly unaware of the fact that you are glowering. And slowly +emerging from my gloom I would wonder about this love that was in her. +At times when she talked she made me feel small. My own love for my +mother, how utterly selfish it had been. Here was a passion so deep and +real it made her almost forget I was there, asking questions, hungrily +watching her, trying to learn about her life.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p> + +<p>"While I was in school," she said, in that low deliberate voice of hers, +"my father and I went abroad every summer. We tramped in the Alps for +weeks at a time, keeping way off the beaten paths to watch the work of +the Swiss engineers. One of them was a woman. We saw the bridge she'd +built over a gorge, and I became deeply excited. Until then I had never +had any idea that I could go into my father's work. But now I wondered +if I could. That winter in school I really worked. I was dreadfully dull +at mathematics, but I wouldn't see it. I made up my mind to go to +Cornell for the course on engineering. I worked like a slave for two +years to get ready and just succeeded in getting in.</p> + +<p>"Then toward the middle of Freshman year I realized that I was becoming +a quite absurdly solemn young grind. There were over a hundred girls in +college but I had made barely any friends. And so I firmly resolved to +be gay. I made a regular business of it and worked my way into clubs and +dances, hunting for the girls I liked and scheming to make them like me +too. By May I was way behind in my work. I tried to make up, I began +cramming every night until one or two in the morning. And I passed my +examinations—but that summer I broke down. My father had to drop his +work and take me abroad for an operation, and by the time we got back he +had lost nearly six months of his time. I decided that as an engineer I +was a dismal failure. I'd much better give my father a chance.</p> + +<p>"So when he took up this work in New York I spent all my time on our new +apartment. I loved fussing with it, I shopped like a bee, and this kept +me busy all Autumn. Besides I was going about with Sue. She had managed +me long ago at school and I was glad to let her now, for I was hunting +for new ideas. But Sue put me on so many committees that by Spring my +nerves were in shreds, and again for weeks I was flat on my back.</p> + +<p>"One evening then—when my father came home and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> sat down by my +bedside—it came over me all of a sudden—the wonderful quiet strength +in his hand, in the look of his eyes.</p> + +<p>"'Where have you been?' I asked him.</p> + +<p>"'Down on the harbor,' he told me. Since eight in the morning he'd been +in a launch exploring it all. I shut my eyes—my wretched eyelids +quivering—and I made him describe the whole day's trip while I tried to +see it all in my mind. Soon I was feeling deliciously quiet. 'I'm going +down there too,' I thought.</p> + +<p>"By the next evening I had the idea for this boat. When I told him he +was delighted, and we both grew excited over the plans—which he drew by +my bed, I made him draw dozens. At last it was built and lay at its +dock, and I packed all I needed into a trunk and we came down in a taxi. +It was a lovely May afternoon and we had a beautiful ride up the Hudson. +And from then on through the Summer I hardly went ashore at all, I knew +if I did it would spoil it all.</p> + +<p>"Every night we slept on board in those two cozy little bunks. I learned +to cook here. Soon I was able to run the boat and even to help my father +a little. I knew just enough about his work to go places for him and +save his time. I'd forgotten I ever had any nerves, for I felt I +belonged to something now that got way down to the roots of things. Do +you see what I mean? This harbor isn't like a hotel, or an evening gown +or Weber and Fields. I love pretty gowns, and my father and I wouldn't +miss Weber and Fields for worlds. But they're all on top, this is down +at the bottom, it's one of those deep places that seem to make the world +go 'round. It's right where the ocean bumps into the land. You can get +your roots here, you can feel you are real.</p> + +<p>"You see what my father is doing is to take this whole harbor and study +it hard—not just the water, the shipping and docks, for when he says +'the port of New York' he means all the railroads too—and he's +studying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> how they all come in and why it is that everything has become +so frightfully snarled. A lot of big shipping men are behind him, and +he's to draw up a plan for it all which they're going to give to the +city to use, to make this port what it's got to be, the very first in +the ocean world. It's one of those slow tremendous pieces of work, it +will take years to carry it out and hundreds of millions of dollars. My +father thinks there's hardly a chance that he'll ever live to see it all +done. I know he will, I'm sure he will, he's the kind of a man who keeps +himself young. But whether he really sees it or not, or gets any credit, +he doesn't care.</p> + +<p>"That's the kind of a person my father is," Eleanore added softly.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>"My father wants to meet you," she told me toward the end of June, at +one of those times when she let the boat drift while we had long +absorbing talks. "He has read that thing you wrote about the German sea +hog, and he thinks it's awfully well done."</p> + +<p>"That's good of him," I said gruffly.</p> + +<p>Somehow or other it always makes me uncomfortable when people talk about +my work. When they criticize I am annoyed and when they praise I am +uneasy. What do they know about it? They spent an hour reading what it +took me weeks to write. They don't know what I <i>tried</i> to do, nor do +they care, they haven't time. I never feel so cut off from people, so +utterly alone in the world, as when some benevolent person says, "I +liked that little story of yours." Instantly I shut up like a clam.</p> + +<p>"I liked it too," said Eleanore.</p> + +<p>"Did you?" I asked delightedly. Far from retiring into my shell, I +wanted at once to open up and make her feel how much I had missed in +that crude effort. Soon she had me talking about it. And while I talked +on eagerly, I tried to guess from her questions whether<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> she'd read it +more than once. Finally I guessed she had. And, glancing at her now and +then, I wondered how much she could ever know about me or I about +her—really know. And the intimacy I saw ahead loomed radiant and +boundless. I strained every nerve to show her myself, to show her the +very best of myself.</p> + +<p>But then I heard her ask me,</p> + +<p>"Wouldn't you like to talk to my father?"</p> + +<p>Here was a fine end to it all.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," I answered gloomily. I could see already those engineer +eyes moving amusedly down my pages. I could see her watching his face +and getting to feel as he did about me. "What good would it do?" I +added.</p> + +<p>"What good would it do?" Her sharply offended tone brought me back with +a jerk to try to explain.</p> + +<p>"Don't you see what I mean!" I asked eagerly. "Why should a man as busy +as he is waste his time on a kid like me? After all that you've told me +about him, I feel sometimes as though all the writers on earth don't +count any more, because all the really big things are being done by men +like your father."</p> + +<p>"That's much better," said Eleanore. "Only of course it isn't true. If +you poor little writers want to get big and really count," she went on +serenely, "all you have to do is to write about my father."</p> + +<p>"I'll begin the minute you say so," I told her.</p> + +<p>"Then it's arranged," said my companion, with an exceedingly comfortable +sigh. "We've taken a cottage up on the Sound for the summer," she +continued. "And we're moving up to-morrow. Suppose you come up over +Sunday."</p> + +<p>"Thanks. I'd love to," I replied.</p> + +<p>"So she's to be away for months," I added dismally to myself. "No more +of these long afternoons."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<p>On the following Saturday, when I met her boat at an East River dock, at +once I felt a difference. We were waiting for her father. The moments +dragged and I grew glum, try as I would to be pleasant.</p> + +<p>"Here he is," she said at last.</p> + +<p>Tall, rather lank and loosely clothed, Dillon was coming down the pier +in easy leisurely fashion, talking to a man by his side. His face +lighted up when he saw us.</p> + +<p>"Just a minute," he said.</p> + +<p>His voice was low but it had a peculiar carrying quality. His rugged +face was deeply lined, and I noticed a little gray in his hair. He was +smiling straight down into the eyes of his companion, a much younger +man, thin and poorly dressed, whose face looked drawn and tired.</p> + +<p>"When I was your age," I heard Dillon remark, "I got into just the same +kind of a snarl." And he began telling about it. A frightfully technical +story it was, full of engineer slang that was Greek to me, but I saw the +younger man listen absorbed, his thin lips parting in a smile. I saw him +come out from under his worries, I saw his chief watching him, pulling +him out.</p> + +<p>"All right, Jim," he ended. "See what you can do."</p> + +<p>"Say, Chief, just you forget this, will you?" the other said intensely. +"Don't give it a thought. It's go'n' to be done!"</p> + +<p>"It's forgotten."</p> + +<p>Another easy smile at his man, and then Eleanore's father turned to us. +I could feel him casually take me in.</p> + +<p>"The thing I liked most in that sketch of yours," he was saying a few +minutes later, when our boat was on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> her course, "was the way you listed +that Dutchman's cargo. 'One baby carriage—to Lahore.' A very large +picture in five little words. I can see that Hindu baby now—being +wheeled in its carriage to Crocodile Park and wondering where the devil +this queer new wagon came from. I've been nosing around these docks for +years, but I missed that part of 'em right along—that human part—till +you came along with your neat writer's trick. 'One baby carriage—to +Lahore.' You ought to be proud, young man, at your age to have written +one sentence so long that it goes half way around the world."</p> + +<p>As he talked in that half bantering tone I tried to feel cross, but it +wouldn't do. That low voice and those gray eyes were not making fun of +me, they were making friends with me, they were so kindly, curious, so +open and sincere. Soon he had lighted a cigar and was telling Eleanore +gravely just how she ought to run her boat.</p> + +<p>"Why be so busy about it?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you be quiet!" she replied, as she sharply spun her wheel. Like an +automobile in a crowded street our craft was lurching its way in short +dashes in and out of the rush hour traffic. The narrow East River was +black with boats. Ferries, tugs and steamers seemed to be coming at us +from every side. Now with a leap we would be off, then abruptly churning +the water behind us we would hold back drifting, watching our chance for +another rush. Eleanore's face was glowing now, her hat was off, her neck +was tense—and her blue-gray eyes, wide open, fixed on the chaos ahead, +were shining with excitement. Now and then a long curling wisp of her +hair would get in her eyes and savagely she would blow it back. And her +lank quiet father puffed his cigar, with his gray eyes restfully on her. +"The serenity of her," he murmured to me.</p> + +<p>"Oh, now, my dear," he said gently, as we careened to starboard, "<i>that</i> +was a slip. I can't say I would have done it like that."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Have you ever run a boat in your life?" came back the fierce rejoinder.</p> + +<p>"No," said Dillon calmly, "I can't exactly say I have. Still"—he +relapsed and enjoyed his cigar.</p> + +<p>Just a short time after this, we had the only ugly moment that I had +been through in all our rides. A huge Sound steamer was ahead. Dashing +close along under her port, we came suddenly out before her and met a +tug whose fool of a captain had made a rush to cross her bow. It was one +of those sickening instants when you see nothing at all to do. But +Eleanore saw. A quick jerk on her lever, a swift spinning of her wheel, +and with a leap we were right under the steamer's bow. It missed our +stern by a foot as it passed and then we were safe on the other side. +She made a low sound, in a moment her face went deathly white, her eyes +shut and she nearly let go the wheel. But then, her slight form +tightening, slowly opening her eyes she turned toward her father.</p> + +<p>"Now?" he asked very softly. And there passed a look between them.</p> + +<p>"All right," she breathed, and turned back to her wheel. And for some +time very little was said.</p> + +<p>But I understood her love for him now. These two were such companions as +I had never seen before. And though I myself felt quite out of it all, +this did not bother me in the least. For watching her father and feeling +the abounding reserve of force deep under his quiet, I told myself that +here was a big man, the first really big one I'd ever come close to. And +I was so eager to know him and see just what he was like inside, that I +had no room for myself or his daughter—because I wanted to write him +up. What a weird, curious feeling it is, this passion for writing up +people you meet.</p> + +<p>On the remainder of the ride, and at supper that night on the porch of +their cottage, a little house perched on a rocky point directly +overlooking the water, I did my best to draw him out, and Eleanore +seemed quite ready<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> to help me. And later, when he went inside to do +some work, I went on with the same eagerness, obliterating my own small +self, exploring this feeling of hers for him and his dream of a future +harbor.</p> + +<p>Soon she was doing all the talking, her voice growing lower and more +intense as she tried to make me feel all he meant when he said, "It's +going to be the first port in the world." She told how up in his tower +he made you see the commerce of this whole mighty world of peace +converging slowly on this port. She told of the night two years before +when he had come home "all shaken and queer" and had said to her +huskily, "Eleanore, child, at last it's sure. There's to be a Panama +Canal." Of other nights when he didn't come home and at last she went +down to his office to fetch him and found him at midnight there with his +men, "all working like mad and gay as larks!"</p> + +<p>"When it comes to millions of dollars for his work," she said, "he's so +very keen that he makes you feel like a little child. But when it's +merely a question of dollars for himself to live on, he's a perfect +baby. He won't look at a bill, he always turns them over to me. He won't +enter a shop, he won't go to a tailor. One ready-made clothing store has +his measure and twice a year I order his clothes and then have a fight +to get him to wear them. He never knows what he eats except steak. One +night when we had been having steak six evenings in succession I tried +chicken for a change. At first he didn't know what was wrong. Every now +and then he would seem to notice something. 'What's the matter with me?' +I could see he was asking. Then all at once he had it. 'My dear,' he +said, very coaxingly, 'could we have a nice juicy porterhouse steak for +supper to-morrow evening?'"</p> + +<p>From these and many other details slowly I got the feel of my man. +Closer, more intimate he grew. All the work I had done in Paris, +questioning, drawing out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> my friends until I could feel their inner +selves coming out of them into me, was counting now. I had never done so +well before, I was sliding my questions in just right, very cautiously +turning her memory this way and that on her father's life, watching her +grow more and more unaware of my presence beside her, although now I had +her bending toward me, eagerly, close.</p> + +<p>"And she thinks she's doing it all by herself," I thought exultingly.</p> + +<p>But as there came a pause in our talk, she turned slightly in her seat +and glanced in through the window into the lighted room behind. And +instantly her expression changed. A swift look of surprise, a puzzled +frown and a moment of hard thinking—and then with a murmured excuse she +rose and went away quickly into the house. In the meantime I had +followed her look. Sitting close by the lamp, in the room inside, Dillon +was staring straight at this spot where I was invisible in the dark. And +he looked old—and rigid, as though he'd been staring like that for some +time. I caught just a glimpse. Then he heard her step and turned hastily +back to his work. I looked at my watch. It was after twelve.</p> + +<p>"And he never knew it was all about him," I said to myself disgustedly. +"I hope this doesn't spoil it all."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>But that is precisely what it did. The next morning she was coolly +polite and Dillon determinedly genial. I could feel a silent struggle +between them as to what should be done with me. She wanted to get rid of +me, he wanted to keep us together. Gone was all his quiet strength, in +its place was an anxious friendliness. He made me tell him what I was +writing. He said he was glad that his press agent daughter had taken me +'round and opened my eyes. And as soon as she got through with me he +himself would do all he could.</p> + +<p>"I'm through with him," said Eleanore cheerfully. "I've shown him all I +possibly can. What you need<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> now," she added, turning to me in her old +easy manner, "is to watch the harbor all by yourself and get your own +feelings about it. You might begin at the North River docks."</p> + +<p>I spent a wretched afternoon. All my plans for my work and my life +assumed the most gray and desolate hues. Eleanore was taking a nap. At +last she came down and gave me some tea.</p> + +<p>"May I come out and see you now and then?" I asked her very humbly. "It +would help me so much to talk over my work."</p> + +<p>"No," she answered kindly, "I think you'd better not."</p> + +<p>"Why not?" I blurted. "What have I done?"</p> + +<p>She hesitated, then looked at me squarely.</p> + +<p>"You've made my absurd young father," she said, "think that he is no +longer young."</p> + +<p>I lost just a moment in admiration. There wasn't one girl in a hundred +who would have come out with it like that. Then I seized my chance.</p> + +<p>"Why, it's perfectly idiotic," I cried. "Here's a man so big he's a +giant beside me, so full of some queer magnetic force that on the way up +here in the boat he made me forget that I was there. I forgot that <i>you</i> +were there," I threw in, and I caught just the sign of a gleam in her +eyes. "No longer young?" I continued. "That man will be young when you +and I are blinking in our dull old age! He's the biggest man I ever met! +And I want to know him, I want to know how he thinks and feels, I want +that more than anything else! And now you come between us!"</p> + +<p>"Are you real?" asked Eleanore. I looked back unflinchingly.</p> + +<p>"Just you try me," I retorted.</p> + +<p>"No," she replied with a quiet smile.</p> + +<p>She said good-by to me that night.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The next morning at seven o'clock I met her father<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> down at the boat. We +had a quick swim together and then climbed on board. And the next +minute, with a sober old seaman called "Captain Arty" at the wheel, the +boat was speeding for New York while we dressed and cooked and +breakfasted.</p> + +<p>"This was Eleanore's idea," Dillon said. "It gets me to town by nine +o'clock and takes me back each day at five. So I hardly miss a night at +home.... Did she ever tell you," he went on, "about the first week she +spent in this boat?"</p> + +<p>"She said it was a wonderful time."</p> + +<p>"It was a nightmare," Dillon said. I looked at him quickly:</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Her fight for her strength. She looked like a ghost—with a stiff upper +lip. She fainted twice. But she wouldn't give up. She said she knew she +could do it if I'd only let her stick it out. She has quite a will, that +daughter of mine," he added quietly.</p> + +<p>"You know," he went on, "that idea of hers that you tackle the North +River piers isn't bad. Why don't you put in the whole Summer there, +watching the big liners? I won't ask you to come to my office now, for +our work is still in that early stage where we don't want any +publicity." I could feel his casual glance, and I wondered whether he +noticed my sharp disappointment. "When we are ready," he resumed, "we're +sure to be flooded with writers. I hope there'll be one man in the lot +who'll stick to the work for a year or more, a man with a kind of a +passion in him for the thing we're trying to do. There's nothing we +wouldn't do for that man. I hope he's going to be you."</p> + +<p>At once a vision opened of work with Eleanore's father, of long talks +with Eleanore.</p> + +<p>"I'll try to get ready for it," I said.</p> + +<p>"You've made a fine start," he continued, "and I think you're going to +make good. But first let's see what you'll<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> do by yourself. Get your own +view of this place as it is to-day before we talk about plans for +to-morrow. And don't hurry. Take your time."</p> + +<p>As he said this quietly, I suddenly awoke to the fact that we were +tearing down the river at a perfectly gorgeous speed. The river was +crowding with traffic ahead, all was a rushing chaos of life and we were +rushing worst of all. And yet we did not seem to hurry. Old Captain Arty +sat at the wheel with the most resigned patient look in his eyes. And +drawing lazily on his cigar Dillon was watching a new line of wharves.</p> + +<p>"You know I've found," he was saying, "the only way to live in this age +and get any pleasure out of life is to always take more time than you +need for every job you tackle. I'm taking at least seven years to this +job. I might possibly do it as well in five, but I'd miss half the fun +of it all, I'd be glaring at separate parts of it, each one as it came +along, and I'd never have time to see it full size and let it carry me +'round the world—to that baby carriage, for instance, over in Lahore."</p> + +<p>We were rounding the Battery now. And in that sparkling morning light, +with billowy waves of sea green all around us, sudden snowy clouds of +spray, we watched for a moment the skyscraper group, the homes of the +Big Companies. The sunshine was reflected from thousands of dazzling +window eyes, little streamers of steam were flung out gaily overhead, +streets suddenly opened to our view, narrow cuts revealing the depths +below. And there came to our ears a deep humming.</p> + +<p>"That's the brains of it all," said Dillon. "In all you'll see while +exploring the wharves you'll find some string that leads back here. And +you don't want to let that worry you. Let the muckrakers worry and plan +all they please for a sea-gate and a nation that's to run with its +brains removed. You want to remember it can't be done. You want to look +harder and harder—until you find out for yourself that there are men up +there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> on Wall Street without whose brains no big thing can be done in +this country. I'm working under their orders and some day I hope you'll +be doing the same. For they don't need <i>less</i> publicity but <i>more</i>."</p> + +<p>He left me at the Battery, and as I stood looking after him I found +myself feeling somewhat dazed. A question flashed into my mind. What +would Joe Kramer say to this? I remembered what he had said to me once: +"Tell Wall Street to get off the roof." Well, that was <i>his</i> view. Here +was another. And this man was certainly just as sincere and decidedly +more wise and sane, altogether a larger size.</p> + +<p>Besides, I was in love with his daughter.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<p>On the Manhattan side of the North River, from Twenty-third Street down +for a mile there stretches a deafening region of cobblestones and +asphalt over which trucks by thousands go clattering each day. There are +long lines of freight cars here and snorting locomotives. Along the +shore side are many saloons, a few cheap decent little hotels and some +that are far from decent. And along the water side is a solid line of +docksheds. Their front is one unbroken wall of sheet iron and concrete.</p> + +<p>I came up against this wall. Over the top I could see here and there the +great round funnels of the ships, but at every passenger doorway and at +every wide freight entrance I found a sign, "No Visitors Admitted," and +under the sign a watchman who would ungraciously take a cigar and then +go right on being a watchman. There seemed no way to get inside. The +old-fashioned mystery of the sea was replaced by the inscrutability of +what some muckrakers called "The Pool."</p> + +<p>"Don't hurry," Eleanore's father had said. All very well, but I needed +money. While I had been making with Eleanore those long and delightful +explorations of the harbor and ourselves, at home my father's bank +account had been steadily dwindling, and all that I had been able to +make had gone into expenses.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what to do," said Sue, alone with me that evening. "The +butcher says he won't wait any longer. He has simply got to be paid this +week."</p> + +<p>"I'll see what I can do," I said.</p> + +<p>I came back to my new hunting ground and all night<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> long I prowled +about. I sipped large schooners of beer at bars, listening to the burly +dockers crowded close around me. I watched the waterfront, empty and +still, with acres of spectral wagons and trucks and here and there a +lantern. I had a long talk with a broken old bum who lay on his back in +an empty truck looking up at the stars and spun me yarns of his life as +a cook on ships all up and down the world. Now and again in the small +wee hours I met hurrying groups of men, women and children poorly clad, +and following them to one of the piers I heard the sleepy watchman +growl, "Steerage passengers over there." I saw the dawn break slowly and +everything around me grow bluish and unreal. I watched the teamsters +come tramping along leading horses, and harness them to the trucks. I +heard the first clatter of the day. I saw the figures of dockers appear, +more and more, I saw some of them drift to the docks. Soon there were +crowds of thousands, and as stevedores there began bawling out names, +gang after gang of men stepped forward, until at last the chosen throngs +went marching in past the timekeepers. Hungrily I peered after them up +the long cavernous docksheds. "No Visitors Admitted."</p> + +<p>Then I went into a lunchroom for ham and eggs and a huge cup of coffee. +I ate an enormous breakfast. On the floor beside me a cross and weary +looking old woman was scrubbing the dirty oil cloth there. But I myself +felt no weariness. While all was still vivid and fresh in my mind, +sitting there I wrote down what I had seen. A magazine editor said it +would do. And so we paid the butcher.</p> + +<p>The same editor gave me a sweeping letter of introduction to all ocean +liners. This I showed to a dock watchman, who directed me upstairs. In +the office above I showed it to a clerk, who directed me to the dock +superintendent, who read it and told me to go downtown. I recalled what +Dillon had said about strings. Here was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> string number one, I reflected, +and I followed it down Manhattan into the tall buildings, only to be +asked down there just what it was I wanted to know.</p> + +<p>"I don't want to know anything," I replied. "I just want permission to +watch the work."</p> + +<p>"We can't allow that," was the answer of this harbor of big companies.</p> + +<p>At every pier that I approached I received about the same reply. At home +Sue spoke of other bills. And now that I was in trouble, hard pressed +for money and groping my way about alone, I found myself missing +Eleanore to a most desperate degree. Her face, her smiling blue-gray +eyes, kept rising in my mind, sometimes with memories and hopes that +permeated my whole view both of the harbor and my work with a warm glad +expectant glow, but more often with no feeling at all but one of +sickening emptiness. She was not here. The only way to get back to her +was to make good with her father. And so I would not ask his aid or even +go to him for advice. Testing me, was he? All right, I would show him.</p> + +<p>And I returned to my editor, whom my intensity rather amused.</p> + +<p>"The joke of it is," he said, "that they think down there you're a +muckraker."</p> + +<p>"I'll be one soon if this keeps on."</p> + +<p>"But it won't," he replied. "As soon as you've once broken in, and they +see it's a glory story you want, you can't imagine how nice they'll be."</p> + +<p>"I haven't broken in," I said.</p> + +<p>"You will to-morrow," he told me, "because Abner Bell will be with you. +He's our star photographer. Wait till you see little Ab go to work. The +place he can't get into hasn't been invented. Besides," the editor +added, "Abner is just the sort of chap to take hold of an author from +Paris and turn him into a writer."</p> + +<p>And this Abner Bell proceeded to do. He was a cheer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>ful, rotund little +man with round simple eyes and a smile that went all over his face.</p> + +<p>"You see," he said, when I met him the next day down at the docks, "you +can't ask a harbor to hold up her chin and look into your camera while +you count. She's such a big fat noisy slob she wouldn't even hear you. +You've got to run right at her and bark."</p> + +<p>"Look here, old man," he was asking a watchman a few moments later. +"What's the name of the superintendent on the next pier down the line!"</p> + +<p>"Captain Townes."</p> + +<p>"Townes, Townes? Is that Bill Townes?"</p> + +<p>"No, it's Ed."</p> + +<p>"I wonder what's become of Bill. All right, brother, much obliged. See +you again." And he went on.</p> + +<p>"Say," he asked the next watchman. "Is Eddy—I mean Captain—Townes +upstairs?"</p> + +<p>"Sure he is. Go right up."</p> + +<p>"Thank you." Up we went to the office. "Captain Townes? Good-morning."</p> + +<p>"Well, sir, what can I do for you?" The captain was an Englishman with a +voice as heavy and deep as his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Why, Captain, I'm sent here by the firm that's putting Peevey's Paris +Perfume on the market out in the Middle West. They're going in heavy on +ads this Fall and I've got an order to hang around here until I can get +a photo of one of your biggest liners. The idea is to run it as an ad, +with a caption under it something like this: '<i>The Kaiser Wilhelm</i> +reaching New York with twenty thousand bottles of Peevey's Best, direct +from Paris.'"</p> + +<p>"<i>The Kaiser Wilhelm</i>," said the captain ponderously, "is a German boat. +She docks in Hoboken, my friend."</p> + +<p>"Of course she does," said Abner. "And I can lug this heavy camera way +over there if you say so, and hand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> ten thousand dollars worth of free +ads to a German line, stick up pictures of their boat in little +drugstore windows all up and down the Middle West. Do you know how to +tell me to go away?"</p> + +<p>Captain Townes smiled heavily.</p> + +<p>"No," he said, "I guess I don't. Here's a pass that'll give you the run +of the dock."</p> + +<p>"Make it two," said Abner, "and fix it so my friend and I can stick +around for quite a while."</p> + +<p>"You're a pretty good liar," I told him as we went downstairs.</p> + +<p>"Oh, hell," he answered modestly. "Let's go out on the porch and get +cool."</p> + +<p>We went out on the open end of the pier and sat down on a wooden beam +which Abner called a bulkhead.</p> + +<p>"If we don't begin calling things names," he remarked, "we'll never get +to feeling we're here. Let's just sit and feel for a while."</p> + +<p>"I've begun," I replied.</p> + +<p>We sat in the shade of two wooden piles with the glare of a midsummer +sun all around us. The East River had been like a crowded creek compared +to this wide expanse of water slapping and gleaming out there in the sun +with smoke shadows chasing over it all. There was the rough odor of +smoke in the air from craft of all kinds as they skurried about. The +high black bow of a Cunarder loomed at the end of the dock next ours. +Far across the river the stout German liners lay at their berths—and +they did not look like sea hogs. What a change had come over the harbor +since I had met that motorboat. How all the hogs had waddled away, and +the very smoke and the oil on the waves had taken on deep, vivid +hues—as I had seen through Eleanore's eyes. "What a strange wonderful +purple," her low voice seemed to murmur at my side.</p> + +<p>"She's going away from here," said Ab. I started:</p> + +<p>"Who is?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p> + +<p>"That Cunarder. Look at the smoke pour out of her stacks. Got a +cigarette about you?"</p> + +<p>"No," I answered gruffly.</p> + +<p>"Damn."</p> + +<p>In the slip on our other side a large freight boat was loading, and a +herd of scows and barges were pressing close around her. These clumsy +craft had cabins, and in some whole families lived. "Harbor Gypsies." A +good title. I had paid the butcher, but the grocer was still waiting. So +I dismissed my motorboat and grimly turned to scows instead. Children by +the dozen were making friends from barge to barge. Dogs were all about +us and they too were busy visiting. High up on the roof of a coal +lighter's cabin an impudent little skye-terrier kept barking at the +sooty men who were shoveling down below. One of these from time to time +would lift his black face and good-humoredly call, "Oh, you go to +hell"—which would drive the small dog into frenzies. Most of the barges +had derrick masts, and all these masts were moving. They rose between me +and the sky, bobbing, tossing and criss-crossing, filling the place with +the feeling of life, the unending, restless life of the sea.</p> + +<p>An ear-shattering roar broke in on it all. Our Cunarder was starting. +Smoke belching black from her funnels, the monster was beginning to +move.</p> + +<p>But what was this woman doing close by us? Out of the cabin of a barge +she had dragged a little rocking chair, and now she had brought out a +baby, all dressed up in its Sunday best, and was rocking expectantly, +watching the ship. Thundering to the harbor, the Cunarder now moved +slowly out. As she swept into the river the end of the pier was revealed +to our eyes all black with people waving. They waved until she was out +in midstream. Then, as they began to turn away, one plump +motherly-looking woman happened to glance toward us.</p> + +<p>"Why, the cute little baby," we heard her exclaim.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> And the next minute +hundreds of people were looking. The barge mother rocked serenely.</p> + +<p>Abner grabbed his camera and jumped nimbly down on the barge, where he +took the baby's picture, with the amused crowd for a background.</p> + +<p>"The kid's name," he remarked on his return, "is Violetta Rosy. She was +born at two a. m. at Pier Forty-nine." He was silent for a moment and +then went on sententiously, "Think what it'll mean to her, through all +the storm and stress of life, to be able to look fondly back upon the +dear old homestead. There's a punch to Violetta. Better run her in."</p> + +<p>"I will," I said.</p> + +<p>"And that little thing of mine," he queried modestly, "about the dear +old homestead."</p> + +<p>"I've got it," I replied.</p> + +<p>"I hand quite a few little things to writers," Ab continued cheerfully. +"If you'll just give me some idea of what it is you're looking for——"</p> + +<p>"I'm looking for the punch," I answered promptly.</p> + +<p>"Then we'll get on fine," he said. "The editor got me worried some. He +said you'd trained in Paris."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that was only a starter," I told him.</p> + +<p>Presently he went into the dockshed on his unending quest of "the +punch." And left to myself I got thinking. What did Paris know about us? +De Maupassant's methods wouldn't do here. I noticed two painters in +overalls at work on that large freighter. With long brooms that they +held in both hands they were slapping a band of crude yellow paint along +her scarred and rusted side. That was what I needed, the broom! All at +once the harbor took hold of me hard. And exulting in its bigness, the +bold raw splattering bigness of my native Yankee land, "Now for some +glory stories," I said.</p> + +<p>I went into the dockshed, and there I stayed right through until night, +till my mind was limp and battered from the rush of new impressions. For +in this long sea<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> station, under the blue arc-lights, in boxes, barrels, +crates and bags, tumbling, banging, crashing, came the products of this +modern land. You could feel the pulse of a continent here. From the +factories, the mines and mills, the prairies and the forests, the +plantations and the vineyards, there flowed a mighty tide of +things—endlessly, both day and night—you could shut your eyes and see +the long brown lines of cars crawl eastward from all over the land, you +could see the stuff converging here to be gathered into coarse rope nets +and swept up to the liners. The pulse beat fast and furious. In gangs at +every hatchway you saw men heaving, sweating, you heard them swearing, +panting. That day they worked straight through the night. For the pulse +kept beating, beating, and the ship must sail on time!</p> + +<p>And now I too worked day and night. In the weeks that followed, Abner +Bell came and went many times, but for me it was my entire life. Though +small of build I was tough and hard, I had not been sick for a day in +years, and now I easily stood the strain. Day by day my story grew, my +glory story of world trade. Watching, questioning, listening here, +making notes, writing hasty sketches to help keep us going at +home—slowly I could feel this place yielding up its inner self, its +punch and bigness, endless rush, its feeling of a nation young and +piling up prodigious wealth. From the customhouse came fabulous tales of +millionaires ransacking the world. Rare old furniture, rugs and +tapestries, paintings, jewels, gorgeous gowns poured in a dazzling +torrent all that summer through the docks. One day on a Mediterranean +ship, in their immaculate "stalls de luxe," came two black Arab horses, +glistening, quivering creatures, valued by the customhouse at twenty +thousand dollars each. And into the same ship that week, as though in +payment for these two, in dust and heavy smell of sweat I saw a thousand +cattle driven, bellowing and lowing.</p> + +<p>I exulted in these symptoms of our crude and lusty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> youth. I watched my +countrymen going abroad. Not only through the Summer but straight on +into the Fall they came by tens of thousands out of the West, people who +had made some money and were going to blow it in, to buy things and to +see things, to learn things and to eat things. One day at noon, on the +end of a dock, when the ship was already far out in midstream and all +the crashing music and cheers had died away, a meek old lady wiped her +eyes and murmured very tearfully, "I suppose they'll be eating their +luncheon soon." And then the loud voice of her daughter replied:</p> + +<p>"Eat? Why, ma, God bless their hearts, they'll sit on that boat and eat +all day!"</p> + +<p>And I echoed her wish with a keen delight. God bless their hearts and +stomachs. Oh, hungry vigorous Yankee land, so mightily young—eat on, +eat on!</p> + +<p>And the land ate on.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>My work here rose to a climax a week or two before Christmas, when the +newest liner of them all pulled off a new world's record for speed. With +the company's publicity man, who had become a friend of mine, I went on +the health officer's tug down the Bay to meet her, on the coldest, +darkest night I've ever known on water. Shortly after nine o'clock the +big boat's light gleamed off the Hook and she bore down upon us. She +came close, slowed down and towered by our side, weird as a ghost with +snow and ice in glimmering sheets on her steel sides. She did not stop. +We caught a rope ladder and scrambled up, and at once we felt her +speeding on.</p> + +<p>And she was indeed a story that night. Bellowing hoarsely now in warning +to all small craft to get out of her way, she was rushing into the +harbor. Suddenly she slowed again, and three dark mail tugs ranged +alongside, and through canvas chutes four thousand sacks of Christmas +mail began to pour down while the ship moved on. Up her other side came +climbing gangs of men who began<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> to make ready her winches and open up +her hatches. Now we were moving in close to the pier, with a whole fleet +of tugs around us. Faint shouts rose in the zero night, toots and sharp +whistles. One of the gang-planks was down at last and two hundred +dockers came up on the run. Off went the passengers and the luggage, +reporters skurrying through the crowds. But the ship did not rest. For +she was to sail again the next night. This was to be a world's record +for speed!</p> + +<p>All night long the work went on, and I watched it from a deck above, +going in now and then for food and hot drinks. On her dock side, +forward, Christmas boxes, bales and packages were being whipped up out +of her hold to the rattle of her winches. One sharp whistle and up they +shot into the air till they swung some seventy feet above. Another +whistle and down they whirled into the dockshed far below from which a +blaze of light poured up. At the same time she was coaling. Along the +black wall of her other side, as I peered over the rail above, I saw far +below a row of barges crowded with Italians. Powerful lights swung over +their heads in the freezing wind, swung above black coal heaps and the +lapping water. It was an inferno of shifting lights and long leaping +shadows.</p> + +<p>I watched till daylight blotted out the yellow glare of the lanterns. +Then I went home to get some sleep. And late that night when I came back +I found her almost ready to sail.</p> + +<p>Out of taxis and automobiles chugging down in front of the pier, the +passengers were pouring in. Many were in evening clothes, some just come +from dinners and others from box parties. The theaters had just let out. +The rich warm hues of the women's cloaks, the gay head dresses here and +there and the sparkling earrings, immaculate gloves and dainty wanton +slippered feet, kept giving flashes of color to this dark freezing ocean +place. Most of these people went hurrying up into the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> warm, gorgeous +café of the ship, which was run from a hotel in Paris. What had all this +to do with the sea?</p> + +<p>"Come on," said the genial press agent. "You're the company's +guest-to-night."</p> + +<p>And while we ate and drank and smoked, and the tables around us filled +with people whose ripples and bursts of laughter rose over the +orchestra's festive throb, and corks kept popping everywhere, he told me +where they were going, these gay revellers, for their Christmas Day—to +London, Brussels, Berlin and Vienna, Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo, Algiers.</p> + +<p>"Now come with me," he said at last, and he took me along warm +passageways to the row of cabins de luxe.</p> + +<p>First we looked into the Bridal Suite, to which one of the Pittsburgh +makers of steel, having just divorced a homely old wife, was presently +to bring his new bride, a ravishing young creature of musical comedy +fame. They had been married that afternoon. A French maid was unpacking +dainty shimmering little gowns, soft furry things and other things of +silk and lace, and hanging them up in closets. It was a large room, and +there were other rooms adjoining and two big luxurious baths. The cost +of it all was four thousand dollars for the five days. There were tall +mirrors and dressing tables, there were capacious easy chairs. Low +subdued lights were here and there, and a thick rug was on the floor. +Over in one corner was a huge double bed of cream colored wood with rich +soft quilts upon it. Beside the bed in a pink satin cradle there lay a +tiny Pekinese dog.</p> + +<p>"Next," he whispered. We peeped into the next stateroom, and there +divided from her neighbors by only one thin partition, a sober, wrinkled +little old lady in black velvet sat quietly reading her Bible. Soon she +would be saying her prayers.</p> + +<p>"Next," he whispered. And in the cabin on her other side we caught a +glimpse of two jovial men playing cards in gay pajamas with a bottle of +Scotch between them.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Next." And as we went on down the row he gave me the names of an +English earl, a Jewish clothing merchant, a Minnesota ranchman, a +banker's widow from Boston, a Tammany politician, a Catholic bishop from +Baltimore, a millionaire cheese maker from Troy and a mining king from +Montana.</p> + +<p>"How about that," he asked at the end, "for an American row de luxe?"</p> + +<p>"My God, it's great," I whispered.</p> + +<p>"There's only one big question here," he added. "Your long respectable +pedigrees and your nice little Puritanical codes can all go to +blazes—this big boat will throw 'em all overboard for you—if you can +answer, 'I've got the price.'"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<p>Meanwhile, in the late Autumn, Eleanore had come back to town. I had a +note from her one day.</p> + +<p>"Come and tell me what you are writing," she said.</p> + +<p>I went to see her that afternoon, and I was deeply excited. I had often +felt her by my side when I was watching the harbor life and as often +behind me while I wrote. We had had long talks together, absorbing talks +about ourselves. And though now in her easy welcome and through all her +cheerful questions there was not a suggestion that we two had been or +ever would be anything but genial friends, this did not discourage me in +the least. No fellow, I thought, could be happy as I and have nothing +better than friendship ahead. The Fates could never be so hard, for +certainly now they were smiling.</p> + +<p>Here was her apartment, just the place I had felt it would be, only +infinitely more attractive. High up above the Manhattan jungle, it was +quiet and sunny and charming here. From the low, wide living-room +windows you could see miles out over the harbor where my work was going +so splendidly, and all around the room itself I saw what I was working +for. Eleanore's touch was everywhere. An intimate, lovable feminine home +with man-sized views from its windows—just like Eleanore herself, from +whom I found it difficult to keep my hungry eyes away. To that soft +bewildering hair of hers she had done something different—I couldn't +tell what, but I loved it. I loved the changing tones of her voice—I +hate monotonous voices. I watched the smiling lights in her eyes. She +was at her small tea table now. Her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> motorboat, thank Heaven, was laid +up for the winter, and I had her right here in a room, with nothing to +do with her eyes but pay a decent amount of attention to me. Then by +some chance remark I learned that she had been reading what I wrote, +almost all of it, in fact. And at the slight exclamation I made I saw +her color slightly and bite her lip as though she were angry with +herself for having let that secret out.</p> + +<p>"What do you want to write," she asked, "when you get through with the +harbor?"</p> + +<p>"Fiction," I said. "I want it so hard sometimes that it seems like a +long way ahead. It seems sometimes," I added, "like a girl I'd fallen in +love with—but I couldn't even ask her—because I'm so infernally +poor."</p> + +<p>Over the tea cup at her lips Eleanore looked thoughtfully straight into +and through and behind my eyes.</p> + +<p>"Fiction is such a broad field," she remarked. "What kind do you think +you're going to try?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," I answered. "It still seems so far ahead. You see, I +have no name at all, and this harbor at least is a good safe start. I'm +afraid I'm rather a cautious sort. When I find what I want—and want so +hard that it's the deepest part of me—I like to go slow. I'm afraid to +risk losing it all—deciding my life one way or the other—by taking a +chance." I made a restless movement. "I wasn't speaking of my work just +then," I added gruffly.</p> + +<p>I suddenly caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror back of Eleanore's +chair. And I glared at myself for the fool that I was to have said all +that. I hadn't meant to—not in the least! What a paltry looking cuss I +was—small, tough and wiry, hair sandy, eyes of no color at all, snub +nose and a jaw shut tight as in pain.</p> + +<p>"You're a queer person," said a voice.</p> + +<p>"I am," I agreed forlornly. "I'm the queerest fellow I ever met." I +caught a grim twinkle in my eyes. Thank God for a sense of humor.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Sometimes," she went on, reflectively, "you seem to me as old as the +hills—and again so young and obvious. I'm so sorry to hear you say that +you weren't talking of your work. I like to hear men talk of their +work."</p> + +<p>"I know you do," I said hungrily. "And that's one of the reasons why +you're going to mean so much some day—to somebody's work—and to his +whole life."</p> + +<p>Why couldn't I stop? Had I gone insane? I rose and moved about the room. +A low rippling laugh brought me back to my senses.</p> + +<p>"But how about <i>me</i> and <i>my</i> life?" she asked. "That ought to be thought +of a little, you know."</p> + +<p>I came close beside her:</p> + +<p>"Let me say this. Won't you? I'll promise never to say it again. Your +life is going to be all right. It's going to be quite wonderful—you'll +be tremendously happy. I'm sure of that. It's not only the way you +always—look—it's the way you always think and feel. It's everything +about you."</p> + +<p>She had looked down at her hands for a moment. Now she looked up +suddenly.</p> + +<p>"Thank you," she said smiling, in a way that told me to smile too. I +obeyed.</p> + +<p>"I did that rather badly, didn't I," I said.</p> + +<p>"No, you did that rather well. Especially the first part—I think I +liked that best of all—the part where you promised so solemnly that +you'd never do it again."</p> + +<p>I went indignantly back to my chair.</p> + +<p>"Do you know," I said, "I feel sometimes when I'm with you as though I +were being managed! Absolutely managed!"</p> + +<p>"I should think you wouldn't like that," she replied. Her hands were +peacefully folded now and she looked at me serenely: "I should think +you'd rather manage yourself."</p> + +<p>I took the hint. From, that day on, each time I came to see her, I +managed myself severely. And this ap<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>parently pleased her so much that +she seemed no longer the least afraid to let me know her as well as I +liked. Her father, too, when I met him now and then in the evenings, was +most kindly in his welcome. And as winter wore on, my hopes rose high.</p> + +<p>But one evening, after Dillon had read my story about the Christmas +Boat, he gave me a bitter disappointment.</p> + +<p>"I like it," he said, as he handed it back. "It's a fine dramatic piece +of work. But it's only a starter here. To get any idea of our problem +you'll have to go all over the harbor. When you've done that for a few +months more, and I get back from my trip abroad, I'll be glad to help +you."</p> + +<p>"You're going abroad?" I asked abruptly.</p> + +<p>"Next month," he said, "with Eleanore. She seems to think I need a +rest."</p> + +<p>Back came the old feeling of emptiness. And gloomily at home that night +I wondered if it was because she knew she was leaving so soon that she +had been so intimate lately. How outrageous women are.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<p>They sailed the middle of March.</p> + +<p>It is easy to look back now and smile at my small desolate self as I was +in the months that followed. But at the time it was no smiling matter. I +was intensely wretched and I had a right to be, for I could see nothing +whatever ahead but the most dire uncertainties. Did Eleanore really care +for me? I didn't know. When could I ask her? I didn't know. For when +would I be earning enough to ask any girl to marry me? At present nearly +all I earned was swallowed up by expenses at home, and I knew that in +all likelihood this drain would soon grow heavier.</p> + +<p>For we could not count much longer on my father's salary. Already I had +done my best to make him give up his position. He stubbornly resisted.</p> + +<p>"I'm strong as I ever was," he declared, and he took great pains to +prove it. He would sit down to dinner, his face heavy and gray with +fatigue, but by a hard visible effort slowly he would throw it off, +keenly questioning me about my work, more often quizzing me about it, or +Sue about her "revolooters." He had a stock of these dry remarks and he +used them over and over. When the same jokes came night after night we +knew he was very tired. After dinner on such evenings, when I went with +him into his study to smoke, he would invariably settle back in his +chair with the same loud "Ah!" of comfort, and he would follow this up +as he lit his cigar with the most obvious grunts expressive of health to +prove to me how strong he was. He was always grimly delighted when I +spent these evenings with him, but always before his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> cigar was out his +head would sink slowly over his book and soon he would be sound asleep. +Then as I sat at my writing I would glance over from time to time. I +could tell when he was waking, and at once I would grow absorbed in my +work. Soon I would hear a slight snort of surprise, I would hear him +stealthily feel for his book, and then presently out of the silence——</p> + +<p>"This is a devilish good piece of writing, boy," he would announce +abruptly. "When <i>you</i> learn to hold your reader like this I'll begin to +think you're a writer."</p> + +<p>Yes, my father was aging fast, I would soon be the only breadwinner +here. Sue fought hard against this idea, she was still set on finding +work for herself, but each time she proposed it Dad would rise so +indignantly, with such evident pain in his glaring old eyes, that she +would be forced to give up her plan. In such talks I supported him, and +in return when we two were alone Sue would revenge herself on me by the +most cutting comments on "this inane habit of looking at girls as fit +for nothing better than marriage."</p> + +<p>These comments, I was well aware, were aimed at my feeling for Eleanore, +for whom Sue had no longer any good word but only a smiling derision. +Her remarks were straight out of Bernard Shaw's most ribald works, and +they left me miserably wondering whether any man had ever loved in any +way that wasn't the curse or the joke of his life. Sue dwelt on this +glorious age of deep radical changes going on, she spoke of Joe Kramer, +with whom she still corresponded, and enlarged on the wonderful freedom +he had to go anywhere at any time. Thank a merciful heaven <i>he</i> wasn't +tied down! And if Joe would only keep his head and not marry, not get a +huge family on his hands——</p> + +<p>Sue made me perfectly wretched.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>In this frame of mind I again tackled the harbor. Dillon had told me to +cover it all, and this I now set<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> out to do. On warm muggy April days I +tramped what appeared to me hundreds of miles. But the regions that from +Eleanore's boat had somehow had a feeling of being one great living +thing, now on these dreary trudging days fell apart into remote bays and +slips and rivers, hours of weary travel apart and each without any +connection with any other that I could see. Railroad tracks wound in and +out with no apparent purpose, dirty freight boats crawled helter-skelter +this way and that. All seemed a meaningless chaos and jam.</p> + +<p>And still worse, as I wrestled with this confusion I found it was +growing stale to me. In those Spring days I was fagged and dull, my +imagination would not work. And this gave me a scare. I must <i>not</i> grow +stale, I must keep right on making money to meet the bills that were +still piling up at home. And so for a Sunday paper I undertook a series +on "The Harbor from a Police Boat." This sounded rather exciting and I +hoped that it might restore the lost thrill. The harbor that it showed +me made fine Sunday reading. Out of its grim waters dead bodies bobbed, +dead faces leered, the sodden ends of mysteries. I wrote them and got +paid for them. And I felt no thrill but only disgust. I made some more +money out of rats—rats in countless ravenous hordes that had a harbor +world of their own. This world extended for hundreds of miles in the +dark chill places under the wharves. And the rats kept gnawing, gnawing, +and slowly with the help of the waves they wore away to splinters and +pulp the millions of beams and planks and piles. I found that entire +mountains were denuded each year of their forests to supply food for the +rats and the ocean here. I was almost a muckraker now.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile I had gone in June to the South Brooklyn waterfront and had +taken a room in a tenement near the end of a dock peninsula which jutted +out into the bay. For I wanted to live in the very heart of the big +port's confusion, to grapple alone with the chaos out of which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> Dillon's +engineers were striving to bring order. Here I lived for weeks by +myself, taking my meals in a barroom below.</p> + +<p>There were no stately liners here. The North River piers with their rich +life had been like a show room. I had come down into the factory now. I +could see them still, those liners, but only in the distance steaming +through the Narrows. Eleanore had gone that way. Here close around me +were grimy yards with heaps of coal, enormous sheds, and inland one of +the two narrow mouths of the crowded Erie Basin, out of which slid ugly +freighters through the dirty water.</p> + +<p>Like the Ancient Mariner I sat there dully on the pier watching the life +of the ocean go past, and I would try to jot it down. But soon I would +stop. "All right—who cares?" The punch was gone. It grew hot and the +water smelt. And I was as blue a reporter of life as ever chewed his +pencil.</p> + +<p>But life has a way of punching up even a stale young writer. In the +rooms above mine lived a man and wife who quarreled half way through the +night. Night after night they railed at each other, until one horrible +night of screams, in the middle of which I heard the man come running +downstairs. He banged at my door.</p> + +<p>"Come in," I cried morosely. A big figure entered the dark room.</p> + +<p>"Look here," said a rough frightened voice. "Get up and get dressed and +run for a doctor. Will you, son? I'm in a hell of a hole!"</p> + +<p>"What's the matter!"</p> + +<p>"My woman is havin' a baby, that's what," he answered fiercely. "We +wasn't expectin' it so soon! An' there ain't a single doctor in miles! +But there's a night watchman with a 'phone down there in the dockshed!"</p> + +<p>"All right, old man, I'll do my best."</p> + +<p>"Say!" he shouted after me, as I hurried down the stairs. "If you know a +damn thing about this business<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> come back here the minute you've +'phoned! I'm in a hole, brother, a hell of a hole!"</p> + +<p>I came back soon, and within a few minutes after I came I saw a baby +born.</p> + +<p>I did not sleep that night. My mind was curiously clear. I had had the +jolt that I needed from life—its agony and bloody sweat, its mystery. +It was not dull, it was not stale. The only trouble lay in me. I must +find a new angle from which to write.</p> + +<p>Why not try becoming one of the workers? The man upstairs was a tug +captain, and grateful to me for what help I had given; he now agreed to +take me on his tug, where there was plenty of simple work which I did +for a dollar a day and my board. And at once I felt a difference. The +light work steadied my overwrought nerves and unlocked my mind which had +set tight. And now at last I began to see my way out of the jungle.</p> + +<p>For the tug belonged to a row of piers about a mile to the southward. +Brand new gigantic piers they were, with solid rows of factory buildings +on the shore behind them, all owned by one great company, which rented +floors or parts of floors to hundreds of manufacturers here. The raw +materials they required were landed from barges or ships at the piers +and delivered to their doors at once, and their finished products were +conveyed in the same way to all parts of the world. Here was a key to +the future port of ordered combination that Eleanore's father was +working toward. Here was the place I must write up before he came back +from abroad, to show him that I had found it.</p> + +<p>And the very certainty of this increased my exasperation. For even still +I could not write. Doggedly I worked at night up there in my room in the +tenement, but I wrote the most tedious dismal stuff which I would tear +up savagely. Inanely I would pound my head as though to put punch into +it.</p> + +<p>But another miracle happened to me.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p> + +<p>On one of those enormous piers, roofed over, dim and cool inside, I +stood one day looking out on the deck of an East Indian freighter, where +two half-naked Malays were polishing the brasswork. One of them was a +boy of ten. His small face was uncouth and primitive almost as some +little ape's, but I saw him look up again and again with a sudden +gleaming expectancy. I grew curious and waited. Now the looks came +oftener, his every move was restless. And after a time another boy, a +little New York "newsie," with a pack of evening papers, came loitering +along the pier. Unconcernedly up the gang-plank he went, while the Malay +crouched in his corner, rigid and tense, his black eyes fixed. The white +boy took no notice. Climbing up a ladder he sold a couple of papers to +some officers on a deck above, and then he went down again to the dock. +Presently one of the officers yawned and threw his paper over the rail, +and as it fell to the lower deck in an instant the Malay boy was upon +it, devouring its headlines and its pictures with his animal eyes, with +one of his small bare brown feet upon the jeweled bosom of the latest +Fifth Avenue divorcee.</p> + +<p>"Where does that kid sleep?" I asked an officer. I was shown his bunk +below, and there I found I had guessed right. For the side and the top +and both ends of his bunk were lined with red headlines and newspaper +pictures all carefully cut and pasted on. Five of the New York "Giants" +were there.</p> + +<p>And as though the fresh fierce hungriness had passed from that small +heathen's soul into my own, that day I again became a reporter of things +to be seen in the port of New York.</p> + +<p>Back into the dockshed I went, and all up and down and in and out among +piles of strange and odorous stuffs. And once more I felt the wonder of +this modern ocean world. I followed this raw produce of Mother Earth's +four corners back into those factory buildings ashore. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> saw it made +into chewing-gum, toys, sofas, glue, curled hair and wall-paper. I saw +it made into ladles' hats, corks, carpets, dynamos, stuffed dates. I saw +it made into dirt-proof collars and shirt bosoms, salad dressing, +blackboards, corsets and the like. Again I fairly reveled in lists of +things and the places they came from and the places to which they were +going. I saw chewing-gum start for Rio and Quaker Oats for Shanghai, +patent medicine for Nabat, curled hair for Yokohama, "movy" theater +seats for Sydney, tomato soup for Cape Town and corsets for Rangoon.</p> + +<p>"From Everywhere to Anywhere" was the title of my article. It took only +a week to write, and was ready when the Dillons came home.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<p>They landed toward the end of July and I went to the dock to meet them.</p> + +<p>Elated over my finished story, which I had in my pocket, and made +absurdly happy by the sight of Eleanore smiling down at me over the +rail, I was surprised at the greeting she gave me.</p> + +<p>"Why, you poor boy. How terribly hard you've been working," she said. +And she looked at me as though I were sick and worn to the bone. The end +of it was that I accepted delightedly an invitation to spend a week up +at their cottage on the Sound.</p> + +<p>Those were seven vivid glowing days. I could not relax, I was too +intensely happy, I had too much to tell her, not only about my work but +about a host of other things that without rhyme or reason popped into my +mind and had to be said. The range of our talk was tremendous, and the +wider we ranged the closer we drew. For she too was telling things, and +her things were as unexpected as mine and infinitely more absorbing. Her +manner toward me had quite changed. It was that of a nurse with an +invalid, she frankly ordered me about.</p> + +<p>"Why can't you lie back on those cushions?" she asked one morning when +we were out in her boat. "You ought to be dozing half the day—and +instead you're as wide awake as an owl."</p> + +<p>"I am," I admitted happily. "I'm trying to see everything." The chic +little hat and the blouse she wore were adorably fresh from Paris, and +as I watched her run her boat I could feel flowing into my body and soul +a perfectly boundless store of new life.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I've been thinking you over," she said.</p> + +<p>"Have you?" I asked delightedly. I had often wondered if she had. "What +do you think?" I inquired.</p> + +<p>Eleanore frowned perplexedly.</p> + +<p>"You're such a queer combination," she said. "You have such ridiculous +ups and downs. To-day you're way up, aren't you."</p> + +<p>"I am," I said very earnestly. She looked off placidly over the Sound.</p> + +<p>"You're so very sensitive," she went on. "You let things take hold of +you so hard. And yet on the other hand you seem to be so very——" she +hesitated for a word.</p> + +<p>"Tough," I suggested cheerfully.</p> + +<p>"No—hungry," Eleanore said. "You're always reaching out for things—you +jump right into them so hard. And even when they hurt you—and you're +hurt quite easily—you hang on and won't let go. Look at the way you've +gone at the harbor right from the start. And you're doing it +still—you've done it all summer until it has made you look like a +ghost. And I guess you'll keep on all your life. There are harbors +everywhere, you know—in a way the whole world is a harbor—and unless +you change a lot you're going to be hurt a good deal."</p> + +<p>"My mother agreed with you," I said. "She wanted me to be a professor in +a quiet college town."</p> + +<p>"Please stop twinkling your eyes," Eleanore commanded. "Your mother knew +you very well. You might have done that—and settled down—with some +nice quiet college girl—if you had done it years ago. As it is, of +course you're hopeless."</p> + +<p>"I am not hopeless," I declared indignantly. "If I can only get what I +want I'll be the happiest fellow alive!"</p> + +<p>"I know," she answered thoughtfully. "You told me that before. You want +fiction, don't you."</p> + +<p>"Yes, fiction," I said wrathfully. "I want that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> more than anything +else. But I don't want any quiet kind, and I don't want any quiet town," +I went on, leaning forward intensely. "I want the harbor and the city—I +want it thick and heavy, and just as fast as it will come. I want all +the life there is in the world—all the beauty—all the happiness! And I +can't wait—I want it soon!"</p> + +<p>From under the brim of her soft white hat her blue-gray eyes were fixed +intently on the shore, which was miles away. But watching her I saw she +knew that all the time I was saying desperately, "I want you."</p> + +<p>I knew she did not want me to say anything like that out loud, and I +felt myself that I had no right—not until I had done so much more in my +writing. But I kept circling around it. Half the time on purpose and as +often quite unconsciously, in all we talked about those days I kept +eagerly filling in the picture of the life we two might lead. When in +one of her cool hostile moods—moods which came over her suddenly—she +told me almost jealously how happy she'd been with her father abroad and +how together they had planned to go to India, China, Japan in the years +to come, I brought her back to my subject by saying: "I mean to travel a +lot myself."</p> + +<p>"That's one advantage I have as a writer," I continued earnestly. "I'll +never be tied down to one place. All my life—whenever I choose—I can +pick up my work and go anywhere."</p> + +<p>She looked straight back into my eyes.</p> + +<p>"I wish my father could," she said.</p> + +<p>"Look here," I said indignantly. "Your father has been four months +abroad while I have been in Brooklyn! Isn't it only fair and square to +let <i>me</i> travel this afternoon?" She looked at me reluctantly.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she agreed. "I suppose it is."</p> + +<p>"Come along," I urged, and off we went. While our boat drifted idly that +long, lazy afternoon, we went<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> careering all over the world and I kept +doggedly by her side. Every now and then I would make her stop while we +had a good look at each other, exploring deep into the old questions, +"What are you and what do you want?"</p> + +<p>"You can't run a motorboat all your life," I reminded her. "What are you +going to tackle next?"</p> + +<p>"Our living-room," she answered. "I'm going to have it done over next +month."</p> + +<p>That took us into house furnishings, and I gave her ideas by the score. +I had never thought about this before, but now I thought hard and +eagerly—until she brought me up with a jerk, by pityingly murmuring:</p> + +<p>"What perfectly frightful taste you have. It's funny—because you're an +artist—you really write quite beautiful things."</p> + +<p>"I don't care," I answered grimly. "I can see that living-room——"</p> + +<p>"So can I," she said cheerfully. "But so long as you like it, that's all +there is to be said. You're the one who has to live in it, you know. Now +my father likes a room——"</p> + +<p>And while I looked gloomily over the water she told me what her father +liked.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>He came out from the city each evening by train. He refused to use the +boat these days, he said he was so infernally busy that he could not +spare the time. He brought out stacks of papers and plans which had +piled up while he was abroad, and with these he busied himself at night. +And though Eleanore from the veranda glanced in at him frequently, she +never again caught him looking old. And when she went in to make him +stop working he smilingly told her to leave him alone. He smoked many +cigars with apparent enjoyment, his lean face wrinkling over the smoke +as he turned over plan after plan for the harbor. His manner to me was +if any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>thing even kindlier than before. He began calling me "Billy" now.</p> + +<p>On the last night of my stay he said:</p> + +<p>"I think you're the man I've been looking for. I've just read your story +and you've done exactly what I hoped. You've pictured one spot of +efficiency in a whole dreary desert of waste. Come up to my office +to-morrow at ten."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<p>So at last I went up to the tower.</p> + +<p>His office took up an entire floor near the tapering top of the +building, and as we walked slowly around the narrow steel balcony +outside, a tremendous panorama unrolled down there before our eyes. We +could see every part of the port below stretching away to the horizon, +and through Dillon's powerful field glass I saw pictures of all I had +seen before in my weary weeks of trudging down there in the haze and +dust. Down there I had felt like a little worm, up here I felt among the +gods. There all had been matter and chaos, here all was mind and a will +to find a way out of confusion. The glass gave me the pictures in swift +succession, in a moment I made a leap of ten miles, and as I listened on +and on to the quiet voice at my elbow, the pictures all came sweeping +together as parts of one colossal whole. The first social vision of my +life I had through Dillon's field glass.</p> + +<p>"To see any harbor or city or state as a whole," he said, "is what most +Americans cannot do. And it's what they've got to learn to do."</p> + +<p>And while I looked where he told me to, like a surgeon about to operate +he talked of his mighty patient, a giant struggling to breathe, with +swollen veins and arteries. He made me see the Hudson, the East River +and the railroad lines all pouring in their traffic, to be shifted and +reloaded onto the ocean vessels in a perfect fever of confusion and +delay. Far below us you could see long lines of tiny trucks and wagons +waiting hours for a chance to get into the docksheds. New York, he +said,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> in true Yankee style had developed its waterfront pell mell, each +railroad and each ship line grabbing sites for its own use, until the +port was now so clogged, so tangled and congested that it was able to +grow no more.</p> + +<p>"And it's got to grow," he said. The old helter-skelter method had +served well enough in years gone by, for this port had been like this +whole bountiful land, its natural advantages had been so prodigious it +could stand all our blind and hoggish mistakes. But now we were rapidly +nearing the time when every mistake we made would cost us tens of +millions of dollars. For within a few years the Big Ditch would open +across Panama, and the commerce of South America, together with that of +the Orient, would pour into the harbor here to meet the westbound +commerce of Europe. Ships of all nations would steam through the +Narrows, and we must be ready to welcome them all, with an ample +generous harbor worthy of the world's first port.</p> + +<p>"To get ready," he said, "what we've got to do is to organize this port +as a whole, like the big industrial plant it is."</p> + +<p>He began to show me some of the plans in blue-print maps and sketches. I +saw tens of thousands of freight cars gathered in great central yards at +a few main strategic points connected by long tunnels with all the minor +centers. I saw the port no longer as a mere body of water, but with a +whole region deep beneath of these long winding tunnels through which +flowed the traffic unseen and unheard. I saw along the waterfronts +continuous lines of docksheds where by huge cranes and other devices the +loading and unloading could be done with enormous saving of time. Along +the heavy roofs of steel of these continuous lines of buildings +stretched wide ocean boulevards with trees and shrubs and flowers to +shut out the clamorous life below. Warehouses and factory buildings rose +in solid rows behind. The city was to build them all, and the city as +the landlord was to invite the ships<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> and railroads, and the +manufacturers too, to come in and get together, to stop their fighting +and grabbing and work with each other in one great plan.</p> + +<p>"That's what we mean nowadays by a port," he told me at the end of our +talk. "A complicated industrial organ, the heart of a country's +circulation, pumping in and out its millions of tons of traffic as +quickly and cheaply as possible. That's efficiency, scientific +management or just plain engineering, whatever you want to call it. But +it's got to be done for us all in a plan instead of each for himself in +a blind struggling chaos."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>I came down from the tower with a dazed, excited feeling which lasted +all the rest of the day. That harbor of confusion had been for months my +entire world, it had baffled and beaten me till I was weak. And now this +man had swept together all its parts and showed me one immense design.</p> + +<p>He had promised me the first use of his plans. With this to go on I +drafted a scheme for a series of magazine articles on "The First Port of +the World," and I soon placed it in advance at four hundred dollars an +article. At last I was coming up in life, my first big story had begun!</p> + +<p>I went with Dillon each week-end up to the cottage on the Sound. Here he +talked in detail of his dreams, and Eleanore with her old passion and +pride delighted to draw him out for me. And not only her father—for to +help me in my work she invited out here in the evenings many of his +engineer friends.</p> + +<p>"It has always been awfully hard for me," she confided, "to understand +big questions by reading about them out of books. But I love to hear +about them from men who are living and working right in them. I love to +feel a little how it must be to be living their lives."</p> + +<p>She was a wonderful listener, for she had quietly studied each man until +now she had a kind of an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> instinct for drawing the very best of him out. +While he talked she would sit with her sewing, now and then putting in a +question to help. Often I would glance at her there and see in her +slightly frowning face how intently she was listening, thinking and +planning to help me. Sometimes she would meet my look. I would grow +tremendously happy.</p> + +<p>"In a little while," I thought. But then I would pull myself up with a +jerk: "Stop looking at her, you young fool, keep your mind on this +engineer. You've got the chance of your life right now to make good in +your work and be happy. Don't fall down! Get busy!"</p> + +<p>And I did. I threw myself into the lives of these men who were the +living embodiments of all that bigness, boldness, punch that had so +gripped and thrilled me. The harbor had drawn them around it out of the +hum and rush of the country, and here they were in its service, watching +it, studying, planning for its even more stupendous growth. One night I +heard them discuss the idea of moving the East River, making it flow +across Long Island, filling in its old water bed and making New York and +Brooklyn one. They talked of this scheme in a hard-headed Yankee way +that made me forget for the moment its boldness, until some cool remark +opened my eyes to the fact that this change would shift vast +populations, plant millions of people this way and that.</p> + +<p>But against these men of the tower, with their wide, deliberate views +ahead, embracing and binding together not only this port but the whole +western world depending upon it, I found in the city jungle innumerable +petty men, who could see only their own narrow interests of to-day, and +who fought blindly any change for a to-morrow—fellows in such mortal +fear of some possible benefit to their rivals that they could see none +for themselves. They were hopelessly used to fighting each other. And I +came to feel that all these men, though many were still young in years, +belonged to a generation gone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> by, to the age of individual strife that +my father had lived and worked in—and that like him they were all soon +to be swept to one side by the inexorable harbor of to-day, which had no +further use for them.</p> + +<p>It needed bigger men. It needed men like Dillon and behind him those +mysterious powers downtown, the men he had called the brains of the +nation, who read the signs of the new times, who saw that the West was +now fast filling up, that the eyes of the nation were once more turning +outward, and that untold resources of wealth were soon to be available +for mighty sea adventures, a vast fleet of Yankee ships that should +drive the surplus output of our teeming industries into all markets of +the world. And the men who saw these things coming were the only ones +who were big enough to prepare the country to meet them. My father's +dream was at last coming true—too late for him to play a part. He had +been but a prophet, a lonely pioneer.</p> + +<p>My view of the harbor was different now. I had seen it before as a vast +machine molding the lives of all people around it. But now behind the +machine itself I felt the minds of its molders. I saw its ponderous +masses of freight, its multitudes of people, all pushed and shifted this +way and that by these invisible powers. And by degrees I made for myself +a new god, and its name was Efficiency.</p> + +<p>Here at last was a god that I felt could stand! I had made so many in +years gone by, I had been making them all my life—from those first +fearful idols, the condors and the cannibals, to the kind old god of +goodness in my mother's church and the radiant goddess of beauty and art +over there in Paris. One by one I had raised them up, and one by one the +harbor had flowed in and dragged them down. But now in my full manhood +(for remember I was twenty-five!) I had found and taken to myself a god +that I felt sure of. No harbor could make it totter and fall. For it was +armed with Science,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> its feet stood firm on mechanical laws and in its +head were all the brains of all the strong men at the top.</p> + +<p>And all the multitudes below seemed mere pigmies to me now. I remember +one late twilight, coming back from a talk with an engineer, I boarded a +ferry at the rush hour and watched the people herd on like sheep. How +small they seemed, how petty their thoughts compared to mine, how blind +their views of the harbor.</p> + +<p>Here was a little Italian bride, just landed, by the looks of her. She +kept her face close to her lover's, smiling dazedly into his eyes. And +she saw no harbor. Here near by was a fat old gentleman with a highly +painted young lady who laughed and swore softly at him as I passed. I +sat down beside them a moment and listened. The old gentleman seemed +quite mad with desire. He was pleading eagerly, whining. And he saw no +harbor. Close by sat two tall serious men. One was deep in a socialist +book, the other in news of the Giants. Both seemed equally absorbed. And +they saw no harbor. I moved on to another spot, and sitting down by a +thin seedy-looking Irish girl I heard her talk to her husband about +having their baby's life insured according to a wonderful plan an agent +had described to her. As she spoke she was frowning anxiously—and she +saw no harbor. Not far away a plump flashy young creature was smiling +down on the bootblack who was busily shining her small patent leather +shoes. Her bright blue petticoat lifted high displayed the most enticing +charms, and as now she turned to look off toward the lights of the city +ahead, she smiled gaily to herself. And she saw no harbor. And alone up +at the windy bow I found a squat husky laborer with his dirty coat and +shirt thrown open wide, the wind on his bare hairy chest, hungrily +watching the dock ahead as though for his supper—seeing no harbor, no +world's first port, no plans for vast fleets or a great canal, none of +the big things shaping his life.</p> + +<p>But I saw. Orders had gone out from the tower<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> east and west and south +and north to show me every courtesy. And with a miraculous youthful ease +I understood all that I saw and heard. The details all fitted right into +the whole, or if they didn't I made them fit. Here was a splendid end to +chaos and blind wrestling with life. And feeling stronger and more sure +than ever in my life before, I set out to build my series of glory +stories about it all, laying on the color thick to reach a million pigmy +readers, grip them, pull them out of their holes, make them sit up and +rub their eyes.</p> + +<p>For I was now a success in life! The exuberant joy of youth and success +filled the whole immense region for me. In those Fall days there was +nothing too hard to try, no queer hours too exhausting, no deep corner +too remote, in the search for my material. I saw the place from an old +fisherman's boat and from a revenue launch at night, with its +searchlight combing the waters far and wide for smugglers. I saw it from +big pilot boats that put far out to sea to meet the incoming liners. I +ate many good suppers and slept long nights on a stout jolly tug called +<i>The Happy</i>, where from my snug bunk at the stern through the open door +I could watch the stars. I went down into tunnels deep beneath the +waters. I went often to the Navy Yard. I dined many nights on +battleships, where the talk of the naval officers recalled my father's +picture of a fighting ocean world. They too talked of the Big Canal, but +in terms of war instead of peace. I went out to the coast defenses, and +with an army major I made a tour of the lights and buoys.</p> + +<p>And perhaps more often than anywhere else, I went to a rude log cabin on +the side of a wooded hill high up on Staten Island, where lived a +Norwegian engineer. He had a cozy den up there, with book-shelves set +into the logs, two deep bunks, a few bright rugs on the rough floor, +some soft, ponderous leather chairs and a crackling little stove on +which we cooked delicious suppers. Later<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> out on the narrow porch we +would puff lazy smoke wreaths and watch the vast valley of lights below, +from the distant twinkling arch of the Bridge to the sparkling towers of +old Coney. Down there like swarms of fire-flies were countless darting +skurrying lights, red and blue and green and white. Far off to the south +flashed the light of the Hook, and still other signals gleamed low from +the ocean.</p> + +<p>Here I came often with Eleanore, for she had now come back to town. In +her boat we went to many new spots and back to all the old ones. We +found new beauties in them all. At home in the evenings we had long +talks. And all the time I could feel that we two both knew what was +coming, that steadily we were drawing together, that all my work and my +view of the harbor took its joy and its glory from this.</p> + +<p>"In a little while," I thought.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<p>I had been little at home those days, for the house in Brooklyn +disturbed me now. Poor old Dad. Since I had secured my contract he had +tried so hard to help me, to be eager, interested, alive, to talk it all +over with me at night. And this I did not like to do. A vague feeling of +guilt and disloyalty would creep into my now boundless zest for the +harbor that had crowded him out. And I think that he suspected this. One +night, when with this feeling I stupidly tried to talk as though I still +hated all its ugliness, its clamor, smoke and grime, I caught a twinkle +of pain in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Boy," he broke in roughly, "I hope you'll always talk and write what +you believe and nothing else! I wouldn't give a picayune for any chap +who didn't!"</p> + +<p>I could feel him watching anxiously my affair with Eleanore. In the days +when she had come to the house he had grown very fond of her, and now by +frequent questions, slipped in with a studied indifference, he showed an +interest which in time became a deep suspense.</p> + +<p>"Out again this evening, son?" he called in one night from the bathroom +where he was washing his hands and face before going down to supper. In +my room adjoining I was dressing to go out.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Dad."</p> + +<p>"What for?"</p> + +<p>"Some work."</p> + +<p>"Be out for dinner too?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Who with?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, a pilot," I answered abstractedly. I was won<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>dering if she would +wear her blue gown. She had asked quite a number of people that night. +Then I saw Dad in the doorway. Briskly rubbing his gray head with a +towel, he was eyeing my evening clothes.</p> + +<p>"Devilish polished chaps these days—pilots," he commented. I heard a +low snort of glee from his room.</p> + +<p>My sister, on the other hand, had no more patience than before with this +fast deepening love of mine, which had drawn me away from her radical +friends up to the men of the tower who worked for the big companies. By +the most vigorous ironies, the most industrious witty remarks, she made +me feel how thoroughly she disapproved of anything so deadening as +marriage, home and settling down, in this glorious age of new ideas.</p> + +<p>One morning at breakfast, when I remarked as I commonly did that I would +be out for dinner that night,</p> + +<p>"Where are you going?" she asked abruptly.</p> + +<p>"To Eleanore Dillon's," I replied. Our eyes met squarely for a moment.</p> + +<p>"Do you know what it means to go there so often, almost every night?" +she asked.</p> + +<p>"I do," I answered bluntly. I would finish this meddling once and for +all. But Sue did not look finished.</p> + +<p>"You'd better stay home to-night, Billy," she said.</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Joe Kramer is coming."</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"He telephoned me late last night. He's just come from Colorado and he +sails to-morrow for England. He's awfully anxious to see you."</p> + +<p>Of course he was, and I knew what about! I saw at once by the look on +her face that Sue had told him all about me and had begged him to see +what he could do. Why couldn't they leave a fellow alone, I said +wrathfully to myself.</p> + +<p>But my ire softened when I met Joe. In the year and a half since I had +seen him the lines in his face had deep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>ened, the stoop of his big +shoulders had grown even more pronounced, and again I felt that wistful, +frowning, searching quality in him. Beneath his gruffness and his jeers +he was so honestly pushing on for what he could find most real in life. +A wave of the old affection came over me suddenly without warning. +Vaguely I wondered about it. Why did he always grip me so?</p> + +<p>My father too appeared at first delighted to see him. He had shown a +keen relish for J. K. from that first time in college when I had brought +him home for Christmas. Since then, whenever Joe had come, he and Dad +had always managed to retreat to the study together and smoke and have +long dogged arguments. But to-night it was not the same. For in his +growth as a radical, Joe had gone beyond all arguing now. Lines of deep +displeasure slowly tightened on Dad's face. All through dinner he kept +attempting to turn the talk from Joe's work to mine. But this I would +have none of, I wanted to be let alone. So I nervously kept the +conversation on what Joe was up to. And Sue seemed more than eager to +learn.</p> + +<p>J. K. was up to a good deal.</p> + +<p>"This muckraking game is played out," he said. "We all know how rotten +things are. All we want to know now is what's to be done." And he +himself had become absorbed in what the working class was doing. As a +reporter in the West he had been to strike after strike, ending with a +long ugly struggle in the Colorado mines. He talked about it intensely, +the greed of the mine owners, the brutality of the militia, the "bull +pens" into which strikers were thrown. Vaguely I felt he was giving us a +most distorted picture, and glancing now and then at my father I saw +that he thought it a pack of lies. Joe made all the strikers the most +heroic figures, and he spoke of their struggle as only a part of a great +labor war that was soon to sweep the entire land.</p> + +<p>Sue excitedly drew him out, and I felt it was all for my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> benefit. Joe +said that he was going abroad in order that he might write the truth +about the labor world over there. The American papers and magazines +would let you write the truth, he said, about labor over in Europe, +because it was at a safe distance. But they wouldn't allow it here. And +then Sue looked across at me as though to say, "It's only stuff like +<i>yours</i> they allow."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you two go out for a walk?" she suggested sweetly after +dinner. And I consented gladly, for there are times when nothing on +earth can be worse than your own sister.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>We went down to the old East River docks and walked for some time with +little said. Then Joe turned on me abruptly.</p> + +<p>"Well, Bill," he said, "I've read your stuff. It's damn well written."</p> + +<p>"Thanks," I replied.</p> + +<p>"If I've got any knocking to do," he went on with a visible effort, "I +know you'll give me credit for not knocking out of jealousy. I'm not +jealous, I'm honestly tickled to death. I was wrong about you in Paris. +You and me were different kinds. What you got over there was just what +you needed, it has put you already way out of my class, and it's going +to give you a lot of power as a spreader of ideas. That's why I hate so +like the devil to see you starting out like this, with what I'm so sure +are the wrong ideas."</p> + +<p>"How are they wrong?"</p> + +<p>"Think a minute. Why is your magazine pushing you so? The first story of +your series is only just out and they've already boomed you all over the +country. Why, Bill, I saw your picture in a trolley car in Denver—and +you're only twenty-five years old! It's damn fine writing, I'll say it +again, but that's not reason enough for this. You've got to go down +deeper and look into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> your magazine's policy—which is to strike a +balance for all kinds of middle-class readers and for their advertisers +too. They've run some radical stuff this year, and they're booming you +now to balance off, to show how 'safe and sane' they can be in the way +they look at life, at big business and at industry—as you do here in +the harbor. You're making gods out of the men at the top, you've seen +'em as they see themselves, and you've only seen what they see here. +You've missed all the millions of people here who depend on the place +for their jobs and their lives. They don't count for you——"</p> + +<p>"That's not true at all!" I interrupted hotly. "It's just for them and +their children that fellows like Dillon are on the job—to make a better +harbor!"</p> + +<p>"<i>For</i> them, <i>for</i> the people!" said Joe. "That's what I'm kicking at in +you, Bill—you treat us all like a mass of dubs that need gods above to +do everything <i>for</i> us because we can't do it all by ourselves!"</p> + +<p>"I don't believe the people can," I retorted. "From what I've seen I +honestly don't believe they count. The fellows that count in a job like +this are the fellows with punch and grit enough to fight their way up +out of the ranks——"</p> + +<p>"I know, and be lieutenants and captains in a regular army of peace, +with your friend Dillon in command and Wall Street in command of him! +Isn't that your view?"</p> + +<p>"All right, it is! I don't see any harm in that. It's the only safe way +that I can see out of this mess of a harbor we've got. These men are the +efficient ones—they're the fellows that have the brains and that know +how to work—to use science, money, everything—to get a decent world +ahead. What's the matter with efficiency?"</p> + +<p>"Your latest god," sneered J. K.</p> + +<p>"Suppose it is! What's wrong with it? What's the matter with Dillon? Is +he a crook?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Joe, "that's just the worst of him. He's so damned honest, +he's such a hard worker. I've met<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> men like him all over the country, +and they're the most dangerous men we've got. Because they're the real +strength of Wall Street—just as thousands of clean hard working priests +are the strength of the Catholic church! They keep their church going +and Dillon keeps his—he's a regular priest of big business! And he +takes hold of kids like you and molds your views like his for life. Look +at what he has done with you here. Does he say a word to you about +Graft? Does he talk of the North Atlantic Pool or any one of the other +pools and schemes by which they keep up rates? Does he make you think +about low wages and long hours and all the fellows hurt or killed on the +docks and in the stoke holes? Does he give you any feeling at all of +this harbor as a city of four million people, most of 'em getting a raw +deal and getting mad about it? That's more important to you and me than +all the efficiency gods on earth. You've got to decide which side you're +on. And that's what's got me talking now. I see so plain which way +you're letting yourself be pulled. I've seen so many pulled the same +way. It's so pleasant up there at the top, there's so much money and +brains up there and refinement—such women to get married to, such homes +to settle down in. Sometimes I wish every promising radical kid in the +country could get himself into some scandal that would cut him off for +life from any chance of being received by this damned respectable upper +class!"</p> + +<p>He stopped for a moment, and then with a gruff intensity:</p> + +<p>"We need you, Bill," he ended. "We need you bad. We don't want you to +marry a girl at the top. We don't want you anchored up there for life."</p> + +<p>We were standing still now, and I was looking out on the river. Through +the grip of his hand on my arm I could feel his body taut and quivering, +his whole spirit hot with revolt. The same old Joe, but tenser now, +strained almost to the breaking point. But I myself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> was different. In +college he had appealed to me because there I was groping and had found +nothing. But now I had found something sure. And so, though to my own +surprise a deep emotional part of me rose up in sudden response to Joe +and made me feel guilty to hold back, it was only for a moment, and then +my mind told me he was wrong. Poor old J. K. What a black distorted view +he had—grown out of a distorted life of traveling continually from one +center of trouble to another. How could he be any judge of life?</p> + +<p>"Look here, Joe," I said. "I'm a kid, as you say, and some day I may see +your side of this. But I don't now, I can't—for since I left Paris I've +been through enough to make me feel what a job living is, I mean really +living and growing. And I know what a difference Dillon has made. He has +been to my life what he is to this harbor. And I'm not old enough nor +strong enough to throw over a man as big as that and as honest and clean +in his thinking, and throw myself in with your millions of people, who +seem to me either mighty poor thinkers or fellows who don't think at +all. They're not in my line. I believe in men who can think clean, who +have trained their minds by years of hard work, who don't try to tear +down and bring things to a smash, but are always building, building! You +talk about this upper class. But they're my people, aren't they, that's +where I was born. And I'm going on with them. I believe they're right +and I know they're strong—I mean strong enough to handle all this—make +it better."</p> + +<p>"They'll make it worse," Joe answered. And then as he turned to me once +more he added very bitterly, "You'll see strength enough in the people +some day."</p> + +<p>A few moments later he left me.</p> + +<p>I looked at my watch and found it was not yet nine o'clock. I went to +Eleanore Dillon. And within an hour Joe and his world of crowds and +confusion were swept utterly out of my mind.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<p>I had often told Eleanore of Joe. She had asked me about him many times. +"It's queer," she had said, "what a hold he must have had on you. I feel +sure he's just the kind of a person I wouldn't like and who wouldn't +like me. I don't think he's really your kind either, and yet he has a +hold on you still. Yes, he has, I can feel he has."</p> + +<p>And to-night when I told her that I had been with him,</p> + +<p>"What did he want of you?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"He wants me to drop everything," I answered. And I tried to give her +some idea of what he had said.</p> + +<p>But as I talked, the thought came suddenly into my mind that here at +last was the very time to settle my life one way or the other, to ask +her if she would be my wife. I grew excited and confused, my voice +sounding unnatural to my ears. And as I talked on about Joe, my heart +pounding, I could barely keep the thoughts in line.</p> + +<p>"And I don't want what he wants," I ended desperately. "That nor +anything like it. I want just what I've been getting—just this kind of +work and life. And I want <i>you</i>—for life, I mean—if you can ever feel +like that."</p> + +<p>Eleanore said nothing. In an instant the world and everything in it had +narrowed to the two of us. The intensity was unbearable. I rose abruptly +and turned away. I felt suddenly far out of my depth. Confusedly and +furiously I felt that I had bungled things, that here was something in +life so strange I could do nothing with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> it. What a young fool I was to +have thought she could ever care for a fellow like me! I felt she must +be smiling. Despairingly I turned to see.</p> + +<p>And Eleanore was smiling—in a way that steadied me in a flash. For her +smile was so plainly a quick, strong effort to steady herself.</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you want me like that," she said, in a voice that did not +sound like hers. "I don't believe in hiding things.... I'm—very happy." +She looked down at her hands in her lap and they slowly locked together. +"But of course it means our whole lives, you see—and we mustn't hurry +or make a mistake. Now that we know—this much—we can talk about it +quite openly—about each other and what we want—what kinds of +lives—what we believe in—whether we'd be best for each other. It's +what we ought to talk about—a good many times—it may be weeks."</p> + +<p>"All right," I agreed. I was utterly changed. At her first words I had +felt a deep rush of relief, and seeing her tremendous pluck and the +effort she was making, I pitied, worshiped and loved her all in the same +moment. And as we talked on for a few minutes more in that grave and +unnaturally sensible way about the pros and cons of it all, these +feelings within me mounted so swiftly that all at once I again broke +off.</p> + +<p>"I don't believe there's any use in this," I declared. "It's perfectly +idiotic!"</p> + +<p>"Of course it is," she promptly agreed.</p> + +<p>And then after a rigid instant when each of us looked at the other as +though asking, "Quick! What are we going to do?"—she burst out laughing +excitedly. So did I, and that carried her into my arms and—I remember +nothing—until after a while she asked me to go, because she wanted to +be by herself. And I noticed how bright and wet were her eyes.</p> + +<p>I saw them still in the darkness down along the river front, where I +walked for half the rest of the night,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> stopping to draw a deep breath +of the sea and laugh excitedly and go on.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Life changed rapidly after that night. I grew so absorbed in Eleanore +and in all that was waiting just ahead, that it was hard not to shut out +everything else, most of all impersonal things. It was hard to write, +and for days I wrote nothing. I remember only intimate talks. Everyone I +talked to seemed to be deeply personal.</p> + +<p>I told my father about it the next evening before supper. I found him in +his old chair in the study buried deep in his paper.</p> + +<p>"Say, Dad—would you mind coming up to your room?" He smote his paper to +one side.</p> + +<p>"What the devil," he asked, "do I want to come up to my room for?"</p> + +<p>"I've—the fact is I've something you ought to know." I could hear Sue +in the other room.</p> + +<p>"All right, my boy," he said nervously. As he followed me he kept +clearing his throat. Sue must have guessed and prepared him. In his room +he fussed about, grunted hard over getting off his shoes and, finding +his slippers, then lay back on his sofa with his hands behind his head +and uttered an explosive sigh.</p> + +<p>"All right, son, now fire ahead," he said jocosely. I loved him at that +moment.</p> + +<p>"You know Eleanore Dillon," I began.</p> + +<p>"She turned you down!"</p> + +<p>"No! She took me!"</p> + +<p>"The devil you say!" He sat bolt upright, staring. "Well, my boy, I'm +very glad," he said thickly. His eyes were moist. "I'm glad—glad! She's +a fine girl—strong character—strong! I wish your poor mother were +alive—she'd be happy—this girl will make a good wife—you must bring +her right here to live with us!"</p> + +<p>And so he talked on, his voice trembling. Then out of his confusion rose +the money question, and at once<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> his mind grew clear. And to my surprise +he urged me to lose no time in looking around for "some good, steady +position" in a magazine office. My writing I could do at night.</p> + +<p>"It's so uncertain at best," he said. "It's nothing you can count on. +And you've got to think of a wife and children. <i>Her</i> father has no +money saved."</p> + +<p>I found he'd been looking Dillon up, and this jarred on me horribly. But +still worse was his lack of faith in my writing. I was making four +hundred dollars a month, and it was a most unpleasant jolt to have it +taken so lightly.</p> + +<p>I went down to Sue. As I came into the living room she met me suddenly +at the door. In a moment her arms were about my neck and she was saying +softly:</p> + +<p>"I know what it is, dear, and I'm glad—I'm awfully glad. If I've been +horrid about it ever, please forgive me. I'm sure now it's just the life +you want!"</p> + +<p>And that evening, while Dad slept in his chair, Sue and I had a long +affectionate talk. We drew closer than we had been for months. She was +eager to hear everything, she wanted to know all our plans. When I tried +at last to turn our talk to herself and our affairs at home, at first +she would not hear to it.</p> + +<p>"My dear boy," she said affectionately, "you've had these worries long +enough. You're to run along now and be happy and leave this house to Dad +and me."</p> + +<p>I slipped my arm around her:</p> + +<p>"Look here, Sis, let's see this right. You can't run here on what Dad +earns, and if you try to work yourself you'll only hurt him terribly. My +idea is to help as before, without letting him know that I'm doing it. +Make him think you've cut expenses."</p> + +<p>It took a long time to get her consent.</p> + +<p>The next night I went to Eleanore's father. He received me quietly, and +with a deep intensity under that steady smile of his, which reminded me +so much of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> hers, he spoke of all she had meant to him and of her brave +search for a big, happy life. He told how he had watched her with me +slowly making up her mind.</p> + +<p>"It took a long time, but it's made up now," he said. "And now that it +is, she's the kind that will go through anything for you that can ever +come up in your life." He looked at me squarely, still smiling a little, +frankly letting his new affection come into his eyes. "I wish I knew all +that's going to happen," he added, almost sadly. "I hope you'll get used +to telling me things—talking things over—anything—no matter +what—where I can be of the slightest help."</p> + +<p>Then he, too, spoke of money. He meant to keep up her allowance, he +said, and he had insured his life for her. Again, as with my father, I +felt that disturbing lack of faith in my work. I spoke of it to Eleanore +and she looked at me indignantly.</p> + +<p>"You must never think of it like that," she said. "I won't have you +writing for money. Dad has never worked that way and you're not to do it +on any account—least of all on account of me. Whatever you make we'll +live on, and that's all there is to be said—except that we'll live +splendidly," she added very gaily, "and we won't spend the finest part +of our lives saving up for rainy days. We'll take care of the rain when +it rains, and we'll have some wonderful times while we can."</p> + +<p>We decided at once on a trip abroad as soon as I had finished my work. +And I remember writing hard, and reading it aloud to her and rewriting +over and over again, for Eleanore could be severe. But I remember, too, +more trips in her boat to gather the last odds and ends. I remember how +the big harbor took on a new glory to our eyes, mingled with all the +deep personal joys and small troubles and crises we went through, the +puzzles and the questionings and the glad discoveries that made up the +swift growth of our love.</p> + +<p>And though I never once thought of Joe Kramer, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> had prophesied +aright. I belonged wholly now to Dillon's world, a world of clean +vigorous order that seemed to welcome me the more as I wrote in praise +of its power. And happy over my success, and in love and starting life +anew with all the signs so bright—how could I have any doubts of my +harbor?</p> + +<p>We were married very quietly late one April afternoon. It rained, I +remember, all that day, but the next was bright and clear for our +sailing. In our small stateroom on the ship we found a note from the +company, a large, engraved impressive affair, presenting their best +wishes and asking us to accept for the voyage one of their most +luxurious cabins.</p> + +<p>"This is what comes," said Eleanore gaily, "of being the wife of a +writer."</p> + +<p>"Or the daughter," I said softly, "of a very wonderful engineer."</p> + +<p>"You darling boy!"</p> + +<p>We moved up to a large sunny cabin. I remember her swiftly reading the +telegrams and letters there as though to get them all out of the way. I +remember her unpacking and taking possession of our first home.</p> + +<p>"We're married, aren't we," said a voice.</p> + +<p>There was only one more good-by to be said. On the deck, as we went out +of the harbor, Eleanore stood by the rail. I felt her hand close tight +on mine and I saw her eyes glisten a little with tears.</p> + +<p>"What a splendid place it has been," she said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + +<p>We found every place splendid in those weeks as we let the wanderlust +carry us on. And as though emerging from some vivid dream, various +places and faces of people stand out in my memory now, as then they +loomed in upon our absorption.</p> + +<p>I remember the little old harbor of Cherbourg, gleaming in the +moonlight, where when we landed Eleanore said, "Let's stay here awhile." +So of course we did, and then went on to Paris. We took an apartment, +very French and absurdly small, from a former Beaux Arts friend of mine. +I remember the kindly face of the maid who took such beaming care of us, +the café in front of which late at night we sat and watched the huge +shadowy carts go by on their way to the market halls, the sunrise flower +market, where we filled our cab with moss roses and plants, Polin's +songs in the "Ambassadeurs," delicious petites allées in the Bois, our +favorite rides on the tops of the 'buses, that old religious place of +mine down under the bridge by Notre Dame.</p> + +<p>All these and more we saw in fragments, now and then, looking out with +vivid interest on all the life around us, only to return to each other, +<i>into</i> each other I should say, for the exploring was quite different +now, there had been such hours between us that nothing intimate could be +held back. Nothing? Well, nothing that I thought of then. For somehow or +other, in those glad, eager afternoons and evenings, in those nights, +nothing disturbingly ugly in me so much as thought of showing its head. +Three years before in this stirring town I had felt guilty at being a +monk. But now I felt no guilt at all. For down<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> the Champs Élysées our +cab rolled serenely now, and even our driver's white hat wore an air as +though it had a place in life.</p> + +<p>From Paris we started for Munich, but we did not stop there, we happened +to feel like going on. So we went through to Constantinople, whence we +took a boat to Batoum and went up into the Caucasus, which Eleanore had +heard about once from an engineer friend of her father's. I remember +Koutais, a little town by a mountain torrent with gray vine-covered +walls around it. Shops opened into the walls like stalls. There we would +buy things for our supper and then in a crazy vehicle we would drive +miles out on the broad mountainside to an orchard pink with blossoms, +where we would build a fire and cook, and an old man in a long yellow +robe and with a turban on his head would come out of his cabin and bring +us wine. And the stars would appear and the frogs tune up in the marshes +far down in the valley below, and the filmy mists would rise and the +mountains would tower overhead. And the effect of this place upon us was +to make us feel it was only one of innumerable such vacation places that +lay ahead, festival spots in long, radiant lives. We felt this vaguely, +silently. So often we talked silently.</p> + +<p>Then there would come the most serious times, when with the deepest +thoughtfulness we would survey the years ahead and very solemnly place +ourselves, our views and beliefs. Miraculous how agreed we were! We +believed, we found, in good workmanship, in honest building, in getting +things done. We believed in Eleanore's father and all those around and +above him that could help his kind of work. We were impatient of +soft-headedness in rich people who had nothing to do, and of heavy +muddle-headedness in the millions who had too much to do, and of +muckraking of every kind which only got in the way of the builders. For +the building of a new, clean vigorous world was our religion. And it did +not seem cold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> to us, because our lives were in it and because we were +in love.</p> + +<p>There was no end to the plans for ourselves, for my writing, our home, +the friends we wanted, the trips, the books and the music. And through +it all and from under it all there kept bursting up that feeling which +we knew was the most important of all, the exultant realization that we +two were just starting out.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>When at last we came back home this feeling took a deeper turn. I +noticed a change in Eleanore. She had far less thought and time for me +now, she seemed to be strangely absorbed in herself. Nearly all her time +and strength were given to our small apartment, in the same building as +that of her father. By countless feminine touches she was making it look +like the home she had planned. She was getting all in order. And then +one night she told me why. Her arms were close around me and her voice +was so low I could barely hear:</p> + +<p>"There's going to be another soon—another one <i>of us</i>—do you hear?—a +very tiny blessed one."</p> + +<p>I held her slowly tighter.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my darling girl," I whispered.</p> + +<p>Suddenly I relaxed my hold, for I was afraid of hurting her now. In a +moment all was so utterly changed. And as in that brave, quiet way of +hers she looked smiling steadily into my eyes, my throat contracted +sharply. For into my mind leaped the memory of what the harbor had shown +to me on that sultry hideous summer night in the tenement over in +Brooklyn. And <i>that</i> must happen to <i>my wife</i>!</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear," she whispered, "if you only knew how much strength I +stored up way over there in the mountains."</p> + +<p>So she had been thinking of this even then, and yet had told me nothing!</p> + +<p>Here was the beginning of a long anxious period.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> Month after month I +watched her quietly preparing. Slowly we drew into ourselves, while her +father and mine and Sue and our friends came and went, but mattered +little. I wondered if Dillon ever felt this. As he came down to us in +the evenings from the apartment upstairs, where he and Eleanore had +meant so much to each other only a year before, he gave no sign that he +saw any change. But one night after he had gone, Eleanore happened to +pick up the evening paper which had dropped from his bulging overcoat +pocket.</p> + +<p>"Billy, come here," she said presently.</p> + +<p>"What is it?"</p> + +<p>"Look at this."</p> + +<p>The President of the United States had gone with Eleanore's father that +day in a revenue cutter over the harbor and had spoken of Dillon's great +dream in vigorous terms of approval.</p> + +<p>"And father was here this evening," said Eleanore very slowly, "and yet +he never told me a word. He saw that I'd heard nothing and he thought I +didn't care. Oh, Billy, I feel so ashamed."</p> + +<p>But she soon forgot the incident.</p> + +<p>My suspense grew sharp as the time drew near. I had a good doctor, I was +sure of that, and he told me he had an excellent nurse. But what good +were all these puny precautions? The tenement room in Brooklyn kept +rising in my mind.</p> + +<p>She sat by the window that last night, and looking down on the far-away +lights of the river we planned another trip abroad.</p> + +<p>A few hours later I stood over her, holding her hand, and with her white +lips pressed close together and her eyes shut, she went through one of +those terrible spasms. Then she looked up in the moment's relief. And +suddenly here was that smile of hers. And she said low, between clenched +teeth,</p> + +<p>"Well, dearie, another starting out——"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2> + +<p>The next morning, after the rush of relief at the news of Eleanore's +safety and the strange sight of our tiny son, I felt keyed gloriously +high, ready for anything under the sun. But there seemed to be nothing +whatever to do, I felt in the way each time that I moved, so I took to +my old refuge, work. And then into my small workroom came Eleanore's +father for a long talk. He too had been up all night, his lean face was +heavily marked from the strain, but their usual deep serenity had come +back into his quiet eyes.</p> + +<p>"Let's take a day off," he said, smiling. "We're both so tired we don't +know it."</p> + +<p>"Tired?" I demanded.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "you're tired—more than you've ever been in your life. +You'll feel like a rag by to-morrow, and then I hope you'll take a good +rest. But to-day, while you are still way up, I want to talk about your +work. Do you mind?"</p> + +<p>"Mind? No," I replied, a bit anxiously. "It's just what I'm trying to +figure out."</p> + +<p>"I know you are. You've figured for months and you've worked yourself +thin. I don't mind that, I like it, because I know the reason. But I +don't think the result has been good. It seems to me you've been so +anxious to get on, because of this large family of yours, that you've +shut yourself up and written too fast, you've gotten rather away from +life. Shall I go right on?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said, watching intently.</p> + +<p>"Well," he continued, "you've been using what name<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> you've already made +and writing short stories of harbor life."</p> + +<p>"That's what the editors want," I said. "When a man makes a hit in one +vein of writing they want that and nothing else."</p> + +<p>"At this rate you'll soon work out the vein," he said. "I'd like to see +you stop writing now, take time to find new ground—and dig."</p> + +<p>"There's not an awful lot of time," I remarked.</p> + +<p>"My plan won't stop your making money," he replied. "I want you to write +less, but get more pay."</p> + +<p>"That sounds attractive. How shall I do it?"</p> + +<p>"By writing about big men," he said. "I suggest that you try a series of +portraits of some of the big Americans and the America they know."</p> + +<p>I jumped up so suddenly he started.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter?" he asked with a glance at the door. "Did you hear +anything?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said excitedly. "I heard a stunning title! The America They +Know!"</p> + +<p>We discussed it all that morning and it appealed to me more and more. +Later on, with Eleanore's help (for she grew stronger fast those days), +I prevailed upon her father to let me practice upon himself as my first +subject. I worked fast, my material right at hand, and within a few +weeks I had written the story of those significant incidents out of +thirty years of work and wanderings east and west that showed the +America he had known, his widening view. I did his portrait, so to +speak, with his back to the reader, letting the reader see what he saw. +This story I sold promptly, and under the tonic of that success I went +into the work with zest and vim.</p> + +<p>It filled the next four years of my life. It took the view I had had of +the harbor and widened it to embrace the whole land, which I now saw +altogether through the eyes of the men at the top.</p> + +<p>The most central figure of them all, and by far the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> most difficult to +attack, was a powerful New York banker, one of those invisible gods +whose hand I had felt on the harbor.</p> + +<p>"The value of him to you," Dillon said, "is that if you can only make +him talk you'll find him a born storyteller. The secret scandal of his +life is that once in a short vacation he tried to write a play."</p> + +<p>It was weeks before he would see me, and I had my first interview at +last only by getting on a night train which he had taken for Cleveland. +There in his stateroom, cornered, he received me with a grim reluctance. +And with a humorous glint in his eyes,</p> + +<p>"How much do you know about banking?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Nothing," I said frankly. And then I took a sudden chance. "What do you +know about writing?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Nothing," he said placidly.</p> + +<p>"Is that true? I thought you once wrote a play." He sat up very quickly. +"If you did," I went on, "you've probably read some of Shakespeare's +stuff. It was strong stuff about strong men. If he were alive he'd write +about you, but I'm sure that he wouldn't know about banking. That's only +your job."</p> + +<p>"What do you want of me, young man?" he inquired. "Is it my soul?"</p> + +<p>"Not at all," I answered. "It's the America you know, expressed in such +simple human terms that even a young ignoramus like me will be able to +understand it. Out of this big country a good many thousands of men, I +suppose, have come to you for money. Which are the most significant +ones?"</p> + +<p>And I went on to explain my idea. Soon it began to take hold of him. We +talked until after midnight, and later we had other talks. It was hard +at first in the questioning to dodge the technical side of it all, the +widely intricate workings of that machine of credit of which he was +chief engineer. But as he saw how eager I was to feel his view and +become enthused, by degrees he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> humanized it all. And not only that, he +trusted me, he gave me the most intimate glimpses into this life of big +money, although when I dared to include such bits in the story that I +showed him he calmly scratched them out and said:</p> + +<p>"You're mistaken, young man. I didn't say that."</p> + +<p>As he talked I saw again that vision I had had on the North River docks. +For into this man's office had come the men of the mines, the factories +and the mills, the promoters of vast irrigations on prairies, builders +of railroads, real estate plungers, street traction promoters, +department store owners, newspaper proprietors, politicians—the +builders and boomers, the strong energetic men of the land. He showed me +their power and made me feel it was still but in its infancy. He made me +feel a dazzling future rushing upon us, a future of plenty still more +controlled by the keen minds and wide visions of the powerful men at the +top.</p> + +<p>Of all these men and the rushing world of power they lived in, I have +only a jumble of memories now. For my own life was a jumble—irregular, +crowded and intense. In their offices, clubs and homes, in their motors, +on yachts and trains, in Chicago and Pittsburgh and other cities, I +followed them, making my time suit theirs. Some had no use for me at +all, but I found others delighted to talk—like the great Dakota +ranchman who ordered twenty thousand copies of the issue in which his +story appeared and scattered them like seeds of fame over the various +counties of wheat, corn and alfalfa he owned. And in the main I had +little trouble. I met often that curious respect which so many men of +affairs seem to have, God knows why, for a successful writer.</p> + +<p>I got in where men with ten times my knowledge were barred. I remember +with a touch of shame the institute of scientific research where the +chief of the place took a whole afternoon to show me around, and while I +looked wise and tried to feel thrilled over glass tubes and jars<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> and +microscopes through which I peered at microbes, a simple old country +doctor, one of the thousands of <i>common</i> visitors, by my invitation +followed humbly in my wake, murmuring from time to time,</p> + +<p>"Miraculous, by George, astounding!" And gratefully pressing my hand at +the end, "This has been the chance of a lifetime," he said.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the principal reason why I got so warm a welcome was the name I +had already made as a writer of glory stories. I liked these men; I +liked to enthuse over all the big things they were doing. And still true +to my efficiency god, the immense importance of getting things done +loomed so high in my view of life as to overshadow everything else. My +sense of moral values changed.</p> + +<p>It was a strange unmoral world.</p> + +<p>In the institute of science these keen laboratory gods (who had seemed +so cold and comfortless to me but a few short years ago) were perfecting +a cure for syphilis. Strong men were removing the wages of sin!</p> + +<p>In Chicago I met the president of a huge industrial company who had +found it necessary at times to use money on politicians. For this he had +been sent to jail, but later his influence got him out. Promptly he was +made treasurer of another company. In one year, through his energy, now +more intense than ever, the business of that company increased some +thirty-five per cent., whereupon the directors of the original +corporation, after a stormy meeting in which two church deacon directors +fussed and fumed considerably, unanimously decided to ask him to come +back. He did. He told me the story quite frankly himself. I admired him +tremendously.</p> + +<p>The head of a mining company sat in his office one afternoon and talked +of the labor problem. There was no right or wrong involved, he said, it +was simply a matter of force. Once when a strike threatened he had +called in a "labor expert" who had used money wholesale and there had +been no strike.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Well?" he asked, smiling. "What do you think of it?"</p> + +<p>"I think I can't print it." He still smiled.</p> + +<p>"Naturally not. But what do you think? If you yourself were responsible +to several hundred stockholders, what would you do? Risk a strike that +might wipe out their dividends? Or would you resort to bribery"—his +smile slowly deepened—"which is a penal offense in this State?"</p> + +<p>I found such questions cropping up almost everywhere I went. In their +dealings with the public and still more with their rivals, there was a +ruthless vigor that swept old-fashioned maxims aside. And I liked this, +for it got things done! I was bored to find, as I often did, these men +in their homes quite old-fashioned again to suit sober old wives who +still went to church. I remember one such elderly lady and the shock I +unwittingly gave her. She had deplored the decline of churches; her own, +she said, was barely half full. And I then tried to cheer her by an +account of my last story, which was of an advertising man, a genius who +in the last two years had made churches his especial line and by his +up-to-date methods had packed church after church on a commission basis. +Her burst of disapproval almost drove me from the house. And there were +so many homes like that. Men who were perfect giants by day would become +the gentlest babies at night, allowing their wives to read to them such +sentimental drivel as would have been kicked from the office by day.</p> + +<p>"But God knows they need such vacuous homes," I reflected, "to rest in."</p> + +<p>I had never dreamed before how strenuous men's lives could be. One day +in the New York office of a big plunger in real estate I pointed to a +map on the wall.</p> + +<p>"What are all those lots marked 'vacant' for?" I asked him. "I never saw +many vacant lots in that part of town." He grinned cheerfully.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Anything under four stories is vacant to us," he answered, "because it +pays to buy it, tear it down and build something higher."</p> + +<p>That was the way they crowded their cities, and as with their cities, so +with their lives. One story that interested me most was of the weird +America which a renowned nerve specialist knew. To him came these men +broken down, some on the verge of insanity. He gave me stories of their +lives, of his glimpses into their straining minds, he described their +pathetic efforts to rest, their strenuous attempts to relax. He himself +had some mysterious ailment, his hands kept trembling while he talked. +His wife said he hadn't had a vacation of over a week in eleven years.</p> + +<p>From such men I would turn to exuberant lives, like that of the Tammany +leader now dead, who gave a ten-thousand-dollar banquet one night, in +the Ten Eyck in Albany, in honor of the newsboy who every morning for +twenty-two winters had brought morning papers to him in bed in his hotel +room. Or like that of the millionaire merchant who told me with the most +naïve pride of the eleven hundred electric lights in his new home on +Fifth Avenue, and of how the bathrooms of both his large daughters were +fitted in solid silver throughout.</p> + +<p>"Not plated, understand," he said. "I told the architect while he was at +it to put in the real solid stuff—and plenty of it!"</p> + +<p>Through this varied throng of successes, this rich abundance of types, I +ranged with an ever deepening zest. As a hunter of game I watched that +endless human procession on and off the front pages of papers, the men +who were for the moment news. Often small people too would be +there—like the telephone girl from a suburb, who for one day, as the +most important witness in a sensational case of graft, was suddenly +before the whole country and then as suddenly dropped out of sight. In +fact, that was now my view of the land, figures emerging<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> from dark +obscure multitudes up into a bright circle of light.</p> + +<p>And I took this front-page view of New York. I saw it as a city where +big exceptional people were endlessly doing sensational things, both in +the making and spending of money. I saw it not only as a cluster of tall +buildings far downtown, but uptown as well a towering pile of rich +hotels and apartments, a region that sparkled gaily at night, lights +flashing from tens of thousands of rooms, in and out of which, I felt +delightedly, millions of people had passed through the years. I loved to +look up at these windows at night, at the sheer inscrutability of them. +For behind these twinkling masses I knew were all things tragic, +comic—people laughing, fighting, hating, scheming, dreaming, loving, +living. I thought of that row of cabins de luxe that I had seen on the +Christmas boat. Here was the same thing magnified, a monstrous +caravansary with but one question over its doors: "Have You Got the +Price?"</p> + +<p>Once I had seen a harbor. Then it had grown into a port. And now I saw a +metropolis, the hub of a successful land.</p> + +<p>And through this gay city of triumph I moved, myself a success, and my +view of the whole was colored by that. My life as an observer was +sprinkled with personal moments that made me see everything in high +lights. I would watch the life of a street full of people, and I myself +would be on my way to an interview with some noted man or coming away +from one who had given me stuff that I knew would write up big—I knew +just how! Or at a corner newsstand I would catch a glimpse of my name on +the cover of some magazine. Again I would be hurrying home, or into a +neighboring florist's or a theater ticket office, or diving into the +jolly whirl of the large Fifth Avenue toy shop in which I took an +unflagging delight. In my mind would be thoughts of a pillow fight or a +long evening with Eleanore, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> we would be having friends to dine or +going out to dinner.</p> + +<p>For Eleanore had been swift to use my success to broaden both our lives. +Young and adorably happy, eagerly alive, she did for me what she had +done for her father, filling my life with other lives. She was an artist +in living. It was a joy to see her make out a list of people to be asked +to dine. Her father, once watching the process, remarked to me in low, +solemn tones:</p> + +<p>"She's a regular social chemist—who has never had an explosion."</p> + +<p>He was often on the list, and through him and his many friends and the +ones I made through my writing, by degrees our circle widened. We met +all kinds of people, for Eleanore hated "sets" and "cliques." We met not +only successful men but (God help us sometimes) we also met their wives. +We met successful writers, artists and musicians, and a few people of +the stage. We met visitors from the West and from half the big cities of +Europe. We furbished up our French and German, our knowledge of books +and pictures and plays—<i>successful</i> books and pictures and plays.</p> + +<p>Through Eleanore's father and his work our minds were still held to the +past, to the harbor which had taken me, bruised and blind and petty, and +lifted me up and taught me to live, had given me my work, my home and my +new god. I was grateful, I was proud, I was in love and I felt strong. +And my view of the harbor in those days was of a glorious symbol of the +power of mind over matter, and of the mighty speeding up of a world of +civilization and peace, a successful world, strong, broad, tolerant, +sweeping on and bearing us with it.</p> + +<p>So we adventured gaily, not deeper down, but higher and higher up into +life.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p> + +<h2>BOOK III</h2> + +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<p>We had been married four years.</p> + +<p>At the end of a crisp November day I was just about starting home. I +remember how keenly alive I felt, how tingling with bodily health, and +above all how successful.</p> + +<p>I had had such a successful day. I had written hard all morning and my +work had been going splendidly. I had lunched downtown with the man +whose life I was writing that month, a man of astounding fertility, who +had started fifteen years ago with a small hotel in a western town, had +made money, had built a larger hotel, had made money, had moved to a +larger town and bought a still larger hotel, had made money, had moved +to Chicago, New York, had made money. And the America he knew was made +up of people who themselves had made their money so suddenly they had to +come to hotels to spend it. The stories that he told me, both scandalous +and otherwise, of these men and women who shot up rich and diamondy out +of this booming country of ours, had a range and a richness of color +that had held me delighted through many long talks. During luncheon he +had told some of his best, and had given me permission to print, with a +discreet twist or so to disguise them, certain intimate episodes in the +first fat years of men whose names were by-words now all over the land. +I could already see that story selling on the newsstands.</p> + +<p>From this man I had come uptown to a branch of the Y. M. C. A., where +after an hour of hand-ball and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> plunge in the swimming tank I had gone +to a room downstairs, to which ambitious youngsters came for free advice +from an expert who told them how to get on in life. His room was a +confessional. He would cross-examine each suppliant hard, make a +diagnosis of each one and then give him advice as to what to do—whether +or not to throw over his job, what kind of work he was suited for best. +The America he knew was made up of these small human units, some +pitiably or absurdly small, but all anxiously straining upward. And they +too appealed to me.</p> + +<p>For I was so successful now that I was growing mellow. From certain big +men I had written about I had taken a spacious breadth of view that +included a deep indulgence for all these skurrying pigmies. Poor little +devils, give 'em a chance, especially those among them who had "bim" +enough to want a chance, to wonder why they were not getting on and want +to do something about it. And so I had formed the habit of dropping in +often at this room, hearing its confessions and now and then helping get +someone a job. As the swimming tank made my body tingle, so this place +affected my soul. It warmed me to do all I could for some fellow, some +decent kid who was down on his luck. Besides, some confessions were gems +of their kind, glimpses into human lives, hard struggles, wild +ambitions. I meant to write them up some day. In fact, I meant to write +everything up, I felt everything waiting for my pen.</p> + +<p>And as I went down to the coat-room, the thought I had had so often +lately came again into my mind. I too would soon throw over my job, +leave articles and write fiction—my old Paris dream. But what a wide +and varied experience of life I had gathered since those ingenuous Paris +days. Yes, I would do it real and big, out of the big life I had known. +And my heroes would no longer be watching at my elbow to point to the +choicest bits and say, "You're mistaken, young man, I never said that."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> +No, all those lifelike human touches would stay in. Stories kept coming +up in my mind, one especially of late. As I stood in line for my hat and +coat I thought of it now and grew so absorbed I forgot that I was +standing in a line of insignificant clerks—until the one ahead of me, +who had just come in from the street, asked the chap in front of him:</p> + +<p>"Say, Gus, did you see the suffragettes? Their parade's just going by."</p> + +<p>This brought me down from the clouds with a jerk. For I had meant to see +that parade. Sue was in it, in it hard. Suffrage was her latest fad.</p> + +<p>"Naw," growled Gus. "If I was the mayor and they came to me for a permit +to march I'd tell 'em to go and buy corsets. That's their complaint. +They can't get kissed so they want to vote." The other one chuckled:</p> + +<p>"I saw one who can have my vote—and all I'll ask is a better look. +Believe me, some silk stockings!"</p> + +<p>As they went away I glared after them. "Damn little muts," I thought. I +was rather in favor of suffrage, at least I felt indulgent about it. Why +shouldn't I be? The great thing was to keep your mind open and kindly, +to feel contempt for nothing whatever. And because I felt contempt for +no thing or person in all the world, I now glared with the most utter +contempt on these narrow-minded little clerks.</p> + +<p>Then I hurried out and over to Fifth Avenue, where the throb of the +drums was still to be heard. And there I found to my surprise that in a +very real sense this parade was different from anything that I had ever +seen before. I was more than indulgent, I was excited. And by what? Not +by the marching lines of figures, fluttering banners, booming bands, nor +just by the fact that these marchers were women, and women quite frankly +dressed for effect, so that the whole rhythmic mass had a feminine color +and dash that made it all gay and delightful. No, there was something +deeper. And that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> something, I finally made out, was this. These women +and girls were all deeply thrilled by the feeling that for the first +time in their lives they were doing something all together—for an idea +that each one of them had thought rather big and stirring before, but +now, as each felt herself a part of this moving, swinging multitude, she +felt the idea suddenly loom so infinitely larger and more compelling +than before that she herself was astounded. Here for the first time in +my life I felt the power of mass action.</p> + +<p>And as presently I started home and the intensity of it was gone, there +was an added pleasure to me in remembering how I had felt it. Another +proof of my breadth of mind. I hurried home to dinner.</p> + +<p>As I entered our apartment I gave a long, low mysterious whistle. And +after a moment another whistle, which tried hard to be mysterious, +answered mine from another room. Then there were stealthy footsteps +which ended in a sudden charge, and my wee son, "the Indian," hurled me +onto a sofa, where, to use his expression, we "rush-housed" each other. +We did this almost every night.</p> + +<p>When the big time was about over Eleanore appeared:</p> + +<p>"Come, Indian, it's time for bed." She led him off protesting and blew +me back a kiss from the door.</p> + +<p>She had developed wonderfully, this bewitching wife of mine, this quiet +able one in her work, this smiling humorous one in her life, this +watchful, joyous, intimate one in the hours that shut everything out. +Sue said I idolized my wife, that I saw her all perfection, "without one +redeeming vice." Not at all. I knew her vices well enough. I knew she +could get distinctly cross when a new gown came home all wrong. I knew +that she could lie to me, I had caught her at it several times when she +said she was feeling finely and then confessed to me the next day, "I +had a splitting headache last night." In fact, she had any number of +vices—queer, mysterious feminine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> moods when she quite shamelessly shut +me out. She didn't half take care of herself, she went places when she +should have stayed at home. And finally, she was slow at dressing. +Placidly seated in front of her mirror she could spend an entire hour in +doing her soft luxuriant hair.</p> + +<p>I went over all these vices now as I lay back on the sofa. Idolize her? +Not at all. I knew her. We were married, thank God.</p> + +<p>Then she came back into the room. She was smiling in rather a curious +way, an expectant way, and I noticed that her color was unusually high. +Eleanore always dressed so well, but to-night she had outdone herself. +From her trim blue satin slippers to the demure little band of blue at +her throat she was more enchantingly fresh than ever. Suffragettes and +that sort of thing were all very well on the Avenue. Give me Eleanore at +home.</p> + +<p>"Did you see the parade?" she inquired.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Did you see me?"</p> + +<p>I fairly jumped!</p> + +<p>"You?" I demanded. "Were you in that march?"</p> + +<p>"I most certainly was," she said quietly. Having shot her bolt she was +regarding me gravely now, with the merest glint of amused delight +somewhere in her gray-blue eyes. "Why not?" she asked. "I believe in it, +I want the vote. Why shouldn't I march? I paraded," she added serenely, +"in the college section right up near the head of the line. That's why +I'm home so early. I'm afraid I was quite conspicuous, for you see I'm +rather small and I had to take long swinging strides to keep in step. +But I soon got used to it, and I thoroughly enjoyed the cheers. We waved +back at them with our flags."</p> + +<p>"But," I cried, "my darling wife! Why didn't you tell me about it +ahead?"</p> + +<p>"Because"—she came close up to me and said quite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> confidentially, "we +do these things all by ourselves. You don't mean to say that you mind +it, dear?"</p> + +<p>I lost about five seconds and then I did exactly right. I took her in my +arms and laughed and called my wife by many names and said she couldn't +worry me, that I didn't mind it in the least, was proud of her and so +on. In short, to use a slang expression, I distinctly got away with it. +Moreover, I soon felt what I said. I was honestly rather proud of my +wife for having had the nerve to march. It must have been quite a +struggle, for she was no born marcher.</p> + +<p>And I was glad that I was proud. Another proof of my tolerance—which +was the more grateful to me just now because a magazine man I admired +had genially hinted the other day that I was rather narrow.</p> + +<p>"Did you see Sue?" I inquired.</p> + +<p>"Only for a moment," she said. "Sue was one of the marshals and she was +all up and down the lines. She's coming to supper with many paraders."</p> + +<p>"A crowd of women here? I'm off!"</p> + +<p>"No you're not. She's bringing some men paraders too."</p> + +<p>Men paraders! Now I could smile. I had earned the right, I had been +broad. But after all, there are limits. I could see those chaps parading +with women. I knew them, I had seen them before, for Sue had often +brought them here. I enjoyed myself immensely—till Eleanore shot +another bolt.</p> + +<p>"Smile on, funny one," she said. "You'll be in line yourself in a year."</p> + +<p>"I will not be in line!"</p> + +<p>"I wonder." She looked at me in a curious way. The mirth went slowly out +of her eyes. "There are so many queer new ideas crowding in all around +us," she said. "And I know you, Billy, oh, so well—so much better than +you know yourself. I know that when you once feel a thing you're just +the kind to go into it hard. I'm<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> not speaking of suffrage now—that's +only one nice little part. I mean this whole big radical movement—all +the kind of thing your friend Joe Kramer stood for." She put her arms +about my neck. "Don't get too radical, husband mine—you're so nice and +funny now, my love."</p> + +<p>I regarded her anxiously:</p> + +<p>"Has this parade gone to your head—or has Sue been talking to you +again?"</p> + +<p>"I lunched with Sue——"</p> + +<p>"I knew it! And now she's coming here to supper—bringing men paraders!"</p> + +<p>"And they'll all be rabidly hungry," said Eleanore with a sudden change. +She went quickly in to see the cook and left me to grim meditation.</p> + +<p>I a radical? I smiled. And my slight uneasiness passed away, as I +thought about my sister.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<p>Poor old Sue. What queer friends she had, what a muddled life compared +to ours. What a vague confused development, jumping from one idea to +another, never seeing any job through, forever starting all over again +with the same feverish absorption in the next new radical fad. High-brow +dramatics, the settlement movement, the post-impressionists, socialism, +votes for women, one thing after the other pell mell. She would work +herself all up, live hard, talk, organize, think and feel till her +nerves went all to pieces, and then she would come to us for a rest and +laugh at us for our restfulness and at herself for the state she was in. +That was one thing at least she had learned—to laugh at herself—she +could be deliciously humorous. And Eleanore, meeting her on that ground, +would quiet her and steady her down.</p> + +<p>We had grown very fond of Sue. We knew her life was not easy at home. +Alone over there with poor old Dad and feeling herself anchored down, +she would still at intervals rebel—against his sticking to his dull +job, against her own dependence, against the small monthly allowance +which without my father's knowledge they still had from me.</p> + +<p>"Let me earn my own living!" she would exclaim. "Why shouldn't I? I'm +twenty-six—and I'm working hard enough as it is—the Lord knows! I'm +organizing every day and making speeches half my nights. Other girls +take pay for that. Now Father, please be sensible. I'm going to take a +good salaried job."</p> + +<p>But then Dad, whose mind was so old and rigid, so much less tolerant +than mine, would grow excited or, still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> worse, ashamed that he couldn't +make money enough to give her all she wanted. And that desperate hungry +love with which he clung to her these latter days would in the end make +her give in. For under all her radical talk Sue had the kindest heart in +the world.</p> + +<p>Eleanore did her best to help. She was always having Dad over to dinner, +and we had a room which she called his, where he would come and stay the +week-end. At six o'clock each Saturday night he would arrive with his +satchel.</p> + +<p>"Daughter-in-law," he would announce, "my other daughter's <i>agin</i> the +law, she's gone off revolooting. Can you take a decent old gentleman in +out of the last century? Don't change any plans on my account. If you're +going out to dinner just tell the cook to give me a snack and a cup of +tea, and then I'll light a good cigar and read the works of my great +son. Go right ahead as if I wasn't here."</p> + +<p>If we had he would have been furious. Eleanore always made it his +night—and no quiet evening, either. When we didn't take him out to a +play she invited people to dinner—young people, for he liked them best. +And late on Sunday morning the "Indian" would wake him up, would watch +him shave and dress and breakfast, and then they would be off to the +Park. We had named our small son after Dad and they were the most +splendid chums. They had any number of secrets.</p> + +<p>Eleanore too had made Sue use our apartment. Sue called it her Manhattan +club and brought her friends here now and then—"to stir you people up," +she said. But this did not disturb me, I felt too secure in life. And +with a safe, amused and slightly curious attitude I found Sue quite a +tonic. I liked to hear her knock my big men in her cocksure superior +way. It was mighty good fun. And every now and then by mistake she would +hit on something that was true.</p> + +<p>I found something too in her ideas. This suffrage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> business, for +example. She had stuck to this hobby quite a while, and through it she +had reached the conviction that women would never get the vote until the +great mass of working girls were drawn into the movement. So she had +gone in for working girls' clubs, and from clubs into trade unions and +from trade unions into strikes. There had been a strike of laundry girls +which for a week was the talk of the town. Sue and some of her suffrage +friends had organized meetings every night, and in a borrowed automobile +she had rushed from meeting to meeting with two laundry women, meager +forlorn-looking creatures who stood up much embarrassed and awkwardly +told about their lives. One of them, a young widow, had gone home from +work one night at eleven and found that her small baby had died of +convulsions during her absence. It was grim, terrible stuff of its kind, +and Sue was so intensely wrought up you'd have thought there was nothing +else in the world. But the strike stopped as suddenly as it began, and +the two women whose names she had brought into headlines were refused +jobs wherever they went. Sue tried to help them for a while, until this +suffrage parade came along, when she went into this equally hard and +quite forgot their existence.</p> + +<p>And then Eleanore took them up. Quietly and as a matter of course, she +took their troubles on her hands, sent one to a hospital and got the +other work, looked into their wretched home affairs and had them come +often to see her. And this kind of thing was happening often, Sue taking +up and dropping what Eleanore then took up and put through. I compared +them with a glow of pride.</p> + +<p>Eleanore's way was so sane and sure. She looked upon society much as she +did upon our son, who had frequent little ailments but through them all +what a glorious growth, to watch it was a perpetual joy. I remember +once, when in his young stomach there were some fearful goings on, +Eleanore's remarking:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Now if Sue had a child with a stomach in trouble, I suppose her way +would be to quickly remove the entire stomach and put some new radical +thing in its place."</p> + +<p>And then she went to the medicine chest, and a vastly comforted Indian +was soon cheerfully sitting up in bed.</p> + +<p>Eleanore could help others, I felt, because she had first helped +herself, had tackled the mote in her own eye, from the time when she had +gone down to the harbor to get her roots, as she called it. She was a +wonderful manager, our budget was carefully worked out. And she had +herself so well in hand she could put herself behind herself and smile +clearly out on life.</p> + +<p>"When Eleanore takes up a charity case," said her father, "she turns it +into a person at once, and later into an intimate friend."</p> + +<p>He himself took a quiet interest in all her charity cases. They would +often talk them over at night, and in his easy careless way he would +turn over all his spare money to help in the work. Eleanore would +protest at times, and tell him how utterly foolish he was in not putting +money aside for himself. But soon, deep in another case of poignant +human misery, she would throw all caution to the winds and use her +father's money—every dollar he could spare. That was another vice she +had.</p> + +<p>How she hated all the red tape in that huge network of institutions by +which New York City provides "relief." She never dropped a case of hers +into that cumbrous relief machine and then let it slip out of her sight. +She did the hard thing, she followed it up. She had learned, as I had in +my work, to "get on the inside" of this secretive city, to go to the +gods behind it all and so have her cases shoved. One day when one of +them, a woman, was in a hospital so desperately ill that her very life +depended on being moved to a private room—"It can't be done," said the +superintendent. Eleanore took the subway downtown to the Wall Street +office of the man who was the hospital's principal backer. She found<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> +his outer office crowded with men who were waiting to see him on +business. "He can't see you," she was told. Then she scribbled this on +her card:</p> + +<p>"I want none of your money, a little of your influence and one minute of +your time on behalf of a woman who is dying."</p> + +<p>About twenty minutes later that woman was in a private room.</p> + +<p>It is hard to stop talking about my wife. But to return to my sister:</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Into my reverie that night Sue burst with a dozen radical friends. +Others kept arriving, and our small rooms were soon a riot of color and +chatter. Banners were stacked against the wall, bright yellow ribbons +were everywhere, faces were flushed and happily tired. Eleanore sat at +her coffee urn, cups and saucers and plates went around, and people +still too excited to rest stood about eating hungrily. The talking was +fast and furious now. I listened, watched their faces.</p> + +<p>These "radicals," it seemed to me, had talked straight on both day and +night ever since the evenings years ago when one of their earliest +coteries had gathered in our Brooklyn home. And talking they had +multiplied and ramified all over the town. There was nothing under +heaven their fingers did not itch to change. Here close by my side were +three of them, two would-be Ibsen actresses and one budding playwright +who had had two Broadway failures and one Berkeley Lyceum success. But +were they talking of plays? Not at all. They talked of the Russian +Revolution. It had died down in the last few years, and they wanted to +help stir it up again by throwing some more American money into the +smoldering embers. To do this they planned to whip into new life "The +Friends of Russian Freedom."</p> + +<p>That was it, I told myself, these people were all friends of +revolutions. Vaguely as I watched them now I felt I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> was seeing the +parlor side, the light and fluffy outer fringe, of something rather +dangerous. I thought again of that parade and my impression of mass +force. No danger in that, it was dressy and safe. But some of these +youngsters did not stop there, they went in for stirring up people in +rags, mass force of a very different kind. Here was a sculptor socialist +who openly bragged that he'd had a hand in filling Union Square one day +with a seething mass of unemployed, and then when some poor crazed +fanatic threw a bomb, our socialist friend, as he himself smilingly put +it, never once stopped running until he reached his studio.</p> + +<p>It was this kind of thing that got on my nerves. For I pitied the +unwieldy poor, the numberless muddle-headed crowds down there in the +tenements, and it seemed to me perfectly criminal that a lot of these +young high-brows should be allowed to stir them up. Their own thinking +was so muddled, their views of life so out of gear.</p> + +<p>I a radical? No chance!</p> + +<p>While they chattered on excitedly, I thought of my trip uptown on the +"El" that afternoon, a trip that I had made hundreds of times. Coming as +I usually was from some big man or other, whose busy office and whose +mind was a clean, brilliant illustration of what efficiency can be, I +would sit in the car and idly watch the upper story windows we passed, +with yellow gas jets flaring in the cave-like rooms behind them. There I +had glimpses of men and girls at long crowded tables making coats, +pants, vests, paper flowers, chewing-gum, five-cent cigars. I saw +countless tenement kitchens, dirty cooking, unmade beds. These glimpses +followed one on the other in such a dizzying torrent they merged into +one moving picture for me. And that picture was of crowds, crowds, +crowds—of people living frowzily.</p> + +<p>This was poverty. And it was like some prodigious swamp. What could you +do about it? You could pull<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> out individuals here and there, as Eleanore +did. I considered that a mighty fine job—for a woman or a clergyman. +But to go at it and drain the swamp was a very different matter. You +couldn't do it by easy preaching of patent cure-alls, nor by stirring up +class hatred through rabid attacks upon big men. No, this was a job for +the big men themselves, men who would go at this human swamp as +Eleanore's father had gone at the harbor—quietly and slowly, with an +engineer's precision. He had been at it six solid years, but he still +remarked humbly, "We've only begun."</p> + +<p>Then from thinking of big men I thought of the one I had seen that day, +and of my story about him. It was just in the stage I liked, where I +could feel it all coming together. Incidents, bits of character and neat +little turns of speech rose temptingly before my mind.</p> + +<p>Presently, through the clamor around me, I heard "the Indian" crying. +All this chatter had waked him up. I saw Eleanore go in to him and soon +I heard the crying stop, and I knew she was telling him a story, a nice +sleepy one to quiet him down.</p> + +<p>What an infernal racket these people were making about the world. I went +on thinking about my work.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<p>"You two," said Sue, when at last her friends had gone away, "have built +up a wall of contentment around you a person couldn't break through with +an axe."</p> + +<p>"Have a little," I suggested.</p> + +<p>"Stay all night," said Eleanore.</p> + +<p>"No, thanks," said Sue. "I promised Dad that I'd be home."</p> + +<p>And then instead of going home she sprawled lazily on the sofa with her +head upon one elbow, and settled in for some more talk. But her talk was +different to-night. She usually talked about herself, but to-night she +talked of us instead, of our contemptible content. And presently through +her talk I felt that she had some surprise to spring. In a few moments +Eleanore felt it too, I could tell that by the vigilant way she kept +glancing up from her knitting.</p> + +<p>"I think," I was remarking, "we're a pretty liberal-minded pair."</p> + +<p>"That's it," said Sue. "You're liberals!" What utter disdain she threw +into the word. "And what's more you're citizens. In all these +movements," she went on, "you always find two classes—citizens and +criminals. You two are both born citizens."</p> + +<p>"What's the difference?" I inquired.</p> + +<p>"Citizens," said Sue impressively, "are ready to <i>vote</i> for what they +believe in. Criminals are ready to get arrested and go to jail."</p> + +<p>Eleanore looked up at her.</p> + +<p>"Who gave you that?" she asked. Sue looked a little taken back, but only +for a moment.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p> + +<p>"One of the criminals," she said. Her voice was carefully casual now but +her eyes were a little excited. "He's a man who made up his mind that he +wanted to get way down to the bottom, and see how it feels to be down +there. So he took the very worst job he could find. For two years he was +a stoker—on ships of all kinds all over the world. And now that he +knows just how it feels, he has an office down on the docks where he's +getting the stokers and dockers together—getting them ready for a +strike—on your beloved harbor."</p> + +<p>"Joe Kramer," said Eleanore quietly. Sue gave a sudden, nervous start.</p> + +<p>"Eleanore," she severely rejoined, "sometimes you're simply uncanny—the +way you quietly jump at a thing!"</p> + +<p>Eleanore had gone on with her knitting. I rose and lit a cigarette. I +could feel Sue's eyes upon me. So <i>this</i> was her infernal surprise! J. +K. banging into my life again!</p> + +<p>"How long has Joe been here?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"About five months," Sue answered.</p> + +<p>"He might have looked me up," I said.</p> + +<p>"He doesn't want to look anyone up, I've only seen him once myself. He +has simply buried himself down there. Why don't you go and see him, +Billy?" she added, with a quick glance at Eleanore. "He won't amuse you +the way we do. He's one of the real criminals now."</p> + +<p>Still Eleanore did not look up.</p> + +<p>"What's his address?" I asked gruffly. Sue gave it to me and +good-humoredly yawned and said she must be getting home.</p> + +<p>"Good-night, dear," said Eleanore. She had risen and come to the door. +"What a love of a hat you're wearing. It's a new one, isn't it? I caught +sight of it in the parade."</p> + +<p>But the smile which my tall sister threw back at us<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> from the doorway +had nothing whatever to do with hats. It said as plainly as in words:</p> + +<p>"Now, you cozy liberals, go over and touch <i>that</i> spot if you dare."</p> + +<p>When she had gone I took up a book and tried to read. But I soon +gloomily relapsed. Would J. K. never leave me alone? What was he doing +with my harbor? Why should I look him up, confound him—he hadn't +bothered his head about me. But I knew that I <i>would</i> look him up and +would find him more disturbing than ever. How he did keep moving on. No, +not on, but down, down—until now he had bumped the bottom!</p> + +<p>"Are you going to see him?"</p> + +<p>Glancing sharply up, I saw Eleanore carefully watching my face.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I suppose so," I replied. She bent again to her knitting.</p> + +<p>"He must be a strange kind of a person," she said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<p>I slept little that night, and my work the next morning went badly. So, +after wasting an hour or two, I decided to stop. I would go and see Joe +and be done with it.</p> + +<p>What was he doing with my harbor? The address Sue had given me was down +on the North River, my old hunting ground. The weather had turned cold +over-night, and when I came to the waterfront I felt the big raw breath +of the sea. I had hardly been near the harbor in years. It had become +for me a deep invisible corner-stone upon which my vigorous world was +built. I had climbed up into the airy heights, I had been writing of +millionaires. And coming so abruptly now from my story of life in rich +hotels, the place I had once glorified looked bleak and naked, +elemental. Down to the roots of things again.</p> + +<p>I came to a bare wooden building, climbed some stairs and entered a +large, low-ceilinged room which was evidently a meeting hall. Chairs +were stacked along the walls and there was a low platform at one end. As +I lingered there a moment, by habit my eyes took in the details. The +local color was lurid enough. On the walls were foreign pictures, one of +the anarchist Ferrer being executed in Spain, and another of an Italian +mob shaking their fists and yelling like demons at a bloated hideous +priest. There were posters in which flaming torches, blood-red flags and +barricades and cannon belching clouds of smoke stood out in heavy blacks +and reds. And all this foreign violence was made grimly real in its +purpose here by the way these pictures centered around the largest +poster, which was of an ocean liner with all its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> different kinds of +workers gathered together in one mass and staring fixedly up at the +ship.</p> + +<p>Through a door in a board partition I went into a narrow room from which +two dirty windows looked out upon the docks below. This room was cramped +and crowded. Newspapers and pamphlets lay heaped on the floor, and in +the corners were four desks, at one of which three men, whom I learned +later to be an Italian, an Englishman and a Spaniard, were talking +together intensely. They took no notice of my entrance, for many other +visitors, burly, sooty creatures, were constantly straggling in and out.</p> + +<p>I saw Joe at a desk in one corner. Looking doubly tall and lean and +stooped, and with a tired frown on his face, he sat there with his +sleeves rolled up slowly pounding out a letter on the typewriter before +him. On top of his desk were huge ledgers, and over them upon hooks on +the wall hung bunches of letters from other ports. It all gave me a +heavy impression of dull daily drudgery. And in this Joe was so absorbed +that he took no notice of my presence, although I now stood close behind +him. When at last he did look up and I got a full view of his face, with +its large, familiar features, tight-set jaw and deep-set eyes, I was +startled at its gauntness.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Joe——"</p> + +<p>"Hello." A dullish red came into his face and then a slight frown. He +half rose from his seat. "Hello, Bill," he repeated. "What's brought you +here?"</p> + +<p>He appeared a little dazed at first, then anything but glad to see me. +The thought of our old college days flashed for a moment into my mind. +How far away they seemed just now. Through our first few awkward remarks +he lapsed back into such a tired, worn indifference that I was soon on +the point of leaving. But that bony gauntness in his face, and all it +showed me he had been through, gave him some right to his rudeness, I +thought. So I changed my mind and stuck to my purpose of hav<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>ing it all +out with Joe and learning what he was about. Persisting in my +friendliness my questions slowly drew him out.</p> + +<p>Since I had seen him five years ago he had continued his writing, but as +he had grown steadily more set on writing only what he called "the truth +about things," the newspapers had closed their doors. While I had gone +up he had gone down, until finally throwing up in disgust "this whole +fool game of putting words on paper," he had made up his mind to throw +in his life with the lives of the men at the bottom. So for two years he +had shoveled coal in the stokeholes of ships by day and by night, he had +mixed with stokers of every race, from English, French and Germans to +Russians and Italians, Spaniards, Hindus, Coolies, Greeks. He had worked +and eaten and slept in their holes, he had ranged the slums of all the +seas. And of all this he spoke in short, commonplace phrases, still in +that indifferent tone, as though personal stories were a bore.</p> + +<p>"But look here, Joe," I asked at the end, "what's the good of living +like this? What the devil can you do?"</p> + +<p>I still remember the look he gave me, the weary remoteness of it. But +all he said was,</p> + +<p>"Organize strikes."</p> + +<p>"Here?"</p> + +<p>"Everywhere."</p> + +<p>"Of stokers?"</p> + +<p>"No, of all industries."</p> + +<p>"For higher pay, eh, and shorter hours."</p> + +<p>Another brief look.</p> + +<p>"No, for revolution," he said.</p> + +<p>Briefly, in reply to my questions, he explained how he and his friends +had already induced some twelve thousand stokers and dockers to leave +their old trade unions and enroll themselves as members of this new +international body, which was to embrace not only one trade but all the +labor connected with ships—ships of all na<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>tions. He was here doing the +advance work. As soon as the ground was made ready, he said, some of the +bigger leaders would come. Then there would be mass meetings here and +presently a general strike. And as the years went on there would be +similar strikes in all trades and in all countries, until at some time +not many years off there would be such labor rebellions as would +paralyze the industrial world. And out of this catastrophe the workers +would emerge into power to build up a strange new world of their own.</p> + +<p>This was what Joe saw ahead. He seemed to be seeing it while he spoke, +with a hard, clear intensity that struck me rather cold. Here was no +mere parlor talk, here was a man who lived what he said.</p> + +<p>"You comfortable people," he said, "are so damn comfortable you're +blind. You see nothing ahead but peace on earth and a nice smooth +evolution—with a lot of steady little reforms. You've got so you +honestly can't believe there's any violence left in the world. You're as +blind as most folks were five years before the Civil War. But what's the +use talking?" he ended. "You can't understand all this." Again my +irritation rose.</p> + +<p>"No, I can't say I do," I replied. "To stir up millions of men of that +kind and then let 'em loose upon the world strikes me as absolutely +mad!"</p> + +<p>"I knew it would."</p> + +<p>"Look here, Joe, how are <i>you</i> so sure about all this? Hasn't it ever +struck you that you're getting damnably narrow?" He smiled.</p> + +<p>"I don't care much if I'm narrow," he said.</p> + +<p>"You think it's good for you, being like this?"</p> + +<p>"I don't care if it's good for me."</p> + +<p>"Don't you want to see anything else?"</p> + +<p>"Not in your successful world."</p> + +<p>"Well, J. K., I'm sorry," I retorted hotly. "Because I'd like to see +your world, I honestly would! I'm not like you, I'm always ready to be +shown!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p> + +<p>"All right, come and see it. Why don't you write up Jim Marsh?" He +smiled as he named the notorious leader of the whole organization. +"He'll be here soon, and in his line he has been a mighty successful +man. All up and down the U. S. A. Jim's name has been in headlines and +Jim himself has been in jail. A successful revolutionist. So why not add +him to your list? Write up the America <i>he</i> knows." There was a +challenge in Joe's voice.</p> + +<p>"All right, perhaps I will," I said. At least I had him talking now. +"Come out to lunch and tell me some more."</p> + +<p>"I don't want any lunch."</p> + +<p>Something in the way he said that made me look at him quickly. He +appeared to me now not only thin but tense and rather feverish. His +nerves were plainly all on edge. He had smoked one cigarette after +another.</p> + +<p>"I've got a lot of work to-day," he added restlessly. "Not only these +damn letters to write—I've got to make up our paper besides—it goes to +the printer to-morrow. Here, take a copy with you."</p> + +<p>And he handed me the last week's issue. It was a crude and flimsy +affair, with its name, in scarehead letters, "WAR SURE." I glanced it +over in silence a moment. What a drop for Joe, from what he had been, to +this wretched violent little sheet, this muckraker of the ocean world.</p> + +<p>"Not like the harbor <i>you</i> painted," he said.</p> + +<p>"No," I answered shortly.</p> + +<p>"Do you want another look at your harbor?"</p> + +<p>I eyed him for a moment:</p> + +<p>"All right—I'll look——"</p> + +<p>"Fine business." He had risen now, and a gleam of the old likable Joe +came for a moment into his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Meet me to-morrow at seven a. m. And let's look at some of its +failures," he said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<p>"Did you see him?" Eleanore asked that night.</p> + +<p>"Yes—I saw him——"</p> + +<p>I could feel her waiting, but I could not bring myself to talk. Eleanore +wouldn't like J. K. She wouldn't like what I had told him I'd do. I was +sorry now that I had, it was simply looking for trouble. I damned that +challenge in Joe's voice. Why did he always get hold of me so?</p> + +<p>"How did he look? Is he much changed?" Eleanore asked me quietly.</p> + +<p>"Yes. He looks half sick—and old. He's been through a good deal," I +answered.</p> + +<p>"Did he talk about that?"</p> + +<p>"Yes"—I hesitated—"and of what he wants to show me," I said. Eleanore +looked quickly up.</p> + +<p>"Are you going to see him soon again?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—to-morrow morning—to have a look at his stoker friends. I want to +have just one good look at the life that has made him what he is. That's +all—that's all it amounts to——"</p> + +<p>There was another silence. Then she came over behind my chair and I felt +the cool quiet of her hand as she slowly stroked my forehead.</p> + +<p>"You look tired, dear," she said.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Just before daylight the next morning I rose and dressed, swallowed some +coffee and set out. I took a surface car downtown.</p> + +<p>I had not been out at this hour in years. And as in my present mood, +troubled and expectant, I watched the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> streets in the raw half-light, +they looked as utterly changed to me as though they were streets of a +different world. The department store windows looked unreal. Their soft +rich lights had been put out, and in this cold hard light of dawn all +their blandishing ladies of wax appeared like so many buxom ghosts. Men +were washing the windows. Women and girls were hurrying by, and as some +of them stopped for a moment to peer in at these phantoms of fashion, +their own faces looked equally waxen to me. A long, luxurious motor +passed with a man and a woman in evening clothes half asleep in each +other's arms. An old man with a huge pack of rags turned slowly and +stared after them. The day's work was beginning. Peddlers trundled +push-carts along, newspaper vendors opened their stands, milk wagons and +trucks from the markets came by, some on the gallop. Our car had filled +with people now. Men and boys clung to the steps behind and women and +girls were packed inside, most of them hanging to the straps. How badly +and foolishly dressed were these girls. There must be thousands of them +out. Two kept tittering inanely. All the rest were silent.</p> + +<p>By the time that I reached the docksheds the day was breaking over their +roofs. It was freezing cold, and the chill was worse in the dock that I +entered. I buttoned my ulster tighter. The big place was dark and empty. +The dockers, I learned from the watchman, had quit work at three +o'clock, for a few tons of fruit was all the freight that remained to be +loaded. The ship was to sail at nine o'clock.</p> + +<p>The stokers had not yet gone aboard. I found about a hundred of them +huddled along the steel wall of the shed. Some of them had old leather +grips or canvas bags, but many had no luggage at all. A few wore seedy +overcoats, but the greater part had none, they stood with their hands in +their ragged pockets, shivering and stamping. Most of them were +undersized, some tough, some rather sickly. A dull-eyed, wretched, +sodden lot. I got the liquor on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> their breaths. A fat old Irish stoker +came drifting half-drunk up the pier with a serene and waggish smile.</p> + +<p>"Hello," said Joe at my elbow.</p> + +<p>He looked more fagged than the day before. I noticed that his lips were +blue and that his teeth were chattering.</p> + +<p>"Joe," I said abruptly, "you're not fit to be here. Let's get out of +this, you belong in bed." He glanced at me impatiently.</p> + +<p>"I'm fit enough," he muttered. "We'll stay right here and see this +show—unless you feel you want to quit——"</p> + +<p>"Did I say I did? I'm ready enough——"</p> + +<p>"All right, then wait a minute. They're about ready to go on board."</p> + +<p>But as we stood and watched them, I still felt the chattering teeth by +my side, and a wave of pity and anger and of disgust swept over me. Joe +wouldn't last long at this kind of thing!</p> + +<p>"What do you think of my friends?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I think you're throwing your life away!"</p> + +<p>"Do you? How do you make it out?"</p> + +<p>"Because they're an utterly hopeless crowd! Look at 'em—poor +devils—they look like a lot of Bowery bums!"</p> + +<p>"Yes—they look like a lot of bums. And they feed all the fires at sea."</p> + +<p>"Are they all like these?" I demanded.</p> + +<p>"No better dressed," he answered. "A million lousy brothers of Christ."</p> + +<p>"And you think you can build a new world <i>with them</i>?"</p> + +<p>"No—I think they can do it themselves."</p> + +<p>"Do you know what I think they'll do themselves? If they ever do win in +any strike and get a raise in wages—they'll simply blow it in on +drink!"</p> + +<p>Joe looked at me a moment.</p> + +<p>"They'll do so much more than drink," he said. "Come on," he added. +"They're going aboard."</p> + +<p>They were forming in a long line now before the third-class gang-plank. +As they went up with their packs on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> their shoulders, a man at the top +gave each a shove and shouted out a number, which another official +checked off in a book. The latter I learned was the chief engineer. He +was a lean, powerful, ruddy-faced man with a plentiful store of +profanity which he poured out in a torrent:</p> + +<p>"Come on! For Christ's sake! Do you want to freeze solid, you —— human +bunch of stiffs?"</p> + +<p>We came up the plank at the end of the line, and I showed him a letter +which I had procured admitting us to the engine rooms. He turned us over +promptly to one of his junior engineers, and we were soon climbing down +oily ladders through the intricate parts of the engines, all polished, +glistening, carefully cleaned. And then climbing down more ladders until +we were, as I was told, within ten feet of the keel of the ship, we came +into the stokers' quarters.</p> + +<p>And here nothing at all was carefully cleaned. The place was foul, its +painted steel walls and floor and ceiling were heavily encrusted with +dirt. The low chamber was crowded with rows of bunks, steel skeleton +bunks three tiers high, the top tier just under the ceiling. In each was +a thin, dirty mattress and blanket. In some of these men were already +asleep, breathing hard, snoring and wheezing. Others were crowded around +their bags intent on something I could not see. Many were smoking, the +air was blue. Some were almost naked, and the smells of their bodies +filled the place. It was already stifling.</p> + +<p>"Had enough?" asked our young guide, with a grin.</p> + +<p>"No," I said, with an answering superior smile. "We'll stay a while and +get it all."</p> + +<p>And after a little more talk he left us.</p> + +<p>"How do you like our home?" asked Joe.</p> + +<p>"I'm here now," I said grimly. "Go ahead and show me. And try to believe +that I want to be shown."</p> + +<p>"All right, here comes our breakfast."</p> + +<p>Two stokers were bringing in a huge boiler. They set it down on the +dirty floor. It was full of a greasy, watery<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> soup with a thick, yellow +scum on the top, through which chunks of pork and potato bobbed up here +and there.</p> + +<p>"This is scouse," Joe told me. Men eagerly dipped tin cups in this and +gulped it down. The chunks of meat they ate with their hands. They ate +sitting on bunks or standing between them. Some were wedged in close +around a bunk in which lay a sleeper who looked utterly dead to the +world. His face was white.</p> + +<p>"He reminds me," said Joe, "of a fellow whose bunk was once next to +mine. He was shipped at Buenos Ayres, where the crimps still handle the +business. A crimp had carried this chap on board, dumped him, got his +ten dollars and left. The man was supposed to wake up at sea and shovel +coal. But this one didn't. The second day out some one leaned over and +touched him and yelled. The crimp had sold us a dead one."</p> + +<p>As Joe said this he stared down at the sleeper, a curious tensity in his +eyes.</p> + +<p>"Joe, how did you ever stand this life?"</p> + +<p>My own voice almost startled me, it sounded so suddenly tense and +strained. Joe turned and looked at me searchingly, with a trace of that +old affection of his.</p> + +<p>"I didn't, Kid," he said gruffly. "The two years almost got me. And +that's what happens to most of 'em here. Half of 'em," he added, "are +down-and-outers when they start. They're what the factories and mills +and all the rest of this lovely modern industrial world throw out as no +more wanted. So they drift down here and take a job that nobody else +will take, it's so rotten, and here they have one week of hell and +another week's good drunk in port. And when the barrooms and the women +and all the waterfront sharks have stripped 'em of their last red cent, +then the crimps collect an advance allotment from their future wages to +ship 'em off to sea again."</p> + +<p>"That's not true in <i>this</i> port," I retorted, eagerly catching him up on +the one point that I knew was wrong. "They don't allow crimps in New +York any more."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p> + +<p>"No," Joe answered grimly. "The port of New York has got reformed, it's +become all for efficiency now. The big companies put up money for a kind +of a seamen's Y. M. C. A. where they try to keep men sober ashore, and +so get 'em back quick into holes like these, in the name of Christ.</p> + +<p>"But there's one thing they forget," he added bitterly. "The age of +steam has sent the old-style sailors ashore and shipped these fellows in +their places. And that makes all the difference. These chaps didn't grow +up on ships and get used to being kicked and cowed and shot for mutiny +if they struck. No, they're all grown up on land, in factories where +they've been in strikes, and they bring their factory views along into +these floating factories. And they don't like these stinking holes! They +don't like their jobs, with no day and no night, only steel walls and +electric light! You hear a shout at midnight and you jump down into the +stokehole and work like hell till four a. m., when you crawl up all +soaked in sweat and fall asleep till the next shout. And you do this, +not as the sailor did for a captain he knew and called 'the old man,' +but for a corporation so big it has rules and regulations for you like +what they have in the navy. You're nothing but a number. Look here."</p> + +<p>He took me to a bulletin that had just been put up on the wall. Around +it men were eagerly crowding.</p> + +<p>"Here's where you find by your number what shift you're to work in," he +said, "and what other number you have to replace if he goes down. Heart +failure is damn common here, and if your man gives out it means you +double up for the rest of the voyage. So you get his number and hunt for +him and size him up. You hope he'll last. I'll show you why."</p> + +<p>He crawled down a short ladder and through low passageways dripping wet +and so came into the stokehole.</p> + +<p>This was a long, narrow chamber with a row of glowing furnace doors. Wet +coal and coal-dust lay on the floor.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> At either end a small steel door +opened into bunkers that ran along the sides of the ship, deep down near +the bottom, containing thousands of tons of soft coal, which the men +called "trimmers" kept shoveling out to the stokers. As the voyage went +on, Joe told me, these trimmers had to go farther and farther back into +the long, black bunkers, full of stifling coal-dust, in which if the +ship were rolling the masses of coal kept crashing down. Hundreds of men +had been killed that way. In the stokehole the fires were not yet up, +but by the time the ship was at sea the furnace mouths would be white +hot and the men at work half naked. They not only shoveled coal into the +flames, they had to spread it out as well and at intervals rake out the +"clinkers" in fiery masses on the floor. On these a stream of water +played, filling the chamber with clouds of steam. In older ships, like +this one, a "lead stoker" stood at the head of the line and set the pace +for the others to follow. He was paid more to keep up the pace. But on +the fast new liners this pacer was replaced by a gong.</p> + +<p>"And at each stroke of the gong you shovel," said Joe. "You do this till +you forget your name. Every time the boat pitches, the floor heaves you +forward, the fire spurts at you out of the doors and the gong keeps on +like a sledgehammer coming down on top of your mind. And all you think +of is your bunk and the time when you're to tumble in."</p> + +<p>From the stokers' quarters presently there came a burst of singing.</p> + +<p>"Now let's go back," he ended, "and see how they're getting ready for +this."</p> + +<p>As we crawled back the noise increased, and it swelled to a roar as we +entered. The place was pandemonium now. Those groups I had noticed +around the bags had been getting out the liquor, and now at eight +o'clock in the morning half the crew were already well soused. Some +moved restlessly about. One huge bull of a creature with large, limpid, +shining eyes stopped suddenly with a puz<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>zled stare, then leaned back on +a bunk and laughed uproariously. From there he lurched over the shoulder +of a thin, wiry, sober man who, sitting on the edge of a bunk, was +slowly spelling out the words of a newspaper aeroplane story. The big +man laughed again and spit, and the thin man jumped half up and snarled.</p> + +<p>Louder rose the singing. Half the crew was crowded close around a little +red-faced cockney. He was the modern "chanty man." With sweat pouring +down his cheeks and the muscles of his neck drawn taut, he was jerking +out verse after verse about women. He sang to an old "chanty" tune, one +that I remembered well. But he was not singing out under the stars, he +was screaming at steel walls down here in the bottom of the ship. And +although he kept speeding up his song the crowd were too drunk to wait +for the chorus, their voices kept tumbling in over his, and soon it was +only a frenzy of sound, a roar with yells rising out of it. The singers +kept pounding each other's backs or waving bottles over their heads. Two +bottles smashed together and brought a still higher burst of glee.</p> + +<p>"I'm tired!" Joe shouted. "Let's get out!"</p> + +<p>I caught a glimpse of his strained, frowning face. Again it came over me +in a flash, the years he had spent in holes like this, in this hideous, +rotten world of his, while I had lived joyously in mine. And as though +he had read the thought in my disturbed and troubled eyes,</p> + +<p>"Let's go up where <i>you</i> belong," he said.</p> + +<p>I followed him up and away from his friends. As we climbed ladder after +ladder, fainter and fainter on our ears rose that yelling from below. +Suddenly we came out on deck and slammed an iron door behind us.</p> + +<p>And I was where I belonged. I was in dazzling sunshine and keen frosty +Autumn air. I was among gay throngs of people. Dainty women brushed me +by. I felt the softness of their furs, I breathed the fragrant scent of +them and of the flowers that they wore, I saw their fresh immaculate +clothes, I heard the joyous tumult of their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> talking and their laughing +to the regular crash of the band—all the life of the ship I had known +so well.</p> + +<p>And I walked through it all as though in a dream. On the dock I watched +it spellbound—until with handkerchiefs waving and voices calling down +good-bys, that throng of happy travelers moved slowly out into +midstream.</p> + +<p>And I knew that deep below all this, down in the bottom of the ship, the +stokers were still singing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<p>That same day I had an appointment to lunch with the owner of rich +hotels whose story I was writing. And the interview dragged. For the +America he knew was like what I'd seen on the upper decks of the ship +that had sailed a few hours before. And I could not get back my old zest +for it all, I kept thinking of what I had seen underneath. The faces of +individual stokers, some fiery red, some sodden gray, kept bobbing up in +my memory. Angrily trying to keep them down, I went on with my +questions. But I caught the hotel millionaire throwing curious looks at +me now and then.</p> + +<p>I went home worried and depressed and shut myself up in my workroom. +This business had to be thought out. It wasn't only stokers; it was +something deep, world-wide. I had come up against the slums. What had I +to do with it all?</p> + +<p>I was in my room all afternoon. I heard "the Indian" at my door, but I +sat still and silent, and presently he went away.</p> + +<p>Late in the twilight Eleanore came. How beautiful she was to-night. She +was wearing a soft gown of silk, blue with something white at her throat +and a brooch that I had given her. As she bent over my shoulder I felt +her clean, fresh loveliness.</p> + +<p>"Don't you want to tell me, love, just what it was he showed you?"</p> + +<p>"I'd rather not, my dear one, it was something so terribly ugly," I +said.</p> + +<p>"I don't like being so far away from you, dear. Please tell me. Suppose +you begin at the start."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p> + +<p>It took a long time, for she would let me keep nothing back.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't have thought it could hit me so hard," I said at the end.</p> + +<p>"I'm not surprised," said Eleanore.</p> + +<p>"I can't be simply angry at Joe," I went on. "He's so intensely and +gauntly sincere. It isn't just talk with him, you see, as it is with +Sue's parlor radical friends. Think of the life he's been leading, think +of it compared to mine. Joe and I were mighty close once"—I broke off +and got up restlessly. "I hate to think of him," I said.</p> + +<p>"It's funny," said Eleanore quietly. "I knew this was coming sooner or +later. Ever since we've been married I've known that Joe Kramer still +means more to you than any man you've ever met."</p> + +<p>"He doesn't," I said sharply. "Where on earth did you get that idea?"</p> + +<p>"From you, my love," she answered. "You can't dream how often you've +spoken about him."</p> + +<p>"I didn't know I had!" It is most disquieting at times, the things +Eleanore tells me about myself.</p> + +<p>"I know you don't," she continued, "you do it so unconsciously. That's +why I'm so sure he has a real place in the deep unconscious part of you. +He worries you. He gets you to think you've no right to be happy!" There +was a bitterness in her voice that I had never heard before. "I believe +in helping people—of course—whenever I get a chance," she said. "But I +don't believe in this—I hate it! It's simply an insane attempt to pull +every good thing down! It's too awful even to think of!"</p> + +<p>"We're not going to," I told her. "I'm sorry for Joe and I wish I could +help him out of his hole. But I can't—it's too infernally deep. He +won't listen to any talk from me—and as long as he won't I'll leave him +alone. It's hideous enough—God knows. But if I ever tackle poverty and +labor and that sort of thing it'll be along quite different lines."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p> + +<p>The door-bell rang.</p> + +<p>"Oh Billy," she said, "I forgot to tell you. Father's coming to dinner +to-night." I looked at her a moment:</p> + +<p>"Did you ask him here on my account?" Eleanore smiled frankly.</p> + +<p>"Yes—I thought I might need him," she said.</p> + +<p>I did not talk to her father of Joe—his plans for a strike were his +secret, not mine. But with Eleanore pushing me on, I described the hell +I had seen in the stokehole.</p> + +<p>"You're right, it's hell," her father agreed. "But in time we'll do away +with it."</p> + +<p>"I knew it," Eleanore put in.</p> + +<p>"How?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"By using oil instead of coal. Or if we can't get oil cheap enough by +automatic stokers—machines to do the work of men."</p> + +<p>I thought hard and fast for a moment, and suddenly I realized that I had +never given any real thought to matters of this kind before.</p> + +<p>"Then what will become of the stokers?" I asked him.</p> + +<p>"One thing at a time." I caught Dillon keenly watching me over his +cigar. "Don't give up your faith in efficiency, Bill. If they'll only +give us time enough we'll be able to do so much for men."</p> + +<p>There was something so big and sincere in his voice and in his clear and +kindly eyes.</p> + +<p>"I'm sure you will," I answered. "If you don't, there's nobody else who +can."</p> + +<p>In a week or two, by grinding steadily on at my work and by a few more +quiet talks with Eleanore and her father, I could feel myself safely +back on my ground.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>But one morning Sue broke in on me.</p> + +<p>"I've just heard from a friend of Joe Kramer's," she said, "that he is +dangerously ill. And there's no one to look after him. Hadn't you better +go yourself?"</p> + +<p>"Of course," I assented gruffly. "I'll go down at once."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p> + +<p>It seemed as though the Fates and Sue were in league to keep Joe in my +life.</p> + +<p>I went to Joe's office and found the address of the room where he slept. +It was over a German saloon close by. It was a large, low-ceilinged +room, bare and cheaply furnished, with dirty curtains at the windows, +dirty collars and shirts on the floor. It was cold. In the high +old-fashioned fireplace the coal fire had gone out. Joe was lying +dressed on the bed. He jumped up as I entered and came to me with his +face flushed and his eyes dilated. He gripped my hand.</p> + +<p>"Why, hello, Kid," he cried. "Glad to see you!" And then with a quick +drop of his voice: "Hold on, we mustn't talk so loud, we've got to be +quiet here, you know." He turned away from me restlessly. "I've been +hunting for hours for that damn book. Their cataloguing system here is +rotten, Kid, it's rotten!" As he spoke he was slowly feeling his way +along the dirty white wall of his room. "They've cheated us, Bill, I'm +on to 'em now! That's what college is really for these days, to hide the +books we ought to read!"</p> + +<p>It came over me suddenly that Joe was back in college, on one of those +library evenings of ours. I felt a tightening at my throat.</p> + +<p>"Say, Joe." I drew him toward the bed. "The chapel bell has just struck +ten. Time for beer and pretzels."</p> + +<p>"Fine business! Gee, but I've got a thirst! But where's the door? God +damn it all—I can't find anything to-night!" He laughed unsteadily.</p> + +<p>"Right over here," I answered. "Steady, old man——"</p> + +<p>And so I got him to his bed. He fell down on it breathing hard and I +brought him a drink of water. He began to shiver violently. I covered +him up with dirty blankets, went down to the barroom and telephoned to +Eleanore. Too deeply disturbed to think very clearly, acting on an +impulse, I told her of Joe's condition and asked if I might bring him +home.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Why of course," came the answer, a little sharp. "Wait a moment. Let me +think." There was a pause, and then she added quietly, "Go back to his +room and keep him in bed. I'll see that an ambulance comes right down."</p> + +<p>Within an hour after that Joe was installed in our guest room with a +trained nurse to attend to him. The doctor pronounced it typhoid and he +was with us for nine weeks.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The effect upon our lives was sharp. In our small crowded apartment all +entertaining was suddenly stopped, and with the sole exception of Sue no +one came to see us. Even our little Indian learned to be quiet as a +mouse. Our whole home became intense.</p> + +<p>Through the thin wall of my workroom I could hear Joe in his delirium. +Now he was busily writing letters, now in a harsh excited voice he was +talking to a crowd of men, again he was furiously shoveling coal. All +this was incoherent, only mutterings most of the time. But when the +voice rose suddenly it was so full of a stern pain, so quivering with +revolt against life, and it poured out such a torrent of commonplace +minute details that showed this was Joe's daily life and the deepest +part of his being—that as I listened at my desk the ghost I thought I +had buried deep, that vague guilty feeling over my own happiness, came +stealing up in me again. And it was so poignant now, that struggle +angrily as I would to plunge again into my work, I found it impossible +to describe the life in those rich gay hotels with the zest and the dash +I needed to make my story a success.</p> + +<p>But it had to be a success, for we needed money badly, the expenses of +Joe's sickness were already rolling in. So I did finish it at last and +took it to my successful man, who read it with evident disappointment. +It was not the glory story that I had led him to expect. My magazine +editor said he would use it, but he, too, appeared surprised.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You weren't up to your usual form," was his comment. "What's the +matter?"</p> + +<p>"A sick friend."</p> + +<p>I started another story at once, one I had already planned, about a man +who was to build a string of gorgeous opera houses in the leading +American cities. This story, too, went slowly. Joe Kramer's voice kept +breaking in. From time to time as I struggled on I could feel Eleanore +watching me.</p> + +<p>"Don't try to hurry it," she said. "We can always borrow from father, +you know—and besides, I'm going to cut our expenses."</p> + +<p>She was as good as her word. She dismissed the nurse, and through the +last weeks of delirium and the first of returning consciousness she +placed herself in Joe's borderland as the one whose presence he vaguely +felt pulling him back into comfort and strength.</p> + +<p>"No, don't talk," I heard her say to him one evening. "I don't want to +hear you. All I want is to get you well. That's the only thing you and I +have to talk of."</p> + +<p>But having so thrown him off his guard, as his mind grew clearer she +began cautiously drawing him out, despite his awakening hostility to +this woman who had made me a success. From my room I heard snatches of +their talk. She surprised J. K. by the intimate bits of knowledge about +him that she had collected both from me and from his own sick ramblings. +She had just enough of his point of view to rouse him from his +indifference, to annoy him by her mistakes and her refusals to +understand. I remember one afternoon when I went in to sit with him, his +staring grimly up at my face and saying:</p> + +<p>"Bill, that wife of yours is such a born success she scares me. +Everything she touches, everything she brings me to drink, everything +she does to this bed, is one thundering success. And she won't listen to +anything <i>but</i> success. Your case is absolutely hopeless."</p> + +<p>They became grim enemies, and both of them enjoyed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> it. She let our +small son come and sit by the bed. The Indian promptly worshiped Joe as +the "longest" man he had ever seen, and they became boon companions.</p> + +<p>"It's pathetic," Eleanore told me, "the little things that appeal to him +here. Poor boy, he has forgotten what a decent home is like."</p> + +<p>As he grew stronger she read the paper to him each morning, and they +quarreled with keen relish over the news events of the day. And as at +the start, so now, she kept giving him little shocks of surprise by her +intimate glimpses into his views. On one of these occasions, after she +had come out from his room and was sitting by me reading,</p> + +<p>"You're a wonder, Eleanore," I said. "I don't see how you've done it."</p> + +<p>"Done what, my love?" asked Eleanore.</p> + +<p>"Wormed all his views out of poor old Joe."</p> + +<p>"I haven't done anything of the sort. I've learned over half of it from +Sue. She comes here often nowadays and we have long talks about him. Sue +seems to know him rather well."</p> + +<p>This did not interest me much, so I switched our talk to something that +did.</p> + +<p>"What bothers me," I said with a scowl, "is this infernal work of mine. +What are you smiling at?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Nothing," she murmured, beginning to read. "But if I were you I'd stick +at my work. You're good at that."</p> + +<p>"Not now I'm not," I retorted. "This story about the opera man isn't +coming on at all! The more I work the worse it gets!"</p> + +<p>"It will get better soon," she said.</p> + +<p>"I'm not so sure. Do you know what I think is the matter with me? I was +in to-day looking at Joe asleep, and watching the lines in that face of +his it came over me all of a sudden what a wretched coward I've been." +Eleanore looked up suddenly. "I know there's something in all his talk, +I've known it every time we've met. His view's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> so distorted it makes me +mad, but there's something in it you can't get away from. Poverty, +that's what it is, and I've always steered way clear of it as though I +were afraid to look. I've taken your father's point of view and left the +slums for him and his friends to tackle when they get the time. I was +only too glad to be left out. But that hour with J. K. and his stokers +gave me a jolt. I can feel it still. I can't seem to shake it off. And +I'm beginning to wonder now why I shouldn't get up the nerve to see for +myself, to have a good big look at it all—and write about it for a +while."</p> + +<p>"Don't!" said Eleanore. "Leave it alone!" Her voice was so sharp it +startled me.</p> + +<p>"Why?" I rejoined. "You've tackled poverty often enough. I guess I can +stand it if you can."</p> + +<p>"You're different," she answered. "You leave poverty alone and force +yourself to go on with your work. You've made a very wonderful start. +You'll be ready to take up fiction soon. When you have, and when you +have gone so far that you can feel sure of your name and yourself, then +you can look at whatever you like."</p> + +<p>"I wonder what Joe would say to that."</p> + +<p>"I know what he'll say—he'll agree with me. Why don't you ask him and +see for yourself? I'm beginning to like Joe Kramer," she added with a +quiet smile, "because now that I understand him I know that his life and +yours are so far apart you've hardly a point in common."</p> + +<p>And in the talks I had with Joe this soon proved to be the case. +Eleanore brought us together now and listened with deep satisfaction as +we clashed and jarred each other apart.</p> + +<p>His old indifferent manner was gone, he was softened, grateful for what +we had done—but he held to that view of his like a rock, and the view +entirely shut me out. Joe saw society wholly as "War Sure" between two +classes, and I was hopelessly on the wrong side. My work, my home and my +whole life were bound in with the upper class.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> And there could be no +middle ground. My boasted tolerance, breadth of mind, my readiness to +see both sides, my passion for showing up all men as human—this to Joe +was utter piffle. He had no use for such writing, or in fact for art of +any kind. "Propaganda" was all that he wanted, and that could be as +cheap as Nick Carter, as sentimental as Uncle Tom's Cabin, if only it +had the kind of "punch" that would reach to the mass of ignorant workers +and stir their minds and their passions into swift and bitter revolt. +Revolution! That was the thing. The world had come to a time, he said, +when talking and writing weren't going to count. We were entering into +an age of force—of "direct action"—strikes and the like—by prodigious +masses of men. All I could do was worthless.</p> + +<p>These talks made me so indignant and sore, so sure that Joe and all his +work were utterly wild and that only in Dillon and his kind lay any hope +of solving the dreary problems of the slums—that within a few days more +I was delving into my opera man with a most determined approval. He at +least was a builder, he didn't want to tear everything down! In his +every scheme for a huge success I took now an aggravated delight. All my +recent tolerance gone, I threw into my work an intensity that I had not +felt in months.</p> + +<p>And Eleanore smiled contentedly, as though she knew what she was about. +When at last the time came for Joe to leave, she was twice as friendly +to him as I.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<p>But on coming home one evening two or three weeks later, I found +Eleanore reading aloud to our son with a most preoccupied look on her +face.</p> + +<p>"Joe Kramer is coming to dinner," she said. "He called up this morning +and said he'd like to see us again. Sue is coming, too, as it happens. +She dropped in this afternoon."</p> + +<p>Sue arrived a few minutes later, and at once I thought to myself I had +never seen her look so well. For once she had taken time to dress. She +had done her dark hair in a different way. Her color, which had been +poor of late, to-night was most becomingly high, and those fascinating +eyes of hers were bright with a new animation.</p> + +<p>"She has found a fine new hobby," I thought.</p> + +<p>Her whole attitude to us was one of eager friendliness. She made much of +what we had done for Joe.</p> + +<p>"You've no idea," she told me, "how he feels about you both." She was +speaking of this when Joe came in.</p> + +<p>He, too, appeared to me different. Into his blunt manner had crept a +certain awkwardness, his gruff voice had an anxious note at times and +his eyes a hungry gleam. Poor old Joe, I thought. It must be hard, +despite all his talk, to see what he had missed in life, to feel what a +sacrifice he had made. He had thrown everything aside, love, marriage, +home, all personal ties—to tackle this bleak business of slums. The +more pity he had such a twisted view. And as presently, in reply to +Sue's questions, he talked about the approaching strike, my irritation +at his talk grew even sharper than before.</p> + +<p>"Your stokers and dock laborers," I interrupted hotly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> "are about as +fit to build up a mew world as they are to build a Brooklyn Bridge! When +I compare them to Eleanore's father and his way of going to work"—I +broke off in exasperation. "Can't you see you're all just floundering in +a perfect swamp of ignorance?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Joe. "I don't see that——"</p> + +<p>"I'm mighty glad you don't," said Sue. Eleanore turned on her abruptly.</p> + +<p>"Why are <i>you</i> glad, Sue?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Because," Sue answered warmly, "he's where every one of us ought to be! +He's doing the work we all ought to be doing!"</p> + +<p>"Then why don't you do it?" said Joe. His voice was low but sharp as in +pain. The next instant he turned from Sue to me. "I mean all of you," he +added. I looked at him in astonishment. What had worked this change in +Joe? In our last talk he had shut me out so completely. He seemed to +feel this at once himself, for he hastened to explain his remark. He had +turned his back on Sue and was talking hard at me:</p> + +<p>"Of course I don't mean you can do it, Bill, unless you change your +whole view of life. But why shouldn't you change? You're young enough. +That look at a stokehole got hold of you hard. And if you're able to +feel like that why not do some thinking, too?"</p> + +<p>"I'm thinking," I said grimly. "I told you before that I wanted to help. +But you said——"</p> + +<p>"I say it still," J. K. cut in. "If you want to help the people you've +got to drop your efficiency gods. You've got to believe in the people +first—that all they need is waking up to handle this whole job +themselves. You've got to see that they're waking up fast—all over the +world—that they're getting tired of gods above 'em slowly planning out +their lives—that they don't want to wait till they're dead to be +happy—that they feel poverty every day like a million tons of brick on +their chests—it's got so they can't even breathe without thinking! And +you've got to see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> that what they're thinking is, 'Do it yourself and do +it quick!' The only thing that's keeping them back is that in these +times of peace men get out of the habit of violence!</p> + +<p>"But the minute you get this clear in your mind, then I say you can help +'em. Because what's needed is so big. It's not only more pay and shorter +hours and homes where they needn't die off like flies—they need more +than that—they need a change as much as you—in their whole way of +looking at things. They've got to learn that they are a crowd—and can't +get anywhere at all until all pull together. Ignorant? Of course they +are! But that's where you and me come in—we can help 'em get together +faster than they would if left to themselves! You can help that way a +lot—by writing to the tenements! <i>That's</i> what I meant!"</p> + +<p>Joe stopped short. And after his passionate outburst, Eleanore spoke up +quietly.</p> + +<p>"This sounds funny from you," she said. "A few weeks ago you were just +as sure that Billy could do nothing. What has made you change so?"</p> + +<p>Joe reddened and looked down at his hands.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," he said gruffly after a moment, "it's because I'm still +weak from typhoid—weak enough to want to see some one but stokers get +into the job that's become my life. You see," he muttered, "I was raised +among people like you. It's a kind of a craving, I suppose—like +cigarettes." Again he stopped short and there was a pause.</p> + +<p>"Rather natural," Sue murmured. Again he turned sharply from her to me.</p> + +<p>"I say you can help by your writing," he said. "You call my friends an +ignorant mob. But thousands of 'em have read your stuff!"</p> + +<p>I looked up at Joe with a start.</p> + +<p>"Oh they don't like it," he went on. "It only makes 'em sore and mad. +But if you ever see things right, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> get into their side of this fight +with that queer fountain-axe of yours, you'll be surprised at the +tenement friends who'll pop up all around you. The first thing you know +they'll be calling you 'Bill.' That's the kind they are—they don't want +to shut anyone out—all they want to know is whether he means business. +If he doesn't he's no use, because they know that sooner or later +they'll do it anyhow themselves. It's going to be the biggest fight +that's happened since the world began! No cause has ever been so fine, +so worth a man's giving his life to aid! And all you've got to decide is +this—whether you're to get in now, and help make it a little easier, +help make it come without violence—or wait till it all comes to a crash +and then be yanked in like a sack of meal!"</p> + +<p>Before I could speak, Sue drew a deep breath.</p> + +<p>"I don't see how there's any choice about that," she said.</p> + +<p>Eleanore turned to her again:</p> + +<p>"Do you mean for Billy?"</p> + +<p>"I mean for us all," Sue answered. "Even for a person like me!" Sue was +beautiful just then—her cheeks aglow, her features tense, a radiant +eagerness in her eyes. "I've felt it, oh so long," she said. "It's gone +all through my suffrage work—through every speech that I have +made—that the suffragists need the working girls and ought to help them +win their strikes!"</p> + +<p>"And what do <i>you</i> think, Joe?" Eleanore persisted. "Were you speaking +of Billy alone just now or did you have Sue, too, in mind?"</p> + +<p>Joe looked back at her steadily.</p> + +<p>"I don't want to shut out the women," he said. "I've seen too many girls +jump in and make a big success of it. Not only working girls, but plenty +of college girls like you." He turned from Eleanore to Sue—and with a +gruff intensity, "You may think you can't do it, Sue," he said. "But I +know you can. I've seen it done, I tell you, all the way from here to +the Coast—girls like you as speakers, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> regular +organizers—forgetting themselves and sinking themselves—ready for any +job that comes."</p> + +<p>"That's the way I should want to do it," said Sue, her voice a little +breathless.</p> + +<p>"But how about wives?" asked Eleanore. "For some of these girls marry, I +suppose," she added thoughtfully. "At least I hope they do. I hope Sue +will."</p> + +<p>"I never said anything against that," Joe answered shortly.</p> + +<p>"But if they marry and have children," Eleanore continued, "aren't they +apt to get sick of it then, even bitter about it, this movement you +speak of that takes you in and sinks you down, swallows up every dollar +you have and all your thoughts and feelings?"</p> + +<p>"It needn't do as much as that," Joe muttered as though to himself.</p> + +<p>"Still—I'd like to see it work out," Eleanore persisted. "Do you happen +to know the wives of any labor leaders?"</p> + +<p>"I do," Joe answered quickly. "The wife of the biggest man we've got. +Jim Marsh arrived in town last night. His wife is with him. She always +is."</p> + +<p>"Now are you satisfied, dear?" Sue asked. But Eleanore smiled and shook +her head.</p> + +<p>"Is Mrs. Marsh a radical, too—I mean an agitator?" she asked. Joe's +face had clouded a little.</p> + +<p>"Not exactly," he replied. Eleanore's eyes were attentive now:</p> + +<p>"Do you know her well, Joe?"</p> + +<p>"I've met her——"</p> + +<p>"I'd like to meet her, too," she said. "And find out how she likes her +life."</p> + +<p>"I think I know what you'd find," said Sue, in her old cocksure, +superior manner. "I guess she likes it well enough——"</p> + +<p>"Still, dear," Eleanore murmured, "instead of taking things for granted +it would be interesting, I think, in all this talk to have one look at a +little real life."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Aren't you just a little afraid of real life, Eleanore?" Sue demanded, +in a quick challenging tone.</p> + +<p>"Am I?" asked Eleanore placidly.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Long after Joe had left us, Sue kept up that challenging tone. But she +did not speak to Eleanore now, her talk like Joe's was aimed at me.</p> + +<p>"Why not think it over, Billy?" she urged. "You're not happy now, I +never saw you so worried and blue."</p> + +<p>"I'm not in the least!" I said stoutly. But Sue did not seem to hear me. +She went on in an eager, absorbed sort of way:</p> + +<p>"Why not try it a little? You needn't go as far as Joe Kramer. He may +even learn to go slower himself—now that he has had typhoid——"</p> + +<p>"Do you think so?" Eleanore put in.</p> + +<p>"Why not?" cried Sue impatiently. "If he keeps on at this pace it will +kill him! Has he no right to some joy in life? Why should you two have +it all? Just think of it, Billy, you have a name, success and a lot of +power! Why not use it here? Suppose it is harder! Oh, I get so out of +patience with myself and all of us! Our easy, lazy, soft little lives! +Why can't we <i>give</i> ourselves a little?" And she went back over all Joe +had said. "It's all so real. So tremendously real," she ended.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>"I wonder what's going to happen," said Eleanore when we were alone.</p> + +<p>"God knows," I answered gloomily. That hammering from Joe and Sue had +stirred me up all over again. I had doggedly resisted, I had told Sue +almost angrily that I meant to keep right on as before. But now she was +gone, I was not so sure. "I still feel certain Joe's all wrong," I said +aloud. "But he and his kind are so dead in earnest—so ready for any +sacrifice to push their utterly wild ideas—that they may get a lot of +power. God help the country if they do."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I wasn't speaking of the country, my love," my wife informed me +cheerfully. "I was speaking of Sue and Joe Kramer."</p> + +<p>"Joe," I replied, "will slam right ahead. You can be sure of that, I've +got him down cold."</p> + +<p>"Have you?" she asked. "And how about Sue?"</p> + +<p>"Oh Sue," I replied indifferently, "has been enthused so many times."</p> + +<p>"Billy."</p> + +<p>I turned and saw my wife regarding her husband thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"I wonder," she said, "how long it will be before you can write a love +story."</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"Sue and Joe Kramer, you idiot."</p> + +<p>I stared at her dumfounded.</p> + +<p>"Did you think all that talk was aimed at you?" my pitiless spouse +continued. "Did you think all that change in Joe's point of view was on +your account?"</p> + +<p>I watched her vigilantly for a while.</p> + +<p>"If there's anything in what you say," I remarked carefully at last, +"I'll bet at least that Joe doesn't know it. He doesn't even suspect +it."</p> + +<p>"There are so many things," said Eleanore, "that men don't even suspect +in themselves. I'm sorry," she added regretfully. "But that summer +vacation we'd planned is off."</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, we'll stay right here in town. I see anything but a pleasant +summer."</p> + +<p>"Suppose," I said excitedly, "you tell me exactly what you <i>do</i> see!"</p> + +<p>"I see something," Eleanore answered, "which unless we can stop it may +be a very tragic affair. Tragic for Sue because I feel sure that she'd +never stand Joe's impossible life. And even worse for your father. He's +not only old and excitable, and very weak and feeble, too, but he's so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> +conservative besides that if Sue married Joe Kramer he'd consider her +utterly damned."</p> + +<p>"But I tell you you're wrong, all wrong!" I broke in. "Joe isn't that +kind of an idiot!"</p> + +<p>"Joe," said my wife decidedly, "is like every man I've ever met. I found +that out when he was sick. He has the old natural longing for a wife and +a home of his own. His glimpse of it here may have started it rising. +I'm no more sure than you are that he admits it to himself. But it's +there all the same in the back of his mind, and in that same mysterious +region he's trying to reconcile marrying Sue to the work which he +believes in—even with this strike coming on. It's perfectly pathetic.</p> + +<p>"Isn't it funny," she added, "how sometimes everything comes all at +once? Do you know what this may mean to us? I don't, I haven't the least +idea. I only know that you yourself are horribly unsettled—and that now +through this affair of Sue's we'll have to see a good deal of Joe—and +not only Joe but his friends on the docks—and not even the quiet ones. +No, we're to see all the wild ones. We're to be drawn right into this +strike—into what Joe calls revolution."</p> + +<p>"You may be right," I said doggedly. "But I don't believe it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<p>A few days later Joe called me up and asked me to come down to his +office. His reason for wanting to see me, he said, he'd rather not give +me over the 'phone.</p> + +<p>"You're right," I told Eleanore dismally. "He's going to talk to me +about Sue."</p> + +<p>I dreaded this talk, and I went to see Joe in no easy frame of mind. But +it was not about Sue. I saw that in my first glimpse of his face. He sat +half around in his office chair listening intensely to a man by his +side.</p> + +<p>"I want you to meet Jim Marsh," he said.</p> + +<p>I felt a little electric shock. So here was the great mob agitator, the +notorious leader of strikes. Eleanore's words came into my mind: "We're +to meet all the wild ones. We're to be drawn right into this +strike—into what Joe calls revolution." Well, here was the +arch-revolutionist, the prime mover of them all. Of middle size, about +forty years old, angular and wiry, there was a lithe easy force in his +limbs, but he barely moved as he spoke to me now. He just turned his +narrow bony face and gave me a glance with his keen gray eyes.</p> + +<p>"I've known your work for quite a while," he said in a low drawling +voice, "Joe says you're thinking of writing me up."</p> + +<p>So this was why Joe had sent for me. I had quite forgotten this idea, +but I took to it eagerly now. My work was going badly. Here was +something I could do, the life story of a man whose picture would soon +be on the front page of every paper in New York. It would interest my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> +magazine, it would give me a chance to get myself clear on this whole +ugly business of labor, poverty and strikes. I had evaded it long +enough, I would turn and face it squarely now.</p> + +<p>"Why yes, I'd like to try," I said.</p> + +<p>"He wants to do your picture with the America you know," said Joe. "He +says he's ready to be shown."</p> + +<p>Marsh glanced out at the harbor.</p> + +<p>"If he'll trail around with us for a while we may show him some of it +here," he drawled. And then quietly ignoring my presence he continued +his talk with Joe, as though taking it for granted that I was an +interested friend. I listened there all afternoon.</p> + +<p>The thing that struck me most at first was the cool effrontery of the +man in undertaking such a struggle. The old type of labor leader had at +least stuck to one industry, and had known by close experience what he +had to face. But here was a mere outsider, a visitor strolling into a +place and saying, "I guess I'll stop all this." Vaguely I knew what he +had to contend with. Sitting here in this cheap bare room, the thought +of other rooms rose in my mind, spacious, handsomely furnished rooms +where at one time or another I had interviewed heads of foreign ship +companies, railroad presidents, bankers and lawyers, newspaper editors, +men representing enormous wealth. All these rooms had been parts of my +harbor—a massed array of money and brains. He would have all this +against him. And to such a struggle I could see no end for him but jail.</p> + +<p>For against all this, on his side, was a chaotic army of ignorant men, +stokers, dockers, teamsters, scattered all over this immense region, +practically unorganized. What possible chance to bring them together? +How could he feel that he had a chance? How much did he already know?</p> + +<p>I asked him what he had seen of the harbor. For days, I learned, he had +told no one but Joe of his coming, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> had wandered about the port by +himself. And as a veteran tramp will in some mysterious fashion get the +feel of a new town within a few short hours there, so Marsh had got the +feel of this place—of a harbor different from mine, for he felt it from +the point of view of its hundred thousand laborers. He felt it with its +human fringe, he saw its various tenement borders like so many camps and +bivouacs on the eve of a battle.</p> + +<p>He told a little incident of how the harbor learned he was here. About +nine o'clock one morning, as he was waiting his chance to get into one +of the North River docks, a teamster recognized him there from a picture +of him he had once seen. The news traveled swiftly along the docks, out +onto piers and into ships. And at noon, way over in Hoboken, Marsh had +overheard a German docker say to the man eating lunch beside him,</p> + +<p>"I hear dot tamn fool anarchist Marsh is raising hell ofer dere in New +York."</p> + +<p>"But I wasn't raising hell," he drawled. "I was over here studying +literature." And he drew out from his pocket a tattered copy of a +report, the result of a careful investigation of work on the docks, made +recently by a most conservative philanthropic organization.</p> + +<p>"'In all the fierce rush of American industry,'" he read, with a quiet +smile of derision, "'no work is so long, so irregular or more full of +danger. Seven a. m. until midnight is a common work day here, and in the +rush season of winter when ships are often delayed by storms and so must +make up time in port, the same men often work all day and night and even +on into the following day, with only hour and half-hour stops for +coffee, food or liquor. This strain makes for accidents. From police +reports and other sources we find that six thousand killed and injured +every year on the docks is a conservative estimate.'"</p> + +<p>Marsh glanced dryly up at me:</p> + +<p>"Here's the America I know."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p> + +<p>I said nothing. I was appalled. Six thousand killed and injured! I could +feel his sharp gray eyes boring down into my soul:</p> + +<p>"You wrote up this harbor once."</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said.</p> + +<p>"Did you write this?"</p> + +<p>"No. I would have said it was a lie."</p> + +<p>"Do you say so now? These people are a careful crowd." I took the +pamphlet from his hands.</p> + +<p>"Queer," I muttered vaguely. "I never saw this report before."</p> + +<p>"Not so queer," he answered. "I'm told that it wasn't <i>meant</i> to be +seen—by you and the general public. That's the way this society works. +They spend half a dead old lady's cash investigating poverty and the +other half in keeping the public from learning what they've discovered. +But we're going to furnish publicity to this secluded work of art.</p> + +<p>"On Saturday afternoon," he continued, "I went along the North River +docks. I found long lines of dockers there—they were waiting for their +pay. At every pay window one of 'em stood with an empty cigar box in his +hands—and into that box every man as he passed dropped a part of his +pay—for the man who had been hurt that week—for him or for his widow.</p> + +<p>"And over across the way," he went on, "I saw something on the +waterfront that fitted right into the scenery. It was a poster on a high +fence, and it had a black border around it. On one side of it was a +picture of a tall gent in a swell frock suit. He was looking squarely at +the docks and pointing to the sign beside him, which said, '<i>Certainly</i> +I'm talking to you! Money saved is money earned. Read what I will +furnish you for seventy-five dollars—cash. Black cloth or any color you +like—plush or imitation oak—casket with a good white or cream +lining—pillow—burial suit or brown habit—draping and embalming +room—chairs—hearse—three coaches—com<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>plete care and attendance—also +handsome candelabra and candles if requested.'"</p> + +<p>As Marsh read this grisly list from his notebook, it suddenly came into +my mind that in my explorations years ago I had seen this poster at many +points, all along the waterfront. It had made no impression on me then, +for it had not fitted into my harbor. But Marsh had caught its meaning +at once and had promptly jotted it down for use. For it fitted his +harbor exactly.</p> + +<p>Vaguely, in this and a dozen ways, I could feel him taking my harbor to +pieces, transforming each piece into something grim and so building a +harbor all his own. Disturbedly and angrily I struggled to find the +flaws in his building, eagerly I caught at distortions here and there, +twisted facts and wrong conclusions. But in all the terrible stuff which +he had so hastily gathered here, there was so much that I could not +deny. And he gave no chance for argument. Quickly jumping from point to +point he pictured a harbor of slaves overburdened, driven into fierce +revolt. It was hard to keep my footing.</p> + +<p>For his talk was not only of this harbor. It ranged out over an ocean +world which was all in a state of ferment and change. Men of every race +and creed, from English, Germans, Russians to Coolies, Japs and Lascars, +had crowded into the stokeholes, mixing bowls for all the world. And the +mixing process had begun. At Copenhagen, two years before, in a great +marine convention that followed the socialist congress there, Marsh had +seen the delegates from seventeen different countries representing +millions of seamen. And this crude world parliament, this international +brotherhood, had placed itself on record as against wars of every kind, +except the one deepening bitter war of labor against capital. To further +this they had proposed to paralyze by strikes the whole international +transport world. The first had followed promptly, breaking out in +England. The second was to take place here.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You don't see how it can happen," said Marsh, with one of those keen +sudden looks that showed he was aware of my presence. "You admit this +place is a watery hell, but you don't believe we can change it. You +don't see how ignorant mobs of men can rise up and take the whole game +in their hands. Do I get you right?"</p> + +<p>"You do," I said.</p> + +<p>"Look over there."</p> + +<p>I followed his glance to the doorway. It was filled with a group of big +ragged men. Some of the faces were black with soot, some were smiling +stolidly, some scowling in the effort to hear. All eyes were intent on +the face of the man who had never been known to lose a strike.</p> + +<p>"That's the beginning," Marsh told me. "You keep your eyes on their +faces—from now on right into the strike—and you may see something grow +there that'll give you a new religion."</p> + +<p>As the day wore into evening the crowd from outside pressed into the +room until they were packed all around us.</p> + +<p>"Let's get out of this," said Joe at last. We went to a neighboring +lunchroom and ate a hasty supper. But as here, too, the crowd pressed in +to get a look at Marsh, Joe asked us to come up to his room.</p> + +<p>"They <i>know</i> your room," Marsh answered. His tone was grim, as though he +had been accustomed for years to this ceaselessly curious pressing mass, +pressing, pressing around him tight. "Suppose we go up to mine," he +said. "I want you fellows to meet my wife. She has never met any writers +before," he added to me, "and she's interested in that kind of thing. +She was a music teacher once."</p> + +<p>I was about to decline and start for home, but suddenly I recalled +Eleanore's saying that she would like to meet Mrs. Marsh. So I accepted +his invitation. And what I saw a few minutes later brought me down +abruptly from these world-wide schemes for labor.</p> + +<p>We entered a small, cheap hotel, climbed a flight of stairs and came +into the narrow bedroom which was for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> the moment this notorious +wanderer's home. A little girl about six years old lay asleep on a cot +in one corner, and under the one electric light a woman sat reading a +magazine. She had a strong rather clever face which would have been +appealing if it were not for the bitter impatient glance she gave us as +we entered.</p> + +<p>"Talk low, boys, our little girl's asleep," Marsh said. "Say, Sally," he +continued, with his faint, derisive smile, "here's a writer come to see +you."</p> + +<p>"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," she said, then relapsed into a stiff +silence. I tried to break through her awkwardness but entirely without +avail. I grew more and more sure of my first impression, that this woman +hated her husband's friends, his strikes, his "proletariate." She was +smart, pushing, ambitious, I thought, just the kind that would have got +on in any middle western town. Eleanore must meet her.</p> + +<p>Then presently I noticed that only Marsh was talking. I glanced at Joe +and was startled by the intensity in his eyes.</p> + +<p>For Joe was watching his leader's wife. And watching, he appeared to me +to be seeing her in a dreary succession of rooms like these, in cities, +towns and mining camps, wherever her husband was leading a strike—and +then trying to see his own home in such rooms, and Sue in his home, a +wife like this. The picture struck me suddenly cold. Sue pulled into +this for life! Again I remembered Eleanore's words—"Drawn into +revolution."</p> + +<p>"Say, Joe," drawled Marsh, with a sharp look at him. "Got any of that +typhoid left?"</p> + +<p>Joe laughed quickly, confusedly.</p> + +<p>Soon after that I left them.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<p>The next day I went to the editor for whom I was doing most of my work. +When I told him I wanted to try Jim Marsh, the editor looked at me +curiously.</p> + +<p>"Why?" he asked.</p> + +<p>I spoke of the impending strike.</p> + +<p>"Have you met Marsh?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Do you like him?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"But he struck you as big."</p> + +<p>"Yes—he did."</p> + +<p>"Are you getting interested in strikes?"</p> + +<p>"I want to see a big one close."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Why not?" I retorted. "They're getting to be significant, aren't they? +I want to see what they're like inside." The editor smiled:</p> + +<p>"You'll find them rather hot inside. Don't get overheated."</p> + +<p>"Oh you needn't think I'll lose my head."</p> + +<p>"I hope not," he said quietly. "Go ahead with your story about Marsh. +I'll be interested to see what you do."</p> + +<p>I went out of the office in no easy frame of mind. The editor's +inquisitive tone had started me thinking of how J. K. had been shut out +by the papers because he wrote "the truth about things."</p> + +<p>"Oh that's all rot," I told myself. "Joe's case and mine are not the +same. The magazines aren't like the papers and I'm not like Joe. His +idea of the truth and mine will never be anywhere near alike."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p> + +<p>But what would Eleanore think of it? I went home and told her of my +plan. To my surprise she made no objection.</p> + +<p>"It's the best thing you can do," she said. "We're in this now—on +account of Sue—we can't keep out. And so long as we are, you might as +well write about it, too. You think so much better when you're at +work—more clearly—don't you—and that's what I want." She was looking +at me steadily out of those gray-blue eyes of hers. "I want you to think +yourself all out—as clearly as you possibly can—and then write just +what you think," she said. "I want you to feel that I'm never afraid of +anything you may ever write—so long as you're really sure it's true."</p> + +<p>I held her a moment in my arms and felt her tremble slightly. And then +she said with her old quiet smile:</p> + +<p>"Sue has asked us over to Brooklyn to-night—Joe Kramer is to be there, +too."</p> + +<p>"That affair is moving rather fast."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, quite fast," she said cheerfully.</p> + +<p>"How will Dad look at it?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"As you did," said Eleanore dryly. "He'll look at it and see nothing at +all."</p> + +<p>"I've half a mind to tell him!"</p> + +<p>"Don't," she said. "If you did he would only get excited, become the +old-fashioned father and order Sue to leave Joe alone—which would be +all that is needed now to make Sue marry Joe in a week."</p> + +<p>"Sue is about as selfish," I said hotly, "about as wrapped up in her own +little self——"</p> + +<p>"As any girl is who thinks she's in love but isn't sure," said Eleanore. +"Sue isn't sure—poor thing—she's frightfully unsettled."</p> + +<p>"But why drag Joe way over there?"</p> + +<p>"Because she wants to look at him there. It's her home, you know, her +whole past life, all that she has been used to. It's the place where she +has breakfast. She wants to see how Joe fits in."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But they'd never live <i>there</i> if they married!"</p> + +<p>"Nevertheless," said Eleanore, "that's one of the ways a girl makes up +her mind." She looked pityingly into my eyes. "Women are beyond +you—aren't they, dear?" she murmured.</p> + +<p>"J. K. isn't," I rejoined. "And I can't see him in <i>any</i> home!"</p> + +<p>"Can't you! Then watch him a little closer the next time he comes to +ours."</p> + +<p>I went out for a walk along the docks and tried to picture the coming +strike. When I came home I found Joe there, he had come to go with us to +Brooklyn. He was sitting on the floor with our boy gravely intent on a +toy circus. Neither one was saying a word, but as Joe carefully poised +an elephant on the top of a tall red ladder, I recalled my wife's +injunction. By Jove, he did fit into a home, here certainly was a +different Joe. He did not see me at the door. Later I called to him from +our bedroom:</p> + +<p>"Say, Joe. Don't you want to come in and wash?"</p> + +<p>He came in, and presently watching him I noticed his glances about our +room. It was most decidedly Eleanore's room, from the flowered curtains +to the warm soft rug on the floor. It was gay, it was quiet and restful, +it was intimately personal. Here was her desk with a small heap of +letters and photographs of our son and of me, and here close by was her +dressing-table strewn with all its dainty equipment. A few invitations +were stuck in the mirror. Eleanore's hat and crumpled white gloves lay +on our bed. I had thrown my coat beside them. There were such things in +this small room as Joe had never dreamed of.</p> + +<p>"Oh Joe," said Eleanore from the hall. "Don't you want to come into the +nursery? Somebody wants a pillow fight."</p> + +<p>"Sure," said Joe, with a queer little start.</p> + +<p>"By the way," I heard her add outside. "Billy told me he saw Mrs. Marsh, +and I should so like to meet her, too.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> Couldn't you have us all down to +your room some evening?"</p> + +<p>"If you like," he answered gruffly.</p> + +<p>"I'm honestly curious," Eleanore said, "to see what kind of a person she +is. And I'm sure that Sue is, too. May we bring her with us?"</p> + +<p>"Of course you may—whenever you like."</p> + +<p>"Would Friday evening be too soon?"</p> + +<p>"I'll see if I can fix it."</p> + +<p>When Eleanore came in to me, her lips were set tight as though something +had hurt her.</p> + +<p>"That was pretty tough," I muttered.</p> + +<p>"Yes, wasn't it," she said quickly. "I don't care, I'm not going to have +him marrying Sue. I'm too fond of both of them. Besides, your father has +to be thought of. It would simply kill him!"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>"Yes," I thought to myself that night. "No doubt about that, it would +kill him."</p> + +<p>How much older he looked, in the strong light of the huge old-fashioned +gas lamp that hung over the dining-room table. He was making a visible +effort to be young and genial. He had not seen Joe in several years, and +he evidently knew nothing whatever of what Joe was up to, except that he +had been ill at our home. Joe spoke of what we had done for him, and Sue +eagerly took up the cue, keeping the talk upon us and "the Indian," to +my father's deep satisfaction. From this she turned to our childhood and +the life in this old house. Dad pictured it all in such glowing colors I +recognized almost nothing as real. But watching Sue's face as she +listened, she seemed to me trying to feel again as she had felt here +long ago when she had been his only chum. Every few moments she would +break off to throw a quick, restless glance at Joe.</p> + +<p>When the time came for us to go, my father assured us warmly that he had +not felt so young in years. He said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> we had so stirred him up that he +must take a book and read or he wouldn't sleep a wink all night. Joe did +not come away with us. As we stood all together at the door, I saw +Eleanore glance into Dad's study where his heavy leather chair was +waiting, and then into the room across the hall where Sue had drawn up +two chairs to the fire. And I thought of the next hour or two. My father +already had under his arm a book on American shipping, which told about +the old despotic sea world of his day, in which there had been no +strikers but only mutineers.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>"There's very little time to lose," said Eleanore on the way home.</p> + +<p>"Look here," I suggested. "Why don't you talk this out with Sue, and +tell her just what you think of it all?"</p> + +<p>"Because," said Eleanore, "what I think and what you think has nothing +whatever to do with the case. Sue would say it was none of our business. +And she'd be quite right. It isn't."</p> + +<p>"Aren't we making it our business?" My wife at times gets me so +confused.</p> + +<p>"I'm not <i>telling</i> them anything," she rejoined. "I'm only trying to +<i>show</i> them something and let the poor idiots see for themselves. If +they won't see, it's hopeless."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<p>On Friday evening Sue sent word that she would be late and that she +would meet us at Joe's room. So we went down without her.</p> + +<p>His room had changed since I'd seen it last, I took in at once his +pathetic attempts to fix it up for our coming. Gone were the dirty +curtains, the dirty collars and shirts, and the bed was concealed by an +old green screen borrowed from his landlady, the German saloon-keeper's +wife below. The same woman had scrubbed the floor and put down a faded +rag carpet in front of the old fireplace, in which now a coal fire was +burning. Poor Joe had turned up all the lights to make things bright and +cheerful, but it only showed things up as they were. The room was +glaringly forlorn.</p> + +<p>And now that Eleanore had come, her presence made him feel at once what +a wretchedly dreary place it was. Eleanore knew what she wanted to do +and she had dressed herself for the part. And as Joe took in the effect +of her smart little suit, and waited for Sue and Mrs. Marsh, he became +so anxious and gloomy that he could only speak with an effort. He kept +glancing uneasily at the door.</p> + +<p>"I don't like the idea," said Eleanore, "of Sue's coming down here alone +at night through this part of town." Joe looked around at her quickly. +"But I suppose," she added thoughtfully, "that she'd have to get used to +queer parts of towns if she ever took up the life you spoke of."</p> + +<p>"I don't think that would bother her," Joe answered gruffly.</p> + +<p>Presently there was a step on the stairs. He jumped up and went to the +door, and a moment later Sue entered the room.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p> + +<p>Immediately its whole atmosphere changed. Sue was plainly excited. She, +too, had dressed herself with care—or rather with a careful neglect. +She wore the oldest suit she had and a simple blouse with a gay red tie. +With one sharp glance at Eleanore, she took in the strained situation +and set about to ease it.</p> + +<p>"What a nice old fireplace," she exclaimed. "Let's turn down the lights +and draw 'round the fire. You need more chairs, Joe; go down and get +some."</p> + +<p>And soon with the lights turned low and the coals stirred into a ruddy +glow, we were sitting in quite a dramatic place, the scene was set for +"revolution." The curtainless windows were no longer bleak, for through +them from the now darkened room we looked out on the lights of the +harbor. Sue thought the view thrilling, and equally thrilling she found +the last issue of Joe's weekly paper, <i>War Sure</i>, which lay on the +table. It was called "Our Special Sabotage Number," and in it various +stokers and dockers, in response to an appeal from Joe, had crudely +written their ideas upon just how the engines of a ship or the hoisting +winches on a dock could be most effectively put out of order in time of +strike. "So that the scabs," wrote one contributor, "can see how they +like it."</p> + +<p>"Why not have blue-penciled some of this?" I asked, with a faint +premonition of trouble ahead.</p> + +<p>"Because Joe believes in free speech, I suppose," Sue answered for him +quickly.</p> + +<p>"I'm not much of a lawyer, Joe," I said. "But this stuff looks to me a +good deal like incitement to violence."</p> + +<p>"Possibly," J. K replied.</p> + +<p>"You don't look horribly frightened," laughed Sue. And she wanted to +hear all the latest strike news. The time was rapidly drawing near. It +was now close to the end of March and the strike was expected in April.</p> + +<p>When Marsh arrived about nine o'clock, there was an awkward moment. For +behind him came his wife and their small daughter, both of whom were +stiffly dressed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> and with one glance at Eleanore they felt immediately +out of place. Mrs. Marsh was even more hostile and curt than when I had +seen her last. She was angry at having been dragged into this and took +little pains to hide it.</p> + +<p>"My husband would have me come," she said. "And I couldn't leave my +little girl, so I had to bring her along." And she stopped abruptly with +a look that asked us plainly, "Now that I'm here, what do you want?"</p> + +<p>"How old is your little girl?" Eleanore inquired.</p> + +<p>"Six last month."</p> + +<p>"Are you going to put her in school in New York?"</p> + +<p>And in spite of short suspicious replies she soon had Mrs. Marsh and her +child talking of kindergartens and parks and other parts of the town +they must see. Sue was now eagerly talking to Marsh, Joe was beside her +helping her out, and both seemed wholly to have forgotten the disturbing +woman behind them. But by the quick looks that Eleanore gave them now +and then, I could see she was only holding back until she should have +Mrs. Marsh in a mood where she could be brought into the talk and made +to tell about her life.</p> + +<p>"Don't you ever want to settle down?" she asked when there had come a +pause. Marsh turned abruptly to Eleanore.</p> + +<p>"Of course she does," he answered. "Did you ever know a woman who +didn't, the minute that she got a kid? But my wife can't, if she sticks +to me. She has had to make up her mind to live in any old place that +comes along, from a dollar room in a cheap hotel to a shanty in a mining +camp." And his look at Eleanore seemed to add, "That's the kind she is, +you little doll."</p> + +<p>Eleanore quickly made herself look as much like a doll as possible. She +placidly folded her dainty gloved hands.</p> + +<p>"I should think," she murmured in ladylike tones, "Mrs. Marsh would find +that rather difficult."</p> + +<p>"She does," said Marsh aggressively. "But my wife has nerve enough to +stand up to the rough side of life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>—as the wives of most workingmen +have to—in this rich and glorious land."</p> + +<p>"Won't you tell us about it?" asked Eleanore sweetly. "I should be so +interested to hear. It's so different, you see, from all I've been +accustomed to."</p> + +<p>"Yes," Marsh answered grimly, "I've no doubt it is. Go ahead, Sally, and +tell them about it."</p> + +<p>And Sally did. Gladly taking her husband's aggressive tone, she started +out almost with a sneer. Her remarks at first were disjointed and brief, +but I told her I was writing the story of her husband's life, that I +wanted her side of it from the start. I promised to show her what I +wrote and let her cut anything she had told me if she did not want it in +print. And so in scattered incidents, with bits thrown in now and then +by Marsh, the lives of these two began to come out. And we understood +her bitterness.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>"Mr. Marsh was born," she said, "in one of the poorest little towns in +Southern Iowa. It was nothing but a hole of a place about six miles from +the county seat where my father was a lawyer. But even in that little +hole his family was the poorest there. I've been all over the States +since then, and I've seen poor people, the Lord knows—but I want to say +I've never seen people anywhere that were any worse off than my husband +was when he was a boy. And yet he got out of it all by himself. He +didn't need any strikes to help him."</p> + +<p>"But of course," Sue put in smoothly, "your husband was an exceptional +man." Mrs. Marsh threw her a bitter glance.</p> + +<p>"He might have been," she answered.</p> + +<p>"What was he like as a boy?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"A fighter," she said. For a moment her sharp voice grew proud. "His +father took diabetes and died, and they went into debt to bury him. Jim +helped his mother run the farm and missed half his schooling. But his +teacher loaned him text-books—and at home they had no candles,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> so he +used to work with his back to the fire—half the night. My father used +to call him a regular little Honest Abe. That's a surprise to you, isn't +it," she added with a hard little laugh.</p> + +<p>"But then the town had a sudden boom. A new branch of the railroad came +through that way and houses and stores went up over night. Jim was only +sixteen then, but he grabbed the chance to get into the building. In +less than a year he had earned enough money so he could quit and go to +school. He came over to high school in our town, walking his six miles +twice a day. And that's where I met him.</p> + +<p>"My father took a shine to him right off and promised to make him a +lawyer. He loaned him law books the first year, and the second Jim +worked in his office." She looked for a moment at the wall. "I expect +it's not a love story you're after—so I'll leave that part of it out. +Papa was mad when I broke the news—and I can't say I blame him. He was +the richest man in town, the railroad lawyer of the place—and he had +meant that I should go to a polishing school in St. Louis.</p> + +<p>"Well, I did go to St. Louis, but I was eloping at the time and I became +Jim's wife. We had a hard fight for a year or two, but we made up our +minds we'd make it go. Jim got a job on a skyscraper which was going up +at that time. I got him his breakfast at six every morning and he got +home about seven at night, and right after supper he went at his +Blackstone and dug into it all evening. As a rule he got to bed at one, +and five hours' sleep was all he had—with a few hours extra Sundays.</p> + +<p>"I knew a girl from home in St. Louis whose husband was making money +fast. But Jim was too proud to make use of my friends or go to her home +when we were invited. We missed three card parties on that account. But +she helped me get some pupils and I gave piano lessons. When my baby was +born I had to quit—but I thought we were out of the woods by then, for +Jim was made foreman of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> his gang and was raised to a hundred dollars a +month. We moved from our boarding house into a flat. I hired a young +Swedish girl and began to feel that I knew where I was.</p> + +<p>"But then the building workers struck. Jim had always been popular with +his men, and now he wanted his boss to give them half of what they asked +for. But his boss didn't see it that way at all, and he and Jim had +trouble. The next week Jim decided he wouldn't manage what he called +'scabs.' So he left his employment, went in with the men and made the +strike a great success. That left him leader of their union. The salary +they paid him was eighty dollars instead of a hundred—so I let our +Swedish girl go.</p> + +<p>"He said his new position would give him more time to study law. But it +didn't turn out quite that way. He got so wrapped up in his union +affairs that he had no time for his law books. One day I put them up on +a shelf and found he didn't notice it."</p> + +<p>Eleanore suddenly tightened at this, a quick sympathy came into her +eyes. Sue gave a restless little sigh.</p> + +<p>"He'd be out at meetings most every night," Mrs. Marsh continued. "At +the end of the year he was one of three leaders in a strike of all the +building trades in town. All work of that kind in the city was stopped +and things got very ugly. One night a man came to our flat and informed +me that my husband was in jail. I went to the jail the next morning and +saw him. We had quite a talk. And that afternoon I gave up our flat."</p> + +<p>"Why?" asked Eleanore softly.</p> + +<p>"I presumed the landlord wished it," said Mrs. Marsh without looking +around. "I took a room in a cheap hotel. Mr. Marsh came out of jail with +ideas that were all new to me. He had left his old trade union and gone +in with a new crowd of men who stood for out-and-out revolution—which I +couldn't understand. But we made the best of it. We went to the theater +that night and then he took the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> midnight train on one of his first +labor trips. At first these trips were only for a week or so, but as +time went on they grew longer. As a rule I never wrote him because I +never knew his address. On one trip he was away five weeks—and before +he got back there was time enough for my second baby, a little boy, to +be born and die of pneumonia."</p> + +<p>Eleanore flinched as though that had hurt. I saw her turn and look at +Sue, who seemed even more restless than before.</p> + +<p>"You decided to travel with him then—didn't you?" Eleanore murmured.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the other gruffly. "We used to try to figure out what city +he would likely be in, or at least not far away from—and then my little +girl and I would find a place to board there. It has been like that for +the past four years. In that time we've lived in fourteen places all the +way between here and the Coast."</p> + +<p>"Have you lived all the time at hotels?" Eleanore inquired.</p> + +<p>"We have," said the woman curtly, "but hardly the kind you're accustomed +to. As a rule, as soon as we reach a town my husband's name appears in +the papers, and on that account the more refined houses wouldn't care to +keep us long."</p> + +<p>Eleanore leaned forward, her eyes troubled and intent. She seemed to +have forgotten Sue.</p> + +<p>"How do you know they wouldn't?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"I found out by trying—twice."</p> + +<p>I heard a sudden angry creak in the battered old chair in which Sue was +sitting.</p> + +<p>"So my little girl Lucy and I," the embittered voice went on, "go to +hotels that don't ask many questions. We pass the time going to parks or +museums—or now and then to a concert—where I try to give her a taste +for good music."</p> + +<p>"Do you find time to keep up your music?" I asked.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p> + +<p>"There's time enough," came the quick reply. "You see as a rule I'm just +waiting around. One night in Pittsburgh it was my birthday, and as the +Grand Opera was there for a week and I had never been to one, I got Mr. +Marsh to take me. We made it a regular celebration, with dinner in a +first-class restaurant just for once. But my husband is generally +watched, and the papers all took it up the next day. 'Marsh and wife +dine and see opera after his speech to starving strikers,' or similar +words to that effect."</p> + +<p>"Do you see anything of the strikers?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Not much," she replied. "We used to be invited to go to parties at +their homes. But most of them, even the leaders, were Irish, Germans, +Italians or Jews whose wives could barely speak English. I found them +not very pleasant affairs. Some of the wives drank a good deal of beer +and most of them had very little to say. Strike dances were no better. +The wives as a rule sat with their children around the walls—while a +lot of young factory girls, Jewesses for the most part, danced turkey +trots around the hall."</p> + +<p>"There were speeches, I suppose?" Sue put in impatiently.</p> + +<p>"Yes—Mr. Marsh and others made speeches between dances. They weren't +the kind of affairs I'd been used to in our home town," said Mrs. Marsh. +"I've lost track of the folks at home. I never write and they don't +write me. Only once when my mother knew where I was she sent me a box at +Christmas. Lucy and I got quite excited over that box, it was all the +presents we'd had from outside in quite a line of Christmases. So we +thought we'd celebrate."</p> + +<p>"How did you celebrate Christmas?" Eleanore asked softly.</p> + +<p>"We went out and bought a tree and candles, some gold balls and popcorn +and all the other fixings. And we popped the corn over the gas that +night. The next day we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> bought things for each other's stockings. Lucy +was then only four years old, but I'd leave her at a counter and tell +the clerk to let her have all she wanted to buy for me up to a dollar. +That was how we worked it. The next night we had the tree in our room. I +got Mr. Marsh to help me trim it. At last we lit the candles and let +Lucy in from the hotel hall, where she'd nearly caught her death of +cold. Then we opened the box from home. There was a doll for Lucy and a +framed photograph of my mother for me—and for Mr. Marsh a Bible. He got +laughing over that and so did I. And that ended Christmas.</p> + +<p>"We had another Christmas last year," she said in a slow, intense sort +of way as though seeing the place as she spoke, "in a mining town in +Montana, where Jim had been in jail five days and the whole place was +under martial law. A major of the militia came to me on Christmas Eve. +He claimed that Jim had been seen by detectives traveling with another +woman and that I was not his wife. They locked me up for two hours that +night as an immoral woman."</p> + +<p>Sue was sitting rigid now, her lips pressed tight. And Joe with a +strained unnatural face was staring into the fire.</p> + +<p>"But of course," Mrs. Marsh concluded, "most of the time it isn't like +that. As a rule when we come to a city nothing especial happens at all. +We just take a room like the one we have now and wait till the strike is +over. I've got so I have a queer view of towns. I'm always there at the +time of a strike, when crowds of Italians and Poles and Jews fill the +streets on parade or jam into halls and talk about running the world by +themselves. And I guess they're going to do it some day—but I presume +not by to-morrow."</p> + +<p>For some time while she was speaking her eyes had been fixed steadily +upon Joe's only picture. It stood on the mantel, a big charcoal sketch +of a crowd of immigrants just leaving Ellis Island. They were of all +races. Un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>couth, heavy, stolid, with that hungry hope in all their eyes +for more of the good things of the earth, they seemed like some barbaric +horde about to pour in over the land. With her eyes upon their faces in +deep, quiet hatred this woman from the Middle West had told the story of +her life.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>"Well, Sally," said her husband, who had grown restive toward the end, +"I guess that'll do. Let's go on home."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure I'm ready," she quickly replied. Now that she had come out of +herself she seemed angry at having told so much.</p> + +<p>When they had left there was a silence, which Sue broke with a breath of +impatience.</p> + +<p>"What a frightful thing it must be for a man in this work," she +exclaimed, "to have a wife like that! A woman so hard and narrow, so +wrapped up in her own little life, with not a spark of sympathy for any +of his big ideals!"</p> + +<p>"I suppose it's the life that has done it," said Eleanore quietly, +looking at Sue.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to see some women," Sue retorted angrily, "who have been in +that life for years and years, and <i>have</i> sympathy, have <i>everything</i>, +don't care for anything else in the world!" She turned suddenly to Joe. +"You said there were hundreds, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>Joe looked back at her a moment. There was a startled, groping, +searching expression in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said. "There are hundreds."</p> + +<p>"Are many of them married?" Eleanore inquired.</p> + +<p>"Some of them are," he answered.</p> + +<p>"When a woman who, as Sue has just said, throws herself into this heart +and soul, marries a man who is in it, too, how much of their time can +they spend together?"</p> + +<p>"That depends on the kind of work," he said. Eleanore held his eyes with +hers.</p> + +<p>"In some cases, I suppose," she went on, "like yours, for example, where +the man's work keeps him moving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>—if the woman's work wouldn't let her +go with him they would have to be half their time apart."</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"As Mrs. Marsh and her husband were at the time when her second baby was +born."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Joe, still watching her.</p> + +<p>"Aren't there a good many, too, who don't exactly marry—but marry just +a little—one woman here, another there, and so on?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Joe, "there are some who do that."</p> + +<p>"I should think," said Eleanore thoughtfully, "that in a movement of +this kind a man ought not to marry at all—or else marry a little a good +many times—so as always to be free for the Cause."</p> + +<p>"Unless," said Joe, quite steadily, "he finds a woman like some I've +known, whose feeling for a man, one man, seems to be planted in her for +life—who can easily stand not being with him because she herself is +deep in her own job, and her job is about the same as his—and because +the two of them have decided to see the whole job through to the end."</p> + +<p>His eyes went up to the charcoal sketch.</p> + +<p>"It's a job worth seeing through," he said.</p> + +<p>Sue was leaning forward now.</p> + +<p>"Where did you get that picture, Joe?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"It was an illustration," he said, "for a thing I once had in a +magazine." And then as though almost forgetting us all, his eyes still +upon those immigrant faces, he said with a slow, rough intensity:</p> + +<p>"I know every figure in it. I know just where they're strong and where +each one of 'em is weak. I've never made gods out of 'em. But I know +they do all the real work in the world. They're the ones who get all the +rotten deals, the ones who get shot down in wars and worked like dogs in +time of peace. They're the ones who are ready to go out on strike and +risk their lives to change all this. They're the people worth spending +your life with. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> it's a job for your whole life—and before a man or +a woman jumps in they want to be sure they're ready."</p> + +<p>He did not look at Sue as he spoke. He seemed barely able to hold +himself in. His relief was plain when we took her away.</p> + +<p>Sue took a car to Brooklyn and we started homeward. Eleanore wanted to +walk for a while. She walked quickly, her face set.</p> + +<p>"What do you think of it?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"I wasn't thinking of Sue," she said. "I was thinking of Mrs. Marsh. +I've never tormented a woman like that and I never will again in my +life—not for Sue or anyone else—she can marry anybody she likes!"</p> + +<p>"Well, she won't marry Joe," I said. "Did you see his face—poor devil? +You've certainly settled that affair."</p> + +<p>"Have I?" she asked sharply. And then her curious feminine mind took a +long leap. "And what are <i>you</i> going to be," she asked, "in a year from +now?" I smiled at her.</p> + +<p>"Not a second Marsh," I said. "But even if I were the man in the moon, +you'd make a success of being my wife."</p> + +<p>"I think I would," said Eleanore. "It must be so quiet up there in the +moon."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<p>"Come over here at once." My father's voice over the telephone, one +morning a few days later, sounded thick and unnatural.</p> + +<p>"What about?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Your sister."</p> + +<p>When I reached the house in Brooklyn he came himself to let me in and +took me into the library. I was shocked by his face, it was terribly +worn, quite plainly he had been up all night. As he began speaking his +voice shook and he leaned forward, every inch of him tense.</p> + +<p>Sue had told him the night before that she was going to marry Joe +Kramer. In reply to his anxious questions she had given him some of the +facts about what Joe was doing. And Dad had stormed at her half the +night.</p> + +<p>"She wants to marry him, Billy," he cried. "She's got her mind set on a +man like that! What has he got to support her with? Not a cent, not even +a decent job! He's not writing now. Do you know what he's doing? +Stirring up strikes—of the ugliest kind—of the most ignorant class of +men—foreigners! I know such strikes—I've fought 'em myself and I know +how they're handled! That young man will land in jail! And it's where he +belongs! Do you know what he's up to right here on the docks?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know——"</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let him come to the house?"</p> + +<p>"I was doing my best to stop it, Dad."</p> + +<p>"You were, eh—well, you'll stop it now! Understand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> me, Billy, he's +your friend—you brought him here—way back at the start. You've got to +put a stop to this——"</p> + +<p>"But how?" I asked, trying to steady my voice. "What do you think that I +can do?"</p> + +<p>"You can talk to her, can't you? God Almighty! Make her see this will +ruin her life!"</p> + +<p>"I can't do that."</p> + +<p>"Can't you?" He rose and bent over me gripping my arms, and I felt his +violent trembling. "If you don't, it's the end of me," he said.</p> + +<p>"Steady, Dad—now steady—this is coming out all right, you know——" I +got him back into his chair. "I'm going to do all I possibly can. I'm +going to see Joe Kramer now—he's the only one who can influence her. +I'm going to get him to come to Sue and help me make her feel what's +ahead—the hardest, ugliest parts of his life. Now promise you'll keep +out of it, promise you'll leave her alone while I'm gone."</p> + +<p>He agreed to this at last and I left him. But as I went into the hall +Sue came to me from the other room. Her face was white and strained.</p> + +<p>"Well, Billy?" she said. My throat tightened. She looked so pitifully +worn.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry, Sue——"</p> + +<p>"Is that all you have to say to me?" she cut in with a quick catch of +her breath.</p> + +<p>"No, no." I took her in my arms. "Dear old Sue—don't you know how I +feel? I want to see you happy. I'm trying to see what on earth we can +do."</p> + +<p>"Why can't you all leave me alone?" she demanded, in low broken tones. +"That's all I want—I'm old enough! I love him! Isn't that enough? To be +treated like this—like a bad little child! If you'd been here and heard +him—Dad, I mean—I tell you he's half out of his mind! I'm afraid to be +left alone with him!"</p> + +<p>"Sue?" It was our father's voice. He had come out close behind us.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Leave me alone!" Sue started back, but he caught her arm:</p> + +<p>"You'll stay right here with me till he comes."</p> + +<p>"Till who comes?"</p> + +<p>"Kramer."</p> + +<p>"Who said he was coming?"</p> + +<p>"Your brother."</p> + +<p>"Billy!"</p> + +<p>"Now, Sis, I'm going to talk to Joe and try to persuade him to see you +and me together, that's all—quietly—over in our apartment."</p> + +<p>"No," said our father. "He'll see her right here!"</p> + +<p>"Now, Dad——"</p> + +<p>"Careful, son, don't get in my way. I'm standing about as much as I can. +Kramer is to come right here. If there's any seeing Sue to be done it's +to be in her home, where she belongs. I won't let her out of it—not for +an hour out of my sight!"</p> + +<p>"You'll lock me in here?" she panted. He turned on her.</p> + +<p>"You can call the police if you want to." He let go his hold and turned +to me. "I'm thinking of her mother. If she sees this man at all again +I'll see him too."</p> + +<p>"Can't you leave us?" I implored her. "Sue—please! Go up to your room!"</p> + +<p>When she'd gone I tried to quiet him. And now that Sue was out of the +way I partly succeeded. But he stuck to his purpose. Joe must come and +see Sue here.</p> + +<p>"I want to be on hand when she sees him," he insisted. "I don't want to +talk—I've done all that—I won't say a word—but I want to be here. You +think you know her better than I do because you're younger—but you +don't. We've lived right here together—she's been my chum for +twenty-five years, and I know things about her you don't know. She's +wilful, she's as wild as a hawk—but she can't hold out, she hasn't it +in her."</p> + +<p>"She will if you act as you did just now——"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But I won't," he said sharply. "That was a mistake—and I won't let it +happen again. When he comes you do the talking, boy—and if we're beaten +I won't try to keep her, she goes and it's ended, I promise you that. +But, son, don't make any mistake about this—I have an influence over +this girl that you haven't got and nobody has. I want her to feel me +beside her."</p> + +<p>He went over this again and again, and with this I had to leave him.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>I found Joe in his office. He rose abruptly when I came in, and reached +for his hat.</p> + +<p>"Let's go out for a walk," he said. Down in the street he turned on me: +"Sue has just 'phoned me you were there. She thought you were going to +help her, Bill, she thought that you'd stand by her. She didn't get any +sleep last night—she's been through hell with that father of hers——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I've been all through Sue's sufferings, Joe. Don't give me any more +of that."</p> + +<p>"You mean you think she's faking?"</p> + +<p>"No. But to be good and brutally frank about it, what she suffers just +now doesn't count with me. It's what her whole life may be with you."</p> + +<p>"That's not exactly your business, is it?"</p> + +<p>"It wouldn't be if I didn't know Sue."</p> + +<p>"What do you know?"</p> + +<p>"I know that in spite of all her talk and the way she acts and honestly +feels whenever she's with you," I replied, "Sue wants to hang on to her +home and us. She isn't the heroic kind. She can't just follow along with +you and leave all this she's used to."</p> + +<p>Joe's face clouded a little.</p> + +<p>"She'll get over that," he muttered.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps she will and perhaps she won't. How do you know? You want to +know, don't you? You want her to be happy?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p> + +<p>"No, that's not what I want most. Being happy isn't the only thing——"</p> + +<p>"Then tell her so. That's all I ask. I'll tell you what I've come for, +Joe. You've always been more honest, more painfully blunt and open than +any man I've ever known. Be that way now with Sue. Give her the +plainest, hardest picture you can of the life you're getting her into."</p> + +<p>"I've tried to do that already."</p> + +<p>"You haven't! If you want to know what you've done I can tell you. +You've painted up this life of yours—and all these things you believe +in—with power enough and smash enough to knock holes through all I +believe in myself. And I'm stronger than Sue—you've done more to her. +What I ask of you now is to drop all the fire and punch of your dreams, +and line out the cold facts of your life on its personal side—what it's +going to be. I'll help draw it out by asking you questions."</p> + +<p>"What's the use of that? I know it won't change her!"</p> + +<p>"Maybe it won't. But if it won't, at least it'll make my father give up. +Can't you see? If you and I together—I asking and you answering—paint +your life the way it's to be, and she says, 'Good, that's what I +want'—he'll feel she's so far away from him then that he'll throw up +his hands and let her go. He can rest then, we can help him +then—Eleanore and I can—it may save the last years of his life. And +Sue will be free to come to you."</p> + +<p>"You mean the more ugly we make it the better."</p> + +<p>"Just that. Let's end this one way or the other."</p> + +<p>"All right. I agree to that."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>When Joe and I came into the library my father rose slowly from his +chair and the two stood looking at one another. And by some curious +mental process two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> memories flashed into my mind. One was of the +towering sails that my father had told me he had seen on his first day +on the harbor, when coming here a crude boy from the inland he had +thrilled to the vision of owning such ships with crews to whom his word +should be law, and of sending them over the ocean world. Such was the +age he had lived in. The other was of the stokers down in the bottom of +the ship, and Joe's tired frowning face as he said, "Yes, they look like +a lot of bums—and they feed all the fires at sea." What was there in +common between these two? To each age a harbor of its own.</p> + +<p>"Well, young man, what have you to say to me?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing."</p> + +<p>Sue came into the room. Briefly I explained to her what our father had +agreed upon, that she was to do the deciding and that he would abide by +her decision. Then I began my questions to Joe. I felt awkward, +painfully the intruder into two other people's lives. And I felt as +though I were operating upon the silent old man close by. "The uglier +the better," I kept repeating to myself.</p> + +<p>"Let's take up first the money side, Joe. Have you any regular salary?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Such as it is, where does it come from?"</p> + +<p>"Out of the stokers."</p> + +<p>"How much do you get?"</p> + +<p>"One week twenty dollars and another ten or five," he said. "One week I +got three dollars and eighty-seven cents."</p> + +<p>"Is that likely to grow steadier?"</p> + +<p>"Possibly—more likely worse."</p> + +<p>"But can two of you live on pay like that—say an average of ten dollars +a week?"</p> + +<p>"I know several millions of people that have to. And most of them have +children too."</p> + +<p>"And you'd expect to live like that?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p> + +<p>"No better," was his answer. My father turned to him slowly as though he +had not heard just right.</p> + +<p>"But as a matter of fact," I went on, "you wouldn't have to, would you? +You'd expect Sue to earn money as well as yourself."</p> + +<p>"I hope so—if she wants to—it's my idea of a woman's life."</p> + +<p>"And the work you hope she'll enter will be the kind you believe +in—organizing labor and taking an active part in strikes?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. She's a good speaker——"</p> + +<p>"I see. And if you were out of a job at times you'd be willing to let +her support you?"</p> + +<p>Sue angrily half rose from her chair, but Joe with a grim move of his +hand said softly, "Sit down and try to stand this. Let's get it over and +done with." Then he turned quietly back to me.</p> + +<p>"Why yes—I'd let her support me," he said.</p> + +<p>"You mean you don't care one way or the other. You'd both be working for +what you believe in, and how you lived wouldn't especially count?"</p> + +<p>"That's about it."</p> + +<p>"What do you believe in, Joe? Just briefly, what's your main idea in +stirring up millions of ignorant men?"</p> + +<p>"Mainly to pull down what's on top."</p> + +<p>"As for instance?"</p> + +<p>"All of it. Business, industry and finance as it's being run at +present."</p> + +<p>"A clean sweep. And in place of that?"</p> + +<p>"Everything run by the workers themselves."</p> + +<p>"For example?" I asked. "The ships by the stokers?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, the ships by the stokers," he said. And I felt Dad stiffen in his +chair. "As they will be when the time comes," Joe added.</p> + +<p>"How soon will that be?"</p> + +<p>"I'll see it," he said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p> + +<p>"The working people in full control. No restraints whatever from above."</p> + +<p>"There won't be anyone left above. No more gods," he answered.</p> + +<p>"Not even one?"</p> + +<p>"Is there one?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"You're an atheist, aren't you," I said.</p> + +<p>"Yes, when I happen to think of it."</p> + +<p>"And Sue would likely be the same."</p> + +<p>"Isn't she now?" he inquired. I dropped the point and hurried on.</p> + +<p>"How about Sue's friends, Joe? In a life like that—always in +strikes—she'd have to give them up, wouldn't she?"</p> + +<p>"Probably. Some of 'em think they're radicals, but I doubt if they'd +come far out of the parlor."</p> + +<p>"So her new friends would be either strikers or the people who lead in +strikes. Her life would be practically sunk in the mass."</p> + +<p>"I hope so."</p> + +<p>"You may be in jail at times."</p> + +<p>"Quite probably."</p> + +<p>"Sue too?"</p> + +<p>"Possibly."</p> + +<p>I caught the look in my father's face and knew that I had but a few +moments more.</p> + +<p>"Do you want to marry her, Joe?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'll go down to City Hall—if a large fat Tammany alderman can +make our love any cleaner."</p> + +<p>"You mean you don't believe in marriage."</p> + +<p>"Not especially," he said.</p> + +<p>"And so if either gets sick of the other he just leaves without any +fuss."</p> + +<p>"Naturally."</p> + +<p>There was a pause. And then Joe spoke again.</p> + +<p>"You're a better interviewer than I thought you were," he said. "You've +made the picture quite complete—as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> far as you can see it. Of course +you've left all the real stuff out——"</p> + +<p>"What is the real stuff, as you call it, young man?" My father's voice +had a deadly ring. Joe turned and looked at him as before.</p> + +<p>"You couldn't understand," he said.</p> + +<p>"I think I understand enough." Dad rose abruptly and turned to Sue. +"Sue," he said. "Shall I ask your anarchist friend to go?"</p> + +<p>I could feel Sue gather herself. She was white.</p> + +<p>"I'll have to go with him," she managed to say. A slight spasm shot over +our father's face. For a moment there was silence.</p> + +<p>"You've heard all he said of this life of his?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"And what he wants and expects you to do?"</p> + +<p>"I heard it."</p> + +<p>"And just how he wants you to live—with nothing you've been used +to—nothing? No money but what a few drunken stokers throw your way, no +decent ideals, no religion, no home?"</p> + +<p>Again a pause.</p> + +<p>"I want to go with him," she brought out at last.</p> + +<p>Dad turned sharply and left the room.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>I heard a deep breath behind me. It came from Joe Kramer, whose face was +set in a frown of pain.</p> + +<p>"He's so damn old," Joe muttered. "You operated on him hard."</p> + +<p>Suddenly Sue threw herself on the lounge. She huddled there shaking and +motioned us off.</p> + +<p>"Leave me alone, can't you, go away!" we heard between her sobs. "It's +all right—I'm ready—I'll come to you, Joe—but not now—not just now! +Go away, both of you—leave me alone!"</p> + +<p>Joe left the house. Soon after that Eleanore arrived and I told her what +had happened. She went in to Sue,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> I left them together and went up to +my father's room. He lay on the bed breathing quickly.</p> + +<p>"You did splendidly, son," he said. "You slashed into her hard. It hurt +me to listen—but it's all right. Let her suffer—she had to. It hit +her, I tell you—she'll break down! If we can only keep her here! Get +Eleanore!"</p> + +<p>He stopped with a jerk, his hand went to his heart, and he panted and +scowled with pain.</p> + +<p>"I sent for her," I told him. "She's come and she's in Sue's room now. +Let's leave them alone. It's going to be all right, Dad."</p> + +<p>I sent for a doctor who was an old friend of my father's. He came and +spent a long time in the room, and I could hear them talking. At last he +came out.</p> + +<p>"It won't do," he said. "We can't have any more of this. We must keep +your sister out of his sight. She can't stay alone with him in this +house, and she can't go now to your anarchist friend. If she does it may +be the end of your father. Suppose you persuade her to come to you."</p> + +<p>But here Eleanore joined us.</p> + +<p>"I have a better plan," she said. "I've been talking to Sue and she has +agreed. She's to stay—and we'll move over here and try to keep Sue and +her father apart."</p> + +<p>"What about Joe?" I asked her.</p> + +<p>"Sue has promised me not to see Joe until the strike is over. It will +only be a matter of weeks—perhaps even days—it may break out +to-morrow. It's not much of a time for Joe to get married—besides, it's +the least she can do for her father—to wait that long. And she has +agreed. So that much is settled."</p> + +<p>She went home to pack up a few things for the night. When she came back +it was evening. She spent some time with Sue in her room, while I stayed +in with father. I gave him a powder the doctor had left and he was soon +sleeping heavily.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></p> + +<p>At last in my old bedroom Eleanore and I were alone. It was a long time +before we could sleep.</p> + +<p>"Funny," said Eleanore presently, "how thoroughly selfish people can be. +Here's Sue and your father going through a perfectly ghastly crisis. But +I haven't been thinking of them—not at all. I've been thinking of +us—of you, I mean—of what this strike will do to you. You're getting +so terribly tense these days."</p> + +<p>I reached over and took her hand:</p> + +<p>"You don't want me to run away from it now?"</p> + +<p>"No," she said quickly. "I don't want that. I've told you that I'm not +afraid——"</p> + +<p>"Then we'll have to wait and see, won't we, dear? We can't help +ourselves now. I've got to keep on writing, you know—we depend on that +for our living. And I can't write what I did before—I don't seem to +have it in me. So I'm going into this strike as hard as I can—I'm going +to watch it as hard as I can and think it out as clearly. I know I'll +never be like Joe—but I do feel now I'm going to change. I've got +to—after what I've been shown. The harbor is so different now. Don't +you understand?"</p> + +<p>I felt her hand slowly tighten on mine.</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear," she said, "I understand——"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<p>The events of that day dropped out of my mind in the turbulent weeks +that followed. For day by day I felt myself sink deeper and deeper into +the crowd, into surging multitudes of men—till something that I found +down there lifted me up and swept me on—into a strange new harbor.</p> + +<p>Of the strike I can give only one man's view, what I could see with my +one pair of eyes in that swiftly spreading confusion that soon embraced +the whole port of New York and other ports both here and abroad. War +correspondents, I suppose, must feel the same chaos around them, but in +my case it rose from within me as well. I was like a war correspondent +who is trying to make up his mind about war. What was good in this labor +rebellion? What was bad? Where was it taking me?</p> + +<p>From the beginning I could feel that it meant for me a breaking of ties +with the safe strong world that had been my life. I felt this first +before the strike, when I went to my magazine editor. He had taken my +story about Jim Marsh, but when I came to him now and told him that I +wanted to cover the strike,</p> + +<p>"Go ahead if you like," he answered, a weary indulgence in his tone, "I +don't want to interfere in your work. But I can't promise you now that +we'll buy it. If you feel you must write up this strike you'll have to +do it at your own risk."</p> + +<p>"Why?" I asked. For years my work had been ordered ahead. I thought of +that small apartment of ours, of my father sick at home—and I felt +myself suddenly insecure.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Because," he answered coolly, "I'm not quite sure that what you write +will be a fair unbiassed presentation of the facts. I've seen so many +good reporters utterly spoiled in strikes like this. They lose their +whole sense of proportion and never seem to get it quite back."</p> + +<p>This little talk left me deeply disturbed. But I was unwilling to give +up my plan, and so, after some anxious thinking, I decided to free-lance +it. After all, if this one story didn't sell I could borrow until I +wrote something that did. And I set to work with an angry vim. The very +thought that my old world was closing up behind me made my mind the more +ready now for the new world opening ahead.</p> + +<p>From the old house in Brooklyn I once more explored my harbor. All day +and the greater part of each night I went back over my old ground. Old +memories rose in sharp contrast to new views I was getting. From the top +I had come to the bottom. Crowds of sweating laborers rose everywhere +between me and my past. And as between me and my past, and between these +masses and their rulers, I felt the struggle drawing near, the whole +immense region took on for me the aspect of a battlefield, with puffs +and clouds and darting lines of smoke and steam from its ships and +trains and factories. Through it I moved confusedly, troubled and +absorbed.</p> + +<p>I saw the work of the harbor go now with an even mightier rush, because +of the impending strike. The rumor of its coming had spread far over the +country, and shippers were hurrying cargoes in. I saw boxes and barrels +by thousands marked "Rush." And they were rushed! On one dock I saw the +dockers begin at seven in the morning and when I came back late in the +evening the same men were there. At midnight I went home to sleep. When +I came back at daybreak the same men were there, and I watched them +straining through the last rush until the ship sailed that day at noon. +They had worked for twenty-nine hours. In that last hour I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> drew +close—so close that I could feel them heaving, sweating, panting, feel +their laboring hearts and lungs. Long ago I had watched them thus, but +then I had seen from a different world. I had felt the pulse of a nation +beating and I had gloried in its speed. But now I felt the pulse-beats +of exhausted straining men, I saw that undertaker's sign staring fixedly +from across the way. "<i>Certainly</i> I'm talking to you!" Six thousand +killed and injured!</p> + +<p>I saw accidents that week. I saw a Polish docker knocked on the head by +the end of a heavy chain that broke. I saw a little Italian caught by +the foot in a rope net, swung yelling with terror into the air, then +dropped—his leg was broken. And toward the end of a long night's work I +saw a tired man slip and fall with a huge bag on his shoulders. The bag +came down on top of him, and he lay there white and still. Later I +learned that his spine had been broken, that he would be paralyzed for +life.</p> + +<p>But what I saw was only a part. From the policemen's books alone I found +a record for that week of six dockers killed and eighty-seven injured. I +traced about a score of these cases back into their tenement homes, and +there I found haggard, crippled men and silent, anxious women, the +mothers of small children. Curious and deeply thrilled, these children +looked at the man on the bed, between his groans of pain I heard their +eager questions, they kept getting in their mother's way. One thin +Italian mother, whose nerves were plainly all on edge, suddenly slapped +the child at her skirts, and then when it began to cry she herself burst +into tears.</p> + +<p>These tragic people gripped me hard. The stokers down in their foul hole +in the bottom of the ship had only disturbed and repelled me. But these +crippled dockers in their homes, with their women and their children, +their shattered lives, their agony, starvation looming up ahead—they +brought a tightening at my throat—nor was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> it all of pity. For these +labor victims were not dumb, I heard the word "strike!" spoken bitterly +here, and now I felt that they had a right to this bitter passion of +revolt.</p> + +<p>But still I felt their way was wrong. How could any real good, any sure +intelligent remedies for all this fearful misery, come out of the minds +of such people as these, who were rushing so blindly into revolt? I went +into saloons full of dockers and stokers, and out of the low harsh +hubbub there the word "strike!" came repeatedly to my ears, recklessly +from drunken tongues. Wherever I went I heard that word. I heard it +spoken in many languages, in many tones. Anxious old women said +"strike!" with fear. Little street urchins shouted it joyously. Even the +greenest foreigner understood its meaning. A little Greek, who had +broken his arm and was one of the cases I traced home, understood none +of my questions. "You speak no English?" He shook his head. "Strike!" I +ventured. Up he leaped. "Yo' bet!" he cried emphatically.</p> + +<p>What was it deep within me that leaped up then as though to meet that +burning passion in his eyes?</p> + +<p>"Keep your head," I warned myself. "To change all this means years of +work—thinking of the clearest kind. And what clear thinking can these +men do? The ships have got them down so low they've no minds left to get +out of their holes!"</p> + +<p>And yet—as now on every dock, that "strike feeling" in the air kept +growing tenser, tenser—its tensity crept into me. What was it that lay +just ahead? I felt like a man starting out on a journey—a journey from +which when he comes back he will find nothing quite the same.</p> + +<p>I had a talk about the strike one day with Eleanore's father. I can +still see the affectionate smile on his face, he looked as though he +were seeing me off.</p> + +<p>"My dear boy," he said, in his kind quiet voice, "don't forget for even +a minute that the men who stand behind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> my work are going to stamp out +this strike. This modern world is too complex to allow brute force and +violence to wreck all that civilization has done. I'm sorry you've gone +into this—but so long as you have, as Eleanore's father, I want you now +to promise you won't write a line until the strike is over and you have +had plenty of time to get clear. Don't let yourself get swamped in +this—remember that you have a wife and a small son to think of."</p> + +<p>My father had put it more sharply. He was out of bed now and he seemed +to take strength from the news reports that he eagerly read of the +struggle so fast approaching.</p> + +<p>"At sea," he said, "when stokers try to quit their jobs and force their +way on deck, they're either put in irons or shot down as mutineers. +You'll see your friend Kramer dead or in jail. No danger to your sister +now. Only see that <i>you</i> keep out of it!"</p> + +<p>I did not tell him of my work, for I knew it would only excite him +again, and excitement would be dangerous.</p> + +<p>"Now you and Eleanore must go home," said Sue that night. "You'll have +enough to think of. I'll be all right with father—he knows there's +nothing to do but wait, and he's so kind to me now that it hurts. Poor +old Dad—how well he means. But he's the old and we're the new—and +that's the whole trouble between us." A sudden light came in her eyes. +"The new are bound to win!" she said.</p> + +<p>But I was not so sure of the new. To me it was still very vague and +chaotic. After we had moved back to New York, at the times when I came +home to sleep, Eleanore was silent or quietly casual in her remarks, but +I felt her always watching me. One night when I came in very late and +thought her asleep, being too tired to sleep myself, I went to our +bedroom window and stood looking off down, into the distant expanse of +the harbor.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> How quiet and cool it seemed down there. But presently out +of the darkness behind, Eleanore's arm came around me.</p> + +<p>"I wonder whether the harbor will ever let us alone," she said. "It was +so good to us at first—we were getting on so splendidly. But it's +taking hold of us now again—as though we had wandered too far away and +were living too smoothly and needed a jolt. Never mind, we're not +afraid. Only let's be very sure we know what we are doing."</p> + +<p>"We'll be very sure," I whispered, and I held her very close.</p> + +<p>"Let's try to be sure together," she said. "Don't leave me out—I want +to be in. I want to see as much as I can—and help in any way I can. If +you make any friends I want to know them. Remember that whatever comes, +thy people shall be mine, my dear."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The next day the strike began.</p> + +<p>Out of the docks at nine in the morning I saw dockers pour in crowds. +They moved on to other docks, merged themselves in other crowds, +scattered here and gathered there, until at last a black tide of men, +here straggling wide, here densely massed, moved slowly along the +waterfront.</p> + +<p>In and out of these surging throngs I moved, so close that in the quiver +of muscles, the excited movements of big limbs, the rough eagerness of +voices that spoke in a babel of many tongues, such a storm of emotions +beat in upon me that I felt I had suddenly dived into an ocean of human +beings, each one of whom was as human as I. I caught a glimpse of Joe +hurrying by. And I thought of Sue, and of Joe's appeal to her and to me +to throw in our lives with such strangers as these whose coarse heavy +faces were pressing so close. And I thought of Eleanore at home. "Thy +people shall be mine, my dear."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p> + +<p>Teamsters drove clattering trucks through the crowds. Some of them did +not unload, but others dumped piles of freight by the docks. The dam had +begun. All day long the freight piled up, and by evening the light of a +pale moon shone down upon acres of barrels and boxes. Then the teamsters +unharnessed their teams, left the empty trucks with poles in air, and +the teamsters and their horses and all the crowds of strikers scattered +by degrees up into the tenement regions. Bursts of laughter and singing +came now and then out of the saloons.</p> + +<p>Silence settled down over the docks. Walking now down the waterfront I +met only a figure here and there. A taxi came tearing and screeching by, +and later down the long empty space came a single wagon slowly. A smoky +lantern swung under its wheels, and its old white horse with his shaggy +head down came plodding wearily along. He alone had no strike feeling.</p> + +<p>Battered and worn from the day's impressions I wanted to be alone and to +think. I made my way in and out among trucks and around a dockshed out +to a slip. It was filled with barges, tugs and floats jammed in between +the two big vessels that loomed one at either pier. It was a dark jumble +of spars and masts, derricks, funnels and cabin roofs, all shadowy and +silent. A single light gleamed here and there from the long dark deck of +the Morgan coaster close to my right. She was heavily loaded still, for +she had come to dock too late. Smoke still drifted from her stout +funnel, steam puffed now and then from her side. Behind her, reaching a +mile to the North, were ships by the dozen, coasters and great ocean +liners, loaded and waiting to discharge or empty and waiting to reload. +And to the South were miles of railroad sheds already packed to +bursting. I thought of the trains from all over the land still rushing a +nation's produce here, and of the starlit ocean roads, of ships coming +from all over the world, the men in their fiery caverns below feeding +faster the fires to quicken their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> speed, all bringing cargoes to this +port. More barrels, boxes, crates and bags to be piled high up on the +waterfront. For the workers had gone away from their work, and the great +white ships were still.</p> + +<p>"What has all this to do with me?"</p> + +<p>There came into my mind the picture of a little man I had seen that day, +a suburban commuter by his looks, frowning from a ferryboat upon a +cheering crowd of strikers. I laughed to myself as I thought of him. He +had seemed so ludicrously small.</p> + +<p>"Yes, my friend," I thought, "you and I are a couple of two-spots here, +swallowed up in the scenery."</p> + +<p>I thought of what Joe had said that day: "When you see the crowd, in a +strike like this, loosen up and show all it could be if it had the +chance—that sight is so big it blots you out—you sink—you melt into +the crowd."</p> + +<p>Something like that happened to me. I had seen the multitudes "loosen +up," I had felt myself melt into the crowd. But I had not seen what they +could be nor did I see what they could do. Far to the south, high over +all the squalid tenement dwellings, rose that tower of lights I had +known so well, the airy place where Eleanore's father had dreamed and +planned his clean vigorous world. It was lighted to-night as usual, as +though nothing whatever had happened. I thought of the men I had seen +that day. How crassly ignorant they seemed. And yet in a few brief hours +they had paralyzed all that the tower had planned, reduced it all to +silence, nothing. Could it be that such upheavals as these meant an end +to the rule of the world from above, by the keen minds of the men at the +top? Was that great idol which had been mine for so many glad years, +that last of my gods, Efficiency, beginning to rock a little now upon +its deep foundations?</p> + +<p>What could these men ever put in its place? I recalled the words of an +old dock watchman with whom I had talked the evening before. From the +days of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> Knights of Labor he had been through many strikes, and all +had failed, he told me. His dog sat there beside him, a solemn old red +spaniel, looking wistfully into his master's face. And with somewhat the +same expression, looking out on the moonlit Hudson, the old striker had +said slowly:</p> + +<p>"Before these labor leaders will do half of what they say—a pile of +water will have to go by."</p> + +<p>A sharp slight sound behind me jerked me suddenly out of my thoughts. I +jumped as though at a shot. How infernally tight my nerves were getting. +The sound had come from a mere piece of paper blown by the wind—a rough +salt wind which now blew in from the ocean as though impatient of all +this stillness. From below came a lapping and slapping of waves. Above +me a derrick mast growled and whined as it rocked. And now as I looked +about me all those densely crowded derricks moved to and fro against the +sky. I had never felt in this watery world such deep restlessness as +now.</p> + +<p>"I wonder if you'll ever stop heaving," I thought half angrily. "I +wonder what I'll be like when you finally get through with me. When will +you ever let me stand pat and get things settled for good and all? When +stop this endless starting out?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<p>What could such men as these raise up in place of the mighty life they +had stilled?</p> + +<p>At first only chaos.</p> + +<p>As I went along the waterfront I felt a confused disappointment. Deep +under all my questioning there had been a vague subconscious hope that I +would see a miracle here. I had looked for an army. I saw only mobs of +angry men. They were "picketing" the docks, here making furious rushes +at men suspected of being "scabs," there clustering quickly around some +talker or some man who was reading a paper, again drifting up into the +streets of teeming foreign quarters, jamming into barrooms, voicing +wildest rumors, talking, shouting, pounding tables with huge fists. And +to me there was nothing inspiring but only something terrible here, an +appalling force turned loose, sightless and unguided. What a fool I had +been to hope. The harbor held no miracles.</p> + +<p>The strike leaders seemed to have little control. Headquarters were in +the wildest disorder. Into the big bare meeting hall and through the +rooms adjoining drifted multitudes of men. There were no inner private +rooms and Marsh saw everyone who came. He was constantly shaking hands +or drawling casual orders, more like suggestions than commands. I caught +sight of Joe Kramer's face at his desk, where he was signing and giving +out union cards to a changing throng that kept pressing around him. +Joe's face was set and haggard. He had been at that desk all night.</p> + +<p>"It's hopeless. They can do nothing," I thought.</p> + +<p>But when I came back the next morning I felt a sudden<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> shock of +surprise. For in some mysterious fashion a crude order had appeared. The +striker throng had poured into the hall, filled all the seats and then +wedged in around the walls. They were silent and attentive now. On the +stage sat Marsh and his fellow leaders. Before them in the first three +rows of seats was the Central Committee, a rough parliament sprung up +over night. Each member, I found, had been elected the night before by +his "district committee." These district bodies had somehow formed in +the last two days and in them leaders had arisen. The leaders were here +to plan together, the mass was here to make sure they planned right. And +watching the deep rough eagerness on all those silent faces, that vague +hope stirred again in my breast.</p> + +<p>Presently I caught Joe's eye. At once he left his platform seat and came +to me in the rear of the hall.</p> + +<p>"Come on, Bill," he said. "We want you up here." And we made our way up +to the platform. There Marsh reached over and gripped my hand.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Bill, glad you're with us," he said. I tingled slightly at his +tone and at a thousand friendly eyes that met mine for an instant. Then +it was over. The work went on.</p> + +<p>What they did at first seemed haphazard enough. Reports from the +districts were being read with frequent interruptions, petty corrections +and useless discussions that strayed from the point and made me +impatient. And yet wide vistas opened here. Telegrams by the dozen were +read from labor unions all over the country, from groups of socialists +East and West, there were cables from England, Germany, France, from +Russia, Poland, Norway, from Italy, Spain and even Japan. "Greetings to +our comrades!" came pouring in from all over the earth. What measureless +army of labor was this? All at once the dense mass in the rear would +part to let a new body of men march through. These were new strikers to +swell the ranks, and at their coming all business would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> stop, there +would be wild cheers and stamping of feet, shrill whistles, pandemonium!</p> + +<p>Gradually I began to feel what was happening in this hall. That first +"strike feeling"—diffused, shifting and uncertain—was condensing as in +a storm cloud here, swelling, thickening, whirling, attracting swiftly +to itself all these floating forces. Here was the first awakening of +that mass thought and passion, which swelling later into full life was +to give me such flashes of insight into the deep buried resources of the +common herd of mankind, their resources and their power of vision when +they are joined and fused in a mass. Here in a few hours the great +spirit of the crowd was born.</p> + +<p>For now the crowd began to question, think and plan. Ideas were thrown +out pell mell. I found that every plan of action, everything felt and +thought and spoken, though it might start from a single man, was at once +transformed by the feeling of all, expressed in fragments of speech, in +applause, or in loud bursts of laughter, or again by a chilling silence +in which an unwelcome thought soon died. The crowd spoke its will +through many voices, through men who sprang up and talked hard a few +moments, then sat down and were lost to sight—some to rise later again +and again and grow in force of thought and expression, others not to be +seen again, they had simply been parts of the crowd, and the crowd had +made them rise and speak.</p> + +<p>On the first day of this labor parliament, up rose a stolid Pole. He was +no committeeman but simply a member of the throng.</p> + +<p>"Yo' sand a spickair to my dock," he said. "Pier feefty-two—East +Reever. I t'ink he make de boys come out." He sat down breathing +heavily.</p> + +<p>"You don't need any speaker, go yourself," an Irishman called from +across the hall.</p> + +<p>"I no spick," said the Pole emphatically.</p> + +<p>"You're spicking now, ain't you?" There was a burst<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> of laughter, and +the big man's face grew red. "You don't need to talk," the voice went +on. "Just go into your dock and yell 'Strike!' You've got chest enough, +you Pollock."</p> + +<p>The big Pole made his way out of the hall. In the rear I saw him light +his pipe and puff and scowl in a puzzled way. Then he disappeared. The +next day, in the midst of some discussion, he rose from another part of +the hall.</p> + +<p>"I want to say I strike my dock," he shouted. Nobody seemed to hear him, +it had nothing whatever to do with the subject, but he sat down with a +glow of pride.</p> + +<p>A Norwegian had arisen and was speaking earnestly, but his English was +so wonderful that no one could understand.</p> + +<p>"Shut up, you big Swede, go and learn English," somebody said.</p> + +<p>"He don't have to shut up." The voice of Marsh cut in, and the mass +backed up his curt rebuke by a murmur of approval. He had risen and come +forward, and now waited till there was absolute silence. "Everyone gets +a hearing here," he said. "We've got nine nationalities, but each one +checks his race at the door. Every man is to have a fair show. What we +need is an interpreter. Where's someone who can help this Swede?"</p> + +<p>There was a quick stirring in the mass and then a man was shoved out of +it. He went over to the speaker, who at once began talking intensely.</p> + +<p>"The first thing he wants to say," said the interpreter at the end of +the torrent, "is that he'd rather be dead than a Swede. He says he's a +Norwegian. His second point is that all bad feeling between +nationalities ought to be stopped if the strike's to be won. He says +he's seen fights already between Irish and Eyetalians."</p> + +<p>Up leaped an enormous negro docker who sounded as though he preached +often on Sundays.</p> + +<p>"Yes, brothers," he boomed, "let us stop our fights.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> Let us desist—let +us refrain. We are men from all countries, black and white. The last +speaker came from Norway—he came from way up there in the North. My +father came from Africa——"</p> + +<p>"He must have come last Monday," said a dry, thin voice from the back of +the hall, and there was a laugh.</p> + +<p>"Brothers," cried the black man, "I come here from the colored race. At +my dock I got over sixty negroes to walk out. Is there no place for us +in this strike? If my father was a slave, is my color so against me?"</p> + +<p>"It ain't your color, it's your scabbing," a sharp voice interrupted. +"They broke the last strike with coons like you. They brought you up in +boats from the South. And you scabbed—you scabbed yourself! Didn't you? +You did! You —— of a nigger!"</p> + +<p>A little Italian sprang up in reply. He did not look like a docker. He +was gaily dressed in a neat blue suit with a bright red tie:</p> + +<p>"Fellow workers—I am Italian man! You call me Guinney, Dago, Wop—you +call another man Coon, Nigger—you call another man a Sheeny! Stop +calling names—call men fellow workers! We are on strike—let us not +fight each other—let us have peace—let us have a good time! I know a +man who has a big boat—and he say now we can have it for nothing—to +take our wives and children and make excursions every day. On the boat +we will have a good time. I am a musician—I play the violin on a boat +till I strike—so now I will get you the music. And we shall run that +boat ourselves! We have our own dockers to start it from dock—we have +our own stokers, our own engineers—we have our own pilots—we have all! +And it will be easy to steer that boat—for we have made the harbor +empty—we shall have the whole place to ourselves! Some day maybe soon +we have all the boats in the world for ourselves—and we shall be free! +All battle boats we shall sink in the sea—we stop all wars! So now we +begin—we stop all our fighting—we take out this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> boat—all our +comrades on board! No coons, no niggers, no sheenies, no wops! Fellow +workers—I tell you the name of our boat! <i>The Internationale</i>!"</p> + +<p>The little man's speech was greeted with a sudden roar of applause. For +the crowd had seen at once this danger of race hatred and was eager to +put it down. <i>The Internationale</i> made her first trip on the following +day, and after that her daily cruise became the gala event of the +strike. Both decks of the clumsy craft were packed with strikers, their +wives and their children, and all up and down the harbor she went. The +little Italian and his friends had had printed a red pamphlet, +"Revolutionary Songs of the Sea," the solos of which he sang on the boat +while the rest came in on the chorus. A new kind of a "chanty man" was +he, voicing the wrongs and the fierce revolt and the surging hopes and +longings of all the toilers on the sea—while this ship that was run by +the workers themselves plowed over a strange new harbor. I watched it +one day from the end of a pier. It approached with a swelling volume of +song. It drew so near I could see the flushed faces of those who were +singing, some with their eyes on their leader's face, others singing out +over the water as though they were spreading far and wide the exultant +prophecy of that song. It passed, the singing died away—and still I sat +there wondering.</p> + +<p>"We shall have all the boats in the world for ourselves—and we shall be +free! All battle boats we shall sink in the sea! We stop all wars! So +now we begin!"</p> + +<p>Was it indeed a beginning? Was this the opening measure of music that +would be heard round the world? My mind rejected the idea, I thought it +merest madness. But still that song rang in my ears. What deep +compelling force was here—this curious power of the crowd that had so +suddenly gripped hold of this simple Italian musician, this fiddler on +excursion boats, and in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> a few short days and nights had made him pour +into music the fire of its world-wide dreams?</p> + +<p>I saw it seize on others. One day a young girl rose up in the hall. A +stenographer on one of the docks, she was neatly, rather sprucely +dressed, but her face was white and scared. She had never made a speech +before. She was speaking now as though impelled by something she could +not control.</p> + +<p>"Comrades—fellow workers." Her voice trembled violently. She paused and +set her teeth, went on. "How about the women and babies?" she asked. "I +know of one who was born last night. And that's only one of a lot. We +have thousands of kids and old people—sick people too, and cripples and +drunks—all that these lovely jobs of ours have left on our backs. +They've got to be carried. Who's to take care of 'em, feed 'em, doctor +'em? If we're going to run the earth let's begin at home. What does +anyone know about that?"</p> + +<p>She sat down with a kind of a gasp of relief. Her seat was close to the +platform, and I could see her bright excited eyes as she listened to +what she had started here. For the crowd, as though it had only been +waiting for this girl to speak its thought, now seized upon her +question. Sharp voices were heard all over the hall. Some said they +could get doctors, others knew of empty stores that could be had for +nothing and used as free food stations. An assistant cook from an ocean +liner told where his chief bought wholesale supplies. And the girl who +had roused this discussion, her nervousness forgotten now, rose up again +and again with so many quick, eager suggestions, that when the first +relief station was opened that evening she was one of those placed in +charge.</p> + +<p>I saw her grow amazingly, for now I came to know her well. Her name was +Nora Ganey. At home that night when Eleanore said, "Remember, dear, I +want something to do that will let me see the strike for myself"—I +thought at once of this work of relief. Eleanore would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> be good at this, +she had trained herself in just such work. And it appealed to her at +once. She went down with me the next morning, and she and Nora Ganey, +though their lives had been so different, yet proved at once to be +kindred souls. Eleanore gave half her time to the work, and these two +became fast friends.</p> + +<p>Before the strike Nora had sat all day in an office pounding a +typewriter, several nights a week she had gone to dances in public +halls, and that had made her entire life. In the strike she was at her +food station all day, and each evening till late she visited homes, +looking into appeals for aid and if need be issuing tickets for food. +She heard the bitterest stories from wives of harbor victims, and she +began telling these stories in speeches. Soon she was sent out over the +city to speak at meetings and ask for aid. With Eleanore I went one +night to hear this young stenographer speak to twenty thousand in +Madison Square Garden. And the strike leader who made that speech was +not the girl of two weeks before. Her life had been as utterly changed +as though she had jumped to another world.</p> + +<p>Through Marsh and Joe, in those tense days, I was fast making striker +friends. With some I had long intimate talks, I ate many kitchen suppers +and spent many evenings in tenement homes. But though by degrees I felt +myself drawn to these men who called me "Bill," when alone with each one +I felt little or none of that passion born of the crowd as a whole. With +a sharp drop, a sudden reaction, I would feel this new world gone. Its +strength and its wide vision would seem like mere illusions now. What +could we little pigmies do with the world? Its guidance was for Dillon +and all the big men I had known. Often in those days of groping, knotty +problems all unsolved, with a sickening hunger I would think of those +men at the top, of their keen minds so thoroughly trained, their vast +experience in affairs. I would feel myself in a hopeless mob, a dense,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> +heavy jungle of ignorant minds. And groping for a foothold here I would +find only chaos.</p> + +<p>But back we would go into the crowd, and there in a twinkling we would +be changed. Once more we were members of the whole and took on its huge +personality. And again the vision came to me, the dream of a weary world +set free, a world where poverty and pain and all the bitterness they +bring might in the end be swept away by this awakening giant here—which +day by day assumed for me a personality of its own. Slowly I began to +feel what It wanted, what It hated, how It planned and how It acted. And +this to me was a miracle, the one great miracle of the strike. For years +I had labored to train myself to concentrate on one man at a time, to +shut out all else for weeks on end, to feel this man so vividly that his +self came into mine. Now with the same intensity I found myself striving +day and night to feel not one but thousands of men, a blurred +bewildering multitude. And slowly in my striving I felt them fuse +together into one great being, look at me with two great eyes, speak to +me with one deep voice, pour into me with one tremendous burning passion +for the freedom of mankind.</p> + +<p>Was this another god of mine?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<p>The great voice of the crowd—incessant, demanding of me and of all +within hearing to throw in our lives, to join in this march to a new +free world regardless of all risk to ourselves—grew clear to me now.</p> + +<p>I felt myself drawn in with the rest. I was helping in the publicity +work, each day I met with the leaders to draw up statements for the +press. And these messages to the outside world that I wrote to the slow +and labored dictation of some burly docker comrade, or again by myself +at dawn to express the will of a meeting that had lasted half the +night—slowly became for me my own. Almost unawares I had taken the +habit of asking:</p> + +<p>"How much can <i>we</i> do? How sane and vigilant can <i>we</i> be to keep clear +of violence, bloodshed, mobs and a return to chaos? How long can we hold +together fast? How far can we march toward this promised land?"</p> + +<p>In order to see ourselves as a whole and feel our swiftly swelling +strength, having now burst the confines of our hall, we began to hold +meetings out on "the Farm." There are many "farms" on the waterfront, +for a "farm" is simply the open shore space in front of a dock. But +this, which was one of the widest of all, now came to be spoken of as +"the Farm," and took on an atmosphere all its own. For there were scenes +here which will long endure in the memories of thousands of people. For +them it will be a great bright spot in the times gone by—in one of +those times behind the times, as this strange world keeps rushing on.</p> + +<p>From the top of a pile of sand, where I stood with the speakers at the +end of a soft April day, I saw the whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> Farm massed solid with people. +This mass rose in hummocks and hills of humanity over the piles of brick +and sand and of crates and barrels dumped by the trucks, and out over +the water they covered the barges and the tugs, and there were even +hundreds upon the roofs of docksheds. The yelp of a dog was heard now +and then and the faint cries of children. But the mass as a whole stood +motionless, without a sound. They had stood thus since two o'clock, and +now the sun was setting. To the west the harbor was empty, no smoke from +ships obscured the sun, and it shone with radiant clearness upon eleven +races of men, upon Italians, Germans, French, on English, Poles and +Russians, on Negroes and Norwegians, Lascars, Malays, Coolies, on +figures burly, figures puny, faces white and faces swarthy, yellow, +brown and black. The sun shone upon all alike—except where that Morgan +liner, still lying unloaded at her dock, threw a long dark creeping +shadow out across the throng.</p> + +<p>Thirty thousand people were here. Thirty thousand intensely alive. As I +eagerly watched their faces it was not their poverty now but their +boundless fresh vitality that took hold of me so hard. I had read many +radical books of late, in my groping for a foothold, and I had found +most of them dry affairs. But now the crowd through its leaders had laid +hold upon the thoughts in these books, had made them its own and so +given them life. In the process the thoughts had been twisted and bent, +some parts ignored and others brought out of all their nice proportions. +Exaggeration, sentiment, all kinds of crudity were here. But it was +crudity alive, a creed was here in action. Out of all the turmoil, the +take and give, the jar and clash back there in the meeting hall, had +come certain thoughts and passions, hopes and plans, that the multitude +had not ignored or hooted but had caught up and cheered into life. And +these ideas that they had cheered were now being pounded back into their +minds. Monotonous repetition, you say? Yes,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> monotonous repetition—slow +sledgehammer blows upon something red hot—pounding, pounding, +pounding—that when it cooled its shape might be changed.</p> + +<p>Nora Ganey was speaking.</p> + +<p>"Look at those ocean liners!" she cried. Her voice was sharp and +strident. "They're paralyzed now, and because they are they're costing +the big companies millions of dollars every day. That's what their time +is worth to their owners. But what are those ships worth to you? Ten +dollars a week and a broken arm—or a leg or a skull, you can take your +choice. Six thousand of you men were crippled or crushed to death last +year—and that, let me remind you, was only in the port of New York. Why +was it? Why did it have to be? And why will it always have to be until +you make these ships your own? Because, fellow workers, the time of the +ships is worth so much to their owners that the work has got to be +rushed day and night—and in that rush somebody's bound to get hurt—if +he isn't killed he's lucky! And as for the rest, when at last you're +through and dead tired—they point to the saloons and say, 'Now have a +few drinks! We won't need you again till next Tuesday'! Do you know what +all this means in your homes? It means drunks, cripples, sick and poor! +It means such sights as I'll never forget. I've seen 'em all—just +lately!</p> + +<p>"I never thought of such things before. I liked my office job on the +dock and all the jobs around me—and when sailing time drew near I liked +the last excitement. I liked the rich furs and dresses and the cute +little earrings and slippers and dogs that were attached to the women +who came. I liked to see them pile out of their motors and laugh and +make eyes at the men they belonged to. I liked to peep into the cabins +they had—get on to all the luxuries there.</p> + +<p>"But out of all this magnificence, friends, and this work that keeps it +going—I saw one day a man come on a stretcher. He was dead. And that +started me think<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>ing. That's why I came out when the strike was called. +And in the strike I've gone into your homes. I've seen what those soft +expensive female dolls and all the work that makes them costs. And I've +got a thrill of another kind! It's a thrill that'll last for the rest of +my life! And in yours, too, fellow workers! For I believe that you'll go +right on—that you'll strike and strike and strike again—till you make +these tenements own these ships—and a life won't be thrown away for a +dollar!"</p> + +<p>She stopped sharply and stepped back, and there burst out a frenzy of +applause, which died down to be caught up and prolonged and deepened +into a steady roar, as Marsh came slowly forward. He stood there +bareheaded, impassive and quiet, listening to the great voice of the +mass. At last he turned to the chairman. The latter picked up a whistle, +and at that piercing call to order slowly the cheering began to subside. +Faces pressed eagerly closer. Marsh looked all around him.</p> + +<p>"Fellow workers," he began, "it's hard for a man to be understood when +he's talking to men from all over the world." He pointed down to a +cluster of Lascars with white turbans on their heads. "<i>You</i> don't +understand me. But some of your comrades will give you my speech, for we +are all strike brothers here. On the ship there is no flag—on the ship +there is no nation—on the ship there is only work—on the ship there +are only the workers!</p> + +<p>"For a ship may be equipped with the most powerful engines to drive +her—she may have the best brains to direct her course—but the ship +can't sail until you go aboard! You're the men who make the ships of +use, you're the men who give value to the stock of all the big ship +companies! You are the ship industry—and to you the ship industry +should belong!</p> + +<p>"I want you now to think of a tombstone. Out in the Atlantic, two miles +down they tell me, a big ship is stuck with her bow in the ooze of the +ocean floor and her stern<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> six hundred feet up in the water. In the cold +green light down there she looks like a tombstone—and she is packed +with dead people inside. She is there because where she should have had +lifeboats she had French cafés instead, and sun parlors for the ladies. +Some of these ladies went down with the ship, and we heard a lot about +their screams. But we haven't heard much of the cries for help of the +thousands of men who go down every year in rotten old ships upon the +seas! Nor have we heard of the millions more who are killed on land—on +the railroads, in the mines and mills and stinking slums of cities!</p> + +<p>"But now we've decided that cries like these are to be heard all over +the world. For we've only got one life apiece—we're not quite sure of +another. And because we do all the work that is done we want all the +life there is to be had! All the life there is to be had—that's what we +are striking for! That is our share of the life in this world! And until +we get our share this labor war will have no end! Other wars may come +and go—but under them all on land and sea this war of ours will go +steadily on—will swallow up all other wars—will swallow up in all your +minds all hatred of your brother men! For you they will be workers all! +With them you will rise—and the world will be free!"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>When the long stormy din of cheers had little by little died away Joe +Kramer began the last speech of the day. He had eaten and slept little, +he had lived on coffee and cigarettes, and there was a strained look in +his deep eyes as he rose up lean and gaunt by my side.</p> + +<p>"I'm here to-day to speak to the men who work in stokeholes naked," he +said. "I'm here to talk of the lives you lead—the lives that millions +before you have led—for a few brief years—and then they have died. For +lives in stokeholes are not long. And before I begin I propose that we +stand for a moment with uncovered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> heads." He looked out over the +multitude as though seeing far beyond them, and his voice was as harsh +as the look in his eyes. "As a tribute to all the dead stokers," he +said.</p> + +<p>And in a breathless silence the multitude did what he had asked. Joe +broke this silence sharply.</p> + +<p>"Now for life and the living," he said. "Why was it that those men all +died? What has the change from sails to steam done to the lives of the +men at sea?</p> + +<p>"The old sailor at least had air to breathe. But what you breathe is red +hot gas—I know because I've been there. There is a gong upon the wall, +and when it clangs you heave in coal, and if when it clangs faster you +don't keep quite up to its pace, a white light flashes out of the wall, +and that light is the Chief Engineer's way of saying, 'God damn you, +keep up those fires down there! Time is money! Who are you?'</p> + +<p>"The old-time sailor lived on deck. He had the winds, the sun and the +stars. But you live down between steel walls—with only the glare of +electric lights in which you sleep and eat and sweat. You work at all +kinds of irregular hours, for you there is no day or night. You don't +know whether the millionaire and his last and loveliest wife are +drinking champagne before going to bed, in their cabin de luxe above +you, or taking their coffee the next day at noon. You don't know about +anything way up there—unless you go up as I've seen you do, half out of +your senses from the heat, and make a sudden jump for the rail. The cry +is heard—'Man overboard!'—then shrieks and a chorus of 'Oh-my-God's!' +And then somebody says, 'It's only a stoker.'"</p> + +<p>He stopped short, and at the sudden roar of the crowd I saw him frown +and quiver. He drew a deep, slow breath and went on:</p> + +<p>"They threw off all the good in the ship with sails—but they carefully +kept all that was bad. The old mutiny laws—they kept all that. +Undermanning of crews—they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> kept all that. The waterfront sharks—they +kept all that. But there was one thing they couldn't keep—the old +sailor's habit of standing all this! He had run away to sea as a boy, +he'd been kicked all his life by the bucko mate into a state where he +couldn't kick back. But with you men it is not so. Among all the +thousands standing here most were on shore a few years ago, and you took +your land views with you on board. You organized seamen's unions. The +one in this country was meek and mild. It did not strike, it went on its +knees to Congress instead, and here's part of the written petition it +made. 'We raise our manacled hands in humble supplication—and we pray +that the nations of the earth issue a decree for our +emancipation—restore us our rights as brother men.' But Congress had no +ear for you then. Sailors are men who have no votes. And so you failed +in your pleading.</p> + +<p>"But in the labor movement there seems to be no such word as fail! You +have not given up your union—instead you have formed one of a kind more +dangerous to your masters! You have not made smaller your requests—no, +you are now demanding more! And instead of asking for merciful laws you +are saying, 'We are done with your laws, will have none of your laws, +will break your laws when they come in our way!'</p> + +<p>"And what do your masters answer? Here are thousands of deserters—every +man here has broken the law by leaving his ship! But have they tried to +arrest you? No! They're afraid to arrest twenty thousand men, they're +afraid of this strike, they're afraid of you! They're so almighty scared +downtown that though we've been only a week on strike they've already +sent their commands to their Congress to give us what merciful laws we +like. They're scared because we've thrown over their laws—because they +know that we now see our power—to stop all their ships and the trade of +their land and send their stock market into a panic!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p> + +<p>"And now do you know what I want you to do? I want you to look at their +ships, at their docks, at their harbor, men—and laugh—laugh! Don't you +see there's no need of violence? Laugh! In old times the people built +barricades. You don't need barricades nor any guns—all you've got to do +is to stand here and laugh! Look at all you have done to your +bosses—and laugh! To this town, to this nation—and laugh, laugh! +Look—and think—of what you <i>can</i> do—all you—and you—and you—and +you—by just folding your arms! Think of all you <i>will</i> do! And +laugh—laugh! Laugh! Laugh!"</p> + +<p>He broke off with both arms raised, and there followed one moment +without a sound. Then suddenly, quick and hard and clear, from a corner +of this human ocean, I heard a single peal of laughter. In an instant +scores joined in. Rising in outbursts here and there, deepening, rushing +out over the Farm, it gathered and rolled in wave on wave, rising, +always rising. And it swelled into such a laugh that I saw the police +feel for their clubs. Reporters scrambled for high places, turned their +kodaks on it all. Women snatched up their babies in terror and ran. +Marsh stepped forward, caught Joe by the arm and jerked him back to +where I was standing. I gripped Joe's hand, it was icy cold.</p> + +<p>Marsh shouted to the chairman, and the piercing whistle for order was +heard. But it took a long time for that laugh to die. Long after the +meeting had broken up I saw groups gather together, and presently they +would begin to laugh, and their laughter would take on again that same +convulsive tensity. I heard small clusters laughing, and dense throngs +in hot saloons where the low rooms would echo and double the roar.</p> + +<p>Late at night out on the waterfront, under the bow of that Morgan ship, +I found two strikers smoking their pipes, and I sat down and lighted +mine. One was a Lascar, the other a Pole. In the strike these wanderers +over the earth had met on the waterfront under a wagon where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> each had +come to sleep the night. Since then they had become good friends. Each +spoke a little English, each one had caught bits here and there from the +speeches made that afternoon—and they had been trying to pool what +they'd heard, trying to find why it was they had laughed. As now I tried +to give them the gist of what Joe Kramer had said, from time to time +they would glance up at the big ship they had paralyzed and chuckle +softly to themselves.</p> + +<p>Then I went on to Marsh's speech. And out there in the darkness I could +feel their rough faces, one white and one brown, grow deeply, eagerly +intent, as these strike brothers listened to the voice that had spoken +the dream of the crowd:</p> + +<p>"Other wars may come and go—but under them all on land and sea this war +of ours will go steadily on—will swallow up all other wars—will +swallow up in all your minds all hatred of your brother men. For you +they will be workers all. With them you will rise—and the world will be +free."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<p>To all this, from the buildings far downtown that loomed like tall grim +shadows, the big companies said nothing.</p> + +<p>But that same night, while I sat talking to those two men, we heard a +sharp excited cry. We saw a man behind us running along the line of +saloons. From these and from the tenements came pouring angry throngs of +men. And out of the hubbub I caught the words,</p> + +<p>"They're bringing in the scabs! By boat!"</p> + +<p>Past a watchman that I knew I ran into a dockshed and out to the open +end of the dock. And there I saw a weird ominous scene. Up the empty +harbor, under a dark and cloudy sky, came four barges, black with negro +laborers, and ahead and around and behind them came police boats +throwing their searchlights upon an angry swarm of union picket dories, +from which as they drew nearer I heard furious voices shouting, "Scab!" +One of the barges docked where I stood and the negroes quickly slunk +inside. I drew back from them as they passed, for to me too they were +"scabs" that night. Afraid to face the men outside, whose jobs they had +taken, these strike-breakers were to live on the dock, under cover of +police. Soon half of them lay snoring on long crowded rows of cots. Food +and hot coffee were served to the rest. Then I heard the harsh rattle of +winches, I saw these negroes trundling freight, the cargo went swooping +up into the ship—and with a deep dismay, a sharp foreboding of trouble +ahead, I felt the work of the harbor begun.</p> + +<p>I heard a quick voice at my elbow:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Say. What the hell are <i>you</i> doing here!" I turned to the Pinkerton man +by my side:</p> + +<p>"I'm reporting this strike."</p> + +<p>"No you're not, you're in here to report what you see to the strikers. +Now don't let's have any words, my friend, we've seen you in their +meeting-hall and we've all got your number. Go on out where you belong!"</p> + +<p>So I went out where I belonged.</p> + +<p>I went out to the crowd—but I found it changed, split up into furious +swarms of men, I found the beginning of chaos here. And the world that I +had left behind, the old world of order and rule from above, which I had +all but forgotten of late, now sharply made its presence felt. For the +god I had once known so well was neither dead nor sleeping. Behind +closed doors, the doors that had flown open once to show me every +courtesy, it had been silently laying plans and sending forth orders or +"requests" to all those in its service.</p> + +<p>The next day the newspapers changed their tone. Until now they had given +us half the front page. Every statement I had written had been printed +word for word. The reporters had been free to dig columns of "human +interest stuff" out of the rich mine of color here, and they had gone at +it hungrily, many with real sympathy. You would have thought the entire +press was on the side of the strikers, at times it had almost seemed to +me as though the entire country had risen in revolt. But now all this +was suddenly stopped, and in its place the front pages were filled with +news of a very different kind. "Big Companies Move at Last," were the +headlines, "Work of Breaking Strike Begun." The first ship would sail +that evening, three more would be ready to start the next day, and +within a week the big companies hoped to resume the regular service. +They regretted the loss to shippers of all the perishable produce which +to the value of millions of dollars had been rotting away at the docks. +They deplored the inconvenience and ruin which had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> brought on the +innocent public by these bodies of rough, irresponsible men who had +openly defied the law. With such men there could be no arbitration, and +in fact there was no need. The port would be open inside of a week.</p> + +<p>So the big companies spoke at last. And as I read the papers, at home +that day at breakfast, I remembered what Eleanore's father had said: +"Don't let yourself forget for one minute that the men behind me are +going to stamp out this strike." Not without a fight, I thought. But I +was anxious and depressed. Dillon had not come of late, he had felt that +we wanted to be alone. As now I glanced at Eleanore, whose eyes were +intent on the news of the day, I saw with a rush of pity and love how +alone she suddenly felt in all this. A moment later she looked up.</p> + +<p>"Pretty bad, isn't it, dear?" she said.</p> + +<p>"It doesn't look very fine just now."</p> + +<p>"Are you going down to the docks?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, they'll want me," I replied, "to write some answer to this stuff."</p> + +<p>"Can you wait a few moments?" Eleanore rose. "I'll get on my hat. I +promised Nora Ganey I'd run her relief station for her to-day." I took +her a moment in my arms:</p> + +<p>"You're no quitter, are you?" I said.</p> + +<p>"We're in this now," she answered, just a little breathlessly. "And so +of course we'll see it through."</p> + +<p>So we went down together.</p> + +<p>The waterfront looked different now. In front of the docks where work +had begun a large space had been roped off. Inside the rope was an +unbroken cordon of police. And without, but pressing close, the +multitude of people for whom in a day so much had been changed, moved +restlessly, no longer sure of its power, no longer sure of anything but +a fast rising hatred of the men who had taken their jobs. As at times +the police lines tightened and the negroes came out for more freight, +thou<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>sands of ominous eyes looked on. Standing here at one such time, I +saw a negro striker pass. His head was down and he walked quickly—for +race feeling had begun.</p> + +<p>The first ship sailed that evening. Tens of thousands watched her sail. +And a bitter voice beside me said,</p> + +<p>"Laughing ain't going to be enough."</p> + +<p>Among men on strike there are two kinds of attitudes toward those who +take their places. The first is the scorn of the man who is winning. +"You are a dirty scab," it says. "You're a Judas to the working class +and a thief who is trying to steal my job. But you won't get it, we're +bound to win, and you're barely worth kicking out of the way." The +second is quite a different feeling. In this is the fear of the man who +is losing—and fear, as an English writer has said, is the great mother +of violence. "You <i>may keep</i> my job! And if you do I'll be left with +nothing to live on!" It is this second attitude which is dreaded by +strike leaders, for it leads to a loss of all control, to machine guns +and defeat.</p> + +<p>With a deepening uneasiness I saw this feeling now appear. Starting in +small groups of men, I saw it spread out over the mass with the speed of +a prairie fire. I felt it that afternoon on the Farm, changing with a +startling speed that sure and mighty giant, the crowd, into a blind +disordered throng, a mottled mass of groups of men angrily discussing +the news. Threats against "scabs" were shouted out, the word "scab" +arose on every side. Bitter things were said against "coons," not only +"scabs" but "all of 'em, God damn 'em!" There were hints of violence and +open threats of sabotage, things done to dock machinery.</p> + +<p>But presently, by slow degrees, as though by a deep instinct groping for +the giant spirit that had been its life and soul, I felt the crowd now +gather itself. Slowly the cries all died away and all eyes turned to the +leader. Facing them with arms upraised, Marsh stood on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> speakers' +pile, his own face imperturbable, his own voice absolutely sure.</p> + +<p>"Boys," he said, when silence had come, "one lonesome ship has gone to +sea—so badly loaded, they tell me, that she ain't got even a chance in +a storm. She was loaded by scabs."</p> + +<p>A savage storm of "booh's" burst forth. He waited until it subsided and +then continued quietly:</p> + +<p>"We have no use for scabs, black or white. But we have use for strikers, +<i>both</i> black and white—our negro brothers are with us still, and we'll +show them we know that they are our brothers. We're going to stand +together, we won't let the bosses split us apart. And when we read the +papers to-morrow we're going to ask if the news is all there—not the +little news in big headlines about a ship or two leaving port, but the +big news in a little paragraph, that you have so stopped this nation's +trade that now its Congress is demanding that your masters come to +terms! And as for this lonesome ship that has sailed, if you want to see +just how much that means, go down and look at Wall Street. They say down +there, 'We're all right now.' But their market prices say, 'We're all +wrong!'"</p> + +<p>Suddenly out of the multitude there came a high, clear voice:</p> + +<p>"You seem to know Wall Street, Brother Marsh. Have you been selling +short down there? Who's your private broker?"</p> + +<p>Instantly there was a rush toward the questioner, but a group of police +formed quickly around him and he was hurried out of the way.</p> + +<p>"Get after that, Jim, get after it quick!" said Joe by my side. And +Marsh lost not a moment.</p> + +<p>"Let that man go!" he shouted. "He was sent here to try to stir up a +riot. That lie was framed up 'way downtown! But it is a lie and you all +know it—you know how I live and how my wife lives—we don't ex<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>actly +roll in wealth! But even if I were a crook, or if I were dead, this +strike would go on exactly the same—for think a minute and you'll see +that whatever has been done in this struggle has been done each time by +you. It's you who have decided each point. It's you who have been called +here to-day to decide the one big question. Congress has said, +'Arbitrate.' It's for you all to decide on our answer. This is no +one-man union, there is no one man they can fix, nor even a small +committee. We're a committee of fifty thousand here to make our own laws +for ourselves. As you lift up your hands and vote, so it will be +decided. But before you do I want to say this. I care so little for Wall +Street and I am so sure we'll win this strike, that with all the +strength I have in me I beg you to answer, 'No arbitration, nothing half +way! All or nothing!' If this is your answer, hold up your hands!"</p> + +<p>Up went the hands by thousands, the crowd was all together now and again +it spoke in one great roar. And with a sudden rush of hope I told +myself, "It's still alive! This fight has only just begun!"</p> + +<p>"That is our answer to Congress," said Marsh, when again quiet had been +restored. "That is the law which we have enacted. This strike is to be +fought through to the end. We are not to be scared by Wall Street or +worked upon by their hired thugs and so resort to violence. I am not +afraid of violence," he continued sharply, "I am here to preach it. But +the only violence I preach is the violence of folded arms. You have +folded your arms and their ships are dead. No other kind is so deadly as +that. Only hold to this kind of violence, and though they may send out a +ship here and there, this great port of New York will stay +closed—bringing ruin all over the land—till the nation turns to Wall +Street and says, 'We cannot wait! You will have to give in!'"</p> + +<p>As he ended his speech, it seemed to me as though he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> were reaching far +out, gripping that throng and holding it in. But for how long could he +hold them?</p> + +<p>Every paper that they read had suddenly turned against them and +prophesied their swift defeat. Two more ships sailed that night. And as +Marsh had foretold, their sailing was played up in pictures and huge +headlines, while the statement that I wrote was cut to one small +paragraph and put upon the second page.</p> + +<p>That night, with the eager aid of strikers of five nationalities, I +wrote a message to the crowd, translated it into German and French, +Spanish, Italian and Polish. A socialist paper loaned us their press, +and by noon our message was scattered in leaflets all up and down the +waterfront. This message went out daily now. For the greater part of +each night I sat in strike headquarters and wrote direct to the +tenements.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The next day Marsh proposed a parade, and the Farm took it up with +prompt acclaim. He challenged the mayor of the city to stop it. To +friends who came to him later he said:</p> + +<p>"You tell the mayor that I'm doing my best to give these men something +peaceful to do. If he wants to help me, all well and good. If he don't, +let him try to stop this parade."</p> + +<p>And the mayor granted a permit.</p> + +<p>The next afternoon the Fifth Avenue shops all closed their doors, and +over the rich displays in their windows heavy steel shutters were rolled +down. The long procession of motors and cabs with their gaily dressed +shoppers had disappeared, and in their place was another procession, +men, women and children, old and young. All around me as I marched I +heard an unending torrent of voices speaking many languages, uniting in +strange cheers and songs brought from all over the ocean world. +Bright-colored turbans bobbed up here and there, for there was no +separation of races, all walked together in dense<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> crowds, the whole +strike family was here. And listening and watching I felt myself a +member now. Behind me came a long line of trucks packed with sick or +crippled men. At their head was a black banner on which was painted, +"Our Wounded." Behind the wagons a small cheap band came blaring forth a +funeral dirge, and behind the band, upon men's shoulders, came eleven +coffins, in which were those dock victims who had died in the last few +days. This section had its banner too, and it was marked, "Our Dead."</p> + +<p>But at one point, late in the afternoon, some marcher just ahead of me +suddenly started to laugh. At first I thought he was simply in fun. But +he kept on. Those near him then caught the look on his face and they all +began to laugh with him. Each moment louder, uglier, it swept up the +Avenue. And as it swelled in volume, like the menace of some furious +beast, the uncontrollable passion I heard filled me again with a sharp +foreboding of violence in the crisis ahead.</p> + +<p>"Why are you here?" I asked myself. "You can't join in a laugh like +that—you're no real member of this crowd—their world is not where you +belong!"</p> + +<p>But from somewhere deep inside me a voice rose up in answer:</p> + +<p>"If the crowd is growing blind—is this the time to leave it? Wait."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<p>Five more vessels sailed that day. And in the evening Eleanore said:</p> + +<p>"The women who came to our station to-day kept asking, 'Why can't they +close up the saloons? They're just the places for trouble to start.'"</p> + +<p>"We'll try," I said, and that same night Marsh sent word through a +friend to the mayor asking him to close all barrooms on the waterfront +during the strike. The mayor sent back a refusal. He said he had no +power.</p> + +<p>Late that night I went down the line and found each barroom packed with +men who were talking of those ships that had sailed. And they talked of +"scabs." Speakers I had not heard before were now shouting and pounding +the bar with their fists. The papers the next morning ran lurid accounts +of these saloons and the open threats of violence there. They censured +the mayor for his weakness and called for the militia. Why wait for mobs +and bloodshed?</p> + +<p>To that challenge I heard the reply of the crowd, on the Farm that +afternoon, in their applause of the fiery speech of a swarthy little +Spaniard. Francesco Vasca was his name.</p> + +<p>"They are sending hired murderers who will come here to shoot us down! +But when they come," he shouted, "I want you to remember this! A jail +cell is no smaller than our holes in the bottoms of their ships, the +food is no worse than the scouse we shall eat if we give in and go back +to our jobs! And so we shall not be driven back! When the militia come +against us, armed with guns and bayonets, then let us go to meet them +armed——"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p> + +<p>He stopped short, and from one end to the other of that motionless mass +of men there fell a death-like silence. Then he grimly ended his speech:</p> + +<p>"Armed with patience, courage and a deep belief in our cause."</p> + +<p>In the sudden storm of cheers and "booh's" I leaned over to Joe at my +side:</p> + +<p>"Why did you let that man speak?"</p> + +<p>The frown tightened on Joe's face.</p> + +<p>"Because he's one of us," he said.</p> + +<p>Seven more ships had sailed by that night.</p> + +<p>In front of the docksheds, outside the double line of police, the throng +had grown denser day by day, and each time the "scabs" came out there +had been a burst of imprecations, a fierce pressing forward. The police +had repeatedly used their clubs. Now late in the afternoon a red +hospital ambulance came clanging down the waterfront. It was greeted by +triumphant shouts. "Some black bastard hurt at last!" There was a quick +gathering of police and a lane was formed reaching into the dock. +Through this lane drove the ambulance, and as presently it emerged it +was greeted by tumultuous cheers.</p> + +<p>The papers the next morning said that a raging, howling mob had tried to +reach the injured man. Cries of "Sabotage!" had been heard. Two men, +they said, had been injured and one killed on the docks the day before. +Was this Sabotage? Had the strikers fixed the winches with the purpose +of killing strike-breakers? Why not? Their leaders had openly preached +it. Not only the Spaniard but Marsh himself was quoted as favoring +violence, and from that special Sabotage Issue of Joe Kramer's paper +long extracts were reprinted. Were not these three leaders responsible +for the death of that innocent black man? And should leaders such as +these be allowed to go on preaching murder? Put them in jail! Quell this +insurrection while still there was time! So spoke the press.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p> + +<p>The rumor quickly spread about that Marsh and the Spaniard and Joe +Kramer were to be arrested that day. All three remained at strike +headquarters, and a dozen burly strikers kept the throng from pouring +in. "Go on home," I could hear them shouting. But far from going, the +throng increased until it filled the whole street outside. Suddenly we +heard their cries rise into a raging din.</p> + +<p>"Well, boys," said Marsh, "I guess they're here." He gave a few more +sharp directions to his aides and then went out into the hall. A dozen +Central Office police in plain clothes were just coming in at the door.</p> + +<p>"All right," said Marsh, "we're ready. But unless you men were sent here +with the idea of starting trouble, suppose you leave here now without +us. Each one of us will meet you at any place and time you say."</p> + +<p>"We can't take your orders, Mr. Marsh."</p> + +<p>"You mean you <i>were</i> sent here for trouble?"</p> + +<p>"I mean I have warrants for the arrest of yourself, Joseph Kramer and +Francesco Vasca on a charge of incitement to murder."</p> + +<p>And in less than a minute I saw Marsh, the Spaniard and Joe Kramer each +handcuffed to two men, one on either side. As they left the hall I came +close behind with a score of eager reporters.</p> + +<p>The crowd, to my excited eyes, was like a crouching tiger now, glaring +out of countless eyes. Through the solid mass of men that packed the +street from wall to wall, the police had forced a narrow lane from the +patrol wagon to the door. On either side of this lane I saw a line of +faces, eyes. Some looked anxious, frightened, and were trying to press +back, but at the sight of their leaders now with a roar the multitude +swept in. In a moment the lane was gone, and some fifty police had +formed in a circle around the prisoners. Quickly their clubs rose and +fell, and men dropped all around them. But furious hundreds kept rushing +in from every side, women and children caught in the tide were swept +helplessly for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>ward, came under the clubs and went down with the rest, +and still the mass poured over them. Now at last the circle of bluecoats +was broken, policemen alone and in small clusters were rushed and +whirled this way and that. Outnumbered twenty to one, they began to go +down in the scrimmage.</p> + +<p>Then I heard a quick shout:</p> + +<p>"Use your guns!"</p> + +<p>After that, two pistol shots. Then more in a sharp, steady crackle. The +mass began breaking, out on the edges I could see men starting to run. +But down the street came a troop of mounted police on the gallop, and +straight through the multitude they rode. I saw the three prisoners +seized and surrounded and thrown into the wagon. I saw it go rapidly +away. The police were now making wholesale arrests. That deep strident +roar of the crowd had died down and broken into panting voices, +everywhere were struggling forms.</p> + +<p>Just before me the throng opened and I saw a woman at my feet. Her face +was bleeding from a club. As I stooped to lift her, I felt a big hand +grip my arm and then a heavy, crushing weight press down upon my head. I +felt myself sink down and down into an empty darkness.</p> + +<p>When I came to, I was being half pushed and half thrown by police up +into one of their wagons. I remember a blurred glimpse of more fighting +forms around me. Then a gong clanged and our wagon was off. And in a few +moments we had emerged out of all this turbulence into the quiet +commonplace streets of a city of every-day business life.</p> + +<p>In the wagon a voice began singing. I looked up and saw our Italian +musician, the leader of those gay excursions on <i>The Internationale</i>. +Now he was singing the song of that name. And as all came in on the +chorus, I caught a glimpse of his face. One cheek was bleeding profusely +and with one hand he was keeping the blood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> from trickling down. With +the other hand he was beating time. And his black eyes were blazing.</p> + +<p>Soon after, we came to Jefferson Market and stopped at the entrance of +the jail. As we were hustled out of the wagon, and in the stronger light +our cuts and swelling bruises came suddenly in view, two young girls +among us began to laugh hysterically. In a moment we were inside the +jail and shoved into a striker group that had come in wagons ahead of +ours. A grim old sergeant at the desk was taking down names and +addresses and sending the prisoners to their cells.</p> + +<p>I found my cell a cool relief after all that fever of cries. With +surprise I noticed it was clean. I had thought all cells were filthy +holes. Still in a daze, I sat down on my cot and felt the big bruise on +my head.</p> + +<p>"Where am I? What has happened? What has all this to do with me? What is +it going to mean in my life?"</p> + +<p>I heard a nasal voice from somewhere say:</p> + +<p>"I know this pen. They're putting the girls with the prostitutes."</p> + +<p>I heard clanging gongs outside and soon the banging of steel doors as +more prisoners were put into cells. And little by little, through it +all, I made out a low, eager murmur.</p> + +<p>"Say," inquired a drunken old voice. "Who are all you damn fools? What +is this party, anyhow?"</p> + +<p>"It is a revolution!" a sharp little voice replied. And at that, from +all sides other voices broke out. Then from his cell our musical friend +again started up the singing, his strained tenor voice rising high over +all. The song rose in volume, grew more intense.</p> + +<p>"Heigh! Quit that noise!" a policeman shouted.</p> + +<p>"Aw, let 'em alone," said another. "They'll soon work it off."</p> + +<p>But we seemed to be only working it up. Up and up, song followed song, +and then short impassioned speeches<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> came out of cells, and there was +applause. A voice asked each one of us to name his nationality, and we +found we were Americans, Irish, Scotch and Germans, Italians and +Norwegians, and three of us were Lascars and one of us was a Coolie. +Then there were cheers for the working class all over the world, and +after that a call for more singing. And now, as one of the songs died +away, we heard from the woman's part of the jail the young girls singing +in reply.</p> + +<p>And slowly as I listened to those songs that rose and swelled and beat +against those walls of steel, I felt once more the presence of that +great spirit of the crowd.</p> + +<p>"That spirit will go on," I thought. "No jail can stop the thing it +feels!"</p> + +<p>And at last with a deep, warm certainty I felt myself where I belonged.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<p>Early in the evening I was taken out to the visitor's room, and there I +found Eleanore's father. When he saw me, Dillon smiled.</p> + +<p>"Do you know where you are?" he asked. "You're not in the Bastille—or +even Libby Prison. You're in the Jefferson Market Jail."</p> + +<p>"It hasn't felt that way," I said.</p> + +<p>"Probably not. But it is that way, and there's Eleanore to be thought +of."</p> + +<p>"Eleanore will understand."</p> + +<p>I saw his features tighten. I noticed now that his face was drawn, as +though he, too, had been through a good deal.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "she understands. But it's a bit tough on her, isn't it? +Jail is not quite in her line."</p> + +<p>I felt my throat contracting:</p> + +<p>"I know all that. I'm sorry enough—on her account——"</p> + +<p>"Then let's get out of this," he said. "I've brought you bail. No use +staying in here all night."</p> + +<p>"None at all," I agreed. "I want to get back to the waterfront. We're +going to issue an answer to this. They'll need me for the writing."</p> + +<p>Dillon watched me a moment.</p> + +<p>"You won't be allowed to do that," he said. "They're under martial law +down there."</p> + +<p>I looked up at him quickly:</p> + +<p>"The troops are here?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he replied, and there was a pause.</p> + +<p>"These arrests, this riot," I said a little huskily.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> "Weren't they all +framed up ahead? They needed the riot to get in the troops."</p> + +<p>"The troops are here."</p> + +<p>"Rather damnable. Do you think the people on the docks will just sit +back and take it all?"</p> + +<p>"They'll have to," he said gently. "The world's work has been clogged up +a little. It's to go on again now."</p> + +<p>On the street outside he took my hand:</p> + +<p>"My boy, when this is over we'll get together, you and I."</p> + +<p>"All right—when it's over," I said.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The Farm that night again changed to my eyes. It was now an orderly +village of tents, two regiments of militia were here, and their sentries +reached for a mile to the north watching the big companies' docks.</p> + +<p>I walked up along the line and had talks with some of the sentries. I +remember one in particular, a thin, nervous little man, a shoe-clerk in +a department store. Every work-day for six years he had fitted shoes on +ladies' feet; he had been doing it all that morning. And now here he was +down on the waterfront with only the stars above him and great shadowy +spaces all around, out of which at any moment he expected rushes by +strikers. These strikers to him were not human, they were "foreigners," +for the moment gone mad, to be treated very much as mad dogs. And here +he was all by himself, his nerves on edge, with a gun in his hands. The +absurdity of that gun in his hands! And the serious danger.</p> + +<p>I went into many tenements, into homes I had come to know in the strike. +And they, too, were different now. Their principal leaders taken away +and their headquarters closed by the police, the disorganization was +complete. That spirit they had relied upon, that strange new spirit of +the mass which they had created by coming together, was now dead—and +each one felt the weakness of being alone, the weakness of his separate +self. Blindly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> they fought against their despair. I found them packing +tenement rooms, gathering instinctively in search of their great friend, +the crowd.</p> + +<p>But from such gatherings as these, the weaker, the more timid and the +wiser kept away. Rash spirits led these meetings, and here was the same +hot passion that I had felt back in the jail. These people did not want +to think, the time for thinking had gone by. They wanted to act, to do +something quick. Their minds were fiercely set on the "scabs," the +police and the militia.</p> + +<p>Their strike was not yet lost. Their friends and sympathizers were +working hard that very night to get their leaders out on bail. In +Washington a House committee was striving still to compel arbitration. +Everywhere the more moderate spirits were drawing together, trying to +work out something safe.</p> + +<p>But these people did not know this. They were in their tenements, they +were scattered far apart. They only knew how they had been clubbed, that +three had been killed and many more wounded, and that now the troops +were here. And the more fiery ones among them were feeling only one +thing now, that when you are hit you must hit back, you must show you're +not scared, you must show you're a man.</p> + +<p>And so on the next morning, no women and no children but huge, silent +throngs of men drifted out of the tenements down to the docks and moved +slowly along the sentry lines.</p> + +<p>The chance to show they were not afraid came late in the afternoon. The +clear, sweet call of a bugle came floating gaily on the air, then the +long, hard roll of drums, and from their camp on the Farm the troops +came on the double-quick up along the waterfront. Now thousands of +strikers were running that way. From the foot of a city street across +the wide open space to a pier the militia formed in two double lines, +each line facing outward.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> Then down that street came mounted police and +behind them a score of trucks loaded with freight.</p> + +<p>At first I had hopes that the mass would not move. But out of the +silence came angry shouts and those behind pushed forward. Those in +front were pressed close up to the sharp lines of bayonets, were prodded +savagely by the troops. Militia youngsters but half trained, in two thin +lines opposing what appeared to them a furious sea of faces, fists and +angry cries—no wonder they were nervous. Bricks came flying from all +sides and even heavy paving-stones, and then a few pistol shots out of +the mass. I saw a militia man drop on one knee and slowly topple over. I +saw an excited young officer shout at his men and wave his sword. I saw +long rows of guns make quick rhythmic movements, then level straight +out, and there were two long flashes of fire.</p> + +<p>Disordered throngs were running now. Only a few men here and there +turned to fire their pistols or to shout back frenzied, quivering oaths. +Behind them a few soldiers were still shooting without orders. Near the +sand-pile on which I stood I saw a young militia man enough like that +little shoe-clerk to have been his brother. His face was white and his +eyes wild, he was panting, pumping his lever and blindly firing shot +after shot.</p> + +<p>"God damn 'em, slaughter 'em, slaughter 'em!"</p> + +<p>An officer knocked up his gun.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>That night the waterfront was still. Only the long, slow moving line of +the figures of sentries was to be seen. The troops were back in their +camp on the Farm. Bivouac fires were burning down there, but up here was +only a dark, empty space.</p> + +<p>Here scattered about on the pavement, after the firing had ceased, I had +seen the dark inert bodies of men. Most of them had begun to move, until +fully half were crawling about. They had been picked up and counted.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> +Thirty-nine wounded, fourteen dead. These, too, had all been taken away.</p> + +<p>From the high steel docksheds there came a deep, harsh murmur made up of +faint whistles, the rattle of winches, the shouts of the foremen, the +heavy jar and crash of crates. A tug puffed smoothly into a slip with +three barges in her wake. I walked slowly out that way. The tugmen and +the bargemen talked in quiet voices as they made fast their craft to the +pier. Below them the water was lapping and slapping.</p> + +<p>"The world's work has been clogged up a little. It's to go on again +now."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The next day three heavy battleships steamed sluggishly through the +Narrows and came to anchor in the bay. When interviewed by reporters, +their commanders were vastly amused. No, they said, the United States +Navy was not governed as to its movements by strikes. They simply +happened to be here through orders issued weeks ago. But their coming +was featured in headlines.</p> + +<p>I saw something else in the papers that night, a force greater than all +battleships. As a week before I had felt a whole country in revolt, I +felt now a country of law and order, a whole nation of angry tradesmen +impatiently demanding an end to all this "foreign anarchy."</p> + +<p>"We want no more of your strikes," it said. "None of your new crowd +spirit, none of your wild talk and dreams! We want no change in this +country of ours!"</p> + +<p>The authorities obeyed this will. Bail was denied to Marsh, Vasca and +Joe, and for them a speedy trial was urged. The press now held them +responsible not only for that first negro's death, but for all the +deaths since their arrest. Let them pay the full penalty! Let them be +made an example of! Let this business of anarchy be dealt with and +settled once and for all!</p> + +<p>The work of crushing the strike went on. More troops were brought to the +harbor. On the docks there were not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> only negroes now, thousands of +immigrant laborers were brought from Ellis Island and put to work at +double pay, and on every incoming vessel the stokers were all kept on +board. Among the strikers there was a break that swiftly spread and +became a stampede. And in the following week the work of the harbor went +on as before, with its regular commonplace weekly toll of a hundred +killed and injured. Peace had come again at last.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>On Saturday morning of that week I stood on the deck of a ferryboat +packed with little commuters who waved and cheered a huge ocean liner +bound for Europe. Lying deep in the water, her hold laden heavy with the +products of this teeming land, her decks thronged with travelers with +money in their pockets, her band playing, her flags streaming out, and +over all on the captain's bridge the officers up there in command—she +was a mighty symbol of order and prosperity and of that Efficiency which +to me had been a religion for so many years. We all followed the great +ship with our eyes as, gathering headway, she steamed out past the +Statue of Liberty toward the battleships beyond.</p> + +<p>"Well," said an amused little man close by me, "I guess that'll be about +all from the strikers."</p> + +<p>"Oh my smiling little citizen—you've only seen the beginning," I +thought.</p> + +<p>What were the strikers thinking now, and what would they be thinking +soon? They had wanted easier lives, they had wanted to feel themselves +powers here. Caught up in the tide of democracy now sweeping all around +the earth, they had wanted to feel themselves running themselves in all +this work they were doing. So they had come out on strike and become a +crowd, and in the crowd they had suddenly found such strength as they +never dreamed could be theirs. And they would not easily forget. The +harbor was already seeing to that, for already its work had gone on with +a rush, and all its heavy labor was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> weighing down upon them—"like a +million tons of brick on their chests." I remembered what Joe Kramer had +said: "It's got so they can't even breathe without thinking."</p> + +<p>Was the defeat of this one strike the end?</p> + +<p>The grim battleships answered, "Yes, it is the end."</p> + +<p>But the restless harbor answered, "No."</p> + +<p>What change was coming in my life? I did not know. Of one thing only I +was sure. The last of my gods, Efficiency, whose feet had stood firm on +mechanical laws and in whose head were all the brains of all the big men +at the top, had now come tottering crashing down. And in its place a +huge new god, whose feet stood deep in poverty and in whose head were +all the dreams of all the toilers of the earth, had called to me with +one deep voice, with one tremendous burning passion for the freedom of +mankind.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p> + +<h2>BOOK IV</h2> + +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<p>Once I saw the harbor in a February storm. And in the wind and skurrying +snow I saw it all together like one whirling thing alive. But the next +morning the storm had died away, and a wind from the south had brought +banks of fog that moved sluggishly low down on the water dividing the +whole region into many separate parts. And from above, a dazzling sun +shone down upon three objects near me, a ferryboat, a puffing tug, and a +tramp which lay at anchor, shone so brightly on these three they seemed +alone, with nothing but mist all about them.</p> + +<p>So it was now for a time with me. The strike, which had so suddenly +drawn me into its whirling crowd-life, now as suddenly dropped away. And +personal troubles piled one on the other. In place of that mass of +thousands, I saw only a few people I loved, and I saw them so intensely +that for a time we were quite alone, with nothing but mist all around +us.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Sue sent for me one morning and I went over to our house. I was startled +by the change in her face. It looked not only tired, it looked so +disillusioned, done, so through with all the absorbing ideas and warm +enthusiasms that had given it abundant life.</p> + +<p>"I'm not going to marry Joe Kramer," she said. "And I want you to tell +him so."</p> + +<p>I stared at her blankly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I'm sorry," I said.</p> + +<p>"Are you?" There was just a worn shadow of her old smile.</p> + +<p>"I don't know why I said that," I replied. "My head's rather dull this +morning. All right, Sis, I'll tell him." Still I watched her pityingly. +Poor old Sue. What a crash in her life.</p> + +<p>"I'd like you to tell him the whole truth," my sister went on sharply, +"just why I've decided as I have. Don't say it's because of father. When +I wanted Joe, Dad didn't count, he was nothing to me but a back number. +But I <i>don't</i> want him now—Joe, I mean—I don't love him any more. If I +went to him to-day in his cell and said I'd stick by him no matter what +happened because he was the man I loved—I'd be lying—that wouldn't be +me. The real me is a much smaller person than that. I don't love Joe +because I've been scared—because he's in a common jail—waiting to be +tried for murder." Her face contracted slightly. "I suppose it's the way +I've been brought up."</p> + +<p>"But Sue——"</p> + +<p>"Don't stop me, Billy, let me talk!" And she talked on intensely, so +absorbed in this fierce impulsive confession that she seemed to forget I +was there. "I've been thinking what's to become of me. I've been +thinking about all the things I've been in, and none seem real any +longer—I wanted a thrill and I got it—that's all. Then I met Joe and I +got it again, I got a thrill out of all his life and the big things it +was made of. I got a <i>great</i> thrill out of the strike. Don't you +remember how I talked three weeks ago when you were here? Dad was the +Old and I was the New. I saw everything beginning. I read Walt Whitman's +'Open Road' and I felt like Joe's 'camarado.' Well, and I kept on like +that. And like a little idiot I couldn't keep it to myself, I went and +told some of my friends. That's what's really the hardest now, what +hurts the most—I told my friends. I posed as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> a young Joan of Arc. I +was going to marry, give up everything, chuck myself into this fight for +the people, into revolution! Thrills, I tell you, thrills and thrills!</p> + +<p>"But then Joe got arrested. I knew he was in a cell in the Tombs, in +Murderers' Row. And that drove all the thrills away. That was real. Dad +made it worse. He talked about the coming trial, Sing Sing and the death +house there. One morning he tried to read to me an account of an +execution. I ran away, but I came back and read it myself, I read all +the hideous details right up to the iron chair. And just because there +was a chance of Joe's being like that, all at once I stopped loving him. +Not just because I was frightened, it wasn't so simple as a scare. It +was something inside of me shuddering, and saying 'how revolting!' I +tried to shake it out of me, I tried to keep on loving him! But I +couldn't shake it out of me! Joe had become—revolting, too! It's +because of the way I've been brought up and because of the way I've +always lived! I can't stand what's real—if it's ugly! That's me!"</p> + +<p>She broke off and looked down. I came and sat beside her, and took her +cold, quivering hands in mine:</p> + +<p>"I guess I <i>am</i> sorry, Sue old girl——"</p> + +<p>"Don't be," she retorted. "I'm too sorry for myself as it is! That's +another part of me!" Again she broke off with a hard little laugh. +"Let's forget me for a minute. What has this sweet strike done to +<i>you</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I'm not sure yet," I answered. "Where is Dad?"</p> + +<p>"Up in his room."</p> + +<p>"Tell me about him," I said. Sue drew an anxious little breath:</p> + +<p>"Oh Billy, he has been getting so queer. It has all been such a strain +on his mind. Every day he kept reading the news of the strike—and some +days he would stamp and rage about till I was afraid to be with him. He +talked about that death cell until I thought that I'd go mad.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> Sometimes +when we were talking I thought that we had both gone mad."</p> + +<p>I went upstairs and found him in a chair by the window. With unnatural, +clumsy motions he rose and came to meet me.</p> + +<p>"I'm all right, my boy." His voice had a mumbling quality and I noticed +the strangeness in his eyes. "I'm all right. I'm glad to see you." Then +his face clouded and hardened a little, and he tried to speak to me +sternly:</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you're clean out of that strike and its notions—glad you've +come to your senses," he said. "You're lucky in having such a wife. +She's been over here often lately—and she's worth a dozen like you and +Sue. Have you seen Sue?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Well, <i>she's</i> all right."</p> + +<p>I said nothing to this, and he shot a sidelong look at me:</p> + +<p>"I had quite a time, my boy—I had to keep right at her." Another quick +look. "I suppose she's told you how I went at her."</p> + +<p>"Never mind, Dad, it's over now."</p> + +<p>"I had to make her feel the noose, I mean the chair," he went on in +those thick, mumbling tones, "and that she'd have to choose between that +and a decent Christian home—like the home her mother had. She was a +wonderful woman, your mother," he wandered off abruptly. "If she'd only +understood me—seen what it was I was trying to do—for American +shipping—Yankee sails!" He sank down in his chair exhausted, and I +noticed he was breathing hard. "I'm all right, my boy, I'm quite all +right——"</p> + +<p>With a sudden rush of pity and of love and deep alarm, I bent gently +over him:</p> + +<p>"Of course you are—why Dad, old boy—just take it easy—quiet, you +know—we're going to pull right out of this——"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span></p> + +<p>The tears welled suddenly up in his eyes:</p> + +<p>"I'm lonely, boy—I'm glad you're here!"</p> + +<p>Presently I went down to Sue:</p> + +<p>"When is the doctor coming next?"</p> + +<p>"Not till this afternoon," she said.</p> + +<p>"I'll be home to-night for supper. Phone me what he says."</p> + +<p>"All right—where are you going now? To Joe?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Sis," I said.</p> + +<p>She turned and went quickly out of the room.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>In the Tombs, when Joe was brought out to me, I saw that he, too, had +been through a deep change. He had been quiet enough all through the +strike, except for that one big speech of his—but he had been <i>tensely</i> +quiet. Now the tension appeared to be gone. He seemed wrapped up in +thoughts of his own.</p> + +<p>"Have you seen Sue?" he asked me at once.</p> + +<p>"Yes Joe, I've just been with her."</p> + +<p>"What did she say?"</p> + +<p>I began to tell him.</p> + +<p>"I knew it," he interrupted me. "I made up my mind to this the first +night I spent here in my cell. It couldn't have happened, it wouldn't +have worked. Tell her I understand all about it, tell her that I'm sure +she's right. Tell her—it's funny but it's true—tell her this infernal +pen has worked the same way on me as on her. I mean it has made me not +want her now. I feel sorry for her and that's all—deeply and infernally +sorry. I was a fool to have let her into it. My only excuse for being so +blind was that damned fever that left me so weak. At any other time I +would have seen what a farce it was. I wasn't booked for a life like +that. It doesn't fit in with this job of mine." He smiled a little +bitterly. "I used to say," he continued, "that if I had time I'd like to +do something yellow enough so that I'd be cut off for life from any +chance of church bells. And I guess I've<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> done it this time—no danger +of getting respectable now."</p> + +<p>"How do you look at this, Joe?" I asked him. "What do you think they'll +do to you?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know." Again he smiled slightly and wearily. "And I can't say I +<i>care</i> a damn. I feel like those fellows over in Russia, the +revolutionist chaps I met, who didn't know if they'd croak in a month +and didn't care one way or the other. But as a matter of fact," he +added, "I think this time it's mainly bluff. They wanted to get us away +from the crowd and keep us away while they broke the strike. Now that +it's over you'll probably find they'll let us all off with light +sentences. Of course the murder charge can't hold.... By the way," he +added, smiling, "I hear they got you, too."</p> + +<p>"Yes," I answered, smiling back. "The Judge fined me ten dollars and let +me go. He said he hoped this would be a lesson."</p> + +<p>Joe looked at me curiously:</p> + +<p>"How much of a lesson, Kid, do you think this strike has been to you?"</p> + +<p>"Quite a big one, Joe," I said.</p> + +<p>"What are you going to do about it?"</p> + +<p>"I haven't decided."</p> + +<p>"How is Eleanore taking it all?"</p> + +<p>"She's not saying much and neither am I. We're both doing some thinking +before we talk."</p> + +<p>"You're a quiet pair," J. K. remarked. "I shouldn't wonder if you'd nose +along quite a distance before you get through—I mean in our direction."</p> + +<p>"That's what we're thinking about," I replied. Again he turned to me +curiously:</p> + +<p>"You two can think together—without talking—can't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—sometimes we can."</p> + +<p>"I never got that far with Sue." All at once he came closer, his whole +manner changed: "Say, Bill—tell her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> all I've said—will you? I'm +sorry! Honest Injun! Make her feel how damnably sorry I am that I ever +let her in for this!"</p> + +<p>When I left him I went off for a walk, for I wanted to be alone awhile. +I wondered just how sure Joe felt about his fast approaching trial. It +seemed to me that he had a good chance of going where Sue had pictured +him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<p>That evening I learned that my father was worse, and I spent the next +day by his bedside. He had had a stroke in the morning and was not +expected to live through the night.</p> + +<p>I found him mumbling fast to himself and making slight, restless efforts +to move. At last he grew quiet, and presently his half-open gnarled +right hand came groping out over the covers. I took it in mine, and at +once I felt it close on mine with a quick, convulsive strength. His hand +was moist, his eyes saw nothing. I sat there thus for a long time. Then +suddenly,</p> + +<p>"Good boy," he muttered thickly. "Good boy—good—always good to your +mother!" He kept repeating this over and over, with pauses between, then +again with an effort, fiercely, as though from a distance his mind were +set on getting this message over to me, over from an age that was dying +into an age that was coming to life, a last good-by to hold me back.</p> + +<p>Soon he was only mumbling figures, names of ships and distant ports, +freight consignments. Now and then his finger would go to his lips, as +he turned phantom pages in feverish haste. Again, in gasping whispers, +he would break out into arguments for the protection of Yankee sails.</p> + +<p>"Protection!" he would whisper. "Damn fools not to see it! +Discriminating tariffs! Subsidies! A Navy!... Don't forget the Navy! +Remember War of 1812!... Nothing without fighting!"</p> + +<p>"Nothing without fighting." He had been learning this all his life—and +after he had said it now, he stopped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> speaking and grew still. Little by +little his movements grew weaker. Finally he lay like a log, and the +doctor said he would be so until dead.</p> + +<p>I went up to my old bedroom and sat down by the open window. It was a +beautiful night. From the garden below, where long ago I had felt such +shivers over the ocean and heathen lands, a graceful poplar rose. Behind +it from the river the huge, dim funnel of a steamer rose over the roof +of the warehouse. Overhead to the right swept the Great Bridge of my +childhood. But behind it were other bridges now, and off across the +river the buildings of Manhattan loomed in loftier masses to their apex +in the tower of lights. How changed it all was since I was a boy. And +yet how like. On the harbor still the hurrying lights, yellow, blue and +green and red. The same deep, restless hum of labor. And from the +waterfront below the same puffs and coughs of engines, the same sharp +toots and treble pantings, the same raucous whine of wheels.</p> + +<p>There came a rough salt breeze from the sea, and it made me think of +billowy sails and the days of my father's boundless youth, and of the +harbor of long ago that had so gripped and molded him—as I felt mine +now molding me. And for what? I asked. To what were we both +adventuring—out of these little harbors of ours?</p> + +<p>Toward dawn a tramp came down the river. Dimly as she passed below I +could see how old she was, how worn and battered by the waves. A +desolate and lonely craft, the smoke draggled out of her funnel. I +watched her steam into the Upper Bay and pass around Governor's Island. +I watched till in the first raw light of day I could see only her smoke +through the Narrows. Then even this became but a blur, which crept away +in that strange dawn light out into the wide ocean.</p> + +<p>A few hours later my father died.</p> + +<p>One by one, from different parts of the port, the queerest old men came +into our house on the day of my father's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> funeral—men who still +believed in American ships, still thrilled to the dream of the Stars and +Stripes wherever there is an ocean breeze; men who still believed in +ships that had sails and moved along with the force of the winds; who +still believed that cabin boys could rise by the sheer force of their +wills to be powers in the ocean world; men who had for the common crowd +only the iron discipline, the old brute tyranny of the sea. These +strange old men stood with their white heads bowed, a little group, +looking down into my father's grave.</p> + +<p>"He was a magnificent fighter," I heard one of them say as we left. "He +wrecked his own business for what he believed in. How many of us would +go that far?"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>From the grave Sue came to our apartment. Eleanore had packed her trunk.</p> + +<p>"Sue must keep out of that dreary old house," she told me. "Luckily she +has a friend out of town whom she's going to visit. When she comes back +we must have the house closed, and I hope she'll live with us for a +while."</p> + +<p>We talked of this that evening, for Sue seemed to want to talk. We +stayed up until late and planned and planned. Many different kinds of +work for Sue were taken up and discussed by us all. She surprised me by +the brave effort she made.</p> + +<p>"I've got to want something—that's sure," she said. "I can't just yet. +I've wanted so many things so hard, one after the other for nearly eight +years, that now I feel as though I'd used up all the wanting that I've +got. But of course I haven't. If I have I'm a back number—and I'd a +great deal rather be dead. So don't you people worry. Depend upon it, in +less than a year I'll be all wrapped up in something new. I'll be +tremendously enthused," she ended, smiling wearily.</p> + +<p>She agreed with me that the house be sold, and after she had left us I +made every effort to sell it at once. I found it was heavily mortgaged +now, but when at last I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> made a sale there was enough to clear off all +debts and leave about two thousand dollars for Sue. She would have at +least something to start on.</p> + +<p>As we set about to dismantle the house, various things thickly covered +with dust came out of closets, drawers and shelves. And these objects +brought near again to me my mother's life and that hunger of hers for +the things that were "fine," that hospitable door which had waited for +friends from the handsome old homes all around us. These homes all along +the street had now lost their quiet dignity. Some were empty and marked +for sale, others that had already been sold were cheerless boarding +houses. The most handsome home of all, with its ample yard where I used +to play, was gone, and in its place rose an apartment building which +made the old houses all seem dwarfs.</p> + +<p>Her world and his were both slipping away. Her life and his, her creed +and his, were little now but memories—memories which in Sue and in me +must take their chance with the warm, new feelings, the cravings, hopes, +loves, doubts and dreams of this absorbing world of our own. For the +harbor was still molding lives.</p> + +<p>How anxious Eleanore seemed to be through, I thought a little +bitterly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<p>But Eleanore had good reason. When at last the house had been closed, +back at home one evening she told me what she had known for weeks but +had kept to herself until I should be free from other things. We were to +have another child.</p> + +<p>The news was a shock, it frightened me. "Where's the money to come +from?" flashed into my mind. In an instant it had passed and I was +holding her tight in my arms. But she must have caught that look in my +face, for I could feel her trembling.</p> + +<p>"The same funny old world, my dearest one," she whispered, "with its +same old trick of starting out. But oh my dear, in spite of it all—or +because of it all—how good it is to be alive! More than ever—a hundred +times!"</p> + +<p>"You darling girl," I whispered back, "you're the bravest one of all!"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Her father came to us the next night, and after Eleanore went to bed he +and I talked long together. He looked worn and tired, but the same quiet +affection was in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Let's see where we are," he said, "and what we've got to go on. To +begin with, thank God, you and I are still friends. Then there's +Eleanore and your small son and the smaller one that's coming. We're +just starting in on a long, hot summer. She must of course be got out of +town. How much have you in the bank?"</p> + +<p>"Thirty-seven dollars," I said.</p> + +<p>He looked thoughtfully at his cigar.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You've never yet taken money from me," he continued, after a moment. +"Still, you'd do it if you had to—because this is <i>our</i> affair. But +unluckily, just at present, I'm nearly as high and dry as yourself. The +men who have backed my harbor work have lost so heavily in the strike +that they feel now they must recoup. I've already proposed to them a +plan which they have as good as accepted. They'll provide enough money +to pay the rent of a smaller office. I can borrow enough to pay half my +men. The rest I'll have to let go for a time."</p> + +<p>"And <i>your</i> salary?" I ventured.</p> + +<p>"Is left out," he answered. "I mean it is if I stay here. I want to stay +here, I want to put through this job if I can, you see it has taken six +years of my life. And besides," he added wistfully, "in a very few weeks +they'll finish the work at Panama—and the ships of the world will begin +to crowd into a harbor that isn't ready here—we haven't even completed +our plans. It's not a good time to stop our work. But of course if you +and Eleanore get into a hole that is serious—as I said before and +you'll agree, you'd have to let me help you—even if to do it I should +have to give up my work for a while and take up something that will +pay."</p> + +<p>"No sir!"</p> + +<p>"Yes sir," he replied. "Unless you can earn enough money yourself."</p> + +<p>We looked at each other a moment.</p> + +<p>"You know how to bring pressure, don't you?" I said.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'm bringing pressure. I want to see you go on as before."</p> + +<p>"That won't be easy," I remarked.</p> + +<p>"Shall we talk it over a little?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"All right," he said. "Since that talk we had together the day +Eleanore's first child was born, what a splendid start you made in your +writing. You were not only earning big pay, you were doing fine work, +work that was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> leading somewhere. I could see you learning to use your +tools, getting a broad, sane view of life—and of yourself—training +yourself and building yourself. You were right on the threshold of big +results. But then your friend Kramer came along. He had not built +himself, he had chucked himself over, neglected himself, his health +included. So he took typhoid and came to your home. His being there was +a drain on your pocket and a heavy strain on your nerves. He got you +unsettled. Then came the strike. And what has it done? It has taken your +time, health, money. It has left two good workmen stranded—you and me. +And I don't see that it's done the crowd any good. What has the strike +given you in return for all it has taken away?"</p> + +<p>"A deeper view of life," I said. "I saw something in that strike so much +bigger than Marsh or Joe or that crude organization of theirs—something +deep down in the people themselves that rises up out of each one of them +the minute they get together. And I believe that power has such +possibilities that when it comes into full life not all the police and +battleships and armies on earth can stop it."</p> + +<p>The look in Dillon's eyes was more anxious than impatient.</p> + +<p>"Billy," he said, "I've lived a good deal closer than you have to the +big jobs of this world. And I know those jobs are to get still bigger, +even more complex. They're to require even bigger men." I smiled a bit +impatiently.</p> + +<p>"Still the one man in a million," I said.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Dillon, "his day isn't over, it has only just begun. He may +have his bad points—I'll admit he has—but compared to all the little +men his vision is wide and it goes deep. And if they'll only leave him +alone and give him a chance, he'll take me and the other engineers, and +the chemists and doctors and lawyers, and he'll make a world—he's doing +it now—where ignorance and poverty will in time be wiped completely +out."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p> + +<p>"They're not going to leave him alone," I said. "I'm sure of that now. +Whether he grafts or whether he's honest won't make any difference. The +crowd is going to pull him down. Because it's not democracy. The trouble +with all your big men at the top is that they're trying to do for the +crowd what the crowd wants to do for itself. And it may not do it half +so well—but all the time it will be learning—gathering closer every +year—and getting a spirit compared to which your whole clean clear +efficiency world is only cold and empty!"</p> + +<p>He must have caught the look in my eyes.</p> + +<p>"You're thinking that I'm getting old," he said softly. "I and all the +men like me who have been building up this country. You're thinking that +we're all following on after your father into the past." As I looked +back I felt suddenly humble. Dillon's voice grew appealing and kind. +"But you belong with us, Billy," he said. "It was under us you won your +start. And what I want now," he added, "is not only for Eleanore's sake, +but your own. I want you to try to write again about all the work we are +doing and see what it will do for you. Why not give it another chance? +You're not afraid of it, are you?"</p> + +<p>"No," I said, "I'm not afraid—and I'll give it another chance if you +like—I don't want to be narrow about it, God knows. But before I tackle +anything else I'll finish my story of the strike."</p> + +<p>"All right," he agreed. "That's all I ask. Now suppose you take Eleanore +up to the mountains and write your strike article up there. Let me loan +you a little just at the start."</p> + +<p>"How much money have <i>you</i> in the bank?"</p> + +<p>"Enough to send Eleanore where she belongs."</p> + +<p>"Eleanore belongs right here," said a voice from the other room, and +presently Eleanore appeared. She surveyed us both with a scorn in her +eyes that made us quake a little. "I never heard," she went on calmly, +"of anything quite so idiotic. Go home, Dad, and go to bed, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> please +drop this insane idea that I'm afraid of July in New York, or of August +or September. Do you know what you're going to do to-morrow, both of you +poor foolish boys? You're going sensibly to work and worry about nothing +at all. And to-morrow night we're all three of us going to forget how it +feels to work or think, and get on an open trolley and go down and hear +Harry Lauder. Thank Heaven he happens to be in town. To hear you talk +you'd think the whole American people had forgotten how to laugh.</p> + +<p>"Now Billy," she ended smoothly, "go to the icebox and get two bottles +of nice cool beer—and make me a tall glass of lemonade. And don't use +too much sugar."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<p>The next day and the next evening Eleanore's program was carried out. +But after that night the laughing stopped. For Joe Kramer was coming to +trial.</p> + +<p>I had not seen Joe for over two weeks, and I had taken his view of his +case, that there was no serious danger. But now I learned from a good +source that Joe and both his colleagues were to be brought to trial at +once, while the public feeling was still hot against them. As the time +of the trials drew near every paper in town took up the cry. Let these +men be settled once and for all, they demanded. Let them not be set free +for other strikes, for wholesale murder and pillage. Let them pay the +full penalty for their crimes!</p> + +<p>In the face of this storm, I found myself on Joe's defense committee, +the best part of my time each day and evening taken up with raising +money, helping to find witnesses and doing the press work for parades +and big mass meetings of labor.</p> + +<p>Through this work, in odd hours, I finished my story of the strike. It +all came back to me vividly now and I tried to tell what I had seen. I +took it to my editor.</p> + +<p>"Print that?" he said when he'd read it. "You're mad."</p> + +<p>"It's the truth," I remarked.</p> + +<p>"As you see it," he said. "And you've seen it only from one side. If +this story had been written and signed by Marsh or your friend Kramer, +we might have run it, with a reply from the companies. But I don't want +to see <i>you</i> stand for this—in our magazine or anywhere else—it means +too much to you as a writer. Look out, my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> boy," he added, with a +return to the old brusque kindliness which he had always shown me in the +years I had worked under him. "We think a lot of you in this office. For +God's sake don't lose your head. Don't be one more good reporter +spoiled."</p> + +<p>I took my story of the strike to every editor I knew, and it was +rejected by each in turn. They thought it all on the side of the crowd, +an open plea for revolution. Then I took it to Joe in the Tombs.</p> + +<p>"Will you sign this, Joe?" I asked, when he had read it.</p> + +<p>"No," he replied. "It's too damn mild. You've given too much to the +other side. All these bouquets to efficiency and all this about the weak +points of the crowd. The average stoker reading this would think that +the revolution won't come till we are all white-haired."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe it will," I said.</p> + +<p>"I know you don't. That's why you're no good to us," he said. "We want +our stuff written by men who are sure that a big revolution is just +ahead, men who are certain that a strike, to take in half the civilized +world, is coming in the next ten years."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe that."</p> + +<p>"I know. You can't. You're still too soaked in the point of view of your +efficiency father-in-law."</p> + +<p>"So you don't feel you can sign this?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>That day I sent my story to a small magazine in New England, which from +the time of the Civil War had retained its traditions of breadth of +view. Within a week the editor wrote that he would be glad to publish +it. "Our modest honorarium will follow shortly," he said at the end. The +modest honorarium did. Meanwhile I had sent him a sketch of Nora Ganey +which I had written just after the strike. I received a letter equally +kind, and another honorarium. I began to see a future of modest +honoraria.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span></p> + +<p>In the meantime, to meet our expenses at home, I had borrowed money and +given my note. And the note would soon fall due. Those were far from +pleasant days. On the one side Joe in his cell waiting to be tried for +his life; on the other, Eleanore at home waiting for a new life to be +born. By a lucky chance for me, Joe's trial was again postponed, so I +could return to my own affairs. I had to have some money quick. I went +back to my magazine editor and asked for a job in his office.</p> + +<p>"I'm ready now to be sane," I said.</p> + +<p>"Glad to hear it," he replied. "I'll give you a steady routine job where +you can grind till you get yourself right."</p> + +<p>"Till I get back where I was, you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, if you can," he answered.</p> + +<p>I went for a walk that afternoon to think over the proposition he'd +made.</p> + +<p>"I have seen three harbors," I said to myself. "My father's harbor which +is now dead, Dillon's harbor of big companies which is very much alive, +and Joe Kramer's harbor which is struggling to be born. It's an +interesting age to live in. I should like to write the truth as I see it +about each kind of harbor. But I need the money—my wife is going to +have a child. So I'll take that steady position and try to grind part of +the truth away."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>"What have you been doing?" Eleanore asked when I came home. "You look +like a ghost."</p> + +<p>"Not at all," I replied. "I've been getting a job."</p> + +<p>"Tell me about it."</p> + +<p>I told her part. She went and got her sewing, and settled herself +comfortably for a quiet evening's work. Eleanore loved baby clothes.</p> + +<p>"Now begin again and tell me all," she ordered. And she persisted until +I did.</p> + +<p>"It won't do," she said, when I had finished.</p> + +<p>"It will do," I replied decidedly. "It's the best thing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> in sight. It +will see us through till the baby is born. After all, it's only for a +year."</p> + +<p>"It's a mighty important year for you, my love," said Eleanore. She +thoughtfully held up and surveyed a tiny infant's nightgown. "If you do +this you'll be giving up. It's not writing your best. It's giving up +what you think is the truth. And that's a bad habit to get into."</p> + +<p>"It's settled now. Please leave it alone."</p> + +<p>"Oh very well," she said placidly. "Let's talk of what I've been doing."</p> + +<p>"What <i>you've</i> been doing?"</p> + +<p>"Precisely. I've taken a little apartment downtown, over by the river. +The rent is twenty-eight dollars a month. It's on the top floor and has +plenty of air, and there's a nice roof for hot summer evenings. You're +to carry two wicker chairs up there each night after supper."</p> + +<p>"I'll do nothing of the kind," I rejoined indignantly. "You're going to +pack up at once and go to the mountains! And when you come back you're +coming right here!"</p> + +<p>"Oh no I'm not," she answered.</p> + +<p>"Don't be an idiot, Eleanore! Think of moving out of here now! In your +condition!"</p> + +<p>"It's better than moving out of your work. Dad has kept right on with +his, even when they stopped his pay. Well, now they've stopped your pay, +that's all, and we've got to do the best we can. We've simply got to +live for a while on modest honorariums. Now don't talk, wait till I get +through. You've got to work harder than ever before but for much less +money. But with less money than before we're going to be happier than +we've ever been in all our lives. And you can't do a thing to stop it. +If you do take that office work and bring a lot of money home, do you +know what I'll do? I'll move to that little flat just the same, and all +the extra money you bring will go to Mrs. Bealey."</p> + +<p>"Who in God's name is Mrs. Bealey?"</p> + +<p>"One of my oldest charity cases. She was here this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> afternoon. The +trouble with you is, my dear," my wife continued smoothly, "that you've +been so wrapped up in your own little changes you haven't given a +thought to mine. Well, I've done some changing, too. Every time that Sue +or you have taken up a new idea I've taken up a Mrs. Bealey. I did the +same thing in the strike. I went with Nora Ganey into the very poorest +of all the tenements down by the docks. I saw the very worst of it +all—and I tried to do what I could to help. But I felt like a drop in +the ocean. And that's how I've changed. Things are so wrong in the +tenements that big reforms are needed. I don't know what they are and +I'm not sure anyone else does. But I'm sure that if any reforms worth +while are to be made, we've got to see just where we are. And that means +that quite a number of people—you for instance—have got to tell the +truth exactly as they see it. So I'd rather put our money in that and +let old Mrs. Bealey forget our address. That's another reason for +moving.</p> + +<p>"There's nothing noble about it at all," she said as she threaded her +needle. "I mean to be perfectly comfortable. I saw this coming long ago, +and since the strike was over I've spent weeks picking out a nice place +where we can get the most for our money. About thirty thousand babies, +I'm told, are to be born in the city this summer—and their mothers +aren't going first to the mountains or even for a walk in the Park. I +don't see why I shouldn't be one. As a matter of fact I won't be one, my +baby won't be born until Fall, and I'll have a clean, comfortable flat +with one maid instead of a dirty tenement with all the cooking and +washing to do. You'll probably find magazines who'll pay enough +honorariums to make a hundred dollars a month, which is just about three +times as much as Mrs. Bealey lives on. So that's settled and we move +this week."</p> + +<p>We moved that week.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<p>One night about a month later, when we had ensconced ourselves for the +evening out on the roof of our new home, where the summer's night was +cooled by a slight breeze from the river, our maid came up and told me +there was a strange gentleman below. I went down and brought him up, I +was deeply pleased and excited. For he was the English novelist whom I +most admired these days. He had come to me during the strike and had +been deeply interested in the great crowd spirit I had found. He was +going back to England now.</p> + +<p>"I'm curious," he told me, "to see how much your striker friends have +kept of what they got in the strike—what new ideas and points of view. +How much are they really changed? That, I should think, is by far the +most valuable part of it all."</p> + +<p>"It's just what I've been trying to find out for myself," I replied.</p> + +<p>"Really? Will you tell me?"</p> + +<p>I told him how on docks, on tugs and barges, in barrooms and in +tenements, I was having talks with various types of men who had been +strikers, how I was finding some dull and hopeless, others bitter, but +more who simply felt that they had bungled this first attempt and were +already looking forward to more and greater struggles. The socialists +among them were already hard at work, urging them to carry their strike +on into the political field, vote together in one solid mass and build +up a government all their own. Through this ceaseless ferment I had gone +in search of significant characters, incidents, new points of view. I +was writing brief sketches of it all.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span></p> + +<p>"How did you feel about all this," the Englishman asked, "before you +were drawn into the strike?" And turning from me to Eleanore, "And you?" +he added.</p> + +<p>Gradually he got the stories of our lives. I told how all my life I had +been raising up gods to worship, and how the harbor had flowed silently +in beneath, undermining each one and bringing it down.</p> + +<p>"It seems to have such a habit of changing," I ended, "that it won't let +a fellow stop."</p> + +<p>"Lucky people," he answered, smiling, "to have found that out so +soon—to have had all this modern life condensed so cozily into your +harbor before your eyes—and to have discovered, while you are still +young, that life is growth and growth is change. I believe the age we +live in is changing so much faster than any age before it, that a man if +he's to be vital at all must give up the idea of any fixed creed—in his +office, his church or his home—that if he does not, he will only wear +himself out butting his indignant head against what is stronger and +probably better than he. But if he does, if he holds himself open to +change and knows that change is his very life, then he can get a +serenity which is as much better than that of the monk as living is +better than dying."</p> + +<p>We talked of books being written in England and France, in Germany and +Russia, all dealing with deep changes in the views and beliefs and +desires of men.</p> + +<p>"Any man," he said, "who thinks that modern Europe will go smoothly, +quietly on, needs a dose of your harbor to open his eyes."</p> + +<p>He turned to me with a sudden thought.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you write a book," he asked, "about this harbor you have +known!"</p> + +<p>Eleanore made a quick move in her chair.</p> + +<p>"That's just what you ought to do!" she exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"I wonder if I could," I said. "It would be hard to see it now, as it +looked at all the different times."</p> + +<p>"You'll hardly be able to do that," the Englishman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> answered quietly. +"Because to each one of us, I suppose, not only his present but his past +is constantly changing to his view. But I wouldn't let that bother you. +What would interest me as a reader would be your view of your life as +you look back upon it to-day—in this present stage of your growth.</p> + +<p>"I was raised in the Alps myself," he went on. "So <i>my</i> picture of life +is the mountain path. As I climb and turn now and then to look back, the +twisting little path below appears quite different each time. But still +I keep on writing—my changing view of the slope behind and of the +rising peaks ahead. And now and then by working my hardest I've felt the +great joy of writing the truth. As you know, it isn't easy. But year by +year I've felt my readers grow in number. I believe they are going to +grow and grow, not mine nor yours but the readers of all the chaps like +ourselves, the readers who pick up each new book with the hope that one +more fellow has done his best—not to please them but to please +himself—by telling of life as he has seen it—his changing life through +his changing eyes."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>After he left us there was a long silence. Both of us were thinking +hard. And as Eleanore looked up to the stars I saw their brightness in +her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said at last, "I'm sure. I'm sure you'd better take his +advice—and write as truthfully as you can the whole story as you see it +now—of this strange harbor you have known."</p> + +<p>We talked long and eagerly that night.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<p>I began my story of the harbor. Every hour that I could spare from the +stories and sketches of tenement life by which I made a scant living +those days, I spent in gathering memories of my long struggle with this +place, arranging and selecting and setting them in order for this record +of the great life I had seen.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>But this wide world has many such lives, many heaving forces. And ever +since I had been born, while I had been building for myself one after +the other these gods of civilization and peace—all unheeded by my eyes +a black shadow had been silently creeping over the whole ocean world. +Now from across the water there came the first low grumble of war. +Within one short portentous week that grumble had become a roar, and +before all the startled peoples had time to realize what was here, vast +armies were being rushed over the lands, all Europe was in chaos—and +the world was on the eve of the most prodigious change of all.</p> + +<p>And like the mirror of the world that it had always been to me, the +harbor at once reflected this change. Only a little time before, I had +seen it almost empty, except for that crude boat of the crowd; the +<i>Internationale</i>, with its songs of brotherhood and of a world where +wars should cease. Now I saw it jammed with ships from whose masts flew +every flag on the seas, and from the men who came ashore I heard of how +they had been chased, some fired upon, by battleships—I heard of war +upon the seas. I felt my father's world reborn, an ocean world where +there was nothing without fighting, and where every nation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> fought. +Ours had already entered the lists, with a loud clamor for ships of our +own in which to seize this sudden chance for our share of the trade of +the world. The great canal was open at last, and Europe in her turmoil +had had not even a moment to look. The East and South lay open to +us—rush in and get our share at last! Make our nation strong at sea!</p> + +<p>And while in blind confusion I groped for some new footing here, strove +to see what it was going to mean to that fair world of brotherhood which +I had seen struggling to be born—suddenly as though in reply there came +a sharp voice out of the crowd.</p> + +<p>Joe Kramer came to trial for his life. Before his case went to the jury, +Joe rose up and addressed them. And he spoke of war and violence. He +spoke of how in times of peace this present system murders men—on ships +and docks and railroads, in the mills and down in the mines. And as +though these lives were not enough, the powers above in this scramble +for theirs for all the profits in the world, all the sweated labor they +could wring out of humankind, had now flown at each others' throats. And +the blood of the common people was pouring out upon the earth.</p> + +<p>"My comrades over the water," he said, "saw this coming years ago. They +worked day and night to gather the workers of Europe together against +this war that will blacken the world. For that they were called +anti-patriots, fiends, men without a country. And some were imprisoned +and others were shot. And over here—where in times of peace the number +of killed and wounded is over five hundred thousand a year—for +rebelling against this murder they have called me murderer—and have +placed me here on trial for my life.</p> + +<p>"And what I want to ask you now is that you take no halfway course. +Either send me out of this dock a free man or up the river to the chair. +For this is no year for compromise. Am I a murderer? Yes or no. Decide<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> +with your eyes wide open. If you set me free I shall still rebel. I +shall join my comrades over the sea who already are going about in the +camps and saying to the rank and file—'You can stop this slaughter! You +can save this world gone mad! You can end this murder—both in time of +war and peace!'"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>And the jury set Joe free.</p> + +<p>Early in the following week I went down to his room by the docks for a +last evening with him there. Joe was sailing that same night. Under a +name not his own he had taken passage in the steerage of the big fast +liner which was to sail at one o'clock. Into his room all evening poured +his revolutionist friends, and the chance of revolution abroad was +talked of in cool practical terms. Nothing could be done, they said, in +the first few months to stop this war. Years ago the man in France, who +had led the anti-war movement, had predicted that if war broke out every +government rushing in would force on its people the belief that this was +no war of aggression but one of defense of the fatherland from a fierce +onrushing foe. And so in truth it had come about, and against that +appeal to fight for their homes no voice of reason could stem the tide.</p> + +<p>The socialists had been swept on with the rest. By tens and hundreds of +thousands they had already gone to the front. But it was upon this very +fact that Joe and his friends now rested their hopes. For just so soon +as in the camps the first burst of enthusiasm had begun to die away, as +the millions in the armies began to grow sick of the sight of blood, the +groans and the shrieks of the wounded and dying, the stench of the +dead—and themselves weary of fighting, worn by privation and disease, +began to think of their distant homes, their wives and children starving +there—then these socialists in their midst, one at every bivouack fire, +would begin to ask them:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Why is it that we are at war? What good is all this blood to us? Is it +to make our toil any lighter, life any brighter in our homes—or were we +sent out by our rulers to die only in order that they in their scramble +might take more of the earth for themselves? And if this is true why not +rise like men and end this fearful carnage?"</p> + +<p>Already these thousands were in the camps. Into Joe's room that evening +came men to give him the names and regiments of those comrades he could +trust. Joe with a few hundred others was to make his dangerous way into +the camps and the barracks, wherever that was possible, of French and +Russians and Germans alike, to carry news from one to the other, to make +ready and to plan.</p> + +<p>Now and then, in the talk that night, I felt the thrilling presence of +that rising god, that giant spirit of the crowd, not dead but only +sleeping now to gain new strength for what it must do. And again in +gleams and flashes I saw the vision of the end—the world for all the +workers. For in this crowded tenement room, forgotten now by +governments, this rough earnest group of men seemed so sure of this +world of theirs, so sure that it was now soon to be born.</p> + +<p>One by one they went away, and Joe and I were left alone. Slowly he +refilled his pipe. I thought of the talks we had had in ten years.</p> + +<p>"Well Bill," he inquired at last, "what are you going to do with +yourself?"</p> + +<p>"Write what I see in the crowd," I said, "from my new point of +view—this year's point of view," I added. I went on to tell him what +the English writer had said. And I told of my book on the harbor.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Joe when I was through, "I guess it's about the best you +can do. You've got a wife to think of."</p> + +<p>"You don't know her," I rejoined, and I told him how she had changed our +home in order not to stop my work.</p> + +<p>"But don't you see what she's up to?" said Joe.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span></p> + +<p>"What the devil do you mean?" I asked indignantly. Joe blew a pitying +puff of smoke.</p> + +<p>"You poor blind dub of a husband," he said with his old affectionate +smile, "she's making you love her all the more. You're anchored worse +than ever. <i>You</i> can't go over to Europe and take a chance at being +shot. Don't you see the hole you're in? You've got to care what happens +to you."</p> + +<p>"I'm not so sure of that, Joe," I said. "Things in this world are +changing so fast that it's hard for any man in it to tell where he'll be +in a year from now—or even a few short months from now. It's the year +that no man can see beyond."</p> + +<p>"You mean you're coming over?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I'm not sure. Just now I'm going to finish this book. I'm going to see +Eleanore through till the baby is born. But after that—if over in +Europe the people rise against this war—I don't just see how I can keep +out."</p> + +<p>Joe looked at me queerly. And with a curious gruffness,</p> + +<p>"I hope you will keep out," he said. "There aren't many women like your wife."</p> + +<p>He pulled an old grip from under his bed and began throwing in a few +books and clothes. From a drawer he swept a few colored shirts, some +underclothes and a small revolver.</p> + +<p>"J. K.," I said, "I've been thinking about us. And I think our youth is +gone."</p> + +<p>"What's youth?" asked Joe indifferently.</p> + +<p>"Youth," I replied, "is the time when you can think anything, feel +anything and go anywhere."</p> + +<p>"I'm still going anywhere," he remarked.</p> + +<p>"But you can't think anything," I rejoined. "You say I'm tied to a wife +and home. All right, I'm glad I am. But you're tied, too. You're tied to +a creed, Mister Syndicalist—a creed so stiff that you can't think of +anything else."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span></p> + +<p>"All right, I'm glad I am," he echoed. "I'm sorry youth lasted as long +as it did."</p> + +<p>He closed his grip and strapped it. Then he took up his hat and coat and +threw a last look about the room where he had lived for a year or more.</p> + +<p>"Breaking up home ties," he said with a grin. "Don't come to the boat," +he added downstairs. "She don't sail for an hour or two and I'll be +asleep in my bunk long before."</p> + +<p>"All right. Good-by, J. K.—remember we may meet over there——"</p> + +<p>Again that gruffness came into his voice:</p> + +<p>"If you do, you'll be taking a mighty big chance," he said. "Good-by, +Bill—it's just possible we may never meet again. Glad to have made your +acquaintance, Kid. Here's wishing you luck."</p> + +<p>He turned and went off down the Farm with that long swinging walk of +his, his big heavy shoulders bent rather more than before. And as I +stood looking after him I thought of the lonely winding road that he was +to travel day and night, into slums of cities and in and out among the +camps.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>I walked slowly back through the tenements toward the new home among +them that Eleanore had made.</p> + +<p>In the summer's night the city streets were still alive with people. I +passed brightly lighted thoroughfares where I saw them in crowds, and I +knew that this tide of people flowed endlessly through the hundreds of +miles of streets that made up the port of New York. Hurrying, idling, +talking and laughing, quarreling, fighting, here stopping to look at +displays in shop windows, there pouring into "Movies"—and walking, +walking, walking on. Going up into their tenement homes to eat and +drink, love, breed and sleep, to wake up and come down to another day.</p> + +<p>So the crowd moved on and on, while the great har<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>bor surrounding their +lives and shaping their lives, went on with its changes unheeded.</p> + +<p>I tried to think of this harbor as being run by this common crowd—of +the railroads, mines and factories, of the colleges, hospitals and all +institutions of research, and the theaters and concert halls, the +picture galleries, all the books—all in the power of the crowd.</p> + +<p>"It will be a long time," I thought. "Before it comes the crowd must +change. But they will change—and fast or slow, I belong with them while +they're changing."</p> + +<p>Something Joe had once said came into my mind:</p> + +<p>"They're the ones who get shot down in wars and worked like dogs in time +of peace."</p> + +<p>And I thought of the crowds across the sea—of men being rushed over +Europe on trains, or marching along starlit roads, or tramping across +meadows. And I thought of long lines of fire at dawn spurting from the +mouths of guns—from mountainsides, from out of woods, from trenches in +fast blackening fields—and of men in endless multitudes pitching on +their faces as the fire mowed them down.</p> + +<p>And with those men, it seemed to me, went all the great gods I had +known—gods of civilization and peace—the kind god in my mother's +church and the smiling goddess in Paris, the clear-eyed god of +efficiency and the awakening god of the crowd—all plunging into this +furnace of war with the men in whose spirits all gods dwell—to shrivel +and melt in seething flame and emerge at last in strange new forms. What +would come out of the furnace?</p> + +<p>I thought of Joe and his comrades going about in towns and camps, +speaking low and watching, waiting, hoping to bring a new dawn, a new +order, out of this chaotic night.</p> + +<p>And I heard them say to these governments:</p> + +<p>"Your civilization is crashing down. For a hundred years, in all our +strikes and risings, you preached against<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> our violence—you talked of +your law and order, your clear deliberate thinking. In you lay the hope +of the world, you said. You were Civilization. You were Mind and +Science, in you was all Efficiency, in you was Art, Religion, and you +kept the Public Peace. But now you have broken all your vows. The +world's treasures of Art are as safe with you as they were in the Dark +Ages. Your Prince of Peace you have trampled down. And all your Science +you have turned to the efficient slaughter of men. In a week of your +boasted calmness you have plunged the world into a violence beside which +all the bloodshed in our strikes and revolutions seems like a pool +beside the sea. And so you have failed, you powers above, blindly and +stupidly you have failed. For you have let loose a violence where you +are weak and we are strong. We are these armies that you have called +out. And before we go back to our homes we shall make sure that these +homes of ours shall no more become ashes at your will. For we shall stop +this war of yours and in our minds we shall put away all hatred of our +brother men. For us they will be workers all. With them we shall rise +and rise again—until at last the world is free!"</p> + +<p>The voice had ceased—and again I was walking by myself along a crowded +tenement street. Immigrants from Europe, brothers, sons and fathers of +the men now in the camps, kept passing me along the way. As I looked +into their faces I saw no hope for Europe there. Such men could take and +hold no world. But then I remembered how in the strike, out of just such +men as these, I had seen a giant slowly born. Would that crowd spirit +rise again? Could it be that the time was near when this last and +mightiest of the gods would rise and take the world in his hands?</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>At home I found Eleanore asleep. For a time I sat at my desk and made +some notes for my writing. I read<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> and smoked for a little, then +undressed and went to bed. But still I lay there wide awake—thinking of +this home of mine and of where I might be in a few months more, in this +year that no man can see beyond. For all the changes in the world seemed +gathering in a cyclone now.</p> + +<p>I was nearly asleep when I was roused by a thick voice from the harbor. +Low in the distance, deep but now rising blast on blast, its waves of +sound beat into the city—into millions of ears of sleepers and +watchers, the well, the sick and the dying, the dead, the lovers, the +schemers, the dreamers, the toilers, the spenders and wasters. I shut my +eyes and saw the huge liner on which Joe was sailing moving slowly out +of its slip. Down at its bottom men shoveling coal to the clang of its +gong. On the decks above them, hundreds of cabins and suites de +luxe—most of them dark and empty now. Bellowing impatiently as it swept +out into the stream, it seemed to be saying:</p> + +<p>"Make way for me. Make way, all you little men. Make way, all you habits +and all you institutions, all you little creeds and gods. For I am the +start of the voyage—over the ocean to heathen lands! And I am always +starting out and always bearing you along! For I am your molder, I am +strong—I am a surprise, I am a shock—I am a dazzling passion of +hope—I am a grim executioner! I am reality—I am life! I am the book +that has no end."<br /><br /></p> + +<hr style="width: 80%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span></p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<h2>JOHN FOX, JR'S.</h2> +<h4>STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS</h4> + +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<u>THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE.</u> + +<h6>Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.</h6> + +<div class="figleft1" style="width: 111px;"> +<img src="images/illo_ad_395.jpg" width="111" height="150" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>The "lonesome pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree +that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine +lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he +finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the +<i>foot-prints of a girl</i>. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and +the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder +chase than "the trail of the lonesome pine."<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<u>THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME</u> + +<h6>Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.</h6> + +<p>This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "Kingdom Come." It +is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest, from which often +springs the flower of civilization.</p> + +<p>"Chad," the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he +came—he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, +seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and +mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery—a charming waif, +by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else in the +mountains.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND.</u></p> + +<h6>Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.</h6> + +<p>The scenes are laid along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of +moonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the +heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two +impetuous young Southerners fall under the spell of "The Blight's" +charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the +love making of the mountaineers.</p> + +<p>Included in this volume is "Hell fer-Sartain" and other stories, some of +Mr. Fox's most entertaining Cumberland valley narratives.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<h4>STORIES OF RARE CHARM</h4> +<h2>BY GENE STRATTON-PORTER</h2> + +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<u>LADDIE.</u> + +<h6>Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer.</h6> + +<div class="figleft2" style="width: 121px;"> +<img src="images/illo_ad_396.jpg" width="121" height="150" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>This is a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The story +is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it +is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs +of older members of the family. Chief among them is that of Laddie, the +older brother whom Little Sister adores, and the Princess, an English +girl who has come to live in the neighborhood and about whose family +there hangs a mystery. There is a wedding midway in the book and a +double wedding at the close.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + + +<p><u>THE HARVESTER.</u></p> <h6>Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs.</h6> + +<p>"The Harvester," David Langston, is a man of the woods and fields, who +draws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If the +book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man it would be +notable. But when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," and the +Harvester's whole being realizes that this is the highest point of life +which has come to him—there begins a romance of the rarest idyllic +quality.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>FRECKLES,</u></p> <h6>Decorations by E. Stetson Crawford.</h6> + +<p>Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he +takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great +Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to +the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The +Angel" are full of real sentiment.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST.</u></p> <h6>Illustrated by Wladyslaw T. Brenda.</h6> + +<p>The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of +the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness +towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of +her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and +unpromising surroundings those rewards of high courage.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW.</u></p> <h6>Illustrations in colors by Oliver Kemp.</h6> + +<p>The scene of this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. The +story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love. +The novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting of nature, and +its pathos and tender sentiment will endear it to all.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<h2>MYRTLE REED'S NOVELS</h2> + +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p><u>LAVENDER AND OLD LACE.</u><br /><br /></p> + +<div class="figleft2" style="width: 111px;"> +<img src="images/illo_ad_397.jpg" width="111" height="150" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>A charming story of a quaint corner of New England where bygone romance +finds a modern parallel. The story centers round the coming of love to +the young people on the staff of a newspaper—and it is one of the +prettiest, sweetest and quaintest of old fashioned love stories, * * * a +rare book, exquisite in spirit and conception, full of delicate fancy, +of tenderness, of delightful humor and spontaneity.<br /><br /><br /></p> + + +<p><u>A SPINNER IN THE SUN.</u></p> + +<p>Miss Myrtle Reed may always be depended upon to write a story in which +poetry, charm, tenderness and humor are combined into a clever and +entertaining book. Her characters are delightful and she always displays +a quaint humor of expression and a quiet feeling of pathos which give a +touch of active realism to all her writings. In "A Spinner in the Sun" +she tells an old-fashioned love story, of a veiled lady who lives in +solitude and whose features her neighbors have never seen. There is a +mystery at the heart of the book that throws over it the glamour of +romance.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>THE MASTER'S VIOLIN.</u></p> + +<p>A love story in a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso +is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take +for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for +technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, +careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with +his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life +and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its +fulness. But a girl comes into his life—a beautiful bit of human +driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through +his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to +give—and his soul awakes.</p> + +<p>Founded on a fact that all artists realize.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<h4>GROSSET & DUNLAP'S</h4> + +<h2>DRAMATIZED NOVELS</h2> + +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<h3>Original, sincere and courageous—often amusing—the<br /> kind that are +making theatrical history.</h3> + +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p><u>WITHIN THE LAW.</u> By Bayard Veiller & Marvin Dana. Illustrated by Wm. +Charles Cooke.</p> + +<p>This is a novelization of the immensely successful play which ran for +two years in New York and Chicago.</p> + +<p>The plot of this powerful novel is of a young woman's revenge directed +against her employer who allowed her to be sent to prison for three +years on a charge of theft, of which she was innocent.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY.</u> By Robert Carlton Brown. Illustrated with scenes +from the play.</p> + +<p>This is a narrative of a young and innocent country girl who is suddenly +thrown into the very heart of New York, "the land of her dreams," where +she is exposed to all sorts of temptations and dangers.</p> + +<p>The story of Mary is being told in moving pictures and played in +theatres all over the world.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM.</u> By David Belasco. Illustrated by John Rae.</p> + +<p>This is a novelization of the popular play in which David Warfield, as +Old Peter Grimm, scored such a remarkable success.</p> + +<p>The story is spectacular and extremely pathetic but withal, powerful, +both as a book and as a play.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>THE GARDEN OF ALLAH.</u> By Robert Hichens.</p> + +<p>This novel is an intense, glowing epic of the great desert, sunlit +barbaric, with its marvelous atmosphere of vastness and loneliness.</p> + +<p>It is a book of rapturous beauty, vivid in word painting. The play has +been staged with magnificent cast and gorgeous properties.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>BEN HUR.</u> A Tale of the Christ. By General Lew Wallace.</p> + +<p>The whole world has placed this famous Religious-Historical Romance on a +height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The +clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect +reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere +of the arena have kept their deep fascination. A tremendous dramatic +success.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>BOUGHT AND PAID FOR.</u> By George Broadhurst and Arthur Hornblow. +Illustrated with scenes from the play.</p> + +<p>A stupendous arraignment of modern marriage which has created an +interest on the stage that is almost unparalleled. The scenes are laid +in New York, and deal with conditions among both the rich and poor.</p> + +<p>The interest of the story turns on the day-by-day developments which +show the young wife the price she has paid.<br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>MADAME X.</u> By Alexandre Bisson and J. W. McConaughy. Illustrated with +scenes from the play.</p> + +<p>A beautiful Parisienne became an outcast because her husband would not +forgive an error of her youth. Her love for her son is the great final +influence in her career. A tremendous dramatic success.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>THE GARDEN OF ALLAH.</u> By Robert Hichens.</p> + +<p>An unconventional English woman and an inscrutable stranger meet and +love in an oasis of the Sahara. Staged this season with magnificent cast +and gorgeous properties.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>THE PRINCE OF INDIA.</u> By Lew. Wallace.</p> + +<p>A glowing romance of the Byzantine Empire, presenting with extraordinary +power the siege of Constantinople, and lighting its tragedy with the +warm underglow of an Oriental romance. As a play it is a great dramatic +spectacle.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY.</u> By Grace Miller White. Illust. by Howard +Chandler Christy.</p> + +<p>A girl from the dregs of society, loves a young Cornell University +student, and it works startling changes in her life and the lives of +those about her. The dramatic version is one of the sensations of the +season.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>YOUNG WALLINGFORD.</u> By George Randolph Chester. Illust. by F. R. Gruger +and Henry Raleigh.</p> + +<p>A series of clever swindles conducted by a cheerful young man, each of +which is just on the safe side of a State's prison offence. As +"Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford," it is probably the most amusing exposé of +money manipulation ever seen on the stage.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>THE INTRUSION OF JIMMY.</u> By P. G. Wodehouse. Illustrations by Will Grefe.</p> + +<p>Social and club life in London and New York, an amateur burglary +adventure and a love story. Dramatized under the title of "A Gentleman +of Leisure," it furnishes hours of laughter to the play-goers.</p> + +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + + +<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<h2>ZANE GREY'S NOVELS</h2> + +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + + +<p><u>THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS</u></p> + +<p>Colored frontispiece by W. Herbert Dunton.</p> + +<p>Most of the action of this story takes place near the turbulent Mexican +border of the present day. A New York society girl buys a ranch which +becomes the center of frontier warfare. Her loyal cowboys defend her +property from bandits, and her superintendent rescues her when she is +captured by them. A surprising climax brings the story to a delightful +close.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>DESERT GOLD</u></p> + +<p>Illustrated by Douglas Duer.</p> + +<p>Another fascinating story of the Mexican border. Two men, lost in the +desert, discover gold when, overcome by weakness, they can go no +farther. The rest of the story describes the recent uprising along the +border, and ends with the finding of the gold which the two prospectors +had willed to the girl who is the story's heroine.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE</u></p> + +<p>Illustrated by Douglas Duer.</p> + +<p>A picturesque romance of Utah of some forty years ago when Mormon +authority ruled. In the persecution of Jane Withersteen, a rich ranch +owner, we are permitted to see the methods employed by the invisible +hand of the Mormon Church to break her will.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN</u></p> + +<p>Illustrated with photograph reproductions.</p> + +<p>This is the record of a trip which the author took with Buffalo Jones, +known as the preserver of the American bison, across the Arizona desert +and of a hunt in "that wonderful country of yellow crags, deep canons +and giant pines." It is a fascinating story.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT</u></p> + +<p>Jacket in color. Frontispiece.</p> + +<p>This big human drama is played in the Painted Desert. A lovely girl, who +has been reared among Mormons, learns to love a young New Englander. The +Mormon religion, however, demands that the girl shall become the second +wife of one of the Mormons—</p> + +<p>Well, that's the problem of this sensational, big selling story.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><u>BETTY ZANE</u></p> + +<p>Illustrated by Louis F. Grant.</p> + +<p>This story tells of the bravery and heroism of Betty, the beautiful +young sister of old Colonel Zane, one of the bravest pioneers, life +along the frontier, attacks by Indians, Betty's heroic defense of the +beleaguered garrison at Wheeling, the burning of the Fort, and Betty's +final race for life, make up this never-to-be-forgotten story.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<h4>May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</h4> + +<h5><i>Ask for complete free list of G. & D. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Harbor + +Author: Ernest Poole + +Release Date: September 9, 2009 [EBook #29932] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HARBOR *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Woodie4 and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced +from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American +Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + THE HARBOR + + + + + THE HARBOR + + BY + + ERNEST POOLE + + [Illustration: Publishers mark] + + NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS + + Published by Arrangement with The Macmillan Company. + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1915, + + BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + + Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1915 Reprinted February, + 1915 Twice. March, 1915 Three Times. April, 1915 Twice May, 1915. Twice + June, 1915. Twice July, 1915. August, 1915. September, October, + November, December, 1915. January, 1916. March, 1916 + + + _TO M. A._ + + + + +THE HARBOR + + + + +BOOK I + +CHAPTER I + + +"You chump," I thought contemptuously. I was seven years old at the +time, and the gentleman to whom I referred was Henry Ward Beecher. What +it was that aroused my contempt for the man will be more fully +understood if I tell first of the grudge that I bore him. + +I was sitting in my mother's pew in the old church in Brooklyn. I was +altogether too small for the pew, it was much too wide for the bend at +my knees; and my legs, which were very short and fat, stuck straight out +before me. I was not allowed to move, I was most uncomfortable, and for +this Sabbath torture I laid all the blame on the preacher. For my mother +had once told me that I was brought to church so small in order that +when I grew up I could say I had heard the great man preach before he +died. Hence the deep grudge that I bore him. Sitting here this morning, +it seemed to me for hours and hours, I had been meditating upon my hard +lot. From time to time, as was my habit when thinking or feeling deeply, +one hand would unconsciously go to my head and slowly stroke my bang. My +hair was short and had no curls, its only glory was this bang, which was +deliciously soft to my hand and shone like a mirror from much reflective +stroking. Presently my mother would notice and with a smile she would +put down my hand, but a few moments later up it would come and would +continue its stroking. For I felt both abused and puzzled. What was +there in the talk of the large white-haired old man in the pulpit to +make my mother's eyes so queer, to make her sit so stiff and still? What +good would it do me when I grew up to say that I had heard him? + +"I don't believe I will ever say it," I reasoned doggedly to myself. +"And even if I do, I don't believe any other man will care whether I say +it to him or not." I felt sure my father wouldn't. He never even came to +church. + +At the thought of my strange silent father, my mind leaped to his +warehouse, his dock, the ships and the harbor. Like him, they were all +so strange. And my hands grew a little cold and moist as I thought of +the terribly risky thing I had planned to do all by myself that very +afternoon. I thought about it for a long time with my eyes tight shut. +Then the voice of the minister brought me back, I found myself sitting +here in church and went on with this less shivery thinking. + +"I wouldn't care myself," I decided. "If I were a man and another man +met me on the street and said, 'Look here. When I was a boy I heard +Henry Ward Beecher before he died,' I guess I would just say to him, +'You mind your business and I'll mind mine.'" This phrase I had heard +from the corner grocer, and I liked the sound of it. I repeated it now +with an added zest. + +Again I opened my eyes and again I found myself here in church. Still +here. I heaved a weary sigh. + +"If you were dead already," I thought as I looked up at the preacher, +"my mother wouldn't bring me here." I found this an exceedingly cheering +thought. I had once overheard our cook Anny describe how her old father +had dropped dead. I eyed the old minister hopefully. + +But what was this he was saying! Something about "the harbor of life." +The harbor! In an instant I was listening hard, for this was something I +knew about. + +"Safe into the harbor," I heard him say. "Home to the harbor at last to +rest." And then, while he passed on to something else, something I +_didn't_ know about, I settled disgustedly back in the pew. + +"You chump," I thought contemptuously. To hear him talk you would have +thought the harbor was a place to feel quite safe in, a place to snuggle +down in, a nice little place to come home to at night. "I guess he has +never seen it much," I snorted. + +For I had. From our narrow brownstone house on the Heights, ever since I +could remember (and let me tell you that seems a long time when you are +seven years old), I had looked down from our back windows upon a harbor +that to me was strange and terrible. + +I was glad that our house was up so high. Its front was on a sedate old +street, and within it everything felt safe. My mother was here, and Sue, +my little sister, and old Belle, our nurse, our nursery, my games, my +animals, my fairy books, the small red table where I ate my supper, and +the warm fur rug by my bed, where I knelt for "Now I lay me." + +But from the porch at the back of our house you went three steps down to +a long narrow garden--at least the garden seemed long to me--and if you +walked to the end of the garden and peered through the ivy-covered bars +of the fence, as I had done when I was so little that I could barely +walk alone, you had the first mighty thrill of your life. For you found +that through a hole in the ivy you could see a shivery distance straight +down through the air to a street below. You found that the two iron +posts, one at either end of the fence, were warm when you touched them, +had holes in the top, had smoke coming out--were chimneys! And slowly it +dawned upon your mind that this garden of yours was nothing at all but +the roof of a gray old building--which your nurse told you vaguely had +been a "warehouse" long ago when the waters of the harbor had come 'way +in to the street below. The old "wharves" had been down there, she said. +What was a "wharf?" It was a "dock," she told me. And she said that a +family of "dockers" lived in the building under our garden. They were +all that was left in it now but "old junk." Who was Old Junk, a man or a +woman? And what in the world were Dockers? + +Pursuing my adventurous ways, I found at one place in the garden, hidden +by flowers near a side wall, a large heavy lid which was painted brown +and felt like tin. But how much heavier than tin. Tug as I might, I +could not budge it. Then I found it had an iron hook and was hooked down +tight to the garden. Yes, it was true, our whole garden was a roof! I +put my ear down to the lid and listened scowling, both eyes shut. I +heard nothing then, but I came back and tried it many times, until once +I jumped up and ran like mad. For faintly from somewhere deep down under +the flower beds I had heard a baby crying! What was this baby, a Junk or +a Docker? And who were these people who lived under flowers? To me they +sounded suspiciously like the goblins in my goblin book. Once when I was +sick in bed, Sue came shrieking into the house and said that a giant had +heaved up that great lid from below. Up had come his shaggy head, his +dirty face, his rolling eyes, and he had laughed and laughed at the +flowers. He was a drunken man, our old nurse Belle had told her, but Sue +was sure he was a giant. + +"You are wrong," I said with dignity. "He is either a Junk or a Docker." + +The lid was spiked down after that, and our visitor never appeared +again. But I saw him vividly in my mind's eye--his shaggy wild head +rising up among our flowers. Vaguely I felt that he came from the +harbor. + +As the exciting weeks of my life went on I discovered three good holes +in that ivy-covered fence of ours. These all became my secret holes, and +through them I watched the street below, a bleak bare chasm of a street +which when the trucks came by echoed till it thundered. Across the +street rose the high gray front of my father's warehouse. It was part +of a solid line of similar gray brick buildings, and it was like my +father, it was grim and silent, you could not see inside. Over its five +tiers of windows black iron shutters were fastened tight. From time to +time a pair of these shutters would fly open, disclosing a dark cave +behind, out of which men brought barrels and crates and let them down by +ropes into the trucks on the street below. How they spun round and round +as they came! But most of the trucks drove rumbling into a tunnel which +led through the warehouse out to my father's dock, out to the ships and +the harbor. And from that mysterious region long lines of men came +through the tunnel at noontime, some nearly naked, some only in shirts, +men with the hairiest faces. They sat on the street with their backs to +the warehouse wall, eating their dinners out of pails, and from other +pails they took long drinks of a curious stuff all white on top. Some of +them were always crossing the street and disappearing from my view into +a little store directly underneath me. Belle spoke of this store as a +"vile saloon" and of these men as "dockers." So I knew what Dockers were +at last! In place of the one who lived under our garden and had burst up +among the flowers, I saw now that there were hundreds and thousands of +men like him down there on the docks. And all belonged to the harbor. + +Their work I learned was to load the ships whose masts and spars peeped +up at me over the warehouse roofs. From my nursery window above I could +see them better. Sometimes they had large white sails and then they +moved off somewhere. I could see them go, these tall ships, with their +sails making low, mysterious sounds, flappings, spankings and deep +boomings. The men on them sang the weirdest songs as they pulled all +together at the ropes. Some of these songs brought a lump in your +throat. Where were they going? "To heathen lands," Belle told me. What +did she mean? I was just going to ask her. But then I stopped--I did not +dare! From up the river, under the sweeping arch of that Great Bridge +which seemed high as the clouds, came more tall ships, and low +"steamers" belching smoke and "tugs" and "barges" and "ferry boats." The +names of all these I learned from Belle and Anny the cook and my mother. +And all were going "to heathen lands." What in the world did Belle mean +by that? + +Once I thought I had it. I saw that some of these smaller boats were +just going across the river and stopping at the land over there, a land +so crowded with buildings you could barely see into it at all. "Is that +a heathen land?" I asked her. "Yes!" said Belle. And she laughed. She +was Scotch and very religious. But later I heard her call it "New York" +and say she was going there herself to buy herself some corsets. And so +I was even more puzzled than ever. For some deep instinct told me you +could buy no corsets in "heathen land"--least of all Belle's corsets. + +She often spoke of "the ocean," too, another place where the tall ships +went. But what was the ocean? "It's like a lake, but mightier," Belle +had said. But what was a lake? It was all so vague and confusing. Always +it came back to this, that I had no more seen the "ocean" than I had +seen a "heathen land," and so I did not know them. + +But I knew the harbor by day and by night, on bright sunny days and in +fogs and rains, in storms of wind, in whirling snow, and under the +restful stars at night that twinkled down from so far above, while the +shadowy region below twinkled back with stars of its own, restless, +many-colored stars, yellow, green and red and blue, moving, dancing, +flaring, dying. And all these stars had voices, too. By night in my bed +I could hear them--hoots and shrieks from ferries and tugs, hoarse +coughs from engines along the docks, the whine of wheels, the clang of +bells, deep blasts and bellows from steamers. And closer still, from +that "vile saloon" directly under the garden, I could hear wild shouts +and songs and roars of laughter that came, I learned, not only from +dockers, but from "stokers" and "drunken sailors," men who lived right +inside the ships and would soon be starting for heathen lands! + +"I wonder how I'd feel," I would think, "if I were out in the garden +now--out in the dark all by myself--right above that vile saloon!" + +This would always scare me so that I would bury my head in the covers +and shake. But I often did this, for I liked to be scared. It was a game +I had all by myself with the harbor. + + * * * * * + +And yet this old man in the pulpit called it a place where you went to +rest! + +Twenty-five years have gone since then, and all that I can remember now +of anything Henry Ward Beecher said was this--that once, just once, I +heard him speak of something that I knew about, and that when he did he +was wrong. + +And though all the years since then have been for me one long story of a +harbor, restless, heaving, changing, always changing--it has never +changed for me in this--it has never seemed a haven where ships come to +dock, but always a place from which ships start out--into the storms and +the fogs of the seas, over the "ocean" to "heathen lands." For so I saw +it when I was a child, the threshold of adventures. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +As I walked home from church with my mother that day the streets seemed +as quiet and safe as her eyes. How suddenly tempting it seemed to me, +this quiet and this safety, compared to the place where I was going. For +I had decided to run away from my home and my mother that afternoon, +down to the harbor to see the world. What would become of me 'way down +there? What would she do if I never came back? A lump rose in my throat +at the thought of her tears. It was terrible. + +"All the same I am going to do it," I kept thinking doggedly. And yet +suddenly, as we reached our front steps, how near I came to telling her. +But no, she would only spoil it all. She wanted me always up in the +garden, she wanted me never to have any thrills. + +My mother knew me so well. She had seen that when she read stories of +fairies, witches and goblins out of my books to Sue and me, while Sue, +though two years younger, would sit there like a little dark imp, her +black eyes snapping over the fights, I would creep softly out of the +room, ashamed and shaken, and would wait in the hall outside till the +happy ending was in plain view. So my mother had gradually toned down +all the fights and the killings, the witches and the monsters, and much +to my disappointment had wholly shut out the gory pirates who were for +me the most frightfully fascinating of all. Sometimes I felt vaguely +that for this she had her own reason, too--that my mother hated +everything that had to do with the ocean, especially my father's dock +that made him so gloomy and silent. But of this I could never be quite +sure. I would often watch her intently, with a sudden sharp anxiety, +for I loved my mother with all my soul and I could not bear to see her +unhappy. + +"Never on any account," I heard her say to Belle, "are the children to +go down the street toward the docks." + +"Yes, ma'am," said Belle. "I'll see to it." + +At once I wanted to go there. The street in front of our house sloped +abruptly down at the next corner two blocks through poorer and smaller +houses to a cobblestone space below, over which trucks clattered, +plainly on their way to the docks. So I could go down and around by that +way. How tempting it all looked down there. Above the roofs of the +houses, the elevated railroad made a sharp bend on its way to the +Bridge, trains roared by, high over all the Great Bridge swept across +the sky. And below all this and more thrilling than all, I caught +glimpses of strange, ragged boys. "Micks," Belle sometimes called them, +and sometimes, "Finian Mickies." Up here I had no playmates. + +From now on, our garden lost its charms. Up the narrow courtway which +ran along the side of the house I would slip stealthily to the front +gate and often get a good look down the street before Belle sharply +called me back. The longest looks, I found, were always on Sunday +afternoons, when Belle would sit back there in the garden, close to the +bed of red tulips which encircled a small fountain made of two white +angels. Belle, who was bony, tall and grim, would sit by the little +angels reading her shabby Bible. Her face was wrinkled and almost brown, +her eyes now kind, now gloomy. She had a song she would sing now and +then. "For beneath the Union Jack we will drive the Finians back"--is +all I can remember. She told me of witches in the Scotch hills. At her +touch horrible monsters rose in the most surprising places. In the +bathtub, for example, when I stayed in the bath too long she would jerk +out the stopper, and as from the hole there came a loud gurgle--"It's +the Were-shark," Belle would mutter. And I would leap out trembling. + +This old "Were-shark" had his home in the very middle of the ocean. In +one gulp he could swallow a boy of my size, and this he did three times +each day. The boys were brought to him by the "Condor," a perfectly +hideous bird as large as a cow and as fierce as a tiger. If ever I dared +go down that street and disobey my mother, the Condor would "swoop" down +over the roofs, snatch me up in his long yellow beak with the blood of +the last boy on it, and with thunder and lightning would carry me off +far over the clouds and drop me into the Were-shark's mouth. + +Then Belle would sit down to her Bible. + +Sunday after Sunday passed, and still in fascinated dread I would steal +quietly out to the gate and watch this street forbidden. Pointing to it +one day, Belle had declared in awful tones, "Broad is the way that +leadeth to destruction." But it was not broad. In that at least she was +all wrong. It was in fact so narrow that a Condor as big as a cow might +easily bump himself when he "swooped." Besides, there were good strong +lamp-posts where a little boy could cling and scream, and almost always +somewhere in sight was a policeman so fat and heavy that even two +Condors could hardly lift him from the ground. This policeman would come +running. My mother had said I must never be scared by policemen, because +they were really good kind men. In fact, she said, it was foolish to be +scared by anything ever. She never knew of Belle's methods with me. + + * * * * * + +So at last I had decided to risk it, and now the fearful day had come. I +could barely eat my dinner. My courage was fast ebbing away. In the +dining-room the sunlight was for a time wiped out by clouds, and I grew +suddenly happy. It might rain and then I could not go. But it did not +rain nor did anything I hoped for happen to prevent my plan. Belle sat +down by the angels and was soon so deep in her Bible that it was plain I +could easily slip up the path. Sue never looked up from her sand-pile +to say, "Stop Billy! He's running away from home!" With a gulp I passed +my mother's window. She did not happen to look out. Now I had reached +the very gate. "I can't go! I can't open the gate!" But the old gate +opened with one push. "I can't go! There is no policeman!" But yes, +there he was on my side of the street slowly walking toward me. My heart +thumped, I could hardly breathe. In a moment with a frantic rush I had +reached the nearest lamp-post and was clinging breathless. I could not +scream, I shut my eyes in sickening fear and waited for the rushing of +enormous wings. + +But there came no Condor swooping. + +Another rush--another post--another and another! + +"What's the matter with you, little feller?" + +I looked up at the big safe policeman and laughed. + +"I'm playing a game," I almost shouted, and ran without touching another +post two blocks to the cobblestone space below. I ran blindly around it +several times, I bumped into a man who said, "Heigh there! Look out!" +After that I strutted proudly, then turned and ran back with all my +might up the street, and into our house and up to my room. And there on +my bed to my great surprise I found myself sobbing and sobbing. It was a +long time before I could stop. I had had my first adventure. + + * * * * * + +I made many Sunday trips after that, and on no one of them was I caught. +For delighted and proud at what I had done I kept asking Belle to talk +of the Condor, gloomily she piled on the terrors, and seeing the awed +look in my eyes (awe at my own courage in defying such a bird), she felt +so sure of my safety that often she would barely look up from her Bible +the whole afternoon. Even on workdays over her sewing she would forget. +And so I went "to destruction." + +At first I stayed but a little while and never left the cobblestone +space, only peering up into the steep little streets that led to the +fearsome homes of the "Micks." But then I made the acquaintance of Sam. +It happened through a small toy boat which I had taken down there with +the purpose of starting it off for "heathen lands." As I headed across +the railroad tracks that led to the docks, suddenly Sam and his gang +appeared from around a freight car. I stood stock-still. They were +certainly "Micks"--ragged and dirty, with holes in their shoes and soot +on their faces. Sam was smoking a cigarette. + +"Heigh, fellers," he said, "look at Willy's boat." + +I clutched my boat tighter and turned to run. But the next moment Sam +had me by the arm. + +"Look here, young feller," he growled. "You've got the wrong man to do +business with this time." + +"I don't want to do any business," I gasped. + +"Smash him, Sam--smash in his nut for him," piped the smallest Micky +cheerfully. And this Sam promptly proceeded to do. It was a wild and +painful time. But though Sam was two years older, he was barely any +larger than I, and when he and his gang had gone off with my boat, as I +stood there breathing hard, I was filled with a grim satisfaction. For +once when he tried to wrench the boat from me I had hit him with it +right on the face, and I had had a glimpse of a thick red mark across +his cheek. I tasted something new in my mouth and spit it out. It was +blood. I did this several times, slowly and impressively, till it made a +good big spot on the railroad tie at my feet. Then I walked with dignity +back across the tracks and up "the way of destruction" home. I walked +slowly, planning as I went. At the gate I climbed up on it and swung. +Then with a sudden loud cry I fell off and ran back into the garden +crying, "I fell off the gate! I fell on my face!" So my cut and swollen +lip was explained, and my trips were not discovered. + +I felt myself growing older fast. For I knew that I could both fight and +tell lies, besides defying the Condor. + +In the next years, for weeks at a time my life was centered on Sam and +his gang. How we became friends, how often we met, by just what means I +evaded my nurse, all these details are vague to me now. I am not even +sure I was never caught. But it seems to me that I was not. For as I +grew to be eight years old, Belle turned her attention more and more to +that impish little sister of mine who was always up to some mischief or +other. There was the corner grocer, too, with whom I pretended to be +staunch friends. "I'm going to see the grocer," I would say, when I +heard Sam's cautious whistle in front of the house--and so presently I +would join the gang. I followed Sam with a doglike devotion, giving up +my weekly twenty-five cents instead of saving it for Christmas, and in +return receiving from him all the world-old wisdom stored in that +bullet-shaped head of his which sat so tight on his round little +shoulders. + +And though I did not realize it then, in my tense crowded childhood, +through Sam and his companions I learned something else that was to +stand me in good stead years later on. I learned how to make friends +with "the slums." I discovered that by making friends with "Micks" and +"Dockers" and the like, you find they are no fearful goblins, giants +bursting savagely up among the flowers of your life, but people as human +as yourself, or rather, much more human, because they live so close to +the harbor, close to the deep rough tides of life. + +Into these tides I was now drawn down--and it did me some good and a +great deal of harm. For I was too little those days for the harbor. + +Sam had the most wonderful life in the world. He could go wherever he +liked and at any hour day or night. Once, he said, when a "feller" was +drowned, he had stayed out on the docks all night. His mother always let +him alone. An enormous woman with heavy eyes, I was in awe of her from +the first. The place that she kept with Sam's father was called "The +Sailor's Harbor." It stood on a corner down by the docks, a long, low +wooden building painted white, with twelve tight-shuttered, mysterious +windows along the second story, and below them a "Ladies' Entrance." In +front was a small blackboard with words in white which Sam could read. +"Ten Cent Dinners" stood at the top. Below came, "Coffee and rolls." +Next, "Ham and eggs." Then "Bacon and eggs." And then, "To-day"--with a +space underneath where Sam's fat father wrote down every morning still +more delicious eatables. You got whiffs of these things and they made +your mouth water, they made your stomach fairly turn against your +nursery supper. + +But most of our time we spent on the docks. All were roofed, and +exploring the long dock sheds and climbing down into the dark holds of +the square-rigged ships called "clippers," we found logs of curious +mottled wood, huge baskets of sugar, odorous spices, indigo, camphor, +tea, coffee, jute and endless other things. Sam knew their names and the +names of the wonder-places they came from--Manila, Calcutta, Bombay, +Ceylon. He knew besides such words as "hawser," "bulkhead" and +"ebb-tide." And Sam knew how to swear. He swore with a fascinating ease +such words as made me shiver and stare. And then he would look at me and +chuckle. + +"You think I'll go to hell for this, don't you," he asked me once. And +my face grew hot with embarrassment, for I thought that he assuredly +would. + +I asked him what were heathen lands, and he said they were countries +where heathen lived. And what were heathen? Cannibals. And what were +they? + +"Fellers that eat fellers," he said. + +"Alive?" I inquired. He turned to the gang: + +"Listen to the kid! He wants to know if they eat 'em alive!" Sam spat +disgustedly. "Naw," he said. "First they roast 'em like any meat. They +roast 'em," he added reflectively, "until their skin gets brown and +bubbles out and busts." + +One afternoon a carriage brought three travelers for one of the ships, a +man, his wife and a little girl with shining yellow pig-tails. "To be +et," Sam whispered as we stood close beside them. And then, pointing to +some of the half-naked brown men that made the crew of the ship near +by--"cannibals," he muttered. For a long time I stared at these eaters, +especially at their lean brown stomachs. + +"We're safe enough," Sam told me. "They ain't allowed to come ashore." I +found this very comforting. + +But what a frightful fate lay in store for the little girl with +pig-tails. As I watched her I felt worse and worse. Why couldn't +somebody warn her in time? At last I decided to do it myself. Procuring +a scrap of paper I retired behind a pile of crates and wrote in my +large, clumsy hand, "You look out--you are going to be et." Watching my +chance, I slipped this into her satchel and hoped that she would read it +soon. Then I promptly forgot all about her and ran off into a warehouse +where the gang had gone to slide. + +These warehouses had cavernous rooms, so dark you could not see to the +ends, and there from between the wooden columns the things from the +ships loomed out of the dark like so many ghosts. There were strange +sweet smells. And from a hole in the ceiling there was a twisting chute +of steel down which you could slide with terrific speed. We used to +slide by the hour. + +Outside were freight cars in long lines, some motionless, some suddenly +lurching forward or back, with a grinding and screeching of wheels and a +puffing and coughing from engines ahead. Sam taught me how to climb on +the cars and how to swing off while they were going. He had learned from +watching the brakemen that dangerous backward left-hand swing that lands +you stock-still in your tracks. It is a splendid feeling. Only once +Sam's left hand caught, I heard a low cry, and after I jumped I found +him standing there with a white face. His left hand hung straight down +from the wrist and blood was dripping from it. + +"Shut up, you damn fool!" he said fiercely. + +"I wasn't saying nothing," I gasped. + +"Yes, you was--you was startin' to cry! Holy Christ!" He sat down +suddenly, then rolled over and lay still. Some one ran for his mother, +and after a time he was carried away. I did not see him again for some +weeks. + +We did things that were bad for a boy of my size, and I saw things that +I shouldn't have seen--a docker crushed upon one of the docks and +brought out on a stretcher dead, a stoker as drunk as though he were +dead being wheeled on a wheelbarrow to a ship by the man called a +"crimp," who sold this drunken body for an advance on its future pay. +Sam told me in detail of these things. There came a strike, and once in +the darkness of a cold November twilight I saw some dockers rush on a +"scab," I heard the dull sickening thumps as they beat him. + +And one day Sam took me to the door of his father's saloon and pointed +out a man in there who had an admiring circle around him. + +"He's going to jump from the Bridge on a bet," Sam whispered. I saw the +man go. For what seemed to me hours I watched the Great Bridge up there +in the sky, with its crawling processions of trolleys and wagons, its +whole moving armies of little black men. Suddenly one of these tiny +specks shot out and down, I saw it fall below the roofs, I felt Sam's +hand like ice in mine. And this was not good for a boy of ten. + +But the sight that ended it all for me was not a man, but a woman. It +happened one chilly March afternoon when I fell from a dock into water +covered with grease and foam, came up spluttering and terrified, was +quickly hauled to the dock by a man and then hustled by Sam and the gang +to his home, to have my clothes dried and so not get caught by my +mother. Scolded by Sam's mother and given something fiery hot to drink, +stripped naked and wrapped in an old flannel nightgown and told to sit +by the stove in the kitchen--I was then left alone with Sam. And then +Sam with a curious light in his eyes took me to a door which he opened +just a crack. Through the crack he showed me a small back room full of +round iron tables. And at one of these a man, stoker or sailor I don't +know which, his face flushed red under dirt and hair, held in his lap a +big fat girl half dressed, giggling and queer, quite drunk. And then +while Sam whispered on and on about the shuttered rooms upstairs, I felt +a rush of such sickening fear and loathing that I wanted to scream--but +I turned too faint. + +I remember awakening on the floor, Sam's mother furiously slapping Sam, +then dressing me quickly, gripping me tight by both my arms and saying, + +"You tell a word of this to your pa and we'll come up and kill you!" + +That night at home I did not sleep. I lay in my bed and shivered and +burned. My first long exciting adventure was over. Ended were all the +thrills, the wild fun. It was a spree I had had with the harbor, from +the time I was seven until I was ten. It had taken me at seven, a plump +sturdy little boy, and at ten it had left me wiry, thin, with quick, +nervous movements and often dark shadows under my eyes. And it left a +deep scar on my early life. For over all the adventures and over my +whole childhood loomed this last thing I had seen, hideous, disgusting. +For years after that, when I saw or even thought of the harbor, I felt +the taste of foul, greasy water in my mouth and in my soul. + +So ended the first lesson. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +The next morning as I started for school, suddenly in the hallway I +thought of what my mother had told me--always when I was frightened to +shut my eyes and speak to Jesus and he would be sure to make everything +right. I had not spoken to Jesus of late except to say "Holy Christ!" +like Sam. But now, so sickened by Sam and his docks, my head throbbing +from the sleepless night, on the impulse I kneeled quickly with my face +on a chair right there in the hall. But I found I was too ashamed to +begin. + +"If he would only ask me," I thought. Why didn't he ask me, "What's the +matter, little son?" or say, "Now, you must tell me and then you'll feel +better"--as my mother always did. But Jesus did not help me out. I could +not even feel him near me. "I will never tell anyone," I thought. And I +felt myself horribly alone. + +Help came from a quite different source. + +"There he is! Look!" + +I heard Sue's eager whisper. Jumping quickly to my feet, I saw in the +library doorway Sue's dark little figure and her mocking, dancing eyes +as she pointed me out to our father, her chum, whose face wore a smile +of amusement. In a moment I had rushed out of doors and was running +angrily to school, furious at myself for praying, furious at Sue for +spying and at my father for that smile. My terror was forgotten. No more +telling Jesus things! I retreated deep inside of myself and worked out +of my troubles as best I could. + +From that day the harbor became for me a big grim place to be let +alone--like my father. A place immeasurably stronger than I--like my +father--and like him harsh and indifferent, not caring whether when I +fell into it I was pulled up to safety or drawn far down into grease and +slime. It made no difference. I was nothing to it one way or the other. +And I was nothing to my father. + +Of course this was by no means true. As I look back now I know that +often he must have tried to be kind, that in the jar and worry of his +own absorbing troubled life he must have often turned to me and tried to +make himself my friend. But children pass hard judgments. And if my +father was friendly at times it did no good. For he was a man--big and +strong--and I was a small boy craving his love. + +Why couldn't he really love me? Why couldn't he ask me how I felt or +pull my ear and say "Hello, Puss?" He was always saying these things to +Sue, and caring about her very hard and trying to understand her, +although she was nothing but a girl, two years younger and smaller than +I and far less interesting. And yet with her he was kind and tender, +curious and smiling, he watched her with wholly different eyes. My +father was a short, powerful man, and though he was nearly fifty years +old his hair was black and thick and coarse. At night he would rub his +unshaven cheek on Sue's small cheek and tickle her. She would chuckle +and wriggle as though it were fun. I used to watch this hungrily, and +once I awkwardly drew close and offered my cheek to be tickled. My +father at once grew as awkward as I, and he gave me a rub so rough it +stung. And this wasn't fair--I had hoped for a cuddle. Besides, he was +always praising Sue when I knew she didn't deserve it. He called her +brave. Once when he took us duck shooting together a squall came up and +he rowed hard, and Sue sat with her eyes on his, smiling and quite +unafraid. At home that night I heard him tell my mother how wonderfully +brave she had been, and of how I, on the other hand, had gripped the +boat and turned white with fear, while little Sue just sat and smiled. + +"We'll see how brave she is," I thought, and the next day I hit her in +Sam's best style, fairly "knocked her nut off," in fact, with one quick +blow. "There," I said to myself while she screamed. "I guess that shows +how brave you are. I didn't scream when Sam hit me." + +He said she was quicker than I at her lessons. And this rankled the +deeper because it was true. But I would never admit it. + +"Of course she's quick, when he's always helping her. Why doesn't he +ever come and help me?" I would burst into tears of vexation. My father +was unfair! + +More than that, it was he and his dock and his warehouse, in the years +that followed my thrills with Sam, that stripped all these thrills away. +A great ship with her spreading, booming white sails might move up the +river from heathen lands as wonderful and strange as you please. But the +moment she reached my father's dock she became a dirty, spotted thing, +just a common every-day part of his business. + +He himself was nothing but business. His business was with ships and the +sea, and yet he had never once in his life taken a long sea voyage. "Why +doesn't he? Why does he like only tiresome things?" I argued secretly to +myself. "Why does he always come ashore?" He always did. In my memories +of ships sailing I see him always there on deck talking to the captain, +scowling, wrinkling his eyes over the smoke of his cigar, but always +coming down the gang-plank at the end, unconcernedly turning his back on +all the excitement and going back to his warehouse. + +He could get excited about ships, but only in the queerest way that had +something to do with his business. Late one night from my bed I heard +his voice downstairs, cutting and snarling through other voices. I got +out of bed and stole downstairs and along the half-lit hall to the +library door, and there from behind the curtain I watched what was going +on inside. The library was full of men, grave, courteous-looking +gentlemen, some of them angry, some merely amused. My father was leaning +over his table talking of ships, of mysterious things that he said must +be done with battleships and tariffs. + +"And mark me, gentlemen," he cried. "If we don't do these things in time +American sails will be swept from the seas!" + +Listening, I got a picture of an immense broom reaching out of the +clouds and sweeping American ships off the ocean. But I could make +nothing of this at the time. I only watched his face and eyes and his +fist that came down with a crash on the table. And I was afraid of my +father. + +When ships lay at his dock the captains often came up to dinner. But +even these marvelous creatures lost in my father's presence all that Sam +had given them in my eyes. They did not like my mother, they ate in +uneasy silence, or spoke gruffly of their dull affairs. Once or twice I +heard talk of mutinies, of sailors shot down or put in irons, but all in +a matter-of-fact sort of way. Mere grunts came from my father. Steadily +drearier grew the ocean, flatter all the heathen lands. + +One stout, red-faced captain, jovial even in spite of my mother, would +annoy me frightfully by joking about my going to sea. He was always +asking me when I meant to run away and be "a bloody pirate." He took it +for granted I liked the sea, was thrilled by the sea, when the truth of +it was that I hated the sea! It was business now, only business! + +My father's warehouse, too, lost its mystery as I grew older. For +exploring into its darkness I found that of course it did have walls +like any common building. The things in it, too, lost their wonder. It +was as though my father had packed all the rich and romantic Far East +into common barrels and crates and then nailed down the covers. And he +himself became for me as common as his warehouse. For in his case, too, +I could see the walls. + +"I know you now," I thought to myself. He could sit through supper +night after night and not utter a word in his gloom. But the mystery in +him was gone. Business, nothing but business. A man and a place to be +let alone. + + * * * * * + +But it was my mother more than anyone else who drew me away from the +harbor. All through those early years she was the one who never changed, +the strong sure friend I could always come back to. My mother was as +safe as our house. + +She was a small, slender woman grown bodily stronger year by year by the +sheer force of her spirit. I remember her smoothly parted hair, brown +but showing gray at forty, the strong, lined face and the kindly eyes +which I saw so often lighted by that loving smile of hers for me. If my +father didn't care for me, I was always sure she did. I could feel her +always watching, trying to understand what I was thinking and feeling. +As when I was very small she toned down the stories she read, so she did +in everything else for me, even in her religion. Though she was a strong +church woman, I heard little from her of the terrors of hell. But I +heard much of heaven and more still of a heaven on earth. "Thy will be +done on earth as it is in heaven." I can never forget how she spoke +those words as I knelt and repeated them after her--not so much in the +tone of a prayer to a higher being as in one of quiet resolve to +herself. To do her share, through church and hospital and charity work +and the bringing up of her children, her share in the establishment of a +heaven upon the earth, this was her religion. + +And this heaven on earth of my mother's was made up of all that was +"fine" in humanity past and present. "Fine, fine!" she would say of some +kind deed, of some new plan for bettering life, or of some book she was +reading, some music she had heard, or of a photograph of some great +painting over in Europe. All her life she had wanted to go abroad. + +My mother was one of those first American women who went to college, and +one of that army sent out from college as school teachers all over the +land. She had taught school in frontier hamlets far out West, homesick +she had looked back on the old college town in New England, and those +ten years of her life out West had been bare and hard, an exile. At last +she had secured a position in an expensive girls' school in New York, +and from there a few years later she had married my father. I think they +had been happy at first, I think that his work with the ships had seemed +to her a gateway leading out to Europe, to all the very "finest" things. +But later, as he set his whole mind upon his warehouse worries, upon his +fight for Yankee ships, a navy, subsidies, tariffs, and shut out all +thought of travel, culture, friends, all but the bare, ugly business of +life--my mother had rebelled against this, had come to hate his harbor, +and had determinedly set herself to help me get what she had missed. + +I don't mean that she babied me. She was too good a teacher for that. I +mean she steered me through hard work away from what she saw in the +harbor up toward what she felt was fine. She began when I was very +little giving me daily lessons at home in the brief time she had to +spare from her house and charity work. She made me study and she studied +me. My mother, sooner or later, seemed to find out all I did or felt. + +Often I would hold stubbornly back. While I was going with Sam to the +docks I never once gave her a hint of my rovings. It was not until two +years after that drunken woman disaster that I suddenly told my mother +about it. I remember then she did not chide. Instead she caught the +chance to draw out of me all I had learned from the harbor. I talked to +her long that night, but she said little in reply. I can vividly +remember, though, how she came to me a few days later and placed a "book +for young men" in my hands. + +"You are only twelve," she said. "It's a pity. But after what you have +seen, my son, it is better that you know." + +She did this twenty years ago. It was far in advance of what most +parents did then or are doing even now for their children. And it threw +a flood of light into the darkest place in my mind, swept away endless +forebodings, secret broodings over what until then had seemed to me the +ugliest, the dirtiest, the most frightening thing I had found in life. + +"When you meet anything ugly or bad," she told me, "I don't want you to +turn away at once, I want you to face it and see what it is. Understand +it and then leave it, and then it won't follow you in the dark." + +"Keep clean," she said. And understanding me as she did, I think she +added to herself, "And I must keep you quiet." She once told me she +hoped that when I grew up I might become a professor in one of those +college towns she loved, where I might work all my life in peace. + +Although she never said anything to me against the harbor, I knew that +my mother put all the ugliest things in life down there. And the things +that were fine were all up here. + +"I always like the front door of a house," she used to say, "to be wide +and low with only a step or two leading up. I like it to look +hospitable, as though always waiting for friends to come in." + +Our front door was like that, and the neighborhood it waited for was one +of the quietest, the cleanest and the finest, according to her view, of +any in the country. The narrow little street had wide, leisurely +sidewalks and old-fashioned houses on either side, a few of red brick, +but more of brown stone with spotless white-sashed windows which were +tall and narrow and rounded at the top. There were no trees, but there +were many smooth, orderly vines. Almost all the houses had wide, +inviting doorways like ours, but the people they invited in were only +those who lived quietly here, shutting out New York and all the toots +and rumblings of the ships and warehouses and docks below, of which they +themselves were the owners. + +These people in their leisurely way talked of literature and music, of +sculpture and painting and travel abroad, as their fathers and even +grandfathers had done--in times when the rest of the country, like one +colossal harbor, changing, heaving, seething, had had time for only the +crudest things, for railroads, mining camps, belching mills, vast herds +of cattle and droves of sheep, for the frontier towns my mother had +loathed, for a Civil War, for a Tweed Ring, for the Knights of Labor, a +Haymarket riot, for the astounding growth of cities, slums, corporations +and trusts, in this deep turbulent onward rush, this peopling of a +continent. + +And because my father, crude and self-made and come out of the West, was +of this present country, he was an intruder politely avoided by these +people of the past. The men would come sometimes at night, but they came +only on business. They went straight through to the library, whence I +could hear my father's voice, loud, impatient, angry, talking of what +must be done soon, or Germany and England would drive the American flag +from the ocean and make us beggars on the seas, humbly asking the ships +of our rivals to give us a share in the trade of the world. To such +disturbing meetings these grave and courteous gentlemen came less and +less as the years went by. + +And so that hospitable front door of ours waited long for neighbors. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +But if my father was an intruder, a disturber of the peace of these +contented gentlemen, my mother was more and more liked by their wives. +As time wore on they came to our house in the afternoons, upon hospital +and church affairs. And first in the church and then in a private school +near by I grew to be friends with their children. + +Across the street from us at the corner there stood a huge, square +brownstone house with a garden and a wide yard around it. Two boys and a +little girl lived here, and about them our small circle centered. Here +we played hockey in winter, part of the yard being flooded for our use; +and in Spring and Autumn, ball, tag, I spy, prisoner's base and other +games. They were all well enough as far as they went, but all were so +very young and tame compared to my former adventures with Sam. +Adventures, that was the difference. These were only games. + +I felt poor beside these boys, in this ample yard by their grandfather's +house. I often saw his great carriage roll out of the stable behind the +yard. "Coach," they called it. It had rich silver trimmings and a red +thing called a "crest," and a footman and coachman in top boots. Inside +the house was a butler who was still more imposing, and a lofty room +with spacious windows called the picture gallery. But by far the most +awesome of all was the white-headed grandfather of these boys, who had +been to Europe twenty-eight times and could read and speak "every +language on earth," as I was told in whispers while we peeped in through +his library door. There he sat with all his books, a man so rich he +never even went to his office, a man who had owned not only warehouses +but hundreds of ships and had sent them to every land in the world! +While, as for me, my grandfather was not even alive. I felt poor and +small, and I did not like it. + +Besides, these unadventurous boys all put me down as "a queer kid." I +was middling good at most of their games and would get sudden spurts +when I would become almost a leader. But at other times, often right in +the middle of a game, I would suddenly forget where I was and would +think of Sam, of the cannibals that I had seen, of the man who had +jumped from the Great Bridge, or of that drunken woman. They would catch +me at it and call me queer. And I would grow hot and feel ashamed. + +On the other hand, poor and queer as I felt at times, at others I would +swell with my wisdom and importance. For what did they know, these +respectable boys, about the docks and the gangs of "Micks" deep down +there below us all as we played about in our nice little gardens. When +they called me queer, sometimes I would retort with dark hints, all +games would stop, they would gather close, and then I would tell these +intense eager boys the things I had learned from the harbor. And I had +the more pleasure in the telling from the feeling of relief that now I +was safe away from it all. + +"That's the real thing, that is," I would declare impressively. But how +good it felt to me to be free of such reality. + + * * * * * + +At such times we made "the Chips" stay over on their side of the yard. +"The Chips" were three small admiring girls. One was my young sister +Sue, who was then about nine years old, long-legged, skinny and quick as +a flash, her black hair always flying. The second, a plump freckled +girl, was the younger sister of the boys who lived here. And the third +was a quiet little thing who lived around the corner. We called them +"Chips" to annoy them. We got the term from the stout coachman in the +barn who used it with a fine sweeping contempt that included all his +lady friends. We ourselves had the most profound contempt for these +girls who kept poking into our games. At times we would stop everything +and take the utmost pains to explain to them that they were nothing +whatever but girls. And this would make Sue furious. She would screw up +her snapping black eyes and viciously stick out her tongue and stamp her +foot and say "darn!" to show she could swear like a regular kid. And +still they hung around us. + +But as time wore on we grew more indulgent, we included them more and +more. And this was largely due to me. For I took a vague curious +interest in the one who lived around the corner. + +Her name was Eleanore Dillon and her age was eight, and she had +attractions that slowly grew. To begin with, as I became gradually +aware, she was much the prettiest of the three. She had light curly hair +tied up in red ribbons, always _fresh_ red ribbons. Everything about her +was always fresh and clean. She had the most serious blue eyes, which at +times would grow intent on what a tall chap of twelve like myself +condescended to tell her, and at other times wondrously confiding. + +Eleanore first attracted me by making me a hero. It was a warm May +afternoon and she was sitting on the grass with her doll and her two +companions. Sue had stolen some matches and was using them as +Jackstraws. Suddenly I heard a scream, then I saw Sue racing like mad +toward the garden hose, and I saw that the white skirt of Eleanore's +dress had caught fire. As yet there was only a little flame. She was +sitting still motionless on the grass, hugging her doll, with scared +round eyes. I got to her first and with my cap I beat out the flame. I +was suddenly panting, my hands were cold. But a few moments later, when +Sue and two of the boys came tugging the hose, it as suddenly flashed +upon me that I had done a heroic thing. + +"Get out!" I shouted scornfully, as they started to play the hose on +her. "Can't you see the whole fire is out?" + +And then while the plump freckled girl came screeching out of the +kitchen with half the servants behind her, and presently these servants +all called me "a little heero"--the one whom I had rescued looked up at +me very gratefully and said, + +"Thank you, Boy, for not letting them squirt water on my dolly's clean +dress." + +"Aw, what do I care for a doll?" I retorted ungraciously. + +But I liked her from that day. She was not at all like Sue. She was +quiet and knew her place. She knew that she was only a girl, how +thoroughly well she knew it. And yet, although so feminine, so +deliberate and sedate, she had "a pile of ginger" deep down inside of +her. In our games, whenever allowed to play, with a dogged resolution +she would come pegging along in the rear, she was a sticker, she never +gave up. In winter when they flooded the yard she was the poorest skater +of all, but patiently plodding along on the ice, each time she fell down +she would pick herself up with such determination that at last with a +jerk at her arm I said, + +"Here, Chip, come on and I'll teach you." + +She came on. I can still feel her soft determined clutch on my elbow. +When I said, "That's enough," she said, "Thank you, Boy," and went +quietly on alone. + +After that I taught her many times. One afternoon when there was a thaw, +I said, + +"Gee, but this ice is rotten." And then Eleanore asked me placidly, + +"Do you like my pretty new shoes?" + +"What's that got to do with it?" I demanded indignantly. + +"Nothing, I guess," she said meekly. + +This girl was full of mysteries. One great point in her favor was that +she had a mother "at death's door." This appealed to me tremendously. +It was so unusual. + +"How's your mother?" I would ask her often, just for the pleasure of +hearing her answer softly, + +"She's at death's door, thank you." + +She soon learned to skate much better, and I remember quite vividly +still the January afternoon when as the darkness deepened a silvery moon +appeared overhead. I had not skated with her for a week, but now we'd +been skating for nearly an hour. One by one the others went home, and +the plump girl turned at the kitchen door to call back to Eleanore +tauntingly, + +"You'll catch it, going home so late!" + +"Never mind," said a gentle voice at my side, and round and round we +skated. The moon grew steadily brighter. Still that soft steady clutch +on my arm. + +"Now you'd better go home," I said gruffly at last. + +"What time is it?" she asked me. I looked at my watch. + +"Gee! It's nearly seven o'clock!" + +"What a pretty watch that is," she said in a pleased, quiet voice, but I +was not to be diverted. + +"Go on home, I tell you. Sit down and I'll take off your skates." She +sighed regretfully but obeyed. + +"What'll they do to you?" I asked her when we stopped in front of her +house. + +"They'll try to punish me," she answered. I looked down at her +anxiously. + +"Hard?" I inquired. She smiled at me. + +"What time is it now?" she asked. + +"Ten minutes after seven." + +"Then they won't punish me," she said. "My father always comes home at +seven." And she went placidly into the house. + +"A mighty smart Chip," I said to myself. + +I had told her a little about the docks, and one day she asked me to +take her there. I promptly refused, but patiently from time to time she +repeated her request. She wanted me to take her "just for a little +walk" down there, or she would run if I preferred. She wanted to come +out after supper into her garden, which was only the third from ours, +and then she would sing and I would whistle. Then I would come around by +the street and she would meet me at her front gate. I don't know how she +ever persuaded me, but she did, and the plan worked splendidly. At the +gate without a word I took her hand and ran down the street. Soon we +were flying. Down to the open space we came, and around across the +railroad tracks. In and out among grimy freight cars we sped. I would +not stop. + +"Christ!" I thought in terror. "Suppose Sam and the gang come around +this way!" I had not seen them now for years. What might not they do to +her? + +But she made me stop by my father's dock. She was gasping and her face +was red, but with her hand like a little vise on mine she stood there +staring at the ship. + +"Where are the heathen?" she asked at last, in a queer choking voice. + +"There." I pointed to a small brown man with a white skull-cap on his +head. "There's one. See him? Now come home!" + +"Wait a minute, please," she begged very softly. A moment longer she +stared at him. "All right, now we'll go," she said. + +When I got her safe inside my gate I was in a cold sweat. This +adventure, to my surprise, had been one of the most thrilling of all. +And who'd have thought _her_ an adventurer? + +Her mother died that summer while we were up in the mountains, and when +we came back we found the house empty. Her father had taken her out +West. + +I remember being distinctly relieved when I heard that she had gone +away. For now there was something uncanny about her. It was one thing to +have a mother "at death's door." That had been quite exciting. But to +have one dead! There was something too awful about it. I would not have +known what to say to the girl. And, besides, the thought suddenly +entered my mind--suppose my own mother were to die! + + * * * * * + +We had been splendid chums, my mother and I, that long delightful summer +up in the White Mountains. The mountains, we had decided together, were +our favorite place to live in. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the +hills," was the part of the Bible which she liked best. She loved these +hills for their quiet, I loved them for the exciting adventures I had +with Sue and "Stouty," the son of the farmer with whom we stayed. But +these adventures were of a kind that my mother warmly approved of for +me. They were not like those on the harbor. + +An adventure to climb with Stouty and Sue up through the resinous +branches of an enormous pine on the mountainside to the hawk's nest in +the bare top branches, snatch the eggs and smash them, while Stouty with +a big thick stick would beat off the mother hawk. An adventure to +clamber half the day up a bouldery path through firs and birches, +looking into black caves, peeping over steep cliffs, and at last +reaching the wind-swept summit to look off through miles of emptiness. +An adventure, coming home from a picnic as evening was falling, to sit +snug in that creaking capacious wagon which belonged to Stouty's father, +and to watch the lights and shadows that darted in and out of the pines +as the lantern swung beneath our wheels. + +But even up here in the mountains the harbor reached with its cold +embrace. For at night it was an adventure hurriedly to undress and bury +myself in the covers in time to hear the first low rumble of "the night +freight" that went by some five miles distant. It made me think of the +trains on the docks, whose voices I had heard at night, and of the +things I had done with Sam. I would hear the mountain engine come +panting impatiently up the grade. As it reached the top I would rise +from my bed and soar off into space, in one swift rushing flight through +the darkness I would be there in the nick of time, I would swing on to a +freight car in the way Sam had shown me, climb to the top and crouching +there I would watch the dark roadway open ahead through the silent +forest. Lower would sink the voice of the engine until it became a faint +confused mutter. And the rest was dreamland. + +This was one of those secret games I never told my mother about--until, +to my own surprise, in one of those long talks at night when she seemed +drawing me to her right out through my eyes, I blurted this out. My +mother wanted to know all about it. Did my hands get cold? Yes, colder +and colder, as listening here in bed I heard the first muttering of the +train and knew that in a few moments more I would take that five-mile +flight, right through the window and over the trees to the distant +track, to be there just ahead of the on-puffing engine. My voice +quivered excitedly as I spoke. + +"I see--I see," she said soothingly. "And when you are riding on top of +a car--aren't you ever frightened?" + +"No--because all the time I know that I am back there at home in my bed. +I can see myself back there behind me." + +"Do you fall asleep in bed--or are you still on the top of the car the +last thing you can remember?" + +"Most always on the top of the car." + +"And when you sleep--do you always dream?" + +"Yes--that's the finest part of it." + +"Do you ever dream of Sam?" + +"Yes." + +"And all those things you did on the harbor?" + +"Yes--all." + +For some moments she sat by my bedside quietly stroking one of my hands. + +"Billy." + +"Yes, mother." I was growing impatient, I wished she would go, for now +it was nearly time for the train. + +"Have you ever played other games like that? I mean where you leave +yourself and look back--and see your own body behind you." + +"Yes--in bed in Brooklyn when I was quite little." + +"Where did you go from your bed?" + +"I went to the end of the garden. I heard drunken sailors and dockers +shouting in that vile saloon below." This was not true. What I had +really done was to lie in bed and whisper, "_Suppose_ I were out +there"--which is very different. I was too young then to have learned +the real trick. But now I was so proud of it that I honestly thought I +had always known how. "It was a game I had with the harbor," I said. + +"With the harbor." I felt her hand slowly tighten on mine. Then all at +once as we heard the first low grumble of the freight train coming, my +mother's hold grew tighter and tighter. "Open your eyes." I opened them +quickly, for her voice was sharp and stern. She held me until the sound +was gone. + +"Do you hear it any longer?" she asked quietly at last. + +"No," I whispered. My breath still came fast. + +"Neither do I." There was another silence. "Let's go and sit by the +window," she said. + +And there she talked to me of the stars. How great they were and how +very quiet. She said that the greatest men in the world were almost +always quiet like that. They never let their hands get cold. + +Often after that in the evenings just before I went to bed we had these +talks about the stars. And not only in the mountains. On sparkling +frosty winter nights we watched them over the harbor. And the things she +said about them were so utterly absorbing that I would never think to +look down, would barely hear the toots and the puffings and grinding of +wheels from that infernal region below. For always when she spoke of +the stars my mother spoke of great men too, the men who had done the +"finest" things--a few in the clash and jar of life like Washington and +Lincoln, but most of them more quietly, by preaching, writing, painting, +composing, sermons, books, pictures and music so "fine" that all the +best people on earth had known about them and loved them. + +As I grew older she read to me more and more about these men. And +sometimes I would feel deeply content as though I had found what I +wanted. But more often I would feel myself swell up big inside of me, +restless, worrying, groping for something. I didn't know what I wanted +then, but I do know now as I look back, and I think there are thousands +of children like me, the kind who are called "queer kids" by their +playmates, who are all groping for much the same thing. + +"Where is the Golden Age to-day?" they are asking. "We hear of all this +from our mothers. We hear of brave knights and warriors, of God and +Christ as they walked around on earth like regular people, of saints and +preachers, writers and painters. But where are the great men living now? +Not in our house nor on our street, nor in school nor in our church on +the corner. There is nothing there that thrills us. Why isn't there? +What is the matter? We are no longer babies, we are becoming big boys +and girls. What will we do when we are grown up? Has everything fine +already been done? Is there no chance for us to be great and to do +them?" + +It was to questionings like these that my mother had led me up from the +harbor. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +And to such questionings I believe that for many children of my kind +there is often some familiar place--a schoolroom or a commonplace +street, or a dreary farm in winter, a grimy row of factories or the ugly +mouth of a mine--that mutely answers, + +"No. There are no more great men for you, nor any fine things left to be +done. There is nothing else left in the world but me. And you'd better +stop trying to find it." + +In my case this message came from the harbor, that one part of the +modern world which looked up at me steadily day after day. Vaguely +struggle as I would to build up fine things in the present from all that +my mother brought out of the past, the harbor would not let me. For what +I clothed it soon stripped naked, what I built it soon tore down. + +"When you were little," it seemed to say, "for you I was filled with +thrilling idols--cannibals and condors, Sam, strange wonder-ships and +sailors adventuring to heathen lands. But then I dragged these idols +down and made you see me as I am. And as I showed myself to you, so I'll +show up all other wonderful places or men that your mother would have +you believe in." + +It did this, as I remember it, in the easiest most trivial ways, like +some huge beast that flicks off a fly and then lumbers unconcernedly on. + +My mother by years of patient work had built up my religion, filling it +with the grand figures of God and Christ and his followers down to the +present time, ending with Henry Ward Beecher. When this man died I felt +awe at her silent grief. All at once the idea popped into my head that I +too might become a great preacher. And still greater, I soon learned, I +might become a preacher who went far off to heathen lands, braving +cannibals and death and giving to thousands of heathen eternal happiness +and life. Our church was sending out such a man. I heard him described +as a hero of God, and I thought of pictures I had seen of saints and +martyrs with soft haloes around their heads. + +But this hero of God came down to the harbor. He was to sail for China +from my father's dock. He wore, I remember, a brown derby hat and a +little top coat. He was thin, with stooping shoulders, he was flustered +in the excitement of leaving, nervously laughing as he shook hands with +admiring women and talking fast in his high jerky voice. Two big dockers +trundled his trunks. I saw them grin at the little man and spit tobacco +juice his way. My father came by, shot one contemptuous glance, and then +went on board to his business. I looked back at the hero. Off fell the +halo from his head. + +"No," I said gloomily to myself, "I never want to be like you." And +drearily I looked around. What heaps and heaps of business here. What an +immense gray harbor. I found no more thrills in church after that. + +And as with religion, so with love. In reading of men of the Golden Age +I came upon stories of high romance that made me strangely happy. But I +saw no love of this kind in our house. I saw my mother and father living +sharply separate lives, and I saw few kisses between them. I saw my +father absorbed in his business, with little time for my mother. And I +blamed this on the harbor. Long ago the same grim place had taught me +something else about this many-sided passion between men and women, and +one day it rose suddenly up in my mind: + +I must have been about fifteen when my little friend Eleanore Dillon +came back. Soon she and Sue were intimate chums, they went to school +together. My mother invited her up to the mountains, and there I was +with her a good deal. She was now nearly twelve years old, and the life +in the West with her father had left her sturdy as you please. And yet +somehow she still seemed to me the same feminine little creature, and as +she told me stories of the life out West, where her father, who was an +engineer, had built bridges, planned out harbors and new cities, I would +wonder vaguely about her. What a fresh, clean little person to be +talking of such places. + +She was talking to me in this way one drowsy August afternoon. We had +been fishing down on the river, and now on our way home up the long hot +slope of the meadow we had stopped to cool ourselves in the shadow of a +haystack. It was fragrant there. Presently, from the top of the stack +close over our heads, a bird poured forth a ravishing song. And Eleanore +with a deep "Oh-h" of delight threw both her hands behind her head, sank +back in the hay and lay there close beside me. Her eyes were shut and +she was smiling to herself. Then as the song of the bird bubbled on, I +felt suddenly a little shock, a new disturbing feeling. Breathlessly I +watched her face. The song stopped and Eleanore opened her eyes, met +mine, and closed them quickly. I saw a slight tightening of her +features. I grew anxious at once and awkward. I wanted to get away. + +But as I made a first uneasy movement, a bit of bright color caught my +eye. It was one of her red garters which had slipped down from beneath +her skirt. And all at once out of my memory rose a picture of years ago, +a picture from the harbor, of that fat drunken girl I had seen. She too +had worn red garters--in fact, little else! With disgusting vividness up +she came! And I jumped trembling to my feet. + +"I'm going home," I said roughly, and left my small companion. + +I kept away from her after that. And even the following winter, when +she came over often to our house to spend the night with Sue, I did my +best to avoid her. I avoided all Sue's friends. I did not keep girls +quite out of my thoughts, I had spells now and then when I would read +about them in novels, papers and magazines, anything I could lay hands +on. I would read hungrily, at times almost wistfully. But all the +stories that I read, however romantic, could never quite overbalance for +me that giggling woman I had seen. + +"This is what love can be these days, foul as two pigs in a sty," said +the harbor. + +The same thing happened again with war and the great idea of giving +one's life for one's country. + +By countless eager questionings I had forced my mother to include among +our heroes men like Napoleon, Nelson and Grant, and after I gave up +hopes of the church these men for a time became greatest of all. You +needed no mother to help you here. It was the easiest thing in the world +to picture yourself leading charges or standing high up on a hill like +Grant, quietly smoking a black cigar and sending your orderlies on the +mad gallop out to all corners of the field. My hill grew very real to +me. It had three wind-swept trees on top and I stood just in front of +them. + +When the war with Spain broke out I was still in my 'teens, still rather +thin and by no means tall, but I made up my mind to try to enlist. Even +now I can shut my eyes and see again that long night on the docks when I +watched two regiments embark on ships which were to sail at dawn. With +the uniforms, the crash of bands, the flags, the cheers, the women +laughing and crying, the harbor seemed all on my side that night. + +"This is certainly what I want!" I thought. + +But my father forbade my going. He was not only stern, he was savage. +For once he came out of himself and talked. And his talk was not only +against this war but against all wars. The Civil War was the worst of +all. This was the more a surprise to me because I knew that he himself +had been with the Boys of Sixty One, I had often boasted about it. But +now I learned he had not fought at all, he had been a mere commissary +clerk moving rations and blankets on freight trains! + +"The business side of war," he said. "And when you've seen that side of +it you know how rotten a big war is! Men in the North made millions by +sending such rotten meat to the front that we had to live on the people +down South, we had to go into their farms and plantations and plunder +defenseless women and children of all they had to eat! That's war! And +war is filthy stinking camps where men die of fever and scurvy like +flies--and war is field hospitals so rotten in their management that you +see the wounded in long lines--packed together like bloody +sardines--bleeding to death for the lack of care! When they're dead you +dig big trenches and you pile 'em in like dogs! In time of war remember +peace--and then you'll be ashamed you're there!" + +For a moment I was struck dumb with surprise. What was this strange fire +deep down within my father's soul that could give out such a flash? +Confusedly I wondered. A sudden idea crossed my mind. + +"But if that's how you feel," I retorted, "why are you always talking +about the battleships we need? You want a big navy----" + +"Yes," he snapped, "to keep this country _out_ of war! If you live long +enough you'll see what I mean--remember then what I'm telling you! This +country needs a navy so big she can trade wherever she likes and make +other nations leave her alone! But she doesn't want war! Sixty One was +enough! Some day when you get a man's eyes in your head you'll see what +that did to this harbor!" + +I had it now, the cause of all his curious wrath! War had hurt his +harbor! How or why I did not care. Could this harbor of his stand +nothing heroic? Patriotism, religion, love--must they all be shoved +aside to make way for his dull business? + + * * * * * + +About a year later I was torn for months between two careers. Should I +become a great musician or a famous writer? The idea of writing came to +me first, I got it from "Pendennis," and for a time it took hold so hard +I thought I was nicely settled for life. But then my mother read aloud +"The Lives of Great Musicians," and within a few weeks the piano lessons +which for years I had thought so dull became an absorbing passion. My +mother bought me a photograph of one of the Beethoven portraits, and +around it over my desk I tacked up pictures of famous pianists that I +cut from magazines. I went to concerts in New York. Better still, my +teacher secured me admittance to some orchestra rehearsals, where like a +real professional, all mere amateurs shut out, I could sit in the dark +and listen, and shut my eyes and hold my head between my hands. I was +composing! After a month or two of this feverish life I remember the +pride with which I wrote "Opus 38" over my last composition. My rapidity +was astounding! + +But one day my teacher, a kind tactful German, told me that Beethoven, +when he was composing, had not always shut himself up in a room and +scowled with both hands to his head, as in the portrait of him I had, +but had rather gone out into the world. + +"The Master found his music," he said, "by listening to the life close +around him." + +"He did?" I became uneasy at once, for again I felt myself being pushed +toward that eternal harbor. + +"If I were you," my relentless monitor went on, "and desired to become +in music the great voice of my country"--I looked at him quickly but saw +no smile--"I should watch the great ships down there below, I should +listen to them with an artist's ears. They are here from all over the +world, these ships, they are manned by men of all nations. I should +listen to the songs of these men. I have heard," he added reflectively, +"that some of their songs are centuries old. Beethoven gathered only the +folk songs of his country. But you in your city of all nations might +gather the folk songs of all the seas." + +I turned quickly. I had been walking the room. + +"I have heard the sailors sing," I said, "ever since I was a little kid +out there in the garden." I scowled in the effort to search my soul, my +artist's soul. "Yes," I added triumphantly, "and sometimes it brought a +lump in my throat!" + +"Ah! Now you are a musician!" + +"I will see what I can do," I said. + +So again I tackled the harbor. By day it was quite impossible, all toots +and blares, the most frightful discords--but at night its vulgar +loudness was toned down sufficiently so that a fellow with artist's ears +could really stand listening to its life, especially if I did not go too +close but listened from my window. Here with uglier sounds subdued I +could catch low voices, snatches of song and now and then a chorus. "The +folk songs of the Seven Seas!" How that phrase took hold of me! + +I went for information to an old dock watchman who had been a sailor. + +"Songs? Why sure!" he answered. "It must be the chanties ye mean." + +"Chanties?" + +"That's it. I've been told the word's French." + +"Oh! Chanter!" + +"No--chanty. An' the man that sings the verses, he's called the +chantyman. He sings while the crew heaves on the ropes an' they all come +in on the chorus. If he's a real good chantyman he makes up new verses +every time, a kind of a yarn he spins while he sings." + +Soon after this, toward the end of a warm, windy April night, I awoke +and heard them singing. I jumped up and went to my window. From the dock +next to my father's, over the line of warehouse roofs, I could see the +immense white sails already slowly rising into the starlit night. +Quickly I threw on some clothes and hurried down to the docks. The +waterfront was empty, swept clean of all that I disliked. Only overhead +a few billowy clouds, the soft rush of the wind, a slight flush in the +east, it was almost dawn. Here and there gleamed a light, red, green or +yellow, with a phantom tug or barge around it, moving over the black of +the water. Not silence but something richer was here--the confused +mysterious murmuring, the creaking and the breathing of the sleeping +port. And out of this those voices singing. + +I drew nearer slowly. Hungrily I tried to take in the details of color +and sound. And I felt suddenly such a deep delight as I had never +dreamed of. To look around and listen and gather it into me and +remember. This was great, no doubt about it--it fitted into all that was +fine! + +"This is really what I want to do--I'd like to learn to do it well--I'd +like to do it all my life!" + +Slower, more fearfully, I drew near. Would anything happen to spoil it +all? There she lay, the long white ship, laden deep, settled low in the +water. I could see the lines of little dark men heaving together at the +ropes. Each time they hove they sang the refrain, which, no doubt, was +centuries old, a song of the winds, the big bullies of the ocean, +calling to each other as in some wild storm at sea they buffeted the +tiny men who clung to the masts and spars of ships: + + "Blow the man down, bullies, + Blow him right down! + Hey! Hey! Blow the man down! + Give us the time to blow the man down!" + +But what were the verses? I could hear the plaintive tenor voice of the +chantyman who sang them--now low and almost mournful, now passionate, +thrilling up into the night, as though yearning for all that was hid in +the heavens. Could a man like that feel things like that? But what were +the words he was singing, this yarn he was spinning in his song? + +I came around by the foot of the slip and walked rapidly up the dockshed +toward one of its wide hatchways. The singing had stopped, but as I drew +close a rough voice broke the silence: + +"Sing it again, Paddy!" + +I looked out. Close by on the deck, in the hard blue glare of an +arc-light, were some twenty men, dirty, greasy, ragged, sweating, all +gripping the ropes and waiting for Paddy, who rolled his quid in his +mouth, spat twice, and then began: + + "As I went awalking down Paradise Street + A pretty young maiden I chanced for to meet." + +A heave on the ropes and a deafening roar: + + "Blow the man down, bullies, + Blow him right down! + Hey! Hey! Blow the man down!" + +Again the solo voice, plaintiff and tender: + + "By her build I took her for Dutch. + She was square in the stuns'l and bluff in the bow." + +The rest was a detailed account of the night spent with the maiden. Roar +on roar rose the boisterous chorus: "Blow the man down, bullies, blow +him right down!" The big patched, dirty sails went jerking and flapping +up toward the stars, which from here were so faint they could barely be +seen. And the ship moved out on the harbor. + +"There go the folk songs of the seas," I thought disgustedly, looking +out on the water now showing itself grease-mottled in the first raw +light of day. + +I tried other songs with my artist's ears and found them all much like +the first, the music like the very stars, the words like the grease and +scum on the water. I was about giving up my search when I met my old +friend, the watchman. + +"Well, did ye find the chanties?" he asked. + +"Yes," I said. "They can't be printed." His old eyes twinkled merrily: + +"Of course they can't. An' _most_ songs an' stories can't. But I'll give +ye a nice little song ye can print. It's the oldest chanty of 'em all. +I'll try to remember an' write it down." + +Here is the song he gave me: + +ROLLING HOME + + To Australia's fair-haired maidens + We will bid our last good-bye. + We are going home to England, + We may never more see you. + + Rolling home, rolling home, + Rolling home across the sea, + Rolling home to merry England, + Rolling home dear land to thee. + + We will leave you our best wishes + As we leave your rocky shores, + We are going home to England, + We may never see you more. + Rolling home.... + + Up aloft amidst her rigging + Spreading out her snow white sails, + Like a bird with outstretched pinions, + On we speed before the gale. + Rolling home.... + + And the wild waves, as we leave them, + Seem to murmur as they roll; + There are hands and hearts to greet thee + In that land to which you go. + Rolling home.... + + Cheer up, Jack, fond hearts await thee, + And kind welcomes everywhere; + There are hands and hearts to greet thee, + Kind caresses from the fair. + + Rolling home, rolling home, + Rolling home across the sea, + Rolling home to merry England, + Rolling home dear land to thee. + +"Do they ever sing those words?" I asked suspiciously. The old Irishman +looked steadily back. + +"Sure they sing 'em--sometimes," he said. "It's the same thing as them +other songs--only nicer put. Put to be printed," he added. + +He found me others "put to be printed." Soon I had quite a collection. +And with the help of my German teacher I wrote down the music. + +"There are not enough for a book," he said. "Why don't you write an +article, tell where you found them, put them in, and send it to a paper? +So you can give them to the world." + +This I at once set out to do. In the writing I found again that deep +delight I had had on the dock, just far enough off to miss the dirt, the +sweat and the words of the song. I showed the article to my mother, and +she was surprised and delighted. Working together, in less than a week +we had polished it off. I heard her read it aloud to my father, I +watched his face, and I saw the grim smile that came over it as he asked +me, + +"Are those the words you heard them sing?" + +"Not all of them are," I answered. And suddenly, somehow or other, I +felt guilty, as though I had done something wrong. But angrily I shook +it off. Why should I always give in to his harbor? This that I had +written was fine! This was Art! At last in spite of him and his docks I +had found something great that I could do! + +When the article was taken by a Sunday paper in New York and a check for +eight dollars was sent me with a brief but flattering letter, my pride +and hopes rose high. The eight dollars I spent on a pin for my mother, +as "Pendennis" or some other boy genius had done. When the article +appeared in the paper my mother bought fifty copies and gave them out to +our neighbors. There was nothing to shock such neighbors here, and they +praised me highly for what they called my "real descriptive power." + +"That boy will go far," I heard one cultured old gentleman say. And I +lost no time in starting out. No musical career for me, down came +Beethoven from my wall, for I was now a writer. And not of mere +articles, either. Inside of six months I had written a dozen short +stories, and when each of these in turn was rejected I began to plan out +a five-act play. But here my mother stopped me. + +"You're trying to go too fast," she said. "Think of it, you are barely +nineteen. You must give up everything else just now and spend all your +time getting ready for college. For if you are going to be a strong +writer, as I hope, you need to learn so many things first. And you will +find them all in college--as I did once when I was young," she added a +little wistfully. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +The first thing I needed in college was a good thorough dressing down. +And this I got without any delay. In the first few weeks my artist's +ears and eyes and soul were hazed to a frazzle. From "that boy who will +go far" I became "you damn young freshman." I was told to make love to a +horse's hind leg, I was made to perch on a gatepost and read the +tenderest passages of "Romeo and Juliet," replacing Romeo's name by my +own, and Juliet's by that of stout Mrs. Doogan, who scrubbed floors in a +dormitory close by. Refusals only made matters painful. Besides, I was +told by a freshman friend that I'd better fit in or I'd "queer" myself. + +This dread of "queering" myself at first did me a world of good. Dumped +in this community of over a thousand callow youths, three hundred in my +class alone and each one absorbed in getting acquainted, fitting in, +making friends and a place for himself, I was soon struggling for a +foothold as hard as the rest. Within a month the thing I wanted above +all else was to shed my genius and become "a good mixer" in the crowd. + +This drew me at first from books to athletics. Though still slight of +build I was wiry, high-strung and quick of movement. I had a snub nose +and sandy hair, and I was tough, with a hard-set jaw. And I now went +into the football world with a passion and a patience that landed me at +the end of the season--one of the substitute quarterbacks on the +freshman team. I did not get into a single game, I was only used on the +"scrub" in our practice. This made for a wholesome humility and a real +love of my college. + +The football season over, I tried for the daily paper. One of the +freshman candidates for the editorial Spring elections, I became a daily +reporter slave. Here at first I drew on my "queer" past, turning all my +"descriptive powers" to use. But a fat senior editor called "Pop" +inquired one day with a sneer, "For God's sake, Freshman, why these +flowers?" And the flowers forthwith dropped out of my style. At all +hours, day and night, to the almost entire neglect of studies, I went +about college digging up news--not the trivial news of the faculty's +dull, puny plans for the development of our minds, but the real vital +news of our college life, news of the things we were here for, the +things by which a man got on, news of all the athletic teams, of the +glee, mandolin and banjo clubs, of "proms," of class and fraternity +elections, mass meetings and parades. Ferreting my way into all nooks +and crannies of college life, ears keen for hints and rumors, alert to +"scoop" my eighteen reporter rivals--the more I learned the better I +loved. And when in the Spring I was one of the five freshman editors +chosen, the conquest was complete. No more artist's soul for me. I was +part and parcel of college life. + +Together with my companions I assumed a genial tolerance toward all +those poor dry devils known to us as "profs." I remember the weary sighs +of our old college president as he monotoned through his lectures on +ethics to the tune of the cracking of peanuts, which an old darky sold +to us at the entrance to the hall. It was a case of live and let live. +He let us eat and we let him talk. With the physics prof, who was known +as "Madge the Scientist," our indulgence went still further. We took no +disturbing peanuts there and we let him drone his hour away without an +interruption, except perhaps an occasional snore. We were so good to +him, I think, because of his sense of humor. He used to stop talking now +and then and with a quizzical hopeless smile he would look about the +hall. And we would all smile broadly back, enjoying to the full with +him the droll farce of our presence there. "Go to it, Madge," someone +would murmur. And the work of revealing the wonders of this material +universe would limp quietly along. In examinations Madge gave no marks, +at least not to the mass of us. If he had, over half of us would have +been dropped, so he "flunked" the worst twenty and let the rest through. + +The faculty, as a whole, appeared to me no less fatigued. Most of them +lectured as though getting tired, the others as though tired out. There +were a few lonely exceptions but they had to fight against heavy odds. + +The hottest fighter of all against this classic torpor was a tall, +joyous Frenchman who gestured not only with his hands but with his +eloquent knees as well. His subject was French literature, but from this +at a moment's notice he would dart off into every phase of French life. +There was nothing in life, according to him, that was not a part of +literature. In college he was considered quite mad. + +I met him not long ago in New York. We were both hanging to straps in +the subway and we had but a moment before he got off. + +"I have read you," he said, "in the magazines. And from what you write I +think you can tell me. What was the trouble with me at college?" I +looked into his black twinkling eyes. + +"Great Scott!" I said suddenly. "You were alive!" + +"Merci! Au revoir, monsieur!" + +What a desert of knowledge it was back there. Our placid tolerance of +the profs included the books they gave us. The history prof gave us ten +books of collateral reading. Each book, if we could pledge our honor as +gentlemen that we had read it, counted us five in examination. On the +night before the examination I happened to enter the room of one of our +football giants, and found him surrounded by five freshmen, all of whom +were reading aloud. One was reading a book on Russia, another the life +of Frederick the Great, a third was patiently droning forth Napoleon's +war on Europe, while over on the window-seat the other two were racing +through volumes one and two of Carlyle's French Revolution. The room was +a perfect babel of sound. But the big man sat and smoked his pipe, his +honor safe and the morrow secure. In later years, whatever might happen +across the sea would find this fellow fully prepared, a wise, +intelligent judge of the world, with a college education. + +"This reminds me," he said, "of last summer--when I did Europe in three +weeks with Dad." + +The main idea in all courses was to do what you had to but no more. One +day an English prof called upon me to define the difference between a +novel and a book of science. + +"About the same difference," I replied, "as between an artist's painting +and a mathematical drawing." + +"Bootlick, bootlick," I heard in murmurs all over the hall. I had +answered better than I had to. Hence I had licked the professor's boots. +I did not offend in this way again. + + * * * * * + +But early in my sophomore year, when the novelty had worn away, I began +to do some thinking. Was there nothing else here? My mother and I had +had talks at home, and she had told me plainly that unless I sent home +better reports I could not finish my four years' course. And after all, +she wasn't a fool, there was something in that idea of hers--that here +in this quiet old town, so remote from the harbor and business, a fellow +ought to be getting "fine" things, things that would help him all his +life. + +"But look what I've got!" I told myself. "When I came here what was I? A +little damn prig! And look at me now!" + +"All right, look ahead. I'm toughened up, I've had some good things +knocked into me and a lot of fool things knocked out of me. But that's +just it. Are all the fine things fool things? Don't I still want to +write? Sure I do. Well, what am I going to write about? What do I know +of the big things of life? I was always hunting for what was great. I'm +never hunting for it now, and unless I get something mighty quick my +father will make me go into his business. What am I going to do with my +life?" + +At first I honestly tried to "pole," to find whether, after all, I +couldn't break through the hard dry crust of books and lectures down +into what I called "the real stuff." But the deeper I dug the drier it +grew. Vaguely I felt that here was crust and only crust, and that for +some reason or other it was meant that this should be so, because in the +fresh bubbling springs and the deep blazing fires whose presence I could +feel below there was something irritating to profs and disturbing to +those who paid them. These profs, I thought confusedly, had about as +much to do with life as had that little "hero of God" who had cut such a +pitiful figure when he came close to the harbor. And more pitiful still +were the "polers," the chaps who were working for high marks. They +thought of marks and little else. They thrived on crust, these fellows, +cramming themselves with words and rules, with facts, dates, theorems +and figures, in order to become professors themselves and teach the same +stuff to other "polers." There was a story of one of them who stayed in +his room and crammed all through the big football game of the season, +and at night when told we had won remarked blithely, + +"Oh, that's splendid! I think I'll go out and have a pretzel!" + +God, what a life, I thought to myself! None of that for me! And so I +left the "polers." + +But now in my restless groping around for realities in life that would +thrill me, things that I could write about, I began trying to test +things out by talking about them with my friends. What did a fellow want +most in life--what to do, what to get and to be? What was there really +in business beside the making of money? In medicine, law and the other +professions, in art, in getting married, in this idea of God and a +heaven, or in the idea I vaguely felt now filtering through the nation, +that a man owed his life to his country in time of peace as in time of +war. The harbor with rough heavy jolts had long ago started me thinking +about questions of this kind. Now I tackled them again and tried to talk +about them. + +And at once I found I was "queering" myself. For these genial companions +of mine had laid a most decided taboo upon all topics of this kind. They +did so because to discuss them meant to openly think and feel, and to +think or feel intensely, about anything but athletics and other things +prescribed by the crowd, was bad form to say the least. + +Bad form to talk in any such fashion of what we were going to make of +our lives. Nobody cared to warm up on the subject. Many had nothing at +all in sight and put off the whole idea as a bore. Others were already +fixed, they had positions waiting in law and business offices, in +factories, mines, mills and banks, and they took these positions as +settled and sure. + +"Why?" I would argue impatiently. "How do you know it's what you want +most?" + +"Oh, I guess it'll do as well as another." + +"But damn it all, why not have a look? We can have a big look now, we've +got a chance to broaden out before we jump into our little jobs--to see +all the jobs and size 'em up and look at 'em as a part of the world!" + +"Oh, biff." I got little or no response. The greater part of these +decent likable fellows could not warm up to anything big, they simply +hadn't it in them. + +"Why in hell do you want me to get all hot?" drawled one fat sluggard of +a friend. "I'll keep alive when the time comes." And he and his kind set +the standard for all. Sometimes a chap who could warm up, who had the +real stuff in him, would "loosen up" about his life on some long tramp +with me alone. But back in college his lips were sealed. It was not +exactly that he was ashamed, it was simply that with his college friends +such talk seemed utterly out of place. + +"Look out, Bill," said one affectionately. "You'll queer yourself if you +keep on." + +The same held true of religion. An upper classman, if he felt he had to, +might safely become a leader of freshmen in the Y. M. C. A. But when one +Sunday evening I disturbed a peaceful pipe-smoking crowd by wondering +why it was that we were all so bored in chapel, there fell an +embarrassing silence--until someone growled good-humoredly, "Don't bite +off more'n you can chew." Nobody wanted to drop his religion, he simply +wanted to let it alone. I remember one Sunday in chapel, in the midst of +a long sermon, how our sarcastic old president woke us up with a start. + +"I was asked," he said, "if we had any free thinkers here. 'No,' I +replied. 'We have not yet advanced that far. For it takes half as much +thinking to be a free thinker as it does to believe in God.'" + +And I remember the night in our sophomore club when the news came like a +thunderclap that one of our members had been killed pole-vaulting at a +track meet in New York. It was our habit, in our new-found manliness, to +eat with our hats on, shout and sing, and speak of our food as +"tapeworm," "hemorrhage," and the like. I remember how we sat that +night, silent, not a word from the crowd--one starting to eat, then +seeing it wasn't the thing to do, and staring blankly like the rest. +They were terrible, those stares into reality. That clutching pain of +grief was real, so real it blotted everything out. Later some of us in +my room began to talk in low voices of what a good fellow he had been. +Then some chap from the Y. M. C. A. proposed timidly to lead us in +prayer. What a glare he got from all over the room! "Damn fool," I heard +someone mutter. Bad form! + +Politics also were tabooed. Here again there were exceptions. A still +fiery son of the South could rail about niggers, rapes and lynchings and +the need for disenfranchising the blacks. It was good fun to hear him. +Moreover, a fellow who was a good speaker, and needed the money, might +stump the state for either political party, and his accounts were often +amusing. But to sit down and talk about the trusts, graft, trade unions, +strikes, or the tariff or the navy, the Philippines, "the open door," or +any other of the big questions that even then, ten years ago, were +beginning to shake the country, and that we would all be voting on soon? +No. The little Bryan club was a joke. And one day when a socialist +speaker struck town the whole college turned out in parade, waving red +sweaters and firing "bombs" and roaring a wordless Marseillaise! We +wanted no solemn problems here! + +Finally, it was distinctly bad form to talk about sex. Not to tell +"smutty stories," they were welcomed by the average crowd. But to look +at it squarely, as I tried to do, and get some light upon what would be +doubtless the most vital part of our future lives--this simply wasn't +done. What did women mean to us, I asked. What did prostitutes mean at +present? What would wives mean later on? And all this talk about +mistresses and this business of free love, and easy divorces and +marriage itself--what did they all amount to? Was love really what it +was cracked up to be, or had the novelists handed us guff? When I came +out with questions like these, the chaps called "clean" looked rather +pained; the ones who weren't, distinctly bored. + +For this whole intricate subject was kept in the cellars of our minds, +cellars often large but dark. Because "sex" was wholly rotten. It had +nothing to do, apparently, with the girls who came chaperoned to the +"proms," it had to do only with certain women in a little town close by. +Plenty of chaps went there at times, and now and then women from over +there would come to us on the quiet at night. But one afternoon I saw a +big crowd on the front campus. It grew every moment, became a mob, +shoving and surging, shouting and jeering. I climbed some steps to look +into the center, and saw two painted terrified girls, hysterical, +sobbing, swearing and shrieking. So they were shoved, a hidden +spectacle, to the station and put on the train. Nothing like that on our +front campus! Nothing like "sex" in the front rooms of our minds. The +crowd returned chuckling. Immoral? Hell, no. Simply bad form. + + * * * * * + +"What am I going to write about?" + +"Games," said the college. "Only games. Don't go adventuring down into +life." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +Then I found Joe Kramer. + +He had "queered" himself at the beginning in college. I had barely known +him. He belonged to no fraternity, and except on the athletic field he +kept out of all our genial life. And this life of ours, for all its +thoughtlessness, was so rich in genuine friendships, so filled and +bubbling over with the joy of being young, that we could not understand +how any decent sort of chap could deliberately keep out of it. We put +Joe Kramer down as a "grouch." + +But now that I too was "queering" myself, our queerness drew us +together, or rather, Joe's drew mine. In the ten years that have gone +since then I have never met any man who drew me harder than he did, than +he is drawing me even still--and this often in spite of my efforts to +shake him off, and later of his quite evident wish to be rid of me. For +Joe had what is so hard to find among us comfortable mortals, a +sincerity so real and deep that it absolutely ruled his life, that it +kept him exploring into things, kept him adventuring always. + +In long tramps over the neighboring hills, on our backs in the grass +staring up at the clouds, or in winter hugging a bonfire in the shelter +of a boulder, or back in college over our beer or over countless pipes +in our rooms, together we adventured through books and long hungry talks +down into life--and of the paths we discovered I see even now no end. + +Joe was tall and lean, with heavy shoulders stooping slightly. He was +sallow, he never took care of himself. He ate his meals at all hours at +a small cheap restaurant, where he bought a bunch of meal tickets each +week. His face was obstinate, honest, kindly, his features were as blunt +as his talk. He was the first to understand what I was so vaguely +looking for, and to say, "All right, Kid, you come right along." And as +he was farther along than I, he pulled me after him on the hunt after +what he called "the genuine article" in this bewildering modern life. + +His own life, to begin with, was a tie with this real modern world that +had forced itself on me long ago through the harbor. For Joe had been +"up against it" hard. Though blunt and frank about most things he talked +little about himself, but I got his story bit by bit. "Graft" had come +into it at the start. In a town of the Middle West his father had been a +physician with a good practice, until when Joe was eleven years old a +case of smallpox was discovered. Joe's father vaccinated about a score +of children that week. The "dope" he used was mailed to him by a drug +firm in Chicago. It was "rotten." Over half the children were +desperately ill and seven of them died. Joe's father, his mother and +both older sisters did duty as nurses day and night. After that they +left town, moved from town to town, that story always following, and +finally both parents died. Since then Joe had been a teamster, a clerk +in a hardware store, a brakeman, a telegrapher, and last, the assistant +editor of a paper in a small town. He had scraped and slaved and studied +throughout with the idea of coming East to college. He had come at +twenty-two, beating his way on freight trains. On the top of a car one +night he had fallen asleep and been knocked on the head by a steel beam +jutting down under a bridge. Then, after two weeks on a hospital bed, he +had arrived at college. + +Here he had earned a meager way by writing football and baseball news +for a string of western papers. Here he had looked for an education, and +here "a bunch of dead ones" had handed him "news from the graveyard" +instead. + +I can still see him in classroom, head cocked to one side, grimly +watching the prof. And once during a Bible course lecture I heard his +voice blandly ironic behind me: + +"Will somebody ask Mister Charley Darwin to be so good as to step this +way?" + +"We've been cheated, Bill," he told me. "We've been cheated right along. +Take history, for instance, the kind of stuff we were handed in school. +I got onto it first when I was fourteen. It was a rainy Saturday and my +mother told me to go and clean out an old closet up in the attic. Well, +I found my German grandfather's diary there, written when he was in +college in Leipsic, in 1848. The way those kids jumped into things! The +way they got themselves mixed up in the Revolution of Forty Eight! To +hear my young grandfather talk, that year was one of the biggest times +in European history. Our school history gave it five pages and then +druled on about courts and kings. 'I'll go to college,' I made up my +mind. 'College will put me next to the truth.' So I saved my little +nickels and came. But college," he added moodily, "ain't advanced as far +as it was in my young grandfather's time." + +"Do you know who's to blame for this stuff?" he said. "It's not the +profs, I've nothing against them, all they need is to be kicked out. No, +it's us, because we stand for their line of drule. If we got right up on +our honkeys and howled, all of us, for a real education, we'd get it by +next Saturday night. But we don't care a damn. Why don't we? Are we all +of us dubs? No we're not. Go down to the football field and see. There's +as much brains in figuring out those plays as there is in mathematics. +Would we stand for coaches like our profs? But that's just it. It's the +thing to be alive in athletics and a dub in everything else. And because +it's the thing, every fellow fits in. On the whole," he added +reflectively, "I think it's this 'dear old college' feeling that's to +blame for it all." + +"My God, Joe!" This was high treason! + +"Sure it is," he retorted. "It _is_ your god and the god of us all. This +dear old college feeling. It's got us all stuck together so close that +nobody dares to be himself and buck against its standards." + +This from Joe Kramer! How often, in a football game, have I seen him on +the reporter's bench, his sallow face now all a-scowl, now beaming +satisfaction as he pounded his neighbor on the back. + +In pursuit of "a real education" we got into the habit of spending +almost every evening in the college library, where except at examination +times there was nobody but a few silent "polers." + +I grew to love this place. It was so huge and shadowy, with only shaded +lights here and there. It had such tempting crannies. I loved its deep +quiet, so pleasantly broken now and then by a step, a whisper, the sound +of a book being moved from its shelf where perhaps it had stood unread +for years, or occasional voices passing outside or snatches of song from +the campus. And here I thought I was finding myself. That French prof +had introduced me to Voltaire, Hugo, Balzac, Maupassant and others who +were becoming my new idols. This was art, this was beauty and truth, +this was getting at life in a way that thrilled. + +But now and then looking up from my book I would see Joe prowling about +the place, taking down a book, then shoving it back and scowling as he +ran his eyes along whole rows of titles. + +"This darned library shut its doors," he would growl to himself, "just +as the real dope was coming along. But there's been such a flood of it +ever since that some leaked in in spite of 'em." + +Joe would search and search until he found "it" on back shelves or stuck +away in corners. Angrily he would blow off the dust and then settle +himself with a sigh to read. There was always something wistful to me in +the way Joe opened each new book. But what a joy when he found +"it"--Darwin, Nietzsche, Henry George, Walt Whitman, Zola, Samuel +Butler. What a sudden sort of glee the night he discovered Bernard Shaw! + +When the library closed we adjourned for beer and a smoke, and often we +would argue long about what we had been reading. Joe had little use for +the stuff I liked. Beauty and form were nothing to him, it was "the +meat" he was after. My mother's idols he laid low. + +"The first part was big," he said one night of a recent English novel. +"But the last part was the kind of thing that poor old Thackeray might +have done." + +In an instant I was up in arms, for to my mother and me the author of +"Pendennis" had been like a great lovable patron saint, a refuge from +all we abhorred in the harbor. To slight him was a sacrilege. But +reverence to Joe Kramer was a thing unknown. "Show me," he said, in +reply to my outburst, "a single thing he ever wrote that wasn't +sentimental bosh!" And we went at it hammer and tongs. + +It was so in all our talks. Nothing was too sacred. Joe always insisted +on "being shown." + +He had a keen liking but little respect for the nation built by our +fathers. From his own father's tragedy, caused by graft, his own hard +struggles in the West and the Populist doctrines he had imbibed, he had +come East with a deep conviction that "things in this country are one +big mess with the Constitution sitting on top." And when the term +"muckraker" came into use, I remember his deep satisfaction. "Now I know +my name," he said. + +He was equally hard on the church. How he kicked against our compulsory +chapel. "Broad, isn't it, scientific," he growled, "to yank a man out of +bed every morning, throw him into his seat in chapel and tell him, +'Here. This is what you believe. Be good now, take your little dose and +then you can go to breakfast.'" + +"I'm no atheist," he remarked. "I'm only a poor young fellah who asks, +'Say, Mister, if you _are_ up there why is it that no big scientist has +brains enough to see you?'" + +"Look here, J. K., that isn't so!" + +"Isn't it? Show me!" And we would start in. I had a deep repugnance for +his whole materialistic view. But I liked the way he jarred me. + +"What I want to do," he said, "is to bust every hold that any creed ever +had on me. I don't mean only creeds in churches, I mean creeds in +politics, business and everywhere else. I want to get 'em all out of my +eyes so I can see what's really here--because I'm so sure there's an +awful lot here and an awful lot more that's coming. If I make a noise +like a knocker at times you don't want to put me down as any +Schopenhauer fan. None of that pessimistic dope for little Joey Kramer. +I never open a new book without hoping I'll find the real stuff I want, +and I never open a paper without hoping that some more of it will be +right here in the news of the day. Kid," he ended intensely, "you can +take it from me there are going to be big doings soon in this little old +world, big doings and great big ideas, as big as what caused the Civil +War and a damn sight more scientific. And the thing for you and me to do +is to get ourselves in some kind of shape so we can shake hands with 'em +when they arrive, and say, 'Hello, fellahs, come right in. You're just +what we've been waiting for.'" + +When Joe gave up college at the end of the junior year, he left a small +group of us behind. "The Ishmaelites," we called ourselves. For though +most of us "couldn't quite go Joe," we had all "queered" ourselves in +college through the influence on us he had had. + +There are thousands of Joe Kramers now in colleges scattered all over +the land. Each year their numbers grow, each year more deep their vague +conviction that somehow they've been cheated, more harsh and insistent +every year their questioning of all "news from the graveyard," whether +it comes from old fogey professors or from parents or preachers, eminent +lawyers or business men, great politicians or writers of books. Arrogant +and sweeping, sparing nothing sacred--young. Ignorant, confused and +groping, almost wistful--new. They are becoming no insignificant part in +this swiftly changing national life. + +Joe Kramer was one of the pioneers. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +It was with an unpleasant shock of surprise that I found Joe liked the +harbor. + +When I took him home for Christmas he spent half his time down there on +the docks. He explored the whole region for miles around, in a week he +spoke in familiar terms of slips and bays and rivers that to me were +still nothing but names. Moreover, he liked my father. And my father, +opening up by degrees, showed an unmistakable relish for Joe. + +They had long talks in the study at night, where I could hear them +arguing about the decline of our shipping, the growth of our trusts and +railroads, graft and high finance and strikes, the swift piling up of +our troubles at home--and about the great chance we were losing abroad, +the blind weak part we were playing in this eager ocean world where +every nation that was alive was rushing in to get a place. As their +voices rose loud and excited, even my young sister Sue, who was just out +of high school now and doing some groping about of her own, would go +into the study to listen at times. But I kept out. For already I was +tired again of all these harbor problems, I wanted to get at life +through Art! And I felt besides that if I entered into long talks with +my father, sooner or later he would be sure to bring up the dreaded +question of my going into his business. And this I was firmly resolved +not to do. For my dislike of all his work, his deepening worries, his +dogged absorption in his tiresome hobby of ships, was even sharper than +before. + +"That dad of yours," Joe told me, "is a mighty interesting old boy. He +has had a big life with a big idea." + +"Has he?" said I. "Then he's lost it." + +"He hasn't! That's just the trouble. He thinks he's a comer when he's a +goer--he can't see his idea is out of date. It's a pity," he added +sadly. "When a man can spend his days and nights hating the trusts and +the railroads as he does, it's a pity he's so darned old in his views of +what ought to be done about it. Your father believes that if only we'd +get a strong navy and a large mercantile marine----" + +"Oh, cut it, J. K.," I said pettishly. "I tell you I don't care what he +believes! The next thing you'll be telling me is that I ought to take a +job in his warehouse!" + +"You might do worse," said Joe. + +"What?" I demanded indignantly. + +"That's just what I said. If you'd go on a paper and learn to write like +a regular man I'd be tickled to death. But if all you want to be in life +is a young Guy de Maupassant and turn out little gems for the girls, +then I say you'd be a lot better off if you went into your father's +warehouse and began telling Wall Street to get off the roof!" + +"Thank you," I said stiffly. + +From that talk Joe and I began drifting apart. I never brought him home +again, I saw less of him at college. And at the end of the college year +he went to New York, where he found a job on a paper. + +And so all through my senior year I was left undisturbed to "queer" +myself in my own sweet way, which was to slave for hours over Guy de +Maupassant and other foreign authors, write stories and sketches by the +score, and with two other "Ishmaelites" plan for a year's work in Paris. +The French prof was delighted and spurred us on with glowing accounts of +life in "the Quarter." One of us wanted to be a painter. No place for +that like Paris! Another an architect--Paris! Myself a writer--Paris! +For what could American writers to-day, with their sentimental little +yarns covering with a laugh or a tear all the big deep facts of life, +show to compare to the unflinching powerful work of the best writers +over in France? In Paris they were training men to write of life as it +really is! How that prof did drum it in. Better still, how he talked it +up to my mother--the last time she came to college. + +I soon found she was on my side. If only she could bring father around. + +I still remember vividly that exciting night in June when the three of +us, back there at home, sat on the terrace and fought it out. I remember +the beauty of the night, I mean of the night up there in the garden +under the stars, my mother's garden and her stars, and of the hideous +showing put up by my father's harbor below. + +Of course he opposed my going abroad. His old indifference to me had +vanished, I saw he regarded me now as worth while, grown up, a business +asset worth fighting for. And my father fought. He spoke abruptly, +passionately of the great chance on the docks down there. I remember +being surprised at his talk, at the bigness and the intensity of this +hunger of his for ships. But of what he said I remembered nothing, I did +not hear, for I was eyeing my mother. + +I saw she was watching him pityingly. Why? What argument had she still +to use? I waited in increasing suspense. + +"So that's all there is to it," I heard him end. "You might as well get +it right out of your head. You're not going over to Europe to fool away +any more of your time. You're going to buckle down right here." + +"Billy, leave us alone," said my mother. + +What in the name of all the miracles did she do to him that night--my +mother so frail (she had grown so of late), my father so strong? The +next day she told me he had consented. + +I saw little of him in the next two weeks. He left me alone with her +every evening. But when I watched him he looked changed--beaten and +broken, older. In spite of myself I pitied him now, and a confused +uneasiness, almost remorse, came over me at the way I had opposed him. +"What's come over Dad?" I wondered. Once I saw him look at my mother, +and his look was frightened, crushed. What was it she had told him? + +Those evenings I read "Pendennis" aloud for the third time to my mother. +It had been our favorite book, and I took anxious pains to show her how +I loved it still. But once chancing to look quickly up, I caught my +mother watching me with a hungriness and an utter despair such as I'd +never seen before. It struck me cold, I looked away--and suddenly I +realized what a selfish little beast I was, beside this woman who loved +me so and whom I was now leaving. My throat contracted sharply. But when +I looked back the look was gone, and in its place was a quiet smile. + +"Oh, my boy, you must do fine work," she said. "I want it so much more +than anything else in my whole life. In my whole life," she repeated. I +came over to her chair, bent over her and kissed her hard. + +"I'm sorry I'm going! I'm sorry!" I whispered. "But mammy! It's only for +a year!" + +Why did that make her cling to me so? If only she had told me. + +But what young egotists we sons are. It was only a few days later that +with my two college chums, from the deck of an ocean liner, I said +good-by to the harbor. + +"Thank God I'm through with you at last." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +I was in Paris for two years. + +In those first weeks of deep delight I called it, "The Beautiful City of +Grays." For this town was certainly mellowed down. No jar of an ugly +present here, no loud disturbing harbor. But on the other hand, no +dullness of a fossilized past. What college had been supposed to do this +city did, it took the past and made it alive, richly, thrillingly alive, +and wove it in with the present. In the first Sorbonne lectures, even +with my meager French, I felt this at once, I wanted to feel it. These +profs were brilliant, sparkling, gay. They talked as though Rousseau and +Voltaire, Hugo, Balzac and Flaubert, Maupassant and all the rest were +still vital dazzling news to the world, because these men were still +molding the world. And from here exploring out over the town, I was +smilingly greeted everywhere by such affable gracious old places, that +seemed to say: + +"We've been written about for a thousand years, and now you also wish to +write. How charming of you. Please sit down. Garcon, un bock." + +And I sat down. Scenes from the books of my great idols rose around +every corner, or if they didn't I made them rise. There was pride in the +process. To go to the Place de la Republique, take a seat before some +cheap, jolly cafe, squint out at the Place with an artist's eye, +reconstruct the Bastille, the Great Revolution, dream back of that to +Rousseau and Voltaire and the way they shook the world by their +writings--and then wake up and find that I had been at it for three +mortal hours! What a chap I was for dreams. I must be quite a genius. +There were hours with Hugo in Notre Dame in one of its most shadowy +corners; with Zola on top of a 'bus at night as it lumbered up into the +Belleville slums; with Balzac in an old garden I found; with Guy de +Maupassant everywhere, in the gay hum and lights of those endless cafes, +from bridges at sunset over the Seine, or far up the long rich dusk of +the Champs Elysees, lights twinkling out, and _his_ women laughing, +chattering by. + +Nothing left in this rich old world but the harbor? Nothing beautiful, +fine or great for an eager, hungry, happy young man? I could laugh! I +knew now that the harbor had lied! For into this radiant city not only +the past but the whole present of the earth appeared to me to be pouring +in. Painters, sculptors, writers and builders were here from all +nations, with even some Hindus and Japs thrown in, young, bringing all +their dreams and ambitions, their gaiety, their vigor and zest. + +"Young men are lucky. They will see great things." + +Voltaire had said that about thirty years before the French Revolution. +It had been true then, true ever since, it was true to-day and +here--though _our_ great things I felt very sure were not to come in +violence--the world had gone beyond all that. No, these immense +surprises that were lurking just before us, these astounding miracles +that were to rise before our eyes, would come in the unfolding of the +powers in men's minds, working free and ranging wide, with a deep +resistless onward rush--in the stirring times of peace! + +And we were not only to see great things but we were all to do them! +That was the very keynote of the place. Here a fellow could certainly +write if only he had it in him. Impatiently I slaved at my French. Five +hours sleep was plenty. + +In the small apartment we had taken just on the edge of the Luxembourg +Gardens, on the nights when we were working at home, one of us at his +easel, another at his drafting board, myself at my desk, we would knock +off at about eleven o'clock and come down for beer and a long smoke in +front of the cafe below. A homely little place it was, with two rows of +small iron tables in front, and at one of these we would seat ourselves. +Behind us in the window was a long glass tank of gold fish, into which +from time to time a huge cat would reach an omnivorous paw. Often from +within the cafe we would hear Russian folk songs played on balalaikas by +a group of Russian students there. And between the songs a low hubbub +rose, in French and many other tongues, for here were French and +Germans, English and Bohemians, Russians and Italians, all gathered here +while they were young. + +How serene the old city seemed those nights. The street outside was +quiet. The motor 'bus, that pest of Paris, had not yet appeared. Only an +occasional cab would come tinkling on its way. Our street was absurdly +short. At one end was a gay cluster of lights from the crowded cafes of +the "Boul' Mich'," at the other were the low lighted arches at the back +of the Odeon, from which when the play was over fluffy feminine figures +would emerge from the stage entrance; we would hear their low musical +voices as they came merrily by us in cabs. Other figures would pass. +Across the street before us rose the trees and the lofty iron fence of +the Gardens, with a rich gloom of shrubs behind, and against this +background figures in groups and alone and in couples would come +strolling by with their happiness or hurrying eagerly toward it. Or to +what else were they hurrying? From what were they coming so slowly away? + +These strangers in this setting thrilled me. Comedy, tragedy, character, +plot--there seemed nothing in life but the writing of tales--watching, +listening, dreaming, finding, then becoming deeply excited, feeling them +grow inside of you, planning them out and writing them off, then working +them over and over and over, little by little building them up. What a +rich absorbing life for a fellow, and for me it still lay all ahead. I +had used but twenty-two years of my life, there were fifty left to write +in, and what couldn't you write in fifty years! + +Often, sitting here at night, I would get an idea and begin to work, and +I would keep on until at last the enormous old woman who kept the +cafe--we called her "The Blessed Damozel"--would come lumbering out and +good humoredly growl, + +"Couches-toi donc. Une heure vient de sonner." + + * * * * * + +There came a brief interruption. Into our street's procession one +evening, over its round cobblestones on a bicycle that wearily wobbled, +there came a lean dusty figure with something distinctly familiar in the +stoop of the big shoulders. + +"Hello, boys," said a deep gruff voice. + +"J. K.!" + +It was. Joe Kramer arriving in Paris at midnight on a punctured tire, +and cursing the cobblestone pavements over which he had hunted us out. + +A hot supper, a bottle of wine, a genial beam on all three of us, and +Joe told his story. After leaving college, from New York he had gone to +Kansas City, and by the "livest paper" there he had been sent abroad +with a bike to do a series of "Sunday specials." He had come over +steerage and written an expose of his passage. He had two weeks for +Paris and then was off to Berlin and Vienna. + +"I'm just breaking ground this time, boys," he said. "I want to get the +hang of the countries and a start in their infernal languages." + +The next day he began to break ground in our city. Early the next +morning I found Joe propped up in bed scowling into _Le Matin_ as he +tried to butt his way through the language into the news events of the +day. What I tried to tell him of the Paris I had found made no appeal +whatever. + +"All right, Kid," he said indulgently. "If I had a dozen lifetimes I +might be a poet. But I haven't, so I'll just be a reporter." + +And he and his bike plunged into the town. He found its "newspaper row" +that day and a Frenchman to whom he had a letter. With this man Joe went +to the Bourse and that night to the Chamber of Deputies. He got "Sunday +specials" out of them both, and then went on to the Bourse de Travail. +And in the few spare moments he had, Joe told us of the things he had +seen. Rumors of war and high finance, trade unions, strikes and sabotage +burst on my startled artist's ears. It made me think of the harbor! +_This_ was not my Paris! + +"It is," said J. K. stoutly. "There's no place like a newspaper office +to put you right next to the heart of a town." + +He would not hear to our seeing him off. I remember him that last night +after supper strapping his bag onto his bike and starting off down our +quiet old street on his way to the station. + +"To-morrow," he said, "I'll stop off in Leipsic. I want to have a look +at the college that stirred my young grandfather up for life. I've got +his diary with me." + +Again, in spite of the gruffness, I felt that wistful quality in him. +J. K. was hunting for something too. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +But what a relief to see him go, to forget his loud disturbing Paris and +again drink deep of mine, the city of great writers. + +"I'll never really know them," I thought, "until I can not only talk but +think and feel in their language." + +So I drudged for hours a day in my room. I inflicted my French on my +chums at meals, on defenseless drivers of 'buses who could not rise and +go away, and on the Blessed Damozel, who said: + +"Va donc, cherches-toi une fille. C'est la seule maniere d'apprendre le +Francais." + +I was vaguely thrilled by this idea, the more because so far in my life +I had had no experience of the kind. On the streets, in cabs, and in +cafes I began watching women with different eyes, more eagerly selecting +eyes that picked out of the throng the one _her_ of the moment so that +for me she was quite alone. She was alone for a thousand reasons, +different ones in every case. She was of many ages, rich and poor, now +gorgeous and now simply dressed, now a ravishing creature that took your +breath and again just funny and very French with a saucy way of wearing +her clothes. Her fascinations were always new. I watched her twinkling +earrings, her trick of using her lips when she smiled, her hands, her +silk clad ankles, her swelling young bust, the small coquettish hat she +wore, her shoulders, their expressive shrugs, her quick vivacious +movements--and I watched her eyes. Her eyes would meet mine now and +then, often with only a challenging smile but again in an intimate +dazzling way that gave me a deep swift shock of delight and left me +confused and excited. + +"In a little while," I thought. I decided to wait till I knew more +French. "She'll be strange enough, God knows," I thought half +apprehensively, "even when I can talk her language." And with a feeling +almost of relief I would plunge back into my work and forget her. For me +she was only an incident in this teeming radiant life. + +I must learn French! I strained my ears at lectures, at plays from the +top gallery, I hired a tutor to hurry it on. Years later in New York I +met a Russian revolutionist come to raise money for his cause. "Three +weeks have I been in this country," he said in utter exasperation. "And +not yet do I speak fluently the English!" That was how I felt about +French. What a delight to begin to feel easy, to catch the fine +shadings, the music and color of words and of phrases. How much more +pliant and smooth and brilliant than English. How remote from the +harbor. + +I could study my models now, not only their construction but their small +character touches as well. De Maupassant was still first for me. So +simple and sure, with so few strokes but each stroke counting to the +full, one suggestive sentence making you imagine the rest, everything +else in the world shut out, your mind gripped suddenly and held, +focussed on this man and this woman who a moment before had been nothing +to you but were now more real than life itself. Especially this woman, +what an absorbing creature he made her--and the big human ideas he +injected into these petites histoires. + +I wrote short stories by the score. Each one had a perfectly huge idea +but each seemed worse than the one before. I took to myself the advice +of Flaubert, and from a table before a cafe I would watch the people +around me and jot down the minutest details, I filled whole pages with +my strokes. But which to choose to make this person or this scene like +no other in the world? There came the rub. How had De Maupassant done +it? The answer came to me one night: + +"Not only by watching people. He talked to 'em, lived with 'em, knew +their lives!" + +The very thing my music teacher had said about Beethoven. How uneasy I +had been then, how absurdly young and priggish then in the gingerly way +I had gone at the harbor. Thank heaven there was no harbor here. I could +enter this life with a wholehearted zest. + +I began with one of my roommates. He was to be an architect. A +hard-working little chap, his days were filled with sharp suspense. The +Beaux Arts entrance examinations were close ahead. If he did not pass, +he told me, his parents in Ohio were too poor to give him another +chance. + +"If I have to go back to Ohio now," he said in that soft reflective +voice of his, "I'll put up cowsheds--later on, barns--and maybe when I'm +fifty, a moving picture theater. If I stay here and go back a Beaux Arts +man, I can go to New York or Chicago and get right into the center of +the big things being done." + +With a wet towel bound around his head he used to sit at his work half +the night. I watched the lines tighten about his thin lips and between +his gray eyes, grew to know the long weariness in them over some +problem, the sudden grim joy when the problem worked out. One day he +came home early. + +"Queer," he said simply. "I can see one side of your face, one side of +your body, one leg and one arm. But the other side don't seem to be +there." I looked up at him a moment. + +"Let's go out for a walk," I suggested. We went for a stroll in the +Gardens. And here I was surprised and just a bit ashamed to find that +while I had a real sympathy for him I had just as real curiosity. For +here was a living illustration of the horror of going blind. I could see +his jaws set like a vise, I could hear his low voice talking steadily on +as though to keep from thinking. What was he thinking? What was he +feeling? We talked of the most commonplace things. But moment by moment, +through his voice and his grip on my arm, those sudden waves now of +sickening fear, now of keen suspense, now of angry groping around for a +foothold, seemed pouring from him right into me, became part of +me--while the other part of me stood off and listened. + +"By God, this is life!" said one part of me. "No, it isn't; it's hell," +growled the other part. "This thing has got to be settled!" + +I took him to an oculist, and there I had another close view, this time +of intense relief. + +"Blind? Why, no, you're not going blind," said the oculist kindly. "All +you need is"--I heard nothing more. I had never had any idea before of +how swift and deep relief could be. On the street outside I heard it not +only in his unsteady laugh but in my own as well. We celebrated long +that night, and very late he took me to his favorite place down on the +lower quay of the river, where with the lights and the sounds of the +city far off it felt like some old dungeon. But just over our heads hung +the heavy black arch of a stone bridge, and looking up through this arch +as a frame we could see close above a gray, luminous mass rising and +rising in great sweeping lines till it filled half the sky--silent, +tremendous, Notre Dame. From down here the old edifice seemed alive. And +though my friend talked little here, I felt him again coming into me. +And this time it was his religion that came, his curious passion for +building. + +When at last we went home he could see my whole body, and I felt as +though I had seen his whole soul. + +Then I carefully wrote this down on paper. I put in every touch that I +could remember. I rewrote it to make it big, and I made it so big I +spoiled it all. I tore this up and began again. For about two weeks I +wrote nothing else. But at last I tore up everything. After all, he was +a friend of mine. + +"But where's the harm," I argued, "so long as I always tear it up? This +is real stuff. I'll get somewhere this way if I keep on." + +And I did keep on. Shamelessly I wormed my way into friends by the +dozen. I found it such an absorbing pursuit I could hardly wait to +finish up one before I went on to another. There were such a bewildering +lot of them, now that I had pried open my eyes. Would-be painters, +sculptors, poets, dramatists, novelists, rich and poor, tragic ones and +comic ones, with the meanest pettiest jealousies, the most bumptious +self-conceits, the blindest worship of masters, the most profound +humility, ambition so savage it made men inhuman. Many were starving +themselves to death. + +There was a little Hungarian Jew, an ardent follower of Matisse. + +"Technique?" he cried. "It is nothing! To grip your soul in your two +hands and press it on your canvas--that is art, that is Matisse!" + +He took me night after night through old buildings up in Montparnasse, +immense and dismal rookeries crowded with Poles, Bohemians and God knows +what other races, all feverish post-impressionists. Often we would find +three together close around one candle, scowling and squinting at their +easels, gaunt, silent, eager. Matisse--Matisse! + +"Most of them," said my guide, "are just mad. They cannot paint. All +think they are going to do great things, but all they are going to do is +to die." + +It was through this little Hungarian that I made my first study of +female life. + +Why delay any longer? I had been in Paris over six months, and I had +qualms almost of guilt at the thought of this chastity of mine. At first +I said, "Art is a jealous mistress." And this did splendidly for a time. +But then a stout German youth came along and laid it down as an absolute +law that no writer could do a woman right until he had lived with a +dozen. Hence that scented little cat with whom he had lived for the past +year. She was the first of the dozen, eh? Damn the fellow, how much was +there in it? De Maupassant certainly hadn't held off. In fact there were +few of my idols who had. Why not be brave and take the plunge? It need +not be such a terrific plunge; no doubt if I went at it right I could +find a safe, easy kind of a _her_, friendly and confiding, a thoroughly +good fellow with none of these wild ups and downs. The less temperament +the better; she must have a good quiet head on her shoulders; no doubt +we would need it. And she must not be too young. Let her have had +affairs enough to know that ours was only one more and would probably be +as brief as the rest--the briefer the better. + +So tamely I pictured my first love. And the gay old city of Paris +smiled, and in that bantering way of hers she brought to me in a cafe +one night a perfect young tigress of a girl, a lithe, dusky beauty with +smouldering eyes, and said: + +"Without doubt this one is better for you. Regard what loveliness, what +fire! Oh, my son, why not be brave?" + +I was not brave, I barely spoke, and my friend the little Hungarian Jew +who had brought her to my table was forced to do the talking. For she, +too, was silent. But how different was her silence from the quiet I had +pictured. Presently, however, I became a little easier, and by degrees +we began to talk. She told me she was a painter. An Armenian by birth, +she had run away from home at eighteen, and here for two years in +Julien's she had tried to paint till she felt she'd go mad. She talked +in abrupt, eager sentences, breaking off to watch people around us. How +her big eyes fastened upon them. "To watch faces until you are sure--and +then paint! There is nothing else in the world!" she said. And I found +this reassuring. + +After that I saw her many nights. And from time to time breaking that +silence of hers, she became so fiercely confiding, not only about her +painting, but about what she called her innermost soul, that soon I +could look my De Maupassant square in the face, man to man, for I was +learning a lot about women. As yet we were friends and nothing more, but +I could feel both of us changing fast. "In a little while," I thought. + +But alas. One night she took me up to her room and showed me her +paintings. They were bad. They were fearfully bad, and my face must have +shown the impression they made. + +"You consider them frightful!" she exclaimed. I stoutly denied it, but +things only went from bad to worse. Here was that temperament I had +dreaded. Now she was clutching both my arms. + +"Mon dieu! Why not say it? Why cannot you say it?" + +"No," I replied. "You have done some extremely powerful work!" Anything +to quiet her nerves. "Especially this one--look--over here!" And I +pointed to one of her pictures. + +"I will show you how I shall look at it!" she cried in a perfect frenzy +of tears. She snatched up a knife that lay on her table, a very old, +curved, Armenian knife, and went at the painting and slashed it to +shreds, and then scattered the shreds all over the room. + +And watching this little festival, I thought to myself excitedly, + +"I know enough about this girl!" + +My retreat was so precipitate as to appear almost a flight. + +"Yes," I said to myself, outside, "De Maupassant knew women. And he went +insane at forty-five." + +And so my next case was a chap from Detroit, whose aim, he told me, was +no less than to make himself "by the sheer force of my will a perfect, +all-round, modern man." + +It was over his case that I lost what was left of my sense of honor. For +I not only wrote him down, I kept what I had written. "Ten years from +now," I said in excuse, "I won't believe him unless he's on paper." But +having kept this, I began keeping others, until my locked drawer was +filled with the dreams and ambitions and even the loves of my confiding, +innocent friends. At last I was a writer. + +What a relief when my mother wrote that my father had consented to a +second year abroad for me. In my gratitude I even grew just a trifle +homesick. + +"Hadn't I better come home for the summer?" I wrote her. + +"No," she replied, "we cannot afford it. I want you to keep right on +with your work. I feel so sure you are working hard and will do things I +shall be proud of." + +I was not only working, but living, feeling, listening hard, under the +stimulus day and night of the tense, rich life around me. About this +time I made a friend of a gaunt, bearded Russian chap, whose dream for +years had been, like mine, to become a writer of fiction. His god had +been Turgenief. And a year ago, leaving his home, a little town near +Moscow, with forty roubles in his purse he had set out on foot with a +pack on his back to tramp the long and winding road that stretched away +two thousand miles to the distant city of Paris, the place where his +idol had lived and studied and written for so many years. Through this +young Russian pilgrim I came to know the books of some of his +countrymen, and through him I caught glimpses down into the vast, +mysterious soul of that people in the North. + +Through other chaps I met those days, other deep, tremendous vistas +opened up as backgrounds for these Paris friends of mine. Half the +night, in that cafe endeared to so many youths of all nations under its +name of "The Dirty Spoon," I heard talk about all things under the sun, +talk that was a merry war of words, ideas and points of view as wide +apart as that of a Jap and a German. For every land upon the earth had +sent its army of ideas, and they all charged together here, and the +walls of the Dirty Spoon resounded with the battle--with roars of +laughter and applause. For we were of free, tolerant minds. We were gay, +young dogs of war who had left our tails behind us--our tails of +prejudice, distrust--and our emancipated souls had only scorn for +hatreds born of race or creed. Like J. K., we had rid ourselves of all +creeds past and present--but J. K. had always been free with a scowl, +his feet set grimly on the ground--we here were free with a verve and a +dash that took us careering up into the stars to laugh at the very +heavens. + +There was breadth in our very manner of speech. For here were we from +all over the earth, all speaking one tongue, the language in which half +the things that had moved the world had been said by men before us. And +what sparkling things there were still to be said, what dazzling things +we would see and do, in this prodigious onward march of the armies of +peace, out of all dark ages into a glad new world for men, where our +great smiling goddess of all the arts would reign supreme, where we +would dream mighty visions of life and all these visions would come +true. + +So we saw the world those days in the radiant city on the Seine. + +And meanwhile far up in the North, the Russian Czar, having started with +loud ostentation the movement for a world-wide peace, was swiftly +completing his preparations to strike with his armies at Japan. And the +other nations of Europe, jealous and suspicious of each other's every +secret plan--they, too, were making ready for what the future years +might bring. + +"Young men are lucky. They will see great things." + +And these young men have seen great things. But they have not been +lucky. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +It was about a year after this that again Joe Kramer broke in on my +dreams. + +He arrived early on a raw, wet morning in the following winter. His +all-night ride from Cherbourg had left him disheveled, unshaven and +hungry. + +"Well, boys," he asked when our greetings were over, "what do you think +of the news?" + +"What news?" + +Joe gave us a grim, fatherly smile. + +"Say. Do I have to come all the way from Chicago to tell you what's +happening down the street? Well, you young beauty boosters, there's a +panic on the Bourse this week that's got your fair city flat on her +back. And the cause of the said panic is that France is in deep on +Russian bonds, which are now worth about a cent to the dollar. Because +the Russian people--already dead sick of the war with Japan--have risen +in a howling mob against their government. See?" + +"I did hear of that," said the painter among us. "A Polish chap in the +studio said something about it yesterday." + +"Now, did he?" said the ironical Joe. "Just kind of murmured it, I +suppose, while bending reverently over his art." He rose. "Well, boys, +I'm sorry for you, but I've only got a day in this town, I'm off for +Russia on the night train. Bill, I wish you'd help me here. I've got an +awful lot to do and my French is still a little weak." + +It was not at all weak, it was strong and loud. I can hear it still, Joe +Kramer's French, and it is a fitting memory of that devastating day. + +The day began so splendidly, so big with promise of great ideas. I grew +quite excited about it. Here was Joe on his way to a real revolution. +Sent out by his Chicago paper, he was going to Russia to see a whole +people fight to be free--a struggle prophesied long ago by Turgenief, +Tolstoy and other big Russians whose work I admired. And now it was +actually coming off--and Joe, the lucky devil, was going to be right on +hand! From some mysterious source in New York he had secured a letter to +a Russian revolutionist leader who for many years had been an exile here +in Paris. Joe was anxious to see him at once. + +"All right," I said eagerly. "Give me his address." + +"Hold on," J. K. retorted. "It's not so easy as all that. I want to get +into Russia. This man's house in Paris is watched day and night by the +Russian secret police, and nobody who's seen with him has a chance of +crossing the frontier. We've got to go slow." + +"What'll we do?" + +"I want you to steer me first to a Frenchman. He's an anarchist. Here's +his address." + +The anarchist was a bit disappointing. A mild little man, we found him +in an attic room receiving a vigorous scolding from the huge blonde with +whom he lived. But after reading Joe's letter, he, too, took on a +mysterious air. He came with us in our cab, and off we went over Paris +until I thought we should never end. Again and again the cab would stop +and our guide would darkly disappear. But from one of these trips he +returned triumphant. + +"I have found his wife," he announced. "But she says she must have a +look at you first." The cab rattled off, and the next stop was in front +of a public library. + +"Now," said our guide, "go in and sit down at a table and pretend you +are reading." + +We went in and did as he said. Soon a middle-aged woman in black sat +down at the other side of the table. She stared at us gloomily a +moment; then with a yawn she opened a book and calmly started making +notes. Presently, scowling over her work, she began muttering to +herself. + +"You must not look up," I heard in French. "A Russian spy sits over +there. You wish to see my husband. Come to-night at nine o'clock to the +second floor of the Cafe Voltaire. He will be at the top of the stairs. +Good-by." And she yawned again over her writing. + +"Now, this," I thought, "is a revolution!" I thoroughly approved of +this. The Cafe Voltaire was an excellent choice, an almost perfect +mise-en-scene. It had long been one of my favorite haunts. A tall white +wooden building, so toned down, so tumbled down, so heavy laden with +memories of poets, dramatists, pamphleteers and fiery young orators, who +had sat here and conspired and schemed and exhorted over human rights. +It had well lived up to its glorious name. What great ideas had started +from here! Here French history had been made! + +But alas! Into this hallowed spot that night, at nine o'clock on his way +to his train, came Joe in a yellow mackintosh with a brand-new suitcase +in his hand--and showed me history in the making. It was made in a +small, stuffy room upstairs. On the one side J. K. with a million +American readers behind him, on the other this revolutionist whose name +that week had been in newspapers all over the world. So far, so good. +But look at him, look at this history maker. Tall, sallow and dyspeptic, +a professor of economics. Romance, liberty, history, thrill? Not at all. +They talked of factories, wages, strikes, of railroads, peasants' taxes, +of plows and wheat and corn and hay! They got quite excited over hay. + +And all this had to come through their defenseless interpreter--me. My +head ached, one foot fell asleep. The Social Democratic Party, the +Social Revolutionist Party, the Constitutional Democrats, in and out of +my head they trooped. If this be revolution, then God save the king! +Crushed to earth, as we left at last, my head still buzzing with +economics, I looked dismally back on my poor cafe, on liberty, justice +and human rights. There was something as bad as the harbor in Joe; he +was always spoiling everything. + +"Why don't you take Carlyle's French Revolution along?" I suggested +forlornly. "You might read it on the train." + +"Because, you poor kid, he's way out of date." + +It took me days to get into my work. + + * * * * * + +About two months later, back he came. From one of our front windows he +looked down into the old Gardens, into all the loveliness the April +twilight was bringing there, and, + +"Where can I get a typewriter?" he asked. "I've got such an awful lot of +stuff that I want to dictate it right off the bat." + +This was _literature_ in the making. For hours in Joe's room that week I +sat and heard him make it. In one corner lay a heap of dirty shirts and +collars, in another a stack of papers and books. An English stenographer +sat at the window, J. K. strode up and down and talked. It was real +enough, this narrative. Facts and figures, he had them down cold, to +back up with a crushing force the points he was making against the Czar. +Poverty, tyranny, bloody oppression, wholesale slaughter of a people in +a half-mad monarch's war--Joe pounded them in with sledgehammer blows. +He not only made you sure they were true, he made you sure that these +things must be stopped and that you as a decent American certainly +wanted to help with your money. And as for the revolution itself, he +left no doubt in your mind about that. It was there all right, Joe had +seen people give up their lives, he had seen men and women clubbed and +shot down, he had been so near he had seen the blood. (But he made human +blood so darned commonplace, curse him!) And in Petersburg for two long +nights he had gone about a city in darkness, every street light put out +by the strikers, the streets filled with surging black masses of +figures. Yes, Joe had certainly seen big things. + +Then what was the matter with me, I thought, that all this did not +thrill me? "Young men are lucky. They will see great things." All right, +here was one of _my_ great things, a whole nation rising to throw off +its chains, to show the world that wars must cease--and to me it didn't +seem great at all, it seemed only big, and there was a world of +difference. Big? It was enormous, not only what Joe had seen up there, +but what he was doing right here in this room. He was talking to a +million people, damn him, and doubtless this was just the kind of +writing that would appeal to them. Thousands of his commonplace readers +would send their dollars to Russia, where dyspeptic professors of +economics would use the money to hire halls, into which millions of +commonplace Russians would crowd to hear about strikes, wages, taxes and +hay! And then some more commonplace blood would be shed, the dyspeptic +professors would be put in office--and this was a modern revolution! + +Was everything modern only big? Must I always have that feeling the +harbor used to give me? + +"No!" I decided angrily. The fault didn't lie in me nor in Russia, but +in J. K. and the way he was writing. As I followed that blunt narrative +of his journey through cities and factory towns, into deep forests, +across snowy plains and through little hamlets half buried in snow and +filled with the starving families of the men who had gone to the war, I +tried to picture it all to myself--not as he described it, confound him, +but with all the beauty which must have been there. Ye Gods of the Road, +what a journey! What tremendous canvases teeming with life, such +strange, dramatic significant life! What a chance for a writer! + +One night on a train whose fifth-class cars, cattle cars and nothing +more, were packed with wounded men from the front, out of one of those +traveling hells Joe had pulled a peasant boy half drunk, and by the +display of a bottle of vodka had enticed him into his own compartment in +a second-class car ahead. The boy's right arm was a loathsome sight, +festering from a neglected wound. Amputation was plainly a matter of +days. But it was not to forget that grim event that the boy had jumped +off at each little station to spend his few kopecks on vodka. No, he was +stolidly getting drunk because, as he confided to Joe, at dawn he would +come to his home town and there he knew he was going to tell twenty-six +wives that their men had been killed. He laboriously counted them off on +his fingers--each wife and each husband by their long, homely Russian +names. Then he burst into half-drunken sobs and pounded the window ledge +with his fist. It was the fist of his right arm, and the kid gave a +queer, sharp scream of pain. + +If Voltaire had been there he would have come back and described that +peasant boy he'd seen in a way that would have gripped men's souls and +sent a great shudder over the world at war and what it meant to +mankind--while Joe was simply slapping it down like some hustling, keen +reporter. + +"Look here, Joe; you make me sick!" I exploded at last. "You ought to +stick right here for months and work on this wonderful stuff you've got +till there's nothing left you can possibly do!" + +"Be an artist, eh, a poet, a great writer." He gave me one of those +fatherly smiles. "I've got some things to say to _you_, Kid. I don't +like the life you're leading." + +"Don't you? Why don't you?" I rejoined. And so began a fight that lasted +as long as he was in Paris. + +Nothing that I had been doing here made any appeal whatever to Joe. I +showed him my sketch of Notre Dame from under that old bridge at night. + +"Yes," he said, "this is fine writing, awful fine. But it has about as +much meaning to me as a woman's left ear. What's the use of sitting down +under a bridge and looking up at an ancient church and trying to feel +like a two-spot? For God's sake, Bill, get it out of your system, quit +getting reverent over the past. You're sitting here at the feet of the +Masters, fellahs who were all right in their day, but are now every one +of 'em out of date. And you're so infernally busy copying their +technique and style and trying to learn just how to write, that you're +getting nothing to write about. Why can't you go to life for your +stuff?" + +"Go to life?" I said indignantly. "I've done nothing else for over a +year!" + +"Show me." + +"Here!" + +He read more of my sketches. + +"But damn it, Bill, these people aren't alive. They're only a bunch of +artist kids as reverent over the past as yourself, they have about as +much connection with anything live and vital to-day as so many mediaeval +monks. You fellahs think you're free of creeds. You're the creediest +kids I ever saw, your religion is style, technique and form. For God's +sake lose it and use your own eyes, forget you're an artist and be a +reporter, come out in the world and have a try. You'll find so much +stuff you won't need any plots, you'll simply report events as they +happen. And you won't have any time for technique, the next event will +be tuning up before you've got to the end of the last. With a big daily +paper behind him a good reporter can follow the front page around the +world. Russia's on the front page now. All right, you can go to Russia. +By June it may be Hindustan, or Pittsburgh, Turkey or China. Believe me, +Bill, the nations of this planet are working themselves into a state +where they're ready to do things you never dreamed of. I'm not talking +of kings and governments, I'm talking of the people themselves, the +people in such excited crowds that nobody knows who's who or what's +next. + +"I saw my first crowd in Petersburg the very day I got off the train. +They filled a street from wall to wall and as far as you could see. They +weren't saying a word or singing a song, and there wasn't even a drum to +keep time. But they moved along with their wives and kids as though +they'd left home, job and church, and were looking for something else so +hard they didn't care for bullets. I saw 'em shot down like so many +sheep. But bullets won't stop what I saw in their eyes. God knows I +don't want a religion. I'm no socialist nor anarchist. But if there's +one thing I want to hang on to it's my belief in the common crowd. +They've had a raw deal since the world began. They can have the whole +earth whenever they want it. And they're beginning to want it hard! + +"Forget your own name and jump into the crowd, write and don't stop to +remember you're writing! The place _you_ need is the U. S. A.--and the +work you need is a job on a paper!" + +"Are you through?" I snapped. + +"I am!" + +"All right," said I. "I'm going to stay just where I am! I'm not going +to be yanked by you all over the earth, to write news articles on the +run! I'm going to stick in one place--right here--and take my time and +learn my job. I don't want to write news, I want to write books. I'd +rather write one good novel than all the headline stuff in the world. +It's books that make the headlines." + +"_Books?_" Joe's look was funny. + +"Sure they do. Take Russia. What started this whole revolution! Books. +It didn't start with your common crowds--they were all eating fried +onions. It started with a few writers of novels!" + +"Who left their little mahogany desks," said Joe, "got into peasant +clothes and went to live with the peasants!" + +"Oh no they didn't. Only a few. Turgenief didn't. Tchernichefsky didn't. +Dostoiefsky----" + +"Say. Are they Russians? I never heard their names up there." + +I looked at J. K. thoughtfully. + +"No," I said. "You wouldn't. As yet they're not quite crowdy enough. But +they are Russians and their ideas made most of the first revolutionists. +The whole revolution was started by books." + +"It wasn't," snapped Joe. "It was taxes. Their taxes were doubled +because of the war, and----" + +"Oh, damn your war taxes, and damn your plows and your corn and hay! +You've got a hay mind, that's the trouble with you! You've got so you +think that hay and bread and pork and beans are all men live and die +for! They don't, Mister Reporter, they die for ideals--freedom, +democracy, human rights--which are in 'em so deep that when a big writer +sees 'em there and brings 'em out and holds 'em up and says, 'Here! This +is you, this is what you want, this is what you believe in!'--your crowd +says, 'Sure! Why didn't we see it long ago?' And then they do things that +go into headlines! But to be able to write like that a man can't go +chasing all over the earth, he's got to quit sneering at art and +technique, he's got to learn how to make characters real and build plots +that make readers sit up all night to see what becomes of the people +he's made! If believing that is a creed, then I'm creedy! I'm willing to +throw over everything else, but I'll hang on to this one thing all my +life--the fact that big art means working like hell!" + +"Gee," said J. K. "What an artist." + +These fights of ours left me weak and sore, as though I'd been back on +the terrace at home, listening to my father talk and looking at his +harbor. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +When Joe left me in peace at last, just for the sake of the rest and +change I turned my attention to music, or, rather, to a musical friend, +a young Bohemian composer who lived wholly in a world of his own. I +explored this musical world of his, by his side in dark top galleries, +in the Cafe Rouge on concert nights, in his room at his piano. How +deliciously far away from hay was this chap's feeling for Mozart. With +him I could feel sure of myself, of the way I was living for my art, of +what my mother way back at the start had called the "fine things" in +humanity. + +I remember the night we heard "Boheme" from the gallery of the Opera +Comique. I remember the talk we had late that night, and my walk by the +edge of the Gardens home--and the letter and the cable that I found +waiting on my desk. The letter was from my father and told me that my +mother was dying. The cable told me she was dead. + +I remember learning that letter by heart on that long ocean voyage home. +This was no sudden illness, I learned, my mother had known of it while I +was home, known that she had it and that it was fatal. That was the news +she had told my father alone that night on the terrace! That was why she +had been so eager to get me away to Paris; that was why she had kept me +abroad! + +"She did not want you to see how she looked," my father wrote. "She +wanted you to remember her always as she was when you saw her last." + +I remembered her now. What a young beast I had been to forget her, to +drop her so utterly out of my thoughts in that selfish happy Paris life, +when it was she who had sent me there, when it was she who had set me +free for a time from the harbor which was now dragging me back, when it +was she from the very start who had fostered this passion for "all that +is fine." I remembered her now--remembered and remembered--until her +dear image filled me. + +My father's letter went on to tell how she had fought for her life. +Three operations, all three of them failures, but still she had held +bravely on in hopes of some new discovery which science might make and +so bring her a cure. A thought suddenly gripped me and struck me cold. +It had all depended on science, on men working calmly and coldly along +in laboratories all over the world, while my mother had held to her +thread of life and hoped that these laboratory gods would hurry, hurry +while yet there was time! How many thousands like her every day, every +hour all over the world were watching those gods with that awful +suspense. For they were the only gods that were left, and a comfortless +set of gods they were! They were like J. K., they had hay minds! They +were businesslike, relentless, cold, they belonged to the world of the +harbor! My mother's kind god was a myth and a joke, with no power here +one way or the other. I _felt_ that now, I had _thought_ it before, only +thought it, with that gay freedom of thought we had aired back there in +Paris. But I knew now that deep underneath I had believed all along in +this god of hers, as I had in my beautiful goddess of art and in all the +things that were fine. It had taken this news from the harbor to bring +him tottering, crashing down. For no god like hers would have let her +die! And I felt fear now, the fear of Death, whom I'd never really +noticed before and who now seemed to say to me, + +"She is nothing--has gone nowhere--she is only dead!" + +And fiercely in a bewildered way I rebelled against this emptiness. I +rebelled against this world of hay that was so abruptly dragging me back +to a sense of its almighty grip on my life. When my ship came up the +Bay, the world looked harsh and gray to me, though there was a bright +and sunny glare on the muddy waves of the harbor. + + + + +BOOK II + +CHAPTER I + + +My mother had been buried several days before I reached home. + +I found Sue waiting on the dock, and I saw with a little shock of +surprise that my young sister was grown up. I had never noticed her much +before. Sue and I had never got on from the start. She had been my +father's chum and I had been my mother's. I had always felt her mocking +smile toward me and all my solemn thoughts. And after that small +catastrophe which I had had with Eleanore, I had more than ever avoided +Sue and her girl friends. Then I had gone to college, and each time that +I came home she had seemed to me all arms and legs, fool secrets and +fool giggles--a most uninteresting kid. I remember being distinctly +surprised when I brought Joe home for Christmas to find that he thought +her quite a girl. But now she was all different. She had grown tall and +graceful, lithe, and in her suit of mourning she looked so much older, +her face thin and worn, subdued and softened by all she'd been through. +For the weight of all those weary weeks had been upon her shoulders. +There was something pitiful about her. I came up and kissed her +awkwardly, then found myself suddenly holding her close. She clung to me +and trembled a little. I found it hard to speak. + +"I wish I'd been here, too," I said gruffly. + +"I wish you had, Billy--it's been a long time." + +All at once Sue and I had become close friends. + +We had a long talk, at home that day, and she told me how our parents +had drawn together in the last years, of how my poor mother had wanted +my father close by her side and of how he had responded, neglecting his +business and spending his last dollar on doctors, consultations and +trips to sanitariums, anything to keep up her strength. He had even read +"Pendennis" aloud. How changed he must have been to do that. I knew why +she had wanted to hear it again. It had been our favorite book. I +remembered how I had read it to her just before I went abroad, and how I +had caught her watching me with that hungry despairing look in her eyes. +What a young brute I had been to go!... For a time Sue's voice seemed +far away. Then I heard her telling how over that story of a young author +my mother had talked to my father of me. + +"He's going to try to know you, Billy, and help you," said Sue. "He +promised her that before she died. And I hope you're going to help him, +too. He needs you very badly. You never understood father, you know. I +don't believe you have any idea of what he has gone through in his +business." + +"What do you mean? Have things gone wrong?" + +"I don't understand it very well. He hardly ever speaks of it. I think +he'd better tell you himself." + + * * * * * + +That evening in his library, from my seat by the table, I furtively +watched my father's face. He sat in a huge chair against the wall, with +a smaller chair in front for his feet, his vest unbuttoned, his short +heavy body settled low as he grimly kept his eyes on his book. The +strong overhead light which shone on his face showed me the deeper +lines, all the wrinkles, the broad loose pouch of skin on the throat, +the gray color, the pain, the weakness and the age in his motionless +eyes. What was going on in there? Sometimes it would seem an hour before +he turned another page. All afternoon he had been at her grave. + +He had given her no happy life. Was it of that he was thinking? I felt +ashamed to be wondering, for he seemed so weak and old in his grief. Two +years ago his hair had been gray, but he had still looked strong and +hale. I could hardly feel now that he was the same man. I felt drawn to +him now, I wished he would put down his book and talk and tell me +everything about her. + +But what an embarrassing job it is to get acquainted with one's father. +When Sue had left us after dinner, there had been a few brief remarks +and then this long tense silence. I, too, pretended to be reading. + +"Your mother thought a lot of you, boy." He spoke at last so abruptly +that I looked up at him with a start, and saw him watching me anxiously. + +"Yes, sir." I looked quickly down, and our eyes did not meet again after +that. + +"It was her pluck that kept you in Paris--while she was dying." + +I choked: + +"I know." + +"You don't know--not how she wanted you back--you'll never know. I +wanted to write you to come home." + +"I wish you had!" + +"She wouldn't hear of it!" + +"I see." Another silence. Why couldn't I think of something to say? + +"She kept every letter you wrote her. They're up there in her bureau +drawer. She was always reading 'em--over and over. She thought a lot of +your writing, boy--of what you would do when--when she was dead." The +last came out almost fiercely. I waited a moment, got hold of myself. + +"Yes, sir," I brought out at last. + +"I hope you'll make it all worth while." + +"I will. I'll try. I'll do my best." I did not look up, for I could +still feel his anxious eyes upon my face. + +"Do you want to go back to Paris?" + +"No, sir! I want to stay right here!" What was the matter with my fool +voice? + +"Have you got any plans for your writing here? How are you going about +it to start?" + +"Well, sir, to begin with--I've got some stuff I did abroad." + +"Stories?" + +"Not exactly----" + +"Poems?" My father's look was tragic. + +"No." + +And I tried to explain what I had been doing. But my attempts to tell +him of my work in Paris were as forced and as pathetic as his efforts to +attend. More and more halting grew our talk, and it ended in a silence +that seemed to have no end. Then I went to the fireplace, knocked the +ashes out of my pipe, refilled it and relit it. When I returned he was +reading his book, and with deep relief I took up mine. That much of it +was over. + +But again I found myself watching him. What was in my father's mind? Why +this anxious almost humble tone? It made me wince, it made me ashamed. I +sat there all evening pretending to read and feeling that he was doing +the same. + +"Good night, dad--I think I'll go to bed." Even this little came +clumsily. I had never called him "dad" before. + +"Good night, my boy. See you at breakfast." + +"Yes, sir." + +I glanced back as I turned down the hall and saw him staring after me. + +What was it he was thinking? + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +"I'm closing out my business, son," he told me the next morning. Here +was another sharp surprise. I did not look at him as I asked: + +"Why are you doing that, sir?" + +"It's a long story. Times have changed and I'm getting old." + +Again I felt suddenly drawn to him. He was old and no mistake. Why had I +never known him till now? + +"Look here--Dad." The last word still came awkwardly. "Can't I possibly +be any help down there?" He shot an anxious look at me: + +"Why, yes. Glad to have you. I still have a young clerk, but I'd rather +have you." + +Only one clerk! What had gone wrong with his business? + +But that day in his warehouse, which was empty now and silent, the mere +ghost of what it had been, he seemed in no hurry to show me. On the +contrary, he went back to the ledgers of his earliest years in business, +on the flimsy pretext of looking up certain figures and dates. He did +not need me here, the work he gave me was absurd, I was simply taking +the musty books from their piles in the closet and arranging them by +years on the floor. "To save time," he said. But he himself was still on +that first ledger, stopping to talk, to ramble off from the pages before +him. What did it mean? As the days wore on and he still delayed and at +night that strange humility crept again into his eyes, with a slowly +deepening suspense I came to feel that instead of saving time my father +was trying to make it, to go far back into his vigorous past for +strength to meet his present--because he dreaded what we would find at +the end of our work on these dusty books, the last grim figure in +dollars and cents that would stand there as the result of his life, as +the stepping-stone for Sue's and mine. And that was why he wanted me +here, this was his way of telling me the story of his business +life--before I saw what lay at the end. And as in our work that story +unfolded, though at times it cast its spell on me hard, revealing what a +man he had been, there were other times when from somewhere deep inside +of me a small selfish voice would ask: + +"What is left? How much has he saved from the wreck? What is this going +to mean to my life?" + +In the ledgers his story was still alive. Yellow and dusty as they were, +for me day by day they revivified that still odorous old warehouse until +I saw it as it had been, a huge dim caravansary for the curious products +of all the earth. And that trick of feeling a man, which I had learned +in Paris, made me keenly sensitive now to this lonely old stranger by my +side with whom I was becoming acquainted. I could feel the pull of these +books upon him, pulling him out of his cramped old age back to his glad +boundless youth. How suddenly spacious they became as he slowly turned +the pages. Palm oil from Africa, cotton from Bombay, coffee from Arabia, +pepper from Sumatra. Turn the page. Ivory from Zanzibar, salt from Cadiz +and wines from Bordeaux. Turn the page. Whale oil from the Arctic, iron +from the Baltic, tortoise shell from the Fiji Islands. Turn the page! +India silks and rugs and shawls, indigo, spices! Turn the page! + +I began to see the sails speed out along those starlit ocean roads. I +began to feel the forces that had shaped my father's life. And little by +little I saw in those days what not even my mother had understood, that +in my father's business life there had been more than dollars, that what +to us had seemed only a hobby, a dull obstinate fixed idea, had been for +him a glorious vision--the white sails of American clippers dotting all +the seven seas. + +So they were in the late Fifties, when leaving the farm in Illinois he +came at sixteen to New York and found a job as time clerk in one of the +ship yards along the East River. They are all gone now, but then they +were humming and teeming with work. And my young father was deeply +excited. He told me of his first day here, when he stood on the deck of +a ferry and watched three great clippers go out with the tide, bound for +Calcutta. There were pictures of these vessels on the walls of his +office, stately East Indiamen bearing such names as _Star of Empire_, +_Daniel Webster_, _Ocean Monarch_, _Flying Cloud_--ships known in every +port of the world for their speed. He told how a British vessel, her +topsails reefed in a gale of wind, would see a white tower of swelling +canvas come out of the spray behind her, come booming, staggering, +plunging by--a Yankee clipper under royals. Press of sail? No other +nation knew what it meant! Our owners took big chances, it was no trade +for nervous men! + +He found a harbor that welcomed young men, where cabin boys rose to be +captains, and clerks became owners of hundreds of ships. To work! To +rise! To own yards like these, build ships like these and send them +rushing on their courses out to all parts of the ocean world! This had +been his vision, at the time when it was bright and clear. And as now he +made me feel it, the crude vital force that had been in his dream poured +into me deep, made me feel how shut in and one-sided had been my own +vision and standards of life, gave me that profound surprise which many +sons, I suppose, never have: + +"My father was once young like me--wiry, straight and tough like me, and +as full of dreams of the things he would do." + +But then had come the Civil War. Although only nineteen when the war +broke out, he was already the head clerk in his office. "But like every +other young fool those days," he said, "I was caught by the noise of a +brass band!" Down South as a commissary clerk he found himself a tiny +pawn in that gigantic game of graft which made fat fortunes in the North +and cost tens of thousands of soldiers their lives. He himself took +typhoid, and when the war was over he returned to New York, weak, +penniless, to find his old work gone. + +"For the war," he said, "had busted American shipping sky high. Even +before it began it had made the South so bitter that just for the sake +of attacking the North the Solid South in congress had joined the damn +fool Farmer West and attacked our mail subventions. 'No more of the +nation's money,' they said, 'for ship subsidies for New York and New +England!' And so all government protection of our shipping was +withdrawn. And when the war ended, with forty per cent of our ships +grabbed, sunk or sold, it was ruination to build any more, for the +British and German governments were pouring millions of dollars a year +into the Cunard and the North German Lloyd, and we couldn't compete +against them. + +"Still a few of the ship yards kept on, and in one of these at last I +got a job at eight dollars a week. 'The war is over,' we told ourselves, +'and the government can't stay blind forever. They'll see what they've +done, and within a few months they'll go back to the old policy.' +Months? I stuck to that job and waited five years--and still no news +from Washington. 'My boy,' said a doddering Brooklynite, 'the nation has +turned her face westward.'" + +Then he left the ship yards and went into a warehouse, where the work +lay mainly in handling cargoes of foreign ships. And starting life all +over again he tried to make up for lost time. The first year he was a +shipping clerk; the second, a bookkeeper; the third, he kept two sets of +books for two different docks, one by day and the other at night. And by +forty he had become a part owner in the old warehouse in which he now +sat grimly reading the record of his life--of a long stubborn losing +fight, for he stuck to his dream of Yankee sails. + +He married my mother when he was still strong and full of hope. He must +have been so much kindlier then and brighter, more human to live with. +They bought that pleasant house of ours with its hospitable front door. +My father's doddering Brooklynites seemed wonderful neighbors to his +young wife. And so that front door waited for friends. As the years +dragged on and they did not come, she blamed it all on the harbor. She +saw what it was making him, jealous of every dollar and every hour spent +at home. He worked all day and half the night. It took him into +politics, on countless trips to Washington, and she knew he spent +thousands of dollars there in ways that were by no means "fine." It made +him morose and gloomy, a man of one idea, to be shunned. + +And she no more saw behind all this than I did when I was a boy. For his +vision was neither of pirates nor of bringing the heathen to Christ, but +of imports and of exports. He dreamed in terms of battleships and of a +mercantile marine. Each year he watched the chances grow, vast +continents opening up to commerce with hints of such riches as staggered +the mind. He saw the ocean world an arena into which rushed all nations +but ours. + +"Everyone but us," he said, "had learned the big lesson--that you can +get nothing on land or sea unless you're ready to fight for it hard!" + +He saw other nations get ready to fight. He watched them build huge +navies and grant heavy subsidies to their fast growing merchant fleets, +send vessels by thousands over the seas. He saw their shipowners draw +swiftly together in great corporations. Here was an age for immense +adventures in this growing trade of the world. To wait, to hold on +grimly, to keep up the fight at Washington for that miracle, Protection, +which would start the boom. To see the shipping yards teeming again with +the building of ships by the hundreds and thousands, to see them go out +again over the seas with our flag at the mast and our sailors below. To +feel the new call go over the nation--"Young men, come east and west, +come out! The first place on the oceans can still be yours!" This was my +father's great idea. + +Ship subsidies and battleships, discriminating tariffs. What a religion. +But it was his. Of the miracles these things would work my father was +more sure than of a god in heaven. For he had thought very little about +a god, and all his life he had thought about this. For this he had spent +at least half his wealth on the congressmen that he despised. Bribery? +Yes. But for a religion. + +"Go all around South America and to the Far East," he told me. "And +you'll see the flags at sea of England, Germany, Austria, France, of +Russia, Norway, Spain, Japan. But if you see the American flag you'll +see it waved by a little girl from the deck of a British liner. This +means that we are losing in marine freights and foreign trade billions +of dollars every year. And it means more and worse than that. For it's +ship building and ship sailing that take a nation's men out of their +ruts, whip up their minds and imaginations, make 'em broad as the seven +seas. And we've lost all that, we've thrown it away, to breed a race of +farmers--of factory hands and miners and anarchists in slums. We've +built a nation of high finance--and graft--and a rising angry mob. But +sooner or later, boy, this country will wake up to what it has done. And +with our grip on both oceans and the blood we've still got in our veins, +we'll reach out and take what is ours--as soon as we're ready to fight +for it hard--the mastery of the ocean world!" + +For this idea he had lived his life. For this he had neglected his +business, for this he had lost favor with the usurping foreign +ships--until his dock and his warehouse were often idle for weeks at a +time. + +And the very bigness of things, the era of big companies which at forty +had thrilled him by the first signs of its coming, now crushed down +upon his old age. Vaguely he knew that the harbor had changed and that +he was too old to change with it. An era no longer of human adventures +for young men but of financial adventures for mammoth corporations, +great foreign shipping companies combining in agreements with the +American railroads to freeze out all the little men and take to +themselves the whole port of New York. My father was one of these little +men. The huge company to which he was selling owned the docks and +warehouses for over two miles, and this was only a part of their +holdings. + +"Nothing without fighting." That had been his motto. And he had fought +and he had lost. And so in this new harbor of big companies my father +was now closing out. Too late for any business here, too late for life +up there in his home. He had kept my mother waiting too long, he was +ready at last but she was dead. Too late. He had been born too late, had +dreamed his dream of sails too late, and now he was too late in dying. +There was nothing left to live for. How much better for him to be dead. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +I have tried to tell his story as my father felt it, at the times when +it took him out of himself and made him forget himself and me. But there +were other times when he remembered himself and me, and those were the +times that hurt the most. For in that new humility in his eyes and in +his voice I could feel him then preparing us both--me to see why it was +that he could not do for me what _she_ had wished; himself to hold on +grimly, to find a new job for his old age, to keep from becoming a +burden--on me. + +At last we were coming to the end--to that last figure in dollars and +cents. I caught his suspense and we talked little now. I knew the price +at which he was selling, and toward that figure I watched the debts +creep slowly up. I saw them creep over, and knew that we had not a +dollar left to live on. And still the debts kept mounting. How small +they were, these last ones, a coil of rope, two kegs of paint--the irony +of it compared to the bigness of his life. Still these little figures +climbed. At last he handed me his balance. He was in debt four thousand, +one hundred and forty-six dollars and seventeen cents. + +He had risen from his old office chair: + +"Well, son, I guess that ends our work." + +"Yes, sir." + +He went out of the office. + +I sat there dully for some time. Then I remember there came a harsh +scream from a freight engine close outside. And I looked out of the +window. + +The harbor of big companies, uglier than I had ever seen it, no longer +dotted with white sails, but clouded with the smoke and soot of an age +of steam, and iron, lay sprawled out there like a thing alive. Always +changing, always growing, it had crushed the life out of my father and +mother, and now it was ready for Sue and me. + +"I've got to stay here and make money." + +Good-by to the Beautiful City of Grays. A clock in an outer room struck +five. In Paris it was ten o'clock, and those friends of mine from all +countries were crowding into "The Dirty Spoon." I could see them +sauntering one by one on that summer's night down the gay old Boulevard +Saint Michel and dropping into their seats at the table in the corner. + +"How am I to make money? By writing?" + +I thought of De Maupassant and the rest, and the two years I had spent +in trying to make vivid and real the life I had seen. In these last +anxious weeks I had sent some of my Paris sketches to magazine offices +in New York. They had all been returned with printed slips of rejection, +except in one case where the editor wrote, "This is a good piece of +writing, but the subject is too remote. Why not try something nearer +home?" + +"All right," I thought, "what's near me here? Let's see. There's a cloud +of yellow smoke I can do, with a brand-new tug below it dragging a +string of good big barges. What are they loaded with? Standard Oil. Wait +till they get closer and I can even describe the smell! No," I concluded +savagely. "Let's keep my writing clean out of this hole and get the +money some other way!" + +Then suddenly I forgot myself and thought of my stern brave old dad. +What under the sun was he going to do? + +That week he mortgaged our house on the Heights for five thousand +dollars. With this he paid off all his debts and put the balance in the +bank. Then from the big dock company he got a job in his own warehouse +at a hundred dollars a month. + +"Kind of 'em," he said gruffly. He was sixty-five years old. They were +even kind enough to add to that a job for me. I sat at the desk next to +his and I was paid ten dollars a week. + +Sue let the servants go, hired one green German girl and said she knew +she could run the house on a hundred and twenty dollars a month. But the +August bills went over that, so we drew money out of the bank. My father +had bronchitis that week. We managed to keep him in bed for three days, +but then he struggled up and dressed and went back to his desk in the +warehouse. + +"Keep your eye on him down there," said Sue. "He's so terribly feeble." + +"This can't go on," I told her. + +I must make more than ten dollars a week. Again I sent out some of my +sketches, again the magazines sent them back. I went to a newspaper +office, but there an ironical office boy, with the aid of the city +editor, made me feel that reporting was not in my line. What other work +could I find to do? How much time did I have? How long was my father +going to last? I watched his face and our bank account. I studied the +"want ads" in the press. But the more I studied the smaller I felt, for +this was one of the years of depression. "Two Hundred Thousand In New +York Idle," I read in a headline. Here was literature that gripped! + +"I guess I'll stay right where I am. It's safer," I thought anxiously. +"Perhaps if I work hard enough they'll give me a raise at Christmas. +When Dad was my age he kept two sets of books, one by day and the other +at night. How can I make my evenings pay?" + +I took long walks in Brooklyn and picked up night work here and there. +It was monotonous clerical work, and being slow at figures I was often +at it till midnight. Very late one evening, while making out bills in a +hardware store, I suddenly came to a customer whose initials were J. K. +It started me thinking of Joe Kramer and our last long talk--about hay. + +"So this is hay," I told myself. "How long will it take me to get a hay +mind, back here by this damned harbor?" + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Then Sue began to take me in hand. From the subdued and weary girl that +I had found when I came home, in the last few weeks she had blossomed +out. The color had come into her cheeks, a new animation into her voice, +a resolute brightness into her eyes. + +"This thing has got to stop, Billy," she said determinedly. "This house +has been like a tomb for months, you and Dad are so gloomy and tired +you're sights. He needs a change, and so do you. You're getting into a +little rut and throwing away your chance to write. You need friends who +are writers, you need a lot of fresh ideas to tone you up. There's +plenty of money in writing. And I need a change myself. I can't stand +this house any longer. After all, I've got my own life to live. I'm +going to get a job before long. In the meantime I'm going to see my +friends. And what's more, I'm going to have them here to the house--- +just as often as they'll come! Let's brighten things up a little!" + +I looked at her with interest. Here was _another_ sister of mine--risen +out of her sorrow and eager to live, and talking of running our lives as +well, of curing us both by large, firm doses of "fresh ideas," while she +herself looked around for a job that would help her to "live her own +life." + +"Look here, Sue," I argued vaguely. "You don't want to take a job----" + +"I certainly do----" + +"But you can't! Dad wouldn't hear to it!" + +"He'll have to--when I've found it. No poor feeble old man supporting +me, thank you--quite probably no man at all--ever! But you needn't +worry. I won't take any old job that comes along. And I won't bother +Dad till I've found just what I really want--something I can grow in." + +"That's right, take it easy," I said. + +"Where have you been!" I thought as I watched her. It came over me as a +distinct surprise that Sue had been in all sorts of places and had been +making all sorts of friends, had been having ambitions and dreams of her +own--all the time I had been having mine. Most older brothers, I +suppose, at some time or another have felt this same bewilderment. "Look +here, Sis," they wonder gravely, "where in thunder have you been?" + +I took a keen interest in her now. In the evenings when I wasn't out +working we had long talks about our lives, which to my satisfaction +became almost entirely talks about _her_ life, her needs, her growth. +Her delight in herself, her intensity over plans for herself, her +enthusiasm for all the new "movements," reforms and ideas that she had +heard of God-knows-where and felt she must gather into herself to expand +herself--it was wonderful! She was like that chap from Detroit, that +would-be perfect all-round man. But Sue was so much less solemn about +it, one minute in art and the next in social settlements, so little +hampered by ever putting through what she planned. + +"In short, a woman," I thought sagely. + +I felt I knew a lot about women, although I had had no more intimate +talks since that affair in Paris. I had felt that would last me for +quite a while. But here was something perfectly safe. A sister, decent +but far from dull, well stocked with all the feminine points and only +too glad to be confidential. She wanted to study for the stage! Of +course that was the kind of thing that Dad and I would stop darned +quick. Still--I could see Sue on the stage. She was not at all like me. +I was middling small, with a square jaw, snub nose and sandy hair. Sue +was tall and easy moving, with an abundance of soft brown hair worn low +over large and irregular features. She had fascinating eyes. She could +sprawl on a rug or a sofa as lazy and indolent as you please--all but +her eyes, they were always doing something or other, letting this out or +keeping that back, practicing on me! + +"Oh, yes, she'll marry soon enough," I thought. "This talk of a job for +life is a joke." + +Some nights I would listen to her for hours. It was so good to come back +to life, to feel younger than my worries, to forget for a little while +that stark heavy certainty that poor old Dad would soon be a burden in +spite of himself, and that with a family on my hands I'd have to spend +the best years of my life slaving for a little hay. + +I took the same delight in her friends. + +Starting with her classmates in a Brooklyn high school, most of whom +were working over in New York, Sue had followed in their trail, and at +settlements, in studios and in girl bachelor flats she had picked up an +amazing assortment of friends. "Radicals," they called themselves. +Nothing was too wild or new for these friends of Sue's to jump into--and +what was more, to tie themselves to by a regular job in some queer +irregular office. "Votes for Women" was just starting up, and one of +this group, a stenographer in a suffragette office, had been in the +first small parade. Another, a stout florid youth who wrote poems for +magazines, had paraded bravely in her wake. Here were two girls who +lived in a tenement, did their own cooking and pushed East Side +investigations that they said would soon "shake up the town." There were +several rising muckrakers, too, some of whom did free work on the side +for socialist papers. There was one real socialist, a painter, who had a +red membership card in his pocket to prove that he belonged to "the +Party." Others were spreading music and art and dramatics through the +tenements--new music, new art and new dramatics. One young husband and +wife, intensely in love with one another, were working together night +and day for easier divorces which would put an end to the old-fashioned +home. + +These people seemed to me to be laughing at a different old thing every +time. But when they weren't laughing they were scowling, over some new +attack upon life--and when they did that they were laughable. At least +so they were to me. Not that I minded attacking things, I had done +plenty of that myself in Paris. But how different we had been back +there. We, too, had thrown old creeds to the winds, but with how much +more finesse and art. And there had been a large remoteness about it. +Each one had tossed his far-away country into the cosmopolitan pot, our +talk had been on a world-wide scale. But this crude crowd, except for +occasional mental flights, kept all its attention, its laughs and its +jeers, its attacks and exposures centered on this one mammoth town, +against which as a background they seemed the merest pigmies. Three +little muckrakers loomed against Wall Street, one small, scoffing +suffragette against a hundred and eighty thousand solid stolid Brooklyn +wives. They had posed themselves so absurdly close to the world of +things as they are. + +And they were in such a rush about their work. Over there in Paris, with +all our smashing of idols, we had at least held fast to our one great +goddess of art, we had slaved like dogs at the hard daily labor of +honestly learning our various crafts. But here they stopped for nothing +at all. The magazine writers were "tearing off copy," the painters were +simply "slapping it down." One of them told me he "painted the real +stuff right out of life"--dashed it off with one hand, so to speak, +while he shook his fist at the town with the other. Everyone wanted to +see something done--and done damn quick--about this, that or the other. + +My artist's eyes surveyed this group and twinkled with amused surprise. +But I could sit by the hour and listen to their talk. I found it mighty +refreshing, after those bills in the hardware shop, that monotonous +martyr feeling of mine and those worries down by the harbor. + +But I felt the harbor always there, slowly closing in on my father, who +looked older day by day, slowly bringing things to a crisis. In the +garden behind our house on warm September evenings when these pigmies +gathered to chatter reforms, the harbor hooted at their little plans as +it had hooted at my own. One evening, I remember, when the talk had +waxed hot and loud in favor of labor unions and strikes, Sue left the +group and with a friend strolled to the lower end of the garden. There I +saw them peer over the edge and listen to the drunken stokers singing in +the barrooms deep under all these flower beds and all this adventurous +chatter of ours. I thought of the years I had spent with Sam--and Sue, +too, seemed to me to be having a spree. Poor kid, what a jolt she would +get some day. She called me "our dreamer imported from France." But I +was far from dreaming. + +Presently the harbor just opened one of its big eyes and sent up by a +messenger a little grim reality. + +A Russian revolutionist had appeared among us with a letter to Sue from +Joe Kramer. Joe, I found to my surprise, had seen quite a little of Sue +over here while I had been in Paris--and from the various ships and +hotels that had been his "home" of late, he had written her now and +then. Through him Sue had joined a society known as "The Friends of +Russian Freedom," and Joe wrote now from Moscow urging her to "stir up +the crowd and lick this fellow into shape to talk at big meetings and +raise some cash. He has the real goods," Joe added. "All he needs is the +English language and a few points about making it yellow. If handled +right he'll be a scream." + +He was handled right and he was a scream. Three months later he finished +a tour that had netted over ten thousand dollars. Now to buy guns and +ship them to Russia--where in the awful poverty bequeathed to them by +the war with Japan, a bitter people was still fighting hard to make an +end of autocracy. + +"I think I can help you, Puss," said Dad. + +I looked at him with interest. I knew he had been as tickled as I by +these astonishing friends of hers. "Revolooters," he called them. He was +a great favorite with the girls. + +"I once knew a man in a business way who dealt in guns," he explained to +Sue. "He shipped some to Bolivia from my dock. I'll have him up to meet +your friend." + +So this messenger from the harbor, a keen lean man of business, gave one +hour of his time to the problem in which the Russian dreamer had been +absorbed for fifteen years. And the hour made the fifteen years look +decidedly dreamy. + +"Guns for Russia, eh?" he said. "How'll you get 'em into your country? +Where's your frontier weakest? You don't know? Then I'll tell you." And +the man of business did. "Now what kind of guns do you want? You hadn't +thought? Well, my friend, you want Mausers. They happen to be cheap just +now in Vienna. You should have looked into that before you traipsed way +over here. You can get 'em there for three twenty apiece--they dropped +three cents last Tuesday." + +The dreamer dreamed hard and fast for a moment. + +"Then," he cried triumphantly, "wit' ten t'ousand dollairs I can buy +over t'ree t'ousand guns!" + +The gunman's look was patient. + +"Don't you want to shoot 'em off?" he inquired. "Because if you do +you'll need ammunition. You ought to have a thousand rounds, which will +come to a little over three times the actual cost of the guns +themselves. You see when you shoot off a gun at an army you want to have +plenty of cartridges or else be ready to run like hell. + +"On second thought," he added, "I advise you to give up the Mausers and +go in for Springfields over here--old ones--you can get 'em cheap. +They're no good at over a mile, but for the first few months your +fellahs will be lucky if they hit a man at a hundred yards. And there's +one good point about Springfields, they make a devil of a noise--and +that's all you need for a starter, noise enough to break into headlines +all over the world as a 'Brave Little Rebel Army.' If you can do that, +and the word goes around on the quiet that you're using American +rifles--well, there's a kind of a sentiment in our trade--you'll find us +all behind you. We'll even _lose_ money. We're a queer bunch." + +"But wait!" cried the Russian. "Dere ees a trouble! Your tr-reaty wit' +Russia! Have you not a tr-reaty which makes it forbidden to sell to me +guns?" + +Again that look of patience: + +"Yes, General, we have a tr-reaty. But we'll ship your guns as grand +pianos to Naples, from there by slow boat down to Brazil and then up to +the Baltic, where they'll arrive with their pedigrees lost. Our agent +will be there ahead, he'll have found a customhouse man he can fix, +he'll cable us where--and when those fifty pianos are landed the said +official will open the box marked twenty-two. It'll take him over an +hour to do it, the boards will be nailed so cussedly tight. And he'll +find a real piano inside. Then he'll look at the other forty-nine crates +and say, 'Oh, Hell!' in Russian. Then they'll go on to wherever you want +'em--and you'll revolute. But don't forget that what you need most is +the livest press agent you can find. I've got to go now. Think it over. +And if you want to do business with me come to my office to-morrow at +ten." + +The man of business left us. And while the dreamer talked like mad and +finally decided that as Mausers were "shoot farther guns" he had better +go to Vienna, I watched the twinkle in Dad's gray eyes and thought of +the cool contempt in his friend's. And from being amused I became rather +sore. For, after all, this little Russian cuss had risked his life for +fifteen years and expected to lose it shortly. (As a matter of fact, he +was stood up against a wall and shot the following April.) Why make him +look so small? + +Was there nothing under the heavens that this infernal harbor didn't +know all about, and "do business with" so thoroughly that it could +always smile? + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +As I drudged on down there in the warehouse, my bitterness became an +obsession. I even talked about it to Sue. + +"Oh, Billy, you make me tired," she said. "Here I've taken the trouble +to bring to the house every magazine writer I know. And they're all +ready to help you break in--but you won't write, you won't even try!" + +"How do you know I haven't tried?" I retorted hotly. "But I'm working +all day as it is--and four nights a week besides. And the other three +nights, when I try to think of the kind of thing that I could sell to +the magazines--well, I simply can't do it, that's all--it's not my way +of writing!" + +"Then your way is just plain morbid," she said, "and it's about time you +dropped it." She seemed to get a sudden idea. "I know the person _you_ +ought to meet----" + +"Do you? What's his name?" I inquired. + +"Eleanore Dillon," she answered. I looked up at her with a start. + +"Eleanore Dillon? Is she still around?" + +I hadn't thought of that girl in years. + +"She is--and she's just what you need," said Sue, with that know-it-all +smile of hers. Her head was now cocked a bit to one side. "Your little +friend of long ago," she added sympathetically. I eyed Sue for a moment. +I did not care at all for her tone. + +"What do I need _her_ for?" I asked. + +"To talk to you of the harbor, of course--that's her especial line these +days." + +"The harbor?" I demanded. "That girl?" + +"Yes--the harbor, that girl." Sue seemed to be having quite a good time. +My jaw set tight. + +"What does she do down there?" I asked. + +"She worships her father. Don't you remember? An engineer. He's doing a +big piece of work on the harbor and Eleanore is wrapped up in his work, +she's a beautiful case of how a fond parent can literally swallow up his +child. There used to be nothing whatever that Eleanore Dillon wasn't +going to do in life. Don't you remember, when she was small, that little +determined air she had in the way she went at every game? Well, she grew +even more like that. From school she went to college and worked herself +to a frazzle. Then she broke down and had to drop out, and now that +she's strong again she's changed. She used to go in for everything. Now +she goes in for nothing at all except her father and his work. She +thinks we're all a lot of young fools." + +"Oh, now, Sue," I put in derisively. "You people fools? How could she?" + +"You'll see," my sister sweetly replied, "for she'll probably think +you're another. She detests morbid people, they're not her kind. But if +she'll give you a talking to it may do you a lot of good." + + * * * * * + +She did give me a talking to and it did do me a lot of good, although +when I came to think of it I found she had barely talked at all. + +She wasn't the sort who liked to talk, she was just as quiet as before. +When she arrived rather late one evening and Sue brought her out on the +verandah into a group of those radical friends who were a committee for +something or other, after the general greetings were over she settled +back in a corner with the air of one who likes just to listen to people, +no matter whether they're fools or not. But as I watched her I decided +she did not consider these people fools. That quiet smile that came on +her face showed a comfortable curiosity and now and then a gleam of +amusement, but no contempt whatever. She seemed a girl so well pleased +with her life that she could be pleased with the world besides and keep +her eyes open for all there was in it. Although she was still rather +small and still demurely feminine, with the same grave sweetness in her +eyes, that same enchanting freshness about everything she wore, she +struck me at once as having changed, as having grown tremendously, as +having somehow filled herself deep with a quiet abundant vitality. +"Where have _you_ been," I wondered. + +There came a loud blast from the harbor. At once I saw her turn in her +chair and look down to the point below where a river boat was just +leaving her slip, sweeping silently out of the darkness into the moonlit +water. My curiosity deepened. Where _had_ she been, and what was she +doing, what queer kind of a girl was this? I took a seat beside her. + +"Don't you remember me?" I asked. She turned her head with a quiet +smile. + +"Of course I do," she answered. Her low voice had a frankly intimate +tone. "I did the moment I saw you. Besides, Sue told me about you." + +"She's been telling me quite a lot about _you_." + +"Has she? What?" + +"That you know all about the harbor these days." + +"Sue's wonderful," Eleanore murmured. "She's so sure her friends know +everything." + +"Let's stick to the harbor." + +"All right, let's. I know enough about it to like it. Sue says you know +enough to hate it. I wonder which of us knows more." + +"I do." + +"How do you know you do?" + +"Because I've been here longer," I said. "I've hated it for twenty odd +years." + +She looked at me with interest. Her eyes were not at all like Sue's. +Sue's eyes were always wrapped up in herself; Eleanore's in somebody +else. They were as intimate as her voice. + +"Don't you remember the evening when you took me down to the docks?" she +asked. + +"I do--very well," I said. + +"And do you mean to tell me you didn't like the harbor then?" + +"I do--I hated the harbor then. I was scared to death that Sam and his +gang would appear around the end of a car." + +"Who was Sam?" she asked me. "He sounds like a very dreadful small boy." + +Soon she had me telling her of Sam and his gang and the harbor of +thrills, from the time of old Belle and the Condor. + +"I was a toy piano," I said. "And the harbor was a giant who played on +me till I rattled inside. We had a big spree together." + +"Not a very healthy spree, was it?" she said quietly, turning her +gray-blue eyes on mine. For some reason we suddenly smiled at each +other. "You're a good deal like your father--aren't you?" she said. "The +same nice twinkle in your eyes. Please go on. What did the harbor do to +you next?" + +I thought all at once of the August day when she had lain, a girl of +twelve, in the fragrant meadow beside me. And as then, so now, the +drunken woman's image rose for an instant in my mind. + +"It wiped the thrills all out," I said abruptly. I told how the place +grew harsh and bare, how I could always feel it there stripping +everything naked like itself, and how finally when later in Paris I felt +I had shaken it off for life, it had now suddenly jerked me back, let me +see what my father had really been, and had then repeated its same old +trick, closing in on his great idea and making it look like an old man's +hobby, crowding him out and handing us grimly two dull little jobs--one +to live on and one to die on. + +"It's getting monotonous," I ended. + +While I talked she had been watching it, now a bustling ferry crossing, +now a tug with a string of barges working up against the tide. + +"How do you know it's so bad for you to be brought back from Paris?" she +asked me, without looking around. + +"Have you ever been in Paris?" + +"Yes--and I want to go again. But I don't believe it will ever feel as +real to me as this place does. And I shouldn't think it would to you. +Because you were born here, weren't you--and you've been so close to it +most of the time that you're all mixed into it, aren't you? I mean +you've got your roots here. Why don't you write about _them_ for a +while?" + +"What?" + +"Your roots." + +She turned and again her eyes met mine, and again for some reason or +other we smiled. + +"All right," I assented gravely, "I'll buy a hoe and start right in." + +"That's it, hoe yourself all up. Get as far down as you can remember. +Dig up Belle and Sam, and Sue and your mother and father. Then take a +hoe to Paris and find out why you loved it so, and why you hate the +harbor. Be sure you get all the hate there is, it makes such interesting +reading. Besides, it may be just what you need--it may take the hate all +out of your system." + +"Who'll print it?" I demanded. + +"Oh, some magazine," she said. + +"Do you think this kind of thing would interest their readers?" + +"It would interest _me_----" + +"Thank you. I'll tell the editors that." + +"You'll do no such thing," she said severely. "You'll tell the magazine +editors, please, that I'm only one of thousands of girls who are +getting sick and tired of the happy, cheery little tales they print for +our special benefit. It's just about time they got over the habit of +thinking of us as sweet, young things and gave us some roots we can grow +on." + +Another modern girl, I thought. + +"Do you, too, want to vote?" I asked her, with a fine, indulgent irony. + +"Some day I do," she answered. And then she added with placid scorn, +"When I've learned all the political wisdom that _you_ have to teach +me." And as if that were a good place to stop, she rose from her seat. + +"The others seem to have left us," she said. "I think I'd better be +going home." + +"Wait a minute, please," I cried. "When am I going to hear about +you--and your side of this dismal body of water?" + +She looked back at me serenely. + +"Wait till you've got yours all written down," she replied. "You see +mine might only mix you up. Mine is so much pleasanter. Good night," she +added softly. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +Until late that night, and again the next day at my desk down in the +warehouse, my thoughts kept drifting back to our talk. With a glow of +surprise I found I remembered not only every word she had said, but the +tones of her voice as she said it, the changing expressions on her face +and in her smiling gray-blue eyes. Her picture rose so vividly at times +it was uncanny. + +"What do you think of her?" asked Sue. + +"Mighty little," I replied. I did not care to discuss her with Sue, for +I had not liked Sue's tone at all. + +But how little I'd learned about Eleanor's life. Where did she live? I +didn't know. When I had hinted at coming to see her she had smilingly +put me off. What was this pleasant harbor of hers? "Wait till you've got +yours all written down," she had said, and had told me nothing whatever. +Yes, I thought disgustedly, I was quite a smart young man. Here I had +spent two years in Paris learning how to draw people out. What had she +let me draw out of her? What hadn't I let her draw out of me? I wondered +how much I had told that girl. + +For some reason, in the next few days, my thoughts drifted about with +astonishing ease and made prodigious journeys. I roved far back to my +childhood, and there the most tempting incidents rose, and solemn little +thoughts and terrors, hopes and plans, some I was proud of, some mighty +ashamed of. Roots, roots, up they came, as though they'd just been +waiting, down there deep inside of me, for that girl and her hoeing. + +Presently, just to get rid of them all, I began writing some of them +down. And again I was surprised to find that I was in fine writing +trim. The words seemed to come of themselves from my pen and line +themselves up triumphantly into scenes of amazing vividness. At least so +they looked to me. How good it felt to be at it again. Often up in my +room at night I kept on working till nearly dawn. I was getting on +famously now. + + * * * * * + +And so now, as was his habit, Joe Kramer came crashing into my life and +as usual put a stop to my work. + +Having just landed from Russia, he had "breezed over" to our house, had +had a talk with Sue downstairs and had then come up to my room to +surprise me--just as I had a good firm grip on one of my most entrancing +roots. + +"Hello, Bill," he cried. "What are you up to?" + +"Hello, J. K. How are you?" + +I knew that I ought to be genial, and for a few moments I did my best. I +went through all the motions. I grabbed his hand, I smiled, I talked, I +told him I was tickled to death, I even tried pounding him on the back. +But it was quite useless. + +"Kid," he said with that grin of his, "you're up to something idealistic +and don't want to be disturbed. But I'm here and it can't be helped. So +out with it--what have you gone and done?" + +And he jerked my story out of me. + +"All right," he declared, "this has got to stop!" + +"I knew it," I said. I had known it the minute he came in the room. + +"You've got to throw up your ten-dollar job, quit working all night on +stuff that won't sell, and come on a paper and make some real money." + +"I can't do it," I snapped. + +"You can," said J. K. + +"But I tell you I tried! I went to a paper----" + +"You'll go to a dozen before I get through!" + +"J. K.--I won't do it" + +"Kid--you will!" + +And he kept at me night after night. He was working for a New York paper +now as a special correspondent. He had a talk with his editor and got me +a chance to go on as a "cub" and write about weddings, describing the +costume of the bride. At least it was a starter, he said, and would lead +to divorces later on, and from there I might be promoted to graft. He +talked to Sue and my father about it, persuading them both to take his +side. Day by day the pressure increased. I set my young jaw doggedly and +kept on writing about my roots. + +"Look here," said Joe one evening. "Your sister tells me you're sore on +the harbor. Then have a look at this." And he showed me a newspaper +clipping headed, "Padrone System Under the Dumps." + +"Well, what about it?" I asked him. + +"What about it? My God! Here's a chance to show up the harbor on one of +its ugliest, rottenest ideas! A dump is a pier that sticks out in the +river. We'll go there at night, get down underneath it and look at the +kids--Dago child-slaves working like hell. You say that weddings are not +in your line--all right, here's just the opposite--stuff that'll make +your women readers sit right up and sob out aloud! I don't care for +tear-jerkers myself," he added. "But even tear-jerkers are better than +Art." + +"All right," I muttered savagely, "let's go and get a tear-jerker to +write!" + +If I must write of this modern harbor, at least it was some satisfaction +to write about one of its ugliest sides. + +We went the next night. + +Joe had chosen a dump which jutted out from the Manhattan side of the +river just about opposite our house. A huge, long, shadowy pile of city +refuse of all kinds, we caught the sour breath of it as we drew near in +the darkness. There was not a sound nor a light. We climbed down onto a +greenish beam that ran along by the side underneath, about a foot from +the water, and cautiously working our way outward for a hundred yards +or more, we stopped abruptly and drew back. + +For just before us under the dump was a cave with walls of papers and +rags. A lantern hung from overhead, swung gently in the raw salt breeze, +and by its light we could see a half dozen swarthy small boys. Five were +intent on a game of dice, whispering fiercely while they played. Their +boss lay asleep in a corner. The sixth, the smallest of them all, sat +smoking in the mouth of the cave, his knees drawn up and his big dilated +black eyes roving hungrily out over the water. All at once around the +end of the pier, a dark, tall shadow like a spook swept silently out +before him. He sprang back and fervently crossed himself, then grinned +and drew on his cigarette hard. For the shadow was only a scow with a +derrick. The imp continued his watching. + +"Now," said J. K. a few minutes later back on shore, "you want to get +their hours and wages. You want to look up the fire law about lighted +cigarettes and a lantern----" + +"Oh, damn your fire law," I growled. "I want to know where that kid with +the cigarette was born, and what he thinks of the harbor!" Joe gave me +one of his cheerful grins. + +"You might get his views on the tariff," he said. + +"Look here, J. K.," I implored him; "go home. Go on home and leave me +alone. It's all right, I'm glad you brought me here--darned good of you, +and I'll get a story. Only for God's sake leave me alone!" + +"Sure," said Joe. "Only don't try to talk to those little Guineys. Their +boss wouldn't let 'em say a word and you'd lose your chance of watching +'em. Make it a kind of a mystery story." + +And a mystery story I made it. + +Where had he been a year ago, this imp who had fervently crossed +himself? In Naples, Rome or Venice, or poking his toes into the dust of +a street in some dull little town in the hills? What great condor of +to-day had picked him up and dropped him here? How did it look to him? +What did he feel? + +I came back to the dump night after night, and writing blindly in the +dark I tried to jot down what he saw--gigantic shapes and shadows, some +motionless, some rushing by with their dim spectral little lights, and +over all the great arch of the Bridge rearing over half the sky. The +lantern in the cave behind threw a patch of light on the water below, +and across that patch from under the pier where the water was slapping, +slapping, there came an endless bobbing procession--a whisky bottle, a +broken toy horse, a bit of a letter, a pink satin slipper, a dirty white +glove--things tossed out of people's lives. On and on they came. And I +knew there were miles of black water like this all covered with tiny +processions like this moving slowly out with the ebb tide, out from the +turbulent city toward the silent ocean. One night the watchman on the +dump showed me a heavy paper bag with what would have been a baby +inside. Where had it come from? He didn't know. Tossed out of some +woman's life, in a day it would be far out on the ocean, bobbing, +bobbing with the rest. Water from here to Naples, water from here to +heathen lands. Just here a patch of light from a lantern. That imp from +Italy looking down--into something immense and dark and unknown. + +He was having a spree with the harbor, as I had had when as small as he. +I saw him watch the older boys and listen thrilled to their wonderful +talk--as once I, too, had been thrilled by Sam. I watched him over a +game of dice, quarreling, scowling, grabbing at pennies, slapped by some +one, whimpering, then eagerly getting back to the game. It was "craps," +I had played it with Sam and the gang. One night he dropped a cigarette +still lighted into the rags and was given a blow by his boss that +knocked him into a corner. But presently he crawled cautiously forth, +and again with both hands hugging his knees he sat and watched the +harbor. What a big spree for a little boy. + +I put my own childhood into this imp, into him my first feelings toward +this place. And so I came again to my roots. How the memories rose up +now--the fascinations and terrors that I, too, had felt before something +immense and dark and unknown. + +Thank heaven J. K. had given me up and gone to Colorado--so I was left +to work in peace. I called my sketch "A Patch of Light," and sent it to +a magazine. It came back with a note explaining that, while this was a +fine little thing in its way, its way wasn't theirs, it was neither an +article full of facts nor a story full of romance. In short, I told +myself savagely, it was neither hay nor tears! Again it went forth and +again back it came. Then Sue gave it to one of her writer friends who +said he knew just the place for it. + +"No, you don't," I thought drearily. "Nobody knows--in this whole +damnable desolate land." + +But Sue's friend sold my story--for twenty-two dollars and fifty cents! +And he said that the editor wanted some more! + +It was curious, from my window that night, what a different harbor I saw +below. Ugly still? Of course it was. But what a _rich mine_ of ugliness +for the pen of a rising young author like me! + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +Now for something bigger. I would have a whack at the place by day. No +mystery now, just ugliness. I would show it up in broad daylight, +bringing out every detail in the glare. I would do this by comparing it +to the harbor of long ago, and the snowy white sails of my father's +youth. + +His youth was gone. A thick-set and gray-headed old figure, he bent over +his desk by my side, putting up a fierce, silent fight for his strength, +and now slowly getting enough of it back to keep him at his job as a +clerk in what had been his warehouse. Only once, coming suddenly into +the room, I found him settled deep down in his chair, heavy, inert, his +cigar gone out, staring vacantly out of the window. + +The sails were gone. Down there at his dock, where even in days that I +could remember the tall clippers had lain for weeks, I saw now a German +whaleback. She had slipped in but three days before and was already +snorting to get away. She was black and she wallowed deep, and she had +an enormous bulging belly into which I descended one day and explored +its metallic compartments that echoed to the deafening din of some +riveters at work on her sides. Though short and stout, she was nine +thousand tons. Hideous, she was practical, as practical as a factory. In +her the romance of the sea was buried and choked in smoke and steam, in +grime, dirt, noise and a regular haste. One morning as her din increased +and the black, sooty breath of her came drifting in through our window, +my father rose abruptly and slammed the window down. + +"The damn sea hog!" he muttered. + +Gone, too, were the American sailors. All races of men on the earth but +ours seemed gathered around this hog of the sea. From barges filled with +her cargo, the stuff was being heaved up on the dock by a lot of Irish +bargemen. Italian dockers rolled it across to this German ship, and on +deck a Jap under-officer was bossing a Coolie crew. These Coolies were +dwarfs with big white teeth and stooping, round little shoulders. They +had strange, nervous faces, long and narrow with high cheek bones and no +foreheads at all to speak of. Their black eyes gleamed. Back and forth +they scurried to the sound of that guttural Japanese voice. + +"The cheapest sea labor there is," growled Dad. "Good-by to Yankee +sailors." + +The Old East with its riches was no longer here. For what were these +Coolies doing? Handling silks and spices? Oh, no. They were hoisting and +letting down into the hold an automobile from Dayton, Ohio, bound for +New South Wales. Gone were the figs and almonds, the indigo, ivory, +tortoise shells. Into the brand-new ledgers over which my father worked, +he was entering such items as barbed wire, boilers, car wheels and gas +engines, baby carriages, kegs of paint. I reveled in the commonplace +stuff, contrasting it vividly in my mind with the starlit ocean roads it +would travel, the picturesque places it would help spoil. + +I filled in the scene with all its details, the more accurate, glaring +and real the better--the brand-new towering skyline risen of late on +Manhattan, the new steel bridge, an ugly one this, and all the modern +steam craft, tugs, river boats, Sound steamers, each one of them panting +and spewing up smoke. I sat there like a stenographer and took down the +harbor's dictation, noting the rasping tones of its voice, recording +eagerly all its smells. And all this and more that I gathered, I +focussed on the sea hog. + +And then toward the end of a winter's day we looked out of our window +and saw her "sail." She sailed in a nervous, worrying haste to the +grunts and shrieks of a lot of steam winches. Up rattled her anchor, out +she waddled, tugs puffing their smoke and steam in her face. She didn't +depart. Who ever heard of a hog departing? She just went. There were no +songs, no last good-byes--except from a man in his shirt sleeves who +called from the deck to a man on the pier, "So long, Mac, see you next +Spring," and then went into the factory. + +When the work of the day was over, I went down into the dock shed. My +father's old place was at peace for a time, the desecration done with. +She was empty, dark and silent. In her long, inward-sloping walls the +eight wide sliding doors were closed. Only through the dusty skylights +here and there fell great masses of soft light. Big bunches of canvas +hung from above, ropes dangled out of the shadows. And there were huge +rhythmic creakings that made you feel the ocean still here, an old ocean +under an old, old dock. The place grew creepy with its past. + +"Faint, spicy odors," I jotted down, as I stood there in the dimness, +"ghosts of long ago--low echoes of old chanties sung by Yankee +sailors--romance--mystery----" + +I broke off writing and drew back behind a crate. My father had entered +the dock shed and was coming slowly up the dock. Presently I saw him +stop and look into the shadows around him. I saw a frown come on his +face, I saw his features tighten. So he stood for some moments. Then he +turned and walked quickly out. A lump had risen in my throat, for I +thought I knew what he had seen. + +"The Phantom Ship" became my title. A fine contrast to the sea hog, I +thought. I asked Dad endless questions at night about the old days not +only here, but all up along the coast of New England, and hungrily I +listened while he glorified the rich life and color of those seaport +towns now gray, those wharves now rotting and covered with moss. He +glorified the spacious homes of the men who had ordered their captains +to search the Far East for the rugs and the curtains, the chairs and the +tables, the dishes, the vase, the silks and the laces, the silver and +gold and precious stones with which those audacious old houses were +stored. He glorified the ships themselves. From the quarter decks of our +clippers, those marvels of cleanliness and speed, he told how those +miraculous captains had issued their orders to Yankee sailors, brawny, +deep-chested, keen-eyed and strong-limbed. He told what perils they had +faced far out on the Atlantic--"the Roaring Forties" those waters were +called! + +"Yes, boy, in those days ships had men!" + +In my room I eagerly wrote it all down and added what I myself could +remember. Here from my bedroom window I tried to see what I had seen as +a boy, the immaculate white of the tall sails, the fresh blue and green +of the dancing waves. Oh, I was romancing finely those nights! And there +came no Blessed Damozel to say to me gruffly, "Couches-toi. Il est +tard." + +When the sketch was completed at last I gave it to my father to read and +then went out for a long walk. It was nearly midnight when I returned, +but he was still reading. He cleared his throat. + +"Son," he said very huskily, "this is a strong piece of work!" His eyes +were moist as they moved rapidly down the page. He looked up with a +jerk. "Who'll print it?" he asked. + +"I wish I knew, Dad----" + +I mailed it that night to a magazine. In the next two weeks my father's +suspense was even deeper than my own, though he tried hard to joke about +it, calling me "Pendennis." One day in his office chair he wheeled with +a nervous sharpness, and I could feel his eyes fixed on the envelope +which the postman had just thrown on my desk. God help me, it was heavy +and long, it had my manuscript inside. Dismally I searched for a letter. +Still I could feel those anxious eyes. + +"Hold on!" I cried. "They've taken it! All they want me to do is to cut +it down!" + +"Then do it!" My radiant father snarled. "It ought to be cut to half its +length! That's the way with beginners, a mass of details! Some day maybe +you'll learn to write!" + +I smiled happily back. He came suddenly over and gripped my hand. + +"My boy, I'm glad, I'm very glad! I'm"--he cleared his throat and went +back to his desk and tried to scowl over what he was doing. + +"Dad." + +"Huh?" + +"They say they'll give me a hundred dollars. Pretty good for one month's +work." + +"Huh." + +"And they want me to do some more on the harbor. They say it's a new +field. Never been touched." + +"Then touch it," he said gruffly. "Leave me alone. I'm busy." + +But coming in late after luncheon that day, I found him reading the +editor's letter. + +"Boy," he said that evening, "you ought to read Thackeray for style, and +Washington Irving, and see what a whippersnapper you are. Work--work! If +your mother were only alive she could help you!" + +And just before bedtime, taking a bottle of beer with my pipe, I caught +his disapproving eye. + +"Worst thing you can put in your stomach," he growled. He said this +regularly each night, and added, "Why can't you keep up your health for +your work?" + +His own health had improved astonishingly. + +"It's the winter air that has done it," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +My work, as my father saw it now, was to write "strong, practical +articles" presenting the respective merits of free ships, ship subsidies +and discriminating tariffs to build up our mercantile marine. + +But I was growing tired these days of my father's idea, his miracle and +his endless talk of the past. On walks along the waterfront he would +treat it all like a graveyard. But while he pointed out the tombs I felt +the swift approach of Spring. It was March, and in a crude way of its +own the harbor was expressing the season--in warm, salty breezes, the +odor of fish and the smell of tar on the bottoms of boats being +overhauled for the Summer. Our Italian dockers sang at their work, and +one day the dock was a bright-hued mass of strawberries and early Spring +flowers landed by a boat from the South. Everywhere things seemed +starting--starting like myself. + +I had given up my warehouse job, and free at last from that tedious desk +to which I once thought I was tied for years, with two sketches sold and +ideas for others, so many others, rising daily in my mind, I went about +watching the life of the port. Poor Dad. He was old. Could I help being +young? + +Without exactly meaning to, I drew away from my father to Sue. We felt +ourselves vividly young in that house. We quarreled intensely over her +friends and were pleased with ourselves in the process. We had long +talks about ourselves. Sue let me talk to her by the hour about my work +and my ideas, while she sat and thought about her own. + +"If you're planning to write up the harbor," she said sleepily late one +night, "you ought to cruise around a bit in Eleanore Dillon's motor +boat." + +I looked at her in astonishment. + +"Does that girl run a motor boat?" + +"Her father's." Sue yawned and gave me a curious smile. "I'll see if I +can't arrange it," she said. And about a week later she told me, +"Eleanore's coming to take us out to-night." + +Some of Sue's friends came to supper that evening and later we all went +down to the dock. There was no moon but the stars were out and the night +was still, the slip was dark and empty. Suddenly with a rush and a swirl +a motor boat rounded the end of the pier, turned sharply in and came +shooting toward us. A boiling of water, she seemed to rear back, then +drifted unconcernedly in to the bottom of the ladder. + +In the small circle of light down there I saw Eleanore Dillon smiling +up. She sat at her wheel, a trim figure in white--a white Jersey, +something red at her throat and a soft white hat crushed a bit to one +side. Beneath it the breeze played tricks with her hair. + +We scrambled down into the cock-pit. It was a deep, cozy little place, +with the wide open doors of a cabin in front, in which I caught a +glimpse of two bunks, a table, a tiny electric cooking stove and a +shaded reading light over the one small easy chair. There were impudent +curtains of blue at the port holes. There was a shelf of books and +another of blue and white cups and saucers and dishes. And what was +that? A monkey crouching under the table, paws clutching the two +enormous brass buttons on the gay blue jacket he wore, eyes watching us +angrily as he chattered. + +"Buttons," commanded his mistress, "come out here this minute and stop +your noise. There's nothing for you to be peevish about, the water's +like glass. When it's rough," she explained, "he gets fearfully seasick. +Come here now, pass the cigarettes." And this her Buttons proceeded to +do--very grumpily. + +Then as a small, quiet hand pulled a lever, I felt a leap of power +beneath me, the boat careened as she turned, then righted, there was a +second pull on the lever, another surging leap of speed, and as we +rushed out on the river now up rose her bow higher and higher, a huge +white wave on either side. The spray dashed in our faces. Everyone began +talking excitedly. Only the Buttons kept his monkey eyes fixed anxiously +on his captain's face while he clasped the pit of his stomach. + +"Oh, Buttons, don't be such a coward," she said. "I tell you it's smooth +and you won't be sick! Go out there and stop being silly!" + +Slowly and with elaborate caution the monkey crept forward over the +cabin. For a moment up at the bow he paused, a ridiculous little +dark-jacketed figure between the two white crests of our waves. Then +with a spring he was up to his place on the top of the light, and there +with gay gesticulations he greeted every vessel we passed. + +I had taken a seat by Eleanore's side. She was driving her boat with +eyes straight ahead. Now and then she would close them, draw in a deep +breath of the rough salt air, and smile contentedly to herself. After a +time I heard her voice, low and intimate as before: + +"Finished up that hideous harbor of yours?" + +"No," I answered hungrily, "I think I've just begun." I caught a gleam +in her eyes. + +"You'll be out of your rut in a moment," she said. + +"What do you mean, my rut?" I demanded. + +"The East River, Stupid--wait and see." + +From the little East River corner I'd lived in, we sped far out on the +Upper Bay, a rushing black speck on a dim expanse, with dark, empty +fields of water around us, long, luminous paths stretching off to the +shores, where the lights twinkled low for miles and miles and there were +sudden bursts of flame from distant blast furnace fires. + +"Tell me what you've been writing about this hideous place," she said. + +"Who said it was hideous at night? Of course if you wrap it all up in +the dark, so that you can see none of its sea hogs----" + +"What's a sea hog?" + +"A sea hog is a wallowing boat with a long, black, heavy snout." And +mustering all that was left of my hatred I plunged into my picture. "The +whole place is like that," I ended. "Full of smoke and dirt and +disorder, everything rushing and jamming together. That's how it looks +to me in the daytime!" + +"Are you sure it does--still?" + +"I am," I answered firmly. "And I'm going to write it just as it looks." + +"Then look back of you," she suggested. + +Behind us, at the tip of Manhattan, the tall buildings had all melted +together into one tremendous mass, with only a pin point of light here +and there, a place of shadowy turrets and walls, like some mediaeval +fortress. Out of it, in contrast to its dimness, rose a garish tower of +lights that seemed to be keeping a vigilant watch over all the dark +waters, the ships and the docks. The harbor of big companies. + +"My father works up in that tower," she said. "He can see the whole +harbor spread out below. But he keeps coming down to see it all close, +and I've steered him up close to everything in it. You've no idea how +much there is." She threw me a glance of pitying scorn. "There are over +seven hundred miles of waterfront in this small port, and I'm not going +to have you trudging around and getting lost and tired and cross and +working off your grudge in your writing. You come with me some afternoon +and I'll do what I can to open your eyes." + +"Please do it," I said quickly. + + * * * * * + +She took me down, to the sea gate at the end of a warm, still, foggy +day. There in the deepening twilight we drifted without a sign of a +world around us--till in from the ocean there came a deep billow, then +another and another, and as our small craft darted off to one side a +gigantic gray shadow loomed through the fog with four black towers of +smoke overhead, lights gleaming from a thousand eyes. + +"Another sea hog," murmured a voice. + +"I said in the daytime," I replied. + +We went out on another afternoon to watch the fisherman fleets at their +work or scudding before a strong wind home with a great, round, radiant +sun behind. She showed me fishers in the air, lonely fish hawks one by +one flying in the late afternoon back to their nests on the Atlantic +Highlands. And far out on the Lower Bay she knew where to stir up whole +armies of gulls, till there seemed to be thousands wheeling in air with +the bright sunshine on all the wings. The sunshine, too, with the help +of the breeze, stole glinting deep into her hair. She watched me out of +half-closed eyes. + +"Is this daylight enough?" she demanded. + +"This is simply absurd," I answered. "You know very well that this +harbor is ugly in places----" + +"Only in places. That's better," she said. + +"In a great _many_ places," I rejoined. "Please take me to Bayonne some +day--at two p. m.," I added. + +It seemed a good, safe, unmysterious hour, and as we neared the place +next day my hopes mounted high, for there was a leaden sky overhead and +loathsome blotches and streaks of oil on the gray water around us--while +ahead on the Jersey shore, from two chimneys that rose halfway to the +clouds, poured two foul, sluggish columns of smoke. + +"Still New York harbor, I believe?" I inquired maliciously. But Eleanore +was smiling. "What's the joke?" I demanded. + +"The southwest wind," she softly replied. I could feel it coming as she +spoke. As I watched I saw it take that sky and tear jagged rifts in it +for the sun, and then as those two columns of smoke began twisting and +writhing like monster snakes they took on purple and greenish hues and +threw ghostly reflections of themselves down on the oily water around +us, filled with blue and gold shimmerings now. + +"What a strange, wonderful purple," murmured a quiet voice by my side. + +Stubbornly I resisted conversion. I wanted more afternoons in that boat. + +"Now it's blowing that oily odor our way," I declared in sudden +annoyance. "I no sooner get to enjoying myself when along comes one of +the smells of this place. And where's the beauty in _them_? Can you show +me? Here's a place that should be a great storehouse of pure fresh air +for the city to breathe, and----" + +"Oh, hush up!" said Eleanore. + +But I doggedly found other blemishes here--swamps, railroad yards and +sooty tracks that filled the waterfront for miles where there should +have been parks and boulevards. At the same time I assumed the tone of +one who tries to be fair and patient. Whenever she showed me some new +beauty in water or sky I took great pains to look at it well. When an +angry little squall of wind came ruffling over the sunny waves in +sweeping bands of deep, soft blues, I gazed and gazed at its wonder as +though I could never have enough. And so gazing I spied floating there a +sodden old mattress, a fleet of tin cans. And I said that it seemed an +unhealthy thing to dump all our refuse so close to the city. + +"They don't!" she retorted indignantly. "They take it out miles beyond +the Hook!" + +In short, I considered myself mighty clever. Day by day I prolonged my +conversion, holding obstinately back--while Eleanore revealed to me the +miracles worked by the sunset here, and by the clouds, the winds, the +tides, the very smoke and the ships themselves, all playing weird +tricks on each other. Slowly the crude glory of it stole upon me +unawares--until to my own intense surprise the harbor now became for me +a breathing, heaving, gleaming thing filled deep with the rush and the +vigor of life. A thing no longer sinister, crushing down on a man's old +age--but strangely deeply stirring. + +"Look out, my friend," I warned myself. "This is no harbor you're +falling in love with." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +Although at such lucid moments I would sometimes go a-soaring up into +the most dazzling dreams, more often I would plunge in gloom. For +Eleanore's dreams and all her thoughts seemed centered on her father. +From each corner of that watery world, no matter how far we wandered, +the high tower from which he looked down on it all would suddenly loom +above the horizon. Over the dreariest marshes it peeped and into all our +talk he came. A marsh was a place that he was to transform, oily odors +were things he would sweep away. For every abuse that I could discover +her father was working out some cure. With a whole corps of engineers +drafting his dreams into practicable plans, there was no end to the +things he could do. + +"Here is a girl," I told myself, "so selfishly wrapped up in her father +she hasn't a thought for anyone else. She's using me to boom his work, +as she has doubtless used writers before me and will use dozens more +when I'm gone. No doubt she would like to have _dozens of me_ sitting +right here beside her now! It's not at all a romantic thought, but think +how she could use me then!" And I would glower at her. + +But it is a lonely desolate job to sit and glower at a girl who appears +so placidly unaware of the fact that you are glowering. And slowly +emerging from my gloom I would wonder about this love that was in her. +At times when she talked she made me feel small. My own love for my +mother, how utterly selfish it had been. Here was a passion so deep and +real it made her almost forget I was there, asking questions, hungrily +watching her, trying to learn about her life. + +"While I was in school," she said, in that low deliberate voice of hers, +"my father and I went abroad every summer. We tramped in the Alps for +weeks at a time, keeping way off the beaten paths to watch the work of +the Swiss engineers. One of them was a woman. We saw the bridge she'd +built over a gorge, and I became deeply excited. Until then I had never +had any idea that I could go into my father's work. But now I wondered +if I could. That winter in school I really worked. I was dreadfully dull +at mathematics, but I wouldn't see it. I made up my mind to go to +Cornell for the course on engineering. I worked like a slave for two +years to get ready and just succeeded in getting in. + +"Then toward the middle of Freshman year I realized that I was becoming +a quite absurdly solemn young grind. There were over a hundred girls in +college but I had made barely any friends. And so I firmly resolved to +be gay. I made a regular business of it and worked my way into clubs and +dances, hunting for the girls I liked and scheming to make them like me +too. By May I was way behind in my work. I tried to make up, I began +cramming every night until one or two in the morning. And I passed my +examinations--but that summer I broke down. My father had to drop his +work and take me abroad for an operation, and by the time we got back he +had lost nearly six months of his time. I decided that as an engineer I +was a dismal failure. I'd much better give my father a chance. + +"So when he took up this work in New York I spent all my time on our new +apartment. I loved fussing with it, I shopped like a bee, and this kept +me busy all Autumn. Besides I was going about with Sue. She had managed +me long ago at school and I was glad to let her now, for I was hunting +for new ideas. But Sue put me on so many committees that by Spring my +nerves were in shreds, and again for weeks I was flat on my back. + +"One evening then--when my father came home and sat down by my +bedside--it came over me all of a sudden--the wonderful quiet strength +in his hand, in the look of his eyes. + +"'Where have you been?' I asked him. + +"'Down on the harbor,' he told me. Since eight in the morning he'd been +in a launch exploring it all. I shut my eyes--my wretched eyelids +quivering--and I made him describe the whole day's trip while I tried to +see it all in my mind. Soon I was feeling deliciously quiet. 'I'm going +down there too,' I thought. + +"By the next evening I had the idea for this boat. When I told him he +was delighted, and we both grew excited over the plans--which he drew by +my bed, I made him draw dozens. At last it was built and lay at its +dock, and I packed all I needed into a trunk and we came down in a taxi. +It was a lovely May afternoon and we had a beautiful ride up the Hudson. +And from then on through the Summer I hardly went ashore at all, I knew +if I did it would spoil it all. + +"Every night we slept on board in those two cozy little bunks. I learned +to cook here. Soon I was able to run the boat and even to help my father +a little. I knew just enough about his work to go places for him and +save his time. I'd forgotten I ever had any nerves, for I felt I +belonged to something now that got way down to the roots of things. Do +you see what I mean? This harbor isn't like a hotel, or an evening gown +or Weber and Fields. I love pretty gowns, and my father and I wouldn't +miss Weber and Fields for worlds. But they're all on top, this is down +at the bottom, it's one of those deep places that seem to make the world +go 'round. It's right where the ocean bumps into the land. You can get +your roots here, you can feel you are real. + +"You see what my father is doing is to take this whole harbor and study +it hard--not just the water, the shipping and docks, for when he says +'the port of New York' he means all the railroads too--and he's +studying how they all come in and why it is that everything has become +so frightfully snarled. A lot of big shipping men are behind him, and +he's to draw up a plan for it all which they're going to give to the +city to use, to make this port what it's got to be, the very first in +the ocean world. It's one of those slow tremendous pieces of work, it +will take years to carry it out and hundreds of millions of dollars. My +father thinks there's hardly a chance that he'll ever live to see it all +done. I know he will, I'm sure he will, he's the kind of a man who keeps +himself young. But whether he really sees it or not, or gets any credit, +he doesn't care. + +"That's the kind of a person my father is," Eleanore added softly. + + * * * * * + +"My father wants to meet you," she told me toward the end of June, at +one of those times when she let the boat drift while we had long +absorbing talks. "He has read that thing you wrote about the German sea +hog, and he thinks it's awfully well done." + +"That's good of him," I said gruffly. + +Somehow or other it always makes me uncomfortable when people talk about +my work. When they criticize I am annoyed and when they praise I am +uneasy. What do they know about it? They spent an hour reading what it +took me weeks to write. They don't know what I _tried_ to do, nor do +they care, they haven't time. I never feel so cut off from people, so +utterly alone in the world, as when some benevolent person says, "I +liked that little story of yours." Instantly I shut up like a clam. + +"I liked it too," said Eleanore. + +"Did you?" I asked delightedly. Far from retiring into my shell, I +wanted at once to open up and make her feel how much I had missed in +that crude effort. Soon she had me talking about it. And while I talked +on eagerly, I tried to guess from her questions whether she'd read it +more than once. Finally I guessed she had. And, glancing at her now and +then, I wondered how much she could ever know about me or I about +her--really know. And the intimacy I saw ahead loomed radiant and +boundless. I strained every nerve to show her myself, to show her the +very best of myself. + +But then I heard her ask me, + +"Wouldn't you like to talk to my father?" + +Here was a fine end to it all. + +"I don't know," I answered gloomily. I could see already those engineer +eyes moving amusedly down my pages. I could see her watching his face +and getting to feel as he did about me. "What good would it do?" I +added. + +"What good would it do?" Her sharply offended tone brought me back with +a jerk to try to explain. + +"Don't you see what I mean!" I asked eagerly. "Why should a man as busy +as he is waste his time on a kid like me? After all that you've told me +about him, I feel sometimes as though all the writers on earth don't +count any more, because all the really big things are being done by men +like your father." + +"That's much better," said Eleanore. "Only of course it isn't true. If +you poor little writers want to get big and really count," she went on +serenely, "all you have to do is to write about my father." + +"I'll begin the minute you say so," I told her. + +"Then it's arranged," said my companion, with an exceedingly comfortable +sigh. "We've taken a cottage up on the Sound for the summer," she +continued. "And we're moving up to-morrow. Suppose you come up over +Sunday." + +"Thanks. I'd love to," I replied. + +"So she's to be away for months," I added dismally to myself. "No more +of these long afternoons." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +On the following Saturday, when I met her boat at an East River dock, at +once I felt a difference. We were waiting for her father. The moments +dragged and I grew glum, try as I would to be pleasant. + +"Here he is," she said at last. + +Tall, rather lank and loosely clothed, Dillon was coming down the pier +in easy leisurely fashion, talking to a man by his side. His face +lighted up when he saw us. + +"Just a minute," he said. + +His voice was low but it had a peculiar carrying quality. His rugged +face was deeply lined, and I noticed a little gray in his hair. He was +smiling straight down into the eyes of his companion, a much younger +man, thin and poorly dressed, whose face looked drawn and tired. + +"When I was your age," I heard Dillon remark, "I got into just the same +kind of a snarl." And he began telling about it. A frightfully technical +story it was, full of engineer slang that was Greek to me, but I saw the +younger man listen absorbed, his thin lips parting in a smile. I saw him +come out from under his worries, I saw his chief watching him, pulling +him out. + +"All right, Jim," he ended. "See what you can do." + +"Say, Chief, just you forget this, will you?" the other said intensely. +"Don't give it a thought. It's go'n' to be done!" + +"It's forgotten." + +Another easy smile at his man, and then Eleanore's father turned to us. +I could feel him casually take me in. + +"The thing I liked most in that sketch of yours," he was saying a few +minutes later, when our boat was on her course, "was the way you listed +that Dutchman's cargo. 'One baby carriage--to Lahore.' A very large +picture in five little words. I can see that Hindu baby now--being +wheeled in its carriage to Crocodile Park and wondering where the devil +this queer new wagon came from. I've been nosing around these docks for +years, but I missed that part of 'em right along--that human part--till +you came along with your neat writer's trick. 'One baby carriage--to +Lahore.' You ought to be proud, young man, at your age to have written +one sentence so long that it goes half way around the world." + +As he talked in that half bantering tone I tried to feel cross, but it +wouldn't do. That low voice and those gray eyes were not making fun of +me, they were making friends with me, they were so kindly, curious, so +open and sincere. Soon he had lighted a cigar and was telling Eleanore +gravely just how she ought to run her boat. + +"Why be so busy about it?" he asked. + +"Oh, you be quiet!" she replied, as she sharply spun her wheel. Like an +automobile in a crowded street our craft was lurching its way in short +dashes in and out of the rush hour traffic. The narrow East River was +black with boats. Ferries, tugs and steamers seemed to be coming at us +from every side. Now with a leap we would be off, then abruptly churning +the water behind us we would hold back drifting, watching our chance for +another rush. Eleanore's face was glowing now, her hat was off, her neck +was tense--and her blue-gray eyes, wide open, fixed on the chaos ahead, +were shining with excitement. Now and then a long curling wisp of her +hair would get in her eyes and savagely she would blow it back. And her +lank quiet father puffed his cigar, with his gray eyes restfully on her. +"The serenity of her," he murmured to me. + +"Oh, now, my dear," he said gently, as we careened to starboard, "_that_ +was a slip. I can't say I would have done it like that." + +"Have you ever run a boat in your life?" came back the fierce rejoinder. + +"No," said Dillon calmly, "I can't exactly say I have. Still"--he +relapsed and enjoyed his cigar. + +Just a short time after this, we had the only ugly moment that I had +been through in all our rides. A huge Sound steamer was ahead. Dashing +close along under her port, we came suddenly out before her and met a +tug whose fool of a captain had made a rush to cross her bow. It was one +of those sickening instants when you see nothing at all to do. But +Eleanore saw. A quick jerk on her lever, a swift spinning of her wheel, +and with a leap we were right under the steamer's bow. It missed our +stern by a foot as it passed and then we were safe on the other side. +She made a low sound, in a moment her face went deathly white, her eyes +shut and she nearly let go the wheel. But then, her slight form +tightening, slowly opening her eyes she turned toward her father. + +"Now?" he asked very softly. And there passed a look between them. + +"All right," she breathed, and turned back to her wheel. And for some +time very little was said. + +But I understood her love for him now. These two were such companions as +I had never seen before. And though I myself felt quite out of it all, +this did not bother me in the least. For watching her father and feeling +the abounding reserve of force deep under his quiet, I told myself that +here was a big man, the first really big one I'd ever come close to. And +I was so eager to know him and see just what he was like inside, that I +had no room for myself or his daughter--because I wanted to write him +up. What a weird, curious feeling it is, this passion for writing up +people you meet. + +On the remainder of the ride, and at supper that night on the porch of +their cottage, a little house perched on a rocky point directly +overlooking the water, I did my best to draw him out, and Eleanore +seemed quite ready to help me. And later, when he went inside to do +some work, I went on with the same eagerness, obliterating my own small +self, exploring this feeling of hers for him and his dream of a future +harbor. + +Soon she was doing all the talking, her voice growing lower and more +intense as she tried to make me feel all he meant when he said, "It's +going to be the first port in the world." She told how up in his tower +he made you see the commerce of this whole mighty world of peace +converging slowly on this port. She told of the night two years before +when he had come home "all shaken and queer" and had said to her +huskily, "Eleanore, child, at last it's sure. There's to be a Panama +Canal." Of other nights when he didn't come home and at last she went +down to his office to fetch him and found him at midnight there with his +men, "all working like mad and gay as larks!" + +"When it comes to millions of dollars for his work," she said, "he's so +very keen that he makes you feel like a little child. But when it's +merely a question of dollars for himself to live on, he's a perfect +baby. He won't look at a bill, he always turns them over to me. He won't +enter a shop, he won't go to a tailor. One ready-made clothing store has +his measure and twice a year I order his clothes and then have a fight +to get him to wear them. He never knows what he eats except steak. One +night when we had been having steak six evenings in succession I tried +chicken for a change. At first he didn't know what was wrong. Every now +and then he would seem to notice something. 'What's the matter with me?' +I could see he was asking. Then all at once he had it. 'My dear,' he +said, very coaxingly, 'could we have a nice juicy porterhouse steak for +supper to-morrow evening?'" + +From these and many other details slowly I got the feel of my man. +Closer, more intimate he grew. All the work I had done in Paris, +questioning, drawing out my friends until I could feel their inner +selves coming out of them into me, was counting now. I had never done so +well before, I was sliding my questions in just right, very cautiously +turning her memory this way and that on her father's life, watching her +grow more and more unaware of my presence beside her, although now I had +her bending toward me, eagerly, close. + +"And she thinks she's doing it all by herself," I thought exultingly. + +But as there came a pause in our talk, she turned slightly in her seat +and glanced in through the window into the lighted room behind. And +instantly her expression changed. A swift look of surprise, a puzzled +frown and a moment of hard thinking--and then with a murmured excuse she +rose and went away quickly into the house. In the meantime I had +followed her look. Sitting close by the lamp, in the room inside, Dillon +was staring straight at this spot where I was invisible in the dark. And +he looked old--and rigid, as though he'd been staring like that for some +time. I caught just a glimpse. Then he heard her step and turned hastily +back to his work. I looked at my watch. It was after twelve. + +"And he never knew it was all about him," I said to myself disgustedly. +"I hope this doesn't spoil it all." + + * * * * * + +But that is precisely what it did. The next morning she was coolly +polite and Dillon determinedly genial. I could feel a silent struggle +between them as to what should be done with me. She wanted to get rid of +me, he wanted to keep us together. Gone was all his quiet strength, in +its place was an anxious friendliness. He made me tell him what I was +writing. He said he was glad that his press agent daughter had taken me +'round and opened my eyes. And as soon as she got through with me he +himself would do all he could. + +"I'm through with him," said Eleanore cheerfully. "I've shown him all I +possibly can. What you need now," she added, turning to me in her old +easy manner, "is to watch the harbor all by yourself and get your own +feelings about it. You might begin at the North River docks." + +I spent a wretched afternoon. All my plans for my work and my life +assumed the most gray and desolate hues. Eleanore was taking a nap. At +last she came down and gave me some tea. + +"May I come out and see you now and then?" I asked her very humbly. "It +would help me so much to talk over my work." + +"No," she answered kindly, "I think you'd better not." + +"Why not?" I blurted. "What have I done?" + +She hesitated, then looked at me squarely. + +"You've made my absurd young father," she said, "think that he is no +longer young." + +I lost just a moment in admiration. There wasn't one girl in a hundred +who would have come out with it like that. Then I seized my chance. + +"Why, it's perfectly idiotic," I cried. "Here's a man so big he's a +giant beside me, so full of some queer magnetic force that on the way up +here in the boat he made me forget that I was there. I forgot that _you_ +were there," I threw in, and I caught just the sign of a gleam in her +eyes. "No longer young?" I continued. "That man will be young when you +and I are blinking in our dull old age! He's the biggest man I ever met! +And I want to know him, I want to know how he thinks and feels, I want +that more than anything else! And now you come between us!" + +"Are you real?" asked Eleanore. I looked back unflinchingly. + +"Just you try me," I retorted. + +"No," she replied with a quiet smile. + +She said good-by to me that night. + + * * * * * + +The next morning at seven o'clock I met her father down at the boat. We +had a quick swim together and then climbed on board. And the next +minute, with a sober old seaman called "Captain Arty" at the wheel, the +boat was speeding for New York while we dressed and cooked and +breakfasted. + +"This was Eleanore's idea," Dillon said. "It gets me to town by nine +o'clock and takes me back each day at five. So I hardly miss a night at +home.... Did she ever tell you," he went on, "about the first week she +spent in this boat?" + +"She said it was a wonderful time." + +"It was a nightmare," Dillon said. I looked at him quickly: + +"What do you mean?" + +"Her fight for her strength. She looked like a ghost--with a stiff upper +lip. She fainted twice. But she wouldn't give up. She said she knew she +could do it if I'd only let her stick it out. She has quite a will, that +daughter of mine," he added quietly. + +"You know," he went on, "that idea of hers that you tackle the North +River piers isn't bad. Why don't you put in the whole Summer there, +watching the big liners? I won't ask you to come to my office now, for +our work is still in that early stage where we don't want any +publicity." I could feel his casual glance, and I wondered whether he +noticed my sharp disappointment. "When we are ready," he resumed, "we're +sure to be flooded with writers. I hope there'll be one man in the lot +who'll stick to the work for a year or more, a man with a kind of a +passion in him for the thing we're trying to do. There's nothing we +wouldn't do for that man. I hope he's going to be you." + +At once a vision opened of work with Eleanore's father, of long talks +with Eleanore. + +"I'll try to get ready for it," I said. + +"You've made a fine start," he continued, "and I think you're going to +make good. But first let's see what you'll do by yourself. Get your own +view of this place as it is to-day before we talk about plans for +to-morrow. And don't hurry. Take your time." + +As he said this quietly, I suddenly awoke to the fact that we were +tearing down the river at a perfectly gorgeous speed. The river was +crowding with traffic ahead, all was a rushing chaos of life and we were +rushing worst of all. And yet we did not seem to hurry. Old Captain Arty +sat at the wheel with the most resigned patient look in his eyes. And +drawing lazily on his cigar Dillon was watching a new line of wharves. + +"You know I've found," he was saying, "the only way to live in this age +and get any pleasure out of life is to always take more time than you +need for every job you tackle. I'm taking at least seven years to this +job. I might possibly do it as well in five, but I'd miss half the fun +of it all, I'd be glaring at separate parts of it, each one as it came +along, and I'd never have time to see it full size and let it carry me +'round the world--to that baby carriage, for instance, over in Lahore." + +We were rounding the Battery now. And in that sparkling morning light, +with billowy waves of sea green all around us, sudden snowy clouds of +spray, we watched for a moment the skyscraper group, the homes of the +Big Companies. The sunshine was reflected from thousands of dazzling +window eyes, little streamers of steam were flung out gaily overhead, +streets suddenly opened to our view, narrow cuts revealing the depths +below. And there came to our ears a deep humming. + +"That's the brains of it all," said Dillon. "In all you'll see while +exploring the wharves you'll find some string that leads back here. And +you don't want to let that worry you. Let the muckrakers worry and plan +all they please for a sea-gate and a nation that's to run with its +brains removed. You want to remember it can't be done. You want to look +harder and harder--until you find out for yourself that there are men up +there on Wall Street without whose brains no big thing can be done in +this country. I'm working under their orders and some day I hope you'll +be doing the same. For they don't need _less_ publicity but _more_." + +He left me at the Battery, and as I stood looking after him I found +myself feeling somewhat dazed. A question flashed into my mind. What +would Joe Kramer say to this? I remembered what he had said to me once: +"Tell Wall Street to get off the roof." Well, that was _his_ view. Here +was another. And this man was certainly just as sincere and decidedly +more wise and sane, altogether a larger size. + +Besides, I was in love with his daughter. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +On the Manhattan side of the North River, from Twenty-third Street down +for a mile there stretches a deafening region of cobblestones and +asphalt over which trucks by thousands go clattering each day. There are +long lines of freight cars here and snorting locomotives. Along the +shore side are many saloons, a few cheap decent little hotels and some +that are far from decent. And along the water side is a solid line of +docksheds. Their front is one unbroken wall of sheet iron and concrete. + +I came up against this wall. Over the top I could see here and there the +great round funnels of the ships, but at every passenger doorway and at +every wide freight entrance I found a sign, "No Visitors Admitted," and +under the sign a watchman who would ungraciously take a cigar and then +go right on being a watchman. There seemed no way to get inside. The +old-fashioned mystery of the sea was replaced by the inscrutability of +what some muckrakers called "The Pool." + +"Don't hurry," Eleanore's father had said. All very well, but I needed +money. While I had been making with Eleanore those long and delightful +explorations of the harbor and ourselves, at home my father's bank +account had been steadily dwindling, and all that I had been able to +make had gone into expenses. + +"I don't know what to do," said Sue, alone with me that evening. "The +butcher says he won't wait any longer. He has simply got to be paid this +week." + +"I'll see what I can do," I said. + +I came back to my new hunting ground and all night long I prowled +about. I sipped large schooners of beer at bars, listening to the burly +dockers crowded close around me. I watched the waterfront, empty and +still, with acres of spectral wagons and trucks and here and there a +lantern. I had a long talk with a broken old bum who lay on his back in +an empty truck looking up at the stars and spun me yarns of his life as +a cook on ships all up and down the world. Now and again in the small +wee hours I met hurrying groups of men, women and children poorly clad, +and following them to one of the piers I heard the sleepy watchman +growl, "Steerage passengers over there." I saw the dawn break slowly and +everything around me grow bluish and unreal. I watched the teamsters +come tramping along leading horses, and harness them to the trucks. I +heard the first clatter of the day. I saw the figures of dockers appear, +more and more, I saw some of them drift to the docks. Soon there were +crowds of thousands, and as stevedores there began bawling out names, +gang after gang of men stepped forward, until at last the chosen throngs +went marching in past the timekeepers. Hungrily I peered after them up +the long cavernous docksheds. "No Visitors Admitted." + +Then I went into a lunchroom for ham and eggs and a huge cup of coffee. +I ate an enormous breakfast. On the floor beside me a cross and weary +looking old woman was scrubbing the dirty oil cloth there. But I myself +felt no weariness. While all was still vivid and fresh in my mind, +sitting there I wrote down what I had seen. A magazine editor said it +would do. And so we paid the butcher. + +The same editor gave me a sweeping letter of introduction to all ocean +liners. This I showed to a dock watchman, who directed me upstairs. In +the office above I showed it to a clerk, who directed me to the dock +superintendent, who read it and told me to go downtown. I recalled what +Dillon had said about strings. Here was string number one, I reflected, +and I followed it down Manhattan into the tall buildings, only to be +asked down there just what it was I wanted to know. + +"I don't want to know anything," I replied. "I just want permission to +watch the work." + +"We can't allow that," was the answer of this harbor of big companies. + +At every pier that I approached I received about the same reply. At home +Sue spoke of other bills. And now that I was in trouble, hard pressed +for money and groping my way about alone, I found myself missing +Eleanore to a most desperate degree. Her face, her smiling blue-gray +eyes, kept rising in my mind, sometimes with memories and hopes that +permeated my whole view both of the harbor and my work with a warm glad +expectant glow, but more often with no feeling at all but one of +sickening emptiness. She was not here. The only way to get back to her +was to make good with her father. And so I would not ask his aid or even +go to him for advice. Testing me, was he? All right, I would show him. + +And I returned to my editor, whom my intensity rather amused. + +"The joke of it is," he said, "that they think down there you're a +muckraker." + +"I'll be one soon if this keeps on." + +"But it won't," he replied. "As soon as you've once broken in, and they +see it's a glory story you want, you can't imagine how nice they'll be." + +"I haven't broken in," I said. + +"You will to-morrow," he told me, "because Abner Bell will be with you. +He's our star photographer. Wait till you see little Ab go to work. The +place he can't get into hasn't been invented. Besides," the editor +added, "Abner is just the sort of chap to take hold of an author from +Paris and turn him into a writer." + +And this Abner Bell proceeded to do. He was a cheerful, rotund little +man with round simple eyes and a smile that went all over his face. + +"You see," he said, when I met him the next day down at the docks, "you +can't ask a harbor to hold up her chin and look into your camera while +you count. She's such a big fat noisy slob she wouldn't even hear you. +You've got to run right at her and bark." + +"Look here, old man," he was asking a watchman a few moments later. +"What's the name of the superintendent on the next pier down the line!" + +"Captain Townes." + +"Townes, Townes? Is that Bill Townes?" + +"No, it's Ed." + +"I wonder what's become of Bill. All right, brother, much obliged. See +you again." And he went on. + +"Say," he asked the next watchman. "Is Eddy--I mean Captain--Townes +upstairs?" + +"Sure he is. Go right up." + +"Thank you." Up we went to the office. "Captain Townes? Good-morning." + +"Well, sir, what can I do for you?" The captain was an Englishman with a +voice as heavy and deep as his eyes. + +"Why, Captain, I'm sent here by the firm that's putting Peevey's Paris +Perfume on the market out in the Middle West. They're going in heavy on +ads this Fall and I've got an order to hang around here until I can get +a photo of one of your biggest liners. The idea is to run it as an ad, +with a caption under it something like this: '_The Kaiser Wilhelm_ +reaching New York with twenty thousand bottles of Peevey's Best, direct +from Paris.'" + +"_The Kaiser Wilhelm_," said the captain ponderously, "is a German boat. +She docks in Hoboken, my friend." + +"Of course she does," said Abner. "And I can lug this heavy camera way +over there if you say so, and hand ten thousand dollars worth of free +ads to a German line, stick up pictures of their boat in little +drugstore windows all up and down the Middle West. Do you know how to +tell me to go away?" + +Captain Townes smiled heavily. + +"No," he said, "I guess I don't. Here's a pass that'll give you the run +of the dock." + +"Make it two," said Abner, "and fix it so my friend and I can stick +around for quite a while." + +"You're a pretty good liar," I told him as we went downstairs. + +"Oh, hell," he answered modestly. "Let's go out on the porch and get +cool." + +We went out on the open end of the pier and sat down on a wooden beam +which Abner called a bulkhead. + +"If we don't begin calling things names," he remarked, "we'll never get +to feeling we're here. Let's just sit and feel for a while." + +"I've begun," I replied. + +We sat in the shade of two wooden piles with the glare of a midsummer +sun all around us. The East River had been like a crowded creek compared +to this wide expanse of water slapping and gleaming out there in the sun +with smoke shadows chasing over it all. There was the rough odor of +smoke in the air from craft of all kinds as they skurried about. The +high black bow of a Cunarder loomed at the end of the dock next ours. +Far across the river the stout German liners lay at their berths--and +they did not look like sea hogs. What a change had come over the harbor +since I had met that motorboat. How all the hogs had waddled away, and +the very smoke and the oil on the waves had taken on deep, vivid +hues--as I had seen through Eleanore's eyes. "What a strange wonderful +purple," her low voice seemed to murmur at my side. + +"She's going away from here," said Ab. I started: + +"Who is?" + +"That Cunarder. Look at the smoke pour out of her stacks. Got a +cigarette about you?" + +"No," I answered gruffly. + +"Damn." + +In the slip on our other side a large freight boat was loading, and a +herd of scows and barges were pressing close around her. These clumsy +craft had cabins, and in some whole families lived. "Harbor Gypsies." A +good title. I had paid the butcher, but the grocer was still waiting. So +I dismissed my motorboat and grimly turned to scows instead. Children by +the dozen were making friends from barge to barge. Dogs were all about +us and they too were busy visiting. High up on the roof of a coal +lighter's cabin an impudent little skye-terrier kept barking at the +sooty men who were shoveling down below. One of these from time to time +would lift his black face and good-humoredly call, "Oh, you go to +hell"--which would drive the small dog into frenzies. Most of the barges +had derrick masts, and all these masts were moving. They rose between me +and the sky, bobbing, tossing and criss-crossing, filling the place with +the feeling of life, the unending, restless life of the sea. + +An ear-shattering roar broke in on it all. Our Cunarder was starting. +Smoke belching black from her funnels, the monster was beginning to +move. + +But what was this woman doing close by us? Out of the cabin of a barge +she had dragged a little rocking chair, and now she had brought out a +baby, all dressed up in its Sunday best, and was rocking expectantly, +watching the ship. Thundering to the harbor, the Cunarder now moved +slowly out. As she swept into the river the end of the pier was revealed +to our eyes all black with people waving. They waved until she was out +in midstream. Then, as they began to turn away, one plump +motherly-looking woman happened to glance toward us. + +"Why, the cute little baby," we heard her exclaim. And the next minute +hundreds of people were looking. The barge mother rocked serenely. + +Abner grabbed his camera and jumped nimbly down on the barge, where he +took the baby's picture, with the amused crowd for a background. + +"The kid's name," he remarked on his return, "is Violetta Rosy. She was +born at two a. m. at Pier Forty-nine." He was silent for a moment and +then went on sententiously, "Think what it'll mean to her, through all +the storm and stress of life, to be able to look fondly back upon the +dear old homestead. There's a punch to Violetta. Better run her in." + +"I will," I said. + +"And that little thing of mine," he queried modestly, "about the dear +old homestead." + +"I've got it," I replied. + +"I hand quite a few little things to writers," Ab continued cheerfully. +"If you'll just give me some idea of what it is you're looking for----" + +"I'm looking for the punch," I answered promptly. + +"Then we'll get on fine," he said. "The editor got me worried some. He +said you'd trained in Paris." + +"Oh, that was only a starter," I told him. + +Presently he went into the dockshed on his unending quest of "the +punch." And left to myself I got thinking. What did Paris know about us? +De Maupassant's methods wouldn't do here. I noticed two painters in +overalls at work on that large freighter. With long brooms that they +held in both hands they were slapping a band of crude yellow paint along +her scarred and rusted side. That was what I needed, the broom! All at +once the harbor took hold of me hard. And exulting in its bigness, the +bold raw splattering bigness of my native Yankee land, "Now for some +glory stories," I said. + +I went into the dockshed, and there I stayed right through until night, +till my mind was limp and battered from the rush of new impressions. For +in this long sea station, under the blue arc-lights, in boxes, barrels, +crates and bags, tumbling, banging, crashing, came the products of this +modern land. You could feel the pulse of a continent here. From the +factories, the mines and mills, the prairies and the forests, the +plantations and the vineyards, there flowed a mighty tide of +things--endlessly, both day and night--you could shut your eyes and see +the long brown lines of cars crawl eastward from all over the land, you +could see the stuff converging here to be gathered into coarse rope nets +and swept up to the liners. The pulse beat fast and furious. In gangs at +every hatchway you saw men heaving, sweating, you heard them swearing, +panting. That day they worked straight through the night. For the pulse +kept beating, beating, and the ship must sail on time! + +And now I too worked day and night. In the weeks that followed, Abner +Bell came and went many times, but for me it was my entire life. Though +small of build I was tough and hard, I had not been sick for a day in +years, and now I easily stood the strain. Day by day my story grew, my +glory story of world trade. Watching, questioning, listening here, +making notes, writing hasty sketches to help keep us going at +home--slowly I could feel this place yielding up its inner self, its +punch and bigness, endless rush, its feeling of a nation young and +piling up prodigious wealth. From the customhouse came fabulous tales of +millionaires ransacking the world. Rare old furniture, rugs and +tapestries, paintings, jewels, gorgeous gowns poured in a dazzling +torrent all that summer through the docks. One day on a Mediterranean +ship, in their immaculate "stalls de luxe," came two black Arab horses, +glistening, quivering creatures, valued by the customhouse at twenty +thousand dollars each. And into the same ship that week, as though in +payment for these two, in dust and heavy smell of sweat I saw a thousand +cattle driven, bellowing and lowing. + +I exulted in these symptoms of our crude and lusty youth. I watched my +countrymen going abroad. Not only through the Summer but straight on +into the Fall they came by tens of thousands out of the West, people who +had made some money and were going to blow it in, to buy things and to +see things, to learn things and to eat things. One day at noon, on the +end of a dock, when the ship was already far out in midstream and all +the crashing music and cheers had died away, a meek old lady wiped her +eyes and murmured very tearfully, "I suppose they'll be eating their +luncheon soon." And then the loud voice of her daughter replied: + +"Eat? Why, ma, God bless their hearts, they'll sit on that boat and eat +all day!" + +And I echoed her wish with a keen delight. God bless their hearts and +stomachs. Oh, hungry vigorous Yankee land, so mightily young--eat on, +eat on! + +And the land ate on. + + * * * * * + +My work here rose to a climax a week or two before Christmas, when the +newest liner of them all pulled off a new world's record for speed. With +the company's publicity man, who had become a friend of mine, I went on +the health officer's tug down the Bay to meet her, on the coldest, +darkest night I've ever known on water. Shortly after nine o'clock the +big boat's light gleamed off the Hook and she bore down upon us. She +came close, slowed down and towered by our side, weird as a ghost with +snow and ice in glimmering sheets on her steel sides. She did not stop. +We caught a rope ladder and scrambled up, and at once we felt her +speeding on. + +And she was indeed a story that night. Bellowing hoarsely now in warning +to all small craft to get out of her way, she was rushing into the +harbor. Suddenly she slowed again, and three dark mail tugs ranged +alongside, and through canvas chutes four thousand sacks of Christmas +mail began to pour down while the ship moved on. Up her other side came +climbing gangs of men who began to make ready her winches and open up +her hatches. Now we were moving in close to the pier, with a whole fleet +of tugs around us. Faint shouts rose in the zero night, toots and sharp +whistles. One of the gang-planks was down at last and two hundred +dockers came up on the run. Off went the passengers and the luggage, +reporters skurrying through the crowds. But the ship did not rest. For +she was to sail again the next night. This was to be a world's record +for speed! + +All night long the work went on, and I watched it from a deck above, +going in now and then for food and hot drinks. On her dock side, +forward, Christmas boxes, bales and packages were being whipped up out +of her hold to the rattle of her winches. One sharp whistle and up they +shot into the air till they swung some seventy feet above. Another +whistle and down they whirled into the dockshed far below from which a +blaze of light poured up. At the same time she was coaling. Along the +black wall of her other side, as I peered over the rail above, I saw far +below a row of barges crowded with Italians. Powerful lights swung over +their heads in the freezing wind, swung above black coal heaps and the +lapping water. It was an inferno of shifting lights and long leaping +shadows. + +I watched till daylight blotted out the yellow glare of the lanterns. +Then I went home to get some sleep. And late that night when I came back +I found her almost ready to sail. + +Out of taxis and automobiles chugging down in front of the pier, the +passengers were pouring in. Many were in evening clothes, some just come +from dinners and others from box parties. The theaters had just let out. +The rich warm hues of the women's cloaks, the gay head dresses here and +there and the sparkling earrings, immaculate gloves and dainty wanton +slippered feet, kept giving flashes of color to this dark freezing ocean +place. Most of these people went hurrying up into the warm, gorgeous +cafe of the ship, which was run from a hotel in Paris. What had all this +to do with the sea? + +"Come on," said the genial press agent. "You're the company's +guest-to-night." + +And while we ate and drank and smoked, and the tables around us filled +with people whose ripples and bursts of laughter rose over the +orchestra's festive throb, and corks kept popping everywhere, he told me +where they were going, these gay revellers, for their Christmas Day--to +London, Brussels, Berlin and Vienna, Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo, Algiers. + +"Now come with me," he said at last, and he took me along warm +passageways to the row of cabins de luxe. + +First we looked into the Bridal Suite, to which one of the Pittsburgh +makers of steel, having just divorced a homely old wife, was presently +to bring his new bride, a ravishing young creature of musical comedy +fame. They had been married that afternoon. A French maid was unpacking +dainty shimmering little gowns, soft furry things and other things of +silk and lace, and hanging them up in closets. It was a large room, and +there were other rooms adjoining and two big luxurious baths. The cost +of it all was four thousand dollars for the five days. There were tall +mirrors and dressing tables, there were capacious easy chairs. Low +subdued lights were here and there, and a thick rug was on the floor. +Over in one corner was a huge double bed of cream colored wood with rich +soft quilts upon it. Beside the bed in a pink satin cradle there lay a +tiny Pekinese dog. + +"Next," he whispered. We peeped into the next stateroom, and there +divided from her neighbors by only one thin partition, a sober, wrinkled +little old lady in black velvet sat quietly reading her Bible. Soon she +would be saying her prayers. + +"Next," he whispered. And in the cabin on her other side we caught a +glimpse of two jovial men playing cards in gay pajamas with a bottle of +Scotch between them. + +"Next." And as we went on down the row he gave me the names of an +English earl, a Jewish clothing merchant, a Minnesota ranchman, a +banker's widow from Boston, a Tammany politician, a Catholic bishop from +Baltimore, a millionaire cheese maker from Troy and a mining king from +Montana. + +"How about that," he asked at the end, "for an American row de luxe?" + +"My God, it's great," I whispered. + +"There's only one big question here," he added. "Your long respectable +pedigrees and your nice little Puritanical codes can all go to +blazes--this big boat will throw 'em all overboard for you--if you can +answer, 'I've got the price.'" + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +Meanwhile, in the late Autumn, Eleanore had come back to town. I had a +note from her one day. + +"Come and tell me what you are writing," she said. + +I went to see her that afternoon, and I was deeply excited. I had often +felt her by my side when I was watching the harbor life and as often +behind me while I wrote. We had had long talks together, absorbing talks +about ourselves. And though now in her easy welcome and through all her +cheerful questions there was not a suggestion that we two had been or +ever would be anything but genial friends, this did not discourage me in +the least. No fellow, I thought, could be happy as I and have nothing +better than friendship ahead. The Fates could never be so hard, for +certainly now they were smiling. + +Here was her apartment, just the place I had felt it would be, only +infinitely more attractive. High up above the Manhattan jungle, it was +quiet and sunny and charming here. From the low, wide living-room +windows you could see miles out over the harbor where my work was going +so splendidly, and all around the room itself I saw what I was working +for. Eleanore's touch was everywhere. An intimate, lovable feminine home +with man-sized views from its windows--just like Eleanore herself, from +whom I found it difficult to keep my hungry eyes away. To that soft +bewildering hair of hers she had done something different--I couldn't +tell what, but I loved it. I loved the changing tones of her voice--I +hate monotonous voices. I watched the smiling lights in her eyes. She +was at her small tea table now. Her motorboat, thank Heaven, was laid +up for the winter, and I had her right here in a room, with nothing to +do with her eyes but pay a decent amount of attention to me. Then by +some chance remark I learned that she had been reading what I wrote, +almost all of it, in fact. And at the slight exclamation I made I saw +her color slightly and bite her lip as though she were angry with +herself for having let that secret out. + +"What do you want to write," she asked, "when you get through with the +harbor?" + +"Fiction," I said. "I want it so hard sometimes that it seems like a +long way ahead. It seems sometimes," I added, "like a girl I'd fallen in +love with--but I couldn't even ask her--because I'm so infernally +poor." + +Over the tea cup at her lips Eleanore looked thoughtfully straight into +and through and behind my eyes. + +"Fiction is such a broad field," she remarked. "What kind do you think +you're going to try?" + +"I don't know," I answered. "It still seems so far ahead. You see, I +have no name at all, and this harbor at least is a good safe start. I'm +afraid I'm rather a cautious sort. When I find what I want--and want so +hard that it's the deepest part of me--I like to go slow. I'm afraid to +risk losing it all--deciding my life one way or the other--by taking a +chance." I made a restless movement. "I wasn't speaking of my work just +then," I added gruffly. + +I suddenly caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror back of Eleanore's +chair. And I glared at myself for the fool that I was to have said all +that. I hadn't meant to--not in the least! What a paltry looking cuss I +was--small, tough and wiry, hair sandy, eyes of no color at all, snub +nose and a jaw shut tight as in pain. + +"You're a queer person," said a voice. + +"I am," I agreed forlornly. "I'm the queerest fellow I ever met." I +caught a grim twinkle in my eyes. Thank God for a sense of humor. + +"Sometimes," she went on, reflectively, "you seem to me as old as the +hills--and again so young and obvious. I'm so sorry to hear you say that +you weren't talking of your work. I like to hear men talk of their +work." + +"I know you do," I said hungrily. "And that's one of the reasons why +you're going to mean so much some day--to somebody's work--and to his +whole life." + +Why couldn't I stop? Had I gone insane? I rose and moved about the room. +A low rippling laugh brought me back to my senses. + +"But how about _me_ and _my_ life?" she asked. "That ought to be thought +of a little, you know." + +I came close beside her: + +"Let me say this. Won't you? I'll promise never to say it again. Your +life is going to be all right. It's going to be quite wonderful--you'll +be tremendously happy. I'm sure of that. It's not only the way you +always--look--it's the way you always think and feel. It's everything +about you." + +She had looked down at her hands for a moment. Now she looked up +suddenly. + +"Thank you," she said smiling, in a way that told me to smile too. I +obeyed. + +"I did that rather badly, didn't I," I said. + +"No, you did that rather well. Especially the first part--I think I +liked that best of all--the part where you promised so solemnly that +you'd never do it again." + +I went indignantly back to my chair. + +"Do you know," I said, "I feel sometimes when I'm with you as though I +were being managed! Absolutely managed!" + +"I should think you wouldn't like that," she replied. Her hands were +peacefully folded now and she looked at me serenely: "I should think +you'd rather manage yourself." + +I took the hint. From, that day on, each time I came to see her, I +managed myself severely. And this apparently pleased her so much that +she seemed no longer the least afraid to let me know her as well as I +liked. Her father, too, when I met him now and then in the evenings, was +most kindly in his welcome. And as winter wore on, my hopes rose high. + +But one evening, after Dillon had read my story about the Christmas +Boat, he gave me a bitter disappointment. + +"I like it," he said, as he handed it back. "It's a fine dramatic piece +of work. But it's only a starter here. To get any idea of our problem +you'll have to go all over the harbor. When you've done that for a few +months more, and I get back from my trip abroad, I'll be glad to help +you." + +"You're going abroad?" I asked abruptly. + +"Next month," he said, "with Eleanore. She seems to think I need a +rest." + +Back came the old feeling of emptiness. And gloomily at home that night +I wondered if it was because she knew she was leaving so soon that she +had been so intimate lately. How outrageous women are. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +They sailed the middle of March. + +It is easy to look back now and smile at my small desolate self as I was +in the months that followed. But at the time it was no smiling matter. I +was intensely wretched and I had a right to be, for I could see nothing +whatever ahead but the most dire uncertainties. Did Eleanore really care +for me? I didn't know. When could I ask her? I didn't know. For when +would I be earning enough to ask any girl to marry me? At present nearly +all I earned was swallowed up by expenses at home, and I knew that in +all likelihood this drain would soon grow heavier. + +For we could not count much longer on my father's salary. Already I had +done my best to make him give up his position. He stubbornly resisted. + +"I'm strong as I ever was," he declared, and he took great pains to +prove it. He would sit down to dinner, his face heavy and gray with +fatigue, but by a hard visible effort slowly he would throw it off, +keenly questioning me about my work, more often quizzing me about it, or +Sue about her "revolooters." He had a stock of these dry remarks and he +used them over and over. When the same jokes came night after night we +knew he was very tired. After dinner on such evenings, when I went with +him into his study to smoke, he would invariably settle back in his +chair with the same loud "Ah!" of comfort, and he would follow this up +as he lit his cigar with the most obvious grunts expressive of health to +prove to me how strong he was. He was always grimly delighted when I +spent these evenings with him, but always before his cigar was out his +head would sink slowly over his book and soon he would be sound asleep. +Then as I sat at my writing I would glance over from time to time. I +could tell when he was waking, and at once I would grow absorbed in my +work. Soon I would hear a slight snort of surprise, I would hear him +stealthily feel for his book, and then presently out of the silence---- + +"This is a devilish good piece of writing, boy," he would announce +abruptly. "When _you_ learn to hold your reader like this I'll begin to +think you're a writer." + +Yes, my father was aging fast, I would soon be the only breadwinner +here. Sue fought hard against this idea, she was still set on finding +work for herself, but each time she proposed it Dad would rise so +indignantly, with such evident pain in his glaring old eyes, that she +would be forced to give up her plan. In such talks I supported him, and +in return when we two were alone Sue would revenge herself on me by the +most cutting comments on "this inane habit of looking at girls as fit +for nothing better than marriage." + +These comments, I was well aware, were aimed at my feeling for Eleanore, +for whom Sue had no longer any good word but only a smiling derision. +Her remarks were straight out of Bernard Shaw's most ribald works, and +they left me miserably wondering whether any man had ever loved in any +way that wasn't the curse or the joke of his life. Sue dwelt on this +glorious age of deep radical changes going on, she spoke of Joe Kramer, +with whom she still corresponded, and enlarged on the wonderful freedom +he had to go anywhere at any time. Thank a merciful heaven _he_ wasn't +tied down! And if Joe would only keep his head and not marry, not get a +huge family on his hands---- + +Sue made me perfectly wretched. + + * * * * * + +In this frame of mind I again tackled the harbor. Dillon had told me to +cover it all, and this I now set out to do. On warm muggy April days I +tramped what appeared to me hundreds of miles. But the regions that from +Eleanore's boat had somehow had a feeling of being one great living +thing, now on these dreary trudging days fell apart into remote bays and +slips and rivers, hours of weary travel apart and each without any +connection with any other that I could see. Railroad tracks wound in and +out with no apparent purpose, dirty freight boats crawled helter-skelter +this way and that. All seemed a meaningless chaos and jam. + +And still worse, as I wrestled with this confusion I found it was +growing stale to me. In those Spring days I was fagged and dull, my +imagination would not work. And this gave me a scare. I must _not_ grow +stale, I must keep right on making money to meet the bills that were +still piling up at home. And so for a Sunday paper I undertook a series +on "The Harbor from a Police Boat." This sounded rather exciting and I +hoped that it might restore the lost thrill. The harbor that it showed +me made fine Sunday reading. Out of its grim waters dead bodies bobbed, +dead faces leered, the sodden ends of mysteries. I wrote them and got +paid for them. And I felt no thrill but only disgust. I made some more +money out of rats--rats in countless ravenous hordes that had a harbor +world of their own. This world extended for hundreds of miles in the +dark chill places under the wharves. And the rats kept gnawing, gnawing, +and slowly with the help of the waves they wore away to splinters and +pulp the millions of beams and planks and piles. I found that entire +mountains were denuded each year of their forests to supply food for the +rats and the ocean here. I was almost a muckraker now. + +Meanwhile I had gone in June to the South Brooklyn waterfront and had +taken a room in a tenement near the end of a dock peninsula which jutted +out into the bay. For I wanted to live in the very heart of the big +port's confusion, to grapple alone with the chaos out of which Dillon's +engineers were striving to bring order. Here I lived for weeks by +myself, taking my meals in a barroom below. + +There were no stately liners here. The North River piers with their rich +life had been like a show room. I had come down into the factory now. I +could see them still, those liners, but only in the distance steaming +through the Narrows. Eleanore had gone that way. Here close around me +were grimy yards with heaps of coal, enormous sheds, and inland one of +the two narrow mouths of the crowded Erie Basin, out of which slid ugly +freighters through the dirty water. + +Like the Ancient Mariner I sat there dully on the pier watching the life +of the ocean go past, and I would try to jot it down. But soon I would +stop. "All right--who cares?" The punch was gone. It grew hot and the +water smelt. And I was as blue a reporter of life as ever chewed his +pencil. + +But life has a way of punching up even a stale young writer. In the +rooms above mine lived a man and wife who quarreled half way through the +night. Night after night they railed at each other, until one horrible +night of screams, in the middle of which I heard the man come running +downstairs. He banged at my door. + +"Come in," I cried morosely. A big figure entered the dark room. + +"Look here," said a rough frightened voice. "Get up and get dressed and +run for a doctor. Will you, son? I'm in a hell of a hole!" + +"What's the matter!" + +"My woman is havin' a baby, that's what," he answered fiercely. "We +wasn't expectin' it so soon! An' there ain't a single doctor in miles! +But there's a night watchman with a 'phone down there in the dockshed!" + +"All right, old man, I'll do my best." + +"Say!" he shouted after me, as I hurried down the stairs. "If you know a +damn thing about this business come back here the minute you've +'phoned! I'm in a hole, brother, a hell of a hole!" + +I came back soon, and within a few minutes after I came I saw a baby +born. + +I did not sleep that night. My mind was curiously clear. I had had the +jolt that I needed from life--its agony and bloody sweat, its mystery. +It was not dull, it was not stale. The only trouble lay in me. I must +find a new angle from which to write. + +Why not try becoming one of the workers? The man upstairs was a tug +captain, and grateful to me for what help I had given; he now agreed to +take me on his tug, where there was plenty of simple work which I did +for a dollar a day and my board. And at once I felt a difference. The +light work steadied my overwrought nerves and unlocked my mind which had +set tight. And now at last I began to see my way out of the jungle. + +For the tug belonged to a row of piers about a mile to the southward. +Brand new gigantic piers they were, with solid rows of factory buildings +on the shore behind them, all owned by one great company, which rented +floors or parts of floors to hundreds of manufacturers here. The raw +materials they required were landed from barges or ships at the piers +and delivered to their doors at once, and their finished products were +conveyed in the same way to all parts of the world. Here was a key to +the future port of ordered combination that Eleanore's father was +working toward. Here was the place I must write up before he came back +from abroad, to show him that I had found it. + +And the very certainty of this increased my exasperation. For even still +I could not write. Doggedly I worked at night up there in my room in the +tenement, but I wrote the most tedious dismal stuff which I would tear +up savagely. Inanely I would pound my head as though to put punch into +it. + +But another miracle happened to me. + +On one of those enormous piers, roofed over, dim and cool inside, I +stood one day looking out on the deck of an East Indian freighter, where +two half-naked Malays were polishing the brasswork. One of them was a +boy of ten. His small face was uncouth and primitive almost as some +little ape's, but I saw him look up again and again with a sudden +gleaming expectancy. I grew curious and waited. Now the looks came +oftener, his every move was restless. And after a time another boy, a +little New York "newsie," with a pack of evening papers, came loitering +along the pier. Unconcernedly up the gang-plank he went, while the Malay +crouched in his corner, rigid and tense, his black eyes fixed. The white +boy took no notice. Climbing up a ladder he sold a couple of papers to +some officers on a deck above, and then he went down again to the dock. +Presently one of the officers yawned and threw his paper over the rail, +and as it fell to the lower deck in an instant the Malay boy was upon +it, devouring its headlines and its pictures with his animal eyes, with +one of his small bare brown feet upon the jeweled bosom of the latest +Fifth Avenue divorcee. + +"Where does that kid sleep?" I asked an officer. I was shown his bunk +below, and there I found I had guessed right. For the side and the top +and both ends of his bunk were lined with red headlines and newspaper +pictures all carefully cut and pasted on. Five of the New York "Giants" +were there. + +And as though the fresh fierce hungriness had passed from that small +heathen's soul into my own, that day I again became a reporter of things +to be seen in the port of New York. + +Back into the dockshed I went, and all up and down and in and out among +piles of strange and odorous stuffs. And once more I felt the wonder of +this modern ocean world. I followed this raw produce of Mother Earth's +four corners back into those factory buildings ashore. I saw it made +into chewing-gum, toys, sofas, glue, curled hair and wall-paper. I saw +it made into ladles' hats, corks, carpets, dynamos, stuffed dates. I saw +it made into dirt-proof collars and shirt bosoms, salad dressing, +blackboards, corsets and the like. Again I fairly reveled in lists of +things and the places they came from and the places to which they were +going. I saw chewing-gum start for Rio and Quaker Oats for Shanghai, +patent medicine for Nabat, curled hair for Yokohama, "movy" theater +seats for Sydney, tomato soup for Cape Town and corsets for Rangoon. + +"From Everywhere to Anywhere" was the title of my article. It took only +a week to write, and was ready when the Dillons came home. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +They landed toward the end of July and I went to the dock to meet them. + +Elated over my finished story, which I had in my pocket, and made +absurdly happy by the sight of Eleanore smiling down at me over the +rail, I was surprised at the greeting she gave me. + +"Why, you poor boy. How terribly hard you've been working," she said. +And she looked at me as though I were sick and worn to the bone. The end +of it was that I accepted delightedly an invitation to spend a week up +at their cottage on the Sound. + +Those were seven vivid glowing days. I could not relax, I was too +intensely happy, I had too much to tell her, not only about my work but +about a host of other things that without rhyme or reason popped into my +mind and had to be said. The range of our talk was tremendous, and the +wider we ranged the closer we drew. For she too was telling things, and +her things were as unexpected as mine and infinitely more absorbing. Her +manner toward me had quite changed. It was that of a nurse with an +invalid, she frankly ordered me about. + +"Why can't you lie back on those cushions?" she asked one morning when +we were out in her boat. "You ought to be dozing half the day--and +instead you're as wide awake as an owl." + +"I am," I admitted happily. "I'm trying to see everything." The chic +little hat and the blouse she wore were adorably fresh from Paris, and +as I watched her run her boat I could feel flowing into my body and soul +a perfectly boundless store of new life. + +"I've been thinking you over," she said. + +"Have you?" I asked delightedly. I had often wondered if she had. "What +do you think?" I inquired. + +Eleanore frowned perplexedly. + +"You're such a queer combination," she said. "You have such ridiculous +ups and downs. To-day you're way up, aren't you." + +"I am," I said very earnestly. She looked off placidly over the Sound. + +"You're so very sensitive," she went on. "You let things take hold of +you so hard. And yet on the other hand you seem to be so very----" she +hesitated for a word. + +"Tough," I suggested cheerfully. + +"No--hungry," Eleanore said. "You're always reaching out for things--you +jump right into them so hard. And even when they hurt you--and you're +hurt quite easily--you hang on and won't let go. Look at the way you've +gone at the harbor right from the start. And you're doing it +still--you've done it all summer until it has made you look like a +ghost. And I guess you'll keep on all your life. There are harbors +everywhere, you know--in a way the whole world is a harbor--and unless +you change a lot you're going to be hurt a good deal." + +"My mother agreed with you," I said. "She wanted me to be a professor in +a quiet college town." + +"Please stop twinkling your eyes," Eleanore commanded. "Your mother knew +you very well. You might have done that--and settled down--with some +nice quiet college girl--if you had done it years ago. As it is, of +course you're hopeless." + +"I am not hopeless," I declared indignantly. "If I can only get what I +want I'll be the happiest fellow alive!" + +"I know," she answered thoughtfully. "You told me that before. You want +fiction, don't you." + +"Yes, fiction," I said wrathfully. "I want that more than anything +else. But I don't want any quiet kind, and I don't want any quiet town," +I went on, leaning forward intensely. "I want the harbor and the city--I +want it thick and heavy, and just as fast as it will come. I want all +the life there is in the world--all the beauty--all the happiness! And I +can't wait--I want it soon!" + +From under the brim of her soft white hat her blue-gray eyes were fixed +intently on the shore, which was miles away. But watching her I saw she +knew that all the time I was saying desperately, "I want you." + +I knew she did not want me to say anything like that out loud, and I +felt myself that I had no right--not until I had done so much more in my +writing. But I kept circling around it. Half the time on purpose and as +often quite unconsciously, in all we talked about those days I kept +eagerly filling in the picture of the life we two might lead. When in +one of her cool hostile moods--moods which came over her suddenly--she +told me almost jealously how happy she'd been with her father abroad and +how together they had planned to go to India, China, Japan in the years +to come, I brought her back to my subject by saying: "I mean to travel a +lot myself." + +"That's one advantage I have as a writer," I continued earnestly. "I'll +never be tied down to one place. All my life--whenever I choose--I can +pick up my work and go anywhere." + +She looked straight back into my eyes. + +"I wish my father could," she said. + +"Look here," I said indignantly. "Your father has been four months +abroad while I have been in Brooklyn! Isn't it only fair and square to +let _me_ travel this afternoon?" She looked at me reluctantly. + +"Yes," she agreed. "I suppose it is." + +"Come along," I urged, and off we went. While our boat drifted idly that +long, lazy afternoon, we went careering all over the world and I kept +doggedly by her side. Every now and then I would make her stop while we +had a good look at each other, exploring deep into the old questions, +"What are you and what do you want?" + +"You can't run a motorboat all your life," I reminded her. "What are you +going to tackle next?" + +"Our living-room," she answered. "I'm going to have it done over next +month." + +That took us into house furnishings, and I gave her ideas by the score. +I had never thought about this before, but now I thought hard and +eagerly--until she brought me up with a jerk, by pityingly murmuring: + +"What perfectly frightful taste you have. It's funny--because you're an +artist--you really write quite beautiful things." + +"I don't care," I answered grimly. "I can see that living-room----" + +"So can I," she said cheerfully. "But so long as you like it, that's all +there is to be said. You're the one who has to live in it, you know. Now +my father likes a room----" + +And while I looked gloomily over the water she told me what her father +liked. + + * * * * * + +He came out from the city each evening by train. He refused to use the +boat these days, he said he was so infernally busy that he could not +spare the time. He brought out stacks of papers and plans which had +piled up while he was abroad, and with these he busied himself at night. +And though Eleanore from the veranda glanced in at him frequently, she +never again caught him looking old. And when she went in to make him +stop working he smilingly told her to leave him alone. He smoked many +cigars with apparent enjoyment, his lean face wrinkling over the smoke +as he turned over plan after plan for the harbor. His manner to me was +if anything even kindlier than before. He began calling me "Billy" now. + +On the last night of my stay he said: + +"I think you're the man I've been looking for. I've just read your story +and you've done exactly what I hoped. You've pictured one spot of +efficiency in a whole dreary desert of waste. Come up to my office +to-morrow at ten." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +So at last I went up to the tower. + +His office took up an entire floor near the tapering top of the +building, and as we walked slowly around the narrow steel balcony +outside, a tremendous panorama unrolled down there before our eyes. We +could see every part of the port below stretching away to the horizon, +and through Dillon's powerful field glass I saw pictures of all I had +seen before in my weary weeks of trudging down there in the haze and +dust. Down there I had felt like a little worm, up here I felt among the +gods. There all had been matter and chaos, here all was mind and a will +to find a way out of confusion. The glass gave me the pictures in swift +succession, in a moment I made a leap of ten miles, and as I listened on +and on to the quiet voice at my elbow, the pictures all came sweeping +together as parts of one colossal whole. The first social vision of my +life I had through Dillon's field glass. + +"To see any harbor or city or state as a whole," he said, "is what most +Americans cannot do. And it's what they've got to learn to do." + +And while I looked where he told me to, like a surgeon about to operate +he talked of his mighty patient, a giant struggling to breathe, with +swollen veins and arteries. He made me see the Hudson, the East River +and the railroad lines all pouring in their traffic, to be shifted and +reloaded onto the ocean vessels in a perfect fever of confusion and +delay. Far below us you could see long lines of tiny trucks and wagons +waiting hours for a chance to get into the docksheds. New York, he +said, in true Yankee style had developed its waterfront pell mell, each +railroad and each ship line grabbing sites for its own use, until the +port was now so clogged, so tangled and congested that it was able to +grow no more. + +"And it's got to grow," he said. The old helter-skelter method had +served well enough in years gone by, for this port had been like this +whole bountiful land, its natural advantages had been so prodigious it +could stand all our blind and hoggish mistakes. But now we were rapidly +nearing the time when every mistake we made would cost us tens of +millions of dollars. For within a few years the Big Ditch would open +across Panama, and the commerce of South America, together with that of +the Orient, would pour into the harbor here to meet the westbound +commerce of Europe. Ships of all nations would steam through the +Narrows, and we must be ready to welcome them all, with an ample +generous harbor worthy of the world's first port. + +"To get ready," he said, "what we've got to do is to organize this port +as a whole, like the big industrial plant it is." + +He began to show me some of the plans in blue-print maps and sketches. I +saw tens of thousands of freight cars gathered in great central yards at +a few main strategic points connected by long tunnels with all the minor +centers. I saw the port no longer as a mere body of water, but with a +whole region deep beneath of these long winding tunnels through which +flowed the traffic unseen and unheard. I saw along the waterfronts +continuous lines of docksheds where by huge cranes and other devices the +loading and unloading could be done with enormous saving of time. Along +the heavy roofs of steel of these continuous lines of buildings +stretched wide ocean boulevards with trees and shrubs and flowers to +shut out the clamorous life below. Warehouses and factory buildings rose +in solid rows behind. The city was to build them all, and the city as +the landlord was to invite the ships and railroads, and the +manufacturers too, to come in and get together, to stop their fighting +and grabbing and work with each other in one great plan. + +"That's what we mean nowadays by a port," he told me at the end of our +talk. "A complicated industrial organ, the heart of a country's +circulation, pumping in and out its millions of tons of traffic as +quickly and cheaply as possible. That's efficiency, scientific +management or just plain engineering, whatever you want to call it. But +it's got to be done for us all in a plan instead of each for himself in +a blind struggling chaos." + + * * * * * + +I came down from the tower with a dazed, excited feeling which lasted +all the rest of the day. That harbor of confusion had been for months my +entire world, it had baffled and beaten me till I was weak. And now this +man had swept together all its parts and showed me one immense design. + +He had promised me the first use of his plans. With this to go on I +drafted a scheme for a series of magazine articles on "The First Port of +the World," and I soon placed it in advance at four hundred dollars an +article. At last I was coming up in life, my first big story had begun! + +I went with Dillon each week-end up to the cottage on the Sound. Here he +talked in detail of his dreams, and Eleanore with her old passion and +pride delighted to draw him out for me. And not only her father--for to +help me in my work she invited out here in the evenings many of his +engineer friends. + +"It has always been awfully hard for me," she confided, "to understand +big questions by reading about them out of books. But I love to hear +about them from men who are living and working right in them. I love to +feel a little how it must be to be living their lives." + +She was a wonderful listener, for she had quietly studied each man until +now she had a kind of an instinct for drawing the very best of him out. +While he talked she would sit with her sewing, now and then putting in a +question to help. Often I would glance at her there and see in her +slightly frowning face how intently she was listening, thinking and +planning to help me. Sometimes she would meet my look. I would grow +tremendously happy. + +"In a little while," I thought. But then I would pull myself up with a +jerk: "Stop looking at her, you young fool, keep your mind on this +engineer. You've got the chance of your life right now to make good in +your work and be happy. Don't fall down! Get busy!" + +And I did. I threw myself into the lives of these men who were the +living embodiments of all that bigness, boldness, punch that had so +gripped and thrilled me. The harbor had drawn them around it out of the +hum and rush of the country, and here they were in its service, watching +it, studying, planning for its even more stupendous growth. One night I +heard them discuss the idea of moving the East River, making it flow +across Long Island, filling in its old water bed and making New York and +Brooklyn one. They talked of this scheme in a hard-headed Yankee way +that made me forget for the moment its boldness, until some cool remark +opened my eyes to the fact that this change would shift vast +populations, plant millions of people this way and that. + +But against these men of the tower, with their wide, deliberate views +ahead, embracing and binding together not only this port but the whole +western world depending upon it, I found in the city jungle innumerable +petty men, who could see only their own narrow interests of to-day, and +who fought blindly any change for a to-morrow--fellows in such mortal +fear of some possible benefit to their rivals that they could see none +for themselves. They were hopelessly used to fighting each other. And I +came to feel that all these men, though many were still young in years, +belonged to a generation gone by, to the age of individual strife that +my father had lived and worked in--and that like him they were all soon +to be swept to one side by the inexorable harbor of to-day, which had no +further use for them. + +It needed bigger men. It needed men like Dillon and behind him those +mysterious powers downtown, the men he had called the brains of the +nation, who read the signs of the new times, who saw that the West was +now fast filling up, that the eyes of the nation were once more turning +outward, and that untold resources of wealth were soon to be available +for mighty sea adventures, a vast fleet of Yankee ships that should +drive the surplus output of our teeming industries into all markets of +the world. And the men who saw these things coming were the only ones +who were big enough to prepare the country to meet them. My father's +dream was at last coming true--too late for him to play a part. He had +been but a prophet, a lonely pioneer. + +My view of the harbor was different now. I had seen it before as a vast +machine molding the lives of all people around it. But now behind the +machine itself I felt the minds of its molders. I saw its ponderous +masses of freight, its multitudes of people, all pushed and shifted this +way and that by these invisible powers. And by degrees I made for myself +a new god, and its name was Efficiency. + +Here at last was a god that I felt could stand! I had made so many in +years gone by, I had been making them all my life--from those first +fearful idols, the condors and the cannibals, to the kind old god of +goodness in my mother's church and the radiant goddess of beauty and art +over there in Paris. One by one I had raised them up, and one by one the +harbor had flowed in and dragged them down. But now in my full manhood +(for remember I was twenty-five!) I had found and taken to myself a god +that I felt sure of. No harbor could make it totter and fall. For it was +armed with Science, its feet stood firm on mechanical laws and in its +head were all the brains of all the strong men at the top. + +And all the multitudes below seemed mere pigmies to me now. I remember +one late twilight, coming back from a talk with an engineer, I boarded a +ferry at the rush hour and watched the people herd on like sheep. How +small they seemed, how petty their thoughts compared to mine, how blind +their views of the harbor. + +Here was a little Italian bride, just landed, by the looks of her. She +kept her face close to her lover's, smiling dazedly into his eyes. And +she saw no harbor. Here near by was a fat old gentleman with a highly +painted young lady who laughed and swore softly at him as I passed. I +sat down beside them a moment and listened. The old gentleman seemed +quite mad with desire. He was pleading eagerly, whining. And he saw no +harbor. Close by sat two tall serious men. One was deep in a socialist +book, the other in news of the Giants. Both seemed equally absorbed. And +they saw no harbor. I moved on to another spot, and sitting down by a +thin seedy-looking Irish girl I heard her talk to her husband about +having their baby's life insured according to a wonderful plan an agent +had described to her. As she spoke she was frowning anxiously--and she +saw no harbor. Not far away a plump flashy young creature was smiling +down on the bootblack who was busily shining her small patent leather +shoes. Her bright blue petticoat lifted high displayed the most enticing +charms, and as now she turned to look off toward the lights of the city +ahead, she smiled gaily to herself. And she saw no harbor. And alone up +at the windy bow I found a squat husky laborer with his dirty coat and +shirt thrown open wide, the wind on his bare hairy chest, hungrily +watching the dock ahead as though for his supper--seeing no harbor, no +world's first port, no plans for vast fleets or a great canal, none of +the big things shaping his life. + +But I saw. Orders had gone out from the tower east and west and south +and north to show me every courtesy. And with a miraculous youthful ease +I understood all that I saw and heard. The details all fitted right into +the whole, or if they didn't I made them fit. Here was a splendid end to +chaos and blind wrestling with life. And feeling stronger and more sure +than ever in my life before, I set out to build my series of glory +stories about it all, laying on the color thick to reach a million pigmy +readers, grip them, pull them out of their holes, make them sit up and +rub their eyes. + +For I was now a success in life! The exuberant joy of youth and success +filled the whole immense region for me. In those Fall days there was +nothing too hard to try, no queer hours too exhausting, no deep corner +too remote, in the search for my material. I saw the place from an old +fisherman's boat and from a revenue launch at night, with its +searchlight combing the waters far and wide for smugglers. I saw it from +big pilot boats that put far out to sea to meet the incoming liners. I +ate many good suppers and slept long nights on a stout jolly tug called +_The Happy_, where from my snug bunk at the stern through the open door +I could watch the stars. I went down into tunnels deep beneath the +waters. I went often to the Navy Yard. I dined many nights on +battleships, where the talk of the naval officers recalled my father's +picture of a fighting ocean world. They too talked of the Big Canal, but +in terms of war instead of peace. I went out to the coast defenses, and +with an army major I made a tour of the lights and buoys. + +And perhaps more often than anywhere else, I went to a rude log cabin on +the side of a wooded hill high up on Staten Island, where lived a +Norwegian engineer. He had a cozy den up there, with book-shelves set +into the logs, two deep bunks, a few bright rugs on the rough floor, +some soft, ponderous leather chairs and a crackling little stove on +which we cooked delicious suppers. Later out on the narrow porch we +would puff lazy smoke wreaths and watch the vast valley of lights below, +from the distant twinkling arch of the Bridge to the sparkling towers of +old Coney. Down there like swarms of fire-flies were countless darting +skurrying lights, red and blue and green and white. Far off to the south +flashed the light of the Hook, and still other signals gleamed low from +the ocean. + +Here I came often with Eleanore, for she had now come back to town. In +her boat we went to many new spots and back to all the old ones. We +found new beauties in them all. At home in the evenings we had long +talks. And all the time I could feel that we two both knew what was +coming, that steadily we were drawing together, that all my work and my +view of the harbor took its joy and its glory from this. + +"In a little while," I thought. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +I had been little at home those days, for the house in Brooklyn +disturbed me now. Poor old Dad. Since I had secured my contract he had +tried so hard to help me, to be eager, interested, alive, to talk it all +over with me at night. And this I did not like to do. A vague feeling of +guilt and disloyalty would creep into my now boundless zest for the +harbor that had crowded him out. And I think that he suspected this. One +night, when with this feeling I stupidly tried to talk as though I still +hated all its ugliness, its clamor, smoke and grime, I caught a twinkle +of pain in his eyes. + +"Boy," he broke in roughly, "I hope you'll always talk and write what +you believe and nothing else! I wouldn't give a picayune for any chap +who didn't!" + +I could feel him watching anxiously my affair with Eleanore. In the days +when she had come to the house he had grown very fond of her, and now by +frequent questions, slipped in with a studied indifference, he showed an +interest which in time became a deep suspense. + +"Out again this evening, son?" he called in one night from the bathroom +where he was washing his hands and face before going down to supper. In +my room adjoining I was dressing to go out. + +"Yes, Dad." + +"What for?" + +"Some work." + +"Be out for dinner too?" + +"Yes." + +"Who with?" + +"Oh, a pilot," I answered abstractedly. I was wondering if she would +wear her blue gown. She had asked quite a number of people that night. +Then I saw Dad in the doorway. Briskly rubbing his gray head with a +towel, he was eyeing my evening clothes. + +"Devilish polished chaps these days--pilots," he commented. I heard a +low snort of glee from his room. + +My sister, on the other hand, had no more patience than before with this +fast deepening love of mine, which had drawn me away from her radical +friends up to the men of the tower who worked for the big companies. By +the most vigorous ironies, the most industrious witty remarks, she made +me feel how thoroughly she disapproved of anything so deadening as +marriage, home and settling down, in this glorious age of new ideas. + +One morning at breakfast, when I remarked as I commonly did that I would +be out for dinner that night, + +"Where are you going?" she asked abruptly. + +"To Eleanore Dillon's," I replied. Our eyes met squarely for a moment. + +"Do you know what it means to go there so often, almost every night?" +she asked. + +"I do," I answered bluntly. I would finish this meddling once and for +all. But Sue did not look finished. + +"You'd better stay home to-night, Billy," she said. + +"Why?" + +"Joe Kramer is coming." + +"What?" + +"He telephoned me late last night. He's just come from Colorado and he +sails to-morrow for England. He's awfully anxious to see you." + +Of course he was, and I knew what about! I saw at once by the look on +her face that Sue had told him all about me and had begged him to see +what he could do. Why couldn't they leave a fellow alone, I said +wrathfully to myself. + +But my ire softened when I met Joe. In the year and a half since I had +seen him the lines in his face had deepened, the stoop of his big +shoulders had grown even more pronounced, and again I felt that wistful, +frowning, searching quality in him. Beneath his gruffness and his jeers +he was so honestly pushing on for what he could find most real in life. +A wave of the old affection came over me suddenly without warning. +Vaguely I wondered about it. Why did he always grip me so? + +My father too appeared at first delighted to see him. He had shown a +keen relish for J. K. from that first time in college when I had brought +him home for Christmas. Since then, whenever Joe had come, he and Dad +had always managed to retreat to the study together and smoke and have +long dogged arguments. But to-night it was not the same. For in his +growth as a radical, Joe had gone beyond all arguing now. Lines of deep +displeasure slowly tightened on Dad's face. All through dinner he kept +attempting to turn the talk from Joe's work to mine. But this I would +have none of, I wanted to be let alone. So I nervously kept the +conversation on what Joe was up to. And Sue seemed more than eager to +learn. + +J. K. was up to a good deal. + +"This muckraking game is played out," he said. "We all know how rotten +things are. All we want to know now is what's to be done." And he +himself had become absorbed in what the working class was doing. As a +reporter in the West he had been to strike after strike, ending with a +long ugly struggle in the Colorado mines. He talked about it intensely, +the greed of the mine owners, the brutality of the militia, the "bull +pens" into which strikers were thrown. Vaguely I felt he was giving us a +most distorted picture, and glancing now and then at my father I saw +that he thought it a pack of lies. Joe made all the strikers the most +heroic figures, and he spoke of their struggle as only a part of a great +labor war that was soon to sweep the entire land. + +Sue excitedly drew him out, and I felt it was all for my benefit. Joe +said that he was going abroad in order that he might write the truth +about the labor world over there. The American papers and magazines +would let you write the truth, he said, about labor over in Europe, +because it was at a safe distance. But they wouldn't allow it here. And +then Sue looked across at me as though to say, "It's only stuff like +_yours_ they allow." + +"Why don't you two go out for a walk?" she suggested sweetly after +dinner. And I consented gladly, for there are times when nothing on +earth can be worse than your own sister. + + * * * * * + +We went down to the old East River docks and walked for some time with +little said. Then Joe turned on me abruptly. + +"Well, Bill," he said, "I've read your stuff. It's damn well written." + +"Thanks," I replied. + +"If I've got any knocking to do," he went on with a visible effort, "I +know you'll give me credit for not knocking out of jealousy. I'm not +jealous, I'm honestly tickled to death. I was wrong about you in Paris. +You and me were different kinds. What you got over there was just what +you needed, it has put you already way out of my class, and it's going +to give you a lot of power as a spreader of ideas. That's why I hate so +like the devil to see you starting out like this, with what I'm so sure +are the wrong ideas." + +"How are they wrong?" + +"Think a minute. Why is your magazine pushing you so? The first story of +your series is only just out and they've already boomed you all over the +country. Why, Bill, I saw your picture in a trolley car in Denver--and +you're only twenty-five years old! It's damn fine writing, I'll say it +again, but that's not reason enough for this. You've got to go down +deeper and look into your magazine's policy--which is to strike a +balance for all kinds of middle-class readers and for their advertisers +too. They've run some radical stuff this year, and they're booming you +now to balance off, to show how 'safe and sane' they can be in the way +they look at life, at big business and at industry--as you do here in +the harbor. You're making gods out of the men at the top, you've seen +'em as they see themselves, and you've only seen what they see here. +You've missed all the millions of people here who depend on the place +for their jobs and their lives. They don't count for you----" + +"That's not true at all!" I interrupted hotly. "It's just for them and +their children that fellows like Dillon are on the job--to make a better +harbor!" + +"_For_ them, _for_ the people!" said Joe. "That's what I'm kicking at in +you, Bill--you treat us all like a mass of dubs that need gods above to +do everything _for_ us because we can't do it all by ourselves!" + +"I don't believe the people can," I retorted. "From what I've seen I +honestly don't believe they count. The fellows that count in a job like +this are the fellows with punch and grit enough to fight their way up +out of the ranks----" + +"I know, and be lieutenants and captains in a regular army of peace, +with your friend Dillon in command and Wall Street in command of him! +Isn't that your view?" + +"All right, it is! I don't see any harm in that. It's the only safe way +that I can see out of this mess of a harbor we've got. These men are the +efficient ones--they're the fellows that have the brains and that know +how to work--to use science, money, everything--to get a decent world +ahead. What's the matter with efficiency?" + +"Your latest god," sneered J. K. + +"Suppose it is! What's wrong with it? What's the matter with Dillon? Is +he a crook?" + +"No," said Joe, "that's just the worst of him. He's so damned honest, +he's such a hard worker. I've met men like him all over the country, +and they're the most dangerous men we've got. Because they're the real +strength of Wall Street--just as thousands of clean hard working priests +are the strength of the Catholic church! They keep their church going +and Dillon keeps his--he's a regular priest of big business! And he +takes hold of kids like you and molds your views like his for life. Look +at what he has done with you here. Does he say a word to you about +Graft? Does he talk of the North Atlantic Pool or any one of the other +pools and schemes by which they keep up rates? Does he make you think +about low wages and long hours and all the fellows hurt or killed on the +docks and in the stoke holes? Does he give you any feeling at all of +this harbor as a city of four million people, most of 'em getting a raw +deal and getting mad about it? That's more important to you and me than +all the efficiency gods on earth. You've got to decide which side you're +on. And that's what's got me talking now. I see so plain which way +you're letting yourself be pulled. I've seen so many pulled the same +way. It's so pleasant up there at the top, there's so much money and +brains up there and refinement--such women to get married to, such homes +to settle down in. Sometimes I wish every promising radical kid in the +country could get himself into some scandal that would cut him off for +life from any chance of being received by this damned respectable upper +class!" + +He stopped for a moment, and then with a gruff intensity: + +"We need you, Bill," he ended. "We need you bad. We don't want you to +marry a girl at the top. We don't want you anchored up there for life." + +We were standing still now, and I was looking out on the river. Through +the grip of his hand on my arm I could feel his body taut and quivering, +his whole spirit hot with revolt. The same old Joe, but tenser now, +strained almost to the breaking point. But I myself was different. In +college he had appealed to me because there I was groping and had found +nothing. But now I had found something sure. And so, though to my own +surprise a deep emotional part of me rose up in sudden response to Joe +and made me feel guilty to hold back, it was only for a moment, and then +my mind told me he was wrong. Poor old J. K. What a black distorted view +he had--grown out of a distorted life of traveling continually from one +center of trouble to another. How could he be any judge of life? + +"Look here, Joe," I said. "I'm a kid, as you say, and some day I may see +your side of this. But I don't now, I can't--for since I left Paris I've +been through enough to make me feel what a job living is, I mean really +living and growing. And I know what a difference Dillon has made. He has +been to my life what he is to this harbor. And I'm not old enough nor +strong enough to throw over a man as big as that and as honest and clean +in his thinking, and throw myself in with your millions of people, who +seem to me either mighty poor thinkers or fellows who don't think at +all. They're not in my line. I believe in men who can think clean, who +have trained their minds by years of hard work, who don't try to tear +down and bring things to a smash, but are always building, building! You +talk about this upper class. But they're my people, aren't they, that's +where I was born. And I'm going on with them. I believe they're right +and I know they're strong--I mean strong enough to handle all this--make +it better." + +"They'll make it worse," Joe answered. And then as he turned to me once +more he added very bitterly, "You'll see strength enough in the people +some day." + +A few moments later he left me. + +I looked at my watch and found it was not yet nine o'clock. I went to +Eleanore Dillon. And within an hour Joe and his world of crowds and +confusion were swept utterly out of my mind. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +I had often told Eleanore of Joe. She had asked me about him many times. +"It's queer," she had said, "what a hold he must have had on you. I feel +sure he's just the kind of a person I wouldn't like and who wouldn't +like me. I don't think he's really your kind either, and yet he has a +hold on you still. Yes, he has, I can feel he has." + +And to-night when I told her that I had been with him, + +"What did he want of you?" she asked. + +"He wants me to drop everything," I answered. And I tried to give her +some idea of what he had said. + +But as I talked, the thought came suddenly into my mind that here at +last was the very time to settle my life one way or the other, to ask +her if she would be my wife. I grew excited and confused, my voice +sounding unnatural to my ears. And as I talked on about Joe, my heart +pounding, I could barely keep the thoughts in line. + +"And I don't want what he wants," I ended desperately. "That nor +anything like it. I want just what I've been getting--just this kind of +work and life. And I want _you_--for life, I mean--if you can ever feel +like that." + +Eleanore said nothing. In an instant the world and everything in it had +narrowed to the two of us. The intensity was unbearable. I rose abruptly +and turned away. I felt suddenly far out of my depth. Confusedly and +furiously I felt that I had bungled things, that here was something in +life so strange I could do nothing with it. What a young fool I was to +have thought she could ever care for a fellow like me! I felt she must +be smiling. Despairingly I turned to see. + +And Eleanore was smiling--in a way that steadied me in a flash. For her +smile was so plainly a quick, strong effort to steady herself. + +"I'm glad you want me like that," she said, in a voice that did not +sound like hers. "I don't believe in hiding things.... I'm--very happy." +She looked down at her hands in her lap and they slowly locked together. +"But of course it means our whole lives, you see--and we mustn't hurry +or make a mistake. Now that we know--this much--we can talk about it +quite openly--about each other and what we want--what kinds of +lives--what we believe in--whether we'd be best for each other. It's +what we ought to talk about--a good many times--it may be weeks." + +"All right," I agreed. I was utterly changed. At her first words I had +felt a deep rush of relief, and seeing her tremendous pluck and the +effort she was making, I pitied, worshiped and loved her all in the same +moment. And as we talked on for a few minutes more in that grave and +unnaturally sensible way about the pros and cons of it all, these +feelings within me mounted so swiftly that all at once I again broke +off. + +"I don't believe there's any use in this," I declared. "It's perfectly +idiotic!" + +"Of course it is," she promptly agreed. + +And then after a rigid instant when each of us looked at the other as +though asking, "Quick! What are we going to do?"--she burst out laughing +excitedly. So did I, and that carried her into my arms and--I remember +nothing--until after a while she asked me to go, because she wanted to +be by herself. And I noticed how bright and wet were her eyes. + +I saw them still in the darkness down along the river front, where I +walked for half the rest of the night, stopping to draw a deep breath +of the sea and laugh excitedly and go on. + + * * * * * + +Life changed rapidly after that night. I grew so absorbed in Eleanore +and in all that was waiting just ahead, that it was hard not to shut out +everything else, most of all impersonal things. It was hard to write, +and for days I wrote nothing. I remember only intimate talks. Everyone I +talked to seemed to be deeply personal. + +I told my father about it the next evening before supper. I found him in +his old chair in the study buried deep in his paper. + +"Say, Dad--would you mind coming up to your room?" He smote his paper to +one side. + +"What the devil," he asked, "do I want to come up to my room for?" + +"I've--the fact is I've something you ought to know." I could hear Sue +in the other room. + +"All right, my boy," he said nervously. As he followed me he kept +clearing his throat. Sue must have guessed and prepared him. In his room +he fussed about, grunted hard over getting off his shoes and, finding +his slippers, then lay back on his sofa with his hands behind his head +and uttered an explosive sigh. + +"All right, son, now fire ahead," he said jocosely. I loved him at that +moment. + +"You know Eleanore Dillon," I began. + +"She turned you down!" + +"No! She took me!" + +"The devil you say!" He sat bolt upright, staring. "Well, my boy, I'm +very glad," he said thickly. His eyes were moist. "I'm glad--glad! She's +a fine girl--strong character--strong! I wish your poor mother were +alive--she'd be happy--this girl will make a good wife--you must bring +her right here to live with us!" + +And so he talked on, his voice trembling. Then out of his confusion rose +the money question, and at once his mind grew clear. And to my surprise +he urged me to lose no time in looking around for "some good, steady +position" in a magazine office. My writing I could do at night. + +"It's so uncertain at best," he said. "It's nothing you can count on. +And you've got to think of a wife and children. _Her_ father has no +money saved." + +I found he'd been looking Dillon up, and this jarred on me horribly. But +still worse was his lack of faith in my writing. I was making four +hundred dollars a month, and it was a most unpleasant jolt to have it +taken so lightly. + +I went down to Sue. As I came into the living room she met me suddenly +at the door. In a moment her arms were about my neck and she was saying +softly: + +"I know what it is, dear, and I'm glad--I'm awfully glad. If I've been +horrid about it ever, please forgive me. I'm sure now it's just the life +you want!" + +And that evening, while Dad slept in his chair, Sue and I had a long +affectionate talk. We drew closer than we had been for months. She was +eager to hear everything, she wanted to know all our plans. When I tried +at last to turn our talk to herself and our affairs at home, at first +she would not hear to it. + +"My dear boy," she said affectionately, "you've had these worries long +enough. You're to run along now and be happy and leave this house to Dad +and me." + +I slipped my arm around her: + +"Look here, Sis, let's see this right. You can't run here on what Dad +earns, and if you try to work yourself you'll only hurt him terribly. My +idea is to help as before, without letting him know that I'm doing it. +Make him think you've cut expenses." + +It took a long time to get her consent. + +The next night I went to Eleanore's father. He received me quietly, and +with a deep intensity under that steady smile of his, which reminded me +so much of hers, he spoke of all she had meant to him and of her brave +search for a big, happy life. He told how he had watched her with me +slowly making up her mind. + +"It took a long time, but it's made up now," he said. "And now that it +is, she's the kind that will go through anything for you that can ever +come up in your life." He looked at me squarely, still smiling a little, +frankly letting his new affection come into his eyes. "I wish I knew all +that's going to happen," he added, almost sadly. "I hope you'll get used +to telling me things--talking things over--anything--no matter +what--where I can be of the slightest help." + +Then he, too, spoke of money. He meant to keep up her allowance, he +said, and he had insured his life for her. Again, as with my father, I +felt that disturbing lack of faith in my work. I spoke of it to Eleanore +and she looked at me indignantly. + +"You must never think of it like that," she said. "I won't have you +writing for money. Dad has never worked that way and you're not to do it +on any account--least of all on account of me. Whatever you make we'll +live on, and that's all there is to be said--except that we'll live +splendidly," she added very gaily, "and we won't spend the finest part +of our lives saving up for rainy days. We'll take care of the rain when +it rains, and we'll have some wonderful times while we can." + +We decided at once on a trip abroad as soon as I had finished my work. +And I remember writing hard, and reading it aloud to her and rewriting +over and over again, for Eleanore could be severe. But I remember, too, +more trips in her boat to gather the last odds and ends. I remember how +the big harbor took on a new glory to our eyes, mingled with all the +deep personal joys and small troubles and crises we went through, the +puzzles and the questionings and the glad discoveries that made up the +swift growth of our love. + +And though I never once thought of Joe Kramer, he had prophesied +aright. I belonged wholly now to Dillon's world, a world of clean +vigorous order that seemed to welcome me the more as I wrote in praise +of its power. And happy over my success, and in love and starting life +anew with all the signs so bright--how could I have any doubts of my +harbor? + +We were married very quietly late one April afternoon. It rained, I +remember, all that day, but the next was bright and clear for our +sailing. In our small stateroom on the ship we found a note from the +company, a large, engraved impressive affair, presenting their best +wishes and asking us to accept for the voyage one of their most +luxurious cabins. + +"This is what comes," said Eleanore gaily, "of being the wife of a +writer." + +"Or the daughter," I said softly, "of a very wonderful engineer." + +"You darling boy!" + +We moved up to a large sunny cabin. I remember her swiftly reading the +telegrams and letters there as though to get them all out of the way. I +remember her unpacking and taking possession of our first home. + +"We're married, aren't we," said a voice. + +There was only one more good-by to be said. On the deck, as we went out +of the harbor, Eleanore stood by the rail. I felt her hand close tight +on mine and I saw her eyes glisten a little with tears. + +"What a splendid place it has been," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +We found every place splendid in those weeks as we let the wanderlust +carry us on. And as though emerging from some vivid dream, various +places and faces of people stand out in my memory now, as then they +loomed in upon our absorption. + +I remember the little old harbor of Cherbourg, gleaming in the +moonlight, where when we landed Eleanore said, "Let's stay here awhile." +So of course we did, and then went on to Paris. We took an apartment, +very French and absurdly small, from a former Beaux Arts friend of mine. +I remember the kindly face of the maid who took such beaming care of us, +the cafe in front of which late at night we sat and watched the huge +shadowy carts go by on their way to the market halls, the sunrise flower +market, where we filled our cab with moss roses and plants, Polin's +songs in the "Ambassadeurs," delicious petites allees in the Bois, our +favorite rides on the tops of the 'buses, that old religious place of +mine down under the bridge by Notre Dame. + +All these and more we saw in fragments, now and then, looking out with +vivid interest on all the life around us, only to return to each other, +_into_ each other I should say, for the exploring was quite different +now, there had been such hours between us that nothing intimate could be +held back. Nothing? Well, nothing that I thought of then. For somehow or +other, in those glad, eager afternoons and evenings, in those nights, +nothing disturbingly ugly in me so much as thought of showing its head. +Three years before in this stirring town I had felt guilty at being a +monk. But now I felt no guilt at all. For down the Champs Elysees our +cab rolled serenely now, and even our driver's white hat wore an air as +though it had a place in life. + +From Paris we started for Munich, but we did not stop there, we happened +to feel like going on. So we went through to Constantinople, whence we +took a boat to Batoum and went up into the Caucasus, which Eleanore had +heard about once from an engineer friend of her father's. I remember +Koutais, a little town by a mountain torrent with gray vine-covered +walls around it. Shops opened into the walls like stalls. There we would +buy things for our supper and then in a crazy vehicle we would drive +miles out on the broad mountainside to an orchard pink with blossoms, +where we would build a fire and cook, and an old man in a long yellow +robe and with a turban on his head would come out of his cabin and bring +us wine. And the stars would appear and the frogs tune up in the marshes +far down in the valley below, and the filmy mists would rise and the +mountains would tower overhead. And the effect of this place upon us was +to make us feel it was only one of innumerable such vacation places that +lay ahead, festival spots in long, radiant lives. We felt this vaguely, +silently. So often we talked silently. + +Then there would come the most serious times, when with the deepest +thoughtfulness we would survey the years ahead and very solemnly place +ourselves, our views and beliefs. Miraculous how agreed we were! We +believed, we found, in good workmanship, in honest building, in getting +things done. We believed in Eleanore's father and all those around and +above him that could help his kind of work. We were impatient of +soft-headedness in rich people who had nothing to do, and of heavy +muddle-headedness in the millions who had too much to do, and of +muckraking of every kind which only got in the way of the builders. For +the building of a new, clean vigorous world was our religion. And it did +not seem cold to us, because our lives were in it and because we were +in love. + +There was no end to the plans for ourselves, for my writing, our home, +the friends we wanted, the trips, the books and the music. And through +it all and from under it all there kept bursting up that feeling which +we knew was the most important of all, the exultant realization that we +two were just starting out. + + * * * * * + +When at last we came back home this feeling took a deeper turn. I +noticed a change in Eleanore. She had far less thought and time for me +now, she seemed to be strangely absorbed in herself. Nearly all her time +and strength were given to our small apartment, in the same building as +that of her father. By countless feminine touches she was making it look +like the home she had planned. She was getting all in order. And then +one night she told me why. Her arms were close around me and her voice +was so low I could barely hear: + +"There's going to be another soon--another one _of us_--do you hear?--a +very tiny blessed one." + +I held her slowly tighter. + +"Oh, my darling girl," I whispered. + +Suddenly I relaxed my hold, for I was afraid of hurting her now. In a +moment all was so utterly changed. And as in that brave, quiet way of +hers she looked smiling steadily into my eyes, my throat contracted +sharply. For into my mind leaped the memory of what the harbor had shown +to me on that sultry hideous summer night in the tenement over in +Brooklyn. And _that_ must happen to _my wife_! + +"Oh, my dear," she whispered, "if you only knew how much strength I +stored up way over there in the mountains." + +So she had been thinking of this even then, and yet had told me nothing! + +Here was the beginning of a long anxious period. Month after month I +watched her quietly preparing. Slowly we drew into ourselves, while her +father and mine and Sue and our friends came and went, but mattered +little. I wondered if Dillon ever felt this. As he came down to us in +the evenings from the apartment upstairs, where he and Eleanore had +meant so much to each other only a year before, he gave no sign that he +saw any change. But one night after he had gone, Eleanore happened to +pick up the evening paper which had dropped from his bulging overcoat +pocket. + +"Billy, come here," she said presently. + +"What is it?" + +"Look at this." + +The President of the United States had gone with Eleanore's father that +day in a revenue cutter over the harbor and had spoken of Dillon's great +dream in vigorous terms of approval. + +"And father was here this evening," said Eleanore very slowly, "and yet +he never told me a word. He saw that I'd heard nothing and he thought I +didn't care. Oh, Billy, I feel so ashamed." + +But she soon forgot the incident. + +My suspense grew sharp as the time drew near. I had a good doctor, I was +sure of that, and he told me he had an excellent nurse. But what good +were all these puny precautions? The tenement room in Brooklyn kept +rising in my mind. + +She sat by the window that last night, and looking down on the far-away +lights of the river we planned another trip abroad. + +A few hours later I stood over her, holding her hand, and with her white +lips pressed close together and her eyes shut, she went through one of +those terrible spasms. Then she looked up in the moment's relief. And +suddenly here was that smile of hers. And she said low, between clenched +teeth, + +"Well, dearie, another starting out----" + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +The next morning, after the rush of relief at the news of Eleanore's +safety and the strange sight of our tiny son, I felt keyed gloriously +high, ready for anything under the sun. But there seemed to be nothing +whatever to do, I felt in the way each time that I moved, so I took to +my old refuge, work. And then into my small workroom came Eleanore's +father for a long talk. He too had been up all night, his lean face was +heavily marked from the strain, but their usual deep serenity had come +back into his quiet eyes. + +"Let's take a day off," he said, smiling. "We're both so tired we don't +know it." + +"Tired?" I demanded. + +"Yes," he said, "you're tired--more than you've ever been in your life. +You'll feel like a rag by to-morrow, and then I hope you'll take a good +rest. But to-day, while you are still way up, I want to talk about your +work. Do you mind?" + +"Mind? No," I replied, a bit anxiously. "It's just what I'm trying to +figure out." + +"I know you are. You've figured for months and you've worked yourself +thin. I don't mind that, I like it, because I know the reason. But I +don't think the result has been good. It seems to me you've been so +anxious to get on, because of this large family of yours, that you've +shut yourself up and written too fast, you've gotten rather away from +life. Shall I go right on?" + +"Yes," I said, watching intently. + +"Well," he continued, "you've been using what name you've already made +and writing short stories of harbor life." + +"That's what the editors want," I said. "When a man makes a hit in one +vein of writing they want that and nothing else." + +"At this rate you'll soon work out the vein," he said. "I'd like to see +you stop writing now, take time to find new ground--and dig." + +"There's not an awful lot of time," I remarked. + +"My plan won't stop your making money," he replied. "I want you to write +less, but get more pay." + +"That sounds attractive. How shall I do it?" + +"By writing about big men," he said. "I suggest that you try a series of +portraits of some of the big Americans and the America they know." + +I jumped up so suddenly he started. + +"What's the matter?" he asked with a glance at the door. "Did you hear +anything?" + +"Yes," I said excitedly. "I heard a stunning title! The America They +Know!" + +We discussed it all that morning and it appealed to me more and more. +Later on, with Eleanore's help (for she grew stronger fast those days), +I prevailed upon her father to let me practice upon himself as my first +subject. I worked fast, my material right at hand, and within a few +weeks I had written the story of those significant incidents out of +thirty years of work and wanderings east and west that showed the +America he had known, his widening view. I did his portrait, so to +speak, with his back to the reader, letting the reader see what he saw. +This story I sold promptly, and under the tonic of that success I went +into the work with zest and vim. + +It filled the next four years of my life. It took the view I had had of +the harbor and widened it to embrace the whole land, which I now saw +altogether through the eyes of the men at the top. + +The most central figure of them all, and by far the most difficult to +attack, was a powerful New York banker, one of those invisible gods +whose hand I had felt on the harbor. + +"The value of him to you," Dillon said, "is that if you can only make +him talk you'll find him a born storyteller. The secret scandal of his +life is that once in a short vacation he tried to write a play." + +It was weeks before he would see me, and I had my first interview at +last only by getting on a night train which he had taken for Cleveland. +There in his stateroom, cornered, he received me with a grim reluctance. +And with a humorous glint in his eyes, + +"How much do you know about banking?" he asked. + +"Nothing," I said frankly. And then I took a sudden chance. "What do you +know about writing?" I asked. + +"Nothing," he said placidly. + +"Is that true? I thought you once wrote a play." He sat up very quickly. +"If you did," I went on, "you've probably read some of Shakespeare's +stuff. It was strong stuff about strong men. If he were alive he'd write +about you, but I'm sure that he wouldn't know about banking. That's only +your job." + +"What do you want of me, young man?" he inquired. "Is it my soul?" + +"Not at all," I answered. "It's the America you know, expressed in such +simple human terms that even a young ignoramus like me will be able to +understand it. Out of this big country a good many thousands of men, I +suppose, have come to you for money. Which are the most significant +ones?" + +And I went on to explain my idea. Soon it began to take hold of him. We +talked until after midnight, and later we had other talks. It was hard +at first in the questioning to dodge the technical side of it all, the +widely intricate workings of that machine of credit of which he was +chief engineer. But as he saw how eager I was to feel his view and +become enthused, by degrees he humanized it all. And not only that, he +trusted me, he gave me the most intimate glimpses into this life of big +money, although when I dared to include such bits in the story that I +showed him he calmly scratched them out and said: + +"You're mistaken, young man. I didn't say that." + +As he talked I saw again that vision I had had on the North River docks. +For into this man's office had come the men of the mines, the factories +and the mills, the promoters of vast irrigations on prairies, builders +of railroads, real estate plungers, street traction promoters, +department store owners, newspaper proprietors, politicians--the +builders and boomers, the strong energetic men of the land. He showed me +their power and made me feel it was still but in its infancy. He made me +feel a dazzling future rushing upon us, a future of plenty still more +controlled by the keen minds and wide visions of the powerful men at the +top. + +Of all these men and the rushing world of power they lived in, I have +only a jumble of memories now. For my own life was a jumble--irregular, +crowded and intense. In their offices, clubs and homes, in their motors, +on yachts and trains, in Chicago and Pittsburgh and other cities, I +followed them, making my time suit theirs. Some had no use for me at +all, but I found others delighted to talk--like the great Dakota +ranchman who ordered twenty thousand copies of the issue in which his +story appeared and scattered them like seeds of fame over the various +counties of wheat, corn and alfalfa he owned. And in the main I had +little trouble. I met often that curious respect which so many men of +affairs seem to have, God knows why, for a successful writer. + +I got in where men with ten times my knowledge were barred. I remember +with a touch of shame the institute of scientific research where the +chief of the place took a whole afternoon to show me around, and while I +looked wise and tried to feel thrilled over glass tubes and jars and +microscopes through which I peered at microbes, a simple old country +doctor, one of the thousands of _common_ visitors, by my invitation +followed humbly in my wake, murmuring from time to time, + +"Miraculous, by George, astounding!" And gratefully pressing my hand at +the end, "This has been the chance of a lifetime," he said. + +Perhaps the principal reason why I got so warm a welcome was the name I +had already made as a writer of glory stories. I liked these men; I +liked to enthuse over all the big things they were doing. And still true +to my efficiency god, the immense importance of getting things done +loomed so high in my view of life as to overshadow everything else. My +sense of moral values changed. + +It was a strange unmoral world. + +In the institute of science these keen laboratory gods (who had seemed +so cold and comfortless to me but a few short years ago) were perfecting +a cure for syphilis. Strong men were removing the wages of sin! + +In Chicago I met the president of a huge industrial company who had +found it necessary at times to use money on politicians. For this he had +been sent to jail, but later his influence got him out. Promptly he was +made treasurer of another company. In one year, through his energy, now +more intense than ever, the business of that company increased some +thirty-five per cent., whereupon the directors of the original +corporation, after a stormy meeting in which two church deacon directors +fussed and fumed considerably, unanimously decided to ask him to come +back. He did. He told me the story quite frankly himself. I admired him +tremendously. + +The head of a mining company sat in his office one afternoon and talked +of the labor problem. There was no right or wrong involved, he said, it +was simply a matter of force. Once when a strike threatened he had +called in a "labor expert" who had used money wholesale and there had +been no strike. + +"Well?" he asked, smiling. "What do you think of it?" + +"I think I can't print it." He still smiled. + +"Naturally not. But what do you think? If you yourself were responsible +to several hundred stockholders, what would you do? Risk a strike that +might wipe out their dividends? Or would you resort to bribery"--his +smile slowly deepened--"which is a penal offense in this State?" + +I found such questions cropping up almost everywhere I went. In their +dealings with the public and still more with their rivals, there was a +ruthless vigor that swept old-fashioned maxims aside. And I liked this, +for it got things done! I was bored to find, as I often did, these men +in their homes quite old-fashioned again to suit sober old wives who +still went to church. I remember one such elderly lady and the shock I +unwittingly gave her. She had deplored the decline of churches; her own, +she said, was barely half full. And I then tried to cheer her by an +account of my last story, which was of an advertising man, a genius who +in the last two years had made churches his especial line and by his +up-to-date methods had packed church after church on a commission basis. +Her burst of disapproval almost drove me from the house. And there were +so many homes like that. Men who were perfect giants by day would become +the gentlest babies at night, allowing their wives to read to them such +sentimental drivel as would have been kicked from the office by day. + +"But God knows they need such vacuous homes," I reflected, "to rest in." + +I had never dreamed before how strenuous men's lives could be. One day +in the New York office of a big plunger in real estate I pointed to a +map on the wall. + +"What are all those lots marked 'vacant' for?" I asked him. "I never saw +many vacant lots in that part of town." He grinned cheerfully. + +"Anything under four stories is vacant to us," he answered, "because it +pays to buy it, tear it down and build something higher." + +That was the way they crowded their cities, and as with their cities, so +with their lives. One story that interested me most was of the weird +America which a renowned nerve specialist knew. To him came these men +broken down, some on the verge of insanity. He gave me stories of their +lives, of his glimpses into their straining minds, he described their +pathetic efforts to rest, their strenuous attempts to relax. He himself +had some mysterious ailment, his hands kept trembling while he talked. +His wife said he hadn't had a vacation of over a week in eleven years. + +From such men I would turn to exuberant lives, like that of the Tammany +leader now dead, who gave a ten-thousand-dollar banquet one night, in +the Ten Eyck in Albany, in honor of the newsboy who every morning for +twenty-two winters had brought morning papers to him in bed in his hotel +room. Or like that of the millionaire merchant who told me with the most +naive pride of the eleven hundred electric lights in his new home on +Fifth Avenue, and of how the bathrooms of both his large daughters were +fitted in solid silver throughout. + +"Not plated, understand," he said. "I told the architect while he was at +it to put in the real solid stuff--and plenty of it!" + +Through this varied throng of successes, this rich abundance of types, I +ranged with an ever deepening zest. As a hunter of game I watched that +endless human procession on and off the front pages of papers, the men +who were for the moment news. Often small people too would be +there--like the telephone girl from a suburb, who for one day, as the +most important witness in a sensational case of graft, was suddenly +before the whole country and then as suddenly dropped out of sight. In +fact, that was now my view of the land, figures emerging from dark +obscure multitudes up into a bright circle of light. + +And I took this front-page view of New York. I saw it as a city where +big exceptional people were endlessly doing sensational things, both in +the making and spending of money. I saw it not only as a cluster of tall +buildings far downtown, but uptown as well a towering pile of rich +hotels and apartments, a region that sparkled gaily at night, lights +flashing from tens of thousands of rooms, in and out of which, I felt +delightedly, millions of people had passed through the years. I loved to +look up at these windows at night, at the sheer inscrutability of them. +For behind these twinkling masses I knew were all things tragic, +comic--people laughing, fighting, hating, scheming, dreaming, loving, +living. I thought of that row of cabins de luxe that I had seen on the +Christmas boat. Here was the same thing magnified, a monstrous +caravansary with but one question over its doors: "Have You Got the +Price?" + +Once I had seen a harbor. Then it had grown into a port. And now I saw a +metropolis, the hub of a successful land. + +And through this gay city of triumph I moved, myself a success, and my +view of the whole was colored by that. My life as an observer was +sprinkled with personal moments that made me see everything in high +lights. I would watch the life of a street full of people, and I myself +would be on my way to an interview with some noted man or coming away +from one who had given me stuff that I knew would write up big--I knew +just how! Or at a corner newsstand I would catch a glimpse of my name on +the cover of some magazine. Again I would be hurrying home, or into a +neighboring florist's or a theater ticket office, or diving into the +jolly whirl of the large Fifth Avenue toy shop in which I took an +unflagging delight. In my mind would be thoughts of a pillow fight or a +long evening with Eleanore, or we would be having friends to dine or +going out to dinner. + +For Eleanore had been swift to use my success to broaden both our lives. +Young and adorably happy, eagerly alive, she did for me what she had +done for her father, filling my life with other lives. She was an artist +in living. It was a joy to see her make out a list of people to be asked +to dine. Her father, once watching the process, remarked to me in low, +solemn tones: + +"She's a regular social chemist--who has never had an explosion." + +He was often on the list, and through him and his many friends and the +ones I made through my writing, by degrees our circle widened. We met +all kinds of people, for Eleanore hated "sets" and "cliques." We met not +only successful men but (God help us sometimes) we also met their wives. +We met successful writers, artists and musicians, and a few people of +the stage. We met visitors from the West and from half the big cities of +Europe. We furbished up our French and German, our knowledge of books +and pictures and plays--_successful_ books and pictures and plays. + +Through Eleanore's father and his work our minds were still held to the +past, to the harbor which had taken me, bruised and blind and petty, and +lifted me up and taught me to live, had given me my work, my home and my +new god. I was grateful, I was proud, I was in love and I felt strong. +And my view of the harbor in those days was of a glorious symbol of the +power of mind over matter, and of the mighty speeding up of a world of +civilization and peace, a successful world, strong, broad, tolerant, +sweeping on and bearing us with it. + +So we adventured gaily, not deeper down, but higher and higher up into +life. + + + + +BOOK III + +CHAPTER I + + +We had been married four years. + +At the end of a crisp November day I was just about starting home. I +remember how keenly alive I felt, how tingling with bodily health, and +above all how successful. + +I had had such a successful day. I had written hard all morning and my +work had been going splendidly. I had lunched downtown with the man +whose life I was writing that month, a man of astounding fertility, who +had started fifteen years ago with a small hotel in a western town, had +made money, had built a larger hotel, had made money, had moved to a +larger town and bought a still larger hotel, had made money, had moved +to Chicago, New York, had made money. And the America he knew was made +up of people who themselves had made their money so suddenly they had to +come to hotels to spend it. The stories that he told me, both scandalous +and otherwise, of these men and women who shot up rich and diamondy out +of this booming country of ours, had a range and a richness of color +that had held me delighted through many long talks. During luncheon he +had told some of his best, and had given me permission to print, with a +discreet twist or so to disguise them, certain intimate episodes in the +first fat years of men whose names were by-words now all over the land. +I could already see that story selling on the newsstands. + +From this man I had come uptown to a branch of the Y. M. C. A., where +after an hour of hand-ball and a plunge in the swimming tank I had gone +to a room downstairs, to which ambitious youngsters came for free advice +from an expert who told them how to get on in life. His room was a +confessional. He would cross-examine each suppliant hard, make a +diagnosis of each one and then give him advice as to what to do--whether +or not to throw over his job, what kind of work he was suited for best. +The America he knew was made up of these small human units, some +pitiably or absurdly small, but all anxiously straining upward. And they +too appealed to me. + +For I was so successful now that I was growing mellow. From certain big +men I had written about I had taken a spacious breadth of view that +included a deep indulgence for all these skurrying pigmies. Poor little +devils, give 'em a chance, especially those among them who had "bim" +enough to want a chance, to wonder why they were not getting on and want +to do something about it. And so I had formed the habit of dropping in +often at this room, hearing its confessions and now and then helping get +someone a job. As the swimming tank made my body tingle, so this place +affected my soul. It warmed me to do all I could for some fellow, some +decent kid who was down on his luck. Besides, some confessions were gems +of their kind, glimpses into human lives, hard struggles, wild +ambitions. I meant to write them up some day. In fact, I meant to write +everything up, I felt everything waiting for my pen. + +And as I went down to the coat-room, the thought I had had so often +lately came again into my mind. I too would soon throw over my job, +leave articles and write fiction--my old Paris dream. But what a wide +and varied experience of life I had gathered since those ingenuous Paris +days. Yes, I would do it real and big, out of the big life I had known. +And my heroes would no longer be watching at my elbow to point to the +choicest bits and say, "You're mistaken, young man, I never said that." +No, all those lifelike human touches would stay in. Stories kept coming +up in my mind, one especially of late. As I stood in line for my hat and +coat I thought of it now and grew so absorbed I forgot that I was +standing in a line of insignificant clerks--until the one ahead of me, +who had just come in from the street, asked the chap in front of him: + +"Say, Gus, did you see the suffragettes? Their parade's just going by." + +This brought me down from the clouds with a jerk. For I had meant to see +that parade. Sue was in it, in it hard. Suffrage was her latest fad. + +"Naw," growled Gus. "If I was the mayor and they came to me for a permit +to march I'd tell 'em to go and buy corsets. That's their complaint. +They can't get kissed so they want to vote." The other one chuckled: + +"I saw one who can have my vote--and all I'll ask is a better look. +Believe me, some silk stockings!" + +As they went away I glared after them. "Damn little muts," I thought. I +was rather in favor of suffrage, at least I felt indulgent about it. Why +shouldn't I be? The great thing was to keep your mind open and kindly, +to feel contempt for nothing whatever. And because I felt contempt for +no thing or person in all the world, I now glared with the most utter +contempt on these narrow-minded little clerks. + +Then I hurried out and over to Fifth Avenue, where the throb of the +drums was still to be heard. And there I found to my surprise that in a +very real sense this parade was different from anything that I had ever +seen before. I was more than indulgent, I was excited. And by what? Not +by the marching lines of figures, fluttering banners, booming bands, nor +just by the fact that these marchers were women, and women quite frankly +dressed for effect, so that the whole rhythmic mass had a feminine color +and dash that made it all gay and delightful. No, there was something +deeper. And that something, I finally made out, was this. These women +and girls were all deeply thrilled by the feeling that for the first +time in their lives they were doing something all together--for an idea +that each one of them had thought rather big and stirring before, but +now, as each felt herself a part of this moving, swinging multitude, she +felt the idea suddenly loom so infinitely larger and more compelling +than before that she herself was astounded. Here for the first time in +my life I felt the power of mass action. + +And as presently I started home and the intensity of it was gone, there +was an added pleasure to me in remembering how I had felt it. Another +proof of my breadth of mind. I hurried home to dinner. + +As I entered our apartment I gave a long, low mysterious whistle. And +after a moment another whistle, which tried hard to be mysterious, +answered mine from another room. Then there were stealthy footsteps +which ended in a sudden charge, and my wee son, "the Indian," hurled me +onto a sofa, where, to use his expression, we "rush-housed" each other. +We did this almost every night. + +When the big time was about over Eleanore appeared: + +"Come, Indian, it's time for bed." She led him off protesting and blew +me back a kiss from the door. + +She had developed wonderfully, this bewitching wife of mine, this quiet +able one in her work, this smiling humorous one in her life, this +watchful, joyous, intimate one in the hours that shut everything out. +Sue said I idolized my wife, that I saw her all perfection, "without one +redeeming vice." Not at all. I knew her vices well enough. I knew she +could get distinctly cross when a new gown came home all wrong. I knew +that she could lie to me, I had caught her at it several times when she +said she was feeling finely and then confessed to me the next day, "I +had a splitting headache last night." In fact, she had any number of +vices--queer, mysterious feminine moods when she quite shamelessly shut +me out. She didn't half take care of herself, she went places when she +should have stayed at home. And finally, she was slow at dressing. +Placidly seated in front of her mirror she could spend an entire hour in +doing her soft luxuriant hair. + +I went over all these vices now as I lay back on the sofa. Idolize her? +Not at all. I knew her. We were married, thank God. + +Then she came back into the room. She was smiling in rather a curious +way, an expectant way, and I noticed that her color was unusually high. +Eleanore always dressed so well, but to-night she had outdone herself. +From her trim blue satin slippers to the demure little band of blue at +her throat she was more enchantingly fresh than ever. Suffragettes and +that sort of thing were all very well on the Avenue. Give me Eleanore at +home. + +"Did you see the parade?" she inquired. + +"Yes." + +"Did you see me?" + +I fairly jumped! + +"You?" I demanded. "Were you in that march?" + +"I most certainly was," she said quietly. Having shot her bolt she was +regarding me gravely now, with the merest glint of amused delight +somewhere in her gray-blue eyes. "Why not?" she asked. "I believe in it, +I want the vote. Why shouldn't I march? I paraded," she added serenely, +"in the college section right up near the head of the line. That's why +I'm home so early. I'm afraid I was quite conspicuous, for you see I'm +rather small and I had to take long swinging strides to keep in step. +But I soon got used to it, and I thoroughly enjoyed the cheers. We waved +back at them with our flags." + +"But," I cried, "my darling wife! Why didn't you tell me about it +ahead?" + +"Because"--she came close up to me and said quite confidentially, "we +do these things all by ourselves. You don't mean to say that you mind +it, dear?" + +I lost about five seconds and then I did exactly right. I took her in my +arms and laughed and called my wife by many names and said she couldn't +worry me, that I didn't mind it in the least, was proud of her and so +on. In short, to use a slang expression, I distinctly got away with it. +Moreover, I soon felt what I said. I was honestly rather proud of my +wife for having had the nerve to march. It must have been quite a +struggle, for she was no born marcher. + +And I was glad that I was proud. Another proof of my tolerance--which +was the more grateful to me just now because a magazine man I admired +had genially hinted the other day that I was rather narrow. + +"Did you see Sue?" I inquired. + +"Only for a moment," she said. "Sue was one of the marshals and she was +all up and down the lines. She's coming to supper with many paraders." + +"A crowd of women here? I'm off!" + +"No you're not. She's bringing some men paraders too." + +Men paraders! Now I could smile. I had earned the right, I had been +broad. But after all, there are limits. I could see those chaps parading +with women. I knew them, I had seen them before, for Sue had often +brought them here. I enjoyed myself immensely--till Eleanore shot +another bolt. + +"Smile on, funny one," she said. "You'll be in line yourself in a year." + +"I will not be in line!" + +"I wonder." She looked at me in a curious way. The mirth went slowly out +of her eyes. "There are so many queer new ideas crowding in all around +us," she said. "And I know you, Billy, oh, so well--so much better than +you know yourself. I know that when you once feel a thing you're just +the kind to go into it hard. I'm not speaking of suffrage now--that's +only one nice little part. I mean this whole big radical movement--all +the kind of thing your friend Joe Kramer stood for." She put her arms +about my neck. "Don't get too radical, husband mine--you're so nice and +funny now, my love." + +I regarded her anxiously: + +"Has this parade gone to your head--or has Sue been talking to you +again?" + +"I lunched with Sue----" + +"I knew it! And now she's coming here to supper--bringing men paraders!" + +"And they'll all be rabidly hungry," said Eleanore with a sudden change. +She went quickly in to see the cook and left me to grim meditation. + +I a radical? I smiled. And my slight uneasiness passed away, as I +thought about my sister. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Poor old Sue. What queer friends she had, what a muddled life compared +to ours. What a vague confused development, jumping from one idea to +another, never seeing any job through, forever starting all over again +with the same feverish absorption in the next new radical fad. High-brow +dramatics, the settlement movement, the post-impressionists, socialism, +votes for women, one thing after the other pell mell. She would work +herself all up, live hard, talk, organize, think and feel till her +nerves went all to pieces, and then she would come to us for a rest and +laugh at us for our restfulness and at herself for the state she was in. +That was one thing at least she had learned--to laugh at herself--she +could be deliciously humorous. And Eleanore, meeting her on that ground, +would quiet her and steady her down. + +We had grown very fond of Sue. We knew her life was not easy at home. +Alone over there with poor old Dad and feeling herself anchored down, +she would still at intervals rebel--against his sticking to his dull +job, against her own dependence, against the small monthly allowance +which without my father's knowledge they still had from me. + +"Let me earn my own living!" she would exclaim. "Why shouldn't I? I'm +twenty-six--and I'm working hard enough as it is--the Lord knows! I'm +organizing every day and making speeches half my nights. Other girls +take pay for that. Now Father, please be sensible. I'm going to take a +good salaried job." + +But then Dad, whose mind was so old and rigid, so much less tolerant +than mine, would grow excited or, still worse, ashamed that he couldn't +make money enough to give her all she wanted. And that desperate hungry +love with which he clung to her these latter days would in the end make +her give in. For under all her radical talk Sue had the kindest heart in +the world. + +Eleanore did her best to help. She was always having Dad over to dinner, +and we had a room which she called his, where he would come and stay the +week-end. At six o'clock each Saturday night he would arrive with his +satchel. + +"Daughter-in-law," he would announce, "my other daughter's _agin_ the +law, she's gone off revolooting. Can you take a decent old gentleman in +out of the last century? Don't change any plans on my account. If you're +going out to dinner just tell the cook to give me a snack and a cup of +tea, and then I'll light a good cigar and read the works of my great +son. Go right ahead as if I wasn't here." + +If we had he would have been furious. Eleanore always made it his +night--and no quiet evening, either. When we didn't take him out to a +play she invited people to dinner--young people, for he liked them best. +And late on Sunday morning the "Indian" would wake him up, would watch +him shave and dress and breakfast, and then they would be off to the +Park. We had named our small son after Dad and they were the most +splendid chums. They had any number of secrets. + +Eleanore too had made Sue use our apartment. Sue called it her Manhattan +club and brought her friends here now and then--"to stir you people up," +she said. But this did not disturb me, I felt too secure in life. And +with a safe, amused and slightly curious attitude I found Sue quite a +tonic. I liked to hear her knock my big men in her cocksure superior +way. It was mighty good fun. And every now and then by mistake she would +hit on something that was true. + +I found something too in her ideas. This suffrage business, for +example. She had stuck to this hobby quite a while, and through it she +had reached the conviction that women would never get the vote until the +great mass of working girls were drawn into the movement. So she had +gone in for working girls' clubs, and from clubs into trade unions and +from trade unions into strikes. There had been a strike of laundry girls +which for a week was the talk of the town. Sue and some of her suffrage +friends had organized meetings every night, and in a borrowed automobile +she had rushed from meeting to meeting with two laundry women, meager +forlorn-looking creatures who stood up much embarrassed and awkwardly +told about their lives. One of them, a young widow, had gone home from +work one night at eleven and found that her small baby had died of +convulsions during her absence. It was grim, terrible stuff of its kind, +and Sue was so intensely wrought up you'd have thought there was nothing +else in the world. But the strike stopped as suddenly as it began, and +the two women whose names she had brought into headlines were refused +jobs wherever they went. Sue tried to help them for a while, until this +suffrage parade came along, when she went into this equally hard and +quite forgot their existence. + +And then Eleanore took them up. Quietly and as a matter of course, she +took their troubles on her hands, sent one to a hospital and got the +other work, looked into their wretched home affairs and had them come +often to see her. And this kind of thing was happening often, Sue taking +up and dropping what Eleanore then took up and put through. I compared +them with a glow of pride. + +Eleanore's way was so sane and sure. She looked upon society much as she +did upon our son, who had frequent little ailments but through them all +what a glorious growth, to watch it was a perpetual joy. I remember +once, when in his young stomach there were some fearful goings on, +Eleanore's remarking: + +"Now if Sue had a child with a stomach in trouble, I suppose her way +would be to quickly remove the entire stomach and put some new radical +thing in its place." + +And then she went to the medicine chest, and a vastly comforted Indian +was soon cheerfully sitting up in bed. + +Eleanore could help others, I felt, because she had first helped +herself, had tackled the mote in her own eye, from the time when she had +gone down to the harbor to get her roots, as she called it. She was a +wonderful manager, our budget was carefully worked out. And she had +herself so well in hand she could put herself behind herself and smile +clearly out on life. + +"When Eleanore takes up a charity case," said her father, "she turns it +into a person at once, and later into an intimate friend." + +He himself took a quiet interest in all her charity cases. They would +often talk them over at night, and in his easy careless way he would +turn over all his spare money to help in the work. Eleanore would +protest at times, and tell him how utterly foolish he was in not putting +money aside for himself. But soon, deep in another case of poignant +human misery, she would throw all caution to the winds and use her +father's money--every dollar he could spare. That was another vice she +had. + +How she hated all the red tape in that huge network of institutions by +which New York City provides "relief." She never dropped a case of hers +into that cumbrous relief machine and then let it slip out of her sight. +She did the hard thing, she followed it up. She had learned, as I had in +my work, to "get on the inside" of this secretive city, to go to the +gods behind it all and so have her cases shoved. One day when one of +them, a woman, was in a hospital so desperately ill that her very life +depended on being moved to a private room--"It can't be done," said the +superintendent. Eleanore took the subway downtown to the Wall Street +office of the man who was the hospital's principal backer. She found +his outer office crowded with men who were waiting to see him on +business. "He can't see you," she was told. Then she scribbled this on +her card: + +"I want none of your money, a little of your influence and one minute of +your time on behalf of a woman who is dying." + +About twenty minutes later that woman was in a private room. + +It is hard to stop talking about my wife. But to return to my sister: + + * * * * * + +Into my reverie that night Sue burst with a dozen radical friends. +Others kept arriving, and our small rooms were soon a riot of color and +chatter. Banners were stacked against the wall, bright yellow ribbons +were everywhere, faces were flushed and happily tired. Eleanore sat at +her coffee urn, cups and saucers and plates went around, and people +still too excited to rest stood about eating hungrily. The talking was +fast and furious now. I listened, watched their faces. + +These "radicals," it seemed to me, had talked straight on both day and +night ever since the evenings years ago when one of their earliest +coteries had gathered in our Brooklyn home. And talking they had +multiplied and ramified all over the town. There was nothing under +heaven their fingers did not itch to change. Here close by my side were +three of them, two would-be Ibsen actresses and one budding playwright +who had had two Broadway failures and one Berkeley Lyceum success. But +were they talking of plays? Not at all. They talked of the Russian +Revolution. It had died down in the last few years, and they wanted to +help stir it up again by throwing some more American money into the +smoldering embers. To do this they planned to whip into new life "The +Friends of Russian Freedom." + +That was it, I told myself, these people were all friends of +revolutions. Vaguely as I watched them now I felt I was seeing the +parlor side, the light and fluffy outer fringe, of something rather +dangerous. I thought again of that parade and my impression of mass +force. No danger in that, it was dressy and safe. But some of these +youngsters did not stop there, they went in for stirring up people in +rags, mass force of a very different kind. Here was a sculptor socialist +who openly bragged that he'd had a hand in filling Union Square one day +with a seething mass of unemployed, and then when some poor crazed +fanatic threw a bomb, our socialist friend, as he himself smilingly put +it, never once stopped running until he reached his studio. + +It was this kind of thing that got on my nerves. For I pitied the +unwieldy poor, the numberless muddle-headed crowds down there in the +tenements, and it seemed to me perfectly criminal that a lot of these +young high-brows should be allowed to stir them up. Their own thinking +was so muddled, their views of life so out of gear. + +I a radical? No chance! + +While they chattered on excitedly, I thought of my trip uptown on the +"El" that afternoon, a trip that I had made hundreds of times. Coming as +I usually was from some big man or other, whose busy office and whose +mind was a clean, brilliant illustration of what efficiency can be, I +would sit in the car and idly watch the upper story windows we passed, +with yellow gas jets flaring in the cave-like rooms behind them. There I +had glimpses of men and girls at long crowded tables making coats, +pants, vests, paper flowers, chewing-gum, five-cent cigars. I saw +countless tenement kitchens, dirty cooking, unmade beds. These glimpses +followed one on the other in such a dizzying torrent they merged into +one moving picture for me. And that picture was of crowds, crowds, +crowds--of people living frowzily. + +This was poverty. And it was like some prodigious swamp. What could you +do about it? You could pull out individuals here and there, as Eleanore +did. I considered that a mighty fine job--for a woman or a clergyman. +But to go at it and drain the swamp was a very different matter. You +couldn't do it by easy preaching of patent cure-alls, nor by stirring up +class hatred through rabid attacks upon big men. No, this was a job for +the big men themselves, men who would go at this human swamp as +Eleanore's father had gone at the harbor--quietly and slowly, with an +engineer's precision. He had been at it six solid years, but he still +remarked humbly, "We've only begun." + +Then from thinking of big men I thought of the one I had seen that day, +and of my story about him. It was just in the stage I liked, where I +could feel it all coming together. Incidents, bits of character and neat +little turns of speech rose temptingly before my mind. + +Presently, through the clamor around me, I heard "the Indian" crying. +All this chatter had waked him up. I saw Eleanore go in to him and soon +I heard the crying stop, and I knew she was telling him a story, a nice +sleepy one to quiet him down. + +What an infernal racket these people were making about the world. I went +on thinking about my work. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +"You two," said Sue, when at last her friends had gone away, "have built +up a wall of contentment around you a person couldn't break through with +an axe." + +"Have a little," I suggested. + +"Stay all night," said Eleanore. + +"No, thanks," said Sue. "I promised Dad that I'd be home." + +And then instead of going home she sprawled lazily on the sofa with her +head upon one elbow, and settled in for some more talk. But her talk was +different to-night. She usually talked about herself, but to-night she +talked of us instead, of our contemptible content. And presently through +her talk I felt that she had some surprise to spring. In a few moments +Eleanore felt it too, I could tell that by the vigilant way she kept +glancing up from her knitting. + +"I think," I was remarking, "we're a pretty liberal-minded pair." + +"That's it," said Sue. "You're liberals!" What utter disdain she threw +into the word. "And what's more you're citizens. In all these +movements," she went on, "you always find two classes--citizens and +criminals. You two are both born citizens." + +"What's the difference?" I inquired. + +"Citizens," said Sue impressively, "are ready to _vote_ for what they +believe in. Criminals are ready to get arrested and go to jail." + +Eleanore looked up at her. + +"Who gave you that?" she asked. Sue looked a little taken back, but only +for a moment. + +"One of the criminals," she said. Her voice was carefully casual now but +her eyes were a little excited. "He's a man who made up his mind that he +wanted to get way down to the bottom, and see how it feels to be down +there. So he took the very worst job he could find. For two years he was +a stoker--on ships of all kinds all over the world. And now that he +knows just how it feels, he has an office down on the docks where he's +getting the stokers and dockers together--getting them ready for a +strike--on your beloved harbor." + +"Joe Kramer," said Eleanore quietly. Sue gave a sudden, nervous start. + +"Eleanore," she severely rejoined, "sometimes you're simply uncanny--the +way you quietly jump at a thing!" + +Eleanore had gone on with her knitting. I rose and lit a cigarette. I +could feel Sue's eyes upon me. So _this_ was her infernal surprise! J. +K. banging into my life again! + +"How long has Joe been here?" I asked. + +"About five months," Sue answered. + +"He might have looked me up," I said. + +"He doesn't want to look anyone up, I've only seen him once myself. He +has simply buried himself down there. Why don't you go and see him, +Billy?" she added, with a quick glance at Eleanore. "He won't amuse you +the way we do. He's one of the real criminals now." + +Still Eleanore did not look up. + +"What's his address?" I asked gruffly. Sue gave it to me and +good-humoredly yawned and said she must be getting home. + +"Good-night, dear," said Eleanore. She had risen and come to the door. +"What a love of a hat you're wearing. It's a new one, isn't it? I caught +sight of it in the parade." + +But the smile which my tall sister threw back at us from the doorway +had nothing whatever to do with hats. It said as plainly as in words: + +"Now, you cozy liberals, go over and touch _that_ spot if you dare." + +When she had gone I took up a book and tried to read. But I soon +gloomily relapsed. Would J. K. never leave me alone? What was he doing +with my harbor? Why should I look him up, confound him--he hadn't +bothered his head about me. But I knew that I _would_ look him up and +would find him more disturbing than ever. How he did keep moving on. No, +not on, but down, down--until now he had bumped the bottom! + +"Are you going to see him?" + +Glancing sharply up, I saw Eleanore carefully watching my face. + +"Oh, I suppose so," I replied. She bent again to her knitting. + +"He must be a strange kind of a person," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +I slept little that night, and my work the next morning went badly. So, +after wasting an hour or two, I decided to stop. I would go and see Joe +and be done with it. + +What was he doing with my harbor? The address Sue had given me was down +on the North River, my old hunting ground. The weather had turned cold +over-night, and when I came to the waterfront I felt the big raw breath +of the sea. I had hardly been near the harbor in years. It had become +for me a deep invisible corner-stone upon which my vigorous world was +built. I had climbed up into the airy heights, I had been writing of +millionaires. And coming so abruptly now from my story of life in rich +hotels, the place I had once glorified looked bleak and naked, +elemental. Down to the roots of things again. + +I came to a bare wooden building, climbed some stairs and entered a +large, low-ceilinged room which was evidently a meeting hall. Chairs +were stacked along the walls and there was a low platform at one end. As +I lingered there a moment, by habit my eyes took in the details. The +local color was lurid enough. On the walls were foreign pictures, one of +the anarchist Ferrer being executed in Spain, and another of an Italian +mob shaking their fists and yelling like demons at a bloated hideous +priest. There were posters in which flaming torches, blood-red flags and +barricades and cannon belching clouds of smoke stood out in heavy blacks +and reds. And all this foreign violence was made grimly real in its +purpose here by the way these pictures centered around the largest +poster, which was of an ocean liner with all its different kinds of +workers gathered together in one mass and staring fixedly up at the +ship. + +Through a door in a board partition I went into a narrow room from which +two dirty windows looked out upon the docks below. This room was cramped +and crowded. Newspapers and pamphlets lay heaped on the floor, and in +the corners were four desks, at one of which three men, whom I learned +later to be an Italian, an Englishman and a Spaniard, were talking +together intensely. They took no notice of my entrance, for many other +visitors, burly, sooty creatures, were constantly straggling in and out. + +I saw Joe at a desk in one corner. Looking doubly tall and lean and +stooped, and with a tired frown on his face, he sat there with his +sleeves rolled up slowly pounding out a letter on the typewriter before +him. On top of his desk were huge ledgers, and over them upon hooks on +the wall hung bunches of letters from other ports. It all gave me a +heavy impression of dull daily drudgery. And in this Joe was so absorbed +that he took no notice of my presence, although I now stood close behind +him. When at last he did look up and I got a full view of his face, with +its large, familiar features, tight-set jaw and deep-set eyes, I was +startled at its gauntness. + +"Hello, Joe----" + +"Hello." A dullish red came into his face and then a slight frown. He +half rose from his seat. "Hello, Bill," he repeated. "What's brought you +here?" + +He appeared a little dazed at first, then anything but glad to see me. +The thought of our old college days flashed for a moment into my mind. +How far away they seemed just now. Through our first few awkward remarks +he lapsed back into such a tired, worn indifference that I was soon on +the point of leaving. But that bony gauntness in his face, and all it +showed me he had been through, gave him some right to his rudeness, I +thought. So I changed my mind and stuck to my purpose of having it all +out with Joe and learning what he was about. Persisting in my +friendliness my questions slowly drew him out. + +Since I had seen him five years ago he had continued his writing, but as +he had grown steadily more set on writing only what he called "the truth +about things," the newspapers had closed their doors. While I had gone +up he had gone down, until finally throwing up in disgust "this whole +fool game of putting words on paper," he had made up his mind to throw +in his life with the lives of the men at the bottom. So for two years he +had shoveled coal in the stokeholes of ships by day and by night, he had +mixed with stokers of every race, from English, French and Germans to +Russians and Italians, Spaniards, Hindus, Coolies, Greeks. He had worked +and eaten and slept in their holes, he had ranged the slums of all the +seas. And of all this he spoke in short, commonplace phrases, still in +that indifferent tone, as though personal stories were a bore. + +"But look here, Joe," I asked at the end, "what's the good of living +like this? What the devil can you do?" + +I still remember the look he gave me, the weary remoteness of it. But +all he said was, + +"Organize strikes." + +"Here?" + +"Everywhere." + +"Of stokers?" + +"No, of all industries." + +"For higher pay, eh, and shorter hours." + +Another brief look. + +"No, for revolution," he said. + +Briefly, in reply to my questions, he explained how he and his friends +had already induced some twelve thousand stokers and dockers to leave +their old trade unions and enroll themselves as members of this new +international body, which was to embrace not only one trade but all the +labor connected with ships--ships of all nations. He was here doing the +advance work. As soon as the ground was made ready, he said, some of the +bigger leaders would come. Then there would be mass meetings here and +presently a general strike. And as the years went on there would be +similar strikes in all trades and in all countries, until at some time +not many years off there would be such labor rebellions as would +paralyze the industrial world. And out of this catastrophe the workers +would emerge into power to build up a strange new world of their own. + +This was what Joe saw ahead. He seemed to be seeing it while he spoke, +with a hard, clear intensity that struck me rather cold. Here was no +mere parlor talk, here was a man who lived what he said. + +"You comfortable people," he said, "are so damn comfortable you're +blind. You see nothing ahead but peace on earth and a nice smooth +evolution--with a lot of steady little reforms. You've got so you +honestly can't believe there's any violence left in the world. You're as +blind as most folks were five years before the Civil War. But what's the +use talking?" he ended. "You can't understand all this." Again my +irritation rose. + +"No, I can't say I do," I replied. "To stir up millions of men of that +kind and then let 'em loose upon the world strikes me as absolutely +mad!" + +"I knew it would." + +"Look here, Joe, how are _you_ so sure about all this? Hasn't it ever +struck you that you're getting damnably narrow?" He smiled. + +"I don't care much if I'm narrow," he said. + +"You think it's good for you, being like this?" + +"I don't care if it's good for me." + +"Don't you want to see anything else?" + +"Not in your successful world." + +"Well, J. K., I'm sorry," I retorted hotly. "Because I'd like to see +your world, I honestly would! I'm not like you, I'm always ready to be +shown!" + +"All right, come and see it. Why don't you write up Jim Marsh?" He +smiled as he named the notorious leader of the whole organization. +"He'll be here soon, and in his line he has been a mighty successful +man. All up and down the U. S. A. Jim's name has been in headlines and +Jim himself has been in jail. A successful revolutionist. So why not add +him to your list? Write up the America _he_ knows." There was a +challenge in Joe's voice. + +"All right, perhaps I will," I said. At least I had him talking now. +"Come out to lunch and tell me some more." + +"I don't want any lunch." + +Something in the way he said that made me look at him quickly. He +appeared to me now not only thin but tense and rather feverish. His +nerves were plainly all on edge. He had smoked one cigarette after +another. + +"I've got a lot of work to-day," he added restlessly. "Not only these +damn letters to write--I've got to make up our paper besides--it goes to +the printer to-morrow. Here, take a copy with you." + +And he handed me the last week's issue. It was a crude and flimsy +affair, with its name, in scarehead letters, "WAR SURE." I glanced it +over in silence a moment. What a drop for Joe, from what he had been, to +this wretched violent little sheet, this muckraker of the ocean world. + +"Not like the harbor _you_ painted," he said. + +"No," I answered shortly. + +"Do you want another look at your harbor?" + +I eyed him for a moment: + +"All right--I'll look----" + +"Fine business." He had risen now, and a gleam of the old likable Joe +came for a moment into his eyes. + +"Meet me to-morrow at seven a. m. And let's look at some of its +failures," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +"Did you see him?" Eleanore asked that night. + +"Yes--I saw him----" + +I could feel her waiting, but I could not bring myself to talk. Eleanore +wouldn't like J. K. She wouldn't like what I had told him I'd do. I was +sorry now that I had, it was simply looking for trouble. I damned that +challenge in Joe's voice. Why did he always get hold of me so? + +"How did he look? Is he much changed?" Eleanore asked me quietly. + +"Yes. He looks half sick--and old. He's been through a good deal," I +answered. + +"Did he talk about that?" + +"Yes"--I hesitated--"and of what he wants to show me," I said. Eleanore +looked quickly up. + +"Are you going to see him soon again?" + +"Yes--to-morrow morning--to have a look at his stoker friends. I want to +have just one good look at the life that has made him what he is. That's +all--that's all it amounts to----" + +There was another silence. Then she came over behind my chair and I felt +the cool quiet of her hand as she slowly stroked my forehead. + +"You look tired, dear," she said. + + * * * * * + +Just before daylight the next morning I rose and dressed, swallowed some +coffee and set out. I took a surface car downtown. + +I had not been out at this hour in years. And as in my present mood, +troubled and expectant, I watched the streets in the raw half-light, +they looked as utterly changed to me as though they were streets of a +different world. The department store windows looked unreal. Their soft +rich lights had been put out, and in this cold hard light of dawn all +their blandishing ladies of wax appeared like so many buxom ghosts. Men +were washing the windows. Women and girls were hurrying by, and as some +of them stopped for a moment to peer in at these phantoms of fashion, +their own faces looked equally waxen to me. A long, luxurious motor +passed with a man and a woman in evening clothes half asleep in each +other's arms. An old man with a huge pack of rags turned slowly and +stared after them. The day's work was beginning. Peddlers trundled +push-carts along, newspaper vendors opened their stands, milk wagons and +trucks from the markets came by, some on the gallop. Our car had filled +with people now. Men and boys clung to the steps behind and women and +girls were packed inside, most of them hanging to the straps. How badly +and foolishly dressed were these girls. There must be thousands of them +out. Two kept tittering inanely. All the rest were silent. + +By the time that I reached the docksheds the day was breaking over their +roofs. It was freezing cold, and the chill was worse in the dock that I +entered. I buttoned my ulster tighter. The big place was dark and empty. +The dockers, I learned from the watchman, had quit work at three +o'clock, for a few tons of fruit was all the freight that remained to be +loaded. The ship was to sail at nine o'clock. + +The stokers had not yet gone aboard. I found about a hundred of them +huddled along the steel wall of the shed. Some of them had old leather +grips or canvas bags, but many had no luggage at all. A few wore seedy +overcoats, but the greater part had none, they stood with their hands in +their ragged pockets, shivering and stamping. Most of them were +undersized, some tough, some rather sickly. A dull-eyed, wretched, +sodden lot. I got the liquor on their breaths. A fat old Irish stoker +came drifting half-drunk up the pier with a serene and waggish smile. + +"Hello," said Joe at my elbow. + +He looked more fagged than the day before. I noticed that his lips were +blue and that his teeth were chattering. + +"Joe," I said abruptly, "you're not fit to be here. Let's get out of +this, you belong in bed." He glanced at me impatiently. + +"I'm fit enough," he muttered. "We'll stay right here and see this +show--unless you feel you want to quit----" + +"Did I say I did? I'm ready enough----" + +"All right, then wait a minute. They're about ready to go on board." + +But as we stood and watched them, I still felt the chattering teeth by +my side, and a wave of pity and anger and of disgust swept over me. Joe +wouldn't last long at this kind of thing! + +"What do you think of my friends?" he asked. + +"I think you're throwing your life away!" + +"Do you? How do you make it out?" + +"Because they're an utterly hopeless crowd! Look at 'em--poor +devils--they look like a lot of Bowery bums!" + +"Yes--they look like a lot of bums. And they feed all the fires at sea." + +"Are they all like these?" I demanded. + +"No better dressed," he answered. "A million lousy brothers of Christ." + +"And you think you can build a new world _with them_?" + +"No--I think they can do it themselves." + +"Do you know what I think they'll do themselves? If they ever do win in +any strike and get a raise in wages--they'll simply blow it in on +drink!" + +Joe looked at me a moment. + +"They'll do so much more than drink," he said. "Come on," he added. +"They're going aboard." + +They were forming in a long line now before the third-class gang-plank. +As they went up with their packs on their shoulders, a man at the top +gave each a shove and shouted out a number, which another official +checked off in a book. The latter I learned was the chief engineer. He +was a lean, powerful, ruddy-faced man with a plentiful store of +profanity which he poured out in a torrent: + +"Come on! For Christ's sake! Do you want to freeze solid, you ---- human +bunch of stiffs?" + +We came up the plank at the end of the line, and I showed him a letter +which I had procured admitting us to the engine rooms. He turned us over +promptly to one of his junior engineers, and we were soon climbing down +oily ladders through the intricate parts of the engines, all polished, +glistening, carefully cleaned. And then climbing down more ladders until +we were, as I was told, within ten feet of the keel of the ship, we came +into the stokers' quarters. + +And here nothing at all was carefully cleaned. The place was foul, its +painted steel walls and floor and ceiling were heavily encrusted with +dirt. The low chamber was crowded with rows of bunks, steel skeleton +bunks three tiers high, the top tier just under the ceiling. In each was +a thin, dirty mattress and blanket. In some of these men were already +asleep, breathing hard, snoring and wheezing. Others were crowded around +their bags intent on something I could not see. Many were smoking, the +air was blue. Some were almost naked, and the smells of their bodies +filled the place. It was already stifling. + +"Had enough?" asked our young guide, with a grin. + +"No," I said, with an answering superior smile. "We'll stay a while and +get it all." + +And after a little more talk he left us. + +"How do you like our home?" asked Joe. + +"I'm here now," I said grimly. "Go ahead and show me. And try to believe +that I want to be shown." + +"All right, here comes our breakfast." + +Two stokers were bringing in a huge boiler. They set it down on the +dirty floor. It was full of a greasy, watery soup with a thick, yellow +scum on the top, through which chunks of pork and potato bobbed up here +and there. + +"This is scouse," Joe told me. Men eagerly dipped tin cups in this and +gulped it down. The chunks of meat they ate with their hands. They ate +sitting on bunks or standing between them. Some were wedged in close +around a bunk in which lay a sleeper who looked utterly dead to the +world. His face was white. + +"He reminds me," said Joe, "of a fellow whose bunk was once next to +mine. He was shipped at Buenos Ayres, where the crimps still handle the +business. A crimp had carried this chap on board, dumped him, got his +ten dollars and left. The man was supposed to wake up at sea and shovel +coal. But this one didn't. The second day out some one leaned over and +touched him and yelled. The crimp had sold us a dead one." + +As Joe said this he stared down at the sleeper, a curious tensity in his +eyes. + +"Joe, how did you ever stand this life?" + +My own voice almost startled me, it sounded so suddenly tense and +strained. Joe turned and looked at me searchingly, with a trace of that +old affection of his. + +"I didn't, Kid," he said gruffly. "The two years almost got me. And +that's what happens to most of 'em here. Half of 'em," he added, "are +down-and-outers when they start. They're what the factories and mills +and all the rest of this lovely modern industrial world throw out as no +more wanted. So they drift down here and take a job that nobody else +will take, it's so rotten, and here they have one week of hell and +another week's good drunk in port. And when the barrooms and the women +and all the waterfront sharks have stripped 'em of their last red cent, +then the crimps collect an advance allotment from their future wages to +ship 'em off to sea again." + +"That's not true in _this_ port," I retorted, eagerly catching him up on +the one point that I knew was wrong. "They don't allow crimps in New +York any more." + +"No," Joe answered grimly. "The port of New York has got reformed, it's +become all for efficiency now. The big companies put up money for a kind +of a seamen's Y. M. C. A. where they try to keep men sober ashore, and +so get 'em back quick into holes like these, in the name of Christ. + +"But there's one thing they forget," he added bitterly. "The age of +steam has sent the old-style sailors ashore and shipped these fellows in +their places. And that makes all the difference. These chaps didn't grow +up on ships and get used to being kicked and cowed and shot for mutiny +if they struck. No, they're all grown up on land, in factories where +they've been in strikes, and they bring their factory views along into +these floating factories. And they don't like these stinking holes! They +don't like their jobs, with no day and no night, only steel walls and +electric light! You hear a shout at midnight and you jump down into the +stokehole and work like hell till four a. m., when you crawl up all +soaked in sweat and fall asleep till the next shout. And you do this, +not as the sailor did for a captain he knew and called 'the old man,' +but for a corporation so big it has rules and regulations for you like +what they have in the navy. You're nothing but a number. Look here." + +He took me to a bulletin that had just been put up on the wall. Around +it men were eagerly crowding. + +"Here's where you find by your number what shift you're to work in," he +said, "and what other number you have to replace if he goes down. Heart +failure is damn common here, and if your man gives out it means you +double up for the rest of the voyage. So you get his number and hunt for +him and size him up. You hope he'll last. I'll show you why." + +He crawled down a short ladder and through low passageways dripping wet +and so came into the stokehole. + +This was a long, narrow chamber with a row of glowing furnace doors. Wet +coal and coal-dust lay on the floor. At either end a small steel door +opened into bunkers that ran along the sides of the ship, deep down near +the bottom, containing thousands of tons of soft coal, which the men +called "trimmers" kept shoveling out to the stokers. As the voyage went +on, Joe told me, these trimmers had to go farther and farther back into +the long, black bunkers, full of stifling coal-dust, in which if the +ship were rolling the masses of coal kept crashing down. Hundreds of men +had been killed that way. In the stokehole the fires were not yet up, +but by the time the ship was at sea the furnace mouths would be white +hot and the men at work half naked. They not only shoveled coal into the +flames, they had to spread it out as well and at intervals rake out the +"clinkers" in fiery masses on the floor. On these a stream of water +played, filling the chamber with clouds of steam. In older ships, like +this one, a "lead stoker" stood at the head of the line and set the pace +for the others to follow. He was paid more to keep up the pace. But on +the fast new liners this pacer was replaced by a gong. + +"And at each stroke of the gong you shovel," said Joe. "You do this till +you forget your name. Every time the boat pitches, the floor heaves you +forward, the fire spurts at you out of the doors and the gong keeps on +like a sledgehammer coming down on top of your mind. And all you think +of is your bunk and the time when you're to tumble in." + +From the stokers' quarters presently there came a burst of singing. + +"Now let's go back," he ended, "and see how they're getting ready for +this." + +As we crawled back the noise increased, and it swelled to a roar as we +entered. The place was pandemonium now. Those groups I had noticed +around the bags had been getting out the liquor, and now at eight +o'clock in the morning half the crew were already well soused. Some +moved restlessly about. One huge bull of a creature with large, limpid, +shining eyes stopped suddenly with a puzzled stare, then leaned back on +a bunk and laughed uproariously. From there he lurched over the shoulder +of a thin, wiry, sober man who, sitting on the edge of a bunk, was +slowly spelling out the words of a newspaper aeroplane story. The big +man laughed again and spit, and the thin man jumped half up and snarled. + +Louder rose the singing. Half the crew was crowded close around a little +red-faced cockney. He was the modern "chanty man." With sweat pouring +down his cheeks and the muscles of his neck drawn taut, he was jerking +out verse after verse about women. He sang to an old "chanty" tune, one +that I remembered well. But he was not singing out under the stars, he +was screaming at steel walls down here in the bottom of the ship. And +although he kept speeding up his song the crowd were too drunk to wait +for the chorus, their voices kept tumbling in over his, and soon it was +only a frenzy of sound, a roar with yells rising out of it. The singers +kept pounding each other's backs or waving bottles over their heads. Two +bottles smashed together and brought a still higher burst of glee. + +"I'm tired!" Joe shouted. "Let's get out!" + +I caught a glimpse of his strained, frowning face. Again it came over me +in a flash, the years he had spent in holes like this, in this hideous, +rotten world of his, while I had lived joyously in mine. And as though +he had read the thought in my disturbed and troubled eyes, + +"Let's go up where _you_ belong," he said. + +I followed him up and away from his friends. As we climbed ladder after +ladder, fainter and fainter on our ears rose that yelling from below. +Suddenly we came out on deck and slammed an iron door behind us. + +And I was where I belonged. I was in dazzling sunshine and keen frosty +Autumn air. I was among gay throngs of people. Dainty women brushed me +by. I felt the softness of their furs, I breathed the fragrant scent of +them and of the flowers that they wore, I saw their fresh immaculate +clothes, I heard the joyous tumult of their talking and their laughing +to the regular crash of the band--all the life of the ship I had known +so well. + +And I walked through it all as though in a dream. On the dock I watched +it spellbound--until with handkerchiefs waving and voices calling down +good-bys, that throng of happy travelers moved slowly out into +midstream. + +And I knew that deep below all this, down in the bottom of the ship, the +stokers were still singing. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +That same day I had an appointment to lunch with the owner of rich +hotels whose story I was writing. And the interview dragged. For the +America he knew was like what I'd seen on the upper decks of the ship +that had sailed a few hours before. And I could not get back my old zest +for it all, I kept thinking of what I had seen underneath. The faces of +individual stokers, some fiery red, some sodden gray, kept bobbing up in +my memory. Angrily trying to keep them down, I went on with my +questions. But I caught the hotel millionaire throwing curious looks at +me now and then. + +I went home worried and depressed and shut myself up in my workroom. +This business had to be thought out. It wasn't only stokers; it was +something deep, world-wide. I had come up against the slums. What had I +to do with it all? + +I was in my room all afternoon. I heard "the Indian" at my door, but I +sat still and silent, and presently he went away. + +Late in the twilight Eleanore came. How beautiful she was to-night. She +was wearing a soft gown of silk, blue with something white at her throat +and a brooch that I had given her. As she bent over my shoulder I felt +her clean, fresh loveliness. + +"Don't you want to tell me, love, just what it was he showed you?" + +"I'd rather not, my dear one, it was something so terribly ugly," I +said. + +"I don't like being so far away from you, dear. Please tell me. Suppose +you begin at the start." + +It took a long time, for she would let me keep nothing back. + +"I wouldn't have thought it could hit me so hard," I said at the end. + +"I'm not surprised," said Eleanore. + +"I can't be simply angry at Joe," I went on. "He's so intensely and +gauntly sincere. It isn't just talk with him, you see, as it is with +Sue's parlor radical friends. Think of the life he's been leading, think +of it compared to mine. Joe and I were mighty close once"--I broke off +and got up restlessly. "I hate to think of him," I said. + +"It's funny," said Eleanore quietly. "I knew this was coming sooner or +later. Ever since we've been married I've known that Joe Kramer still +means more to you than any man you've ever met." + +"He doesn't," I said sharply. "Where on earth did you get that idea?" + +"From you, my love," she answered. "You can't dream how often you've +spoken about him." + +"I didn't know I had!" It is most disquieting at times, the things +Eleanore tells me about myself. + +"I know you don't," she continued, "you do it so unconsciously. That's +why I'm so sure he has a real place in the deep unconscious part of you. +He worries you. He gets you to think you've no right to be happy!" There +was a bitterness in her voice that I had never heard before. "I believe +in helping people--of course--whenever I get a chance," she said. "But I +don't believe in this--I hate it! It's simply an insane attempt to pull +every good thing down! It's too awful even to think of!" + +"We're not going to," I told her. "I'm sorry for Joe and I wish I could +help him out of his hole. But I can't--it's too infernally deep. He +won't listen to any talk from me--and as long as he won't I'll leave him +alone. It's hideous enough--God knows. But if I ever tackle poverty and +labor and that sort of thing it'll be along quite different lines." + +The door-bell rang. + +"Oh Billy," she said, "I forgot to tell you. Father's coming to dinner +to-night." I looked at her a moment: + +"Did you ask him here on my account?" Eleanore smiled frankly. + +"Yes--I thought I might need him," she said. + +I did not talk to her father of Joe--his plans for a strike were his +secret, not mine. But with Eleanore pushing me on, I described the hell +I had seen in the stokehole. + +"You're right, it's hell," her father agreed. "But in time we'll do away +with it." + +"I knew it," Eleanore put in. + +"How?" I asked. + +"By using oil instead of coal. Or if we can't get oil cheap enough by +automatic stokers--machines to do the work of men." + +I thought hard and fast for a moment, and suddenly I realized that I had +never given any real thought to matters of this kind before. + +"Then what will become of the stokers?" I asked him. + +"One thing at a time." I caught Dillon keenly watching me over his +cigar. "Don't give up your faith in efficiency, Bill. If they'll only +give us time enough we'll be able to do so much for men." + +There was something so big and sincere in his voice and in his clear and +kindly eyes. + +"I'm sure you will," I answered. "If you don't, there's nobody else who +can." + +In a week or two, by grinding steadily on at my work and by a few more +quiet talks with Eleanore and her father, I could feel myself safely +back on my ground. + + * * * * * + +But one morning Sue broke in on me. + +"I've just heard from a friend of Joe Kramer's," she said, "that he is +dangerously ill. And there's no one to look after him. Hadn't you better +go yourself?" + +"Of course," I assented gruffly. "I'll go down at once." + +It seemed as though the Fates and Sue were in league to keep Joe in my +life. + +I went to Joe's office and found the address of the room where he slept. +It was over a German saloon close by. It was a large, low-ceilinged +room, bare and cheaply furnished, with dirty curtains at the windows, +dirty collars and shirts on the floor. It was cold. In the high +old-fashioned fireplace the coal fire had gone out. Joe was lying +dressed on the bed. He jumped up as I entered and came to me with his +face flushed and his eyes dilated. He gripped my hand. + +"Why, hello, Kid," he cried. "Glad to see you!" And then with a quick +drop of his voice: "Hold on, we mustn't talk so loud, we've got to be +quiet here, you know." He turned away from me restlessly. "I've been +hunting for hours for that damn book. Their cataloguing system here is +rotten, Kid, it's rotten!" As he spoke he was slowly feeling his way +along the dirty white wall of his room. "They've cheated us, Bill, I'm +on to 'em now! That's what college is really for these days, to hide the +books we ought to read!" + +It came over me suddenly that Joe was back in college, on one of those +library evenings of ours. I felt a tightening at my throat. + +"Say, Joe." I drew him toward the bed. "The chapel bell has just struck +ten. Time for beer and pretzels." + +"Fine business! Gee, but I've got a thirst! But where's the door? God +damn it all--I can't find anything to-night!" He laughed unsteadily. + +"Right over here," I answered. "Steady, old man----" + +And so I got him to his bed. He fell down on it breathing hard and I +brought him a drink of water. He began to shiver violently. I covered +him up with dirty blankets, went down to the barroom and telephoned to +Eleanore. Too deeply disturbed to think very clearly, acting on an +impulse, I told her of Joe's condition and asked if I might bring him +home. + +"Why of course," came the answer, a little sharp. "Wait a moment. Let me +think." There was a pause, and then she added quietly, "Go back to his +room and keep him in bed. I'll see that an ambulance comes right down." + +Within an hour after that Joe was installed in our guest room with a +trained nurse to attend to him. The doctor pronounced it typhoid and he +was with us for nine weeks. + + * * * * * + +The effect upon our lives was sharp. In our small crowded apartment all +entertaining was suddenly stopped, and with the sole exception of Sue no +one came to see us. Even our little Indian learned to be quiet as a +mouse. Our whole home became intense. + +Through the thin wall of my workroom I could hear Joe in his delirium. +Now he was busily writing letters, now in a harsh excited voice he was +talking to a crowd of men, again he was furiously shoveling coal. All +this was incoherent, only mutterings most of the time. But when the +voice rose suddenly it was so full of a stern pain, so quivering with +revolt against life, and it poured out such a torrent of commonplace +minute details that showed this was Joe's daily life and the deepest +part of his being--that as I listened at my desk the ghost I thought I +had buried deep, that vague guilty feeling over my own happiness, came +stealing up in me again. And it was so poignant now, that struggle +angrily as I would to plunge again into my work, I found it impossible +to describe the life in those rich gay hotels with the zest and the dash +I needed to make my story a success. + +But it had to be a success, for we needed money badly, the expenses of +Joe's sickness were already rolling in. So I did finish it at last and +took it to my successful man, who read it with evident disappointment. +It was not the glory story that I had led him to expect. My magazine +editor said he would use it, but he, too, appeared surprised. + +"You weren't up to your usual form," was his comment. "What's the +matter?" + +"A sick friend." + +I started another story at once, one I had already planned, about a man +who was to build a string of gorgeous opera houses in the leading +American cities. This story, too, went slowly. Joe Kramer's voice kept +breaking in. From time to time as I struggled on I could feel Eleanore +watching me. + +"Don't try to hurry it," she said. "We can always borrow from father, +you know--and besides, I'm going to cut our expenses." + +She was as good as her word. She dismissed the nurse, and through the +last weeks of delirium and the first of returning consciousness she +placed herself in Joe's borderland as the one whose presence he vaguely +felt pulling him back into comfort and strength. + +"No, don't talk," I heard her say to him one evening. "I don't want to +hear you. All I want is to get you well. That's the only thing you and I +have to talk of." + +But having so thrown him off his guard, as his mind grew clearer she +began cautiously drawing him out, despite his awakening hostility to +this woman who had made me a success. From my room I heard snatches of +their talk. She surprised J. K. by the intimate bits of knowledge about +him that she had collected both from me and from his own sick ramblings. +She had just enough of his point of view to rouse him from his +indifference, to annoy him by her mistakes and her refusals to +understand. I remember one afternoon when I went in to sit with him, his +staring grimly up at my face and saying: + +"Bill, that wife of yours is such a born success she scares me. +Everything she touches, everything she brings me to drink, everything +she does to this bed, is one thundering success. And she won't listen to +anything _but_ success. Your case is absolutely hopeless." + +They became grim enemies, and both of them enjoyed it. She let our +small son come and sit by the bed. The Indian promptly worshiped Joe as +the "longest" man he had ever seen, and they became boon companions. + +"It's pathetic," Eleanore told me, "the little things that appeal to him +here. Poor boy, he has forgotten what a decent home is like." + +As he grew stronger she read the paper to him each morning, and they +quarreled with keen relish over the news events of the day. And as at +the start, so now, she kept giving him little shocks of surprise by her +intimate glimpses into his views. On one of these occasions, after she +had come out from his room and was sitting by me reading, + +"You're a wonder, Eleanore," I said. "I don't see how you've done it." + +"Done what, my love?" asked Eleanore. + +"Wormed all his views out of poor old Joe." + +"I haven't done anything of the sort. I've learned over half of it from +Sue. She comes here often nowadays and we have long talks about him. Sue +seems to know him rather well." + +This did not interest me much, so I switched our talk to something that +did. + +"What bothers me," I said with a scowl, "is this infernal work of mine. +What are you smiling at?" I asked. + +"Nothing," she murmured, beginning to read. "But if I were you I'd stick +at my work. You're good at that." + +"Not now I'm not," I retorted. "This story about the opera man isn't +coming on at all! The more I work the worse it gets!" + +"It will get better soon," she said. + +"I'm not so sure. Do you know what I think is the matter with me? I was +in to-day looking at Joe asleep, and watching the lines in that face of +his it came over me all of a sudden what a wretched coward I've been." +Eleanore looked up suddenly. "I know there's something in all his talk, +I've known it every time we've met. His view's so distorted it makes me +mad, but there's something in it you can't get away from. Poverty, +that's what it is, and I've always steered way clear of it as though I +were afraid to look. I've taken your father's point of view and left the +slums for him and his friends to tackle when they get the time. I was +only too glad to be left out. But that hour with J. K. and his stokers +gave me a jolt. I can feel it still. I can't seem to shake it off. And +I'm beginning to wonder now why I shouldn't get up the nerve to see for +myself, to have a good big look at it all--and write about it for a +while." + +"Don't!" said Eleanore. "Leave it alone!" Her voice was so sharp it +startled me. + +"Why?" I rejoined. "You've tackled poverty often enough. I guess I can +stand it if you can." + +"You're different," she answered. "You leave poverty alone and force +yourself to go on with your work. You've made a very wonderful start. +You'll be ready to take up fiction soon. When you have, and when you +have gone so far that you can feel sure of your name and yourself, then +you can look at whatever you like." + +"I wonder what Joe would say to that." + +"I know what he'll say--he'll agree with me. Why don't you ask him and +see for yourself? I'm beginning to like Joe Kramer," she added with a +quiet smile, "because now that I understand him I know that his life and +yours are so far apart you've hardly a point in common." + +And in the talks I had with Joe this soon proved to be the case. +Eleanore brought us together now and listened with deep satisfaction as +we clashed and jarred each other apart. + +His old indifferent manner was gone, he was softened, grateful for what +we had done--but he held to that view of his like a rock, and the view +entirely shut me out. Joe saw society wholly as "War Sure" between two +classes, and I was hopelessly on the wrong side. My work, my home and my +whole life were bound in with the upper class. And there could be no +middle ground. My boasted tolerance, breadth of mind, my readiness to +see both sides, my passion for showing up all men as human--this to Joe +was utter piffle. He had no use for such writing, or in fact for art of +any kind. "Propaganda" was all that he wanted, and that could be as +cheap as Nick Carter, as sentimental as Uncle Tom's Cabin, if only it +had the kind of "punch" that would reach to the mass of ignorant workers +and stir their minds and their passions into swift and bitter revolt. +Revolution! That was the thing. The world had come to a time, he said, +when talking and writing weren't going to count. We were entering into +an age of force--of "direct action"--strikes and the like--by prodigious +masses of men. All I could do was worthless. + +These talks made me so indignant and sore, so sure that Joe and all his +work were utterly wild and that only in Dillon and his kind lay any hope +of solving the dreary problems of the slums--that within a few days more +I was delving into my opera man with a most determined approval. He at +least was a builder, he didn't want to tear everything down! In his +every scheme for a huge success I took now an aggravated delight. All my +recent tolerance gone, I threw into my work an intensity that I had not +felt in months. + +And Eleanore smiled contentedly, as though she knew what she was about. +When at last the time came for Joe to leave, she was twice as friendly +to him as I. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +But on coming home one evening two or three weeks later, I found +Eleanore reading aloud to our son with a most preoccupied look on her +face. + +"Joe Kramer is coming to dinner," she said. "He called up this morning +and said he'd like to see us again. Sue is coming, too, as it happens. +She dropped in this afternoon." + +Sue arrived a few minutes later, and at once I thought to myself I had +never seen her look so well. For once she had taken time to dress. She +had done her dark hair in a different way. Her color, which had been +poor of late, to-night was most becomingly high, and those fascinating +eyes of hers were bright with a new animation. + +"She has found a fine new hobby," I thought. + +Her whole attitude to us was one of eager friendliness. She made much of +what we had done for Joe. + +"You've no idea," she told me, "how he feels about you both." She was +speaking of this when Joe came in. + +He, too, appeared to me different. Into his blunt manner had crept a +certain awkwardness, his gruff voice had an anxious note at times and +his eyes a hungry gleam. Poor old Joe, I thought. It must be hard, +despite all his talk, to see what he had missed in life, to feel what a +sacrifice he had made. He had thrown everything aside, love, marriage, +home, all personal ties--to tackle this bleak business of slums. The +more pity he had such a twisted view. And as presently, in reply to +Sue's questions, he talked about the approaching strike, my irritation +at his talk grew even sharper than before. + +"Your stokers and dock laborers," I interrupted hotly, "are about as +fit to build up a mew world as they are to build a Brooklyn Bridge! When +I compare them to Eleanore's father and his way of going to work"--I +broke off in exasperation. "Can't you see you're all just floundering in +a perfect swamp of ignorance?" + +"No," said Joe. "I don't see that----" + +"I'm mighty glad you don't," said Sue. Eleanore turned on her abruptly. + +"Why are _you_ glad, Sue?" she asked. + +"Because," Sue answered warmly, "he's where every one of us ought to be! +He's doing the work we all ought to be doing!" + +"Then why don't you do it?" said Joe. His voice was low but sharp as in +pain. The next instant he turned from Sue to me. "I mean all of you," he +added. I looked at him in astonishment. What had worked this change in +Joe? In our last talk he had shut me out so completely. He seemed to +feel this at once himself, for he hastened to explain his remark. He had +turned his back on Sue and was talking hard at me: + +"Of course I don't mean you can do it, Bill, unless you change your +whole view of life. But why shouldn't you change? You're young enough. +That look at a stokehole got hold of you hard. And if you're able to +feel like that why not do some thinking, too?" + +"I'm thinking," I said grimly. "I told you before that I wanted to help. +But you said----" + +"I say it still," J. K. cut in. "If you want to help the people you've +got to drop your efficiency gods. You've got to believe in the people +first--that all they need is waking up to handle this whole job +themselves. You've got to see that they're waking up fast--all over the +world--that they're getting tired of gods above 'em slowly planning out +their lives--that they don't want to wait till they're dead to be +happy--that they feel poverty every day like a million tons of brick on +their chests--it's got so they can't even breathe without thinking! And +you've got to see that what they're thinking is, 'Do it yourself and do +it quick!' The only thing that's keeping them back is that in these +times of peace men get out of the habit of violence! + +"But the minute you get this clear in your mind, then I say you can help +'em. Because what's needed is so big. It's not only more pay and shorter +hours and homes where they needn't die off like flies--they need more +than that--they need a change as much as you--in their whole way of +looking at things. They've got to learn that they are a crowd--and can't +get anywhere at all until all pull together. Ignorant? Of course they +are! But that's where you and me come in--we can help 'em get together +faster than they would if left to themselves! You can help that way a +lot--by writing to the tenements! _That's_ what I meant!" + +Joe stopped short. And after his passionate outburst, Eleanore spoke up +quietly. + +"This sounds funny from you," she said. "A few weeks ago you were just +as sure that Billy could do nothing. What has made you change so?" + +Joe reddened and looked down at his hands. + +"I suppose," he said gruffly after a moment, "it's because I'm still +weak from typhoid--weak enough to want to see some one but stokers get +into the job that's become my life. You see," he muttered, "I was raised +among people like you. It's a kind of a craving, I suppose--like +cigarettes." Again he stopped short and there was a pause. + +"Rather natural," Sue murmured. Again he turned sharply from her to me. + +"I say you can help by your writing," he said. "You call my friends an +ignorant mob. But thousands of 'em have read your stuff!" + +I looked up at Joe with a start. + +"Oh they don't like it," he went on. "It only makes 'em sore and mad. +But if you ever see things right, and get into their side of this fight +with that queer fountain-axe of yours, you'll be surprised at the +tenement friends who'll pop up all around you. The first thing you know +they'll be calling you 'Bill.' That's the kind they are--they don't want +to shut anyone out--all they want to know is whether he means business. +If he doesn't he's no use, because they know that sooner or later +they'll do it anyhow themselves. It's going to be the biggest fight +that's happened since the world began! No cause has ever been so fine, +so worth a man's giving his life to aid! And all you've got to decide is +this--whether you're to get in now, and help make it a little easier, +help make it come without violence--or wait till it all comes to a crash +and then be yanked in like a sack of meal!" + +Before I could speak, Sue drew a deep breath. + +"I don't see how there's any choice about that," she said. + +Eleanore turned to her again: + +"Do you mean for Billy?" + +"I mean for us all," Sue answered. "Even for a person like me!" Sue was +beautiful just then--her cheeks aglow, her features tense, a radiant +eagerness in her eyes. "I've felt it, oh so long," she said. "It's gone +all through my suffrage work--through every speech that I have +made--that the suffragists need the working girls and ought to help them +win their strikes!" + +"And what do _you_ think, Joe?" Eleanore persisted. "Were you speaking +of Billy alone just now or did you have Sue, too, in mind?" + +Joe looked back at her steadily. + +"I don't want to shut out the women," he said. "I've seen too many girls +jump in and make a big success of it. Not only working girls, but plenty +of college girls like you." He turned from Eleanore to Sue--and with a +gruff intensity, "You may think you can't do it, Sue," he said. "But I +know you can. I've seen it done, I tell you, all the way from here to +the Coast--girls like you as speakers, as regular organizers--forgetting +themselves and sinking themselves--ready for any job that comes." + +"That's the way I should want to do it," said Sue, her voice a little +breathless. + +"But how about wives?" asked Eleanore. "For some of these girls marry, I +suppose," she added thoughtfully. "At least I hope they do. I hope Sue +will." + +"I never said anything against that," Joe answered shortly. + +"But if they marry and have children," Eleanore continued, "aren't they +apt to get sick of it then, even bitter about it, this movement you +speak of that takes you in and sinks you down, swallows up every dollar +you have and all your thoughts and feelings?" + +"It needn't do as much as that," Joe muttered as though to himself. + +"Still--I'd like to see it work out," Eleanore persisted. "Do you happen +to know the wives of any labor leaders?" + +"I do," Joe answered quickly. "The wife of the biggest man we've got. +Jim Marsh arrived in town last night. His wife is with him. She always +is." + +"Now are you satisfied, dear?" Sue asked. But Eleanore smiled and shook +her head. + +"Is Mrs. Marsh a radical, too--I mean an agitator?" she asked. Joe's +face had clouded a little. + +"Not exactly," he replied. Eleanore's eyes were attentive now: + +"Do you know her well, Joe?" + +"I've met her----" + +"I'd like to meet her, too," she said. "And find out how she likes her +life." + +"I think I know what you'd find," said Sue, in her old cocksure, +superior manner. "I guess she likes it well enough----" + +"Still, dear," Eleanore murmured, "instead of taking things for granted +it would be interesting, I think, in all this talk to have one look at a +little real life." + +"Aren't you just a little afraid of real life, Eleanore?" Sue demanded, +in a quick challenging tone. + +"Am I?" asked Eleanore placidly. + + * * * * * + +Long after Joe had left us, Sue kept up that challenging tone. But she +did not speak to Eleanore now, her talk like Joe's was aimed at me. + +"Why not think it over, Billy?" she urged. "You're not happy now, I +never saw you so worried and blue." + +"I'm not in the least!" I said stoutly. But Sue did not seem to hear me. +She went on in an eager, absorbed sort of way: + +"Why not try it a little? You needn't go as far as Joe Kramer. He may +even learn to go slower himself--now that he has had typhoid----" + +"Do you think so?" Eleanore put in. + +"Why not?" cried Sue impatiently. "If he keeps on at this pace it will +kill him! Has he no right to some joy in life? Why should you two have +it all? Just think of it, Billy, you have a name, success and a lot of +power! Why not use it here? Suppose it is harder! Oh, I get so out of +patience with myself and all of us! Our easy, lazy, soft little lives! +Why can't we _give_ ourselves a little?" And she went back over all Joe +had said. "It's all so real. So tremendously real," she ended. + + * * * * * + +"I wonder what's going to happen," said Eleanore when we were alone. + +"God knows," I answered gloomily. That hammering from Joe and Sue had +stirred me up all over again. I had doggedly resisted, I had told Sue +almost angrily that I meant to keep right on as before. But now she was +gone, I was not so sure. "I still feel certain Joe's all wrong," I said +aloud. "But he and his kind are so dead in earnest--so ready for any +sacrifice to push their utterly wild ideas--that they may get a lot of +power. God help the country if they do." + +"I wasn't speaking of the country, my love," my wife informed me +cheerfully. "I was speaking of Sue and Joe Kramer." + +"Joe," I replied, "will slam right ahead. You can be sure of that, I've +got him down cold." + +"Have you?" she asked. "And how about Sue?" + +"Oh Sue," I replied indifferently, "has been enthused so many times." + +"Billy." + +I turned and saw my wife regarding her husband thoughtfully. + +"I wonder," she said, "how long it will be before you can write a love +story." + +"What?" + +"Sue and Joe Kramer, you idiot." + +I stared at her dumfounded. + +"Did you think all that talk was aimed at you?" my pitiless spouse +continued. "Did you think all that change in Joe's point of view was on +your account?" + +I watched her vigilantly for a while. + +"If there's anything in what you say," I remarked carefully at last, +"I'll bet at least that Joe doesn't know it. He doesn't even suspect +it." + +"There are so many things," said Eleanore, "that men don't even suspect +in themselves. I'm sorry," she added regretfully. "But that summer +vacation we'd planned is off." + +"What?" + +"Oh, yes, we'll stay right here in town. I see anything but a pleasant +summer." + +"Suppose," I said excitedly, "you tell me exactly what you _do_ see!" + +"I see something," Eleanore answered, "which unless we can stop it may +be a very tragic affair. Tragic for Sue because I feel sure that she'd +never stand Joe's impossible life. And even worse for your father. He's +not only old and excitable, and very weak and feeble, too, but he's so +conservative besides that if Sue married Joe Kramer he'd consider her +utterly damned." + +"But I tell you you're wrong, all wrong!" I broke in. "Joe isn't that +kind of an idiot!" + +"Joe," said my wife decidedly, "is like every man I've ever met. I found +that out when he was sick. He has the old natural longing for a wife and +a home of his own. His glimpse of it here may have started it rising. +I'm no more sure than you are that he admits it to himself. But it's +there all the same in the back of his mind, and in that same mysterious +region he's trying to reconcile marrying Sue to the work which he +believes in--even with this strike coming on. It's perfectly pathetic. + +"Isn't it funny," she added, "how sometimes everything comes all at +once? Do you know what this may mean to us? I don't, I haven't the least +idea. I only know that you yourself are horribly unsettled--and that now +through this affair of Sue's we'll have to see a good deal of Joe--and +not only Joe but his friends on the docks--and not even the quiet ones. +No, we're to see all the wild ones. We're to be drawn right into this +strike--into what Joe calls revolution." + +"You may be right," I said doggedly. "But I don't believe it." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +A few days later Joe called me up and asked me to come down to his +office. His reason for wanting to see me, he said, he'd rather not give +me over the 'phone. + +"You're right," I told Eleanore dismally. "He's going to talk to me +about Sue." + +I dreaded this talk, and I went to see Joe in no easy frame of mind. But +it was not about Sue. I saw that in my first glimpse of his face. He sat +half around in his office chair listening intensely to a man by his +side. + +"I want you to meet Jim Marsh," he said. + +I felt a little electric shock. So here was the great mob agitator, the +notorious leader of strikes. Eleanore's words came into my mind: "We're +to meet all the wild ones. We're to be drawn right into this +strike--into what Joe calls revolution." Well, here was the +arch-revolutionist, the prime mover of them all. Of middle size, about +forty years old, angular and wiry, there was a lithe easy force in his +limbs, but he barely moved as he spoke to me now. He just turned his +narrow bony face and gave me a glance with his keen gray eyes. + +"I've known your work for quite a while," he said in a low drawling +voice, "Joe says you're thinking of writing me up." + +So this was why Joe had sent for me. I had quite forgotten this idea, +but I took to it eagerly now. My work was going badly. Here was +something I could do, the life story of a man whose picture would soon +be on the front page of every paper in New York. It would interest my +magazine, it would give me a chance to get myself clear on this whole +ugly business of labor, poverty and strikes. I had evaded it long +enough, I would turn and face it squarely now. + +"Why yes, I'd like to try," I said. + +"He wants to do your picture with the America you know," said Joe. "He +says he's ready to be shown." + +Marsh glanced out at the harbor. + +"If he'll trail around with us for a while we may show him some of it +here," he drawled. And then quietly ignoring my presence he continued +his talk with Joe, as though taking it for granted that I was an +interested friend. I listened there all afternoon. + +The thing that struck me most at first was the cool effrontery of the +man in undertaking such a struggle. The old type of labor leader had at +least stuck to one industry, and had known by close experience what he +had to face. But here was a mere outsider, a visitor strolling into a +place and saying, "I guess I'll stop all this." Vaguely I knew what he +had to contend with. Sitting here in this cheap bare room, the thought +of other rooms rose in my mind, spacious, handsomely furnished rooms +where at one time or another I had interviewed heads of foreign ship +companies, railroad presidents, bankers and lawyers, newspaper editors, +men representing enormous wealth. All these rooms had been parts of my +harbor--a massed array of money and brains. He would have all this +against him. And to such a struggle I could see no end for him but jail. + +For against all this, on his side, was a chaotic army of ignorant men, +stokers, dockers, teamsters, scattered all over this immense region, +practically unorganized. What possible chance to bring them together? +How could he feel that he had a chance? How much did he already know? + +I asked him what he had seen of the harbor. For days, I learned, he had +told no one but Joe of his coming, he had wandered about the port by +himself. And as a veteran tramp will in some mysterious fashion get the +feel of a new town within a few short hours there, so Marsh had got the +feel of this place--of a harbor different from mine, for he felt it from +the point of view of its hundred thousand laborers. He felt it with its +human fringe, he saw its various tenement borders like so many camps and +bivouacs on the eve of a battle. + +He told a little incident of how the harbor learned he was here. About +nine o'clock one morning, as he was waiting his chance to get into one +of the North River docks, a teamster recognized him there from a picture +of him he had once seen. The news traveled swiftly along the docks, out +onto piers and into ships. And at noon, way over in Hoboken, Marsh had +overheard a German docker say to the man eating lunch beside him, + +"I hear dot tamn fool anarchist Marsh is raising hell ofer dere in New +York." + +"But I wasn't raising hell," he drawled. "I was over here studying +literature." And he drew out from his pocket a tattered copy of a +report, the result of a careful investigation of work on the docks, made +recently by a most conservative philanthropic organization. + +"'In all the fierce rush of American industry,'" he read, with a quiet +smile of derision, "'no work is so long, so irregular or more full of +danger. Seven a. m. until midnight is a common work day here, and in the +rush season of winter when ships are often delayed by storms and so must +make up time in port, the same men often work all day and night and even +on into the following day, with only hour and half-hour stops for +coffee, food or liquor. This strain makes for accidents. From police +reports and other sources we find that six thousand killed and injured +every year on the docks is a conservative estimate.'" + +Marsh glanced dryly up at me: + +"Here's the America I know." + +I said nothing. I was appalled. Six thousand killed and injured! I could +feel his sharp gray eyes boring down into my soul: + +"You wrote up this harbor once." + +"Yes," I said. + +"Did you write this?" + +"No. I would have said it was a lie." + +"Do you say so now? These people are a careful crowd." I took the +pamphlet from his hands. + +"Queer," I muttered vaguely. "I never saw this report before." + +"Not so queer," he answered. "I'm told that it wasn't _meant_ to be +seen--by you and the general public. That's the way this society works. +They spend half a dead old lady's cash investigating poverty and the +other half in keeping the public from learning what they've discovered. +But we're going to furnish publicity to this secluded work of art. + +"On Saturday afternoon," he continued, "I went along the North River +docks. I found long lines of dockers there--they were waiting for their +pay. At every pay window one of 'em stood with an empty cigar box in his +hands--and into that box every man as he passed dropped a part of his +pay--for the man who had been hurt that week--for him or for his widow. + +"And over across the way," he went on, "I saw something on the +waterfront that fitted right into the scenery. It was a poster on a high +fence, and it had a black border around it. On one side of it was a +picture of a tall gent in a swell frock suit. He was looking squarely at +the docks and pointing to the sign beside him, which said, '_Certainly_ +I'm talking to you! Money saved is money earned. Read what I will +furnish you for seventy-five dollars--cash. Black cloth or any color you +like--plush or imitation oak--casket with a good white or cream +lining--pillow--burial suit or brown habit--draping and embalming +room--chairs--hearse--three coaches--complete care and attendance--also +handsome candelabra and candles if requested.'" + +As Marsh read this grisly list from his notebook, it suddenly came into +my mind that in my explorations years ago I had seen this poster at many +points, all along the waterfront. It had made no impression on me then, +for it had not fitted into my harbor. But Marsh had caught its meaning +at once and had promptly jotted it down for use. For it fitted his +harbor exactly. + +Vaguely, in this and a dozen ways, I could feel him taking my harbor to +pieces, transforming each piece into something grim and so building a +harbor all his own. Disturbedly and angrily I struggled to find the +flaws in his building, eagerly I caught at distortions here and there, +twisted facts and wrong conclusions. But in all the terrible stuff which +he had so hastily gathered here, there was so much that I could not +deny. And he gave no chance for argument. Quickly jumping from point to +point he pictured a harbor of slaves overburdened, driven into fierce +revolt. It was hard to keep my footing. + +For his talk was not only of this harbor. It ranged out over an ocean +world which was all in a state of ferment and change. Men of every race +and creed, from English, Germans, Russians to Coolies, Japs and Lascars, +had crowded into the stokeholes, mixing bowls for all the world. And the +mixing process had begun. At Copenhagen, two years before, in a great +marine convention that followed the socialist congress there, Marsh had +seen the delegates from seventeen different countries representing +millions of seamen. And this crude world parliament, this international +brotherhood, had placed itself on record as against wars of every kind, +except the one deepening bitter war of labor against capital. To further +this they had proposed to paralyze by strikes the whole international +transport world. The first had followed promptly, breaking out in +England. The second was to take place here. + +"You don't see how it can happen," said Marsh, with one of those keen +sudden looks that showed he was aware of my presence. "You admit this +place is a watery hell, but you don't believe we can change it. You +don't see how ignorant mobs of men can rise up and take the whole game +in their hands. Do I get you right?" + +"You do," I said. + +"Look over there." + +I followed his glance to the doorway. It was filled with a group of big +ragged men. Some of the faces were black with soot, some were smiling +stolidly, some scowling in the effort to hear. All eyes were intent on +the face of the man who had never been known to lose a strike. + +"That's the beginning," Marsh told me. "You keep your eyes on their +faces--from now on right into the strike--and you may see something grow +there that'll give you a new religion." + +As the day wore into evening the crowd from outside pressed into the +room until they were packed all around us. + +"Let's get out of this," said Joe at last. We went to a neighboring +lunchroom and ate a hasty supper. But as here, too, the crowd pressed in +to get a look at Marsh, Joe asked us to come up to his room. + +"They _know_ your room," Marsh answered. His tone was grim, as though he +had been accustomed for years to this ceaselessly curious pressing mass, +pressing, pressing around him tight. "Suppose we go up to mine," he +said. "I want you fellows to meet my wife. She has never met any writers +before," he added to me, "and she's interested in that kind of thing. +She was a music teacher once." + +I was about to decline and start for home, but suddenly I recalled +Eleanore's saying that she would like to meet Mrs. Marsh. So I accepted +his invitation. And what I saw a few minutes later brought me down +abruptly from these world-wide schemes for labor. + +We entered a small, cheap hotel, climbed a flight of stairs and came +into the narrow bedroom which was for the moment this notorious +wanderer's home. A little girl about six years old lay asleep on a cot +in one corner, and under the one electric light a woman sat reading a +magazine. She had a strong rather clever face which would have been +appealing if it were not for the bitter impatient glance she gave us as +we entered. + +"Talk low, boys, our little girl's asleep," Marsh said. "Say, Sally," he +continued, with his faint, derisive smile, "here's a writer come to see +you." + +"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," she said, then relapsed into a stiff +silence. I tried to break through her awkwardness but entirely without +avail. I grew more and more sure of my first impression, that this woman +hated her husband's friends, his strikes, his "proletariate." She was +smart, pushing, ambitious, I thought, just the kind that would have got +on in any middle western town. Eleanore must meet her. + +Then presently I noticed that only Marsh was talking. I glanced at Joe +and was startled by the intensity in his eyes. + +For Joe was watching his leader's wife. And watching, he appeared to me +to be seeing her in a dreary succession of rooms like these, in cities, +towns and mining camps, wherever her husband was leading a strike--and +then trying to see his own home in such rooms, and Sue in his home, a +wife like this. The picture struck me suddenly cold. Sue pulled into +this for life! Again I remembered Eleanore's words--"Drawn into +revolution." + +"Say, Joe," drawled Marsh, with a sharp look at him. "Got any of that +typhoid left?" + +Joe laughed quickly, confusedly. + +Soon after that I left them. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +The next day I went to the editor for whom I was doing most of my work. +When I told him I wanted to try Jim Marsh, the editor looked at me +curiously. + +"Why?" he asked. + +I spoke of the impending strike. + +"Have you met Marsh?" he inquired. + +"Yes." + +"Do you like him?" + +"No." + +"But he struck you as big." + +"Yes--he did." + +"Are you getting interested in strikes?" + +"I want to see a big one close." + +"Why?" + +"Why not?" I retorted. "They're getting to be significant, aren't they? +I want to see what they're like inside." The editor smiled: + +"You'll find them rather hot inside. Don't get overheated." + +"Oh you needn't think I'll lose my head." + +"I hope not," he said quietly. "Go ahead with your story about Marsh. +I'll be interested to see what you do." + +I went out of the office in no easy frame of mind. The editor's +inquisitive tone had started me thinking of how J. K. had been shut out +by the papers because he wrote "the truth about things." + +"Oh that's all rot," I told myself. "Joe's case and mine are not the +same. The magazines aren't like the papers and I'm not like Joe. His +idea of the truth and mine will never be anywhere near alike." + +But what would Eleanore think of it? I went home and told her of my +plan. To my surprise she made no objection. + +"It's the best thing you can do," she said. "We're in this now--on +account of Sue--we can't keep out. And so long as we are, you might as +well write about it, too. You think so much better when you're at +work--more clearly--don't you--and that's what I want." She was looking +at me steadily out of those gray-blue eyes of hers. "I want you to think +yourself all out--as clearly as you possibly can--and then write just +what you think," she said. "I want you to feel that I'm never afraid of +anything you may ever write--so long as you're really sure it's true." + +I held her a moment in my arms and felt her tremble slightly. And then +she said with her old quiet smile: + +"Sue has asked us over to Brooklyn to-night--Joe Kramer is to be there, +too." + +"That affair is moving rather fast." + +"Oh yes, quite fast," she said cheerfully. + +"How will Dad look at it?" I asked. + +"As you did," said Eleanore dryly. "He'll look at it and see nothing at +all." + +"I've half a mind to tell him!" + +"Don't," she said. "If you did he would only get excited, become the +old-fashioned father and order Sue to leave Joe alone--which would be +all that is needed now to make Sue marry Joe in a week." + +"Sue is about as selfish," I said hotly, "about as wrapped up in her own +little self----" + +"As any girl is who thinks she's in love but isn't sure," said Eleanore. +"Sue isn't sure--poor thing--she's frightfully unsettled." + +"But why drag Joe way over there?" + +"Because she wants to look at him there. It's her home, you know, her +whole past life, all that she has been used to. It's the place where she +has breakfast. She wants to see how Joe fits in." + +"But they'd never live _there_ if they married!" + +"Nevertheless," said Eleanore, "that's one of the ways a girl makes up +her mind." She looked pityingly into my eyes. "Women are beyond +you--aren't they, dear?" she murmured. + +"J. K. isn't," I rejoined. "And I can't see him in _any_ home!" + +"Can't you! Then watch him a little closer the next time he comes to +ours." + +I went out for a walk along the docks and tried to picture the coming +strike. When I came home I found Joe there, he had come to go with us to +Brooklyn. He was sitting on the floor with our boy gravely intent on a +toy circus. Neither one was saying a word, but as Joe carefully poised +an elephant on the top of a tall red ladder, I recalled my wife's +injunction. By Jove, he did fit into a home, here certainly was a +different Joe. He did not see me at the door. Later I called to him from +our bedroom: + +"Say, Joe. Don't you want to come in and wash?" + +He came in, and presently watching him I noticed his glances about our +room. It was most decidedly Eleanore's room, from the flowered curtains +to the warm soft rug on the floor. It was gay, it was quiet and restful, +it was intimately personal. Here was her desk with a small heap of +letters and photographs of our son and of me, and here close by was her +dressing-table strewn with all its dainty equipment. A few invitations +were stuck in the mirror. Eleanore's hat and crumpled white gloves lay +on our bed. I had thrown my coat beside them. There were such things in +this small room as Joe had never dreamed of. + +"Oh Joe," said Eleanore from the hall. "Don't you want to come into the +nursery? Somebody wants a pillow fight." + +"Sure," said Joe, with a queer little start. + +"By the way," I heard her add outside. "Billy told me he saw Mrs. Marsh, +and I should so like to meet her, too. Couldn't you have us all down to +your room some evening?" + +"If you like," he answered gruffly. + +"I'm honestly curious," Eleanore said, "to see what kind of a person she +is. And I'm sure that Sue is, too. May we bring her with us?" + +"Of course you may--whenever you like." + +"Would Friday evening be too soon?" + +"I'll see if I can fix it." + +When Eleanore came in to me, her lips were set tight as though something +had hurt her. + +"That was pretty tough," I muttered. + +"Yes, wasn't it," she said quickly. "I don't care, I'm not going to have +him marrying Sue. I'm too fond of both of them. Besides, your father has +to be thought of. It would simply kill him!" + + * * * * * + +"Yes," I thought to myself that night. "No doubt about that, it would +kill him." + +How much older he looked, in the strong light of the huge old-fashioned +gas lamp that hung over the dining-room table. He was making a visible +effort to be young and genial. He had not seen Joe in several years, and +he evidently knew nothing whatever of what Joe was up to, except that he +had been ill at our home. Joe spoke of what we had done for him, and Sue +eagerly took up the cue, keeping the talk upon us and "the Indian," to +my father's deep satisfaction. From this she turned to our childhood and +the life in this old house. Dad pictured it all in such glowing colors I +recognized almost nothing as real. But watching Sue's face as she +listened, she seemed to me trying to feel again as she had felt here +long ago when she had been his only chum. Every few moments she would +break off to throw a quick, restless glance at Joe. + +When the time came for us to go, my father assured us warmly that he had +not felt so young in years. He said we had so stirred him up that he +must take a book and read or he wouldn't sleep a wink all night. Joe did +not come away with us. As we stood all together at the door, I saw +Eleanore glance into Dad's study where his heavy leather chair was +waiting, and then into the room across the hall where Sue had drawn up +two chairs to the fire. And I thought of the next hour or two. My father +already had under his arm a book on American shipping, which told about +the old despotic sea world of his day, in which there had been no +strikers but only mutineers. + + * * * * * + +"There's very little time to lose," said Eleanore on the way home. + +"Look here," I suggested. "Why don't you talk this out with Sue, and +tell her just what you think of it all?" + +"Because," said Eleanore, "what I think and what you think has nothing +whatever to do with the case. Sue would say it was none of our business. +And she'd be quite right. It isn't." + +"Aren't we making it our business?" My wife at times gets me so +confused. + +"I'm not _telling_ them anything," she rejoined. "I'm only trying to +_show_ them something and let the poor idiots see for themselves. If +they won't see, it's hopeless." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +On Friday evening Sue sent word that she would be late and that she +would meet us at Joe's room. So we went down without her. + +His room had changed since I'd seen it last, I took in at once his +pathetic attempts to fix it up for our coming. Gone were the dirty +curtains, the dirty collars and shirts, and the bed was concealed by an +old green screen borrowed from his landlady, the German saloon-keeper's +wife below. The same woman had scrubbed the floor and put down a faded +rag carpet in front of the old fireplace, in which now a coal fire was +burning. Poor Joe had turned up all the lights to make things bright and +cheerful, but it only showed things up as they were. The room was +glaringly forlorn. + +And now that Eleanore had come, her presence made him feel at once what +a wretchedly dreary place it was. Eleanore knew what she wanted to do +and she had dressed herself for the part. And as Joe took in the effect +of her smart little suit, and waited for Sue and Mrs. Marsh, he became +so anxious and gloomy that he could only speak with an effort. He kept +glancing uneasily at the door. + +"I don't like the idea," said Eleanore, "of Sue's coming down here alone +at night through this part of town." Joe looked around at her quickly. +"But I suppose," she added thoughtfully, "that she'd have to get used to +queer parts of towns if she ever took up the life you spoke of." + +"I don't think that would bother her," Joe answered gruffly. + +Presently there was a step on the stairs. He jumped up and went to the +door, and a moment later Sue entered the room. + +Immediately its whole atmosphere changed. Sue was plainly excited. She, +too, had dressed herself with care--or rather with a careful neglect. +She wore the oldest suit she had and a simple blouse with a gay red tie. +With one sharp glance at Eleanore, she took in the strained situation +and set about to ease it. + +"What a nice old fireplace," she exclaimed. "Let's turn down the lights +and draw 'round the fire. You need more chairs, Joe; go down and get +some." + +And soon with the lights turned low and the coals stirred into a ruddy +glow, we were sitting in quite a dramatic place, the scene was set for +"revolution." The curtainless windows were no longer bleak, for through +them from the now darkened room we looked out on the lights of the +harbor. Sue thought the view thrilling, and equally thrilling she found +the last issue of Joe's weekly paper, _War Sure_, which lay on the +table. It was called "Our Special Sabotage Number," and in it various +stokers and dockers, in response to an appeal from Joe, had crudely +written their ideas upon just how the engines of a ship or the hoisting +winches on a dock could be most effectively put out of order in time of +strike. "So that the scabs," wrote one contributor, "can see how they +like it." + +"Why not have blue-penciled some of this?" I asked, with a faint +premonition of trouble ahead. + +"Because Joe believes in free speech, I suppose," Sue answered for him +quickly. + +"I'm not much of a lawyer, Joe," I said. "But this stuff looks to me a +good deal like incitement to violence." + +"Possibly," J. K replied. + +"You don't look horribly frightened," laughed Sue. And she wanted to +hear all the latest strike news. The time was rapidly drawing near. It +was now close to the end of March and the strike was expected in April. + +When Marsh arrived about nine o'clock, there was an awkward moment. For +behind him came his wife and their small daughter, both of whom were +stiffly dressed, and with one glance at Eleanore they felt immediately +out of place. Mrs. Marsh was even more hostile and curt than when I had +seen her last. She was angry at having been dragged into this and took +little pains to hide it. + +"My husband would have me come," she said. "And I couldn't leave my +little girl, so I had to bring her along." And she stopped abruptly with +a look that asked us plainly, "Now that I'm here, what do you want?" + +"How old is your little girl?" Eleanore inquired. + +"Six last month." + +"Are you going to put her in school in New York?" + +And in spite of short suspicious replies she soon had Mrs. Marsh and her +child talking of kindergartens and parks and other parts of the town +they must see. Sue was now eagerly talking to Marsh, Joe was beside her +helping her out, and both seemed wholly to have forgotten the disturbing +woman behind them. But by the quick looks that Eleanore gave them now +and then, I could see she was only holding back until she should have +Mrs. Marsh in a mood where she could be brought into the talk and made +to tell about her life. + +"Don't you ever want to settle down?" she asked when there had come a +pause. Marsh turned abruptly to Eleanore. + +"Of course she does," he answered. "Did you ever know a woman who +didn't, the minute that she got a kid? But my wife can't, if she sticks +to me. She has had to make up her mind to live in any old place that +comes along, from a dollar room in a cheap hotel to a shanty in a mining +camp." And his look at Eleanore seemed to add, "That's the kind she is, +you little doll." + +Eleanore quickly made herself look as much like a doll as possible. She +placidly folded her dainty gloved hands. + +"I should think," she murmured in ladylike tones, "Mrs. Marsh would find +that rather difficult." + +"She does," said Marsh aggressively. "But my wife has nerve enough to +stand up to the rough side of life--as the wives of most workingmen +have to--in this rich and glorious land." + +"Won't you tell us about it?" asked Eleanore sweetly. "I should be so +interested to hear. It's so different, you see, from all I've been +accustomed to." + +"Yes," Marsh answered grimly, "I've no doubt it is. Go ahead, Sally, and +tell them about it." + +And Sally did. Gladly taking her husband's aggressive tone, she started +out almost with a sneer. Her remarks at first were disjointed and brief, +but I told her I was writing the story of her husband's life, that I +wanted her side of it from the start. I promised to show her what I +wrote and let her cut anything she had told me if she did not want it in +print. And so in scattered incidents, with bits thrown in now and then +by Marsh, the lives of these two began to come out. And we understood +her bitterness. + + * * * * * + +"Mr. Marsh was born," she said, "in one of the poorest little towns in +Southern Iowa. It was nothing but a hole of a place about six miles from +the county seat where my father was a lawyer. But even in that little +hole his family was the poorest there. I've been all over the States +since then, and I've seen poor people, the Lord knows--but I want to say +I've never seen people anywhere that were any worse off than my husband +was when he was a boy. And yet he got out of it all by himself. He +didn't need any strikes to help him." + +"But of course," Sue put in smoothly, "your husband was an exceptional +man." Mrs. Marsh threw her a bitter glance. + +"He might have been," she answered. + +"What was he like as a boy?" I asked. + +"A fighter," she said. For a moment her sharp voice grew proud. "His +father took diabetes and died, and they went into debt to bury him. Jim +helped his mother run the farm and missed half his schooling. But his +teacher loaned him text-books--and at home they had no candles, so he +used to work with his back to the fire--half the night. My father used +to call him a regular little Honest Abe. That's a surprise to you, isn't +it," she added with a hard little laugh. + +"But then the town had a sudden boom. A new branch of the railroad came +through that way and houses and stores went up over night. Jim was only +sixteen then, but he grabbed the chance to get into the building. In +less than a year he had earned enough money so he could quit and go to +school. He came over to high school in our town, walking his six miles +twice a day. And that's where I met him. + +"My father took a shine to him right off and promised to make him a +lawyer. He loaned him law books the first year, and the second Jim +worked in his office." She looked for a moment at the wall. "I expect +it's not a love story you're after--so I'll leave that part of it out. +Papa was mad when I broke the news--and I can't say I blame him. He was +the richest man in town, the railroad lawyer of the place--and he had +meant that I should go to a polishing school in St. Louis. + +"Well, I did go to St. Louis, but I was eloping at the time and I became +Jim's wife. We had a hard fight for a year or two, but we made up our +minds we'd make it go. Jim got a job on a skyscraper which was going up +at that time. I got him his breakfast at six every morning and he got +home about seven at night, and right after supper he went at his +Blackstone and dug into it all evening. As a rule he got to bed at one, +and five hours' sleep was all he had--with a few hours extra Sundays. + +"I knew a girl from home in St. Louis whose husband was making money +fast. But Jim was too proud to make use of my friends or go to her home +when we were invited. We missed three card parties on that account. But +she helped me get some pupils and I gave piano lessons. When my baby was +born I had to quit--but I thought we were out of the woods by then, for +Jim was made foreman of his gang and was raised to a hundred dollars a +month. We moved from our boarding house into a flat. I hired a young +Swedish girl and began to feel that I knew where I was. + +"But then the building workers struck. Jim had always been popular with +his men, and now he wanted his boss to give them half of what they asked +for. But his boss didn't see it that way at all, and he and Jim had +trouble. The next week Jim decided he wouldn't manage what he called +'scabs.' So he left his employment, went in with the men and made the +strike a great success. That left him leader of their union. The salary +they paid him was eighty dollars instead of a hundred--so I let our +Swedish girl go. + +"He said his new position would give him more time to study law. But it +didn't turn out quite that way. He got so wrapped up in his union +affairs that he had no time for his law books. One day I put them up on +a shelf and found he didn't notice it." + +Eleanore suddenly tightened at this, a quick sympathy came into her +eyes. Sue gave a restless little sigh. + +"He'd be out at meetings most every night," Mrs. Marsh continued. "At +the end of the year he was one of three leaders in a strike of all the +building trades in town. All work of that kind in the city was stopped +and things got very ugly. One night a man came to our flat and informed +me that my husband was in jail. I went to the jail the next morning and +saw him. We had quite a talk. And that afternoon I gave up our flat." + +"Why?" asked Eleanore softly. + +"I presumed the landlord wished it," said Mrs. Marsh without looking +around. "I took a room in a cheap hotel. Mr. Marsh came out of jail with +ideas that were all new to me. He had left his old trade union and gone +in with a new crowd of men who stood for out-and-out revolution--which I +couldn't understand. But we made the best of it. We went to the theater +that night and then he took the midnight train on one of his first +labor trips. At first these trips were only for a week or so, but as +time went on they grew longer. As a rule I never wrote him because I +never knew his address. On one trip he was away five weeks--and before +he got back there was time enough for my second baby, a little boy, to +be born and die of pneumonia." + +Eleanore flinched as though that had hurt. I saw her turn and look at +Sue, who seemed even more restless than before. + +"You decided to travel with him then--didn't you?" Eleanore murmured. + +"Yes," said the other gruffly. "We used to try to figure out what city +he would likely be in, or at least not far away from--and then my little +girl and I would find a place to board there. It has been like that for +the past four years. In that time we've lived in fourteen places all the +way between here and the Coast." + +"Have you lived all the time at hotels?" Eleanore inquired. + +"We have," said the woman curtly, "but hardly the kind you're accustomed +to. As a rule, as soon as we reach a town my husband's name appears in +the papers, and on that account the more refined houses wouldn't care to +keep us long." + +Eleanore leaned forward, her eyes troubled and intent. She seemed to +have forgotten Sue. + +"How do you know they wouldn't?" she asked. + +"I found out by trying--twice." + +I heard a sudden angry creak in the battered old chair in which Sue was +sitting. + +"So my little girl Lucy and I," the embittered voice went on, "go to +hotels that don't ask many questions. We pass the time going to parks or +museums--or now and then to a concert--where I try to give her a taste +for good music." + +"Do you find time to keep up your music?" I asked. + +"There's time enough," came the quick reply. "You see as a rule I'm just +waiting around. One night in Pittsburgh it was my birthday, and as the +Grand Opera was there for a week and I had never been to one, I got Mr. +Marsh to take me. We made it a regular celebration, with dinner in a +first-class restaurant just for once. But my husband is generally +watched, and the papers all took it up the next day. 'Marsh and wife +dine and see opera after his speech to starving strikers,' or similar +words to that effect." + +"Do you see anything of the strikers?" I asked. + +"Not much," she replied. "We used to be invited to go to parties at +their homes. But most of them, even the leaders, were Irish, Germans, +Italians or Jews whose wives could barely speak English. I found them +not very pleasant affairs. Some of the wives drank a good deal of beer +and most of them had very little to say. Strike dances were no better. +The wives as a rule sat with their children around the walls--while a +lot of young factory girls, Jewesses for the most part, danced turkey +trots around the hall." + +"There were speeches, I suppose?" Sue put in impatiently. + +"Yes--Mr. Marsh and others made speeches between dances. They weren't +the kind of affairs I'd been used to in our home town," said Mrs. Marsh. +"I've lost track of the folks at home. I never write and they don't +write me. Only once when my mother knew where I was she sent me a box at +Christmas. Lucy and I got quite excited over that box, it was all the +presents we'd had from outside in quite a line of Christmases. So we +thought we'd celebrate." + +"How did you celebrate Christmas?" Eleanore asked softly. + +"We went out and bought a tree and candles, some gold balls and popcorn +and all the other fixings. And we popped the corn over the gas that +night. The next day we bought things for each other's stockings. Lucy +was then only four years old, but I'd leave her at a counter and tell +the clerk to let her have all she wanted to buy for me up to a dollar. +That was how we worked it. The next night we had the tree in our room. I +got Mr. Marsh to help me trim it. At last we lit the candles and let +Lucy in from the hotel hall, where she'd nearly caught her death of +cold. Then we opened the box from home. There was a doll for Lucy and a +framed photograph of my mother for me--and for Mr. Marsh a Bible. He got +laughing over that and so did I. And that ended Christmas. + +"We had another Christmas last year," she said in a slow, intense sort +of way as though seeing the place as she spoke, "in a mining town in +Montana, where Jim had been in jail five days and the whole place was +under martial law. A major of the militia came to me on Christmas Eve. +He claimed that Jim had been seen by detectives traveling with another +woman and that I was not his wife. They locked me up for two hours that +night as an immoral woman." + +Sue was sitting rigid now, her lips pressed tight. And Joe with a +strained unnatural face was staring into the fire. + +"But of course," Mrs. Marsh concluded, "most of the time it isn't like +that. As a rule when we come to a city nothing especial happens at all. +We just take a room like the one we have now and wait till the strike is +over. I've got so I have a queer view of towns. I'm always there at the +time of a strike, when crowds of Italians and Poles and Jews fill the +streets on parade or jam into halls and talk about running the world by +themselves. And I guess they're going to do it some day--but I presume +not by to-morrow." + +For some time while she was speaking her eyes had been fixed steadily +upon Joe's only picture. It stood on the mantel, a big charcoal sketch +of a crowd of immigrants just leaving Ellis Island. They were of all +races. Uncouth, heavy, stolid, with that hungry hope in all their eyes +for more of the good things of the earth, they seemed like some barbaric +horde about to pour in over the land. With her eyes upon their faces in +deep, quiet hatred this woman from the Middle West had told the story of +her life. + + * * * * * + +"Well, Sally," said her husband, who had grown restive toward the end, +"I guess that'll do. Let's go on home." + +"I'm sure I'm ready," she quickly replied. Now that she had come out of +herself she seemed angry at having told so much. + +When they had left there was a silence, which Sue broke with a breath of +impatience. + +"What a frightful thing it must be for a man in this work," she +exclaimed, "to have a wife like that! A woman so hard and narrow, so +wrapped up in her own little life, with not a spark of sympathy for any +of his big ideals!" + +"I suppose it's the life that has done it," said Eleanore quietly, +looking at Sue. + +"I'd like to see some women," Sue retorted angrily, "who have been in +that life for years and years, and _have_ sympathy, have _everything_, +don't care for anything else in the world!" She turned suddenly to Joe. +"You said there were hundreds, didn't you?" + +Joe looked back at her a moment. There was a startled, groping, +searching expression in his eyes. + +"Yes," he said. "There are hundreds." + +"Are many of them married?" Eleanore inquired. + +"Some of them are," he answered. + +"When a woman who, as Sue has just said, throws herself into this heart +and soul, marries a man who is in it, too, how much of their time can +they spend together?" + +"That depends on the kind of work," he said. Eleanore held his eyes with +hers. + +"In some cases, I suppose," she went on, "like yours, for example, where +the man's work keeps him moving--if the woman's work wouldn't let her +go with him they would have to be half their time apart." + +"Yes." + +"As Mrs. Marsh and her husband were at the time when her second baby was +born." + +"Yes," said Joe, still watching her. + +"Aren't there a good many, too, who don't exactly marry--but marry just +a little--one woman here, another there, and so on?" + +"Yes," said Joe, "there are some who do that." + +"I should think," said Eleanore thoughtfully, "that in a movement of +this kind a man ought not to marry at all--or else marry a little a good +many times--so as always to be free for the Cause." + +"Unless," said Joe, quite steadily, "he finds a woman like some I've +known, whose feeling for a man, one man, seems to be planted in her for +life--who can easily stand not being with him because she herself is +deep in her own job, and her job is about the same as his--and because +the two of them have decided to see the whole job through to the end." + +His eyes went up to the charcoal sketch. + +"It's a job worth seeing through," he said. + +Sue was leaning forward now. + +"Where did you get that picture, Joe?" she asked. + +"It was an illustration," he said, "for a thing I once had in a +magazine." And then as though almost forgetting us all, his eyes still +upon those immigrant faces, he said with a slow, rough intensity: + +"I know every figure in it. I know just where they're strong and where +each one of 'em is weak. I've never made gods out of 'em. But I know +they do all the real work in the world. They're the ones who get all the +rotten deals, the ones who get shot down in wars and worked like dogs in +time of peace. They're the ones who are ready to go out on strike and +risk their lives to change all this. They're the people worth spending +your life with. But it's a job for your whole life--and before a man or +a woman jumps in they want to be sure they're ready." + +He did not look at Sue as he spoke. He seemed barely able to hold +himself in. His relief was plain when we took her away. + +Sue took a car to Brooklyn and we started homeward. Eleanore wanted to +walk for a while. She walked quickly, her face set. + +"What do you think of it?" I asked. + +"I wasn't thinking of Sue," she said. "I was thinking of Mrs. Marsh. +I've never tormented a woman like that and I never will again in my +life--not for Sue or anyone else--she can marry anybody she likes!" + +"Well, she won't marry Joe," I said. "Did you see his face--poor devil? +You've certainly settled that affair." + +"Have I?" she asked sharply. And then her curious feminine mind took a +long leap. "And what are _you_ going to be," she asked, "in a year from +now?" I smiled at her. + +"Not a second Marsh," I said. "But even if I were the man in the moon, +you'd make a success of being my wife." + +"I think I would," said Eleanore. "It must be so quiet up there in the +moon." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +"Come over here at once." My father's voice over the telephone, one +morning a few days later, sounded thick and unnatural. + +"What about?" I asked. + +"Your sister." + +When I reached the house in Brooklyn he came himself to let me in and +took me into the library. I was shocked by his face, it was terribly +worn, quite plainly he had been up all night. As he began speaking his +voice shook and he leaned forward, every inch of him tense. + +Sue had told him the night before that she was going to marry Joe +Kramer. In reply to his anxious questions she had given him some of the +facts about what Joe was doing. And Dad had stormed at her half the +night. + +"She wants to marry him, Billy," he cried. "She's got her mind set on a +man like that! What has he got to support her with? Not a cent, not even +a decent job! He's not writing now. Do you know what he's doing? +Stirring up strikes--of the ugliest kind--of the most ignorant class of +men--foreigners! I know such strikes--I've fought 'em myself and I know +how they're handled! That young man will land in jail! And it's where he +belongs! Do you know what he's up to right here on the docks?" + +"Yes, I know----" + +"Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let him come to the house?" + +"I was doing my best to stop it, Dad." + +"You were, eh--well, you'll stop it now! Understand me, Billy, he's +your friend--you brought him here--way back at the start. You've got to +put a stop to this----" + +"But how?" I asked, trying to steady my voice. "What do you think that I +can do?" + +"You can talk to her, can't you? God Almighty! Make her see this will +ruin her life!" + +"I can't do that." + +"Can't you?" He rose and bent over me gripping my arms, and I felt his +violent trembling. "If you don't, it's the end of me," he said. + +"Steady, Dad--now steady--this is coming out all right, you know----" I +got him back into his chair. "I'm going to do all I possibly can. I'm +going to see Joe Kramer now--he's the only one who can influence her. +I'm going to get him to come to Sue and help me make her feel what's +ahead--the hardest, ugliest parts of his life. Now promise you'll keep +out of it, promise you'll leave her alone while I'm gone." + +He agreed to this at last and I left him. But as I went into the hall +Sue came to me from the other room. Her face was white and strained. + +"Well, Billy?" she said. My throat tightened. She looked so pitifully +worn. + +"I'm sorry, Sue----" + +"Is that all you have to say to me?" she cut in with a quick catch of +her breath. + +"No, no." I took her in my arms. "Dear old Sue--don't you know how I +feel? I want to see you happy. I'm trying to see what on earth we can +do." + +"Why can't you all leave me alone?" she demanded, in low broken tones. +"That's all I want--I'm old enough! I love him! Isn't that enough? To be +treated like this--like a bad little child! If you'd been here and heard +him--Dad, I mean--I tell you he's half out of his mind! I'm afraid to be +left alone with him!" + +"Sue?" It was our father's voice. He had come out close behind us. + +"Leave me alone!" Sue started back, but he caught her arm: + +"You'll stay right here with me till he comes." + +"Till who comes?" + +"Kramer." + +"Who said he was coming?" + +"Your brother." + +"Billy!" + +"Now, Sis, I'm going to talk to Joe and try to persuade him to see you +and me together, that's all--quietly--over in our apartment." + +"No," said our father. "He'll see her right here!" + +"Now, Dad----" + +"Careful, son, don't get in my way. I'm standing about as much as I can. +Kramer is to come right here. If there's any seeing Sue to be done it's +to be in her home, where she belongs. I won't let her out of it--not for +an hour out of my sight!" + +"You'll lock me in here?" she panted. He turned on her. + +"You can call the police if you want to." He let go his hold and turned +to me. "I'm thinking of her mother. If she sees this man at all again +I'll see him too." + +"Can't you leave us?" I implored her. "Sue--please! Go up to your room!" + +When she'd gone I tried to quiet him. And now that Sue was out of the +way I partly succeeded. But he stuck to his purpose. Joe must come and +see Sue here. + +"I want to be on hand when she sees him," he insisted. "I don't want to +talk--I've done all that--I won't say a word--but I want to be here. You +think you know her better than I do because you're younger--but you +don't. We've lived right here together--she's been my chum for +twenty-five years, and I know things about her you don't know. She's +wilful, she's as wild as a hawk--but she can't hold out, she hasn't it +in her." + +"She will if you act as you did just now----" + +"But I won't," he said sharply. "That was a mistake--and I won't let it +happen again. When he comes you do the talking, boy--and if we're beaten +I won't try to keep her, she goes and it's ended, I promise you that. +But, son, don't make any mistake about this--I have an influence over +this girl that you haven't got and nobody has. I want her to feel me +beside her." + +He went over this again and again, and with this I had to leave him. + + * * * * * + +I found Joe in his office. He rose abruptly when I came in, and reached +for his hat. + +"Let's go out for a walk," he said. Down in the street he turned on me: +"Sue has just 'phoned me you were there. She thought you were going to +help her, Bill, she thought that you'd stand by her. She didn't get any +sleep last night--she's been through hell with that father of hers----" + +"Oh, I've been all through Sue's sufferings, Joe. Don't give me any more +of that." + +"You mean you think she's faking?" + +"No. But to be good and brutally frank about it, what she suffers just +now doesn't count with me. It's what her whole life may be with you." + +"That's not exactly your business, is it?" + +"It wouldn't be if I didn't know Sue." + +"What do you know?" + +"I know that in spite of all her talk and the way she acts and honestly +feels whenever she's with you," I replied, "Sue wants to hang on to her +home and us. She isn't the heroic kind. She can't just follow along with +you and leave all this she's used to." + +Joe's face clouded a little. + +"She'll get over that," he muttered. + +"Perhaps she will and perhaps she won't. How do you know? You want to +know, don't you? You want her to be happy?" + +"No, that's not what I want most. Being happy isn't the only thing----" + +"Then tell her so. That's all I ask. I'll tell you what I've come for, +Joe. You've always been more honest, more painfully blunt and open than +any man I've ever known. Be that way now with Sue. Give her the +plainest, hardest picture you can of the life you're getting her into." + +"I've tried to do that already." + +"You haven't! If you want to know what you've done I can tell you. +You've painted up this life of yours--and all these things you believe +in--with power enough and smash enough to knock holes through all I +believe in myself. And I'm stronger than Sue--you've done more to her. +What I ask of you now is to drop all the fire and punch of your dreams, +and line out the cold facts of your life on its personal side--what it's +going to be. I'll help draw it out by asking you questions." + +"What's the use of that? I know it won't change her!" + +"Maybe it won't. But if it won't, at least it'll make my father give up. +Can't you see? If you and I together--I asking and you answering--paint +your life the way it's to be, and she says, 'Good, that's what I +want'--he'll feel she's so far away from him then that he'll throw up +his hands and let her go. He can rest then, we can help him +then--Eleanore and I can--it may save the last years of his life. And +Sue will be free to come to you." + +"You mean the more ugly we make it the better." + +"Just that. Let's end this one way or the other." + +"All right. I agree to that." + + * * * * * + +When Joe and I came into the library my father rose slowly from his +chair and the two stood looking at one another. And by some curious +mental process two memories flashed into my mind. One was of the +towering sails that my father had told me he had seen on his first day +on the harbor, when coming here a crude boy from the inland he had +thrilled to the vision of owning such ships with crews to whom his word +should be law, and of sending them over the ocean world. Such was the +age he had lived in. The other was of the stokers down in the bottom of +the ship, and Joe's tired frowning face as he said, "Yes, they look like +a lot of bums--and they feed all the fires at sea." What was there in +common between these two? To each age a harbor of its own. + +"Well, young man, what have you to say to me?" + +"Nothing." + +Sue came into the room. Briefly I explained to her what our father had +agreed upon, that she was to do the deciding and that he would abide by +her decision. Then I began my questions to Joe. I felt awkward, +painfully the intruder into two other people's lives. And I felt as +though I were operating upon the silent old man close by. "The uglier +the better," I kept repeating to myself. + +"Let's take up first the money side, Joe. Have you any regular salary?" + +"No." + +"Such as it is, where does it come from?" + +"Out of the stokers." + +"How much do you get?" + +"One week twenty dollars and another ten or five," he said. "One week I +got three dollars and eighty-seven cents." + +"Is that likely to grow steadier?" + +"Possibly--more likely worse." + +"But can two of you live on pay like that--say an average of ten dollars +a week?" + +"I know several millions of people that have to. And most of them have +children too." + +"And you'd expect to live like that?" + +"No better," was his answer. My father turned to him slowly as though he +had not heard just right. + +"But as a matter of fact," I went on, "you wouldn't have to, would you? +You'd expect Sue to earn money as well as yourself." + +"I hope so--if she wants to--it's my idea of a woman's life." + +"And the work you hope she'll enter will be the kind you believe +in--organizing labor and taking an active part in strikes?" + +"Yes. She's a good speaker----" + +"I see. And if you were out of a job at times you'd be willing to let +her support you?" + +Sue angrily half rose from her chair, but Joe with a grim move of his +hand said softly, "Sit down and try to stand this. Let's get it over and +done with." Then he turned quietly back to me. + +"Why yes--I'd let her support me," he said. + +"You mean you don't care one way or the other. You'd both be working for +what you believe in, and how you lived wouldn't especially count?" + +"That's about it." + +"What do you believe in, Joe? Just briefly, what's your main idea in +stirring up millions of ignorant men?" + +"Mainly to pull down what's on top." + +"As for instance?" + +"All of it. Business, industry and finance as it's being run at +present." + +"A clean sweep. And in place of that?" + +"Everything run by the workers themselves." + +"For example?" I asked. "The ships by the stokers?" + +"Yes, the ships by the stokers," he said. And I felt Dad stiffen in his +chair. "As they will be when the time comes," Joe added. + +"How soon will that be?" + +"I'll see it," he said. + +"The working people in full control. No restraints whatever from above." + +"There won't be anyone left above. No more gods," he answered. + +"Not even one?" + +"Is there one?" he asked. + +"You're an atheist, aren't you," I said. + +"Yes, when I happen to think of it." + +"And Sue would likely be the same." + +"Isn't she now?" he inquired. I dropped the point and hurried on. + +"How about Sue's friends, Joe? In a life like that--always in +strikes--she'd have to give them up, wouldn't she?" + +"Probably. Some of 'em think they're radicals, but I doubt if they'd +come far out of the parlor." + +"So her new friends would be either strikers or the people who lead in +strikes. Her life would be practically sunk in the mass." + +"I hope so." + +"You may be in jail at times." + +"Quite probably." + +"Sue too?" + +"Possibly." + +I caught the look in my father's face and knew that I had but a few +moments more. + +"Do you want to marry her, Joe?" I asked. + +"Yes, I'll go down to City Hall--if a large fat Tammany alderman can +make our love any cleaner." + +"You mean you don't believe in marriage." + +"Not especially," he said. + +"And so if either gets sick of the other he just leaves without any +fuss." + +"Naturally." + +There was a pause. And then Joe spoke again. + +"You're a better interviewer than I thought you were," he said. "You've +made the picture quite complete--as far as you can see it. Of course +you've left all the real stuff out----" + +"What is the real stuff, as you call it, young man?" My father's voice +had a deadly ring. Joe turned and looked at him as before. + +"You couldn't understand," he said. + +"I think I understand enough." Dad rose abruptly and turned to Sue. +"Sue," he said. "Shall I ask your anarchist friend to go?" + +I could feel Sue gather herself. She was white. + +"I'll have to go with him," she managed to say. A slight spasm shot over +our father's face. For a moment there was silence. + +"You've heard all he said of this life of his?" + +"Yes." + +"And what he wants and expects you to do?" + +"I heard it." + +"And just how he wants you to live--with nothing you've been used +to--nothing? No money but what a few drunken stokers throw your way, no +decent ideals, no religion, no home?" + +Again a pause. + +"I want to go with him," she brought out at last. + +Dad turned sharply and left the room. + + * * * * * + +I heard a deep breath behind me. It came from Joe Kramer, whose face was +set in a frown of pain. + +"He's so damn old," Joe muttered. "You operated on him hard." + +Suddenly Sue threw herself on the lounge. She huddled there shaking and +motioned us off. + +"Leave me alone, can't you, go away!" we heard between her sobs. "It's +all right--I'm ready--I'll come to you, Joe--but not now--not just now! +Go away, both of you--leave me alone!" + +Joe left the house. Soon after that Eleanore arrived and I told her what +had happened. She went in to Sue, I left them together and went up to +my father's room. He lay on the bed breathing quickly. + +"You did splendidly, son," he said. "You slashed into her hard. It hurt +me to listen--but it's all right. Let her suffer--she had to. It hit +her, I tell you--she'll break down! If we can only keep her here! Get +Eleanore!" + +He stopped with a jerk, his hand went to his heart, and he panted and +scowled with pain. + +"I sent for her," I told him. "She's come and she's in Sue's room now. +Let's leave them alone. It's going to be all right, Dad." + +I sent for a doctor who was an old friend of my father's. He came and +spent a long time in the room, and I could hear them talking. At last he +came out. + +"It won't do," he said. "We can't have any more of this. We must keep +your sister out of his sight. She can't stay alone with him in this +house, and she can't go now to your anarchist friend. If she does it may +be the end of your father. Suppose you persuade her to come to you." + +But here Eleanore joined us. + +"I have a better plan," she said. "I've been talking to Sue and she has +agreed. She's to stay--and we'll move over here and try to keep Sue and +her father apart." + +"What about Joe?" I asked her. + +"Sue has promised me not to see Joe until the strike is over. It will +only be a matter of weeks--perhaps even days--it may break out +to-morrow. It's not much of a time for Joe to get married--besides, it's +the least she can do for her father--to wait that long. And she has +agreed. So that much is settled." + +She went home to pack up a few things for the night. When she came back +it was evening. She spent some time with Sue in her room, while I stayed +in with father. I gave him a powder the doctor had left and he was soon +sleeping heavily. + +At last in my old bedroom Eleanore and I were alone. It was a long time +before we could sleep. + +"Funny," said Eleanore presently, "how thoroughly selfish people can be. +Here's Sue and your father going through a perfectly ghastly crisis. But +I haven't been thinking of them--not at all. I've been thinking of +us--of you, I mean--of what this strike will do to you. You're getting +so terribly tense these days." + +I reached over and took her hand: + +"You don't want me to run away from it now?" + +"No," she said quickly. "I don't want that. I've told you that I'm not +afraid----" + +"Then we'll have to wait and see, won't we, dear? We can't help +ourselves now. I've got to keep on writing, you know--we depend on that +for our living. And I can't write what I did before--I don't seem to +have it in me. So I'm going into this strike as hard as I can--I'm going +to watch it as hard as I can and think it out as clearly. I know I'll +never be like Joe--but I do feel now I'm going to change. I've got +to--after what I've been shown. The harbor is so different now. Don't +you understand?" + +I felt her hand slowly tighten on mine. + +"Yes, dear," she said, "I understand----" + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +The events of that day dropped out of my mind in the turbulent weeks +that followed. For day by day I felt myself sink deeper and deeper into +the crowd, into surging multitudes of men--till something that I found +down there lifted me up and swept me on--into a strange new harbor. + +Of the strike I can give only one man's view, what I could see with my +one pair of eyes in that swiftly spreading confusion that soon embraced +the whole port of New York and other ports both here and abroad. War +correspondents, I suppose, must feel the same chaos around them, but in +my case it rose from within me as well. I was like a war correspondent +who is trying to make up his mind about war. What was good in this labor +rebellion? What was bad? Where was it taking me? + +From the beginning I could feel that it meant for me a breaking of ties +with the safe strong world that had been my life. I felt this first +before the strike, when I went to my magazine editor. He had taken my +story about Jim Marsh, but when I came to him now and told him that I +wanted to cover the strike, + +"Go ahead if you like," he answered, a weary indulgence in his tone, "I +don't want to interfere in your work. But I can't promise you now that +we'll buy it. If you feel you must write up this strike you'll have to +do it at your own risk." + +"Why?" I asked. For years my work had been ordered ahead. I thought of +that small apartment of ours, of my father sick at home--and I felt +myself suddenly insecure. + +"Because," he answered coolly, "I'm not quite sure that what you write +will be a fair unbiassed presentation of the facts. I've seen so many +good reporters utterly spoiled in strikes like this. They lose their +whole sense of proportion and never seem to get it quite back." + +This little talk left me deeply disturbed. But I was unwilling to give +up my plan, and so, after some anxious thinking, I decided to free-lance +it. After all, if this one story didn't sell I could borrow until I +wrote something that did. And I set to work with an angry vim. The very +thought that my old world was closing up behind me made my mind the more +ready now for the new world opening ahead. + +From the old house in Brooklyn I once more explored my harbor. All day +and the greater part of each night I went back over my old ground. Old +memories rose in sharp contrast to new views I was getting. From the top +I had come to the bottom. Crowds of sweating laborers rose everywhere +between me and my past. And as between me and my past, and between these +masses and their rulers, I felt the struggle drawing near, the whole +immense region took on for me the aspect of a battlefield, with puffs +and clouds and darting lines of smoke and steam from its ships and +trains and factories. Through it I moved confusedly, troubled and +absorbed. + +I saw the work of the harbor go now with an even mightier rush, because +of the impending strike. The rumor of its coming had spread far over the +country, and shippers were hurrying cargoes in. I saw boxes and barrels +by thousands marked "Rush." And they were rushed! On one dock I saw the +dockers begin at seven in the morning and when I came back late in the +evening the same men were there. At midnight I went home to sleep. When +I came back at daybreak the same men were there, and I watched them +straining through the last rush until the ship sailed that day at noon. +They had worked for twenty-nine hours. In that last hour I drew +close--so close that I could feel them heaving, sweating, panting, feel +their laboring hearts and lungs. Long ago I had watched them thus, but +then I had seen from a different world. I had felt the pulse of a nation +beating and I had gloried in its speed. But now I felt the pulse-beats +of exhausted straining men, I saw that undertaker's sign staring fixedly +from across the way. "_Certainly_ I'm talking to you!" Six thousand +killed and injured! + +I saw accidents that week. I saw a Polish docker knocked on the head by +the end of a heavy chain that broke. I saw a little Italian caught by +the foot in a rope net, swung yelling with terror into the air, then +dropped--his leg was broken. And toward the end of a long night's work I +saw a tired man slip and fall with a huge bag on his shoulders. The bag +came down on top of him, and he lay there white and still. Later I +learned that his spine had been broken, that he would be paralyzed for +life. + +But what I saw was only a part. From the policemen's books alone I found +a record for that week of six dockers killed and eighty-seven injured. I +traced about a score of these cases back into their tenement homes, and +there I found haggard, crippled men and silent, anxious women, the +mothers of small children. Curious and deeply thrilled, these children +looked at the man on the bed, between his groans of pain I heard their +eager questions, they kept getting in their mother's way. One thin +Italian mother, whose nerves were plainly all on edge, suddenly slapped +the child at her skirts, and then when it began to cry she herself burst +into tears. + +These tragic people gripped me hard. The stokers down in their foul hole +in the bottom of the ship had only disturbed and repelled me. But these +crippled dockers in their homes, with their women and their children, +their shattered lives, their agony, starvation looming up ahead--they +brought a tightening at my throat--nor was it all of pity. For these +labor victims were not dumb, I heard the word "strike!" spoken bitterly +here, and now I felt that they had a right to this bitter passion of +revolt. + +But still I felt their way was wrong. How could any real good, any sure +intelligent remedies for all this fearful misery, come out of the minds +of such people as these, who were rushing so blindly into revolt? I went +into saloons full of dockers and stokers, and out of the low harsh +hubbub there the word "strike!" came repeatedly to my ears, recklessly +from drunken tongues. Wherever I went I heard that word. I heard it +spoken in many languages, in many tones. Anxious old women said +"strike!" with fear. Little street urchins shouted it joyously. Even the +greenest foreigner understood its meaning. A little Greek, who had +broken his arm and was one of the cases I traced home, understood none +of my questions. "You speak no English?" He shook his head. "Strike!" I +ventured. Up he leaped. "Yo' bet!" he cried emphatically. + +What was it deep within me that leaped up then as though to meet that +burning passion in his eyes? + +"Keep your head," I warned myself. "To change all this means years of +work--thinking of the clearest kind. And what clear thinking can these +men do? The ships have got them down so low they've no minds left to get +out of their holes!" + +And yet--as now on every dock, that "strike feeling" in the air kept +growing tenser, tenser--its tensity crept into me. What was it that lay +just ahead? I felt like a man starting out on a journey--a journey from +which when he comes back he will find nothing quite the same. + +I had a talk about the strike one day with Eleanore's father. I can +still see the affectionate smile on his face, he looked as though he +were seeing me off. + +"My dear boy," he said, in his kind quiet voice, "don't forget for even +a minute that the men who stand behind my work are going to stamp out +this strike. This modern world is too complex to allow brute force and +violence to wreck all that civilization has done. I'm sorry you've gone +into this--but so long as you have, as Eleanore's father, I want you now +to promise you won't write a line until the strike is over and you have +had plenty of time to get clear. Don't let yourself get swamped in +this--remember that you have a wife and a small son to think of." + +My father had put it more sharply. He was out of bed now and he seemed +to take strength from the news reports that he eagerly read of the +struggle so fast approaching. + +"At sea," he said, "when stokers try to quit their jobs and force their +way on deck, they're either put in irons or shot down as mutineers. +You'll see your friend Kramer dead or in jail. No danger to your sister +now. Only see that _you_ keep out of it!" + +I did not tell him of my work, for I knew it would only excite him +again, and excitement would be dangerous. + +"Now you and Eleanore must go home," said Sue that night. "You'll have +enough to think of. I'll be all right with father--he knows there's +nothing to do but wait, and he's so kind to me now that it hurts. Poor +old Dad--how well he means. But he's the old and we're the new--and +that's the whole trouble between us." A sudden light came in her eyes. +"The new are bound to win!" she said. + +But I was not so sure of the new. To me it was still very vague and +chaotic. After we had moved back to New York, at the times when I came +home to sleep, Eleanore was silent or quietly casual in her remarks, but +I felt her always watching me. One night when I came in very late and +thought her asleep, being too tired to sleep myself, I went to our +bedroom window and stood looking off down, into the distant expanse of +the harbor. How quiet and cool it seemed down there. But presently out +of the darkness behind, Eleanore's arm came around me. + +"I wonder whether the harbor will ever let us alone," she said. "It was +so good to us at first--we were getting on so splendidly. But it's +taking hold of us now again--as though we had wandered too far away and +were living too smoothly and needed a jolt. Never mind, we're not +afraid. Only let's be very sure we know what we are doing." + +"We'll be very sure," I whispered, and I held her very close. + +"Let's try to be sure together," she said. "Don't leave me out--I want +to be in. I want to see as much as I can--and help in any way I can. If +you make any friends I want to know them. Remember that whatever comes, +thy people shall be mine, my dear." + + * * * * * + +The next day the strike began. + +Out of the docks at nine in the morning I saw dockers pour in crowds. +They moved on to other docks, merged themselves in other crowds, +scattered here and gathered there, until at last a black tide of men, +here straggling wide, here densely massed, moved slowly along the +waterfront. + +In and out of these surging throngs I moved, so close that in the quiver +of muscles, the excited movements of big limbs, the rough eagerness of +voices that spoke in a babel of many tongues, such a storm of emotions +beat in upon me that I felt I had suddenly dived into an ocean of human +beings, each one of whom was as human as I. I caught a glimpse of Joe +hurrying by. And I thought of Sue, and of Joe's appeal to her and to me +to throw in our lives with such strangers as these whose coarse heavy +faces were pressing so close. And I thought of Eleanore at home. "Thy +people shall be mine, my dear." + +Teamsters drove clattering trucks through the crowds. Some of them did +not unload, but others dumped piles of freight by the docks. The dam had +begun. All day long the freight piled up, and by evening the light of a +pale moon shone down upon acres of barrels and boxes. Then the teamsters +unharnessed their teams, left the empty trucks with poles in air, and +the teamsters and their horses and all the crowds of strikers scattered +by degrees up into the tenement regions. Bursts of laughter and singing +came now and then out of the saloons. + +Silence settled down over the docks. Walking now down the waterfront I +met only a figure here and there. A taxi came tearing and screeching by, +and later down the long empty space came a single wagon slowly. A smoky +lantern swung under its wheels, and its old white horse with his shaggy +head down came plodding wearily along. He alone had no strike feeling. + +Battered and worn from the day's impressions I wanted to be alone and to +think. I made my way in and out among trucks and around a dockshed out +to a slip. It was filled with barges, tugs and floats jammed in between +the two big vessels that loomed one at either pier. It was a dark jumble +of spars and masts, derricks, funnels and cabin roofs, all shadowy and +silent. A single light gleamed here and there from the long dark deck of +the Morgan coaster close to my right. She was heavily loaded still, for +she had come to dock too late. Smoke still drifted from her stout +funnel, steam puffed now and then from her side. Behind her, reaching a +mile to the North, were ships by the dozen, coasters and great ocean +liners, loaded and waiting to discharge or empty and waiting to reload. +And to the South were miles of railroad sheds already packed to +bursting. I thought of the trains from all over the land still rushing a +nation's produce here, and of the starlit ocean roads, of ships coming +from all over the world, the men in their fiery caverns below feeding +faster the fires to quicken their speed, all bringing cargoes to this +port. More barrels, boxes, crates and bags to be piled high up on the +waterfront. For the workers had gone away from their work, and the great +white ships were still. + +"What has all this to do with me?" + +There came into my mind the picture of a little man I had seen that day, +a suburban commuter by his looks, frowning from a ferryboat upon a +cheering crowd of strikers. I laughed to myself as I thought of him. He +had seemed so ludicrously small. + +"Yes, my friend," I thought, "you and I are a couple of two-spots here, +swallowed up in the scenery." + +I thought of what Joe had said that day: "When you see the crowd, in a +strike like this, loosen up and show all it could be if it had the +chance--that sight is so big it blots you out--you sink--you melt into +the crowd." + +Something like that happened to me. I had seen the multitudes "loosen +up," I had felt myself melt into the crowd. But I had not seen what they +could be nor did I see what they could do. Far to the south, high over +all the squalid tenement dwellings, rose that tower of lights I had +known so well, the airy place where Eleanore's father had dreamed and +planned his clean vigorous world. It was lighted to-night as usual, as +though nothing whatever had happened. I thought of the men I had seen +that day. How crassly ignorant they seemed. And yet in a few brief hours +they had paralyzed all that the tower had planned, reduced it all to +silence, nothing. Could it be that such upheavals as these meant an end +to the rule of the world from above, by the keen minds of the men at the +top? Was that great idol which had been mine for so many glad years, +that last of my gods, Efficiency, beginning to rock a little now upon +its deep foundations? + +What could these men ever put in its place? I recalled the words of an +old dock watchman with whom I had talked the evening before. From the +days of the Knights of Labor he had been through many strikes, and all +had failed, he told me. His dog sat there beside him, a solemn old red +spaniel, looking wistfully into his master's face. And with somewhat the +same expression, looking out on the moonlit Hudson, the old striker had +said slowly: + +"Before these labor leaders will do half of what they say--a pile of +water will have to go by." + +A sharp slight sound behind me jerked me suddenly out of my thoughts. I +jumped as though at a shot. How infernally tight my nerves were getting. +The sound had come from a mere piece of paper blown by the wind--a rough +salt wind which now blew in from the ocean as though impatient of all +this stillness. From below came a lapping and slapping of waves. Above +me a derrick mast growled and whined as it rocked. And now as I looked +about me all those densely crowded derricks moved to and fro against the +sky. I had never felt in this watery world such deep restlessness as +now. + +"I wonder if you'll ever stop heaving," I thought half angrily. "I +wonder what I'll be like when you finally get through with me. When will +you ever let me stand pat and get things settled for good and all? When +stop this endless starting out?" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +What could such men as these raise up in place of the mighty life they +had stilled? + +At first only chaos. + +As I went along the waterfront I felt a confused disappointment. Deep +under all my questioning there had been a vague subconscious hope that I +would see a miracle here. I had looked for an army. I saw only mobs of +angry men. They were "picketing" the docks, here making furious rushes +at men suspected of being "scabs," there clustering quickly around some +talker or some man who was reading a paper, again drifting up into the +streets of teeming foreign quarters, jamming into barrooms, voicing +wildest rumors, talking, shouting, pounding tables with huge fists. And +to me there was nothing inspiring but only something terrible here, an +appalling force turned loose, sightless and unguided. What a fool I had +been to hope. The harbor held no miracles. + +The strike leaders seemed to have little control. Headquarters were in +the wildest disorder. Into the big bare meeting hall and through the +rooms adjoining drifted multitudes of men. There were no inner private +rooms and Marsh saw everyone who came. He was constantly shaking hands +or drawling casual orders, more like suggestions than commands. I caught +sight of Joe Kramer's face at his desk, where he was signing and giving +out union cards to a changing throng that kept pressing around him. +Joe's face was set and haggard. He had been at that desk all night. + +"It's hopeless. They can do nothing," I thought. + +But when I came back the next morning I felt a sudden shock of +surprise. For in some mysterious fashion a crude order had appeared. The +striker throng had poured into the hall, filled all the seats and then +wedged in around the walls. They were silent and attentive now. On the +stage sat Marsh and his fellow leaders. Before them in the first three +rows of seats was the Central Committee, a rough parliament sprung up +over night. Each member, I found, had been elected the night before by +his "district committee." These district bodies had somehow formed in +the last two days and in them leaders had arisen. The leaders were here +to plan together, the mass was here to make sure they planned right. And +watching the deep rough eagerness on all those silent faces, that vague +hope stirred again in my breast. + +Presently I caught Joe's eye. At once he left his platform seat and came +to me in the rear of the hall. + +"Come on, Bill," he said. "We want you up here." And we made our way up +to the platform. There Marsh reached over and gripped my hand. + +"Hello, Bill, glad you're with us," he said. I tingled slightly at his +tone and at a thousand friendly eyes that met mine for an instant. Then +it was over. The work went on. + +What they did at first seemed haphazard enough. Reports from the +districts were being read with frequent interruptions, petty corrections +and useless discussions that strayed from the point and made me +impatient. And yet wide vistas opened here. Telegrams by the dozen were +read from labor unions all over the country, from groups of socialists +East and West, there were cables from England, Germany, France, from +Russia, Poland, Norway, from Italy, Spain and even Japan. "Greetings to +our comrades!" came pouring in from all over the earth. What measureless +army of labor was this? All at once the dense mass in the rear would +part to let a new body of men march through. These were new strikers to +swell the ranks, and at their coming all business would stop, there +would be wild cheers and stamping of feet, shrill whistles, pandemonium! + +Gradually I began to feel what was happening in this hall. That first +"strike feeling"--diffused, shifting and uncertain--was condensing as in +a storm cloud here, swelling, thickening, whirling, attracting swiftly +to itself all these floating forces. Here was the first awakening of +that mass thought and passion, which swelling later into full life was +to give me such flashes of insight into the deep buried resources of the +common herd of mankind, their resources and their power of vision when +they are joined and fused in a mass. Here in a few hours the great +spirit of the crowd was born. + +For now the crowd began to question, think and plan. Ideas were thrown +out pell mell. I found that every plan of action, everything felt and +thought and spoken, though it might start from a single man, was at once +transformed by the feeling of all, expressed in fragments of speech, in +applause, or in loud bursts of laughter, or again by a chilling silence +in which an unwelcome thought soon died. The crowd spoke its will +through many voices, through men who sprang up and talked hard a few +moments, then sat down and were lost to sight--some to rise later again +and again and grow in force of thought and expression, others not to be +seen again, they had simply been parts of the crowd, and the crowd had +made them rise and speak. + +On the first day of this labor parliament, up rose a stolid Pole. He was +no committeeman but simply a member of the throng. + +"Yo' sand a spickair to my dock," he said. "Pier feefty-two--East +Reever. I t'ink he make de boys come out." He sat down breathing +heavily. + +"You don't need any speaker, go yourself," an Irishman called from +across the hall. + +"I no spick," said the Pole emphatically. + +"You're spicking now, ain't you?" There was a burst of laughter, and +the big man's face grew red. "You don't need to talk," the voice went +on. "Just go into your dock and yell 'Strike!' You've got chest enough, +you Pollock." + +The big Pole made his way out of the hall. In the rear I saw him light +his pipe and puff and scowl in a puzzled way. Then he disappeared. The +next day, in the midst of some discussion, he rose from another part of +the hall. + +"I want to say I strike my dock," he shouted. Nobody seemed to hear him, +it had nothing whatever to do with the subject, but he sat down with a +glow of pride. + +A Norwegian had arisen and was speaking earnestly, but his English was +so wonderful that no one could understand. + +"Shut up, you big Swede, go and learn English," somebody said. + +"He don't have to shut up." The voice of Marsh cut in, and the mass +backed up his curt rebuke by a murmur of approval. He had risen and come +forward, and now waited till there was absolute silence. "Everyone gets +a hearing here," he said. "We've got nine nationalities, but each one +checks his race at the door. Every man is to have a fair show. What we +need is an interpreter. Where's someone who can help this Swede?" + +There was a quick stirring in the mass and then a man was shoved out of +it. He went over to the speaker, who at once began talking intensely. + +"The first thing he wants to say," said the interpreter at the end of +the torrent, "is that he'd rather be dead than a Swede. He says he's a +Norwegian. His second point is that all bad feeling between +nationalities ought to be stopped if the strike's to be won. He says +he's seen fights already between Irish and Eyetalians." + +Up leaped an enormous negro docker who sounded as though he preached +often on Sundays. + +"Yes, brothers," he boomed, "let us stop our fights. Let us desist--let +us refrain. We are men from all countries, black and white. The last +speaker came from Norway--he came from way up there in the North. My +father came from Africa----" + +"He must have come last Monday," said a dry, thin voice from the back of +the hall, and there was a laugh. + +"Brothers," cried the black man, "I come here from the colored race. At +my dock I got over sixty negroes to walk out. Is there no place for us +in this strike? If my father was a slave, is my color so against me?" + +"It ain't your color, it's your scabbing," a sharp voice interrupted. +"They broke the last strike with coons like you. They brought you up in +boats from the South. And you scabbed--you scabbed yourself! Didn't you? +You did! You ---- of a nigger!" + +A little Italian sprang up in reply. He did not look like a docker. He +was gaily dressed in a neat blue suit with a bright red tie: + +"Fellow workers--I am Italian man! You call me Guinney, Dago, Wop--you +call another man Coon, Nigger--you call another man a Sheeny! Stop +calling names--call men fellow workers! We are on strike--let us not +fight each other--let us have peace--let us have a good time! I know a +man who has a big boat--and he say now we can have it for nothing--to +take our wives and children and make excursions every day. On the boat +we will have a good time. I am a musician--I play the violin on a boat +till I strike--so now I will get you the music. And we shall run that +boat ourselves! We have our own dockers to start it from dock--we have +our own stokers, our own engineers--we have our own pilots--we have all! +And it will be easy to steer that boat--for we have made the harbor +empty--we shall have the whole place to ourselves! Some day maybe soon +we have all the boats in the world for ourselves--and we shall be free! +All battle boats we shall sink in the sea--we stop all wars! So now we +begin--we stop all our fighting--we take out this boat--all our +comrades on board! No coons, no niggers, no sheenies, no wops! Fellow +workers--I tell you the name of our boat! _The Internationale!_" + +The little man's speech was greeted with a sudden roar of applause. For +the crowd had seen at once this danger of race hatred and was eager to +put it down. _The Internationale_ made her first trip on the following +day, and after that her daily cruise became the gala event of the +strike. Both decks of the clumsy craft were packed with strikers, their +wives and their children, and all up and down the harbor she went. The +little Italian and his friends had had printed a red pamphlet, +"Revolutionary Songs of the Sea," the solos of which he sang on the boat +while the rest came in on the chorus. A new kind of a "chanty man" was +he, voicing the wrongs and the fierce revolt and the surging hopes and +longings of all the toilers on the sea--while this ship that was run by +the workers themselves plowed over a strange new harbor. I watched it +one day from the end of a pier. It approached with a swelling volume of +song. It drew so near I could see the flushed faces of those who were +singing, some with their eyes on their leader's face, others singing out +over the water as though they were spreading far and wide the exultant +prophecy of that song. It passed, the singing died away--and still I sat +there wondering. + +"We shall have all the boats in the world for ourselves--and we shall be +free! All battle boats we shall sink in the sea! We stop all wars! So +now we begin!" + +Was it indeed a beginning? Was this the opening measure of music that +would be heard round the world? My mind rejected the idea, I thought it +merest madness. But still that song rang in my ears. What deep +compelling force was here--this curious power of the crowd that had so +suddenly gripped hold of this simple Italian musician, this fiddler on +excursion boats, and in a few short days and nights had made him pour +into music the fire of its world-wide dreams? + +I saw it seize on others. One day a young girl rose up in the hall. A +stenographer on one of the docks, she was neatly, rather sprucely +dressed, but her face was white and scared. She had never made a speech +before. She was speaking now as though impelled by something she could +not control. + +"Comrades--fellow workers." Her voice trembled violently. She paused and +set her teeth, went on. "How about the women and babies?" she asked. "I +know of one who was born last night. And that's only one of a lot. We +have thousands of kids and old people--sick people too, and cripples and +drunks--all that these lovely jobs of ours have left on our backs. +They've got to be carried. Who's to take care of 'em, feed 'em, doctor +'em? If we're going to run the earth let's begin at home. What does +anyone know about that?" + +She sat down with a kind of a gasp of relief. Her seat was close to the +platform, and I could see her bright excited eyes as she listened to +what she had started here. For the crowd, as though it had only been +waiting for this girl to speak its thought, now seized upon her +question. Sharp voices were heard all over the hall. Some said they +could get doctors, others knew of empty stores that could be had for +nothing and used as free food stations. An assistant cook from an ocean +liner told where his chief bought wholesale supplies. And the girl who +had roused this discussion, her nervousness forgotten now, rose up again +and again with so many quick, eager suggestions, that when the first +relief station was opened that evening she was one of those placed in +charge. + +I saw her grow amazingly, for now I came to know her well. Her name was +Nora Ganey. At home that night when Eleanore said, "Remember, dear, I +want something to do that will let me see the strike for myself"--I +thought at once of this work of relief. Eleanore would be good at this, +she had trained herself in just such work. And it appealed to her at +once. She went down with me the next morning, and she and Nora Ganey, +though their lives had been so different, yet proved at once to be +kindred souls. Eleanore gave half her time to the work, and these two +became fast friends. + +Before the strike Nora had sat all day in an office pounding a +typewriter, several nights a week she had gone to dances in public +halls, and that had made her entire life. In the strike she was at her +food station all day, and each evening till late she visited homes, +looking into appeals for aid and if need be issuing tickets for food. +She heard the bitterest stories from wives of harbor victims, and she +began telling these stories in speeches. Soon she was sent out over the +city to speak at meetings and ask for aid. With Eleanore I went one +night to hear this young stenographer speak to twenty thousand in +Madison Square Garden. And the strike leader who made that speech was +not the girl of two weeks before. Her life had been as utterly changed +as though she had jumped to another world. + +Through Marsh and Joe, in those tense days, I was fast making striker +friends. With some I had long intimate talks, I ate many kitchen suppers +and spent many evenings in tenement homes. But though by degrees I felt +myself drawn to these men who called me "Bill," when alone with each one +I felt little or none of that passion born of the crowd as a whole. With +a sharp drop, a sudden reaction, I would feel this new world gone. Its +strength and its wide vision would seem like mere illusions now. What +could we little pigmies do with the world? Its guidance was for Dillon +and all the big men I had known. Often in those days of groping, knotty +problems all unsolved, with a sickening hunger I would think of those +men at the top, of their keen minds so thoroughly trained, their vast +experience in affairs. I would feel myself in a hopeless mob, a dense, +heavy jungle of ignorant minds. And groping for a foothold here I would +find only chaos. + +But back we would go into the crowd, and there in a twinkling we would +be changed. Once more we were members of the whole and took on its huge +personality. And again the vision came to me, the dream of a weary world +set free, a world where poverty and pain and all the bitterness they +bring might in the end be swept away by this awakening giant here--which +day by day assumed for me a personality of its own. Slowly I began to +feel what It wanted, what It hated, how It planned and how It acted. And +this to me was a miracle, the one great miracle of the strike. For years +I had labored to train myself to concentrate on one man at a time, to +shut out all else for weeks on end, to feel this man so vividly that his +self came into mine. Now with the same intensity I found myself striving +day and night to feel not one but thousands of men, a blurred +bewildering multitude. And slowly in my striving I felt them fuse +together into one great being, look at me with two great eyes, speak to +me with one deep voice, pour into me with one tremendous burning passion +for the freedom of mankind. + +Was this another god of mine? + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +The great voice of the crowd--incessant, demanding of me and of all +within hearing to throw in our lives, to join in this march to a new +free world regardless of all risk to ourselves--grew clear to me now. + +I felt myself drawn in with the rest. I was helping in the publicity +work, each day I met with the leaders to draw up statements for the +press. And these messages to the outside world that I wrote to the slow +and labored dictation of some burly docker comrade, or again by myself +at dawn to express the will of a meeting that had lasted half the +night--slowly became for me my own. Almost unawares I had taken the +habit of asking: + +"How much can _we_ do? How sane and vigilant can _we_ be to keep clear +of violence, bloodshed, mobs and a return to chaos? How long can we hold +together fast? How far can we march toward this promised land?" + +In order to see ourselves as a whole and feel our swiftly swelling +strength, having now burst the confines of our hall, we began to hold +meetings out on "the Farm." There are many "farms" on the waterfront, +for a "farm" is simply the open shore space in front of a dock. But +this, which was one of the widest of all, now came to be spoken of as +"the Farm," and took on an atmosphere all its own. For there were scenes +here which will long endure in the memories of thousands of people. For +them it will be a great bright spot in the times gone by--in one of +those times behind the times, as this strange world keeps rushing on. + +From the top of a pile of sand, where I stood with the speakers at the +end of a soft April day, I saw the whole Farm massed solid with people. +This mass rose in hummocks and hills of humanity over the piles of brick +and sand and of crates and barrels dumped by the trucks, and out over +the water they covered the barges and the tugs, and there were even +hundreds upon the roofs of docksheds. The yelp of a dog was heard now +and then and the faint cries of children. But the mass as a whole stood +motionless, without a sound. They had stood thus since two o'clock, and +now the sun was setting. To the west the harbor was empty, no smoke from +ships obscured the sun, and it shone with radiant clearness upon eleven +races of men, upon Italians, Germans, French, on English, Poles and +Russians, on Negroes and Norwegians, Lascars, Malays, Coolies, on +figures burly, figures puny, faces white and faces swarthy, yellow, +brown and black. The sun shone upon all alike--except where that Morgan +liner, still lying unloaded at her dock, threw a long dark creeping +shadow out across the throng. + +Thirty thousand people were here. Thirty thousand intensely alive. As I +eagerly watched their faces it was not their poverty now but their +boundless fresh vitality that took hold of me so hard. I had read many +radical books of late, in my groping for a foothold, and I had found +most of them dry affairs. But now the crowd through its leaders had laid +hold upon the thoughts in these books, had made them its own and so +given them life. In the process the thoughts had been twisted and bent, +some parts ignored and others brought out of all their nice proportions. +Exaggeration, sentiment, all kinds of crudity were here. But it was +crudity alive, a creed was here in action. Out of all the turmoil, the +take and give, the jar and clash back there in the meeting hall, had +come certain thoughts and passions, hopes and plans, that the multitude +had not ignored or hooted but had caught up and cheered into life. And +these ideas that they had cheered were now being pounded back into their +minds. Monotonous repetition, you say? Yes, monotonous repetition--slow +sledgehammer blows upon something red hot--pounding, pounding, +pounding--that when it cooled its shape might be changed. + +Nora Ganey was speaking. + +"Look at those ocean liners!" she cried. Her voice was sharp and +strident. "They're paralyzed now, and because they are they're costing +the big companies millions of dollars every day. That's what their time +is worth to their owners. But what are those ships worth to you? Ten +dollars a week and a broken arm--or a leg or a skull, you can take your +choice. Six thousand of you men were crippled or crushed to death last +year--and that, let me remind you, was only in the port of New York. Why +was it? Why did it have to be? And why will it always have to be until +you make these ships your own? Because, fellow workers, the time of the +ships is worth so much to their owners that the work has got to be +rushed day and night--and in that rush somebody's bound to get hurt--if +he isn't killed he's lucky! And as for the rest, when at last you're +through and dead tired--they point to the saloons and say, 'Now have a +few drinks! We won't need you again till next Tuesday'! Do you know what +all this means in your homes? It means drunks, cripples, sick and poor! +It means such sights as I'll never forget. I've seen 'em all--just +lately! + +"I never thought of such things before. I liked my office job on the +dock and all the jobs around me--and when sailing time drew near I liked +the last excitement. I liked the rich furs and dresses and the cute +little earrings and slippers and dogs that were attached to the women +who came. I liked to see them pile out of their motors and laugh and +make eyes at the men they belonged to. I liked to peep into the cabins +they had--get on to all the luxuries there. + +"But out of all this magnificence, friends, and this work that keeps it +going--I saw one day a man come on a stretcher. He was dead. And that +started me thinking. That's why I came out when the strike was called. +And in the strike I've gone into your homes. I've seen what those soft +expensive female dolls and all the work that makes them costs. And I've +got a thrill of another kind! It's a thrill that'll last for the rest of +my life! And in yours, too, fellow workers! For I believe that you'll go +right on--that you'll strike and strike and strike again--till you make +these tenements own these ships--and a life won't be thrown away for a +dollar!" + +She stopped sharply and stepped back, and there burst out a frenzy of +applause, which died down to be caught up and prolonged and deepened +into a steady roar, as Marsh came slowly forward. He stood there +bareheaded, impassive and quiet, listening to the great voice of the +mass. At last he turned to the chairman. The latter picked up a whistle, +and at that piercing call to order slowly the cheering began to subside. +Faces pressed eagerly closer. Marsh looked all around him. + +"Fellow workers," he began, "it's hard for a man to be understood when +he's talking to men from all over the world." He pointed down to a +cluster of Lascars with white turbans on their heads. "_You_ don't +understand me. But some of your comrades will give you my speech, for we +are all strike brothers here. On the ship there is no flag--on the ship +there is no nation--on the ship there is only work--on the ship there +are only the workers! + +"For a ship may be equipped with the most powerful engines to drive +her--she may have the best brains to direct her course--but the ship +can't sail until you go aboard! You're the men who make the ships of +use, you're the men who give value to the stock of all the big ship +companies! You are the ship industry--and to you the ship industry +should belong! + +"I want you now to think of a tombstone. Out in the Atlantic, two miles +down they tell me, a big ship is stuck with her bow in the ooze of the +ocean floor and her stern six hundred feet up in the water. In the cold +green light down there she looks like a tombstone--and she is packed +with dead people inside. She is there because where she should have had +lifeboats she had French cafes instead, and sun parlors for the ladies. +Some of these ladies went down with the ship, and we heard a lot about +their screams. But we haven't heard much of the cries for help of the +thousands of men who go down every year in rotten old ships upon the +seas! Nor have we heard of the millions more who are killed on land--on +the railroads, in the mines and mills and stinking slums of cities! + +"But now we've decided that cries like these are to be heard all over +the world. For we've only got one life apiece--we're not quite sure of +another. And because we do all the work that is done we want all the +life there is to be had! All the life there is to be had--that's what we +are striking for! That is our share of the life in this world! And until +we get our share this labor war will have no end! Other wars may come +and go--but under them all on land and sea this war of ours will go +steadily on--will swallow up all other wars--will swallow up in all your +minds all hatred of your brother men! For you they will be workers all! +With them you will rise--and the world will be free!" + + * * * * * + +When the long stormy din of cheers had little by little died away Joe +Kramer began the last speech of the day. He had eaten and slept little, +he had lived on coffee and cigarettes, and there was a strained look in +his deep eyes as he rose up lean and gaunt by my side. + +"I'm here to-day to speak to the men who work in stokeholes naked," he +said. "I'm here to talk of the lives you lead--the lives that millions +before you have led--for a few brief years--and then they have died. For +lives in stokeholes are not long. And before I begin I propose that we +stand for a moment with uncovered heads." He looked out over the +multitude as though seeing far beyond them, and his voice was as harsh +as the look in his eyes. "As a tribute to all the dead stokers," he +said. + +And in a breathless silence the multitude did what he had asked. Joe +broke this silence sharply. + +"Now for life and the living," he said. "Why was it that those men all +died? What has the change from sails to steam done to the lives of the +men at sea? + +"The old sailor at least had air to breathe. But what you breathe is red +hot gas--I know because I've been there. There is a gong upon the wall, +and when it clangs you heave in coal, and if when it clangs faster you +don't keep quite up to its pace, a white light flashes out of the wall, +and that light is the Chief Engineer's way of saying, 'God damn you, +keep up those fires down there! Time is money! Who are you?' + +"The old-time sailor lived on deck. He had the winds, the sun and the +stars. But you live down between steel walls--with only the glare of +electric lights in which you sleep and eat and sweat. You work at all +kinds of irregular hours, for you there is no day or night. You don't +know whether the millionaire and his last and loveliest wife are +drinking champagne before going to bed, in their cabin de luxe above +you, or taking their coffee the next day at noon. You don't know about +anything way up there--unless you go up as I've seen you do, half out of +your senses from the heat, and make a sudden jump for the rail. The cry +is heard--'Man overboard!'--then shrieks and a chorus of 'Oh-my-God's!' +And then somebody says, 'It's only a stoker.'" + +He stopped short, and at the sudden roar of the crowd I saw him frown +and quiver. He drew a deep, slow breath and went on: + +"They threw off all the good in the ship with sails--but they carefully +kept all that was bad. The old mutiny laws--they kept all that. +Undermanning of crews--they kept all that. The waterfront sharks--they +kept all that. But there was one thing they couldn't keep--the old +sailor's habit of standing all this! He had run away to sea as a boy, +he'd been kicked all his life by the bucko mate into a state where he +couldn't kick back. But with you men it is not so. Among all the +thousands standing here most were on shore a few years ago, and you took +your land views with you on board. You organized seamen's unions. The +one in this country was meek and mild. It did not strike, it went on its +knees to Congress instead, and here's part of the written petition it +made. 'We raise our manacled hands in humble supplication--and we pray +that the nations of the earth issue a decree for our emancipation--restore +us our rights as brother men.' But Congress had no ear for you then. +Sailors are men who have no votes. And so you failed in your pleading. + +"But in the labor movement there seems to be no such word as fail! You +have not given up your union--instead you have formed one of a kind more +dangerous to your masters! You have not made smaller your requests--no, +you are now demanding more! And instead of asking for merciful laws you +are saying, 'We are done with your laws, will have none of your laws, +will break your laws when they come in our way!' + +"And what do your masters answer? Here are thousands of deserters--every +man here has broken the law by leaving his ship! But have they tried to +arrest you? No! They're afraid to arrest twenty thousand men, they're +afraid of this strike, they're afraid of you! They're so almighty scared +downtown that though we've been only a week on strike they've already +sent their commands to their Congress to give us what merciful laws we +like. They're scared because we've thrown over their laws--because they +know that we now see our power--to stop all their ships and the trade of +their land and send their stock market into a panic! + +"And now do you know what I want you to do? I want you to look at their +ships, at their docks, at their harbor, men--and laugh--laugh! Don't you +see there's no need of violence? Laugh! In old times the people built +barricades. You don't need barricades nor any guns--all you've got to do +is to stand here and laugh! Look at all you have done to your +bosses--and laugh! To this town, to this nation--and laugh, laugh! +Look--and think--of what you _can_ do--all you--and you--and you--and +you--by just folding your arms! Think of all you _will_ do! And +laugh--laugh! Laugh! Laugh!" + +He broke off with both arms raised, and there followed one moment +without a sound. Then suddenly, quick and hard and clear, from a corner +of this human ocean, I heard a single peal of laughter. In an instant +scores joined in. Rising in outbursts here and there, deepening, rushing +out over the Farm, it gathered and rolled in wave on wave, rising, +always rising. And it swelled into such a laugh that I saw the police +feel for their clubs. Reporters scrambled for high places, turned their +kodaks on it all. Women snatched up their babies in terror and ran. +Marsh stepped forward, caught Joe by the arm and jerked him back to +where I was standing. I gripped Joe's hand, it was icy cold. + +Marsh shouted to the chairman, and the piercing whistle for order was +heard. But it took a long time for that laugh to die. Long after the +meeting had broken up I saw groups gather together, and presently they +would begin to laugh, and their laughter would take on again that same +convulsive tensity. I heard small clusters laughing, and dense throngs +in hot saloons where the low rooms would echo and double the roar. + +Late at night out on the waterfront, under the bow of that Morgan ship, +I found two strikers smoking their pipes, and I sat down and lighted +mine. One was a Lascar, the other a Pole. In the strike these wanderers +over the earth had met on the waterfront under a wagon where each had +come to sleep the night. Since then they had become good friends. Each +spoke a little English, each one had caught bits here and there from the +speeches made that afternoon--and they had been trying to pool what +they'd heard, trying to find why it was they had laughed. As now I tried +to give them the gist of what Joe Kramer had said, from time to time +they would glance up at the big ship they had paralyzed and chuckle +softly to themselves. + +Then I went on to Marsh's speech. And out there in the darkness I could +feel their rough faces, one white and one brown, grow deeply, eagerly +intent, as these strike brothers listened to the voice that had spoken +the dream of the crowd: + +"Other wars may come and go--but under them all on land and sea this war +of ours will go steadily on--will swallow up all other wars--will +swallow up in all your minds all hatred of your brother men. For you +they will be workers all. With them you will rise--and the world will be +free." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +To all this, from the buildings far downtown that loomed like tall grim +shadows, the big companies said nothing. + +But that same night, while I sat talking to those two men, we heard a +sharp excited cry. We saw a man behind us running along the line of +saloons. From these and from the tenements came pouring angry throngs of +men. And out of the hubbub I caught the words, + +"They're bringing in the scabs! By boat!" + +Past a watchman that I knew I ran into a dockshed and out to the open +end of the dock. And there I saw a weird ominous scene. Up the empty +harbor, under a dark and cloudy sky, came four barges, black with negro +laborers, and ahead and around and behind them came police boats +throwing their searchlights upon an angry swarm of union picket dories, +from which as they drew nearer I heard furious voices shouting, "Scab!" +One of the barges docked where I stood and the negroes quickly slunk +inside. I drew back from them as they passed, for to me too they were +"scabs" that night. Afraid to face the men outside, whose jobs they had +taken, these strike-breakers were to live on the dock, under cover of +police. Soon half of them lay snoring on long crowded rows of cots. Food +and hot coffee were served to the rest. Then I heard the harsh rattle of +winches, I saw these negroes trundling freight, the cargo went swooping +up into the ship--and with a deep dismay, a sharp foreboding of trouble +ahead, I felt the work of the harbor begun. + +I heard a quick voice at my elbow: + +"Say. What the hell are _you_ doing here!" I turned to the Pinkerton man +by my side: + +"I'm reporting this strike." + +"No you're not, you're in here to report what you see to the strikers. +Now don't let's have any words, my friend, we've seen you in their +meeting-hall and we've all got your number. Go on out where you belong!" + +So I went out where I belonged. + +I went out to the crowd--but I found it changed, split up into furious +swarms of men, I found the beginning of chaos here. And the world that I +had left behind, the old world of order and rule from above, which I had +all but forgotten of late, now sharply made its presence felt. For the +god I had once known so well was neither dead nor sleeping. Behind +closed doors, the doors that had flown open once to show me every +courtesy, it had been silently laying plans and sending forth orders or +"requests" to all those in its service. + +The next day the newspapers changed their tone. Until now they had given +us half the front page. Every statement I had written had been printed +word for word. The reporters had been free to dig columns of "human +interest stuff" out of the rich mine of color here, and they had gone at +it hungrily, many with real sympathy. You would have thought the entire +press was on the side of the strikers, at times it had almost seemed to +me as though the entire country had risen in revolt. But now all this +was suddenly stopped, and in its place the front pages were filled with +news of a very different kind. "Big Companies Move at Last," were the +headlines, "Work of Breaking Strike Begun." The first ship would sail +that evening, three more would be ready to start the next day, and +within a week the big companies hoped to resume the regular service. +They regretted the loss to shippers of all the perishable produce which +to the value of millions of dollars had been rotting away at the docks. +They deplored the inconvenience and ruin which had been brought on the +innocent public by these bodies of rough, irresponsible men who had +openly defied the law. With such men there could be no arbitration, and +in fact there was no need. The port would be open inside of a week. + +So the big companies spoke at last. And as I read the papers, at home +that day at breakfast, I remembered what Eleanore's father had said: +"Don't let yourself forget for one minute that the men behind me are +going to stamp out this strike." Not without a fight, I thought. But I +was anxious and depressed. Dillon had not come of late, he had felt that +we wanted to be alone. As now I glanced at Eleanore, whose eyes were +intent on the news of the day, I saw with a rush of pity and love how +alone she suddenly felt in all this. A moment later she looked up. + +"Pretty bad, isn't it, dear?" she said. + +"It doesn't look very fine just now." + +"Are you going down to the docks?" + +"Yes, they'll want me," I replied, "to write some answer to this stuff." + +"Can you wait a few moments?" Eleanore rose. "I'll get on my hat. I +promised Nora Ganey I'd run her relief station for her to-day." I took +her a moment in my arms: + +"You're no quitter, are you?" I said. + +"We're in this now," she answered, just a little breathlessly. "And so +of course we'll see it through." + +So we went down together. + +The waterfront looked different now. In front of the docks where work +had begun a large space had been roped off. Inside the rope was an +unbroken cordon of police. And without, but pressing close, the +multitude of people for whom in a day so much had been changed, moved +restlessly, no longer sure of its power, no longer sure of anything but +a fast rising hatred of the men who had taken their jobs. As at times +the police lines tightened and the negroes came out for more freight, +thousands of ominous eyes looked on. Standing here at one such time, I +saw a negro striker pass. His head was down and he walked quickly--for +race feeling had begun. + +The first ship sailed that evening. Tens of thousands watched her sail. +And a bitter voice beside me said, + +"Laughing ain't going to be enough." + +Among men on strike there are two kinds of attitudes toward those who +take their places. The first is the scorn of the man who is winning. +"You are a dirty scab," it says. "You're a Judas to the working class +and a thief who is trying to steal my job. But you won't get it, we're +bound to win, and you're barely worth kicking out of the way." The +second is quite a different feeling. In this is the fear of the man who +is losing--and fear, as an English writer has said, is the great mother +of violence. "You _may keep_ my job! And if you do I'll be left with +nothing to live on!" It is this second attitude which is dreaded by +strike leaders, for it leads to a loss of all control, to machine guns +and defeat. + +With a deepening uneasiness I saw this feeling now appear. Starting in +small groups of men, I saw it spread out over the mass with the speed of +a prairie fire. I felt it that afternoon on the Farm, changing with a +startling speed that sure and mighty giant, the crowd, into a blind +disordered throng, a mottled mass of groups of men angrily discussing +the news. Threats against "scabs" were shouted out, the word "scab" +arose on every side. Bitter things were said against "coons," not only +"scabs" but "all of 'em, God damn 'em!" There were hints of violence and +open threats of sabotage, things done to dock machinery. + +But presently, by slow degrees, as though by a deep instinct groping for +the giant spirit that had been its life and soul, I felt the crowd now +gather itself. Slowly the cries all died away and all eyes turned to the +leader. Facing them with arms upraised, Marsh stood on the speakers' +pile, his own face imperturbable, his own voice absolutely sure. + +"Boys," he said, when silence had come, "one lonesome ship has gone to +sea--so badly loaded, they tell me, that she ain't got even a chance in +a storm. She was loaded by scabs." + +A savage storm of "booh's" burst forth. He waited until it subsided and +then continued quietly: + +"We have no use for scabs, black or white. But we have use for strikers, +_both_ black and white--our negro brothers are with us still, and we'll +show them we know that they are our brothers. We're going to stand +together, we won't let the bosses split us apart. And when we read the +papers to-morrow we're going to ask if the news is all there--not the +little news in big headlines about a ship or two leaving port, but the +big news in a little paragraph, that you have so stopped this nation's +trade that now its Congress is demanding that your masters come to +terms! And as for this lonesome ship that has sailed, if you want to see +just how much that means, go down and look at Wall Street. They say down +there, 'We're all right now.' But their market prices say, 'We're all +wrong!'" + +Suddenly out of the multitude there came a high, clear voice: + +"You seem to know Wall Street, Brother Marsh. Have you been selling +short down there? Who's your private broker?" + +Instantly there was a rush toward the questioner, but a group of police +formed quickly around him and he was hurried out of the way. + +"Get after that, Jim, get after it quick!" said Joe by my side. And +Marsh lost not a moment. + +"Let that man go!" he shouted. "He was sent here to try to stir up a +riot. That lie was framed up 'way downtown! But it is a lie and you all +know it--you know how I live and how my wife lives--we don't exactly +roll in wealth! But even if I were a crook, or if I were dead, this +strike would go on exactly the same--for think a minute and you'll see +that whatever has been done in this struggle has been done each time by +you. It's you who have decided each point. It's you who have been called +here to-day to decide the one big question. Congress has said, +'Arbitrate.' It's for you all to decide on our answer. This is no +one-man union, there is no one man they can fix, nor even a small +committee. We're a committee of fifty thousand here to make our own laws +for ourselves. As you lift up your hands and vote, so it will be +decided. But before you do I want to say this. I care so little for Wall +Street and I am so sure we'll win this strike, that with all the +strength I have in me I beg you to answer, 'No arbitration, nothing half +way! All or nothing!' If this is your answer, hold up your hands!" + +Up went the hands by thousands, the crowd was all together now and again +it spoke in one great roar. And with a sudden rush of hope I told +myself, "It's still alive! This fight has only just begun!" + +"That is our answer to Congress," said Marsh, when again quiet had been +restored. "That is the law which we have enacted. This strike is to be +fought through to the end. We are not to be scared by Wall Street or +worked upon by their hired thugs and so resort to violence. I am not +afraid of violence," he continued sharply, "I am here to preach it. But +the only violence I preach is the violence of folded arms. You have +folded your arms and their ships are dead. No other kind is so deadly as +that. Only hold to this kind of violence, and though they may send out a +ship here and there, this great port of New York will stay +closed--bringing ruin all over the land--till the nation turns to Wall +Street and says, 'We cannot wait! You will have to give in!'" + +As he ended his speech, it seemed to me as though he were reaching far +out, gripping that throng and holding it in. But for how long could he +hold them? + +Every paper that they read had suddenly turned against them and +prophesied their swift defeat. Two more ships sailed that night. And as +Marsh had foretold, their sailing was played up in pictures and huge +headlines, while the statement that I wrote was cut to one small +paragraph and put upon the second page. + +That night, with the eager aid of strikers of five nationalities, I +wrote a message to the crowd, translated it into German and French, +Spanish, Italian and Polish. A socialist paper loaned us their press, +and by noon our message was scattered in leaflets all up and down the +waterfront. This message went out daily now. For the greater part of +each night I sat in strike headquarters and wrote direct to the +tenements. + + * * * * * + +The next day Marsh proposed a parade, and the Farm took it up with +prompt acclaim. He challenged the mayor of the city to stop it. To +friends who came to him later he said: + +"You tell the mayor that I'm doing my best to give these men something +peaceful to do. If he wants to help me, all well and good. If he don't, +let him try to stop this parade." + +And the mayor granted a permit. + +The next afternoon the Fifth Avenue shops all closed their doors, and +over the rich displays in their windows heavy steel shutters were rolled +down. The long procession of motors and cabs with their gaily dressed +shoppers had disappeared, and in their place was another procession, +men, women and children, old and young. All around me as I marched I +heard an unending torrent of voices speaking many languages, uniting in +strange cheers and songs brought from all over the ocean world. +Bright-colored turbans bobbed up here and there, for there was no +separation of races, all walked together in dense crowds, the whole +strike family was here. And listening and watching I felt myself a +member now. Behind me came a long line of trucks packed with sick or +crippled men. At their head was a black banner on which was painted, +"Our Wounded." Behind the wagons a small cheap band came blaring forth a +funeral dirge, and behind the band, upon men's shoulders, came eleven +coffins, in which were those dock victims who had died in the last few +days. This section had its banner too, and it was marked, "Our Dead." + +But at one point, late in the afternoon, some marcher just ahead of me +suddenly started to laugh. At first I thought he was simply in fun. But +he kept on. Those near him then caught the look on his face and they all +began to laugh with him. Each moment louder, uglier, it swept up the +Avenue. And as it swelled in volume, like the menace of some furious +beast, the uncontrollable passion I heard filled me again with a sharp +foreboding of violence in the crisis ahead. + +"Why are you here?" I asked myself. "You can't join in a laugh like +that--you're no real member of this crowd--their world is not where you +belong!" + +But from somewhere deep inside me a voice rose up in answer: + +"If the crowd is growing blind--is this the time to leave it? Wait." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +Five more vessels sailed that day. And in the evening Eleanore said: + +"The women who came to our station to-day kept asking, 'Why can't they +close up the saloons? They're just the places for trouble to start.'" + +"We'll try," I said, and that same night Marsh sent word through a +friend to the mayor asking him to close all barrooms on the waterfront +during the strike. The mayor sent back a refusal. He said he had no +power. + +Late that night I went down the line and found each barroom packed with +men who were talking of those ships that had sailed. And they talked of +"scabs." Speakers I had not heard before were now shouting and pounding +the bar with their fists. The papers the next morning ran lurid accounts +of these saloons and the open threats of violence there. They censured +the mayor for his weakness and called for the militia. Why wait for mobs +and bloodshed? + +To that challenge I heard the reply of the crowd, on the Farm that +afternoon, in their applause of the fiery speech of a swarthy little +Spaniard. Francesco Vasca was his name. + +"They are sending hired murderers who will come here to shoot us down! +But when they come," he shouted, "I want you to remember this! A jail +cell is no smaller than our holes in the bottoms of their ships, the +food is no worse than the scouse we shall eat if we give in and go back +to our jobs! And so we shall not be driven back! When the militia come +against us, armed with guns and bayonets, then let us go to meet them +armed----" + +He stopped short, and from one end to the other of that motionless mass +of men there fell a death-like silence. Then he grimly ended his speech: + +"Armed with patience, courage and a deep belief in our cause." + +In the sudden storm of cheers and "booh's" I leaned over to Joe at my +side: + +"Why did you let that man speak?" + +The frown tightened on Joe's face. + +"Because he's one of us," he said. + +Seven more ships had sailed by that night. + +In front of the docksheds, outside the double line of police, the throng +had grown denser day by day, and each time the "scabs" came out there +had been a burst of imprecations, a fierce pressing forward. The police +had repeatedly used their clubs. Now late in the afternoon a red +hospital ambulance came clanging down the waterfront. It was greeted by +triumphant shouts. "Some black bastard hurt at last!" There was a quick +gathering of police and a lane was formed reaching into the dock. +Through this lane drove the ambulance, and as presently it emerged it +was greeted by tumultuous cheers. + +The papers the next morning said that a raging, howling mob had tried to +reach the injured man. Cries of "Sabotage!" had been heard. Two men, +they said, had been injured and one killed on the docks the day before. +Was this Sabotage? Had the strikers fixed the winches with the purpose +of killing strike-breakers? Why not? Their leaders had openly preached +it. Not only the Spaniard but Marsh himself was quoted as favoring +violence, and from that special Sabotage Issue of Joe Kramer's paper +long extracts were reprinted. Were not these three leaders responsible +for the death of that innocent black man? And should leaders such as +these be allowed to go on preaching murder? Put them in jail! Quell this +insurrection while still there was time! So spoke the press. + +The rumor quickly spread about that Marsh and the Spaniard and Joe +Kramer were to be arrested that day. All three remained at strike +headquarters, and a dozen burly strikers kept the throng from pouring +in. "Go on home," I could hear them shouting. But far from going, the +throng increased until it filled the whole street outside. Suddenly we +heard their cries rise into a raging din. + +"Well, boys," said Marsh, "I guess they're here." He gave a few more +sharp directions to his aides and then went out into the hall. A dozen +Central Office police in plain clothes were just coming in at the door. + +"All right," said Marsh, "we're ready. But unless you men were sent here +with the idea of starting trouble, suppose you leave here now without +us. Each one of us will meet you at any place and time you say." + +"We can't take your orders, Mr. Marsh." + +"You mean you _were_ sent here for trouble?" + +"I mean I have warrants for the arrest of yourself, Joseph Kramer and +Francesco Vasca on a charge of incitement to murder." + +And in less than a minute I saw Marsh, the Spaniard and Joe Kramer each +handcuffed to two men, one on either side. As they left the hall I came +close behind with a score of eager reporters. + +The crowd, to my excited eyes, was like a crouching tiger now, glaring +out of countless eyes. Through the solid mass of men that packed the +street from wall to wall, the police had forced a narrow lane from the +patrol wagon to the door. On either side of this lane I saw a line of +faces, eyes. Some looked anxious, frightened, and were trying to press +back, but at the sight of their leaders now with a roar the multitude +swept in. In a moment the lane was gone, and some fifty police had +formed in a circle around the prisoners. Quickly their clubs rose and +fell, and men dropped all around them. But furious hundreds kept rushing +in from every side, women and children caught in the tide were swept +helplessly forward, came under the clubs and went down with the rest, +and still the mass poured over them. Now at last the circle of bluecoats +was broken, policemen alone and in small clusters were rushed and +whirled this way and that. Outnumbered twenty to one, they began to go +down in the scrimmage. + +Then I heard a quick shout: + +"Use your guns!" + +After that, two pistol shots. Then more in a sharp, steady crackle. The +mass began breaking, out on the edges I could see men starting to run. +But down the street came a troop of mounted police on the gallop, and +straight through the multitude they rode. I saw the three prisoners +seized and surrounded and thrown into the wagon. I saw it go rapidly +away. The police were now making wholesale arrests. That deep strident +roar of the crowd had died down and broken into panting voices, +everywhere were struggling forms. + +Just before me the throng opened and I saw a woman at my feet. Her face +was bleeding from a club. As I stooped to lift her, I felt a big hand +grip my arm and then a heavy, crushing weight press down upon my head. I +felt myself sink down and down into an empty darkness. + +When I came to, I was being half pushed and half thrown by police up +into one of their wagons. I remember a blurred glimpse of more fighting +forms around me. Then a gong clanged and our wagon was off. And in a few +moments we had emerged out of all this turbulence into the quiet +commonplace streets of a city of every-day business life. + +In the wagon a voice began singing. I looked up and saw our Italian +musician, the leader of those gay excursions on _The Internationale_. +Now he was singing the song of that name. And as all came in on the +chorus, I caught a glimpse of his face. One cheek was bleeding profusely +and with one hand he was keeping the blood from trickling down. With +the other hand he was beating time. And his black eyes were blazing. + +Soon after, we came to Jefferson Market and stopped at the entrance of +the jail. As we were hustled out of the wagon, and in the stronger light +our cuts and swelling bruises came suddenly in view, two young girls +among us began to laugh hysterically. In a moment we were inside the +jail and shoved into a striker group that had come in wagons ahead of +ours. A grim old sergeant at the desk was taking down names and +addresses and sending the prisoners to their cells. + +I found my cell a cool relief after all that fever of cries. With +surprise I noticed it was clean. I had thought all cells were filthy +holes. Still in a daze, I sat down on my cot and felt the big bruise on +my head. + +"Where am I? What has happened? What has all this to do with me? What is +it going to mean in my life?" + +I heard a nasal voice from somewhere say: + +"I know this pen. They're putting the girls with the prostitutes." + +I heard clanging gongs outside and soon the banging of steel doors as +more prisoners were put into cells. And little by little, through it +all, I made out a low, eager murmur. + +"Say," inquired a drunken old voice. "Who are all you damn fools? What +is this party, anyhow?" + +"It is a revolution!" a sharp little voice replied. And at that, from +all sides other voices broke out. Then from his cell our musical friend +again started up the singing, his strained tenor voice rising high over +all. The song rose in volume, grew more intense. + +"Heigh! Quit that noise!" a policeman shouted. + +"Aw, let 'em alone," said another. "They'll soon work it off." + +But we seemed to be only working it up. Up and up, song followed song, +and then short impassioned speeches came out of cells, and there was +applause. A voice asked each one of us to name his nationality, and we +found we were Americans, Irish, Scotch and Germans, Italians and +Norwegians, and three of us were Lascars and one of us was a Coolie. +Then there were cheers for the working class all over the world, and +after that a call for more singing. And now, as one of the songs died +away, we heard from the woman's part of the jail the young girls singing +in reply. + +And slowly as I listened to those songs that rose and swelled and beat +against those walls of steel, I felt once more the presence of that +great spirit of the crowd. + +"That spirit will go on," I thought. "No jail can stop the thing it +feels!" + +And at last with a deep, warm certainty I felt myself where I belonged. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +Early in the evening I was taken out to the visitor's room, and there I +found Eleanore's father. When he saw me, Dillon smiled. + +"Do you know where you are?" he asked. "You're not in the Bastille--or +even Libby Prison. You're in the Jefferson Market Jail." + +"It hasn't felt that way," I said. + +"Probably not. But it is that way, and there's Eleanore to be thought +of." + +"Eleanore will understand." + +I saw his features tighten. I noticed now that his face was drawn, as +though he, too, had been through a good deal. + +"Yes," he said, "she understands. But it's a bit tough on her, isn't it? +Jail is not quite in her line." + +I felt my throat contracting: + +"I know all that. I'm sorry enough--on her account----" + +"Then let's get out of this," he said. "I've brought you bail. No use +staying in here all night." + +"None at all," I agreed. "I want to get back to the waterfront. We're +going to issue an answer to this. They'll need me for the writing." + +Dillon watched me a moment. + +"You won't be allowed to do that," he said. "They're under martial law +down there." + +I looked up at him quickly: + +"The troops are here?" + +"Yes," he replied, and there was a pause. + +"These arrests, this riot," I said a little huskily. "Weren't they all +framed up ahead? They needed the riot to get in the troops." + +"The troops are here." + +"Rather damnable. Do you think the people on the docks will just sit +back and take it all?" + +"They'll have to," he said gently. "The world's work has been clogged up +a little. It's to go on again now." + +On the street outside he took my hand: + +"My boy, when this is over we'll get together, you and I." + +"All right--when it's over," I said. + + * * * * * + +The Farm that night again changed to my eyes. It was now an orderly +village of tents, two regiments of militia were here, and their sentries +reached for a mile to the north watching the big companies' docks. + +I walked up along the line and had talks with some of the sentries. I +remember one in particular, a thin, nervous little man, a shoe-clerk in +a department store. Every work-day for six years he had fitted shoes on +ladies' feet; he had been doing it all that morning. And now here he was +down on the waterfront with only the stars above him and great shadowy +spaces all around, out of which at any moment he expected rushes by +strikers. These strikers to him were not human, they were "foreigners," +for the moment gone mad, to be treated very much as mad dogs. And here +he was all by himself, his nerves on edge, with a gun in his hands. The +absurdity of that gun in his hands! And the serious danger. + +I went into many tenements, into homes I had come to know in the strike. +And they, too, were different now. Their principal leaders taken away +and their headquarters closed by the police, the disorganization was +complete. That spirit they had relied upon, that strange new spirit of +the mass which they had created by coming together, was now dead--and +each one felt the weakness of being alone, the weakness of his separate +self. Blindly they fought against their despair. I found them packing +tenement rooms, gathering instinctively in search of their great friend, +the crowd. + +But from such gatherings as these, the weaker, the more timid and the +wiser kept away. Rash spirits led these meetings, and here was the same +hot passion that I had felt back in the jail. These people did not want +to think, the time for thinking had gone by. They wanted to act, to do +something quick. Their minds were fiercely set on the "scabs," the +police and the militia. + +Their strike was not yet lost. Their friends and sympathizers were +working hard that very night to get their leaders out on bail. In +Washington a House committee was striving still to compel arbitration. +Everywhere the more moderate spirits were drawing together, trying to +work out something safe. + +But these people did not know this. They were in their tenements, they +were scattered far apart. They only knew how they had been clubbed, that +three had been killed and many more wounded, and that now the troops +were here. And the more fiery ones among them were feeling only one +thing now, that when you are hit you must hit back, you must show you're +not scared, you must show you're a man. + +And so on the next morning, no women and no children but huge, silent +throngs of men drifted out of the tenements down to the docks and moved +slowly along the sentry lines. + +The chance to show they were not afraid came late in the afternoon. The +clear, sweet call of a bugle came floating gaily on the air, then the +long, hard roll of drums, and from their camp on the Farm the troops +came on the double-quick up along the waterfront. Now thousands of +strikers were running that way. From the foot of a city street across +the wide open space to a pier the militia formed in two double lines, +each line facing outward. Then down that street came mounted police and +behind them a score of trucks loaded with freight. + +At first I had hopes that the mass would not move. But out of the +silence came angry shouts and those behind pushed forward. Those in +front were pressed close up to the sharp lines of bayonets, were prodded +savagely by the troops. Militia youngsters but half trained, in two thin +lines opposing what appeared to them a furious sea of faces, fists and +angry cries--no wonder they were nervous. Bricks came flying from all +sides and even heavy paving-stones, and then a few pistol shots out of +the mass. I saw a militia man drop on one knee and slowly topple over. I +saw an excited young officer shout at his men and wave his sword. I saw +long rows of guns make quick rhythmic movements, then level straight +out, and there were two long flashes of fire. + +Disordered throngs were running now. Only a few men here and there +turned to fire their pistols or to shout back frenzied, quivering oaths. +Behind them a few soldiers were still shooting without orders. Near the +sand-pile on which I stood I saw a young militia man enough like that +little shoe-clerk to have been his brother. His face was white and his +eyes wild, he was panting, pumping his lever and blindly firing shot +after shot. + +"God damn 'em, slaughter 'em, slaughter 'em!" + +An officer knocked up his gun. + + * * * * * + +That night the waterfront was still. Only the long, slow moving line of +the figures of sentries was to be seen. The troops were back in their +camp on the Farm. Bivouac fires were burning down there, but up here was +only a dark, empty space. + +Here scattered about on the pavement, after the firing had ceased, I had +seen the dark inert bodies of men. Most of them had begun to move, until +fully half were crawling about. They had been picked up and counted. +Thirty-nine wounded, fourteen dead. These, too, had all been taken away. + +From the high steel docksheds there came a deep, harsh murmur made up of +faint whistles, the rattle of winches, the shouts of the foremen, the +heavy jar and crash of crates. A tug puffed smoothly into a slip with +three barges in her wake. I walked slowly out that way. The tugmen and +the bargemen talked in quiet voices as they made fast their craft to the +pier. Below them the water was lapping and slapping. + +"The world's work has been clogged up a little. It's to go on again +now." + + * * * * * + +The next day three heavy battleships steamed sluggishly through the +Narrows and came to anchor in the bay. When interviewed by reporters, +their commanders were vastly amused. No, they said, the United States +Navy was not governed as to its movements by strikes. They simply +happened to be here through orders issued weeks ago. But their coming +was featured in headlines. + +I saw something else in the papers that night, a force greater than all +battleships. As a week before I had felt a whole country in revolt, I +felt now a country of law and order, a whole nation of angry tradesmen +impatiently demanding an end to all this "foreign anarchy." + +"We want no more of your strikes," it said. "None of your new crowd +spirit, none of your wild talk and dreams! We want no change in this +country of ours!" + +The authorities obeyed this will. Bail was denied to Marsh, Vasca and +Joe, and for them a speedy trial was urged. The press now held them +responsible not only for that first negro's death, but for all the +deaths since their arrest. Let them pay the full penalty! Let them be +made an example of! Let this business of anarchy be dealt with and +settled once and for all! + +The work of crushing the strike went on. More troops were brought to the +harbor. On the docks there were not only negroes now, thousands of +immigrant laborers were brought from Ellis Island and put to work at +double pay, and on every incoming vessel the stokers were all kept on +board. Among the strikers there was a break that swiftly spread and +became a stampede. And in the following week the work of the harbor went +on as before, with its regular commonplace weekly toll of a hundred +killed and injured. Peace had come again at last. + + * * * * * + +On Saturday morning of that week I stood on the deck of a ferryboat +packed with little commuters who waved and cheered a huge ocean liner +bound for Europe. Lying deep in the water, her hold laden heavy with the +products of this teeming land, her decks thronged with travelers with +money in their pockets, her band playing, her flags streaming out, and +over all on the captain's bridge the officers up there in command--she +was a mighty symbol of order and prosperity and of that Efficiency which +to me had been a religion for so many years. We all followed the great +ship with our eyes as, gathering headway, she steamed out past the +Statue of Liberty toward the battleships beyond. + +"Well," said an amused little man close by me, "I guess that'll be about +all from the strikers." + +"Oh my smiling little citizen--you've only seen the beginning," I +thought. + +What were the strikers thinking now, and what would they be thinking +soon? They had wanted easier lives, they had wanted to feel themselves +powers here. Caught up in the tide of democracy now sweeping all around +the earth, they had wanted to feel themselves running themselves in all +this work they were doing. So they had come out on strike and become a +crowd, and in the crowd they had suddenly found such strength as they +never dreamed could be theirs. And they would not easily forget. The +harbor was already seeing to that, for already its work had gone on with +a rush, and all its heavy labor was weighing down upon them--"like a +million tons of brick on their chests." I remembered what Joe Kramer had +said: "It's got so they can't even breathe without thinking." + +Was the defeat of this one strike the end? + +The grim battleships answered, "Yes, it is the end." + +But the restless harbor answered, "No." + +What change was coming in my life? I did not know. Of one thing only I +was sure. The last of my gods, Efficiency, whose feet had stood firm on +mechanical laws and in whose head were all the brains of all the big men +at the top, had now come tottering crashing down. And in its place a +huge new god, whose feet stood deep in poverty and in whose head were +all the dreams of all the toilers of the earth, had called to me with +one deep voice, with one tremendous burning passion for the freedom of +mankind. + + + + +BOOK IV + +CHAPTER I + + +Once I saw the harbor in a February storm. And in the wind and skurrying +snow I saw it all together like one whirling thing alive. But the next +morning the storm had died away, and a wind from the south had brought +banks of fog that moved sluggishly low down on the water dividing the +whole region into many separate parts. And from above, a dazzling sun +shone down upon three objects near me, a ferryboat, a puffing tug, and a +tramp which lay at anchor, shone so brightly on these three they seemed +alone, with nothing but mist all about them. + +So it was now for a time with me. The strike, which had so suddenly +drawn me into its whirling crowd-life, now as suddenly dropped away. And +personal troubles piled one on the other. In place of that mass of +thousands, I saw only a few people I loved, and I saw them so intensely +that for a time we were quite alone, with nothing but mist all around +us. + + * * * * * + +Sue sent for me one morning and I went over to our house. I was startled +by the change in her face. It looked not only tired, it looked so +disillusioned, done, so through with all the absorbing ideas and warm +enthusiasms that had given it abundant life. + +"I'm not going to marry Joe Kramer," she said. "And I want you to tell +him so." + +I stared at her blankly. + +"I'm sorry," I said. + +"Are you?" There was just a worn shadow of her old smile. + +"I don't know why I said that," I replied. "My head's rather dull this +morning. All right, Sis, I'll tell him." Still I watched her pityingly. +Poor old Sue. What a crash in her life. + +"I'd like you to tell him the whole truth," my sister went on sharply, +"just why I've decided as I have. Don't say it's because of father. When +I wanted Joe, Dad didn't count, he was nothing to me but a back number. +But I _don't_ want him now--Joe, I mean--I don't love him any more. If I +went to him to-day in his cell and said I'd stick by him no matter what +happened because he was the man I loved--I'd be lying--that wouldn't be +me. The real me is a much smaller person than that. I don't love Joe +because I've been scared--because he's in a common jail--waiting to be +tried for murder." Her face contracted slightly. "I suppose it's the way +I've been brought up." + +"But Sue----" + +"Don't stop me, Billy, let me talk!" And she talked on intensely, so +absorbed in this fierce impulsive confession that she seemed to forget I +was there. "I've been thinking what's to become of me. I've been +thinking about all the things I've been in, and none seem real any +longer--I wanted a thrill and I got it--that's all. Then I met Joe and I +got it again, I got a thrill out of all his life and the big things it +was made of. I got a _great_ thrill out of the strike. Don't you +remember how I talked three weeks ago when you were here? Dad was the +Old and I was the New. I saw everything beginning. I read Walt Whitman's +'Open Road' and I felt like Joe's 'camarado.' Well, and I kept on like +that. And like a little idiot I couldn't keep it to myself, I went and +told some of my friends. That's what's really the hardest now, what +hurts the most--I told my friends. I posed as a young Joan of Arc. I +was going to marry, give up everything, chuck myself into this fight for +the people, into revolution! Thrills, I tell you, thrills and thrills! + +"But then Joe got arrested. I knew he was in a cell in the Tombs, in +Murderers' Row. And that drove all the thrills away. That was real. Dad +made it worse. He talked about the coming trial, Sing Sing and the death +house there. One morning he tried to read to me an account of an +execution. I ran away, but I came back and read it myself, I read all +the hideous details right up to the iron chair. And just because there +was a chance of Joe's being like that, all at once I stopped loving him. +Not just because I was frightened, it wasn't so simple as a scare. It +was something inside of me shuddering, and saying 'how revolting!' I +tried to shake it out of me, I tried to keep on loving him! But I +couldn't shake it out of me! Joe had become--revolting, too! It's +because of the way I've been brought up and because of the way I've +always lived! I can't stand what's real--if it's ugly! That's me!" + +She broke off and looked down. I came and sat beside her, and took her +cold, quivering hands in mine: + +"I guess I _am_ sorry, Sue old girl----" + +"Don't be," she retorted. "I'm too sorry for myself as it is! That's +another part of me!" Again she broke off with a hard little laugh. +"Let's forget me for a minute. What has this sweet strike done to +_you_?" + +"I'm not sure yet," I answered. "Where is Dad?" + +"Up in his room." + +"Tell me about him," I said. Sue drew an anxious little breath: + +"Oh Billy, he has been getting so queer. It has all been such a strain +on his mind. Every day he kept reading the news of the strike--and some +days he would stamp and rage about till I was afraid to be with him. He +talked about that death cell until I thought that I'd go mad. Sometimes +when we were talking I thought that we had both gone mad." + +I went upstairs and found him in a chair by the window. With unnatural, +clumsy motions he rose and came to meet me. + +"I'm all right, my boy." His voice had a mumbling quality and I noticed +the strangeness in his eyes. "I'm all right. I'm glad to see you." Then +his face clouded and hardened a little, and he tried to speak to me +sternly: + +"I'm glad you're clean out of that strike and its notions--glad you've +come to your senses," he said. "You're lucky in having such a wife. +She's been over here often lately--and she's worth a dozen like you and +Sue. Have you seen Sue?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, _she's_ all right." + +I said nothing to this, and he shot a sidelong look at me: + +"I had quite a time, my boy--I had to keep right at her." Another quick +look. "I suppose she's told you how I went at her." + +"Never mind, Dad, it's over now." + +"I had to make her feel the noose, I mean the chair," he went on in +those thick, mumbling tones, "and that she'd have to choose between that +and a decent Christian home--like the home her mother had. She was a +wonderful woman, your mother," he wandered off abruptly. "If she'd only +understood me--seen what it was I was trying to do--for American +shipping--Yankee sails!" He sank down in his chair exhausted, and I +noticed he was breathing hard. "I'm all right, my boy, I'm quite all +right----" + +With a sudden rush of pity and of love and deep alarm, I bent gently +over him: + +"Of course you are--why Dad, old boy--just take it easy--quiet, you +know--we're going to pull right out of this----" + +The tears welled suddenly up in his eyes: + +"I'm lonely, boy--I'm glad you're here!" + +Presently I went down to Sue: + +"When is the doctor coming next?" + +"Not till this afternoon," she said. + +"I'll be home to-night for supper. Phone me what he says." + +"All right--where are you going now? To Joe?" + +"Yes, Sis," I said. + +She turned and went quickly out of the room. + + * * * * * + +In the Tombs, when Joe was brought out to me, I saw that he, too, had +been through a deep change. He had been quiet enough all through the +strike, except for that one big speech of his--but he had been _tensely_ +quiet. Now the tension appeared to be gone. He seemed wrapped up in +thoughts of his own. + +"Have you seen Sue?" he asked me at once. + +"Yes Joe, I've just been with her." + +"What did she say?" + +I began to tell him. + +"I knew it," he interrupted me. "I made up my mind to this the first +night I spent here in my cell. It couldn't have happened, it wouldn't +have worked. Tell her I understand all about it, tell her that I'm sure +she's right. Tell her--it's funny but it's true--tell her this infernal +pen has worked the same way on me as on her. I mean it has made me not +want her now. I feel sorry for her and that's all--deeply and infernally +sorry. I was a fool to have let her into it. My only excuse for being so +blind was that damned fever that left me so weak. At any other time I +would have seen what a farce it was. I wasn't booked for a life like +that. It doesn't fit in with this job of mine." He smiled a little +bitterly. "I used to say," he continued, "that if I had time I'd like to +do something yellow enough so that I'd be cut off for life from any +chance of church bells. And I guess I've done it this time--no danger +of getting respectable now." + +"How do you look at this, Joe?" I asked him. "What do you think they'll +do to you?" + +"I don't know." Again he smiled slightly and wearily. "And I can't say I +_care_ a damn. I feel like those fellows over in Russia, the +revolutionist chaps I met, who didn't know if they'd croak in a month +and didn't care one way or the other. But as a matter of fact," he +added, "I think this time it's mainly bluff. They wanted to get us away +from the crowd and keep us away while they broke the strike. Now that +it's over you'll probably find they'll let us all off with light +sentences. Of course the murder charge can't hold.... By the way," he +added, smiling, "I hear they got you, too." + +"Yes," I answered, smiling back. "The Judge fined me ten dollars and let +me go. He said he hoped this would be a lesson." + +Joe looked at me curiously: + +"How much of a lesson, Kid, do you think this strike has been to you?" + +"Quite a big one, Joe," I said. + +"What are you going to do about it?" + +"I haven't decided." + +"How is Eleanore taking it all?" + +"She's not saying much and neither am I. We're both doing some thinking +before we talk." + +"You're a quiet pair," J. K. remarked. "I shouldn't wonder if you'd nose +along quite a distance before you get through--I mean in our direction." + +"That's what we're thinking about," I replied. Again he turned to me +curiously: + +"You two can think together--without talking--can't you?" + +"Yes--sometimes we can." + +"I never got that far with Sue." All at once he came closer, his whole +manner changed: "Say, Bill--tell her all I've said--will you? I'm +sorry! Honest Injun! Make her feel how damnably sorry I am that I ever +let her in for this!" + +When I left him I went off for a walk, for I wanted to be alone awhile. +I wondered just how sure Joe felt about his fast approaching trial. It +seemed to me that he had a good chance of going where Sue had pictured +him. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +That evening I learned that my father was worse, and I spent the next +day by his bedside. He had had a stroke in the morning and was not +expected to live through the night. + +I found him mumbling fast to himself and making slight, restless efforts +to move. At last he grew quiet, and presently his half-open gnarled +right hand came groping out over the covers. I took it in mine, and at +once I felt it close on mine with a quick, convulsive strength. His hand +was moist, his eyes saw nothing. I sat there thus for a long time. Then +suddenly, + +"Good boy," he muttered thickly. "Good boy--good--always good to your +mother!" He kept repeating this over and over, with pauses between, then +again with an effort, fiercely, as though from a distance his mind were +set on getting this message over to me, over from an age that was dying +into an age that was coming to life, a last good-by to hold me back. + +Soon he was only mumbling figures, names of ships and distant ports, +freight consignments. Now and then his finger would go to his lips, as +he turned phantom pages in feverish haste. Again, in gasping whispers, +he would break out into arguments for the protection of Yankee sails. + +"Protection!" he would whisper. "Damn fools not to see it! +Discriminating tariffs! Subsidies! A Navy!... Don't forget the Navy! +Remember War of 1812!... Nothing without fighting!" + +"Nothing without fighting." He had been learning this all his life--and +after he had said it now, he stopped speaking and grew still. Little by +little his movements grew weaker. Finally he lay like a log, and the +doctor said he would be so until dead. + +I went up to my old bedroom and sat down by the open window. It was a +beautiful night. From the garden below, where long ago I had felt such +shivers over the ocean and heathen lands, a graceful poplar rose. Behind +it from the river the huge, dim funnel of a steamer rose over the roof +of the warehouse. Overhead to the right swept the Great Bridge of my +childhood. But behind it were other bridges now, and off across the +river the buildings of Manhattan loomed in loftier masses to their apex +in the tower of lights. How changed it all was since I was a boy. And +yet how like. On the harbor still the hurrying lights, yellow, blue and +green and red. The same deep, restless hum of labor. And from the +waterfront below the same puffs and coughs of engines, the same sharp +toots and treble pantings, the same raucous whine of wheels. + +There came a rough salt breeze from the sea, and it made me think of +billowy sails and the days of my father's boundless youth, and of the +harbor of long ago that had so gripped and molded him--as I felt mine +now molding me. And for what? I asked. To what were we both +adventuring--out of these little harbors of ours? + +Toward dawn a tramp came down the river. Dimly as she passed below I +could see how old she was, how worn and battered by the waves. A +desolate and lonely craft, the smoke draggled out of her funnel. I +watched her steam into the Upper Bay and pass around Governor's Island. +I watched till in the first raw light of day I could see only her smoke +through the Narrows. Then even this became but a blur, which crept away +in that strange dawn light out into the wide ocean. + +A few hours later my father died. + +One by one, from different parts of the port, the queerest old men came +into our house on the day of my father's funeral--men who still +believed in American ships, still thrilled to the dream of the Stars and +Stripes wherever there is an ocean breeze; men who still believed in +ships that had sails and moved along with the force of the winds; who +still believed that cabin boys could rise by the sheer force of their +wills to be powers in the ocean world; men who had for the common crowd +only the iron discipline, the old brute tyranny of the sea. These +strange old men stood with their white heads bowed, a little group, +looking down into my father's grave. + +"He was a magnificent fighter," I heard one of them say as we left. "He +wrecked his own business for what he believed in. How many of us would +go that far?" + + * * * * * + +From the grave Sue came to our apartment. Eleanore had packed her trunk. + +"Sue must keep out of that dreary old house," she told me. "Luckily she +has a friend out of town whom she's going to visit. When she comes back +we must have the house closed, and I hope she'll live with us for a +while." + +We talked of this that evening, for Sue seemed to want to talk. We +stayed up until late and planned and planned. Many different kinds of +work for Sue were taken up and discussed by us all. She surprised me by +the brave effort she made. + +"I've got to want something--that's sure," she said. "I can't just yet. +I've wanted so many things so hard, one after the other for nearly eight +years, that now I feel as though I'd used up all the wanting that I've +got. But of course I haven't. If I have I'm a back number--and I'd a +great deal rather be dead. So don't you people worry. Depend upon it, in +less than a year I'll be all wrapped up in something new. I'll be +tremendously enthused," she ended, smiling wearily. + +She agreed with me that the house be sold, and after she had left us I +made every effort to sell it at once. I found it was heavily mortgaged +now, but when at last I made a sale there was enough to clear off all +debts and leave about two thousand dollars for Sue. She would have at +least something to start on. + +As we set about to dismantle the house, various things thickly covered +with dust came out of closets, drawers and shelves. And these objects +brought near again to me my mother's life and that hunger of hers for +the things that were "fine," that hospitable door which had waited for +friends from the handsome old homes all around us. These homes all along +the street had now lost their quiet dignity. Some were empty and marked +for sale, others that had already been sold were cheerless boarding +houses. The most handsome home of all, with its ample yard where I used +to play, was gone, and in its place rose an apartment building which +made the old houses all seem dwarfs. + +Her world and his were both slipping away. Her life and his, her creed +and his, were little now but memories--memories which in Sue and in me +must take their chance with the warm, new feelings, the cravings, hopes, +loves, doubts and dreams of this absorbing world of our own. For the +harbor was still molding lives. + +How anxious Eleanore seemed to be through, I thought a little +bitterly. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +But Eleanore had good reason. When at last the house had been closed, +back at home one evening she told me what she had known for weeks but +had kept to herself until I should be free from other things. We were to +have another child. + +The news was a shock, it frightened me. "Where's the money to come +from?" flashed into my mind. In an instant it had passed and I was +holding her tight in my arms. But she must have caught that look in my +face, for I could feel her trembling. + +"The same funny old world, my dearest one," she whispered, "with its +same old trick of starting out. But oh my dear, in spite of it all--or +because of it all--how good it is to be alive! More than ever--a hundred +times!" + +"You darling girl," I whispered back, "you're the bravest one of all!" + + * * * * * + +Her father came to us the next night, and after Eleanore went to bed he +and I talked long together. He looked worn and tired, but the same quiet +affection was in his eyes. + +"Let's see where we are," he said, "and what we've got to go on. To +begin with, thank God, you and I are still friends. Then there's +Eleanore and your small son and the smaller one that's coming. We're +just starting in on a long, hot summer. She must of course be got out of +town. How much have you in the bank?" + +"Thirty-seven dollars," I said. + +He looked thoughtfully at his cigar. + +"You've never yet taken money from me," he continued, after a moment. +"Still, you'd do it if you had to--because this is _our_ affair. But +unluckily, just at present, I'm nearly as high and dry as yourself. The +men who have backed my harbor work have lost so heavily in the strike +that they feel now they must recoup. I've already proposed to them a +plan which they have as good as accepted. They'll provide enough money +to pay the rent of a smaller office. I can borrow enough to pay half my +men. The rest I'll have to let go for a time." + +"And _your_ salary?" I ventured. + +"Is left out," he answered. "I mean it is if I stay here. I want to stay +here, I want to put through this job if I can, you see it has taken six +years of my life. And besides," he added wistfully, "in a very few weeks +they'll finish the work at Panama--and the ships of the world will begin +to crowd into a harbor that isn't ready here--we haven't even completed +our plans. It's not a good time to stop our work. But of course if you +and Eleanore get into a hole that is serious--as I said before and +you'll agree, you'd have to let me help you--even if to do it I should +have to give up my work for a while and take up something that will +pay." + +"No sir!" + +"Yes sir," he replied. "Unless you can earn enough money yourself." + +We looked at each other a moment. + +"You know how to bring pressure, don't you?" I said. + +"Yes, I'm bringing pressure. I want to see you go on as before." + +"That won't be easy," I remarked. + +"Shall we talk it over a little?" + +"Yes." + +"All right," he said. "Since that talk we had together the day +Eleanore's first child was born, what a splendid start you made in your +writing. You were not only earning big pay, you were doing fine work, +work that was leading somewhere. I could see you learning to use your +tools, getting a broad, sane view of life--and of yourself--training +yourself and building yourself. You were right on the threshold of big +results. But then your friend Kramer came along. He had not built +himself, he had chucked himself over, neglected himself, his health +included. So he took typhoid and came to your home. His being there was +a drain on your pocket and a heavy strain on your nerves. He got you +unsettled. Then came the strike. And what has it done? It has taken your +time, health, money. It has left two good workmen stranded--you and me. +And I don't see that it's done the crowd any good. What has the strike +given you in return for all it has taken away?" + +"A deeper view of life," I said. "I saw something in that strike so much +bigger than Marsh or Joe or that crude organization of theirs--something +deep down in the people themselves that rises up out of each one of them +the minute they get together. And I believe that power has such +possibilities that when it comes into full life not all the police and +battleships and armies on earth can stop it." + +The look in Dillon's eyes was more anxious than impatient. + +"Billy," he said, "I've lived a good deal closer than you have to the +big jobs of this world. And I know those jobs are to get still bigger, +even more complex. They're to require even bigger men." I smiled a bit +impatiently. + +"Still the one man in a million," I said. + +"Yes," said Dillon, "his day isn't over, it has only just begun. He may +have his bad points--I'll admit he has--but compared to all the little +men his vision is wide and it goes deep. And if they'll only leave him +alone and give him a chance, he'll take me and the other engineers, and +the chemists and doctors and lawyers, and he'll make a world--he's doing +it now--where ignorance and poverty will in time be wiped completely +out." + +"They're not going to leave him alone," I said. "I'm sure of that now. +Whether he grafts or whether he's honest won't make any difference. The +crowd is going to pull him down. Because it's not democracy. The trouble +with all your big men at the top is that they're trying to do for the +crowd what the crowd wants to do for itself. And it may not do it half +so well--but all the time it will be learning--gathering closer every +year--and getting a spirit compared to which your whole clean clear +efficiency world is only cold and empty!" + +He must have caught the look in my eyes. + +"You're thinking that I'm getting old," he said softly. "I and all the +men like me who have been building up this country. You're thinking that +we're all following on after your father into the past." As I looked +back I felt suddenly humble. Dillon's voice grew appealing and kind. +"But you belong with us, Billy," he said. "It was under us you won your +start. And what I want now," he added, "is not only for Eleanore's sake, +but your own. I want you to try to write again about all the work we are +doing and see what it will do for you. Why not give it another chance? +You're not afraid of it, are you?" + +"No," I said, "I'm not afraid--and I'll give it another chance if you +like--I don't want to be narrow about it, God knows. But before I tackle +anything else I'll finish my story of the strike." + +"All right," he agreed. "That's all I ask. Now suppose you take Eleanore +up to the mountains and write your strike article up there. Let me loan +you a little just at the start." + +"How much money have _you_ in the bank?" + +"Enough to send Eleanore where she belongs." + +"Eleanore belongs right here," said a voice from the other room, and +presently Eleanore appeared. She surveyed us both with a scorn in her +eyes that made us quake a little. "I never heard," she went on calmly, +"of anything quite so idiotic. Go home, Dad, and go to bed, and please +drop this insane idea that I'm afraid of July in New York, or of August +or September. Do you know what you're going to do to-morrow, both of you +poor foolish boys? You're going sensibly to work and worry about nothing +at all. And to-morrow night we're all three of us going to forget how it +feels to work or think, and get on an open trolley and go down and hear +Harry Lauder. Thank Heaven he happens to be in town. To hear you talk +you'd think the whole American people had forgotten how to laugh. + +"Now Billy," she ended smoothly, "go to the icebox and get two bottles +of nice cool beer--and make me a tall glass of lemonade. And don't use +too much sugar." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +The next day and the next evening Eleanore's program was carried out. +But after that night the laughing stopped. For Joe Kramer was coming to +trial. + +I had not seen Joe for over two weeks, and I had taken his view of his +case, that there was no serious danger. But now I learned from a good +source that Joe and both his colleagues were to be brought to trial at +once, while the public feeling was still hot against them. As the time +of the trials drew near every paper in town took up the cry. Let these +men be settled once and for all, they demanded. Let them not be set free +for other strikes, for wholesale murder and pillage. Let them pay the +full penalty for their crimes! + +In the face of this storm, I found myself on Joe's defense committee, +the best part of my time each day and evening taken up with raising +money, helping to find witnesses and doing the press work for parades +and big mass meetings of labor. + +Through this work, in odd hours, I finished my story of the strike. It +all came back to me vividly now and I tried to tell what I had seen. I +took it to my editor. + +"Print that?" he said when he'd read it. "You're mad." + +"It's the truth," I remarked. + +"As you see it," he said. "And you've seen it only from one side. If +this story had been written and signed by Marsh or your friend Kramer, +we might have run it, with a reply from the companies. But I don't want +to see _you_ stand for this--in our magazine or anywhere else--it means +too much to you as a writer. Look out, my boy," he added, with a +return to the old brusque kindliness which he had always shown me in the +years I had worked under him. "We think a lot of you in this office. For +God's sake don't lose your head. Don't be one more good reporter +spoiled." + +I took my story of the strike to every editor I knew, and it was +rejected by each in turn. They thought it all on the side of the crowd, +an open plea for revolution. Then I took it to Joe in the Tombs. + +"Will you sign this, Joe?" I asked, when he had read it. + +"No," he replied. "It's too damn mild. You've given too much to the +other side. All these bouquets to efficiency and all this about the weak +points of the crowd. The average stoker reading this would think that +the revolution won't come till we are all white-haired." + +"I don't believe it will," I said. + +"I know you don't. That's why you're no good to us," he said. "We want +our stuff written by men who are sure that a big revolution is just +ahead, men who are certain that a strike, to take in half the civilized +world, is coming in the next ten years." + +"I don't believe that." + +"I know. You can't. You're still too soaked in the point of view of your +efficiency father-in-law." + +"So you don't feel you can sign this?" + +"No." + +That day I sent my story to a small magazine in New England, which from +the time of the Civil War had retained its traditions of breadth of +view. Within a week the editor wrote that he would be glad to publish +it. "Our modest honorarium will follow shortly," he said at the end. The +modest honorarium did. Meanwhile I had sent him a sketch of Nora Ganey +which I had written just after the strike. I received a letter equally +kind, and another honorarium. I began to see a future of modest +honoraria. + +In the meantime, to meet our expenses at home, I had borrowed money and +given my note. And the note would soon fall due. Those were far from +pleasant days. On the one side Joe in his cell waiting to be tried for +his life; on the other, Eleanore at home waiting for a new life to be +born. By a lucky chance for me, Joe's trial was again postponed, so I +could return to my own affairs. I had to have some money quick. I went +back to my magazine editor and asked for a job in his office. + +"I'm ready now to be sane," I said. + +"Glad to hear it," he replied. "I'll give you a steady routine job where +you can grind till you get yourself right." + +"Till I get back where I was, you mean?" + +"Yes, if you can," he answered. + +I went for a walk that afternoon to think over the proposition he'd +made. + +"I have seen three harbors," I said to myself. "My father's harbor which +is now dead, Dillon's harbor of big companies which is very much alive, +and Joe Kramer's harbor which is struggling to be born. It's an +interesting age to live in. I should like to write the truth as I see it +about each kind of harbor. But I need the money--my wife is going to +have a child. So I'll take that steady position and try to grind part of +the truth away." + + * * * * * + +"What have you been doing?" Eleanore asked when I came home. "You look +like a ghost." + +"Not at all," I replied. "I've been getting a job." + +"Tell me about it." + +I told her part. She went and got her sewing, and settled herself +comfortably for a quiet evening's work. Eleanore loved baby clothes. + +"Now begin again and tell me all," she ordered. And she persisted until +I did. + +"It won't do," she said, when I had finished. + +"It will do," I replied decidedly. "It's the best thing in sight. It +will see us through till the baby is born. After all, it's only for a +year." + +"It's a mighty important year for you, my love," said Eleanore. She +thoughtfully held up and surveyed a tiny infant's nightgown. "If you do +this you'll be giving up. It's not writing your best. It's giving up +what you think is the truth. And that's a bad habit to get into." + +"It's settled now. Please leave it alone." + +"Oh very well," she said placidly. "Let's talk of what I've been doing." + +"What _you've_ been doing?" + +"Precisely. I've taken a little apartment downtown, over by the river. +The rent is twenty-eight dollars a month. It's on the top floor and has +plenty of air, and there's a nice roof for hot summer evenings. You're +to carry two wicker chairs up there each night after supper." + +"I'll do nothing of the kind," I rejoined indignantly. "You're going to +pack up at once and go to the mountains! And when you come back you're +coming right here!" + +"Oh no I'm not," she answered. + +"Don't be an idiot, Eleanore! Think of moving out of here now! In your +condition!" + +"It's better than moving out of your work. Dad has kept right on with +his, even when they stopped his pay. Well, now they've stopped your pay, +that's all, and we've got to do the best we can. We've simply got to +live for a while on modest honorariums. Now don't talk, wait till I get +through. You've got to work harder than ever before but for much less +money. But with less money than before we're going to be happier than +we've ever been in all our lives. And you can't do a thing to stop it. +If you do take that office work and bring a lot of money home, do you +know what I'll do? I'll move to that little flat just the same, and all +the extra money you bring will go to Mrs. Bealey." + +"Who in God's name is Mrs. Bealey?" + +"One of my oldest charity cases. She was here this afternoon. The +trouble with you is, my dear," my wife continued smoothly, "that you've +been so wrapped up in your own little changes you haven't given a +thought to mine. Well, I've done some changing, too. Every time that Sue +or you have taken up a new idea I've taken up a Mrs. Bealey. I did the +same thing in the strike. I went with Nora Ganey into the very poorest +of all the tenements down by the docks. I saw the very worst of it +all--and I tried to do what I could to help. But I felt like a drop in +the ocean. And that's how I've changed. Things are so wrong in the +tenements that big reforms are needed. I don't know what they are and +I'm not sure anyone else does. But I'm sure that if any reforms worth +while are to be made, we've got to see just where we are. And that means +that quite a number of people--you for instance--have got to tell the +truth exactly as they see it. So I'd rather put our money in that and +let old Mrs. Bealey forget our address. That's another reason for +moving. + +"There's nothing noble about it at all," she said as she threaded her +needle. "I mean to be perfectly comfortable. I saw this coming long ago, +and since the strike was over I've spent weeks picking out a nice place +where we can get the most for our money. About thirty thousand babies, +I'm told, are to be born in the city this summer--and their mothers +aren't going first to the mountains or even for a walk in the Park. I +don't see why I shouldn't be one. As a matter of fact I won't be one, my +baby won't be born until Fall, and I'll have a clean, comfortable flat +with one maid instead of a dirty tenement with all the cooking and +washing to do. You'll probably find magazines who'll pay enough +honorariums to make a hundred dollars a month, which is just about three +times as much as Mrs. Bealey lives on. So that's settled and we move +this week." + +We moved that week. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +One night about a month later, when we had ensconced ourselves for the +evening out on the roof of our new home, where the summer's night was +cooled by a slight breeze from the river, our maid came up and told me +there was a strange gentleman below. I went down and brought him up, I +was deeply pleased and excited. For he was the English novelist whom I +most admired these days. He had come to me during the strike and had +been deeply interested in the great crowd spirit I had found. He was +going back to England now. + +"I'm curious," he told me, "to see how much your striker friends have +kept of what they got in the strike--what new ideas and points of view. +How much are they really changed? That, I should think, is by far the +most valuable part of it all." + +"It's just what I've been trying to find out for myself," I replied. + +"Really? Will you tell me?" + +I told him how on docks, on tugs and barges, in barrooms and in +tenements, I was having talks with various types of men who had been +strikers, how I was finding some dull and hopeless, others bitter, but +more who simply felt that they had bungled this first attempt and were +already looking forward to more and greater struggles. The socialists +among them were already hard at work, urging them to carry their strike +on into the political field, vote together in one solid mass and build +up a government all their own. Through this ceaseless ferment I had gone +in search of significant characters, incidents, new points of view. I +was writing brief sketches of it all. + +"How did you feel about all this," the Englishman asked, "before you +were drawn into the strike?" And turning from me to Eleanore, "And you?" +he added. + +Gradually he got the stories of our lives. I told how all my life I had +been raising up gods to worship, and how the harbor had flowed silently +in beneath, undermining each one and bringing it down. + +"It seems to have such a habit of changing," I ended, "that it won't let +a fellow stop." + +"Lucky people," he answered, smiling, "to have found that out so +soon--to have had all this modern life condensed so cozily into your +harbor before your eyes--and to have discovered, while you are still +young, that life is growth and growth is change. I believe the age we +live in is changing so much faster than any age before it, that a man if +he's to be vital at all must give up the idea of any fixed creed--in his +office, his church or his home--that if he does not, he will only wear +himself out butting his indignant head against what is stronger and +probably better than he. But if he does, if he holds himself open to +change and knows that change is his very life, then he can get a +serenity which is as much better than that of the monk as living is +better than dying." + +We talked of books being written in England and France, in Germany and +Russia, all dealing with deep changes in the views and beliefs and +desires of men. + +"Any man," he said, "who thinks that modern Europe will go smoothly, +quietly on, needs a dose of your harbor to open his eyes." + +He turned to me with a sudden thought. + +"Why don't you write a book," he asked, "about this harbor you have +known!" + +Eleanore made a quick move in her chair. + +"That's just what you ought to do!" she exclaimed. + +"I wonder if I could," I said. "It would be hard to see it now, as it +looked at all the different times." + +"You'll hardly be able to do that," the Englishman answered quietly. +"Because to each one of us, I suppose, not only his present but his past +is constantly changing to his view. But I wouldn't let that bother you. +What would interest me as a reader would be your view of your life as +you look back upon it to-day--in this present stage of your growth. + +"I was raised in the Alps myself," he went on. "So _my_ picture of life +is the mountain path. As I climb and turn now and then to look back, the +twisting little path below appears quite different each time. But still +I keep on writing--my changing view of the slope behind and of the +rising peaks ahead. And now and then by working my hardest I've felt the +great joy of writing the truth. As you know, it isn't easy. But year by +year I've felt my readers grow in number. I believe they are going to +grow and grow, not mine nor yours but the readers of all the chaps like +ourselves, the readers who pick up each new book with the hope that one +more fellow has done his best--not to please them but to please +himself--by telling of life as he has seen it--his changing life through +his changing eyes." + + * * * * * + +After he left us there was a long silence. Both of us were thinking +hard. And as Eleanore looked up to the stars I saw their brightness in +her eyes. + +"Yes," she said at last, "I'm sure. I'm sure you'd better take his +advice--and write as truthfully as you can the whole story as you see it +now--of this strange harbor you have known." + +We talked long and eagerly that night. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +I began my story of the harbor. Every hour that I could spare from the +stories and sketches of tenement life by which I made a scant living +those days, I spent in gathering memories of my long struggle with this +place, arranging and selecting and setting them in order for this record +of the great life I had seen. + + * * * * * + +But this wide world has many such lives, many heaving forces. And ever +since I had been born, while I had been building for myself one after +the other these gods of civilization and peace--all unheeded by my eyes +a black shadow had been silently creeping over the whole ocean world. +Now from across the water there came the first low grumble of war. +Within one short portentous week that grumble had become a roar, and +before all the startled peoples had time to realize what was here, vast +armies were being rushed over the lands, all Europe was in chaos--and +the world was on the eve of the most prodigious change of all. + +And like the mirror of the world that it had always been to me, the +harbor at once reflected this change. Only a little time before, I had +seen it almost empty, except for that crude boat of the crowd; the +_Internationale_, with its songs of brotherhood and of a world where +wars should cease. Now I saw it jammed with ships from whose masts flew +every flag on the seas, and from the men who came ashore I heard of how +they had been chased, some fired upon, by battleships--I heard of war +upon the seas. I felt my father's world reborn, an ocean world where +there was nothing without fighting, and where every nation fought. +Ours had already entered the lists, with a loud clamor for ships of our +own in which to seize this sudden chance for our share of the trade of +the world. The great canal was open at last, and Europe in her turmoil +had had not even a moment to look. The East and South lay open to +us--rush in and get our share at last! Make our nation strong at sea! + +And while in blind confusion I groped for some new footing here, strove +to see what it was going to mean to that fair world of brotherhood which +I had seen struggling to be born--suddenly as though in reply there came +a sharp voice out of the crowd. + +Joe Kramer came to trial for his life. Before his case went to the jury, +Joe rose up and addressed them. And he spoke of war and violence. He +spoke of how in times of peace this present system murders men--on ships +and docks and railroads, in the mills and down in the mines. And as +though these lives were not enough, the powers above in this scramble +for theirs for all the profits in the world, all the sweated labor they +could wring out of humankind, had now flown at each others' throats. And +the blood of the common people was pouring out upon the earth. + +"My comrades over the water," he said, "saw this coming years ago. They +worked day and night to gather the workers of Europe together against +this war that will blacken the world. For that they were called +anti-patriots, fiends, men without a country. And some were imprisoned +and others were shot. And over here--where in times of peace the number +of killed and wounded is over five hundred thousand a year--for +rebelling against this murder they have called me murderer--and have +placed me here on trial for my life. + +"And what I want to ask you now is that you take no halfway course. +Either send me out of this dock a free man or up the river to the chair. +For this is no year for compromise. Am I a murderer? Yes or no. Decide +with your eyes wide open. If you set me free I shall still rebel. I +shall join my comrades over the sea who already are going about in the +camps and saying to the rank and file--'You can stop this slaughter! You +can save this world gone mad! You can end this murder--both in time of +war and peace!'" + + * * * * * + +And the jury set Joe free. + +Early in the following week I went down to his room by the docks for a +last evening with him there. Joe was sailing that same night. Under a +name not his own he had taken passage in the steerage of the big fast +liner which was to sail at one o'clock. Into his room all evening poured +his revolutionist friends, and the chance of revolution abroad was +talked of in cool practical terms. Nothing could be done, they said, in +the first few months to stop this war. Years ago the man in France, who +had led the anti-war movement, had predicted that if war broke out every +government rushing in would force on its people the belief that this was +no war of aggression but one of defense of the fatherland from a fierce +onrushing foe. And so in truth it had come about, and against that +appeal to fight for their homes no voice of reason could stem the tide. + +The socialists had been swept on with the rest. By tens and hundreds of +thousands they had already gone to the front. But it was upon this very +fact that Joe and his friends now rested their hopes. For just so soon +as in the camps the first burst of enthusiasm had begun to die away, as +the millions in the armies began to grow sick of the sight of blood, the +groans and the shrieks of the wounded and dying, the stench of the +dead--and themselves weary of fighting, worn by privation and disease, +began to think of their distant homes, their wives and children starving +there--then these socialists in their midst, one at every bivouack fire, +would begin to ask them: + +"Why is it that we are at war? What good is all this blood to us? Is it +to make our toil any lighter, life any brighter in our homes--or were we +sent out by our rulers to die only in order that they in their scramble +might take more of the earth for themselves? And if this is true why not +rise like men and end this fearful carnage?" + +Already these thousands were in the camps. Into Joe's room that evening +came men to give him the names and regiments of those comrades he could +trust. Joe with a few hundred others was to make his dangerous way into +the camps and the barracks, wherever that was possible, of French and +Russians and Germans alike, to carry news from one to the other, to make +ready and to plan. + +Now and then, in the talk that night, I felt the thrilling presence of +that rising god, that giant spirit of the crowd, not dead but only +sleeping now to gain new strength for what it must do. And again in +gleams and flashes I saw the vision of the end--the world for all the +workers. For in this crowded tenement room, forgotten now by +governments, this rough earnest group of men seemed so sure of this +world of theirs, so sure that it was now soon to be born. + +One by one they went away, and Joe and I were left alone. Slowly he +refilled his pipe. I thought of the talks we had had in ten years. + +"Well Bill," he inquired at last, "what are you going to do with +yourself?" + +"Write what I see in the crowd," I said, "from my new point of +view--this year's point of view," I added. I went on to tell him what +the English writer had said. And I told of my book on the harbor. + +"Well," said Joe when I was through, "I guess it's about the best you +can do. You've got a wife to think of." + +"You don't know her," I rejoined, and I told him how she had changed our +home in order not to stop my work. + +"But don't you see what she's up to?" said Joe. + +"What the devil do you mean?" I asked indignantly. Joe blew a pitying +puff of smoke. + +"You poor blind dub of a husband," he said with his old affectionate +smile, "she's making you love her all the more. You're anchored worse +than ever. _You_ can't go over to Europe and take a chance at being +shot. Don't you see the hole you're in? You've got to care what happens +to you." + +"I'm not so sure of that, Joe," I said. "Things in this world are +changing so fast that it's hard for any man in it to tell where he'll be +in a year from now--or even a few short months from now. It's the year +that no man can see beyond." + +"You mean you're coming over?" he asked. + +"I'm not sure. Just now I'm going to finish this book. I'm going to see +Eleanore through till the baby is born. But after that--if over in +Europe the people rise against this war--I don't just see how I can keep +out." + +Joe looked at me queerly. And with a curious gruffness, + +"I hope you will keep out," he said. "There aren't many women like your +wife." + +He pulled an old grip from under his bed and began throwing in a few +books and clothes. From a drawer he swept a few colored shirts, some +underclothes and a small revolver. + +"J. K.," I said, "I've been thinking about us. And I think our youth is +gone." + +"What's youth?" asked Joe indifferently. + +"Youth," I replied, "is the time when you can think anything, feel +anything and go anywhere." + +"I'm still going anywhere," he remarked. + +"But you can't think anything," I rejoined. "You say I'm tied to a wife +and home. All right, I'm glad I am. But you're tied, too. You're tied to +a creed, Mister Syndicalist--a creed so stiff that you can't think of +anything else." + +"All right, I'm glad I am," he echoed. "I'm sorry youth lasted as long +as it did." + +He closed his grip and strapped it. Then he took up his hat and coat and +threw a last look about the room where he had lived for a year or more. + +"Breaking up home ties," he said with a grin. "Don't come to the boat," +he added downstairs. "She don't sail for an hour or two and I'll be +asleep in my bunk long before." + +"All right. Good-by, J. K.--remember we may meet over there----" + +Again that gruffness came into his voice: + +"If you do, you'll be taking a mighty big chance," he said. "Good-by, +Bill--it's just possible we may never meet again. Glad to have made your +acquaintance, Kid. Here's wishing you luck." + +He turned and went off down the Farm with that long swinging walk of +his, his big heavy shoulders bent rather more than before. And as I +stood looking after him I thought of the lonely winding road that he was +to travel day and night, into slums of cities and in and out among the +camps. + + * * * * * + +I walked slowly back through the tenements toward the new home among +them that Eleanore had made. + +In the summer's night the city streets were still alive with people. I +passed brightly lighted thoroughfares where I saw them in crowds, and I +knew that this tide of people flowed endlessly through the hundreds of +miles of streets that made up the port of New York. Hurrying, idling, +talking and laughing, quarreling, fighting, here stopping to look at +displays in shop windows, there pouring into "Movies"--and walking, +walking, walking on. Going up into their tenement homes to eat and +drink, love, breed and sleep, to wake up and come down to another day. + +So the crowd moved on and on, while the great harbor surrounding their +lives and shaping their lives, went on with its changes unheeded. + +I tried to think of this harbor as being run by this common crowd--of +the railroads, mines and factories, of the colleges, hospitals and all +institutions of research, and the theaters and concert halls, the +picture galleries, all the books--all in the power of the crowd. + +"It will be a long time," I thought. "Before it comes the crowd must +change. But they will change--and fast or slow, I belong with them while +they're changing." + +Something Joe had once said came into my mind: + +"They're the ones who get shot down in wars and worked like dogs in time +of peace." + +And I thought of the crowds across the sea--of men being rushed over +Europe on trains, or marching along starlit roads, or tramping across +meadows. And I thought of long lines of fire at dawn spurting from the +mouths of guns--from mountainsides, from out of woods, from trenches in +fast blackening fields--and of men in endless multitudes pitching on +their faces as the fire mowed them down. + +And with those men, it seemed to me, went all the great gods I had +known--gods of civilization and peace--the kind god in my mother's +church and the smiling goddess in Paris, the clear-eyed god of +efficiency and the awakening god of the crowd--all plunging into this +furnace of war with the men in whose spirits all gods dwell--to shrivel +and melt in seething flame and emerge at last in strange new forms. What +would come out of the furnace? + +I thought of Joe and his comrades going about in towns and camps, +speaking low and watching, waiting, hoping to bring a new dawn, a new +order, out of this chaotic night. + +And I heard them say to these governments: + +"Your civilization is crashing down. For a hundred years, in all our +strikes and risings, you preached against our violence--you talked of +your law and order, your clear deliberate thinking. In you lay the hope +of the world, you said. You were Civilization. You were Mind and +Science, in you was all Efficiency, in you was Art, Religion, and you +kept the Public Peace. But now you have broken all your vows. The +world's treasures of Art are as safe with you as they were in the Dark +Ages. Your Prince of Peace you have trampled down. And all your Science +you have turned to the efficient slaughter of men. In a week of your +boasted calmness you have plunged the world into a violence beside which +all the bloodshed in our strikes and revolutions seems like a pool +beside the sea. And so you have failed, you powers above, blindly and +stupidly you have failed. For you have let loose a violence where you +are weak and we are strong. We are these armies that you have called +out. And before we go back to our homes we shall make sure that these +homes of ours shall no more become ashes at your will. For we shall stop +this war of yours and in our minds we shall put away all hatred of our +brother men. For us they will be workers all. With them we shall rise +and rise again--until at last the world is free!" + +The voice had ceased--and again I was walking by myself along a crowded +tenement street. Immigrants from Europe, brothers, sons and fathers of +the men now in the camps, kept passing me along the way. As I looked +into their faces I saw no hope for Europe there. Such men could take and +hold no world. But then I remembered how in the strike, out of just such +men as these, I had seen a giant slowly born. Would that crowd spirit +rise again? Could it be that the time was near when this last and +mightiest of the gods would rise and take the world in his hands? + + * * * * * + +At home I found Eleanore asleep. For a time I sat at my desk and made +some notes for my writing. I read and smoked for a little, then +undressed and went to bed. But still I lay there wide awake--thinking of +this home of mine and of where I might be in a few months more, in this +year that no man can see beyond. For all the changes in the world seemed +gathering in a cyclone now. + +I was nearly asleep when I was roused by a thick voice from the harbor. +Low in the distance, deep but now rising blast on blast, its waves of +sound beat into the city--into millions of ears of sleepers and +watchers, the well, the sick and the dying, the dead, the lovers, the +schemers, the dreamers, the toilers, the spenders and wasters. I shut my +eyes and saw the huge liner on which Joe was sailing moving slowly out +of its slip. Down at its bottom men shoveling coal to the clang of its +gong. On the decks above them, hundreds of cabins and suites de +luxe--most of them dark and empty now. Bellowing impatiently as it swept +out into the stream, it seemed to be saying: + +"Make way for me. Make way, all you little men. Make way, all you habits +and all you institutions, all you little creeds and gods. For I am the +start of the voyage--over the ocean to heathen lands! And I am always +starting out and always bearing you along! For I am your molder, I am +strong--I am a surprise, I am a shock--I am a dazzling passion of +hope--I am a grim executioner! I am reality--I am life! I am the book +that has no end." + + * * * * * + + + + +JOHN FOX, JR'S. + +STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list. + + +THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE. + +Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. + +The "lonesome pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree +that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine +lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he +finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the +_foot-prints of a girl_. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and +the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder +chase than "the trail of the lonesome pine." + + +THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME + +Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. + +This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "Kingdom Come." It +is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest, from which often +springs the flower of civilization. + +"Chad," the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he +came--he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, +seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and +mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery--a charming waif, +by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else in the +mountains. + + +A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND. + +Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. + +The scenes are laid along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of +moonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the +heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two +impetuous young Southerners fall under the spell of "The Blight's" +charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the +love making of the mountaineers. + +Included in this volume is "Hell fer-Sartain" and other stories, some of +Mr. Fox's most entertaining Cumberland valley narratives. + + * * * * * + + + + +STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY GENE STRATTON-PORTER + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list + + +LADDIE. + +Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer. + +This is a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The story +is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it +is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs +of older members of the family. Chief among them is that of Laddie, the +older brother whom Little Sister adores, and the Princess, an English +girl who has come to live in the neighborhood and about whose family +there hangs a mystery. There is a wedding midway in the book and a +double wedding at the close. + + +THE HARVESTER. Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs. + +"The Harvester," David Langston, is a man of the woods and fields, who +draws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If the +book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man it would be +notable. But when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," and the +Harvester's whole being realizes that this is the highest point of life +which has come to him--there begins a romance of the rarest idyllic +quality. + + +FRECKLES, Decorations by E. Stetson Crawford. + +Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he +takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great +Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to +the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The +Angel" are full of real sentiment. + + +A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST. Illustrated by Wladyslaw T. Brenda. + +The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of +the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness +towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of +her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and +unpromising surroundings those rewards of high courage. + + +AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW. Illustrations in colors by Oliver Kemp. + +The scene of this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. The +story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love. +The novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting of nature, and +its pathos and tender sentiment will endear it to all. + + + + +MYRTLE REED'S NOVELS + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list + + +LAVENDER AND OLD LACE. + +A charming story of a quaint corner of New England where bygone romance +finds a modern parallel. The story centers round the coming of love to +the young people on the staff of a newspaper--and it is one of the +prettiest, sweetest and quaintest of old fashioned love stories, * * * a +rare book, exquisite in spirit and conception, full of delicate fancy, +of tenderness, of delightful humor and spontaneity. + + +A SPINNER IN THE SUN. + +Miss Myrtle Reed may always be depended upon to write a story in which +poetry, charm, tenderness and humor are combined into a clever and +entertaining book. Her characters are delightful and she always displays +a quaint humor of expression and a quiet feeling of pathos which give a +touch of active realism to all her writings. In "A Spinner in the Sun" +she tells an old-fashioned love story, of a veiled lady who lives in +solitude and whose features her neighbors have never seen. There is a +mystery at the heart of the book that throws over it the glamour of +romance. + + +THE MASTER'S VIOLIN. + +A love story in a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso +is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take +for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for +technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, +careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with +his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life +and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its +fulness. But a girl comes into his life--a beautiful bit of human +driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through +his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to +give--and his soul awakes. + +Founded on a fact that all artists realize. + + + + +GROSSET & DUNLAP'S DRAMATIZED NOVELS + +THE KIND THAT ARE MAKING THEATRICAL HISTORY + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list + + +WITHIN THE LAW. By Bayard Veiller & Marvin Dana. Illustrated by Wm. +Charles Cooke. + +This is a novelization of the immensely successful play which ran for +two years in New York and Chicago. + +The plot of this powerful novel is of a young woman's revenge directed +against her employer who allowed her to be sent to prison for three +years on a charge of theft, of which she was innocent. + + +WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY. By Robert Carlton Brown. Illustrated with scenes +from the play. + +This is a narrative of a young and innocent country girl who is suddenly +thrown into the very heart of New York, "the land of her dreams," where +she is exposed to all sorts of temptations and dangers. + +The story of Mary is being told in moving pictures and played in +theatres all over the world. + + +THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM. By David Belasco. Illustrated by John Rae. + +This is a novelization of the popular play in which David Warfield, as +Old Peter Grimm, scored such a remarkable success. + +The story is spectacular and extremely pathetic but withal, powerful, +both as a book and as a play. + + +THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. By Robert Hichens. + +This novel is an intense, glowing epic of the great desert, sunlit +barbaric, with its marvelous atmosphere of vastness and loneliness. + +It is a book of rapturous beauty, vivid in word painting. The play has +been staged with magnificent cast and gorgeous properties. + + +BEN HUR. A Tale of the Christ. By General Lew Wallace. + +The whole world has placed this famous Religious-Historical Romance on a +height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The +clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect +reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere +of the arena have kept their deep fascination. A tremendous dramatic +success. + + +BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. By George Broadhurst and Arthur Hornblow. +Illustrated with scenes from the play. + +A stupendous arraignment of modern marriage which has created an +interest on the stage that is almost unparalleled. The scenes are laid +in New York, and deal with conditions among both the rich and poor. + +The interest of the story turns on the day-by-day developments which +show the young wife the price she has paid. + + + + +GROSSET & DUNLAP'S DRAMATIZED NOVELS + +Original, sincere and courageous--often amusing--the kind that are +making theatrical history. + + +MADAME X. By Alexandre Bisson and J. W. McConaughy. Illustrated with +scenes from the play. + +A beautiful Parisienne became an outcast because her husband would not +forgive an error of her youth. Her love for her son is the great final +influence in her career. A tremendous dramatic success. + + +THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. By Robert Hichens. + +An unconventional English woman and an inscrutable stranger meet and +love in an oasis of the Sahara. Staged this season with magnificent cast +and gorgeous properties. + + +THE PRINCE OF INDIA. By Lew. Wallace. + +A glowing romance of the Byzantine Empire, presenting with extraordinary +power the siege of Constantinople, and lighting its tragedy with the +warm underglow of an Oriental romance. As a play it is a great dramatic +spectacle. + + +TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY. By Grace Miller White. Illust. by Howard +Chandler Christy. + +A girl from the dregs of society, loves a young Cornell University +student, and it works startling changes in her life and the lives of +those about her. The dramatic version is one of the sensations of the +season. + + +YOUNG WALLINGFORD. By George Randolph Chester. Illust. by F. R. Gruger +and Henry Raleigh. + +A series of clever swindles conducted by a cheerful young man, each of +which is just on the safe side of a State's prison offence. As +"Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford," it is probably the most amusing expose of +money manipulation ever seen on the stage. + + +THE INTRUSION OF JIMMY. By P. G. Wodehouse. Illustrations by Will Grefe. + +Social and club life in London and New York, an amateur burglary +adventure and a love story. Dramatized under the title of "A Gentleman +of Leisure," it furnishes hours of laughter to the play-goers. + + + + +ZANE GREY'S NOVELS + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list + + +THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS + +Colored frontispiece by W. Herbert Dunton. + +Most of the action of this story takes place near the turbulent Mexican +border of the present day. A New York society girl buys a ranch which +becomes the center of frontier warfare. Her loyal cowboys defend her +property from bandits, and her superintendent rescues her when she is +captured by them. A surprising climax brings the story to a delightful +close. + + +DESERT GOLD + +Illustrated by Douglas Duer. + +Another fascinating story of the Mexican border. Two men, lost in the +desert, discover gold when, overcome by weakness, they can go no +farther. The rest of the story describes the recent uprising along the +border, and ends with the finding of the gold which the two prospectors +had willed to the girl who is the story's heroine. + + +RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE + +Illustrated by Douglas Duer. + +A picturesque romance of Utah of some forty years ago when Mormon +authority ruled. In the persecution of Jane Withersteen, a rich ranch +owner, we are permitted to see the methods employed by the invisible +hand of the Mormon Church to break her will. + + +THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN + +Illustrated with photograph reproductions. + +This is the record of a trip which the author took with Buffalo Jones, +known as the preserver of the American bison, across the Arizona desert +and of a hunt in "that wonderful country of yellow crags, deep canons +and giant pines." It is a fascinating story. + + +THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT + +Jacket in color. Frontispiece. + +This big human drama is played in the Painted Desert. A lovely girl, who +has been reared among Mormons, learns to love a young New Englander. The +Mormon religion, however, demands that the girl shall become the second +wife of one of the Mormons-- + +Well, that's the problem of this sensational, big selling story. + + +BETTY ZANE + +Illustrated by Louis F. Grant. + +This story tells of the bravery and heroism of Betty, the beautiful +young sister of old Colonel Zane, one of the bravest pioneers, life +along the frontier, attacks by Indians, Betty's heroic defense of the +beleaguered garrison at Wheeling, the burning of the Fort, and Betty's +final race for life, make up this never-to-be-forgotten story. + + +May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.As + +_Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_ + +GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Harbor, by Ernest Poole + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HARBOR *** + +***** This file should be named 29932.txt or 29932.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/9/3/29932/ + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Woodie4 and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced +from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American +Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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