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diff --git a/old/67947-h/67947-h.htm b/old/67947-h/67947-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index a1ad16c..0000000 --- a/old/67947-h/67947-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7220 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - A Handy Guide for Beggars, by Vachel Lindsay—A Project Gutenberg eBook - </title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2,h3,h4 { - text-align: center; - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -div.titlepage {text-align: center; page-break-before: always; page-break-after: always;} -div.titlepage p {text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: 2em;} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } - -div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} -h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} -h3.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} - -table { - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; -} - -td {text-indent: -1em;} - -.tdr {text-align: right;} -.tdc {text-align: center;} - -p.drop-cap { - text-indent: -0.35em; -} - -p.drop-cap:first-letter -{ - float: left; - margin: 0em 0.15em 0em 0em; - font-size: 250%; - line-height:0.85em; - text-indent: 0em; -} -.x-ebookmaker p.drop-cap { - text-indent: 0em; -} -.x-ebookmaker p.drop-cap:first-letter -{ - float: none; - margin: 0; - font-size: 100%; -} - -.bbox {border: 2px solid; padding: 2em;} - -.pagenum { - position: absolute; - left: 92%; - font-size: smaller; - text-align: right; - font-style: normal; - font-weight: normal; - font-variant: normal; -} - -.blockquot { - margin-left: 17.5%; - margin-right: 17.5%; -} - -.x-ebookmaker .blockquot { - margin-left: 5%; - margin-right: 5%; -} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} - -.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;} - -.antiqua { - font-family: Blackletter, Fraktur, Textur, "Old English Text MT", "Olde English Mt", "Olde English", Gothic, serif, sans-serif;} - -.large {font-size: 125%;} -.xlarge {font-size: 175%;} -.ph1 {text-align: center; font-size: large; font-weight: bold;} -.ph3 {text-align: left; font-size: x-large; font-weight: bold;} -.gap {padding-left: 6em;} -.gap2 {padding-left: 1em;} - -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; - page-break-inside: avoid; - max-width: 100%; -} - -.x-ebookmaker .hide {display: none; visibility: hidden;} - -.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} - -.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} - -.fnanchor { - vertical-align: super; - font-size: .8em; - text-decoration: - none; -} - - -.poetry-container {text-align: center;} -.poetry {display: inline-block; text-align: left;} -.poetry .verse {text-indent: -2.5em; padding-left: 3em;} -.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} -@media print { .poetry {display: block;} } -.x-ebookmaker .poetry {display: block;} - -.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; - color: black; - font-size:smaller; - margin-left: 17.5%; - margin-right: 17.5%; - padding: 1em; - margin-bottom: 1em; - font-family:sans-serif, serif; } - - </style> - </head> -<body> -<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Handy Guide for Beggars, by Vachel Lindsay</p> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. 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. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: A Handy Guide for Beggars</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em;'>Especially Those of the Poetic Fraternity</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Vachel Lindsay</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April 28, 2022 [eBook #67947]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: D A Alexander, David E. Browm, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was created from images of public domain material made available by the University of Toronto Libraries.)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HANDY GUIDE FOR BEGGARS ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter hide"><img src="images/coversmall.jpg" width="40%" alt="" /></div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<h1>A HANDY GUIDE FOR BEGGARS</h1> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_logo.jpg" alt="" /></div> - - -<p class="center"><span class="large">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</span><br /> - -NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS<br /> -ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO<br /> -<br /> -<span class="large">MACMILLAN & CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span></span><br /> -LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA<br /> -MELBOURNE<br /> -<br /> -<span class="large">THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span></span><br /> -TORONTO</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> -<p><span class="xlarge">A HANDY GUIDE<br /> -FOR BEGGARS</span><br /> -<span class="large">ESPECIALLY THOSE OF<br /> -THE POETIC FRATERNITY</span></p> - -<p> </p> -<p><i>Being sundry explorations, made while afoot and<br /> -penniless in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina,<br /> -Tennessee, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.<br /> -These adventures convey and illustrate<br /> -the rules of beggary for poets and some others.</i></p> - -<p> </p> -<p><span class="large"><span class="smcap">By</span> VACHEL LINDSAY</span><br /> - -<i>Author of “The Congo,” “The Art of The Moving<br /> -Picture,” “Adventures while Preaching<br /> -the Gospel of Beauty,” etc.</i></p> - -<p> </p> -<p><span class="large">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</span><br /> -PUBLISHERS <span class="gap"> MCMXVI</span></p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1916,<br /> - -<span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.<br /> - -Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1916.<br /> -<br /> - -<span class="antiqua">Norwood Press</span><br /> -J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.<br /> -Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.</p> -</div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[v]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS</h2> -</div> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> author desires to express his indebtedness -to <i>The Outlook</i> for permission to reprint the -adventures in the South and to Charles Zueblin -for permission to reprint the adventures in the -East.</p> - -<p>The author desires to express his indebtedness -to the <i>Chicago Herald</i> for permission to reprint -<i>The Would-be Merman</i>, and to <i>The Forum</i> -for <i>What the Sexton Said</i>, and to <i>The Yale Review</i> -for <i>The Tramp’s Refusal</i>.</p> - -<p>The author wishes to express his gratitude -to Mr. George Mather Richards, Miss Susan -Wilcox, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Ide and Miss -Grace Humphrey for their generous help and -advice in preparing this work.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[vi]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[vii]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">DEDICATION AND PREFACE OF A<br /> -HANDY GUIDE FOR BEGGARS</h2> -</div> - - -<p><span class="smcap">There</span> are one hundred new poets in the -villages of the land. This Handy Guide is -dedicated first of all <i>to them</i>.</p> - -<p>It is also dedicated to the younger sons of -the wide earth, to the runaway boys and girls -getting further from home every hour, to the -prodigals who are still wasting their substance -in riotous living, be they gamblers or blasphemers -or plain drunks; to those heretics of -whatever school to whom life is a rebellion with -banners; to those who are willing to accept -counsel if it be mad counsel.</p> - -<p>This book is also dedicated to those budding -philosophers who realize that every creature is -a beggar in the presence of the beneficent sun, -to those righteous ones who know that all -righteousness is as filthy rags.</p> - -<p>Moreover, as an act of contrition, reënlistment -and fellowship this book is dedicated to -all the children of Don Quixote who see giants -where most folks see windmills: those Galahads<span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[viii]</span> -dear to Christ and those virgin sisters of -Joan of Arc who serve the lepers on their knees -and march in shabby armor against the proud, -who look into the lightning with the eyes of -the mountain cat. They do more soldierly -things every day than this book records, yet -they are mine own people, my nobler kin to -whom I have been recreant, and so I finally -dedicate this book <i>to them</i>.</p> - -<p>These are the rules of the road:—</p> - -<p>(1) Keep away from the Cities;</p> - -<p>(2) Keep away from the railroads;</p> - -<p>(3) Have nothing to do with money and -carry no baggage;</p> - -<p>(4) Ask for dinner about quarter after eleven;</p> - -<p>(5) Ask for supper, lodging and breakfast -about quarter of five;</p> - -<p>(6) Travel alone;</p> - -<p>(7) Be neat, deliberate, chaste and civil;</p> - -<p>(8) Preach the Gospel of Beauty.</p> - -<p>And without further parley, let us proceed -to inculcate these, by illustration, precept and -dogma.</p> - -<p class="right">VACHEL LINDSAY.</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Springfield, Illinois</span>,<br /> - November, 1916.</p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[ix]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="table"> - -<tr><td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Acknowledgements</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_v"> v</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Dedication and Preface</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_vii"> vii</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Follow This Thistledown</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_xi"> xi</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td colspan="2"> </td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">I. VAGRANT ADVENTURES IN THE SOUTH</td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Columbus</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3"> 3</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Man under the Yoke. Being My First Experience<br /> -as an Absolutely Penniless Person,<br /> -and Showing the Good Fortune of the<br /> -Penniless</span></td><td class="tdr" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_5"> 5</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Man with the Apple-green Eyes. A Story<br /> -Covering a Ride in Two Freight-cabooses<br /> -in Southern Georgia. Showing How My<br /> -Good Luck Came after I Spent My All upon<br /> -Ginger-snaps</span></td><td class="tdr" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_14"> 14</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Interlude: The Would-be Merman</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_33"> 33</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Macon. Showing My First Respite with a<br /> -Civilized Friend</span></td><td class="tdr" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_35"> 35</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Falls of Tallulah. Being the Story of a<br /> -Wild Bath in a Mountain-torrent, and a<br /> -Conversation with the Earth</span></td><td class="tdr" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_38"> 38</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Gnome. Being the Story of a Grotesque<br /> -Moonshiner, Eaten up with Drink</span></td><td class="tdr" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_46"> 46</a></td></tr> - - - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Interlude: The Tramp’s Refusal</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_61"> 61</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[x]</span></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The House of the Loom. Being the Story of<br /> -Seven Aristocrats and a Soap-kettle. An<br /> -Eminent Instance of the Good Fortune of<br /> -the Devotee of Voluntary Poverty</span></td><td class="tdr" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_63"> 63</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Interlude: Phidias</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_78"> 78</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Man, in the City of Collars. Showing How an<br /> -Unexpected Shock Came to a Civilized Person.<br /> -A Not Very Tragic Relapse into the<br /> -Toils of Finance</span></td><td class="tdr" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_79"> 79</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Interlude: Confucius</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_87"> 87</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Old Lady at the Top of the Hill. Showing<br /> -How an Empress of the Mountains Desired<br /> -Me as Her Guest</span></td><td class="tdr" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_88"> 88</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Interlude: With a Rose, to Brunhilde</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_94"> 94</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Lady Iron-heels. A Story Touching upon the<br /> -Romance of a Long-dead Florist,—also<br /> -the Canticle of the Rose</span></td><td class="tdr" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_96"> 96</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td colspan="2"> </td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">II. A MENDICANT PILGRIMAGE IN THE EAST</td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">In Lost Jerusalem</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_113"> 113</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Temple Made with Hands</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_115"> 115</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Interlude: The Town of American Visions</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_133"> 133</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">On Being Entertained by College Boys</span> </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_135"> 135</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Interlude: That Which Men Hail as King</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_137"> 137</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Near Shickshinny. The Story of the Hospitality<br /> -of a Promising Family in a Coal-mining<br /> -Region</span></td><td class="tdr" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_138"> 138</a></td></tr> - - - - - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Interlude: What the Sexton Said</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_159"> 159</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[xi]</span></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Death, the Devil, and Human Kindness. Being<br /> -the Shred of an Allegory</span></td><td class="tdr" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_160"> 160</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Interludes: “Life Transcendent”</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_179"> 179</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">In the Immaculate Conception<br /> -Church</span></td><td class="tdr" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_180"> 180</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Old Gentleman with the Lantern (and the<br /> -People of His Household)</span></td><td class="tdr" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_182"> 182</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">That Men Might See Again the Angel-throng</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_205"> 205</a></td></tr> -</table> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 class="nobreak">FOLLOW THE THISTLEDOWN</h3> -</div> - - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I asked her “Is Aladdin’s Lamp</div> -<div class="verse">Hidden anywhere?”</div> -<div class="verse">“Look into your heart,” she said,</div> -<div class="verse">“Aladdin’s Lamp is there.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">She took my heart with glowing hands.</div> -<div class="verse">It burned to dust and air</div> -<div class="verse">And smoke and rolling thistledown,</div> -<div class="verse">Blowing everywhere.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Follow the thistledown,” she said,</div> -<div class="verse">“Till doomsday if you dare,</div> -<div class="verse">Over the hills and far away.</div> -<div class="verse">Aladdin’s Lamp is there.”</div> -</div></div></div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">I<br /> - - -VAGRANT ADVENTURES IN THE SOUTH</h2> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">COLUMBUS</h3> -</div> - - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Would</span> that we had the fortunes of Columbus.</div> -<div class="verse">Sailing his caravels a trackless way,</div> -<div class="verse">He found a Universe—he sought Cathay.</div> -<div class="verse">God give such dawns as when, his venture o’er,</div> -<div class="verse">The Sailor looked upon San Salvador.</div> -<div class="verse">God lead us past the setting of the sun</div> -<div class="verse">To wizard islands, of august surprise;</div> -<div class="verse">God make our blunders wise.</div> -</div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">THE MAN UNDER THE YOKE</h3> -</div> - - -<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was Sunday morning in the middle of -March. I was stranded in Jacksonville, Florida. -After breakfast I had five cents left. Joyously -I purchased a sack of peanuts, then started -northwest on the railway ties straight toward -that part of Georgia marked “Swamp” on the -map.</p> - -<p>Sunset found me in a pine forest. I decided -to ask for a meal and lodging at the white -house looming half a mile ahead just by the -track. I prepared a speech to this effect:—</p> - -<p>“I am the peddler of dreams. I am the -sole active member of the ancient brotherhood -of the troubadours. It is against the rules of -our order to receive money. We have the -habit of asking a night’s lodging in exchange -for repeating verses and fairy-tales.”</p> - -<p>As I approached the house I forgot the -speech. All the turkeys gobbled at me fiercely. -The two dogs almost tore down the fence trying -to get a taste of me. I went to the side<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span> -gate to appeal to the proud old lady crowned -with a lace cap and enthroned in the porch -rocker. Her son, the proprietor, appeared. -He shall ever be named the dog-man. His -tone of voice was such, that, to speak in metaphor, -he bit me in the throat. He refused -me a place in his white kennel. He would -not share his dog-biscuit. The being on the -porch assured me in a whanging yelp that -they did not take “nobody in under no circumstances.” -Then the dog-man, mollified by -my serene grin, pointed with his thumb into -the woods, saying: “There is a man in there -who will take you in sure.” He said it as -though it were a reflection on his neighbor’s -dignity. That I might not seem to be hurrying, -I asked if his friend kept watch-dogs. -He assured me the neighbor could not afford -them.</p> - -<p>The night with the man around the corner -was like a chapter from that curious document, -“The Gospel according to St. John.” He -“could not afford to turn a man away” because -once he slept three nights in the rain -when he walked here from west Georgia. No -one would give him shelter. After that he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span> -decided that when he had a roof he would go -shares with whoever asked. Some strangers -were good, some bad, but he would risk them -all. Imagine this amplified in the drawling -wheeze of the cracker sucking his corn-cob -pipe for emphasis.</p> - -<p>His real name and address are of no consequence. -I found later that there were thousands -like him. But let us call him “The -Man Under the Yoke.” He was lean as an -old opium-smoker. He was sooty as a pair -of tongs. His Egyptian-mummy jaws had a -two-weeks’ beard. His shirt had not been -washed since the flood. His ankles were innocent -of socks. His hat had no band. I -verily believe his pipe was hereditary, smoked -first by a bond-slave in Jamestown, Virginia.</p> - -<p>He could not read. I presume his wife -could not. They were much embarrassed -when I wanted them to show me Lakeland -on the map. They had warned me against -that village as a place where itinerant strangers -were shot full of holes. Well, I found that -town pretty soon on the map, and made the -brief, snappy memorandum in my note-book: -“Avoid Lakeland.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span>There were three uncertain chairs on the -porch, one a broken rocker. Therefore the -company sat on the railing, loafing against -the pillars. The plump wife was frozen with -diffidence. The genial, stubby neighbor, a -man from away back in the woods, after telling -me how to hop freight-cars, departed -through an aperture in the wandering fence.</p> - -<p>The two babies on the floor, squealing like -shoats, succeeded in being good without being -clean. They wrestled with the puppies who -emerged from somewhere to the number of -four. I wondered if the Man Under the Yoke -would turn to a dog-man when the puppies -grew up and learned to bark.</p> - -<p>Supper was announced with the admonition, -“Bring the chairs.” The rocking chair would -not fit the kitchen table. Therefore the two -babies occupied one, and the lord of the house -another, and the kitchen chair was allotted -to your servant. The mother hastened to -explain that she was “not hungry.” After -snuffing the smoking lamp that had no chimney, -she paced at regular intervals between -the stove and her lord, piling hot biscuits -before him.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span>I could not offer my chair, and make it -plain that some one must stand. I expressed -my regrets at her lack of appetite and fell to. -Their hospitality did not fade in my eyes -when I considered that they ate such provisions -every day. There was a dish of salt -pork that tasted like a salt mine. We had -one deep plate in common containing a soup -of luke-warm water, tallow, half-raw fat pork -and wilted greens. This dish was innocent -of any enhancing condiment. I turned to the -biscuit pile.</p> - -<p>They were raw in the middle. I kept up -courage by watching the children consume -the tallow soup with zest. After taking one -biscuit for meat, and one for vegetables, I -ate a third for good-fellowship. The mother -was anxious that her children should be a -credit, and shook them too sternly and energetically -I thought, when they buried their -hands in the main dish.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile the Man Under the Yoke told -me how his bosses in the lumber-camp kept -his wages down to the point where the grocery -bill took all his pay; how he was forced to -trade at the “company” store, there in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span> -heart of the pine woods. He had cut himself -in the saw-pit, had been laid up for a month, -and “like a fool” had gone back to the same -business. Last year he had saved a little -money, expecting to get things “fixed up nice,” -but the whole family was sick from June till -October. He liked his fellow-workmen. They -had to stand all he did. They loved the -woods, and because of this love would not -move to happier fortunes. Few had gone -farther than Jacksonville. They did not understand -travelling. They did not understand -the traveller and were “likely to be mean to -him.” Then he asked me whether I thought -“niggers” had souls. I answered “Yes.” He -agreed reluctantly. “They have a soul, of -course, but it’s a mighty small one.” We -adjourned to the front room, carrying our -chairs down a corridor, where the open doorways -we passed displayed uncarpeted floors -and no furniture. The echo of the slow steps -of the Man Under the Yoke reverberated -through the wide house like muffled drums -at a giant’s funeral. Yet the largeness of -the empty house was wealth. I have been -entertained since in many a poorer castle;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span> -for instance, in Tennessee, where a deaf old -man, a crone, and her sister, a lame man, a -slug of a girl, and a little unexplained boy ate, -cooked, and slept by an open fire. They had -neither stove, lamp, nor candle. I was made -sacredly welcome for the night, though it -was a one-room cabin with a low roof and a -narrow door.</p> - -<p>Thanks to the Giver of every good and -perfect gift, pine-knots cost nothing in a pine -forest. New York has no such fireplaces -as that in the front room of the Man Under -the Yoke. I thought of an essay by a New -England sage on compensation. There were -many old scriptures rising in my heart as I -looked into that blaze. The one I remembered -most was “I was a stranger, and ye took me -in.” But though it was Sunday night, I did -not quote Scripture to my host.</p> - -<p>It was seven o’clock. The wife had put -her babies to bed. She sat on the opposite -side of the fire from us. Eight o’clock was -bedtime, the host had to go to work so early. -But our three hearts were bright as the burning -pine for an hour.</p> - -<p>You have enjoyed the golden embossed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span> -brocades of Hokusai. You have felt the -charm of Maeterlinck’s “The Blind.” Think -of these, then think of the shoulders of the -Man Under the Yoke, embossed by the flame. -Think of his voice as an occult instrument, -while he burned a bit of crackling brush, and -spoke of the love he bore that fireplace, the -memory of evenings his neighbors had spent -there with him, the stories told, the pipes -smoked, the good silent times with wife and -children. It was said by hints, and repetitions, -and broken syllables, but it was said. -We ate and drank in the land of heart’s desire. -This man and his wife sighed at the fitting -times, and smiled, when to smile was to understand, -while I recited a few of the rhymes of -the dear singers of yesterday and to-day: -Yeats and Lanier, Burns and even Milton. -This fire was the treasure at the end of the -rainbow. I had not been rainbow-chasing in -vain.</p> - -<p>As my host rose and knocked out his pipe, -he told how interesting lumbering with oxen -could be made, if a man once understood -how they were driven. He assured me that -the most striking thing in all these woods<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span> -was a team of ten oxen. He directed me to a -road whereby I would be sure to see half a -dozen to-morrow. He said if ever I met a -literary man, to have him write them into -verses. Therefore the next day I took the -route and observed: and be sure, if ever I -meet the proper minstrel, I shall exhort him -with all my strength to write the poem of the -yoke.</p> - -<p>As to that night, I slept in that room in the -corner away from the fireplace. One comfort -was over me, one comfort and pillow between -me and the dark floor. The pillow was laundered -at the same time as the shirt of my host. -There was every reason to infer that the -pillow and comfort came from his bed.</p> - -<p>They slept far away, in some mysterious -part of the empty house. I hoped they were -not cold. I looked into the rejoicing fire. I -said: “This is what I came out into the wilderness -to see. This man had nothing, and -gave me half of it, and we both had abundance.”</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">THE MAN WITH THE APPLE-GREEN -EYES</h3> -</div> - -<p><span class="smcap">Remember</span>, if you go a-wandering, the road -will break your heart. It is sometimes like a -woman, caressing and stabbing at once. It is -a mystery, this quality of the road. I write, -not to explain, but to warn, and to give the -treatment. Comradeship and hospitality are -opiates most often at hand.</p> - -<p>I remember when I encountered the out-poured -welcome of an Old Testament Patriarch, -a praying section boss in a gray log village, one -Monday evening in north Florida. He looked -at me long. He sensed my depression. He -made me his seventh son.</p> - -<p>He sent his family about to announce my -lecture in the schoolhouse on “The Value of -Poetry.” Enough apple-cheeked maidens, sad -mothers, and wriggling, large-eyed urchins assembled -to give an unconscious demonstration -of the theme.</p> - -<p>The little lamp spluttered. The windows<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span> -rattled. Two babies cried. Everybody assumed -that lectures were delightful, miserable, -and important. The woman on the back seat -nursed her baby, reducing the noise one-third. -When I was through shouting, they passed -the hat. I felt sure I had carried my point. -Poetry was eighty-three cents valuable, a -good deal for that place. And the sons of -the Patriarch were the main contributors, for -before the event he had thunderously exhorted -them to be generous. I should not have taken -the money? But that was before I had a good -grip on my rule.</p> - -<p>The Patriarch was kept away by a neighbor -who had been seized with fits on Sunday, while -fishing. The neighbor though mending physically, -was in a state of apprehension. He demanded, -with strong crying and tears, that -the Patriarch pray with him. Late in the -evening, as we were about the hearth, recovering -from the lecture, my host returned from -the sinner’s bed, the pride of priesthood in his -step. He had established a contrite heart in -his brother, though all the while frank with -him about the doubtful efficacy of prayer in -healing a body visited with just wrath.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>Who would not have loved the six sons, when, -at the Patriarch’s command, they drew into a -circle around the family altar, with their small -sister, and the gentle mother with her babe -at her breast? It was an achievement to put -the look of prayer into such flushed, wilful -faces as those boys displayed. They followed -their father with the devotion of an Ironside -regiment as he lifted up his voice singing -“The Son of God goes forth to War.” They -rolled out other strenuous hymns. I thought -they would sing through the book. I looked -at the mother. I thanked God for her. She -was the only woman in Florida who could -cook. And her voice was honey. Her breast -was ivory. The child was a pearl. Her whole -aspect had the age and the youth of one of -De Forest Brush’s austere American madonnas. -The scripture lesson, selected not by chance, -covered the adventures of Jacob at Bethel.</p> - -<p>We afterwards knelt on the pine floor, our -heads in the seats of the chairs. I peeped and -observed the Patriarch with his chair almost -in the fireplace. He ignored the heat. He -shouted the name of the smallest boy, who -answered the roll-call by praying: “Now I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span> -lay me down to sleep.” The father megaphoned -for the next, and the next, with a like -response. He called the girl’s name, but in -a still small voice she lisped the Lord’s Prayer. -As the older boys were reached, the prayers -became individual, but containing fragments -of “Now I lay me.” The mother petitioned -for the soul of the youngest boy, not yet in a -state of grace, for a sick cousin, and many a -neighborhood cause. The father prayed twenty -minutes, while the chair smoked. I forgot the -chair at last when he voiced the petition that -the stranger in the gates might have visitations -on his lonely road, like Jacob at Bethel. Then -a great appeal went up the chimney that the -whole assembly might bear abundantly the -fruits of the spirit. The fire leaped for joy. -I knew that when the prayer appeared before -the throne, it was still a tongue of flame.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Next morning I spent about seventy cents -lecture money on a railway ticket, and tried -to sleep past my destination, but the conductor -woke me. He put me off in the Okefenokee -swamp, just inside the Georgia line. -The waters had more brass-bespangled ooze<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span> -than in mid-Florida; the marsh weeds beneath -were lustrous red. I crossed an interminable -trestle over the Suwannee River. A fidgety -bird was scolding from tie to tie. If the sky -had been turned over and the azure boiled -to a spoonful, you would have had the intense -blue with which he was painted. If the -caldron had been filled with sad clouds, and -boiled to a black lump, you would have had -my heart. Ungrateful, I had forgotten the -Patriarch. I was lonely for I knew not what; -maybe for my friend Edward Broderick, who -had walked with me through central Florida, -and had been called to New York by the -industrial tyranny which the steel rails represented -even here.</p> - -<p>We two had taken the path beside the railway -in the regions of Sanford and Tampa, -walking in loose sand white as salt. An -orange grove in twilight had been a sky of -little moons. We had eaten not many oranges. -They are expensive there. But we had stolen -the souls of all we passed, and so had spoiled -them for their owners. It had been an exquisite -revenge.</p> - -<p>We had seen swamps of parched palmettos<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span> -set afire by wood-burning locomotives whose -volcanic smoke-stacks are squat and wide, -like those on the engines in grandmother’s -third reader.</p> - -<p>We had met Mr. Terrapin, Mr. Owl, Mrs. -Cow, and Master Calf, all of them carved by -the train-wheels, Mr. Buzzard sighing beside -them. We had met Mr. Pig again at the -cracker’s table, cooked by last year’s forest-fire, -run over by last year’s train. But what -had it mattered? For we together had had -ears for the mocking-bird, and eyes for the -moss-hung live oaks that mourn above the -brown swamp waters.</p> - -<p>We had met few men afoot, only two professional -tramps, yet the path by the railway -was clearly marked. Some Florida poet must -celebrate the Roman directness of the railways -embanked six feet above the swamp, -going everywhere in regions that have no -wagon-roads.</p> - -<p>But wherever in our land there is a railway, -there is a little path clinging to the embankment -holding the United States in a network -as real as that of the rolled steel,—a path -wrought by the foot of the unsubdued. This<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span> -path wanders back through history till it -encounters Tramp Columbus, Tramp Dante, -Tramp St. Francis, Tramp Buddha, and the -rest of our masters.</p> - -<p>All this we talked of nobly, even grandiloquently, -but now I walked alone, ignoring the -beautiful turpentine forests of Georgia and the -sometime accepted merits of a quest for the -Grail, the Gleam, or the Dark Tower. Reaching -Fargo about one o’clock I attempted to -telegraph for money to take me home, beaten. -It was not a money-order office, and thirteen -cents would not have covered the necessary -business details. Forced to make the best of -things, I spent all upon ginger-snaps at the -combination grocery-store and railway-station. -I shared them with a drummer waiting for the -freight, who had the figure of Falstaff, and -the mustaches of Napoleon third. I did not -realize at that time, that by getting myself -penniless I was inviting good luck.</p> - -<p>After a dreary while, the local freight going -to Valdosta came in. Napoleon advanced to -capture a ride. A conductor and an inspector -were on the platform. He attacked them -with cigars. He indulged freely in friendly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span> -swearing and slapping on the back. He showed -credentials, printed and written. He did not -want to wait three hours for the passenger -train in that much-to-be-condemned town. -His cigars were refused, his papers returned. -He took the path to the lumberman’s hotel. -His defeat appeared to be the inspector’s doing.</p> - -<p>That obstinate inspector wore a gray stubble -beard and a collar chewed by many laundries. -He was encompassed in a black garment of -state that can be described as a temperance -overcoat. He needed only a bulging umbrella -and a nose like a pump-spout to resemble the -caricatures of the Prohibition Party that appeared -in <i>Puck</i> when St. John ran for President.</p> - -<p>I showed him all my baggage carried in an -oil-cloth wrapper in my breast pocket: a -blue bandanna, a comb, a little shaving mirror, -a tooth-brush, a razor, and a piece of soap. -“These,” I said, “are my credentials.”</p> - -<p>Also I showed a little package of tracts in -rhyme I was distributing to the best people: -<i>The Wings of the Morning</i>, or <i>The Tree of -Laughing Bells</i>.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> I hinted he might become<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span> -the possessor of one. I drew his attention -to the fact that there was no purse in the -exhibit. I divided my last four ginger-snaps -with him. I showed him a letter commending -me to all pious souls from a leading religious -worker in New York, Charles F. Powlison.</p> - -<p><i>Soon we were thundering away to Valdosta!</i> -Mr. Temperance climbed to the observation -chair in the little box at the top of the caboose, -alternately puzzling over my <i>Wings of the -Morning</i>,<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> and looking out. The caboose -bumped like a farm-wagon on a frozen road. -The pine-burning stove roared. The negro -Adonis on the wood-pile had gold in his teeth. -He had eyes like dark jewels set in white -marble, and he polished lanterns as black as -himself.</p> - -<p>“By Jove,” I said. “That’s the handsomest -bit of lacquer this side of the Metropolitan -Museum.”</p> - -<p>“’Sh,” said Conductor Roundface, sobering -himself. “You will queer yourself with the -old man. He wouldn’t let that drummer on -because <i>he</i> swore.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>The old man came down. I bridled my -profane tongue while he lectured the conductor -on the necessity for more interest in the Georgia -public schools, and the beauty of total abstinence, -and, at last, the Japanese situation. -This is a condensed translation of his speech: -“I was on the side of the Russians all through -the Russo-Japanese war. My friends said, -‘Hooray for Japan.’ But I say a Japanese -is a nigger. I have never seen one, but I have -seen their pictures. The Lord intended people -to stay where they were put. We ought to -have trade, but no immigration. Chinese belong -to China. They are adapted to the -Chinese climate. Niggers belong to Africa. -They are adapted to the African climate. -Americans belong to America. They are -adapted to the American climate. Why, the -mixing that is going on is something scandalous. -I had a nigger working for me once that was -half-Spaniard and half-Indian. There are just -a few white people, and more mulattoes every -day. The white people ought to keep their -blood pure. Russians are white people. Germans, -English, and Americans are white people. -French people are niggers. Dagoes are niggers.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span> -Jews are niggers. All people are niggers but -just these four. There is going to be a big -war in two or three years between all the -white people and all the niggers. The niggers -are going to combine and force a fight, Japan -in the lead.”</p> - -<p>We reached Valdosta after dark. Conductor -and inspector exchanged with me most civil -good-bys. Their hospitality had been nepenthe -for my poor broken heart. I reconciled myself -to sitting in front of the station fireplace -all night. I thought my nearest friend was -at Macon, one hundred and fifty miles north; -a gay cavalier who had read Omar Khayyam -with me in college.</p> - -<p>Just then an immense, angular, red-haired -man sat down in front of the fire. He might -have been the prodigal son of some Yankee -farmer-statesman. He threw his arms around -me, and though I had never seen him before, -the Brotherhood of Man was established at -once. He cast an empty bottle into the wood-box. -He produced another. I would not -drink. He poured down one-half of it. It -snorted like dish-water going into the sink. -He said: “That’s right. Don’t drink. This<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span> -is the first time I ever drank. I have been -on a soak two weeks. You see I was in Texas -a long time, and went broke. I don’t know -how I got here.” “Well,” I said, “we have -this fire till they run us out. Enjoy yourself.”</p> - -<p>He wept. “I don’t deserve to enjoy anything. -Anybody that’s made a fool of himself -as I have done. I wish I were in Vermont -where my wife and babies are buried. Somebody -wrote me they were dead and buried just -when I went broke.”</p> - -<p>Thereafter he was merry. “There was a -man in Vermont I didn’t like who kept a fire -like this. I went to see him every evening -because I liked his fire. He would study and -I would smoke.”</p> - -<p>He took out two dimes. “Say, that’s my -last money. Let’s buy two tickets to the next -station and get off and shoot up the town.”</p> - -<p>A hollow-eyed little man of middle age, -grimy like a coal-miner, sat down on the -other side of Mr. Vermont. He said he had -been flagging trains for so long he could not -tell when he began. He said he must wait -three hours for a friend. He declined the -bottle. He listened to Mr. Vermont’s story,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span> -told with variations. He put his chin into -his hands, his elbows on his knees, and slept. -Vermont threw himself on top of the bent -back, his face wrapped in his arms, like a -school-boy asleep on his desk-lid. Mr. Flagman -slowly awoke, and cast off his brother, -and slept again. Cautiously Vermont waited, -to resume his pillow in a quarter of an hour, -and be again cast off.</p> - -<p>Mr. Flagman sat up. I asked him if there -was a train for Macon going soon. He said: -“The through freight is making up now.” -He gave me the conductor’s name. I asked -if there was any one about who could write -me a pass to Macon. He said, “The pay car -has just come in, and Mr. Grady can give -you a pass if he wants to.” I went out to the -tracks.</p> - -<p>From a little window at the end of the car -Mr. Grady was paying the interminable sons -of Ham, who emerged from the African night, -climbed the steps, received their envelopes, -and slunk down the steps into the African night.</p> - -<p>At last I showed Mr. Grady my letter from -Charles F. Powlison. Mr. Grady did not appear -to be of a religious turn. I asked him<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span> -permission to ride to Macon in the caboose of -the freight, going out at one o’clock. I assured -him it was beneath my dignity to crawl -into the box-car, or patronize the blind baggage, -and I was tired of walking in swamp. -Mr. Grady asked, “Are you an official of the -road?”</p> - -<p>“No, sir.”</p> - -<p>“Then what you ask is impossible, sir.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, my dear Mr. Grady, it is not impossible—”</p> - -<p>“I am glad to have met you, sir. Good-night, -sir,” and Mr. Grady had shut the window.</p> - -<p>There was the smash, clang, and thud of -making up a train. A negro guided me to -the lantern of a freight conductor. The conductor -had the lean frame, the tight jaw, the -fox nose, the Chinese skin of a card-shark. -He would have made a name for himself on -the Spanish Main, some centuries since, by -the cool way he would have snatched jewels -from ladies’ ears and smiled when they bled. -He did not smile now. He gripped his lantern -like a cutlass, and the cars groaned. They -were gentlemen in armor compelled to walk<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span> -the plank by this pirate with the apple-green -eyes. We will call him Mr. Shark.</p> - -<p>I put my pious letter into my pocket. “Mr. -Shark, I would like to ride to Macon in the -caboose.” Mr. Shark thrust his lantern under -my hat-brim. I had no collar, but was not -ashamed of that. He said, “I have met men -like you before.” He turned down the track -shouting orders. I jumped in front of him. -I said, “You are mistaken. You have not -met a man like me before. I am the goods. -I am the wise boy from New York. I have -been walking in every swamp in Florida, eating -dead pig for breakfast, water-moccasins -for lunch, alligators for dinner. I would like -to tell you my adventures.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Shark ignored me, and went on persecuting -the train.</p> - -<p>Valdosta was a depot in the midst of darkness. -I hated the darkness. I went into the -depot. Vermont was offering Flagman the -bottle. He drank.</p> - -<p>Flagman asked me: “Can’t you make it?”</p> - -<p>“No. Grady turned me down. And the -conductor turned me down.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Flagman said, “The sure way to ride<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span> -in a caboose like a gentleman is to ask the -conductor like he is a gentleman, and everybody -else is a gentleman, and when he turns -you down, ask him again like a gentleman.” -And much more with that refrain. It was -wisdom lightly given, profounder than it -seemed. Let us remember the tired flagman, -and engrave the substance of his saying on our -souls.</p> - -<p>I sought the pirate again. I took off my -hat. I bowed like Don Cæsar De Bazan, -but gravely. “I ask you, just as one gentleman -to another, to take me to Macon. I have -friends in Macon.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Shark showed a pale streak of smile. -“Come around at one o’clock.”</p> - -<p>My “Thank you” was drowned by a late -passenger. It came from Fargo, for Napoleon -III dismounted. He said: “Hello. Where -are you going, boy?”</p> - -<p>“I am just taking the caboose of the through -freight for Macon. But I have a few minutes.”</p> - -<p>“How the devil did you get here, sir?” I -told him the story in brief. We were in front -of the fire now. “How are you going to make -this next train? I would like to go with you.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>I could not tell whether he meant it or not. -Right beside us Mr. Flagman was asleep for -all night, with his elbows on his knees, his -chin in his hands. Stretched above Flagman’s -back was Mr. Vermont, like a school-boy -asleep on his desk. I said, “Do you see the -gentleman on the bottom of the pile? He is -the Grand Lama of Cabooseville. You have -to ask him for the password. The man on -top is the sublime sub-Lama.”</p> - -<p>Napoleon looked dubiously at them, and the -two bottles in the wood-box. He gave me -good words of farewell, finishing with mock-gravity: -“Of course I respect you, sir, in not -giving the password without orders from your -superior, sir.”</p> - -<p>And now I boarded the caboose, hurrying -to surprise the Macon cavalier. He expected -me in three weeks, walking. But the caboose -did one hundred and fifty miles in thirteen -hours, and all the way my heart spun like a -glorified musical top. Alas, this is a tale of -drink. I filled the coffee-pot and drained it -an infinite number of times, all because my -poor broken heart was healed. The stove was -the only person in the world out of humor.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span> -He was mad because his feet were nailed to -the floor. He tried to spill the coffee, and -screamed, “Now you’ve done it” every time -we rounded a curve. The caboose-door -slammed open every seven minutes, Shark and -his white man and his negro rushing in from -their all-night work for refreshment.</p> - -<p>The manner of serving coffee in a caboose is -this: there are three tin cups for the white -men. The negro can chew sugar-cane, or steal -a drink when we do not look. There is a tin -box of sugar. If one is serving Mr. Shark, -one shakes a great deal of sugar into the cup, -and more down one’s sleeve, and into one’s -shoes and about the rocking floor. One becomes -sprinkled like a doughnut, newly-fried, -and fragrant with splashed coffee. The cinders -that come in on the breath of the shrieking -night cling to the person. But if you are -serving Mr. Shark you do not mind these -things. You pour his drink, you eat his bread -and cheese, thanking him from the bottom of -your stomach, not having eaten anything -since the ginger-snaps of long ago. You solemnly -touch your cup to his, as you sit with -him on the red disembowelled car cushions,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span> -with the moss gushing out. You wish him -the treasure-heaps of Aladdin or a racing stable -in Ireland, whichever he pleases.</p> - -<p>Let all the readers of this tale who hope to -become Gentlemen of the Road take off collars -and cuffs, throw their purses into the ditch, -break their china, and drink their coffee from -tinware to the health of Mr. Shark, our friend -with the apple-green eyes. Yea, my wanderers, -the cure for the broken heart is gratitude to -the gentleman you would hate, if you had -your collar on or your purse in your pocket -when you met him. Though there was heavy -betting against him, he becomes the Hero in a -whirlwind finish. Patriarch and Flagman disputing -for second, decision for Flagman.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">THE WOULD-BE MERMAN</h3> -</div> - - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Mobs</span> are like the Gulf Stream,</div> -<div class="verse">Like the vast Atlantic.</div> -<div class="verse">In your fragile boats you ride,</div> -<div class="verse">Conceited folk at ease.</div> -<div class="verse">Far beneath are dancers,</div> -<div class="verse">Mermen wild and frantic,</div> -<div class="verse">Circling round the giant glowing</div> -<div class="verse">Sea-anemones.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Crude, ill-smelling voters,—</div> -<div class="verse">Herds,” to you in seeming.</div> -<div class="verse">But to me their draggled clothes</div> -<div class="verse">Are scales of gold and red.</div> -<div class="verse">Ah, the pink sea-horses,</div> -<div class="verse">Green sea-dragons gleaming,</div> -<div class="verse">And knights that chase the dragons</div> -<div class="verse">And spear them till they’re dead!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Wisdom waits the diver</div> -<div class="verse">In the social ocean—</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span> -<div class="verse">Rainbow shells of wonder,</div> -<div class="verse">Piled into a throne.</div> -<div class="verse">I would go exploring</div> -<div class="verse">Through the wide commotion,</div> -<div class="verse">Building under some deep cliff</div> -<div class="verse">A pearl-throne all my own.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Yesterday I dived there,</div> -<div class="verse">Grinned at all the roaring,</div> -<div class="verse">Clinging to the corals for a flash,</div> -<div class="verse">Defying death.</div> -<div class="verse">Mermen came rejoicing,</div> -<div class="verse">In procession pouring,</div> -<div class="verse">Yet I lost my feeble grip</div> -<div class="verse">And came above for breath.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I would be a merman.</div> -<div class="verse">Not in desperation</div> -<div class="verse">A momentary diver</div> -<div class="verse">Blue for lack of air.</div> -<div class="verse">But with gills deep-breathing</div> -<div class="verse">Swim amid the nation—</div> -<div class="verse">Finny feet and hands forsooth,</div> -<div class="verse">Sea-laurels in my hair.</div> -</div></div></div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">MACON</h3> -</div> - - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> languid town of Macon, Georgia, will -ever remain in my mind as my first island of -respite after vagrancy. My friend C. D. -Russell lent me his clothes, took me to his -eating-place, introduced his circle. We settled -the destiny of the universe several different -ways in peripatetic discourse.</p> - -<p>After one has ventured one hundred and -fifty miles through everglades and spent twenty-four -sleepless hours riding in freight-cabooses -the marrow of his bones is marsh, his hair and -clothes are moss, cinders and bark, his immortal -soul is engine-smoke. Feeling just so, I had -entered Russell’s law office. He was at court. -I sent word by his partner that I had gone to -school with him in Ohio, that I had mailed a -postal last Sunday from Florida telling him I -would arrive afoot in three weeks,—but here -I was, already. The word was carried with -Southern precision.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>“There is a person in the office who went to -school with you in Indiana.”</p> - -<p>“I did not go to school in Indiana.”</p> - -<p>“He has been walking in Mississippi and -Alabama. He wrote you a postal six weeks -ago.”</p> - -<p>“How does he look?”</p> - -<p>“Like the devil. He is principally pants and -shirt.”</p> - -<p>The cavalier knew who that was. He found -me, took me to his castle, introduced civilization. -<span class="smcap">Civilization</span> is whiter than the clouds, -and full of clear water. One enters it with a -plunge. <span class="smcap">Culture</span> is a fuzzy fabric with -which one rubs in <span class="smcap">Civilization</span>. After I had -been intimate with these, I was admitted to -<span class="smcap">Society</span>: a suit of the cavalier’s clothes. I -looked like him then, all but head and hands. -I regarded myself with awe, as a gorilla would -if he found himself fading into a Gibson picture.</p> - -<p>A chair is a sturdy creature. I wonder who -captured the first one? Who put out its eyes -and taught it to stand still? A table-cloth is -ritualistic. How nobly the napkin defends the -vest, while those glistening birds, the knife, -the fork, the spoon, bring one food.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>How did these things to eat get here among -these hundreds of houses? One would think -that if anything to eat were brought among so -many men, there would be enough hungry ones -to kill each other and spoil it with blood.</p> - -<p>Why do people stop eating when they have -had just a bit? Why not go on forever?</p> - -<p>We were in another room. The cavalier -showed on the table what he called his Bible: -the letters of Lord Chesterfield. To one who -has not slept in all his life, who has lived a -thousand years on freight trains, books do not -count much. But how ingenious is a white -iron bed, how subtle are pillows, how overwhelming -is sleep!</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">THE FALLS OF TALLULAH<br /> - - -(North Georgia)</h3> -</div> - -<h4>I<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Call of the Water</span></h4> - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> dust of many miles was upon me. I -felt uncouth in the presence of the sun-dried -stones. Here was a natural bathing-place. -Who could resist it?</p> - -<p>I climbed further down the cañon, holding -to the bushes. The cliff along which the -water rushed to the fall’s foot was smooth -and seemed artificially made, though it had -been so hewn by the fury of the cataclysm -in ages past.</p> - -<p>I took off my clothes and put my shoulders -against the granite, being obliged to lean -back a little to conform to its angle. I was -standing with my left shoulder almost touching -the perilous main column of water. A -little fall that hurried along by itself a bit<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span> -nearer the bank flowed over me. It came with -headway. Though it looked so innocent, I -could scarcely hold up against its power.</p> - -<p>But it gave me delight to maintain myself. -The touch of the stone was balm to my walk-worn -body and dust-fevered feet. Like a -sacerdotal robe the water flowed over my -shoulders and I thought myself priest of the -solitude.</p> - -<p>I stepped out into the air. With unwonted -energy I was able to throw off the coldness -of my wet frame. The water there at the -fall’s foot was like a thousand elves singing. -“Joy to all creatures!” cried the birds. “Joy -to all creatures! Glory, glory, glory to the -wild falls!”</p> - - -<h4>II<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Piping of Pan</span></h4> - -<p>I was getting myself sunburned, stretched -out on the warm dry rocks. Down over the -steep edge, somewhere near the foot of the -next descent I heard the pipes of Pan. Why -should I dress and go?</p> - -<p>I made my shoes and clothes into a bundle,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span> -and threw them down the cliff and climbed -over, clinging to the steep by mere twigs. I -seemed to hear the piping as I approached -the terrace at the fall’s base. Then the sound -of music blended with the stream’s strange -voice and I turned to merge myself again with -its waters.</p> - -<p>Against the leaning wall of the cliff I placed -my shoulders. The descending current smote -me, wrestling with wildwood laughter, threatening -to crush me and hurl me to the base of -the mountain. But just as before my feet -were well set in a notch of the cliff that went -across the stream, cut there a million years -ago.</p> - -<p>It was a curious combination to discover, -this stream-wide notch, and above it this wall -with the water spread like a crystal robe over -it. In the centre of the fall a Cyclops could -have stood to bathe, and on the edge was the -same provision in miniature for feeble man. -And it was the more curious to find this plan -repeated in detail by successive cataracts of -the cañon, unmistakably wrought by the slow -hand of geologic ages. And to see the water -of the deep central stream undisturbed in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span> -midst of the fall and still crystalline, and to -see it slide down the steep incline and strike -each notch at the foot with sudden music and -appalling foam, was more wonderful than the -simple telling can explain.</p> - -<p>Each sheet of crystal that came over my -shoulders seemed now to pour into them rather -than over them. I lifted my mouth and drank -as a desert bird drinks rain. My downstretched -arms and extended fingers and the spreading -spray seemed one. My heart with its exultant -blood seemed but the curve of a cataract over -the cliff of my soul.</p> - - -<h4>III<br /> - -<span class="smcap">Peril, Vanity, and Adoration</span></h4> - -<p>Led by the pipes of Pan, I again descended. -Once more that sound, almost overtaken, -interwove itself with the water’s cry, and I -merged body and soul with the stream and the -music. The margin of another cataract crashed -upon me. In the recklessness of pleasure, one -arm swung into the main current. Then the -water threatened my life. To save myself, I -was kneeling on one knee. I reached out<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span> -blindly and found a hold at last in a slippery -cleft, and later, it seemed an age, with the -other hand I was able to reach one leaf. The -leaf did not break. At last its bough was in -my grasp and I crawled frightened into the -sun. I sat long on a warm patch of grass.</p> - -<p>But the cliffs and the water were not really -my enemies. They sent a wind to give me -delight. Never was the taste of the air so sweet -as then. The touch of it was on my lips like -fruit. There was a flattery in the tree-limbs -bending near my shoulders. They said, “There -is brotherhood in your footfall on our roots -and the touch of your hand on our boughs.”</p> - -<p>The spray of the splashed foam was wine. -I was the unchallenged possessor of all of -nature my body and soul could lay hold upon. -It was the fair season between spring and -summer when no one came to this place. Like -Selkirk, I was monarch of all I surveyed. In -my folly I seemed to feel strange powers creeping -into my veins from the sod. I forgot my -near-disaster. I said in my heart, “O Mother -Earth majestical, the touch of your creatures -has comforted me, and I feel the strength of -the soil creeping up into my dust. From this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span> -patch of soft grass, power and courage come up -into me from your bosom, from the foundation -of your continents. I feel within me the soul -of iron from your iron mines, and the soul of -lava from your deepest fires.”</p> - - -<h4>IV<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Blood Unquenchable</span></h4> - -<p>The satyrs in the bushes were laughing at -me and daring me to try the water again.</p> - -<p>I stood on the edge of the rapids where were -many stones coming up out of the foam. I -threw logs across. The rocks held them in -place. I lay down between the logs in the -liquid ice. I defied it heartily. And my -brother the river had mercy upon me, and -slew me not.</p> - -<p>Amid the shout of the stream the birds were -singing: “Joy, joy, joy to all creatures, and -happiness to the whole earth. Glory, glory, -glory to the wild falls.”</p> - -<p>I struggled out from between the logs and -threw my bundle over the cliff, and again -descended, for I heard the pipes of Pan, just -below me there, too plainly for delay. They<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span> -seemed to say “Look! Here is a more exquisite -place.”</p> - -<p>The sun beat down upon me. I felt myself -twin brother to the sun. My body was lit -with an all-conquering fever. I had walked -through tropical wildernesses for many a mile, -gathering sunshine. And now in an afternoon -I was gambling my golden heat against the -icy silver of the river and winning my wager, -while all the leaves were laughing on all the -trees.</p> - -<p>And again I stood in a Heaven-prepared -place, and the water poured in glory upon my -shoulders.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Why was it so dark? Was a storm coming? -I was dazed as a child in the theatre beholding -the crowd go out after the sudden end of a -solemn play. My clothes, it appeared, were -half on. I was kneeling, looking up. I counted -the falls to the top of the cañon. It was night, -and I had wrestled with them all. My spirit -was beyond all reason happy. This was a day -for which I had not planned. I felt like one -crowned. My blood was glowing like the -blood of the crocus, the blood of the tiger-lily.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span> -And so I meditated, and then at last the chill -of weariness began to touch me and in my -heart I said, “Oh Mother Earth, for all my -vanity, I know I am but a perishable flower in -a cleft of the rock. I give thanks to you -who have fed me the wild milk of this river, -who have upheld me like a child of the gods -throughout this day.”</p> - -<p>Around a curve in the cañon, down stream, -growing each moment sweeter, I heard the -pipes of Pan.</p> - - -<h4>V<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Gift of Tallulah</span></h4> - -<p>Go, you my brothers, whose hearts are in -sore need of delight, and bathe in the falls of -Tallulah. That experience will be for the -foot-sore a balm, for the languid a lash, for -the dry-throated pedant the very cup of nature. -To those crushed by the inventions of -cities, wounded by evil men, it will be a washing -away of tears and of blood. Yea, it will -be to them all, what it was to my heart that -day, the sweet, sweet blowing of the reckless -pipes of Pan.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">THE GNOME</h3> -</div> - - -<p><span class="smcap">Let</span> us now recall a certain adventure among -the moonshiners.</p> - -<p>When I walked north from Atlanta Easter -morning, on Peachtree road, orchards were -flowering everywhere. Resurrection songs flew -across the road from humble blunt steeples.</p> - -<p>Stony Mountain, miles to the east, Kenesaw -on the western edge of things, and all the rest -of the rolling land made the beginning of a -gradual ascent by which I was to climb the -Blue Ridge. The road mounted the watershed -between the Atlantic and the gulf.</p> - -<p>An old man took me into his wagon for a -mile. I asked what sort of people I would -meet on the Blue Ridge. He answered, “They -make blockade whisky up there. But if you -don’t go around hunting stills by the creeks, -or in the woods away from the road, they’ll -be awful glad to see you. They are all moonshiners, -but if they likes a man they loves him,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span> -and they’re as likely to get to lovin’ you as -not.”</p> - -<p>When I was truly in the mountains, six days -north of Atlanta, a day’s journey from the last -struggling railway, the road wound into a -certain high, uninhabited valley. Two days -back, at a village I entered just after I had -enjoyed the falls of Tallulah, I had found a -letter from my new friend John Collier whom -I had met in Macon and Atlanta. It contained -a little money, which he insisted I should take, -to make easier my way. I was inconsistent -enough to spend some of it, instead of returning -it or giving it “to the poor.”</p> - -<p>I invested seventy-five cents in brogans -made of the thickest leather. I had thought -they were conquered the first day. But now -one of them bit a piece out of my heel. John -Collier has done noble things since. On my -behalf, for instance, he climbed Mount Mitchell -with me, and showed me half the glory of the -South. Then and after, he has helped my -soul with counsel and teaching. But he should -not have corrupted a near-Franciscan with -money for hoodoo brogans. Though it was -fairly warm weather, if ever I rested five<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span> -minutes, the heavy things stiffened like cooling -metal.</p> - -<p>The little streams I crossed scarcely afforded -me a drink. Their dried borders had the foot-prints -of swine on them.</p> - -<p>Lameness affects one’s vision. The thick -woods were the dregs of the landscape, fit -haunt for the acorn-grubbing sow. The road -following the ridges was a monster’s spine.</p> - -<p>Those wicked brogans led me where they -should not. Or maybe it was just my destiny -to find what I found.</p> - -<p>About four o’clock in the afternoon, after -exploring many roads that led to futile nothing, -I was on what seemed the main highway, and -dragged myself into the sight of the first mortal -since daybreak. He seemed like a gnome as -he watched me across the furrows. And so -he was, despite his red-ripe cheeks. The -virginal mountain apple-tree, blossoming overhead, -half covering the toad-like cabin, was -out of place. It should have been some fabulous, -man-devouring devil-bush from the tropics, -some monstrous work of the enemies of God.</p> - -<p>The child, just in her teens, helping the -Gnome to plant sweet potatoes, had in her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span> -life planted many, and eaten few. Or so it -appeared. She was a crouching lump of earth. -Her father dug the furrow. She did the planting, -shovelling the dirt with her hands. Her -face was sodden as any in the slums of Chicago. -She ran to the house a ragged girl, and came -back a homespun girl, a quick change. It -must not be counted against her that she did -not wash her face.</p> - -<p>The Gnome talked to me meanwhile. He -had made up his mind about me. “I guess -you want to stay all night?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“The next house is fifteen miles away. -You are welcome if what we have is good -enough for you. My wife is sick, but she -will not let you be any bother.”</p> - -<p>I wanted to be noble and walk on. But I -persuaded myself my feet were as sick as the -woman. I accepted the Gnome’s invitation.</p> - -<p>Let the readers with a detective instinct note -that his hoe-handle was two feet short, and had -been whittled a little around the top to make -it usable. It was at best an awkward instrument. -(The mystery will soon be solved.)</p> - -<p>We were met at the door by one my host<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span> -called Brother Joseph—a towering shape with -an upper lip like a walrus, for it was armed -with tusk-like mustaches. He was silent as -King Log.</p> - -<p>But the Gnome said, “I have saved up a -month of talk since the last stranger came -through.” With ease, with simplicity of word, -with I know not how much of guile, he gave -fragments of his life: how he had lived in this -log house always, how his first wife died, how -her children were raised by this second wife -and married off, how they now enjoyed this -second family.</p> - -<p>He showed me the other fragment of the -hoe-handle. “I broke that over a horse’s -head the last time I was drunk. I always -get crazy. When I come to, I do not remember -anything about it. The last time I fought -with my cousin. When I knocked down his -horse he drew his knife. I drew <i>this</i> knife. -My wife said I fought like a wild hog. I -sliced my cousin pretty bad. He skipped the -country, for he cut out one of my lungs and -two of my ribs. I lost two buckets of blood. -It took the doctor a long time to put my insides -back.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>From this hour forward he struggled between -the luxury of being even more confidential, -and the luxury of being cautious like a lynx. -I squirmed. Despite his abandon, he was -watching me.</p> - -<p>I put one hand in my pocket. I found a -diversion, a pair of eyeglasses. I had chanced -on them in the bushes at Tallulah. The droop -of his eyelids as he put them on was exquisite. -He paced the floor. I had a review of his -appearance. He was like a thin twist of -tobacco. He had been burned out by too-sharp -whisky. The babies clapped their hands -as he strutted. He was like a third-rate Sunday-school -teacher in a frock coat in the presence -of the infant class. He was glad to keep the -glasses, yet asked questions with a double -meaning, implying I had stolen them in Atlanta, -and fled these one hundred miles. We -were gay rogues, and we knew it.</p> - -<p>“Get up! Make some coffee and supper!” -he shouted to the figure on the bed in the -black corner of the cabin. He kept his jaw -tight on his pipe, speaking to her in the gnome -language. She replied in kind, snorting and -muffling her words, without moving lips or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span> -tongue, and keeping her teeth on her snuff-stick. -She stumbled up, groaning, with both -hands on her head. She had once been a -woman. She had lived with this thing too -long. All the trappings that make for home -had grown stale and weird about her. The -scraps of rag-carpet on the floor were rat -eaten. The red calico window curtains were -vilely dirty from the years of dust and the -leak of many rains. The benches were battered, -unsteady. The door-latch was gone. -The door was held in place by a stone. She -stood before me, her hair hanging straight across -her face or down her collar, or flying about -or tied behind in a dreadful knot. She stood -before me, but as long as I was in that house -she did not look at me, she did not speak to me.</p> - -<p>There was no stove. The Gnome said: -“Wife don’t like a stove. She had rather -cook the way she learned.” We rolled in the -back-log for her and coaxed up the embers. -We sat at one side of the hearth. We exchanged -boastful adventures. She crawled into -the fireplace to nurse the corn-bread and coffee -and pork to perfection and place the Dutch -oven right.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>Have you heard your grandmother speak of -the Dutch oven? It is a squat kettle which -is set in the embers. When it is hot, the biscuit -dough is put in and the lid replaced. Slowly -the biscuits become ambrosia. Slowly the -watching cook is baked.</p> - -<p>The Devil was in my host. By his coaxing -hospitality he made it seem natural that a -woman deadly sick should serve us. The rest -of the family could wait. It did not matter -if the tiny one cried and pulled the mother’s -skirt. She smote it into silence and fear, then -carried it to the black corner where the potato -planter herded the rest of the babies, helped -by King Log, the walrus-headed.</p> - -<p>The Gnome said, “I quit drinking ever since -I had that fight I told you about. I don’t -dare drink. So I take coffee.”</p> - -<p>You should have seen him flooding himself -with black coffee, drinking from a yellow bowl. -I said to myself: “He will surely turn to the -consolation of liquor anon. He will beat his -wife again. He will drive his children into the -woods. This woman must fight the battle -for her offspring till her black-snake hair is -white. Or maybe that insane knife will go<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span> -suddenly into her throat. She may die soon -with her hair black,—and red.”</p> - -<p>We ate with manly leisure. We were sated. -The mother prepared the second meal, and -called the group from the black corner. She -made ready her own supper. I see her by -the fire, the heavy arm shielding her face, the -hunched figure a knot of roots,—a palpable -mystery about her, making her worthy of a -portrait by some new Rembrandt. It is the -tragic mystery born of the isolation of the -Blue Ridge and the juice of the Indian corn. -Let us not forget the weapon with which she -fights the flame, the quaint long shovel.</p> - -<p>Let us watch her at the table, breaking her -corn-bread alone, her puffy eyelids closed, -her cheek-bones seeming to cut through the -skin. There is something of the eagle in her -aspect because of her Roman nose, and her -hands moving like talons. It is not corn-bread -that she tears and devours. She is consuming -her enemies, which are Weariness, Squalor, -Flat and Unprofitable Memory, Spiritual Death. -She is seeking to forget that the light of the -hearthstone that falls on her dirty but beautiful -babies is kindled in hell.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>The Gnome spoke of his hogs. A Middle -West farmer can talk hogs, and the world will -admire him the more. But a mediæval swine-herd -dare not. It is self-betrayal.</p> - -<p>My host grew affectionate, grandfatherly. -He told of a solid acre of mica on top of a -mountain. He speculated that it was a mile -deep. He put a chunk into my pocket for me -to carry to Asheville to interest great capitalists. -He offered me fifty per cent on the profits. -I took out a copy of the <i>Tree of Laughing -Bells</i> from my pocket. I reviewed the tale -contained in the book, in words I thought the -Gnome would understand. Then he read it -for himself with the “specs.” He was proud -of having learned to read out of the Bible, -with no schooling.</p> - -<p>He seemed particularly impressed with the -length of the journey of the hero of the poem, -who flew “to the farthest star of all.” He -looked at me with conceited shrewdness. “I -played hookey myself, when I was a kid. I -rode and walked forty-five miles that day. -I was mighty glad to get back to my mammy -the day after. I never wanted to run away -again.” He shook his pipe at me. “You<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span> -are just a runaway boy, that’s what you -are.”</p> - -<p>He said something favorable about me to his -wife, in the gnome language. She stood up. -She shrilled back a caution. She showed her -dirty teeth at him. But there was something -he was bursting to tell me. He was essentially -too reckless to conceal a secret long, even a -life-and-death secret. He began: “I still raise -a little corn.”</p> - -<p>The Walrus gave a sort of watch-dog bark. -The Gnome reluctantly accepted the caution. -He pointed sharply to the bed farthest from the -black corner of the room.</p> - -<p>“That’s for you.”</p> - -<p>“Isn’t there a shed or a corn-crib where I -can sleep?”</p> - -<p>“No, you don’t get out of this house to-night. -There aren’t any sheds or cribs.”</p> - -<p>I looked helplessly around that single-roomed -cabin. Not fear, but modesty, overcame me. -I was expected to retire first. But King Log, -the Walrus, perceiving my diffidence, set me -an example. He rapidly hauled a couch off -the porch and tumbled into it, first undressing -as far as his underwear. With a quilt almost<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span> -to his chin, and covering his pretty pink feet, -he was a decent spectacle.</p> - -<p>Happily I also wore underwear, and was -soon under my quilt. I stole a look at the -potato planter. I realized that she was the -maiden present. Be pleased, O brothers, to -observe that she has been aware of her age -and state. She has huddled up to the fire, -with her back to us; she has hidden her face -on her knees. At last she piles ashes on the -embers and finds a place in the black corner -in the cot full of children. Her father and -mother take the cot between.</p> - -<p>Next morning was Sunday, a week since -Easter. Only when a man has sadly mangled -feet, and blood heated by many weeks of adventure, -can he find luxury such as I found in -the icy stream next morning. The divine rivulet -on the far side of the field had been misnamed -“Mud Creek.” It was clear as a diamond.</p> - -<p>Always carrying a piece of soap in my hip -pocket, I was able to take a complete scour. -Not content with this (pardon me), I did scrub -shirt, socks, underwear, and bandanna. I hung -them on the bushes, thanking God for the wind. -Taking my before-mentioned credentials from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span> -my pocket, I made myself into a gentleman. -When I dressed at last, my clothes were a -little damp, but I knew that an hour’s walking -would put all to rights. As I held the bushes -aside I saw a crib-like structure that made me -shake more than the damp clothes. Was it -a still, or was it not a still?</p> - -<p>In my innocence I could not tell. But I -remembered the warning, “Don’t go pokin’ -round huntin’ stills by the creeks.”</p> - -<p>As I hurried to the house my host carelessly -appeared from the region of my bathing-place. -He was whittling with his historic knife. I -suppose he had noted my actions enough to -restore his confidence. Anyway, the shame of -being unwashed was his only visible emotion. -He said, “I always bathe in hot water.”</p> - -<p>“So do I, when I am not on the road.”</p> - -<p>Still he was abashed. He took an enormous -chew of tobacco to vindicate himself.</p> - -<p>After breakfast the wife helped the Walrus -to drag the cot out of doors. When she was -alone on the porch I told her how sorry I was -she had been obliged to cook for me. I thanked -her for her toil. But she hurried away, without -a pause or a glance. She kissed one of those<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span> -miry faced babies. She walked into the house, -leaving me smirking at the hills. She growled -something at the host. He came forth. He -pointed out the road, over the mountains and -far away. He broke off a blossoming apple-sprig -and whittled it.</p> - -<p>“So you’ve been to Atlanta?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“I was there once. What hotel did you use?”</p> - -<p>“The Salvation Army.”</p> - -<p>“I was in the United States Hotel.”</p> - -<p>Still I was stupid. He continued:</p> - -<p>“I was there two years.”</p> - -<p>He put on his glasses. He threw down the -apple-sprig, and, looking over the glasses, he -made unhappy each blossom in his own peculiar -way. He continued: “I was in the United -States Hotel, for making blockade whisky. I -don’t make it any more.” He spat again. -“I don’t even go fishin’ on Sunday unless—”</p> - -<p>He had made up his mind that I was a customer, -not a detective.</p> - -<p>“Unless what?”</p> - -<p>“Unless a visitor wants a mess of fish.”</p> - -<p>But I did not want a mess of fish. Repeatedly -I offered money for my night’s lodging.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span> -This he declined with real pride. <i>He maintained -his one virtue intact.</i> And so I thought of -him, just as I left, as a man who kept his code.</p> - -<p>The John Collier brogans were easier that -morning, partly because I had something new -on my mind, no doubt.</p> - -<p>I thought of the Gnome a long time. I -thought of the wife, and wondered at her as -a unique illustration of the tragic mysteries -of the human race. If she screams when seven -devils enter into the Gnome, no one outside -the house will hear but the apple-tree. If she -weeps, only the wind in the chimney will -understand. If she seeks justice and the law, -King Log, the Walrus, is her uncertain refuge. -If she desires mercy, the emperor of that -valley, the king above King Log, is a venomous -serpent, even the Worm of the Still.</p> - -<p>But now the road unwound in glory. I -walked away from those serpent-bitten dominions -for that time. I was one with the air of -the sweet heavens, the light of the ever-enduring -sun, the abounding stillness of the forest, -and the inscrutable Majesty, brooding on the -mountains, the Majesty whom ignorantly we -worship.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">THE TRAMP’S REFUSAL<br /> - - -On Being Asked by a Beautiful Gipsy to Join her Group<br /> -of Strolling Players.</h3> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Lady</span>, I cannot act, though I admire</div> -<div class="verse">God’s great chameleons, Booth-Barret men.</div> -<div class="verse">But when the trees are green, my thoughts may be</div> -<div class="verse">October-red. December comes again</div> -<div class="verse">And snowy Christmas there within my breast</div> -<div class="verse">Though I be walking in the August dust.</div> -<div class="verse">Often my lone contrary sword is bright</div> -<div class="verse">When every other soldier’s sword is rust.</div> -<div class="verse">Sometimes, while churchly friends go up to God</div> -<div class="verse">On wings of prayer to altars of delight</div> -<div class="verse">I walk and talk with Satan, call him friend,</div> -<div class="verse">And greet the imps with converse most polite.</div> -<div class="verse">When hunger nips me, then at once I knock</div> -<div class="verse">At the near farmer’s door and ask for bread.</div> -<div class="verse">I must, when I have wrought a curious song</div> -<div class="verse">Pin down some stranger till the thing is read.</div> -<div class="verse">When weeds choke up within, then look to me</div> -<div class="verse">To show the world the manners of a weed.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span> -<div class="verse">I cannot change my cloak except my heart</div> -<div class="verse">Has changed and set the fashion for the deed.</div> -<div class="verse">When love betrays me I go forth to tell</div> -<div class="verse">The first kind gossip that too-patent fact.</div> -<div class="verse">I cannot pose at hunger, love or shame.</div> -<div class="verse">It plagues me not to say: “I cannot act.”</div> -<div class="verse">I only mourn that this unharnessed <i>me</i></div> -<div class="verse">Walks with the devil far too much each day.</div> -<div class="verse">I would be chained to angel-kings of fire.</div> -<div class="verse">And whipped and driven up the heavenly way.</div> -</div></div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">THE HOUSE OF THE LOOM<br /> - - -A Story of Seven Aristocrats and a Soap-Kettle.</h3> -</div> - -<p><span class="smcap">With</span> no sorrow in my heart, with no money -in my pocket, with no baggage but a lunch, -the most dazzling feature of which was a piece -of gingerbread, I walked away from a wind-swept -North Carolina village, one afternoon, -over the mountain ridges toward Lake Toxaway. -I turned to the right once too often, -and climbed Mount Whiteside. There was a -drop of millions of miles, and a Lilliputian -valley below like a landscape by Charlotte B. -Coman. I heard some days later that once -a man tied a dog to an umbrella and threw -him over. Dog landed safely, barking still. -Dog was able to eat, walk, and wag as before. -But the fate of the master was horrible. Dog -never spoke to him again.</p> - -<p>Having no umbrella, I retraced my way. -I stepped into the highway that circumscribes -the tremendous amphitheatre of Cashier’s Valley. -I met not a soul till eight o’clock that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span> -night. The mountain laurel, the sardis bloom, -the violet, and the apple blossom made glad -the margins of the splendidly built road; and, -as long as the gingerbread lasted, I looked -upon these things in a sort of sophisticated -wonder.</p> - -<p>This was because the gingerbread was given -me by a civilized man, to whom John Collier -had written for me a letter of introduction: -Mr. Thomas G. Harbison, Botanical Collector; -American tree seeds a specialty.</p> - -<p>Back there by the village he was improving -the breed of mountain apples by running a -nursery. He was improving the children with -a school he taught without salary, and was -using the most modern pedagogy. Something -in his manner made me say, “You are like a -doctor out of one of Ibsen’s plays, only you -are optimistic.” Then we talked of Ibsen. -He debated art versus science, he being a -science-fanatic, I an art-fanatic. He concluded -the argument with these words: “You are -bound to be wrong. I am bound to be wrong. -What is the use of either of us judging the -other?” That is not the mountain way of -ending a discussion.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>For the purposes of the tale, as well as for -his own merits, we must praise this civilized -man who entertained me a day and a half so -well. His mountain cottage was a permanent -civilized camp. Without intruding on his -privacy, we can show what that means. Cross -a few states to the west with me.</p> - -<p>Have you watched the camps of the up-to-date -visitors, in the oldest parts of Colorado? -They begin with tent, axe, blanket, bacon, and -frying-pan, as miners do. In ten summers, -though they climb as much as the miners, -wear uglier boots, and rougher clothes, their -tents are highly organized. They are convenient -and free from clutter as the best New -York flat. The axe has multiplied rustic -benches, bridges, shelters. It has made a -refrigerator in the stream. The frying-pan -has changed into a camp-stove and a box of -white granite dishes. The blanket flowers and -Mariposa lilies that made the aspen groves -celestial have been gathered in jardinières.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, in the big houses of the veteran -miners of the villages are the axe, the blanket, -and the frying-pan, though their lords have -been through half a dozen fortunes since<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span> -pioneer days. Those houses have the single -great advantage of a rich tradition. They -seem to grow up out of the ground.</p> - -<p>Musing these matters, I munched my gingerbread, -walking past sweet waterfalls, groves of -enormous cedars, many springs, and one deserted -cabin. I was homesick for that great -civilized camp, New York, and the sober-minded -pursuit of knowledge there.</p> - -<p>But civilization lost her battle at twilight, -when I swallowed my last gingerbread crumb. -Immediately I was in the land beyond the -nowhere place, willing to sleep twelve hours -by a waterfall, or let the fairies wake me before -day. The road went deeper into savagery. -I blundered on, rejoicing in the fever of weariness. -In the piercing light of the young stars, -the house that came at last before me seemed -even more deeply rooted in the ground than -the oaks around it. What new revelation -lies here? Knock, knock, knock, O my soul, -and may Heaven open a mystery that will give -the traveller a contrite heart.</p> - -<p>Let us tell a secret, even before we enter. -If, with the proper magic in our minds, we were -guests here, a year or a day, we might write<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span> -the world’s one unwritten epic. All day, in -one of these tiny rooms, amid appointments -that fill the spirit with the elation of simple -things, we would write. At evening we would -dream the next event by the fire. The epic -would begin with the opening of the door.</p> - -<p>There appeared a military figure, with a -face like Henry Irving’s in contour, like -Whistler’s in sharpness, fantasy, and pride.</p> - -<p>“May I have a night’s lodging? I have no -money.”</p> - -<p>“Come in.... We never turn a man -away.”</p> - -<p>We were inside. He asked: “What might -be your name?” I gave it. He gave his. -The circle by the fire did not turn their heads, -but presumably I was introduced. One child -ran into the kitchen. My host gave me her -chair. All looked silently into the great soap-kettle -in the midst of the snapping logs.</p> - -<p>I have a high opinion of the fine people of -the South, and gratefully remember the scattering -of gentlefolk so good as to entertain me in -their mansions. But in this cottage, with one -glance at those fixed, flushed faces, I said: -“This is the best blood I have met in this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span> -United States.” The five children were night-blooming -flowers. There were hints of Doré -in the shadow of the father, cast against the -log walls of the cabin. He sat on the little -stairway. He was a better Don Quixote than -Doré ever drew.</p> - -<p>I said, “Every middle-aged man I have met -in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina has -been a soldier, and I suppose you were.”</p> - -<p>He looked at me long, as though the obligation -of hospitality did not involve conversation. -He spoke at last: “I fought, but I could -not help it. It was for home, or against home. -I fought for this cabin.”</p> - -<p>“It is a beautiful cabin.”</p> - -<p>He relented a bit. “We have kept it just -so, ever since my great-grandfather came here -with his pack-mule and made his own trail. -I—I hated the war. We did not care anything -about the cotton and niggers of the fire-eaters. -The niggers never climbed this high.”</p> - -<p>I changed the subject. “This is the largest -fireplace I have seen in the South. A man -could stand up in it.”</p> - -<p>He stiffened again. “<i>This is not the South. -This is the Blue Ridge.</i>”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>An inner door opened. It was plain the -woman who stood there was his wife. She -had the austere mouth a wife’s passion gives. -She had the sweet white throat of her -youth, that made even the candle-flame rejoice. -She looked straight at me, with ink-black -eyes. She was dumb, like some one -struggling to awake.</p> - -<p>“Everything is ready,” she said at length to -her husband.</p> - -<p>He turned to me: “Your supper is now in -the kitchen, ‘if what we have is good enough.’” -It was the usual formula for hospitality.</p> - -<p>I turned to the wife. “My dear woman, I -did not know that this was going on. It is -not right for you to set a new supper at this -hour. I had enough on the road.”</p> - -<p>“But you have walked a long way.” Then -she uttered the ancient proverb of the Blue -Ridge. “‘A stranger needs takin’ care of.’”</p> - -<p>In the kitchen there was a cook-stove. -Otherwise there was nothing to remind one of -the world this side of Beowulf. I felt myself -in a stronghold of barbarian royalty.</p> - -<p>“Do you do your own spinning and weaving?”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>She lifted the candle, lighting a corner. -“Here are the cards and the wools.” She -held it higher. “There is the spinning wheel.”</p> - -<p>“Where is the loom?”</p> - -<p>“Up stairs, just by where you will sleep.”</p> - -<p>I knew that if there was a loom, it was a -magic one, for she was a witch of the better -sort, a fine, serious witch, and a princess withal. -Her ancestors wore their black hair that simple -way when their lords won them by fighting -dragons. She was prouder than the pyramids. -If the epic is ever written, let it tell how the -spinner of the wizard wools did stand to serve -the stranger, that being the custom of her -house. This was a primitive camp indeed. -There was no gingerbread. There was not one -thing to remind me of the last table at which -I had eaten. But every gesture said, “Good -prince, you are far from your court. Therefore, -this, our royal trencher, is yours. May -you find your way to your own kingdom in -peace.” But for a long time her lips were -still. She had the spareness of a fertile, toiling -mother. And, ah, the motherhood in her -voice when she said at last, “My son, you are -tired.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>Let the epic tell that, when the stranger -returned to the fireplace, a restless, expectant -silence settled down upon the circle. There -was portent in the hiss of the flames. When I -spoke to the children they only stared at me -as at a curious shadow. Their lips moved not. -The eldest, about seventeen, had inherited, no -doubt, his love of strange brewing. He looked -sideways into the soap-kettle. I said to myself, -“He sees more hippogriffs than steam-engines.” -He eyed every move of the circle -with restless approval or disapproval. Every -chip his little brother threw on the fire seemed -to be a symbol of some precious thing sacrificed, -every curl of steam seemed to have something -to do with the destiny of the house.</p> - -<p>He took out of his pocket a monthly magazine. -It was the sort that costs ten cents a year. -No doubt, had he gone to school to the admirable -man who gave me gingerbread, he would -have learned to read scientific and technical -monthlies. But a magazine of any sort is a -terribly intrusive thing at this juncture. The -boy, and a sister just a little younger, read in -a loud whisper to one another an advertisement -they did not want me to hear. At their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span> -stage of culture it was impossible to read -silently. The advertisement, if I remember, -went about this way:—</p> - -<p>“Free, free, free! A sewing machine! Send -us a two-cent stamp, your name and address, -mentioning the name of this magazine. We -will tell you how to get an up-to-date sewing -machine absolutely free. This offer is good -for thirty days.”</p> - -<p>They wrote a most unscholarly letter, spelling -it aloud. It required their total and -united culture to produce it. When the girl -returned to the fire, she was provoked by her -pride into an astonishing flush. How it set -off her temples, with their pattern of azure -veins! With her lotus-leaf hands, the hands -of Hathor, goddess of love, she cooled her -cheeks again and again. There is something -of breeding in the very color of blood. Come, -brothers of the road, all who travel with me in -fancy, will you not join the knighthood of the -soap-kettle? Come, ladies in mansions, will -you not be one with us? None of you could -have gainsaid the maiden-in-chief of the assembly. -She wore her homespun as Zenobia, -princess of Palmyra, wore her splendors. With<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span> -her arms around her two gipsy younger sisters -she smiled at last into the soap-kettle. When -the epic is written, let it use words of marvelling, -speaking of her hair, so pale, so electrical, -set in a thick, ingenious coronal.</p> - -<p>All the little children stood up. “Uncle,” -they shouted. Hoofs sounded by the door. -A man entered without knocking. When he -saw me he became ceremonious as a Mandarin.</p> - -<p>“This is a traveller,” said my host.</p> - -<p>The messenger indulged in inquiries about -my welfare, journey, and destination. My host -interrupted.</p> - -<p>“How’s mother? We have watched late to -know.”</p> - -<p>“She is much worse.” And the messenger -went on to say that she might not live two -days, and the doctor was a careless, indifferent -dog, treating her as though she were an ordinary -old woman.</p> - -<p>“Does he still give her strychnine?”</p> - -<p>“He won’t deny it.” The messenger explained -that the doctor thought strychnine in -small doses was good for old people. The -scientist who gave me gingerbread should have -been there to champion the doctor. In the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span> -eyes of his judges that night he was suspected -of poisoning or treating with criminal folly, -royalty itself.</p> - -<p>The younger doctor was miles away, and -might refuse to make the trip. The two loyal -sons seemed paralyzed because the time for -decision and the time for mourning came together. -There were long silences, interrupted -by my host repeating in a sort of primitive -song, “<i>I can’t think of anything except my -dying mother. I can’t think of anything except -mother is going to die.</i>”</p> - -<p>At last, with his brother’s consent, the -messenger galloped and galloped away, to -find his only hope, the younger physician. -As the wife gave me the candle, sending me -up stairs, I looked back at the family circle.</p> - -<p>Helpless grief made every face rigid. I -looked again at the eldest daughter. The -moving shadows embroidered on her breast -intricate symbols of the fair years, passing by -in the ghost of tapestry, things that happened -in the beginning of the world. Let the epic -tell that when the stranger slept there was a -magic loom by his bed that wove that history -again in valiant colors, showing battles without<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span> -number, and sieges, and interminable sunny -love-tales, and lotus-handed ladies whispering -over manuscript things too fine to be told, -and ruddy warriors sitting at watch-fires on -battlements eternal; and let the epic tell -how, in the early dawn, the stranger half -awoke, yet saw this tapestry hung round the -walls. If one could remember every story for -which the pictures stood, he might indeed -write the world’s unwritten epic. The last -tapestry to be hung changed from gold to -black warp and woof upon which was written -that because of a treacherous prime minister -who served a poisoned wine, the Empress of the -White Witches was perishing before her time, -and the young wizard, with the counter-spell, -was riding night and day, but all the palace -knew he would arrive too late.</p> - -<p>At breakfast the faces were stolid and white -as frost. The father answered me only when -I said good-by.</p> - -<p>He said he hardly knew whether I had had -anything to eat, or whether any one had been -good to me. “You just had to take care of -yourself.” The son, feeling the demand of -hospitality in his father’s voice, walked to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span> -road with me. He asked if I was walking to -Asheville.</p> - -<p>“Yes, by way of Mount Toxaway and -Brevard.”</p> - -<p>He told me it was good walking all the way, -and added, in a difficult burst of confidence, -“I am going to Asheville.”</p> - -<p>“Why not come along with me?” I asked. -I meant it heartily.</p> - -<p>He said he had to take horseback, and then -the railway. He had to be there to-morrow.</p> - -<p>“What’s the hurry?”</p> - -<p>“I have to witness in a whisky case, an -internal revenue case.”</p> - -<p>He said it like a Spanish Protestant called -before the inquisition.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I said to my soul: “These were the revelations -of a night and a morning. What deeper -troubles were in the House of the Loom that -you did not know?”</p> - -<p>All through the country there had been that -night what is called a black frost. By the -roadside it was deep and white as the wool on -a sheep. But it left things blighted and black, -and destroyed the chances of the fruit-bearing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span> -trees. All the way to Mount Toxaway I -met scattered mourners of the ill-timed visitation.</p> - -<p>But the simple folly of spring was in me, -and the strange elation of gratitude. My soul -said within itself: “A money-claim has definite -limits, but when will you ever discharge your -obligation to the proud and the fine in the -House of the Loom? You intruded on their -grief. Yet they held their guest sacred as their -grief.”</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">PHIDIAS</h3> -</div> - - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Would</span> that the joy of living came to-day,</div> -<div class="verse">Even as sculptured on Athena’s shrine</div> -<div class="verse">In sunny conclave of serene design,</div> -<div class="verse">Maidens and men, procession flute and feast,</div> -<div class="verse">By Phidias, the ivory-hearted priest</div> -<div class="verse">Of beauty absolute, whose eyes the sun</div> -<div class="verse">Showed goodlier forms than our desires can guess</div> -<div class="verse">And more of happiness.</div> -</div></div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">MAN, IN THE CITY OF COLLARS<br /> - - -A Not Very Tragic Relapse into the Toils of the World,<br /> -and of Finance.</h3> -</div> - -<p><span class="smcap">Having</span> been properly treated as a bunco -man by systematic piety in a certain city further -south, I had double-barrelled special recommendations -sent to a lofty benevolence in -Asheville, from a religious leader of New York, -the before-mentioned Charles F. Powlison.</p> - -<p>It was with confidence that I bade good-by -to the chicken-merchant who drove me into -the city. I entered the office of the black-coated, -semi-clerical gentleman who had received -the Powlison indorsements. My stick -pounded his floor. The heels of my brogans -made the place resound. But he gave all -official privileges. He received me with the -fine manly hand-clasp, the glitter of teeth, the -pat on the back. He insisted I use the shower -bath, writing room, reading table. Then I -suggested a conference among a dozen of his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span> -devouter workers on the relation of the sense -of Beauty to their present notion of Christianity -or, if he preferred, a talk on some aspect of art -to a larger group.</p> - -<p>He took me into his office. He shut the door. -He was haughty. He made me haughty. I -give the conversation as it struck me. He -probably said some smart things I do not -recall. But I remember all the smart things -I said.</p> - -<p>He denounced labor agitators in plain words. -I agreed. I belonged to the brotherhood of -those who loaf and invite their souls.</p> - -<p>He spoke of anarchy. I maintained that I -loved the law.</p> - -<p>He very clearly, and at length, assaulted -Single Tax. I knew nothing then of Single -Tax, and thanked him for light. He denounced -Socialism. Knowing little about Socialism at -that time, I denounced it also, having just -been converted to individualism by a man in -Highlands.</p> - -<p>The religious leader spoke of his long experience -with bunco men. I insisted I wanted not -a cent from him, I was there to do him good. -I had letters of introduction to two men in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span> -city; one of them, an active worker in the -organization, had already been in to identify -me. A third man was coming to climb Mount -Mitchell with me.</p> - -<p>He doubted that I was a bona fide worker -in his organization. Then came my only long -speech. We will omit the speech. But he -began to see light. He took a fresh grip on -his argument. He said: “There is a man -here in Asheville I see snooping around with a -tin box and a butterfly net. They call him the -state something-ologist. He goes around and—and—<i>hunts -bugs</i>. But do you want to know -what I think of a crank like that?” I wanted -to know. He told me.</p> - -<p>“But,” I objected, “I am not a scientist. I -am an art student.”</p> - -<p>He expressed an interest in art. He gave -a pious and proper view of the nude in art. It -took some time. It was the sort of chilly, -cautious talk that could not possibly bring a -blush to the cheek of ignorance. I assured -him his decorous concessions were unnecessary. -I was not expounding the nude.</p> - -<p>There was an artist here, and Asheville -needed no further instruction of the kind, he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span> -maintained. The gentleman had won some -blue ribbons in Europe. He painted a big -picture (dimensions were given) and sold it for -thousands (price was given).</p> - -<p>“He is holding the next one, two feet longer -each way, for double the money.”</p> - -<p>I told him if he felt there was enough art in -Asheville, we might do something to popularize -the poets.</p> - -<p>In reply he talked about literary cranks. -He spoke of how Thoreau, with his long hair -and ugly looks, frightened strangers who suddenly -met him in the woods. I thanked him -for light on Thoreau.... But he had to -admit that my hair was short.</p> - -<p>He suspected I was neither artist nor literary -man. I assured him my friends were often of -the same opinion.</p> - -<p>“But,” he said bitterly, “do you know sir, -by the tone of letters I received from Mr. Powlison -I expected to assemble the wealth and -fashion of Asheville to hear you. I expected to -see you first in your private car, wearing a -dress-suit.”</p> - -<p>I answered sternly, “Art, my friend, does -not travel in a Pullman.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>He threw off all restraint. “Old shoes,” he -said, “old shoes.” He pointed at them.</p> - -<p>“I have walked two hundred miles among -the moonshiners. They wear brogans like -these.” But his manner plainly said that his -organization did not need cranks climbing over -the mountains to tell them things.</p> - -<p>“Your New York letter did not say you were -walking. It said you ‘would arrive.’”</p> - -<p>He began to point again. “Frayed trousers! -And the lining of your coat in rags!”</p> - -<p>“I took the lining of the coat for necessary -patches.”</p> - -<p>“A blue bandanna round your neck!”</p> - -<p>“To protect me from sunburn.”</p> - -<p>He rose and hit the table. “And no collar!”</p> - -<p>“Oh yes, I have a collar.” I drew it from -my hip pocket. It had had a two hundred -mile ride, and needed a bath.</p> - -<p>“I should like to have it laundered, but I -haven’t the money.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Get</i> the money.”</p> - -<p>“No,” I said, “but I will get a collar.”</p> - -<p>I entered a furnishing and tailor shop around -the corner. I asked for the proprietor. He -showed me collars.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>“Two for a quarter?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Now I have here a little brochure I sell for -twenty-five cents. In fact it is a poem, well -worth the money. I will let you have it for -half price, that is, one collar.”</p> - -<p>“We are selling collars.”</p> - -<p>“I am selling the poem.”</p> - -<p>I turned my Ancient Mariner eye on him. -I recited the most mesmeric rhymes.</p> - -<p>He repeated, “We are selling collars.”</p> - -<p>Evidently the eye was out of order. I tried -argument.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you think I need a collar?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t you think this one would fit this -shirt?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“I renew my offer.”</p> - -<p>He sternly put the box away.</p> - -<p>So I said, “If I must face my friends in -Asheville without this necessary ornament, you -shall blush. I have done my duty, and refuse -to blush.”</p> - -<p>I looked up a scholar from Yale, Yutaka -Minakuchi, friend of old friends, student of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span> -philosophy, in which he instructed me much, -first lending me a collar. He became my host -in Asheville. It needs no words of mine to -enhance the fame of Japanese hospitality....</p> - -<p>And I had a friend in a distant place, whom, -for fancy’s sake, we will call the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid. -Let him remain a mystery. We -will reveal this much. Had he known the -truth, he would have sent Greek slaves riding -on elephants, laden with changes of raiment. -He discerned, at least, that I was in a barbarous -land, for at length a long package containing -a sword arrived from the court of the Caliph -(to speak in parables). I exchanged the weapon -at a pawnshop for <i>money</i>, all in one bill—<i>money</i>—against -which I had so many times sworn -eternal warfare, which had been my hoodoo -in the past, and was destined to be again. But -this time, such are the whims of fate, the little -while it was with me it brought me only good.</p> - -<p>I entered the furnishing store. The proprietor -was terribly busy, but my glittering -eye was in condition. I persuaded him, by -dint of repetition, to show me his collars. I -treated him as though we had not met.</p> - -<p>“Fifteen cents apiece?”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“I will take <i>one</i>.” I gave the bill. He had -to send a boy out for the change. I put the -silver in my pocket, and rattled it. He wrapped -up the collar, while I studied his cheeks. He -blushed like a maid, bless his tender heart, and -in his sweet confusion he knew that I knew it.</p> - -<p>The streets of Asheville kept shouting to me: -“Let us praise Man, when he builds cities, and -grows respectable, and cringes to money, and -becomes a tailor, and loves collars with all -his heart.”</p> - - - -<hr class="tb" /> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span> -<h3 class="nobreak">CONFUCIUS</h3> -</div> - - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Would</span> we were scholars of Confucius’ time</div> -<div class="verse">Watching the feudal China crumbling down,</div> -<div class="verse">Frightening our master, shaking many a crown,</div> -<div class="verse">Until he makes more firm the father sages,</div> -<div class="verse">Restoring custom from the earliest ages</div> -<div class="verse">With prudent sayings, golden as the sun.</div> -<div class="verse">Lord, show us safe, august, established ways,</div> -<div class="verse">Fill us with yesterdays.</div> -</div></div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">THE OLD LADY AT THE TOP OF THE -HILL</h3> -</div> - - -<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was a bland afternoon. I had been crossing -a green valley in North Carolina. Every -man I passed had that languid leanness slanderously -attributed to the hookworm by folk who -have no temperament. Yet some bee of industry -must have stung these fellows into intermittent -effort this morning, yesterday, last -week or last year.</p> - -<p>Here were reasonably good barns. Here -were fences, and good fences at that. Here -were mysterious crops, neither cotton nor corn. -One man was not ploughing with a mule. No, -sir. He was ploughing with a sort of horse....</p> - -<p>At last I mounted the northern rim of the -circle of steep hills that kept the place as separate -from the rest of the world as a Chinese -wall. I met her on the crest. She advanced -slowly, looking on the ground, leaning at the -hips as do the very aged, but not grotesquely. -Her primly made dress and sunbonnet were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span> -dull dark blue. With her walking-stick she -meditatively knocked the little stones from -her path. The staff had a T-shaped head. It -was the cane Old Mother Hubbard carries in -the toy book.</p> - -<p>And now she looked up and said with a -pleasant start, “Why, good evening, young -stranger.”</p> - -<p>“Good evening, kind lady.”</p> - -<p>“Where have you been, my son?”</p> - -<p>“Why, I am following my nose to the end -of the world. I have just walked through this -enterprising valley.”</p> - -<p>She looked into the dust and meditated -awhile. Then she said: “It’s getting late. -No one has let you in?”</p> - -<p>“No one.”</p> - -<p>“How about that house by the bridge?” -She pointed with her cane.</p> - -<p>“The lady said she had a sick child.”</p> - -<p>“Nonsense, nonsense. Do you see that little -Ardella by that corner of the ploughed field -near the house? She don’t run like a sick -child.... Did you ask at the next place, the -one that has a green porch?” She pointed -again with her cane.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>“The woman said she had no spare bed.”</p> - -<p>“But she has. I slept in it last week.... -And that last house before you start up this -hill?”</p> - -<p>“The woman said she had to take care of -saw-mill hands.”</p> - -<p>“Did she tell you <i>that</i>?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, ma’am.”</p> - -<p>The old lady ruminated again, leaning on -her stick. At length she said: “Sit down. -I want to tell you something.” There we -were, Grandmother and newly adopted grandson, -on a big sunlit rock.</p> - -<p>I give only the spirit of her words. She -discoursed in that precious mountain dialect, -so mediæval, so Shakespearean with its surprising -phrases that seem at first the slang of -a literary clan, till one learns they are the -common property of folk that cannot read. It -is a manner of speech all too elusive. Would -that I had kept a note-book upon it! But -somewhat to this intent she spoke, and in a -tone gentler than her words:—</p> - -<p>“They thought I would never find out about -this, or they would not have treated you so. -That woman in the last house is my daughter-in-law.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span> -She has only two saw-mill hands, and -they’re no trouble. That’s my house anyway. -It was my mother’s before me. No one dares -turn strangers away when I am there. There’s -an empty bed up stairs, and another in the hall.”</p> - -<p>She turned about and pointed in the direction -in which I had been walking. “Just ahead of -you, around that clump of trees, is a hospitable -family. If they will not take care of you, it is -because they have a good excuse. If they -cannot take you in, ask no further. Come -back to my place, and” (she spoke with a -Colonial Dame air) “<i>I will make you welcome</i>.”</p> - -<p>“What sort of mountaineer is this?” I -asked myself. “The hospitality is the usual -thing, but the grandeur is exotic.”</p> - -<p>We chatted awhile of the sunset. Then I -accompanied her to the edge of the hill.</p> - -<p>Under her sacred hair her face retained girl-contours. -The wrinkles were not too deep. -She seemed not to have changed as mothers -often do, when, under decades of inevitable -sorrow, the features are recarved into the special -mask of middle age, and finally into the very -different mask of senility. She had yet the -authority of Beauty. She wore her white hair<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span> -with a Quakerish-feminine skill most admirably -adapted to that ancient forehead. I divined -she had learned that at sixteen. What a long -time to be remembering.</p> - -<p>We were spirits that at once met and understood. -She said: “My son, I have walked -all my life across this valley, or up this hill, or -toward that green mountain where you are -going. I never walked as far as I wanted to. -But walking even so short a path makes for -consolation.”</p> - -<p>Now she laid aside antique grandeur and took -on plain vanity.</p> - -<p>“Do you know how old I am?”</p> - -<p>“About eighty-five.”</p> - -<p>“I’m ninety-two years old, young man, and -I’m going to live ten years more.”</p> - -<p>It was getting late. I said, “I am glad indeed -to have met you.”</p> - -<p>She answered, “I am sorry my valley has -not been kind.”</p> - -<p>I ventured to ask, “So it’s <i>your</i> valley?”</p> - -<p>I had touched a raw nerve. I was completely -shaken by the suddenness of her answer.</p> - -<p>“Mine! Mine! Mine!” she shrieked. -Kneeling, she beat up the dust of the road<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span> -with her cane. And then “Mine! Mine! -Mine!” shaking her outstretched arms over -that amphitheatre, as though she would drag -it all to her breast.</p> - -<p>She was out of breath and trembling. At -length she smiled, and added so quietly it -seemed another person. “And they shall not -take it away from me.”</p> - -<p>I helped her to her feet. She was once more -the Martha Washington sort.... I remember -her last sentence. In a royal tone, that was -three times an accolade, in a motherly tone -that was caressing and slow she half-sung the -pretty words:—</p> - -<p>“Good evening, young man. I wish you -well.”</p> - -<p>The man at the next house took me in. In -the course of the evening he assured me that -the old lady did own the valley, and that she -ruled it with a rod of iron. The family graveyard -was full of heirs who had grown to old -age and died of old age hoping in vain to outlive, -and to inherit her authority.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">WITH A ROSE, TO BRUNHILDE</h3> -</div> - - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Brunhilde</span>, with the young Norn soul</div> -<div class="verse">That has no peace, and grim as those</div> -<div class="verse">That spun the thread of life, give heed:</div> -<div class="verse">Peace is concealed in every rose.</div> -<div class="verse">And in these petals peace I bring:</div> -<div class="verse">A jewel clearer than the dew:</div> -<div class="verse">A perfume subtler than the breath</div> -<div class="verse">Of Spring with which it circles you.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Peace I have found, asleep, awake,</div> -<div class="verse">By many paths, on many a strand.</div> -<div class="verse">Peace overspreads the sky with stars.</div> -<div class="verse">Peace is concealed within your hand.</div> -<div class="verse">And when at night I clasp it there</div> -<div class="verse">I wonder how you never know</div> -<div class="verse">The strength you shed from finger-tips:</div> -<div class="verse">The treasure that consoles me so.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Begin the art of finding peace,</div> -<div class="verse">Beloved:—it is art, no less.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span> -<div class="verse">Sometimes we find it hid beneath</div> -<div class="verse">The orchards in their springtime dress:</div> -<div class="verse">Sometimes one finds it in oak woods,</div> -<div class="verse">Sometimes in dazzling mountain-snows;</div> -<div class="verse">In books, sometimes. But pray begin</div> -<div class="verse">By finding it within a rose.</div> -</div></div></div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">LADY IRON-HEELS<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></h3> -</div> - - -<h4>I<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Seven Suspicions</span></h4> - -<p><span class="smcap">One</span> Saturday in May I was hurrying from -mountainous North Carolina into mountainous -Tennessee. Because of my speed and air of -alarm, I was followed by the Seven Suspicions. -I was either a revenue detective in pursuit -of moonshiners, or a moonshiner pursued by -revenue detectives, or a thief hurrying out of -hot territory, or a deputy sheriff pursuing a -thief, or a pretended non-combatant hurrying -toward a Tennessee feud, actually an armed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span> -recruit, or I had just killed my family’s hereditary -enemy and was eluding his avengers, or I -had bought some moonshine whisky and was -trying to get out of a bad region before nightfall. -These suspicions implied that the inhabitants -admired me. Yet I hurried.</p> - -<p>I came upon one article of my creed, the very -next day, Sunday. But Saturday was a season -of panic, preparation, and trial.</p> - -<p>The article of my creed that I won as my reward -might be stated in this fashion: “<i>Peace -is to be found, even in a red and bleeding rose.</i>”</p> - -<p>I was accustomed to the feudist and the -assassin. Such people had been good to me, -and I had walked calmly through their haunts. -But now the smothering landscape seemed to -double every natural fear. The hills were so -steep and so close together that only the indomitable -corn and rye climbed to the top -to see the sun. The road was in the bed of a -scolding rivulet. People in general travelled -horseback. Cross-logs for those afoot bridged -high above the streams every half mile. There -was a primeval something about the heavy -chains of the cross-logs, binding them to the -trees, that suggested the forgotten beginning<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span> -of an iron people, some harsh iron-willed Sparta. -This impression was strengthened by the unpainted -dwellings, hunched close to the path, -with thick walls to resist siege.</p> - -<p>What first fixed these outlaws here, as in a -nest, with a ring of houseless open country -round them? A traveller was more shut from -the horizon than in the slums of Chicago. The -road climbed no summits. It writhed like a -snake. And there were snakes sunning themselves -on every other cross-log. <i>And there was -never a flower to be seen.</i></p> - -<p>An old woman, kindly enough, gave this -beggar a noon-meal for the asking, but the landscape -had struck into me so I almost feared to -eat the bread. For this fear I sternly blamed -my perverse imagination. Refreshed in body -only, I crept like a fascinated fly, dragged by -occult force toward a spider’s den. I felt as -though I had reached the very heart of the -trap when I stepped into the streets of the profane -village of Flagpond, Tennessee.</p> - -<p>It was early in the afternoon. The feudal -warriors had come to the place on horseback, -dressed in poverty-stricken Saturday finery: -clothes tight and ill-dyed, with black felt hats<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span> -that should have slouched, but did not. The -immaculate rims stood out in queer precision. -The wearers sat in front of the three main stores, -looking across the street at one another. Since -there was no woman in sight, every one knew -that the shooting might begin at any time. -The silence was deadly as the silence of a plague. -I checked my pace. I ambled in a leisurely way -from store to store, inquiring the road to Cumberland -Gap, the distance to Greenville, and the -like. I was on the other side of the circle of -dwellings pretty soon, followed by the Seven -Suspicions, shot from about seventy-five lean -countenances, which makes about five hundred -and twenty-five suspicions.</p> - -<p>One of the most indescribable and haunting -things of that region was that all the women -and children were dressed in a certain dead-bone -gray.</p> - -<p>About four o’clock I had made good my -escape. I had begun to mount rolling, uninhabited -hills. At twilight I entered a plain, -and felt a new kind of civilization round me. -It would have been shabby in Indiana. Here -it was glorious. They had whitewashed fences, -and white-painted cottages, glimmering kindly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span> -through the dusk. Some farm machinery was -rusting in the open. I climbed a last year’s -straw-stack, and slept, with acres of stars pouring -down peace.</p> - - -<h4>II<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Tailor and the Florist</span></h4> - -<p>Now the story begins all over again with -the episode of the well-known tailor and the -unknown florist. Just off the main street of -Greenville, Tennessee, there is a log cabin with -the century old inscription, <span class="smcap">Andrew Johnson, -Tailor</span>. That sign is the fittest monument to -the indomitable but dubious man who could not -cut the mantle of the railsplitter to fit him. I -was told by the citizens of Greenville that there -was a monument to their hero on the hill. So -I climbed up. It was indeed wonderful—a -weird straddling archway, supporting an obelisk. -The archway also upheld two flaming funeral -urns with buzzard contours, and a stone eagle -preparing to screech. There was a dog-eared -scroll inscribed, “His faith in the people never -wavered.” Around all was, most appropriately, -a spiked fence.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>But I was glad I came, because near the -Tailor’s resting-place was a Florist’s grave, on -which depends the rest of this adventure, and -which reaches back to the beginning of it. It -had a wooden headstone, marked “John Kenton -of Flagpond, Florist. 1870-1900.” And in -testimony to his occupation, a great rosebush -almost hid the inscription. Any man who -could undertake to sell flowers in Flagpond -might have it said of him also, “His faith in -the people never wavered.”</p> - -<p>And now in my tramping the spirit of John -Kenton, or some other Florist, seemed to lead -me. My season of panic, preparation, and trial -was over. It was indeed Sunday on this planet -for awhile. I passed bush after bush of the -same sort as that marking Kenton’s place of -sleep. The sight of them was all that I had to -give me strength till noon. I had had neither -breakfast nor supper. People would have fed -this poor tramp, but I love sometimes the -ecstasy that comes with healthy fasting. And -now that I reflect upon it, it was indeed appropriate -that the Religion of the Rose should -begin with abstinence.</p> - -<p>I have burdened you further back with an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span> -elaborate description of the landscape of Flagpond. -Now that landscape was repeated with -the addition of roses. And what a difference they -made! They quenched the Seven Suspicions. -They made gray dresses seem rather tolerable. -On either side loomed the steepest cornfields -yet, but they did not make me tremble now.</p> - -<p>At noon I turned aside where a log cabin on -stilts, leaning against its own chimney, stood -astride a little gully. It was about as big as a -dove-cote. Straggling rose-hedges led to the -green-banked spring at the foot of a ladder that -took the place of steps. The old lady that came -to the door was a dove in one respect only; she -was dressed in gray.</p> - -<p>She was drawn to the pattern of the tub-like -peasants of the German funny paper <i>Simplicissimus</i>. -I told her my name was Nicholas. -She took it for granted that I wanted my dinner, -and asked me up the ladder without ado. She -did an unusual thing. She began to talk family -affairs. “You must be kin to Lawyer Nicholas -of Flagpond.... He defended my son ten -years ago ... in a trial for murder.”</p> - -<p>I said: “I am no kin to Lawyer Nicholas, -but I hope he won his case.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>“No. My son is in the state’s prison for -life.... He surely killed Florist Kenton.” -But she added, as if it nullified all guilt, “they -were both drunk.”</p> - -<p>She was busy cooking at the open fireplace. -She turned to the boy, about ten years old. -“Call your Ma and your Aunt to dinner.” He -climbed the steep and shouted. Presently two -figures came over the ridge. The larger woman -took the boy’s hand.</p> - -<p>“<i>That’s my daughter-in-law, the boy’s mother</i>,” -said Mrs. Simplicissimus.</p> - -<p>I judged the second figure to be a woman of -about twenty-eight. She carried a fence-rail -on her shoulder. She was straight as an -Indian. The old woman said: “<i>That’s my -daughter. She was going to marry John Kenton.</i>” -The only influences that could have -induced a mountain-woman to unburden so -much, were the roses, just outside the door, -leaping in the wind.</p> - -<p>The procession soon reached us. The wood-carrier -threw the log into the yard. “There’s -firewood,” she sang. She vaulted over the -fence, displaying iron-heeled brogans, thick red -stockings, and a red-lined skirt. There was a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span> -smear of earth on cheek and chin. Her face -was a sunburned, dust-mired roseleaf. She -swept off her hat. She bowed ironically. She -said: “Howdy. What might be your name?”</p> - -<p>I did not tell my name.</p> - -<p>She fell on her knees. She drank from her -hands at the spring. I could feel the cold water -warring with the sunshine in her sinews. She -would never have done with splashing eyelids -and ears, and cheeks and red arms and throat. -The rosebushes behind her leaped in the wind. -The boy and his mother and the grandmother -knelt at that same place and splashed after that -same manner. Then the grandmother nudged -me.</p> - -<p>“Wash,” she said.</p> - -<p>I washed.</p> - -<p>We climbed into that dove-cote block-house -on stilts. We ate like four plough-horses and a -colt. We consumed corn-bread and fat pork, -then corn-bread and beans, then corn-bread -and butter. I ate supper, breakfast, and -dinner in three quarters of an hour.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span></p> - - -<h4>III<br /> - -<span class="smcap">A Brief Siesta</span></h4> - -<p>Working a farm of fields that stand on edge, -without men to help, and without much machinery, -makes women into warriors or kills -them. The grandmother and mother were -no longer women. Even when they caressed -the boy their faces were furrowed with invincible -will-power. But Lady Iron-Heels still a woman, -was confused in the alternative of manhood or -death. She was indeed a flower not yet torn -to pieces by the wind, greatly shaken, and therefore -blooming the faster.</p> - -<p>There was a red ribbon streaming over the -gray rag-carpet. Lady Iron-Heels stooped, -gave the ribbon a jerk, and a banjo came snarling -from under the bed.</p> - -<p>She sat on the warring colors of the crazy-quilt, -and played a dance-tune, storming the -floor with one heel. She grew pensive. She -sang:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“We shall rest in the fair and happy land</div> -<div class="verse">Just across on the ever-green shore,</div> -<div class="verse">Sing the song of Moses and the Lamb (by and by)</div> -<div class="verse">And dwell with Jesus evermore.”</div> -</div></div> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>Her neck had a yellow handkerchief round -it. A brown lock swept across her leaping -throat. Her cheeks and chin were bold as her -iron heels. Underneath the precious silken -sunburn, the blood was beating, beating, and -trying to thicken into manhood to fight off -death.</p> - -<p>After the music the ladies dipped snuff in -the circle around the dim fire.</p> - - -<h4>IV<br /> - -“<span class="smcap">That’s All the Church I Get</span>”</h4> - -<p>I made a great palaver to Iron-Heels about -giving me the banjo ribbon. She consented -easily. Coquetry was not her specialty.</p> - -<p>“What might be your name?” she asked.</p> - -<p>There was no dodging now. The old woman -spoke up as though to save me pain: “His -name is Nicholas. But he is no kin to Lawyer -Nicholas of Flagpond.”</p> - -<p>After a long silence the girl said: “We came -from Flagpond, once upon a time.”</p> - -<p>She had been looking out the door at the -clear bowl of the spring, and the reflection of -the tall bushes, leaping in the wind.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span>I thought to myself: “She herself was John -Kenton’s chief rose.” I thought: “He had -her in mind when he set these ameliorating -bushes through the wild.” Possibly the girl -could not read or write. Yet she was royal.</p> - -<p>Democracy has the ways of a jackdaw. -Democracy hides jewels in the ash-heap. Democracy -is infinitely whimsical. Every once -in a while a changeling appears, not like any of -the people around, a changeling whose real -ancestors are aristocratic souls forgotten for -centuries. As the girl’s eyes narrowed, she became -Queen Thi, the masterful and beautiful -potentate of immemorial Egypt whose face I -have seen in a museum, carved on a Canopic -jar. She was Queen Thi only an instant, then -she became a Tennessee girl again, with the -eyes of a weary doe.</p> - -<p>She said: “Them roses give me comfort. -That’s all the church I get.”</p> - -<p>I asked: “Why are there so many roses between -here and Greenville and none near Flagpond?”</p> - -<p>It was her turn not to speak. The old woman -as though to save her pain, answered: “The -flowers of these parts were all brought in by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span> -John Kenton. He lived in Flagpond, but -could not sell them there.”</p> - -<p>And the mother of the little boy, the man-woman, -whose husband had killed Kenton, -broke her long silence: “The only flowers we -have to-day are these he brought. I think we -would die without them.... How do we get -through the winter?”</p> - -<p>Lady Iron-Heels and her sister-in-law took -a swig of whisky from the jug under the table, -and lifted up their hoes from the floor. The -boy whimpered for a drink. They said: “Wait -till you are a man.” All three climbed the hill.</p> - -<p>Lady Iron-Heels was the last to go over the -ridge. She saw me gather buds from both -those bushes by the spring. She made a -gesture of salute with her hoe.</p> - -<p>I never travelled that way again. I passed -by quickly; therefore I had a glimpse of what -she was intended to be. “He that loseth his -life shall find it.” I see her many a time when -I am looking on scattered rose-leaves. She -was a woman, God’s chief rose for man. She -was scorned and downtrodden, but radiant still. -I am only saying that she wore the face of -Beauty when Beauty rises above circumstance.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>The buds that I had gathered did not fall to -pieces till I had passed by Daniel Boone’s old -trail on through Cumberland Gap, on over big -hill Kentucky into the Blue Grass. On the -way I wrote this, their poor memorial, the -Canticle of the Rose:—</p> - -<p>It is an article of my creed that the petals of -this flower of which we speak are a medicine, -that they can almost heal a mortal wound.</p> - -<p>The rose is so young of face and line, she appears -so casually and humbly, we forget she is -an ancient physician.</p> - -<p>Yet so much tradition is wrapped around her -stalk, it is strange she is not a mummy. Her -ashes can be found in the tombs of the Pharaohs, -in everlasting companionship with the ashes -of the lotus and the papyrus plant. Her dust -travels on every desert wind.</p> - -<p>No love-song can do without her.</p> - -<p>No soldier and no priest can scorn her. There -were the Wars of the Roses. And there was a -Rose in Sharon. Our wandering brother Dante -found a great rose in Paradise.</p> - -<p>There are white roses, sweet ghosts under -the pine. There are yellow roses, little suns -in the shadow. But the normal bloom is red,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span> -flushed with foolish ardors, laughing, shaking -off the gossamer years. She remembers Love, -but not too well, if love is pain. There is no -yesterday that can daunt her and keep her dear -heart-laughter down. In springtime her magic -petals bring God to the weary and give Heaven’s -strength to the wavering of heart.</p> - -<p>She can turn the slave to a woman, the -woman to something a little more than mortal. -Oh, how bravely, with the same life-giving -red, with the last of her virgin strength, -she blooms and blooms on almost every highway. -We find her on the road to Benares, on -the road to Mecca, on the road to Rome, and -on the road to Nowhere, in Tennessee.</p> - -<p>Her red petals can almost heal a mortal -wound.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">II<br /> - - -A MENDICANT PILGRIMAGE IN THE -EAST</h2> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">IN LOST JERUSALEM</h3> -</div> - - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Behold</span> the Pharisees, proud, rich, and damned,</div> -<div class="verse">Boasting themselves in lost Jerusalem,</div> -<div class="verse">Gathered a weeping woman to condemn,</div> -<div class="verse">Then watching curiously, without a sound</div> -<div class="verse">The God of Mercy, writing on the ground.</div> -<div class="verse">How looked his sunburned face beneath the sun</div> -<div class="verse">Flushed with his Father’s mighty angel-wine?</div> -<div class="verse">God make us all divine.</div> -</div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">A TEMPLE MADE WITH HANDS</h3> -</div> - - -<h4>I<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Dwelling-place of Faith, Hope, and -Charity</span></h4> - -<p><span class="smcap">I had</span> walked twelve miles before noon. -Then I had eaten four slices of bread and butter -on merciful doorsteps. At four-thirty, having -completed twenty-one miles, I entered the richest -village in the United States, a village that is -located in New Jersey. I was so weary I was -ready to sleep in the gutter, and did not care -if the wagons ran over me. I should have -walked through to the green fields before I -looked for hospitality. I knew that the well-meant -deeds of the city cannot equal the kindness -of the most commonplace farm-hand. -Yet I lingered.</p> - -<p>I purchased a feast of beefsteak and onions -at an obscure Jewish restaurant and felt myself -once more a man. But it was now too late to -leave town. The rule of the country is—one<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span> -must ask for his night’s lodging before five -o’clock. After that, things are growing dark, -and people may be afraid of you.</p> - -<p>After paying for beefsteak and onions, I had -twenty-five cents. This twenty-five cents was -all that remained after a winter’s lecturing on -art and poetry in Manhattan. I am satisfied -that the extra money, over and above all paid -debts, brought me some of the ill-luck of the -night. As I have before observed, money is a -hoodoo on the road. Until a man is penniless -he is not stripped for action.</p> - -<p>A sign at the lunch-counter advertised: -“Furnished rooms, fifty cents.”</p> - -<p>I asked the proprietor to cut the price. He -dodged the issue. “Say, why don’t you go up -there to the mission? They will sell you a good -bed cheap.”</p> - -<p>“For a quarter?”</p> - -<p>“Something like that.”</p> - -<p>“Show me the place.”</p> - -<p>As of old the Jew pointed out the way of -salvation. The Gentile followed it and reached -the dwelling-place of Faith, Hope, and Charity.</p> - -<p>“What do you want?” The questioner, -evidently in charge of the place, was accoutred<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span> -in stage laboring-man style. Maybe his paraphernalia -was intended to put him on a level -with wayfarers. He wore a slouch hat, a soft -shirt, and no necktie. His clothes had the store -freshness still. They looked rather presumptuous -in that neat, well-stocked reading room.</p> - -<p>“I want a cheap bed.”</p> - -<p>“We do not sell beds.”</p> - -<p>“I was told you did.”</p> - -<p>“We give them away.”</p> - -<p>“All right.”</p> - -<p>“But you have to work.”</p> - -<p>“Very well.”</p> - -<p>“Do you want to leave early in the morning?” -(The place was evidently a half-way house for -tramps.)</p> - -<p>“Yes. I want to leave early in the morning.”</p> - -<p>“Then you will have to split kindling two -hours to-night.”</p> - -<p>“Show me the kindling.”</p> - - -<h4>II<br /> - -<span class="smcap">Splitting Kindling</span></h4> - -<p>In the basement I throned myself on one -block while I chopped kindling on another.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span> -Before me, piled to the first story, was a cellarful -of wood, the record of my predecessors in toil. -I gathered that the corporal’s guard of the unemployed -who stayed at the mission that night, -and had been there two or three days, had -finished their day’s assignment of splitting. -They completely surrounded me, questioned -me with the greatest curiosity, and put me -down as a terrific liar, for I answered every -question with simple truth.</p> - -<p>As soon as the melodramatic workingman-boss -went up stairs, one of them said, “Don’t work -so fast. It’s only a matter of form this late at -night. They want to see if you are willing, -that’s all.”</p> - -<p>I chopped a little faster for this advice. Not -that I was out of humor with the advisers,—though -I should have been, for they were box-car -tramps.</p> - -<p>One of them, having an evil and a witty eye, -said, “If I was goin’ west like you, I’d start -about ten o’clock to-night and be near Buffalo -before morning.”</p> - -<p>Another, a mild nobody, professed himself a -miller. He told what a wonderful trick it was -to say, “Leddy, I’m too tired to work till I eat,” -and after eating, to walk away.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>The next, a carriage painter of battered -gentility, told endless stories of the sprees that -had destroyed him. Another, a white frog with -a bald head and gray mustache, quite won my -heart. He said, “Wait till you get a nice warm -bath after service. Then you’ll sleep good.”</p> - -<p>To my weary and addled brain the mission -was like one of those beautiful resting-places -in Pilgrim’s Progress. It became my religion, -just to split kindling. I failed to apprehend -what infinitesimal nobodies these fellows around -me were. I should have disliked them more.</p> - -<p>The modern tramp is not a tramp, he is a -speed-maniac. Being unable to afford luxuries, -he must still be near something mechanical -and hasty, so he uses a dirty box-car to whirl -from one railroad-yard to another. He has no -destination but the cinder-pile by the water-tank. -The landscape hurrying by in one indistinguishable -mass and the roaring of the car-wheels -in his ears are the ends of life to him. -He is no back-to-nature crank. He is a most -highly specialized modern man. All to keep -going, he risks disease from these religious -missions, from foul box-cars, and foul comrades. -He risks accident every hour. He is always<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span> -liable to the cruelty of conductor or brakeman -and to murder by companions.</p> - -<p>He runs fewer risks in the country, yet his aversion -to the country is profound. He knows all -that I know about country hospitality, that it -can be purchased by the merest grain of courtesy. -Yet most of the farm-people that entertained -me had not seen a tramp for months.</p> - -<p>To account for some of the happenings of this -tale I will only add that a speed-maniac at either -end of the social scale is not necessarily a -hustler, personally. But in one way or another -he is sure to be shallow and artificial, the grotesque, -nervous victim of machinery. And a -“Mission,” an institution built by speed-maniacs -who use automobiles for speed-maniacs -who use box-cars, is bound to be absurd beyond -words to tell it.</p> - - -<h4>III<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Sermon on the Mount</span></h4> - -<p>I loved all men that night, even the fellow in -melodramatic laboring-man costume, who appeared -after two hours to drive us animals up -stairs into one corner of the chapel, where a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span> -dozen of our kind had already assembled from -somewhere.</p> - -<p>On the far side of that chapel sat the money-fed. -The aisle was a great gulf between them -and us. I smiled across the gulf indulgently, -imagining by what exhortations to “Come and -help us in our problem” those uncomfortable -persons had been assembled. An unmitigated -clergyman rose to read a text.</p> - -<p>I presume this clergyman imagined Christ -wore a white tie and was on a salary promptly -paid by some of our oldest families. But I -share with the followers of St. Francis the vision -of Christ as a man of the open road, improvident -as the sparrow. I share with the followers of -Tolstoi the opinion that when Christ proclaimed -those uncomfortable social doctrines, -he meant what he said.</p> - -<p>The clergyman read: “Blessed are the poor -in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”</p> - -<p>“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall -be comforted.”</p> - -<p>“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit -the earth.”</p> - -<p>He read much more than I will quote. Here -is the final passage:—</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>“Ye have heard how it hath been said: ‘An -eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I -say unto you that you resist not evil. But -whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, -turn to him the other also. And if any man will -sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, -let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever -shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. -Give to him that asketh thee, and to him that -would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.”</p> - -<p>This Pharisee smugly assumed that he was -authorized by the Deity to explain away this -scripture. And he did it, as the reader has heard -it done many a time.</p> - -<p>The Pharisee was followed by a fat Scribe who -tried to smile away what the other fellow had -tried to argue away. The fat one then called -on the assembly to bow, and exhorted the repentant -to hold up their hands to be prayed for.</p> - -<p>I held up my hand. Was I not eating the -bread of the mission? And then I felt like a -sinner anyway.</p> - -<p>“Thank God,” said the fat one.</p> - -<p>After a hymn, testimonies were called for. I -felt the spirit move me, but some one had the -floor. Across the gulf she stood, an exceedingly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span> -well-dressed and blindly devout sister. She -glanced with a terrified shrinking at the animals -she hoped to benefit. She said:—</p> - -<p>“There has been one great difficulty in my -Christian life. It came with seeking for the -Spirit. Sometimes we think it has come with -power, when we are simply stirred by our own -selfish desires. Our works will show whether -we are moved by the Spirit.”</p> - -<p>I wanted to preach them a sermon on St. -Francis. But how could I? There was still -a quarter in my own pocket. Meanwhile there -rose a saint with a pompadour and blocky jaws. -He was distinctly inferior in social position to a -great part of the saints. It was probable he -had given that testimony many times. But -he did not want the meeting to drag. He spake -in a loud voice: “I was saved from a drunkard’s -life, in this mission, eighteen years ago, -and ever since, not by my own power, but by -the grace of God, I have been leading a God-fearing -and money-making life in this town.” -That was his exact phrase, “a money-making -life.” His intention was good, but he should -have been more tactful. The Pharisee looked -annoyed.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span></p> - - -<h4>IV<br /> - -<span class="smcap">A Screaming Farce</span></h4> - -<p>I advise all self-respecting citizens to skip -this section. It is nothing but over-strained, -shabby farce.</p> - -<p>The throng melted. Scribe and Pharisee, -Dives, Mrs. Dives, and their satellites went home -to their comfortable beds. Many of the roughs -on our side of the house found somewhere else -to stay. The fellow dressed like a workingman -in a melodrama sought the consolations of his -own home. Had the last authority departed? -Were we to have anarchy? The Frog, in his -gentlest manner, sidled up to make friends -again.</p> - -<p>“Now you can have your nice warm bath, you -two.” I looked around. There were two of -us then. Beside me, fresh from a box-car was -a battered scalawag. The Frog must have let -him in at the last moment.</p> - -<p>We three climbed to the bath-room.</p> - -<p>“Wait a minute,” said the Amphibian. He -disappeared. I opened my eyes, for this creature -spake with a voice of authority. The box-car -scalawag grinned sheepishly.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span>There was a scuffling overhead, a scratch and -a rumble. We two looked up just in time to -dodge the astonishing vision of a clothes-horse -descending through a trap-door by a rope. At -the upper end of the rope was the absurd bald -head of our newly achieved superintendent.</p> - -<p>“Hello, Santy Claus,” said the box-car -tramp. “Whose Christmas present is this?”</p> - -<p>The Frog shouted: “Put your shoes and hats -in the corner. If you have any tobacco, put -it in your shoes. Hang everything else on the -clothes-horse.”</p> - -<p>I obeyed, except that I had no tobacco. The -rascal by my side had a plenty, and sawdusted -the bath-room floor with some of it, and the -remainder went into his foot-gear. Then we -two, companions in nakedness, watched the -Frog haul up our clothes out of sight. He -closed the trap-door with many grunts.</p> - -<p>Then this Amphibian, this boss, descended -and entered the bath-room. He was a dry-land -Amphibian. He had never taken a bath -himself, but was there to superintend. He -seemed to feel himself the accredited representative -of all the good people behind the mission, -and no doubt he was.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span>“Can it be possible,” I asked myself, “that -they have chosen this creature to apply their -Christianity?”</p> - -<p>The Frog said to my companion: “Git in -the tub.”</p> - -<p>Then he turned on the water, regulated the -temperature, and watched as though he expected -one of us to steal the faucets from the -wash-bowl. He threw a gruesome rag at the -tramp, and allowed him to scrub himself. The -creature bathing seemed well-disposed toward -the idea, and had put soap on about one-third -of his person when the Frog shouted: “I’ve got -to get up at four-thirty.”</p> - -<p>The scalawag took the hint and rose like -Venus from the foam. He splashed off part of -it, and rubbed off the rest with a towel that was -a fallen sister of the wash-rag.</p> - -<p>The Frog was evidently trying to enforce, in a -literal way, regulations he did not understand. -He wiped out the bath-tub most carefully with -the unclean wash-rag. Then he provided the -scalawag with a shirt for night-wear. The -creature put it on and said:—</p> - -<p>“Ain’t I a peach?”</p> - -<p>He was.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span>The nightie was an old, heavily-starched -dress-shirt, once white. Maybe it had once -been worn by the Scribe or the Pharisee. But -it had not been washed since. The rascal cut -quite a figure as he took long steps down the -corridor to bed, piloted by the hurrying Amphibian. -He was a long-legged rascal, and the -slivered remainders of that ancient shirt flapped -about him gloriously.</p> - -<p>I was hustled into the tub after the rascal. -I was supervised after the same manner. “Now -wash,” boomed the Amphibian. He threw at -me the sloppy rag of my predecessor.</p> - -<p>I threw it promptly on the floor.</p> - -<p>“I don’t use a wash-rag,” I said.</p> - -<p>“Hurry,” croaked the Frog. <i>And he let the -water out of the tub.</i> He handed me the towel -the scalawag had used. I had not, as a matter -of fact, had a bath, and I was quite foot-sore.</p> - -<p>“I do not want that towel,” I said.</p> - -<p>“You’re awful fancy, aren’t you?” sneered -the Frog.</p> - -<p>Wherever I was damp, I rubbed myself dry -with my bare hands, being skilled in the matter, -meanwhile reflecting that there is nothing worse -than a Pharisee except a creature like this. I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span> -wondered if it was too late to rouse a mob among -the better element of the town, neither saints -nor sinners, but just plain malefactors of great -wealth, and have this person lynched. There -were probably multi-millionnaires in this town -giving ten-dollar bills to this mission, who were -imagining they were giving a free bath to somebody.</p> - -<p>I wanted to appeal to some man with manicured -hands who had grown decently rich -robbing the widow and the orphan and who now -had the leisure to surround himself with the -appurtenances of civility and the manners of a -Chesterfield.</p> - -<p>“I am through with the poor but honest submerged -tenth. Rich worldlings for mine,” I -muttered.</p> - -<p>“Put these on,” squeaked the Frog. His -manner said, “See how good we are to you.” -He held out the treasure of the establishment, -a night-garment retained for fastidious new-arrivals, -newly-bathed. Of course, no one else -was supposed to bathe.</p> - -<p>Was the garment he held out a slivered shirt? -Nay, nay. It was a sort of pajama combination. -Hundreds of men had found shelter,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span> -taken a luxurious bath, and put them on. They -were companions in crime of the towel and the -wash-rag. Let us suppose that three hundred -and sixty-five men wore them a year. In ten -years there would have been about three thousand -six hundred and fifty bathed men in them. -That did not account for their appearance.</p> - -<p>“What makes them so dirty?” I asked.</p> - -<p>No answer.</p> - -<p>“Can’t I wear my underclothes to bed instead -of these?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“Why?”</p> - -<p>“Sulphur.”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean by sulphur?”</p> - -<p>“Your clothes are up stairs being fumigated.”</p> - -<p>“Can’t I get my socks to-night? I always -wash them before I go to bed.”</p> - -<p>“No. It’s against the law of the state. And -you would dirty up these bowls. I have just -scrubbed them out.”</p> - -<p>“I will wash them out afterward.”</p> - -<p>“I haven’t time to wait. I must get up at -four-thirty.”</p> - -<p>“But why fumigate my clean underwear, and -give me dirty pajamas?”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>The Frog was getting flabbergasted. “I -tell you it’s the law of New Jersey. You are -getting awful fancy. If I had had my way, -you would never have been let in here.”</p> - -<p>“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit -the earth,” I said to myself, and put on the -pajamas.</p> - -<p>This insanitary director showed me my bed. -It was in a long low room with all the windows -closed, where half a score were asleep. The -sheets had never, never, never been washed. -Why was it that in a mission so shiny in its -reading room, and so devout in its chapel, so -melodramatic with its clean workman-boss, in -the daytime, these things were so?</p> - -<p>The lights went out. I kicked off the pajamas -and slept. I awoke at midnight and reflected -on all these matters. I quoted another scripture -to myself: “I was naked, and ye clothed -me.”</p> - - -<h4>V<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Highway of Our God</span></h4> - -<p>At six o’clock I was called for breakfast. -My sulphur-smelling clothes were on my bed.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span> -I put them on with a light heart, for after all I -had slept well, and my feet were not stiff. The -quarter was still in my trousers’ pocket. I -presume that hoodoo quarter had something to -do with the bad breakfast.</p> - -<p>The Amphibian was now cook. He gave each -man a soup-plate heaped with oat-meal. If it -had been oats, it would have been food for so -many horses. Had the Frog been up since four-thirty -preparing this?</p> - -<p>The price of part of that horse-feed might -have gone into something to eat. There was a -salty blue sauce on it that was called milk. -And there was dry bread to be had, without -butter, and as much bad coffee as a man could -drink.</p> - -<p>A person called the bookkeeper arrived with the -janitor. I made my formal farewells to those -representatives of the law, before whom the -Amphibian melted with humility. The scalawag -who had bathed with me tipped me a wink, -and tried to escape in my company. But I -bade him good-by so firmly that the authorities -noticed, and the brash creature remained glued -to his chair. He probably had to do his full -share of kindling before he escaped.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>I went forth from that place into the highway -of our God, who dwelleth not in temples made -with hands, neither is worshipped with men’s -hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He -giveth to all men life and breath and all things.</p> - -<p>I said in my heart: “I shall walk on and on -and find a better, a far holier shrine than this -at the ends of the infinite earth.”</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">THE TOWN OF AMERICAN VISIONS<br /> - - -(Springfield, Illinois)</h3> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Is</span> it for naught that where the tired crowds see</div> -<div class="verse">Only a place for trade, a teeming square,</div> -<div class="verse">Doors of high portent open unto me</div> -<div class="verse">Carved with great eagles, and with hawthorns rare?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Doors I proclaim, for there are rooms forgot</div> -<div class="verse">Ripened through æons by the good and wise:</div> -<div class="verse">Walls set with Art’s own pearl and amethyst</div> -<div class="verse">Angel-wrought hangings there, and heaven-hued dyes:—</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Dazzling the eye of faith, the hope-filled heart:</div> -<div class="verse">Rooms rich in records of old deeds sublime:</div> -<div class="verse">Books that hold garnered harvests of far lands,</div> -<div class="verse">Pictures that tableau Man’s triumphant climb:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Statues so white, so counterfeiting life,</div> -<div class="verse">Bronze so ennobled, so with glory fraught</div> -<div class="verse">That the tired eyes must weep with joy to see</div> -<div class="verse">And the tired mind in Beauty’s net be caught.</div> -</div> - -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span> - -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Come enter there, and meet To-morrow’s Man,</div> -<div class="verse">Communing with him softly day by day.</div> -<div class="verse">Ah, the deep vistas he reveals, the dream</div> -<div class="verse">Of angel-bands in infinite array—</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Bright angel-bands, that dance in paths of earth</div> -<div class="verse">When our despairs are gone, long overpast—</div> -<div class="verse">When men and maidens give fair hearts to Christ</div> -<div class="verse">And white streets flame in righteous peace at last.</div> -</div></div></div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">ON BEING ENTERTAINED ONE EVENING<br /> -BY COLLEGE BOYS</h3> -</div> - - -<p><span class="smcap">I walked</span> across the bridge from New Jersey -into Easton, Pennsylvania, one afternoon. I -discovered there was a college atop of the hill. -In exchange for a lecture on twenty-six great -men<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> based on a poem on the same theme, -that I carried with me, the boys entertained me -that night. They did not pay much attention -to the lecture. Immediately before and after -was a yell carnival. There was to be a game -next day. They were cheering the team and -the coach with elaborate reiteration. All was -astir.</p> - -<p>But for all this the boys spoke to me gently, -gave me the privileges of the table, the bath-room, -the dormitory. The president of the -Y. M. C. A. lent me a clean suit of pajamas. -He and two other young fellows delighted my<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span> -vain soul, by keeping me up late reciting all -the poems I knew.</p> - -<p>I record these things for the sake of recording -one thing more, the extraordinary impression of -buoyancy that came from that school. It was -inspiring to a degree, a draught of the gods. -Coming into that place not far from the centre -of hard-faced Easton-town I realized for the -first time what sheltered, nurtured boy-America -was like, and what wonders may lie beneath the -roofs of our cities.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">THAT WHICH MEN HAIL AS KING</h3> -</div> - - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Would</span> I might rouse the Cæsar in you all,</div> -<div class="verse">(That which men hail as king, and bow them down)</div> -<div class="verse">Till you are crowned, or you refuse the crown.</div> -<div class="verse">Would I might wake the valor and the pride,</div> -<div class="verse">The eagle soul with which he soared and died,</div> -<div class="verse">Entering grandly then the fearful grave.</div> -<div class="verse">God help us build the world, like master-men,</div> -<div class="verse">God help us to be brave.</div> -</div></div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">NEAR SHICKSHINNY</h3> -</div> - - -<h4>I</h4> - -<p><span class="smcap">Leaving</span> New Jersey I kept from all contact -with money, and was consequently turning -over in memory many delicious adventures -among the Pennsylvania-German farmers. -After crossing that lovely, lonely plateau called -Pocono Mountain, I descended abruptly to -Wilkesbarre by a length of steep automobile -road called Giant Despair.</p> - -<p>It was a Sunday noon in May. Wilkesbarre -was a mixture of Sabbath calm and the smoke -of torment that ascendeth forever. One passed -pious faces too clean, sooty faces too restless. -I hurried through, hoping for more German -farmers beyond. But King Coal had conspired -against the traveller, and would not let him go. -The further west I walked, the thicker the -squalor and slag heaps, and the presence of -St. Francis seemed withdrawn from me, though -I had been faithful in my fashion.</p> - -<p>King Coal is a boaster. He says he furnishes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span> -food for all the engines of the earth. He says -he is the maker of steam. He says steam is the -twentieth century. He holds that an infinite -number of black holes in the ground is a -blessing.</p> - -<p>He may say what he likes, but he has not -excused himself to me. He blasts the landscape. -Never do human beings drink so hard to forget -their sorrow as in the courtyards of this monarch. -To dig in a mine makes men reckless, to -own one makes them tormentors.</p> - -<p>I had a double reason for hurrying on. My -rules as a mendicant afoot were against cities -and railroads. I flattered myself I was called -and sent to the agricultural laborer.</p> - -<p>When the land grew less black and less inhabited, -I mistakenly rejoiced, assuming I -should soon strike the valleys where grain is -sown and garnered. Yet the King was following -me still, like a great mole underground. -There was no coal on the surface. The land was -rusty-red and ashen-gray,—as though blasted -by the torch of a Cyclops and only yesterday -cooled by the rain. The best grain that could -have been scattered among such rocks with the -hope of a crop was a seed of dragons’ teeth.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>How long the desolation continued! Toward -the end of the day in the midst of the nothingness, -I came upon a saloon full of human creatures -roaring drunk. Otherwise there was not -so much as a shed in sight.</p> - -<p>Four vilely dirty little girls came down the -steps carrying beer. One of them, too intoxicated -for her errand, entrusted her can to her -companions. They preceded me toward the -smoke-veiled sun by a highway growing black -again with the foot-prints of the King.</p> - -<p>Now there was a deafening explosion. I sat -down on a rock examining myself to see if I was -still alive. The children pattered on. My -start seemed to amuse them immensely. I -followed toward the new civil war, or whatever -it was.</p> - -<p>Just over the crest and around the corner I -encountered the King’s never-varying insignia, -the double-row of “company houses.”</p> - -<p>Every dwelling was as eternally and uniformly -damned as its neighbor, making the eyes ache, -standing foursquare in the presence of the insulted -daylight. Every porch and railing was -jig-sawed in the same ruthless way. Every -front yard was grassless. Everything was made<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span> -of wood, yet seemed made of iron, so black it -was, so long had it stood in the wasting weather, -so steadily had it resisted the dynamite now -shaking the earth.</p> - -<p>There they stood, thirty houses to the left, -thirty to the right, with what you might call a -street between, whose ruts were seemingly cut -by the treasure-chariots of the brimstone -princes of the nether world.</p> - -<p>Two-thirds of the way through, several -young miners were exploding giant powder. -As I approached I saw another was loading his -pistol with ball-cartridges and shooting over -the hills at the sun. He did not put it out.</p> - -<p>The group of children with the beer served -these knights of dynamite, holding up the cans -for them to drink. The little cup-bearers were -then given pennies. They scurried home.</p> - -<p>By their eyes and queer speech I guessed that -these children were Poles, or of some other race -from Eastern Europe. I guessed the same -about the men celebrating. Every porch on -both sides of that street held some heavy headed -creatures from presumably the same foreign -parts. They were, no doubt, good citizens -after their peculiar fashion, but with countenances<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span> -that I could not read. Though the next -explosion seemed to jolt the earth out of its -orbit, they merely blinked.</p> - -<p>I said to myself, “This is not the fourth of -July. Therefore it must be the anniversary -of the day when ‘Freedom shrieked’ and ‘Kosciuszko -fell.’”</p> - -<p>I reached the end of the street; nothing beyond -but a hollow of hills and a dubious river, -enclosing a new Tophet, that I learned afterwards -was Shickshinny. It was late. I wanted -to get beyond to the green fields.</p> - -<p>I zigzagged across that end of the street to -folk on the front porches that I thought were -Americans. Each time I vainly attempted conversation -with some dumb John Sobieski in -Sunday clothes. I wondered what were the -Polish words for bread, shelter, and dead broke.</p> - - -<h4>II<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Son of King Coal</span></h4> - -<p>Some spick and span people came out on the -porch of the last house. Possibly they could -understand English. I went closer. They were -out and out Americans.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>So I looked them in the eye and said: “I -would like to have you entertain me to-night. -I am a sort of begging preacher. I do not take -money, only food and lodging.”</p> - -<p>“A beggin’ preacher?”</p> - -<p>“My sermon is in poetry. I can read it to you -after supper, if that will suit.”</p> - -<p>“What sort of poetry?” asked the man.</p> - -<p>“I can only say it is my own.”</p> - -<p>“Why I just <span class="allsmcap">LOVE</span> poetry,” said the woman. -“Come in.”</p> - -<p>“Come up,” said the man, and hustled out a -chair.</p> - -<p>“I’ll go right in and get supper,” said the wife. -She was a breezy creature with a loud musical -voice. She doubtless developed it by trying -to talk against giant powder.</p> - -<p>I told the man my story, in brief.</p> - -<p>After quite a smoke, he said, “So you’ve -walked from Wilkesbarre this afternoon. Why, -man, that’s seventeen miles.”</p> - -<p>I do not believe it was over fourteen.</p> - -<p>He continued, “I’m awful glad to see a white -man. This place is full of Bohunks, and Slavs, -and Rooshians, and Poles and Lickerishes -(Lithuanians?). They’re not bad to have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span> -around, but they ain’t Cawcasians. They all -talk Eyetalian.”</p> - -<p>The fellow’s manner breathed not only race-fraternity, -but industrial fraternity. It had -no suggestion of sheltered agricultural caution. -It was sophisticated and anti-capitalistic. It -said, “You and I are against the system. -That’s enough for brotherhood.”</p> - -<p>Now that he stood and refilled his pipe from a -tobacco box nailed just inside the door, I saw -him as in a picture-frame. He had powerful -but slanting shoulders. He was so tall he must -needs stoop to avoid the lintel. With his bent -neck, he looked as though he could hold up a -mine caving in. His general outlines seemed -to be hewn from fence-rails, then hung with -grotesque muscles of loose leather. His eyebrows -were grown together. From looking -down long passageways his eyes were marvellously -owl-like. He was cadaverous. He had -a beak nose. He had a retreating chin but, -breaking the rules of phrenology, he managed -to convey the impression of a driving personality. -He looked like an enormous pick-axe.</p> - -<p>He calmly commented: “Them Polacks -waste powder awful. Not only on Sunday, for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span> -fun, but down in the mine they use twice too -much. And they can’t blast the hardest coal, -either.... And they’re always gettin’ careless -and blowin’ themselves to hell and everybody -else. It’s awful, it’s awful,” he said, -but in a most philosophic tone.</p> - -<p>He lowered his voice and pointed with his -pipe stem: “Them people that live in the next -house are supposed to be Cawcasians, but they -haven’t a marriage license. They let their -little girl go for beer this afternoon, for them -fellows explodin’ powder over there. ’Taint -no way to raise a child. That child’s mother -was a well-behaved Methodist till she married -a Polack, and had four children, and he died, -and they died, and some say she poisoned them -all. Now she’s got this child by this no-account -white man. They live without a license, -like birds. Yet they eat off weddin’s.”</p> - -<p>“Eat off weddings?”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” he said. “These Bohunks and Lickerishes -all have one kind of a wedding. It lasts -three days and everybody comes. The best -man is king. He bosses the plates.”</p> - -<p>“Bosses the plates?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. They buy a lot of cheap plates.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span> -Every man that comes must break a plate with -a dollar. The plate is put in the middle of -the floor. He stands over it and bangs the -dollar down. If he breaks the plate he gets -to kiss and hug the bride. If he doesn’t break -it, the young couple get that dollar. He must -keep on givin’ them dollars in this way till he -breaks the plate. Eats and plates and beer -cost about fifty dollars. The young folks clear -about two hundred dollars to start life on.”</p> - -<p>“And,” he continued, “the folks next door -make a practice of eatin’ round at weddin’s -without puttin’ down their dollars.”</p> - -<p>I began to feel guilty.</p> - -<p>“It’s a good deal like my begging supper and -breakfast of you.” He hadn’t meant it that -way. “No,” he said, “you’re takin’ the only -way to see the country. Why, man, I used to -travel like you, before I was married, except -I didn’t take no book nor poetry nor nothin’, -and wasn’t afeered of box-cars the way you are.... -I been in every state in the Union but -Maine. I don’t know how I kept out of there.... -I’ve been nine years in this house. I -don’t know but what I see as much as when I -was on the go....</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span>“That fellow Gallic over there that was -shootin’ that pistol at the sky killed a man -named Bothweinis last year and got off free. -It was Gallic’s wedding and Bothweinis brought -fifty dollars and said he was goin’ to break all -the plates in the house. He used up twelve -dollars. He broke seven plates and kissed the -bride seven times. Then the bride got drunk. -She was only fifteen years old. She hunted -up Bothweinis and kissed him and cried, and -Gallic chased him down towards Shickshinny -and tripped him up, and shot him in the -mouth and in the eye.... The bride didn’t -know no better.... He was an awful sight -when they brought him in. The bride was -only a kid. These Bohunk women never learn -no sense anyway. They’re not smart like -Cawcasian women, and they fade in the face -quick.”</p> - -<p>He reflected: “My wife’s a wonderful -woman. I have been with her nine years, and -she learns me something every day, and she -still looks good in her Sunday clothes.”</p> - -<p>He became lighter in tone again. “What -these Bohunks need is a priest and a church to -make them behave. They mind a priest some,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span> -if he is a good priest. They’re all Catholics, or -no church....”</p> - -<p>“Seems though sometimes a man’s got to -shoot. Some of them devils over there used to -throw rocks at my door, but one Sunday I -filled ’em full of buckshot and they quit. The -justice upheld me. I didn’t have to pay no -fine. They’ve been pretty good neighbors since, -pretty good neighbors.”</p> - -<p>There was a sound as though the flagstones of -eternity had been ripped up. He saw I didn’t -like it and said consolingly, “They’ll stop and -go to supper pretty soon. They eat too much -to do anything but set, afterwards. They don’t -have nothin’ to eat in the old country but raw -turnips. Here they stuff themselves like toads. -I don’t see how they save money the way they -do. The mine owners squeeze the very life out -of ’em and they wallow in beer. I’ve always -made big money, but somehow never kept it. -Me and my wife are spenders. But I ain’t -afraid, for I am the only man on the street that -can dig the hardest coal. I could dig my way -out of hell with my pick, and by G—— once -I did it, too.”</p> - -<p>The wife came to the door newly decked in an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span> -elaborate lace waist, torn, alas, at the shoulder. -Husband was right. She looked good. She -announced radiantly: “Come to supper.”</p> - -<p>Then she rushed down between the houses -and shouted: “Jimmy and Frank, come here! -What you doin’? Get down off that roof. -What you doin’, associatin’ with them Polack -children? What you doin’ with them -switches?” Then she swore heartily, as unto -the Lord, and continued, “They’re helpin’ them -Polack kids switch that poor little drunk -American child. Come down off that coal -shed!”</p> - -<p>They slunk into sight. She snatched their -switches from them.</p> - -<p>“Who started it?”</p> - -<p>Jimmy admitted he started it. He looked -capable of starting most anything, good or bad. -He had eyes like black diamonds, a stocky frame, -and the tiny beginnings of his mother’s voice.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know whether to lick you or not,” -she said judicially. Finally: “Go up to bed -without supper.”</p> - -<p>Jimmy went.</p> - -<p>She addressed us in perfect good humor, as a -musical volcano might: “Come and eat.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span></p> - - -<h4>III<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Daughter of the King</span></h4> - -<p>Never did I see beefsteak so thick. There -was a garnish of fried onions. There was a -separate sea of gravy. There was a hill of -butter, a hill of thickly sliced bread. There was -a delectable mountain of potatoes. That was -all. These people were living the simple life, -living it in chunks.</p> - -<p>At table, as everywhere, the husband solemnly -deferred to the wife. She was to him a druid -priestess. And so she was radiant, as woman -enthroned is apt to be. Of course, no young -lady from finishing school would have liked the -way we tunnelled and blasted our way through -the provender. We were gloriously hungry and -our manners were a hearty confession of the -fact.</p> - -<p>My passion for the joys of the table partially -sated, I began to realize the room. There were -hardly any of the comforts of home. There -was a big onyx time-piece, chipped, and not -running. Beside it was a dollar alarm-clock -in good trim.</p> - -<p>There were in the next room, among other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span> -things, two frail gilt parlor chairs, almost black. -The curtains were streaked with soot and poorly -ironed. She said she had washed them yesterday. -But, she continued, “I just keep cheerful, -I don’t keep house. Doesn’t seem like I -can, this street is so awful dirty and noisy and -foreign.”</p> - -<p>“Yet you like it,” said the husband.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said, “that’s because I’m half -Irish. The Irish were born for excitement.”</p> - -<p>“What’s <i>your</i> ancestry?” I asked the husband.</p> - -<p>“My father was a mountain white. Moved -here from North Carolina, and dug coal and -married a Pennsylvania Dutch lady.”</p> - -<p>“It’s your turn,” she said to me. “You are -a preacher?”</p> - -<p>“That’s a kind of an excuse I make.”</p> - -<p>“You can’t be any worse than the preacher -we had here,” continued the wife. “He lived -down toward Shickshinny. He preached in an -old chapel. He wouldn’t start a Sunday school. -We needed one bad enough. He just married -folks. He hardly ever buried them. They say -he was afraid. And,” she continued, with a -growing tone of condemnation, “it’s a preacher’s -<span class="allsmcap">BUSINESS</span> to face death.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span>“Just about the time two of our children -died of diphtheria, was when he came to these -parts. He was a Presbyterian, and I was raised -a Presbyterian, and he wouldn’t preach the -funeral of my two babies. He promised to -come, and we waited two hours. So I just -read the Bible at the grave.”</p> - -<p>This she recounted with a bitter sense of -insult.</p> - -<p>“And the same day he locked up his mother, -too.”</p> - -<p>“Locked up his mother?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Some said he wanted to visit a woman -he didn’t want her to know about. They said -he was afraid she would follow him and spy. -He locked up the old lady, and she about yelled -the roof off, and the neighbors let her out.</p> - -<p>“And then,” continued my hostess, “when -he was dying, he sent for a Wilkesbarre -priest.”</p> - -<p>“Sent for a priest?” I exclaimed, completely -mystified.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she whispered. “He must have been -a Catholic all the time. And the priest wouldn’t -come either. <i>That’s what that old preacher got -for being so mean.</i>”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span>She continued: “That preacher wasn’t much -meaner than the man is in the company store.”</p> - -<p>She was bristling again.</p> - -<p>“He won’t deliver goods up here unless you -run a big bill. If I want anything much while -big Frank here is at work, I have to take -Jimmy’s little play express-wagon and haul -it up.”</p> - -<p>And now she was telling me of her terrible -fright three days ago, down at the company -store, when there was a rumor of an accident -in one of the far tunnels of the mine.</p> - -<p>“All the foreign women came running down -the hill, half-crazy. I am used to false alarms, -but I could hardly get up to this house with my -goods. I was expecting to see big Frank -brought in, just like he was before little Frank -was born, eight years ago.”</p> - -<p>Little Frank lifted his face from its business -of eating to listen.</p> - -<p>“The first thing that boy ever saw was his -father on the floor there, covered with blood.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t remember it, Frank?” asked his -father, grinning.</p> - -<p>“Nope.”</p> - -<p>The wife continued: “There was only one<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span> -doctor came. We had a time between us. The -other doctor was tendin’ the men husband had -dug out. The coal fell on them and mashed -them flat. It couldn’t quite mash husband. -He’s too tough,” she said, lovingly. “He -grabbed his pick and he tunnelled his way -through, with the blood squirting out of him.”</p> - -<p>Husband grinned like a petted child. He -said: “It wasn’t quite as bad as that, but I -was bloody, all right.”</p> - -<p>She continued with a gesture of impatience: -“This is cheerful Sunday night talk. Let’s -try something else. What kind of a poem are -you goin’ to read?”</p> - -<p>“It tells boys how to be great men, but it’s -for fellows of from fifteen to twenty. You’ll -have to save it for your sons till they grow a -bit.”</p> - -<p>She was at the foot of the stairway like a -flash.</p> - -<p>“Son, dress and come down to supper.”</p> - -<p>Son was down almost as soon as she was in -her chair, pulling on a stocking as he came. -And he was hungry. He ate while we talked -on and on.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span></p> - - -<h4>IV<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Grandsons of the King</span></h4> - -<p>After the supper the dishes waited. The -wife said: “Now we will have the poetry.” -I said in my heart, “Maybe this is the one -house in a hundred where the seed of these -verses will be sown upon good ground.”</p> - -<p>We went into the parlor, distinguished as -such by the battered organ. The mother had -Frank and Jimmy sit in semicircle with her and -big Frank, while I plunged into my rhymed -appeal. After the dynamite of the day I did -not hesitate to let loose the thunders. I -did not hesitate to pause and expound:—the -poem being, as I have before described, many -stanzas on heroes of history, with the refrain, -ever and anon: <i>God help us to be brave.</i> No, -kind and flattering reader, it was not above -their heads. Earnestness is earnestness everywhere. -The whole circle grasped that I really -expected something unusual of those boys with -the black-diamond eyes, no matter what kind -of perversity was in them at present.</p> - -<p>I said, in so many words, as a beginning, that -nitro-glycerine was not the only force in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span> -world, that there is also that dynamite called -the power of the soul, and that detonation -called fame.</p> - -<p>But I did not dwell long upon my special -saints, Francis of Assisi and Buddha, nor those -other favorites who some folk think contradict -them: Phidias and Michael Angelo. I dwelt -on the strong: Alexander, Cæsar, Mohammed, -Cromwell, Napoleon, and especially -upon the lawgivers, Confucius, Moses, Justinian; -and dreamed that this ungoverned -strength before me, that had sprung from the -loins of King Coal, might some day climb high, -that these little wriggling, dirty-fisted grandsons -of that monarch might yet make the world -some princely reparation for his crimes.</p> - -<p>After the reading the mother and father said -solemnly, “it is a good book.”</p> - -<p>Then the wife showed the other two pieces -of printed matter in the household, a volume -of sermons, and a copy of <i>The House of a Thousand -Candles</i>. You have read that work about -the candles. The sermons were by the Reverend -Wood M. Smithers. You do not know the -Reverend Mister Smithers? He has collected -in one fair volume all the sermons that ever put<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span> -you to sleep, an anthology of all those discourses -that are just alike.</p> - -<p>She said she had read them over and over -again to the family. I believed it. There -was butter on the page. I said in my heart: -“She is not to be baffled by any phraseology. -If she can get a kernel out of Wood M. -Smithers, she will also derive strength from my -rhyme.”</p> - -<p>She promised she would have each of the boys -pick out one of the twenty-six great men for a -model, as soon as they were schooled enough to -choose. She put the poem in the kitchen table -drawer, where she kept some photographs of -close relatives, and I had the final evidence that -I had become an integral part of the family -tradition.</p> - - -<h4>V<br /> - -<span class="smcap">On to Shickshinny</span></h4> - -<p>They sent me up to bed. I put out the -lamp at once, lest I should see too much. I -went to sleep quickly. I was as quickly -awakened. Being a man of strategies and -divertisements, I reached through the blackness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span> -to the lamp that was covered with leaked -oil. I rubbed this on my hands, and thence, -thinly over my whole body. Coal oil too -thick makes blisters; thin enough, brings peace.</p> - -<p>I remember breakfast as a thing apart. -Although the table held only what we had -for supper, warmed over, although the morning -light was grey, and the room the worse for -the grey light, the thing I cannot help remembering -was the stillness and tenderness of that -time. Father and mother spoke in subdued -human voices. They had not yet had occasion -to shout against the alarums and excursions -of the day. And the sensitive faces of the -boys, and the half-demon, half-angel light of -their eyes stirred me with marvelling and reverence -for the curious, protean ways of God.</p> - -<p>And now I was walking down the steeps of -Avernus into Shickshinny, toward the smoke -of torment that ascends forever. Underfoot -was spread the same dark leprosy that yesterday -had stunted flower and fruit and grass-blade.</p> - -<p>I hated King Coal still, but not so much as -of yore.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">WHAT THE SEXTON SAID</h3> -</div> - - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Your</span> dust will be upon the wind</div> -<div class="verse">Within some certain years,</div> -<div class="verse">Though you be sealed in lead to-day</div> -<div class="verse">Amid the country’s tears.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When this idyllic churchyard</div> -<div class="verse">Becomes the heart of town,</div> -<div class="verse">The place to build garage or inn,</div> -<div class="verse">They’ll throw your tombstone down.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Your name so dim, so long outworn,</div> -<div class="verse">Your bones so near to earth,</div> -<div class="verse">Your sturdy kindred dead and gone,</div> -<div class="verse">How should men know your worth?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">So read upon the runic moon</div> -<div class="verse">Man’s epitaph, deep-writ.</div> -<div class="verse">It says the world is one great grave.</div> -<div class="verse">For names it cares no whit.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">It tells the folk to live in peace,</div> -<div class="verse">And still, in peace, to die.</div> -<div class="verse">At least, so speaks the moon to me,</div> -<div class="verse">The tombstone of the sky.</div> -</div></div></div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">DEATH, THE DEVIL, AND HUMAN -KINDNESS<br /> - - -<span class="smcap">The Shred of an Allegory</span></h3> -</div> - -<h4>I<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Undertaker</span></h4> - -<p><span class="smcap">Curious</span> are the agencies that throw the -true believer into the occult state. Convalescence -may do it. Acts of piety may do it. -Self-mortification may do it.</p> - -<p>After reading my evening sermon in rhyme -in the house of the stranger, I had slept on the -lounge in the parlor. The lounge had lost -some of its excelsior, and the springs wound -their way upwards like steel serpents. So -strenuous had been the day I could have -slumbered peacefully on a Hindu bed of spikes.</p> - -<p>I awoke refreshed, despite several honorable -scars. What is more important I left that -house with faculties of discernment.</p> - -<p>I did not realize at first that I was particularly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span> -spiritualized. I was merely walking west, -hoping to take in Oil City on my route. Yet I -saw straight through the bark of a big maple, -and beheld the loveliest ... but I have not -time to tell.</p> - -<p>Then I heard a fluttering in a patch of tall -weeds and discovered what the people in fairyland -call ... but no matter. We must hurry -on.</p> - -<p>At noon your servant was on the front step -of a store near a cross-roads called Cranberry, -Pennsylvania. The store was on the south -side of the way by which I had come. I sat -looking along wagon tracks leading north, -little suspecting I should take that route soon.</p> - -<p>On one side overhead was the sign: “Fred -James, Undertaker.” On the other: “Fred -James, Grocer.”</p> - -<p>“<i>And so</i>,” I thought, “<i>I am going to meet, -face to face, one of the eternal powers.</i> He may -call himself Fred James all he pleases. His -real name is Death.”</p> - -<p>I met the lady Life, once upon a time, long -ago. She had innocent blue eyes. Alone in -the field I felt free to kiss the palm of her -little hand, under the shadow of the corn.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>It has nothing to do with the tale, but let -us here reflect how the corn-stalk is a proud -thing, how it flourishes its dangerous blades, -guarding the young ear. It will cut you on -the forehead if the wind is high. Above the -blades is the sacred tassel like a flame.</p> - -<p>Once, under that tassel, under those dangerous -blades, I met Life, and for good reason, -bade her good-by. After her solemn words -of parting, she called me back, and mischievously -fed me, from the pocket of her gingham -apron, crab apples and cranberries. Ever since -that time those fruits have been bitter delights -to my superstitious fancy.</p> - -<p>And here I was at <span class="smcap">Cranberry</span> cross-roads, -with a funeral director’s sign over my head. A -long five minutes I meditated on the mystery -of Life and Death and cranberries. A fat -chicken, apparently meditating on the same -mystery, kept walking up and down, catching -gnats.</p> - -<p>At length it was revealed to me that when -things have their proper rhythm Life and Death -are interwoven, like willows plaited for a -basket. Somewhat later in the afternoon I -speculated that when times are out of joint, it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span> -is because Death reigns without Life for a -partner, with the assistance of the Devil rather. -But do not remember this. It anticipates the -plot.</p> - -<p>One does not hasten into the presence of the -undertaker. One rather waits. <span class="smcap">He</span> was coming. -I did not look round. Even at noon he -cast a considerable shadow.</p> - -<p>The shadow dwindled as he sat on the same -step and asked: “What road have you come?” -His non-partisan drawl was the result, we will -suppose, of not knowing which side of the -store the new customer approached.</p> - -<p>“I came from over there. I have been walking -since sunrise.”</p> - -<p>He had some account of my adventures, and -my point of view as a religious mendicant. I -knew I would have to ask the further road of -him, but disliked the necessity. He waited -patiently while I watched my friend, the fat -chicken, explore an empty, dirty, bottomless -basket for flies.</p> - -<p>“I want to go west by way of Oil City,” I -finally said.</p> - -<p>He answered: “Oil City is reached by the -north road, straight in front of you as you sit.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span> -It is about an hour’s walk to the edge of it. -It is a sort of trap in the mountains. When -you get in sight of it, <i>keep on going down</i>.” -This he said very solemnly.</p> - -<p>He put his hand on my shoulder: “Come -in and rest and eat first. It won’t cost you a -cent.”</p> - -<p>I was hungry enough to eat a coffin handle, -and so I looked at him and extended my hand. -He was a handsome chap, with a grey mustache. -His black coat was buttoned high. He was -extra neat for a country merchant, and chewed -his tobacco surreptitiously. His face was not -so bony and stern as you might think.</p> - -<p>I gave him an odd copy of the <i>Tree of Laughing -Bells</i>, still remaining by me. He looked at -the outside long, doing the cover more than -justice. Then he opened it, with a certain air -of delicate appreciation. I urged him to postpone -reading the thing till I was gone.</p> - -<p>His store was high and long and narrow and -cool. There was a counter to the west, a -counter to the east. Behind the western one -were tall coffin cupboards. As he proudly -opened and shut them, one could not but -notice the length of his fingers and their dexterity.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span> -He showed plain coffins and splendid -coffins. He unscrewed the lid of one, that I -might see the silky cushions within. They -looked easier than last night’s lounge.</p> - -<p>As he stepped across what might be called -the international date line of the store, and -entered the hemisphere of groceries, he began -to look as though he would indulge in a merry -quip. A faint flush came to his white countenance, -that shone among the multi-colored -packages.</p> - -<p>Before us were the supplies of a rural general -store, from the kitchen mop to the blue parlor -vase. Hanging from the ceiling was an array -of the flamboyant varnished posters of the -seedsmen, with pictures of cut watermelons, -blood-red, and portraits of beets, cabbages, -pumpkins.</p> - -<p>I read his home-made sign aloud: “I guarantee -every seed in the store. Pansy seeds a -specialty.”</p> - -<p>“Not that they all grow,” he explained. -“But the guarantee keeps up the confidence -of the customers. I have made more off of -vegetable and flower seeds this year than -caskets.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span>He pulled out a chip plate and fed me with -dried beef, sliced thin.</p> - -<p>He smiled broadly, and set down a jar. The -merry quip had arrived.</p> - -<p>“Why,” he asked, “is a stick of candy like a -race-horse?”</p> - -<p>I remained silent, but looked anxious to -know. Delighted with himself, he gave the -ancient answer, and with it several sticks of -candy. Kind reader, if you do not know the -answer to the riddle, ask your neighbor.</p> - -<p>There was no end of sweets. He skilfully -sliced fresh bread, and spread it with butter -and thick honey-comb. With much self-approval -he insisted on crowding my pockets with -supper.</p> - -<p>“Nobody knows how they will treat you -around Oil City. <i>I go often, but never for -pleasure. Only on funeral business.</i>”</p> - -<p>He gave me pocketfuls of the little animal -crackers, so daintily cut out, that used to delight -all of us as children. Since he insisted I take -something more, I took figs and dates.</p> - -<p>He held up an animal cracker, shaped like a -cow, and asked: “When was beefsteak the -highest?” I ventured to give the answer.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>Death is not a bad fellow. Let no man cross -his grey front stoop with misgiving. The -honey he serves is made by noble bees. Yet -do not go seeking him out. No doubt his -acquaintance is most worth while when it is -casual, unexpected, one of the natural accidents. -And he does not always ask such simple riddles.</p> - - -<h4>II<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Trap without the Bait</span></h4> - -<p>It was about two o’clock when the north road -left the cornfields and reached the hill crests -above the city. How the highway descended -over cliffs and retraced itself on ridges and -wound into hollows to get to the streets! At -the foot of the first incline I met a lame cat -creeping, panic-stricken, out of town.</p> - -<p>Oil City is an ugly, confused kind of place. -There are thousands like it in the United States.</p> - -<p>I reached the post-office at last. <i>There was -no letter for me at the general delivery. I was -expecting a missive.</i> And now my blistered -heels, and my breaking the rule to avoid the -towns, and my detour of half a day were all in -vain.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span>Oil City, in her better suburbs, as a collection -of worthy families in comfortable homes, may -have much to say for herself. But as a corporate -soul she has no excuse. The dominant, -shoddy architecture is as eloquent as the red nose -of a drunkard. I do not need to take pains to -work her into my allegory. The name she has -chosen makes her a symbol. No doubt others -reach the very heart of her only to find it empty -as the post-office was to me. Baffling as this -may be, there is another risk. Escape is not -easy.</p> - -<p>Almost out of town at last, I sat down by the -fence, determined not to stir till morning. I -said, “I can sleep with my back against this -post.”</p> - -<p>I had just overtaken the lame cat, and she -now moved past me over the ridge to the cornfields. -She seemed most unhappy. I looked -back to that oil metropolis. <i>I wondered how -many had lived and died there when they would -have preferred some other place.</i></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span></p> - - -<h4>III<br /> - -<span class="smcap">A Mysterious Driver</span></h4> - -<p>A fat Italian came by in a heavily-tired wagon. -The wagon was loaded with green bananas. -The fruit-vendor stopped and looked me over. -He most demonstratively offered me a seat -beside him. He had a Benvenuto Cellini leer. -He wore one gold earring. He looked like the -social secretary of the Black Hand.</p> - -<p>He was apparently driving on into the country. -Therefore I suffered myself to be pulled -up on to the seat. Around the corner we came -to green fields and bushes, and I thanked the -good St. Francis and all his holy company.</p> - -<p>I said to my charioteer: “As soon as you get -a mile out, let me down. I do not want to get -near any more towns for awhile.”</p> - -<p>“Allaright,” he said. On his wrist was -tattooed a blue dagger. The first thing he did -was unmerciful. He went a yard out of his -way to drive over the lame cat which had -stopped in despair, just ahead of us. Pussy -died without a shriek. Then the cruel one, -gathering by my manner that I was not pleased -with this incident, created a diversion. He<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span> -reproved his horse for not hurrying. It was -not so much a curse as an Italian oration. The -poor animal tried to respond, but hobbled so, -his master surprised me by checking the gait -to a walk. Then he cooed to the horse like a -two hundred pound turtledove.</p> - -<p>In a previous incarnation this driver must -have been one of the lower animals, he had so -many dealings with such. Some rocks half the -size of base-balls were piled at his feet. A -ferocious dog shot out from a cottage doorway. -With lightning action he hurled the ammunition -at the offender. The beast retreated -weeping aloud from pain. And Mr. Cellini -showed his teeth with delight.</p> - -<p>And now, after passing several pleasant farm-houses, -where I ran a chance for a free lodging for -the asking, I was vexed to be suddenly driven -into a town. We hobbled, rattled on, into a -wilderness thicker every minute with fire-spouting -smoke-stacks.</p> - -<p>“This ees Franklin,” said my charioteer. -“Nice-a-town. <i>MY</i> town,” he added earnestly. -“I getta reech (rich) to-morrow.”</p> - -<p>He began to cross-examine the writer of -this tale. I counselled myself not to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span> -give my name and address, lest I be held for -ransom.</p> - -<p>After many harmless inquiries, he asked -in a would-be ingratiating manner, “Poppa -reech?”</p> - -<p>“No. Poor.”</p> - -<p>“Poppa verra reech?”</p> - -<p>“No. Awfully poor. But happy and contented.”</p> - -<p>“Where your Poppa leeve?”</p> - -<p>“My father is the Man in the Moon.”</p> - -<p>That answer changed him completely. I -seemed to have given the password. I had -joined whatever it was he belonged to. He -gave me three oranges as a sign.</p> - -<p>I had hoped we would drive past the smoke -and fire. But he turned at right angles, into -the midst of it, and drove into a big black barn. -He waved me good-by in the courtliest manner, -as though he were somebody important, and I -were somebody important.</p> - -<p>Pretty soon I asked a passer-by the nearest -way to the suburbs. I had to walk on the -edges of my feet they were so tired. The street -he pointed out to me was nothing but a continuation -of tar-black, coughing, out-of-door ovens,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span> -side by side, shoulder to shoulder, on to the -crack of doom. I presume, in the language of -this vain world, they were coke ovens.</p> - -<p>I opened my eyes as little as possible and -breathed hardly at all. Then, by way of diversion, -I nibbled animal crackers, first a dog, -then a giraffe, then a hippopotamus, then an -elephant.</p> - -<p>Those ovens looked queerer as the street led -on. There were subtle essences abroad when -the smoke cleared away, and when the great -roar ceased there were vague sounds that -struck awe into the heart. I may be mistaken, -but I think I know the odor of a burning ghost -on the late afternoon wind, and the puffing -noise he makes.</p> - -<p>As the cinders crunched, crunched, underfoot, -the conviction deepened: “These ovens are -not mere works of man. Dying sinners snared -and corrupted by Oil City are carried here -when the city has done its work—carried in -the wagon of Apollyon, under bunches of green -bananas. Body and soul they are disintegrated -by the venomous oil; they crumble away in the -town of oil, and here in the town of ovens, the -fragments are burned with unquenchable fire.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span>Now it was seven o’clock. The street led -south past the aristocratic suburbs of Franklin, -and on to the fields and dandelion-starred -roadside.</p> - - -<h4>IV<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Allegory Breaks Down. My Friend<br /> -Humankindness with the Green Galluses</span></h4> - -<p>I hoped for a farm-hand’s house. Only in -that sort will they give free lodging so near -town. And, friends, I found it, there on the -edge of the second cornfield. The welcome was -unhesitating.</p> - -<p>I looked at my host aghast. To satisfy my -sense of the formal, he should have had the -dignity to make him Father Adam, and lord of -Paradise. How could one round out a day that -began loftily with Death, and continued gloriously -with some one mighty like the Devil, -with this inglorious type now before me? He -wrecked my allegory. There is no climax in -Stupidity.</p> - -<p>Just as the colorless, one-room house had -stove, chimney, cupboard, adequate roof, floor, -and walls, so the owner had the simplified,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span> -anatomical, and phrenological make-up of a -man. He had a luke-warm hand-clasp. He -smoked a Pittsburg stogy. He had thick -vague features and a shock of drab hair. The -nearest to a symbol about him was his new -green galluses. I suppose they indicated I -was out in the fields again.</p> - -<p>If his name was not Stupidity, it was Awkwardness. -He kept a sick geranium in an old -tomato can in the window. He had not cut off -the bent-back cover of the can. Just after he -gave me a seat he scratched his hand, as he was -watering the flower, and swore softly.</p> - -<p>Yet one must not abuse his host. I hasten to -acknowledge his generous hospitality. If it -be not indelicate to mention it, he boiled much -water, and properly diluted it with cold, that -the traveller might bathe. The bath was accomplished -out of doors beneath the shades of -evening.</p> - -<p>Later he was making preparations for supper, -with dull eyes that looked nowhere. He made -sure I fitted my chair. He put an old comfort -over it. It was well. The chair was -not naturally comfortable; it was partly a -box.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>After much fumbling about, he brought some -baked potatoes from the oven. The plate was -so hot he dropped it, but so thick it would not -break.</p> - -<p>He picked up the potatoes, as good as ever, -and broke some open for me, spreading them -with tolerable butter, and handing them across -the table. Then I started to eat.</p> - -<p>“Wait a minute,” he said. He bowed his -head, closed his dull eyes, and uttered these -words: “The Lord make us truly thankful for -what we are about to receive. Amen.”</p> - -<p>I have been reproved by some of the judicious -for putting so much food in these narratives. -Nevertheless the first warm potato tasted like -peacocks’ tongues, the next like venison, and -the next like ambrosia, and the next like a good -warm potato with butter on it. One might as -well leave Juliet out of Verona as food like -this out of a road-story. As we ate we hinted -to each other of our many ups and downs. He -mumbled along, telling his tale. He did not -care whether he heard mine or not.</p> - -<p>He had been born nearby. In early manhood -he had been taken with the oil fever. It happened -in this wise:—He had cut his foot<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span> -splitting kindling. Meditating ambition as he -slowly recovered, he resolved to go to town. -He sold his small farm and wasted his substance -in speculation. At the same time his young -wife and only child died of typhoid fever. He -was a laborer awhile in the two cities to the -northeast. Then he came back here to plough -corn.</p> - -<p>He had been saving for two years, had made -money enough to go back “pretty soon” and -enter what he considered a sure-thing scheme, -that I gathered had a close relation to the oil -business. He said that he had learned from -experience to sift the good from the bad in that -realm of commerce.</p> - -<p>He put brakes on the slow freight train of his -narrative. “I was about to explain, when you -ast to come in, that I don’t afford dessert to my -meals often.”</p> - -<p>“If you will excuse me,” I said, emptying -my pockets, “these figs, these dates, these -oranges, these animal crackers were given me -by Death, and the Devil. Eat hearty.”</p> - -<p>“Death and the Devil. What kind are -they?”</p> - -<p>“They’re not a bad sort. Death gave me<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span> -honey for dinner, and the Devil did no worse -than drive me a little out of my way.”</p> - -<p>He smiled vaguely. He thought it was a -joke, and was too interested in the food itself -to ask any more questions.</p> - -<p>The balmy smokeless wind from the south -was whistling, whistling past the window, and -through the field. How much one can understand -by mere whispers! The wind cried, -“Life, life, life!” Some of the young corn was -brushing the walls of the cottage, and armies on -armies of young corn were bivouacing further -down the road, lifting their sacred tassels -toward the stars.</p> - -<p>There was no change in the expression of the -countenance of my host, eating, talking, or -sitting still in the presence of the night. I -may have had too poor an estimate of his powers, -but I preached no sermon that evening.</p> - -<p>But, like many a primitive man I have met, -he preached me a sermon. He had no bed. -He gave the traveller a place to sleep in one -corner and himself slept in the opposite corner. -The floor was smooth and clean and white, and -the many scraps of rag-carpet and the clean -comfort over me were a part of the sermon.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span> -Another part was in his question before he slept: -“Does the air from that open window bother -you?”</p> - -<p>I assured him I wanted all there was, though -from the edge of the world.</p> - -<p>He had awkwardly folded his new overcoat, -and put it under my head.... And so I -was beginning to change his name from Stupidity -and Awkwardness to Humankindness.</p> - -<p>Though in five minutes he was snoring like -Sousa’s band, I could not but sleep. When I -awoke the sun was in my eyes. It shone -through the open door. Mr. Humankindness -was up. The smell of baked potatoes was in -the air. Outside, rustled the com. The wind -cried, “Life, life, life.”</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">LIFE TRANSCENDENT<br /> - - -This being the name of praise given to a fair lady.</h3> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">I used</span> to think, when the corn was blowing,</div> -<div class="verse">Of my lost lady, <i>Life Transcendent</i>,</div> -<div class="verse">Of her valiant way, of her pride resplendent:</div> -<div class="verse">For the corn swayed round, like her warrior-band</div> -<div class="verse">When I knelt by the blades to kiss her hand.</div> -<div class="verse">But now the green of the corn is going,</div> -<div class="verse">And winter comes and a springtime sowing</div> -<div class="verse">Of other grain, on the plains we knew.</div> -<div class="verse">So I walk on air, where the clouds are blowing,</div> -<div class="verse">And kiss her hand, where the gods are sowing</div> -<div class="verse">Stars for corn, in the star-fields new.</div> -</div></div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">IN THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION -CHURCH</h3> -</div> - - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Hunted</span> by friends who think that life is play,</div> -<div class="verse">Shaken by holy loves, more feared than foes,</div> -<div class="verse">By beauty’s amber cup, that overflows,</div> -<div class="verse">And pride of place, that leads me more astray:—</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Here I renew my vows, and this chief vow—</div> -<div class="verse">To seek each year this shrine of deathless power,</div> -<div class="verse">Keeping my springtime cornland thoughts in flower,</div> -<div class="verse">While labor-gnarled grey Christians round me bow.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Arm me against great towns, strong spirits old!</div> -<div class="verse">St. Francis keep me road-worn, music-fed.</div> -<div class="verse">Help me to look upon the poor-house bed</div> -<div class="verse">As a most fitting death, more dear than gold.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Help me to seek the sunburned groups afield,</div> -<div class="verse">The iron folk, the pioneers free-born.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span> -<div class="verse">Make me to voice the tall men in the corn.</div> -<div class="verse">Let boyhood’s wildflower days a bright fruit yield.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Scourge me, a slave that brings unhallowed praise</div> -<div class="verse">To you, stern Virgin in this church so sweet</div> -<div class="verse">If I desert the ways wherein my feet</div> -<div class="verse">Were set by Heaven, in prenatal days.</div> -</div></div></div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">THE OLD GENTLEMAN WITH THE<br /> -LANTERN (AND THE PEOPLE OF<br /> -HIS HOUSEHOLD)</h3> -</div> - - -<h4>I<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Savage Necklace</span></h4> - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> reader need not expect this book to -contain any nicely adjusted plot with a villain, -hero, lawyer, papers, surprise, and happy ending. -The highway is irrelevant. The highway is -slipshod. The highway is as the necklace of a -gipsy or an Indian, a savage string of pebbles -and precious stones, no two alike, with an occasional -trumpery suspender button or peach seed. -Every diamond is in the rough.</p> - -<p>I was walking between rugged farms on the -edge of the oil country in western Pennsylvania.</p> - -<p>The road, almost dry after several days of -rain, was gay with butterfly-haunted puddles. -The grotesque swain who gave me a lift in his -automobile for a mile is worth a page, but we -will only say that his photograph would have -contributed to the gaiety of nations—that he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span> -was the carved peach-stone on the necklace of -the day.</p> - -<p>There was a complacent cat in a doorway, -that should have been named “scrambled eggs -and milk,” so mongrel was his overcoat. There -was a philosophic grasshopper reading inscriptions -in a lonely cemetery, with whom I had a -long and silent interchange of spirit. Even the -graveyard was full of sun.</p> - -<p>On and on led the merry morning. At -length came noon, and a meal given with heartiness, -as easily plucked as a red apple. For half -an hour after dinner in that big farm-house we -sat and talked religion.</p> - -<p>O pagan in the cities, the brand of one’s belief -is still important in the hayfield. I was delighted -to discover this household held by conviction -to the brotherhood of which I was still -a nominal member. Their lingo was a taste -of home. “Our People,” “Our Plea,” “The -pious unimmersed.” Thus did they lead themselves -into paths of solemnity.</p> - -<p>Then, in the last five minutes of my stay, I -gave them my poem-sermon. The pamphlet -made them stare, if it did not make them think.</p> - -<p>Splendor after splendor rolled in upon the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span> -highway from the four corners at heaven. -Why then should I complain, if about four -o’clock the prosy old world emerged again?</p> - -<p>The wagon-track now followed a section of -the Pennsylvania railroad, and railroads are -anathema in my eyes when I am afoot. There -appeared no promising way of escape. And -now the steel rails led into a region where there -had been rain, even this morning. More than -once I had to take to the ties to go on. When -the mud was at all passable I walked in it by -preference, fortifying myself with these philosophizings:—</p> - -<p>“Cinders are sterile. They blast man and -nature, but the black earth renews all. Mud -upon the shoes is not a contamination but a sign -of progress, eloquent as sweat upon the brow. -Who knows but the feet are the roots of a man? -Who knows but rain on the road may help him -to grow? Maybe the stature and breadth of -farmers is due to their walking behind the -plough in the damp soil. Only an aviator or a -bird has a right to spurn the ground. All the -rest of us must furrow our way. Thus will our -cores be enriched, thus will we give fruit after -our kind.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>Whistling pretty hard, I made my way. -And now I had to choose between my rule to -flee from the railroad, and my rule to ask for -hospitality before dark.</p> - -<p>At length I said to myself: “I want to get -into a big unsophisticated house, the kind that is -removed from this railroad. I want to find an -unprejudiced host who will listen with an open -mind, and let me talk him to death.”</p> - -<p>To keep this resolve I had to hang on till near -eight o’clock. The cloudy night made the way -dim. At length I came to a road that had been -so often graded and dragged it shed water like -a turtle’s shell. It crossed the railway at right -angles and ploughed north. I followed it a -mile, shaking the heaviest mud from my shoes. -Led by the light of a lantern, I approached a -dim grey farm-house and what would have -been in the daytime a red barn.</p> - - -<h4>II<br /> - -<span class="smcap">By the Light of the Lantern</span></h4> - -<p>The lantern was carried, as I finally discovered, -by an old man getting a basket of chips -near the barn gate. He had his eye on me as I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span> -leaned over the fence. He swung the lantern -closer.</p> - -<p>“My name is Nicholas,” I said. “I am a -professional tramp.”</p> - -<p>“W-e-l-l,” he said slowly, in question, and -then in exclamation.</p> - -<p>He flashed the lantern in my face. “Come -in,” he said. “Sit down.”</p> - -<p>We were together on the chip-pile. He did -not ask me to split kindling, or saw wood. Few -people ever do.</p> - -<p>In appearance he was the old John G. Whittier -type of educated laboring-man, only more -eagle-like. He spoke to me in a kingly prophetic -manner, developed, I have no doubt, by a lifetime -of unquestioned predominance at prayer-meeting -and at the communion table. It was -the sonorous agricultural holy tone that is the -particular aversion of a certain pagan type of -city radical who does not understand that the -meeting-house is the very rock of the agricultural -social system. As far as I am concerned, -if this manner be worn by a kindly old man, it -inspires me with respect and delight. In a slow -and gracious way he separated his syllables.</p> - -<p>“Young man, you are per-fect-ly wel-come<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span> -to shel-ter if we are on-ly sure you will not do us -an in-ju-ry. My age and ex-per-ience ought -to count for a lit-tle, and I assure you that most -free travel-ers abuse hos-pi-tal-ity. But wait -till my daugh-ter-in-law comes.”</p> - -<p>I was shivering with weariness, and my wet -feet wanted to get to a stove at once. I did not -feel so much like talking some one to death as I -had a while back.</p> - -<p>By way of passing the time, the Patriarch -showed me his cane. “Pre-sen-ted at the last -old set-tel-ers’ picnic because I have been the -pres-i-dent of the old-settlers’ association for -ten years. Young man, why don’t you carry a -cane?”</p> - -<p>“Why should I?”</p> - -<p>“Won’t it help you to keep off dogs?”</p> - -<p>I replied, “A housekeeper, if she is in a nervous -condition, is apt to be afraid of a walking-stick. -It looks like a club. To carry something -to keep off dogs is like carrying a lightning-rod -to keep off lightning. I encounter a lot of -barking and thunder, but have never been -bitten or blasted.”</p> - -<p>And while I was thus laboring for the respect -of the Patriarch, the daughter-in-law stepped<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span> -into the golden circle of the lantern light. She -had just come from the milking. I shall never -forget those bashful gleaming eyes, peering out -from the sunbonnet. Her sleeves were rolled -to the shoulder. Startling indeed were those -arms, as white as the foaming milk.</p> - -<p>She set down the bucket with a big sigh of -relaxation. She pushed back the sunbonnet -to get a better look. The old man addressed -her in an authoritative and confident way, as -though she were a mere adjunct, a part of his -hospitality.</p> - -<p>“Daugh-ter, here is a good young man—he -Looks like a good young man, I think a stew-dent. -You see he has books in his pock-et. -He wants a night’s lodging. Now, if he <i>is</i> a -good young man, I think we can give him the -bed in the spare room, and if he is a bad young -man, I think there is enough rope in the barn -to hang him before daylight.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, you can stay,” she said brightly. -“Have you had supper?”</p> - -<p>It is one of the obligations of the road to -tell the whole truth. But in this case I lied. -The woman was working too late.</p> - -<p>“Oh yes, I’ve had supper,” I said.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span>And she carried the milk into the darkness.</p> - -<p>In the city, among people having the status -indicated by the big red barn and the enormous -wind-mill and a most substantial fence, this -gleaming woman would have languished in -shelter. She would have played at many -philanthropies, or gone to many study clubs or -have had many lovers. She would have been -variously adventurous according to her corner -of the town. Here her paramour was <span class="smcap">Work</span>. -He still caressed her, but would some day break -her on the wheel.</p> - -<p>The old man sent me toward the front porch -alone. There was a rolling back of the low -gray clouds just then, and the coming of the -moon. The moon’s moods are so many. To-night -she took the forlornness out of the restless -sky. She looked domestic as the lantern.</p> - - -<h4>III<br /> - -<span class="smcap">You Ought to be Ashamed of Yourself</span></h4> - -<p>I was on the porch, scraping an acquaintance -with the grandmother. She held a baby -in her lap. They sat in the crossing of the -moonlight and the lamplight.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span>There was no one to explain me. I explained -myself. She eyed me angrily. She did not -want me to shake hands with the baby. She -asked concerning her daughter-in-law.</p> - -<p>“And did she say you could stay?”</p> - -<p>“She did.”</p> - -<p>The grandmother brought a hard fist down -on the arm of the chair: “I’d like to break her -neck. She’s no more backbone than a rabbit.”</p> - -<p>I do not distinctly remember any bitter old -man I have met in my travels. She was the -third bitter old woman. Probably with the -same general experiences as her husband, she -had digested them differently. She was on -the shelf, but made for efficiency and she was -not run down.</p> - -<p>In her youth her hair was probably red. -Though she was plainly an old woman, it was -the brown of middle age with only a few streaks -of gray. Under her roughness there were -touches of a truly cultured accent and manner. -I would have said that in youth she had had -what they call opportunities.</p> - -<p>I asked: “Isn’t the moon fine to-night?”</p> - -<p>She replied: “Why don’t you go to work?”</p> - -<p>I answered: “I asked for work in the big<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span> -city till I was worn to a thread. And you are -the first person who has urged it on me since -I took to tramping. I wonder why no one -ever thought of it before.”</p> - -<p>She smiled grudgingly.</p> - -<p>“What kind of work did you try to do in the -city?”</p> - -<p>“I wanted to paint rainbows and gild sidewalks -and blow bubbles for a living. But no -one wanted me to. It is about all I am fit for.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t talk nonsense to me, young man!”</p> - -<p>“Pardon me, leddy—I am a writer of -rhymes.”</p> - -<p>“The nation’s going to the dogs,” she said. -I suppose I was the principal symptom of -national decay.</p> - -<p>Just then a happy voice called through the -house, “Come to supper.”</p> - -<p>“That’s for you,” said the grandmother. -“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”</p> - - -<h4>IV<br /> - -<span class="smcap">Gretchen-Cecilia, Waitress</span></h4> - -<p>I went in the direction of the voice, delighted, -not ashamed. There, in that most cleanly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span> -kitchen, stood the white-armed milkmaid, with -cheeks of geranium red. She had spread a -table before me in the presence of mine enemy. -I said: “I did not ask for supper. I told you -I had eaten.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I knew you were hungry. Wait on -him, Gretchen-Cecilia.”</p> - -<p>My hostess scurried into the other room. -She was in a glorious mood over something -with which I had nothing to do.</p> - -<p>Gretchen-Cecilia came out of the pantry and -poured me a glass of warm milk. I looked at -her, and my destiny was sealed forevermore—at -least for an hour or so. The sight of her -brought the tears to my eyes.</p> - -<p>I know you are saying: “Beware of the -man with tears in his eyes.” Yes, I too have -seen weeping exhibitions. I remember a certain -pious exhorter. The collection followed -soon. And I used to hear an actor brag about -the way he wept when he looked upon a certain -ladylike actress whom we all adore. He -vividly pictured himself with a handkerchief -to his devoted cheeks, waiting in the wings for -his cue. He had belladonna eyes. At the -risk of being classed with such folk, I reaffirm<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span> -that I was a little weepy. I insist it was not -gratitude for a sudden square meal—if truth -be told, I have had many such—it was the -novel Gretchen-Cecilia.</p> - -<p>It took little conversation to show that -Gretchen-Cecilia was a privileged character. -She had little of the touch of the farm upon -her. She was the spoiled pet of the house, and -the index of their prosperity—what novelists -call the third generation. She had a way of -lifting her chin and shoving her fists deep into -her apron pockets.</p> - -<p>I said: “I have a fairy-tale to read to you -after supper.”</p> - -<p>And she said: “I like fairy-tales.” And -then, redundantly: “I like stories about fairies. -Fairy stories are nice.”</p> - -<p>It was no little pleasure to eat after nine -hours doing without, and to dwell on beauty -such as this after so many days of absence -from the museums of art and the curio shops. -Every time she brought me warm biscuits or -refilled my tumbler, she brought me pretty -thoughts as well.</p> - -<p>She was nine years old, she told me. Her -eyes were sometimes brown, sometimes violet.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span> -Her mouth was half a cherry, and her chin the -quintessence of elegance. Her braids were -long and rich, her ribbons wide and crisp.</p> - -<p>Maidenhood has distinct stages. The sixteenth -year, when unusually ripe, is a tender -prophecy. Thirteen is often the climax of -astringent childhood, with its especial defiance -or charm. But nine years old is my favorite -season. It is spring in winter. It is sweet -sixteen through walls of impregnable glass. -This ripeness dates from prehistoric days, -when people lived in the tops of the trees, and -almost flew to and from the nests they built -there, and mated much earlier than now.</p> - -<p>As I finished eating, the mother brought the -little brother into the room saying, “Gretchen-Cecilia, -watch the baby.” Then she smiled on -me and said: “When she washes the dishes, -you can hold him.”</p> - -<p>She had on a fresh gingham apron, blue, with -white trimmings. I judged by the squeak, -she had changed her shoes.</p> - -<p>“Who’s coming?” I asked, when the mother -had left.</p> - -<p>“Papa. He goes around the state and digs -oil wells, and is back at the end of the week.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span>I was washing the dishes when Grandma came -in. She frowned me away from the dishpan. -She said, “Gretchen-Cecilia, wipe the dishes.”</p> - -<p>The baby howled on the floor. I was not -to touch him. Gretchen-Cecilia tried to comfort -him by saying, “Baby, dear dear baby; -baby, dear dear baby.”</p> - -<p>“Do you realize, young man,” asked -Grandma, “that I, an old woman, am washing -your dishes for you?”</p> - -<p>I was busy. I was putting my wet stockinged -feet on a kindling-board in the oven, and my -shoes were curling up on the back of the -stove.</p> - -<p>“Young man—”</p> - -<p>“Yessum—”</p> - -<p>“<i>Where’s your wife?</i>”</p> - -<p>I replied, “I have no wife, and never did -have.” Then I ventured to ask, “May I -have the hand of Gretchen? I want some one -who can wipe dishes while I wash them.”</p> - -<p>“But I’m not grown up,” piped the maiden. -It seemed her only objection.</p> - -<p>I said: “I will wait and wait till you are -seventeen.”</p> - -<p>The old lady had no soul for trifles. She intoned,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span> -like conscience that will not be slain: -“<i>Where’s your wife?</i>”</p> - -<p>But I said in my heart: “Madam, you are -only a suspender button upon the necklace of -the evening.”</p> - - -<h4>V<br /> - -“<span class="smcap">Papa has Come!</span>”</h4> - -<p>There was a scurry and a flutter. Gretchen -threw down her dish-rag, leaving Grandma a -plate to wipe.</p> - -<p>I heard the grandfather say, “Wel-come, son, -wel-come indeed!” The young wife gave a -smothered shriek, and then in a minute I -heard her exclaim, “John, you’re a scamp!”</p> - -<p>I put on my hot shoes and went in to see -what this looked like. Gretchen-Cecilia was -somewhere between them, and then on her -father’s shoulder, mussing his hair. And the -mother took Gretchen down, as John said in -reply to a question:—</p> - -<p>“Business is good. Whether there’s oil or -not, I dig the hole and get paid.”</p> - -<p>This man was now standing his full height -for his family to admire. He was one I too<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span> -could not help admiring. He had an open -sunburned face, and I thought that behind it -there was a non-scheming mind, that had -attained good fortune beyond the lot of most -of the simple. He was worth the dressing up -the family had done for him, and almost worthy -of Gretchen’s extra crisp hair ribbons.</p> - -<p>His wife put her arms around his neck and -whispered something, evidently about me. He -watched me over his shoulder as much as to -say:—</p> - -<p>“And so it’s a stray dog wants shelter? No -objections.”</p> - -<p>He unwrapped his package. It was an -extraordinary doll, with truly truly hair, and -Gretchen-Cecilia had to give him seven kisses -and almost cry before he surrendered it.</p> - -<p>He pulled off his boots and threw them in -the corner, then paddled up stairs and came -down in his shoes. For no reason at all -Gretchen-Cecilia and her mother chased him -around the kitchen table with a broom and a -feather duster, and then out on to the back -porch.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span></p> - - -<h4>VI<br /> - -<span class="smcap">Conferences</span></h4> - -<p>The grandfather called me into the front -room and handed me a book.</p> - -<p>“Yer a schol-ar. What do you think of -that?”</p> - -<p>It was a history of the county. The frontispiece -was a portrait of Judge Somebody. -But the book naturally opened at about the -tenth page, on an atrocious engraving of this -goodly old man and his not ill-looking wife. -He breathed easier when I found it. It was -plainly a basis of family pride. I read the -inscription.</p> - -<p>“So you two are the oldest inhabitants?” I -asked.</p> - -<p>“The oldest per-pet-ual in-habitants. I was -born in this coun-ty and have nev-er left it. -My wife is some young-er, but she has nev-er -left it, since she married me.”</p> - -<p>Even the old lady grew civil. She tapped a -brooch near her neck. “They gave me this -breast-pin at the last old-settlers’ picnic.”</p> - -<p>The old man continued: “All the old farm -is still here in our hands, but mostly rented.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span> -It brings something, something. Our big income -is from my son’s well-digging. He never -speculates and he makes money.”</p> - -<p>It seemed a part of the old man’s pride to -have even the passing stranger realize they -were well-fixed. In a furtive attempt to do -justice to their station in life they had a tall -clock in the corner, quite new and beautiful. -And, as I discovered later, there was up stairs -a handsome bath-room. The rest of -that new house was clean and white, but helplessly -Spartan.</p> - -<p>The old folk were called to the back porch. -At the same time I heard the mother say, -“Show the man your doll.”</p> - -<p>And in came the little daughter like thistledown.</p> - -<p>We were in that white room at opposite ends -of the long table, and nothing but the immaculate -cloth stretching between us. She -sat with the doll clutched to her breast, looking -straight into my eyes, the doll staring at me -also. The girl was such a piece of bewitchment -that the poem I brought to her about -the magical <i>Tree of Laughing Bells</i> seemed tame -to me, and everyday. That foolish rhyme was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span> -soon read and put into her hands. It seemed -to give her an infinite respect for me. And -any human creature loves to be respected.</p> - -<p>On the back porch the talking grew louder.</p> - -<p>“Papa is telling them he wants to rent the -rest of the farm and move us all to town,” -explained Gretchen.</p> - -<p>It was the soft voice of the young wife we -heard: “Of course it will be nice to be nearer -my church.”</p> - -<p>And then the young father’s voice: “And I -don’t want Gretchen to grow up on the farm.”</p> - -<p>And the old man’s voice, still nobly intoned: -“And as I say, I don’t want to be stub-born, -but I don’t want to cross the coun-ty line.”</p> - -<p>Gretchen banged the door on them and we -crossed the county line indeed. We told each -other fairy-tales while the unheeded murmur -of debate went on.</p> - -<p>When it came Gretchen’s turn, she alternated -Grimm, and Hans Andersen and the -legends of the Roman Church. I had left the -railroad resolved to talk some one to death, -and now with all my heart I was listening. -She knew the tales I had considered my special -discoveries in youth: “The Amber Witch,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span> -“The Enchanted Horse,” “The Two Brothers.” -She also knew that most pious narrative, <i>Elsie -Dinsmore</i>. She approved when I told her I -had found it not only sad but helpful in my -spiritual life. She had found it just so in hers.</p> - - -<h4>VII<br /> - -<span class="smcap">The Spare Room</span></h4> - -<p>With her eyes still flashing from argument, -the grandmother took me up stairs. She gave -me a big bath-towel, and showed me the bath-room, -and also my sleeping place. I asked her -about the holy pictures hanging near my bed. -She explained in a voice that endeavored not -to censure: “My daughter-in-law is of German-Catholic -descent, and she is <i>still</i> Catholic.”</p> - -<p>“What is <i>your</i> denomination?” I asked.</p> - -<p>“My husband and son and I are Congregationalists.”</p> - -<p>She did not ask it of me, but I said: “I am -what is sometimes disrespectfully called a -‘Campbellite.’”</p> - -<p>But the old lady was gone.</p> - -<p>After a boiling bath I lay musing under -those holy pictures. My brother of the road,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span> -when they put you in the best room, as they -sometimes do, and you look at the white counterpane -and the white sheets and the cosey -appointments, do you take these brutally, or -do you think long upon the intrinsic generosity -of God and man?</p> - -<p>I have laid hold of hospitality coldly and -greedily in my time, but this night at least, I -was thankful. And as I turned my head in a -new direction I was thankful most of all for -the unexpected presence of the Mother of God. -There was her silvery statue near the foot of -my bed, the moonlight pouring straight in -upon it through the wide window. It spoke to -me of peace and virginity.</p> - -<p>And I thought how many times in Babylon -I had gone into the one ever open church to -look on the crowned image of the Star of the -Sea. Though I am no servitor of Rome I -have only adoration for virginity, be it carved -in motionless stone, or in marble that breathes -and sings.</p> - -<p>A long long time I lay awake while the image -glimmered and glowed. The clock downstairs -would strike its shrill bell, and in my heart a -censer swung.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span></p> - - -<h4>VIII<br /> - -<span class="smcap">Morning</span></h4> - -<p>There was a pounding on the door and a -shout. It was the young husband’s voice. -“It’s time to feed your face.”</p> - -<p>They were at the breakfast table when I -came down. My cherished memory of the -group is the picture of them with bowed heads, -the grandfather, with hand upraised, saying -grace. It was ornate, and by no means brief. -It was rich with authority. I wanted to call -in all the mocking pagans of the nation, to be -subdued before that devotion. I wanted to -say: “Behold, little people, some great hearts -still pray.”</p> - -<p>I stood in the door and made shift to bow -my head. Yet my head was not so much bowed -but I could see Gretchen-Cecilia and her mother -timidly cross themselves. In my heart I said -“Amen” to the old man’s prayer. But I love -every kind of devotion, so I crossed myself in -the Virgin’s name.</p> - -<p>The tale had as well end here as anywhere. -On the road there are endless beginnings and -few conclusions. For instance I gathered from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span> -the conversation at the breakfast table they -were not sure whether they would move to the -city or not. They were for the most part -silent and serene.</p> - -<p>There were pleasant farewells a little later. -Gretchen-Cecilia, when the others were not -looking, gave me, at my earnest solicitation, a -tiny curl from the head of her doll that had -truly truly hair.</p> - -<p>I walked on and on, toward the ends of the -infinite earth, though I had found this noble -temple, this shrine not altogether made with -hands. I again consecrated my soul to the -august and Protean Creator, maker of all -religions, dweller in all clean temples, master -of the perpetual road.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">THAT MEN MIGHT SEE AGAIN THE<br /> -ANGEL-THRONG</h3> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - -<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Would</span> we were blind with Milton, and we sang</div> -<div class="verse">With him of uttermost Heaven in a new song,</div> -<div class="verse">That men might see again the angel-throng,</div> -<div class="verse">And newborn hopes, true to this age would rise,</div> -<div class="verse">Pictures to make men weep for paradise,</div> -<div class="verse">All glorious things beyond the defeated grave.</div> -<div class="verse">God smite us blind, and give us bolder wings;</div> -<div class="verse">God help us to be brave.</div> -</div></div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">Printed in the United States of America.</p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="bbox"> - -<p class="drop-cap">THE following pages contain advertisements<br /> -of books by the same author.</p> -</div></div></div></div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="ph1"><i>VERSE BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i></p> -</div> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p class="ph3">The Congo and Other Poems</p> - -<p> -With a preface by <span class="smcap">Harriet Monroe</span>, Editor of the <i>Poetry Magazine</i>.</p> - -<p class="right"><i>Cloth, 12mo, $1.25; leather, $1.60</i></p> - -<p>In the readings which Vachel Lindsay has given for -colleges, universities, etc., throughout the country, he -has won the approbation of the critics and of his audiences -in general for the new verse-form which he is -employing, as well as the manner of his chanting and -singing, which is peculiarly his own. He carries in -memory all the poems in his books, and recites the program -made out for him; the wonderful effect of sound -produced by his lines, their relation to the idea which -the author seeks to convey, and their marvelous lyrical -quality are quite beyond the ordinary, and suggest new -possibilities and new meanings in poetry. It is his -main object to give his already established friends a -deeper sense of the musical intention of his pieces.</p> - -<p>The book contains the much discussed “War Poem,” -“Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight”; it contains -among its familiar pieces: “The Santa Fe Trail,” -“The Firemen’s Ball,” “The Dirge for a Righteous -Kitten,” “The Griffin’s Egg,” “The Spice Tree,” -“Blanche Sweet,” “Mary Pickford,” “The Soul of the -City,” etc.</p> - - - - - -<p><b>Mr. Lindsay received the Levinson Prize for the best poem -contributed to <i>Poetry</i>, a magazine of verse, (Chicago) for 1915.</b></p> - - - -<p>“We do not know a young man of any more promise than Mr. -Vachel Lindsay for the task which he seems to have set himself.”—<i>The -Dial.</i></p> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p class="ph3">General William Booth Enters Into<br /> - Heaven and Other Poems</p> - - - -<p class="right"><i>Price, $1.25; leather, $1.60</i></p> - -<p>This book contains among other verses: “On Reading -Omar Khayyam during an Anti-Saloon Campaign -in Illinois”; “The Wizard Wind”; “The Eagle Forgotten,” -a Memorial to John P. Altgeld; “The Knight -in Disguise,” a Memorial to O. Henry; “The Rose -and the Lotus”; “Michaelangelo”; “Titian”; “What -the Hyena Said”; “What Grandpa Mouse Said”; -“A Net to Snare the Moonlight”; “Springfield Magical”; -“The Proud Farmer”; “The Illinois Village”; -“The Building of Springfield.”</p> - - -<p><b>COMMENTS ON THE TITLE POEM:</b></p> - - - -<p>“This poem, at once so glorious, so touching and poignant in -its conception and expression ... is perhaps the most remarkable -poem of a decade—one that defies imitation.”—<i>Review of -Reviews.</i></p> - -<p>“A sweeping and penetrating vision that works with a naïve -charm.... No American poet of to-day is more a people’s -poet.”—<i>Boston Transcript.</i></p> - -<p>“One could hardly overpraise ‘General Booth.’”—<i>New York -Times.</i></p> - -<p>“Something new in verse, spontaneous, passionate, unmindful -of conventions in form and theme.”—<i>The Living Age.</i></p> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="ph1"><i>PROSE BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i></p> - - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p class="ph3">Adventures While Preaching the Gospel<br /> - of Beauty</p> - - -<p class="right"><i>Price, $1.00</i></p> - -<p>This is a series of happenings afoot while reciting at -back-doors in the west, and includes some experiences -while harvesting in Kansas. It includes several proclamations -which apply the Gospel of Beauty to agricultural -conditions. There are, among other rhymed -interludes: “The Shield of Faith,” “The Flute of the -Lonely,” “The Rose of Midnight,” “Kansas,” “The -Kallyope Yell.”</p> - - -<p class="ph1">SOMETHING TO READ</p> - - - -<p>Vachel Lindsay took a walk from his home in Springfield, Ill., -over the prairies to New Mexico. He was in Kansas in wheat-harvest -time and he worked as a farm-hand, and he tells all about -that. He tells about his walks and the people he met in a little -book, “Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty.” For -the conditions of his tramps were that he should keep away from -cities, money, baggage, and pay his way by reciting his own poems. -And he did it. People liked his pieces, and tramp farmhands with -rough necks and rougher hands left off singing smutty limericks -and took to “Atlanta in Calydon” apparently because they preferred -it. Of motor cars, which gave him a lift, he says: “I still -maintain that the auto is a carnal institution, to be shunned by the -truly spiritual, but there are times when I, for one, get tired of -being spiritual.” His story of the “Five Little Children Eating -Mush” (that was one night in Colorado, and he recited to them -while they ate supper) has more beauty and tenderness and jolly -tears than all the expensive sob stuff theatrical managers ever -dreamed of. Mr. Lindsay doesn’t need to write verse to be a poet. -His prose is poetry—poetry straight from the soil, of America that -is, and of a nobler America that is to be. You cannot afford—both -for your entertainment and for the <i>real idea</i> that this young -man has (of which we have said nothing)—to miss this book.—<i>Editorial -from Collier’s Weekly.</i></p> -</div> - - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p class="ph3">The Art of the Moving Picture</p> - -<p class="right"><i>Price, $1.25</i></p> - -<p>An effort to apply the Gospel of Beauty to a new art. -The first section has an outline which is proposed as a -basis for photoplay criticism in America; chapters on: -“The Photoplay of Action,” “The Intimate Photoplay,” -“The Picture of Fairy Splendor,” “The Picture of -Crowd Splendor,” “The Picture of Patriotic Splendor,” -“The Picture of Religious Splendor,” “Sculpture in -Motion,” “Painting in Motion,” “Furniture,” “Trappings -and Inventions in Motion,” “Architecture in -Motion,” “Thirty Differences between the Photoplays -and the Stage,” “Hieroglyphics.” The second section -is avowedly more discursive, being more personal speculations -and afterthoughts, not brought forward so dogmatically; -chapters on: “The Orchestra Conversation -and the Censorship,” “The Substitute for the Saloon,” -“California and America,” “Progress and Endowment,” -“Architects as Crusaders,” “On Coming Forth -by Day,” “The Prophet Wizard,” “The Acceptable -Year of the Lord.”</p> - - -<p><b>FOR LATE REVIEWS OF MR. LINDSAY AND HIS -CONTEMPORARIES READ:</b></p> - - - -<p><i>The New Republic</i>: Articles by Randolph S. Bourne, December -5, 1914, on the “Adventures while Preaching”; and Francis -Hackett, December 25, 1915, on “The Art of the Moving Picture.”</p> - -<p><i>The Dial</i>: Unsigned article by Lucien Carey, October 16, 1914, -on “The Congo,” etc.</p> - -<p><i>The Yale Review</i>: Article by H. M. Luquiens, July, 1916, on -“The Art of the Moving Picture.”</p> - - - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">General Articles on the Poetry Situation</span></p> - - - -<p><i>The Century Magazine</i>: “America’s Golden Age in Poetry,” -March, 1916.</p> - -<p><i>Harper’s Monthly Magazine</i>: “The Easy Chair,” William Dean -Howells, September, 1915.</p> - -<p><i>The Craftsman</i>: “Has America a National Poetry?” Amy -Lowell, July, 1916.</p> -</div> - - -<p class="ph1">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> - - -Publishers <span class="gap2"> 64-66 Fifth Avenue </span><span class="gap2"> New York</span></p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="ph1">FOOTNOTES:</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> This appears, pages seventy-four through eighty-one, in -<i>General Booth and Other Poems</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> This appears, pages seventy-four through eighty-one, in -<i>General Booth and Other Poems</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> In the prose sketches in this book I have allowed myself -a story-teller’s license only a little. Sometimes a considerable -happening is introduced that came the day before, or two days -after. In some cases the events of a week are told in reverse -order.</p> - -<p>Lady Iron-Heels is obviously a story, but embodies my exact -impression of that region in a more compressed form than a -note-book record could have done.</p> - -<p>The other travel-narratives are ninety-nine per cent literal -fact and one per cent abbreviation.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> Portions of this poem are scattered through this book for -interludes. Others are already printed in <i>General Booth and -Other Poems</i>.</p> - -</div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="transnote"> -<p class="ph1">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:</p> - - -<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.</p> - -<p>Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.</p> - -<p>Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.</p> -</div></div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HANDY GUIDE FOR BEGGARS ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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