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diff --git a/old/67960-0.txt b/old/67960-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 69308f5..0000000 --- a/old/67960-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6156 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tramping With a Poet in the Rockies, -by Stephen Graham - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Tramping With a Poet in the Rockies - -Authors: Stephen Graham - Vachel Lindsay - -Illustrator: Vernon Hill - -Release Date: May 1, 2022 [eBook #67960] - -Language: English - -Produced by: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by - University of California libraries) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAMPING WITH A POET IN THE -ROCKIES *** - - - - - -TRAMPING WITH A POET IN THE ROCKIES - - - - -BOOKS BY STEPHEN GRAHAM - - THE GENTLE ART OF TRAMPING - THE DIVIDING LINE OF EUROPE - IN QUEST OF EL DORADO - TRAMPING WITH A POET IN THE ROCKIES - EUROPE--WHITHER BOUND? - THE CHALLENGE OF THE DEAD - CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES - A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS - THE QUEST OF THE FACE - RUSSIA IN 1916 - PRIEST OF THE IDEAL - THROUGH RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA - THE WAY OF MARTHA AND THE WAY OF MARY - RUSSIA AND THE WORLD - WITH POOR EMIGRANTS TO AMERICA - WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM - CHANGING RUSSIA - A TRAMP’S SKETCHES - UNDISCOVERED RUSSIA - A VAGABOND IN THE CAUCASUS - ST. VITUS DAY - - - - - TRAMPING WITH A POET - IN THE ROCKIES - - BY - STEPHEN GRAHAM - AUTHOR OF “EUROPE--WHITHER BOUND?” - - WITH THIRTY-EIGHT EMBLEMS BY - VERNON HILL - - [Illustration] - - - D. APPLETON-CENTURY COMPANY - INCORPORATED - NEW YORK LONDON - 1936 - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY - D. APPLETON AND COMPANY - - _All rights reserved. This book, or parts - thereof, must not be reproduced in any - form without permission of the publisher._ - - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - - - -PREFACE - - -Vachel Lindsay is the poet. He is best known as the author of _General -William Booth Enters Heaven_, _The Congo_ and _Johnny Appleseed_. He -also wrote a highly comical piece called _The Daniel Jazz_. He is a -wonderful reciter, and is aided by a sonorous, heaven-reaching voice. -All his poems are written to be read aloud, chanted, or declaimed; in -some cases they are written to be danced also, and played as games. -In many of his recitations the audience is called upon to take part -in choruses and refrains. Thus, in one poem, when Lindsay says, “I’ve -been to Palestine,” the audience as one man has to cry back to him, -“_What did you see in Palestine?_” This is rapturously enjoyed by -the audience. When you have heard the poet you can well understand -that he did not starve when he used to tramp in America and recite to -the farmers for a meal and a night’s lodging. He has gained a great -popularity. - -He is, however, something more than an entertainer. He has a spiritual -message to the world, and is deeply in earnest. In a large experience -of men and women in many countries, I have rarely met such a rebel -against vulgarity, materialism, and the modern artificial way of life. -At the same time, despite his poetry, he is almost inarticulate. He has -helped me, and here in a way I help him by giving in a new form part of -the richness of his thoughts and his opinions. - -Vachel Lindsay visited England in 1920, and recited his poems at Oxford -and Cambridge and to several groups of friends in London. His mother, -Catharine Frazee Lindsay, who accompanied him, was a notable woman in -Springfield, Illinois, in religious and progressive activities. She -succumbed to an attack of pneumonia this year. But those who met her -in this country recognised in her a remarkable figure. At Vachel’s -invitation I visited Springfield last summer, and we went to the -Rockies, and tramped together to Canada, and this volume is a record -of our holiday. A mutual friend of ours is Christopher Morley, who -brought us together in 1919. When he heard of our projected expedition -he interposed to get some letters for the New York _Evening Post_. Some -thirty-two of these were written, mostly by the camp fire or sitting -on the rocks in the sun, and were printed in the _Post_, where they -attracted considerable attention. “Centurion” in the _Century Magazine_ -for August wrote: “Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Graham are having a glorious -time. As for those of us who must spend the dog-days in stuffy cities -and stuffier offices, the picture of the two of them by a camp fire -in the Rockies waking to the freshness and glory of a mountain dawn -is--well, if there are no future issues of the _Century Magazine_, -you may be sure that the entire staff, inspired by this example, has -started vagabonding.” Another, a facetious scribe, wrote: “It is -conceded by every one that Stephen Graham’s _Tramping with a Poet_ will -some day stand on the shelf of open-air literature beside _Travels with -a Donkey_.” - -My thanks are due to the representatives of the Great Northern -Railway of America, at St. Paul, who gave us a wonderful collection -of pictures, maps, and books, when they heard we were going, on the -subject of Glacier Park, which we tramped through. In fact, the railway -company would have done a great deal for us, but we eluded their kind -care, as was our wish, and got out entirely on our own. - -As Vachel Lindsay was an art student before he was a poet, and wrote -his first verses as scrolls to be illuminated below emblematic figures, -we naturally discussed emblems and emblematic art and hieroglyphics as -we tramped together. The emblems in this book are an attempt to express -that side of our mutual experience. They have been done by my friend, -Vernon Hill, who drew once that very precious work, “The Arcadian -Calendar.” - -One of the poems is by “Rusticus,” who, anent our adventures, -contributed it to the New York _Evening Post_. - -A last point: Vachel is pronounced to rhyme with Rachel, and is spelt -with one l. It does not rhyme with satchel. The poet asked me to tell -you that. - - STEPHEN GRAHAM - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAPTER PAGE - - I. TRAMPING AGAIN 1 - - II. FINDING THE POET 7 - - III. TAKING THE ROAD 14 - - IV. FIRST NIGHTS OUT 21 - - V. GOING UP TO THE SNOW 28 - - VI. DIFFERENT WAYS OF GOING DOWNWARD 34 - - VII. SILENCED BY THE MOUNTAINS 40 - - VIII. NIGHT AND NOTHING ON THE MOUNTAINS 47 - - IX. “WIFE, GIVE ME THE PAIN-KILLER” 54 - - X. CLEAR BLUE 62 - - XI. NATIONAL WILDERNESS 71 - - XII. GOING WEST 77 - - XIII. CLIMBING RED EAGLE 82 - - XIV. DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE 89 - - XV. PEOPLE IN CAMP 95 - - XVI. VISITED BY BEARS 101 - - XVII. LINDSAY’S STONE COFFEE 108 - - XVIII. MAKING MAPS OF THE WORLD 114 - - XIX. A MOUNTAIN POINT OF VIEW 121 - - XX. BY THE CAMP FIRE 127 - - XXI. DOWN CATARACT MOUNTAIN 133 - - XXII. “GO WEST, YOUNG MAN” 139 - - XXIII. THE SUN-WORSHIPPERS 146 - - XXIV. TWO VOICES 151 - - XXV. STOPPED BY THE CLOUDS 158 - - XXVI. LINDSAY ON ROOSEVELT 165 - - XXVII. THE WILLOWS 171 - - XXVIII. JOHNNY APPLESEED 177 - - XXIX. LOG-ROLLING 184 - - XXX. TOWARD THE KOOTENAI 190 - - XXXI. AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD 196 - - XXXII. THE STAR OF SPRINGFIELD 201 - - XXXIII. FLAT TOP MOUNTAIN 213 - - XXXIV. CROSSING THE CANADIAN LINE 221 - - XXXV. THE DIFFERENCE 231 - - XXXVI. DUKHOBORS 239 - - XXXVII. A VISIT TO THE MORMONS 247 - - XXXVIII. “BLOOM FOR EVER, O REPUBLIC!” 274 - - - - -TRAMPING WITH A POET IN THE ROCKIES - - - - -[Illustration: HAIL TO ALL MOVING THINGS] - - - - -I. TRAMPING AGAIN - - -WELL, it’s good to be going tramping again. I’ve been sitting in -European cafés and reading newspapers half a year, from Constantinople -to Berlin, and I’ve only stretched my legs when in strange cities I -needed to find a hotel, beating it pleasurelessly on asphalt. Last -autumn, yes, I was tramping over the ruins and wreck of the war in -France, and the year before that walked across Georgia on the track of -old Sherman. But with a purpose, and in lands where after all there are -hotels, and one pulls the blinds down when the stars appear. - -But now I’ve had a real call from Hesperus and the wilds, and am off -with a knapsack and a pot and a blanket, and a free mind--yes, and, I -confess, a few yards of mosquito netting. I’ve left a notice, “Not at -home,” at my Soho flat, though I don’t spend much time there, anyhow; -“Back in half an hour or so,” and there are already four thousand miles -between my arm-chair and me. - -And as I hasten to the West the link stretches, stretches. Not that my -flat could ever be lasting home. Where the lady of your heart is, there -is home! And where is she not? The worst thing man ever did to man was -to nail him down. So hail to all things and men which move and keep -moving. - - * * * * * - -I AM called by one of the most wonderful men who ever broke silence -with a song. He belongs to the same sub-species. Yes, a tramping -species. His hat has got a hole in it, and so have his breeches. But he -is a poet, and he sings of what the world will be when the years have -passed away. He can charm a supper out of a farmer with a song. And I -who have tramped without music know what a miracle that is. They always -said to me, “Chop this wood,” or “Turn that hay,” or “If a man do not -work, then neither shall he eat.” - -_Grande erreur_, Mr. Farmer! - -“Well, _I_ can’t take to the road,” says Mrs. Farmer. “Look at -me!--it’s wuk, wuk, wuk, all day!” Mrs. Farmer was born on a Saturday. -I always feel sorry for Saturday’s children. They were born a day -before I was. For I was born on a Sunday. How sadly we used to -intone it when we were children--“Saturday’s child works _hard_ for -his living!” And then the relief, “But the child who is born on the -good Sunday, is happy and loving and blithe and gay.” That is the -tramp-baby, born on the day of rest. - - * * * * * - -I AM sitting at this moment in the St. Louis train heading for -Missouri. The little negro marionette with set smile and the borrowed -voice of a ventriloquist has offered coffee, ice-cream, oranges, -without response, and now the car-conductor has just put into my hand -a tract. It is entitled “Millions Now Living Will Never Die,” and costs -25 cents. - -“The emphatic announcement that millions now living on earth will never -die must seem presumptuous to many people; but when the evidence is -carefully considered I believe that almost every fair mind will concede -that the conclusion is a reasonable one.” So the book begins. And you -who are spiritually a citizen of Missouri will doubtless require, like -doubting Thomas of old, to be shown the very truth in substance and -reality. - -But the car-conductor has made a mistake. I have not read this book, -but I believe. Though I have not seen, I believe and am blessed. -And though in the Missouri train, I am not going to Missouri. I am -stepping off at Flora, Illinois, to catch the Beardstown local train to -Springfield, which unlike St. Louis and Jerusalem and Capernaum, and -perhaps more like Tyre and Sidon, is a city of faith where they have -bread from heaven to eat. - -Not that I am staying in Springfield. But there I pick up the poet. -That is where he haunts--“where Lincoln dreamed in Illinois.” The -poet thinks that the world could be regenerated from a centre in -Illinois--this beautiful state upon which Chicago has thought fit to -rear its awful form. - -Some one of Illinois, not the poet, wrote to me, “What do you think -of Springfield as a centre of world thought?” Now I know the craze -of “Boost your home town” can be, and often is, carried to excess, -and little Springfield is not even on a main line from New York. But -neither is Bethlehem nor the human heart. If you want to regenerate -your wicked world you can begin here and now--or, to use the language -of the country, put your hand to your bosom and say it--“_You can begin -right here._” And then, to quote the poet himself, you will have-- - - Crossed the Appalachians, - And turned to blazing warrior souls - Of the lazy forest. - -Springfield will not hold us. But we shall take Springfield with us. We -are going to take it in our hearts and place it on the top of the Rocky -Mountains, at the Triple Divide, where the waters of the new world -flow north and east and west-- - -[Illustration] - - _Going tramping again, - Going to the mountains, - To recapture the stars, - To meet again the nymphs of the fountains. - To visit the bear, - To salute the eagles, - To be kissed all night by wild-flowers in the grass!_ - - - - -[Illustration: TO HEART’S DESIRE] - - - - -II. FINDING THE POET - - -FLORA, Illinois, where one changes for Springfield, has a Main Street, -and, like many a little town of the Middle West of America, looks -rather self-consciously askance at visitors, like the village that -voted the earth was flat in Kipling’s tale. For the novel of the hour -is called _Main Street_ and is sold to hundreds of thousands of people -and read by every American who reads anything, and is bitterly or -jocularly discussed at every tea-table. It sheds a bright light on -the life of a typical little town in the Middle West. It names the -town Gopher Prairie--because the Middle West is prairie land and the -gopher-rats or marmots live there in myriads in their little burrows. -The novelist seems to suggest that the people themselves are a species -of gopher, a little people, limited of view, good-natured, of the earth -earthy, but always bobbing-up. Because of the criticism implied in this -novel the Middle West would rather now be called the “Central West.” - -These Main Streets, however, except for the sophisticated eyes of a -college girl inauspiciously married, are probably not so bad as the -realist paints them. They are dull, but genuine. They exhibit our -modern civilisation without too many shams. See the people working -in the heat. The minds of the young are set on their dull jobs and -not thinking of drink or sex--it is sufficiently wonderful. There -are “Main Street” towns in every country in Europe, and life is dull -in them though adorned by fights and drinks and “hussies”--but where -will you find such an unexhausted _élan_ and zest for the unornamented -reality that America affords? Where else moreover will you find the -working-men to-day working in silk shirts? Life in Main Street seems -worth while, at least to those who live there. - -It’s a by-line from Flora to Springfield, and you plough iron slowly -through Illinois corn. An old mechanical car-conductor with grey straw -hat and fat stubby face calls the stations one by one in an outlandish -accent which to a stranger is entirely baffling. He collects the -tickets, and if you are for Springfield he puts a red check in your -hat-band; if you are for anywhere else it is a white check. Springfield -is now in the mind’s eye as a large place and is printed everywhere in -big type. The Springfield _Register_ and the Springfield _Journal_ make -showing. - - * * * * * - -I READ the newspapers and then tick off the names of the stations on -the printed time-table of the B. and O. folder and patiently await -the city and its bard. A four-hour journey in a slow train in England -would seem intolerable, but America has a different sense of time and -space, and a long time is not thought so long. At last, in the late -dusk, behold Springfield, Illinois, and the unmistakable marble of the -poet’s face under a small black felt--“waitin’ for me, prayin’ for me,” -and certainly not really believing in the act of faith which can bring -the mountain to Mahomet. In the literary world when invitations are -rife there is a golden rule--_Promise everything and do just what you -like._ So one never really knows whether “Yes, I’ll come,” means yea, -yea or nay, nay. - -It meant yea, yea this time, and so, getting out of the Beardstown -local which pulled up outside the station, behold--two strong men -stand face to face and they come from the ends of the earth. Vachel -Lindsay rasped out sentences of welcome in broad Illinois and I replied -in whispering English, and we bundled along Fifth Street for home. -Then mother, of seventy years, tiptoed and curtsied and smiled with -the roguishness of a young maid, and brought us in. So we sit now on -rocking-chairs and talk while beads of moisture roll ticklingly adown -our brows, and it is home. - -Vachel is a poetical vagabond. I also am a vagabond. There lies our -common ground. He is an old-fashioned hiker of the tramping parson -type. He leaves home, as it were to post a letter, and does a thousand -or so miles. He made a rule once to travel without money, and he -recited his poems to the farmers and their wives for food and a night’s -lodging. Like Weston, who tramped with ice-blocks under his hat and -water streaming down his neck, he can do his twenty miles a day over a -long time and has travelled some huge distances in his day. I for my -part hardly believe in tramping for tramping’s sake, but in living with -Nature for what that is worth. - -To sleep under the stars, to live with the river that sings as it -flows, to sit by the embers of morning or evening fire and just dream -away time and earnestness, to gather sticks to keep the old pot -a-boiling, to laze into the company of strangers and slip out of their -company in time, to make friends with bird and beast, and watch insects -and grubs--to relax and to be; that’s my idea of tramping. The blessed -nights full of dew or rain and breeze, the full length of a ferny bed -that Mother Earth provides--don’t they attract, don’t they pull one -away from the town! And then the day, with celestial, unadvertised, -unpaid-for sunshine or shade, on the rocks, on the tufty hills, beside -tiny springs or stream on the stairs of the mountains! - - * * * * * - -I HAD an idea I was finding my poet at Springfield--well, I know -I shall not find him now till we get to the wilderness. He is yet -incarcerated in the home town. He reflects in his soul the grey walls -and squat architecture of the city; his nerves are still tied to the -leading strings of audiences and friends; his soul, like a rare singing -bird lately caught by the curious, flings itself against the bars and -pines for the wilderness. All is going to go well with him and us, I -surmise, and his eyes will have mountains and stars in them, and his -nerves get free of strings and sink into their natural beds for a rest, -and his soul, that rarely plumaged, wingéd wanderer ’twixt heaven and -earth--well, some one has come to open the cage door and let him fly -away, to heart’s desire. - -The world will have to send a fowler after him with a net, if it wants -to get him back. And to find him--it will be “a long ways.” - -[Illustration] - - _The poet was in Fifth Street - Mewed up as in a prison. - He was moping in his bedchamber - All the day long - Far from the mountains and the flowers, - But see, a visitor has arrived - From strange parts._ - - - - -[Illustration] - - - - -III. TAKING THE ROAD - - -WE packed our knapsacks at Springfield, and stowed away blankets and -socks, a coffee-pot, and a frying-pan. We bought at a ten-cent store -knife and fork and spoon, skillet, towels which we sewed into sacks, -mugs, and what was labelled “The Mystic Mit--the greatest discovery -since soap for cleaning pots and pans.” Lindsay had hobnails put -in his old boots and bought a handsome pair of corduroy breeches, -which, together with his old black hat, made him look like a tramping -violinist. Springfield bade us farewell. We were one night in the -train to Chicago and travelled all day north to St. Paul. We were then -two nights and a day crossing the great land ocean of Minnesota, North -Dakota, and eastern Montana--what was once an unending stage-coach -trail to the West. - -“This is what I like,” said Lindsay--“the prairie to the horizon, -no fences, no stone walls, as in New England. It is all broad and -unlimited; that is why since the days of Andrew Jackson all the great -politicians have come from the West--the unfenced West. I’d like to put -all the Boston and New York people out here on the plains and let the -plain men run the East.” - -To me, however, it looked a land of endless toil as I saw it from train -windows, and I thought of the toiling pioneers and the Russians in -the Dakotas, the Swedes and the Germans content to live and toil and -be swallowed up at last by the distances and the primitive. European -life-rivers have flowed into these deserts and made them what they are. -One day their children perhaps will have a Western consciousness, an -American consciousness. - - * * * * * - -WE stepped off the train at Glacier Park Station. Some dozen women in -khaki riding breeches were waiting on the platform, and six or seven -people got out from the tourist and Pullman cars to cross to the great -log-built hotel opposite. Then the train started again and toiled -onwards to the heights of the divide, whence, as Kipling put it: - - They ride the iron stallions down to drink; - To the canyons and the waters of the West. - -We spent a night at the hotel and were much amused by the idea of a -room with a bath in such a place, and by the notice that you could have -your linen laundered in twenty-four hours. There was dancing in the -evening in an immense hall lit by red Chinese lanterns and adorned by -bear-skins and Alaskan ornaments--a fair company of people, too, though -mostly from the West. - -We, however, were eager for the road, and set out next morning with -blankets and provisions and steered a north-westerly or west by -north-westerly course by our compasses, abjuring trails and guides. Our -idea was to obtain a cross-section view of the Rockies in their most -primitive state unguided by convention. We hoped to realise something -of what America was like for at least a hundred years after Columbus -discovered it. We were headed for the virgin land. - -How quickly did we leave that hotel with its “stopping over” crowd -behind! In an hour we were in the deep silence of the mountains -encompassed on each side by exuberant pink larkspurs and blanket -flowers and red paint-brush. We clambered upward, ever upward, through -fresh, young, chattering aspens and then green tangled pinewood--and -then also through old dead forests lying in black confusion, uprooted, -snapped, stricken, in heaps like the woods of the Somme Valley. Then -we walked through new dead forests, burned only last year, and then -through brown scorched forests that did not burn, but died merely of -the great heat which their neighbours’ burning had caused. - -We stepped from log to log and tree to tree, making for the open -and the light, with the gaiety of troubadours, and Lindsay seemed -romantically happy. I also was happy, and thought of the happy days -before the war, when I tramped in this fashion back and forth across -the Caucasus Mountains and along hundreds of miles of Black Sea shore. -It was pure joy to light the first fire and fry our bacon and make our -coffee in the full effulgence of the sun. - - * * * * * - -GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, which we passed through first, is a preserve. -It is God’s holy mountain on which no man may shoot. By the laws you -are not allowed even to frighten a bird. You may not carry firearms -into the region. We were therefore not very agreeably surprised to hear -in the thickets the whiz-ping of a gun which some Indians were using. -Lindsay nearly got a shot in the head as he got up from luncheon. The -fact is, Glacier adjoins the Blackfeet Indian reservation, and the -Indians are all hunters by instinct and preference. It is difficult -to restrain them. They are a gay, independent, and wild lot. We saw a -number of these men with an array of plumes round their heads, steel -padlocks in their ears for ear-rings, cow-bells on their sleeves, -and chequer-work embroidery on their gay vests and cloaks. They had -with them their squaws, fat and handsome women, all swollen out and -weather-beaten like fishwives, with high cheek-bones and red-ochre -faces. They danced together and skirled in wild Asiatic strains while -four intent ruffians in ordinary attire beat upon one small drum with -sticks. I seemed to recognise in them some sort of acquaintance to my -old friends, the nomads of Central Asia, the Kirghiz--the same sort of -faces and the same way of being musical. I have had a similar musical -entertainment during weeks and months tramping in Turkestan and Seven -Rivers Land. Both Kirghiz and Indians are dying out and both are red. I -was struck by the feminine expression of the faces of the Indians and -the absence of hair on their lips and chins--as if their males were not -male. - -However, we soon left the Blackfeet behind, and came out of their -forests, and in late afternoon stood high above the lovely length of -water which we identified as Medicine Lake. - -[Illustration] - - _The Indians are dancing as we enter their paradise, - Our hearts are dancing too. - We love the Indians because they never bent their backs - To slavery, - To civilisation, - To office-desks. - What matter if they are dying out, - They have at least lived once._ - - - - -[Illustration: - - I WENT TO A HOUSE - AND I KNOCKED AT THE DOOR - BUT THE OLD LADY SAID - I HAVE SEEN YOU BEFORE] - - - - -IV. FIRST NIGHTS OUT - - -WE spent our first night in a burned forest beside a sunken pink and -grey rock. There was a green carpet of unblossoming flowers as green -and romantic as ideal spring, and beside it in contrast the stark -blackness of the charred trees all up and down the hill. Hidden from -view but twenty yards away was a foaming rivulet with pools. - -We bathed and we cooked and we talked and we slept. A great mountain -like God Almighty in the midst of His creation was visible to us -through the trees. We made our beds soft by pulling the dead red -foliage from scorched trees and heaping it under our blankets beside -the pink rocks. Lindsay made hot a large stone in the embers of our -fire to keep him warm. So we lay down and waited for the night. I -looked through black masts and great entanglements to the hills. -Lindsay faced a scorched section of the forest all hanging in brown -tresses. We listened to the stream below, its music becoming every -moment more insistent. We knew that it would lull us all night long. - -The mountain cloud then began to come down and roll over the tree-tops, -giving them ghostly semblance. That passed, and the stars and the moon -appeared and stillness ruled. An hour before dawn we were awakened by -the sudden patter of a shower of rain and it was followed by the birth -of a wind which came roaring along a ravine and started all the air -moving everywhere and all the dead forest creaked and whined. It was -our signal to arise. - - * * * * * - -LINDSAY rose like a young lion roaring, rrrah!... and making the -mountains echo with his roar. “Let us go up higher,” says he. I read -him this. “Put it, ‘Lindsay arose groaning and grunting like a pig -under a gate--and let people choose,’” said the poet. - -He was in great spirits. “I have never been so free. I start afresh. -All is behind me. We’ll tramp to the coast. We’ll tramp to Alaska. -We’ll do all the national parks, the same way,” were his impulsive -speeches. - -As we climbed aloft, following the North-west by our wrist-compasses, -and careless of time and space, he sang a disreputable song belonging -no doubt to that disreputable past of his when he hiked and begged and -recited his poems to farmers-- - - Why don’t you go to work - Like other men do? - How can we work when there’s no work to do? - Hallelujah, on the bum! - Hallelujah, bum again! - Hallelujah! Give us a hand-out - To revive us again! - -“You do look a real honest-to-God tramp this morning,” said I in the -language of the country, “with your corduroys burst out at the knees, -old red handkerchief round your neck, and devil-may-care look in your -eyes.” - -We reached the top of a mountain where there was a perfect “cyclorama,” -as he called it, and he balanced on his toes, and half closed his eyes -in his half upturned face, and turned round and about like a teetotum. -Last time I had seen him do this was on the carpet of a London -drawing-room in Queen Anne’s Gate to the strains of “_Let Samson be -a-coming in to your mind_.” - -This mountain was our first _ne plus ultra_, for having got to the top -of it there was only one thing to do, and that was to go down again. -Lindsay tested the echoes from it with “_Rah for Bryan!_” apparently -his favourite war-cry, and then as if in response a slim Indian youth -on horseback appeared and seemed much amused by us. He was very red -and swarthy, with bright teeth, and rode his horse as if he and it -made one. He told us he knew all the mountains and had been to the top -of every one except Rising Wolf, which had never been climbed by any -one. “It is called ‘Wolf gets up’ in our language,” he explained, and -pointed to its snarling and menacing mass upstarting through clouds. “A -storm comes from the mountain,” said he in warning, and passed on. He -passed and we remained, and we saw no other human being the whole day. - -“Just think of the children these flowers would amuse,” said Lindsay. -“Millions of flowers--and the only human being we see is an Indian. I’d -like to write a song on it.” - - * * * * * - -BUT the poetic mood passed. Thunderclouds rose in spectral peaks behind -the mountains. Mount Helen grew dark and dreadful, and four phantasmal -Mount Helens appeared behind her, the first of white mist, the second -of lead, the third of streaming cloud, the fourth of shadow. Rising -Wolf entered heaven; a howling, gathering, tumultuous wind roared over -all the pines of the valleys and lightning like the glint of an eye -traversed the ravine. Clouds swept forward to embrace us and indeed -overtook us and soaked us while we sat together on a downward slide and -sheltered under a blanket. - -The storm passed, but we got drenched to our necks as we walked through -dense undergrowth downward to a strikingly prominent clump of gigantic -pines which from aloft we had chosen as harbourage for the night. These -lifted their fine forms from immemorial heaps of old pine mould, soft -and brown and porous. There was a stream near them and we lit a great -fire by the water’s edge and hung out a line to dry blankets, coats, -pants, socks, and all we possessed. - -The heat flew up in armfuls of smoke, in showers of sparks, up to our -sagging shirts and heavy blankets. Sparks in hundreds lighted on them, -and went out or burned small holes. We walked about like savages the -while, wresting dead wood to build ever higher the fire. I pulled down -a branch with a tree-wasp’s nest upon it, and brought a cloud of wasps -after our bodies, and I paid the penalty in a sting. Thus, however, we -dried everything, and we were able at last to make a dry bed in a wet -place. But rain came on again at night, and in the intense darkness -under the giant pines we lay and heard it, and slept, and then waked to -hear it again. - -[Illustration] - - _If it rains in the town and if you get caught in the rain - And soaked to the bone--ah what a calamity! - You must have a hot bath, and take some hot toddy; - You must swallow an aspirin and sleep under blankets, - Whilst your clothes on two chairs by the fire will be drying; - You must put on dry clothes in the morning. - It’s different in the mountains, - You can sleep wet and wake wet, - And dry when the weather gets drier, - That’s more fun: try it._ - - - - -[Illustration: SERAPHICAL SUNRISE] - - - - -V. GOING UP TO THE SNOW - - -IT cleared up before dawn, but it rained for three hours after dawn. -Vachel got up in the night and relit the fire and made himself a hot -rock. Coming back into our dark and gloomy thicket, he mistook my form -for a bear, and his heart jumped. We lived in expectation of meeting -bears. “There’ll just be one heading in the _Illinois Register_,” says -Vachel--“ATE BY BEARS.” We placed our bacon twenty yards away from -where we slept, and hoped tacitly that they would take the bacon and -spare us. - -Our knapsacks weighed double next morning because of the wet in our -things. We got wetter still as we ploughed out through flower fields -of a drowned paradise. But an hour before noon the sun broke free and -started a miraculous drying of Nature and of ourselves. We seemed to -cook in the steam of our own clothes. On the hillside, at last, we -decided to rest and we spread out everything to dry, dispensing with -most of our clothes, and we lay in the sun in the hot damp of the -flowers and let Old Sol stream into us. - -Early in the afternoon most of our clothes were dry and, following -the compass, we climbed up and up to a great height through primeval -forest. The trees were so close that often we could not squeeze -between them with our packs. We hustled and bustled and impolitely -pushed through branches and umbrage and crossed tiny glades filled -with ineffably lovely basket grass, holding aloft their cream crowns -of blossom. It seemed to us a great struggle, and Lindsay and I held -different opinions as to what we should find when we got to the end -of the wood, and both of us were wrong. He thought it would be “the -divide.” I thought it might be another _ne plus ultra_ and a sheer -descent. - -But instead it was a sort of end of the world. Our primeval forest came -sharply to an end on a deep, green, wind-bitten line where the branches -of the trees were gnarled and twisted and beaten downward. Beyond that -was a boulder-strewn upper-mountain region and a wall of rock. We asked -no questions as to the morrow, but camped beside a huge stone. It was -twelve feet high, but one could creep under it and be safe from the -rain. And a few feet away was our first snow-bank. We built a big fire -and made tea of melted snow, and Lindsay made ice-cream of sugar and -condensed milk and snow which we voted very good, and we made eight or -nine hot rocks for our bed. - - * * * * * - -BECAUSE of the mountain-wall above us sunset took place at about four -in the afternoon here. But a beautiful evening endured long in the east -below us. We were so exalted that we looked a hundred miles over the -plains and saw, as it were, the whole world picked out in shadow and -sunshine below. Sunset slowly advanced over it all, and with reflected -rays from an unseen west the day passed serenely away. - -Lindsay, being the colder man, slept under the great boulder, and I -smoothed out a recess at the side. I lay beside scores of daintily -hooded yellow columbines and looked out to the occasional licked-sweet -redness of an Indian paint brush. A chipmunk rudely squeaked at us, -and as a last visitor a humming bird boomed over our heads like a -night-awakened beetle. - -We slept serenely. At two I awoke to see a fleeting half moon, all -silver, tripping homeward over the high wall of the mountain with -attendant stars behind. But away in the east there was a faint rose -light over a bank of darkness. The darkness slowly took sharp contour, -and the light that comes before the light of day picked out ten or -twelve lakes and tarns which we had not noticed until then. The -darkness below the rose quivered with lightning; the zenith clearness -grew clearer and clearer, and then, with uplifting hands of glory and -light, came seraphical sunrise. - -Our bonfire, which had burned red all night, now burned a pallid yellow -in the new light, and we brought out our blankets into the open and lay -down and slept again in the increasing light and warmth of the new day. -Then breakfast at seven and God’s in his heaven. And we washed in the -snow, and scores of curlews screamed from rock to rock above us on the -road that we should take. - -“How new it all is!” said the poet. “It is as if no one ever slept here -before and wakened to see what we see or to do the things we do.” - -Wrapped in our thoughts we put our packs on our shoulders and -meditatively turned our steps to the downward-dropping corner of the -mountain-wall which obscured the adventures of the new day. - -[Illustration] - - We cut off the top of the snow with a sharp piece of slate, - And took the purer under-snow to make our coffee, - To make ice-cream: - _Fastidious creatures!_ - And then we stood in the snow-hole - And washed with warm water, - And rubbed ourselves all over with handfuls of sloppy snow-- - _Disgusting old tramps!_ - The discreet birds watched us, - The chipmunks squeaked at us, - You didn’t see us. - - - - -[Illustration: THE DOWNWARD WAY] - - - - -VI. DIFFERENT WAYS OF GOING DOWNWARD - - -FOR several days now we did not meet a human being or see evidence of -the existence of one; nor, though continually imagining that we had -found a bit of a trail, did we find either a footstep or a hoof-mark. -“I’ve never been before in a place where you did not see tin cans,” -said Lindsay. “Why, some of the popular canyons of the West are -literally filled with cans. It is not only tourist parties that leave -them, but the cowboys live on canned goods and fill the valley with -their cans.” Another relief is the absence of advertisements, of all -the signs of modern civilisation. You are given without reserve to -America as she was. - -“I don’t believe in class war,” says Lindsay, as we turn the corner of -the mountain-wall. “I believe in the war of the mountain and the desert -with the town. Only the deserts and mountains of America can break the -business-hardened skulls of the East.” - -He wants me to seek with him the source of the American spirit in the -mountains of the West. However, reality confronts us and not a dream. -We see beyond the wall of the mountain, terrace after terrace and -cascade upon cascade, gleaming upward on a sort of endless stairway. To -the first waterfall we count eight bays of loose stone and shale. We -step from rock to rock, and as my legs are longer this hinders Lindsay -more than it does me. He is all for diagonalising downward, or even -going straight down, and finding an imaginary easier course skirting -the edge of the forest. We, however, try to keep our level, but whether -we wish it or no we slide downward at each uncertain step. - -At last we come to a bay of tiny, trickling silt, so steep and smooth -that a glass marble might roll from the top of the mountain to the -bottom. Decent progress along this is impossible, so we decide to -toboggan to the bottom, and seat ourselves on broad, flat stones, -and guiding ourselves with our hands go off at a rare pace for that -imaginary better way at the skirting of the mid-mountain forest. The -device reminds Lindsay of an Indian Government agent who had the task -of supplying the Indians with all they needed on their reservation. - -There came, consigned to him, some very large skillets or frying-pans, -which the Indians repeatedly refused to take away, having no use for -them. At last one day the chief came in and gladly took away the lot. -The agent, curious to know what they were going to do with them, went -out to see. He found half the tribe on the hillside and a very gay game -in progress--Indians sitting in the frying-pans and tobogganing on the -loose shale. - -We slid to the bottom like the Indians, but we found no better way -down there. The skirting of the mid-mountain forest ran unevenly, now -up three hundred feet, now down again, and it was too arduous a way -for us. “Let us go down through the forest and seek a trail,” said my -companion. Once more we entered the primeval crowd of vegetation, and -like police hurrying to some scene of accident, pushed our way through. -In half an hour we made good progress downward and came to a sheer -cliff over the rivulet of the valley. The cliff was feathered with -pines, and we let ourselves down with our hands from the tops of trees, -from branches, from stem to stem and trunk to trunk, to the verdant -pit of the stream. We clambered downward like two curious Mowglis, but -with large humps on our backs, and the humps were our packs. And how -these packs of ours pulled us about! We seldom touched earth with our -feet and therefore constantly slewed around and dangled with our packs -entangled in thick growth. - -There was little to console the poet when the water was reached, unless -it was the mess of tea we made on a fire on a dank, red rock standing -out of the stream. But he was all for fording the water and for trying -to find a better way on the other side. This we did, and we climbed up -again and then we climbed down. And we found no better way. For no one -had been there before us to make it for us. - -But we found beautiful quarters at last among the snows and the -waterfalls below the pass, and we slept under innumerable stars, lulled -by the choruses of many waters. We made breakfast at dawn and talked -till it was warm. Vachel told me of his past--how he had struggled -always against the downward way. People had said to him, “You must -make money. You must enter a profession.” When as an art student he -had gained some power with the pencil, they had said, “You must enter -commercial art”; when as poet he had been recognised, they had said, -“You must let us organise and commercialise your gift, turn it into -money for you.” “They wanted to Barnumise me,” said my companion, “and -take me all over America as a reciting freak. When I refused, they -said, ‘You’ll end in the poor-house,’ and I replied, ‘I don’t care: -show me the poor-house--let me go to it.’” He had taken to the road -to regain his self-respect. He had gone without any money, and in the -hospitality and kindness of the farmers he had won a personal faith in -the common man and a reliance which was not merely on success. When he -harvested in Kansas for two dollars fifty a day, that daily wage was -like millions to him. And now with me, when all the world was telling -him he must do thus and so, he was finding in the wilderness of the -Rockies a new means of escape. - -“To-morrow,” said he, “we will climb right away to the top and find the -pass into new country.” - -[Illustration] - - _Who said it was easier to go down, - Facilis decensus and the rest? - I’ll say it is more painful - Than to go up. - You think it was great fun a-sliding down the shale - On large flat rocks. - But it leaves me cold, - As the saying is, - For the seat of my pants is much thinner._ - - - - -[Illustration: THEY OUTSTAYED US AND WILL OUTSTAY US] - - - - -VII. SILENCED BY THE MOUNTAINS - - -MY companion’s secret thought is that he is a Virginian. But how, since -he was born in Illinois and his parents in Kentucky? “I am a follower -of Poe and Jefferson,” he answers. Kentucky was largely colonised from -Virginia, and the poet is ready to claim allegiance to the chivalric, -leisurely and flamboyant genius of the South. “If only as a protest -against the drab, square-toed, dull, unimaginative America which is -gaining on us all,” he adds. He has a passion for ideal democracy, -and his great hero of the hour as we stride over the rocks is John -Randolph, of Roanoke, who could enter Congress with four hounds and -a dog-whip and make speeches to which all must listen. “America,” -Lindsay insists, “simply _needs_ the flamboyant to save her soul.” I -suppose, because of that faith, he also, Vachel Lindsay, the poet, is a -flamboyant genius. - -The higher we rose in the mountains the more serious became our -conversation. We were silent only when we lost our breath. Upon -occasion, in this grand and lonely scene, the poet would lift his voice -so high that it could have been heard on the mountain on the other side -of the valley. His enthusiasm naturally lifted his resonant voice. His -political hero is John Randolph or Andrew Jackson, his literary hero -is Ruskin, his artist in marble is Saint-Gaudens, his pet hobby is -Egyptian hieroglyphics, his passion is the road, and his ideal is St. -Francis. Tell it to the mountains and the streams; tell it out! They -hear and so do I. - - * * * * * - -WHERE we stand is where never man has stood before, or foot of man has -trod, and the fresh and virginal flowers on every hand look up at us -with mute surprise. We carry our argument higher and higher. We sit -and boil our pot beside a bank of purple heather, exalted upon the bare -scarp of a sun-drowned mountain, and crackling of roots in the fire -blends with strident Middle-West American. We pull up to the black door -of a great rock, and the splashing of a cascade splashes through his -vibrant tones. - -At last, however, the mountains silenced us. They outstayed us, and -will outstay us. They ate up our provisions, and swallowed our breath, -and beguiled us deceptively to climb higher. “Upward and onward!” was -invisibly written on every crag. And we always expected to get to -the top in an hour. We finished the coffee, we finished the milk, we -finished the bread, we finished the sugar. We got down to a rasher of -bacon a day and tea without sugar and milk. Then even the much-loathed -bacon got finished, and the problem was to find a “camp” and get more -supplies. So we set ourselves seriously to the task of finding a pass -over the range. - -The poet became much exhausted, and the high altitude evidently -affected him more than it did me. We walked quarter-hours and rested -quarter-hours, and every time we rested we fell fast asleep. I led up -the steep inclines, and we stopped every twenty paces and listened to -our breath, I to his breath, he to mine--_ao, ao, ao_--almost a sob, -and waited for the _ahoo_ sound, which meant that the lungs had filled -again. After some arduous hours in this wise, we came on our first -destitute afternoon, to our first topmost ridge. A cold hurricane -seemed to try to stop our final conquest of it, and it went through our -bodies like swords. But when we exultantly bore through it we came to a -sheer precipice going down to a narrow corridor which led always to the -northward. - - * * * * * - -VACHEL punctuates most of his remarks with a wild native yell--“Whoopee -Whuh!” but he was down to a whisper now, and could no longer move the -mountains with a “Hurrah for Bryan.” Silently and rather mournfully we -diagonalised downward to a far blue lake which was the ultimate end -of the valley, and the source of the stream we had followed for days. -Devastating winds blew across us, and we watched how they descended -upon the surface of that lake and tore it off in sprays and circles of -water and steam. We found what seemed to be a horse trail over the -shingle, but it led to an extensive field of snow, and we recognised -only the footsteps of a bear. The lake was not blue, but green when we -got near to it, and was banked on three sides by snow. - -Said Vachel: “Here, Stephen, is the place to catch a fish.” - -I said: “No, Vachel, this is just a snow-melt; there never were any -fish here.” - -“Nevertheless try!” said the poet. - -Now we had purchased fishing tackle, though we had no rods. And Vachel -had a large red wooden grasshopper, and I had a large green one. - -Vachel said: “You must throw your grasshopper in, and I’ll go light a -fire so as to be ready to cook the fish.” - -So I fastened my fat green wooden gentleman to the gut, and the gut to -the line, and attaching a stone, flung him in the air. Behold, he flew -like a grasshopper and disported with the winds. But when he settled at -last on the surface of that green and snowy lake, he always made a most -rapid progress toward the shore. I sailed him like a boat. No fish -came, and even our faith remained unrewarded. - -Was not this adventure prophetically put in verses in _Alice_, where -some one sent a message to the fish, telling them, this is what I -wish. And the little fishes’ answer was--“We cannot do it, sir, -because,”--the little fishes, as was disclosed later, were in bed. - -We sat down together in a place like the heath in Macbeth, and the -weird sisters were ready to appear, had we been evil. The sun had -set, winds were blowing from four directions at the same time, and -it was bitterly cold. A tiny fire of roots peeped at us and smoked -and chattered, and we tried hard to get warm at it. We looked at the -mountain-walls, we looked at our maps and compasses. We thought of the -night and of our empty wallets and insides. “Just think of Broadway at -this minute,” said Vachel. “Still sweltering in heat, not yet lighted -up for evening pleasure.” We felt far from civilisation, and sighed -at last for what we despised. “Or think of Piccadilly and Shaftesbury -Avenue,” said I, “all a-swarm with the light-hearted summer crowd of -London.” - -“Well, we can’t sleep here,” said I at length. - -“Let us make one last attempt to get over to the other side.” - -Vachel seemed surprised, but agreed with alacrity: “I’m for it,” said -he. - -[Illustration] - - _The greedy old mountains have been to our knapsacks - And eaten up most of our food. - They’ve swallowed our breath and silenced our speech. - But they haven’t broken our hearts. - It takes more than a mountain to do that!_ - - - - -[Illustration: IMPRISONED IN THE VIEWLESS WINDS] - - - - -VIII. NIGHT AND NOTHING ON THE MOUNTAINS - - -MY companion has a curious old-man-of-the-woods appearance. It is not -his loose red handkerchief round his neck so much as his hanging, -dead-branch-like arms. His face sleeps even when he is awake. He walks -when he is tired in a patient, dog-like way, treading in my very steps. -No ribald songs, now, of tramping days--but as if hushed by the hills -he croons ever to himself-- - - O Beulah land, sweet Beulah land, - Lo, on thy topmost mount I stand, - -and in a sort of hymnal marching step, like way-worn pilgrims, we take -the trackless way upward once again. And it is late twilight. Sombre -hope and patience dwell in our hearts as we trudge, trudge upward. - -By slow stages we reach a new possible pass, and every time we stop and -turn round and sit down to rest we face the lake. On three sides the -descent to the water is precipitous, and an overhanging snow-crust goes -round. In the late light the surface of the lake is a still, viscous -green and the mountain above it a calm blood-red. The snow patches -on the mountain are of fantastic shape and give an idea of futurist -designs. We stare at the patches and see in one of them a ferocious -white tiger, stalking forward with a demented white cat on its back. -In another we see an Egyptian figure, slender, with veiled features of -awful and eternal significance. These grow in the dusk. The winds chase -over us, and when they pass there are moments of windlessness, and we -watch hurrying grey rags of clouds running over the brow of the ridge -above us and losing themselves in thin air. - -It is a romantic climb. We support each other up the steep, sitting -down every twenty paces in breathlessness. Vachel sits with his head on -my shoulder and I with my head on his. In a minute or so we recover and -sit up straight, in the half darkness, and pick up flat stones and try -to make them skid over the snow patches. For a moment I was taken back -to the romantic vein of “Parsifal” as I saw it in Vienna, last May, and -we were Wagnerian pilgrims, toiling upwards in the ecstacy of mystical -opera. Somewhere below us, in the lake, all the violins should sob and -croon together and aspire, yes, aspire and throb, and the drums should -start the gods to look at us. But we treated the matter in light vein. -“The Bacon-eaters,” said Vachel _sotto voce_. “Seventh reel.” - - * * * * * - -A MIGHTY final effort brought us to the top. I shall not soon forget -the dramatic sensation of seeing the new sky which suddenly began to -lift itself into our view from out the other side of the mountain, -a sky with more light, for it lay in the West. It was as if the -prison-wall of the mountain had been thrown down and that which -prisoners dream about and rave about had been given us. - -And there was a way down. It was night and nothing, but we found a -narrow gully on the other side, five or six feet broad, two or three -thousand feet down, and an appalling steepness. This gully was all -loose stones and boulders which the slightest touch sent clattering or -thundering to the bottom. We were nerved to the descent by what we had -gone through and by our joy at finding a way out. - -I took the lead, clutched the rock wall for support, and began to -slip downward, tentatively and cautiously. But directly I started, -a wonderful thing occurred. I found the whole body of loose stones -under my feet moved with me, and I began a progress as on a moving -staircase, down, down, down, as in Jules Verne’s _Journey to the Centre -of the Earth_--easily, steadily. Pleasure in this was, however, rudely -disturbed. Lindsay had started downward behind me and was naturally -starting a movement of rocks on his own, and suddenly a leg-breaking -boulder flew past on my track with dumfounding acceleration. I climbed, -therefore, away from the moving staircase into a cleft of the rock and -waited for the poet to draw level. - - * * * * * - -IT was dark night now, and as the rocks from Lindsay’s feet rushed -past they struck bright sparks in the gloom. How they crashed! How -they thundered and lurched and thumped, and thumped again, and thudded -into the abyss below, and how the little stones rattled after them! We -agreed to go downward in short spells, one at a time, and then go into -shelter and wait till we drew level again. And as we sat side by side -in the gloom we looked to the great mountains on the other side of the -new valley and discerned a colossal figure nine in snow, staring at us -out of the darkness. It was eerie. It needed a deal of nerve to go on. - -And we did not go much further. At one point I thought I saw two human -beings, or they might have been bears, struggling slowly upward toward -us. I shouted to them and they stopped. But they made no reply and -just glowered menacingly upward. That was the end for me. I would -go no further. I gave the halloo to Lindsay and got into shelter. -He came down the way I had come, laboriously, cautiously, like some -weather-beaten old soldier, a skulker from beyond human ken. And he -also desired to do no more that night. So we lay in a lair of a beast -on the brink of a sheer cliff, far, as it happened, above mist and -cloud and a rain that was falling below, and slumbered the night away. - -[Illustration] - - _The Guardsman and the Western Bard_[1] - _Went hiking hand in hand. - They felt uplifted much to see - The prospects wide and grand. - “A thousand leagues,” said one, “Oh Steve, - From any boardwalk band.”_ - - _“How fine the air, immense the view! - The trees are large and green. - See! Here are glades and crystal rills, - And every scent and petal fills_ - - _Our souls with pure ecstatic thrills. - Afflatus holds the scene!” - The Guardsman pointed to the sun. - “It’s supper time, I mean.”_ - - _And as they munched the cracker thin - And quaffed eau naturel, - The gates of heaven were oped--and all - Its liquid contents fell. - They felt the truth that bards have sung: - Heaven is a limpid well._ - - _Then night came on, that covers all - Of high and mean degree, - The king, the clown, the russet gown, - The land, the clouds, the sea. - “And yet I scarcely feel,” said one, - “It really covers me.”_ - - _Long time they sought sweet slumber’s balm, - Kind antidote to care. - “O soft embalmer,” was their psalm - That filled the mountain air. - Embalmer! Something rough in pine - Was as all they wanted there._ - - _A chilly dawn illumed the East, - Most wonderfully wet. - And evermore their pangs increased, - Nor heaven’s libations ever ceased ... - (No further messages released - They’re on that mountain yet)._ - -[1] Contributed by “Rusticus” to the _New York Evening Post_ at this -point in our adventures. - - - - -[Illustration: WHEN HE IS IN PAIN HE CALLETH FOR THE BOTTLE] - - - - -IX. “WIFE, GIVE ME THE PAIN-KILLER” - - -“I SUFFERED forty-seven separate chills,” said the poet. “And -forty-seven separate cramps,” said I. Did we sleep? Six hours passed -somehow and it seemed not so long as waiting that time for a train or -for a theatre to open. Lindsay lay in a sort of hole. I lay with my -head half over the abyss. I watched the stars swim out of the clouds -above. I saw the blackness of the bottomless below us become grey as -the clouds formed there. Lindsay cried out once: “I’m getting up to -light a fire.” “Impossible!” I rejoined. “There’s no wood, and no -place to light it.” - -“I am afraid the clouds are below us; we may have to stay up here all -day,” I whispered, an hour before dawn. But it was all the same to the -poet, whose thoughts were entirely in the present. - -Destiny, however, was kind to us. The clouds at last lifted and -drifted, and angels at sunrise lifted white curtains and smiled at us. - -A couple of old woe-begone weather-beaten tramps lifted themselves -up cautiously and peeped at the wilderness. Last night’s nerve had -gone. With backs bent, and sometimes on hands and knees, they picked -their way gingerly down to the far snow dump beneath, to the first -wind-missed bits of mountain forest, to the first tinkling stream, and -to the first chalice anemones and pink paint-brush flowers. We washed -and we dressed, and we slept and washed again, and put snow inside our -hats--for the morning had become rapidly hot--and we descended. The -streamlet foamed down its rocky bed, and we waded and jumped and clung -to its sides. And other streams flowed into it and made it deeper and -the current stronger, and it splashed us above the waist. We waded -knee-high through pools where shadowy fishes darted, and we sat to rest -on shiny rocks in the water and talked of desirable foods. We scanned -the map of the Geological Survey and stared at our compasses and -considered the contours of the hills, and at length were rewarded by -the sight of a real human horse trail with indisputable hoof-marks upon -it. - - * * * * * - -WE found this in the afternoon, and for three hours followed doggedly, -without meeting a soul. At last, to our great joy, we came upon a -trivial enough thing, and that was a piece of candy wrapping. “Those -who eat candy do not stray far from the place where candy was bought,” -said I sententiously. - -“Well argued, sir,” said Lindsay. “I fully agree.” - -And, indeed, before sunset the happy augury was fulfilled, and we found -a camp much used by Montana fishermen. Curiously enough, though all -other wild things are preserved in the National Park, the fishes are -allowed to be caught. In our opinion, however, after some experience, -the fishes do not stand in need of protection. - -At the camp we resumed acquaintance with the human race in the person -of the keeper and his wife, a fire-ranger, and a hired maid called -Elsie. They filled up our cans and gave us a pail of boiling water to -wash our clothes, and thread for our trousers and coats, and a week’s -rations to take us to “The Sun.” They were disappointed that we would -not buy bacon. - -“Bacon,” said the camp keeper, “is my long suit.” But Vachel vowed he -had gone over to the Mosaic point of view, and didn’t care if he never -tasted bacon again. - -Instead, we “filled up” with corn-beef hash and took into our packs -raisins and grape-nuts and butter; double quantities of bread and -sugar and milk, and nine packets of comforting lozenges. And we saw by -the Spokane _Advertiser_ of some remote date that the King and Queen -of England had been to Ascot races in person, and no one knew what -was happening in Ireland, or whether De Valera was a Protestant or a -Catholic, and the fire-ranger confessed he did not know the ins and -outs of Sinn Fein. And no, there had not been a forest fire this year -yet, though he evidently lived in hope. - - * * * * * - -SO the poet and I fortified ourselves materially and spiritually, and -set off again for the North-west. We started on our new rations and had -one of the most jovial of meals in a place where evidently people had -once camped before. We found the charred circles of old camp-fires in -the grass. - -While we were resting under the trees, and in the gleam of the -firelight, Vachel told me the story of how once, in Kansas, he “ate -down” his landlord. He had hired himself out with a gang of others -to harvest the wheat on the land of a certain German farmer. All the -week-days they “piled the golden sheaves,” and it was a red-hot July. -The men ate as much as they were able, slept in barns on the hay -when the day was done, slept like the dead, rose with the dawn, and -certainly did bring in the wheat. For this they got two dollars fifty a -day and were proud of their gains. - -On Sunday, however, work was suspended, and the gang just lazed and -dozed and ate. The German was a pious Catholic, and said a longish -grace before and after meals. As the gang were rather sheepish -regarding religion, they generally let one course pass, just to avoid -the grace, and came slouching in as the meal went on. But Vachel -started in with the first grace, right level with the farmer himself. -Whatever he had Vachel had. He had several helpings of everything on -the table, and as each of the ten harvest hands came in Vachel started -afresh with him, and as he had hash he had hash. As each man thought he -had done, he slunk out so as to avoid the second grace. The farmer kept -piously waiting for all the men to get finished, and helping himself -with them, too, just for company. - -At last all seemed to have finished and gone, and the farmer was about -to pronounce the final blessing when he had an afterthought and took -another piece of pie. So Vachel also took another piece of pie. Then -mechanically the last grace was said. “I went over to the barn and lay -down and slept,” says Vachel. “By supper time I was ready for another -meal, and I sat down again with the farmer before the rest of the gang -had arrived and grace was said. The farmer was about to help himself -when suddenly he paused, spoon in hand, and sat back in his chair, -looking ill.” - -Then, in a loud, stentorian voice he called to the kitchen: “Wife, give -me the pain-killer.” - -He had a violent fit of indigestion. Wife then brought a large bottle -labelled PAIN-KILLER, an astonishing bottle, about a foot long, that -looked as if it might be horse liniment, and the farmer took his dose -with a large iron spoon. “A terrible stuff,” says Vachel, “a stuff that -just eats the inside out of you, one part turpentine, three alcohol, -and the rest iron rust. It gives you such a heat you forget about your -indigestion.” - -So the farmer had his pain-killer, but he did not eat any supper, and -the poet and the rest of the gang as they came went gaily on and ate to -the end. “I began with each man as he came in and ate him down,” says -my hungry companion suggestively. “And the farmer, tasting nothing, had -to wait till all were through to say the final grace. We finished at -last and went all of us to the barns to sleep till Monday morning and -the hour when we returned again to the golden line.” - - _The kiss by hopeless fancy feigned - On lips that are for others, - Does not compare with the imaginary meal - You eat when the wallet is empty. - The kiss too, when you get it, - Oft proves a disillusion; - But the first meal after an involuntary fast, - Well! - It takes a real poet to describe that!_ - - - - -[Illustration] - - - - -X. CLEAR BLUE - - -AFTER telling me how he “ate down” the farmer, Vachel rested and passed -into a halcyon mood. We had a heavenly day climbing towards a heaven of -unclouded blue. Swinburne flowed more naturally from the poet’s lips -than conversation: - - Before the beginning of years - There came to the making of man - Time with a gift of tears, - Grief with a glass that ran. - -His thought soared with our steps. - - As the sea gives her shells to the shingle - The earth gives her streams to the sea, - -he declaimed to the streams. I promised to arrange a Swinburne recital -for him next time he came to England. For I soon found that he knew as -much Swinburne by heart as he did of his own poetry. Ellery Sedgwick -wrote me from Boston that to tramp with a poet would be “Some punkins,” -and one may say it was when the poet all day long was a living fountain -of verse. I had but to mention a poem and Lindsay poured it forth to -the skies. We bathed in a waterfall in the heat of noon, which was also -a Swinburnian joy, and we splashed in melting snow whilst our shoulders -were burned by the sun and inured ourselves to sun and ice. - -The sun literally blistered the skin, and we reclined in it on scarlet -shelving rocks and cooked our luncheon. All the while Vachel recited -Swinburne’s “Ode to Athens,” addressing the walls of a great mountain -cirque which drooped in snow curtains and hanging gardens of silver -water. - -Up there came to us after lunch a yellowish-grey animal with sprawling -hind legs and stupid benevolent snout and whistled at us--_fee-fo, -fee-fo_,--a whistling marmot. As I tried to approach him he snuggled -off to the snow-field whence he had come, disappeared under the crust, -and presently reappeared from a hole in the midst of the snow and began -chasing chipmunks in and out of the snow holes. - - * * * * * - -WE resumed our journey upward, and all was well. The grass was emerald, -the paint-brush was bright ruby. Swallow-tailed butterflies aeroplaned -to our feet. The valley was broad and clear without mystery or horror. -The waterfalls hung like the gardens of Babylon. An opal lake below us -changed and waxed in iridescent glory and caused whispers of rapturous -interest. And the mountain we were on was the one of the great figure -nine made of snow, which had so thrilled us and appalled us when we saw -it afar at night some days before. When we had gone to the top of it -we had reached the great divide, where the waters flow north, south, -and west toward Hudson’s Bay, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific. -At least, so the topographers assure us, and we must take their word. -Vachel says we will not wait for rain and see the rain-drops hit the -mountain-top and divide automatically into three parts. - -So we descended at dusk into a verdant valley, with low trees growing -wide apart, and waist-high flowering daisies and basket grass, and -sunflowers--all as fresh and fair as if gardened for us yesterday. -There were serried ranks of flowers. The tall mullein stalks became -so thick that they looked like a wooden fencing in the twilight. -Looking upward we saw a crimson mountain, a brown mountain, and a green -mountain. Looking downward, afar, we saw many forests, separated by -streams, sleeping before us. And we slept in a thicket and were made -music to by the nymphs of the seven waterfalls of Shadow Mountain. - - * * * * * - -VACHEL LINDSAY belongs to a sect of primitive Christians called -“Disciples of Christ.” They are followers of Alexander Campbell, and -are called “Campbellites” in America, much as members of the Catholic -and Apostolic community are called Irvingites in England. They are -akin to the Baptists, being emphatically “immersionists.” Among other -notable people who belong to this brotherhood is Mr. Lloyd George, and -it has been suggested that the British statesman be asked to address a -general convention of the Disciples if he comes to America. The chief -virtue in the sect lay doubtless in an attempted return to primitive -historical Christianity in all its simplicity. Not that the poet is -a narrow sectarian. How could a poet be? But he has drunk deep of -the primitive spirit in Christianity, and is very near to children, -negroes, Indians, and the elemental types in men and women. He loves -oratory more than reason, and impulse more than thought. Hence, no -doubt, the well of his poetry. - -We talked of the modern cult of mediævalism and the Chesterton-Belloc -group as we resumed our tramp, and we discussed G. K. Chesterton’s -visit to America. Lindsay felt that Chesterton counted for a great deal -in America. He was not merely a celebrity. He had the reputation of -a Socrates eager to converse with youth. But when he came to America -he did not really come. “He has been Barnumised as Oliver Lodge -was Barnumised,” said the poet. “It’s the worst of commercialised -lecturing. Literary lions are imported by speculative impresarios and -then put to the American people entirely from a dollar point of view. -The organisations that can pay five hundred dollars for a visit get -their Chesterton. But how about the universities and colleges and small -groups, the real intelligentsia of America--the people who have a -creative interest in what a thinker and critic has said and in what he -says? A similar mistake was made with Alfred Noyes, who was booked as -the man who made poetry pay. It created a false impression and did much -injury when there was an opportunity for great good.” Vachel Lindsay’s -idea is that two or three literary men and women should be chosen each -year as the guests of the nation, and that they should be sponsored by -the magazines and the universities. In that way they would meet the -American nation and not merely the brassy front of American business. - - * * * * * - -WITH this subject we plunged through the rank undergrowth of the -forest, following our north-westerly way, which should bring us to -St. Mary’s Lake and the steps of “Going to the Sun Mountain.” We -gathered our first potful of black currants and stewed them with sugar -for our luncheon, and we had our daily dip in the rushing waters of -Red Eagle Creek. It was a warm valley, and the west wind, surcharged -with moisture from the Pacific, had expressed itself in a great floral -exuberance, in ripe raspberries, currants, and gooseberries, and in -forests of firs, which lay against the steep mountain-sides like -feathers against a bird’s wing. - -Vachel indulged his passion for the West and all that the West means -to an American. He has memorised at some time or other the map of -the United States, and can draw it and put in all the States in a -few minutes. He drew it on a scrap of paper as we rested at sunset, -putting in the far Western States first--Washington and Oregon like -two sugar-boxes on top of one another, and then the key-shape of -Utah, whose southern line is roughly the southern line of Colorado, -Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia, and whose northern line is -the northern line of California and Nevada, and approximately of -Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. - -“California,” says he, “is a whale swimming around the desert of -Nevada; Idaho is a mountain throne and its curve is the curve of -Montana. Wyoming fits into the angle of Utah. New Mexico is under -Colorado, and its capital, Sante Fé, is the spiritual capital of -America. Texas plunges southward like a root--don’t draw it too -small. Oklahoma is a pistol pointing west. Nebraska is another -pistol pointing west. North and South Dakota are western blankets. -Louisiana is a cavalier’s boot. Illinois is like an ear of Indian -corn. Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa move westward with the slant of -the mountains and the rivers. All America, as you will see, has a -grandiose north-westerly-south-easterly direction or kink caused by the -Rocky Mountains primarily, and by the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers -secondarily. The Rocky Mountains control the continent. That is why we -are travelling north-west. It is quite natural. It is America’s way. It -is written in her rocks and by her waters. - -“As the families migrated from Virginia to Kentucky and Illinois and -Minnesota--so we go following nature’s trail out to the wilderness.” - -[Illustration] - - _North-west, north-west! - Give us north-westerly breezes. - Let us be mad north-north-west, - Rather than southerly sober and sane. - Some one once wrote on a madhouse wall, - That the madder we were the nearer to God; - The saner, the further from Man. - God give us the divine kink - North-north-west, north-north-west, - When you can’t tell a hawk from a handsaw,-- - Hamlet only became Hamlet when he learned the secret._ - - - - -[Illustration: YOU HAVE COME TO BE ALONE WITH YOUR HEART] - - - - -XI. NATIONAL WILDERNESSES - - -GLACIER in Montana, Yellowstone in Wyoming, Sequoia and Yosemite in -California, Grand Canyon in Arizona, besides Mount McKinley in Alaska -and many minor reservations and national forests--they ought truly to -be called by some name other than parks. The same also is true for -Canada, which possesses its wonderful Dominion Parks such as those of -Waterton and Lake Louise. The name “park” has evidently been given to -popularise them. Such places in Russia are called “wildernesses,” -and are resorted to for meditation. They are called literally “empty -places,” the same word that is used in the Bible for wilderness. -Tolstoy when he died was on his way to the wilderness--to the “Empty -Place of Optin.” In England, in our conventional phrase, we should be -likely to call them “retreats,” like the retreat on the Island of Iona. -But the idea is that they should provide in our life what is meant when -it is written: _The Spirit drove Him into the wilderness_; or _He went -up into the mountain to pray._ In the midst of the hurly-burly comes -the happy thought--“I will arise now and go to my wilderness, to my -retreat, to my empty place.” - -The spiritual background of Great Britain is in the mountains of the -North, among the Cumberland Lakes and on the wild border. Or it is in -the obscure grandeur of the Sussex Downs, or on Dartmoor, or on the -Welsh hills. Small though the mountains may be, they are continually in -the minds of English people. The way of escape is clear. And many of -the bright spirits of England and Scotland have derived their strength -direct from the hills. Byron and Scott and Ruskin and Wordsworth drew -their strength from the hills. Carlyle super-imposed Ecclefechan upon -Chelsea. Even he who once said “London’s streets are paved with gold” -was driven by the spirit from Battersea to Buckingham. I find a belief -in the wilderness strong in Vachel Lindsay. He holds that the wild West -has been and still must be the spiritual lodestone of American men. -Untamed America has remade the race. Andrew Jackson was the voice of -the West of his day, Abraham Lincoln of his. And though New England -has held the hegemony of letters he divines that the wilderness--the -mountains--will be the source of the inspiration of the coming time. -Early America derived most of her inspiration from across the Atlantic. -Her heart was outside her body. But mature America, conscious of -herself as a whole, will know more surely that she has a heart and a -soul and a way to God in herself. - - * * * * * - -I LOOK to a time when national wildernesses will have an acknowledged -significance in our public life, when men and women of all classes of -life will naturally retire to them for recreation--as naturally as -people used to go to church on Sundays and for a similar reason. All -praise to the foresight and energy of Franklin Lane, the late American -Minister of the Interior, that enterprising Canadian who did so much to -bring the people’s heritage before their eyes! - -The “See America First” is a poor slogan. It is like “Do Everything -Once” and “Buy him a Fountain Pen.” The question should be raised to a -higher level. People need not visit Glacier as they visit Switzerland, -in a spirit of curiosity. Even in this sophisticated age they can -come as pilgrims of Nature as easily as they can come as tourists. -“Triangular trips,” “Four-day tours,” are not in the right spirit. Time -is immaterial. - -But there is virtue in shoe-leather, virtue in the saddle of the horse. -Not much virtue in guides, in hotels. You come to these places to be -alone with Nature or you do not arrive. - - * * * * * - -SO much for the idea and possibilities of the national parks. Lindsay -showed me a portfolio of descriptions of them when he was in London, -and he did much to persuade young Englishmen interested in America to -visit them, go tramp in them. And though of course we had heard in a -dim way of Yellowstone Park and of the Indian reservations both in the -United States and in Canada it was a novelty for us. But Englishmen are -born trampers and lovers of the wilderness, and are ready to reverse -the American proverb--Why walk if you can ride?--and put it, Why ride -when you can walk? And I shall not be the first Englishman to seek -refreshment hiking through the wild places of the West. - -We talked of this exuberantly as we clambered through the forests on -the side of Little Chief Mountain, and it was still our theme in the -evening when we lighted our fires in a vast rock temple and chasm down -into which tumbled dark water, glittering and hastening as it flowed -downward to the valleys. How to say a word for national wildernesses -in this sedentary era of the world’s history, how to say a word for -true religion and quiet and the things of the spirit! Vachel Lindsay -will no doubt dramatise the subject in one fine Western epic some day, -and I make my appeal, as I have done before, in prose, as for the -wildernesses of Europe, so also for the wildernesses of America. But -whether we write or sing of what we feel or see, one thing is sure when -we are done--we shall have lived apart and tramped and meditated upon -the mountains and far in the wilderness and it will mean something in -our lives. - -[Illustration] - - _What wish you to-day, dear tramp? - What wish you for brother-man? - Why, just this:-- - The quality of mountain-sides in the colour of his eyes, - The deep of stars in the lake of his soul, - Feet that have learned to leap, - And a spirit that longs to fly. - That’s what I wish, dear brother, to-day, - Said the tramp._ - - - - -[Illustration: THE SUN SEES EVERYTHING] - - - - -XII. GOING WEST - - -WE love inspirational phrases such as to “go West” which sprang on to -men’s lips in the Great War, and was a way of saying “to die,” which -was startlingly poetic, seeing that it came from the soul of those -masses usually admitted to be so vulgar. “He’s gone West,” men said -with a hushed voice, meaning that like so many who had passed before, -he had gone--to another world, to beyond the setting sun. The phrase -was not current among the American soldiers, but I have heard of an -equally wonderful expression used by the mountaineers, who said: “He -has crossed the Great Divide.” - -My mind is inevitably drawn to these thoughts as we face so often the -setting sun, as we cross the pinnacles of our momentary aspirations, -the passes, the divides which separate sky from sky and valley from -valley. - -Lindsay is also constantly enwrapped by the romance of Going West--the -historic and poetic Western movement which has pulsated humanity since -the hordes and their caravans stampeded across Asia in the days which -are almost before history. What was it, what is it that hypnotises -us--is it not the sun which, rising in the morning, calls all his -children after him all day and bids them follow when at last he plunges -into night and nothingness? - - * * * * * - -“HAVE courage,” says the sun in the evening. “Have faith,” say the -stars all the night long. “You see, I rise again; you will rise,” says -the sun in the morning. “This way, this way,” he says till noon, and -“Follow, follow,” all the afternoon, and then once more, “Behold! I -go. Have courage!” he says in the evening again. And that sets young -hearts a-beating, that kindles the poet’s flame and enlarges the spirit -and makes the way of the world. - -That makes us all nomads, all gypsies, all pilgrims. That draws the -steps of the willing, and even the unwilling find themselves borne -along by a human tide and a sliding sand of time--away to the west and -the night and the other country. No one can stay, even if he will. In -time all must go, all must follow the sun and cross the Divide and go -down the slopes of the unimaginable other side and be with the stars -in the long, hungry night, the myriads of stars that never do anything -else but look down on human souls and ask of us and stare at us and -dream of us. The night of stars for all of us, and then with our Father -and guide, far o’er these mountains, wan and tired, but gleaming -and then resplendent, we lift our eyes to the other country, the -dreamed-of, hoped-for country--and it is morning and we are still with -the light that we followed yesterday. - - * * * * * - -“THE old prairie-schooners,” says Lindsay, “blundered forward on the -western way, day after day, season after season, sometimes for years, -for the pioneers often worked their way to the Virgin Land which they -had taken for goal. Often, indeed, they died on the way, they broke -down on the way. Each yearned to the West even as they failed and threw -their spirits westward, like Douglases carrying the heart of Bruce to -the Promised Land. The primitive instinct for moving was awakened by -the road and many a pioneer found happiness in the going as much as in -the attainment.” - -We ourselves are going westward now, rather than north-west, and the -sun beckons us. For the mountain we are now setting out to reach has -been called by the Indians “Going-to-the-Sun.” It stands over and -beyond St. Mary’s Lake and climbs heavenward in gigantic steps of -stone. It steps from the forest to the rocks, from the rocks to the -snow, from the snow to the sky. It is a mighty cathedral, standing in -the midst of prosaic mountains, surely one of the most beautiful and -majestic of these mountains, symbolic in its shape and its ancient -name. We have slept on the mossy earth at the foot of the pines. We -will arise and go to the sun. - -[Illustration] - - _There’s some one calling you: - Arise, sleepy-head, - Arise from your bed! - A messenger is peeping, - There where you’re sleeping: - For the day’s been begun - By your master the sun, - And you surely will follow._ - - - - -[Illustration: CROSSING THE GREAT DIVIDE] - - - - -XIII. CLIMBING RED EAGLE - - -WE journeyed through the primeval forest without a trail to guide us, -through the jagged, thorny, tumultuous pine wilderness. It was not so -easy for Lindsay, whose legs are shorter than mine, but he took it as -a game of banter leader and moved forward doggedly into the openings I -made. We were glad to take advantage of the thousands of wind-smitten -trees which lay dead, piled at every angle and piled on one another. - -We climbed upward for miles on the white, smooth, dead timber of fallen -trees, balancing and jumping, transferring from trunk to trunk, and -clambering over the immense stars of upturned roots. We were rewarded -at length by a view of the rocks above the tree line and of a tumbling -cascade. This was in the direction we required and we made for it -and lunched by the cascade become rivulet, and then climbed all the -afternoon by rock stairs to the snow. - -At six beside a “bride-veil waterfall,” we had supper. Above us was an -amphitheatre of red rocks and ruined slate and it seemed but a small -climb to the top of the mountain. The gradient was steep and there were -large quantities of loose stones. We climbed without intermittence -until 9 o’clock at night, and as one top was nearly conquered another -top seemed to be added. The amphitheatre receded upward to heaven. - -How arduous it was and at times how risky! Massive stones on which we -relied to place our feet proved to be only passengers like ourselves -upon the mountain and at a touch from us resumed their downward track, -clashing and smashing from rock to rock. We came to steep banks of -shale which moved _en masse_ with the weight of our bodies and we lay -flat on them and slid with them unwillingly and fearfully. Nevertheless -we did make great progress upward, and if we did not conquer the -mountain on which we were we at least conquered some peaks that -were behind us. We entered the society of the mountains. The mighty -eminences and august personalities of the southward view came into our -ken. - - * * * * * - -THE sun went down, the shadows below us deepened, the snow banks -multiplied themselves in number, and their outlines and suggestiveness -intensified as the valley whence we had arisen lost its trees and -changed to a vast blank abyss. Our unfailing wonder when we sat down -on a stone to regain our lost breath was the multitudinous terrain of -awful, wrathful mountain peaks which in indescribable promiscuity had -climbed the horizon wall to stare at us. - -Vachel confessed to being dizzy and dared hardly look downward whence -we had come. He preferred to look upward, and it was always “three -more dashes and we’ll be there,” though instead of three we made thirty. - -Our mountain at length seemed to show the last limits and to be crowned -by a sort of Roman wall. We came in view of a long, serried, level grey -rock which ran evenly along the mountain brow like a fortification, and -in the midst of it was a way of stone steps and a gap. I got up through -the hole in the wall and hauled up Lindsay’s pack after me, and he -followed. - -But when we got on top it was flat, but it was not the top. We lay -full length there and ate raisins and looked upward over another field -of shale and loose boulders, and a cold wind as from the Pole swept -across. We watched the first stars appear and talked of finding a -sheltered ledge somewhere and sleeping on it or at least waiting on it -till morning. But secretly we still had a strong hold on hope. Mountain -tops are only to be conquered, and we would not give in. - - * * * * * - -“THE other sky beyond the mountain ridge is on tiptoe waiting for us,” -said I. - -It should be explained that the mountains here are nearly all -“razor-edges.” When you have climbed sheer up to the top you have to -climb sheer down the other side. Plateaus and table mountains are rare. - -The mountain “cirques” and ridges actually cut the great sky in two and -you can only join the two pieces of it at the top. - -However, when, after another forty minutes of picking our way upward, -we did actually reach the summit no new sky greeted us. Indeed, I -shrank back aghast from the dreadful view that I saw. For the mountain -swept downward in long, swift and severe lines into a funnel of Erebus -darkness. We stood perched at a gigantic height above the world, and it -was black night with an abyss both behind and in front of us. - -You could stand on the top of the mountain and see the two dreadful -views, on the one side scores and fifties of wrathful, staring -mountains and on the other a purgatorial abyss for lost souls. - -We dared not start a descent so we slept on the top of the mountain. -I lay on a narrow ledge and slumbered and waked. And Vachel, who was -hypnotised by the abyss, would not lie down for fear he might fall off -or might get up in his sleep and jump. So he sat like a fakir the whole -night long, looking unwaveringly on one fixed spot. - -“Our friends all lie in their soft beds with their heads on pillows of -down,” I thought, “far away in the valleys and across the plains, in -snug, comfortable homes, and we lie on rocky, jagged edges on the very -top of a great mountain, far from human ken.” - -We seemed as much nearer the stars as we were further away from -mankind. Venus was like a diamond cut out of the sun, and she lifted -an unearthly splendour high into the sooty devouring darkness of the -night. In other parts of the sky the meteors shot laconically in and -out as if on errands for the planets. Cold winds ravaged the heights, -but they did not roar. For the forests were far away. And there was -no sound of waters--only the long slow threatening roll and splurge -of loose rocks continually detaching themselves from the heights and -slipping downward to perdition. - -I lay and I lay, and Vachel sat unmoving, and we heard, as it were, the -pulse of the world. We did not see humanity’s prayers going up to God. -We only saw the stars and the night. - -[Illustration] - - _If you join the mountain-peak club - You’ll notice the old members stare at you, - Call you silently a parvenu, interloper, upstart. - Upstart you are, of course, - But never mind, you’ve got a rise in the world. - No use trying to outstare the mountains - Sitting in their arms-chairs, nursing their gouty feet. - Be a social climber still, - Aspire higher, - And be put up as soon as you can - For the club of Heaven’s stars._ - - - - -[Illustration: WHERE THE ANTELOPE WILL GO THE BEAR WILL FOLLOW] - - - - -XIV. DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE - - -BLESSINGS for dawn and the rosy lights and for the cloudlessness of the -morning! Had mist enshrouded us we should have had to have remained -high up on the slippery knife-edge of the mountain till the mist had -passed. We were able to descend, cautiously, cautiously, for three -hours in a trackless precipitous zig-zag to the red peak of a lower -mountain and a high snow-bound lake, where we made a good fire and -made coffee with our last coffee, and lay down again and slept. Then -we washed in the snow and ceased to be old weather-beaten tramps and -recaptured our yesterdays and our youth, and Vachel began to sing again -and our knapsacks felt lighter, as indeed they were, for we had eaten -up all the rations, even the iron rations. - -Then we walked to the valley of the Sun Mountain adown the rocks of a -continuous cascade. The descent to the snow-bound lake and the red peak -had seemed impossible, and we essayed the impossible again. It was not -merely a polite walk downstairs. Every step that we took was a problem. -We used our hands and the strength of our wrists as much as our feet -and the tension of our ankles. Constantly were we faced with fifteen -to twenty-foot drops on to narrow ledges, where a balance must be kept -when we alighted. - -No doubt I am by nature a mountaineer and hillsman, half a Highlander, -at least, and Vachel’s genius is the genius of the plains. I am an -antelope and he is a bear, we tell each other. - -“You lead,” says Vachel. “Where the antelope will go the bear will -follow after him, but the antelope will not follow the bear.” - -So he followed downward, and we took the most abominable chances of -breaking our legs or our necks--we had to take them. Then presently we -came to what seemed a full forty-foot sheer drop of foaming water--an -impossible descent, you would say, for all the grasp and grip in it -was water-washed and water-smoothed by ages of water--impossible, -impossible. But no, face it, think it over, it can be managed. O -caution, caution! Trust yourself to the Almighty Protector and grit -your teeth! - - * * * * * - -TIMIDITY fought daring all the way down. We sat once or twice, and -regarded the view. One thing was certain: we could not climb back to -the places we had come from. If we did not continue downward we had to -remain where we were. - -We did things which one does not do without guides and ropes and the -paraphernalia of mountaineering, and when we got down to the tortured -fissured rocks below the cataract we looked up whence we had come and -said again to ourselves, “Impossible, impossible!” - -And as in going up the mountain the winning of the summit was -continually deferred, so in descending to the valley we only conquered -one steep mountain slope to be presented with another steep mountain -slope and another series of terraces and another impossibility. - -Perhaps no one ever came this way over the mountains unless it was some -adventurous Indian, but even Indians do not venture where horse cannot -go. I remember as one of the most remarkable passages of our descent an -hour we spent in a subarboreal channel shut out from the light of day, -a jagged downward plunge where the stream fell away in darkness while -in voluminous curves the thick sallow roofed it in. We made a hanging -descent, clinging to handfuls of branches of sallow and swaying and -sagging and dropping, and then touching rock with a dangling foot, and -then clutching another lower bunch of branches and letting ourselves -down again, downward, downward. - - * * * * * - -BUT it all ended well, for we came at last to sheets of sliding -shale and then to a spacious forest. And we had been saved from all -mischance, and the silence which danger had gradually imposed on us -was broken. - -“Bread, beauty, and freedom is all that man requires,” cried Vachel, -“and now I’ll translate it into fire, water, and a place to sleep.” - -These we found, and one by one the stars discovered us when they peeped -through the branches of the lofty pines. They saw us where we lay -now far away below, stretched out beside the embers of our fire and -luxuriating in its warmth like cats. - -We boiled a pot of black currants and wild gooseberries and we ate -it to the last berry, though, as the poet said afterwards, it was -a quart of concentrated quinine. And we made a rosy layer of wild -black-currant candy in the frying-pan which was not allowed to remain -long unconsumed. We had no food in our knapsacks, only a little sugar, -but we counted ourselves happy though hungry because we had been up on -top of a great mountain and had come down. - -“A joy to the heart of a man is a goal that he may not reach,” says -Swinburne. And a greater joy still is the joy of reaching it. That is -what we have been doing all day. - -“Call it ‘Doing the Impossible’ and thinking well of ourselves,” adds -the poet when I read this to him: - -[Illustration] - - _“My master builder!” said the lady - When she made the master builder - Climb to the top of his new building, - Risking his life and doing the impossible a second time. - She made him do it, but he doing it was a hero. - He showed his manhood to her - By doing something that could not be done. - “The impossible or nothing” be our cry. - Don’t you loathe the perfectly possible? - I do._ - - - - -[Illustration: SWEET LADIES DO STOP ROLLING YOUR EYES] - - - - -XV. PEOPLE IN CAMP - - -A DAY’S steady tramping brought us to a camp, and then we bathed in St. -Mary’s Lake and washed every separate item of linen, even that which -we wore, and we sun-baked ourselves on the hot beach while the clothes -dried, and we made a clean appearance at last among fair women and -brave men, and we took supplies on which to vagabondise for days on the -slopes of Going-to-the-Sun Mountain. - -It was a curious experience to be absolutely alone on the mountains so -long and then suddenly to come on a large congregation of tourists. -Going-to-the-Sun Camp is a spectacular point in the recognised tour of -Glacier Wilderness. - -“We are doing the four days’ tour,” is the common explanation which -visitors gave us. Or, “We are making the triangular trip.” - -One’s eyes naturally rest on the ladies, who are nearly all in seeming -male attire, and some of this attire fits and some does not; some of it -suggests homes where men are rare and breeches have to be imported. But -they all look pretty well in this simplicity. Girls in mauve and violet -jumpers, shiny leather belts, and leg-o’-mutton breeches sit with us -at supper and explain that to-day was their first day on a horse--and -they know it. “Are you tired?” say I. “You can tell the world,” is the -reply. Near us stands a girl in tan riding costume, violet stockings, -white shoes, and bobbed brown hair in a hair net. She is talking to -two well-built youths, standing with their legs apart, and the girl, -imitating their styles, droops forward to them as they chaff one -another. She will not stray far. The same may be said of a well-fed -lady of sixty, pampered and neurotic, but sitting in a riding jacket -and very baggy breeches and nervously smelling at an ammonia bottle. -Grandma in trousers is rather portentous. - -But how describe the charm of the little boy and girl, children of -twelve and thirteen, accoutred also for the horse and sitting on their -steeds with the grace of Indians. The old and middle-aged are stiff and -only the children look as if they could never get tired. In any case, -all is good humour and jollity. Mme. Censure is not here. There are -people with crumpled faces and there are people made of dimples and -curves--but happiness holds all. - - * * * * * - -WE did not see very much of the tourist life. There is not much of it -up here. There ought probably to be more. While Yosemite, Grand Canyon -and Yellowstone are visited by hundreds of thousands of Americans, -Glacier is left unused. We do not want its canyons also to be filled -up to the top with cans, but no one would grudge a few more people in -a wilderness where you can travel weeks without meeting a soul--a few -more sharers in the loveliness of the Northern Rockies. - -A number of camps have been made with log-cabins and canvas tents, and -there are two large hotels on the fringe of the wilderness. But an -especial charm lies in the fact that the people in charge of the camps -and the little inns called “chalets” are mostly university students -and college girls of the institutions of Minnesota and Montana, and -they do the needful work on the self-help principle of earning a little -money in their holidays to pay their way during term. There is nothing -of the low commercial spirit, no one hanging around for a tip, no one -with any interest to treat you shabbily, but instead the natural good -manners of unspoiled people. You see the choleric “colonel” trying to -get more than his share of attention and service, but he doesn’t effect -anything, and you may see the millionaire cheerfully and shrewdly -recognising the fact that he must take his turn after his stenographer -and perhaps after a couple of ragged old tramps like ourselves. - - * * * * * - -VACHEL is devoted to the universities and high schools of America -and the life they represent. He has almost completely changed his -constituency from the “ladies’ club” and the heavy society of Mr. and -Mrs. Leo Hunter and is now a poetic voice of young germinal America. -He has “covered the map” of the United States singing his songs to -college youths. And in return college youth recognises him quickly. He -is a natural favourite among those who run the “chalets.” And they all -wanted him to “sing” to them. - -Not that the visitors do not also make friends with us and we with -them. Such coats of sunshine as we have make ordinary sunburn pale and -give us much glamour. Souvenir huntresses grab us from a “big ballyhoo” -Western town. Likewise, a girl from Chicago, pronounced in three facial -contortions. And when we set off to vagabondise for some days we were -followed by a beautiful creature who wished for a minute to come with -us to the world’s end. - -[Illustration] - - _The tramps have gone to sleep - Nearer to the skies; - Oh ladies, sweet ladies, - Do stop rolling your eyes. - The tramps have gone away - To seek their paradise; - Oh ladies, sweet ladies, - Do stop rolling your eyes. - The tramps have taken with them - The best of apple pies, - They’re not prepared to-day - To take on extra ties. - So ladies, sweet ladies, - Do stop rolling your eyes._ - - - - -[Illustration: ST. SERAPHIM - HE IS ONLY A WILD BEAST WHEN TREATED LIKE A WILD BEAST] - - - - -XVI. VISITED BY BEARS - - -I RETAIN very cheerily in mind from Russia the memory of the typical -Russian saint who lived in the woods and was so holy that the bears -approached without malice and took what the saint could spare of the -store of crusts on which he lived. The unfortunate Tsarina when she -desired so religiously a male heir, went to the shrine of Seraphim in -the “empty place” of Arzamas to pray for one. And the most famous -thing about St. Seraphim was his love of the bears. He is nearly always -depicted in popular oleographs feeding the bears with bread, and in -Russian ikons the bear is the national emblem of the primitive nature -of Russia and the saint is the emblem of Christ. - -On the other hand, I remember also my good old friend Alexander Beekof, -a hunter of bears who had himself snapshotted facing in the snowy -forest the upstanding, snarling, dangerous beast which presently he -was to lay low. And since we are thinking of bears, I call to mind how -I saw last winter little baby bears, dressed up in ribbons and fed -with milk from a pap-bottle, hawked for sale by refugee Russians from -street to street in Constantinople--pets to put in the nursery with -your children, astonishing little rompers and ideal players of hide and -seek. I have wondered about the bear as we wonder now about the Russian -as to just what sort of an animal he is. Is he only a wild beast when -treated like a wild beast, but otherwise tame in the presence of saints -and children? Or is he a wild beast all the while? - -This problem we evidently went to the Rocky Mountains to solve. For -there we met the bears, and even if we may not have the haloes of the -saints we hope to find a place among the children. - - * * * * * - -NOT that we were entirely ready for the overtures of Brother Bear, and -it is true that we frightened some bears away, but later we got on good -terms. I saw the first bear on “Going-to-the-Sun” Mountain. No one, of -course, is allowed to shoot bears in Glacier National Park, though it -is not many years since hunters hunted them there with Indians and with -dogs, and one may read of the bear-hunting adventures of Emerson Hough -and others. Now without dogs or guns the bear has been won over and he -has ceased to fear mankind. - -It was a beautiful morning and Vachel had been sitting in Baring Creek, -letting Balchis, as he called the waterfall, flow over him, and he was -now lying in a blanket on the ferns and meditating when I heard an -unwonted stump, stump, crash, in the undergrowth. - -“Is it a man?” I asked. - -Crash, stump, stump, it went again, and peering through the trees I -saw a black bear coming towards us, glossy and shaggy. I called Vachel, -but at that the bear stopped short, raised his intent, listening ears -and then made away from us in another direction. We saw no more of him. - -After that I recognised the sound of the bear’s feet in the forest, -quite a characteristic sound, and we knew there were many bears. But -the next occasion of a personal encounter was some weeks later near -Heaven’s Peak. Vachel had got himself an extra long wisp of old canvas -from a ruined tent. We slept by a large fire, and when the fire went -out a bear came to us. Vachel and I were lying close to one another -and both had our blankets over our faces, for it was cold. Vachel, as -he told me afterwards, was awakened by something and lay listening to -my breathing. He thought to himself, “Stephen is certainly making a -terrible racket; he must have a cold”; and then he thought again lazily -and unsuspectingly, “Stephen surely must have caught a cold to be -snuffing and snorting in that way.” Then he thought again, “He seems to -be moving about, I wonder what he’s doing.” - - * * * * * - -THEN Vachel put his head out of his blanket and what should he see -standing beside us but a big black bear. As for me, I was sleeping like -a babe, and the bear apparently had been snuffing at me to see whether -I were live meat or dead meat. Vachel gave one terrific shout. “THE SON -OF A GUN,” said he, and I wakened up. - -“Wake up, Stephen; it’s a bear,” said he. At this Brother Bear walked -across from my side, where I had a pile of boiled eggs, which he had -scattered, and leisurely began to knock our tin cans about on the other -side and try and find the ham which we had bought the day before. In -a most unsaintly way we drove him off. We forgot the example of St. -Seraphim, and Brother Bear was fain to depart. I repented too late -and followed the old scallywag up the moon-bathed forest glade quite -a way. But he would not be called by his pet name after the abuse -we had hurled at him and went away and away till he was lost in the -moon-beams. “He was smelling you to find out whether you were good -to eat,” said Vachel, laughing. “He wouldn’t begin on you unless he -were sure you were carrion.” “Curious,” said I, “isn’t it; we used as -children to look at pictures of bears smelling men who were shamming -dead in order to escape being eaten by them. In children’s books, the -bear won’t eat carrion. Out here in the Rockies you can’t keep them out -of the garbage cans of the camps at night.” - -On another occasion, however, when three bears came trundling down -after our supper was over, I approached one with some bread, which he -very gently took from my fingers, and I scratched his nose and put -myself on speaking terms. - -“Curious,” said I to Vachel, “is it not? These are the same bears which -used to figure so largely in adventure stories of the Rocky Mountains. -It follows they are ready to be good citizens of the forest if treated -‘good.’” - -You’d have had a different experience had they been grizzlies, we were -told later. - -Maybe. But St. Seraphim himself did not tackle grizzlies. - -[Illustration] - - _So we’ve met the bear: - The bear has snuffed at us - And wondered what we were. - Humans with a forest smell to us, - No doubt quite game; - Sleeping out too, very quietly. - Good to eat no doubt, - Dare one, dare a poor bear take a bite? - Would they mind? - I’ve bitten most of the animals in the wood - Except them-- - In my time._ - - - - -[Illustration: ELEMENTS OF GOOD COFFEE - - MOSQUITO - NETTING - WATERFALL - COFFEE POT - FIR TREE - COFFEE BEANS - STONE - PYRE - LOVE] - - - - -XVII. LINDSAY’S STONE COFFEE - - -THE wind blew all night long, a wind that seemed to be cleaning up and -burnishing all the spaces between the stars. The rock wall against -which I leaned my back kept stealing away the warmth from my blanket. -Vachel slept off the level on the ferns, at a forty-five degree tilt -downward. We both looked out to the mountains and the stars, and it -was an epical summer night on the Rockies. - -The mountains were compact and black and clear, and a dim light behind -them glorified each. A young moon arose and poised herself above us, -and only slowly and very unobtrusively crept across the sky. It was a -night of persistent gale but of a steadfast starry universe. It seemed -to call for rain, but there never came a cloud, only the metallic -interstellar spaces grew lustrous and more lustrous, and the mountains -more and more romantic. Our eyes were religiously and adoringly -spellbound. Our hands--our feet--that is a different tale. - - Their hearts were pure, - Their hands were horribly red, - -as Balzac said of two young ladies of France. - -Vachel, who had tied the tassels of his old steamer rug together and -made a sleeping-bag, was meditative of Peary and Shackleton and their -companions, and though he had procured an extra flannel shirt and -had tied himself up in all he possessed, he still could not find the -temperature at which corn ripens in central Illinois. We heard the -waters of the creek pouring down below, we heard movements among the -trees, and the idea of a bear coming to us was not unsuggested. Vachel -picked up his steamer rug and came across to my rock and laid him down -nearer to me. We slept then till dawn, slept with one eye open and one -shut; one ear alert, the other muffled. - - * * * * * - -THE lovely light of the east flooded upward and over us from Lake St. -Mary, bathing our mountain-side in a peach blossom glamour; small birds -winged it through the wedge of air ’twixt mountain and mountain. The -creek poured more loudly into our consciousness, and the sharp points -of our rocky bed jibbed upward towards our bones. Then it was morning. -Then it was coffee time. - -I shall never forget the poet as he looked in the dawn, with his red -handkerchief tied over his old felt hat and under his chin, and the -concentration of his gaze as he plodded about in three pairs of socks -and half-laced boots seeking extra twigs to make that fire burn. He -looked like a true dwarf or old man of the woods from a page of a -fairy-book, but not really visible to human eyes. - -And it was an unpractical fairy who expected damp wood and large wood -to burn as easily as dry withered pine. It sometimes took a long while -to set our pot a-boilin’. Once, however, that had been achieved, great -was our reward. We had our coffee, “Lindsay’s stone coffee,” as we -named it, better than any other coffee in the United States. - - * * * * * - -“STEPHEN,” said Vachel quietly to me one day, “you must let them know -just how this coffee is made. I’m not one of those selfish people who -keep such secrets to themselves. The ladies especially will like to -have our secret.” - -The first point is that you take a stone which has never seen either -sunset or sunrise, a stone lying at the feet of trees not less than -100 feet high. It must have lain there not less than 4000 years and -listened to the music of a waterfall. That is the important point. Any -decent coffee beans ground in any kind of clean grinder will do. A pot -that has seen more than one continent is preferred. - -You then cut a square piece of white mosquito net sufficient to hold -the coffee and the stone. Tie up carefully like a plum-pudding, but -leave seven or eight inches of string attached to it so that you can -pull the coffee sack up and down in the pot at will. Vachel in this -matter of coffee is a complete immersionist. The coffee must go right -under. - -It is prepared, moreover, in silence and without fear of flame and -smoke. The pot stands on a funeral pyre, and is allowed to lift its lid -several times before a hand swathed up in a towel darts in to rescue it. - -We pour it out into our tin cups. It is black, it is good, it has a -kick like a mule; it searches the vitals and chases out the damps; it -comforts the spine and gives tone to the heart. And the poet, silent -hitherto, sits holding his large cup before him. Then he takes a sip -and looks at me. - -“Thadd touches the spadd,” says he at last in a deep gastronomical -gestatory voice which seems to lend expression to his ears and -shoulders. “Thadd touches the spadd,” says he in happy relief. - -[Illustration] - - _Coffee should be made with love; - That’s the first ingredient. - It’s all very well about the stone, - Say I, but it needs a heart as well. - The coffee knows if you really care, - And will do its best if you lend it encouragement. - You can flatter the coffee whilst it is in the pot, - And it will rise to your persuasion. - But the commonest cause of coffee being just indifferent - Is your indifference towards the coffee._ - - - - -[Illustration: TO THE WORLD’S END] - - - - -XVIII. MAKING MAPS OF THE WORLD - - -AFTER an era of drawing maps of the United States my companion took to -drawing maps of the world, supporting them by mermaids and making them -fly by north-westerly and north-easterly angels, and he wrote original -couplets and hid them in hollow trees and under stones. As Shelley made -paper boats in the Bay of Naples he made maps and hid them--his pet -hobby for a number of days. - -One verse asked Atlas if he did not find the world heavier since the -Treaty of Versailles. - -“I hope you made a copy of it before hiding it,” said I. - -“Oh, no; stray leaves of poetry, rewards for seekers,” said he. -Celebrated mountaineers have been putting copper boxes with their -signatures on the tops of the mountains this year; Vachel has been -leaving original poems in the valleys. - -We set off from Sun Mountain for the high walls of the Canadian line. -Vachel was in no passion for climbing, and confessed that if he were a -woman, he would, at this point in our adventure, “lie down on the floor -and scream.” So our progress was slow and punctuated by long waits. We -went through tree thickets and breast-high flowers and through tearing -thorns, and we came to many red-rock promontories. Rocks grew up out of -the jungle and topped the highest trees, and we climbed them and looked -out from their smooth, wind-swept summits and listened to the bears, -and Vachel, with paper and pencil, drew maps and put Czecho-Slovakia -in the scheme of things, and asked the God who made the world where -Turkestan might be. - - * * * * * - -AT length, at noon, we came unto a mighty cliff, an end of the world, -rosy red and flamingly joyful, but very final. The poet was a quarter -of a mile behind me, and I watched him patiently grubbing his way -through the exuberant green, trackless jungle, hit in the face by -branches, choked up to the fork of his legs by the weeds. And when he -came to the end of the world he asked no questions but just sat down -and began drawing a map. “Where,” asked he, “is Seven Rivers Land and -the Desert of Pamir?” - -I left him sitting down below and began climbing the giddy cliff with -a tin can in my hand. For growing like wall-flowers on the rocks above -were dwarf raspberry bushes all hung with tiny rosy lights--and these -were fruits. I got up to them and standing on half-inch ledges and -holding to twigs and weeds I picked a cupful of the hot berries all -half-cooked by the sun’s rays. And when I got down again we had a -wonderful repast of raspberries and sugar. - -When we resumed tramping we crossed a crag-strewn valley, which was -very rough on our boots. My boots were cracking; Lindsay’s were very -floral. His held out a little while longer, but mine died that day. As -we each carried two pairs of boots we were prepared for the emergency. - -Mine had been a stout pair of pre-war boots (Americans please read -“shoes”). I used them first in North Norway and Russia. I tramped in -them in France. They were repaired first by a Russian at Kislovodsk -in the Caucasus; repaired for the second time in Georgia by a negro -cobbler. For I did Sherman’s march and walked from Atlanta to the -sea in them in 1919. And they were repaired for the last time by a -Frenchman in Hazebrouck last year. I had tramped in them over the -battlefields of Gallipoli, and had worn them when the weather was bad -in Constantinople, Belgrade, Budapest, Vienna, Warsaw, and almost every -other capital of Europe. - -“We must burn them,” said Vachel, “and have a special ceremony. These -are no ordinary shoes (Englishmen please read ‘boots’) to be abandoned -in the wilds without the meed of some melodious tear.” So we burned -one on a high flaming fire with young pine-shoots for incense, and the -other we threw into a rushing mountain torrent, and bade it continue -its world journey to the world’s end. - - * * * * * - -WE lay stretched on our blankets by the pine fire that night and talked -of the world. We arrived at some ideas. “You are not drawing the map -merely as part of a geography lesson,” said I. “You are drawing the -poetry of it.” - -A poetical map of the world has never yet been drawn. “It should have -ships on its oceans and lighthouses on its rocks and mermaids under it, -and stars over it,” said Vachel. “Imagine how Blake would have drawn -it.” - -First, you put in the North and South Poles, symbols of man’s love -of the inaccessible and the paradox of his striving life; then Cape -Horn, stormiest point in the world, cape of innumerable wrecks, of -the innumerable adventures of daring sailors. Then put in the Panama -Canal, symbol of utilitarianism and our modern life. Draw in the Bering -Strait, which is the pre-historic link of the Old World and the New, -and then the Rocky Mountains, which the red men climbed. - -Then draw in a dotted line the keel track of Columbus over the ocean -and put an eye upon a peak in the Darien looking downward and outward -to the great Pacific. Draw the Mason and Dixon line. Draw 54° 40´--the -“fifty-four forty or fight” line. Then for the old world, make the -coast-line of China and then mark the Chinese Wall built to keep out -the Huns, then draw the caravans of the hordes, and may arrows fly -over the desert of Asia, spitting against Bokhara and Samarkand, -spitting against the empire of Darius, spitting against the Scythians, -the Slavs, stampeding the Goths and the North Men and ruining Rome and -starting the modern world! - -You must put in Athens the birthplace of the ideal, and Marathon and -then Rome, the birthplace of materialism, the capital of capitals, seat -of the Caesars. And then St. Helena, symbol of the doom of would-be -Caesars. - -Mark in the mysterious Nile, and the place where the Sphinx looks out -from the sand. Mark Bethlehem and then Jerusalem---- - -Thus we schemed and mused and made many maps in fancy, and we took -to ourselves just before the stars said good-night the title Geo. -Ast.--geographical astrologers. - -“I dare you to register as such,” said Vachel, “when we get out of all -this and reach a hotel at last.” - -[Illustration] - - _Poor old world, you’re a playground. - And we are the children who romp in you now. - Those maps of you are wrong - Which show trade winds - Instead of winds of inspiration, - Where names of business-places are in bold black print - And railway lines are ruled, - And capitals are marked with blots - And other places are invisible._ - - - - -[Illustration: THE EAGLE SEES WHAT IS IN THE PIT] - - - - -XIX. A MOUNTAIN POINT OF VIEW - - -“WITE man, you’s skeerin’ me to death,” cries Vachel playfully from -behind me as we get out of forests and up among the naked rocks. “Wite -man, you’s skeerin’ me to death,” or again, “You might as well kill a -man as scare him to death.” - -“This is no place to bring ladies,” I ventured. - -“And no place to bring a poet, either,” says Vachel. “Look here, -Stephen, I make one rule. I’ll only be scared out of my wits once a -day.” - -The poet riveted his eyes on me, and I was a curious sight, being torn -to tatters from head to foot. I had been mending my trousers with the -stuff of my vest and the lining of my coat. “Stephen,” cries Vachel, -“when I get tired of looking at the scenery I look at your pants.” And -I employed much time when we rested sewing up the triangles and flaps -on my knees with white thread drawn from our mosquito netting. - -We saw now the wonderful cathedral-shaped mountain behind us, blue -and white and scarred and crumpled. It lifted its clerestory with -grandiosity up into the colder and rarer air. Its rivelled snow hung -in great white copes; its earthquake rents and chasms yawned, and -its dreadful steeps, up which no man ever climbed, drew sternly and -austerely up to summits and spires and towers. Grandiose mountain! And -what little flies, what microscopical insects we were upon it! - - * * * * * - -WE came to the top of the Valley of Boulder Creek, stretching away -from the heart of the Rockies to the tents of the Indians and the -indeterminate plains, one of the grandest of views to my companion, who -loves the prairie like the prairie child, an aperçu of America seen -from the mountains. “That is what we want to get,” said Vachel, “a -Rocky Mountain point of view on all things American. That is the true -meaning of calling it a national park.” - -“Not only that, but a world-point-of-view can be found,” said I. -“That is why it was called Going-to-the-Sun Mountain--the sun sees -everything.” - -We turned, however, into a wild and obscure region and blundered and -staggered among a miscellany of all kinds of boulders. Blue lakelets -and pools lay at the foot of djinns of snow, and there were dreadful -iceberg-like reflections in the weird blueness of the water. We -camped on a plateau, or rather in a wide, high trough surrounded by -mountain-sides, and we made a fire of old resinous roots and stumps of -dead, dwarfed trees. There were shallow lakes in sight, but the way -to them was over undulating, quaking moss. Mists encircled us before -nightfall and made our fire ghostly. We lay all night in a great -stillness, and the fire glowered and smouldered and the mist uneasily -crept into rain with a breeze or settled again into mist with the calm. -Next day was a cold and chilling morning like November in England, -and we heaped higher the fire with wood and slept till wind and sun -conquered cloud and damp. And that was nearly noon. - - * * * * * - -“ONWARD,” cried Vachel, “upward, higher, purer, better, nobler, -sweeter, stronger”--which was his favourite war-cry at the time, and -amid stark upper-mountain scenery we made a glorious afternoon march to -a place of great height. At length, on what seemed a terrifically high -pedestal of black rock, we gleaned a coffee-pot full of fresh snow and -proposed to make tea. And I upset the evaporated milk, but licked it -up off the rocks with the flat of my tongue. This Vachel was too proud -to do, so I have surmised that his progenitors were Lowland Scottish -gentlemen farmers, but mine were Border cattle thieves and “land -loupers.” - -We had supper that evening in a great, open mountain space, with -glaciers as large as cities brooding and impending over abysses, -and we looked downward to dark and gloomy rising forests gone tired -on their way up towards us, and we looked upwards to the grandeur of -snow-covered crags and tumultuous, heaven-climbing waves of rock. -Vachel fried the beans to an accompaniment of rhythmical remarks. -Poetry possessed us both. All about us was in grand, romantic, heroic -strain. Vachel remarked how the forests were like harps with long harp -strings, and the strings were the lines which mountain stones and -avalanches had furrowed there for ages. The carpet on which we lay was -of yellow vetches and dark-blue gentians, with lichened stones all -interspersed. Heaven itself was not flat-roofed above us, but raised -at the zenith, a blue vault above us, like the dome of a world-temple. -And the fire burned a black patch on the green and puffed and flamed -symbolically as if we were children of the Old Testament sacrificing -there to our God. - -[Illustration] - - _Two stars arose above the mountain’s head, - Two stars looked down upon the world in bed; - Looked through the window-panes and saw the world at home, - From Babylon to Tyre, and Rome to Rome. - What if the stars, lifting their tiny lamps, - Were but like us, a couple of old tramps? - Heaven’s tramps the stars, blazing their trails they go, - From mountain-top to mountain-top and snow to snow._ - - - - -[Illustration: ‘I HAD RATHER BE A PEACOCK THAN A HOG’ SAID THE PEACOCK] - - - - -XX. BY THE CAMP FIRE - - -MANY years ago one of the Springfield newspapers offered a prize to the -reader who should send in the best answer to the question: _What would -you do with a million dollars?_ Young Vachel sent in an answer. His -was: “I would change them to dimes and have them thrown into the State -House yard and any one who wanted them could come and take as much as -he liked.” The answer was printed in the paper with a lot of others and -gave considerable offence. The telephone was kept busy that morning by -those who thought fit to tell his father and mother that they ought to -look after him better and not let him make a fool of himself. - -“I did not get the prize,” said Vachel sadly. “The editor probably -thought that with a million dollars one could do just a million -dollars’ worth of good. He thinks, as does my dearest friend, that -you can employ people to do good at a salary, and the one who got the -prize probably allotted ten thousand dollars to this charity and ten -thousand dollars to that and endowed this thing and endowed that and -did not even dare to buy himself an ice-cream soda. They’ve got such a -high idea of money that it’s almost an attribute of God himself. Now, I -rank money low. I’m right up against the weekly magazine advertisement -point of view--‘Doing good is only possible when you’ve a lot of money. -Get money! Oh, get money first somehow, then you can do good. Wear good -clothes and then you’ll be in the way of doing good.’” - - * * * * * - -WE had made our camp under a great overhanging rock beside rushing -cataracts. The huge vague scenery about us was made more immense by a -cloud screen which prevented one knowing exactly how high the mountains -were, and we looked outward at a vastitude of scarred precipitous -cliffs. Our fire warmed the rock against which we had laid our -blankets, and we had found a delightfully cosy place in which to be at -home. Night came down upon us, but we lay long in the flamelight and -talked. - -“I don’t think,” said Vachel, “that this money incentive is really a -strong one or leads far. That is where I part company with the radicals -of this country. They have all founded their faith on the economic -theory of history. I’d like to write for them a ‘romantic theory’ of -history. I believe in the romantic theory; I do NOT believe in the -economic theory.” - -“All right, dear Vachel,” said I constrainedly. “There are only you and -I present, and God. Say it more quietly.” - -“Vanity and ambition have always been stronger motives than the desire -of gain. And that is good. I put vanity a whole lot higher than greed. -In a country of hogs the peacock is a praiseworthy bird.” - -“You say that because you are a peacock.” - -“I KNOW IT. I AM A PEACOCK. I AM NOT A HOG.” - -“All right, Vachel. Now, if money is not so strong an incentive how do -you account for the fact that in your own beautiful State of Illinois -Governor Small has been under arrest for appropriation of funds, and at -Chicago members of one of the greatest baseball teams in America are -under trial for selling championship games to the other side?” - -“That’s the influence of the magazine advertisement--praise of dollars -and the implication that everything in the world has a commercial value -or it has no value. And there are no other honours but money honours.” - - * * * * * - -IT was evidently more that a mere opinion of my companion. It was a -creed. He passionately believed what he said. And thus it was that I -discovered in Glacier wilderness a very rare bird, the American black -swan, and that in the poet of Springfield whom the village in its -ignorance was once scandalised about. - -Vachel told me how he acted on his creed--What is greater than the -power of money? why, contempt of money--and set off without a dime to -see America and live, and how the good God took care of him until he -got to California. “In that way I learned to respect myself and to -respect my fellow-man,” said he. “I learned what a lot of good poor -men and women there are in America. And I have nothing to complain -of individuals as such. I could always rely on brotherliness. But it -was different with institutions, when I went to people who were not -themselves but hirelings, people hired to do good. Don’t I know the -minions of charity? What are the places where as a tramp I’ve had the -stingiest treatment in the world? Why, in institutions from the paid -organisers of charity.” And he told of how he once went to a Y at -H----, Mo., and the fight he had to get mere soap and towel and a bath. - -“By Gosh, they weren’t going to give it to me. I said ‘I’ve been a -Y.M.C.A. worker myself in New York for years and I know that soap and -towel can be had. I know the whole workings of the organisation and -I’ll have soap and towel from you if I have to bring the roof down. -I’ll go to the editors of the newspapers. I’ll go to the leading -ministers and preachers of H---- and I’ll hold you up to shame to the -town. I’ll whale you.’ And I got soap and towel and they said, ‘take -him down,’ and I got a bath, though I used as much energy to get it -from them as would have served to do three days’ hard work. Now I know -that if I had gone into any working man’s home in town and asked for -it, or even into a hotel I’d have got soap and towel without demur. - -“Yet my best friend says, ‘Vachel, you’re morbid on the subject of -money.’ I said to him ‘Well, there’s a lot in the New Testament about -it. Look it up!’” - -[Illustration] - - _The gopher-rats are sitting on their tails - Watching us all around, listening to us. - What is it these queer birds are getting excited about - By their camp fire? - Money, is it? Money’s no good to the gophers, - Leave us a crumb or two. - Don’t forget a spot of that fried hash: - Squeak!_ - - - - -[Illustration: WE CLIMBED UP WITH THE TREES - BUT CAME DOWN WITH THE WATERS] - - - - -XXI. DOWN CATARACT MOUNTAIN - - -VACHEL told me once, to save his self-respect, he took a job in Chicago -in a department store at seven dollars a week, and was employed in -the wholesale toy department; a whole block of toys, where was to -be found every imaginable plaything for young and old, from dolls -as large as three-year-old children to family portrait albums that, -having a musical box in their binding, played “The Old Folks at Home” -and various hymn-tunes when you opened them. He told how a lad called -Timmins wound up all the albums he could lay his hands on, and laid -them open and went away to another part of the building, and of the -wild din that ensued. - -Timmins was “fired.” - -He told how he lived amid acres of dolls and how, to satisfy the fire -insurance inspectors, a three-foot clearance was made between the top -of the toy heaps and the roof, and how all one night they did overtime -slamming down rows and sections of dolls and toys on to waiting trucks, -and they were rushed to another place. Then the inspectors came and -passed the building. And when they were gone the Ghetto came and bought -the “bum dolls” from the “smash dump,” and Vachel and the rest were -soon building toys up to the roof once more. - - * * * * * - -“BUT none of my friends liked my earning my living in this way. They’d -prefer to see me in a bank or an insurance office. You see, I could not -paint a picture that would keep me. I would not enter commercial art--I -mean advertisement drawing. My poems did not sell, and people thought -I had spent long enough studying and loafing, and that I ought to begin -to earn a decent living. So I went into the Chicago Department Store. -They did not like that. So I took to the road again. Curiously enough, -Francis Hackett took a job in that same store before his star arose.” - -Vachel and I had a great pow-wow by night and morning fire, and I -cannot set down half here in these (I hope) dignified paragraphs. But -all the while we sat and talked, the prairie rats sat about us on their -tails and haunches, and stared curiously with their forepaws on their -chests like good masons in their rituals. They smelt the beans, they -smelt the cheese, they smelt the corn-beef hash; they knew they were -protected by the United States Government and they had never seen a dog -or a cat. Curiously friendly little companions! - -After the cloudy night there was a serene morning. When the veils were -lifted off the mountains we knew them for just what they were. They did -not go all the way to the sky after all. - -We went down Cataract Mountain the same way as the water, down to -flower-spread meads and spacious fir-woods and widening streams. -Up above us the water chariots came racing behind white horses four -abreast, five abreast, natural fountains played on every hand, and -high as heaven itself tiny cataracts tipped over and fell downwards -into veils, into smoke, into nothingness. Characteristic of the place -were the great volumes of water which plunged under hollow snow-crusts -to emerge forty feet lower down after a momentary vigil in the snow. -This is the valley of Cataract Creek, bounded by lofty and perhaps -impassable rocks, but in itself a garden to the last patch of mould and -the last bright flower. - - * * * * * - -WE made our way along Haystack Butte toward Mount Grinnell, which, like -a mighty fortress, stood facing us in the line of our tramp. Was it the -beauty of the garden or was it the limpidity of the streams that set -us talking of England? It is a peculiarly happy subject with the poet, -who, with all his Americanism, has a true reverence for the fountain -of English. This July, just before setting out for the Rockies, he -received an invitation from Robert Bridges, the British poet laureate, -to become a member of the “Society for Pure English.” To that extent -has Oxford at least recognised that Vachel Lindsay is no mere performer -or charlatan and not the “jazz-poet.” To some people in England Vachel -came as a prophet, and his courtly and, indeed, stately manners, -the profound obeisance which he made with his hat before entering a -church or a school or a house, revealed him as an American of the -Washingtonian cast. - -Some would-be cynical, smart undergraduate was showing Vachel King’s -College Chapel at Cambridge, and said to him: “The last American we -showed round when we asked him what he thought of it, said, ‘Some -God-box.’” And he seemed to think that very amusing, and could not -understand Lindsay’s silence on the point. - -“He did not know for how many years I had lectured on the Gothic and -what it meant to me,” said Vachel. - -Naturally, I chaffed my companion not a little on his belonging to -the S.P.E., and called him to order whenever the arduousness of our -campaign prompted him to break across the pure classic of Shakespeare’s -tongue, and I made him take note of many expressions, such as “being -wished on,” and “handing a man the canned goods,” which I bade him -chase from America into the sea. - -“I should only be too glad, Stephen,” said he, “if I could get rid -of ‘motivate’ and a man’s ‘implications’ and ‘the last analysis’ and -‘the twilight zone’ and ‘canned metaphor’ and the dollar adjectives, a -‘ten-million-dollar building’ and a ‘million-dollar bride.’” - -[Illustration] - - _Oxford has asked Chicago - To lend its purifying aid - To the King’s English. - O Oxford! O Bridges!_ - - - - -[Illustration: THE INVISIBLE PLAYMATE JOINS US] - - - - -XXII. “GO WEST, YOUNG MAN” - - -“NOW, Horace Greeley----” said Vachel, opening his “morning strafe” of -political conversation. - -“Who the ---- was he?” - -“You don’t know? Why, you’ll be saying you don’t know Shakespeare next. -That’s as if J. C. Squire had never heard of Edwin Booth.” - -“Well, who was he?” - -“He edited the _Tribune_ throughout the Civil War.” - -“That all?” - -“He said, ‘The way to resume is to resume.’” - -“That all?” - -“He said, ‘Go West, young man, and grow up with the country,’ and -printed it at the head of his newspaper every day.” - -“Oh! Did you ever hear of Mudford?” - -“No.” - -“What, never heard of Mudford, the famous editor of the _Standard_?” - -“No.” - -“Ever heard of Nicol Dunn?” - -“No.” - -“He edited the _Morning Post_ in its better days. Ever heard of -Frederick Greenwood?” - -“No.” - -“Never heard of Frederick Greenwood? Why, he was the greatest -journalist England ever produced. He inspired Disraeli with the idea of -buying the Suez Canal. If we don’t know about your journalists, I see -you don’t know about ours.” - -The battery was silenced. - - * * * * * - -WE walked through five miles of rotten-ripe red raspberries and -got thorns in our half-naked knees and carmined our fingers with -raspberry juice, and we kept spitting out unpalatable fruits and making -uncomplimentary remarks. Then we got to open pine woods and freed our -feet of the tangles, and Vachel began to sing softly to himself a -children’s processional hymn: - - We are the Magi, - Children though we are. - We are the wise men, - Following the star. - -“There are only two of us.” I ventured. “Where do you think the third -king has got to?” - -“That’s King Christopher,” said Vachel, sadly. “That’s our ‘other wise -man.’ He is with us, but he’s invisible. He is sitting in Greeley -Square or Vesey Street, and it was thinking of him that really started -me on Horace Greeley.” - -“How do you mean?” - -“Well, he said to all the young Magi, ‘quit seeking a star in the East, -Go West and grow up with the country. Get into America; find your -spiritual roots.’” - -“You want to persuade every one to cross the Appalachians?” - -“Yes,” said Vachel dreamily. “So I brought him along invisibly. He is -our invisible playmate.” And he resumed his children’s hymn. - -“You’re a good bit like Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling,” said Vachel to -me at last, “You’ve a wonderful geographical background. You ought to -read the life of Mark Twain. Very interesting. He was made by his life -in Nevada. His life in the silver mining camps and his knowledge of the -West and the South made him. Read _Roughing It_. It’s a great book. -Then Kipling with a boyhood in India and a maturity in America owes -much to his knowing both West and East. What’s the matter with young -men to-day is a disinclination to get their feet dirty. You’re the only -man in England or America I’ve been able to persuade to go on a tramp -with me. When I proposed it to M----, the English poet, he seemed to -turn pale. That’s all behind me,” he said, “though I don’t know what he -meant.” - - * * * * * - -WE came within sight of the shore of Lake Josephine. “Shall we ask our -invisible companion if he’d like to come in for a swim with us?” said -I. - -“Why, that would be fine.” - -So we broke through to the green and silver lake and, putting our -tender feet on the sharp stones and water-covered boulders, waded out -to swimming depth and we made a great splash with Napoleon’s beautiful -bride. And when we came we vagabondised on the shore for the rest of -the day--the three of us--lying stretched out beside a mounting red -blaze of rain-washed wood. - -The beach was all of little mauve stones which we raked into couches. -And there we lay munching hot pea-nuts and rebuilding the world on a -foundation of the American Wild West. Vachel drew some more world-maps -and adopted our invisible playmate as a member of the society of -“astrological geographers,” and we took for our emblem and device the -map of the two hemispheres with the motto, “The World is My Parish.” - -What a serene evening it was by the side of fair Josephine! A half -moon rose over us at nightfall and marsh hens sped through the air -in volleying groups of wings. The stars and the moon threw a silver -radiance on the line of the mountain-tops and on the forests and on -the dimples and lines and circles of the lake. We fell asleep and were -warm and at peace. We only waked at four in the morning and then bathed -before sunrise and mingled our bodies with the perfect reflections of -green and grey and brown and snowy mountain-sides. - -The sun arising grew upon us and chased wraith-like mists across the -waters, and our fire, hotter than the sun, blazed on the mauve stones -and baked us and dried us when we came out to it, and gave us our -coffee and gave us all we needed till old Sol was radiant o’er the -scene. - -[Illustration] - - _We know about Josephine - What Napoleon did not know. - He was too preoccupied sacking cities - To love the beautiful altogether, - Killing men, counting cannon, putting unneeded - Crowns upon his brothers’ heads. - He didn’t know much about her, - O no! - He said there were no more Alps, - No more Pyrenees. - He never said there were no more Rocky Mountains._ - - - - -[Illustration: THE CHRISTIAN BECOMES SUN-WORSHIPPER ALSO] - - - - -XXIII. THE SUN-WORSHIPPER - - -“I DRINK to America as she was before 1492,” said Vachel, lifting high -his coffee cup. - -“I drink to her as she was before the Red Man came.” - -“And I drink to her as she was before the Mound-builders came----” - -“And I drink to her as she was in the days of the mountain-top tribe -when a man and his family lived together on a mountain-top and the -rule was one peak to one family, and the eagles were tame and carried -the mail.” - -“And I drink to Noah’s fourth son, who was so naughty he was not -allowed to bring a wife into the Ark but carried a pine branch under -his arm. Is there any more booze i’ the can? Yea. Very well; I drink -again to Noah’s outcast son who wandered in these parts before the -mountain-tribe arrived.” - -“Is there any more of this most excellent coffee?” - -“There is, dear Stephen, one last kick in the bottom of the pot.” - -“Then I drink to the Lady of the Lake whom Noah’s son was obliged to -marry and to the cut-throat trout that were their offspring----” - -“Enough, enough! Is there any more booze?” - -“Not a suck, Sir.” - -“Alas!” - - * * * * * - -THE reader will perhaps surmise that we are approaching the Canadian -line and that my anti-saloon companion has fallen for what they make in -Alberta. - -But no, we have been made drunk with words; it often occurs, and with -Lindsay’s stone coffee. The stone in the mosquito-net coffee bag has -spoken through us. It is a piece of the Rocky Mountains, and they -know all there is to know about the mysterious mound-builders and -mountain-tribes. How gauntly and savagely these old mountains have -looked on at no-humanity and for how many thousands of years! “What -went ye out for to see?” said Vachel presently when we had hitched -on our packs. “Not a reed shaken by the wind! What went we out into -Glacier Wilderness for to see? Why, _man_, a prophet. And there’s a -prophet in these mountains who can tell us a good deal about the old -world. We ought to settle many things about the world before I get back -to Springfield and you get back to London. Everywhere you have been I’m -going to assume I’ve been also. Now, at our next sitting let us drink -to Russia--Russia as she was before the Bolsheviks.” - -“As she was before Peter the Great,” I added. - -“As she was before the hordes.” - -The subject was too dark after all. I felt we should have to drink, -not to the past, but to the Russia that is going to be when the -Bolsheviks have been forgotten. - -“And England?” I asked. “Will you not drink confusion to the enemies of -King George V.?” - - * * * * * - -“OH, no,” said the poet. “I’m too good an American for that. Couldn’t -do that. My roots are too deep in democracy. Confusion to the enemies -of King George--no, couldn’t drink it. Confusion to the enemies of the -English people. Yes, I’d drink that toast.” - -“Well, it’s the same thing.” - -“Doesn’t sound so.” - -“In that case,” I retorted, “I’ll not drink to the President.” - -But Vachel had become preoccupied and began an unending chant of -Patrick Henry’s oration, - - Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, - As to be purchased by chains and slavery-- - I don’t care for others, but as for myself - Give me liberty or give me death! - -No doubt he did not quote it quite correctly, but I fastened -on the third line, which I repeated deliberately after him, -“I--do--not--care--for--others,” until he was once more moved to mirth -and got down from what in one poem he has called: - - The old Elijah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist soap-box; - The Rousseau, Mirabeau, Danton soap-box; - The Karl Marx, Henry George, and Woodrow Wilson soap-box. - -And we washed off our politics from our minds at high noon in a river. -And Vachel sat astride of a giant tree that had fallen across the -stream, and luxuriating in the heat he cried out to me, “Gosh, Stephen, -I’m a sun-worshipper with my shirt off!” - -[Illustration] - - _Quit drinking coffee - Before it’s everlastingly too late; - Be not found among the coffee-bibbers! - Silence those profane toasts - To Noah’s offspring and Patrick Henry. - Oh, Uncle Sam, - See how thy children go - To the devil--drinking coffee! - O prohibit it!_ - - - - -[Illustration: THE BIRD CATCHETH THE EAR OF THE PRIMITIVE MAN] - - - - -XXIV. TWO VOICES - - -MY companion has two voices: one is that of a politician, harsh and -strident, the other is that of a Homeric harper and ballad-chanter of -the days of old. The political voice does not please me much. It is -the voice of the “hell-roarer” of the prairies. Lindsay loves a mighty -shout, an exultant war-whoop for its own sake, like any Indian. And ... -I’ve heard those “glacier boulders across the prairies rolled.” I have -heard the “gigantic troubadour speaking like a siege-gun.” But there is -another voice-- - - Two voices: - One was of the deep, - The other of a poor old silly sheep. - And ... both were thine! - -as G. W. Steevens once wrote. The other voice is truly of the deep; -sonorous and golden, murmuring, and with eternity dreaming in it. That -is the voice of the poet. - -Some days with us were naturally dedicated to poetry. The steps on the -mountains caught the rhythms, the gliding waterfalls and the intensely -coloured listening flowers suggested the mood of the poets, and then -the peaks, the grandeur, uplifted Lindsay’s spirit. The hymns were -silenced. Silence hung on the mute figures of Bryan and Altgelt. We let -Roosevelt sleep on. American and European civilisation ceased to fill -the mind, and there was only the mountains and poetry. Vachel knew by -heart whole books, and he crooned and chanted as we walked, and lifted -his head up to the snows and the waterfalls and the skies. He has a -bird-like face when he recites; his eyes almost close, his lips purse -up and open like a thrush’s beak. He glories in the word of poesy, and -entirely forgets himself-- - - Oh ye who tread the Narrow Way - By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day, - Be gentle when the heathen pray - To Buddha at Kamàkura. - -he chanted over and over again like a prayer, as if those hushed and -holy mountains on which we looked were Buddha, Buddha at Kamàkura. And -then-- - - To him the Way, the Law, Apart - Whom Maya held beneath her heart, - Ananda’s Lord--the Bodhisat. - - For whoso will, from Pride released - Contemning neither man nor beast, - May hear the Soul of all the East - About him at Kamàkura. - - Yea, voice of every Soul that clung - To Life that strove from rung to rung, - When Devadatta’s rule was young, - The warm wind brings Kamàkura. - -My eyes had no doubt often passed over these lines without realising -their beauty. The printing of a poem is only a guide, a clue to what -the poem really is. It is not the poem itself. You have to divine the -inner mystery and beauty. The man who can read a poem may help you to -divine it for yourself. And this Lindsay did, making this poem live as -we walked about--about and about. The beauty of the poem almost depends -on pronouncing the word Kamàkura aright. Because we both loved this -song we thought of naming some snowy mountain after Buddha, with the -great plea--“Be gentle!” Be gentle, all of us! - -Another poem which became a possession of the heart was that of Sydney -Lanier, little-known in England-- - - As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, - Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God. - I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies, - In the freedom that fills all space ’twixt the marsh and the skies - - By so many roots as the marsh-hen sends to the sod, - I will heartily lay me ahold of the greatness of God. - Like the greatness of God is the greatness within - The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn. - -This poet of southern Georgia gave, I thought, voice to a part -of America, and it was a part I had tramped in too, a land of -moss-hung forests and marshes, of marsh-blossoms and many birds. -In that beautiful first verse how the word “secretly” in the first -line enchants the ear, and then the wonderful effect of the phrase -“greatness of God” when taken with wing-flight of birds rising o’er the -reeds! - -Talking of the modern poets, we agreed that a poem was little if there -was not sound in it--melody--resonance. We found a common fellowship in -Poe, and my companion rolled forth under a low and threatening heaven -the cadences of “Ulalume,” his favourite poem, he averred. - -Browning meant nothing to him, but he was fond of some of the early -poems of Tennyson, especially of “Maud,” which greatly inspired him. -Curiously enough, the latter poems of Tennyson were unknown to him-- - - On a midnight in mid-winter when all but the winds were dead, - “The meek shall inherit the earth” was a Scripture which ran through - his head, - -and the kindred poems among the last pages of the collected works of -Tennyson. - -Matthew Arnold had never touched him, but the music of Keats he -understood naturally at sight. Of his own American poets he did not -care for Whitman, whom he is so often told he resembles, but he loved -Longfellow and all such word-music as-- - - Sandalphon the angel of glory, - Sandalphon the angel of prayer, - -all of which he said one day as we were climbing among the rocks. - -He began loving poetry by learning it by heart and reciting it for his -own joy, and I began by writing in an exercise-book all the soldiers’ -poems of Thomas Campbell and reading them--“a thousand times o’er”-- - - My little one kissed me a thousand times o’er, - And my wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart. - “Stay, stay with us! rest! thou art weary and worn,” - And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay; - But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn, - And the voice in my dreaming ear--melted away! - -How precious are the recollections of one’s first love of poetry! If as -a boy you read the “Golden Legend” walking in country lanes when the -hay was cut in swathes in the fields on either hand; if you have ever -lain in the midst of a cornfield and crooned to yourself the exultant -promises of Rabbi ben Ezra, or climbed mountains with “Marmion” in -your heart, or lisped the “Ode to a Nightingale” to the first girl you -loved, how touching it will always be in memory! - -The poet and the tramp shared thus their recollections as they wandered -amidst heights and depths. They surely know much more of one another -now! - - _I think the poet - Learned to be a poet, - By living with the poets - Till he became a poet._ - - _He had the great need in him - To give a song a tune. - So he listened how the birds sang - And he began to croon._ - - _Now he’s singing for a living - And living for his singing. - And his companion’s singing, - And all of us are singing, - Because he’s learned to sing._ - - - - -[Illustration: THE CLOUDS CAME OUT OF THEIR HOMES TO SEE US] - - - - -XXV. STOPPED BY THE CLOUDS - - -WE scrambled through thickets to Mount Grinnell, which stands like -a gigantic fortress, a bulwark of this world against others. Its -impregnability seemed appalling. Fancy knocking at that door after it -was shut! We stopped and looked up at it, and the sight of it relaxed -our tense human energy and left us with very contrite souls. However, -the nearer we got to it the less it was magnified. Its battlements -receded and we soon had a fly’s view of the mountain, the view which -the fly has when it is walking on the barren surface of the rock. - -We clawed our way along the steep entangled shore of Lake Grinnell to a -waste of willow saplings, and a litter of postal packets of great rocks -delivered by the mail chute of the Grinnell Cataract. Here a great mass -of water meets momentarily with calamity and falls over a precipice -like houses falling. At two miles’ distance it is like a picture of -a waterfall seen in a shop window, pretty and attractive. At twenty -yards’ distance it is the awful thing it is. The sun is hidden at noon -and a noise that drowns all other noises is in your ears. The spray -blows turbulently over you like rain. - -We had thought to cross the cataract through the _disjecta membra_ -of the rocks at its base, and climbed into dreadful proximity, and -advanced our noses inquisitively over the foam. And then very hurriedly -we drew back as if we feared we should be tempted across it. But what -to do? Not surely to retrace our steps? That seemed unthinkable. - -We decided to go lower and try to ford the rapids. Vachel thought that -would not be difficult. But I had attempted such crossings in the -Caucasus and knew what it meant to adventure one’s tender body into a -hypnotic, rushing current and a frantic roar of stones. So I went first -and demonstrated it. - -And we did get across. With most of our clothes off and stuffed into -our packs, and with uprooted pine saplings for support, we made a -criss-cross diagonal course into the water, which rushed up our bodies -like wild mastiffs, and we were too preoccupied with the rolling stones -and slippery snags and the mesmerising onset of the waters to think -about the chilling we were getting. It was certainly a victory when we -slipped out of the central violence and got into the shallows on the -other side. - - * * * * * - -WE did no more that day. I had sprained two fingers anyway, and could -not rely on my left hand. So we piled a dead-willow fire beside the red -rocks and talked. The cliff above us went up to heaven, but there was -a recess washed out by the water of that waterfall in some past age. -I am inclined to think that the cataract made the wind which simply -raged round the corner all night long. But we had found a place that -was completely out of it. Also, we got enough wood to burn all night -and cure the cold. For it was cold up here. We built a long barrier of -little rocks between us and the elongated glowing furnace of willow -which we had made. This kept the flames off our blankets and yet warmed -our bodies all the way along. - -It was a majestic night, with the screened light of the moon filling -a narrow sky. A selection of heaven’s stars played voluntaries to us, -but the jazz band of the waterfall kept up a grandiose hubbub, in which -were vocal human cries and groans and chatterings--as if it were hell -or Broadway going past. - -Vachel could talk above this roar; I could not. So I listened to him -and his cataclysmic accompaniment. It was, I think, on the subject -of Turner and heroic painting. Vachel, and Ruskin before him were -attracted to Turner by the heroic style. - -“Scenes such as this beside the waterfall delighted Turner. Just at -dusk it was a perfect Turner painting. Did you ever see that ‘elegant’ -edition of Rogers’s _Italy_ which old Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin read with -their child? It is profusely illustrated with vignettes by Turner. -They are all in the heroic spirit and they started Ruskin on his -speculation about cloud-forms and in his idealistic interpretation of -Turner.” - -“I love the heroic,” Vachel went on. “I hate the game of puncturing -heroics which people think so clever nowadays.” - -I made no objection. A poet whose voice can be heard above the jazz -band is a hero, and my sympathies are not with the flood of the -burlesque--unless, as now, they begin to wrap my soul in slumber’s holy -balm. - - * * * * * - -NEXT day we went up to the clouds, climbing by tiny steps of rock and -slippery tussocks, and Vachel went ahead and became pioneer of the way. -For it was a left-handed mountain, and I had no left hand that I could -use, and I kept slipping five feet down in making one foot up. I got -left behind, and when I caught up with the poet he was sitting stripped -under a waterfall and leaning against a gleaming rock whilst the stream -splashed downward over him. - -It was a day of great moving clouds. Clouds with personalities came -stalking out of chasm bed-chambers, clouds overtook us and enveloped -us. We found November’s home, where sweeping rains cross and recross -on the mountains. We passed near the base of the black and dirty -glacier and watched the clouds smoking over it like a spreading fire. -And presently there was not a particle of view above us except cloud, -and no view below except of the rocks at our feet and the cloud-filled -ravines. - -We stood in perplexity. In clear weather it is difficult to get over -the “Garden Wall” from this side. Now we could not see our way any -further. We retired to twin slits in the cliff, stretched ourselves on -our blankets, and gave way to meditation. - -[Illustration] - - _The clouds came out of their homes to see us; - They had heard of us and had seen us from afar, - Now they could satisfy their curiosity - And find out just exactly who we were. - So they gave us of their hospitality, - Inviting us both to their mountain abode. - Mr. and Mrs. Glacier were at home--a chilly couple, - So were the impulsive avalanches, a family of long descent - And purest origin. - The visitors were mostly ladies of the upper strata of society - Most æsthetically gowned. - They came about us, asked us various questions, - Conventional questions about the weather. - Some new ones came, others drifted away. - We were left by ourselves at the last. - The clouds didn’t altogether like our style, - Our form wasn’t theirs, - We were obviously parvenus, Nature’s profiteers, - Living not on our income but by our output. - The Peaks, their husbands, with their patrimonies, - Were certainly less clever and more stodgy, - But we were clear outsiders, people of a lowly birth, - Not altogether possible, they judged. - So the clouds’ curiosity regarding us abated, - We felt pretty chilly towards the end of the party. - They offered us no tea, though we each had an ice on a wafer. - Proud, supercilious, overweening ladies!_ - - - - -[Illustration: IF YOU’RE MY FRIEND YOU’RE GREAT] - - - - -XXVI. LINDSAY ON ROOSEVELT - - -WE decided to change our direction and make for the camp at the head -of Lake McDermot. This we could hope to reach by nightfall, as it was -downhill all the way. It was moreover a right-hand descent and suited -me well. In an hour of diving and plunging downward we got out of the -clouds and saw that there was fine weather away to the East. We had -moreover found a foot-trail, and, “Bless de Lo’d I’se found de way,” -cried Vachel. - -Downward, downward to the low pines, to the large pines, to the giant -pines--how easy it was to go down. I thought we should have little -difficulty in getting to the little log-cabins of the camp, and sleep -dry for once. It was now ten days since we had last had a roof over -our heads. The prospect was pleasant; we thought of the hot supper -awaiting us. We thought of the drying of our clothes and our blankets, -and of a gentle sweet repose of our tumbled and jolted bodies between -white sheets. - -The descent, however, suited Vachel as badly as the ascent had suited -me. As a short-legged man he had to take three steps to my one, and he -constantly serenaded me through the evening air--“Steeven ... wait a -minute! Little Vachel’s lonesome!” - -I would stop, he would draw level. “Now wait a minute,” he would say. -“Let’s look back! What a wonderful view! Isn’t it a wonderful view? -Let’s sit here awhile and take it in--a _wonderful_ view!” - -Or he would let me go on a bit and then stop me. “Stee-ven, look at the -pine-tree, look at the giant tree, giant of the forest, look what a -_great_ giant! Let’s sit down and take it all in!” - -In the twilight we got to talking of oratory, which is one of the -poet’s pet themes. He holds that pure oratory is natural poetry. Bryan -is a poet; Patrick Henry was a poet; Daniel Webster was a poet. He -enunciated various famous lines to me, trying to rouse the mountains -with a sort of voice-of-God tone or air-bursting boom which the poet -commands-- - - Lib-er-ty _and_ Un-i-on ... - One ... and in-sep-ar-able ... - Now ... and ... for-everrr! - -and he imitated Andrew Jackson saying--“_The Federal Union! It must and -will be preserved!_” - -I found in the poet a curious creed, and that is, that oratory is -better than logic. He preferred the warm glowing orator to the cold -clear logician. He preferred Antony to Brutus, and put friendship above -merit. He justified the “Solid South” in being solid. He justified -Wilson for appointing his friends to power. He considered politics a -matter not of theories but of friendships and family ties. He justified -the spoils system to me. “When a man comes to power--he brings his clan -to power, his friends, the people of the village, and that is much -better than a collection of high-browed experts,” said he. He loathed -detraction and personal attacks of any kind. The commonest laudatory -adjective which he used to me in his conversations about his friends -was the adjective “loyal.” I could not persuade him to talk critically -of any of the literary work of his friends. - -“Any poet who is a friend of mine is a good poet!” cried Vachel more -than once. “I’m _for_ him.” - - * * * * * - -WE came into view once more of fair Lake Josephine, but we could not -make much headway. We were held by conversational webs. The poet was -tired, and at every halting-place he started on some engrossing theme -which beguiled us into spending half an hour sitting on dead trees. He -was in the rôle of Scheherezade talking to her sultan. We ought to have -plunged down to the lake-shore, built a big fire and dried off, but I -was foolishly persistent in the idea of getting to the Many Glacier -camp that night. Presently we started talking of Roosevelt, and the -poet held me by the coat for a whole hour while he explained how he had -been carried off his feet by a Republican, and had defied his family -and voted for Roosevelt and had been struck out of the family Bible, so -to speak. - -“I was for him until the end of his Presidency,” said Vachel. “He -refused to give business and high finance the first place, he would -not talk the holy gospel of tariff, he made the White House a national -centre of culture, he gave a great progressive lead, and rallied to -his banner the bright spirits of America; he hit the shams and the -frauds and the trusts; he stood by the Negro; he was not afraid to -express what he thought on any subject under the sun; he did not halt -between yes and no, and he was the very opposite of the Adams type of -politician.” - -“But it burned him out,” Vachel went on. “He had a third and last -period when he was not himself, when he acted the young man, and -stage-managed the delusion of endless energy.” - -And he told the story of Roosevelt’s last visit to Springfield with -great gusto, imitating Teddie’s mighty stride down through the people -to the platform, the war-cries and yells of the audience, the clash of -the brass-bands. - -“And he was not an orator, and he did not believe in the spoils -system,” I interrupted maliciously. “And he did not believe in the -families ruling America----” - -No wonder we got lost in the willows. - -[Illustration] - - _A’m ti-erd, yes a’m ti-erd, - A got th’ bloo-ooes aw-fool ba-ad. - Ma feet is sore; - You’s awful so-ore, - Ain’t ye, feet? - That fellah over the-ere - ’S legs is just too lo-ong. - Now where’s he gwine to now? - Where’s he gwine to now? - I’se skeered he’ll leave me here a-lone, - All a-lo-one. - Say, Cap, doan go on so fa-ar, - Say, boss, you sure didn’t see that tree, - You cahn have no feelin’s for the view - Huhhyin’ on so fass--_ - (Tired Feet Blues) - - - - -[Illustration: SHE SENT MORE RAIN AND LAUGHED AGAIN] - - - - -XXVII. THE WILLOWS - - -WHEN I was at Springfield I was brought before the children of the -High School, where in years past the poet went to school, two thousand -children in a grand auditorium. I think we could show nothing of -the kind in England, an assembly of nearly all the boys and girls -between the ages of twelve and sixteen in the city--white children, -black children, immigrant European children promiscuously grouped, -bright-faced and vivacious and feeling all-together. I was to speak -to them on Russia, but before my turn came the school did twenty -minutes’ practice at the school-yell. For there was a ball-match on the -morrow, and as a young orator cried out to them, “We are going to win -to-morrow. If the school is behind us we’ll win.” - -The leaders of the school-yell came out of their seats, and they leapt -like Indians and flung their arms about and writhed and appealed and -struck the floor with the palms of their hands and appealed again. -Thus they gave “The Locomotive Yell,” which reminded me of the voice -of the Purple Emperor Express in Kipling’s locomotive story “.007.” -Thus they imitated a great steam-engine under full pressure of steam, -laboriously and mightily and then victoriously roaring forth from the -Grand Terminal-- - - Rah ... rah ... rah ... rah-- - Spring ... field ... High ... School - - (repeated four times with gradual acceleration) - - Yea Springfield - Yea Springfield - Rah ... Rah ... Rah. - -Vachel was visibly affected. “That’s where I get my inspiration,” said -he. “I just love them to death. I feel as if I’d got a snoot full o’ -whisky. I just love them.” - -It would be idle to deny that these yells did not raise every hair on -my scalp. It was an astonishing enkindling of the primitive. When I -stood up to speak to these children I felt myself on a mighty friendly -river. I was borne along by a rapturous enthusiasm which had been -started by the yells. The whole school, boys and girls, white and -coloured, were fused in one glowing whole. And Vachel said to me once -more, “There is America.” - -What a contrast to England, where the children are not allowed to get -into this rapturous state! If you have faced the critical audience of -Rugby or Harrow, or the restrained maidenhood of a school like High -Wycombe, you realise the difference. If you are a moving speaker the -Head may even ask you “not to get the children excited.” - -I was explaining this to Vachel. “Well,” said he, “that’s how it is -in England. The duelling spirit survives. Every one is still on his -guard. The American has thrown his shield away. Most human beings are -incapable of understanding anything till they are moved. That’s how we -do things in America, and go ahead, by whoops and yells--Whoopee!” - - * * * * * - -ROOSEVELT made America into one man. He mesmerised America. But the -spell failed, and many were disillusioned. His destruction of his own -Progressive party was a terrible blow. - -We were walking now in the woods in the dark, and heavy rain had come -on, and we thought we were on a foot-trail and were not, and we got -into a lamentable jungle of devastated pines and wild undergrowth and -water. We walked in a circle, we tore our clothes afresh, we climbed -pitiably slowly over stark dead jagged trees and branches, and Vachel -forgot the subject of Roosevelt and of oratory, and began to make many -suggestions as to the right direction. We got so desperate that I said -to him: - -“You think you know the way. Go ahead, I’ll follow.” - -He wouldn’t do that. - -“All right: you follow me. And no suggestions for twenty minutes. We’re -going to get out of here.” - -We then plunged into a waste of tightly-packed willow trees, all about -ten feet high, with branches thickly interlaced. It was intensely dark, -and they soused us with water at every step. It was like breast-stroke -swimming through them. We came to a pine-tree island in the midst of -them, and then after a long struggle forward, as I thought, we came -back to the same pine trees. Then Vachel said, “Let us just lie down -here for the night. When morning comes it will be easier.” - -But the ground under us was in slops of water, and rather than sit and -shiver there for hours I was all for getting out, and still believed -it possible. This faith or stubbornness was at length rewarded, for we -came to the water at the top of Lake McDermot, and it was nothing to us -to walk through thigh-deep water for half a mile and ford the river. We -were so soaked with the water of the willows that we must have made the -lake a little wetter. - -So we made our way to the palatial hotel which is situated on the -north-eastern corner of Lake McDermot. Bedraggled, hanging in new -tatters and with water streaming into little pools on the floor when -we stood still, we were no people for the hotel. And we read on the -front door, “No one in hobnails or bradded shoes allowed to enter -here.” The many lights shone on our red faces for a minute, and then -we passed on--to the log-cabins of the campers and the hob-nailed -brethren. And there we got a room, and we opened our last can of pork -and beans and ate it to the bottom, and we rung out our streaming -clothes and hung them to dry, and we put Roosevelt and Bryan to sleep, -and the poet and the Guardsman were hushed. - -[Illustration] - - _The joke was on us and Nature laughed at us, - She laughed at us, she would not help us. - She sent more rain and laughed again, - Swish, swish! - Ha, Ha! - She laughed at us, she would not help us, - She sent more rain and laughed again._ - - - - -[Illustration: SO FOR US HE MADE GREAT MEDICINE] - - - - -XXVIII. JOHNNY APPLESEED - - -I BUILT a fire by the roadside opposite the palatial hotel and made our -coffee. “It’s like lighting a fire and making yourself a personal cup -of coffee on Broadway,” said Lindsay, “but it’s fine.” It’s a dramatic -act and startles the imagination. The coffee-pot could be made the -emblem of revolt--“Go West, young man, with a coffee-pot. You can live -on nothing a year with a coffee-pot. Figure it out, how little money -you need to live in the wilds!” - -Vachel is all for giving the business man and clerk and industrial -worker a three-months’ vacation. “They don’t work in these summer -months anyway,” says he. “But they are afraid of being reproached if -they take long holidays. Every man here, be he a millionaire or a poor -man, works. He has an office, he has a factory. If he hasn’t these, -he invents them. He believes it is effeminate to take more than two -weeks’ holiday. For a month’s holiday he must have the recommendation -of his physician. Otherwise he loses caste and may be called a ‘lounge -lizard,’ which is one of the terms of abuse which sting most. On -the other hand, modern work becomes every-day more sedentary, more -mechanical. In accountancy figures become more exclusive, in the -workshop automatic machinery becomes more and more perfect. It dulls -and enthralls the mind.” - -“Yet how easy it is to get out and do what we are doing!” I urged in -agreement. - -“Go, give them a message,” cried the poet. - -“Intelligentsia of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your -chains. Young men and women, get free, get your coffee-pots, take up -the national parks and the free lands of the West!” - -“I have an idea that most of the tramps and vagabonds of our -country-sides have had lives full of poetry. The men who are dismissed -as eccentrics were often mystics. America has not liked its Thoreaus -and its Chapmans.... Johnny Appleseed, for instance, who was an -American St. Francis, has been generally laughed at as a sort of a -harmless lunatic.” - -We talked of this on the upward trail next day. One point in favour of -the hotel had been its good supply of canvas trousers. I bought myself -a pair, and was thereby saved the reproach of looking a little like -Johnny Appleseed in the matter of my attire. I laughed at Johnny for -having worn a tin can on his head for a hat, and Vachel was at pains to -defend him even there. But the poetry of his life was his going ahead -of the pioneers of Ohio and Indiana, and planting apple-orchards and -tending them and watching them grow for the America that should come -after him. I often wonder whether the large red-gleaming Ohio apples -of to-day do not come from him. I’ve stolen them and munched them -at dawn, as I tramped to the West, and I can testify how good they -were--good medicine. - -“And so for us he made great medicine,” says the poet reverently, -quoting his own new poem. - -Vachel in his quest for beauty was regarded by many as a crank, an -eccentric. He endured the humiliation of being village-idiot, or, as -they call it in the Middle West, “town-boob.” Awfully silly people who -thought themselves smart would stop in front of him with the air of a -Johnny Walker whisky advertisement and ask him quizzically if he were -“still going strong.” He was discovered later, and hailed and acclaimed -by the poets of America and England, but even then the dulled folk -of business and politics looked doubtfully upon him. He told me, for -instance, how a celebrated impresario introduced him to the notables of -the capital, but always with the formula-- - -“I want to introduce you to Mr. Vachel Lindsay of Springfield, -Illinois.... He is a pp--oet.” - -So there’s a streak of sadness somewhere in the poet’s mind, and it -comes from brother-man. And that sadness has expressed itself in a -love of Johnny Appleseed and all others whom the Spirit drives into the -wilderness. - - * * * * * - -WE camped then under an overhanging crag of Mt. Justinian and watched -the moon, half eclipsed by a cliff, creep and crawl like a golden -turtle over the mountains, over the mighty tops, over the ... over the -world, whilst bright silver cloudlets in ball-robes danced lightly -amongst the stars. And we climbed next day by twenty-four zigzags to -the jagged summit, and rested in a grand snow-cavern as large as a -church, made by the winds and the drifts in dread mid-winter, and we -saw the clouds blow off the glaciers like washing-day steam out of a -kitchen door. The poet lifted his mighty voice to the rocks, and they -sent a kindred answer back to him. He called the snow-cavern Brand’s -Church, and it was a strange and thrilling place in which to abide. - -They call the ridge of the mountain the “Garden Wall,” but it is not -very felicitously named. But it is wall-like. It is like an enormous -exaggeration of the Roman wall built to keep out the Picts and Scots -from England, but it is a rampart against the Martians rather than -against man. - -We came at last to a joyous company in an old-fashioned inn, and -made happy acquaintance with a band of hikers and sportsmen and -mountaineers. Girls with riding-switches in their hands were dancing -with one another, and a tall dark striking one whom I called the -Spaniard chummed in with us and brought her friend and made Vachel -promise to recite. We had a mountain-climbers’ supper, and when this -was cleared away the bears came down the mountain toward us for the -leavings, and watched us eagerly and ate the sweets we threw them, -and when the bears were gone we built a huge bonfire and sat around -and watched the sparks fly upward, and told stories and chaffed one -another. And Vachel talked to us all of the virtue of the West and read -to us his poem of the hour--the story of Johnny Appleseed, who in the -days of President Washington made for us all--great medicine. - -[Illustration] - - _Thackeray advised us-- - How to live on nothing a year. - “Take a nice little house in Mayfair; - Order everything and pay nothing.” - We can go one better than that. - Take over the Rocky Mountains - As your personal estate; - Everything arranged for you in advance, - Complete freedom of mind, - And no bills. - When the little game in Mayfair is played out - And you are clearly on the rocks, - Be sweet about it, - Leave your friends a card, - Tell them you’ve been advised a change of scene. - You’re on the Rockies._ - - - - -[Illustration: HENCEFORTH I CALL YE NOT SERVANTS BUT FRIENDS] - - - - -XXIX. LOG-ROLLING - - -VACHEL slipped near Heaven’s Peak and turned a double somersault -downward, buffeting his head with his huge pack (crammed with canned -goods, loaves, blankets, and what not) and then I picked him up and -found he had sprained his ankle. - -“Don’t think I’m hurt,” said the poet. “I yelled because I was scared. -I’ll be all right in a few minutes.” - -He didn’t mind the pain, but he loathed being beaten. Nevertheless he -was down and out. “We’ll go on to-morrow,” said he. “We’ll go on next -day.” - -“Here we are, and here we remain,” said I, “till the ankle has -recovered. We can stay a week or two weeks, and I’ll go back for more -food. So let’s make up our minds to it.” - -So we stayed by a flat-rocked stream on a grand slope in a forest of -stately pines and firs. Vachel sat on his blankets like a sultan. And -he speedily forgot his ankle and the mountains and Heaven’s Peak, and -began to tell me the story of Elbert Hubbard, from the time when he -travelled in Larkin’s soap to the time when he wrote “Who Took the -Lid off Hell?” and went down in the Lusitania. And then he told me -the substance of “A Self-made Businessman’s Letters to his Son,” that -unashamed best seller which portrayed the benevolent soul of a Chicago -packer before Upton Sinclair dared. Then he told me a fantastic story -of how ten ne’er-do-well men of Springfield were found ready to die for -the Flag. Then he told to me from memory Edgar Allan Poe’s story of -King Pest, and the ghouls of the forest crept close to us to listen. -Then he told me of the prairie-schooners which used to have inscribed -on them “Pike’s Peak or bust!” - -“Heaven’s Peak or bust,” said I, maliciously pointing to his swollen -ankle. “Lindsay, essaying to climb Heaven’s Peak, slipped downward,” I -went on facetiously, imitating the style of my letters to the _Evening -Post_. He smiled. - -“How yer feelin’?” I interjected. - -“I’m feelin’ fine,” said he. - -“Shall we get to Canada?” - -“I’ll be all right to-morrow.” - -“We ought to have gone further whilst the goin’ was good, eh?” - -“I’m sorry, Stephen,” said he apologetically. - -“But this is good?” - -“It’s good enough for me.” - -“All right.” - - * * * * * - -BRINGING in wood for a big fire is rather a tedious job, but I hit on -a sporting way of doing it all by myself, and doing it better. We were -at seven thousand feet, and the avalanches and spring floods and storms -had wrought havoc among the trees. Fine dead trunks lay in scores -on the mighty slope of the mountain. Our fire was at the foot of a -slippery granite slide. So I took a stout young pine-tree, and began -to lever the great dead trees and set them rolling downward. Vachel -was perched on a rock above the fire, and the logs arrived at the -embers below like colliding locomotives, with a great bump and showers -of sparks. It was possible to lever and roll downwards logs that were -thirty or forty feet long, and we pulled the great lumps of their -sprawling resinous roots on to the fire. - -We slept that night among the granite shelves, and the pine-roots -roared as they burned, and the great rocks beside the fire cracked -under the heat with a sort of earthquake thud which registered a buffet -on our bodies ten yards away. - -We stayed four days in this wonderful spot, and I became fascinated -with log-rolling. Even Vachel, with his ankle, hobbled after me and -tried to do it too. We talked of political and literary log-rolling, -log-rolling for one’s friends. “I’m all for it,” said the poet. -“Log-rolling is a virtue.” - -Then he recounted to me the origin of the expression--log-rolling. “It -is a Western term,” said the poet. “It also comes from the life of -the pioneers. You know how it was; the settler chose the site of his -log-cabin or of his new barn, and then went into the forest and felled -the number of trees necessary, and he left them lying where they had -fallen, and then called his friends together for a festive occasion. -They all worked together for him, and rolled his logs to the most -convenient spot where they could be piled to make his home. Of course -he always gave his friends a luncheon first, and then they went off and -rolled his logs home for him.” - -“And I like that,” said the poet. “No man can hope to do much in this -world without the help of friends. And I for one would not want to.” - -Go to it then, ye log-rollers of the literary world, ye friends, we’ll -lunch ye, we’ll give you, coffee with a kick of a mule in it, and fried -corned-beef hash fit for the best friend of the Grand Vizier’s cook. -And he, as you know, fares better than the Sultan himself. - -[Illustration] - - _Who rolled home Shakespeare’s logs? - We did: we helped to do it. - All the world has given a hand. - Were they lunched first? - Ah, I doubt it. - But that was not Shakespeare’s fault, - He was a jolly fellow!_ - - _N.B._--According to Frederick Dallenbaugh, writing to the _New - York Post_, the real log-rolling commences after the logs have been - brought to the site: - - “The foundation logs for the house having been duly notched and fixed - in position, another tier is placed on top of them, and then another, - and so on till the log wall is of the prescribed height. Now, it is - obvious that it would be difficult to lift the logs up on to this - growing wall. Primitive science then comes to the builder’s aid. - Other logs are placed at an incline against those already established - in their position and the logs that are to surmount the lower logs - are rolled up the incline into place. - - “From this came the invitations sent out by the prospective builder - to come to his log-rolling.” - - - - -[Illustration: POOR ACTÆON PAYS * THE WOMAN NEVER PAYS] - - - - -XXX. TOWARD THE KOOTENAI - - -SUMMER began to give way to winter on the mountains. There were very -cold nights, and frost. The full moon made the forest spacious, and the -beautiful fir-trees, like candelabras, glittering with silver lights. -The mornings were of an intense stillness as if ordained whilst God -walked in the garden. We had stayed three days beside a grey rock wall -which was eight feet high, and it began to have the light of home upon -it, and one might have lived there long. - -Vachel soon began to feel much better, though he looked quaint, -hobbling along the rocks and uneven woodland holding on to a tall -pine-cudgel which he had cut. He wore a red cotton handkerchief over -his crumpled hat, and it was tied in knots under his chin. He was weak -at all joints and walked like a dwarf who lives in a hollow tree, a -fairy-like antediluvian old fellow. His red wind-blown face was lined -and lined. His eyes twinkled as he walked. He stooped to pick up wood, -he looked cautiously about him, and I had the feeling that he would -rapidly scurry away if a human being came into view. - -I returned to camp for a bagful of provisions, and bright-faced Myrtle -La Barge gave me a whole apple-pie to take to the poet in memory of -Johnny Appleseed, and she gave me large overweight of cheese and -apricots and ham and all the rest I asked for. That night a bear came -after us, smelling the ham, and I said to him, “Bite Daniel, bite him, -bite him!” and the bear studied us some paltry half-hour, but as the -Comick saith, “his mind was in the kitchen.” And he said to the poet -with a disappointed groan--“How about the ham?” But Vachel then waved -his pine-cudgel and the bear did waver with his hind-quarters and ran -away. The poet then became a silent watcher for the rest of the night. - -We set off next day for the Kootenai River, and Vachel had tied up -his game foot in a dozen ropes and bindings, and it was soaking in -iodine besides, and we went very slowly and he sang hymns all the way. -I said to him, “You won’t mind, Vachel, if I go ahead some distance.” -For his singing scared the wild animals. The white-vested woodpecker -walking like a great fly up the dead poles of old pines, tapping as he -went, paused meditatively at the sound of Vachel’s voice; the grouse -and the ptarmigan tripped ahead of us like hens, and scurried out of -view; little piggy the porcupine trembled in all his beautiful quills; -and the squirrels scolded from all the trees as if we were a terrible -annoyance. I am not surprised. At school at Springfield the teacher -used to say; “All sing except Vachel,” the reason being that he has his -own voice entirely. Thus, in slow and devastating accents, keeping pace -with the enforced slow walk and pine-cudgel progress, you might have -heard him singing-- - - We ... shall ... dwell ... in that fair and happy ... land - Just across ... from the ever-green sho-o-re. - -and I put distance between us, but ever as he caught up I could hear -the scared animals rushing away. I grew facetious about the ever-green -shore, after he had sung it fifty-five times, and he, with utter -meekness, gave it up from that hour forth and sang instead: - - When he cometh, when he cometh, - To make up his jewels. - - * * * * * - -WE descended into a profound and shadowy valley where the pines and -firs got loftier as if trying to reach the level of the mighty cliffs -above them, but all their branches hung in veils of the tillandsia -moss. Here were firs with thousands of Uncle Sam beards of yellow-green -hair hanging from thousands of sharp chins. The great depth of the -brown floor of the forest was roofed in by darkness, and tree-tops and -moss. We came down to a wild brawling stream which rent the forest in -twain and let in the fairness of the sky and the sun. It was a perfect -place and I must say we did not expect to meet anybody there. - -We took off our clothes in the sun, and naked Lindsay took his shirt -to wash in the stream. Naked, I made a fire by the water-edge, and put -on the coffee-pot to boil. The water of the river was ice-cold, and -surreptitiously dipping a limb in it, one registered the fact. Many -brown comma butterflies danced in the sunshine, and settling on our -arms and legs, tickled us, throwing their honey-tubes deep into our -pores and getting their luncheon before we got ours. Evidently we were -a couple of sweet boys. - -Our innocence was, however, sharply disturbed by an unwonted cry and a -shout, and a red-faced, large-eyed, half-breed Indian suddenly appeared -on horseback along the river shore. He was trying to protect the eyes -of his party. But he was too late. We made a rapid scramble and dived -as a party of five highly-amused girls came past, and following them a -dozen pack-mules, carrying their camping outfits and party-frocks. - -I lay in the water after that and thought it over whilst a cascade of -melted snow rushed down my neck, and I saw on the shore the coffee-pot -lifting its lid and spitting many times. Presently I saw the Indian -re-appear and struggle through the forest wreckage of the river-bank. - -“The party apologises,” says he, “for coming upon you unexpectedly.” I -apologised in return. - -[Illustration] - - _When Actaeon saw Artemis at her bath, - The goddess changed him to a stag. - And when Tiresias saw Athene thus - She robbed him of his eyes. - But when these goddesses saw Actaeon and Tiresias - A-bathing, - They laughed. - We meant nothing to them - Compared with what they knew they meant to us._ - - - - -[Illustration: FROM THE FIRE TO THE DARK GOES THE TINY SPARK] - - - - -XXXI. AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD - - -WE lunched on ham and peas and caramel cake, and lay in a natural -cradle among the roots of giant firs, and slept for an hour of a -perfect afternoon. After the ice-cold dip and scalding coffee and a -good feed and a self-indulgent snooze, we knew ourselves to be well and -certainly happy. What a thing is physical well-being--to be hard, to -be fit, to be cool, to be clear-headed, to know there’s a live spring -in every muscle, and then to be care-free and able to sleep in the -afternoon! - -Vachel’s ankle went very well, the danger was that he might do too much -on it. We walked three or four miles up stream and then camped for the -night on a wild triangle alongside a mighty barricade of the jetsam of -broken water-washed tree trunks, some as long as fifty feet. We lodged -in the profound trough of a characteristic Western canyon. Night came -quickly, and our camp-fire light obscured the stars. The giant trees -with shadowy bases climbed sheer out of sight into the murky sky above. -The brown and white foaming river, like hundreds of swimming beavers, -rolled onward past us all the while. We boiled from it, washed clothes -in it, made soap-foam over it, but the ever-freshening waves purified -our margins faster than we could sully them. We paddled about in bare -feet on the shore and gathered wood whilst the firelight played on the -stones, and we heaped high the bonfire. I stood on a mighty chief of -the forest and flung lesser logs from the water-washed wood barricade -right to the fire, and they landed one after another with a thud and a -roar in the midst of the flames. Then we lay flat on our backs on our -blankets and watched our sparks fly up and die in scores, in thirties, -in fives, in thirty-fives, in hundred and fives. What a giddy and wild -life some of them had! How they whirled! How impetuous were some, how -serpentine others! We saw how all of them trailed their light as the -first escaped from the fire, and were like serpents of flame. - -“They do not die,” said the poet. “They only seem to die; they go -on, like ideas, into the invisible world. I’d like to write a volume -of adventures, the story of the adventures of, say, twelve different -sparks.” - -It was very white wood and very red fire. And it was slow-burning, for -the resin had been washed out of all their boles. The fire glowed and -glittered and was sociable and was taking time to live and taking time -to die. Our eyes grew hot and staring, like children’s eyes sitting -in front of the yule-logs listening to Christmas tales after their -bed-time hour. - -Our thoughts fly up brightly and then disappear, but goodness knows -where they go to. Our fancies stream upward idly like little flaming -serpents. Life is a fire, and we keep on burning and throwing up -sparks. We are very pretty, if we could only see ourselves, with our -thoughts and fancies jumping out of us and flying from us. The fire -will burn out towards dawn, and then the sparks will cease. They’ll -only be a happy memory then. But the poet believes the sparks go on. - -What a silence! The river is roaring past like the river of time -itself, but we have forgotten it, we have detached ourselves from -it, and beside our little fire there is a silence all our own. We -have a silence and a noise at the same time. There is a stillness and -aloofness and a sense of no man near. - -A disturbing thought comes. “If there were an earthquake in San -Francisco you’d feel the tremor here. If there were an earthquake in -the West the river might suddenly flow over us.” We listened, we tried -to sense the sleeping world, the ball on which we were lying. How -still, how peaceful it was! Not a tremor, not a quiver from beneath us! -Old earth slept the perfect sleep of a child. We too could sleep that -way, and presently some one spoke but the others did not reply, did not -dare. One was left speaking and the other was asleep. All became still -and quiet in the temple. The candles were still burning. But the priest -had gone. It was night, and the Spirit reigned in serenity. And the -candles were still burning. - -[Illustration] - - _A tiny spark was born to-day; - It said good-b’ye to yesterday. - It carried up a tiny light, - Said good-day and then good-night. - “Good-morrow!” said the tiny spark, - But ere the morrow came ’twas dark. - So that’s the best that he can do, - In his own time say “How d’ye do.”_ - - - - -[Illustration: LINCOLN - THE STAR OF THE EAST BECOMES THE STAR OF THE WEST] - - - - -XXXII. THE STAR OF SPRINGFIELD - - -NEXT day, tramping to Flat Top Mountain, we talked of Springfield and -Abraham Lincoln. We were in stately forests, and the ancient mould -under the feet silenced our steps. We walked slowly, and stopped to -pick the big black huckleberries, paused to climb over stricken trees, -paused to eat the raspberries from the undergrowth of raspberry bushes. - -“I’d like you to think of Lincoln as a poor man,” said Vachel, -“an eccentric--laughed at, sneered at a great deal, entirely -underestimated, a man who was a mystic, who believed in dreams and -presentiments and told many dreams to his Cabinet with great gravity. -Politicians want to see in him a conventional great man now, but in his -life-time he was called eccentric. He was as much laughed at as Johnny -Appleseed. But if a man is called eccentric in this country, or much -laughed at, you’ll often find he was a mystic or a genius of some kind.” - -One of Vachel’s alternative ideas for a tramp was to do a Springfield -star, making the city our centre to radiate outward, or, could I say, -walk radiantly outward, in one direction, then in another, all round -the compass. “As you went to Bethlehem with the Russian pilgrims so you -could pilgrimage to our Bethlehem,” said he, “see our star.” - -People from all parts of the world come to Springfield to see the -Lincoln home, to visit Salem and the grave of Anne Rutledge, to salute -Lincoln’s grave. They do so, not because they are told to do so, or -because there are organised tours, but because the heart moves them to -it. - -But there are also many people in America ready to turn their backs on -the simple Abe Lincoln of Springfield. He is too rough for them, too -untidy, too raw. They would fain think of him as a man of aplomb, a man -of a well-established family, one of the governing class. Lincoln’s -son Robert is president of the Pullman Car Company, and they would see -the father in the son and surmise a family well-lined, well-wadded, -well-upholstered. In that class you can get to power, and be carried -there, and sleep on the way. Belong to that class and all is yours! - -But the real Abe Lincoln gives the lie to this. It offends some people -to the heart to think that Lincoln’s father lived in a three-ways-round -log-cabin with the fourth side not built in, that young Abraham was a -barge-man, what we call in England a bargee, and came down the Sangamon -River in a flat-bottomed boat with a cargo and got stuck on the dam -at Salem and accepted a job there, and slept in a sort of loft over a -ramshackle tavern, men one side of a plank, women the other, and that -he rose out of the very depths of American life. - -“What Lincoln did, any boy in the United States can aspire to do,” -cried Vachel as we sat on a log together and looked at the shadow and -shine of the myriad-fold population of trees. “We’ve no governing -class. We’ve only got a class that thinks it is the governing class, -but it is the most barren in the community. Lincoln’s life shows -the real truth. Any one who feels he has it in him can rise to the -Presidency of the United States.” - -I promised to make the pilgrimage to the Lincoln shrines when our tramp -should be over and we returned to Springfield. Then Vachel was fired -by his pet fancies about his native city. He would have it all painted -white, like the Chicago World’s Fair. “White harmonises all sizes and -shapes of houses and all types of architectural design. And it has an -effect on the mind. It suggests the ideal. If the city were all painted -white, then people would try to live up to its appearance. Then also -it would stand out among all cities of America. The very fact of its -painting itself white would go into every newspaper in the United -States, it would be known in all English-speaking lands and would -direct world-attention to the shrine of Abraham Lincoln,” said he. - -It seemed to me a practical idea, and I bade him preach it still. He’d -find valuable allies in the paint merchants and painters of Springfield -anyway. If America could go “dry” one need not despair of Springfield -painting itself white. “In America all things are possible,” as a -German street-song says. - -He returned once more to his story of the ten who died for the flag -of Springfield--the new flag of the city. “I’ve always felt,” said -he, “that there could be found at least ten men among the unlikely -fellows who loaf around our town square ready to give their lives for -Springfield. If ever there came a time when Springfield was in danger -or its flag likely to be dishonoured, I know it is from the tramps and -wasters that something would come. At least, from the people we don’t -know.” - -“If only I could write that idea as Edgar Allan Poe wrote ‘King Pest,’” -said the poet, “then I’d tell the truth and shame the Devil.” - - * * * * * - -“YET Springfield was once disgraced by a most unholy race-riot,” my -companion went on. “It was in 1908, the centenary of Lincoln’s birth, -and I felt it as a terrible disgrace. The negro victims were entirely -innocent. It was a shocking affair.” - -We had by this time lifted ourselves high out of the gloomy valleys -and had attained to a rarer atmosphere and a clearer world, where the -forest lay below like a book that has been read and above it rose the -eternal hills lifting their mighty granite shoulders to the sky. We saw -in retrospect many of the mountains we had climbed. “Going-to-the-Sun” -and “Heaven’s Peak” were remote but grandiose on the horizon. We were -on a much-exposed ridge of Flat Top Mountain, and we camped in a wintry -spot beside a natural table of rock. On the rock we spread our supper; -on the ground our blankets. The wind blew the flaps of our blankets, -it blew away the flaming embers of the bonfire which we made, and it -ignited the grass, and when we had put the fire out on one side it -broke out on the other, and yet there was not enough of a fire to warm -us. Night came on, and we sought new fuel. Vachel hobbled beside me and -discoursed in a preoccupied way about Springfield and its race-riot. - -“I’m with you all the way about the Negroes, Stephen,” said he, as we -struggled to upraise an embedded sapling which the snows had tumbled -over in the spring. “If you write about the Negro again, say I’m with -you, I subscribe to it. I’ll go the limit with you.” - -We raised the entangled, difficult, fallen tree up on to the star-radii -of its roots, and looked down the wild slope to where our fire was -burning and blowing. It was dark up there where we were, and the fire -below gleamed in the darkness. We rolled the sapling down to the -fire and on to it, and stamped out the flames in the grass, and then -returned into the darkness for another sapling. - -“You know how I felt in Springfield when that riot occurred,” said -Vachel. “I visited all the leading Negroes and most of the leading -white men. I bombarded the newspapers with letters. And I don’t know -that it did any good. You couldn’t be sure that another onslaught on -the coloured people wouldn’t occur to-morrow.” - -As we talked we sought and collected withered branches, wind-riven arms -of the pines. Some we had to pull out of the earth, others we could not -pull out. - -“I believe the only way to stop lynching would be to break into a -lynching crowd and make them either lynch you instead of the Negro or -lynch you for interfering. When they realised what they had done their -hearts would be touched, their consciences would be shocked,” said -Vachel. - -We had unwieldy faggots in our arms and so walked closely together down -the hill, supporting one another’s wood. - -“It is expedient that one man should die for the people once more,” -said the poet. - -We made up a good fire; we boiled a pot of coffee and fried a heap of -beans and stewed a cup of apricots and cut the bread and untied the -sugar-bag and exposed the dried raisins, of which we had a capacious -little sack-full and wrapped ourselves round and sat by the fire and -fed and talked-- - -“Springfield was just about to attract the attention of the world in a -special way, as the shrine of Lincoln, when that riot broke out,” said -Vachel. “Large schemes had been approved for the improvement of the -city. All promised well. Then suddenly this race-riot broke out, and -Springfield was the subject of cartoons all over the United States. -The finger of scorn was pointed at Lincoln’s city. Springfield is still -trying to live it down.” - -I confessed it was difficult to think of Springfield as an American -Bethlehem after it had been the scene of a race-riot. That was indeed -a smudge on its fair name. Quiet little Bethlehem in Palestine has at -least kept clear of that. Still even Bethlehem could not help it if -some ugly human doings occurred there. - -It was curious that the race-riot sprang from the “poor Whites,” and -yet from the same poor Whites Vachel was ready to find ten who would -die for the Flag. - -I told my thought then, and that was, that the poor white population, -heroic as it was, would not be deterred by the self-sacrifice of one -of their number for the sake of the Blacks. This very year an English -clergyman was stripped and beaten almost to death by a gang of Whites -in Florida, just because he asked a congregation for fair play for the -Negro. And nothing happened to the gang. No prosecutions followed. -Lynch is powerful when law is weak. - -“The social conscience is dull,” said the poet sadly. “The Negro -question is the one which has most plagued America, and most people -have given it up and decided not to fret their brains any more about -it. You see, we even fought a war for it once, and we’re always -quarrelling about it. A news paragraph about a man being burned by a -mob will not even catch the notice of the newspaper reader. It either -does not stir his imagination, or he refuses to think about it.” - -“But it brings America into disrespect in Europe. It takes away from -the force of her moral example,” said I. - -Lindsay knew that. We discussed then the daring appeal of Governor -Dorsey of Georgia to the people of that State to mend their ways. We -discussed South Africa and then India. - -And then we went for more wood, and the stars shone out above us, -peerless in their righteousness, rolling along deliberately as ever on -their fixed ways. “How brightly they shine on us,” said I. “We should -be as they. If they erred and strayed from their ways as we do, what a -mad universe ’twould be.” - -“And one of them,” said the poet, “is the star of Bethlehem, the star -that rested over Bethlehem and then rested over Springfield for a -while.” - -“Up here in the mountains we see the stars, but down there in the -forests and dark valleys it is not so easy,” said I. - -We talked of Springfield by the firelight till one of us fell asleep. -One picture remains in my mind, and that is of a Hindu who sought out -Vachel Lindsay after he had been to Abraham Lincoln’s home. “Show me -now the home of the poet who lives among you,” said the Hindu. - -[Illustration] - - _A Hindu came to Springfield, - He saw the home of Lincoln, - He saw the court of Lincoln, - He saw the streets he trod. - “Now show me,” quoth the Hindu, - Show me your poet Lindsay, - Show me your prophet Lindsay, - Who sings to-day to God._ - - _The guide to Fifth Street therefore led - And showed the house where Lindsay fed. - And the Hindu much rejoiced and said: - “I know that Springfield is not dead.”_ - - - - -[Illustration: GOOD-DAY MR PRESIDENT] - - - - -XXXIII. FLAT TOP MOUNTAIN - - -THE fire burned sulkily at dawn, and the grass around it was white -with frost. We had lain awake for an hour, silently meditating on the -joys of coffee to be. We knew it was no use getting up before sunrise, -for fuel was scarce and hard to find. It was a wonderful dreamy dawn, -rising above the mists of an autumnal night. We looked to see antelopes -perched on the crags above us, and mountain-goats. But the scene was -bare on all hands. Our eyes lighted on the rusty foliage of some -uprooted trees. Walking in our unlaced boots, we brought this dead wood -in, made a fine blaze, and had breakfast, and then curled ourselves up -by the fire and slept till the sun stood higher. If I woke first it was -to sit with a blanket about my shoulders and pen an article for Kit -Morley. It commonly happened that I sat by the fire and scribbled my -letters to the Post in the morning whilst the poet had an extra hour -asleep. - -When we resumed our climb the poet got talking of the Indians. -Curiously enough Flat Top Mountain marks the entrance to the country of -the Flat-Heads, the Flat-Heads being so called because they press their -babies’ heads to obtain a flat-headed type of beauty. The mountain has -imitated the Indians and grown up flat-headed too. We were presently -to meet, when we crossed the Canadian line, a considerable number -of Indians of various tribes. Vachel facetiously observed that he -wouldn’t mind taking an Indian bride if he could find one that walked -thirty-five miles a day and took a bath every morning. I held that -it was very snobbish on his part. The disqualifying point, however, -proved to be the chewing of tobacco. When the poet saw these young -Amazons rolling their quids he was confirmed in bachelordom. - -“Great people, the Indians,” said Vachel. “I was brought up on their -orations. So was mother, I believe. Did you ever see M’Gaffey’s reader -with Black Hawk’s ‘Oration’ and the ‘Defence of Spartacus,’ and other -wonderful studies in popular oratory? I wouldn’t mind voting for an -Indian to be President of the United States.” - -“What! A red Indian? I should have thought America was too prejudiced -against colour.” - -“Not against the Indians. Against the Negroes. You and I don’t think a -Negro could rise to Presidency. But an Indian is different. There is a -great romance connected with the Indians; there are the traditions of -the battles with them; there is the personal grandeur of the braves. -Every American boy has longed to be an Indian chief. And then there is -the strain of Pocahontas, the Indian princess, married into the pride -of Virginia. I believe an Indian President is just what we want to -root us in America and give us a genuine American inspiration. It would -bring poetry into politics. It would bring all the glamour of the West.” - -“But it is not a practical possibility,” I urged. - -“I believe it could be put over,” said the poet. “You see, the Indians -are a hunting people, a sporting people. They’ve refused to bow the -knee to the sordid side of life.” - -We agreed that they were such good hunters that it was in vain the -United States Government protected game in these parts. The Flat-Heads -seemed to have swept off everything. You may go for days and see -nothing more edible than marmots and porcupines. On the other hand, I -have heard it said that the animals know the difference between the -reservations of the Indians and the preserved regions of the Rockies, -and at sight of an Indian on the horizon they rush to safety. - -Lindsay recounted to me the story of the political campaigns of -“Tippecanoe and Tyler too!” and how the wild tokens of Western life -invaded the East and moved the imagination of America. Every American -politician is aware of this motive force. Even Roosevelt, a pure New -Yorker, played the Western game--as Colonel of the Rough Riders. - -We had a wonderful walk along the Flat Top, which was a prolonged -mountain meadow full of flowers. Vachel began to repine because he -foresaw that, like everything else, our tramp must end, and that in -a few weeks we should be back in Springfield and the mere town. I -told him a story of how one summer day in Petrograd I paused at a -fruiterer’s shop to buy some strawberries which looked very inviting. -They were very dear, but the shopkeeper said, “I have some very -good second quality strawberries inside the shop, and I strongly -recommend them.” “Thanks,” said I. “But I never buy second quality -strawberries.” “So in life, eh Vachel, let us never accept second -quality strawberries.” - -The poet laughed, and began talking of grades of eggs, new-laid eggs, -State eggs, selected eggs, political eggs. So walking gently we reached -the north-western extremity of the tableland and came upon a grandiose -diversified scene of shadows and gloomy greens and barren scarps, and -of crowned monarchs of ice and snow. The pines of the Canadian approach -were posted like companies of soldiers and disposed in beleaguering -armies as if the line, unguarded by men, was guarded by trees, the -forest wardens of the Empire and the Republic. The poet saw in the -scene another Turner engraving. - -We plunged then downward through thick masses of alder and hazel, a -whole mountain-side solid with low growth. Here also were thousands of -raspberry bushes all agleam with rosy fruits. Vachel called the descent -a “raspberry epic.” Down, down we plunged to the dark valley of the -rushing Kootenai, only finding a camping-ground after dark. - -We came to an aged river in a steep vale of years with old shaggy -firs on its very water-edge, and with the ruins of the uncontrollable -ever-encroaching forest piled up like walls. We lighted a fire on a -humpy-bumpy bit of shore where it was hard either to walk or sit, but -easy to find wood to burn. We each cleared ourselves a cradle in the -brown needles of the infringing firs. - -It was a magnificent enclosure which the old river was a-running -through, like a cypress-walled garden of an Asiatic mountain-castle. -The trees stood like gigantic janissaries or guardsmen with their -cloaks on. The night-stars were exalted by the climbing forest and -peeped but faintly into the depths, and like a mighty black bastion the -sheer rock of the mountain cut off the view northward. - -The fire flared, the hot stones cracked and burst. We put our hot -blankets around us and sprawled on them whilst the poet cooked the ham -and the beans, and I tended the coffee-pot or stripped the last wisps -of grease-paper from the butter. - -We slept in our cradles and wakened in the morning to see the beavers -jumping among the fallen timber and diving in the river. - -[Illustration] - - _A prairie resident, - A dweller in a tent, - A White House resident, - A good man for President! - To White House from white tent. - O excellent precedent! - A precedent for a President. - An unprecedented President!_ - - - - -[Illustration: We’ve seen your line of difference and viewed it with -indifference.] - - - - -XXXIV. CROSSING THE CANADIAN LINE - - -“AS we approach the British Empire,” says Vachel facetiously, “the -huckleberries grow more plentiful, the raspberry bushes larger, the -trees loftier, the air purer.” In the poet’s mind politics and hymns -gave way to desire of huckleberries. I luxuriated in raspberries. He -was Huckleberry Finn. I was a character in Russian folk-lore--the hare -with the raspberry-coloured whiskers. “When we get to a Canadian hotel -let us register as H. Finn and R. C. W. Hare,” said the poet. - -We had slept on the hoar-frosted grass of mountain meadows near the -sky; we had slept among the beavers on the banks of the Kootenai; we -tramped in the radiant upper air; we tramped in the gloom of ancient -forests. Mount Cleveland lifted its dome of snow high o’er the lesser -mountains. Trapper Mountain receded. We listened one night to the -coyotes caterwauling in their loneliness. Their superfluous lugubrious -laments reminded me of modern West of Ireland poetry. Vachel laughed -at the comparison. We came to a deserted cabin, once the habitation of -a ranger, now littered with Alberta whisky bottles, and here we read -a pencilled remark written years ago: “Slept here last night. Visited -by a bare who came into cabin and et two sides of bacon.” Another -pencilled notice, apparently by the same hand, said: “Don’t leave -garbig lying about but put it in the Garbig Holl.” An Indian came and -offered to lead us to a boat on Lake Waterton and give us a ferry to -Canada. We preferred to walk, but it occurred to me afterwards that he -was not so much interested in boating as in bottles. I don’t doubt he -could have got us a drink. Then a grand mounted party came past us -with guides and pack-horses, coming from over Brown Pass, going over -Indian Pass. This was a rich American family on holiday: here were -father and mother, grown children, young children, cousins, and in -the midst of them Aunt Jemima, looking very proud and stiff, with an -expression on her face which signified “_Never again!_” They had been -twenty-eight days in the mountains, camping out all the time. - - * * * * * - -VACHEL’S ankle was rather weak, and he much preferred sitting to -walking. He called himself “the slow train through Arkansas.” We -stopped at stations, half-stations, and halts. “All I lack, Stephen, is -steam,” said he. But every now and then he would take courage and say, -“Lots of walk in me to-day--Canada to-night!” - -The excitement of finding the “Canadian Line” cheered my companion. The -face which in the morning had looked contrite and penitent as that of -one just released from jail, lighted up with new mirth and facetious -intent. He began to get steam. The slow train from Arkansas began to -approach Kentucky, and the sign of steam was a return to political -conversation. He began to chaff me mercilessly on the subject of the -Empire and King George and the British lion. I chaffed him about “God’s -own country.” The poet identified America with all that was best in -America’s traditions and in the visions of her poets, the - - All I could never be, - All men ignored in me, - -of his native country. I was critical, for I bore in my mind the -growth of materialism, the corruption of the law, the lynchings of -the Negroes, and the rest. He wanted me to dissociate America from -the dollar, from the noisy business rampage, and from all that was -unworthy, and instead identify America with the dreams of her idealists. - -“That is what I did with Russia,” said I. “If I tell England of the -ideal America they’ll only call me a mystic. But you, Vachel,” I -continued, “try and think of the Empire that way.” - -He found it difficult. He could think creatively about his own country, -but where others were concerned he reverted to the normal critical -mind. - - * * * * * - -IT is almost a recognised convention in literature. If you are writing -about a foreign country you take the general average of what you -observe and describe that. You can attack lustily without fear that the -magazine will lose “advertising.” The writer on Russia was supposed to -bring home a report that the police, and indeed every one else, took -bribes, the Jews were persecuted, the prisoners in Siberia were chained -together. Most American writers on Russia have done it. Kennan is a -characteristic case, who obtained fame identifying Russia with prison -horrors without recalling to the minds of his readers that there are -dreadful prisons also in the United States, and that the silence of his -own Georgia is sometimes desecrated by the melancholy clank-clank of -the chain-gang. - -I was besought in 1917, by a leading magazine of America, to write an -account of Rasputin, and although I had many interesting stories of -that evil genius of Russia I refused to write what I considered would -at that time be damaging to Russia. On the other hand, I wrote in 1919 -a realistic vision of America in perhaps her saddest post-war moment, -when Wilson was down and no one knew what America was going to do next, -and offered it to the same journal. But the editor was quite hurt that -I did not then see America in roseate hues. How characteristic of this -sprightly world, which, as Latimer said, “was begotten of Envy and put -out at Discord for nurse!” - -Not that the poet was critical of England. He idealised England. -He was not as critical of England as I was of America. Whilst he -idealised America creatively he idealised England romantically. To him -America was something to be; to him England was something that forever -was--beautiful, the substance of poetry, the evidence of things not -seen. He did not sympathise with the Irish. He did not think England -was so well organised, commercially, as America. But then to him that -was a point in our favour. Only one point was registered against us--he -did not think that as a nation we could make coffee; and we lagged -behind on Prohibition. But then he had to admit that the Americans for -their part did not know how to make tea. - -“Except for the King,” said Vachel, “we are much the same people.” -He loathed kings. “There’s not much difference between Canada and the -United States,” he went on. - -“We’ll see,” I answered. “Canadians are subjects of a monarch; -Americans are citizens of a Republic. Canadians look to the King. More -than a mere line divides the two halves of North America. You’ll see.” - -So we tramped on. We had a last lunch and finished the ham, the -apricots, and the coffee. As one remarkable fact, we met no Canadians -on the American side; we met no Americans going to Canada either. Yet -there were no restrictions whatever. Out in the Rockies the unguarded -line is literally unguarded; no patrols, no excise or passport -officers. You can come and go as you please. The United States would -encourage Canada to a communion of perfect freedom. Whilst America puts -nothing in Canada’s way, Canada for her part could not afford to police -a 4000-mile line. All is therefore free. - -Still, it is clearly the wild animals that take advantage of freedom, -and they abound and are happy in the region about the line. It is a -very strange line, straight and absolute on the map, the essence of -political division, an absurdity in geography. There is no river, no -main mountain-range, no change of the colour of the soil, but only the -invisible hypothesis called 54.40--the “Fifty-four Forty or fight” of -the boundary dispute. It would have been difficult to find the line but -for the fact that a sixteen-foot swathe has been cut in the forest. We -had been told to look out for that. We found it at last, and it was -afternoon, and we stood in No-man’s land together. - -It was a curious cut, a rough glade, an alley through the tall pines. -We walked along it a short way; we discerned where it stretched far -over a mountain-side, a mere marking in the uniform green of the -forest-roof. We came down to where the lake water was lapping on the -shore, and the great mountains in their fastnesses stood about us. We -found frontier-post No. 276, and then I stood on the Canada side and -Vachel Lindsay stood on the America side, and we put our wrists on -the top of the post. As we two had become friends and learned to live -together without quarrelling, so might our nations! It was a happy -moment in our tramping. - -Then, as it was four in the afternoon, I proposed having tea, much to -the mirth of the poet. For had we not finished the last of our coffee -at our last American resting-place? Fittingly we began on tea when we -entered the Empire. - -There was a change of scenery; fresher air, aspen groves, red hips on -many briars. A beautiful mountain lifted its citadelled peak into a -grey unearthly radiance. We climbed Mount Bertha, and the hillsides -were massed with young slender pines that never grow hoary or old, but -die whilst they are young, and are supplanted by the ever-new--forests -of everlasting youth. The grandeur of the mountains increased upon us -till all was in the sublimity of the Book of Job and of the Chaldean -stars. There was nothing petty anywhere--but an eternal witness and an -eternal silence. - -[Illustration] - - _A Yank and a Britisher walked to the line, - One was a citizen, the other an alien. - “You alien!” said the Yank._ - - _The Yank and the Britisher crossed o’er the line, - One was a subject, the other an alien. - “You alien!” said the Britisher._ - - _But when Yank and Briton elapsed hands on the line, - Then neither the Yank nor the Briton was alien._ - - _Hail, Uncle Sam! - Hail, John Bull!_ - - _We’ve found your line of difference - And viewed it with indifference._ - - _You don’t need to guard it, - Nor yet to regard it - With doubt or with fret. - Six weeks we’ve tramped together - In every sort of weather, - And haven’t quarrelled yet._ - - _We toe the line, we toe it, - The old tramp and the poet. - If we can do it. - And not rue it, - All can--says the poet._ - - - - -[Illustration: WASHINGTONIA WELLINGTONIA HINDENBURGER] - - - - -XXXV. THE DIFFERENCE - - -SO we entered the Dominion National Park of Waterton Lakes. We climbed -the next mountain after Mount Bertha and saw on every hand the -pinnacled and pillared tops of the Canadian mountains, crags surmounted -by mighty teeth of stone blackly silhouetted against a radiant sky. -Some Dominion officials came into these parts last year, cancelled the -old names of the mountains, and gave them a new set--Mount Joffre, -Mount Foch, and the rest, as if they were No. 1 and No. 2 of Great War -villas. I see by old maps that Mount Cleveland used to be called Kaiser -Peak. How war changes the names of places! It changed St. Petersburg to -Petrograd, Pressburg to Bratislavl; it has even changed the names of -the Rocky Mountains. - -“Luckily the Germans did not win,” I said to Vachel, “or New York might -have become ‘Zeppelindorf.’” - -We were walking down a slope which Nature had planted out with pompous -trees called “Wellingtonias.” - -“What do you call them?” asked the poet. - -“Wellingtonias.” - -“Not in America. We call them ‘Washingtonias.’” - -“You forget you’ve crossed the line--Washingtonias this morning, but -Wellingtonias this afternoon.” - -The poet submitted. - -“But what would the Germans have called them?” - -“Perhaps they’d call them ‘Bluchers’ or ‘Hindenburgers.’” - -Apropos of Bluchers--in the first Canadian village we visited the -cobbler for repairs. He was an old man, and explained to us just -exactly what “Blucher shoes” were. He pronounced the name to rhyme with -“butcher,” and he called them shoes in the American fashion. In America -boots are shoes, and shoes are boots. - -“They call them Bluchers,” said the cobbler in a quavering voice, -“because Blucher came up on both sides, and Bony did not know on which -side he’d turn up. So the upper of the Bluchers are equally high on -both sides of the shoe.” - - * * * * * - -THAT is, however, to go some days ahead. We are in the Rockies still, -and beside a wonderful stretch of water blown by mountain winds into -myriads of running waves. We bathed on its shallow shores; we did not -venture far from the bank. For Waterton is a mysterious lake. It has -often been sounded, but there are parts of it where no bottom has been -found. It is the hole out of which these Rocky Mountains have been -scooped, and it goes down, down, down, to the very depths of the earth. - -At last we came to a Canadian camping-ground and a group of people -clustered around a Ford touring car. A Ford car used for touring. -Here there happened to be on holiday a professor of English, and he -recognised Lindsay at first sight--such is the fame of the poet in -American universities and schools. - -This camping-group told us we were in a land predominantly inhabited -by Mennonites, Mormons, and Dukhobors, and they whetted our curiosity -considerably regarding our new neighbours. We had arrived in a part of -Canada which was rather obscure and certainly little visited by either -Americans or Englishmen. - -We came to a ramshackle inn and a village and a dance-hall, and it was -the last dance of the season. The Mormon, German, and Russian belles -checked in their corsets at the cloakroom, and prepared for fun. It -was a log-cabin hall, but the floor was waxed, and from the beams hung -coloured-paper lanterns. There were a score or so of black bear-skins -hung on the walls all the way round. On the bear-skins were white -sashes with these words printed on them: _I DO LOVE TO CUDDLE_; and on -the main beam of the ceiling was written: _Patrons are respectfully -requested to park their gum outside_. The whole front of the piano was -taken out so that there should be more noise. Splotches on the floor -showed how in the past, patrons had surreptitiously brought in their -gum and had accidents. Many couples assembled, and we saw the human -species, though not at its best. - - * * * * * - -WE issued from the mountains on to the southern Alberta plain, and then -looking back, saw every great mountain we had ever crossed. “We’ve -found the real sky-scrapers,” said Vachel. “Instead of the Times -Building, Heaven’s Peak; instead of the Flatiron, Flat Top Mountain; -instead of the World Building, Going-to-the-Sun; and instead of the -building raised by dimes, the temple not made by hands. The way to -these wonders is not by Broadway, but by primitive trails.” The poet -conducted the orchestra of the universe with the long blossoming stem -of a basket-flower--“instead of the Stock Exchange, the Star Granary -over Waterton Lake,” he murmured. We named the beautiful grouping of -mountains about the lake as the Star Granary. For at night, with stars -above and star-reflections below, it was as if the barns were full of -Heaven’s harvest. - -We tramped away northward toward the Crow’s Nest, where a great forest -fire was raging, and we came to the “cow-town” of Pincer Creek. -The Canadian Wild West seemed much wilder than the Wild West south -of the line--or rather, the population seemed wilder. One missed -the gentleness and playfulness of the United States. The men were -harder than down south, and they looked at us with a contempt only -modified by the thought that we might be potential harvest hands. The -Canadian-English looked more askance at Vachel than they did at me. -He looked poetical. They couldn’t have put a name to it, but that is -what it was. But whatever it was, I could feel their aversion. They -disapproved of tramps, but preferred them to poets. I could see also -they didn’t care for Vachel’s accent, but they rejoiced in mine and -spoke to me just to get me to reply so that they could hear once more -the voice of the Old Country. We were clearly in the Empire and not in -the Republic. The Union Jacks in the little log-cabins were wreathed -with flowers. The Stars and Stripes had disappeared. We were so struck -with the change of feeling in the air that we bought ourselves a -school-history of Canada and read it assiduously. The very way of man -looking to man was different. Then the first popular song which sounded -in our ears was: - - We never get up until the sergeant - Brings our breakfast up to bed. - O it’s a lovely war! - -which is a purely British army song. The Englishman in Alberta is an -overman in the midst of a miscellaneous foreign under-population. The -Englishman’s word is law. He is stronger, rougher in his language and -his ways--not educated. But this sort of fibre is best suited for the -outposts of Empire. - -“We Americans are just a bunch of playful kittens,” said Vachel. - -There was nothing very playful about the Alberta pioneers. - -“Did you light that fire on the side of the road a mile back? Well, you -dam well go back and put it out.” - -“We did put it out.” - -“I tell ye, ye didn’t. I won’t waste my breath talking to you. If you -set the prairie afire I’ll have you both in jail by sundown.” - -“All right, we’ll go back.” - -[Illustration] - - _We’re on the same continent. - Well, I don’t know. Smells different somehow. - Same air; people speak the same language. - But I don’t see that bird about, - That old eagle of yours. - Smells as if a lion had been here. - You don’t know the lion’s smell? - Well, smell that Union Jack! - That’s it._ - - - - -[Illustration: BURN YOUR RIFLES AND RETURN TO WORK] - - - - -XXXVI. DUKHOBORS - - -WE had not anticipated coming into the neighbourhood of the Dukhobors. -It was an interesting surprise. I had promised myself I would make a -special pilgrimage some day to Western Canada just to find out what the -Dukhobors thought about life, and how they were getting on now. And -then to come on them accidentally. - -The Dukhobors, or “Spirit wrestlers,” are a Russian religious community -brought to Canada in 1898. They claim to have been in existence in -Russia for over three hundred years. They are primitive Christians akin -to Quakers, but more uncompromising. They are Communists, pacifists, -anti-state, anti-church, anti-law. Theologically they consider Christ -as a good man and teacher, but not divine. Tolstoy’s teachings show -him very close to the Dukhobors in theory. He greatly sympathised with -them in the persecution which they suffered at the hands of the Russian -Government, and it was in part due to him, and more largely to the -Society of Friends in England, that the expatriation of the Dukhobors -was accomplished. Tolstoy is said to have put aside the profits of his -novel _Resurrection_ to defray in part the expenses of transporting the -Russians. There are several thousand of them, and first they were taken -to Cyprus where at least the British Navy got acquainted with them, as -they were naturally a curiosity. Cyprus was not suitable, and so Canada -was chosen for a habitat. The community was taken to Saskatchewan, and -later migrated in large part to British Columbia. They did not find -their path strewn with roses in Canada, and have had a hard time. -But despite persecution they have prospered. They are notorious for a -naked procession they once made “in quest of the Messiah” some forty -miles in bitter winter weather, displaying “the naked truth” to the -Canadians--the pilgrimage to Yorktown which has been described with -much gusto in the American and Canadian Press. They have refused to -take steps to relinquish their Russian nationality, refused to fight, -refused to pay taxes. So naturally they have been a thorn in the side -of the Canadian. - -The Rocky Mountains stretching away in their majesty must remind -some Russians of the grand array of the Caucasus as seen from the -north--and the prairie is the steppe. Far away you discern the white -and brown buildings of a settlement, and then, ten times as large as -anything else, pale-blue grain-elevators. The circumambient moor is -many coloured, and a dove-coloured sky is flecked with softest cloud. -There are snow fences at many points of the road to protect from drifts -in winter. A neverceasing wind which brings no rain is driving over -the corn-fields. As you approach the village you begin to see Russian -peasant men and women working on the fields hoisting the wheat-sheaves -to the harvesting carts, hoisting the sheaves to the top of the -stacks. A stalwart peasant-wife in cottons stands on top of the stack, -pitchfork in her hand, and she catches the sheaves as they come up to -her. The grain-elevators rise mightily into vision, and then the words -printed on them in large black letters--=THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY OF -UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD=. - -I soon met Pavel Potapof, the local headman, and I talked in Russian -with a number of men and women who spoke no other language. They were -raising wheat for themselves and for their wheatless brethren who live -in the lumbering camps and villages of British Columbia, but represent -a sort of a half-way colony between the original Verigin, Saskatchewan, -and the main settlement of Brilliant, British Columbia. - -Potapof was a boy at Cyprus, where his father enjoyed some authority. -He is now a man in his thirties with brown moustache and close-clipped -chin. If you are a Dukhobor you may not shave but you may clip with the -shears. He remembered touching a Mr. St. John at Cyprus, who used to -call him Pavlushka. - -Potapof spoke Russian with a soft Little-Russian accent, all g’s being -h’s. He came from Tiflis province, and I talked first of the Caucasus, -comparing them with the Rockies. Then naturally we discussed Russia, -and a curious crowd gathered about us. Scarcely any spoke English--all -were Russian subjects, and I much wondered what they thought of the -Bolshevik revolution. For they also are Communists. I soon learned that -an appeal had been made to them on behalf of the Bolsheviks to help -to stem the famine in Russia. Some of the Dukhobors were for sending -grain, some not. They blamed the Bolsheviks for their “two million men -under arms.” - -Most of them said: “Let those who are richer in Russia give to -those who are poorer; there’ll be enough to go round.” Imagination -did not show them the ghastly ruin of contemporary Russia, where, -except for a handful of Soviet commissaries, there are no rich, no -“better-off” people. Most of them also said: “Let them lay down their -arms, and then we’ll think of feeding them.” But their deliberations -crystallised in the following way. They decided on a symbolic act. -They visited all their Ruthenian and Galician neighbours and any -one who had a war-trophy to spare, and they made thus a collection -of rifles, shotguns, pistols--some three hundred or more weapons. -These they burned in a heap. Then they sent a wireless message to the -Russian people describing this act, and added further the monition: “Do -likewise; burn your rifles, and return to work!” - -“They murdered Nikolai (rubili Nikolai) and his family for liberty,” -said Potapof. “But now clearly there is much less liberty than ever -there was before.” - -Nevertheless I thought I detected a curious home-sickness among many of -them. The violent rumours and persistent bad news of Russia comes to a -primitive community that cannot read in a more disturbing and dramatic -way than through newspapers. They complained sadly of conditions in -Canada; of droughts, of plagues of grasshoppers, of bygone hardships -and persecutions in Saskatchewan. - -“Here there will be a Bolshevik revolution too,” said one. “We shall -not take part in it. But we know it is preparing. There is much -discontent in the neighbouring settlements and in the mines. Oh yes, -there is trouble brewing here too.” - -This Dukhobor had been talking to brother Poles and Ruthenians, but he -was quite out of perspective. I asked how the Dukhobors had faced under -the Conscription Act. Apparently they did not suffer much; Canada did -not trouble the Dukhobors. They had an easier time than their brothers -the Mennonites in the United States. They told me there had been a -considerable influx of Mennonites by way of the unguarded line: they -also are pacifists and utterly oppose to personal service in war. So -struck are they by what happened to them in America through the war -that there is much talk of their deserting both Canada and the States -and seeking a refuge in Mexico. - -The Dukhobors, however, have a strong hold in Canada, and as long as -Peter Verigin, their unofficial patriarch and leader, lives, they will -most probably hold on to their settlements in British Columbia and -Saskatchewan. Perhaps in a new era, a new Russia may again take the -Dukhobors to herself. Canada does not assimilate them. They do not -assimilate Canada. And they are, and they feel, as Dostoievsky said, -like “a slice cut out of a loaf.” - -[Illustration] - - _Fancy meeting the Dukhobors - Up in the Rockies: - A bit of old Russia - Planted up there to meet me! - Sure next time when I go to the Caucasus - I’ll look to find a batch of English there, - Trying to live their unmolested lives - Under the free institutions - Of old Russia._ - - _Tolstoy, in his story of the old pilgrim, - Taught you could find Jerusalem in your native village, - And did not need to pilgrimage afar. - But he did not say you could find freedom - In your own village--in your own heart. - O no, that’s political, - You must go a long way to find that._ - - - - -[Illustration: WHEREVER THEY LOCATE THEY BUILD TEMPLES] - - - - -XXXVII. A VISIT TO THE MORMONS - - -WE tramped from ranch to ranch by the rutty roads that skirt the -sections, walked away from the mountain-walls, and ever as we went -the terrain extended. The sky had become wider; no rocky walls closed -us in. The backs of our necks became swollen from the unusual heat -of the sun on them. We kicked up dust as we walked, dust again! -Our eyes traversed the scene to light, not on cascades or possible -camping-grounds, but on far-away farmhouses. We met the oats and -wheat and barley fields striving over the moors, and walked till all -moor disappeared, till there was nothing in front of us but gold. -Made dream-like by the forest fires, the long range of the Rockies -seemed unreal--the mountains which we had climbed became remote and -shadowy--and not part of our destiny. Our only reality was golden -Alberta, which seemed to extend to infinitude, the plateau only -gradually losing its altitude, unfolding and undulating downward--one -vast resplendent area of golden harvest fields. - -The sun gleamed on numberless shocks on the right, on the left, and -ahead, and the whole horizon was massed with newly mobilised golden -armies. We walked the rutty roads and were exhilarated, and counted the -wheatfields which we passed, knowing that each, being a whole section, -was a whole mile long. - -We discussed a tragical line in one of Lindsay’s poems: - - Election night at midnight - Boy Bryan’s defeat. - Defeat of Western silver, - Defeat of the wheat - ... Defeat of the aspen groves of Colorado valleys, - The blue-bells of the Rockies, - And blue bonnets of old Texas - By the Pittsburg alleys. - -Defeat of the wheat! How tragical that sounds in the soul, how -calamitous and appalling! It is like the cutting off of golden youth, -the extinction of all our dreams. - - * * * * * - -WE boiled our pot by the side of the road; we sought milk and bread at -farmhouses; we slept at night in the wheat with shocks piled on three -sides of us to keep out the wind, and a broken shock underneath us to -keep us soft--and the night sky above us was of swans’ plumage, and all -the golden stalks and stubble about us and above us were exaggerated -among the stars. - -Night was very different on the plains from night in the mountains. No -sound of waters, no castellated peaks rising in the moonlight, no sense -of vast unevenness and disjected rocks; but instead, a feeling of being -in a great encampment where the swarming shocks of wheat were tents, -the tents of such a host that the numbers took away one’s breath. The -poet rejoiced. He loved it. The odour of the yellow stalks was a new -breath of life to him--for he was a prairie boy. - -The dawn-twilight was long and quiet, and the mornings were serene. -No workers were in sight. The disparity in numbers between men and -wheat was remarkable to my eyes. In Russia, the whole plain would have -been alive with the gay cottons of peasant lads and lasses. But here, -harvesting machinery displaces whole populations of men and women. - -Indians began to be numerous on the road as we approached the Blood -Reservation, Indian farm-wagons with women and children sprawling on -the hay at the bottom, and then Indians on horseback, all one piece -with their horses. We left the golden grain behind and crossed the -Reserve. Vachel explained what a squaw-man is--a white who marries an -Indian girl in order to get hold of her portion of land, the Indians of -to-day being almost all of them endowed with land by the Government. We -found again the Kootenai, now brawling through the plains, and bathed -again, and reverted in spirit to those mountains. Then we tramped from -tent to tent across the green wilderness where the Indians lived. -Indian boys in many-coloured garments pranced on their horses, chased -lines of cattle and horses, and kept the lines straight by galloping -incessantly between them from left to right to one end of the line, and -then right to left to the other end. - -We met Indians in voluminous seedy clothes, walking with a stoop; men -with gloomy ruminating faces who tried to avoid contact with a white -man. We talked to them; they raised their red romantic faces and glared -at us like owls startled by light. They could not speak English, so -they answered nothing, but just turned out of our way and slouched on. -Or the livelier ones made signs to us. The stout squaws stared at us. -The slender girls on their horses were almost indistinguishable from -boys. - - * * * * * - -WHAT a beaten-down and untidy place a Reservation is, strewn with -jetsam from the wigwam, hoofed till not a flower remains! The Indians -spend more time on horseback than on foot--they can’t farm, or -won’t farm, and possess only the roughest of comforts. We came to a -Government Practice Farm where Indians were being taught, and saw -squaws working there--but very little sign of decent cultivation on -the reservations. The Indian asks enough on which to live. He wants no -more, will work for no more. He makes plentiful use of canned foods, -and lives from hand to mouth. Hence you never hear of Indian cooks. -It is curious to contrast the genius of the negro for cooking and the -absence of a taste for cooking in the Indians. - - * * * * * - -AFTER the Indians we came to the Mormons. They were as much surprised -as the Dukhobors. How should Mormons be here? Perhaps we are the first -to make the discovery that the Mormons have invaded Canada. These -are the first Mormons to invite the shelter of the Empire. As usual, -they have made their settlement in a very obscure part, far from the -centre of authority. And if trouble should arise they have only to trek -through the Rockies, and then Uncle Sam and Senator Smoot will protect -them. - -We were regaled at farmhouses by sweet Mormon brides, who gave us -bannocks, who gave us of their simmering greengages out of the great -cauldron on the stove. Elders on horseback very politely, and with -many details, showed us the way to Cardston and the Mormon Temple. We -were happily and sympathetically disposed towards the Mormons, and -Vachel, who has taught the Salt-Lake-City girls to dance whilst he -chanted to them “The Queen of Sheba,” has a soft spot in his heart for -the sect. It was really started by a renegade preacher from his own -sect of Disciples, Sidney Rigdon, who revised the unsaleable manuscript -of a novel called _The Book of Mormon_. He conspired with Joseph Smith, -who discovered the book written in aboriginal American hieroglyphics -on gold plates and translated it by the aid of certain miraculous -spectacles into King’s English, or I should say President’s English, -who was murdered; who therefore gave way to Brigham Young, to whom were -revealed many mysteries. - -“They are a whole lot nearer to Mahometanism than to Christianity,” -said Vachel. “I think a Mahometan mission to the Mormons might not be a -bad idea as a step on the road towards Christianity.” - - * * * * * - -WE sat discussing this on the banks of the Kootenai, and I was -facetious: - -“Ye Mormons, there is no god but God, and Mahomet is His prophet. -Whereas in Christ ye are now living in adultery and sin, in Mahomet ye -are pure men and women. By Christ, in the after-life there is neither -marriage nor giving in marriage, but in Mahomet connubial bliss for -evermore, attended by your houris and your wives. Don’t say no. Think -it over and I’ll call this afternoon!” - -“_Put that in_,” said Vachel. “I think they’ve derived a good deal -from the phallic religions too. They’ve made a much bigger thing of -Mormonism than it was in the days of Joseph Smith. It has got hold of -the sex mysteries. There’s a whole lot of masonry in it. The common -sort of condemnation of the Mormons is all that’s ever been attempted -by way of criticism of them. They’ve been stoned out of all the Middle -West. We have even in Springfield in the Fair-grounds one of their -altars taken from Nauvoo, Illinois, from which they were chased. They -were a mistaken people--but they learned much through tribulation.” - -The poet is by temperament on the side of any one or any institution -which happens to be violently attacked. He was greatly interested by -Mormonism, so I naturally heard from him many things in favour of it. -First of all, he felt it had a great future in America--it was not a -dying cult. - -“One side of it is getting very popular,” I interjected, with some -mirth. “It’s the word of abuse in England from an injured wife to her -husband--‘_You--Mormon!_’” - -“Well, the idea of polygamy does make a strong appeal to the male,” -said the poet. “And the women feel happy in it when it is an accepted -convention.” - -“You mean, women only object to clandestine polygamy?” - -“There is always jealousy,” said my companion. “But that is another -matter. What I meant about the future of Mormonism did not refer -to polygamy so much. But it’s our first real American religion. It -started in America. It pretends to give American religious traditions. -According to Mormon, one of the lost tribes of Israel came to South -America. Mormonism links America to both Noah and Adam and to the -hand of God. In their belief, too, Christ came to America--He did not -wait till 1492 for Columbus to discover it first. He was here before -Columbus. In Mormonism America is presented with a whole American -tradition, going as far back as the Old World traditions, embodied in -the Old and New Testaments.” - - * * * * * - -CARDSTON, which at length we reached, is largely a Mormon city. The -Temple, a remarkable structure, exteriorily chaste and beautiful, -dominates the scene, and the clouds rest upon it, obscuring its upper -storeys in cloudy weather. It is not used for general worship; for -that purpose there is a sufficiently ugly tabernacle. It is almost -exclusively for the Mormon sacraments, the sealing of wives and -children, and for the meditational recreation of the elders. Once the -building has been completed and consecrated it will remain inaccessible -to outsiders, but in order to avert suspicion, visitors are shown -over it until that time. We were lucky, as the Temple is very nearly -finished, and it is a rare experience for an outsider to gain access. -There are only eight Mormon Temples in the world, and the rites -performed therein are entirely secret. - -The town is mostly inhabited by Mormons, and the great business “pull” -of the sect is evidenced in the technical and structural growth of the -place. The land between the city and the reservations is theirs, and -also much that lies beyond. A strong propaganda for the sect is carried -on all over America, and also in England and in Europe. Women converts -seem especially desired. On the other hand, men of proved sincerity or -simplicity are not rejected. The Mormons have land at their disposal, -and they exert considerable influence on settlers and pioneers of -the West. The elders help to organise business and to mormonise the -community as much as possible. They can be of great help to any young -Mormon starting life. On the other hand strange dooms are said to await -any Mormons who give away their secrets, and apostasy is infrequent. - -Some of them are, however, incautious. In my room at the hotel I found -a heap of correspondence left there by the last man who had been in -occupation. It was perhaps indelicate to pry into a Mormon’s private -affairs, but I confess to a human weakness of curiosity under the -circumstances. Here was the basic material for a novel on the Mormons; -letters from one pal to another, letters from girls, sweet letters, -despairing letters, telegrams. Technically there is not supposed to be -polygamy any more, and legally there is not, but in reality something -of the sort goes on, as may be judged from the following letter I -transcribe, one of a packet I brought from Cardston. - - S----D, - Mo. - - DEAR ----, - - I received your letter written on the 21st from Ladysmith, B.C., - yesterday, but I worked late last night and I had an answer to one - of Ruth’s letters to write that I had put off for a week. So it was - pretty near time to get up rather than to go to bed, but I will just - drop a hurried line to let you know I still live. - - I sure am glad to hear you are able to save a little because I also - am trying to save a few pennies also and it sure comes hard. I also - am glad to hear you are in a business that you like but you failed - to tell me just what your line of selling is. What do you sell? buck - handkerchiefs or iron toothpicks. Does Dan travel with you also. - It sure is great to be able to see a lot of the world at some one - else’s expense and your pleasure. I suppose S----d is about like - Vancouver; rainy and not worth a dam. It sure has rained a lot here - in the last few weeks. I believe we have had more rain here this - month than Utah has in a year. - - About my wife in Utah. I receive letters regularly. Eight or nine - days apart as regular as 8 o’clock comes in the morning. Every 8 - or 9 days I get a letter and just that often I get a letter from - home also. I am going to try to get a vacation and get enough money - to take me back to Utah next summer. I don’t know if I can or not - because I will have to have an operation on my nose right away - because I always have a cold as it is. If I do not keep on having - this cold I now have I will not have the operation, but if it does - not leave me pretty soon I will have the bone taken out and doubtless - lose my chance of getting home. - - I sure am glad you appreciate Peggy by now. You know, old Pal, that - you never miss the water till the well runs dry, and it sure is - true when a fellow leaves his friends and is out alone. You sure - appreciate what you did have when it is gone completely. I believe - that a fellow must live a life like we are to really appreciate the - good things in life anyhow. If we did not taste of the sour things - the sweet ones would seem sour to us. By gosh it sure is true in one - respect I miss some one to darn my sox. I try to do it myself but it - is slow work and I get so (nervous?) Try and imagine me sitting all - night darning sox. It sure is a bellina (? hellish) job. I don’t like - it at all. - - Well, old pal, I have a Missouri wife now so S----d seems to be a - pretty good place after all. She is a girl I met in church and is - about the size and looks about like Ruth W----. Some girl I will say. - We have been to a couple of parties and to a couple of shows in two - weeks beside being at her place all day last Sunday. Sunday we are - going to have a picnic and take a few pictures, and Monday night a - large masquerade party is on and we are going to it also. So you see - I stop her right off and she don’t object either, I don’t believe. - - I wrote W---- a letter on the 3rd of this month and as yet I have - not received a letter. I guess he wanted to have a good time while - his “heaven” lasts, and I don’t blame him either. I believe he is a - little worried over his mission and rather hates to go, but I believe - he will be alright. - - I am getting along fine here. I order all the shoes here so I am - the shoe desk manager. The boss gives me all the shoe mail, and I - just order what I want and leave the rest. It is quite a large job, - but our store is not quite as large as Salt Lake’s, but the shoe - department could keep a regular man busy. So you see I am doing fine. - To-morrow is pay-day and I also get a nice raise, so I have no kick - except to darn my sox. They are the greatest worry I have had. - - Well, old pal, I gave this letter and your last one pretty good - service considering all the work we have now that the winter business - is just opening up. Here it is after 12.30 again, so I will go to bed - and get up again at 6 a. m. Try to be good, old pal, and don’t do - anything I wouldn’t--Your old pal, - ED. - - * * * * * - -YOU cannot learn much of the ways of the Mormons by asking them, but -when one of them leaves a whole packet of correspondence behind him in -a hotel he “sure is” giving things away. - -We walked up to the Temple at three in the afternoon, the designated -time when visitors are shown round, and punctually at that hour the -doors were opened and the curious were admitted. - -“Wherever we locates we builds temples,” said the guide, a curious -old fellow, so illiterate that he strewed the temple floor with his -aitches, an Englishman from the provinces, squat, confidential, -insinuating. “This is the eighth Mormon Temple,” said he. “The ninth is -now rising in Phœnix, Arizona.” - -The visitors were mostly farm-women, and Vachel and I looked like a -couple of tramps in their midst. Our clothes hung on us; we held in our -hands a couple of the most weather-beaten of old hats. I was the “big -un” and Vachel was the “little un.” We looked to have a little less -intelligence than gopher-rats. - -“The ’ole edifiss is of stone,” said the guide, “and the foundation is -of rock and concrete. There’s not five dollars’ worth of wood in the -construction. All the wood you see is haksessories.” - -“Are all the temples built of stone only?” I asked cautiously, with the -air of a stone-mason out of a job. - -“No,” said he. “Each is built on a seprit plan.” - -“’Ere,” said he, turning to the rest of the company, “’ere we seals. -This ’ere room is for ordinances only. No, we don’t worship in the -Temple. It’s not used for public worship. You see the red-brick -building as you came up to the Temple. That is the Tabernacle where -public worship is held, and that is free to all. But ’ere in the Temple -we ’as the ordinances and the meditations.” - -The guide was naturally a Mormon, and as he showed us around I thought -his main objects were to tell us nothing while pretending to tell us -all, and yet at the same time to make converts among the women. He did -all he could to interest the latter in the cooking and lighting and -warming and washing arrangements. - -“You ’ave ’ere the electric stoves to cook the meals. You couldn’t -keep running in and out of the Temple in yer sacred garments to get -meals at resterongs, so we cooks ’ere. But there can be no smell of -cooking--as this exhaust takes all the smell away out of the building. -Very convenient, eh, ain’t it? We’ve had over ten thousand applications -from women to come and cook in the Temple.” - -The farm-women giggled appreciatively. The guide led them on to the -laundering establishment. As the Mormons wear secret underlinen with -signs, they naturally don’t care to send their laundry out to wash. -And in the Temple we were given to understand every man and woman wore -special white garments. Consequently there would be much laundering. -But all was to be done by the latest machinery, driven by electric -power. “No hand-work, no scrubbing, no drudgery and gettin’ your -fingers red and ’ard,” said the guide. “Then, when the wash is done, -hpp, in they go to the drying chamber, and in a few seconds they are -sufficiently dry to be taken out and ironed on the electric irons.” - -For a moment it was like being at an ideal home exhibition. “Then the -radiators,” said the guide, “you see, they don’t project into the -rooms, but are fixed in the walls dead level with the surface of the -walls.” - -“Of course the Temple ’asn’t got its upolstery in yet, but in every -room the furniture will be all of a piece with the inlay wood of the -walls. If the walls is oak the furniture will be oak to match; if -it’s bird’s-eye maple, the furniture’ll be bird’s-eye maple; if it’s -Circassian mahogany the furniture will be Circassian mahogany too. -Every room will have its colour scheme. ’Ere you see the thermometer. -Now the temperature of the building will be regulated. It won’t matter -wot the weather is like outside, it will be controlled inside. The -engineer will ’ave ’is orfice outside the Temple and don’t never need -come in. All they ’as to do is telephone ’im to raise the temperature -ten degrees or lower it five and he’ll do it.” - -“We comes to the baths” (they are pretty elaborate). “’Ere’s the men’s -section, over there’s the women’s. You natcherally bathe first of all -when you enter the Temple and remove every speck of dust or dirt from -your body. And ’ere are the robing-rooms where spotless garments is -waiting you to put on. You walks all in white wherever you go in the -Temple, and when it ’as been consecrated no more folks will ever go in -it in ordinary clothes like as you and me to-day.” - -The Temple proved to be the last word in luxury and modern convenience. -In the most elegant club in London, Paris, or New York I have not seen -such luxury and sensual comfort as was in this Temple in the rough -wild west. Every room was inlaid with precious woods. The baths and -robing-rooms were worthy of a Sultan, the lounge and one-piece carpets -all suggested a material heaven. The guide showed us the vast font -reposing on the life-size figures of twelve oxen, the symbols of the -twelve tribes of Israel. This font was the centre of a stately chamber -with galleries running round it. From the galleries the friends of the -candidates could watch the ceremony of immersion. The font was large -enough to baptize families at once. - -“And you can be baptized many times,” said the guide. “For yourself, -then for your friends, and then for the dead--for any one you would -like to have saved.” - -“Baptized for the dead?” said one of the women in horror. “Yes,” said -he. “You think it strange, but the early Christians all used to do it. -Just turn up First Corinthians, chapter fifteen. ‘What shall they do -which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are -they then baptized for the dead?’ which shows plainly that the apostles -recommended it.” - -“Is the water cold?” asked a farm-girl, timorously. - -“Cold,” said the guide ingratiatingly, “oh, no! It’s warmed. It’s just -_nice_. I should say about the temperature of warm milk.” - -“Oh!” “Oh!” There was chorus of approval from the women, who had been -considering the whole matter from a purely personal point of view. - -We were then led to the Creation Room, the Garden of Eden Room, and the -Earth-natural Room, all adorned with works of art. There were pictures -of the world before Creation, and then of each stage in the process of -Creation. - -“God don’t love chaos. ’E’s a great organiser. ’E organised it, and -’e divided the water from the hearth and gave us light and made the -hanimal creation--yes, all that lives and breeves,” said the guide. -“’Ere we meet to meditate on the Creation. Isn’t it a beutiful room?” - -Some one asked him if the artists were Mormons. “Yes, all of them,” -said he, and then went on-- - -“You’d think it gets stuffy in ’ere. But no; we ’as the hair taken out -and washed and then returned. It’s a new device for washing the hair.” - -We passed to Eden. Here were pictures of the whole animal creation in -benevolent and sentimental happiness; the tiger browsing beside the -lamb, and the lion and the giddy goat frisking around. - -The guide purveyed the story of the Garden of Eden, but left out Adam -and Eve, and I walked away from him to wander round and seek the -portraits of our first parents. They were not included. But I found -that the painting of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and of the -Tree of Life were concave at the base, and that there was a recess and -an alcove to each. So there was a place for a living Adam and Eve to -sit, side by side, when the meditation on the Garden was going on. My -idea is that Eve would be seated in the Tree of Life and Adam in the -Tree of Knowledge. But that is surmise. The guide would not tell us -what the alcoves were for, but in the eye of curious imagination I saw -Adam and Eve sitting there in primitive innocence whilst the hearts of -the elders were inditing of a good matter. - -From Eden we went to the Earth-natural, which was a hideous place where -every animal was depicted with a vicious expression. A large mad coyote -or, was it a hyena? seemed to control the atmosphere of the chamber. - -“’Ere we ’ave the Hearth after sin ’as crept in,” said the guide. “’Ere -is life as we know it, full of sin which you can’t escape. You can all -learn a great deal from them pictures. Think of Hadam and Eve. ’Ave you -ever thought of it--’ow God gave them the garden of Eden, and of the -‘experience’ ’e made them ’ave there. Isn’t it true about us? ’E didn’t -mean that nothin’ should ever ’appen to us. ’E brought us into the -world that we might ’ave an experience.” - -So we went on to the Marriage Room, which was entirely bare, and no one -could say what it would be like when the decorations and the furniture -had been added. I judged it time for me to cease being Simple Simon, -so I asked the guide as humbly as I could whether the marriages were -legal when the ceremony was performed. - -“Yes,” said he. “You ’ave a legal marriage.” - -“But polygamy?” I queried, and I saw his eyes flame. - -“Polygamy ’as been done away with long ago when Utah was received into -the Union,” he answered in a gruff way. - -“And what happened to the other wives when it was abolished?” asked -some one else very softly. But the guide did not reply. Instead he -began to hurry us out of the building. We had only seen a third of -it and were loth to go. But there was nothing for it. We managed to -get a last glimpse of an assembly hall with large frescoes on the -walls, depicting Christ distributing the Bread and the Wine to the -Mound-Builders, or Indians of South America, and underneath was written -III. Nephi 15. Another fresco had reference to the Book of Josiah, -which is part of Mormon Holy Writ--found by Joseph Smith, written on -gold plates. - -The guide hurried us to the door. “I’ve some pictures of the Temple -for sale,” said he to the farm-women. But they seemed all to have been -scared by my question about polygamy. Vachel and I stopped to look -at the pictures. After all, they were only picture-postcards of the -exterior. We bought three. - -“Good-b’ye,” said I. “And much obliged.” And I offered him my hand. He -gave me his left. - -“Good-b’ye,” said Vachel. “Most interesting.” And he offered him his -hand. The guide gave him his left also. - -“A left-handed shake,” said Vachel, meditatively, as we went down the -steps. “You know what that means.” - -“No?” - -“That means--Go to Hell!” - - * * * * * - -WE were much intrigued by all this, and found out that Adam is God -to the Mormons, and Christ only one of a series which culminated in -Brigham Young. Mormonism is the story of a passionate sensual man -with a fake religion, a leader, however, of men and women, capable of -starting a church, murdered and then succeeded by the great Brigham. -The Mormon community, persecuted ever, loathed and detested yet -not destroyed, plunged ever westward through the deserts with new -revelations all the way, always, however, being overtaken by the tide -of other pioneers and chased again. They were secret, and wanted to -be secret. But the United States always overtook them. Now they have -compromised in many ways and are not persecuted, and they multiply and -spread and propagandise. They are disciplined. In politics they all -vote one way--as ordered. They begin to be proud of America. - -Vachel and I went up to the Temple at night. It looked like a place -produced by enchantment--the highest thing on the highest eminence -of the widespread but low-built city of Cardston. Clouds hid the top -of it. There was no one near but ourselves, apparently not even a -watchman. The massive gates were locked and barred, and above them -gleamed electric lanterns in large and graceful M’s. - -We have learned an elementary lesson about them. - -“Remember that, Vachel,” said I. “M for Mormon.” - -“The guide said a true word,” said the poet. “God sent us into the -world that we might have an experience.” - - * * * * * - -WITH that our tramping ended. We left our pine-staffs leaning against a -Cardston wall. We slept in beds again and bought our coffee at a shop. -Gathering prose invaded the clear blue of our poetry. Some sadness, -like a shadow, settled on us. And it was good-b’ye to the mountains. - -[Illustration] - - _Thy Kingdom come, O Lord, - As once it came, - May it come again! - For once it came upon the mountains, - It came upon the wings of the morning - Amid the flowers and adown the streams. - It came into our eyes, - It came into our hearts. - Thy Kingdom come, O Lord, - As once it came, - May it come again!_ - - - - -[Illustration: THE WORLD IS MY PARISH] - - - - -XXXVIII. BLOOM FOR EVER, O REPUBLIC! - - -WE crossed the line again and returned to the United States. And then -we went to the city of St. Paul, and we saw the falls where Minnehaha -and Hiawatha met. We stood on the high bank of the Mississippi and -considered meditatively the mounds of the mound-builders there. What -more impressive symbol for a world-traveller than these pre-historic -mounds--there before the Indians came--emblems of the infinite -forgotten past of man! Then we went to Chicago. We saw the beautiful -Wrigley building which has risen to look from drab Chicago over -Michigan Lake--a building raised by the profits of gum! Vachel -introduced me to the first sponsor of his verse, Harriet Monroe, of -“Poetry,” and he described to me how he and W. B. Yeats once divided -the annual poetry prize of Chicago, and how he was to have read aloud -the prize poem--“General William Booth Enters Heaven,” but to the -surprise of the company assembled gave his new, hitherto unheard-of -work “The Congo,” a poem which at that time must have been dumfounding -in its novelty. Then Yeats, who seemed to have snubbed every one -including the poet himself, made a very generous speech in favour of -Lindsay’s genius. And we met Chicago’s poet, Carl Sandburg, a rugged -Scandinavian with brown hair who claimed me as a “Nordic” also. And he -carried a large and old guitar on which he thrummed when reciting his -poems. He has heard Negro Blues in the South, and loves the coloured -folk, and has a whole repertoire of blues which he will sing you if -you will. I had a glass of beer with Sandburg in Milwaukee, the only -glass of anything of the kind offered me this time in these dry United -States. I met Ridgely Torrance, gentle and whimsical, with one long -lock of hair on his head like a Russian khokhol. Curiously enough, he -also had been enchanted by the Negroes and knew more about them than -us all, and he read poetry to us. There I met beautiful Zona Gale of -Portage whom, it is said, nearly every literary man who ever met her -has at some time or other loved. And meeting Zona I met Lulu Bett. We -met delectable Isidora, once queen of Springfield, now queen of another -city. And we stayed with Mrs. William Vaughan Moody, widow of that -dramatist and poet who wrote “The Great Divide” and “The Fire-Bringer.” -We were a rough-looking couple to be a lady’s guests, but Harriet Moody -loves the whole writing world for her husband’s sake and took us in, -and I found in her what so many know--a vivid personality, endlessly -kind. And couldn’t she cook! We loved her for her poetry and we loved -her for her pies. - - * * * * * - -WE went to Springfield, Illinois, and there we had a general clean-up -and our mosquito netting came back from the laundry marked “Lace; two -pieces.” I visited all Vachel’s cronies and friends and acquaintances -and enemies, and there were articles about us in the _Register_ and -_Journal_ every day for a fortnight, and I spoke to the Radical Kaffee -Klatsch for the celebrated Isidor Levine, and to the Conservative -Luncheon Club for the ubiquitous Elmer Neale, and I spoke to the _Via -Christi_ class for Mrs. Lindsay, and to the High School for Vachel’s -old teacher, and to the readers in the Public Library for Martha -Wilson. I had all the books on Russia put on a table, and I discoursed -upon them. The most-read book was _The Brothers Karamazof_, which -looked as if it had been in every bed in Springfield. We went to the -Negro churches together; we talked to Charlie Gibbs the famous coloured -attorney. We were entertained by Mrs. Warren--Drinkwater’s Springfield -hostess. We could not visit the Governor--he was under arrest. But -we visited the unsuccessful candidate for the governship at the last -election. Vachel discoursed on small-town politics while Mrs. Sherman -made us meringues. The poet introduced me to his sweethearts, who were -of all ages, from twelve to eighty. I made friends with beautiful -little Mary Jane Allen, who danced and glided into and out of our -presence, and smiled at us and lifted her child’s heart to us. And we -called on “Judith the Dancer,” who taught little Mary Jane. Always -along the Springfield streets the sight of the children exhilarated my -companion--“Stephen, I just love them to death,” said he. - -I got to be very well known. I had a sort of royal progress in the -street, questioned and smiled at on all hands. “’Scuse me,” they would -say, “those boots, did you tramp in _them_?” or, “How d’ye do? My -little girl heard you give your talk in the school yesterday. She’s -full of it; it was _mighty_ good of you.” - -I came to love the people of this little city, and to see the place -with Vachel’s creative eyes. Surely no one ever encountered such -kindness, such real warmth of heart, as I did there. It was very moving -for one who had come right out of the bitterness and quarrels of Europe -and out of the loneliness of London. They know something about living -which we are forgetting. They taught me much, and the poet has taught -me much also--the bounty of good humour and of unfailing kindness and -warmth. I love those who’ve got the strength of heart to lift their -hands to take yours, who open their mouths actually to speak to you. - -So I cannot tell the poet what I owe him, and he says he cannot tell -me what he owes me. We made one final quest together, and that was -to Salem where Abraham Lincoln lived a poor man’s life, and learned -mathematics from Dominie Graham and fell in love with the daughter of -his landlord--unforgettable Anne Rutledge. And we paused before the -massive block of granite which marks Anne’s grave, strewn otherwise -with flowers, and refulgent with thoughts. And we read Masters’s -beautiful lines inscribed over the grave: - - I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, - Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, - Wedded to him, not through union - But through separation. - Bloom for ever, O Republic - From the dust of my bosom! - -[Illustration] - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=. - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - - Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAMPING WITH A POET IN THE -ROCKIES *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -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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