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+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #63888 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63888)
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great American Novel, by William Carlos
-Williams
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Great American Novel
-
-Author: William Carlos Williams
-
-Release Date: December 05, 2020 [EBook #63888]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-Produced by: Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images generously
-             made available by The Internet Archive.)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL ***
-
-THE GREAT
-AMERICAN NOVEL
-
-_BY_
-
-WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
-
-
-
-_PARIS_
-
-Three Mountains Press
-
-1923
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-CHAPTER I
-CHAPTER II
-CHAPTER III
-CHAPTER IV
-CHAPTER V
-CHAPTER VI
-CHAPTER VII
-CHAPTER VIII
-CHAPTER IX
-CHAPTER X
-CHAPTER XI
-CHAPTER XII
-CHAPTER XIII
-CHAPTER XIV
-CHAPTER XV
-CHAPTER XVI
-CHAPTER XVII
-CHAPTER XVIII
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-_The Great_
-American Novel
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-The Fog
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-If there is progress then there is a novel. Without progress there is
-nothing. Everything exists from the beginning. I existed in the
-beginning. I was a slobbering infant. Today I saw nameless grasses--I
-tapped the earth with my knuckle. It sounded hollow. It was dry as
-rubber. Eons of drought. No rain for fifteen days. No rain. It has never
-rained. It will never rain. Heat and no wind all day long better say hot
-September. The year has progressed. Up one street down another. It is
-still September. Down one street, up another. Still September. Yesterday
-was the twenty second. Today is the twenty first. Impossible. Not if it
-was last year. But then it wouldn't be yesterday. A year is not as
-yesterday in his eyes. Besides last year it rained in the early part of
-the month. That makes a difference. It rained on the white goldenrod.
-Today being misplaced as against last year makes it seem better to have
-white--Such is progress. Yet if there is to be a novel one must begin
-somewhere.
-
-Words are not permanent unless the graphite be scraped up and put in a
-tube or the ink lifted. Words progress into the ground. One must begin
-with words if one is to write. But what then of smell? What then of the
-hair on the trees or the golden brown cherries under the black cliffs.
-What of the weakness of smiles that leave dimples as much as to say:
-forgive me--I am slipping, slipping, slipping into nothing at all. Now
-I am not what I was when the word was forming to say what I am. I sit so
-on my bicycle and look at you greyly, dimpling because it is September
-and I am older than I was. I have nothing to say this minute. I shall
-never have anything to do unless there is progress, unless you write a
-novel. But if you take me in your arms--why the bicycle will fall and it
-will not be what it is now to smile greyly and a dimple is so deep--you
-might fall in and never, never remember to write a word to say good-bye
-to your cherries. For it is September. Begin with September.
-
-To progress from word to word is to suck a nipple. Imagine saying: My
-dear, I am thirsty, will you let me have a little milk--This to love at
-first sight. But who do you think I am, says white goldenrod? Of course
-there is progress. Of course there are words. But I am thirsty, one
-might add. Yes but I love you and besides I have no milk. Oh yes, that
-is right. I forgot that we were speaking of words. Yet you cannot deny
-that to have a novel one must have milk. Not at the beginning. Granted,
-but at the end at least. Yes, yes, at the end. Progress from the mere
-form to the substance. Yes, yes, in other words: milk. Milk is the
-answer.
-
-But how have milk out of white goldenrod? Why, that was what the Indians
-said. The bosom of the earth sprays up a girl balancing, balancing on a
-bicycle. Rapidly she passes through the first--the second eight years.
-Progress, you note. But September was rainy last year and how can it
-ever be dry again unless one go back to the year before that. There are
-no words. It cannot be any otherwise than as this is built the bosom of
-the earth shrinks back; phosphates. Yet to have a novel--Oh catch up a
-dozen good smelly names and find some reason for murder, it will do. But
-can you not see, can you not taste, can you not smell, can you not hear,
-can you not touch--words? It is words that must progress. Words, white
-goldenrod, it is words you are made out of--THAT is why you want what
-you haven't got.
-
-Progress is to get. But how can words get.--Let them get drunk. Bah.
-Words are words. Fog of words. The car runs through it. The words take
-up the smell of the car. Petrol. Face powder, arm pits, food-grease in
-the hair, foul breath, clean musk. Words. Words cannot progress. There
-cannot be a novel. Break the words. Words are indivisible crystals. One
-cannot break them--Awu tsst grang splith gra pragh og bm--Yes, one can
-break them. One can make words. Progress? If I make a word I make myself
-into a word. Such is progress. I shall make myself into a word. One big
-word. One big union. Such is progress. It is a novel. I begin small and
-make myself into a big splurging word: I take life and make it into one
-big blurb. I begin at my childhood. I begin at the beginning and make
-one big--Bah.
-
-What difference is it whether I make the words or take the words. It
-makes no difference whatever.
-
-There cannot be a novel. There can only be pyramids, pyramids of words,
-tombs. Their warm breasts heave up and down calling for a head to
-progress toward them, to fly onward, upon a word that was a pumpkin, now
-a fairy chariot, and all the time the thing was rolling backward to the
-time when one believed. Hans Anderson didn't believe. He had to pretend
-to believe. It is a conspiracy against childhood. It runs backward.
-Words are the reverse motion. Words are the flesh of yesterday. Words
-roll, spin, flare up, rumble, trickle, foam--Slowly they lose momentum.
-Slowly they cease to stir. At last they break up into their letters--Out
-of them jumps the worm that was--His hairy feet tremble upon them.
-
-Leaving the meeting room where the Mosquito Extermination Commission had
-been holding an important fall conference they walked out on to the
-portico of the County Court House Annex where for a moment they remained
-in the shadow cast by the moon. A fog had arisen in which the egg-shaped
-white moon was fixed--so it seemed. They walked around the side of the
-old-fashioned wooden building--constructed in the style of the fine
-residences of sixty years ago and coming to the car he said: Go around
-that side as I will have to get in here by the wheel. The seat was wet
-with dew and cold--after the exceptionally hot day. They sat on it
-nevertheless. The wind-shield was opaque with the water in minute
-droplets on it--through which the moon shone with its inadequate light.
-That is, our eyes being used to the sun the moon's light is inadequate
-for us to see by. But certain bats and owls find it even too strong,
-preferring the starlight. The stars also were out.
-
-Turning into the exit of the parking space he stopped the car and began
-to wipe the wind-shield with his hand. Take this rag said the other,
-with one hand already in his trowser pocket. So the glass was wiped on
-both sides, the top and the bottom pane and the cloth--which looked a
-good deal like a handkerchief--was returned to the owner--who put it
-back where it came from not seeming to mind that it was wet and dirty.
-But of course the man is a mechanic in a certain sense and doesn't care.
-
-On the highway they began to encounter the fog. It seemed in the rush of
-the car to come and meet them. It came suddenly, with a rush and in a
-moment nothing could be seen but the white billows of water crossed in
-front by the flares of the headlights. And so it went all the way home,
-sometimes clearer, sometimes so thick he had to stop, nearly--ending in
-his own bed-room with his wife's head on the pillow in the perfectly
-clear electric light. The light shone brightest on the corner of her
-right eye, which was nearest it, also on the prominences of her face.
-
-Her right arm was under her head. She had been reading. The magazine
-Vanity Fair, which he had bought thinking of her, lay open on the
-coverlet. He looked at her and she at him. He smiled and she, from long
-practice, began to read him, progressing rapidly until she said: You
-can't fool me.
-
-He became very angry but understood at once that she had penetrated his
-mystery, that she saw he was stealing in order to write words. She
-smiled again knowingly. He became furious.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-I'm new, said she, I don't think you'll find my card here. You're new; how
-interesting. Can you read the letters on that chart? Open your mouth.
-Breathe. Do you have headaches? No. Ah, yes, you are new. I'm new, said
-the oval moon at the bottom of the mist funnel, brightening and paling.
-I don't think you'll find my card there. Open your mouth--Breathe--A
-crater big enough to hold the land from New York to Philadelphia. New!
-I'm new, said the quartz crystal on the parlor table--like glass--Mr.
-Tiffany bought a cart load of them. Like water or white rock candy--I'm
-new, said the mist rising from the duck pond, rising, curling, turning
-under the moon--Unknown grasses asleep in the level mists, pieces of the
-fog. Last night it was an ocean. Tonight trees. Already it is yesterday.
-Turned into the wrong street seeking to pass the power house from which
-the hum, hmmmmmmmmmmmmm--sprang. Electricity has been discovered for
-ever. I'm new, says the great dynamo. I am progress. I make a word.
-Listen! UMMMMMMMMMMMM--
-
-Ummmmmmmmmm--Turned into the wrong street at three A.M. lost in the fog,
-listening, searching--Waaaa! said the baby. I'm new. A boy! A what? Boy.
-Shit, said the father of two other sons. Listen here. This is no place
-to talk that way. What a word to use. I'm new, said the sudden word.
-
-The fog lay in deep masses on the roads at three A.M. Into the wrong
-street turned the car seeking the high pitched singing tone of the
-dynamos endlessly spinning in the high banquet hall, filling the house
-and the room where the bed of pain stood with progress. Ow, ow! Oh help
-me somebody! said she. UMMMMMM sang the dynamo in the next street,
-UMMMM. With a terrible scream she drowned out its sound. He went to the
-window to see if his car was still there, pulled the curtain aside,
-green--Yes it was still there under the light where it would not be so
-likely to be struck by other cars coming in the fog. There it was as
-still as if it were asleep. Still as could be. Not a wheel moved. No
-sound came from the engine. It stood there under the purple arc-light,
-partly hidden by a pole which cast a shadow toward him in the masses of
-floating vapor. He could see the redtail-light still burning brightly
-with the electricity that came from the battery under the floor boards.
-No one had stolen the spare tire. It was very late.--Well, said he,
-dropping the shade and thinking that maybe when he was busy someone
-might easily come up from the meadows and take the spare tire--Well, I
-suppose I had better see how things have progressed.
-
-And so he backed out into the main street and turned up another block.
-And there he saw. The great doors were open to full view of the world. A
-great amphitheatre of mist lighted from the interior of the power house.
-In rows sat the great black machines saying vrummmmmmmmmmmmm. Stately in
-the great hall they sat and generated electricity to light the cellar
-stairs with. To warm the pad on Mrs. Voorman's belly. To cook supper by
-and iron Abie's pyjamas. Here was democracy. Here is progress--here is
-the substance of words--UMMMMM: that is to say meat or linen or belly
-ache.--Three A.M. To be exact twenty-eight minutes past three.
-
-And all this was yesterday--Yesterday and there at her window I saw her,
-the lady of my dreams her long and sallow face, held heavily near the
-glass, overlooking the street where the decayed-meat wagon passes and
-the ice-cream cart rumbles with its great power and the complicated
-affairs of the town twitter toward the open sewer in the meadows by the
-Button Factory. Orange peel, tomato peel floating in a whitish, soapy
-flow--Her face without expression, the lady I am dying for, her right
-shoulder as high as her ear, the line of the shoulder sloping down
-acutely to the neck, her left shoulder also raised so that her head
-seemed to lie loose in a kind of saddle.
-
-Supreme in stupidity and a fog of waste, profit in what is left. Oh what
-delectable morsel is left. Blessed hunchback, scum of loves weekly
-praying in all churches--which by the way take up the very best sites in
-the town. There she sat, her body low down below the window frame, only
-her face showing, and looked at me dully, looked because I looked--and
-my heart leaped up to her in passionate appeal that she should be my
-queen and run with me over the foggy land--Forward--Onward and upward
-forever.
-
-So saying the day had progressed toward the afternoon and under the
-poplars the dried leaves had begun to collect. It had been unbearably
-hot. September is a hot month. The leaves had fallen one by one. No
-wind. One by one pushed off by the buds which swollen by the heat had
-thought that winter was over. Off with you. You stand in the way of
-progress, say the young leaves. Sitting on his chair he seemed like any
-other man but to get to the bed he suddenly descended to the floor. On
-his long arms--he Apollo, and using the stumps of his legs, apelike on
-all fours and talking quietly he swung himself up over the edge of the
-bed and lay down.
-
-Over the field--for the fog had left the grasses in the early morning
-when the sun came up with majestic progression, haughtily leaving the
-dropping city under him--over the field--for it was late in the
-afternoon and the sunlight shone in with his poor broken legs, crippled
-as he was--the sun shone in from the west. The car had turned in to the
-wrong street and he had gone into the store where the paralysed
-Scotchman whom he had never seen before put him on the way--climbing
-into his bed sent his rays almost level over a patch of red grass hot
-and blinding. Over the field the heat rose and in it even from a
-distance due to the blur of light on their wings a great swarm of gnats
-could be seen turning, twisting in the air, rising falling--over the
-grass, fringed with the progressing sun.
-
-But with great sweeps and sudden turns a dozen dragon flies seeming
-twice as large as they really were, from the sun blurring their
-transparent wings, darted back and forth over the field catching and
-eating the gnats. Swiftly the gnats progressed into the dragon flies,
-swiftly coalescing--and from time to time a droplet of stuff fell from
-the vent of a feeding dragon fly,--and the little sound of this stuff
-striking the earth could not be heard with its true poetic force. Lost.
-Lost in a complicated world. Except in the eyes of God. But a word, a
-word rang true. Shit, said the father. With this name I thee christen:
-he added under his breath.
-
-And yet--one must begin somewhere.
-
-Deeply religious, he walked into the back yard and watching lest the
-children see him and want what they shouldn't have he approached the
-grape vines. Selecting a bunch of Delawares he picked it with some
-difficulty spilling a few of the fruit. Then he walked to the other side
-and found some blue ones. These too he ate. Then some white which he ate
-also one by one swallowing the pulp and the seeds and spitting out the
-skins. He continued to eat but no word came to satisfy.
-
-Somehow a word must be found. He felt rather a weight in his belly from
-eating so many grapes. He, himself that must die someday, he the deeply
-religious friend of great men and women in incipience, he couldn't find
-a word. Only words and words. He ate another bunch of the grapes. More
-words. And never THE word.
-
-A novel must progress toward a word. Any word that--Any word. There is
-an idea.
-
-His brother was ill. He must go home. The sun will soon be on the
-Pacific coast. To bed, to bed--take off the clothes beginning on the
-outside and working in. How would it be to take off the underwear first,
-then the shirt--
-
-Progress is dam foolishness.--It is a game. Either I have or--a thieves'
-game. Hold me close, closer, close as you can. I can't hold you any
-closer. I have been stealing. I should never touch anything. I should
-never think of anything but you. I love another. It is a word. I have
-left you alone to run wild with a girl. I would be tame. Lies flicker in
-the sun. Visions beset noonday. Through the back window of the
-shoe-shine parlor a mass of golden glow flashes in the heat. Come into
-my heart while I am running--jumping from airplane to plane in mid-air.
-I cannot stop: the word I am seeking is in your mouth--I cannot stop.
-Hold me against--
-
-You are wrong, wrong Alva N. Turner. It is deeper than you imagine. I
-perceive that it may be permissible for a poet to write about a poetic
-sweet-heart but never about a wife--should have said possible. It is not
-possible. All men do the same. Dante be damned. Knew nothing at all.
-Lied to himself all his life. Profited by his luck and never said
-thanks. God pulled the lady up by the roots. Never even said thank you.
-Quite wrong. Look what he produced. Page after page. Helped the world to
-bread. Have another slice of bread Mr. Helseth. No thank you--Not hungry
-tonight? Something on his mind.
-
-The word. Who.
-
-Liberate the words. You tie them. Poetic sweet-heart. Ugh. Poetic
-sweet-heart. My dear Miss Word let me hold your W. I love you. Of all
-the girls in school you alone are the one--
-
-Dramatise myself make it sing together as if the world were a bird who
-married to the same mate five years understood in the end transmigration
-of souls.
-
-Nonsense. I am a writer and will never be anything else. In which case
-it is impossible to find the word. But to have a novel one must progress
-with the words. The words must become real, they must take the place of
-wife and sweet-heart. They must be church--Wife. It must be your wife.
-It must be a thing of adamant with the texture of wind. Wife.
-
-Am I a word? Words, words, words--
-
-And approaching the end of the novel in his mind as he sat there with
-his wife sleeping alone in the next room he could feel that something
-unusual had happened. Something had grown up in his life dearer
-than--It, as the end. The words from long practice had come to be
-leaves, trees, the corners of his house--such was the end. He had
-progressed leaving the others far behind him. Alone in that air with the
-words of his brain he had breathed again the pure mountain air of
-joy--there night after night in his poor room. And now he must leave
-her. She the--He had written the last word and getting up he understood
-the fog as it billowed before the lights.
-
-That which had been impossible for him at first had become possible.
-Everything had been removed that other men had tied to the words to
-secure them to themselves. Clean, clean he had taken each word and made
-it new for himself so that at last it was new, free from the world for
-himself--never to touch it--dreams of his babyhood--poetic sweet-heart.
-No. He went in to his wife with exalted mind, his breath coming in
-pleasant surges. I come to tell you that the book is finished.
-
-I have added a new chapter to the art of writing. I feel sincerely that
-all they say of me is true, that I am truly a great man and a great
-poet.
-
-What did you say, dear, I have been asleep?
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-It is Joyce with a difference. The difference being greater opacity,
-less erudition, reduced power of perception--Si la sol fa mi re do.
-Aside from that simple, rather stupid derivation, forced to a ridiculous
-extreme. No excuse for this sort of thing. Amounts to a total occlusion
-of intelligence. Substitution of something else. What? Well, nonsense.
-Since you drive me to it.
-
-Take the improvisations: What the French reader would say is: _Oui, ça;
-j'ai déjà vu ça; ça c'est de Rimbaud._ Finis.
-
-Representative American verse will be that which will appear new to the
-French . . . . prose the same.
-
-Infertile Joyce laments the failure of his sterile pen. Siegfried Wagner
-runs to his Mama crying: Mutti, Mutti, listen, I have just composed a
-beautiful Cantata on a theme I discovered in one of father's operas.
-
-In other words it comes after Joyce, therefore it is no good, of no use
-but a secondary local usefulness like the Madison Square Garden tower
-copied from Seville--It is of no absolute good. It is not NEW. It is not
-an invention.
-
-Invention, I want to buy you some clothes. Now what would you really
-like to have? Let us pretend we have no intelligence whatever, that we
-have read ALL there is to read and that Rimbaud has taught us nothing,
-that Joyce has passed in a cloud, that, in short, we find nothing to do
-but begin with Macaulay or King James, that all writing is forbidden us
-save that which we recognise to be inadequate. NOW show your
-originality, _mon ami_. NOW let me see what you can do with your vaunted
-pen.
-
-Nothing could be easier.
-
-My invention this time, my dear, is that literature is a pure matter of
-words. The moon making a false star of the weather vane on the steeple
-makes also a word. You do not know the fine hairs on a hickory leaf? Try
-one in the woods some time. You will grasp at once what I mean.
-
-But Joyce. He is misjudged, misunderstood. His vaunted invention is a
-fragile fog. His method escapes him. He has not the slightest notion
-what he is about. He is a priest, a roysterer of the spirit. He is an
-epicurean of romance. His true genius flickers and fails: there's the
-peak, there in the trees--For God's sake can't you see it! Not that tree
-but the mass of rocks, that reddish mass of rocks, granite, with the sun
-on it between that oak and the maple.--That is not an oak. Hell take it
-what's the use of arguing with a botanist.
-
-But I will not have my toothpicks made of anything but maple. Mr. Joyce
-will you see to it that my toothpicks are not made of anything but
-maple? Irish maple. Damn it, it's for Ireland. Pick your teeth, God
-knows you need to. The trouble with writing of the old style is that the
-teeth don't fit. They were made for Irishmen--as a class.
-
-Tell me now, of what in your opinion does Mr. Joyce's art consist, since
-you have gone so far as to criticise the teeth he makes?--Why, my dear,
-his art consists of words.
-
-What then is his failure, O God.--His failure is when he mistakes his
-art to be something else.
-
-What then does he mistake his art to be, Rosinante?--He mistakes it to
-be several things in more or less certain rotation from botany--Oh well
-it's a kind of botany you know--from botany to--to--litany. Do you know
-his poetry?
-
-But you must not mistake his real, if hidden, service. He has in some
-measure liberated words, freed them for their proper uses. He has to a
-great measure destroyed what is known as "literature." For me as an
-American it is his only important service.
-
-It would be a pity if the French failed to discover him for a decade or
-so. Now wouldn't it? Think how literature would suffer. Yes think--think
-how LITERATURE would suffer.
-
-At that the car jumped forward like a live thing. Up the steep board
-incline into the garage it leaped--as well as a thing on four wheels
-could leap--But with great dexterity he threw out the clutch with a
-slight pressure of his left foot, just as the fore end of the car was
-about to careen against a mass of old window screens at the garage end.
-Then pressing with his right foot and grasping the hand-brake he brought
-the machine to a halt--just in time--though it was no trick to him, he
-having done it so often for the past ten years.
-
-It seemed glad to be at home in its own little house, the trusty
-mechanism. The lights continued to flare intimately against the wooden
-wall as much as to say: Here I am back again. The engine sighed and
-stopped at the twist of the key governing the electric switch. Out went
-the lights with another twist of the wrist. The owner groped his way to
-the little door at the back and emerged into the moonlight, into the
-fog, leaving his idle car behind him to its own thoughts. There it must
-remain all night, requiring no food, no water to drink, nothing while
-he, being a man, must live. His wife was at the window holding the shade
-aside.
-
-
-And what is good poetry made of
-And what is good poetry made of
-Of rats and snails and puppy-dog's tails
-And that is what good poetry is made of
-
-And what is bad poetry made of
-And what is bad poetry made of
-Of sugar and spice and everything nice
-That is what bad poetry is made of
-
-
-_A Rebours_: Huysman puts it. My dear let us free ourselves from this
-enslavement. We do not know how thoroughly we are bound. It must be a
-new definition, it must cut us off from the rest. It is in a different
-line. Good morning Boss said the old colored man working on the railroad
-and started to sing: Jesus, Jesus I love you. It was Sunday, he was
-working on the railroad on Sunday and had to put up some barrier. It is
-an end to art temporarily. That upstart Luther. My God don't talk to me
-of Luther, never changed his bed clothes for a year. Well, my dear, IT'S
-COMING just the same. To hell with art. To hell with literature. The old
-renaissance priests guarded art in their cloisters for three hundred
-years or more. Sunk their teeth in it. The ONE solid thing. Don't blame
-me if it went down with them. DOWN, you understand. Fist through the
-middle of the rose window. You are horror struck. One word: Bing! One
-accurate word and a shower of colored glass following it. Is it MY
-fault? Ask the French if that is literature.
-
-Do you mean to say that art--O ha, ha. Do you mean to say that
-art--O ha, ha. Well spit it out. Do you mean to say that art is
-SERIOUS?--Yes. Do you mean to say that art does any WORK?--Yes.
-Do you mean--? Revolution. Russia. Kropotkin. Farm, Factory and
-Field.--CRRRRRRASH.--Down comes the world. There you are gentlemen,
-I am an artist.
-
-What then would you say of the usual interpretation of the word
-"literature"?--Permanence. A great army with its tail in antiquity.
-Cliche of the soul: beauty.
-
-But can you have literature without beauty? It all depends on what you
-mean by beauty.
-
-There is beauty in the bellow of the BLAST, etc. from all previous
-significance.--To me beauty is purity. To me it is discovery, a race on
-the ground.
-
-And for this you are willing to smash--
-
-Yes, everything.--To go down into hell.--Well let's look.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-That's all very fine about _le mot juste_ but first the word must be
-free.--But is there not some other way? It must come about gradually.
-Why go down into hell when--Because words are not men, they have no
-adjustments that need to be made. They are words. They can not be
-anything but free or bound. Go about it any way you chose.
-
-The word is the thing. If it is smeared with colors from right and left
-what can it amount to?
-
-I'd hate to have to live up there, she said with a frown. It was the
-soul that spoke. In her words could be read the whole of democracy, the
-entire life of the planet. It fell by chance on his ear but he was
-ready, he was alert.
-
-And the little dusty car: There drawn up at the gutter was a great truck
-painted green and red. Close to it passed the little runabout while
-conscious desire surged in its breast. Yes there he was the great
-powerful mechanism, all in his new paint against the gutter while she
-rolled by and saw--The Polish woman in the clinic, yellow hair slicked
-back. Neck, arms, breast, waist, hips, etc. This is THE thing--The small
-mechanism went swiftly by the great truck with fluttering heart in the
-hope, the secret hope that perhaps, somehow he would notice--HE, the
-great truck in his massiveness and paint, that somehow he would come to
-her. Oh I wouldn't like to live up there!
-
-FOG HOLDS UP LINERS say the head lines. It is a blackness, a choking
-smother of dirty water in suspension.--You should have been here this
-morning. You could look out and see nothing but a sea of cloud below us.
-Right at our feet the fog began and stretched off as far as the eye
-could perceive.
-
-Up out of the trees with a whirr started the sparrows. With a loud
-clatter the grouse got up at his feet. The ground was full of mushrooms.
-Everything, no matter what it is must be re-valuated.
-
-The red grass will soon open into feathers.
-
-Peter Broom, yes sah, my grandfather sah, the greatest man in Prince
-George County. He had three hundred children.
-
-So many things, so many things: heat.
-
-What then are you trying to say in THIS chapter? And what of your quest
-of THE word? What of A.N.T. ant?
-
-Why someone has offended Wells. He has retorted with NEO-ACADEMICIAN:
-And: No new form of the novel required. Lack of substance always takes
-the form of novelty mongering. Empire must be saved! Saved for the
-proletariat.
-
-On the side of the great machine it read: Standard Motor Gasoline, in
-capital letters. A great green tank was built upon the red chassis, FULL
-of gas. The little car looked and her heart leaped with shy wonder.
-
-Save the words. Save the words from themselves. They are like children.
-Young Men's Hebrew Association. Save them while they're still young.
-Words must not be allowed to say, to do--Geld them. They are not REALLY
-words they are geldings. Save the words. Yes, I repeat SAVE THE WORDS.
-When Voronoff would have had words to transplant, interstitial words--he
-said save the words.
-
-And what has anything Wells says to do with serious writing. FIRST let
-the words be free. The words are men, therefore they are not men. They
-cannot, must not, will not be mustered of the people, by the people, for
-the people. They are words. They will have their way.
-
-Puh, puh, puh, puh! said the little car going up hill. But the great
-green and red truck said nothing but continued to discharge its gasoline
-into a tank buried in the ground near the gutter.
-
-And the fog had coalesced into rain. Rain to soak the firewood the boys
-had left beside their old fire, like good scouts, for those to come
-after and the great car continued to discharge.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-What then is a novel? _Un Novello_, pretty, pretty Baby. It is a thing
-of fixed form. It is pure English. Yes, she is of Massachusetts stock.
-Her great grandfather was thrown out of the Quaker church for joining
-the Continental army. Hates the English. Her life is a novel--almost too
-sensational.
-
-The story of Miss Li--so well told.
-
-_Qu'avez-vous vu_? Or they that write much and see little. Not much use
-to us.
-
-Speak of old Sun Bow pacing his mesa instead of Felipe Segundo in the
-barren halls of El Escorial--or asleep in his hard bed at one corner of
-the griddle.
-
-My mother would have a little nigger boy come with a brush and sit at
-her feet and brush her legs by the hour.
-
-Expressionism is to express skilfully the seething reactions of the
-contemporary European consciousness. Cornucopia. In at the small end
-and--blui! Kandinsky.
-
-But it's a fine thing. It is THE thing for the moment--in Europe. The
-same sort of thing, reversed, in America has a water attachment to be
-released with a button. That IS art. Everyone agrees that IS art.
-Just as one uses a handkerchief.
-
-It is the apotheosis of relief. Dadaism in one of its prettiest modes:
-_rien, rien, rien_.--But wait a bit. Maybe Dadaism is not so weak as one
-might imagine.--One takes it for granted almost without a thought that
-expressionism is the release of SOMETHING. Now then Aemilius, what is
-European consciousness composed of?--Tell me in one word.--_Rien, rien,
-rien_! It is at least very complicated. Oh very.
-
-You damned jackass. What do you know about Europe? Yes, what in Christ's
-name do you know? Your mouth is a sewer, a cloaca.
-
-Complicated consciousness quite aside from a possible revaluation. It
-has no value for ME. It is all very interesting and God knows we have
-enough to learn. The swarming European consciousness. But there it is
-much simpler--No good to us.
-
-Swarming European consciousness: Kreisler and Ysaye were the only ones
-with any value. They had a few pennies over and above expenses. They
-swarm here now for something to eat. But the funniest are the ones from
-Russia; each excoriates the playing of the other and calls the other a
-Sheeny. Wow!
-
-Really you are too naive. They are merely reacting to the American
-atmosphere--It is their work that counts. And besides a virtuoso is not
-really creative in any serious sense. Would a great artist, say
-Kandinsky--? In any case it all seems to preoccupy you so, and in a book
-about America, really--
-
-Take their work. I resent it all. I hate every symphony, every opera as
-much as a nigger should hate _Il Trovatore_. Not perhaps hate it in a
-purely aesthetic sense but from under. It is an impertinence. Where in
-God's name is our Alexander to cut, cut, cut, through this knot.
-
-Europe is nothing to us. Simply nothing. Their music is death to us. We
-are starving--not dying--not dying mind you--but lean-bellied for words.
-God I would like to see some man, some one of the singers step out in
-the midst of some one of Aida's songs and scream like a puma.
-
-But you poor fellow, you use such inept figures. Aida has been dead
-artistically in Munich for fifty years.
-
-Wagner then--Strauss. It is no difference to me. Tear it all apart.
-Start with one note. One word. Chant it over and over forty different
-ways.
-
-But it would be stupid--
-
-It would, if it were what I mean--it would be accurate. It would
-articulate with something. It would signify relief. Release I mean. It
-would be the beginning.
-
-Do not imagine I do not see the necessity of learning from Europe--or
-China but we will learn what we will, and never what they would teach
-us. America is a mass of pulp, a jelly, a sensitive plate ready to take
-whatever print you want to put on it--We have no art, no manners, no
-intellect--we have nothing. We water at the eyes at our own stupidity.
-We have only mass movement like a sea. But we are not a sea--
-
-Europe we must--We have no words. Every word we get must be broken off
-from the European mass. Every word we get placed over again by some
-delicate hand. Piece by piece we must loosen what we want. What we will
-have. Will they let it go? Hugh.
-
-I touch the words and they baffle me. I turn them over in my mind and
-look at them but they mean little that is clean. They are plastered with
-muck out of the cities.--
-
-We must imitate the motivation and shun the result.
-
-We are very few to your many--
-
-But what is all this but waste energy.
-
-No it is not. It is as near as I can come for the present to the word.
-What good to talk to me of Santayana and your later critics. I brush
-them aside. They do not apply. They do not reach me any more than a
-baby's hand reaches the moon. I am far under them. I am less, far less
-if you will. I am a beginner. I am an American. A United Stateser. Yes
-its ugly, there is no word to say it better. I do not believe in
-ugliness. I do not want to call myself a United Stateser but what
-in--but what else am I? Ugliness is a horror to me but it is less
-abhorrent than to be like you even in the most remote, the most minute
-particular. For the moment I hate you, I hate your orchestras, your
-libraries, your sciences, your yearly salons, your finely tuned
-intelligences of all sorts. My intelligence is as finely tuned
-as yours but it lives in hell, it is doomed to eternal--perhaps
-eternal--shiftings after what? Oh to hell with Masters and the rest of
-them. To hell with everything I have myself ever written.
-
-Here's a man wants me to revise, to put in order. My God what I am doing
-means just the opposite from that. There is no revision, there can be no
-revision--
-
-Down came the rain with a crash. For five days it had been pending. With
-a loud splash it seemed to strike the earth as if it were body meeting
-body. The poplar leaves swirled and swirled. The gutters were wedged
-with water.
-
-Oh fool you are thicker than rain drops.
-
-Give me to Moussorgsky. I am tired. Take me to the opera tonight and let
-me see Nijinsky dance his _Til Eulenspiegel_ for I am tired to death
-with looking for sense among American poets. Igor will retrieve my
-courage. I could sit and listen in his lap for ever. Were not the
-American Indians Mongols? Oh they must have been. Why could they not
-have been Chinese? Why could not the early Emperors have discovered
-America? Tell me, wet streets, what we are coming to, we in this
-country? Are we doomed? Must we be another Europe or another Japan with
-our coats copied from China, another bastard country in a world of
-bastards? Is this our doom or will we ever amount to anything?
-
-Drown me in pictures like Marsden, make me a radical artist in the
-conventional sense. Give me the intelligence of a Wells. God, Hueffer is
-so far beyond him that what Wells says really sounds sensible.
-
-Must it be a civilization of fatigued spirits? Then give me Hueffer. My
-God it is too disgusting.
-
-Great men of America! O very great men of America please lend me a penny
-so I wont have to go to the opera.
-
-Why not capitalise Barnum--?
-
-_Bravo, bravo mon vieux_! A noble apostrophe to your country but don't
-you realize that it is not a matter of country but the time--The time.
-
-For God's sake Charlie bring a lemon pie.
-
-So they lay in the little brook and let the cold water run up their bare
-bellies.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-In spite of the moon in mid sky and the plaster of dully shining leaves
-on the macadam and all the other signs of the approach of fine weather
-there rang in his head: Such a cuddle muddle: Is that modern German
-poetry? I never saw such a lot of things mixed together under one title.
-These are modern times, Pa, airships and automobiles; you cover space--
-
-And that's all right--
-
-O America! Turn your head a little to the left please. So. Now are you
-ready? Watch my hand. Now: _Lohengrin_ in ITALIAN, SUNG AT
-MANHATTAN--San Carlo Company Revives Wagner Opera, with Anna Fitziu as
-Elsa.
-
-Sweet kisses that come in the night--O argyrol!
-
-Rain, rain, for three days and three nights.
-
-In the night a cesura. Suddenly the fire bell begins to ring. I wake
-with a start and hear the small boy calling from the next room. Eight
-thousand people wake and count the strokes of the black bells. It is not
-our signal. Someone has been set afire. The engines pass with a crash
-and roar of the exhausts. Their siren whistles shriek with a fortissimo
-rise and fall. In a thousand beds men of forty, women of thirty eight,
-girls in their teens, boys tired from football practice and little boys
-and girls down to babyhood wake and think the same thoughts. They listen
-and count the number of strokes, and sink back saying to themselves:
-Fire! Presently all but the few who are immediately affected are again
-asleep. The fire has burnt itself out. Slowly the sun has been crossing
-Europe and will soon appear fresh from the sea with his benison. The tie
-of that black thought in the night will be broken. The opportunity will
-be lost forever. Each will rise and dress and go out into the rain on
-whatever errand the day has chosen for him.
-
-Rain all day long. The sun does not appear. The heat is suffocating. The
-rattle of the torrent fills the ears. Water is everywhere.
-
-In the night a wind wakens. It comes from the south-west about midnight
-and takes the trees by their heavy leaves twisting them until they
-crack. With a roar the wind batters at the houses, shaking them as if it
-were a heavy hand. And again for the second night running eight thousand
-men and women and boys and girls wake and listen or get up to close
-windows and to look out at the trees leaning with snapping branches,
-tossing and seething with a sound of escaping steam. It has grown cold.
-Pull up the covers. It has grown cold. Sixteen thousand hands have drawn
-the covers closer about the bodies. The wind is cold.
-
-The sun has come back. The air is washed clean. Leaves lie plastered
-upon the streets, against the tree trunks, upon the very house sides.
-The bird bath is filled to overflowing. A lame man is hurrying for the
-train.
-
-They had talked for hours. The new project was beginning to take form.
-It was the evening of the second day. There stood the train puffing out
-great volumes of dense smoke which no sooner arose than it was caught in
-the wind and sent flying out ahead of the train. I wish to God I were on
-that train wherever it might be going. Oh well, remarked the younger man
-and said good-bye, which is what it is to be a man.
-
-He was too old, remarked the voice in the room next to the one in which
-the woman was lying, he never should have gone out in that rain. Too
-cold! At times it seems possible, even now. She took the hair between
-her thumb and index finger of the right hand and using her left hand
-swiftly stroked the little hair strands back toward the head to make it
-stand out. Ratting it, I told her. It ruins the hair. Oh well I haven't
-much left, it might as well be broken.
-
-She wore blue stockings under a very quiet dress but the world has not
-beheld a more maddening spectacle. Devoted to the art of writing, he
-read with his mind watching her and his mind in the sky seeking, seeking
-some earth to stand on when the boys were tearing up the soggy turf
-with their cleats. What to do? There it is. The wind hesitated whether
-or not to impregnate her. So many things were to be considered. In the
-years since his passage over Ponce de Leon's soldiers on the beach--the
-wind footloose, gnawing the leaves had witnessed flying footballs that
-it had blown out of bounds. He had not a word to stand on, yet he stood,
-not knowing why. Fear clutched his heart. Visions of uprooted trees
-passed over his heart as he shook her heavy skirt about her knees. But
-she, oblivious to it all, walked with downcast eyes--looking at her feet
-or smiling pleasantly at one here and there in the crowd that was
-shouting and pressing to see the players.
-
-In the night all nature was asleep as she lay with her young cheek
-pressed against her pillow and slept. The boys tossed and turned from
-the stiffness in their joints and from the bruises received in the game.
-But she lay quiet and asleep, the breath coming slowly in regular flow
-from her hollow nostrils moving them slightly back and forth.
-
-Under the covers her young form could be made out, the left shoulder,
-the hips and the legs and feet, the left knee slightly bent and fallen
-to the mattress before the other. Not a sound in the room for a million
-years. Still she lay there asleep.--The wind has turned into hail.
-
-Spring flowers are blossoming in the wind. There is the tulip, the
-jonquil and the violet--for it is September and no man shall know his
-defeat. So there are spring flowers that grew up through the ice that
-will be present later. It is of ice that they have made the flowers.
-
-Yet sometimes it seems that it would still be possible. And this is
-romance: to believe that which is unbelievable. This is faith: to desire
-that which is never to be obtained, to ride like a swallow on the
-wind--apparently for the pleasure of flight.
-
-The swallow's bill is constructed in such a way that in flying with his
-mouth open tiny insects that enter are ensnared in hairlike gills so
-that he is fed.
-
-Here are a pretty pair of legs in blue stockings, feed. Yet without the
-thought of a possible achievement that would make it possible to command
-the achievement of certain--The boys kick the ball and pay no attention.
-The boys kick the ball up into the wind and the wind hurriedly writes a
-love note upon it: Meet me tonight. Say you are going to the Library and
-I will have my car at the corner of Fern Street. I have something to
-tell you. There is one word you must hear: YOU.
-
-There is one word you must hear. It will come out at my lips and enter
-in at your ears. It might be written with letters on white paper but it
-is a word that I want you to have out of the lips into your ear. And she
-answers: I will be there. So he does not keep his appointment. Off he
-goes in search of a word.
-
-But she goes home and weeps her eyes out. Her pillow is wet with her
-tears--
-
-What do you think! He has left his wife, and a child in the high school
-has been ill a week, weeping her eyes out and murmuring his name. Is it
-not terrible?
-
-It is the wind! The wind is in the poplars twiddling the fading leaves
-between his fingers idly and thinking, thinking of the words he will
-make, new words to be written on white paper but never to be spoken by
-the lips to pass into her ear.
-
-Quietly he goes home to his wife and taking her by the shoulder wakes
-her: Here I am.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Nuevo Mundo! shouted the sailors. The sea was rippling like the bottom
-of a woven grassrope chair. A new world! Taking out their finest satins
-and putting on new armor the commanders of the little party ordered
-boats to be made ready and the royal standards of Aragon and Castile to
-be taken into men meanwhile feeling the balmy air and seeing green and a
-shore for the first time in two months were greedily talking of fresh
-fruit--after their monotonous and meager diet of meat--of milk, of a
-chance to walk free in the air, to escape their commanders, and of
-women. Yes perhaps there would be women, beautiful savages of manifold
-charms. But most of all they were filled with the wild joy of release
-from torment of the mind. For not one among them but expected to be
-eaten by a god or a monster long since or to have been boiled alive by
-a hypertropical sea. Excitedly they went down the ladders and took their
-places at the words of the boatswain spoken in the Castilian tongue.
-
-Of Columbus' small talk on that occasion nothing remains but it could
-not have been of Eric the Discoverer. Nor of the parties of Asiatics and
-Islanders--Pacific Islanders who had in other ages peopled the
-continents from the east. No matter: _Nuevo Mundo_! had shouted the
-sailors and _Nuevo Mundo_ it was sure enough as they found out as soon
-as they had set foot on it and Columbus had kneeled and said prayers and
-the priest had spoken his rigmarole in the name of Christ and the land
-was finally declared taken over for Ferdinand and Isabella the far
-distant king and queen.
-
-Yes it was indeed a new world. They the product of an age-long
-civilization beginning in India, it is said, and growing through
-conquest and struggle of all imaginable sorts through periods of success
-and decline, through ages of walkings to and fro in the fields and woods
-and the streets of cities that were without walls and had walls and
-burst their walk and became ruins again; through the changes of speech:
-Sanscrit, Greek, Latin growing crooked in the mouths of peasants who
-would rise and impose their speech on their masters, and on divisions,
-in the state and savage colonial influences, words accurate to the
-country, Italian, French and Spanish itself not to speak of Portuguese.
-Words! Yes this party of sailors, men of the sea, brothers of a most
-ancient guild, ambassadors of all the ages that had gone before them,
-had indeed found a new world, a world, that is, that knew nothing about
-them, on which the foot of a white man had never made a mark such as
-theirs were then making on the white sand under the palms. _Nuevo
-Mundo_!
-
-The children released from school lay in the gutter and covered
-themselves with the fallen poplar leaves.--A new world! All summer the
-leaves had been thick on the branches but now after the heat and the
-rain and the wind the branches were beginning to be bare. More sky
-appeared to their eyes than ever before. With what relief the children
-had pranced in the wind! Now they lay half covered in the leaves and
-enjoying the warmth looked out on the new world.
-
-And he was passing and saw them. And wondered if it were too late to be
-Eric. What a new world they had made of it with their Cortezes, their
-Pizarros yes and their Lord Howes, their Washingtons even. The
-Declaration of Independence. I wonder, he said, whether it could be
-possible that the influence of the climate--I wonder if the seed, the
-sperm of that, existed in Columbus. Was it authentic? Is there a word
-to be found there? Could it be that in those men who had crossed, in the
-Norse as; well as the Mongols, something, spontaneous could not have
-been implanted out of the air? Or was the declaration to be put to the
-credit of that German George? Was it only the result of local
-conditions?
-
-"A new declaration of independence, signed by Columbus, found in Porto
-Rico."
-
-Indians in any case, pale yellow and with lank black hair came to the
-edge of the bushes and stared: The Yaquis territory lay north of the
-river Fuertes. To the south was Carrancista territory. The valley was,
-fertile, the Indians wanted it.
-
-During the week of November 13th, 17th, 1916--word reached Los Mochis
-that Gen. Banderas and the Villistas from Chihuahua had been defeated by
-the Carrancistas near Fuertes and were in retreat. During this week two
-Indians were captured by Los Mochis police and hung on willow trees
-below the Jaula.
-
-On Saturday November 13th, Col. Escobar and his Carrancistas of the
-Fifth regiment of Sinaloa were withdrawn from Los Mochis and Aguila and
-concentrated in San Blas. Banderas and his Villistas meanwhile had come
-down the Fuertes, effected a junction with Bacomo and his Mayo Indians,
-and Monday night crossed the river above Los Tastos, tore out the
-telephone at the pumps and started for Los Mochis. All gate keepers
-encountered on the road were killed as were their families. Mr. Wilcox
-estimated the combined forces participating in the raid and on the other
-side of the river at 6,000.
-
-The first intimation of the raid was at one o'clock in the morning of
-Tuesday when with a "_Villa! Vive Villa! Vive Villa_!" the raiders
-swarmed into Los Mochis from three sides, shooting cursing as they
-galloped into town. From all over the town came the sound of smashing
-doors and windows, shots, yells and screams.
-
-When I came here the Indians all used bows and arrows. Conscripted
-during the many revolutions they had deserted with their rifles until at
-last, after 800 of them, in a body, went over they used the rifle
-extensively. Wilcox lived at the pumps with his wife and daughter. A
-cocky Englishman, he poopooed the danger. He had been in the habit of
-telephoning into the town, seven miles, whenever a raid was coming. It
-was agreed we Americans were to keep to our houses, take our animals off
-the roads and wait with more or less excitement until it was over. We
-never notified the Mexicans. Had we done so once we should not have
-escaped the next raid. This time the Villistas were with the Indians. As
-you saw the first thing they did was to rip out the wires. Washington
-had just accepted Carranza as the power in authority and the Villistas
-were angry.
-
-Wilcox and his wife and daughter were locked in a room all the first
-night while Banderas and Bacomo argued over their fate. Banderas was for
-killing Wilcox and taking over his wife and daughter for camp women. But
-the Indian stood out against him. It seems Wilcox had at one time given
-the Indians some sacks of beans when they were hard up for food. They
-remembered this. It was a good thing for the three.
-
-At a previous raid an American engineer living near Wilcox was found
-dead. He was supposed to have run. Looked just like a pin-cushion, with
-the feathered arrows that were in him. Funniest thing you ever saw in
-your life. There were four bullets in him also.
-
-The Americans were too scattered to resist. It was decided to save the
-few guns by hiding them. Bacomo rode up to the house with his
-escort,--ordered to give up all guns and cartridges. At the last moment
-he turned back from the stairs, entered Mrs. Johnson's room where the
-ladies were sitting on the beds and ordered them to get up. Under the
-mattress a miscellaneous collection of riot guns, rifles, shot guns,
-automatics, pistols and cartridges were found. When all the guns and
-cartridges to the last shell had been loaded on the horses behind the
-drunken soldiers Bacomo refused C.'s request for one of the riot guns
-and with a polite bow and a "_Con permiso, senores_," he rode off.
-
-In Mr. Johnson's cellar they had found all sorts of bottles from Scotch
-to German _Scheiswasser_ and had drunk it all indiscriminately.
-
-Cattle had eaten the standing rice. The pigs had got loose and over-run
-everything. Returning there were corpses on all sides. About one of
-these a triple battle raged. The pigs were ranged on one side, the dogs
-on another and from a third a flock of vultures crept up from time to
-time. The pigs and dogs would make a united rush at the birds who would
-fly a few feet into the air and settle a yard or so away.
-
-These pictures are of Bacomo taken a year later just as he was being
-taken from the train by his captors. He was a physical wreck at the time
-but at the time of the raid he was a magnificent specimen of a man. It
-seemed there was some silver buried near Los Mochis which they wanted.
-He would not disclose its whereabouts unless they freed him and they
-would not free him unless he spoke first.
-
-The end is shown in this picture. Here he is with the pick and spade at
-his feet surrounded by the Carrancista soldiers. He dug his grave and
-was shot and they buried him there.
-
-The Indians have made a local saint of him and every night you will see
-candles burning on the spot and little plates of rice and other food
-placed there for his spirit.--
-
-For a moment Columbus stood as if spell-bound by the fact of this new
-country. Soon however he regained his self-possession and with Alonzo
-Pinzon ordered the trunks of trifles to be opened which, being opened,
-the Indians drew near in wonder and began to try to communicate with
-these gods.
-
-It was indeed a new world.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-No man can tell the truth and survive--save through prestige. And no
-child either. Aristocracy is license to tell the truth. And to hear it.
-Witness the man William in Henry Fifth, the camp incident. Fear clutched
-at his heart.
-
-Agh-ha-ha! Shouted the _vaqueros_ plunging their spurs into the
-bronchos' sides. Up with the heels. Buck, buck, buck. Agh-ha-ha!
-_Fortissimo_. The wild and unexpected cry out of the Mexican Indian
-country rang through the quiet house so that the pup leaped up and
-rushed to the door.
-
-Someone had taken the apple. Both denied they had had a hand in it. Each
-accused the other. The truth did not appear. For an hour the man tried
-his best to arrive at a just decision. Joseph Smith shook where he stood
-and fell frothing at the mouth. He was of Vermont mountain stock. His
-birth among the poor white trash there had not even been thought worth
-recording. Yet a vision came to him of the marriage in Cana. Christ
-drank the wine and Martha and Mary her sister became his wives--so to
-speak. It is the truth. The world shall be saved anew, said Joseph Smith
-in the mountains of Vermont--where the mushrooms are so plentiful among
-the fir trees.
-
-Who had given the boy the apple against the father's express orders? Had
-he taken it himself--which he denied or had the girl gone into the store
-room--as he asserted but which she denied--and selected it herself?
-Where was the truth?
-
-In Illinois Brigham Young was recruited. Off they set with fifty oxen
-for the Promised Land away over the prairies and deserts--through the
-Sioux country, in search of Zion. The whole world they would leave
-behind and for the truth's sake they would live in that far country--to
-be discovered, to which the Lord would lead them.
-
-Go upstairs sir and take your clothes off. You shall go to bed for this
-lie--I'll say I took the apple Daddy, said the boy sobbing violently,
-but she gave it to me. In minute detail he repeated the story of how the
-apple was picked out of the basket by the girl and handed to him to eat.
-
-Lions of the Lord. The boy would not give up his bride to Brigham and
-was _altered_, as a rebel. She went mad. In '49 a party of gold seekers
-came by accident into the valley they had found. They were gently
-received. A warning was given of hostile Indians and a special guard was
-appointed to conduct them safely on their way. But Brigham had had a
-dream. Men must not wander into the valley of Zion to disturb the ways
-of God's holy ones. A blood sacrifice had been demanded of Brigham by
-the Lord. John D. Lee was selected as he who must lend himself to the
-Almighty will of God for the good of the church and state. Slowly the
-party of gold seekers departed for California. At the narrow defile at
-Mountain Meadow the treacherous business was performed. All but a child
-were killed and Brigham and the Lord were revenged. Later John D. Lee
-was convicted of murder by government authorities and shot. A poor
-ignorant tool in the hands of that most mighty Lion of the Lord.
-
-And you my girl. You have lied to me before this. Did you or did you not
-take the apple? No one will be punished but I must have the truth.
-Tomorrow is Sunday. You shall go to church, and up to the minister you
-shall march, and he will ask you what I am asking you now. In the face
-of God you shall say to him that you did not take that apple, then I
-shall know. Did you or did you not take that apple? I will have the
-truth. And you my young sir, I shall not punish you but I must have the
-truth. You shall stay in bed all day tomorrow, all next week as long as
-it takes for one of you to change your story. I will have the truth.
-
-The mountains are savage about the valley. The lake is bitter, scalding
-with the salt. They knew they had found the Dead Sea. At last the child
-confessed, with bitter and hard tears that he had taken the fruit
-himself. It was the truth.
-
-Clear and cold the moon shone in the partly denuded poplars. It was
-midnight and the little fellow to whom he had determined to teach the
-meaning of the truth was snug in his bed. Years before that Utah had
-been admitted to the Union as a state and polygamy had been more or less
-abandoned. The young folk were beginning to be ashamed of the narrowness
-of their cult and the bones of the fathers were rotten.
-
-The glassy half moon in the dark leaves cast a dull light over the world
-upon which a calm had descended. Suddenly the pleiades could be heard
-talking together in Phœnician. Their words were clear as dropping
-water: What things they do in this new world: they said. Let us from now
-on swear to each other that we will give up every thought of wisdom and
-seek no further for the truth--which is, after all a veritable moon.--At
-this the moon was overcast for a moment by a falling leaf. The answer
-that came from that clear but broken ball rose slowly toward the stars:
-The child is asleep. Let us warn him of the folly of words. Let us bless
-him only with words that change often and never stiffen nor remain to
-form sentences of seven parts. To him I send a message of words like
-running water.--At this the stars smiled for they were married to one--
-
-_Elena, yo soy un_ wonder, she would say. _Vu par le jury_. And who is
-the jury but myself. The boy had struck her with a stone. Come we shall
-go and apologise, said Brigham Young. Into the neighbour's kitchen they
-walked. An older sister was cleaning the gas range. Where is your
-sister? But the truth is that all the while he had been hoping that just
-what had happened would happen. His eye ran up and down the girl's form.
-Secretly he was happy to have found her alone. I'm sorry, I will never
-do it again, Never again. Never again. Oh never, never again.
-
-And how can I, now that it is all over, and I am old? But at first I
-tell you I cried my eyes out. I had just been admitted to the Beaux
-Arts. All was as near perfect as could well be. I had the friendship of
-La Baronne d'Orsay and then the stars withdrew their aid. I had to go
-back to Porto Rico. I had to leave everything behind to go back to that
-country where there was nothing.
-
-There life ended. But it is over now. I was just beginning to do things.
-I tell you I cried my eyes out. But I am old now. I wanted you to see
-these drawings, to show you it was not a bluff.
-
-The Indians are gone. It is late now. It is cold. September is over.
-October is cold. Words should be--Words should be--I am tired to death.
-
-But two enormous women, middle aged, dignified, with still broad backs
-came down the street just as the very dirty little boy was crossing
-over. The three arrived at the entrance to the path at the same moment.
-The women looked hard at the filthy little boy whose face was stickily
-from apple-juice and black, with a great circle of dirt around the
-mouth. The women looked and the little boy hung his head and stumbled
-off into the long grass, almost falling into the abandoned foundation.
-
-And so the little company went on foot 20,000 miles along what later
-became known as Emigration Trail, overcoming incredible obstacles,
-eating the draught oxen, through savage mountains on, on to the Mountain
-Meadow Massacre. For they would worship the Lord their God in peace and
-in their own way. At last the Mayflower was in the harbor and the
-pilgrims had landed and dispersed.
-
-Yes, it was a New World.
-
-But they have prospered and today the Mormon Church is all for goodness
-and it is powerful and rich.
-
-A favorite trick of the Mayo Indians is, if they meet a man with good
-clothes, to take what they want and let him go on in his drawers.
-
-So it was with infinite satisfaction that on looking up the little boy
-saw those two terrible viragos suddenly as low as he. _Nuevo Mundo_.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Calang-glang! Calang-glang! went the bells of the little Episcopal
-Church at Allandale. It was eight o'clock in the evening. A row of cars
-stood along the curb, each with its headlights lit, but dimmed so as not
-to make too much of a glare on the road, at the same time to save the
-battery while complying with the law!
-
-On sped the little family all crowded into one seat, the two children
-sleeping.
-
-In the Dutch church on the old Paramus Road Aaron Burr was married to
-Mrs. Prevost, Jataqua! It is near Hohokus, cleft-in-the-rocks, where the
-Leni Lenapes of the Delaware nation had their village from time
-immemorial. Aaron, my darling, life begins anew! It is a new start. Let
-us look forward staunchly together--
-
-The long, palm-like leaves of the ailantus trees moved slowly up and
-down in the little wind, up and down.
-
-And along this road came the British. Aaron, the youth from Princeton,
-gathered his command together and drove them back. Mother I cannot sleep
-in this bed, it is full of _British soldiers_. Why so it is! How horrid.
-
-And he too, on his memorable retreat, that excellent judge of
-horseflesh, George Washington, he too had passed over this road; and
-these trees, the oldest of them, had witnessed him. And now the wind has
-torn the finest of them in half.
-
-Nothing more wonderful than to see the pears attached by their stems to
-the trees. Earth, trunk, branch, twig and the fruit: a circle soon to be
-completed when the pear falls. They had left at eleven and soon they
-would be home. The little car purred pleasantly to itself at the thought
-of the long night. Oh, to be a woman, thought the speeding mechanism.
-For they had wrapped something or other in a piece of newspaper and
-placed it under the seat and there were pictures there of girls--or
-grown women it might be, in very short skirts. Steadily the wheels spun
-while on the paper were printed these words:
-
-The Perfection of Pisek-designed Personality Modes: A distinctly forward
-move in the realm of fashion is suggested by the new personality modes,
-designed by Pisek... modes that are genuine inspirations of individual
-styling, created for meeting the personal preferences of a fastidiously
-fashionable clientele, the woman and the miss who seek personality in
-dress in keeping with their charms, characteristics and station . . .
-Thus you can expect at Pisek's only those _tailleurs_, gowns, wraps and
-frocks that bear the unmistakable stamp of individuality--styles that
-encourage and inspire admiration for their splendid simplicity and
-differentness... come to Pisek's . . . (the more the better) . . . see
-the new ideas in fashions . . . You'll not be disappointed . . .
-
-What chit of a girl could have appreciated you, my darling boy, as I do.
-A man of your personality, so fresh in wit, so brimming with vigor and
-new ideas. Aaron my dear, dear boy, life has not yet begun. All is new
-and untouched in the world waiting, like the pear on the tree, for you
-to pluck it. Everyone loves you and will wait on you. For you everything
-is possible. Bing! and Hamilton lies dead.
-
-As old Mr. Goss, who lost his hearing from an explosion of fireworks in
-Philadelphia after Lee's defeat, has said in his high nasal twang: Quite
-right, quite right, I've seen the country saved 8 times in the last
-fifty years.
-
-At any rate it was a new world to them; they two together would conquer
-and use, life had smiled upon them. _Nuevo Mundo_.
-
-Along the road the Dutch settlers came out from their attractive brown
-stone houses as the happy and distinguished couple went by. It was a
-great day for the little colony of New Jersey. There over the misty
-meadows the lights of Weehawken were beginning to glimmer as the little
-car and its precious freight drew near the end of the journey. The pear
-fell to the earth and was eaten by the pigs.
-
-I wonder if he'll recognise me in my Greenwich Village honkie-tonk
-bobbed hair. The hairdresser said: Don't you do it, when I said I'd like
-mine bobbed too. So many of the girls had theirs done a year ago and now
-its just at that impossible stage where you can't do a thing with it.
-Better go to Europe or California until it grows again. There's a reason
-for travel: As the hair progresses the days grow fewer.
-
-But is South Africa after all the country of the future?
-
-Over the great spaces of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana he sped
-in the Pullman car. City after city swept up to him, paused awhile at
-his elbow and plunged away to the rear with the motion of a wheel whose
-hub was hidden in infinity. And such indeed was exactly the case. He was
-being ground between two wheels, one on either side of the car and it
-was their turning that thrust him forward at such speed. The wheat was
-up in the fields but a fellow passenger assured him that in Kansas, only
-two days before, he had seen wheat twice as high--which explains the
-cause of so many abandoned farms in Vermont, he remembered, and settled
-back to another hour of idle staring. A new country he kept saying to
-himself. On a siding were cars loaded with emigrants from Holland booked
-through to San Francisco.
-
-Into the elevator stepped the young man in a petty officer's uniform.
-His Spanish was exquisite to hear. The first battleship since the
-Spanish-American war was anchored in New York harbor. How well he bears
-himself. The Spanish are the only people in Europe whom civilization has
-not ruined. Savage men, big bearded chins--but shaved clean. They know
-how to treat their women--better than the French for the French--after
-all are _blagueurs_ to a man. The Spanish stand still. What an ass a man
-will make of himself in a strange country! In armor De Soto wandering
-haphazard over Alabama. The Seminoles for guides. Buried him in the
-Mississippi. It is my river, he said. Roll Jordan roll. It is _my_ river
-for I discovered it and into it let my body, in full armor, be put to
-rest. The cat-fish ate it. So roll Jordan roll. Diada Daughter of
-Discord: read it.
-
-In Illinois, far in the west, over that trackless waste of forest and
-mountain and river and lake they came at last to a valley that pleased
-them and there they determined to build. So they fell to hewing trees
-and building their houses, work to which they had been bred and trained
-for two generations since Plymouth and Salem days. Cornwallis had been
-beaten fifty years before and Pitt had rushed to see the King crying:
-All is lost. A new world had been born. Here in the primeval forest the
-little colony of New Englanders hoped to realize success and plenty.
-
-In Bonnie, Illinois, the Presbyterian minister is a very good man. He is
-as good a preacher as Bonnie can afford and if anybody said that Bonnie
-is made up of mad-men--He would be shot. _Nuevo Mundo_, shouted the
-sailors. But their cry was by now almost extinct.
-
-In polite stories the world had been made acquainted with the
-picturesque lives of these commonplace but worthy people. In detail
-their story had been told. Over the precipice in Yosemite the Bridal
-Veil Falls had been launching its water for a thousand years and
-ignorance was fattening his belly apace.
-
-Bonnie, Ill., October 22. Dear Bill: Am up to my ears in painting, and
-am preparing to go to Alton, Ill., to work in the State Hospital, if I
-get a call, so am too busy now to read your book but think I'm going to
-like it and will devour it later. Sincerely. A. N. Turner.
-
-And the little boy crept into the great chest like Peppo into the
-Cardinal's tomb and began to pick up the mothballs that had been left
-there when the winter things were removed.
-
-An Indian would sense the facts as he wished. A tree would speak to him
-with a definite identity. It would not at least seem endowed with human
-characteristics: a voice, that would be all.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Arnold, this wind is, the wise and sagacious captain. Henchman of the
-wind. The wind is a lion with hooked teeth. The saber-toothed tiger
-inhabited the region west of the Alleganies throughout the pleistocene
-age. With a snarl it wrenches the limbs of the trees from their places
-and tosses them to earth where they lie with the leaves still
-fluttering.
-
-Vacuous; full of wind. Her whole pelvis is full of intestine but aside
-from the ptosis I find nothing really wrong. The uterus appears to be
-normal. The bleeding may come from a cyst. At least there is no good
-reason for removing--for a hysterectomy. There it is. It. Like some
-tropical fruit color of the skunk cabbage flower. There it is, that
-mystical pear, glistening with the peritoneum. Here the cavern of all
-caverns. Alpha if not omega. Talk politely and obey the law. But do not
-remove it.
-
-Oh my country. Shall it be a hysterectomy? Arnold there is a wind with a
-knife's edge.
-
-And Remy says the spring of curiosity is broken at thirty. Nothing left
-at fifty but the facts of bed and table. He has the lilt of Heine at his
-best and in places quite equals the work of the author of Danny Deever.
-The catgut had slipped out of the needle. The young interne held the
-point of the suture between his fingers and the nurse approached the
-needle as accurately as she could. But the man's hand trembled slightly.
-For a moment they tried to complete the connection but failing in their
-attempt the nurse took the end in her other hand and soon had the needle
-threaded. The young doctor looked up as much as to say thank you.
-
-Such a wind. At fifteen they seem noble, desirable beyond dreams. In the
-winter the trees at least remain stems of wood that resist with a will,
-whose branches rebound against the impact of sleet. At thirty they are
-what they are. The boy rebels and she with her hair in distressed
-tangles about the disorderly boudoir cap, at mid-day, whines and
-snatches at him as he jerks and defies her. It is beyond her strength to
-control a boy of nine. Clutching her dressing sack--oh slobbery
-morsel--about her breastless form with one hand she rushes as far as she
-dares to the porch edge, glancing furtively about for chance gentlemen
-or neighbors and tries to overtake the youngster. No, the young man has
-really escaped. He goes to school filthy again and what will they think
-of his mother.
-
-At fifteen they are slender and coquettish and they cry if you are rough
-with them. Great burly fellow, she seemed to him all that he was not,
-the quintessence of Ibsenism, the wind among the reeds. Or perhaps the
-reed in the wind. Something to love, to take into the arms, to
-protect--If you can find any reason for doing a hysterectomy doctor, do
-it. Her husband is good for nothing at all. She at least is a power in
-her family. She is not like the native American women of her class, she
-is a Polock. You never saw such courage.
-
-The schooner left Southampton bound for New York with a cargo of
-rails--steel rails. But the English emigrants were not like these modern
-messes. Those round, expressionless peasant faces of today. See that one
-there with the little boy at her side. Castle Garden. At last we are to
-be in America, where gold is in the streets. Look at that face. That is
-the kind of immigration we want. Look at the power in that jaw. Look at
-that nose. She is one who will give two for every stroke she has to
-take. Look at the intensity of her gaze. Well, she's English, that's the
-reason. Nowadays they have no more of that sort. These Jews and Polocks,
-Sicilians and Greeks. Goodbye America!
-
-The head nurse's legs under her practical short skirt were like mighty
-columns. They held the seriousness of her looks, her steady, able hands.
-A fine woman.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The American background is America. If there is to be a new world Europe
-must not invade us. It is not a matter of changing the y to i as in
-Chile. They are bound.
-
-The background of America is not Europe but America.
-
-_Eh bien mon vieux coco_, this stuff that you have been writing today,
-do you mean that you are attempting to set down the American background?
-You will go mad. Why? Because you are trying to do nothing at all. The
-American background? It is Europe. It can be nothing else. Your very
-method proves what I say. You have no notion what you are going to write
-from one word to the other. It is madness. You call this the background
-of American life? Madness?
-
-As far as I have gone it is accurate.
-
-It is painting the wind.
-
-Ah, that would be something.
-
-_Mais ça_, are you a plain imbecile? That is a game for children. Why
-do you not do as so many of your good writers do? Your Edgar Lee
-Masters, your Winesburg, Ohio. Have you not seen the photographs of men
-and women on your walls? They are a type, as distinct as a Frenchman or
-a German. Study these men, know their lives. You have a real work to do,
-you have the talent, the opportunity even. This is your work in life.
-You Americans, you are wasteful, mad--
-
-Our background.
-
-You would paint the wind. Well, it has been tried--many times, and do
-you know where that leads?
-
-I know where it has led.
-
-But do you know? Have you seen, felt, heard what they have seen, felt,
-heard, our Villons--
-
-Apollo was out of breath but the nymph was more tired than he. The chase
-must soon have ended when she falling to her knees half from the will to
-be there half from fatigue besought her mistress Diana to save her from
-the God's desire. And she was changed into a laurel bush.
-
-All about the hills where they stood the hard waxen leaves of the laurel
-glistened above the dead leaves of the hardwood trees, the beech, the
-maple, the oak.
-
-You imagine I am French because I attack you from the continental
-viewpoint. You are wrong. I am from the country of your friends
-Mussorgsky, Dostoevsky, Chekov. At least if you will not yield me the
-point that America cannot be new, cannot do anything unless she takes
-the great heritage which men of all nations and ages have left to the
-human race.
-
-You mean that I should not be an American but--Turgenev, enjoy you more
-if, well, if you were more comprehensible, a little more particular,
-_vous comprenez_? You sweep out your arms, you--I see no faces, no
-details of the life, no new shape--
-
-The druggist's boy cannot be distinguished from his master when he says,
-Hello, over the phone--Is that what you mean?
-
-Well, you are very much children, you Americans.
-
-It is not to be avoided as far as I can see.
-
-Let us have now a beginning of composition. We have had enough of your
-improvisations.
-
-I am consumed by my lusts. No American can imagine the hunger I have.
-
-It is the itch, monsieur. It is neurasthenia. Desire is not a thing to
-speak of as if it were a matter of filling the stomach. It is wind, gas.
-You are empty my friend. Eat. Then and then only.
-
-Like all men save perhaps the Chinese you are most transparent when you
-imagine yourself most protected.
-
-Her bosom reached almost to her knees. That morning in the October
-garden she had picked a violet for him and placed it in his coat.
-Watching the feet of men and women as they touched the pavement a strong
-odor of violets crossed his path.
-
-He turned and saw the massive Jewess waddling by. It had been good
-perfume too.
-
-These Polocks. Their heads have no occiput. They are flat behind. It is
-why when they put on their American hats the things slip down about
-their ears. The nigger's head isn't that way. You know how the bump goes
-out behind in so many of them. The club sandwich on her plate kept
-sliding apart, the top slice of bread would slip. Then she took the
-pieces in her fingers and poked the lettuce in under the sheet. On her
-breast was a black pin. It formed a circle. She looked up with her mouth
-full of food and resting both elbows on the table chewed America
-thoughtfully while she held the state of Maryland in her firm fingers.
-The ends of each finger were stubby, the nails cut short and as clean as
-well manicured nails could well be. Clatter, clatter, clatter. He could
-see himself in the plate glass behind her. He was conscious of his hat
-which he had not removed. He was at this table with these five
-women--one of them young, ready--and he had not removed his hat. There
-was in fact no place to put it.
-
-I am begging, frankly. Ten cents a ticket. I have to raise fifty dollars
-by the end of next week. We want to fit up a room in our hall where the
-colored working girls can come and rest. On Thursdays we serve tea. Then
-they go back to the office. When the impact is over the man must think.
-I tell you I do not contemplate with relish seeing my children bred out
-of all these girls. Is it wrong? Well, I thought you said you had an
-appetite. Impregnate eighty of them, right and left as you see them here
-in this room. It would not be impossible. I cannot think of my children
-running about in the environment in which these have to live. My dear
-sir, you are a fool. You are lying to yourself--As to the girls, I
-frankly desire them. I desire many, many, many.
-
-There she sat on the bench of the subway car looking idly about, being
-rushed under the river at great speed to the kitchen of her mother's
-flat. Malodorous mother. Or wrinkled hard-put-to-it mother. Savior of
-the movies. After the impact his great heart had expanded so as to
-include the whole city, every woman young and old there he having
-impregnated with sons and daughters. For everyone loved him. And he knew
-how to look into their eyes with both passion and understanding. Each
-had taken him to her soul of souls where the walls were papered with
-editorials from the Journal and there he had made himself father to her
-future child. As they went upstairs he saw how her heels were worn--Who
-will understand the hugeness of my passion?
-
-But he had understood. The truth lay under the surface. Why then not--No
-two can remain together without training. Who better than that one who
-is practiced. The faithful husband of the clothing store madam is used
-to her. They functionate well together. He puts his hat in the right
-place. His money in the right bank. His arm fitted in just the posture
-best suited to their mutual height and width. All their practices were
-mated.
-
-But he was an outsider. He was new to all. Her shoes are stitched up the
-back.
-
-Card-index minds, the judges have. Socialism, immorality and lunacy are
-about synonyms to the judge. Property is sacred and human liberty is
-bitter, bitter, bitter to their tongues.
-
-Walk up the stairs there little girl. But she is naked! These are all
-doctors. So the little tot struggled up the very high clinic steps,
-naked as she was, and all the doctors looked at her. She had some spots
-on her body that had been there a year. Had I been her father I would
-know why I am a fool.
-
-Naked and free, free to be damned in to hell by a chance vagrant to whom
-she had taken a fancy. Her father did not know her. Did not even know
-that she existed. Cared less. We will look after her said the head
-doctor.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-That cat is funny. I think she'd be a good one for the circus. When
-she's hungry she bites your legs. Then she jumps at you as much as to
-say: _Carramba_, give me something.
-
-America needs the flamboyant to save her soul--said Vachel Lindsay to
-the indifferent mountains.
-
-He might have added that America tries to satisfy this need in strange
-and often uncatalogued ways. America, living an exemplary
-three-meals-a-day-and-bed-time life in a wall-papered home, goes now and
-then _en masse_, by Gosh, to the circus to see men, women and animals
-perform exquisite and impossible feats or daring. What could be more
-flamboyant than the trapeze-performer hurtling through the air, the
-tiger leaping through man-made hoops, or the elephant poising his mighty
-bulk on his two forelegs lifted to the top of bottles? What more
-flamboyant than the painted clown, timeless type of the race, laughing
-that he may not weep, grinning through a thousand tragic jests while
-little human beings perform their miraculous tricks around him?
-
-Jazz, the Follies, the flapper in orange and green gown and war-paint of
-rouge--impossible frenzies of color in a world that refuses to be drab.
-Even the movies, devoid as they are of color in the physical sense, are
-gaudy in the imaginations of the people who watch them; gaudy with
-exaggerated romance, exaggerated comedy, exaggerated splendor or
-grotesqueness or passion. Human souls who are not living impassioned
-lives, not creating romance and splendor and grotesqueness--phases of
-beauty's infinite variety--such people wistfully try to find these
-things outside themselves; a futile, often a destructive quest.
-
-The imagination will not down. If it is not a dance, a song, it becomes
-an outcry, a protest. If it is not flamboyance it becomes deformity; if
-it is not art, it becomes crime. Men and women cannot be content, any
-more than children, with the mere facts of a humdrum life--the
-imagination must adorn and exaggerate life, must give it splendor and
-grotesqueness, beauty and infinite depth. And the mere acceptance of
-these things from without is not enough--it is not enough to agree and
-assert when the imagination demands for satisfaction creative energy.
-Flamboyance expresses faith in that energy--it is a shout of delight, a
-declaration of richness. It is at least the beginning of art.
-
-All right go ahead: A TEXAS PRIZE CONTEST--The Southern Methodist
-University at Dallas, Texas, recently emerged from a prize contest which
-had a strange _dénouement_--
-
-Look here young man, after this you examine those girls in the cold
-weather.
-
-Who is Warner Fabian? _Flaming Youth_ is the story of the super-flapper,
-of her affairs at country clubs and cozy home-dances with all the
-accompaniments of prohibition stimulants. Warner Fabian believes that
-the youth of this country feeds on excitement and rushes to knowledge
-"heeled" by way of petting parties and the elemental stimulus of jazz.
-The barriers of convention are down. Youth makes its own standards and
-innocence, according to the author, has been superseded by omniscience.
-
-It doesn't matter that Warner Fabian is a _nom de plume_ which conceals
-the identity of one of the ablest scientists of this country who has
-dared to look facts in the face, facts physical, moral and emotional. He
-has written the truth about youth, the youth of today as he sees it.
-
-FLAMING YOUTH by Warner Fabian is the writing on the wall. It is the
-_Quo Vadis_? of the present moment.
-
-Those who are following in the Metropolitan Magazine the fortunes of
-Pat, the most sophisticated and yet at the same time one of the most
-deliciously lovely heroines of recent novels, and the fortunes of her
-two sisters, may protest that Mr. Fabian's portrayal of youth in this
-novel is outscotting Fitzgerald and overdancing in the Dark. We feel
-however that this story of three girls and their many men is one which
-may sufficiently frighten mothers and electrify fathers and hit the
-younger set hard enough between the eyes to help America's youth to, at
-least, a gradual return to sanity.
-
-And so the beginning of art ends in a gradual return to sanity.
-
-Today Modern scientific research has provided the most efficient agent
-for the treatment of local inflammation: DIONAL applied locally over the
-affected area acts promptly with prolonged effect. Drugless.
-Non-irritant. Non-toxic. Indicated in Mastitis, Burns, Boil,
-Tonsillitis, Mastoiditis, Sprain, Abscess, Bronchitis, Mumps, Contusion,
-Ulcers, Pneumonia.
-
-If a man died on a stretcher he simply said: Dump it out. And ordered us
-back for another load.
-
-Intended to stop at the school but his mind waylaid him. Down the hill
-came the ash-cart--on the wrong side of the street. He, up the hill,
-perforce went wrong also and with great headway. Just as he was about to
-pass the cart another car swung out from behind it, headed down hill at
-full speed. It was too late for any of the three to stop. In three
-seconds there would be death for someone. Angels would be waiting for
-mother's little boy. Without the minutest loss of time, in time with the
-Boston Symphony Orchestra at its best he swung far to the left, up over
-the curb, between two trees, onto the sidewalk--by luck no one was
-passing--and going fifty feet came back between two trees, over the curb
-to the roadway and continued his empty progress, rather hot in the face,
-it must be confessed. He felt happy and proud.
-
-But he had missed his street.
-
-Well let it go. Far away in front of him a locomotive stood
-indifferently at the avenue end, emitting great clouds of smoke. It was
-autumn, clear and cold.
-
-But you Scandinavians, said the Frenchman, it is impossible to live in
-this way. Why France, which is ten times as rich as your countries,
-could not do it. You do not know what money is for. You throw it away
-like a sickness. To drink champagne like this is madness, and it is
-every night, everywhere, in Christiania, Copenhagen, everywhere.
-
-And there she sits staring out, not at the sea, but over Long Island
-Sound. Dreaming of her sons--and of the money she will make next year
-by renting the better of her two little shacks.
-
-When you have paid up the twenty shares you may, if you like, retain
-them as paid up shares in which case you will receive the 5% interest,
-or, if you feel that you would like to do so, you may increase your
-holding to thirty shares and receive the 6%. Of course everyone is not
-able to do that. Do not worry about it, we will notify you in plenty of
-time when your book is balanced at the end of the six months.
-
-Let's see. What is the number of your house? Four eighty? I'll see that
-they send it right up.
-
-You know last Sunday was my birthday. Seventy-three years old. I had a
-party, a surprise party--my relatives came from all sides. But I
-couldn't get her downstairs. She's afraid. We had a banister put on the
-stairs, cost me nine dollars but she will not do it. She's so fat you
-know, she's afraid of falling.
-
-Re Commissions due--Amount $1.00. Dear Sir:--You will please take notice
-that unless we receive payment in full of your account within FIVE DAYS
-after receipt of this letter, we shall draw upon you for the amount due.
-
-A collection agency draft notifies the banks--those great institutions
-of finance--that there is serious doubt regarding the way you pay your
-honest obligations. The bank will take note of it. From there the
-information quietly passes to the various Mercantile Agencies, Dun's,
-Bradstreet's, Martindale's. And this is ONLY ONE cog in the wheel of
-ARROW SERVICE. Our reports cover the whole field of credit reporting.
-
-Your continued indifference to our requests for payment has forced us to
-consider this action. The draft, with a full history of the debt leaves
-our office in five days unless your check is received in the meantime.
-
-Let your better judgement guide you, and pay this account without any
-more trouble or expense. Yours very truly--MEMBERS: Retail Credit Men's
-National Association. Commercial Law League of America. Rotary
-International. O Rotary International!
-
-At this, De Soto, sick, after all the months of travel, stopped out of
-breath and looked about him. Hundreds of miles he had travelled through
-morass after morass, where the trees were so thick that one could
-scarcely get between them, over mountain and river but never did he come
-to the other side. The best he had done was to locate a river running
-across his path, the greatest he had ever seen or heard of, greater than
-the Nile, greater than the Euphrates, no less indeed than any. Here he
-had confronted the New World in all its mighty significance and
-something had penetrated his soul so that in the hour of need he had
-turned to this Mighty River rather than to any other thing. Should it
-come to the worst he had decided what to do. Out of the tangle around
-him, out of the mess of his own past the river alone could give him
-rest. Should he die his body should be given to this last resting place.
-Into it Europe should pass as into a new world.
-
-Near the shore he saw a school of small fish which seemed to look at
-him, rippling the water as they moved out in unison. Raising his heavy
-head De Soto gave the order to proceed. Four of the men lifted him on an
-improvised stretcher and the party, headed by the Indians, started again
-north along the bank.
-
-The whole country was strange to them. But there at the edge of that
-mighty river he had seen those little fish who would soon be eating him,
-he, De Soto the mighty explorer--He smiled quietly to himself with a
-curious satisfaction.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-It was a shock to discover that she, that most well built girl, so
-discrete, so comely, so able a thing in appearance, should be so stupid.
-There are things that she cannot learn. She will never finish school.
-Positively stupid. Why her little brother, no bigger than Hop o' my
-Thumb has caught up to her and will soon outstrip her. Her older brother
-is the brightest boy in the High School. She will I suppose breed stupid
-children. Plant wizards choose the best out of lots running into the
-millions. Choose here there everywhere for hybrids. A ten-pound white
-leghorn cockerel, hens that lay eggs big enough to spoil the career of
-any actor. She might though have bright children. What a pity that one
-so likely should be so stupid. Easier to work with but I should hate a
-child of mine to be that way. Excuses--Try first. Argue after. Excuses.
-Do not dare.
-
-There sat the seven boys--nine years old and there-abouts--planning
-dire tortures for any that should seduce or touch in any way their
-sisters. Each strove to exceed the other. Tying his antagonist to a tree
-Apollo took out his knife and flayed him. For sweet as the flute had
-been yet no man can play the flute and sing at the same time. But the
-God had first played his harp and then sung to his own accompaniment--a
-thing manifestly unfair. No doubt, his sense of being in the wrong
-whetted his lust for the other's hide. In any case he got what he was
-after. He was the winner and that was all there was about it.
-
-Each boy would think with a secret glow of a new torture: I would dip
-his hands in boiling lead--they often melted old pieces of lead in a
-plumber's pot over a field fire to make slugs for their bean
-shooters--then I would tie a rope to his feet and drag him on cinders
-etc.... each inventing a worse torture than that pictured before. And
-all for their sisters' virtue. So there under the east wall of the
-Episcopal Church they sat in a group on the grass and talked together
-for an hour.
-
-The real empire builders of our colonial period were not the statesmen,
-the men of wealth, the great planters but the unknown pioneers who
-fought single-handed and at once both the primeval wilderness and the
-lurking savage. The hand crooked to the ploughtail was shaped to the
-trigger.
-
-The Mesa Verde cliff dwellers--a much advanced race--formed a
-partnership with nature in the science of home building. Masterpieces of
-architecture, the survivals of the cliff dwellings tell the story of the
-ages.
-
-On the top of a point high above the steep cliffs stood Sun Temple, so
-called, scene of the great ceremonial dramas of the clan. The building
-is in the form of the letter D and many of the stones which make up the
-thousand-odd feet of walls are highly decorated.
-
-The corner stone of the building contains a fossil leaf of a palm tree.
-Influenced by anything which even in shape resembled the sun, the
-primitive people walled in the leaf on three sides and made a shrine.
-
-The word _bayeta_ is merely Spanish for _baize_. Great quantities of
-this were made in England for the Spanish and Mexican trade, the major
-part of which was of a brilliant red color. In this way English _baize_
-became Spanish _bayeta_ to the Indians of the American Southwest.
-Familiar with the art of weaving, these Indians unraveled the bayeta,
-retwisted it into one, two or three strands, and then rewove it into
-their blankets, which are now almost priceless. This old blanket was
-picked up by the author in a New Mexican corral, for the purpose of
-wiping his buggy axle. It was covered with filth and mud. A number of
-washings revealed this glorious specimen of the weaver's art.
-
-Accepted by a cultured and talented belle, Lincoln, according to his law
-partner, had already been refused by Sarah Rickard, an obscure miss of
-sixteen, of whom apparently nothing further is known.
-
-It was twelve feet from the rock into the water. As he stood looking
-down it seemed twenty. His eyes being five feet from his heels made it
-seem by that much higher than it was. He had never dived from such a
-height in his life. He had climbed up there to dive and he must dive or
-yield. What would he yield? At least it was something he did not intend
-to yield. He tried his best to imitate the others, he stood on the edge
-and plunged. It seemed to him that he plunged. As a matter of fact he
-dropped over the edge with his body bent almost double so that his
-thighs hit the water with a stinging impact, also the lower part of his
-belly, also the top of his head. He did not feel certain of himself for
-a moment or two after rising to the surface. That was about enough.
-Memory began to fill the blank of his mind.
-
-There it was still, the men around Mrs. Chain's table on Locust St.:
-$3.50 a week. A week? Yes, three-fifty a week. And that place in Leipzig
-where they had only half cooked fresh pork. _Schwein schlacherei_! Bah.
-One week was enough there. Fraulein Dachs, _pflaumen suppe_. That purple
-and sweet soup. The white cakes they sold on the station platform near
-Malaga, what were they called? It seemed to be some native bake peculiar
-to the place. The devil fish in a black sauce in Seville. Big lumps of
-dough, big as snowballs, _sauer braten_. But Mrs. Chain's prunes were
-the most wonderful. Watery tidbits. It was prunes or applesauce. Her
-daughter was simple I guess. Did her best to land one of the students,
-kept it up for twenty years. At that table I met one of my dearest
-friends. Will you have some bread? Yes. That look. It was enough. Youth
-is so rich. It needs no stage setting. Out went my heart to that face.
-There was something soft there, a reticence, a welcome, a loneliness
-that called to me. And he, he must have seen it in me too. We looked,
-two young men, and at once the tie was cemented. It was gaged accurately
-at once and sealed for all time. The other faces are so many prunes.
-
-Have you ever seen a dish of small birds all lying on their backs on the
-dish and with feet in the air, all roasted stiff but brown and savory?
-Rice birds I think they called them. Or snails or baked eggs?
-
-The old man raked slowly. It took him all day to finish the small lawn.
-But it was autumn and the leaves had fallen thickly. The bird bath was
-full of leaves. It was a sentimental picture. But after all why? The
-leaves must fall into every corner. If they fall into the bird bath that
-is all there is to it. Still it calls many things to the mind that are
-not evoked by the twingling of waves on a lake shore in August.
-
-Clark had taken a job as clerk at Pocono, and she was a Quakeress. They
-got to know each other very, very well. And this girl in the steamer
-chair, it was the cattle men who attracted her. Let her go then, he said
-tying the cord with a piece of gauze twisted into a rope. When you bathe
-the baby for the first time do not put him into a tub but sponge him off
-carefully before the fire with castile soap and warm water. Be careful
-not to get the soap into his eyes. Is it nitrate of silver they use for
-a baby's eyes?
-
-I could not tell whether it was a baby or a doll the little girl was
-coddling. The Italians' babies are often so very small. They dress them
-up so grotesquely too. It must be a rigid custom with them.
-
-Nothing at all. All at once it seemed that every ill word he had ever
-heard spoken struck his ear at the same moment. What a horrible roar it
-made. But there were other things, too many to record. Corners of rooms
-sacred to so many deeds. Here he had said so and so, done so and so. On
-that picnic he had dared to be happy. All the older women had watched
-him. With one girl under each arm he had let his spirit go. They had
-been closer than anything he could now imagine.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Particles of falling stars, coming to nothing. The air pits them, eating
-out the softer parts. Sometimes one strikes the earth or falls flaming
-into Lake Michigan with a great hiss and roar. And if the lawless mob
-that rules Ireland with its orderly courts and still more orderly minds
-will not desist it must be crushed by England. So that to realize the
-futility of American men intent upon that virtue to be found in
-literature, literature, that is, of the traditional sort as known in
-France and Prussia--to realize how each serious American writer in turn
-flares up for a moment and fizzles out, burnt out by the air leaving no
-literary monument, no Arc de Triomphe behind him, no India subdued--To
-realize this it is necessary to go back to the T'ang dynasty where
-responsibility rested solely on the heads of the poets--_etc., etc_...
-Or better still why not seek in Aleppo or Jerusalem for the strain to
-save us.
-
-America is lost. Ah Christ, Ah Christ that night should come so soon.
-
-And the reason is that no American poet, no American man of letters has
-taken the responsibility upon his own person. The responsibility for
-what? There is the fire. Rush into it. What is literature anyway but
-suffering recorded in palpitating syllables? It is the quiet after the
-attack. Picking a sliver of bone from his mangled and severed leg he
-dipped it in his own gore and wrote an immortal lyric. Richard Cœur de
-Lion shot through the chest with an iron bolt wrote the first
-English--no, French, poem of importance. What of democratic Chaucer? He
-was only a poet but Richard was a man, an adventurer, a king. The half
-mad women rush to impregnate themselves against him. And this is
-literature. This is the great desirable. Soaked in passion, _baba au
-rhum_, the sheer proof of the spirit will do the trick and America will
-be King. Up America. Up Cœur de Lion. Up Countess Wynienski the queen
-of Ireland.
-
-Polyphemus took first one shape then another but Odysseus, the wise and
-crafty, held firm. He did not let go but Polyphemus did. In fact the God
-could not exist without Odysseus to oppose him.
-
-Why man, Europe is YEARNING to see something new come out of America.
-
-In a soup of passion they would see a little clam. Let us smile. This
-is--
-
-The danger is in forgetting that the good of the past is the same good
-of the present. That the power that lived then lives today. That we too
-possess it. That true novelty is in good work and that no matter how
-good work comes it is good when it possesses power over itself. Europe's
-enemy is the past. Our enemy is Europe, a thing unrelated to us in any
-way. Our lie that we must fight to the last breathe is that it is
-related to us.
-
-We are deceived when they cry that negro music is the only true American
-creation. It IS the only true from the European point of view.
-Everything is judged from that point of view. But to us it is only new
-when we consider it from a traditional vantage. To us it means a
-thousand things it can never mean to a European. To us only can it be
-said to be alive. With us it integrates with our lives. That is what it
-teaches us. What in hell does it matter to us whether it is new or not
-when it IS to us. It exists. It is good solely because it is a part of
-us. It is good THEREFORE and therefore only is it new. Everything that
-is done in Europe is a repetition of the past with a difference.
-Everything we do must be a repetition of the past with a difference. I
-mean that if negro music is new in an absolute sense---which it is not
-by any means, if we are to consider the Ethiopian--the probable
-Ethiopian influence in Egypt--then it is new to Europe as it is to
-us.
-
-It is not necessary for us to learn from anyone but ourselves--at least
-it would be a relief to discover a critic who looked at American work
-from the American viewpoint.
-
-We are a young nation and have not had time or opportunity to catch up
-with nations that had ten centuries start of us. We still labor under
-the handicap of our Puritan lineage....
-
-We shall not be able to plead childhood any longer.
-
-Eric the Red landed in Providence, Long Island, and was put in a cage so
-everyone could see him.
-
-This sort of stupidity we have to combat. I am not talking of the mass
-of plumbers and carpenters. I am talking of the one thing that is
-permanent. Spirits. I am saying that America will screw whom it will
-screw and when and how it will screw. And that it will refrain from
-screwing when it will and that no amount of infiltration tactics from
-"superior civilizations" can possibly make us anything but bastards.
-
-We are only children when we acknowledge ourselves to be children.
-Weight of culture, weight of learning, weight of everything such as
-abandon in any sense has nothing to do with it. We must first isolate
-ourselves. Free ourselves even more than we have. Let us learn the
-essentials of the American situation.
-
-We who despise the blackguards in the old sense. We too are free. Free!
-We too, with paddles instead of turbines will discover the new world. We
-are able. We are kings in our own right.
-
-We care nothing at all for the complacent Concordites? We can look at
-that imitative phase with its erudite Holmeses, Thoreaus, and Emersons.
-With one word we can damn it: England.
-
-In Patagonia they kick up the skulls of the river men out of the dust
-after a flood. In Peru, in Machu Pichu the cyclopean wall on the top of
-the Andes remains to rival the pyramids which after all may have been
-built of blocks of some plaster stuff of which we have lost the
-combination.
-
-I know not a land except ours that has not to some small extent made its
-title clear. Translate this into ancient Greek and offer it to Harvard
-engraved on copper to be hung in the waterclosets which freshmen use.
-
-And why do they come to naught? these falling stars, etc.
-
-It has been generally supposed that among the peoples of the earth the
-age of maturity comes earliest in the tropics and increases gradually as
-one goes northward. But in North America this rule has one striking
-exception. It is not rare among Esquimau women that they have their
-first child at 12 and children born before the mothers were 11 have been
-recorded. Point Barrow Alaska 300 miles north of the Arctic circle.
-
-But the early maturity of the Esquimau girls is strictly in accord with
-the supposition that the hotter the environment the earlier the
-maturity. To all intents and purposes the typical Esquimau lives under
-tropical or subtropical conditions. The temperature of the Esquimau
-house indoors frequently rises to 90°. When they go out the cold air
-does not have a chance to come in contact with the body, except for the
-limited area of the face. When an Esquimau is well dressed his two
-layers of fur clothing imprison the body heat so effectively that the
-air in actual contact with his skin is always at the temperature of a
-tropical summer. He carries the climate about with him inside his
-clothes.
-
-When an Esquimau comes inside such a house as the one I have been
-speaking of he strips off all clothing, immediately on entering, except
-his knee breeches, and sits naked from the waist up and from the knees
-down. Great streams of perspiration run down the face and body and are
-being continually mopped up with handfuls of moss.
-
-The effect of the overheated houses is more direct upon the women than
-the men for they remain indoors a large part of the winter.
-
-Otherwise in North America among the Indians as one goes north from
-Mexico toward the arctic sea the colder the average temperature of the
-air that is in contact with the body through the year, the later the
-maturity of the girls. The most northerly of the Atabasca Indians appear
-to suffer a great deal from the cold.
-
-The Dog Rib and Yellow Knife Indians are often so poorly clad that they
-have to be continually moving, for if they stop for even half an hour at
-a time their hands become completely numb.
-
-In the evenings their wigwams are cheerful with a roaring fire but while
-one's face is almost scorched with the heat of the roaring flames one's
-back has hoar-frost forming upon it. At night the Indians go to sleep
-under their blankets covering up their heads and shivering all night.
-The average age of maturity of the girls of these tribes is as high or
-higher than that of north European whites.
-
-But north from the Slavey and Dog Rib Indians to the Esquimau country
-the conditions suddenly change. One comes in contact with a people that
-has a system of living almost perfectly adapted to a cold climate, while
-the northern Indians have a system almost unbelievably ill adapted to
-the conditions in which they live.
-
-In Puritan New England they wrapped the lover and his lass in one
-blanket and left them before the dying hearth after the family retired.
-There was a name for it which I have forgotten.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-It was another day ended. Another day added to the days that had gone
-before. Merest superstition. The eternal moment remained twining in its
-hair the flowers of yesterday and tomorrow. The newer street lights
-sparked in the dark. The uphill street which that morning had been
-filled at its far end with the enormous medal-with-rays of the sun was
-now flecked with sparkles. It was Carlstadt, established as a free
-thinker's corporation by Carl Weiss of Berne from which all churches had
-been excluded. Another day--any day--.
-
-There lay that great frame of a man with his heavy features relaxed his
-loose jowls rising and falling with each breath while the busy surgeons
-tinkered at his elbow. Soon they struck gold and out spurted the red.
-Martha, who had not gone downstairs for over an hour caught it in a
-white porcelain bowl, an ounce, two ounces--she thought--estimating the
-amount swiftly. Then four ounces, eight. He was a large man. When will
-they check it! His breathing had grown easier. He was benefited. A
-pint! He was white. In an hour men on horseback were riding north and
-south. Washington was dead. It was another day. Any day.
-
-Davy Crockett had a literary style. Rather than blow his squirrel to
-bits he'd strike the tree just under its belly so that the concussion
-would stun it. Such was the country with the element of time subtracted.
-What is time but an impertinence?
-
-Homesteading in the far western states was a struggle. Every child born
-there had a mother who is thrice a heroine. A woman in such a country
-approached motherhood at a time when her husband had to be away from
-home. Up to the day of her confinement she had to milk, churn, care for
-the chickens, work in the garden and carry water to the house from a
-well three hundred yards away... The day of her confinement she did a
-large washing then walked two miles to the home of a neighbor.
-
-For that the brat seized her by the lug with his little sharp teeth and
-drew blood. We'll have to put him on the bottle.
-
-Nothing, save for the moment! In the moment exists all the past and the
-future! Evolution--! Anti-peristalsis. Eighty-seven years ago I was born
-in a little village in the outskirts of Birmingham. The past is for
-those that lived in the past, the present is for today. Or--today! The
-little thing lay at the foot of the bed while the midwife--It was in
-England 1833. And now by the sea a new world death has come and left his
-chewing gum in an artery of her brain. But I'll pay you for this, she
-said as they were sliding her into the ambulance, I'll pay you for this.
-You young people think you are awfully smart, don't you. I don't want to
-see them again, those fuzzy things, what are they, trees?
-
-Good gracious, do you call this making me comfortable? The two boys had
-her on the stretcher on the floor. Yes, stay here a week then I can do
-what I please but you want to do what you please first. I wonder how
-much she planned.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Another day, going evening foremost this time. Leaning above her baby in
-the carriage was Nettie Vogelman, grown heavier since we knew her in the
-sixth grade twenty-five years before and balancing great masses of
-prehistoric knowledge on her head in the shape of a purple ostrichplume
-hat.
-
-But where is romance in all this--with the great-coat she was wearing
-hanging from the bulge of her paps to the sidewalk? Romance! When
-knighthood was in flower. Rome. Eliogabalus in a skirt married his man
-servant.
-
-We struggle to comprehend an obscure evolution--opposed by the true and
-static church--when the compensatory involution so plainly marked
-escapes our notice. Living we fail to live but insist on impaling
-ourselves on fossil horns. But the church balanced like a glass ball
-where the jets of evolution and involution meet has always, in its
-prosperous periods, patronised the arts. What else could it do? Religion
-is the shell of beauty.
-
-The fad of evolution is swept aside. It was only mildly interesting at
-the best. I'll give you a dollar my son for each of these books you
-read: Descent of Man and Origin of Species, reprinted by Dombie and
-Sons, Noodle Lane, Ken. W. London; England 1890.
-
-Who will write the natural history of involution beginning with the
-stone razor age in Cornwall to the stone razor age in Papua? Oh China,
-China teach us! Ottoman, Magyar, Moor, teach us. Norse Eric the
-Discoverer teach us. Cœur de Lion, teach us. Great Catherine teach us.
-Phryne, Thaïs, Cleopatra, Brunehilde, Lucretia Borgia teach us. What
-was it, Demosthenes, that she said to you? Come again?
-
-Borne on the foamy crest of involution, like Venus on her wave, stript
-as she but of all consequence--since it is the return: See they return!
-From savages in quest of a bear we are come upon rifles, cannon. From
-Chaldeans solving the stars we have fallen into the bellies of the
-telescopes. From great runners we have evolved into speeches sent over a
-wire.
-
-But our spirits, our spirits have prospered! Boom, boom. Oh yes, our
-spirits have grown--
-
-The corrosive of pity, Baroja says, giving up medicine to be a baker.
-
-Marriage is of the church because it is the intersection of _loci_ by
-which alone there is place for a church to stand. Beauty is an arrow.
-Diana launched her shaft into the air and where the deer and the arrow
-met a church was founded and there beauty had died.
-
-So youth and youth meet and die and there the church sets up its
-ceremony.
-
-Who will write the natural history of involution?
-
-I have forgotten something important that I wanted to say. Thus having
-forgotten and remembered that it was important the folly of all thought
-is revealed.
-
-The deer lay panting on the leaves while Diana leaned over it to stab it
-in the neck with her dagger.
-
-I have forgotten what I wanted to say.
-
-Venus and Adonis.
-
-The second time I saw her it was in a room of a hotel in the city.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-As the Southern mountains are not like other mountains, so the
-mountaineers are not like others. For all their beauty these mountains
-are treacherous and alien, and the people who must wring a livelihood
-from the sawmills or from the tiny perpendicular farms high up under the
-sky come to be wary and secret like their woodlands.
-
-The Cumberland mountain mother, by nature sharp and sane, has studied
-the moods of the mountains and of the animals. Illiterate though she be,
-she is full of ripe wisdom. Many, superior to the mountain woman in,
-say, sanitation might learn from sitting on cabin doorsteps that they
-are most often inferior to her in sanity.
-
-Yet, frankly, it is often better to sit on the cabin doorstep than to go
-inside. The mountain mother struggles bravely against dirt, but if you
-live in a lonely two-room cabin, if you are the sole caretaker of six
-children under ten, and two cows and a large stony garden, and must help
-in the cornfield besides, you are excusable if in the end you "quit
-struggling." The mountain mother does not make herself and her husband
-and her children slaves to the housekeeping arts.
-
-A mountain woman dips snuff--surreptitiously if she is young, frankly if
-she is old.
-
-We settle down on the doorstep probably on straight chairs with seats of
-cornhusks twisted into a rope and then interwoven. There is a sound to
-which the mountains have accustomed me--the sharp jolting thud when a
-mother, if she possesses neither cradle nor rocker, puts her baby to
-sleep by jerking forward and backward on two legs of a straight chair.
-There is usually some two-year-old lying fast asleep on the bed just
-inside the door; or on the porch floor, plump and brown as a bun and
-studded with flies thick as currants.
-
-Mountain children are as vigorous as baby oaks until they reach their
-teens, and then over-work begins to tell on growing bodies. A reedy boy
-of thirteen, just beginning to stretch to the length of spine and limb
-that characterises the mountaineer, often gets a stoop that he never
-afterward conquers. In the more remote lumber districts I have seen boys
-of ten and twelve work all day loading cars. There too, slim mountain
-girls of twelve and fourteen stand all day in the icy spray of the flume
-to stack bark on the cars.
-
-Here where isolation makes people fiercely individualistic public
-opinion is as slow to deny a man's right to marry at the age he wishes
-as it is to deny his right to turn his corn into whisky. At the age when
-boys and girls first awake to the fact of sex they marry and the
-parents, although regretfully, let them.
-
-The unmarried mother is most rare. A boy of sixteen sets himself to all
-the duties of fatherhood. A fourteen-year-old mother, with an ageless
-wisdom, enters without faltering on her future of a dozen children.
-
-But here is Lory. But again a digression--: In any account of the
-mountains one must remember that there are three distinct types: the
-people of the little villages, almost all remote from railroads; the
-itinerant lumber workers, woodchoppers and mill-hands who follow the
-fortunes of the portable sawmill as it exhausts first one remote cove
-then another; and the permanent farmers who have inherited their
-dwindling acres for generations. Yet at bottom the mountain mother is
-always the same.
-
-Lory lives in a one-room lumber shack, and moves about once in three
-months. The walls are of planks with inch-wide cracks between them.
-There are two tiny windows with sliding wooden shutters and a door. All
-three must be closed when it is very cold. For better protection the
-walls are plastered over with newspapers, always peeling off and gnawed
-by woodrats. The plank floor does not prevent the red clay from oozing
-up. The shack is some fifteen feet square. It contains two stoves, two
-beds, two trunks, a table and two or three chairs. In it live six souls:
-two brothers, their wives and a baby apiece.
-
-Lory is part Indian, one surmises from the straight hair dropping over
-her eyes and her slow squawlike movements. Her face is stolid except
-when it flashes into a smile of pure fun. Dark though she is her breast,
-bared from her dark purple dress, is statue white. She looks down on her
-first baby with a madonna's love and her words have in them a madonna's
-awe before a holy thing: "I ain't never a-goin' to whip him. He ain't
-never a-goin' to need it, for he won't get no meanness if I don't learn
-him none."
-
-The setting is fairyland. Mountain folk go far toward living on beauty.
-The women may become too careless and inert even to scrape away the
-underbrush and plant a few sweet potatoes and cabbages. They may sit
-through lazy hours mumbling their snuff sticks, as does Mrs. Cole, while
-children and dogs and chickens swarm about them: but even Mrs. Cole can
-be roused by the call of beauty.
-
-"My husband he's choppin' at the first clearin' two miles from here, and
-he's been plumb crazy over the yaller lady slippers up that-a-way. He's
-been sayin' I must take the two least kids, what ain't never seen sech,
-and go up there and see 'em 'fore they was gone. So yesterday we went.
-It sure was some climb over them old logs, but Gawd them lady slippers
-was worth it." I shall never understand the mystery of a mountain
-woman's hair. No matter how old, how worn or ill she may be, her hair is
-always a wonder of color and abundance.
-
-Ma Duncan at fifty-five is straight and sure-footed as an Indian; tall
-and slim and dark as a gypsy, with a gypsy's passionate love of
-out-of-doors. Her neighbors send for Ma Duncan from far and near in time
-of need. Going forth from her big farm boarding-house on errands of
-mercy. Up wild ravines to tiny cabins that seem to bud out like lichens
-from grey boulders wet with mountain streams, over foot logs that sway
-crazily over rock creeks, through waist-high undergrowth Ma Duncan goes
-with her stout stick.
-
-As we reach a little grassy clearing Ma Duncan drops down to stretch out
-happily: So as I can hear what the old earth has to say me... Reckon it
-says, "Quit your fussin' you old fool. Ain't God kept your gang a young
-uns all straight so fur? He ain't a-going back on you now, just because
-they're growd."
-
-Presently Ma Duncan sits up, her hands about her knees, her hat fallen
-from her wealth of hair, her gun on the ground beside her--often she
-carries a gun in the hope of getting a gray squirrel to be done in
-inimitable brown cream gravy for breakfast.
-
-She looks out sadly over much worn woodland, with the great stumps
-remaining:
-
-"I wish you could have seen the great old trees that used to be here. If
-folks wasn't so mad for money they might be here and a preachin' the
-gospel of beauty. But folks is all for money and all for self. Some-day
-when they've cut off all the beauty that God planted to point us to him,
-folks will look round and wonder what us human bein's is here fur--"
-
-"The mountain woman lives untouched by all modern life. In two centuries
-mountain people have changed so little that they are in many ways the
-typical Americans."
-
-"The Lord sent me back" former pastor tells men in session at the
-church. With tears in his eyes, he enters meeting, escorted by two sons.
-Dramatic scene follows as he asks forgiveness for mistake he has made.
-Was in Canada and Buffalo. His explanation of absence is satisfactory to
-family and members he met last night.
-
-Miss Hannen in seclusion at home. Her family declines to give statement.
-
-Dominie Cornelius Densel, forty eight years old, former pastor, etc...
-who left his wife and eight children etc. came home last night.
-
-Miss T. Hannen, twenty-six years old, etc... who disappeared from her
-home, etc... on the same afternoon that the dominie was numbered among
-the missing also came to her home the same evening.
-
-Pictures of the missing dominie and member of his church who are home
-again.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Commodius renamed the tenth month Amazonius. But he died a violent death
-and the old name was returned.
-
-I had five cents in my pocket and a piece of apple pie in my hand, said
-Prof. M. I. Pupin, of Columbia University describing the circumstances
-of his arrival in America in the steerage of the steamship Westphalie
-from Hamburg half a century ago.
-
-Today that American scholar of Serbian birth holds the chair in
-electro-mechanics at Columbia University.
-
-Prof. Pupin is merely one of a host of former immigrants whose names are
-linked with the great strides in science, commerce, finance and industry
-and whose careers furnish living proof that America, besides breeding
-great men, imports them.
-
-Claude Monet was born in Columbia, Ohio.
-
-In industry and commerce the stories of many of the successful
-immigrants read like romances.
-
-There is C. C. A. Baldi of Philadelphia who began with nothing and who
-is now one of America's foremost citizens of foreign birth. When he
-landed in this country thirty years ago he had only a few pennies in the
-pockets of his ragged trowsers. He knew no English and knew nothing of
-American customs, but he had heard of the opportunities which America
-offers to a wide-awake, ambitious immigrant willing to work.
-
-Mr. Baldi bought thirty lemons with his pennies. He peddled them and
-with the proceeds of sales bought more lemons and peddled them. Before
-long he had a cart loaded with hundreds of lemons. In time the push-cart
-became a store and the store grew into a great business.
-
-Other spectacular instances of success are furnished by the careers of
-Louis J. Horowitz, one of America's greatest builders and S. M.
-Schatzkin, who came to this country twenty-five years ago with 3 dollars
-carefully tucked away in his clothes and began peddling coal in the East
-side of New York. Today Schatzkin has large sums invested in many big
-American enterprises.
-
-Horowitz, who came here thirty years ago, built the Woolworth and the
-Equitable buildings, one the tallest and the other the largest office
-building in point of floor space in the world. His first job was that of
-an errand boy. Later he worked as a parcel wrapper, then as a stock boy
-and then as a shoe salesman. After selling shoes he started selling real
-estate.
-
-Witness? oh witness these lives my dainty cousins. Dear Madam:--It has
-often been said that one of the most interesting spots in America is the
-small space covered by the desk of the editor of the Atlantic Monthly.
-
-All the qualities which make up the interest of life,--joy, sorrow,
-romance, ambition, experience,--seem to center in this spot in turn,
-radiating from every nook and corner of the world.
-
-"Adventures," remarked the talented Mr. Disraeli, "are for the
-adventurous," and it is to those who think of life as the supreme
-adventure that the Atlantic is most confidently addressed.
-
-If you care for a magazine that satisfies, vexes and delights by turn,
-you can safely subscribe to the Atlantic Monthly for the coming year.
-
-Public Service Railway Company, Newark, N. J. Amazonius 10, 1920.--To
-our Patrons: As a fair minded citizen, your impartial consideration of
-the facts set forth in subjoined letter, written by me to the Board of
-Public Utility Commissioners under date of Amazonius 7th. 1920, is
-respectfully requested. Very truly yours? Thomas N. McCarter, President.
-
-To the Board of Public Utility Commissioners of the State of New Jersey,
-Trenton, New Jersey. Dear Sirs: The rate of fare of 7 cents, with one
-cent for a transfer, etc..., etc... Such large cities as Boston, New
-Haven, Hartford and Pittsburg already have a 10c. flat rate. Etc...
-etc... Under the foregoing statement of facts the company is forced to
-file herewith a flat rate of 10c. where 7c. is now charged. Etc...
-Etc...
-
-
-Now when Christmas bells ring clear
-Telling us that love is here
-And children sing
-Gifts that speak of thoughtful love
-Just like angels from above
-Glad tidings bring.
-
-
-Rugs, mirrors, chairs, tables, W. & J. Sloane, N.Y., Wash., San F.
-Christmas Gifts Sure to be Appreciated.: Standing lamps, table lamps,
-book ends, Sheffield ware, desk sets, framed prints, porcelains, soft
-pillows, foot rests (D-2968 Rocking foot rest in Mahogany. Formerly
-$45.00. Sale Price $30.00!) sconces, mantel clocks, wall clocks, tall
-clocks, small tables, smoking stands, occasional chairs, screens,
-oriental rugs, Chinese embroideries, vacuum cleaners--Mirrors. Small
-Oriental Rugs: Mossouls, Pergames, Beloochistans, Lilehennas, Sarouks
-and Kirmanshahs.
-
-California was peopled by the Indians first and then by the Padres who
-brought with them their sprigs of vine and of orange and of fig and also
-the art of irrigation. So that you will find today from the very
-northernmost part, from Klamath Lake down to the Imperial Valley in the
-South, the lands of California watered and made as fertile as the valley
-of the Nile.
-
-That's all right. Yes Sir. But I come from the Eastern shore of
-Maryland. I'm an East Sho' man. Have you ever been on the Eastern Sho'?
-No? Well sir, we're a strange people and we have some strange legends on
-the East Sho'. When Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden they fell
-sick and the Lord was very much disturbed over them, so he called a
-council of his angels and wanted to know where they should be taken for
-a change of air.
-
-Gabriel suggested the Eastern Sho' of Maryland but the Lord said, No,
-No; that wouldn't be sufficient change.
-
-Yes sir, down at Chincoteague they have the biggest and the finest
-oysters in the world. Big as your hand and when you get a half dozen of
-them a couple of hours out of the water you know you have something.
-
-It was at Chincoteague two Spanish galleons went ashore in the old days
-and some ponies swam ashore. To this day they have a yearly round-up on
-the island where the breed of these ponies is coralled, a short special
-breed of horse.
-
-Tangier Island is another place. That's where the sheriff shot the boy
-who wouldn't go in off his front porch on Sunday morning during church
-service. Either in church or in the house during that hour. He shot him
-all right. They have little individual canals up to their back doors
-from the bay.
-
-And the native, coming up to him suddenly with a knife as long as your
-arm, said; _Yo soy mas hombre que tu_! and started a swing at him. Had
-he not been so quick to seize a chair and bring it down on the man's
-head--What would have happened?
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Sometimes the men would come in and say there was a turkey nest down in
-the meadow and they'd send me to look for it.
-
-Once I fell in the mireage up to my waist. My, they was mad at me.
-"Can't tramp a meadow without falling in the mireage?" they said.
-
-I miss it often. At nine they let me drive the hay-hoist with one horse
-and later with two. One morning I had the young team out. It was Allie's
-team of greys, they was only just no more than colts. They shied at a
-piece of paper. I could hear the men up in the barn yelling. "Hey,
-what's the matter down there!" But it was no use. I tried to get to
-their heads. I wasn't afraid of them. Allie said afterward he wouldn't
-have been surprised to have seen me killed.
-
-One of the women stood in the road waving a broom. I can see her yet. I
-might have been able to manage them if it hadn't been for her but they
-simply jumped over a wagon and smashed the hay-fork and ran down the
-road two miles. Then they came back again. My but the old man was mad at
-me. All the black looks I got!
-
-I used to hate the Old Man. Sometimes I'd be getting wood and he'd ask
-me why I hadn't done something. I'd say I hadn't gotten round to it yet.
-Maybe he'd throw a piece of wood at me.
-
-I can remember the churning. I wouldn't exactly like to go back to it
-all but sometimes I miss it terribly. Sometimes it would n't take you
-more than five minutes to get the butter and sometimes you'd churn for
-45 or two hours and sometimes it would never come. We'd get four or five
-pounds or more at a churning. Then it would have to be washed and salted
-and packed in jars in the cellar.
-
-So now that it is raining. So now that it is Amazonius--we go to buy a
-metal syringe at the factory because we know the men who live on our
-street who own the bricks that make the walls that hold the floors that
-hold the girls who make mistakes in the inventories:
-
-Every order that comes in is copied. You must rely on your help. As the
-orders come in they are handled by a girl who puts them on our own
-uniform order sheets. So right there it begins. You have to rely on a
-young flyaway who has perhaps been up dancing the night before. It's
-easy enough for her to write "with" for "without" and--that's the sort
-of thing that happens. There is a certain minimum of error that you must
-count on and no reputable house will fail to make good promptly.
-
-The glass blowers have never in my entire experience of 17 years
-suffered any harm from their trade. Why we had a boy in the old factory,
-a cripple, a withered leg, the weakest, scrawniest lad you ever saw.
-He's been blowing for us for 15 or 17 years and you should see him
-today. Why the fat fairly hangs down over his collar.
-
-In our thermometer work they blow the bulb then fill it with mercury
-which is in a special container like the cups you get at Child's
-restaurant say. They never have to touch the stuff. When the bulb is
-full they seal it. Then the mercury in the bulb is warmed by passing the
-bulb through a flame. This is to drive it up the capillary tube. There
-can be no volatilization since the mercury is in the tube and this is
-the only time the stuff is heated. Then when the metal rises from the
-heat the other end of the glass is dipped in the stuff so that as the
-bulb now cools the mercury is sucked up filling the thermometer
-completely.
-
-Sometimes, of course, a bulb breaks in heating so that the floor is full
-of the stuff.
-
-The hydrofluoric acid for marking is used under a hood with a special
-exhaust-blower that has nothing else to do but exhaust that hood. There
-is not the slightest odor of fumes in the room. The air is as good there
-as here.
-
-And what is your business?
-
-Rag merchant.
-
-Ah yes. And what does that mean?
-
-Our main specialty is shoddy.
-
-Ah yes. Shoddy is made from--
-
-From woolen rags. The whole mass is put into a vat and the cotton
-dissolved out. It comes out in a great wet heap of stuff that has to be
-washed and dried.
-
-Sometimes they burn the cotton out with gas. For instance you'll see a
-piece of cloth, grey cloth. The gas will take out the black cotton and
-leave the wool fibres all running in one direction. One of the secrets
-of the trade is the selection of the colors. That is red shoddy is made
-from red rags and so on. But they even take the dyes out of the cloth
-and use it over again.
-
-You know the army coats the boys wore. They were 70% shoddy. It's all
-wool but the fibre has been broken. It makes a hard material not like
-the soft new woven woolens but it's wool, all of it.
-
-After the stuff from the vats is dry they put it on the donkeys which
-turn it into loose skeins. From that stage it goes on to the making of
-the yarn for weaving when any quantity of fresh wool can be mixed that
-you desire.
-
-The shortest fibre, that can't be used for anything else, is made into
-these workingmen's shirts you see. The wool is held in a container in
-the loosest state possible. This is connected up with a blower in front
-of which a loom is set for weaving a fairly tight cotton mesh. Then as
-the loom is working the wool is BLOWN IN! Where the cotton warp and woof
-cross the shoddy is caught.
-
-Recently a Jew came in to complain of the lightness of the shirts he was
-getting. All we did was to yell out, "George turn on the blower a little
-stronger." One washing and the wool is gone. But the Jews are the smart
-ones. You got to hand it to them. They invent machinery to do anything
-with that stuff. Why one man made a million before the government
-stopped him by making cheap quilts.
-
-He took any kind of rags just as they were collected, filth or grease
-right on them the way they were and teased them up into a fluffy stuff
-which he put through a rolling process and made into sheets of wadding.
-These sheets were fed mechanically between two layers of silkolene and a
-girl simply sat there with an electric sewing device which she guided
-with her hand and drew in the designs you see on those quilts, you know.
-
-You've seen this fake oilcloth they are advertising now. Congoleum.
-Nothing but building paper with a coating of enamel.
-
-¡_O vida tan dulce_!
-
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-<pre style='margin-bottom:6em;'>The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great American Novel, by William Carlos
-Williams
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Great American Novel
-
-Author: William Carlos Williams
-
-Release Date: December 05, 2020 [EBook #63888]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-Produced by: Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images generously
-             made available by The Internet Archive.)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL ***
-</pre>
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<img src="images/novel_cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<h2>THE GREAT<br />
-AMERICAN NOVEL</h2>
-
-
-<h5><i>BY</i></h5>
-
-
-<h3>WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS</h3>
-
-
-
-<h4><i>PARIS</i></h4>
-
-<h4>Three Mountains Press</h4>
-
-<h5>1923</h5>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>CONTENTS</h4>
-<p><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a><br />
-<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a></p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<img src="images/figure01.jpg" width="400" height="100" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<h4><i>The Great</i><br />
-American Novel</h4>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></h4>
-
-<h4>The Fog</h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure02.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>If there is progress then there is a novel. Without progress there is
-nothing. Everything exists from the beginning. I existed in the
-beginning. I was a slobbering infant. Today I saw nameless grasses&mdash;I
-tapped the earth with my knuckle. It sounded hollow. It was dry as
-rubber. Eons of drought. No rain for fifteen days. No rain. It has never
-rained. It will never rain. Heat and no wind all day long better say hot
-September. The year has progressed. Up one street down another. It is
-still September. Down one street, up another. Still September. Yesterday
-was the twenty second. Today is the twenty first. Impossible. Not if it
-was last year. But then it wouldn't be yesterday. A year is not as
-yesterday in his eyes. Besides last year it rained in the early part of
-the month. That makes a difference. It rained on the white goldenrod.
-Today being misplaced as against last year makes it seem better to have
-white&mdash;Such is progress. Yet if there is to be a novel one must begin
-somewhere.</p>
-
-<p>Words are not permanent unless the graphite be scraped up and put in a
-tube or the ink lifted. Words progress into the ground. One must begin
-with words if one is to write. But what then of smell? What then of the
-hair on the trees or the golden brown cherries under the black cliffs.
-What of the weakness of smiles that leave dimples as much as to say:
-forgive me&mdash;I am slipping, slipping, slipping into nothing at all. Now
-I am not what I was when the word was forming to say what I am. I sit so
-on my bicycle and look at you greyly, dimpling because it is September
-and I am older than I was. I have nothing to say this minute. I shall
-never have anything to do unless there is progress, unless you write a
-novel. But if you take me in your arms&mdash;why the bicycle will fall and
-it will not be what it is now to smile greyly and a dimple is so
-deep&mdash;you might fall in and never, never remember to write a word to
-say good-bye to your cherries. For it is September. Begin with September.</p>
-
-<p>To progress from word to word is to suck a nipple. Imagine saying: My
-dear, I am thirsty, will you let me have a little milk&mdash;This to love
-at first sight. But who do you think I am, says white goldenrod? Of course
-there is progress. Of course there are words. But I am thirsty, one
-might add. Yes but I love you and besides I have no milk. Oh yes, that
-is right. I forgot that we were speaking of words. Yet you cannot deny
-that to have a novel one must have milk. Not at the beginning. Granted,
-but at the end at least. Yes, yes, at the end. Progress from the mere
-form to the substance. Yes, yes, in other words: milk. Milk is the
-answer.</p>
-
-<p>But how have milk out of white goldenrod? Why, that was what the Indians
-said. The bosom of the earth sprays up a girl balancing, balancing on a
-bicycle. Rapidly she passes through the first&mdash;the second eight years.
-Progress, you note. But September was rainy last year and how can it
-ever be dry again unless one go back to the year before that. There are
-no words. It cannot be any otherwise than as this is built the bosom of
-the earth shrinks back; phosphates. Yet to have a novel&mdash;Oh catch up a
-dozen good smelly names and find some reason for murder, it will do. But
-can you not see, can you not taste, can you not smell, can you not hear,
-can you not touch&mdash;words? It is words that must progress. Words, white
-goldenrod, it is words you are made out of&mdash;THAT is why you want what
-you haven't got.</p>
-
-<p>Progress is to get. But how can words get.&mdash;Let them get drunk.
-Bah. Words are words. Fog of words. The car runs through it. The words
-take up the smell of the car. Petrol. Face powder, arm pits, food-grease
-in the hair, foul breath, clean musk. Words. Words cannot progress.
-There cannot be a novel. Break the words. Words are indivisible
-crystals. One cannot break them&mdash;Awu tsst grang splith gra pragh og
-bm&mdash;Yes, one can break them. One can make words. Progress? If I
-make a word I make myself into a word. Such is progress. I shall make
-myself into a word. One big word. One big union. Such is progress. It is
-a novel. I begin small and make myself into a big splurging word: I take
-life and make it into one big blurb. I begin at my childhood. I begin at
-the beginning and make one big&mdash;Bah.</p>
-
-<p>What difference is it whether I make the words or take the words. It
-makes no difference whatever.</p>
-
-<p>There cannot be a novel. There can only be pyramids, pyramids of
-words, tombs. Their warm breasts heave up and down calling for a head to
-progress toward them, to fly onward, upon a word that was a pumpkin, now
-a fairy chariot, and all the time the thing was rolling backward to the
-time when one believed. Hans Anderson didn't believe. He had to pretend
-to believe. It is a conspiracy against childhood. It runs backward.
-Words are the reverse motion. Words are the flesh of yesterday. Words
-roll, spin, flare up, rumble, trickle, foam&mdash;Slowly they lose
-momentum. Slowly they cease to stir. At last they break up into their
-letters&mdash;Out of them jumps the worm that was&mdash;His hairy feet
-tremble upon them.</p>
-
-<p>Leaving the meeting room where the Mosquito Extermination Commission had
-been holding an important fall conference they walked out on to the
-portico of the County Court House Annex where for a moment they remained
-in the shadow cast by the moon. A fog had arisen in which the egg-shaped
-white moon was fixed&mdash;so it seemed. They walked around the side of the
-old-fashioned wooden building&mdash;constructed in the style of the fine
-residences of sixty years ago and coming to the car he said: Go around
-that side as I will have to get in here by the wheel. The seat was wet
-with dew and cold&mdash;after the exceptionally hot day. They sat on it
-nevertheless. The wind-shield was opaque with the water in minute droplets
-on it&mdash;through which the moon shone with its inadequate light. That
-is, our eyes being used to the sun the moon's light is inadequate
-for us to see by. But certain bats and owls find it even too strong,
-preferring the starlight. The stars also were out.</p>
-
-<p>Turning into the exit of the parking space he stopped the car and began
-to wipe the wind-shield with his hand. Take this rag said the other,
-with one hand already in his trowser pocket. So the glass was wiped on
-both sides, the top and the bottom pane and the cloth&mdash;which looked a
-good deal like a handkerchief&mdash;was returned to the owner&mdash;who put
-it back where it came from not seeming to mind that it was wet and dirty.
-But of course the man is a mechanic in a certain sense and doesn't care.</p>
-
-<p>On the highway they began to encounter the fog. It seemed in the rush of
-the car to come and meet them. It came suddenly, with a rush and in a
-moment nothing could be seen but the white billows of water crossed in
-front by the flares of the headlights. And so it went all the way home,
-sometimes clearer, sometimes so thick he had to stop, nearly&mdash;ending
-in his own bed-room with his wife's head on the pillow in the perfectly
-clear electric light. The light shone brightest on the corner of her
-right eye, which was nearest it, also on the prominences of her face.</p>
-
-<p>Her right arm was under her head. She had been reading. The magazine
-Vanity Fair, which he had bought thinking of her, lay open on the
-coverlet. He looked at her and she at him. He smiled and she, from long
-practice, began to read him, progressing rapidly until she said: You
-can't fool me.</p>
-
-<p>He became very angry but understood at once that she had penetrated his
-mystery, that she saw he was stealing in order to write words. She
-smiled again knowingly. He became furious.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure03.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>I'm new, said she, I don't think you'll find my card here. You're
-new; how interesting. Can you read the letters on that chart? Open your
-mouth. Breathe. Do you have headaches? No. Ah, yes, you are new. I'm
-new, said the oval moon at the bottom of the mist funnel, brightening
-and paling. I don't think you'll find my card there. Open your
-mouth&mdash;Breathe&mdash;A crater big enough to hold the land from New
-York to Philadelphia. New! I'm new, said the quartz crystal on the
-parlor table&mdash;like glass&mdash;Mr. Tiffany bought a cart load
-of them. Like water or white rock candy&mdash;I'm new, said the
-mist rising from the duck pond, rising, curling, turning under the
-moon&mdash;Unknown grasses asleep in the level mists, pieces of the fog.
-Last night it was an ocean. Tonight trees. Already it is yesterday.
-Turned into the wrong street seeking to pass the power house from which
-the hum, hmmmmmmmmmmmmm&mdash;sprang. Electricity has been discovered
-for ever. I'm new, says the great dynamo. I am progress. I make a word.
-Listen! UMMMMMMMMMMMM&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Ummmmmmmmmm&mdash;Turned into the wrong street at three A.M. lost in the
-fog, listening, searching&mdash;Waaaa! said the baby. I'm new. A boy! A
-what? Boy. Shit, said the father of two other sons. Listen here. This is no
-place to talk that way. What a word to use. I'm new, said the sudden word.</p>
-
-<p>The fog lay in deep masses on the roads at three A.M. Into the wrong
-street turned the car seeking the high pitched singing tone of the
-dynamos endlessly spinning in the high banquet hall, filling the house
-and the room where the bed of pain stood with progress. Ow, ow! Oh help
-me somebody! said she. UMMMMMM sang the dynamo in the next street,
-UMMMM. With a terrible scream she drowned out its sound. He went to the
-window to see if his car was still there, pulled the curtain aside,
-green&mdash;Yes it was still there under the light where it would not be so
-likely to be struck by other cars coming in the fog. There it was as
-still as if it were asleep. Still as could be. Not a wheel moved. No
-sound came from the engine. It stood there under the purple arc-light,
-partly hidden by a pole which cast a shadow toward him in the masses of
-floating vapor. He could see the redtail-light still burning brightly
-with the electricity that came from the battery under the floor boards.
-No one had stolen the spare tire. It was very late.&mdash;Well, said he,
-dropping the shade and thinking that maybe when he was busy someone
-might easily come up from the meadows and take the spare tire&mdash;Well, I
-suppose I had better see how things have progressed.</p>
-
-<p>And so he backed out into the main street and turned up another block.
-And there he saw. The great doors were open to full view of the world. A
-great amphitheatre of mist lighted from the interior of the power house.
-In rows sat the great black machines saying vrummmmmmmmmmmmm. Stately in
-the great hall they sat and generated electricity to light the cellar
-stairs with. To warm the pad on Mrs. Voorman's belly. To cook supper by
-and iron Abie's pyjamas. Here was democracy. Here is progress&mdash;here is
-the substance of words&mdash;UMMMMM: that is to say meat or linen or belly
-ache.&mdash;Three A.M. To be exact twenty-eight minutes past three.</p>
-
-<p>And all this was yesterday&mdash;Yesterday and there at her window I saw
-her, the lady of my dreams her long and sallow face, held heavily near the
-glass, overlooking the street where the decayed-meat wagon passes and
-the ice-cream cart rumbles with its great power and the complicated
-affairs of the town twitter toward the open sewer in the meadows by the
-Button Factory. Orange peel, tomato peel floating in a whitish, soapy
-flow&mdash;Her face without expression, the lady I am dying for, her right
-shoulder as high as her ear, the line of the shoulder sloping down
-acutely to the neck, her left shoulder also raised so that her head
-seemed to lie loose in a kind of saddle.</p>
-
-<p>Supreme in stupidity and a fog of waste, profit in what is left. Oh what
-delectable morsel is left. Blessed hunchback, scum of loves weekly praying
-in all churches&mdash;which by the way take up the very best sites in
-the town. There she sat, her body low down below the window frame, only
-her face showing, and looked at me dully, looked because I looked&mdash;and
-my heart leaped up to her in passionate appeal that she should be my
-queen and run with me over the foggy land&mdash;Forward&mdash;Onward and
-upward forever.</p>
-
-<p>So saying the day had progressed toward the afternoon and under the
-poplars the dried leaves had begun to collect. It had been unbearably
-hot. September is a hot month. The leaves had fallen one by one. No
-wind. One by one pushed off by the buds which swollen by the heat had
-thought that winter was over. Off with you. You stand in the way of
-progress, say the young leaves. Sitting on his chair he seemed like any
-other man but to get to the bed he suddenly descended to the floor. On
-his long arms&mdash;he Apollo, and using the stumps of his legs, apelike on
-all fours and talking quietly he swung himself up over the edge of the
-bed and lay down.</p>
-
-<p>Over the field&mdash;for the fog had left the grasses in the early
-morning when the sun came up with majestic progression, haughtily leaving
-the dropping city under him&mdash;over the field&mdash;for it was late in
-the afternoon and the sunlight shone in with his poor broken legs, crippled
-as he was&mdash;the sun shone in from the west. The car had turned in to
-the wrong street and he had gone into the store where the paralysed
-Scotchman whom he had never seen before put him on the way&mdash;climbing
-into his bed sent his rays almost level over a patch of red grass hot
-and blinding. Over the field the heat rose and in it even from a
-distance due to the blur of light on their wings a great swarm of gnats
-could be seen turning, twisting in the air, rising falling&mdash;over the
-grass, fringed with the progressing sun.</p>
-
-<p>But with great sweeps and sudden turns a dozen dragon flies seeming
-twice as large as they really were, from the sun blurring their
-transparent wings, darted back and forth over the field catching and
-eating the gnats. Swiftly the gnats progressed into the dragon flies,
-swiftly coalescing&mdash;and from time to time a droplet of stuff fell from
-the vent of a feeding dragon fly,&mdash;and the little sound of this stuff
-striking the earth could not be heard with its true poetic force. Lost.
-Lost in a complicated world. Except in the eyes of God. But a word, a
-word rang true. Shit, said the father. With this name I thee christen:
-he added under his breath.</p>
-
-<p>And yet&mdash;one must begin somewhere.</p>
-
-<p>Deeply religious, he walked into the back yard and watching lest the
-children see him and want what they shouldn't have he approached the
-grape vines. Selecting a bunch of Delawares he picked it with some
-difficulty spilling a few of the fruit. Then he walked to the other side
-and found some blue ones. These too he ate. Then some white which he ate
-also one by one swallowing the pulp and the seeds and spitting out the
-skins. He continued to eat but no word came to satisfy.</p>
-
-<p>Somehow a word must be found. He felt rather a weight in his belly from
-eating so many grapes. He, himself that must die someday, he the deeply
-religious friend of great men and women in incipience, he couldn't find
-a word. Only words and words. He ate another bunch of the grapes. More
-words. And never THE word.</p>
-
-<p>A novel must progress toward a word. Any word that&mdash;Any word.
-There is an idea.</p>
-
-<p>His brother was ill. He must go home. The sun will soon be on the
-Pacific coast. To bed, to bed&mdash;take off the clothes beginning on the
-outside and working in. How would it be to take off the underwear first,
-then the shirt&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Progress is dam foolishness.&mdash;It is a game. Either I have
-or&mdash;a thieves' game. Hold me close, closer, close as you can. I
-can't hold you any closer. I have been stealing. I should never touch
-anything. I should never think of anything but you. I love another. It
-is a word. I have left you alone to run wild with a girl. I would be
-tame. Lies flicker in the sun. Visions beset noonday. Through the back
-window of the shoe-shine parlor a mass of golden glow flashes in the
-heat. Come into my heart while I am running&mdash;jumping from airplane
-to plane in mid-air. I cannot stop: the word I am seeking is in your
-mouth&mdash;I cannot stop. Hold me against&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>You are wrong, wrong Alva N. Turner. It is deeper than you imagine. I
-perceive that it may be permissible for a poet to write about a poetic
-sweet-heart but never about a wife&mdash;should have said possible. It is
-not possible. All men do the same. Dante be damned. Knew nothing at all.
-Lied to himself all his life. Profited by his luck and never said
-thanks. God pulled the lady up by the roots. Never even said thank you.
-Quite wrong. Look what he produced. Page after page. Helped the world to
-bread. Have another slice of bread Mr. Helseth. No thank you&mdash;Not
-hungry tonight? Something on his mind.</p>
-
-<p>The word. Who.</p>
-
-<p>Liberate the words. You tie them. Poetic sweet-heart. Ugh. Poetic
-sweet-heart. My dear Miss Word let me hold your W. I love you. Of all
-the girls in school you alone are the one&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Dramatise myself make it sing together as if the world were a bird who
-married to the same mate five years understood in the end transmigration
-of souls.</p>
-
-<p>Nonsense. I am a writer and will never be anything else. In which case
-it is impossible to find the word. But to have a novel one must progress
-with the words. The words must become real, they must take the place of
-wife and sweet-heart. They must be church&mdash;Wife. It must be your wife.
-It must be a thing of adamant with the texture of wind. Wife.</p>
-
-<p>Am I a word? Words, words, words&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>And approaching the end of the novel in his mind as he sat there with
-his wife sleeping alone in the next room he could feel that something
-unusual had happened. Something had grown up in his life dearer
-than&mdash;It, as the end. The words from long practice had come to be
-leaves, trees, the corners of his house&mdash;such was the end. He had
-progressed leaving the others far behind him. Alone in that air with the
-words of his brain he had breathed again the pure mountain air of
-joy&mdash;there night after night in his poor room. And now he must leave
-her. She the&mdash;He had written the last word and getting up he
-understood the fog as it billowed before the lights.</p>
-
-<p>That which had been impossible for him at first had become possible.
-Everything had been removed that other men had tied to the words to
-secure them to themselves. Clean, clean he had taken each word and made
-it new for himself so that at last it was new, free from the world for
-himself&mdash;never to touch it&mdash;dreams of his babyhood&mdash;poetic
-sweet-heart. No. He went in to his wife with exalted mind, his breath
-coming in pleasant surges. I come to tell you that the book is finished.</p>
-
-<p>I have added a new chapter to the art of writing. I feel sincerely that
-all they say of me is true, that I am truly a great man and a great
-poet.</p>
-
-<p>What did you say, dear, I have been asleep?</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure04.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>It is Joyce with a difference. The difference being greater opacity,
-less erudition, reduced power of perception&mdash;Si la sol fa mi re do.
-Aside from that simple, rather stupid derivation, forced to a ridiculous
-extreme. No excuse for this sort of thing. Amounts to a total occlusion
-of intelligence. Substitution of something else. What? Well, nonsense.
-Since you drive me to it.</p>
-
-<p>Take the improvisations: What the French reader would say is: <i>Oui,
-ça; j'ai déjà vu ça; ça c'est de Rimbaud.</i> Finis.</p>
-
-<p>Representative American verse will be that which will appear new to the
-French . . . . prose the same.</p>
-
-<p>Infertile Joyce laments the failure of his sterile pen. Siegfried Wagner
-runs to his Mama crying: Mutti, Mutti, listen, I have just composed a
-beautiful Cantata on a theme I discovered in one of father's operas.</p>
-
-<p>In other words it comes after Joyce, therefore it is no good, of no use
-but a secondary local usefulness like the Madison Square Garden tower
-copied from Seville&mdash;It is of no absolute good. It is not NEW. It is
-not an invention.</p>
-
-<p>Invention, I want to buy you some clothes. Now what would you really
-like to have? Let us pretend we have no intelligence whatever, that we
-have read ALL there is to read and that Rimbaud has taught us nothing,
-that Joyce has passed in a cloud, that, in short, we find nothing to do
-but begin with Macaulay or King James, that all writing is forbidden us
-save that which we recognise to be inadequate. NOW show your
-originality, <i>mon ami</i>. NOW let me see what you can do with your
-vaunted pen.</p>
-
-<p>Nothing could be easier.</p>
-
-<p>My invention this time, my dear, is that literature is a pure matter of
-words. The moon making a false star of the weather vane on the steeple
-makes also a word. You do not know the fine hairs on a hickory leaf? Try
-one in the woods some time. You will grasp at once what I mean.</p>
-
-<p>But Joyce. He is misjudged, misunderstood. His vaunted invention is a
-fragile fog. His method escapes him. He has not the slightest notion
-what he is about. He is a priest, a roysterer of the spirit. He is an
-epicurean of romance. His true genius flickers and fails: there's the
-peak, there in the trees&mdash;For God's sake can't you see it! Not that
-tree but the mass of rocks, that reddish mass of rocks, granite, with the
-sun on it between that oak and the maple.&mdash;That is not an oak. Hell
-take it what's the use of arguing with a botanist.</p>
-
-<p>But I will not have my toothpicks made of anything but maple. Mr. Joyce
-will you see to it that my toothpicks are not made of anything but
-maple? Irish maple. Damn it, it's for Ireland. Pick your teeth, God
-knows you need to. The trouble with writing of the old style is that the
-teeth don't fit. They were made for Irishmen&mdash;as a class.</p>
-
-<p>Tell me now, of what in your opinion does Mr. Joyce's art consist, since
-you have gone so far as to criticise the teeth he makes?&mdash;Why, my
-dear, his art consists of words.</p>
-
-<p>What then is his failure, O God.&mdash;His failure is when he mistakes
-his art to be something else.</p>
-
-<p>What then does he mistake his art to be, Rosinante?&mdash;He mistakes
-it to be several things in more or less certain rotation from
-botany&mdash;Oh well it's a kind of botany you know&mdash;from botany
-to&mdash;to&mdash;litany. Do you know his poetry?</p>
-
-<p>But you must not mistake his real, if hidden, service. He has in some
-measure liberated words, freed them for their proper uses. He has to a
-great measure destroyed what is known as "literature." For me as an
-American it is his only important service.</p>
-
-<p>It would be a pity if the French failed to discover him for a decade or
-so. Now wouldn't it? Think how literature would suffer. Yes
-think&mdash;think how LITERATURE would suffer.</p>
-
-<p>At that the car jumped forward like a live thing. Up the steep board
-incline into the garage it leaped&mdash;as well as a thing on four wheels
-could leap&mdash;But with great dexterity he threw out the clutch with a
-slight pressure of his left foot, just as the fore end of the car was
-about to careen against a mass of old window screens at the garage end.
-Then pressing with his right foot and grasping the hand-brake he brought
-the machine to a halt&mdash;just in time&mdash;though it was no trick to
-him, he having done it so often for the past ten years.</p>
-
-<p>It seemed glad to be at home in its own little house, the trusty
-mechanism. The lights continued to flare intimately against the wooden
-wall as much as to say: Here I am back again. The engine sighed and
-stopped at the twist of the key governing the electric switch. Out went
-the lights with another twist of the wrist. The owner groped his way to
-the little door at the back and emerged into the moonlight, into the
-fog, leaving his idle car behind him to its own thoughts. There it must
-remain all night, requiring no food, no water to drink, nothing while
-he, being a man, must live. His wife was at the window holding the shade
-aside.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">And what is good poetry made of</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And what is good poetry made of</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of rats and snails and puppy-dog's tails</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And that is what good poetry is made of</span><br />
-<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And what is bad poetry made of</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And what is bad poetry made of</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of sugar and spice and everything nice</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">That is what bad poetry is made of</span></p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p><i>A Rebours</i>: Huysman puts it. My dear let us free ourselves from
-this enslavement. We do not know how thoroughly we are bound. It must be a
-new definition, it must cut us off from the rest. It is in a different
-line. Good morning Boss said the old colored man working on the railroad
-and started to sing: Jesus, Jesus I love you. It was Sunday, he was
-working on the railroad on Sunday and had to put up some barrier. It is
-an end to art temporarily. That upstart Luther. My God don't talk to me
-of Luther, never changed his bed clothes for a year. Well, my dear, IT'S
-COMING just the same. To hell with art. To hell with literature. The old
-renaissance priests guarded art in their cloisters for three hundred
-years or more. Sunk their teeth in it. The ONE solid thing. Don't blame
-me if it went down with them. DOWN, you understand. Fist through the
-middle of the rose window. You are horror struck. One word: Bing! One
-accurate word and a shower of colored glass following it. Is it MY
-fault? Ask the French if that is literature.</p>
-
-<p>Do you mean to say that art&mdash;O ha, ha. Do you mean to say that
-art&mdash;O ha, ha. Well spit it out. Do you mean to say that art is
-SERIOUS?&mdash;Yes. Do you mean to say that art does any WORK?&mdash;Yes.
-Do you mean&mdash;? Revolution. Russia. Kropotkin. Farm, Factory and
-Field.&mdash;CRRRRRRASH.&mdash;Down comes the world. There you are
-gentlemen, I am an artist.</p>
-
-<p>What then would you say of the usual interpretation of the word
-"literature"?&mdash;Permanence. A great army with its tail in antiquity.
-Cliche of the soul: beauty.</p>
-
-<p>But can you have literature without beauty? It all depends on what you
-mean by beauty.</p>
-
-<p>There is beauty in the bellow of the BLAST, etc. from all previous
-significance.&mdash;To me beauty is purity. To me it is discovery, a race
-on the ground.</p>
-
-<p>And for this you are willing to smash&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Yes, everything.&mdash;To go down into hell.&mdash;Well let's look.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure05.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>That's all very fine about <i>le mot juste</i> but first the word must
-be free.&mdash;But is there not some other way? It must come about
-gradually. Why go down into hell when&mdash;Because words are not men, they
-have no adjustments that need to be made. They are words. They can not be
-anything but free or bound. Go about it any way you chose.</p>
-
-<p>The word is the thing. If it is smeared with colors from right and left
-what can it amount to?</p>
-
-<p>I'd hate to have to live up there, she said with a frown. It was the
-soul that spoke. In her words could be read the whole of democracy, the
-entire life of the planet. It fell by chance on his ear but he was
-ready, he was alert.</p>
-
-<p>And the little dusty car: There drawn up at the gutter was a great truck
-painted green and red. Close to it passed the little runabout while
-conscious desire surged in its breast. Yes there he was the great
-powerful mechanism, all in his new paint against the gutter while she
-rolled by and saw&mdash;The Polish woman in the clinic, yellow hair slicked
-back. Neck, arms, breast, waist, hips, etc. This is THE thing&mdash;The
-small mechanism went swiftly by the great truck with fluttering heart in
-the hope, the secret hope that perhaps, somehow he would notice&mdash;HE,
-the great truck in his massiveness and paint, that somehow he would come to
-her. Oh I wouldn't like to live up there!</p>
-
-<p>FOG HOLDS UP LINERS say the head lines. It is a blackness, a choking
-smother of dirty water in suspension.&mdash;You should have been here this
-morning. You could look out and see nothing but a sea of cloud below us.
-Right at our feet the fog began and stretched off as far as the eye
-could perceive.</p>
-
-<p>Up out of the trees with a whirr started the sparrows. With a loud
-clatter the grouse got up at his feet. The ground was full of mushrooms.
-Everything, no matter what it is must be re-valuated.</p>
-
-<p>The red grass will soon open into feathers.</p>
-
-<p>Peter Broom, yes sah, my grandfather sah, the greatest man in Prince
-George County. He had three hundred children.</p>
-
-<p>So many things, so many things: heat.</p>
-
-<p>What then are you trying to say in THIS chapter? And what of your quest
-of THE word? What of A.N.T. ant?</p>
-
-<p>Why someone has offended Wells. He has retorted with NEO-ACADEMICIAN:
-And: No new form of the novel required. Lack of substance always takes
-the form of novelty mongering. Empire must be saved! Saved for the
-proletariat.</p>
-
-<p>On the side of the great machine it read: Standard Motor Gasoline, in
-capital letters. A great green tank was built upon the red chassis, FULL
-of gas. The little car looked and her heart leaped with shy wonder.</p>
-
-<p>Save the words. Save the words from themselves. They are like children.
-Young Men's Hebrew Association. Save them while they're still young. Words
-must not be allowed to say, to do&mdash;Geld them. They are not REALLY
-words they are geldings. Save the words. Yes, I repeat SAVE THE WORDS. When
-Voronoff would have had words to transplant, interstitial words&mdash;he
-said save the words.</p>
-
-<p>And what has anything Wells says to do with serious writing. FIRST let
-the words be free. The words are men, therefore they are not men. They
-cannot, must not, will not be mustered of the people, by the people, for
-the people. They are words. They will have their way.</p>
-
-<p>Puh, puh, puh, puh! said the little car going up hill. But the great
-green and red truck said nothing but continued to discharge its gasoline
-into a tank buried in the ground near the gutter.</p>
-
-<p>And the fog had coalesced into rain. Rain to soak the firewood the boys
-had left beside their old fire, like good scouts, for those to come
-after and the great car continued to discharge.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure06.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>What then is a novel? <i>Un Novello</i>, pretty, pretty Baby. It is a
-thing of fixed form. It is pure English. Yes, she is of Massachusetts
-stock. Her great grandfather was thrown out of the Quaker church for
-joining the Continental army. Hates the English. Her life is a
-novel&mdash;almost too sensational.</p>
-
-<p>The story of Miss Li&mdash;so well told.</p>
-
-<p><i>Qu'avez-vous vu</i>? Or they that write much and see little. Not
-much use to us.</p>
-
-<p>Speak of old Sun Bow pacing his mesa instead of Felipe Segundo in the
-barren halls of El Escorial&mdash;or asleep in his hard bed at one corner
-of the griddle.</p>
-
-<p>My mother would have a little nigger boy come with a brush and sit at
-her feet and brush her legs by the hour.</p>
-
-<p>Expressionism is to express skilfully the seething reactions of the
-contemporary European consciousness. Cornucopia. In at the small end
-and&mdash;blui! Kandinsky.</p>
-
-<p>But it's a fine thing. It is THE thing for the moment&mdash;in Europe.
-The same sort of thing, reversed, in America has a water attachment to be
-released with a button. That IS art. Everyone agrees that IS art.
-Just as one uses a handkerchief.</p>
-
-<p>It is the apotheosis of relief. Dadaism in one of its prettiest
-modes: <i>rien, rien, rien</i>.&mdash;But wait a bit. Maybe Dadaism is
-not so weak as one might imagine.&mdash;One takes it for granted
-almost without a thought that expressionism is the release of
-SOMETHING. Now then Aemilius, what is European consciousness composed
-of?&mdash;Tell me in one word.&mdash;<i>Rien, rien, rien</i>! It is at
-least very complicated. Oh very.</p>
-
-<p>You damned jackass. What do you know about Europe? Yes, what in Christ's
-name do you know? Your mouth is a sewer, a cloaca.</p>
-
-<p>Complicated consciousness quite aside from a possible revaluation. It
-has no value for ME. It is all very interesting and God knows we have
-enough to learn. The swarming European consciousness. But there it is
-much simpler&mdash;No good to us.</p>
-
-<p>Swarming European consciousness: Kreisler and Ysaye were the only ones
-with any value. They had a few pennies over and above expenses. They
-swarm here now for something to eat. But the funniest are the ones from
-Russia; each excoriates the playing of the other and calls the other a
-Sheeny. Wow!</p>
-
-<p>Really you are too naive. They are merely reacting to the American
-atmosphere&mdash;It is their work that counts. And besides a virtuoso is
-not really creative in any serious sense. Would a great artist, say
-Kandinsky&mdash;? In any case it all seems to preoccupy you so, and in a
-book about America, really&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Take their work. I resent it all. I hate every symphony, every opera as
-much as a nigger should hate <i>Il Trovatore</i>. Not perhaps hate it in a
-purely aesthetic sense but from under. It is an impertinence. Where in
-God's name is our Alexander to cut, cut, cut, through this knot.</p>
-
-<p>Europe is nothing to us. Simply nothing. Their music is death to
-us. We are starving&mdash;not dying&mdash;not dying mind you&mdash;but
-lean-bellied for words. God I would like to see some man, some one of the
-singers step out in the midst of some one of Aida's songs and scream like a
-puma.</p>
-
-<p>But you poor fellow, you use such inept figures. Aida has been dead
-artistically in Munich for fifty years.</p>
-
-<p>Wagner then&mdash;Strauss. It is no difference to me. Tear it all apart.
-Start with one note. One word. Chant it over and over forty different
-ways.</p>
-
-<p>But it would be stupid&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>It would, if it were what I mean&mdash;it would be accurate. It would
-articulate with something. It would signify relief. Release I mean. It
-would be the beginning.</p>
-
-<p>Do not imagine I do not see the necessity of learning from
-Europe&mdash;or China but we will learn what we will, and never what
-they would teach us. America is a mass of pulp, a jelly, a sensitive
-plate ready to take whatever print you want to put on it&mdash;We have
-no art, no manners, no intellect&mdash;we have nothing. We water at the
-eyes at our own stupidity. We have only mass movement like a sea. But we
-are not a sea&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Europe we must&mdash;We have no words. Every word we get must be
-broken off from the European mass. Every word we get placed over again
-by some delicate hand. Piece by piece we must loosen what we want. What
-we will have. Will they let it go? Hugh.</p>
-
-<p>I touch the words and they baffle me. I turn them over in my mind and
-look at them but they mean little that is clean. They are plastered with
-muck out of the cities.&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>We must imitate the motivation and shun the result.</p>
-
-<p>We are very few to your many&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>But what is all this but waste energy.</p>
-
-<p>No it is not. It is as near as I can come for the present to the word.
-What good to talk to me of Santayana and your later critics. I brush
-them aside. They do not apply. They do not reach me any more than a
-baby's hand reaches the moon. I am far under them. I am less, far less
-if you will. I am a beginner. I am an American. A United Stateser. Yes
-its ugly, there is no word to say it better. I do not believe in
-ugliness. I do not want to call myself a United Stateser but what
-in&mdash;but what else am I? Ugliness is a horror to me but it is less
-abhorrent than to be like you even in the most remote, the most minute
-particular. For the moment I hate you, I hate your orchestras, your
-libraries, your sciences, your yearly salons, your finely tuned
-intelligences of all sorts. My intelligence is as finely tuned
-as yours but it lives in hell, it is doomed to eternal&mdash;perhaps
-eternal&mdash;shiftings after what? Oh to hell with Masters and the rest of
-them. To hell with everything I have myself ever written.</p>
-
-<p>Here's a man wants me to revise, to put in order. My God what I am doing
-means just the opposite from that. There is no revision, there can be no
-revision&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Down came the rain with a crash. For five days it had been pending. With
-a loud splash it seemed to strike the earth as if it were body meeting
-body. The poplar leaves swirled and swirled. The gutters were wedged
-with water.</p>
-
-<p>Oh fool you are thicker than rain drops.</p>
-
-<p>Give me to Moussorgsky. I am tired. Take me to the opera tonight and let
-me see Nijinsky dance his <i>Til Eulenspiegel</i> for I am tired to death
-with looking for sense among American poets. Igor will retrieve my
-courage. I could sit and listen in his lap for ever. Were not the
-American Indians Mongols? Oh they must have been. Why could they not
-have been Chinese? Why could not the early Emperors have discovered
-America? Tell me, wet streets, what we are coming to, we in this
-country? Are we doomed? Must we be another Europe or another Japan with
-our coats copied from China, another bastard country in a world of
-bastards? Is this our doom or will we ever amount to anything?</p>
-
-<p>Drown me in pictures like Marsden, make me a radical artist in the
-conventional sense. Give me the intelligence of a Wells. God, Hueffer is
-so far beyond him that what Wells says really sounds sensible.</p>
-
-<p>Must it be a civilization of fatigued spirits? Then give me Hueffer. My
-God it is too disgusting.</p>
-
-<p>Great men of America! O very great men of America please lend me a penny
-so I wont have to go to the opera.</p>
-
-<p>Why not capitalise Barnum&mdash;?</p>
-
-<p><i>Bravo, bravo mon vieux</i>! A noble apostrophe to your country but
-don't you realize that it is not a matter of country but the time&mdash;The
-time.</p>
-
-<p>For God's sake Charlie bring a lemon pie.</p>
-
-<p>So they lay in the little brook and let the cold water run up their bare
-bellies.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure07.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>In spite of the moon in mid sky and the plaster of dully shining leaves
-on the macadam and all the other signs of the approach of fine weather
-there rang in his head: Such a cuddle muddle: Is that modern German
-poetry? I never saw such a lot of things mixed together under one title.
-These are modern times, Pa, airships and automobiles; you cover
-space&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>And that's all right&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>O America! Turn your head a little to the left please. So. Now are you
-ready? Watch my hand. Now: <i>Lohengrin</i> in ITALIAN, SUNG AT
-MANHATTAN&mdash;San Carlo Company Revives Wagner Opera, with Anna Fitziu as
-Elsa.</p>
-
-<p>Sweet kisses that come in the night&mdash;O argyrol!</p>
-
-<p>Rain, rain, for three days and three nights.</p>
-
-<p>In the night a cesura. Suddenly the fire bell begins to ring. I wake
-with a start and hear the small boy calling from the next room. Eight
-thousand people wake and count the strokes of the black bells. It is not
-our signal. Someone has been set afire. The engines pass with a crash
-and roar of the exhausts. Their siren whistles shriek with a fortissimo
-rise and fall. In a thousand beds men of forty, women of thirty eight,
-girls in their teens, boys tired from football practice and little boys
-and girls down to babyhood wake and think the same thoughts. They listen
-and count the number of strokes, and sink back saying to themselves:
-Fire! Presently all but the few who are immediately affected are again
-asleep. The fire has burnt itself out. Slowly the sun has been crossing
-Europe and will soon appear fresh from the sea with his benison. The tie
-of that black thought in the night will be broken. The opportunity will
-be lost forever. Each will rise and dress and go out into the rain on
-whatever errand the day has chosen for him.</p>
-
-<p>Rain all day long. The sun does not appear. The heat is suffocating. The
-rattle of the torrent fills the ears. Water is everywhere.</p>
-
-<p>In the night a wind wakens. It comes from the south-west about midnight
-and takes the trees by their heavy leaves twisting them until they
-crack. With a roar the wind batters at the houses, shaking them as if it
-were a heavy hand. And again for the second night running eight thousand
-men and women and boys and girls wake and listen or get up to close
-windows and to look out at the trees leaning with snapping branches,
-tossing and seething with a sound of escaping steam. It has grown cold.
-Pull up the covers. It has grown cold. Sixteen thousand hands have drawn
-the covers closer about the bodies. The wind is cold.</p>
-
-<p>The sun has come back. The air is washed clean. Leaves lie plastered
-upon the streets, against the tree trunks, upon the very house sides.
-The bird bath is filled to overflowing. A lame man is hurrying for the
-train.</p>
-
-<p>They had talked for hours. The new project was beginning to take form.
-It was the evening of the second day. There stood the train puffing out
-great volumes of dense smoke which no sooner arose than it was caught in
-the wind and sent flying out ahead of the train. I wish to God I were on
-that train wherever it might be going. Oh well, remarked the younger man
-and said good-bye, which is what it is to be a man.</p>
-
-<p>He was too old, remarked the voice in the room next to the one in which
-the woman was lying, he never should have gone out in that rain. Too
-cold! At times it seems possible, even now. She took the hair between
-her thumb and index finger of the right hand and using her left hand
-swiftly stroked the little hair strands back toward the head to make it
-stand out. Ratting it, I told her. It ruins the hair. Oh well I haven't
-much left, it might as well be broken.</p>
-
-<p>She wore blue stockings under a very quiet dress but the world has
-not beheld a more maddening spectacle. Devoted to the art of writing, he
-read with his mind watching her and his mind in the sky seeking, seeking
-some earth to stand on when the boys were tearing up the soggy turf with
-their cleats. What to do? There it is. The wind hesitated whether or not
-to impregnate her. So many things were to be considered. In the years
-since his passage over Ponce de Leon's soldiers on the beach&mdash;the
-wind footloose, gnawing the leaves had witnessed flying footballs that
-it had blown out of bounds. He had not a word to stand on, yet he stood,
-not knowing why. Fear clutched his heart. Visions of uprooted trees
-passed over his heart as he shook her heavy skirt about her knees. But
-she, oblivious to it all, walked with downcast eyes&mdash;looking at her
-feet or smiling pleasantly at one here and there in the crowd that was
-shouting and pressing to see the players.</p>
-
-<p>In the night all nature was asleep as she lay with her young cheek
-pressed against her pillow and slept. The boys tossed and turned from
-the stiffness in their joints and from the bruises received in the game.
-But she lay quiet and asleep, the breath coming slowly in regular flow
-from her hollow nostrils moving them slightly back and forth.</p>
-
-<p>Under the covers her young form could be made out, the left shoulder,
-the hips and the legs and feet, the left knee slightly bent and fallen
-to the mattress before the other. Not a sound in the room for a million
-years. Still she lay there asleep.&mdash;The wind has turned into hail.</p>
-
-<p>Spring flowers are blossoming in the wind. There is the tulip, the
-jonquil and the violet&mdash;for it is September and no man shall know his
-defeat. So there are spring flowers that grew up through the ice that
-will be present later. It is of ice that they have made the flowers.</p>
-
-<p>Yet sometimes it seems that it would still be possible. And this is
-romance: to believe that which is unbelievable. This is faith: to desire
-that which is never to be obtained, to ride like a swallow on the
-wind&mdash;apparently for the pleasure of flight.</p>
-
-<p>The swallow's bill is constructed in such a way that in flying with his
-mouth open tiny insects that enter are ensnared in hairlike gills so
-that he is fed.</p>
-
-<p>Here are a pretty pair of legs in blue stockings, feed. Yet without the
-thought of a possible achievement that would make it possible to command
-the achievement of certain&mdash;The boys kick the ball and pay no
-attention. The boys kick the ball up into the wind and the wind hurriedly
-writes a love note upon it: Meet me tonight. Say you are going to the
-Library and I will have my car at the corner of Fern Street. I have
-something to tell you. There is one word you must hear: YOU.</p>
-
-<p>There is one word you must hear. It will come out at my lips and enter
-in at your ears. It might be written with letters on white paper but it
-is a word that I want you to have out of the lips into your ear. And she
-answers: I will be there. So he does not keep his appointment. Off he
-goes in search of a word.</p>
-
-<p>But she goes home and weeps her eyes out. Her pillow is wet with her
-tears&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>What do you think! He has left his wife, and a child in the high school
-has been ill a week, weeping her eyes out and murmuring his name. Is it
-not terrible?</p>
-
-<p>It is the wind! The wind is in the poplars twiddling the fading leaves
-between his fingers idly and thinking, thinking of the words he will
-make, new words to be written on white paper but never to be spoken by
-the lips to pass into her ear.</p>
-
-<p>Quietly he goes home to his wife and taking her by the shoulder wakes
-her: Here I am.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure08.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>Nuevo Mundo! shouted the sailors. The sea was rippling like the bottom
-of a woven grassrope chair. A new world! Taking out their finest satins
-and putting on new armor the commanders of the little party ordered
-boats to be made ready and the royal standards of Aragon and Castile to
-be taken into men meanwhile feeling the balmy air and seeing green and a
-shore for the first time in two months were greedily talking of fresh
-fruit&mdash;after their monotonous and meager diet of meat&mdash;of milk,
-of a chance to walk free in the air, to escape their commanders, and of
-women. Yes perhaps there would be women, beautiful savages of manifold
-charms. But most of all they were filled with the wild joy of release
-from torment of the mind. For not one among them but expected to be
-eaten by a god or a monster long since or to have been boiled alive by
-a hypertropical sea. Excitedly they went down the ladders and took their
-places at the words of the boatswain spoken in the Castilian tongue.</p>
-
-<p>Of Columbus' small talk on that occasion nothing remains but it could
-not have been of Eric the Discoverer. Nor of the parties of Asiatics and
-Islanders&mdash;Pacific Islanders who had in other ages peopled the
-continents from the east. No matter: <i>Nuevo Mundo</i>! had shouted the
-sailors and <i>Nuevo Mundo</i> it was sure enough as they found out as soon
-as they had set foot on it and Columbus had kneeled and said prayers and
-the priest had spoken his rigmarole in the name of Christ and the land
-was finally declared taken over for Ferdinand and Isabella the far
-distant king and queen.</p>
-
-<p>Yes it was indeed a new world. They the product of an age-long
-civilization beginning in India, it is said, and growing through
-conquest and struggle of all imaginable sorts through periods of success
-and decline, through ages of walkings to and fro in the fields and woods
-and the streets of cities that were without walls and had walls and
-burst their walk and became ruins again; through the changes of speech:
-Sanscrit, Greek, Latin growing crooked in the mouths of peasants who
-would rise and impose their speech on their masters, and on divisions,
-in the state and savage colonial influences, words accurate to the
-country, Italian, French and Spanish itself not to speak of Portuguese.
-Words! Yes this party of sailors, men of the sea, brothers of a most
-ancient guild, ambassadors of all the ages that had gone before them,
-had indeed found a new world, a world, that is, that knew nothing about
-them, on which the foot of a white man had never made a mark such as
-theirs were then making on the white sand under the palms. <i>Nuevo
-Mundo</i>!</p>
-
-<p>The children released from school lay in the gutter and covered
-themselves with the fallen poplar leaves.&mdash;A new world! All summer the
-leaves had been thick on the branches but now after the heat and the
-rain and the wind the branches were beginning to be bare. More sky
-appeared to their eyes than ever before. With what relief the children
-had pranced in the wind! Now they lay half covered in the leaves and
-enjoying the warmth looked out on the new world.</p>
-
-<p>And he was passing and saw them. And wondered if it were too late to be
-Eric. What a new world they had made of it with their Cortezes, their
-Pizarros yes and their Lord Howes, their Washingtons even. The
-Declaration of Independence. I wonder, he said, whether it could be
-possible that the influence of the climate&mdash;I wonder if the seed, the
-sperm of that, existed in Columbus. Was it authentic? Is there a word
-to be found there? Could it be that in those men who had crossed, in the
-Norse as; well as the Mongols, something, spontaneous could not have
-been implanted out of the air? Or was the declaration to be put to the
-credit of that German George? Was it only the result of local
-conditions?</p>
-
-<p>"A new declaration of independence, signed by Columbus, found in Porto
-Rico."</p>
-
-<p>Indians in any case, pale yellow and with lank black hair came to the
-edge of the bushes and stared: The Yaquis territory lay north of the
-river Fuertes. To the south was Carrancista territory. The valley was,
-fertile, the Indians wanted it.</p>
-
-<p>During the week of November 13th, 17th, 1916&mdash;word reached Los
-Mochis that Gen. Banderas and the Villistas from Chihuahua had been
-defeated by the Carrancistas near Fuertes and were in retreat. During this
-week two Indians were captured by Los Mochis police and hung on willow
-trees below the Jaula.</p>
-
-<p>On Saturday November 13th, Col. Escobar and his Carrancistas of the
-Fifth regiment of Sinaloa were withdrawn from Los Mochis and Aguila and
-concentrated in San Blas. Banderas and his Villistas meanwhile had come
-down the Fuertes, effected a junction with Bacomo and his Mayo Indians,
-and Monday night crossed the river above Los Tastos, tore out the
-telephone at the pumps and started for Los Mochis. All gate keepers
-encountered on the road were killed as were their families. Mr. Wilcox
-estimated the combined forces participating in the raid and on the other
-side of the river at 6,000.</p>
-
-<p>The first intimation of the raid was at one o'clock in the morning of
-Tuesday when with a "<i>Villa! Vive Villa! Vive Villa</i>!" the raiders
-swarmed into Los Mochis from three sides, shooting cursing as they
-galloped into town. From all over the town came the sound of smashing
-doors and windows, shots, yells and screams.</p>
-
-<p>When I came here the Indians all used bows and arrows. Conscripted
-during the many revolutions they had deserted with their rifles until at
-last, after 800 of them, in a body, went over they used the rifle
-extensively. Wilcox lived at the pumps with his wife and daughter. A
-cocky Englishman, he poopooed the danger. He had been in the habit of
-telephoning into the town, seven miles, whenever a raid was coming. It
-was agreed we Americans were to keep to our houses, take our animals off
-the roads and wait with more or less excitement until it was over. We
-never notified the Mexicans. Had we done so once we should not have
-escaped the next raid. This time the Villistas were with the Indians. As
-you saw the first thing they did was to rip out the wires. Washington
-had just accepted Carranza as the power in authority and the Villistas
-were angry.</p>
-
-<p>Wilcox and his wife and daughter were locked in a room all the first
-night while Banderas and Bacomo argued over their fate. Banderas was for
-killing Wilcox and taking over his wife and daughter for camp women. But
-the Indian stood out against him. It seems Wilcox had at one time given
-the Indians some sacks of beans when they were hard up for food. They
-remembered this. It was a good thing for the three.</p>
-
-<p>At a previous raid an American engineer living near Wilcox was found
-dead. He was supposed to have run. Looked just like a pin-cushion, with
-the feathered arrows that were in him. Funniest thing you ever saw in
-your life. There were four bullets in him also.</p>
-
-<p>The Americans were too scattered to resist. It was decided to save
-the few guns by hiding them. Bacomo rode up to the house with his
-escort,&mdash;ordered to give up all guns and cartridges. At the last
-moment he turned back from the stairs, entered Mrs. Johnson's room where
-the ladies were sitting on the beds and ordered them to get up. Under the
-mattress a miscellaneous collection of riot guns, rifles, shot guns,
-automatics, pistols and cartridges were found. When all the guns and
-cartridges to the last shell had been loaded on the horses behind the
-drunken soldiers Bacomo refused C.'s request for one of the riot guns
-and with a polite bow and a "<i>Con permiso, senores</i>," he rode off.</p>
-
-<p>In Mr. Johnson's cellar they had found all sorts of bottles from Scotch
-to German <i>Scheiswasser</i> and had drunk it all indiscriminately.</p>
-
-<p>Cattle had eaten the standing rice. The pigs had got loose and over-run
-everything. Returning there were corpses on all sides. About one of
-these a triple battle raged. The pigs were ranged on one side, the dogs
-on another and from a third a flock of vultures crept up from time to
-time. The pigs and dogs would make a united rush at the birds who would
-fly a few feet into the air and settle a yard or so away.</p>
-
-<p>These pictures are of Bacomo taken a year later just as he was being
-taken from the train by his captors. He was a physical wreck at the time
-but at the time of the raid he was a magnificent specimen of a man. It
-seemed there was some silver buried near Los Mochis which they wanted.
-He would not disclose its whereabouts unless they freed him and they
-would not free him unless he spoke first.</p>
-
-<p>The end is shown in this picture. Here he is with the pick and spade at
-his feet surrounded by the Carrancista soldiers. He dug his grave and
-was shot and they buried him there.</p>
-
-<p>The Indians have made a local saint of him and every night you will see
-candles burning on the spot and little plates of rice and other food
-placed there for his spirit.&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>For a moment Columbus stood as if spell-bound by the fact of this new
-country. Soon however he regained his self-possession and with Alonzo
-Pinzon ordered the trunks of trifles to be opened which, being opened,
-the Indians drew near in wonder and began to try to communicate with
-these gods.</p>
-
-<p>It was indeed a new world.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure09.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>No man can tell the truth and survive&mdash;save through prestige. And
-no child either. Aristocracy is license to tell the truth. And to hear it.
-Witness the man William in Henry Fifth, the camp incident. Fear clutched
-at his heart.</p>
-
-<p>Agh-ha-ha! Shouted the <i>vaqueros</i> plunging their spurs into the
-bronchos' sides. Up with the heels. Buck, buck, buck. Agh-ha-ha!
-<i>Fortissimo</i>. The wild and unexpected cry out of the Mexican Indian
-country rang through the quiet house so that the pup leaped up and
-rushed to the door.</p>
-
-<p>Someone had taken the apple. Both denied they had had a hand in it. Each
-accused the other. The truth did not appear. For an hour the man tried
-his best to arrive at a just decision. Joseph Smith shook where he stood
-and fell frothing at the mouth. He was of Vermont mountain stock. His
-birth among the poor white trash there had not even been thought worth
-recording. Yet a vision came to him of the marriage in Cana. Christ
-drank the wine and Martha and Mary her sister became his wives&mdash;so to
-speak. It is the truth. The world shall be saved anew, said Joseph Smith
-in the mountains of Vermont&mdash;where the mushrooms are so plentiful
-among the fir trees.</p>
-
-<p>Who had given the boy the apple against the father's express orders? Had
-he taken it himself&mdash;which he denied or had the girl gone into the
-store room&mdash;as he asserted but which she denied&mdash;and selected it
-herself? Where was the truth?</p>
-
-<p>In Illinois Brigham Young was recruited. Off they set with fifty oxen
-for the Promised Land away over the prairies and deserts&mdash;through the
-Sioux country, in search of Zion. The whole world they would leave behind
-and for the truth's sake they would live in that far country&mdash;to
-be discovered, to which the Lord would lead them.</p>
-
-<p>Go upstairs sir and take your clothes off. You shall go to bed for this
-lie&mdash;I'll say I took the apple Daddy, said the boy sobbing violently,
-but she gave it to me. In minute detail he repeated the story of how the
-apple was picked out of the basket by the girl and handed to him to eat.</p>
-
-<p>Lions of the Lord. The boy would not give up his bride to Brigham and
-was <i>altered</i>, as a rebel. She went mad. In '49 a party of gold
-seekers came by accident into the valley they had found. They were gently
-received. A warning was given of hostile Indians and a special guard was
-appointed to conduct them safely on their way. But Brigham had had a
-dream. Men must not wander into the valley of Zion to disturb the ways
-of God's holy ones. A blood sacrifice had been demanded of Brigham by
-the Lord. John D. Lee was selected as he who must lend himself to the
-Almighty will of God for the good of the church and state. Slowly the
-party of gold seekers departed for California. At the narrow defile at
-Mountain Meadow the treacherous business was performed. All but a child
-were killed and Brigham and the Lord were revenged. Later John D. Lee
-was convicted of murder by government authorities and shot. A poor
-ignorant tool in the hands of that most mighty Lion of the Lord.</p>
-
-<p>And you my girl. You have lied to me before this. Did you or did you not
-take the apple? No one will be punished but I must have the truth.
-Tomorrow is Sunday. You shall go to church, and up to the minister you
-shall march, and he will ask you what I am asking you now. In the face
-of God you shall say to him that you did not take that apple, then I
-shall know. Did you or did you not take that apple? I will have the
-truth. And you my young sir, I shall not punish you but I must have the
-truth. You shall stay in bed all day tomorrow, all next week as long as
-it takes for one of you to change your story. I will have the truth.</p>
-
-<p>The mountains are savage about the valley. The lake is bitter, scalding
-with the salt. They knew they had found the Dead Sea. At last the child
-confessed, with bitter and hard tears that he had taken the fruit
-himself. It was the truth.</p>
-
-<p>Clear and cold the moon shone in the partly denuded poplars. It was
-midnight and the little fellow to whom he had determined to teach the
-meaning of the truth was snug in his bed. Years before that Utah had
-been admitted to the Union as a state and polygamy had been more or less
-abandoned. The young folk were beginning to be ashamed of the narrowness
-of their cult and the bones of the fathers were rotten.</p>
-
-<p>The glassy half moon in the dark leaves cast a dull light over the
-world upon which a calm had descended. Suddenly the pleiades could be
-heard talking together in Phœnician. Their words were clear as dropping
-water: What things they do in this new world: they said. Let us from now
-on swear to each other that we will give up every thought of wisdom and
-seek no further for the truth&mdash;which is, after all a veritable
-moon.&mdash;At this the moon was overcast for a moment by a falling
-leaf. The answer that came from that clear but broken ball rose slowly
-toward the stars: The child is asleep. Let us warn him of the folly of
-words. Let us bless him only with words that change often and never
-stiffen nor remain to form sentences of seven parts. To him I send a
-message of words like running water.&mdash;At this the stars smiled for
-they were married to one&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><i>Elena, yo soy un</i> wonder, she would say. <i>Vu par le jury</i>.
-And who is the jury but myself. The boy had struck her with a stone. Come
-we shall go and apologise, said Brigham Young. Into the neighbour's kitchen
-they walked. An older sister was cleaning the gas range. Where is your
-sister? But the truth is that all the while he had been hoping that just
-what had happened would happen. His eye ran up and down the girl's form.
-Secretly he was happy to have found her alone. I'm sorry, I will never
-do it again, Never again. Never again. Oh never, never again.</p>
-
-<p>And how can I, now that it is all over, and I am old? But at first I
-tell you I cried my eyes out. I had just been admitted to the Beaux
-Arts. All was as near perfect as could well be. I had the friendship of
-La Baronne d'Orsay and then the stars withdrew their aid. I had to go
-back to Porto Rico. I had to leave everything behind to go back to that
-country where there was nothing.</p>
-
-<p>There life ended. But it is over now. I was just beginning to do things.
-I tell you I cried my eyes out. But I am old now. I wanted you to see
-these drawings, to show you it was not a bluff.</p>
-
-<p>The Indians are gone. It is late now. It is cold. September
-is over. October is cold. Words should be&mdash;Words should be&mdash;I am
-tired to death.</p>
-
-<p>But two enormous women, middle aged, dignified, with still broad backs
-came down the street just as the very dirty little boy was crossing
-over. The three arrived at the entrance to the path at the same moment.
-The women looked hard at the filthy little boy whose face was stickily
-from apple-juice and black, with a great circle of dirt around the
-mouth. The women looked and the little boy hung his head and stumbled
-off into the long grass, almost falling into the abandoned foundation.</p>
-
-<p>And so the little company went on foot 20,000 miles along what later
-became known as Emigration Trail, overcoming incredible obstacles,
-eating the draught oxen, through savage mountains on, on to the Mountain
-Meadow Massacre. For they would worship the Lord their God in peace and
-in their own way. At last the Mayflower was in the harbor and the
-pilgrims had landed and dispersed.</p>
-
-<p>Yes, it was a New World.</p>
-
-<p>But they have prospered and today the Mormon Church is all for goodness
-and it is powerful and rich.</p>
-
-<p>A favorite trick of the Mayo Indians is, if they meet a man with good
-clothes, to take what they want and let him go on in his drawers.</p>
-
-<p>So it was with infinite satisfaction that on looking up the little boy
-saw those two terrible viragos suddenly as low as he. <i>Nuevo
-Mundo</i>.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure10.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>Calang-glang! Calang-glang! went the bells of the little Episcopal
-Church at Allandale. It was eight o'clock in the evening. A row of cars
-stood along the curb, each with its headlights lit, but dimmed so as not
-to make too much of a glare on the road, at the same time to save the
-battery while complying with the law!</p>
-
-<p>On sped the little family all crowded into one seat, the two children
-sleeping.</p>
-
-<p>In the Dutch church on the old Paramus Road Aaron Burr was married to
-Mrs. Prevost, Jataqua! It is near Hohokus, cleft-in-the-rocks, where the
-Leni Lenapes of the Delaware nation had their village from time
-immemorial. Aaron, my darling, life begins anew! It is a new start. Let
-us look forward staunchly together&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>The long, palm-like leaves of the ailantus trees moved slowly up and
-down in the little wind, up and down.</p>
-
-<p>And along this road came the British. Aaron, the youth from Princeton,
-gathered his command together and drove them back. Mother I cannot sleep
-in this bed, it is full of <i>British soldiers</i>. Why so it is! How
-horrid.</p>
-
-<p>And he too, on his memorable retreat, that excellent judge of
-horseflesh, George Washington, he too had passed over this road; and
-these trees, the oldest of them, had witnessed him. And now the wind has
-torn the finest of them in half.</p>
-
-<p>Nothing more wonderful than to see the pears attached by their stems to
-the trees. Earth, trunk, branch, twig and the fruit: a circle soon to be
-completed when the pear falls. They had left at eleven and soon they
-would be home. The little car purred pleasantly to itself at the thought
-of the long night. Oh, to be a woman, thought the speeding mechanism.
-For they had wrapped something or other in a piece of newspaper and
-placed it under the seat and there were pictures there of girls&mdash;or
-grown women it might be, in very short skirts. Steadily the wheels spun
-while on the paper were printed these words:</p>
-
-<p>The Perfection of Pisek-designed Personality Modes: A distinctly forward
-move in the realm of fashion is suggested by the new personality modes,
-designed by Pisek... modes that are genuine inspirations of individual
-styling, created for meeting the personal preferences of a fastidiously
-fashionable clientele, the woman and the miss who seek personality in
-dress in keeping with their charms, characteristics and station . . .
-Thus you can expect at Pisek's only those <i>tailleurs</i>, gowns, wraps
-and frocks that bear the unmistakable stamp of individuality&mdash;styles
-that encourage and inspire admiration for their splendid simplicity and
-differentness... come to Pisek's . . . (the more the better) . . . see
-the new ideas in fashions . . . You'll not be disappointed . . .</p>
-
-<p>What chit of a girl could have appreciated you, my darling boy, as I do.
-A man of your personality, so fresh in wit, so brimming with vigor and
-new ideas. Aaron my dear, dear boy, life has not yet begun. All is new
-and untouched in the world waiting, like the pear on the tree, for you
-to pluck it. Everyone loves you and will wait on you. For you everything
-is possible. Bing! and Hamilton lies dead.</p>
-
-<p>As old Mr. Goss, who lost his hearing from an explosion of fireworks in
-Philadelphia after Lee's defeat, has said in his high nasal twang: Quite
-right, quite right, I've seen the country saved 8 times in the last
-fifty years.</p>
-
-<p>At any rate it was a new world to them; they two together would conquer
-and use, life had smiled upon them. <i>Nuevo Mundo</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Along the road the Dutch settlers came out from their attractive brown
-stone houses as the happy and distinguished couple went by. It was a
-great day for the little colony of New Jersey. There over the misty
-meadows the lights of Weehawken were beginning to glimmer as the little
-car and its precious freight drew near the end of the journey. The pear
-fell to the earth and was eaten by the pigs.</p>
-
-<p>I wonder if he'll recognise me in my Greenwich Village honkie-tonk
-bobbed hair. The hairdresser said: Don't you do it, when I said I'd like
-mine bobbed too. So many of the girls had theirs done a year ago and now
-its just at that impossible stage where you can't do a thing with it.
-Better go to Europe or California until it grows again. There's a reason
-for travel: As the hair progresses the days grow fewer.</p>
-
-<p>But is South Africa after all the country of the future?</p>
-
-<p>Over the great spaces of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana he sped
-in the Pullman car. City after city swept up to him, paused awhile at
-his elbow and plunged away to the rear with the motion of a wheel whose
-hub was hidden in infinity. And such indeed was exactly the case. He was
-being ground between two wheels, one on either side of the car and it
-was their turning that thrust him forward at such speed. The wheat was
-up in the fields but a fellow passenger assured him that in Kansas, only
-two days before, he had seen wheat twice as high&mdash;which explains the
-cause of so many abandoned farms in Vermont, he remembered, and settled
-back to another hour of idle staring. A new country he kept saying to
-himself. On a siding were cars loaded with emigrants from Holland booked
-through to San Francisco.</p>
-
-<p>Into the elevator stepped the young man in a petty officer's uniform.
-His Spanish was exquisite to hear. The first battleship since the
-Spanish-American war was anchored in New York harbor. How well he bears
-himself. The Spanish are the only people in Europe whom civilization has
-not ruined. Savage men, big bearded chins&mdash;but shaved clean. They
-know how to treat their women&mdash;better than the French for the
-French&mdash;after all are <i>blagueurs</i> to a man. The Spanish stand
-still. What an ass a man will make of himself in a strange country! In
-armor De Soto wandering haphazard over Alabama. The Seminoles for
-guides. Buried him in the Mississippi. It is my river, he said. Roll
-Jordan roll. It is <i>my</i> river for I discovered it and into it let
-my body, in full armor, be put to rest. The cat-fish ate it. So roll
-Jordan roll. Diada Daughter of Discord: read it.</p>
-
-<p>In Illinois, far in the west, over that trackless waste of forest and
-mountain and river and lake they came at last to a valley that pleased
-them and there they determined to build. So they fell to hewing trees
-and building their houses, work to which they had been bred and trained
-for two generations since Plymouth and Salem days. Cornwallis had been
-beaten fifty years before and Pitt had rushed to see the King crying:
-All is lost. A new world had been born. Here in the primeval forest the
-little colony of New Englanders hoped to realize success and plenty.</p>
-
-<p>In Bonnie, Illinois, the Presbyterian minister is a very good man. He is
-as good a preacher as Bonnie can afford and if anybody said that Bonnie
-is made up of mad-men&mdash;He would be shot. <i>Nuevo Mundo</i>, shouted
-the sailors. But their cry was by now almost extinct.</p>
-
-<p>In polite stories the world had been made acquainted with the
-picturesque lives of these commonplace but worthy people. In detail
-their story had been told. Over the precipice in Yosemite the Bridal
-Veil Falls had been launching its water for a thousand years and
-ignorance was fattening his belly apace.</p>
-
-<p>Bonnie, Ill., October 22. Dear Bill: Am up to my ears in painting, and
-am preparing to go to Alton, Ill., to work in the State Hospital, if I
-get a call, so am too busy now to read your book but think I'm going to
-like it and will devour it later. Sincerely. A. N. Turner.</p>
-
-<p>And the little boy crept into the great chest like Peppo into the
-Cardinal's tomb and began to pick up the mothballs that had been left
-there when the winter things were removed.</p>
-
-<p>An Indian would sense the facts as he wished. A tree would speak to him
-with a definite identity. It would not at least seem endowed with human
-characteristics: a voice, that would be all.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure11.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>Arnold, this wind is, the wise and sagacious captain. Henchman of the
-wind. The wind is a lion with hooked teeth. The saber-toothed tiger
-inhabited the region west of the Alleganies throughout the pleistocene
-age. With a snarl it wrenches the limbs of the trees from their places
-and tosses them to earth where they lie with the leaves still
-fluttering.</p>
-
-<p>Vacuous; full of wind. Her whole pelvis is full of intestine but aside
-from the ptosis I find nothing really wrong. The uterus appears to be
-normal. The bleeding may come from a cyst. At least there is no good
-reason for removing&mdash;for a hysterectomy. There it is. It. Like some
-tropical fruit color of the skunk cabbage flower. There it is, that
-mystical pear, glistening with the peritoneum. Here the cavern of all
-caverns. Alpha if not omega. Talk politely and obey the law. But do not
-remove it.</p>
-
-<p>Oh my country. Shall it be a hysterectomy? Arnold there is a wind with a
-knife's edge.</p>
-
-<p>And Remy says the spring of curiosity is broken at thirty. Nothing left
-at fifty but the facts of bed and table. He has the lilt of Heine at his
-best and in places quite equals the work of the author of Danny Deever.
-The catgut had slipped out of the needle. The young interne held the
-point of the suture between his fingers and the nurse approached the
-needle as accurately as she could. But the man's hand trembled slightly.
-For a moment they tried to complete the connection but failing in their
-attempt the nurse took the end in her other hand and soon had the needle
-threaded. The young doctor looked up as much as to say thank you.</p>
-
-<p>Such a wind. At fifteen they seem noble, desirable beyond dreams. In the
-winter the trees at least remain stems of wood that resist with a will,
-whose branches rebound against the impact of sleet. At thirty they are
-what they are. The boy rebels and she with her hair in distressed
-tangles about the disorderly boudoir cap, at mid-day, whines and
-snatches at him as he jerks and defies her. It is beyond her strength to
-control a boy of nine. Clutching her dressing sack&mdash;oh slobbery
-morsel&mdash;about her breastless form with one hand she rushes as far as
-she dares to the porch edge, glancing furtively about for chance gentlemen
-or neighbors and tries to overtake the youngster. No, the young man has
-really escaped. He goes to school filthy again and what will they think
-of his mother.</p>
-
-<p>At fifteen they are slender and coquettish and they cry if you are rough
-with them. Great burly fellow, she seemed to him all that he was not,
-the quintessence of Ibsenism, the wind among the reeds. Or perhaps
-the reed in the wind. Something to love, to take into the arms, to
-protect&mdash;If you can find any reason for doing a hysterectomy doctor,
-do it. Her husband is good for nothing at all. She at least is a power in
-her family. She is not like the native American women of her class, she
-is a Polock. You never saw such courage.</p>
-
-<p>The schooner left Southampton bound for New York with a cargo of
-rails&mdash;steel rails. But the English emigrants were not like these
-modern messes. Those round, expressionless peasant faces of today. See that
-one there with the little boy at her side. Castle Garden. At last we are to
-be in America, where gold is in the streets. Look at that face. That is
-the kind of immigration we want. Look at the power in that jaw. Look at
-that nose. She is one who will give two for every stroke she has to
-take. Look at the intensity of her gaze. Well, she's English, that's the
-reason. Nowadays they have no more of that sort. These Jews and Polocks,
-Sicilians and Greeks. Goodbye America!</p>
-
-<p>The head nurse's legs under her practical short skirt were like mighty
-columns. They held the seriousness of her looks, her steady, able hands.
-A fine woman.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure12.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>The American background is America. If there is to be a new world Europe
-must not invade us. It is not a matter of changing the y to i as in
-Chile. They are bound.</p>
-
-<p>The background of America is not Europe but America.</p>
-
-<p><i>Eh bien mon vieux coco</i>, this stuff that you have been writing
-today, do you mean that you are attempting to set down the American
-background? You will go mad. Why? Because you are trying to do nothing at
-all. The American background? It is Europe. It can be nothing else. Your
-very method proves what I say. You have no notion what you are going to
-write from one word to the other. It is madness. You call this the
-background of American life? Madness?</p>
-
-<p>As far as I have gone it is accurate.</p>
-
-<p>It is painting the wind.</p>
-
-<p>Ah, that would be something.</p>
-
-<p><i>Mais ça</i>, are you a plain imbecile? That is a game for children.
-Why do you not do as so many of your good writers do? Your Edgar Lee
-Masters, your Winesburg, Ohio. Have you not seen the photographs of men
-and women on your walls? They are a type, as distinct as a Frenchman or
-a German. Study these men, know their lives. You have a real work to do,
-you have the talent, the opportunity even. This is your work in life.
-You Americans, you are wasteful, mad&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Our background.</p>
-
-<p>You would paint the wind. Well, it has been tried&mdash;many times, and
-do you know where that leads?</p>
-
-<p>I know where it has led.</p>
-
-<p>But do you know? Have you seen, felt, heard what they have seen, felt,
-heard, our Villons&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Apollo was out of breath but the nymph was more tired than he. The chase
-must soon have ended when she falling to her knees half from the will to
-be there half from fatigue besought her mistress Diana to save her from
-the God's desire. And she was changed into a laurel bush.</p>
-
-<p>All about the hills where they stood the hard waxen leaves of the laurel
-glistened above the dead leaves of the hardwood trees, the beech, the
-maple, the oak.</p>
-
-<p>You imagine I am French because I attack you from the continental
-viewpoint. You are wrong. I am from the country of your friends
-Mussorgsky, Dostoevsky, Chekov. At least if you will not yield me the
-point that America cannot be new, cannot do anything unless she takes
-the great heritage which men of all nations and ages have left to the
-human race.</p>
-
-<p>You mean that I should not be an American but&mdash;Turgenev, enjoy you
-more if, well, if you were more comprehensible, a little more particular,
-<i>vous comprenez</i>? You sweep out your arms, you&mdash;I see no faces,
-no details of the life, no new shape&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>The druggist's boy cannot be distinguished from his master when he says,
-Hello, over the phone&mdash;Is that what you mean?</p>
-
-<p>Well, you are very much children, you Americans.</p>
-
-<p>It is not to be avoided as far as I can see.</p>
-
-<p>Let us have now a beginning of composition. We have had enough of your
-improvisations.</p>
-
-<p>I am consumed by my lusts. No American can imagine the hunger I
-have.</p>
-
-<p>It is the itch, monsieur. It is neurasthenia. Desire is not a thing to
-speak of as if it were a matter of filling the stomach. It is wind, gas.
-You are empty my friend. Eat. Then and then only.</p>
-
-<p>Like all men save perhaps the Chinese you are most transparent when you
-imagine yourself most protected.</p>
-
-<p>Her bosom reached almost to her knees. That morning in the October
-garden she had picked a violet for him and placed it in his coat.
-Watching the feet of men and women as they touched the pavement a strong
-odor of violets crossed his path.</p>
-
-<p>He turned and saw the massive Jewess waddling by. It had been good
-perfume too.</p>
-
-<p>These Polocks. Their heads have no occiput. They are flat behind. It is
-why when they put on their American hats the things slip down about
-their ears. The nigger's head isn't that way. You know how the bump goes
-out behind in so many of them. The club sandwich on her plate kept
-sliding apart, the top slice of bread would slip. Then she took the
-pieces in her fingers and poked the lettuce in under the sheet. On her
-breast was a black pin. It formed a circle. She looked up with her mouth
-full of food and resting both elbows on the table chewed America
-thoughtfully while she held the state of Maryland in her firm fingers.
-The ends of each finger were stubby, the nails cut short and as clean as
-well manicured nails could well be. Clatter, clatter, clatter. He could
-see himself in the plate glass behind her. He was conscious of his hat
-which he had not removed. He was at this table with these five
-women&mdash;one of them young, ready&mdash;and he had not removed his hat.
-There was in fact no place to put it.</p>
-
-<p>I am begging, frankly. Ten cents a ticket. I have to raise fifty dollars
-by the end of next week. We want to fit up a room in our hall where the
-colored working girls can come and rest. On Thursdays we serve tea. Then
-they go back to the office. When the impact is over the man must think.
-I tell you I do not contemplate with relish seeing my children bred out
-of all these girls. Is it wrong? Well, I thought you said you had an
-appetite. Impregnate eighty of them, right and left as you see them here
-in this room. It would not be impossible. I cannot think of my children
-running about in the environment in which these have to live. My dear
-sir, you are a fool. You are lying to yourself&mdash;As to the girls, I
-frankly desire them. I desire many, many, many.</p>
-
-<p>There she sat on the bench of the subway car looking idly about, being
-rushed under the river at great speed to the kitchen of her mother's
-flat. Malodorous mother. Or wrinkled hard-put-to-it mother. Savior of
-the movies. After the impact his great heart had expanded so as to
-include the whole city, every woman young and old there he having
-impregnated with sons and daughters. For everyone loved him. And he knew
-how to look into their eyes with both passion and understanding. Each
-had taken him to her soul of souls where the walls were papered with
-editorials from the Journal and there he had made himself father to her
-future child. As they went upstairs he saw how her heels were
-worn&mdash;Who will understand the hugeness of my passion?</p>
-
-<p>But he had understood. The truth lay under the surface. Why then
-not&mdash;No two can remain together without training. Who better than that
-one who is practiced. The faithful husband of the clothing store madam is
-used to her. They functionate well together. He puts his hat in the right
-place. His money in the right bank. His arm fitted in just the posture
-best suited to their mutual height and width. All their practices were
-mated.</p>
-
-<p>But he was an outsider. He was new to all. Her shoes are stitched up the
-back.</p>
-
-<p>Card-index minds, the judges have. Socialism, immorality and lunacy are
-about synonyms to the judge. Property is sacred and human liberty is
-bitter, bitter, bitter to their tongues.</p>
-
-<p>Walk up the stairs there little girl. But she is naked! These are all
-doctors. So the little tot struggled up the very high clinic steps,
-naked as she was, and all the doctors looked at her. She had some spots
-on her body that had been there a year. Had I been her father I would
-know why I am a fool.</p>
-
-<p>Naked and free, free to be damned in to hell by a chance vagrant to whom
-she had taken a fancy. Her father did not know her. Did not even know
-that she existed. Cared less. We will look after her said the head
-doctor.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure13.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>That cat is funny. I think she'd be a good one for the circus. When
-she's hungry she bites your legs. Then she jumps at you as much as to
-say: <i>Carramba</i>, give me something.</p>
-
-<p>America needs the flamboyant to save her soul&mdash;said Vachel Lindsay
-to the indifferent mountains.</p>
-
-<p>He might have added that America tries to satisfy this need in strange
-and often uncatalogued ways. America, living an exemplary
-three-meals-a-day-and-bed-time life in a wall-papered home, goes now and
-then <i>en masse</i>, by Gosh, to the circus to see men, women and animals
-perform exquisite and impossible feats or daring. What could be more
-flamboyant than the trapeze-performer hurtling through the air, the
-tiger leaping through man-made hoops, or the elephant poising his mighty
-bulk on his two forelegs lifted to the top of bottles? What more
-flamboyant than the painted clown, timeless type of the race, laughing
-that he may not weep, grinning through a thousand tragic jests while
-little human beings perform their miraculous tricks around him?</p>
-
-<p>Jazz, the Follies, the flapper in orange and green gown and war-paint of
-rouge&mdash;impossible frenzies of color in a world that refuses to be
-drab. Even the movies, devoid as they are of color in the physical sense,
-are gaudy in the imaginations of the people who watch them; gaudy with
-exaggerated romance, exaggerated comedy, exaggerated splendor or
-grotesqueness or passion. Human souls who are not living impassioned
-lives, not creating romance and splendor and grotesqueness&mdash;phases of
-beauty's infinite variety&mdash;such people wistfully try to find these
-things outside themselves; a futile, often a destructive quest.</p>
-
-<p>The imagination will not down. If it is not a dance, a song, it becomes
-an outcry, a protest. If it is not flamboyance it becomes deformity; if
-it is not art, it becomes crime. Men and women cannot be content, any
-more than children, with the mere facts of a humdrum life&mdash;the
-imagination must adorn and exaggerate life, must give it splendor and
-grotesqueness, beauty and infinite depth. And the mere acceptance of
-these things from without is not enough&mdash;it is not enough to agree and
-assert when the imagination demands for satisfaction creative energy.
-Flamboyance expresses faith in that energy&mdash;it is a shout of delight,
-a declaration of richness. It is at least the beginning of art.</p>
-
-<p>All right go ahead: A TEXAS PRIZE CONTEST&mdash;The Southern Methodist
-University at Dallas, Texas, recently emerged from a prize contest which
-had a strange <i>dénouement</i>&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Look here young man, after this you examine those girls in the cold
-weather.</p>
-
-<p>Who is Warner Fabian? <i>Flaming Youth</i> is the story of the
-super-flapper, of her affairs at country clubs and cozy home-dances with
-all the accompaniments of prohibition stimulants. Warner Fabian believes
-that the youth of this country feeds on excitement and rushes to knowledge
-"heeled" by way of petting parties and the elemental stimulus of jazz.
-The barriers of convention are down. Youth makes its own standards and
-innocence, according to the author, has been superseded by omniscience.</p>
-
-<p>It doesn't matter that Warner Fabian is a <i>nom de plume</i> which
-conceals the identity of one of the ablest scientists of this country who
-has dared to look facts in the face, facts physical, moral and emotional.
-He has written the truth about youth, the youth of today as he sees it.</p>
-
-<p>FLAMING YOUTH by Warner Fabian is the writing on the wall. It is the
-<i>Quo Vadis</i>? of the present moment.</p>
-
-<p>Those who are following in the Metropolitan Magazine the fortunes of
-Pat, the most sophisticated and yet at the same time one of the most
-deliciously lovely heroines of recent novels, and the fortunes of her
-two sisters, may protest that Mr. Fabian's portrayal of youth in this
-novel is outscotting Fitzgerald and overdancing in the Dark. We feel
-however that this story of three girls and their many men is one which
-may sufficiently frighten mothers and electrify fathers and hit the
-younger set hard enough between the eyes to help America's youth to, at
-least, a gradual return to sanity.</p>
-
-<p>And so the beginning of art ends in a gradual return to sanity.</p>
-
-<p>Today Modern scientific research has provided the most efficient agent
-for the treatment of local inflammation: DIONAL applied locally over the
-affected area acts promptly with prolonged effect. Drugless.
-Non-irritant. Non-toxic. Indicated in Mastitis, Burns, Boil,
-Tonsillitis, Mastoiditis, Sprain, Abscess, Bronchitis, Mumps, Contusion,
-Ulcers, Pneumonia.</p>
-
-<p>If a man died on a stretcher he simply said: Dump it out. And ordered us
-back for another load.</p>
-
-<p>Intended to stop at the school but his mind waylaid him. Down the hill
-came the ash-cart&mdash;on the wrong side of the street. He, up the hill,
-perforce went wrong also and with great headway. Just as he was about to
-pass the cart another car swung out from behind it, headed down hill at
-full speed. It was too late for any of the three to stop. In three
-seconds there would be death for someone. Angels would be waiting for
-mother's little boy. Without the minutest loss of time, in time with the
-Boston Symphony Orchestra at its best he swung far to the left, up over
-the curb, between two trees, onto the sidewalk&mdash;by luck no one was
-passing&mdash;and going fifty feet came back between two trees, over the
-curb to the roadway and continued his empty progress, rather hot in the
-face, it must be confessed. He felt happy and proud.</p>
-
-<p>But he had missed his street.</p>
-
-<p>Well let it go. Far away in front of him a locomotive stood
-indifferently at the avenue end, emitting great clouds of smoke. It was
-autumn, clear and cold.</p>
-
-<p>But you Scandinavians, said the Frenchman, it is impossible to live in
-this way. Why France, which is ten times as rich as your countries,
-could not do it. You do not know what money is for. You throw it away
-like a sickness. To drink champagne like this is madness, and it is
-every night, everywhere, in Christiania, Copenhagen, everywhere.</p>
-
-<p>And there she sits staring out, not at the sea, but over Long Island
-Sound. Dreaming of her sons&mdash;and of the money she will make next year
-by renting the better of her two little shacks.</p>
-
-<p>When you have paid up the twenty shares you may, if you like, retain
-them as paid up shares in which case you will receive the 5% interest,
-or, if you feel that you would like to do so, you may increase your
-holding to thirty shares and receive the 6%. Of course everyone is not
-able to do that. Do not worry about it, we will notify you in plenty of
-time when your book is balanced at the end of the six months.</p>
-
-<p>Let's see. What is the number of your house? Four eighty? I'll see that
-they send it right up.</p>
-
-<p>You know last Sunday was my birthday. Seventy-three years old. I had a
-party, a surprise party&mdash;my relatives came from all sides. But I
-couldn't get her downstairs. She's afraid. We had a banister put on the
-stairs, cost me nine dollars but she will not do it. She's so fat you
-know, she's afraid of falling.</p>
-
-<p>Re Commissions due&mdash;Amount $1.00. Dear Sir:&mdash;You will please
-take notice that unless we receive payment in full of your account within
-FIVE DAYS after receipt of this letter, we shall draw upon you for the
-amount due.</p>
-
-<p>A collection agency draft notifies the banks&mdash;those great
-institutions of finance&mdash;that there is serious doubt regarding the
-way you pay your honest obligations. The bank will take note of it. From
-there the information quietly passes to the various Mercantile Agencies,
-Dun's, Bradstreet's, Martindale's. And this is ONLY ONE cog in the wheel of
-ARROW SERVICE. Our reports cover the whole field of credit reporting.</p>
-
-<p>Your continued indifference to our requests for payment has forced us to
-consider this action. The draft, with a full history of the debt leaves
-our office in five days unless your check is received in the meantime.</p>
-
-<p>Let your better judgement guide you, and pay this account without any
-more trouble or expense. Yours very truly&mdash;MEMBERS: Retail Credit
-Men's National Association. Commercial Law League of America. Rotary
-International. O Rotary International!</p>
-
-<p>At this, De Soto, sick, after all the months of travel, stopped out of
-breath and looked about him. Hundreds of miles he had travelled through
-morass after morass, where the trees were so thick that one could
-scarcely get between them, over mountain and river but never did he come
-to the other side. The best he had done was to locate a river running
-across his path, the greatest he had ever seen or heard of, greater than
-the Nile, greater than the Euphrates, no less indeed than any. Here he
-had confronted the New World in all its mighty significance and
-something had penetrated his soul so that in the hour of need he had
-turned to this Mighty River rather than to any other thing. Should it
-come to the worst he had decided what to do. Out of the tangle around
-him, out of the mess of his own past the river alone could give him
-rest. Should he die his body should be given to this last resting place.
-Into it Europe should pass as into a new world.</p>
-
-<p>Near the shore he saw a school of small fish which seemed to look at
-him, rippling the water as they moved out in unison. Raising his heavy
-head De Soto gave the order to proceed. Four of the men lifted him on an
-improvised stretcher and the party, headed by the Indians, started again
-north along the bank.</p>
-
-<p>The whole country was strange to them. But there at the edge of that
-mighty river he had seen those little fish who would soon be eating him,
-he, De Soto the mighty explorer&mdash;He smiled quietly to himself with a
-curious satisfaction.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure14.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>It was a shock to discover that she, that most well built girl, so
-discrete, so comely, so able a thing in appearance, should be so stupid.
-There are things that she cannot learn. She will never finish school.
-Positively stupid. Why her little brother, no bigger than Hop o' my
-Thumb has caught up to her and will soon outstrip her. Her older brother
-is the brightest boy in the High School. She will I suppose breed stupid
-children. Plant wizards choose the best out of lots running into the
-millions. Choose here there everywhere for hybrids. A ten-pound white
-leghorn cockerel, hens that lay eggs big enough to spoil the career of
-any actor. She might though have bright children. What a pity that one
-so likely should be so stupid. Easier to work with but I should hate
-a child of mine to be that way. Excuses&mdash;Try first. Argue after.
-Excuses. Do not dare.</p>
-
-<p>There sat the seven boys&mdash;nine years old and
-there-abouts&mdash;planning dire tortures for any that should seduce or
-touch in any way their sisters. Each strove to exceed the other. Tying
-his antagonist to a tree Apollo took out his knife and flayed him. For
-sweet as the flute had been yet no man can play the flute and sing at
-the same time. But the God had first played his harp and then sung to
-his own accompaniment&mdash;a thing manifestly unfair. No doubt, his
-sense of being in the wrong whetted his lust for the other's hide. In
-any case he got what he was after. He was the winner and that was all
-there was about it.</p>
-
-<p>Each boy would think with a secret glow of a new torture: I would dip
-his hands in boiling lead&mdash;they often melted old pieces of lead in a
-plumber's pot over a field fire to make slugs for their bean
-shooters&mdash;then I would tie a rope to his feet and drag him on cinders
-etc.... each inventing a worse torture than that pictured before. And
-all for their sisters' virtue. So there under the east wall of the
-Episcopal Church they sat in a group on the grass and talked together
-for an hour.</p>
-
-<p>The real empire builders of our colonial period were not the statesmen,
-the men of wealth, the great planters but the unknown pioneers who
-fought single-handed and at once both the primeval wilderness and the
-lurking savage. The hand crooked to the ploughtail was shaped to the
-trigger.</p>
-
-<p>The Mesa Verde cliff dwellers&mdash;a much advanced race&mdash;formed a
-partnership with nature in the science of home building. Masterpieces of
-architecture, the survivals of the cliff dwellings tell the story of the
-ages.</p>
-
-<p>On the top of a point high above the steep cliffs stood Sun Temple, so
-called, scene of the great ceremonial dramas of the clan. The building
-is in the form of the letter D and many of the stones which make up the
-thousand-odd feet of walls are highly decorated.</p>
-
-<p>The corner stone of the building contains a fossil leaf of a palm tree.
-Influenced by anything which even in shape resembled the sun, the
-primitive people walled in the leaf on three sides and made a shrine.</p>
-
-<p>The word <i>bayeta</i> is merely Spanish for <i>baize</i>. Great
-quantities of this were made in England for the Spanish and Mexican trade,
-the major part of which was of a brilliant red color. In this way
-English <i>baize</i> became Spanish <i>bayeta</i> to the Indians of the
-American Southwest. Familiar with the art of weaving, these Indians
-unraveled the bayeta, retwisted it into one, two or three strands, and then
-rewove it into their blankets, which are now almost priceless. This old
-blanket was picked up by the author in a New Mexican corral, for the
-purpose of wiping his buggy axle. It was covered with filth and mud. A
-number of washings revealed this glorious specimen of the weaver's art.</p>
-
-<p>Accepted by a cultured and talented belle, Lincoln, according to his law
-partner, had already been refused by Sarah Rickard, an obscure miss of
-sixteen, of whom apparently nothing further is known.</p>
-
-<p>It was twelve feet from the rock into the water. As he stood looking
-down it seemed twenty. His eyes being five feet from his heels made it
-seem by that much higher than it was. He had never dived from such a
-height in his life. He had climbed up there to dive and he must dive or
-yield. What would he yield? At least it was something he did not intend
-to yield. He tried his best to imitate the others, he stood on the edge
-and plunged. It seemed to him that he plunged. As a matter of fact he
-dropped over the edge with his body bent almost double so that his
-thighs hit the water with a stinging impact, also the lower part of his
-belly, also the top of his head. He did not feel certain of himself for
-a moment or two after rising to the surface. That was about enough.
-Memory began to fill the blank of his mind.</p>
-
-<p>There it was still, the men around Mrs. Chain's table on Locust St.:
-$3.50 a week. A week? Yes, three-fifty a week. And that place in Leipzig
-where they had only half cooked fresh pork. <i>Schwein schlacherei</i>!
-Bah. One week was enough there. Fraulein Dachs, <i>pflaumen suppe</i>. That
-purple and sweet soup. The white cakes they sold on the station platform
-near Malaga, what were they called? It seemed to be some native bake
-peculiar to the place. The devil fish in a black sauce in Seville. Big
-lumps of dough, big as snowballs, <i>sauer braten</i>. But Mrs. Chain's
-prunes were the most wonderful. Watery tidbits. It was prunes or
-applesauce. Her daughter was simple I guess. Did her best to land one of
-the students, kept it up for twenty years. At that table I met one of my
-dearest friends. Will you have some bread? Yes. That look. It was enough.
-Youth is so rich. It needs no stage setting. Out went my heart to that
-face. There was something soft there, a reticence, a welcome, a loneliness
-that called to me. And he, he must have seen it in me too. We looked,
-two young men, and at once the tie was cemented. It was gaged accurately
-at once and sealed for all time. The other faces are so many prunes.</p>
-
-<p>Have you ever seen a dish of small birds all lying on their backs on the
-dish and with feet in the air, all roasted stiff but brown and savory?
-Rice birds I think they called them. Or snails or baked eggs?</p>
-
-<p>The old man raked slowly. It took him all day to finish the small lawn.
-But it was autumn and the leaves had fallen thickly. The bird bath was
-full of leaves. It was a sentimental picture. But after all why? The
-leaves must fall into every corner. If they fall into the bird bath that
-is all there is to it. Still it calls many things to the mind that are
-not evoked by the twingling of waves on a lake shore in August.</p>
-
-<p>Clark had taken a job as clerk at Pocono, and she was a Quakeress. They
-got to know each other very, very well. And this girl in the steamer
-chair, it was the cattle men who attracted her. Let her go then, he said
-tying the cord with a piece of gauze twisted into a rope. When you bathe
-the baby for the first time do not put him into a tub but sponge him off
-carefully before the fire with castile soap and warm water. Be careful
-not to get the soap into his eyes. Is it nitrate of silver they use for
-a baby's eyes?</p>
-
-<p>I could not tell whether it was a baby or a doll the little girl was
-coddling. The Italians' babies are often so very small. They dress them
-up so grotesquely too. It must be a rigid custom with them.</p>
-
-<p>Nothing at all. All at once it seemed that every ill word he had ever
-heard spoken struck his ear at the same moment. What a horrible roar it
-made. But there were other things, too many to record. Corners of rooms
-sacred to so many deeds. Here he had said so and so, done so and so. On
-that picnic he had dared to be happy. All the older women had watched
-him. With one girl under each arm he had let his spirit go. They had
-been closer than anything he could now imagine.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure15.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>Particles of falling stars, coming to nothing. The air pits them, eating
-out the softer parts. Sometimes one strikes the earth or falls flaming
-into Lake Michigan with a great hiss and roar. And if the lawless mob
-that rules Ireland with its orderly courts and still more orderly minds
-will not desist it must be crushed by England. So that to realize the
-futility of American men intent upon that virtue to be found in
-literature, literature, that is, of the traditional sort as known in France
-and Prussia&mdash;to realize how each serious American writer in turn
-flares up for a moment and fizzles out, burnt out by the air leaving no
-literary monument, no Arc de Triomphe behind him, no India subdued&mdash;To
-realize this it is necessary to go back to the T'ang dynasty where
-responsibility rested solely on the heads of the poets&mdash;<i>etc.,
-etc</i>... Or better still why not seek in Aleppo or Jerusalem for the
-strain to save us.</p>
-
-<p>America is lost. Ah Christ, Ah Christ that night should come so
-soon.</p>
-
-<p>And the reason is that no American poet, no American man of letters has
-taken the responsibility upon his own person. The responsibility for
-what? There is the fire. Rush into it. What is literature anyway but
-suffering recorded in palpitating syllables? It is the quiet after the
-attack. Picking a sliver of bone from his mangled and severed leg he
-dipped it in his own gore and wrote an immortal lyric. Richard
-Cœur de Lion shot through the chest with an iron bolt wrote the first
-English&mdash;no, French, poem of importance. What of democratic Chaucer?
-He was only a poet but Richard was a man, an adventurer, a king. The half
-mad women rush to impregnate themselves against him. And this is
-literature. This is the great desirable. Soaked in passion, <i>baba au
-rhum</i>, the sheer proof of the spirit will do the trick and America will
-be King. Up America. Up Cœur de Lion. Up Countess Wynienski the queen
-of Ireland.</p>
-
-<p>Polyphemus took first one shape then another but Odysseus, the wise and
-crafty, held firm. He did not let go but Polyphemus did. In fact the God
-could not exist without Odysseus to oppose him.</p>
-
-<p>Why man, Europe is YEARNING to see something new come out of
-America.</p>
-
-<p>In a soup of passion they would see a little clam. Let us smile. This
-is&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>The danger is in forgetting that the good of the past is the same good
-of the present. That the power that lived then lives today. That we too
-possess it. That true novelty is in good work and that no matter how
-good work comes it is good when it possesses power over itself. Europe's
-enemy is the past. Our enemy is Europe, a thing unrelated to us in any
-way. Our lie that we must fight to the last breathe is that it is
-related to us.</p>
-
-<p>We are deceived when they cry that negro music is the only true American
-creation. It IS the only true from the European point of view.
-Everything is judged from that point of view. But to us it is only new
-when we consider it from a traditional vantage. To us it means a
-thousand things it can never mean to a European. To us only can it be
-said to be alive. With us it integrates with our lives. That is what it
-teaches us. What in hell does it matter to us whether it is new or not
-when it IS to us. It exists. It is good solely because it is a part of
-us. It is good THEREFORE and therefore only is it new. Everything that
-is done in Europe is a repetition of the past with a difference.
-Everything we do must be a repetition of the past with a difference. I
-mean that if negro music is new in an absolute sense&mdash;-which it is not
-by any means, if we are to consider the Ethiopian&mdash;the probable
-Ethiopian influence in Egypt&mdash;then it is new to Europe as it is to
-us.</p>
-
-<p>It is not necessary for us to learn from anyone but ourselves&mdash;at
-least it would be a relief to discover a critic who looked at American work
-from the American viewpoint.</p>
-
-<p>We are a young nation and have not had time or opportunity to catch up
-with nations that had ten centuries start of us. We still labor under
-the handicap of our Puritan lineage....</p>
-
-<p>We shall not be able to plead childhood any longer.</p>
-
-<p>Eric the Red landed in Providence, Long Island, and was put in a cage so
-everyone could see him.</p>
-
-<p>This sort of stupidity we have to combat. I am not talking of the mass
-of plumbers and carpenters. I am talking of the one thing that is
-permanent. Spirits. I am saying that America will screw whom it will
-screw and when and how it will screw. And that it will refrain from
-screwing when it will and that no amount of infiltration tactics from
-"superior civilizations" can possibly make us anything but bastards.</p>
-
-<p>We are only children when we acknowledge ourselves to be children.
-Weight of culture, weight of learning, weight of everything such as
-abandon in any sense has nothing to do with it. We must first isolate
-ourselves. Free ourselves even more than we have. Let us learn the
-essentials of the American situation.</p>
-
-<p>We who despise the blackguards in the old sense. We too are free. Free!
-We too, with paddles instead of turbines will discover the new world. We
-are able. We are kings in our own right.</p>
-
-<p>We care nothing at all for the complacent Concordites? We can look at
-that imitative phase with its erudite Holmeses, Thoreaus, and Emersons.
-With one word we can damn it: England.</p>
-
-<p>In Patagonia they kick up the skulls of the river men out of the dust
-after a flood. In Peru, in Machu Pichu the cyclopean wall on the top of
-the Andes remains to rival the pyramids which after all may have been
-built of blocks of some plaster stuff of which we have lost the
-combination.</p>
-
-<p>I know not a land except ours that has not to some small extent made its
-title clear. Translate this into ancient Greek and offer it to Harvard
-engraved on copper to be hung in the waterclosets which freshmen use.</p>
-
-<p>And why do they come to naught? these falling stars, etc.</p>
-
-<p>It has been generally supposed that among the peoples of the earth the
-age of maturity comes earliest in the tropics and increases gradually as
-one goes northward. But in North America this rule has one striking
-exception. It is not rare among Esquimau women that they have their
-first child at 12 and children born before the mothers were 11 have been
-recorded. Point Barrow Alaska 300 miles north of the Arctic circle.</p>
-
-<p>But the early maturity of the Esquimau girls is strictly in accord with
-the supposition that the hotter the environment the earlier the
-maturity. To all intents and purposes the typical Esquimau lives under
-tropical or subtropical conditions. The temperature of the Esquimau
-house indoors frequently rises to 90°. When they go out the cold air
-does not have a chance to come in contact with the body, except for the
-limited area of the face. When an Esquimau is well dressed his two
-layers of fur clothing imprison the body heat so effectively that the
-air in actual contact with his skin is always at the temperature of a
-tropical summer. He carries the climate about with him inside his
-clothes.</p>
-
-<p>When an Esquimau comes inside such a house as the one I have been
-speaking of he strips off all clothing, immediately on entering, except
-his knee breeches, and sits naked from the waist up and from the knees
-down. Great streams of perspiration run down the face and body and are
-being continually mopped up with handfuls of moss.</p>
-
-<p>The effect of the overheated houses is more direct upon the women than
-the men for they remain indoors a large part of the winter.</p>
-
-<p>Otherwise in North America among the Indians as one goes north from
-Mexico toward the arctic sea the colder the average temperature of the
-air that is in contact with the body through the year, the later the
-maturity of the girls. The most northerly of the Atabasca Indians appear
-to suffer a great deal from the cold.</p>
-
-<p>The Dog Rib and Yellow Knife Indians are often so poorly clad that they
-have to be continually moving, for if they stop for even half an hour at
-a time their hands become completely numb.</p>
-
-<p>In the evenings their wigwams are cheerful with a roaring fire but while
-one's face is almost scorched with the heat of the roaring flames one's
-back has hoar-frost forming upon it. At night the Indians go to sleep
-under their blankets covering up their heads and shivering all night.
-The average age of maturity of the girls of these tribes is as high or
-higher than that of north European whites.</p>
-
-<p>But north from the Slavey and Dog Rib Indians to the Esquimau country
-the conditions suddenly change. One comes in contact with a people that
-has a system of living almost perfectly adapted to a cold climate, while
-the northern Indians have a system almost unbelievably ill adapted to
-the conditions in which they live.</p>
-
-<p>In Puritan New England they wrapped the lover and his lass in one
-blanket and left them before the dying hearth after the family retired.
-There was a name for it which I have forgotten.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure16.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>It was another day ended. Another day added to the days that had gone
-before. Merest superstition. The eternal moment remained twining in its
-hair the flowers of yesterday and tomorrow. The newer street lights
-sparked in the dark. The uphill street which that morning had been
-filled at its far end with the enormous medal-with-rays of the sun was
-now flecked with sparkles. It was Carlstadt, established as a free
-thinker's corporation by Carl Weiss of Berne from which all churches had
-been excluded. Another day&mdash;any day&mdash;.</p>
-
-<p>There lay that great frame of a man with his heavy features relaxed his
-loose jowls rising and falling with each breath while the busy surgeons
-tinkered at his elbow. Soon they struck gold and out spurted the red.
-Martha, who had not gone downstairs for over an hour caught it in a white
-porcelain bowl, an ounce, two ounces&mdash;she thought&mdash;estimating the
-amount swiftly. Then four ounces, eight. He was a large man. When will
-they check it! His breathing had grown easier. He was benefited. A
-pint! He was white. In an hour men on horseback were riding north and
-south. Washington was dead. It was another day. Any day.</p>
-
-<p>Davy Crockett had a literary style. Rather than blow his squirrel to
-bits he'd strike the tree just under its belly so that the concussion
-would stun it. Such was the country with the element of time subtracted.
-What is time but an impertinence?</p>
-
-<p>Homesteading in the far western states was a struggle. Every child born
-there had a mother who is thrice a heroine. A woman in such a country
-approached motherhood at a time when her husband had to be away from
-home. Up to the day of her confinement she had to milk, churn, care for
-the chickens, work in the garden and carry water to the house from a
-well three hundred yards away... The day of her confinement she did a
-large washing then walked two miles to the home of a neighbor.</p>
-
-<p>For that the brat seized her by the lug with his little sharp teeth and
-drew blood. We'll have to put him on the bottle.</p>
-
-<p>Nothing, save for the moment! In the moment exists all the past and the
-future! Evolution&mdash;! Anti-peristalsis. Eighty-seven years ago I was
-born in a little village in the outskirts of Birmingham. The past is for
-those that lived in the past, the present is for today. Or&mdash;today! The
-little thing lay at the foot of the bed while the midwife&mdash;It was in
-England 1833. And now by the sea a new world death has come and left his
-chewing gum in an artery of her brain. But I'll pay you for this, she
-said as they were sliding her into the ambulance, I'll pay you for this.
-You young people think you are awfully smart, don't you. I don't want to
-see them again, those fuzzy things, what are they, trees?</p>
-
-<p>Good gracious, do you call this making me comfortable? The two boys had
-her on the stretcher on the floor. Yes, stay here a week then I can do
-what I please but you want to do what you please first. I wonder how
-much she planned.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure17.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>Another day, going evening foremost this time. Leaning above her baby in
-the carriage was Nettie Vogelman, grown heavier since we knew her in the
-sixth grade twenty-five years before and balancing great masses of
-prehistoric knowledge on her head in the shape of a purple ostrichplume
-hat.</p>
-
-<p>But where is romance in all this&mdash;with the great-coat she was
-wearing hanging from the bulge of her paps to the sidewalk? Romance! When
-knighthood was in flower. Rome. Eliogabalus in a skirt married his man
-servant.</p>
-
-<p>We struggle to comprehend an obscure evolution&mdash;opposed by the true
-and static church&mdash;when the compensatory involution so plainly marked
-escapes our notice. Living we fail to live but insist on impaling
-ourselves on fossil horns. But the church balanced like a glass ball
-where the jets of evolution and involution meet has always, in its
-prosperous periods, patronised the arts. What else could it do? Religion
-is the shell of beauty.</p>
-
-<p>The fad of evolution is swept aside. It was only mildly interesting at
-the best. I'll give you a dollar my son for each of these books you
-read: Descent of Man and Origin of Species, reprinted by Dombie and
-Sons, Noodle Lane, Ken. W. London; England 1890.</p>
-
-<p>Who will write the natural history of involution beginning with the
-stone razor age in Cornwall to the stone razor age in Papua? Oh China,
-China teach us! Ottoman, Magyar, Moor, teach us. Norse Eric the
-Discoverer teach us. Cœur de Lion, teach us. Great Catherine teach us.
-Phryne, Thaïs, Cleopatra, Brunehilde, Lucretia Borgia teach us. What
-was it, Demosthenes, that she said to you? Come again?</p>
-
-<p>Borne on the foamy crest of involution, like Venus on her wave, stript
-as she but of all consequence&mdash;since it is the return: See they
-return! From savages in quest of a bear we are come upon rifles, cannon.
-From Chaldeans solving the stars we have fallen into the bellies of the
-telescopes. From great runners we have evolved into speeches sent over a
-wire.</p>
-
-<p>But our spirits, our spirits have prospered! Boom, boom. Oh yes, our
-spirits have grown&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>The corrosive of pity, Baroja says, giving up medicine to be a baker.</p>
-
-<p>Marriage is of the church because it is the intersection of <i>loci</i>
-by which alone there is place for a church to stand. Beauty is an arrow.
-Diana launched her shaft into the air and where the deer and the arrow
-met a church was founded and there beauty had died.</p>
-
-<p>So youth and youth meet and die and there the church sets up its
-ceremony.</p>
-
-<p>Who will write the natural history of involution?</p>
-
-<p>I have forgotten something important that I wanted to say. Thus having
-forgotten and remembered that it was important the folly of all thought
-is revealed.</p>
-
-<p>The deer lay panting on the leaves while Diana leaned over it to stab it
-in the neck with her dagger.</p>
-
-<p>I have forgotten what I wanted to say.</p>
-
-<p>Venus and Adonis.</p>
-
-<p>The second time I saw her it was in a room of a hotel in the city.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure18.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>As the Southern mountains are not like other mountains, so the
-mountaineers are not like others. For all their beauty these mountains
-are treacherous and alien, and the people who must wring a livelihood
-from the sawmills or from the tiny perpendicular farms high up under the
-sky come to be wary and secret like their woodlands.</p>
-
-<p>The Cumberland mountain mother, by nature sharp and sane, has studied
-the moods of the mountains and of the animals. Illiterate though she be,
-she is full of ripe wisdom. Many, superior to the mountain woman in,
-say, sanitation might learn from sitting on cabin doorsteps that they
-are most often inferior to her in sanity.</p>
-
-<p>Yet, frankly, it is often better to sit on the cabin doorstep than to go
-inside. The mountain mother struggles bravely against dirt, but if you
-live in a lonely two-room cabin, if you are the sole caretaker of six
-children under ten, and two cows and a large stony garden, and must help
-in the cornfield besides, you are excusable if in the end you "quit
-struggling." The mountain mother does not make herself and her husband
-and her children slaves to the housekeeping arts.</p>
-
-<p>A mountain woman dips snuff&mdash;surreptitiously if she is young,
-frankly if she is old.</p>
-
-<p>We settle down on the doorstep probably on straight chairs with seats of
-cornhusks twisted into a rope and then interwoven. There is a sound to
-which the mountains have accustomed me&mdash;the sharp jolting thud when a
-mother, if she possesses neither cradle nor rocker, puts her baby to
-sleep by jerking forward and backward on two legs of a straight chair.
-There is usually some two-year-old lying fast asleep on the bed just
-inside the door; or on the porch floor, plump and brown as a bun and
-studded with flies thick as currants.</p>
-
-<p>Mountain children are as vigorous as baby oaks until they reach their
-teens, and then over-work begins to tell on growing bodies. A reedy boy
-of thirteen, just beginning to stretch to the length of spine and limb
-that characterises the mountaineer, often gets a stoop that he never
-afterward conquers. In the more remote lumber districts I have seen boys
-of ten and twelve work all day loading cars. There too, slim mountain
-girls of twelve and fourteen stand all day in the icy spray of the flume
-to stack bark on the cars.</p>
-
-<p>Here where isolation makes people fiercely individualistic public
-opinion is as slow to deny a man's right to marry at the age he wishes
-as it is to deny his right to turn his corn into whisky. At the age when
-boys and girls first awake to the fact of sex they marry and the
-parents, although regretfully, let them.</p>
-
-<p>The unmarried mother is most rare. A boy of sixteen sets himself to all
-the duties of fatherhood. A fourteen-year-old mother, with an ageless
-wisdom, enters without faltering on her future of a dozen children.</p>
-
-<p>But here is Lory. But again a digression&mdash;: In any account of the
-mountains one must remember that there are three distinct types: the
-people of the little villages, almost all remote from railroads; the
-itinerant lumber workers, woodchoppers and mill-hands who follow the
-fortunes of the portable sawmill as it exhausts first one remote cove
-then another; and the permanent farmers who have inherited their
-dwindling acres for generations. Yet at bottom the mountain mother is
-always the same.</p>
-
-<p>Lory lives in a one-room lumber shack, and moves about once in three
-months. The walls are of planks with inch-wide cracks between them.
-There are two tiny windows with sliding wooden shutters and a door. All
-three must be closed when it is very cold. For better protection the
-walls are plastered over with newspapers, always peeling off and gnawed
-by woodrats. The plank floor does not prevent the red clay from oozing
-up. The shack is some fifteen feet square. It contains two stoves, two
-beds, two trunks, a table and two or three chairs. In it live six souls:
-two brothers, their wives and a baby apiece.</p>
-
-<p>Lory is part Indian, one surmises from the straight hair dropping over
-her eyes and her slow squawlike movements. Her face is stolid except
-when it flashes into a smile of pure fun. Dark though she is her breast,
-bared from her dark purple dress, is statue white. She looks down on her
-first baby with a madonna's love and her words have in them a madonna's
-awe before a holy thing: "I ain't never a-goin' to whip him. He ain't
-never a-goin' to need it, for he won't get no meanness if I don't learn
-him none."</p>
-
-<p>The setting is fairyland. Mountain folk go far toward living on beauty.
-The women may become too careless and inert even to scrape away the
-underbrush and plant a few sweet potatoes and cabbages. They may sit
-through lazy hours mumbling their snuff sticks, as does Mrs. Cole, while
-children and dogs and chickens swarm about them: but even Mrs. Cole can
-be roused by the call of beauty.</p>
-
-<p>"My husband he's choppin' at the first clearin' two miles from here, and
-he's been plumb crazy over the yaller lady slippers up that-a-way. He's
-been sayin' I must take the two least kids, what ain't never seen sech,
-and go up there and see 'em 'fore they was gone. So yesterday we went.
-It sure was some climb over them old logs, but Gawd them lady slippers
-was worth it." I shall never understand the mystery of a mountain
-woman's hair. No matter how old, how worn or ill she may be, her hair is
-always a wonder of color and abundance.</p>
-
-<p>Ma Duncan at fifty-five is straight and sure-footed as an Indian; tall
-and slim and dark as a gypsy, with a gypsy's passionate love of
-out-of-doors. Her neighbors send for Ma Duncan from far and near in time
-of need. Going forth from her big farm boarding-house on errands of
-mercy. Up wild ravines to tiny cabins that seem to bud out like lichens
-from grey boulders wet with mountain streams, over foot logs that sway
-crazily over rock creeks, through waist-high undergrowth Ma Duncan goes
-with her stout stick.</p>
-
-<p>As we reach a little grassy clearing Ma Duncan drops down to stretch out
-happily: So as I can hear what the old earth has to say me... Reckon it
-says, "Quit your fussin' you old fool. Ain't God kept your gang a young
-uns all straight so fur? He ain't a-going back on you now, just because
-they're growd."</p>
-
-<p>Presently Ma Duncan sits up, her hands about her knees, her hat fallen
-from her wealth of hair, her gun on the ground beside her&mdash;often she
-carries a gun in the hope of getting a gray squirrel to be done in
-inimitable brown cream gravy for breakfast.</p>
-
-<p>She looks out sadly over much worn woodland, with the great stumps
-remaining:</p>
-
-<p>"I wish you could have seen the great old trees that used to be here. If
-folks wasn't so mad for money they might be here and a preachin' the
-gospel of beauty. But folks is all for money and all for self. Some-day
-when they've cut off all the beauty that God planted to point us to him,
-folks will look round and wonder what us human bein's is here
-fur&mdash;"</p>
-
-<p>"The mountain woman lives untouched by all modern life. In two centuries
-mountain people have changed so little that they are in many ways the
-typical Americans."</p>
-
-<p>"The Lord sent me back" former pastor tells men in session at the
-church. With tears in his eyes, he enters meeting, escorted by two sons.
-Dramatic scene follows as he asks forgiveness for mistake he has made.
-Was in Canada and Buffalo. His explanation of absence is satisfactory to
-family and members he met last night.</p>
-
-<p>Miss Hannen in seclusion at home. Her family declines to give
-statement.</p>
-
-<p>Dominie Cornelius Densel, forty eight years old, former pastor, etc...
-who left his wife and eight children etc. came home last night.</p>
-
-<p>Miss T. Hannen, twenty-six years old, etc... who disappeared from her
-home, etc... on the same afternoon that the dominie was numbered among
-the missing also came to her home the same evening.</p>
-
-<p>Pictures of the missing dominie and member of his church who are home
-again.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure19.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>Commodius renamed the tenth month Amazonius. But he died a violent death
-and the old name was returned.</p>
-
-<p>I had five cents in my pocket and a piece of apple pie in my hand, said
-Prof. M. I. Pupin, of Columbia University describing the circumstances
-of his arrival in America in the steerage of the steamship Westphalie
-from Hamburg half a century ago.</p>
-
-<p>Today that American scholar of Serbian birth holds the chair in
-electro-mechanics at Columbia University.</p>
-
-<p>Prof. Pupin is merely one of a host of former immigrants whose names are
-linked with the great strides in science, commerce, finance and industry
-and whose careers furnish living proof that America, besides breeding
-great men, imports them.</p>
-
-<p>Claude Monet was born in Columbia, Ohio.</p>
-
-<p>In industry and commerce the stories of many of the successful
-immigrants read like romances.</p>
-
-<p>There is C. C. A. Baldi of Philadelphia who began with nothing and who
-is now one of America's foremost citizens of foreign birth. When he
-landed in this country thirty years ago he had only a few pennies in the
-pockets of his ragged trowsers. He knew no English and knew nothing of
-American customs, but he had heard of the opportunities which America
-offers to a wide-awake, ambitious immigrant willing to work.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Baldi bought thirty lemons with his pennies. He peddled them and
-with the proceeds of sales bought more lemons and peddled them. Before
-long he had a cart loaded with hundreds of lemons. In time the push-cart
-became a store and the store grew into a great business.</p>
-
-<p>Other spectacular instances of success are furnished by the careers of
-Louis J. Horowitz, one of America's greatest builders and S. M.
-Schatzkin, who came to this country twenty-five years ago with 3 dollars
-carefully tucked away in his clothes and began peddling coal in the East
-side of New York. Today Schatzkin has large sums invested in many big
-American enterprises.</p>
-
-<p>Horowitz, who came here thirty years ago, built the Woolworth and the
-Equitable buildings, one the tallest and the other the largest office
-building in point of floor space in the world. His first job was that of
-an errand boy. Later he worked as a parcel wrapper, then as a stock boy
-and then as a shoe salesman. After selling shoes he started selling real
-estate.</p>
-
-<p>Witness? oh witness these lives my dainty cousins. Dear Madam:&mdash;It
-has often been said that one of the most interesting spots in America is
-the small space covered by the desk of the editor of the Atlantic
-Monthly.</p>
-
-<p>All the qualities which make up the interest of life,&mdash;joy, sorrow,
-romance, ambition, experience,&mdash;seem to center in this spot in turn,
-radiating from every nook and corner of the world.</p>
-
-<p>"Adventures," remarked the talented Mr. Disraeli, "are for the
-adventurous," and it is to those who think of life as the supreme
-adventure that the Atlantic is most confidently addressed.</p>
-
-<p>If you care for a magazine that satisfies, vexes and delights by turn,
-you can safely subscribe to the Atlantic Monthly for the coming year.</p>
-
-<p>Public Service Railway Company, Newark, N. J. Amazonius 10,
-1920.&mdash;To our Patrons: As a fair minded citizen, your impartial
-consideration of the facts set forth in subjoined letter, written by me
-to the Board of Public Utility Commissioners under date of Amazonius
-7th. 1920, is respectfully requested. Very truly yours? Thomas N.
-McCarter, President.</p>
-
-<p>To the Board of Public Utility Commissioners of the State of New Jersey,
-Trenton, New Jersey. Dear Sirs: The rate of fare of 7 cents, with one
-cent for a transfer, etc..., etc... Such large cities as Boston, New
-Haven, Hartford and Pittsburg already have a 10c. flat rate. Etc...
-etc... Under the foregoing statement of facts the company is forced to
-file herewith a flat rate of 10c. where 7c. is now charged. Etc...
-Etc...</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Now when Christmas bells ring clear</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Telling us that love is here</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 6em;">And children sing</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Gifts that speak of thoughtful love</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Just like angels from above</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Glad tidings bring.</span></p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>Rugs, mirrors, chairs, tables, W. &amp; J. Sloane, N.Y., Wash., San F.
-Christmas Gifts Sure to be Appreciated.: Standing lamps, table lamps,
-book ends, Sheffield ware, desk sets, framed prints, porcelains, soft
-pillows, foot rests (D-2968 Rocking foot rest in Mahogany. Formerly
-$45.00. Sale Price $30.00!) sconces, mantel clocks, wall clocks, tall
-clocks, small tables, smoking stands, occasional chairs, screens,
-oriental rugs, Chinese embroideries, vacuum cleaners&mdash;Mirrors. Small
-Oriental Rugs: Mossouls, Pergames, Beloochistans, Lilehennas, Sarouks
-and Kirmanshahs.</p>
-
-<p>California was peopled by the Indians first and then by the Padres who
-brought with them their sprigs of vine and of orange and of fig and also
-the art of irrigation. So that you will find today from the very
-northernmost part, from Klamath Lake down to the Imperial Valley in the
-South, the lands of California watered and made as fertile as the valley
-of the Nile.</p>
-
-<p>That's all right. Yes Sir. But I come from the Eastern shore of
-Maryland. I'm an East Sho' man. Have you ever been on the Eastern Sho'?
-No? Well sir, we're a strange people and we have some strange legends on
-the East Sho'. When Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden they fell
-sick and the Lord was very much disturbed over them, so he called a
-council of his angels and wanted to know where they should be taken for
-a change of air.</p>
-
-<p>Gabriel suggested the Eastern Sho' of Maryland but the Lord said, No,
-No; that wouldn't be sufficient change.</p>
-
-<p>Yes sir, down at Chincoteague they have the biggest and the finest
-oysters in the world. Big as your hand and when you get a half dozen of
-them a couple of hours out of the water you know you have something.</p>
-
-<p>It was at Chincoteague two Spanish galleons went ashore in the old days
-and some ponies swam ashore. To this day they have a yearly round-up on
-the island where the breed of these ponies is coralled, a short special
-breed of horse.</p>
-
-<p>Tangier Island is another place. That's where the sheriff shot the boy
-who wouldn't go in off his front porch on Sunday morning during church
-service. Either in church or in the house during that hour. He shot him
-all right. They have little individual canals up to their back doors
-from the bay.</p>
-
-<p>And the native, coming up to him suddenly with a knife as long as your
-arm, said; <i>Yo soy mas hombre que tu</i>! and started a swing at him. Had
-he not been so quick to seize a chair and bring it down on the man's
-head&mdash;What would have happened?</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
-<img src="images/figure20.jpg" width="100"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p>Sometimes the men would come in and say there was a turkey nest down in
-the meadow and they'd send me to look for it.</p>
-
-<p>Once I fell in the mireage up to my waist. My, they was mad at me.
-"Can't tramp a meadow without falling in the mireage?" they said.</p>
-
-<p>I miss it often. At nine they let me drive the hay-hoist with one horse
-and later with two. One morning I had the young team out. It was Allie's
-team of greys, they was only just no more than colts. They shied at a
-piece of paper. I could hear the men up in the barn yelling. "Hey,
-what's the matter down there!" But it was no use. I tried to get to
-their heads. I wasn't afraid of them. Allie said afterward he wouldn't
-have been surprised to have seen me killed.</p>
-
-<p>One of the women stood in the road waving a broom. I can see her yet. I
-might have been able to manage them if it hadn't been for her but they
-simply jumped over a wagon and smashed the hay-fork and ran down the
-road two miles. Then they came back again. My but the old man was mad at
-me. All the black looks I got!</p>
-
-<p>I used to hate the Old Man. Sometimes I'd be getting wood and he'd ask
-me why I hadn't done something. I'd say I hadn't gotten round to it yet.
-Maybe he'd throw a piece of wood at me.</p>
-
-<p>I can remember the churning. I wouldn't exactly like to go back to it
-all but sometimes I miss it terribly. Sometimes it would n't take you
-more than five minutes to get the butter and sometimes you'd churn for
-45 or two hours and sometimes it would never come. We'd get four or five
-pounds or more at a churning. Then it would have to be washed and salted
-and packed in jars in the cellar.</p>
-
-<p>So now that it is raining. So now that it is Amazonius&mdash;we go to
-buy a metal syringe at the factory because we know the men who live on our
-street who own the bricks that make the walls that hold the floors that
-hold the girls who make mistakes in the inventories:</p>
-
-<p>Every order that comes in is copied. You must rely on your help. As the
-orders come in they are handled by a girl who puts them on our own
-uniform order sheets. So right there it begins. You have to rely on a
-young flyaway who has perhaps been up dancing the night before. It's
-easy enough for her to write "with" for "without" and&mdash;that's the sort
-of thing that happens. There is a certain minimum of error that you must
-count on and no reputable house will fail to make good promptly.</p>
-
-<p>The glass blowers have never in my entire experience of 17 years
-suffered any harm from their trade. Why we had a boy in the old factory,
-a cripple, a withered leg, the weakest, scrawniest lad you ever saw.
-He's been blowing for us for 15 or 17 years and you should see him
-today. Why the fat fairly hangs down over his collar.</p>
-
-<p>In our thermometer work they blow the bulb then fill it with mercury
-which is in a special container like the cups you get at Child's
-restaurant say. They never have to touch the stuff. When the bulb is
-full they seal it. Then the mercury in the bulb is warmed by passing the
-bulb through a flame. This is to drive it up the capillary tube. There
-can be no volatilization since the mercury is in the tube and this is
-the only time the stuff is heated. Then when the metal rises from the
-heat the other end of the glass is dipped in the stuff so that as the
-bulb now cools the mercury is sucked up filling the thermometer
-completely.</p>
-
-<p>Sometimes, of course, a bulb breaks in heating so that the floor is full
-of the stuff.</p>
-
-<p>The hydrofluoric acid for marking is used under a hood with a special
-exhaust-blower that has nothing else to do but exhaust that hood. There
-is not the slightest odor of fumes in the room. The air is as good there
-as here.</p>
-
-<p>And what is your business?</p>
-
-<p>Rag merchant.</p>
-
-<p>Ah yes. And what does that mean?</p>
-
-<p>Our main specialty is shoddy.</p>
-
-<p>Ah yes. Shoddy is made from&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>From woolen rags. The whole mass is put into a vat and the cotton
-dissolved out. It comes out in a great wet heap of stuff that has to be
-washed and dried.</p>
-
-<p>Sometimes they burn the cotton out with gas. For instance you'll see a
-piece of cloth, grey cloth. The gas will take out the black cotton and
-leave the wool fibres all running in one direction. One of the secrets
-of the trade is the selection of the colors. That is red shoddy is made
-from red rags and so on. But they even take the dyes out of the cloth
-and use it over again.</p>
-
-<p>You know the army coats the boys wore. They were 70% shoddy. It's all
-wool but the fibre has been broken. It makes a hard material not like
-the soft new woven woolens but it's wool, all of it.</p>
-
-<p>After the stuff from the vats is dry they put it on the donkeys which
-turn it into loose skeins. From that stage it goes on to the making of
-the yarn for weaving when any quantity of fresh wool can be mixed that
-you desire.</p>
-
-<p>The shortest fibre, that can't be used for anything else, is made into
-these workingmen's shirts you see. The wool is held in a container in
-the loosest state possible. This is connected up with a blower in front
-of which a loom is set for weaving a fairly tight cotton mesh. Then as
-the loom is working the wool is BLOWN IN! Where the cotton warp and woof
-cross the shoddy is caught.</p>
-
-<p>Recently a Jew came in to complain of the lightness of the shirts he was
-getting. All we did was to yell out, "George turn on the blower a little
-stronger." One washing and the wool is gone. But the Jews are the smart
-ones. You got to hand it to them. They invent machinery to do anything
-with that stuff. Why one man made a million before the government
-stopped him by making cheap quilts.</p>
-
-<p>He took any kind of rags just as they were collected, filth or grease
-right on them the way they were and teased them up into a fluffy stuff
-which he put through a rolling process and made into sheets of wadding.
-These sheets were fed mechanically between two layers of silkolene and a
-girl simply sat there with an electric sewing device which she guided
-with her hand and drew in the designs you see on those quilts, you know.</p>
-
-<p>You've seen this fake oilcloth they are advertising now. Congoleum.
-Nothing but building paper with a coating of enamel.</p>
-
-<p>¡<i>O vida tan dulce</i>!</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<pre style='margin-top:6em'>
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-</pre>
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